Warren - Into Bones like Oil

Praise for Into Bones Like Oil

Warren delivers a tale of creeping dread. Dora is in a house that we all know and despise from traveling, but where the guests are used as conduits. For Dora, the haunting by her past may be worse than anything supernatural and in Warrens hands, the horrific encroaches inexorably on the familiar. Recommended.

TADE THOMPSON, author of Rosewater and

The Murders of Molly Southbourne

This dark, ethereal novella by Warren... will especially appeal to horror readers who appreciate melancholic and atmospheric stories.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Beautifully written and profoundly disturbing, an evocative meditation on sorrow and loss, a ghost story in which the most terrifying specters come from within.

TIM WAGGONER, author of The Forever House

Dark, disturbing, visceral... it taps into a deep fear of not having our voice heard, our history recognized, our feelings taken into account and our motivations understood. Yet it is also a story which offers the chance of redemption, forgiveness, justice and, eventually, cathartic resolution.

LINDA HEPWORTH, NB MAGAZINE (5 STARS)

Warren stirs awake an everyday fear that comes at you one hundred and one ways... an accomplished story that is most unsettling.

EUGEN BACON, AUREALIS MAGAZINE

A gripping and idiosyncratic story of horror and redemption... the uncanny is actually the normality, and what we call normality is actually the real horror.

SEB DOUBINSKY, author of the City-States Cycle series

An unusually effective tale; hard to define, and harder to forget.

FANTASY BOOK REVIEW

ALSO BY KAARON WARREN

NOVELS

Slights

Walking the Tree

Mistification

The Grief Hole

Tide of Stone

COLLECTIONS

The Grinding House

The Glass Woman

Dead Sea Fruit

Through Splintered Walls

Cemetery Dance Select: Kaaron Warren

The Gate Theory

Exploring Dark Short Fiction #2: A Primer to Kaaron Warren

into

bones

like

oil

kaaron warren

Meerkat Press

Atlanta

INTO BONES LIKE OIL. Copyright 2019 by Kaaron Warren.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For information, contact Meerkat Press at info@meerkatpress.com .

ISBN-13 978-1-946154-42-2 (Paperback)

ISBN-13 978-1-946154-43-9 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019948180

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the authors imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Cover art by S.A. Hadi Hasan

Printed in the United States of America

Published in the United States of America by

Meerkat Press, LLC, Atlanta, Georgia

www.meerkatpress.com

For my Green Shed girls, for providing me with so much inspiration, support and friendship.

FIRST DAY

TUESDAY

NIGHT

The reception desk sat empty when Dora arrived at nine p.m. Good. That was the plan. The key to her room was in a lock box that wasnt locked (It looks locked, thats the main thing, the landlord had told her). The key was there, along with a grease-stained sheet of rules and conditions ( No Cooking In The Rooms ) and a hand-drawn map showing her where to find her bedroom.

She was on the ground floor, although it was really the lower ground level now since the building had sunk further into the ground over the years. She passed the doorway her map indicated opened into the breakfast room ( 7 a.m.8 a.m. sharp ). The room was dark except for the light of the hallway spilling in, but she could see six or seven tables already set up. Each table was laid for one person and she smiled; that was one less thing to worry about. The idea of having to eat with a stranger horrified her. She could barely stand eating with her own family. She thought she could smell bacon, but there was also mustiness and something else, like hot metal.

Someone had hand lettered a sign for the bathroom door vacant and that was a relief too, unless someone thought it was funny to turn the sign over when someone else was inside. She glanced up and down the hallway and, seeing no one, ducked into the bathroom, flipping the sign. The other side said: fuck off Im in here .

The bathrooms floor and walls were tiled in pale purple streaked with gold. It gave the room an odd glow because the pale green glass-globed light fixture was set high in the ceiling and dimmed by dust and dead insects. The toilet was old but clean. There was no sign of spare toilet paper in the room. Against the wall was a shower and bath combination with a large, pale purple bathtub that sported rust stains and paint chips. The shower curtain was moldy and stained, but at least it existed. She hated showering without one.

Shed wash later, once she figured out who was around and where they were.

She listened at the bathroom door and, hearing nothing, stepped into the hallway. She flipped the sign back to vacant . There were three doors off this stretch, one marked linen , with a lock, the others numbered. It was very quiet, but from each room came a slow murmur, a hum like a one-sided conversation.

She heard the gentle ticking of a large clock but couldnt see one.

The map said her room lay at the end of the hall. The key was small and flimsy, and she hoped it would work. She was relieved when it turned smoothly as it must have done a thousand times before.

Dora slid the door open. It was lightweight, shaking in the track as it moved. It would provide very little security. But then she was in an inner-city rooming house, so her expectation of security was low.

Her room had once been the foyer, when the house was much smaller and the entrance faced the other way. Now, after renovations and changes, it faced an alleyway. The old front door, now most of one of the walls, was covered with clothes hooks of many kinds. Her wardrobe. She thought previous tenants must have hammered the hooks in as there was nowhere else to hang clothes. There was no chest of drawers in the room, only one shelf over the bed, set into the wall. It looked like the place where, decades ago when a family lived here and milk was delivered to the door, the milkman would have put the bottles. She didnt remember those days, but her grandmother did, once wistfully and now as if it were still the case, as if milk was delivered each morning. There were six or seven books on the shelf.

Dora had very little with her. One small suitcase that shed used as a seat and a pillow over the last week. There was no room to lay her suitcase out on the floor so she hefted it onto the bed. Opening the zip, she threw back the lid. She hung T-shirts and skirts and pants, two of each, on the hooks, folded her underwear onto the shelf. She had one book ( Chicken Soup for the Grieving Soul ) but no photos. She zipped the suitcase closed, lifted it off the bed, and placed it upright on the floor. Once she covered it with a pillowcase or a towel it would be a fine bedside table.

She moved the seven books, all by R.L. Stephenson ( Confessions of the Dead, Parts IV , Lore of the Sea, and The Wreck ) from the shelf and placed them beside her suitcase. There was a blue bottle she left on the shelf, andbeside itshe placed two childrens hairbrushes, pink and run through with strands of hair.