John Everson - Deadly Nightlusts: A Collection of Forbidden Magic

FIRST EDITION

DEADLY NIGHTLUSTS A COLLECTION OF FORBIDDEN MAGIC

Published by Blasphemous Books, an imprint of KHP Publishers

blasphemousbooks.com

This collection is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This work, including all characters, names, and places: Copyright 2010 John Everson

All rights reserved.

"Pumpkin Head," originally published in Grue, 1999

"A Lack of Signs," originally published in Vigilantes of Love, 2003

"Green Apples, Red Nails," original to this collection, 2010

"Star on the Beach," originally published in Peepshow Vol. 1, 2004

"To Earn His Love," originally published in Crossroads Magazine, 1995

"Sacrificing Virgins," originally published in The Dead Inn, 2001

"Body & Blood," originally published in Lords of the Abyss, 1995

Cover design: Copyright 2010 K.H. Koehler

Cover photo by Carlotta Carano: http://spectralfairy.deviantart.com/

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of both the publisher and author.

Acknowledgments:

Thanks to editors Pat Nielsen, Glenda Woodrum, Peggy Nadramia, Shane Ryan Staley and Paul Fry for originally publishing these dark dreams of mine in their magazines and anthologies! And thanks to S.D. Hintz, Jerrod Balzer and K.H. Koehler for bringing these tales back from the dead.

Fifteen years ago, the world was a really different place. Most people didn't have a personal email address (or carry cell phones, for that matter). Most didn't "surf the net" with any frequency, because the World Wide Web was a fledgling thing. Those of us who wrote short horror fiction went to the magazine stands each month, constantly searching the ads at the back of Writers Market and other publications for announcements about small press magazines that were looking for the kinds of weird tales we were typing up on our floppy disc-driven computers (yep - my computer back then didn't have an actual hard drive... it worked completely off a 3.5 inch floppy disc!).

It was like discovering a secret society each time you found a new small press magazine out there with some obscure P.O. Box, and you really treasured those 'zines when you found them. They were the only connections many of us had with any other people who shared our niche interests in the bizarre. Horror readers and writers were really remote islands to themselves.

If you stuck with it, you slowly uncovered a network of magazines with their small but loyal fan bases all around the country; digest and full-sized magazines that were printed and side-stapled in someone's garage. Most of them were distributed to only 50 or 100 people... but it was still a challenge and a victory to get a story accepted for publication.

That was the atmosphere that I started out in; it was really the heyday of the small press magazine. In the early to mid-'90s, I published dozens of stories in them, some of which were collected in my first couple of short fiction books, Cage of Bones & Other Deadly Obsessions and Vigilantes of Love. Some others from that period I've recycled and had reprinted over the past few years in anthologies that reached ten times more people than the stories did when they were first released. But I still have some tales sitting on my computer hard drive that appeared only once in a tiny magazine and have never been seen by more than a few dozen people since.

When S.D. Hintz and Jerrod Balzer approached me about doing something with their new press, I thought that perhaps there was still a story or two in the "vault" that might be worth digging up and giving a new life. I found a couple pieces they liked, including "Star on the Beach" a story that originally appeared in a small British anthology. I also dug up "Sacrificing Virgins," which I'd written 10 years ago for an early Delirium Books anthology called The Dead Inn and "To Earn His Love," a story that had appeared in 1995 in a tiny digest magazine called Crossroads. The latter were both tales that I've always wanted to get into wider circulation.

Then I suggested adding another story that had only appeared in my Vigilantes of Love collection, just to round it out a bit. And then they suggested including "Pumpkin Head," one of their favorite stories of mine (which is the only one in this collection that has seen a lot of exposure). And then I sent them "Body & Blood" after a conversation about the mission behind their new imprint Blasphemous Books; I remembered this old piece that had only seen print in one of those wildly indie, side-stapled anthologies of the '90s called Lords of the Abyss. I'd be shocked if more than 75 people ever saw that anthology, or the story. I hadn't read "Body & Blood" in years, and really wasn't thinking that we'd put it in the book... but I thought my new editors would get a kick out of the "blasphemous" theme. They did... and wanted it in the collection.

Then I saw the cover art that was proposed for this book, and instantly had a story idea pop to mind about the seductive woman, and green apples, and those nails, red as blood... and the story's theme of the past catching up to the present seemed right for this book, which really is about unearthing forgotten moments. And so somehow, this short "double feature" release grew to be a seven-story collection.

Some of these tales may be a little rougher around the edges than my work is today, but I hope you'll enjoy them regardless. They come from a writer I once was, and remember fondly, along with those secret small press magazines that lurked on the other side of P.O. Boxes around the country. They come from places that I've been along the way. Places of forbidden magic. And deadly nightlusts.

Tread softly.

John Everson

Naperville, IL

October 24, 2010

Jack's hands trembled as he traced a small circle on the slick skin of the pumpkin, using a magic marker and the bottlecap he'd lifted from his mom's medicine cabinet. It looked to be about the right size.

A gibbous moon shone in garish relief off the night-polished hides of hundreds of orange globes, but Jack's chosen pumpkin was special. He'd picked it for its size as well as its seclusion. Somehow, this particular vine had crept over the irrigation ditch and nurtured its offspring well away from the others under the shade of a gnarled elm.

The tiny circle drawn, Jack opened his pocketknife and with quick, short thrusts turned his drawing into a hole. His heart began pumping with growing volume as he completed the first stage of his violation.

"You've got to try this!" Tom had told him in a whisper the previous week after school. Exhaling a cloud of Marlboro smoke with practiced disdain for anyone who might be staring his way, Tom had laughed. "It's so twisted, it's great. You just have to make sure the hole's not too big, or it won't work."

At first, he'd figured Tom had to be making it up. Nobody would try that! Totally gross. But every time he thought about it, he got a funny feeling inside; the idea attracted him. And so tonight, under the chill wind of an October moon, Jack stood coring a pumpkin. This is stupid, he thought for the hundredth time. This is warped.

But after taking a furtive glance around the pumpkin patch behind him, silently amazed at the endless rows of orange basketball shapes stretching to the black horizon, Jack unbuckled his belt and dropped his jeans to the ground. A cold knot twisted his stomach at the realization that he was going through with this perversion, and a countering hot stab of anticipation drove through his heart and groin. With a shiver and a shrug, he shoved his underpants past his knees and, goosebumps popping out across his bare lower body, knelt next to the pumpkin.