The Fear County Chronicle #21
Heading up north once again, upcoming book releases, and a vintage Southern-Fried tale from way back in the 1990s!
Wow! Has it really been nearly a month since I posted the Giant-Size Authorcon Edition of The Fear County Chronicle? I reckon putting out a new Chronicle has sort of slipped my mind lately, what with having to meet several deadlines and reading a few books for blurbs (all well-deserved, I might add). And now here I am packing up boxes of Southern-Fried Horror books again for another journey, this time north of the Mason-Dixion Line. Plus, this coming Friday, my youngest daughter Makenna graduates from high school. So, I’ve had a lot on my plate lately in a lot of different ways.
Horror On Main Bound!
Next weekend, May 26th through 28th, I’ll be at the Delta Marriott in Hunt Valley, Maryland for the First Annual HORROR ON MAIN convention as an author guest. There will be a huge gathering of writers, artists, voice talents, actors, directors, screenwriters, and creative folks in the horror field there… so many I could fill up this entire newsletter just naming them. So - to make it easier on myself and you - here’s a sampling of who you’ll find there if you attend (it’s kinda like trying to find Waldo, isn’t it?)
If you’re interested in attending, head on over to the HORROR ON MAIN website and check it out. The lovely Mrs. Joyce and I will be there with the Southern-Fried Horror table, as well as fresh copies of my latest collection, Tales From the Southern Fried Crypt.
And speaking of TALES FROM THE SOUTHERN-FRIED CRYPT…
Yes, Book Two of my EC Comics-inspired Southern-Fried Horror Series is currently available in ebook and paperback at Amazon. I hope to have copies available at the RKHORROR online bookstore around May 19th for those of you who prefer personally inscribed copies with hand drawn RK artwork on the title page (yeah, I know, I’ve spoiled y’all! But, hey, you’re worth it.) I would have had copies available sooner, but the wrong size was submitted to Amazon (a bit smaller than Book One, Haunt of Southern-Fried Fear), so Crossroad Press has resubmitted the book again in the correct size format.
Tales From the Southern-Fried Crypt features ten terrifying tales from your host, The Old Storyteller, as he spins southern-fried stories of voodoo curses and rampaging swamp creatures. Alex McVey did the cool retro comic book cover, and I did the back cover art, plus eleven interior black and white comic-panel pages, plus two pages of vintage-style comic book advertisements in the back. Book Three of the series, Vault of Southern-Fried Horror (featuring tales of murderers, maniacs, and serial killers), will be released in early 2024.
Upcoming RK books for 2023!
Here is a list of books that I’ll be releasing in paperback and hardcover editions during the rest of 2023:
The Shrouded Tome: Ten Forgotten Fables (June, D&T Publishing) This is a collection of ten rarely read short stories and novellas from my Thunderstorm limited editions and the small press horror magazines I appeared in during the late-1980s and early 1990s.
The Essential Sick Stuff (Late-May, Crossroad Press) My Splatterpunk Award-winning collection of extreme horror stories, The Essential Sick Stuff, will soon be available in paperback and hardcover editions. This book will pretty much be identical to the 2020 Silver Shamrock edition, with Alex McVey’s creepy blue tick cover, as well as all 23 of Alex’s black & white interior illustrations.
Twelve Gauge (June-July, Crossroad Press) My fifth novel with Zebra Books, Father’s Little Helper, will soon be released under its original title, Twelve Gauge. This will be the first time this novel has been available in paperback since 1992. The new edition will feature a new blood-splattered cover by Chad Lutzke.
Pitfall (August, Crossroad Press) Also, for the first time since 1990, my second Zebra novel, Pitfall, will be available in a paperback edition, with a new cover by Zach McCain. Pitfall is the only novel I wrote for Zebra that was set somewhere other than my home state of Tennessee. This one takes place in the desert wilderness of West Texas and involves demonic Tasmanian devils on the rampage!
Hell Hollow (September-October, Crossroad Press) Following the demise of Sinister Grin Publishing in 2021, the paperback of my novel Hell Hollow was no longer available (except for a few personal copies I had, which just sold out at RKHORROR a couple of weeks ago). It’s coming back in a new Crossroad Press edition, featuring Alex McVey’s original Hell Hollow cover art (which graced the 2010 Cemetery Dance hardcover edition).
Southern-Fried Blast from the Past: BOOKMARKS
In this edition of the Chronicle, I’m featuring a story that originally appeared in Barry Hoffman’s 1992 anti-censorship anthology, Gauntlet 2 (which included contributions by Stephen King and Ray Bradbury). This story was a cautionary tale about a horror author who suffers persecution when a religiously fanatical government takes power. The last time this story was published was in my 2009 short story collection, Midnight Grinding & Other Twilight Terrors. I hope you enjoy it.
BOOKMARKS
Jennifer huddled against her father’s body, seeking warmth and comfort. There was little of either there in the camp. She faintly remembered her room, bright and cheerful, filled with colorful toys and decorated with posters of Sesame Street and Disney characters. It was during periods like this – when she was hungry, exhausted, and on the verge of slumber – that the six-year-old could remember the good times the best. In the daylight hours, with the drab and dirty tents, with the men in white jumpsuits standing on the wall with guns, Jennifer had a difficult time remembering the past. All she experienced then was misery and resignation, as if she had been born there in the filthy hovel they now called home.
Drowsiness began to overcome her and, gradually, she remembered things as they had been a year ago. The big two-story house in a Memphis suburb. Her father in his study, sitting in front of his computer. Her mother baking raisin oatmeal cookies and taking care of the new baby. But that had changed abruptly in the dead of night, with rough hands dragging Jennifer from her bed and strips of tape sealing away her screams of terror. The next thing Jennifer knew, she and her family were in the compound, surrounded by people dressed in dirty pajamas and nightgowns like themselves. Some of the people cried, while others merely sat there and stared into space.
She thought that maybe their imprisonment had something to do with Daddy and his job. Daddy didn’t go to work like other daddies did. He stayed at home and wrote books. Books with scary names and pictures on the covers that gave Jennifer nightmares if she looked at them long enough.
She remembered the people that made Daddy mad; the ones who marched in front of their house, carrying signs and yelling Bible verses. They said that their book was a Good Book and that Daddy wrote Bad Books. They said Daddy worshipped the Devil and that he would burn in the Bad Place. The people had frightened Jennifer. She had cried and Daddy had told her that it wasn’t true. He told her that what he wrote was just make-believe, like Curious George or the Cat in the Hat.
Then things got worse. Daddy started crying, too, and drinking the Nasty Tasting Stuff because the stores in town wouldn’t sell his books anymore. He looked really sad and didn’t play with Jennifer or Baby Joey like he once did. He didn’t talk to Mommy very much, didn’t hug or kiss her like he used to. He just sat there, drinking the Nasty Tasting Stuff and watching the congressional hearings and the new President talking about “reviving moral values” and things like that.
Jennifer opened her sleepy eyes and stared at her mother, who lay curled up on her side at the other end of the tent. Mommy hadn’t said anything for a long time. Not since Baby Joey went away. Her little brother had coughed and cried for days. Then he stopped, turning as still and cold as a rubber baby doll. The big, fat woman they called Preacher Lady came and took Joey away. She told Mommy that Joey was in the Bad Place and that God wouldn’t let him into the Good Place with the angels because of what Daddy wrote. Mommy had screamed and cried for a while, then she curled up and hadn’t said a word since.
Jennifer cuddled in Daddy’s lap, ignoring the stinky way he smelled, and hoped that she would dream of Barbie dolls, Dr. Suess, and chocolate pudding. As she dozed off, her tiny fingers traced the picture on Daddy’s chest – a tattoo he called it. Out in the muddy yard, the speakers sang “Amazing Grace”. It almost drowned out the sound of weeping, the sound of sickness and despair… but not quite.
~*~
Samuel Markham waited until his daughter was asleep, then tenderly took her in his arms and carried her to the neighboring tent. Florence Delaney was awake and waiting for him. “Take good care of her,” he said, laying her on a palate of filthy newspaper.
“I will,” promised the former librarian. She ran her fingers through Jennifer’s dirty blond hair, then looked at the gaunt man dressed in tattered pajamas. “I don’t think you should go. It’s a terrible risk to take.”
“I know, but I have to,” said Sam. “For all of us. I have to see how bad it is… if it’s as widespread as I think.” He reached out and took the woman’s frail hand; a hand that had once proudly stamped library cards and sorted a million books. “Anyway, what’s the worst that could happen if I get caught? They’ll just ship me back here. It’s not like they’re going to kill me or anything.”
“Don’t be so sure,” said Florence. “Would you have ever thought of them pulling something like this?”
Sam’s face darkened. “No, I guess not.” Then, planting a parting kiss on his daughter’s forehead, he slipped out of the tent and took to the shadows.
Only half of the guards were on sentry duty during the graveyard shift. Sam crouched in the darkness beside a ramshackle barn and waited until the oscillating searchlights swung the other way. Then he sprinted to the old henhouse and the wall of timber and barbed wire beyond. From what Sam could tell, the camp had once been a farm. He wondered where the owners of the property were and whether it had been bought from them or taken by force.
He found the spot that he had been working on for three nights and began to rake the loose earth and dead leaves away. He cast a fleeting glance at the corner towers and saw the white clad men holding their M-16’s and Uzis. Fortunately, their attention was dulled by the lateness of the hour. Carefully, Sam squeezed under the fence and ducked into the heavy woods to the north. The singing of crickets and the peeping of water toads masked his footsteps as he headed through the dark thicket. He breathed deeply and smelled the scent of the muddy Mississippi nearby. It was a smell he had not experienced for twelve long months.
He reached the main highway a half hour later, but kept to the underbrush, reluctant to reveal himself to the headlights of passing cars. Around three o’clock in the morning, he came to a peach orchard and tried to gorge himself of the sweet fruit. But his stomach rebelled, and he became violently sick. Normal food seemed much too exotic to his digestive system. He was more accustomed to a diet of rat meat and raw insects now.
The first gray light of dawn found Sam Markham on the outskirts of Memphis. He reached his own neighborhood around five o’clock. Except for a couple of things, his house seemed the same as it had the night of his family’s abduction. However, there was someone else’s name on the mailbox and a strange car parked in the drive.
Sam made his way inconspicuously to the back door of the house, then remembered that he had no keys. He went to Brenda’s flower garden, which was now overgrown with weeds, and then reached up into the cedar birdfeeder that had been built in his own workshop. He felt around in the gritty layer of birdseed, hoping that it was still hidden there. Soon, his fingers found the emergency key that was stashed there. A better hiding place than under the welcome mat or on top of the door sill, he remembered telling his wife and he had been right.
Quietly, he unlocked the back door and stepped into the kitchen. The place was a mess; dirty dishes in the sink and soda cans and food wrappers littering the breakfast table. He took a cast iron skillet from where Brenda’s kitchen utensils hung and silently climbed the stairs. Once on the second floor, Sam checked the rooms. They were all unoccupied, except for the master bedroom. A man stretched out in the king-sized bed that Sam and Brenda had once slept and made love in. He was young, blond, and muscular. Sam glanced at a chair next to the bed. A snow-white jumpsuit and beret were draped there, as if waiting for the ringing of the alarm clock. On the cedar chest at the foot of the bed laid an AK-47 and a gun belt with a magnum revolver in its holster.
Suddenly, a great rage overcame Sam. The bastard was one of them! He walked over to the bed, raised the iron skillet overhead, and with all his might, hit the sleeping stranger in the head. The man’s eyelids fluttered, and he unleashed a low grunt as the edge of the frying pan cleaved his skull in half. Sam didn’t stop there. He struck again and again, until his anger had been depleted. He stared in disgust at the skillet, which was caked with blood, hair, and brain matter, then flung the makeshift weapon across the room.
He sat on the carpeted floor of his bedroom until eight o’clock, then decided that it was time to get ready. He stripped off his filthy rags, showered, shaved, and then returned to the bedroom. He studied himself in the full-length mirror on the closet door and grimaced. Even scrubbed clean, he looked terrible. He had lost nearly forty pounds since his imprisonment. He looked like a walking skeleton.
He dressed in the white jumpsuit and was zipping it up, when the tattoo on his chest drew his attention. He studied it in the mirror, recalling its origin. It had happened during the first World Horror Convention in Nashville. He had been a fledgling horror writer then; only a few short stories and a novel to his credit. He and some other writers had gotten drunk and stumbled into a tattoo parlor on lower Broadway. They had all agreed on the same design… a winged serpent entwined around a flaming cross. It had seemed pretty damned funny at the time, but now the memory pained him like a cancer. That had been nearly twenty years and twelve best-sellers ago.
After dressing, Sam took the guns and went downstairs to raid the refrigerator. He saw nothing there that he could stomach, except for a steak in the meat drawer. He ate it raw and bloody, pretending that it was fresh rat meat rather than choice sirloin. Then he walked down the hallway to his study. It was almost like he had left it. The stereo system was still there, as well as his computer and the La-Z-Boy recliner that he did his reading in. His collection of rock & roll CDs was gone, as well as every book in every bookcase that lined the four walls. He was stunned. His Dark Harvest and Ziesing hardcovers were gone, along with his limited editions of King, Barker, McCammon, and Lansdale. Even his own books, both paperbacks and hardbacks alike, had been cleaned out.
Sam went to the TV in the family room and turned it on. Most of the cable stations were scrambled. Those that weren’t showed religious programming. Tearful preachers pounded pulpits and demanded donations for the Unified Church of America, a faction of organized religion that Sam was all too familiar with. He had endured the non-stop teachings of that religious conglomerate during his time in the prison camp. It was a disturbing hybrid of several religions, distorting the belief of God into something fanatical and perverse. He turned on CNN. The anchorman reported on the President’s recent press conference. Sam shuddered as he watched. The death penalty for homosexuality and abortion. The Cold War back into full swing again. Then the bland face of the President came on the screen and Sam remembered when the Mississippi minister had been something of a joke in the media, with his sponsor boycotts and his demands for wholesome, family programming.
Feeling a little sick, Sam turned off the TV. A lot had taken place in twenty years. For one thing, no one was laughing now.
Sam took the car of the man he had murdered and drove toward the heart of the city. He drove north up Elvis Presley Boulevard and passed Graceland. The home of the King had been altered. The great iron gates with the musical notes and silhouette of a guitar-picking Elvis were gone. In their place were gates decorated with praying hands and crosses.
He turned onto Union Avenue and headed for downtown Memphis. He was surprised by how immaculate the place was. No litter, no unsightly billboards, half as many cars and buses as usual, and not a homeless person in sight. The extent of the city’s cleanliness was almost obscene. Is it like this everywhere? he wondered. All over the country? He noticed the people on the sidewalks. They were dressed in their best Sunday clothes, smiling unnerving, plastic grins. He wondered how they could manage to maintain such a look of complete happiness and contentment, then noticed the abundance of surveillance cameras at every street corner.
He parked his car in a lot next to an old book bindery that still seemed to be in operation. He sat there for a while and stared across the street at the great columned front of the Memphis Public Library. He hated the thought of walking into that building, but he knew he had to… for himself, and especially for Florence, who had worked there for nearly thirty years. He had to see how extreme things had actually become.
Sam left the car, slipping the strap of the assault rifle over his shoulder and plastering a dopey, good-natured grin across his face. Then he walked across the street and up the stone steps to the library. Above the double doors were words in polished bronze relief. He remembered that it had once said READ A GOOD BOOK TODAY. It had been changed to READ THE GOOD BOOK TODAY.
The library was nearly deserted at that time of morning. An elderly woman with silver-blue hair and a golden cross on her black dress smiled as he walked up and he did his best to return the gesture with as much sincerity as possible. “May I help you find something, officer?” she asked sweetly.
“No thanks,” he told her. “Just browsing.”
The librarian gave him a strange look as he started down the aisles of books, then seemed to pay him no more attention. At first, things looked the same as it had a year ago. But as he noticed the titles on the spines, horror began to grip him. The reference books, encyclopedias… everything had been replaced. In their place was the Encyclopedia Biblical and Bakker’s Guide to the Holy Scriptures. Sam made his way to the periodical section. Religious magazines and newspapers replaced Time, Newsweek, and The Wall Street Journal. A crisp edition of a daily newspaper called The Unified Word lay on a reading table. It was so thick that it rivaled the New York Times in volume. Secretly, Sam wondered if it might have been published on the same press that the Times had once been printed on.
Swiftly, he headed for the second floor and the fiction section. A scream of anguish almost escaped him when he found row upon row of empty shelves. They were all gone; the classics of Shakespeare, Dickens, Faulkner, and Hemingway had been stripped from their rightful places and disposed of. Like a madman, he ran down the aisles, his eyes growing tearful at the absence of Poe, Lovecraft, Tolkien, and Bradbury. Even with its emptiness, the place grew oppressive with the sheer magnitude of the horrible crime that had been committed there. Panicked, Sam ran for the emergency stairs and headed for the roof.
Once there, he staggered to the ledge and breathed deeply. He stared up into the sky. A Goodyear blimp hovered overhead, the word REPENT flashing across its side. He directed his eyes toward the Mississippi River and saw a parade of huge barges heading downriver from the north. He couldn’t believe his eyes, but they seemed to be heaped twenty feet high with books.
“How?” he wailed, not caring who heard him. “How could this have happened? It’s only been a year. One damned year!”
Then, suddenly, he heard the sound of footsteps behind him. He turned and saw the librarian standing there with three armed officers dressed in angelic white and carrying sub-machine guns. “There he is!” she said. “That is the man!”
“Surrender!” demanded one of the men. He cocked the bolt of his Uzi and aimed it at Sam. “Throw down your weapons and put your hands behind your head.”
At first, Sam considered slipping the AK-47 from his shoulder and resisting them. But even if he survived the inevitable firefight, would he want to? Would he want to live in a society with one frame of mind? A society that denied its citizens individualism and freedom of speech? Could he live in a country where religion ruled and those considered unworthy were packed away in concentration camps or worse?
He didn’t even need to give it a second thought.
“I give up!” he called out, tossing the rifle down and unbuckling his gun belt. “You can take me away. You can take me back home.” All he wanted at that moment was to be with his family again.
The three officers converged on him and grabbed him roughly. One hand grabbed the front of his jumpsuit and tore it open. His bare chest was exposed… as well as the tattoo.
“He has been marked!” screamed the librarian, leveling a finger of righteous accusation. “He’s been cursed with the Mark of Cain!”
He was quickly handcuffed and shoved across the roof to the stairwell. “Mark of Cain!” chanted the three men, their faces frozen in grisly smiles. “Mark of Cain!”
Suddenly, Sam Markham knew that he wouldn’t be going back to the camp and that he would never see his wife and daughter again. He screamed long and loud as they herded him from the library and across the street to his fate.
To the book bindery.
~*~
Jennifer huddled in the corner of Florence Delaney’s tent. Florence was on work detail that afternoon and the girl was alone. Jennifer’s unresponsive mother was gone. Some men had come several days ago, loaded her on a stretcher, and taken her to the big building on the far side of the compound. Florence called it the barracks and said it was the place where the men who guarded the camp slept at night. Jennifer couldn’t figure out why they would take her there. She couldn’t talk or make oatmeal raisin cookies anymore. All she could do was lay there.
It had been a week since her father had left in the middle of the night without saying good-bye. Jennifer still felt hurt and confused. She couldn’t understand why her father would run away and leave them there. It just didn’t seem fair.
“Read and repent!” called a woman’s stern voice from the compound outside. “Repent, lest you be condemned to everlasting damnation.”
Trembling, Jennifer crouched in the dank shadows. She stared at the open flap, until a hulking shadow blocked out the sunlight. It was the Preacher Lady, the warden of the camp. Preacher Lady was over three hundred pounds, wore horn-rimmed glasses, and carried a purse large enough for Jennifer to fit into. That afternoon she was carrying a bulky shopping bag in the crook of one flabby arm.
Preacher Lady stared at her from the door of the tent. “Read and repent, child,” she said, reaching into the shopping bag. “Read the teachings of the Good Book or be forever damned.”
The girl watched as the bag tipped, showing its contents. Inside were small copies of the Unified Testament, bound in soft leather. Each was unique in its own way. Some were pale and freckled, while some bore tiny scars or moles. Others were dark brown, caramel, or golden yellow in hue. Preacher Lady took one from the bag, tossed it at her filthy feet, and then moved on to the next tent.
Jennifer stared at the testament for a long moment, then picked it up. Its cover was as pale as her own sickly complexion. And, in the center, there was a mark that was familiar to Jennifer. One that she had marveled at many times before.
Huddling deeper into the shadows of the ragged tent, she pressed her face to the cover of the Good Book. As her tears glistened upon the faded design of a winged serpent upon a fiery cross, she imagined that she could feel the warmth of her father’s skin and hear the distant beating of his heart.
Remember, for Southern-Fried books, artwork, and apparel, head to my online bookstore, RKHORROR! All books come with a personal inscription and hand drawn RK artwork on the title page.
I hope y’all enjoyed this edition of The Fear County Chronicle. If you haven’t subscribed already, give that subscribe button a click and get the Chronicle every two weeks (or whenever the heck I get around to it!) For those of you attending HORROR ON MAIN, I look forward to seeing you there. And, to you all, take care and Many Happy Nightmares!
Holy cow! That was an awesome short! Damn !