What's Below--Fiction by Stacia Kane

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It was the absinthe that did it.

At least, that’s what Jacob says. I don’t believe him. My memories of that Halloween may be fuzzy, but they’re clear enough for truth, and if Jacob wants to blame the absinthe that’s fine with me. Let him. I know where the responsibility lies, but I won’t tell them. I don’t want to.

The doctors seem to think I should. They wait, circling me like white-coated vultures, expecting me to wake up one morning and have some sort of fucking “Eureka!” moment, and tell them the whole story, beginning to end.

I won’t. I dream of it at night, every night, and that’s enough. That’s too much.

Jacob was the one who got me into it, actually. Him and Pratt and Liza. “Come to the mine,” they said. “He’s buried there, it’ll be awesome. We’ll drink at his grave. And if we’re lucky he’ll appear. He rises on Halloween, you know. He imparts his wisdom.”

“He,” of course, being Melchior Abbanzo.

If you’re from Laporte, you know the name. I know you do. Melchior Abbanzo built Rednour House on the hill, its Gothic edifice giving the town what little gravity it manages to bear. Laporte might not be much, But Rednour House is, and people come to see it all the time. They come to see Abbanzo’s grave as well, but when I think about his grave at the top of the mine, his bones interred hundreds of feet on top of the others, I feel twisted and sick and I beg the nurses to bring me more medication. Any medication, I don’t care what.

Still they hound me. The doctors. The nurses. Jacob, when he comes to see me with his pale face and his shadowed eyes. He blames himself. As well he fucking should. It was his idea. His responsibility.

Halloween. Samhain. Devil’s Night. Whatever it’s called. Jacob convinced us to go to the mine. I blame him. And if he’s too much of a coward to tell the true story, I’m sure as fuck not going to hide.

I roll over in my hospital bed. Scratchy sheets rustle, so loud I almost can’t hear myself think, but sadly not loud enough to drown out the memory of Liza’s screams.

The mine is shut down, of course, and loathed in the way of all abandoned things. It begins with a pair of wrought iron gates, taller even than Pratt, tall enough for their black spires to impale the clouds when you stand before them and feel very small. It’s hard to believe, when you stand there, that such things as clouds and sky and the world outside the gates and the faded red warning signs really exist, but they do.

Jacob brought the absinthe. Where he got it I have no idea, but he held it up with a proud smile, waving it like a baton above his head while his teeth gleamed white in the steetlight half a block down. It seems in my memory like all I could see was his teeth, sharp and ready to bite, even though I know it wasn’t his fault.

“Got this off my cousin,” he said. “He made it himself. Full wormwood. And moonshine. We’re going to get fucked up, I swear.”

“I have some weed,” Pratt volunteered. “I bet Abbanzo will rise tonight!”

“Of course he will,” Liza said, but from her nervous glance I knew she didn’t mean it. Or rather, that she meant it but was scared by it. I knew Liza would rather be home handing out candy to the little Hannah Montanas or Wall-Es or whatever, instead of standing at the foot of a Satanist’s grave on Halloween with a couple of guys holding illegal substances. Liza was never brave like me.

We sat in a semi-circle, arrayed around the grave like fingers on a hand, and passed the bottle. You’re supposed to mix absinthe with water and sugar—there’s this whole ritual, apparently, which Jacob told us about in great and boring detail—but we didn’t have either, so we just drank it straight from the bottle. It tasted like the worst cold medicine you’ve ever tasted in your life and stole my breath like a hurricane in my chest. I’d never drank much before, beyond wine or cheap bottled mixed drinks, so it was like swallowing gasoline.

But I felt it immediately, and it felt good. Powerful. Like I was an adult, doing adult things. I was brave and strong, there on the rocky hill on Halloween, drinking hard liquor while Pratt lit candles and fired up a joint I should have refused, but didn’t.

Maybe that did it. Or maybe it was the way the moon rose high over the trees ringing the mine, or the sounds of kids laughing and shouting from the street. I don’t know, or I should say I won’t let myself know.

But I lie in bed at night and remember. I lie in bed and lie to myself, wishing it hadn’t happened, but it did and it plays against my closed eyelids like the world’s worst movie ever.

The joint got passed. The candle flames wavered and flickered. Jacob started chanting. “Abbanzo. Abbanzo.”

We all joined in. All but Liza. “Abban-zo. Abban-zo. Ab-ban-zo. Rise. Rise.” Pratt was beating his hands on his knees like a drum and we were all fucked up. My vision was blurry and we kept chanting, chanting louder, until our voices seemed to turn into howls and the world filled with creeping fog.

Still I wasn’t scared. I was too drunk to be scared, too drunk to recognize shamanism or mediumship or just plain mass hysteria. Too drunk and high to realize Liza had stopped chanting and was staring, open-mouthed, at the white mist rising from the grave and the low deep chuckle that seemed to seep through my skin from the air around me.

“Abbanzo! Abbanzo!”

He was supposed to be a Satanist. A witch. A magician. He’d owned the mines just outside town, the ones we sat on now that collapsed in 1914 and killed a hundred men, including my great-great-grandfather. I shouldn’t have been celebrating him, or his life. I shouldn’t have been celebrating the fact that after the collapse of the mines he refused to pay for the funerals, refused to even show up at them, and that rumors around town were dark and heavy with the idea that he was joyful, that something beneath the earth had thanked him for those lives sacrificed to the dirt and flames.

Certainly he prospered, though his children were born stunted and sickly and neither of them lived.

Maybe all they needed was fresh blood. I wonder about that, as I taste that horrible sweetness again and hear heavy footsteps in the hospital hall.

“Abbanzo! Abbanzo!”

A shape appeared, more than one shape, hovering in the air above the graves. Pratt’s laughter broke the chant, high and sharp, but the rest of us couldn’t stop chanting. At least I couldn’t. My mouth moved without my consent, my voice rising high, and before I knew what was happening “Abbanzo” sounded like something else, something darker, a name that even now as I try to be clear and acknowledge what I’ve done I cannot bring myself to repeat.

The skull floated above us. Jacob shrieked. So did Pratt. So did I. I was so dizzy and sick; the bottle was empty by that point, the joint nothing more than a teeny scrap of paper stubbed out in the black earth. My stomach leapt and twisted beneath my skin as the skull’s mouth opened and it whispered things. Ordered us to do things.

It roared in the night.

Liza screamed then. She screamed and she stood up. I knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, in the tiny part of me that still clutched at a scrap of sanity, that she had the right idea, that it hadn’t affected her. She’d barely touched the booze. She’d refused the weed. She didn’t see the blood-red letters now scrolling over the tombstone and across the ground.

Or maybe she did, and that’s why she screamed.

But just as that tiny part of me saw her and recognized the truth, that writing filled my eyes and my mind, and I know what we did. We chased her, our breath white in the cold air like the ghostly mist following us. We ran after Liza until we caught her, and we dragged her back to Abbanzo’s grave while she screamed, until Pratt clasped his hand over her mouth to keep her quiet. I could hear his laughter maniacal and high, echoed by the deeper chuckle, as my fingers found fresh meat on that Halloween night.

Liza’s blood tangy and sweet on my hands. Liza’s flesh hot and savory in my mouth. In my head I see scraps fall onto the grave and hear the unearthly howling again, the laughter. I see us as hyenas, our chins stained red, our eyes wild, not even ourselves as we do something so unspeakable that even as I try to be honest I cannot quite face it.

What I can face is the legend. The tale of what that mining disaster awakened, and how Abbanzo led it, and how his death finally ended the string of mysterious murders in town.

What I have to face is how Liza’s blood spilled onto that grave, and how by the time only her bones remained something shrieked in triumph and flew through the trees, and the air turned so much colder.

I don’t know what the symbol carved into my arm means. I don’t know how it got there, or how much of my blood mixed with Liza’s as we fell on her like feral beasts.

But I know how it tingles. I know how even as Jacob cries his regret something dark gleams behind his eyes, and how I feel an echoing gleam behind mine.

And I think…God help me, but I think I know whose heavy footsteps those are in the hospital hallway, and how even as I cower in fear part of me leaps with excitement. Because for that one moment while Liza’s blood gleamed black in the moonlight, I was powerful. I was one with the thing beneath the earth, the thing that whispers, the thing that offers an eternity of dark pleasures.

And those footsteps will deliver it.

And I want it. So does Jacob, and so does Pratt. And we can live forever under the earth, forever at that grave, forever making our sacrifice.

I stand up from my bed. I am ready.

Stacia Kane has been a phone psychic, a customer service representative, a bartender, and a movie theatre usher. Writing is more fun than all of them combined. She wears a lot of black, still makes great cocktails, likes to play music loud in the car, and thinks Die Hard is one of the greatest movies ever made. She believes in dragons and the divine right of kings, and is a fervent Ricardian. She lives outside Atlanta with her husband and their two little girls. Stacia Kane’s debut urban fantasy novel, PERSONAL DEMONS, started off the Megan Chase series and was chosen by Barnes & Noble’s Paul Goat Allen as one of the best paranormal releases of 2008. Learn more at staciakane.com

Like reading short fiction? We have more where this came from. Our Write Here, Write Now subforum is full of original fiction as well.

Comments

Wow, that was deliciously creepy and awful! I really didn't see that particularly gruesome ending coming, either. I haven't read any of Stacia Kane's stuff before, but now I feel like I've been missing out.

Hmm. The style was a bit clumsy and self-conscious, and drew me out of the story, but it's damn hard to tell a story like that and have it sound natural. I hope Stacia keeps at it.

Quote Originally posted by Baldwin View post
Hmm. The style was a bit clumsy and self-conscious, and drew me out of the story, but it's damn hard to tell a story like that and have it sound natural. I hope Stacia keeps at it.
She's a multi-published author with Juno/Pocket Books and Del Ray. She actually had a lucrative career as a romance author, but "retired" that pseudonym to focus full time on her two very popular urban fantasy series.

Still have shivers down my spine from that! Would love to read more by Stacia.

Whee! I liked it! I'd like to see it expanded more fully though. Short stories are nice because there's no time commitment but this one seems like it would be a good bedtime read.

I guess it doesn't really matter, but the front page link for this article says there are five comments instead of 9.

Quote Originally posted by 5er View post
In your opinion, you mean...which means nothing to me. And probably even less to anyone else. But wow, I can't wait to read your submissions, Spanky! Might wanna wait til you master it, though. Wanker.
Moderator note: Please do not insult other members in this forum. If you want to call him (or anybody else) a wanker, please take it to The Pit of Rage.

I loved it! I actually enjoy short stories more than novels because I have no patience. Will we get to read more by Stacia Kane?
I might ask her to submit again in the future, but she's a busy lady!

FWIW, Stacia wrote on her blog that this is a complete departure from her usual work. She never writes short stories or in the 1st POV. Given those facts, I thought it was quite effectively done.

I thought the writing was excellent. The narrator had a great voice that carried through the piece. The story itself left me with shivers. This was definitely enough to make me want to check out Stacia's other work.

Quote Originally posted by pepperlandgirl View post
Quote Originally posted by 5er View post
In your opinion, you mean...which means nothing to me. And probably even less to anyone else. But wow, I can't wait to read your submissions, Spanky! Might wanna wait til you master it, though. Wanker.
Moderator note: Please do not insult other members in this forum. If you want to call him (or anybody else) a wanker, please take it to The Pit of Rage.
I humbly apologize for calling Baldwin a wanker in a thread where it's inappropriate to use such descriptions. I shall restrain myself in the future.

Quote Originally posted by 5er View post
I humbly apologize for calling Baldwin a wanker in a thread where it's inappropriate to use such descriptions. I shall restrain myself in the future.
No problem. We all give in to anger sometimes; it's rarely useful to one's argument, though.

Quote Originally posted by 5er
I've yet to see you write anything positive on this board, Baldwin. Have you something constructive to offer? Even if you don't, is it so hard to appreciate that someone took the time and the effort to contribute her work in the hope we'd be entertained, and maybe acknowledge that with a word of thanks along with your criticism?
If you mean the entire Mellophant board, then you're not familiar with my posting. If you mean the threads related to Front Page content, I'd have to say it doesn't matter whether a critique is positive or negative, as long as it's honest and to the point. I don't owe another writer praise, just a careful reading and a fair evaluation. I've gotten a lot of rejections, and the ones that included some specifics about why my story was inadequate have been helpful, even if they stung a bit.

It is awfully nice for a full-time pro to give the Elephant a story as a favor. I've re-read "What's Below", and I think it would really take somebody like Ramsey Campbell or Harlan Ellison to make that story interesting to me. I'm just not the intended audience, so my critique is probably irrelevant.