Faces, Strange and Secret

FACES,

STRANGE

AND SECRET

AN ANTHOLOGY OF STORIES

FROM THE FEAR MYTHOS

SMASHWORDS EDITION

EDITED BY ADAM LEVINE

***

COPYRIGHT

All stories within are copyright their respective authors. They may not be copied, distributed, or transmitted without the consent of the author. All rights reserved.

The Fears themselves are released under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. They may be copied, distributed, transmitted, or remixed for non-commercial or commercial use. They must, however, be attributed to the Fear Mythos.

***

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is for all the writers.

This is for all the readers.

***

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction by Adam Levine

PART ONE: VISIONS & VIGNETTES

The Problems of Hell by Jake J. Johnson

The Truth Will Set You Free by Bill Fletcher

Exploring a Sealed Wing by Jake J. Johnson

The Hum by Adam Levine

Jack Frost by A. L. Stark

Inevitable by Jake J. Johnson

Decay by Sean O'Neil

Need You Like Water in My Lungs by Adam Levine

Soundless by Jake J. Johnson

Penance by Jake J. Johnson

Lucidity Online Newspaper 21 by Jake J. Johnson

Underneath by Jake J. Johnson

Richard Cory by Adam Levine

Nerve by Bill Fletcher

Possibilities by Jake J. Johnson

Shadow Play by Colin Morgan

Talk on a Streetcorner by Jake J. Johnson

Closing Time by Adam Levine

The Last Mistake I Will Ever Make by Jake J. Johnson

Precious Little Angel by Logan Emery

Comfort and Joy by Douglas October

PART TWO: REVERIES & REVELATIONS

Amen by Sean O'Neil

Eulogy for Howard O'Grady by Jake J. Johnson

Time/Place by Owen Norris

Salvation by Chad Traydor

The Day the Door Froze by Jordan Dooling

The Witch of Gatlinburg by Seann Barbour

Teenage Gluttony by Jordan Dooling

Saved by Douglas October

Insanity Door by Jordan Dooling

Charcoal Sketches by Alexander Monday

She Dreamt She Was a Bulldozer, She Dreamt She Was Alone in an Empty Field by Amelia Norvelle

Infection by Jake J. Johnson

Tick Tock by Martin Hall

Wish by Jordan Dooling

Merry Christmas, Mommy! by A. L. Stark

The March of Pestilence by Jacob Anderson

Still Life by Manic Muse

Chrysanthemums by Adam Levine

Statements Recorded From a Candlelight Vigil by Jake J. Johnson

Case File Juliet 005 by Martin Hall

PART THREE: PREDATORS & PREY

The Farmhouse by Amelia Norvelle

Christmas Present by Amelia Norvelle

Shortcut by Colin Morgan

Blood Music by Jake J. Johnson

The Midwinter Nights by Jacob Anderson

The Storm by Jay Xythos

A Great Man, Dying by Douglas October

The Ballerinas of Versiansa by Jordan Dooling

Wanderlust by Jake J. Johnson

Hell is Repetition by Chad Traydor

152 Hours by A. L. Stark

The Hive by Martin Hall

Weak Foundations by Paolo Iantorno

William Wright by Jordan Dooling

The Monster in the Mirror by Sean Connors

Peter Pan by Bill Fletcher

The Thing Where My Eyes Used to Be by Jordan Dooling

Erosion by Chad Traydor

Roses by Max Hallam

The Suicide Note of an Anonymous Mother by R. R. Hood

Playtime with Mikey by Martin Hall

The Killing Type by Adam Levine

Afterword by Adam Levine

Glossary

About the Contributors

***

INTRODUCTION

by Adam Levine

When I first announced I wanted to put together an anthology of stories from the Fear Mythos, I solicited ideas for an introduction. The first two introductions that I received were completely different, but between them, I thought they managed to cover most of what the Fear Mythos was about.

This was the first introduction, written by Collen:

What lies in your hand is a piece of the unknown, a book telling tales of disappearances in the darkness, of voices in your head, of the dead seemingly walking once more. These strange tales, while they may seem fictional, are all one-hundred percent true. So I suppose this isn't as much of a story but a warning.

Do you have a phobia? Perhaps a fear of heights, or insects, or becoming lost and never finding your way again? It turns out these 'irrational' fears are rational. Since the dawn of time the Fears have been around, causing death and despair wherever they roam. They are both the lurkers in the shadows and the eyes in the sun. They represent what we fear.

I'm here today to take you over a bridge. A bridge between the safe, normal world and the edge of sanity, where all of your nightmares are real. There you'll be taken on a tour, a tour of the surreal and the magical, a tour of the murkiest depths Earth has to offer.

Where we go, strange is normal and normal is strange. Forget monuments and jewelry. The main exhibit here is what lurks behind our vision, these bringers of despair and death. This is a tour of these faces, strange and secret.

And this was the second introduction, written by Jordan Dooling:

At the end of days, as we lay ourselves down to the impossible world of dreams, our minds conjure up creations of a blackened reality where meaning and fear are synonymous. Beings rise out of the fiery fields of gray and evoke newfound emotions our consciousnesses practically invents on the spot. There is much power in the mind, and the creative mind crafts haunting ruses without boundary.

I'm not going to tell you stories of how these tales are true, nor how the ghoulies and ghosties in the twilight realms are real and are going to someday rise up beneath your bed and pull you under waves of fear. The following tales are fictional on all accounts, but they don't have to be real to captivate and terrify. Sometimes, the scariest things are what we imagine. Sometimes, the strangest faces are secret, and the hidden faces are the strangest.

You can see the difference, can't you? One treats these stories as fact, the other as fiction. One postulates that these are real tales of what lies underneath the thin skin of normality, while the other proclaims that these are imaginary stories. But, to quote Alan Moore, aren't they all?

The Fear Mythos started on a cold day in February on an addictive website dedicated to cataloging tropes used in fiction. We started out with an online urban legend called 'the Slender Man.' This horror story in the form of a faceless man ignited an idea: a pantheon of eldritch horrors, of fears made flesh. The Slender Man does not make an appearance in the stories within – aside from an oblique reference to 'the Thin White Duke' – but we do owe a debt of gratitude to him and his creator, Victor Surge.

The Fear Mythos is not a setting. This is something that evolved throughout the beginning of the Mythos, something which we had to get straight: unlike the other mythoi (yes, that is the correct plural) the Fear Mythos has no set canon. It is not a setting, like Oz or Wonderland; instead, the Fears are open source monsters. They are open to interpretation.

Part of the problem with writing an introduction is that I want the stories themselves to introduce readers to the Fears. If I tell you what a Fear is, it takes away any horror; I'd rather show you what a Fear is. Considerations should be made for those who may be confused, so a glossary is provided at the end. If at any point, you want to know more about the specifics of the Fears or come across a term you do not understand, please consult the glossary.

Even the Fears are not set in stone, though. A writer is free to use the Fears in any way they want. The following stories show the diversity of the Fear Mythos and I am proud of each and every one of them, from the post-apocalyptic vision of Jack Frost and The March of Pestilence, to the medical horror of The Thing Where My Eyes Used to Be, or even the ones that can simply creep under your skin, like one of my favorites, She Dreamt She Was a Bulldozer, She Dreamt She Was Alone in an Empty Field (the title of which comes from a song by Godspeed You! Black Emperor).

Most of the stories within are very short. This is because they aren't supposed to be normal short stories; instead, they are 'creepypasta' (a term that sounds silly, I know, but which originates from copypasta, material that was copy-and-pasted around the internet), which are generally quick, bite-sized nuggets of creepiness, often times portrayed as real stories or urban legends.

The shortest creepypasta was a story by Fredric Brown. It went: The last man on earth sat in a room. There was a knock on the door. Brown then changed one word and the entire story: The last man on earth sat in a room. There was a lock on the door.

In one introduction, the Fear Mythos is real. In the other, it is fiction. In one story, there was a knock on the door. In the other, there was a lock on the door. And yet between them, they encompass all of horror.

I received one final introduction from another author in this book, A. L. Stark:

As horror writers, we try to find the trigger for fear. We expose it to the nerve, then press on that nerve until you no longer feel comfortable in your own skin. You sit in a darkened room, in front of a dimly lit computer screen and shake in your skin as the old house settles around you, as familiar sounds become alien. A part of you delights in the itchy feeling crawling over your scalp. You're alive, blessedly, safely alive.

No matter what our experiences are, what our background, common themes arise in our fear. We're afraid of being alone. We're afraid of being in a crowd. We're afraid of being the target of violence. Afraid of our own rage. Afraid of failure. Afraid of being judged. Afraid of being powerless. Afraid of what the dark hides. Afraid of what the light exposes.

As you read these stories, ask yourself: what are you really, truly, in the deepest, darkest corners of your mind, what are you afraid of?

We enjoy scaring ourselves. We reach into the dark places and watch as our hands disappear into shadow. Stephen King wrote in Danse Macabre that horror is a chance to examine what's going on behind doors which we usually keep double-locked. Horror lets us open the doors and let the shadows in. It lets us examine that which we fear, those faces that are so strange and secret.

These are stories of reality and fiction.

These are horror stories.

Welcome to the Fear Mythos.

***

VISIONS

&

VIGNETTES

***

The Archangel

THE PROBLEMS OF HELL

by Jake J. Johnson

Let's go through the list, shall we? We've all been keeping it well, haven't we? Of course we have.

a) Infinite retribution: Infinite retribution for finite crimes is pointless. Infinite punishment is only useful if God is infinitely sadistic. God is infinitely loving, so He isn't infinitely sadistic.

b) Uselessness: Justice and mercy are opposites. A place of torment in response to crimes is not merciful. God is infinitely merciful, so there is no use for a hell.

c) Moral issues: Only a finite amount of evil can be accomplished in a human lifetime. It is evil to torture, and thus it is infinitely worse to torture anyone for eternity. It would make God infinitely worse than every mass murderer in history. But God is good, perfect, holy, and just, so He isn't infinitely evil.

d) Problem of evil: If evil is intrinsic, defined by God, and being evil is punishable by eternal torment, God is directly responsible for every person He sends to hell. God wouldn't create people for the sole purpose of tormenting them forever.

e) False prophets: It's said there will be false prophets at the end of days. Anyone who tells you that there is no escape from eternal torment is a false prophet. Anyone claiming to be an archangel is in need of serious medical assistance. I know that some of us haven't been coming to these meetings, but they're just fine.

Have I seen him? Come now, let's not start that again.

Yes, some people have been absent for a while now. There's no need for alarm.

What?

Dear Lord in heaven.

...Did she look peaceful, at least?

...Look, there she is! Sweet heaven above, how dare you pull my leg like that?! Yes, dear, we've missed you so much. Come here and give me a hug.

***

The Black Dog

THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE

by Bill Fletcher

Over the course of three hours, an adulterer was outed.

It started when her husband noticed a strange pattern of disappearances, the realization just snapping together in his head. He ignored the trickle of blood from his ear as he investigated further, memories coming to the fore—the strife that their relationship had gone through, the strange eyes of his young son. All of these things snapped together in the mind of a previously trusting man.

He immediately deduced that she was an adulterer, and quickly sought his family for advice. However, before he could reach his father's home, he met a man on the street. The man smelt like a butcher's shop and was misshapen, but the husband was entranced by his bloodshot eyes. The butcher man tilted his head to the side.

The husband explained his situation to the butcher, who nodded with a sad smile. The husband understood, then—there was only one punishment for adulterers. He ignored the sharp pain in his skull, and he began shouting the truth for all to hear.

He went to the town square and raised an angry mob, and the butcher man plodded behind him, wiry black hair covering his body. The people shouted in outrage, rallying around the husband and the butcher man, raising their fists. They all bled from their ears, their noses, and their eyes as the butcher man gazed upon them.

The mob charged down the streets and dragged the husband's wife from her home, tying her to a metal pole in the town square kicking and screaming. They told her that they knew the truth and that she could never, ever escape it. They then took up stones in their hands and ended her life, the dull thudding of rock on flesh and bone echoing through the streets for half an hour.

Then the crowd dispersed, the husband simply standing there alone with his dead wife, bleeding from his nose, ears and eyes. The butcher man plodded in front of him on heavy paws, wiry fur rank with the smell of death.

It crouched down, smoke drifting from its maw as it lowered its face towards the wife's body, and began stripping it of meat in the middle of Times Square.

***

The Blind Man

EXPLORING A SEALED WING

by Jake J. Johnson

Urban exploration. Sounded cool. Didn't mean much, though.

Poor job, bad pay, but with this economy, where else would have me?

Besides, it has its good days. Like today. I get to blow a door off its hinges.

I'm alone for now, set up the C4 myself. Hit the button, big explosion, good fun. Some doors just take kicks, but this one's been sealed so long hardly anything can open it.

The inside smells like dust and history. It's coated in both. Bookshelves more than anything, some desks, all good condition hardwood. A collector's paradise.

I step in and the dust kicks up everywhere. The floor's coated even thicker further on, and you can't even see it.

Dust is hair. Skin, too. It's us, living things, what we become. I don't like it, but I tolerate it for the job. I stop to wonder what all this dust used to be.

The room was much bigger than it looked on the outside. Vaulted but rusty ceiling, small things lying around. One of them's a photo album, black binder. I put on gloves and open it up.

The photos are all high-quality. They look digital, full-color, but no one's in them. Shame, too. Looks like you could just throw in someone's face and it'd fit.

I've been to these places, as a kid. Most of them, at least. Pretty sure I got pictures taken with Mom and Pop that looked just like these. But I haven't seen those pictures in years. No way to tell right now.

It's darker further on, where the dust covers the floor entirely. Flashlight on, scanning the area. The room's too big to see the other end of, so I step forward.

There isn't a floor.

I'm falling through dust and it's everywhere. In my nose, in my clothes, in my mouth. I stop, I don't know how deep I am, but I feel caught. Like the dust's been made into a web.

And he walks up, the man without eyes. He opens a book and he stares into my soul. He's written some of my name, but now he writes the rest.

Layers of my life turn to dust. Childhood, name, parents. I've died early. All of those pictures were real, weren't they?

If only I could remember what pictures I was talking about.

***

T

he Choir

THE HUM

by Adam Levine

Have you ever noticed that sometimes, when things are quiet, you'll hear a hissing sound? It won't be coming from anywhere—believe me, I've tried to find it, but it just seems to be coming from everywhere, permeating through the air. Hissssssssssss.

Scientists have, unimaginatively, called this the Hum. And people have reported hearing it all over the world. Some scientists claim that the Hum is infrasound generated by colliding ocean waves.

I have a different theory. I think it's aliens. No, wait, hear me out: the average movie aliens are all big-headed, short-bodied grays, right? But that's unrealistic. The probability of another alien lifeform having humanoid features is astronomical. In all probability, the only alien lifeforms out there would be ones that could survive in the harshest conditions, ones that could spread throughout space. In other words: fungi.

When I was searching for the source of the Hum before, I couldn't find anything, no machinery, nothing that could explain it. But