Something Wicked This Way Plumbs

by Vylar Kaftan

It happened last year.  I’d come into the office early, because I was on deadline–and a month behind on bills.  To make things worse, my girlfriend had the flu, and I’d promised to be there by 5 to take her boys trick-or-treating.  So here I was in the men’s restroom, at 7:30 on Halloween morning.  I shook out a few drops, zipped my pants, and went to the sink.  It’s one of those two-faucet deals with handles on each side and a wide central spigot.  I turned the cold water tap.

Candy streamed out of the faucet like the entrails of a slaughtered piñata.  The sink filled with Skittles, candy corn, and jellybeans.  They rattled against each other as they spilled over the basin’s edge.  Startled, I turned the faucet off.

I hoped someone was playing a Halloween prank, because the alternative was disturbing.  Or maybe I wasn’t awake yet.  I glanced at the mirror.  In dreams you’ve always got weird things about your face, like snakes crawling from your eyeballs.  But I looked normal.  A bit scruffy, and my sleepy eyes were bloodshot.  Neither of these were a problem for a freelance writer–in some circles, they might count as street cred.  I looked at the sink.  Still candy.

I went to my office for a paper bag.

The Whistling Room

by William Hope Hodgson

“‘The whistling started about ten o’clock, on the second night, as Ibsaid. Tom and I were in the library, when we heard an awfully queer whistling, coming along the East Corridor–The room is in the East Wing, you know.

“‘That’s that blessed ghost!’ I said to Tom, and we collared the lamps off the table, and went up to have a look. I tell you, even as we dug along the corridor, it took me a bit in the throat, it was so beastly queer. It was a sort of tune, in a way; but more as if a devil or some rotten thing were laughing at you, and going to get ’round at your back. That’s how it makes you feel.

“‘When we got to the door, we didn’t wait; but rushed it open; and then I tell you the sound of the thing fairly hit me in the face. Tom said he got it the same way–sort of felt stunned and bewildered. We looked all ’round, and soon got so nervous, we just cleared out, and I locked the door.

Black Feather

by K. Tempest Bradford

Exactly one year before she saw the raven, Brenna began to dream of flying.  Sometimes she was in a plane, sometimes she was in a bird, sometimes she was just herself–surrounded by sky, clouds, and too-thin-to-breathe air.  In the dark, in the light, over cities and oceans and fields, she flew.  Every night for a year.

Then, on the twelfth day of the twelfth month, the dreams changed.  They ended with a crash and fire and the feeling of falling.  Most nights she almost didn’t wake up in time.

Exactly one year from the night the dreams began, Brenna struggled out of sleep, the phantom smell of burning metal still in her nose.  She reached out for Scott–he was not there.  He was never there.  He had never been there.  She fell back onto her pillows and groaned.

Another dream of flying, another reaching out for Scott; she wished she could stop doing both.

Kingspeaker

by Marie Brennan

The king had come to Anahata.

I met him for the first time in the sacred garden of the Temple.  Passing through an archway of fire, I found myself on a path of flower petals, which bruised delicately beneath my bare feet.  Two attendants clothed me in a robe of more petals, fragile silk holding blossoms of the flowers for which the days are named.  Still barefoot, I proceeded, marking along the path the measured steps of my dance.

For that moment, they say, I was the Goddess Triumphant, but I felt no difference.  Only nervousness, that I might misstep in some way.

They had removed the wax at dawn, and even the tiny, faint sounds I had heard since then were a balm for my mind and soul.  Soon, I would hear more.  A new voice awaited me.