Nightmare Yearnings, page 21
Praise for Nightmare Yearnings
“Eric Raglin’s marvelous debut short story collection is a precious gift — a treasure trove of strangeness — that will beguile, mystify, and astound even the most discerning reader of weird fiction.”
Eric LaRocca, author of Starving Ghosts in Every Thread
“Nightmare Yearnings is a dark and propulsive book of mind-splinters. From page one you’ll be hooked by the voice, the images, and the uneasy sense that these really are nightmares, dictated from a place just beyond dreaming.”
Tyler Jones, author of Criterium and Almost Ruth
"Nightmare Yearnings is a suspenseful snake, luring you in with humanity and enthralling you with oddity, only for humanity to coil around again and sink its teeth in when you least expect it."
Hailey Piper, author of The Worm and His Kings
Copyright © 2021 Eric Raglin
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying. Recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This collection is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Art/Design: Matthew Revert
Editor: Rachel Oestreich, Owner/Editor of The Wallflower Editing, LLC
Interior Design, Typesetting, and Layout: Sam Richard
Contents
Mother’s Tongue
Ivory
Gray Matter
Sick Leave
The Patch
The Lord Above
Under the Hoof, Upon the Horns
For My Final Girl
Lockdown
Top 5 Ghosts Caught on Camera
Remi Rook the Cannibal Cook
My Better Half
The Reveal
Smaller
Ghost of an Ocean
When Mothman Came to Queer Lake
Acknowledgments
Story Notes
Content Warnings for Stories
About the Author
Mother’s Tongue
Mom claims I changed after drowning at Adventureland. I was a girl of six, unaccompanied but wearing inflatable water wings. You might think my mom was wrong to let me swim alone, especially in the wave pool, but you’re misunderstanding her parenting philosophy. She named me River, if that tells you anything. Yep, River drowned. Hardee har har. I’ve heard it before.
There I was in the water, waiting for the next wave to come in. The water wings were biting into my armpits, so I wriggled out of them. Just as they came loose, the wave hit me full force, knocking me into a group of screaming teenagers and whisking the water wings out of reach. I immediately went under, thrashing my arms to stay afloat like I’d seen other kids do, but to no effect. The teens did nothing as I sank. With my eyes glassy and stinging, I watched as, half-submerged, they bounced around and fondled each other. Air bubbles trickled out of my lungs, slowly at first and then in larger bursts, looking like clear clusters of grapes climbing to the surface. My lungs felt hot, like a sunburn, and the burning became unbearable. I kicked my legs and went nowhere. A shadow came over the teens, over everything, eclipsing my vision. But in that darkness, a new light seeped in, enveloping me and easing the pain in my lungs, melting away my desire for air.
There was a song, undistorted in the water but still distant, as if sung from the opposite side of an empty football stadium. It was hard to identify its source, but when my throat began seizing, I noticed the tongues. Seven of them, long and pale, sticking out of the pool drain, vibrating in harmony. I couldn’t make out the meaning. If it was words, it was a language I didn’t yet understand, a language I could learn if I stayed under just a minute longer, though it was beyond my human abilities.
I don’t remember much after that, only that I washed ashore like a castaway. When I awoke, a lifeguard was doing chest compressions and Mom was crowding the space, slapping my face gently at first and then not so gently. The lifeguard tried to shoo her away, but she wouldn’t budge. It was only when I coughed up a cup of chlorine that they stopped arguing. The lifeguard backed off while Mom clutched me and wept.
She didn’t know the lifeguard had broken my ribs, so she squeezed me tight. It hurt, but I didn’t react. Overwhelmed, she squeezed tighter, kissing me and whispering promises in my ear. A rib shifted farther out of place, crunching hollow in my chest. I didn’t scream or cry. What was a little pain? What use was my body, anyway?
* * *
Cynthia begs me not to do it. She also begged when I went spelunking, skydiving, and BASE jumping, but this time there are actual tears in her eyes.
“The park is cool enough on its own,” she says, pulling up a blog post titled “Best Things to Do at Yosemite” and thrusting it in my face. “You don’t have to—”
“Babe, I’m driving,” I say, batting the phone away.
The road is dirt, barely a single lane twisting and turning through the woods. Deer skirt the shoulder and I don’t want to hit one.
“Oh,” Cynthia says, “so you’ll climb a mile-and-a-half-high rock wall without any gear, but using a phone while driving is too dangerous for you?”
“Goddamn, you’re not gonna change my mind,” I say. I slow the car down, not quite slamming the brakes.
Of course, she doesn’t know why I have to do it—not the real reason. She figures I’m just an adrenaline junkie who can still be rehabilitated. I haven’t told her about the tongues. I’ve never witnessed them as clearly as I did the day I drowned, but while jumping out of a plane or squeezing through a crawl space in an abandoned mine, I sometimes catch a glimpse—a white shape out of the corner of my eye, and if I’m lucky, the faintest hint of its song. The tighter I ride the line between life and death, the more I see and hear.
Cynthia wipes away her tears, smearing her eyeliner, then looks out the side window. I sigh and ease off the brakes, speeding up. It’ll be another hour before we reach our campsite.
“Look,” I say, “I know this is stressful for you, but—”
“Isn’t it stressful for you too? Aren’t you the least bit concerned you’ll—”
She tries to say it but can’t. My heart keeps a slow and steady beat, and my palms remain dry around the steering wheel. The best I can muster is a shrug in Cynthia’s direction. She inhales sharply, closes her eyes, and begins muttering a prayer for me. If anyone else did this I’d assume they were being passive aggressive, but Cynthia is devout in her churchgoing and still says grace before each meal. As for me, I sleep in on Sunday mornings and like to eat my food while it’s still hot.
After Cynthia’s prayer, she’s silent the rest of the ride. I try to pull her out of it when a coyote up ahead darts into the grass to snap at something, but her eyes don’t follow where I’m pointing. I change tactics and, grinning, tune the radio to a country station. But even with Toby Keith’s static-bathed voice blaring through the speaker, Cynthia keeps her head pressed against the glass, gazing into nothing. She doesn’t even try to turn the music off. It’s much less fun when I have to do it myself.
* * *
Cynthia breaks her silence while we’re setting up our tent—or rather, while I’m setting it up. One of the pole clips keeps slipping, and after a few choice words, I call to her for help.
“Hey, Cyn, c’mon,” I say, sweat in my eyes.
“If you can’t set up a tent yourself, how are you gonna climb El Capitan?” she asks, rummaging through something in the car trunk.
She turns around with a bulging duffle bag slung over her shoulder. I figure her clothes are inside, but when she unzips it, it’s full of brand-new climbing equipment—ropes, a harness, carabiners, the works. None of it is mine, but I know roughly how much it all costs, and it’s certainly more than Cynthia can afford waitressing at Olive Garden.
“Why?” I ask, dropping the pole, the gray tent collapsing. “Just . . . why?”
“A compromise,” she says. “You use all this in your climb and I won’t break up with you.”
“Jesus, you wasted so much money.”
“What, to keep my girlfriend alive?”
I shake my head and, walking away from the tent, get to work on bear-proofing our food supplies. I find a tree branch that can hold everything and toss a rope over it.
“So, that’s a no?” Cynthia says, following so close behind me I can feel her breath on my neck. I almost swat her away like a mosquito.
“Yes!” I say, and her face briefly lights up with a smile. “As in yes, that’s a no.”
She bites her lip, then throws the duffel bag at me. I catch it just barely, and by the time I set it down she’s already halfway to the car.
“What,” I shout, “are you going to drive off without me?”
“I wouldn’t do that to you even if you are an idiot,” she says, not looking back. “Keep the tent to yourself. I’ll sleep in the car.”
It’s still an hour before dark, but she slams the door behind her and whips out a book, alternating between reading and staring off into space every few seconds. As soon as the sun dips below the canopy, she reclines her seat into something resembling a bed and doesn't come back out of the car.
I sleep alone in the tent, or try to anyway. Mostly I shift from one dirt clump to the next, occasionally finding a sharp rock in the middle of my spine. My sleeping bag does little to pad the ground, and the tent crinkles loudly each time I shift. When dawn finally comes, I’ve squeezed in barely an hour of rest. But in my few seconds of dreaming, I hear that song again, louder than I’ve heard it since Adventureland, alien melodies blending with real-world sounds—rain pattering against the tent flap, crickets chirping from some crevice beneath.
I wake to the smell of bacon and eggs. It’s misty out, but Cynthia has a fire going—I’m not sure how, with all the rain—and is hard at work seasoning an omelet. I rub the crust out of my eyes and try not to look exhausted.
“Morning,” I say.
“Figured I’d make you one last breakfast before you fall to your death,” Cynthia says, flipping the eggs on the pan. “How many slices of bacon do you want?”
“I’m giving up pork. Bad for the heart.”
She frowns at me, then snorts and brings a fist to her mouth to hide her laugh. I can’t help but crack a sleepy smile.
“Come eat with me,” she says, slapping the wet stump beside her.
I pull up next to her, hoping she won’t expect any more jokes out of me. My head feels foggy, and that pork joke is all my brain can muster until I've woken up a bit more. Cynthia scoops me up an omelet and grease quickly soaks through the paper plate. At this point the meal is more likely to put me in a food coma than give me energy, but I eat it anyway.
“You know why I’m doing this, right?” I ask between bites.
“Because you have a death wish and want to break my heart,” Cynthia says.
“Well that, too, but . . .”
She doesn’t laugh at that one, just sets her plate down in the dirt, looks me in the eyes, and waits. The morning mist sends a shiver through me, and I shovel down the rest of the omelet so I have an excuse not to talk. There’s no point in completing the thought, anyway. No lie will satisfy Cynthia, and the truth will only land me in a mental institution.
* * *
I drive extra slow on our way to El Capitan, hoping the night’s rain will evaporate off the rock face before we arrive. But as we pull up to it, the rock looks a shade darker than usual. I’ll do some extra stretches before the ascent, give the sun some time to rise a bit more. I can’t wait too long, though—if the rock gets too much sunlight, it’ll be too hot to touch.
Cynthia unloads the duffle bag full of climbing gear, placing each item in front of me. When she takes out the harness, she kneels down as if to slip it over my legs, but I move away.
“I already told you no,” I say.
And with that, Cynthia retreats back to the car and locks herself inside. She whips out her cell phone, dials a number, and steals a quick glance in my direction. When I finish my hamstring stretch, I amble over and knock on the glass. Whoever’s on the other line is speaking, but I can’t hear their words.
“Yes,” Cynthia says, her voice muffled and shaky. “My girlfriend is trying to commit suicide. She’s—yes, El Capitan. She—”
I pound on the glass, but Cynthia leans in the opposite direction and cups her free hand over the microphone.
“Don’t listen to her, she’s lying!” I shout through the glass, but Cynthia is already hanging up the call.
“They’re coming,” she says, and she shrugs, tossing her hands up in the air.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
The rock face is still dark with moisture, but Cynthia leaves me with no choice other than to proceed. If I don’t do it now, it’ll be years before we have the money to make another trip out here from Iowa. I stomp toward the rock wall, flexing and releasing my fists. My heart races, but I can’t help it—I still yawn.
Then comes the song, carried on a gust of wind from atop the cliff. I crane my neck upward to get a glimpse but catch only the watery movement of what looks like a tongue slipping out of view. I thought it had just been a dream, but had the tongues actually come to me in the night? The song vibrates through me, my muscles twitching to life, adrenaline replacing ache. Now is the time.
* * *
The thing about adrenaline is that it doesn’t stay in your system long—an hour at most. Even with the song getting louder the farther I ascend, my arms start stiffening, becoming like rocks themselves. Whenever my other limbs feel secure, I take one hand off the rock wall to shake it, like a student three hours into a pen-and-paper test. I don’t have a watch, but judging by the vast plain of rock above me, I’m only a fourth of the way there—still hours left. The wall is mostly dry by now, but some handholds are shadowed enough that their moisture hasn’t simmered away. There are generally drier handholds to grab instead—ones that require me to stretch, sending fire through my calves. But sometimes those are too far away, and the slick handhold is my only option. In those moments, I hope Cynthia’s prayers cling to me like armor.
Cynthia. I refuse to look down, but I know she’s still there. Maybe sobbing in the car, gawking at the rock wall, gnawing her nails into oblivion. Most certainly she’s waiting for emergency services to arrive and prevent me from “killing myself.”
“Hi.”
The voice is right next to me. I nearly let go of the wall but grip a jagged handhold just in time, the nail on my index finger bending backward and detaching. I grimace but focus on breathing and steadying myself. I close my eyes for a moment, but the thought that the climber beside me might just as suddenly close the distance and appear an inch from my face makes me open my eyes again.
She looks about my age. Like me, she doesn’t have any gear, but her tank top and shorts have an ’80s pink-and-blue color palette. How had I not seen someone so brightly dressed? I could have sworn I was the only climber undeterred by last night’s rain.
“How—?” I start, but a rumble of thunder rolls through the sky, vibrating the stone beneath my hands and feet.
“Shoot,” the woman says, smiling. “Better get climbing.”
As she speaks, I think I see the nub of a second tongue, drained of pink and twisting, but she closes her mouth and resumes climbing before I can confirm it. She ascends with incredible haste and minimal thought, doesn’t check that each handhold is secure, and—in a movement that makes my gut drop—actually leaps from one handhold to the next, momentarily leaving all four limbs free-floating. I’m about to yell at her when her body flickers. That’s the best way I can describe it, like a TV losing power for half a second but not all the way. I blink to make sure nothing’s in my eyes, but they’re clear. The woman is making great time, and at this point I have to squint to see her; she’s climbing more like she’s a video game hero than a human.
Thunder again—louder, closer. The first sprinkle of rain lands in my eye—just a tiny drop, but it’s enough. I’m done, and my training is for naught. I’ll be back in flat-ass Iowa before I know it, farther from solving this mystery than ever before. I want to slam my fist against the rock, scream at the top of my lungs, but that isn’t an option up here. I have to go back down.
Just as that thought pops into my head, the song grows louder, as if the storm has amplified it. Harmonic trills uncork chemicals in my brain and flood my system with emotions stronger than I’ve ever felt, even as a child. I weep. I cackle. I climb. Faster now, rain be damned.
“I’m coming, Mother!” the woman above me shouts, once more taking an apelike leap upward, shimmering out of existence for a nanosecond and then landing in place as solid as ever.
The flash of a tongue teases the edge of the cliff, and looking up at it, the woman whoops like a wolf. So she hears the song too; this “Mother” is not just last night’s dream or a childhood hallucination.
