The Sick Stuff (12 page)

He had only traveled a few yards when he
heard something come crashing out of the canebrake. He rolled over
onto his back to find the thing that had killed his horse, standing
on the pathway eight feet away.

It was the headless body of Jonathan; naked,
his ebony skin glistening with sweat and wet sand. The ugly hole
within the column of his neck -- severed just above the larynx --
sputtered and wheezed as his lungs inflated and deflated without
benefit of those cerebral impulses necessary for such function.

"No!" screamed Quentin. "Lord Jesus, no... it
is impossible!"

But he knew that Mojo Mama's voodoo had made
it possible. Out of love and vengeance, she had conjured a spell
and turned the sunken remains of her only son into a living,
breathing zombie. Horrified, he watched as the headless corpse
started toward him. Its huge, dark hands clenched and unclenched
angrily, ready to latch upon the murderer of the woman who had once
given birth to him.

Quentin wailed and tried to crawl away. He
dismissed the revolver in his coat, for in his haste he had
neglected to bring powder and ball with which to reload. The
youngest of the Deveroux scrambled only a few feet, before hands
roughly took hold of him. He wept, waiting to feel strong fingers
close about his gullet, expecting the quick twist that might
shatter his neckbone and send him spiraling into the dark void of
death.

But it did not come. No, something much more
horrifying took place. He felt the thing's brawny arms encircle
him, lifting him from the pathway. Quentin shut his eyes in
revulsion as it pressed him closely to its broad chest, almost
tenderly so. He struggled to break free, but there was no chance of
doing so.

Quentin pleaded as Jonathan headed through
the canebrake with him in tow. Onward into the bayou it took him,
until they reached a broad clearing amid a crescent of ancient
swamp oaks. There the zombie took a few steps forward... and
sank...returning to the mire of the quicksand pit it had been
confined to following its untimely death.

Quentin screamed until the quicksand slowly
sucked them both downward. But as they went under, he realized that
he was not suffocating as he should. The Curse of the Deveroux had
not ended with the shooting of Mojo Mama. It continued, even more
terrifying than before.

Sinking toward the pool's murky bottom,
Quentin Deveroux knew that he would spend eternity in a heightened
state of torment and mortification, unable to die, trapped in the
unyielding arms of the victim of his father's unbridled jealously
and rage.

As he hung there, suspended between life and
death, he felt the creatures within him panic and surge into
battle. Snake against toad, scorpion against spider, a nest of
hornets against an invading army of angry red ants. All converged
within him, biting, stinging, bringing agony and boundless fear...
but, alas, no promise of finality.

So... exactly why did I write this godawful
"sick stuff"?

Well, it's like this...

A peculiar thing happened in the early
1990's. Those who wrote in the horror genre at that time did their
best to outdo each other. They wanted their fiction to be on the
"cutting edge". They wanted to push the envelope to the limit, so
to speak.

In other words, they did their very best to
gross their readers out.

Much of that had to do with the Splatterpunk
movement that took place in the late 80's and early 90's. Horror
writers such as John Skipp and Craig Spector, David J. Schow, and
others showed that extreme fiction of the dark kind was a valuable
commodity back then. And, because it was so popular, most writers
of horror and suspense jumped on the blood-and-guts bandwagon for
the ride.

I was one of them... at least for a while.
There seemed to be an air of intense competition in the genre at
that time. Most of the small press magazines -- and even some of the
big dog publications -- wanted shocking, visceral fiction, rather
than creepy, atmospheric work. So everyone scrambled to come up
with the most gut-wrenching and disgusting tales of terror that
they could dredge from their imaginations. I remember receiving
rejection letters from publishers saying that my stories weren't
"bloody enough" or "lacked shock value". That just fired up my
determination even more. I was bound and determined to write what
everyone seemed to crave, therefore I would conjure up every
gruesome and gory image that popped into my mind. Truthfully, some
of those tales that I penned should have stayed in the muck and
mire of that cesspool of misguided inspiration, never to be set
forth on the printed page.

To give an example, I once wrote a
particularly disgusting piece of fiction titled "Quetzalcoatl's
Revenge", intending to submit it to
New Blood
Magazine
,
which, at that time, specialized
in extreme horror fiction. The fine details of this story escape
me, but I do remember that the main character had pissed someone
off during a trip to Mexico City and been cursed with a rather
nasty case of dysentery. The tale ended with a winged serpent
ripping its way out of the protagonist's ass, dragging his
intestines along with it. Charming, huh? Better be glad that one
got misplaced.

My dark detour into "cutting edge" horror was
a short-lived one, lasting about six months or so. Then I was back
to writing the kind of stuff that folks liked to read from me;
tales of down-home horror set in the American South. Not that my
writing career suffered from my foray into visceral literature; I
just cringe a little whenever I come across one of those old
stories that crossed the line a little too far.

The collection you just read included seven
examples from that period. The first,
Diary
,
was published in an issue of
Cemetery Dance
back in 1990. Of this story, Richard
Chizmar wrote "
Diary
is an unusual tale -- a bit
nastier than Ronald's normal work"... which may be putting it
lightly. A couple more are
Housewarming
and
Old Hacker
, published in Eldritch Tales and New
Blood respectively, but were presented here in their more
repugnant, uncut forms.

Three other stories --
Mass
Appeal, Pins & Needles,
and
The Abduction
-- were previously unpublished pieces. The trio would have probably
languished in the darkness of the filing cabinet if several friends
had not urged me to bring them out into the open. And, by the way...
if you came away from
The Abduction
believing
Little Buddy was a dog... WRONG!

You wouldn't believe how many folks get that
impression. Give it another read and look for the clues hidden
throughout. Then you'll realize Buddy's true identity.

Of the bunch,
Mojo Mama
was
the real oddity of the bunch. Also previously unpublished, I wrote
it back in 1992, lost all traces of it during my ten year hiatus
from horror, then decided to completely rewrite it for inclusion in
this collection. And I'm happy to say -- in my opinion, at least --
it turned out ten-times sicker and nastier than the original
version could ever hope to be.

In a strange way, I have fond memories of
that time in my writing career. It was a time when I spread my
wings and broke the boundaries of what I then considered
"acceptable" fiction. In the Ron Kelly archives, the tales that
made up this collection is considered my "sick stuff"... the kind of
stories that twists at your innards and make them scream
"Uncle!"

Ronald Kelly

Brush Creek, Tennessee

December 2008

About the Author

After a ten year hiatus from the horror
genre, Ronald Kelly returns with his distinctive brand of Southern
horror fiction. He is the author of such novels as
Hindsight,
Pitfall, Something Out There, Father's Little Helper, The
Possession, Fear,
and
Blood Kin.
He has penned over a
hundred short stories, many appearing in major anthologies like
Borderlands, Shock Rock, Dark at Heart,
and
Hot
Blood.
His audio collection,
Dark Dixie: Tales of Southern
Horror
was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1992 for Best Spoken
or Non-Musical Recording. His first short story collection,
Midnight Grinding & Other Twilight Terrors,
was
published by Cemetery Dance Publications in 2009. His upcoming
publications include
Undertaker's Moon, Hell Hollow,
and the
Essential Ronald Kelly Collection.

He lives in Brush Creek, Tennessee with his
wife, Joyce, and three young'uns, Reilly, Makenna, and Ryan.

You can check out his website of
Southern-Fried Horror at
http://www.ronaldkelly.com
.