• • •
Samantha opened her eyes. Patrick’s lifeless body hung five feet in front of her. His body was badly burned, and the bear trap had been reattached to his face. It was only a few seconds before she realised that she herself was in unbearable pain. Her hair had been burned off down to the scalp. Her clothes had been burned off, the nylon straps of her bra melted into her skin, but the cotton had burned away. Her arms had been stretched behind her and over a branch that hung at shoulder level. There was a noose made of vines hanging around her neck. She could feel liquid dripping down her legs, but she couldn’t tell if it was blood, urine or melted flesh.
A flickering light illuminated the woods in front of her. The static man appeared and floated in between the trees, weaving in and out of them as if playing a game. It circled her several times, each pass coming a little closer until finally it stood at the bottom of the large, dead oak. Slowly it ascended through the air until it was directly in front of her. She could feel it smiling, though it had no face. She could smell electricity over the scent of Patrick’s and her own burnt flesh.
“Please.” She whispered.
Luminous tentacles of snowy static shot from its sides and wrapped around the branch she was standing on, immediately catching the wood on fire. She lowered her eyes to see the thin branch engulfed in flames, and what was left of her lower lip trembled as her gaze shifted from the static man to Patrick.
“I love you.” she said, just before the branch gave way underneath her.
She fell quickly and barely felt the sharp snap in her neck. The last thing she saw before the darkness took her was the trunk of the dead oak she was hanging from, the bark glowing as static spread outwards into the rest of the forest.
Matthew A. St. Cyr
About the Author
Matthew A. St. Cyr was born, raised and still resides in Massachusetts. From a young age he was fascinated by the unnatural and the unexplained and as a student in elementary school would often write book reports on books about UFO’s, ghosts and Bigfoot, much to the disturbance of his teachers. Surprisingly, the Children’s Public Library in Fitchburg, Massachusetts had a rather robust selection in what could be considered occult subjects back in the the nineteen-eighties.
As a youth, his interests in the mysterious and unexplained led to an obsession with magic and illusion, which became his primary focus for much of his young life, eventually finding work as a professional magician for a number of years after high school. This led to his discovery of bizarre magick, a lesser known genre of the craft which relies more on story telling than it does flashy boxes and sawing pretty girls in half.
He began to write small tales of terror to accompany his illusions and prestidigitations and while he still performs a wonder or two when the mood strikes him, he fell in love with the writing of the tales and it eventually became his main focus.
Today, Matthew spends his time dreaming up new stories from his home in Western Massachusetts, which he shares with his wife and three cats. On occasion, when the stars align just so, he will still perform the odd piece of magic for friends, family or even the occasional stranger, especially while spinning yarns around the fire in his backyard.
You can follow Matthew’s ramblings at https://matthewastcyr.blogspot.com/ or find him on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MatthewAStCyr or you follow him on Twitter: @MatthewAStCyr.
Getting Away from It All
Greg Hunter
When the first wound spoke to Jonathan, he was several miles off the designated trail — this was by design, although the cut had come by accident. It was a three-inch-long abrasion above his left ankle, which he’d caught sliding down the subtle incline that led him away from the trailhead on the first day of his long weekend. Provided he evaded the detection of the park’s rangers, he would be set for three nights of camping without another soul around.
He was surprised by the voice from the start, but the surprise was in proportion to his agenda: an innocuous, if technically illegal, weekend of getting away from it all. At the end he would clear out his site by the same standards of the park’s designated overnight areas, probably even with more diligence than those areas’ campers. He would certainly cleanup without the kind of noise pollution that had led him to this, his single renegade activity. Sing-alongs, shouting matches, bawling infants — they amounted to toll beyond the price of a park permit, one which he no longer wanted to pay.
He’d initially mistaken his ankle wound’s first words as chatter from a party of like-minded purists, people who would hopefully make camp at an agreeable distance. This impression did not last long. When the wound spoke again, its nearness was audible, obvious, and very unlike conversation traveling through the trees.
North now, the voice said, to the ground beneath the peak. A hushed confidence.
As the speaker repeated itself, Jon scanned the oaks around him, seeing no one. He was waiting to catch sight of a bright Patagonia vest, or for a polyester tent bag to appear between the trees. He looked in the direction of the wound only after repetition, the fourth North, which forced into his reasoning the possibility of a speaker at his feet. Even then, at the earliest consideration of something extranormal, he’d still expected a face. Someone prone in the grass he’d somehow failed to notice. Even a frog, whose croaks could become audible as such, would amend themselves in his ear as soon as he’d identified the thing. But instead it was the wound, tremorring slightly as sound escaped it once again.
North now, to the ground beneath the peak.
Jonathan had hydrated carefully and only thirty minutes earlier had let loose a clear, colorless
