The Voices in Our Heads

  THE VOICES IN OUR HEADS

  By

  MICHAEL ARONOVITZ

  Edited By

  S.T. Joshi

  Foreword

  Tamara Thorne

  Cover Art

  Marius Siergiejew

  http://noistromo.com

  Graphics

  Nathan J.D.L. Rowark

  First Edition

  Horrified Press

  Dedications

  To Ken Bingham, my first creative writing teacher.

  To S.T. Joshi, my mentor.

  To lifelong friends who love short fiction.

  © Horrified Press

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner

  without written permission from the publisher.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  FOREWORD

  As a rule, I’m not a fan of short stories. They tend to read like vignettes, the characters have little room to grow, and half the time I’m left wondering what the point was. Therefore, when Michael Aronovitz asked me if I’d take a look at a couple of his, I only said yes because I was familiar with Alice Walks, his stunningly beautiful and eerie first novel.

  I read one story, then two. Then I read all the rest in rapid succession because I simply couldn’t put them down. The stories you now hold in your hand will keep you up at night and give you the creeping willies for years to come. Most of all, they will satisfy you.

  Mike’s little fictions read like small novels, not short stories. They are exceptional tales, all replete with rich description and perfect plotting that will get under your skin, then wiggle around and torment you -- and you won’t want any of them to end. His characters are incredibly real - they eat, they sleep, they use the bathroom. Flawed and ultimately human, each character is a small work of art.

  Herein are twelve dark tales, themed to the seasons, the months of the year, and divided into four sections - Monsters, Phantoms, Delusions, and Toys. They are flawlessly told in a multitude of voices and styles. Aronovitz is a master of transition, an Olympic athlete somersaulting from a first person present tense tale to a second person past tense narration and everything in between with grace and ease. Like all great storytellers, he is invisible, hidden in description and character, waiting to scare you when you least expect it.

  Most of all, Mike’s stories work because he understands that there are always voices in our heads, dark voices, seductive voices, voices telling us that there’s a monster in the closet, or that it might be fun to do something very, very bad. In “The Sculptor,” we ride along in a serial killer’s brain as he enjoys, so enjoys, his work. Certainly, the killer is delusional, but he is also an artist, proud of his product.

  “The Puddles” delivers an OCD nightmare, full of phantom smells, sights, and sounds that are terrible and unforgettable. In “The Trickster,” we find out what happens when a well-meaning teacher tries to share his strange toys with a student in need, and in “The Echo,” we discover what it’s like to confront monsters on a highway that never ends.

  Mike Aronovitz’s great gift is his ability to see the terror in the ordinary. He notices things we usually ignore, and after reading these stories, you will no doubt find yourself thinking new, dark thoughts about the neighbors, the clerk at the home improvement store, the public restroom at work, and maybe even your old, reliable car. So, turn down the lights and make sure the drapes are tightly closed. Then settle in and dig into a story or two. And when you have read these tales of terror, you can count yourself among those who have discovered a brilliant new author ahead of the crowd.

  Tamara Thorne

  Author of "Haunted" and "The Sorority"

  Table of Contents

  FOREWORD

  MONSTERS

  The Falcon

  The Echo

  The Green-Eyed Breath-Vampire with the Cheap Striped Tuxedo and Monocle Tattoo

  PHANTOMS

  The Puddles

  The Rain Barrel

  Prequel

  DELUSION

  The Sculptor

  The Grave Keeper

  The Soldier

  TOYS

  The Addict

  The Shape

  The Trickster

  Acknowledgments

  MONSTERS

  The Falcon

  April

  “Push, Rachel.”

  “It hurts so.”

  “Push hard, girl, or I’ll slap you again. The chloroform slowed you.”

  “It’s out.”

  “It’s a boy, God bless.”

  “Turn him, Belinda. Hold him in the lamp light.”

  “What’s that on his back? Oh God! Oh, my holy God!”

  “I’m sewing them shut.”

  “You can’t. ’Tain’t natural.”

  “What ain’t? You call what’s in there natural?”

  “But that’s fishing line, Rachel. He’s two years old.”

  “The skin’s tough there ’round the slits. He’ll live.”

  “Adam Michael Rothman, you come down off that barrel, now.”

  “I’m not standing on a barrel, mother. It’s your eyes tricking you. Come closer.”

  “Down, I say, this instant!”

  “Why? I like it. And it feels good to get them air once in a while.”

  “Someone might see, goddamn you. Through the widow. You’re tossing shadows. And don’t go up to the rafters again, or so help me, I’ll get the short rifle.”

  “And aim the barrel at your own son . . .”

  “Do you doubt it? I’m sewing you up again. And this time I’m using the steel baling twine. Try and stop me, I’ll knock your skull. You gotta sleep sometime, and chloroform’s got many uses, it does.”

  April 1892

  On his seventeenth birthday, Adam Michael Rothman set off into the Penn Woods to meet Katie Claypool, because she’d promised to show him her bare legs all the way up to her privates. She was waiting for him in the glen by their sitting stone. A shadow lay across her bosom and her breath was high. The straight black hair she’d been growing since the age of ten was twisted in a long braid down her back.

  “Do you want to play Fox and Geese, Adam? Hide and Seek?”

  “You wouldn’t hide from me.”

  “I might very well at that.” She raised her chin. “I’ve just had my bath, and I’m not wearing any undergarments. If you don’t believe me, you’ll have to go exploring up my tea dress.” When he didn’t answer, she pursed her lips. She webbed her fingers down curtsey style in front of her waist, turned her head slightly, and looked up through her bangs and lashes. “But you’ll have to catch me first, Adam Rothman.”

  She was off then, running into the dark wood, Adam close behind her. At the peak of the first rise a fallen oak blocked the path, and she angled off right, down the knoll through the wild grass, and then she darted across the creek, toes dancing along the dark, polished stones. Adam splashed ungraciously across, followed her up the short craggy incline, and gained ground along the long floor of pine needles. He reached for her once, grazing the fabric of one sheer, puffy sleeve, and she zigzagged off into the shadows.

  “Not so easy for you, boy,” she cried over her shoulder.

  “You’re a damned gazelle,” Adam panted. Her laughter painted the darkness in a splash of ice chips and tinsel, and she made for the footbridge, dodging between a pair of birches too tight for Adam to follow her through. By the time he’d skirted to the left and hurdled a thicket, she had made it to the high clearing at the back edge of what had been the property of some rich wholesale grocer a cen
tury before. There was a flat square rough with briar where a stable once stood and the petrified remains of a hitching post. In the background was the carriage house, all rubble but for the northwest corner, still standing tall like some ancient monolith at the edge of the wood’s darkest border. The moon came through the tangled nest of overhead branches in slants and splinters, and she was waiting there for him, leaning against the old stone well covered at the bottom with moss, and ivy, and vine.

  “Want to make a wish, Adam?”

  He approached heavily and kissed her. It wasn’t the first time, but it was certainly the most urgent. His hands were on her waist, and she’d indeed shed her underclothes, for he could feel her beneath as if touching her through the thinnest of silks, and when he fondled her breasts she moved his hands southward where he could get up and under the hem. Then he kneeled, the April dampness soaking through the knees of his trousers, and he was kissing the outside of one sturdy thigh, and then the warmer insides of both, and he caught her fragrance, and buried himself there, making her bite off a screech that led to a husky moaning in the thick of her throat. He wasn’t sure if it was all right to kiss her lips afterwards, but she was on to other business, and his sack coat was pulled off him, laid out in folds behind her to make a buffer against the coarse surface of the well. His trousers were at his ankles.

  “Where?” he begged.

  “Right there, that’s it.”

  “But Katie—”

  “You’ve got to push, Adam. It won’t hurt me too bad, and I know you want to.”

  “Like that?”

  “Hard, Adam. No . . . oh, yes! Mighty Christ!”

  “Should I stop?”

  “God, no. Get through with it, rough if you need to, just finish.”

  After it was done they held each other for a moment, heads to shoulders, and he took her face in his hands and kissed her lips and told her that he loved her. She kissed his forehead and said it in return, and then she felt it move. The thing in his back, and she groped a bit to the left and found its twin.

  Her hands went up to her mouth, yet she didn’t scream, and when he went to take her hands in his to make the prayer shape, she let him.

  “I’m different,” he said, “and all the time I’ve known you I wanted to tell you. Mother sewed them in when I was little, and she thinks the skin grew over them like scars.” Hair fell across his eyes and he shook it away. “But there ain’t no skin covering. I have slits, roughened around the edges, and what’s inside I’ve trained myself to hold there. But when I get excited, and I mean really excited . . .” He stopped. Couldn’t go on.

  “They move,” she finished for him. She unbuttoned his shirt. Slid it off. And then he let them come free.

  There was a wet suckling sound, steam coming up, and they rose from behind him, dark and oily, and he made them spread and made them work, and he rose off the ground before her.

  When he descended, he let her touch them. They swore they would love each other forever.

  What they didn’t see was the figure hiding behind the remains of the northwest corner of the carriage house, breath making a thin vapor upon the air, half-lidded eyes staring through a pair of octagonal nose-pinch glasses with no sides to them.

  “Where you been?” Papa said. He was at the table, papers before him. Light from the oil lamp played off his thick face, the soot of the iron works cleaned from around his eyes, nose, and mouth, the rest of him dark as the corner shadows. Katie put her hands behind her back, stuck out her bottom lip, and blew upward to fluff the hair from her forehead.

  “I was in the wood,” she said. Papa took off his cap and rested it on his knee.

  “You’re not to go in there. Nor the train station. We discussed this.” He rubbed his nose with calloused hands, clean at the knuckles, filthy beneath the nails. “And you’re not completely dressed.”

  “Papa!” she said, eyes widened, nostrils flared.

  “Jonathan Claypool, that’s personal to her.” Mother came into the room, one of the twins in the cradle of her arm. “I’ll speak to her myself—”

  “No,” Katie said. “Jean Marie lost Baxter again, gone into the wood all barking and loping after a field rabbit. She called to my window, and I only had time to throw on a dress. Ask her.”

  “Sit down,” Papa said.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Sit, Katie. I need to speak to you of adult matters.” Mother had come forward and taken a chair. Katie shifted her eyes back and forth between them both for a moment, came forward, and sat quietly. Papa cleared his throat for a speech, and given that he was a man of few words it was going be dire news, Katie knew.

  “Thorndale’s closing down,” he said. “Lord knows I’ve put my time in. Most of the boilerplates ’round these parts and five states south bear the iron run through my shift.” He took a deep breath. “Today, a new man, Jacob someone, a puddler’s helper, was taking out a buggy of hot coals. He slipped on a plate and fell with the buggy tipping toward him. Lucky it had a crust on, or else he’d have been covered with live cinder. Still burned him bad. Broke his arm and both ankles too. I think that was the final straw for Mr. Bailey. We’d been working for wages cut by twenty percent anyway, and there’d been too many accidents, too much liability, let alone the lack of contracts. We were told at the end of the second shift that the doors will be closed by December. All that will be left are the muck rollers and furnaces.”

  Katie pouted.

  “You already take most my wages. And Mr. Drake won’t let me work overtime until I’m eighteen, ’cause of some stupid new rule. You want my allowance too?”

  Papa looked at his hands making dark shapes before him.

  “I ain’t talking about the spice factory, Katie, Lord if it were only that simple.” Mother leaned forward, the baby’s tiny fingers twisted into a lock of hair that had come free down her cheek.

  “Things are changing, dear, you’d best understand it.”

  “Sarah, let me finish—”

  “But if you’d just let me explain to her—”

  “Quiet. I’ll handle this.” He looked up, eyes firm.

  “I want to talk to you about Ezra Fletcher.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s taken a liking to you.”

  She jumped to her feet.

  “He’s fifty years old!”

  “Forty-five. Sit down.”

  “I won’t! What are you saying?”

  He looked over at mother, and she nodded him on with her eyes. He tapped the table lightly with his thumb.

  “You’re to be wed. It’s a favorable match. By the time you’re thirty, he’ll be gone and all he has will be yours. You’ll be of middle age, but then you can do as you please. The decision’s been made.”

  She had her arms rigid at her sides, fists tight.

  “But Papa, I don’t like him! He’s spindly and crooked, and all those times I went to his store he was eyeballing me over the edge of his glasses, looking at my bum when I bent over to get the molasses, or staring at my bosom when I stretched sewing fabric across it, even when I was eleven. He’s lecherous. And he’s been waiting for his chance, don’t you see?”

  “Now, all men look,” Papa said, “they can’t help it, and I’m sure he never meant nothing by it but making sure you weren’t about to tip over a lamp display or knock into the crockery.”

  “I won’t do it,” she said. “I’m supposed to have a say-so.”

  “You will do it. There’s no choice.”

  “There’s always a choice.”

  “Not this time!” He’d let his tone heighten, and Katie backed up a step. He regained his calm, turned his hands to her, palms up.

  “Katie, be reasonable. Times are bad. We ain’t had a boarder for half a year, and next winter’s gonna be colder than the last. The twins can’t lay quiet before the fireplace, it’s too dangerous. Now, I can put in cast iron radiators and fuel them with a good coal-fired basement boiler, but I can’t afford
the initial installment of the ducts.”

  He looked at Mother and spoke this bit at her, as if they’d rehearsed it together.

  “Ezra Fletcher can give you comfort in his place up on the hill there. And he’s promised me a job at his brother’s sand quarry, washing, drying, and screening. It’s a living, and it’s done. Take me for my word, I wouldn’t decide this unless I’d put my prayers to it.”

  “But my heart is saved for another.”

  “Who?”

  “Adam Rothman.”

  Now Papa stood, tall and thick.

  “I don’t like him,” he said darkly. “His mother is mad, and his father is always off at the tavern. There’s unhappiness in that household; I’ve walked past and heard the yelling. And they know nothing of the farming they’ve undertaken. The main house is falling apart, its chimney leaning, and the yard’s overrun with rank weeds and pigs. It’s no place for a girl.”

  “But I love him.”

  “Not anymore, you don’t.”

  A knock came at the door then, and Katie went to it. A stiff blast of wind came in, and a tall, thin-faced figure stood in the frame, bent over a bit, gray waistcoat, close-set eyes, small beard twisted to a point.

  “Speak of the devil,” Katie whispered. He removed his octagon-shaped nose-pinch eyeglasses and slid them carefully into his pocket.