PRAISE FOR “SPLIT SCREAM VOLUME ONE”

  “Two satisfyingly weird tales that slot eccentrically together without ever quite overlapping. Kind of like a yin yang symbol but with a quite literal hell in the place of yin and irradiated post-life weirdness in the place of yang. Or like an EP in which one side plays at 78 and the other plays at 33, but backwards, and which you can't stop listening to.”

  —Brian Evenson, author of The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell

  “I devoured ACE doubles back in the day, and SPLIT SCREAM feels like a sleek, bullet-sized iteration of those beauties. Winter and Moses go hard with transdimensional Lovecraftian body horror and far-future pulp evocative of Vance, Brackett, and the like. Excellent.”

  —Laird Barron, author of Swift to Chase

  “SPLIT SCREAM VOLUME ONE is an experience I can whole-heartedly recommend. The two works have distinct flavors but work well together, and you'd be right to expect to settle in for a bloody weird, but bloody good time with this duo. Just be sure to keep your hands inside the vehicle at all times.”

  —Alex Woodroe, editor at Tenebrous Press

  “Dread Stone Press’s SPLIT SCREAM series is off to a wonderfully disturbing start with this double feature. I was immersed in Carson Winter’s weird noir…then chilled by Scott J. Moses’ stark dystopian.”

  —Christi Nogle, author of Beulah

  PRAISE FOR “THE GUTS OF MYTH” by CARSON WINTER

  “The Guts of Myth needs no blurb, no presentation; just read the first page and you'll be steeped in the smell of smog and cigarette smoke, in off-English accents and out of tune pub music, in Byron's dark melancholy voice. You can't help but want more. And then, just when you think you've got a handle on this charismatic hard-boiled noir? Then it gets really, excitingly weird.”

  —Alex Woodroe, editor at Tenebrous Press

  “While seeming to start by answering the question ‘What if Guy Ritchie got his hands on the Necronomicon?’, Carson Winter’s The Guts of Myth peels back its layers to reveal a vulnerable, sensitive emotional core beneath the weird and horrific. Like its tough-talking, ‘perma-chip on his shoulder’ protagonist, The Guts of Myth offers glimpses of its true nature throughout while keeping its darkest secrets until the end.”

  —Patrick Barb, author of The Nut House and Gargantuana's Ghost

  “[A] tour-de-force of cosmic weirdness, full of imagination and verve, that will leave you both bewildered and hungry for more. Winter is an exciting new talent in horror and once you cut into The Guts of Myth, you won't be able to put it down until the last strange bite.”

  —Evelyn Freeling, author and editor

  PRAISE FOR “THE MOURNER ACROSS THE FLAMES” by SCOTT J. MOSES

  “Once again Scott J. Moses has decided to rip out my heart, pummel it with grief, and leave it desiccated like a cheap valentine blowing in the wind across a nuclear wasteland. What a glorious story.”

  —Joe Koch, author of The Wingspan of Severed Hands

  “By the end of the first chapter, I could taste salt, feel salt on my fingers, even hear the salt. Profoundly strange and unsettling from the start, the surreal setting serves as a perfect vehicle by which to deliver these profoundly human emotions and profoundly human pains, in a world where you never feel safe and hardly ever feel human. I am left feeling not only touched, but scrubbed raw, inside and out, in the most satisfying way.”

  —Alex Woodroe, editor at Tenebrous Press

  “Scott J. Moses blends the emotional turmoil of loss, grief, and a desperate search for meaning after the unthinkable occurs, with as sure a talent as he does when bringing together dark fantasy, horror, and the post-apocalyptic narrative. Impossible to classify, this unforgettable novelette showcases Moses’s uncanny skill at creating grand, awe-inspiring otherworld landscapes populated with complex characters who come alive in the moral gray areas.”

  —Patrick Barb, author of The Nut House and Gargantuana's Ghost

  “Moses delivers a hallucinatory spiral of emotive horror that stuck to me like radiation.”

  —Eric Raglin, author of Nightmare Yearnings

  Volume One

  Featuring:

  Carson Winter

  &

  Scott J. Moses

  SPLIT SCREAM

  Volume One

  © 2022 by Dread Stone Press

  Cover illustrations by Evangeline Gallagher

  Interior illustrations by Marisa Bruno

  Cover & interior design by Dreadful Designs

  The Guts of Myth © 2022 by Carson Winter

  The Mourner Across the Flames © 2022 by Scott J. Moses

  No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, scanning, recording, broadcast or live performance, or duplication by any information storage or retrieval system without permission, except for the inclusion of brief quotations with attribution in a review or report. Requests for reproductions or related information should be addressed to Dread Stone Press at dreadstonepress@gmail.com

  All rights reserved. The stories within this anthology are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locals is entirely coincidental.

  Dread Stone Press

  dreadstonepress.com

  First Edition: September 2022

  ISBN: 978-1-7379740-2-4 / Paperback Edition

  ISBN: 978-1-7379740-3-1/ eBook Edition

  For the love of horror, and all you weird ones.

  INTRODUCTION

  The novelette has been dismissed and disparaged. Some dictionaries don’t even define them as a unique form, listing only short stories, novellas, or novels. Others write them off as being “too sentimental” or “trivial”.

  This is silly, of course, and, with little effort it’s easy to see the novelette has a purpose and value.

  What makes a novelette, then? Exact word counts vary, but these stories are longer than a short story and shorter than a novella. Entertainment consumable in about an hour or two.

  Sound like another form of easily digestible entertainment?

  I’m not saying a novelette is a movie is a novelette. And I’m not saying written fiction needs to be like movies. But… But they are kind of like movies, right? If you’re willing to accept that premise, at least for the moment, may I present to you…

  SPLIT SCREAM

  A Novelette Double Feature

  Truly, what better way to present these stories than as a double feature? Do you have to read them back to back in a single Friday night after dusk? Certainly not. But could you? Absolutely.

  So, what do you say?

  You’ll first bop along the twisted, quippy world of Carson Winter’s “The Guts of Myth.” Haven’t you always wanted weird, cosmic, hardboiled noir? Sure you have. Then, slow it down with a trip to the barren salt flats, imbued with grief and delusion in Scott J. Moses’s “The Mourner Across the Flames.” There’s a thread of love there, too, that you’d be remiss to let go.

  Well, are you ready? Grab some popcorn, turn the lights low, and don’t be afraid to scream.

  This is but Volume One of the Split Scream series. I do hope you enjoy, and that you come back for more.

  Long live the novelette!

  Alex Ebenstein

  Dread Stone Press

  Michigan, USA

  July 2022

  CONTENTS

  THE GUTS OF MYTH

  Carson Winter

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  THE MOURNER ACROSS THE FLAMES

  Scott J. Moses

  The Emissary

  The Proposition

  The Fetcher

  The Road

  The Ruins

  The Decree

  The Pillar

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  ABOUT THE ARTISTS

  CONTENT WARNINGS

  THE GUTS OF MYTH

  Carson Winter

  1.

  I always thought I looked a little like Roger Moore. I wore the same suits and I had the same chestnut hair. We were both English, even though I only got in on a technicality. The real difference between us was that he was a movie star and I was a crook. But that was fine. I doubted either of us were keeping score.

  London was alive with shit and smog. Double-decker buses and mean-faced bastards like myself ruled the streets—guys with bruised knuckles, red eyes, and a lust for carnage. It was a scary place, I guess—at least for everyone else. But it was 1973 and I was loving every minute of it. Because, you see, everyone else grew up here. They watched it change, or worse, they didn’t watch it at all. I was an Anglophile—a perversion born of spending most of my youth in the States. In Seattle, of all places. That’s why I didn’t sound like Roger Moore, but holy shit did I want to.

  When I was going around London saying shit like lad and mate, no one bothered correcting me. I couldn’t help my flat accent, just like I couldn’t help how my face looked cut up and vicious. I wasn’t a big guy, everyone could see that. But they could tell I was mean. They could see that I was willing to go a lot further than the other guy.

  That’s why I was at Mikey’s, thi s old hole-in-the-wall pub that still played Sinatra while old-timers smoked. The lights always flickered there, and I could swear there was always some middle-class geriatric nodding off in a corner. In the back of the building was a little room where some local hoods—lads like me—did business.

  Clarence nodded at me when I walked in and told me to take a seat. He wasn’t a particularly nice guy, but he was efficient. Gaunt, widow’s peak, cheekbones you could cut metal on. He had blue eyes, and if they were on a warmer looking guy, you might even say he was handsome. But, for me, he was a total no-go. You had to be careful going after guys like Clarence. Everyone’s fine with a little buggery until they get caught doing it, and then suddenly the pitchforks are drawn and you’re bleeding out somewhere in the Thames.

  “Good morning, Byron.”

  “Is it?”

  “When you come to me and you give me money, then yes, it is a fine morning. Let’s have it.”

  Clarence’s eyes were like ice. You couldn’t small talk that guy worth a damn. I pulled out a wad of pounds and handed them to him all nice like. He didn’t like it when you threw money on his desk. Everything had to be placed in his hands. He was fussy like that.

  He counted it and nodded. “Very well.”

  “I heard you had something for me today.”

  Clarence looked at me as if he had no clue what I was saying. He reached out for a cigarette, lit it, and puffed it for a couple seconds, not speaking until after he blew out a cloud of smoke. We all worked on Clarence’s clock and he knew it.

  “Yes, of course. There’s a gentleman who approached me the other day. He was looking for a common thug. I told him I knew several.”

  “You’re not shy about your associations, are you?”

  “Never. But I’ve worked hard enough that I don’t have to be coy. I’m not sure I know your excuse.”

  “American brashness, I suppose. Do you know who this guy is?”

  “I don’t. But he knew where to find me so he’s worth knowing. He left a card for whoever wanted to talk. I figured you’d be as good as any other.”

  “How much does it pay?”

  “I haven’t a clue.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he wasn’t asking me to take part. He was asking me if I knew anyone. I told him I did and I’d pass the message along. My part is done.”

  He handed me the card.

  “Dr. Paul Gossam,” I read.

  “The address is on the back.”

  “I know where this is. But it’s not a place a doctor lives.”

  “Indeed.”

  “What’d this cunt look like?”

  He winced at my language. “A normal fellow. Well-dressed, but not showy. His shoes were Italian, I knew that. Well-bred, carefully spoken. Maybe about fifty-years old.”

  “And you don’t know anything about what he wants from me?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “Strange.”

  Clarence took a long drag of his cigarette. “It’s not uncommon for a man to practice discretion in his affairs.”

  “Sure, sure,” I said. The way Clarence looked at me, and the way he talked—that discretion shit—it was that sort of thing that made me want to make good on those blue eyes and ask him straight out how he swung. But I had a feeling the moment I asked would be the moment I signed a bullet into the back of my head.

  “Is that all?”

  I took the hint and left Clarence behind me. He breathed a long dragon’s breath of smoke as I passed through the doors and out into the streets, with Dr. Gossam’s card in my hands.

  An hour later.

  I couldn’t understand what the guy on the street was saying.

  I say I’m British, but I’m British in the way Americans say they’re Irish. I was born here, ostensibly, but years six to eighteen were spent in the States. I spent so much time being special for having been born across the ocean, the Union Jack became a part of my identity that was hard to shake. When I was a young man, I got into some trouble and had to leave stateside. Long story.

  Over in Seattle, I was British enough for any red-blooded American boy and girl, but over here, it wasn’t as easy. Over here, I was a yank and my accent was a painful mish-mash of forced slang and mixed pronunciation. Americans said I sounded British, Brits said I sounded American. I couldn’t win.

  So, it was no surprise I couldn’t understand this old fucker who probably came from somewhere up North. He was telling me something important, but it just sounded like a posh goat braying at me. Then again—everyone here sounded posh to me.

  This guy was trying to sell me something and I was trying to ask him for directions. We were speaking two different languages. If he wasn’t as old as the colonies themselves, I might have bashed his fucking face in, but eventually he gave me something I could use—he pointed.

  I followed his old gnarled finger and saw a set of industrial looking buildings with thick smoke pouring out of tall, ominous smokestacks.

  I ducked down the pavement and into an alley, where I crossed over into a labyrinth of connected brick warrens. My Dr. Gossam practiced between a factory and a shipyard. I imagined his patients would have to step over broken glass and rusted iron just to shake his hand. I was beginning to suspect he wasn’t the sort of doctor I imagined.

  Men screamed at each other over the sound of machinery. I’d spent a lot of time in places like this in my line of work. Pushing speed to tired working class folks, or beating the shit out of low-lifes who owed too much, too fast. I liked to say I broke teeth for a living.

  The door was slender and red and carved into the side of a copper green warehouse. I had to climb a flight of stairs that twisted around the outside of the building like a snake. There were numbers on the door that matched the card, so I knocked. Somewhere, much too close, kids were smashing glass bottles and laughing.

  I waited.

  The smashing continued, and I wondered if this were a ruse. Maybe Clarence was pulling my leg. Maybe he saw the flicker in my eyes when I looked at him and he wanted to put me in the grave before even a whiff of poofery wafted from my cock. I tapped my toe against the metal platform beneath my feet.

  The sounds of industrial London overtook me. I could hear everything for a five-mile radius. The street kids breaking glass, couples screaming, honking horns, and just as I was about to get lost in it all, I heard footsteps approaching the door, hand in hand with the inevitable.

  2.

  Dr. Gossam looked pretty much exactly as Clarence described him. He was fifty-something, well-bred, with a close-trimmed beard. He looked strong for his age. His hair was white, but he didn’t look older because of it. He looked like the sort of fellow that swam in cold rivers and boasted of invigoration. We shook hands and he welcomed me in, leading me deep into a disaster.

  “Excuse the mess. Byron, you said?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Named for the poet?”

  “My parents were capital-R Romantics.”

  “Ah, I see. Lovely people, I’m sure.”

  The office was strewn with plaster and trash. The walls were concrete and covered in divots, crumbling in places. Most of the windows were frosted, diffusing cold gray light across the detritus. He took me through four different rooms until we reached the last, tucked into the back of the building. A desk and a chair sat in isolation. He motioned me toward the latter as he took his place behind the desk and smiled, surrounded by rubbish.

  “Excuse the mess,” he said again. “But I like to do my business in places I can trust.”

  “No wandering ears, I suppose.”

  “Correct. Can we agree to keep this conversation between the two of us?”

  “Of course,” I said, nodding. “What can I do for you, Dr. Gossam?”

  He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “Do you know much about books, Byron?”

 

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