Genres:

Cast of Wonders 207: Millions Times Eight

Cast of Wonders 207: Millions Times Eight is a Cast of Wonders original.

Content Warning: Spiders. Lots and lots of spiders.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:20 — 19.7MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Millions Times Eight

by Jake Walters

Mick looked at the letter to his parents sitting on the kitchen table.  It was from the school. Outside, he heard the sounds of children laughing and a ball bouncing on the street pavement.  It was late August, and in just a week, their summer freedom was going to be erased. Mick was starting seventh grade.

The letter had been opened and was sitting unfolded beside a pile of crumbs, likely left by his older brother, Chaz, before he ran outside to meet up with his own high school friends.  There was nothing unusual about receiving a letter from the school at about this time in the summer; a welcome back, hope everything is okay and that your summer treated you well and you had a chance to rest for the big year coming up kind of statement from the superintendent.

So Mick read it.  And that was what it was, in the dullest, most boring language imaginable.  Except for the very last paragraph, which read, “We are looking forward to working with our students this year, and we have some big surprises in store for all of them and all of you!  We appreciate your trust in Linwood Schools!” Something about the words did not match the style of the rest of the letter, which had been business-as-usual. Something about the exclamation marks at the ends of the statements sent a little shiver down Mick’s back.

(Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 202: Henkie’s Fiddle

Originally published in Potter’s Field 4

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:27 — 22.5MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Henkie’s Fiddle

by Vonnie Winslow Crist

Stirred by a bone-chilling wind, the lone tree in the unsanctified section of the cemetery rattled its bare branches. Duffy had the eerie feeling that Witchman’s Oak sensed what was to happen today. He chewed on the hard skin left by a burst blister on his right thumb and studied the tree.

By order of the Edgewater town council and with the mayor’s approval, Duffy was to remove Witchman’s Oak before Christmas despite local lore proclaiming the tree haunted. Personally, he thought it was a terrible mistake to cut down the oak if for no other reason than the shade it provided in the summer. Rousted by another cold gust, the huge iron bell hanging from a rusted hook embedded in the tree’s trunk clanked its agreement.

(Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 190: Home Isn’t (Staff Pick 2015)

Originally published in Flash Fiction Online.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:28 — 14.2MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

Every year in January, Cast of Wonders takes the month off to recharge our batteries, plan the year ahead, and highlight some of our favourite episodes. As part of joining the Escape Artists family, this year we’re pulling out all the stops. We’re running 10 staff pick episodes over the month, each one hosted by a different member of the Cast of Wonders crew.

We hope you enjoy slush reader Katherine Inskip’s favorite story from 2015, Home Isn’t by Kelly Sandoval and narrated by Katherine Inskip. The story originally aired October 25, 2015 as Cast of Wonders 178.

Home Isn’t

by Kelly Sandoval

They tell him he’ll be happy when he gets there. It was wrong, what was done to you, they say. We’re making it right. You’re going home.

The kind ones, who call him Mark, are pleased. They have a party, with foods from his planet. He chews the edge of a gray leaf so bitter it closes his throat. He’s used to coke and animal crackers. You’re going home, they say. No more soda, no more sweets. No more rooms with white walls and bright toys. No more needles, treadmills, tests. Home.

They won’t tell him what home is, only what it isn’t. He pictures a toyless, colorless, cokeless expanse. He pictures fields of bitter gray leaves growing beside silver pools. He tries to picture others like himself, but he is the only one he knows. He populates his imaginings with mirror-reversed copies of his own face. Pale blue fur and liquid black eyes.

At night, he wraps his arms around his chest and makes low choking noises as he tries to cry. He’s never quite gotten the trick of it.
(Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 186: A School Story (Staff Pick 2015)

Originally published by the author in More Ghost Stories, 1911

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:55 — 18.3MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

Every year in January, Cast of Wonders takes the month off to recharge our batteries, plan the year ahead, and highlight some of our favourite episodes. As part of joining the Escape Artists family, this year we’re pulling out all the stops. We’re running 10 staff pick episodes over the month, each one hosted by a different member of the Cast of Wonders crew.

We hope you enjoy artist and founder Barry J. Northern’s favorite story from 2015, A School Story by M. R. James, and narrated by Alasdair Stuart. The story originally aired August 2, 2015 as Cast of Wonders 172.

A School Story

by M.R. James

Two men in a smoking-room were talking of their private-school days. “At our school,” said A., “we had a ghost’s footmark on the staircase. What was it like? Oh, very unconvincing. Just the shape of a shoe, with a square toe, if I remember right. The staircase was a stone one. I never heard any story about the thing. That seems odd, when you come to think of it. Why didn’t somebody invent one, I wonder?”

“You never can tell with little boys. They have a mythology of their own. There’s a subject for you, by the way–‘The Folklore of Private Schools.'”

“Yes; the crop is rather scanty, though. I imagine, if you were to investigate the cycle of ghost stories, for instance, which the boys at private schools tell each other, they would all turn out to be highly-compressed versions of stories out of books.”

“Nowadays the Strand and Pearson’s, and so on, would be extensively drawn upon.”

(Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 178: Home Isn’t

Originally published in Flash Fiction Online.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:37 — 12.3MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

Hungry for more horror flash fiction? Then head to the Pseudopod forums where this very moment yours could be the deciding vote in the “two stories enter, one story leaves” ritual that is the flash fiction contest. The three winners will be purchased and run in a special Flash on the Borderlands. For those who comment on the stories, Pseudopod will randomly select a few lucky winners to receive copies of the excellent Women Destroy Horror by Nightmare Magazine. Horror stories and the chance of even MORE horror stories and commentary by participating in a thriving horror fiction community? The only thing more sure is that somehow, some way, your trick or treat candy will contain at least one of those strange honey nougat things…

 

Home Isn’t

by Kelly Sandoval

They tell him he’ll be happy when he gets there. It was wrong, what was done to you, they say. We’re making it right. You’re going home.

The kind ones, who call him Mark, are pleased. They have a party, with foods from his planet. He chews the edge of a gray leaf so bitter it closes his throat. He’s used to coke and animal crackers. You’re going home, they say. No more soda, no more sweets. No more rooms with white walls and bright toys. No more needles, treadmills, tests. Home.

They won’t tell him what home is, only what it isn’t. He pictures a toyless, colorless, cokeless expanse. He pictures fields of bitter gray leaves growing beside silver pools. He tries to picture others like himself, but he is the only one he knows. He populates his imaginings with mirror-reversed copies of his own face. Pale blue fur and liquid black eyes.

At night, he wraps his arms around his chest and makes low choking noises as he tries to cry. He’s never quite gotten the trick of it.
(Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 172: A School Story

Originally published by the author in More Ghost Stories, 1911

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:23 — 17.9MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

Do you love flash fiction? The Escape Artists podcasts are hosting their fourth annual flash fiction contest, starting with Pseudopod this year. The submission window runs from August 15th through September 15th. All the details can be found on their forum.

A SCHOOL STORY

by M.R. James

Two men in a smoking-room were talking of their private-school days. “At our school,” said A., “we had a ghost’s footmark on the staircase. What was it like? Oh, very unconvincing. Just the shape of a shoe, with a square toe, if I remember right. The staircase was a stone one. I never heard any story about the thing. That seems odd, when you come to think of it. Why didn’t somebody invent one, I wonder?”

“You never can tell with little boys. They have a mythology of their own. There’s a subject for you, by the way–‘The Folklore of Private Schools.'”

“Yes; the crop is rather scanty, though. I imagine, if you were to investigate the cycle of ghost stories, for instance, which the boys at private schools tell each other, they would all turn out to be highly-compressed versions of stories out of books.”

“Nowadays the Strand and Pearson’s, and so on, would be extensively drawn upon.”

(Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 143: Dagon

Originally published in issue #11 of The Vagrant (November 1919).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:05 — 25.7MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Dagon

by H. P. Lovecraft

I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone, makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below. Do not think from my slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fully realise, why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death.
(Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 142: Marrow

Cast of Wonders 142: Marrow is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:24 — 27.8MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Marrow

By Mav Skye

I have eyes but do not see.

I have ears but do not hear

I have a nose but I cannot smell

My mouth wears a stitched frown…

And if I get close, I suck bones out your crown.

 

What am I?

 

A gaggle of teens stalk sugar on All Hallow’s Eve. It’s a beaut of a night and we’ve got ourselves a whole crowd of ghouls. Why there’s Frankenstein and Vampire, Werewolf and Gorilla, also Kitty, Witch, and Dorothy carrying a live Toto in a basket. Toto yaps and all the kids laugh. They’re high on sugar as the moon is full. Werewolf howls, and the girls giggle. They’re carrying pillowcases overflowing with candy, pitching rocks at Mr. and Mrs. Vandyke’s cornfield. The cornstalks are picked clean as bones. And the dry, leathery sound they make when the wind blows is eerie enough to scare the nuts off a squirrel.

(Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 141: Reading Time / A House in the Forest

Reading Time was originally published in Daily Science Fiction (August 2011)

A House in the Forest was originally published as House Woods Bugs Los Alamos in Beyond Prose (November 2008)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:18 — 24.1MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Reading Time

by Beth Cato

We began to burn the books, and Dad tried to kill himself.

Almost all of the extra furniture had been burned over the previous month, leaving the upholstery and padding from sofas and chairs heaped on the big bed in what used to be just Mom’s and Dad’s room. Me and Taylor stayed in that room all day since heat rises, and we wore so many layers of clothes that it was hard to go up and down the stairs. Anyway, with so many of the walls and rooms empty, the whole house echoed so their voices really carried from the downstairs library.

“I can’t do this, Vick, I can’t. Burning books, like Nazis?”

“We are not burning books like Nazis. We’re burning books to keep our kids warm and alive. I’ve torn apart everything else first. You know that. The books are last.”

Dad made some sort of weird moan like a whale from an old nature show. “I know, I know. But if we make it out of here, what sort of world will it be without books? What sort of civilization–”

“Tom. Listen to yourself. We’re one family. There are other survivors out there. You’ve said yourself that a nuclear winter isn’t supposed to last long. It’s a drop in temperature, nothing permanent.”

“I thought it would be over by now. The smoke and debris should have cleared the atmosphere.”
(Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 140: Of Pumpkin Soup and Other Demons / The Ghost of Grammy Goneril

Of Pumpkin Soup and Other Demons was originally published in Coping: A Not One of Us Special Publication in 2014.

The Ghost of Grammy Goneril was originally published in Underneath the Juniper Tree in Fall 2013.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:25 — 26.9MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

It’s October, everyone. That means it’s time for our annual Halloween special. This year we’ve gone for a theme, presenting a collection of horror stories about endings, both figurative and literal. The dead and the undying. Spirits sea monsters. Apocalypses writ both large and small. Welcome to The End of the World.

Of Pumpkin Soup and Other Demons

by Natalia Theodoridou

The shutters rattled in their hinges as rainy fists banged against the wood. Katina rubbed her knuckles. They made a creaky noise. “Old bones, what did you expect?” she chuckled. “Old bodies are as good as coffins.”

She stirred the pumpkin soup boiling on the stove and tasted her wooden spoon. “Almost ready.”

The wind pounded on the door with all his might and fury. It almost sounded like knocking.

“Are you set on tearing my house down?” she asked him.

Then, another knock. And another.

Katina looked at the door, her left eyebrow raised.

“Is someone there?” she asked.

(Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 102: The Tell-Tale Heart

“The Tell-Tale Heart,” first appeared in The Pioneer, Vol. 1, No. 1, at page 29 (which was published in Philadelphia during January, 1843). It is now available in the public domain.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:46 — 17.3MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

The Tell-Tale Heart

By Edgar Allen Poe

TRUE!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily—how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees—very gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.
(Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 101: Custom Made

Custom Made first appeared in The Colored Lens, a magazine of speculative fiction, in February 2012.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:59 — 24.8MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Custom Made

by Sylvia Anna Hiven

The first time it happened was with a button.

It was gold and shaped like an acorn, and snapped loose from a man’s overcoat as he bumped into Valenka on the street. Clattering into the gutter, it came to a stop against her scuffed boot.

Valenka hadn’t experienced much magic in her life—only gray days spent tugging at sleeves for coins. Still she understood that something special happened when she picked up the button. All the walls of her mind fell away, and into her head, accompanied by the chilly Prague breeze, swept the man’s past.

That man is good, she thought, holding the button in her little fist. He has a wife and two daughters whom he kisses goodnight each day. He kissed another woman once, but only once, and he regrets it still. He gives coins to a lame man in Petrin Hill Park on Sundays. And he loves God. Yes, the owner of this button is a good man.

After that, it happened more frequently. People’s pasts came to her uncalled as she brushed against shoulders in the market, or when she picked up someone’s forgotten glove in an eatery. When she was seventeen and found employment as a seamstress in Dvorak’s Tailor Shop, it became an unavoidable part of her life. Each piece of silk had a story to tell, and each strip of macrame whispered a past. Valenka learned about grief through black funeral gowns, and understood the meaning of passion as she mended ripped lace blouses. Lives, although she did not live them, passed before her eyes.

Mostly, experiencing memories was effortless and her ability showed her everything there was to know. Other times, the past only seeped into her mind in elusive glimpses. But never had Valenka seen someone’s future.

Not until she touched the hem of a murderer.
(Continue Reading…)