Limbus, Inc.

  JournalStone

  San Francisco

  Copyright © 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  JournalStone books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

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  The views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  ISBN: 978-1-936564-52-1 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-936564-74-3 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-1-936564-75-0 (ebook)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2012956364

  Printed in the United States of America

  JournalStone rev. date: April 26, 2013

  Cover Design: Denise Daniel

  Cover Art: Alan M. Clark

  Edited by: Anne C. Petty

  Epilogue and Prologue: Brett J. Talley

  Dedication

  For Constance L. Payne, my daughters, Emily and Cassidy, and my unborn son, Domenic

  —Christopher C. Payne

  Acknowledgements

  Special thanks to Anne C. Petty for coming up with the incredible idea, pulling the stories together and for her patience with me throughout this process; also thanks to Brett J. Talley, Jonathan Maberry, Benjamin Kane Ethridge, and Joseph Nassise for working with JournalStone and taking a chance on us.

  —Christopher C. Payne

  Endorsements

  “This shared-world anthology about a mysterious metaphysical employment agency is pleasingly consistent in tone. The execution and intriguing theme leave the reader wanting more.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Limbus, Inc. is a brilliant concept that lets writers share a world while allowing their imaginations free rein. Ethridge, Mayberry, Nassise, Petty, and Talley take full advantage of all that creative elbow room and serve up some tasty stories. Do not miss this.”

  —F. Paul Wilson

  “Listen up, fans. Limbus, Inc. is a delight. Remember all those alternate universes suggested by classics such as The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone? Turns out they’re for real. Only one sinister corporation controls all of the entrances—and there are no exits.”

  —Harry Shannon, Stoker nominated author of Dead and Gone and The Hungry

  “Limbus, Inc. is one of the strangest, creepiest things I’ve read in a long time. Guaranteed to send all you conspiracy theorists out there into paroxysms of paranoid delight! Well, you did warn us.”

  —Brian Knight, author of The Phoenix Girls, Book 1: The Conjuring Glass

  “Get street level in crazy town. Limbus, Inc. finds a new kind of noir.”

  —Weston Ochse, author of Seal Team 666

  “The five novellas in Limbus, Inc. are the kind of horror fiction I love most: Smart, scary, funny, edgy, melancholy, and set in a world I recognize all too well. The most frightening elements here aren’t alien princesses with insatiable appetites, ancient murder cults, or shapeshifting assassins, but desperation, hunger, neverending wars, and a wealthy class all too eager to prey on the rest of us. Limbus, Inc. isn’t just kickass—it’s five kinds of kickass.”

  —Lisa Morton, four-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Castle of Los Angeles

  “Limbus, Inc. is the best shared world anthology I’ve come across in the last twenty years. It was absolutely outstanding—five perfect stories from five of the top names in the business. Even the best shared world anthologies can, at times, play a little fast and loose with continuity, but not so Limbus, Inc. Editor Anne C. Petty has put together such a flexible, yet finely realized world here that the five voices she’s brought together sound like a choir warmed up in hell. This book is going to set the bar for shared world anthologies for a long time to come. Mark my words.”

  —Joe McKinney, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Flesh Eaters and Inheritance

  What Is Limbus?

  Limbus is Latin for “edge” or “boundary,” but that’s not the whole story.

  Welcome to the world of Limbus, Inc., a shadow organization at the edge of reality whose recruitment methods are low-rent, sketchy, even haphazard to the ordinary eye: a tattered flyer taped to a bus-stop shed or tacked to the bulletin board of a neighborhood Laundromat, a dropped business card, a popup ad on the Internet. Limbus’s employees are as suspicious and ephemeral as the company, if indeed it could be called a company in the normal sense of the word.

  Recruiters offer contracts for employment tailored exactly to the job seeker in question. But a word to the wise… it’s always a good idea to read the fine print.

  Prologue

  Ichabod Templeton hid in shadow, for the ones he feared walked in the light. He clutched a leather-bound book to his chest, eyeing the early evening revelers as they passed. They didn’t notice him, crouching in darkness. Or maybe that was all part of their plan. Lure him into a sense of ease. Make him think that he had finally escaped their gazes. And then strike. No, Ichabod thought, shaking his head against the idea. He had come so far. He would not fail now.

  He crept through the alleys and back ways of Boston, hiding himself in the maze of the city. But he was not lost. He knew where he was going, even if he had never been there, even with no map to lead the way. Something inside, some preternatural sense, guided his footsteps.

  He found himself in the North End of the great city, not that he would have known the name of that place. He cut through the old burying ground at Copp’s Hill, past the ancient, crumbling tomb of Cotton Mather, into the labyrinth of narrow corridors and side streets north of Prince. He stopped at the mouth of one and stared with sudden recognition at a ramshackle storefront. He had reached his destination. He pulled the old book closer, rubbing his hands along the coarse leather while the setting sun cast longer and deeper shadows than even the one in which he stood. Yes, this was the place. This was his destiny.

  *

  The antique grandfather clock—the one he had inherited from his father’s father—struck seven, but Matthew Sellers didn’t hear it. He stared at the blinking cursor on his computer screen, as if willing it to type some good news. It was well past closing time, and Matthew should have been home, tucked away in the garret that sufficed for a living space. But he always found himself staying late on the days he reviewed the budget, as if working harder would result in more income. But as his eyes scanned the black and red numbers in the ledger—the latter in greater quantity and size than the former—he knew that such was wishful thinking at best.

  The used book store had always been a dream of his, as had the small-press publishing company he had started along with it. He’d created Unbound with money his parents had left him in their will, and at first, the store had been something of a cultural phenomenon in Boston’s increasingly bourgeois North End. Unfortunately, like all such phenomena, Matthew’s star had burned out as quickly as it had ignited. The elite moved on to the next distraction, and Matthew often wished he had opened the store in the Back Bay or on Newbury Street, even if he knew he could never have afforded it.

  It had been bad for a while, but the last month had been particularly unsuccessful.

  “Well,” he mumbled to himself, “I guess it’s time to get a real job.”

 
The door to the shop opened, and the antique bell Matthew had installed above it announced his visitor with an enthusiastic jingle. Even though he needed the business, Matthew looked up with every intention of turning the customer away. His mouth hung open, the words died in his throat when he saw the man standing before him.

  He didn’t know whether to pity or fear him. The man was one part professor, another part homeless derelict. His tan trench coat hung limp from his skeletal frame, splattered with mud along its edges. His soiled clothing and unkempt beard said he hadn’t bathed in days or perhaps weeks even. But it was his eyes that held Matthew. Blue as the ocean on a summer’s day, yet trembling in what Matthew could only assume was fear behind the wire-rimmed glasses of an artist.

  “Can I help you?” Matthew stammered. It was only then he noticed the leather-bound tome the man hugged, clinging to it as if it were the most important item he had ever possessed. As if he feared that at any moment, someone would try to take it from him.

  “Yes,” the man croaked. “Yes, I think you are the only person who can.”

  For a long moment the two men assessed one another across the swirling dust that filled the space between them. Then something in the stranger’s mind clicked, and he took a step into the center of the room. He held the book in his hands, reaching it out to Matthew as he stumbled toward him.

  “This is for you.” He placed the book on the desk, but it still did not leave his hands. Matthew saw a storm of conflicting emotions in his eyes. Finally he withdrew, and as he did, a wave of relief poured over his face.

  “Please,” Matthew said, “take a seat.”

  The man glanced down at the chair, and just as Matthew began to doubt he would accept the offer, down he sat.

  “So I didn’t get your name.”

  “Ichabod. Ichabod Templeton.”

  Matthew tried not to smile. He was sure it wasn’t an alias. No one would be so creative.

  “Matthew Sellers.”

  He opened the leather cover of the book and immediately frowned. It wasn’t an antique book as he’d originally thought. Instead, it was some sort of diary, one that someone—Ichabod, likely—had filled with his own ramblings. Some pages were nothing but handwritten scrawl, barely legible in parts. Others were poorly typed, while yet more had computer printouts glued or stapled on top of them.

  “Mr. Templeton …”

  “I wrote it in three days,” Templeton said. His hands shook and his voice was feverish. “I didn’t eat or bathe, nor did I sleep. It was my obsession. It is my masterpiece.”

  “Mr. Templeton, I am sure you worked very hard on this, but I only purchase published books for the store. I am afraid I …”

  “Oh, no no, you misunderstand, Mr. Sellers. I don’t want to sell the book to you. I am giving it to you. I want you to publish it. The story I have to tell is far too important to be confined within the meager leather bindings of a single manuscript. No, the world must read it. The world must know what I know.”

  Matthew leaned forward and shook his head. “I don’t think you understand, Mr. Templeton. There’s a whole process to selling a book. I have to read it and like it. There are legal considerations, contracts to sign. Then we have to think about artists and titles and distribution strategy. And besides, I run a small press here. If you want the world to read your book, you’ll probably want to take it somewhere else.”

  Templeton smiled for the first time, revealing yellow-encrusted teeth. “None of that will be necessary, Mr. Sellers. The book is yours now. I have no doubt that after you read it, you will want to publish it. And then, the world will see. They won’t have a choice.”

  Matthew flipped through pages, suddenly convinced that it was better to play along with Templeton than anger him. He was a man on the edge, and at any moment, he could fall in completely.

  “Writing the book wasn’t easy,” Templeton continued. “Sometimes I had to write by hand. Other times I used my old Olympia Deluxe typewriter. When I was lucky, I wrote on a computer.”

  “I guess I don’t understand,” Matthew said. “Why couldn’t you just use your computer to write the book?”

  “Oh, well, I was on the run most of the time. They were after me, of course.”

  Matthew closed the book and looked up at Templeton. “Now Mr. Templeton,” he said as calmly as he could, very afraid of his guest, “why would anyone be after you?”

  “Because I know things,” he said. “I know things that are now in that book.”

  “So this is nonfiction?”

  “It is truth,” Templeton answered without addressing the question, “distilled down to its finest essence. The line between fiction and nonfiction is a fine one, after all.”

  “But how did you come upon this story then? Do you have sources? Research?”

  Templeton laughed. “Come now, Mr. Sellers. Don’t you understand? I didn’t ask for this assignment. It was given to me. By God, perhaps, though the origin is irrelevant. I was fated to complete this task. It is my job to reveal them, for what they are. I am the only one who can.”

  “Them?”

  The man smiled again, and this time Matthew saw pity.

  “Mr. Sellers, the world is a machine, and like all machines, it requires someone to run it. Otherwise, it would spin out of control. Things must be done, adjustments must be made, the system must be tweaked.”

  “You’re talking about the Illuminati? Free Masons? Conspiracies and secret societies?”

  “No, no Mr. Sellers. Nothing so quaint. And nothing so secret. They walk in the light, not the shadows. Secrets breed questions, and questions sometimes have inconvenient answers. No, they are all around you. Working every day. They are neither good nor evil, as such notions are normally counted by mankind. They stand on the edge of the pit, and stare down into its depths. They do what they must. They do what we cannot.”

  Matthew grinned, shaking head, no longer able or willing to contain his doubt. “I’m sorry Mr. Templeton, but I don’t think I buy any of this.”

  Templeton rose from his seat and adjusted his glasses. “Read the book, Mr. Sellers. Read it, and then you will know. Belief will follow, as thunder follows the lightning.”

  Before Matthew could object, Templeton had turned and strode to the door. He didn’t stop when Matthew called out his name. The antique bell rang again, and he was gone.

  Matthew leaned back in his chair and looked down at the book that sat before him. He rubbed his hands along the leather, opened the cover, and started to read.

  The Slaughter Man

  By

  Benjamin Kane Ethridge

  Time stood still, as it always did in this moment, and he felt neither dead, nor alive. As far as his life went, everything important existed only in this sad moment. Nothing before. Nothing after. He couldn’t decide if he hated that truth, loved it, or just needed it that way. Living in this instant was who he was, and yet, he’d never really been acquainted with that person. Not really.

  Who am I?

  What do I want?

  As the Sticker punched through the jugular vein and dark red flooded over his apron, he saw a minor commotion up the chain. The first bolt hadn’t penetrated the cow’s solid cranium. The shackler, Jackson Turner, jogged over and exchanged glances with the stunner, Carl Cabers. The two men spoke something inaudible over the driving noise of the process line. Carl lowered the captive bolt pistol and fired into the cow’s skull again. Jackson gave a little electrified hop and returned to the side, taking up the shackles for the animal.

  Blood flowed from the drains up the Sticker’s ankles and he responded by stepping on a pedal for the hidden sump pump. Further consideration told him this was a bad idea. The abandoned thirty thousand gallon underground tank had been filled to its limit just yesterday. He could no longer use it as a shortcut. The tank had plumbing issues when Sunshine State Natural Meat Processors first built the facility, and so it was capped off but never properly backfilled with gravel per city requirements.
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  The main drain was hidden from view, under the work table where the Sticker’s gory equipment usually sat. He ran the pump only when work got moving fiercely. The grade in the floor sloped toward that particular drain anyway, so using it enabled him to go faster than the other stickers (who weren’t privy to its whereabouts).

  Last week the blood flow started rising under the table. Rather than throw the pump in reverse and send the nasty smelling stuff out to the appropriate drains, he got caught in the workday rush and put it off.

  Today, the Sticker just let it be. He would have to be a mortal employee now like everybody else and work at a normal pace. No more super killer, processing twice as many animals as his peers.

  A month ago, when Annette had still been in his life, he might have plotted how to empty that tank so he could retain his star quality, and possibly get called up for a management position. That might have made Annette proud of his return to the stockyards. Might have made her see his potential still existed.

  Might have made her stay with him.

  That wasn’t the reality anymore. Annette was gone and he was free to be as mediocre as the rest of the people working in this land of shit and blood.

  Jackson brought the shackle up to the cow’s dangling hoof. It happened with such suddenness the Sticker only saw Jackson falling, arms out like a messiah, and then he was prone on the corrugated metal floor. The cow’s free hoof continued to fling wildly.

  The Sticker ran to the thrashing beast, its labored calls louder than the process line. Carl arrived with his bolt gun. He’d already been working on another cow and knew this had to be done quickly. The chain will not stop was the company mantra and nobody took it for granted.

  Carl aimed at the cow’s head. The animal shifted its weight, fell off the processing bar and struck him bodily against the side wall.

  The Sticker dropped his knife and threw all his weight into the cow’s midsection. Carl broke free; he held his head and blinked spastically before rising on one knee. Jackson still rested on the floor, palm pressed to a spot between his eyes. The Sticker took the bolt gun, put the cow in a side headlock and discharged a bolt into its temple. The bolt retracted and the animal’s body jerked. It swung forward and sent the Sticker into the wall, knocking all the air from him. He pushed off the wall and hurried away from any other attack.