Morpheus Tales: The Best Weird Fiction Volume 5 Ebook

Introduction

Welcome to the fifth volume of Morpheus Tales: The Best Weird Fiction.

It’s amazing to think that we started this eight years ago. A lot of the small presses that we were reading at the time have long since disappeared. It is due to our readers and contributors that we are still here.

A lot has changed in the past eight years, not only personally but for the magazine. We’ve had a few guest editors working on some amazing special issues, and the editorship of the magazine was entrusted to the capable hands of our regular proof-reader Sheri White, who has done a great job of revitalising the magazine and bringing even more horror than ever before.

It is great to publish authors and artists for the first time, and to see regular contributors having success, publishing books and showing in galleries. It is great to work with some of the same people we’ve been working with since the beginning.

Morpheus Tales is not just a small press. It is a family, a union of like-minded people working together to create magic. Magic that terrifies and horrifies.

If you like to be scared you’ve come to the right place.

Read on and enjoy, and then come and make some friends...

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Adam Bradley

The Cherry Tree By David Lear

Thirty Chimes Avenue is a ramshackle, with its rotten front door, broken and boarded windows, and slate tiles missing from the roof. And in the sprawling back garden a cherry tree stands stranded in a sea of weeds and brambles like some hapless vessel.

The cherry tree is mottled with disease and its branches are almost bare despite the arrival of summer. It is a sorry sight and yet… and yet there is something quite magical about it too. For had someone snuck into the garden one moonlit evening, and looked up at the tree from just the right angle, then they would have been startled to see how the branches and a handful of blossoms came together, almost miraculously, to give the startling resemblance of a woman weeping and cradling a baby in her arms.

# # #

Ted, a retired seaman and the house’s sole occupant these last fifty years, shuffles into the kitchen and flicks on the light. He plunges his gnarly hands into the cold water and half-heartedly begins to wash up. Plates grunt and squeak in protest, and after ten minutes Ted’s arms begin to ache. He twists his stiffened neck, looking this way and that, but all the while he deliberately avoids looking through the darkening window facing the cherry tree.

Soon, a precarious mountain of cutlery and crockery piles upon the draining board. Ted reaches into the brown pool and pulls the slimy plug. The water sinks grudgingly, slow as the sea tide, leaving behind a scummy watermark. Ted knows that soon his sink will be blocked completely if he does not call a plumber or have a go himself or -

CRACK! A stone bounces off the window. Ted looks up to see two shadowy youths.

SMILER! they guffaw, before sprinting off into the bluish dusk, laughing at the ironic nickname they’ve given him.

Ted knows there is nothing he can do, and as he looks out the window, it seems as though the world has sunk to the bottom of the ocean, and the cherry tree sways as though its limbs are being tugged this way and that by deep ocean currents.

Ted closes his eyes. Feelings of grief pull his heart down to unfathomable depths, and there it is crushed by the weight of fifty years’ guilt for the death of his wife - for killing his wife.

I’m sorry, he whispers to the tree, and he draws the curtains shut.

Retiring upstairs for the night, Ted flicks on a switch to reveal his sparsely furnished bedroom. There is a bare wooden floor, broken drawers, a rickety bed, and the once white walls are now stained yellow like a smoker’s teeth.

The bedroom, like the kitchen, stares out over the back garden. Outside, the cherry tree’s nearest branches reach towards Ted and point like accusatory fingers. He opens his mouth but the words fail him and he hangs his head.

# # #

As a young man Ted had been a drunkard, and his young wife, Lavinia found that while he was a kind-hearted man when sober, alcohol quickly turned him to violence. In the end, finding she could cope no more, Lavinia planned to run away at the dead of night. But Ted discovered her secret and in a bout of drunken fury he lashed out, knocking her to the ground. Lavinia smacked her head upon the grate - and never got up again.

Ted, not knowing that she had been expecting his child, buried her body beneath a sapling cherry tree, and the next morning he feigned shock that his wife had run away to… who knows where? However, when Lavinia’s friends did not hear from her, they became suspicious. The police even questioned Ted, and while they never charged him, or discovered what had become of his wife, the locals still passed their judgement and shunned him for evermore.

# # #

Sober these last fifty years, almost to the day, Ted gazes upon the tree sadly and shuts the curtains.

I… I’m sorry, he whispers. I’m so sorry.

When he turns the light off, moonlight pours in through the window, straight through the flimsy curtains, turning the room a hazy blue so that Ted is just able to see his way into bed.

Through the darkness, a sharp image of the window and the swaying tree is projected onto one of the walls. Ted’s eyes snap shut - but his mind remains stubbornly conscious. As the moon shifts and the minutes pass, he can imagine the window’s projection, and the tree’s silhouette slithering across the wall towards him. Despite his eyes being scrunched tightly shut, Ted soon cannot help but feel the moonlight wash his crumpled face.

He can hear his own breaths and the sound of distant traffic, and then he hears three light taps upon the window. His eyes flick open. Out the corner of his eye he can see the window shining bright, and he hears three more knocks, harder this time.

Ted turns to face the curtains. W- What do you want? he quivers. Leave me alone!

There are three more aggressive knocks and Ted, summoning every last ounce of courage, throws off his blankets and shuffles towards the window. As he grips the curtains with clammy hands, he can see the tree swaying and dancing, almost beckoning him.

He tugs open the curtains, nearly ripping them off the rail. A pane has been cracked and the tree now stands motionless, a perfect shadow - as though cut from the darkest cloth.

For the last couple of weeks, Ted has felt ill at ease with the way the branches touch the window, and as he calms, he tells himself that he will find a gardener to prune the tree this coming weekend. He shuts the curtains once more and returns to bed. This time, clouds obscure the moon and sleep comes quickly. Ted dreams of the house and of the tree and of his wife. And a sparkling tear seeps from his eye.

# # #

When morning comes, Ted starts the day by trying to unblock the kitchen sink. With only the radio for company, he tries the plunger, but to no avail. Then, he crawls under the sink and takes apart the u-bend. A stink of festering brown liquid spatters unpleasantly into an old bucket. Ted thrusts a variety of implements down the exit pipe to dislodge the blockage and he works on through the day until dusk, but his efforts are in vain and eventually he retires to the living room, defeated.

With its window boarded and the light bulb recently blown, only the television illuminates this room, chasing away the shadows, sending them scurrying and leaping over pieces of furniture behind which they now lie crouched and quivering.

Ted stares, fixated on the television, though his mind is elsewhere. He tries not to think of the cherry tree or what lies beneath, but much as he tries to block them out, he cannot stop these dark thoughts from crawling over his mind.

Eventually, Ted’s desperate need for sleep begins to rapidly overwhelm his fervent desire to remain awake and, leaving the television on as he sometimes does, Ted sneaks upstairs to his bedroom.

The idea of switching the light on doesn’t appeal to Ted on this particular evening and instead, he creeps quietly through the darkness; the moon and her silvery light having for the moment been cloaked by a mighty black cloud.

Keeping his gaze firmly fixed on the floor, Ted closes the curtains, not daring to look out for even a moment before undressing and struggling into bed.

Sleep overwhelms Ted as quickly as a snuffed candle and he might have slept right through until break of day - if something had not suddenly woken him with a start.

Ted’s eyes creep open, and his heart pounds fearfully inside his chest. The black cloud has broken, moonlight shines upon his face like a burglar’s torch, and he knows exactly what has startled him from his sleep.

Outside, the wind gives a lamenting wail and something begins to rap steadily upon the window. Ted lies on his side and draws his quilt so that only his eyes peer fearfully out over the top.

Please, He whimpers, please - leave me alone.

But his desperate wish is ignored. There is the smash and tinkle of glass and now the rhythmic knocking is replaced by what sounds like something rustling, slithering, scratching, crawling across the floorboards.

Petrified, Ted hardly dares breathe as something heavy clambers up behind him and onto the bed. The aged springs creak as the form rolls closer and slips what feels like an arm over the blankets and about his waist.

Ted lies wide-eyed, hearing his own shallow breaths. Knowing that sooner or later he will have to confront whatever shares his mattress, he rolls over to face the presence.

Beside him lies a collection of twigs that wrap about one another in such a way as to give the startling resemblance of a woman’s sleeping face.

Lavinia? Ted whispers, barely able to comprehend what he is seeing. You know I… I didn’t mean to…

Two pink buds unfurl and blossom as eyes, and Lavinia smiles. Her arms tighten around Ted, and he feels himself being scratched all over as branches begin to wrap themselves about him. He shouts and screams, but his cries go unheard. The twigs that have formed Lavinia’s face untangle themselves and, hopelessly entwined, Ted can only watch as they slowly consume him.

The mass of branches drag him out of his bed and scratch their way across the floor, towards the window. Akin to a snake devouring prey, Ted’s enveloped mass is somehow compressed and pulled through the broken pane without a single jagged shard being dislodged.

# # #

As time passes, milk bottles accumulate on the doorstep and Ted’s nearest neighbours become concerned. They