Beyond the Bounds of Infinity

Beyond

the

Bounds

of

Infinity

Beyond the Bounds of Infinity © 2024 by the authors

Published by Raw Dog Screaming Press

Bowie, MD

All rights reserved.

First Edition

Book design: Jennifer Barnes

Cover art copyright 2024 by Lynne Hansen

LynneHansenArt.com

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024932724

www.RawDogScreaming.com

Beyond the Bounds of Infinity

An Anthology of Diverse Cosmic Horror

Edited by

Vaughn A. Jackson

Stephanie Pearre

Contents

Foreword

The Birth of Sound • Timaeus Bloom

Fractures of Her Reflection • Amanda Headlee

Live Free or Die • Danny Brzozowski

The Silent Letter • Chris Nelson

Effigies of Monstrous Things • Pedro Iniguez

Six Underground • Vicky Velvet

You Have Joined the Livestream • Jessica McHugh

Cracks • Mary SanGiovanni

The Things We Did in the Dark • Julia Darcey

In the House, There Were Teeth and There Were Eyes • Ichabod Cassius Kilroy

A Dampened Embrace • Christopher Hann

24 Points • S.A. Cosby

On the Shores of Midnight • Marnie Desdemona

The Eye of God • Rachel Searcey

Like Ants We March • Jorja Osha

Burning Slumber • Jessica L. Sparrow

Passage • Cyrus Amelia Fisher

The Comfort of a Cold Pit • Michelle Tang

Gyges • Vaughn A. Jackson

Beggars Can’t be Choosers • L. Marie Wood

Editor Bios

Author Bios

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Fear makes companions of us all.

Odd, I’m sure, to start the foreword to a horror anthology with a Doctor Who reference, but the second I sat down to write this, I knew it was perfect. See, at first glance it’s simple, we all have to live with fear, but in the context of the show, where a Companion is the title for the titular character’s running mate, it starts to mean something more akin to, fear makes us into Companions.

For who? Each other.

Fear is like a companion. A constant companion, always there. But that’s okay, because fear can bring us together. Sixty years, and a whole lot of time travel later, we get this expansion of the initial quote.

Fear is relational, it’s a writhing knot of blackened veins that connects all of humanity, and horror as a genre is (or perhaps should be) a safe space to experience and understand fear. H.P. Lovecraft said, The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

This isn’t the first, or only, thing the man was wrong about in his life: the oldest and strongest kind of fear is the fear of being alone. When ancient humans were terrified of the unknown, they joined together—because even the unknown is less scary when you’re facing it with other folks just as scared as you.

Sure, horror shines a light on the things we’d rather not acknowledge--the darkness of our souls, the demons that torment us, and the hurts we can’t quite snuff out. But through the emotional catharsis of being seen, horror is unifying. Trauma and pain are at their worst when you feel completely isolated by them, but seeing your experience understood, be it in a book or a film or another person lifts a bit of that weight from your shoulders, because suddenly you aren’t alone.

Jordan Peele’s Get Out was one of the first movies where the horrific aspects felt like they were catered towards me—I still shudder at the ‘fist bump’ scene—and it brought to my attention how little I related to characters in horror. It didn’t take long for me to realize that if I felt this way about Black characters (I mean, who wants to relate to the guy who dies first) then surely other marginalized ethnicities and orientations—who are lucky to have characters in these stories at all—probably held similar feelings.

Thus, this idea began to form, and it wasn’t until much later when I fully started grappling with the *ahem* problematic nature of a few of my favorite classic horror authors that I really put the pedal to metal.

As a fan of cosmic horror in particular, it grew hard for me to really prop the genre seeing how racist and intrinsically other-ing its origins (and to this day, a lot of its proponents) are. I got really tired of saying things like Go check out this book, it’s great, just remember, the fish people are a symbol for the horrors of mixed-race breeding so maybe…okay, yeah never mind, maybe just don’t. And it wasn’t until I read The Ballad of Black Tom and The Worm and His Kings by Victor LaValle and Hailey Piper, respectively, that I realized there were other people trying to rally against the negative stereotype. This got me wondering if maybe, just maybe, there were a lot more people out there trying to get their versions of cosmic horror told—to reclaim a great subgenre of horror and show how it could work without vilifying entire races! (You’d think, for a genre overflowing to the brim with tentacle monsters and things so horrifying the authors would run out of words in the dictionary to describe them, that maybe we wouldn’t have to spend whole sections hating on Black people, or the Irish, or Jewish folks, right?)

I can’t say I was surprised to find that there were, nor was I surprised to find that some of these people were having difficulty getting these stories out into the world, for whatever reason. My personal favorite is always: People can’t relate to this character/culture, meanwhile we are all supposed to be able to relate to the guy whose entire grasp on sanity is upended because immigrants started moving into Red Hook. But I digress, and it threatens to become a rant, so…

I was lucky enough to find a publisher, and a handful of authors who were of like mind on this topic. We put out the call and—somewhere close to 350 submissions later—we were well on our way. I point out the number we received not as a bragging point (though I feel like it is just a tad brag-worthy), but because such a large turnout for two first-time editors in myself and Stephanie was mind-boggling. The stories themselves proved our assumption that cosmic horror does not have to rely on fear or hatred of the other to work.

I’m beyond grateful to everyone who submitted, and flattered that people would trust their tales to me (if you were just trusting them to Stephanie, I understand, and don’t blame you). You made the process incredibly difficult and if I thought a three-hundred story anthology was doable, well…there’s a reason I’m just the editor, not the publisher.

At last, this is where we stand.

This collection houses nineteen phenomenal stories by a cast of authors new and known that will give you a healthy glimpse of just what the genre can be: from cozy to gothic, enraging to empowering, and so many kaleidoscopic ideas in between. By casting a wide net and seeking diversity in the authors we accepted, we created an anthology that is not only a stellar introduction to cosmic horror, but a variety pack showcasing all the different forms that cosmic horror can take when viewed through a different lens.

These are the voices of The Other that have been held in contempt for so long. Follow their whispers into the void—away from the trite and overwrought hatreds of the past—and step Beyond the Bounds of Infinity. With each of these stories, a new breed of fear is being born. Take our hand and know that even in a world that casts you as an outsider, you are not alone. You are never alone.

Necrophantasmically Yours,

Vaughn A. Jackson

The Birth of Sound

Timaeus Bloom

You’ve had a long night.

Whoever you are, whatever it is that filled your evening.

Perhaps it was work. A normal shift that tiptoed, and then sprinted, into the midnight hour.

Perhaps you landed after a long flight, that spreading cancer we call jetlag seeping into your mind, your bones…your soul.

You’re exhausted, but the last thing you can do is sleep.

Or better yet, maybe tonight was a good night? A nightcap with a not so former lover.

Or no! You finally started that book of yours, the Great American Novel that this country so desperately needs. It’s poignant, critical, truly a tour de force.

It’s likely that’s not it either.

Did you stay up late chatting with friends online? How fun. That one person is always so funny. He’s a trip.

No matter what you did or didn’t do, it left you exhausted, devoid of energy. Sleep would be a welcome gift, a blessing to combat this curse of unrelenting insomnia.

Are you in your car? Turn on the radio.

THE FREQUENCIES CRACKLE

Or perhaps you use your phone—open up an app and scroll through your list of tracks. You like music okay, but it’s not your life. For ninety-nine cents a pop, you were quick to smack your thumb on the buy button for these songs. If it’s got a good beat, and you can tap your feet to it, it’s just fine by you. You don’t know your jazz from your blues, your country from your folk, but they’re hits for a reason, right?

Scratch that. You’re a snob. You’ve got so many pieces of vinyl that those cheap IKEA shelves are buckling—leaning forward like your uncle when he’s had more than his fill of the sauce. You own a high-dollar system that you’re still slaving away on weekends to pay off. You wouldn’t be caught dead listening to a CD or, God forbid, streaming a song. When you listen to the opening chords of Yes’ Roundabout, you want to hear Steve’s strings ring.

What was it you said on that message board?

Audio Files are like dipping a dead frog in formaldehyde. Kill it, but it lasts forever. You drop the needle, let that record ease you like Sunday morning, but you don’t hear Lionel Richie. Whatever you click, swipe, or flip, it’s all the same: a disquieting silence and a little bit of me…

THE FREQUENCIES CACKLE

I say the same old schlocky disc jockey tags that have been slopping out of speakers like curdled sweet milk for decades. Back in ‘27 when Thomas Edison told us for the first time that Mary had a little lamb on his phonograph, who’d have thought that I’d be easing people into Sunny D commercials by catching them in the meantime, and in between time in the era of Synthwave and whatever Bjork is.

To you, dear listener, my voice is in competition with the buzzing frequencies. The harsh, biting sound of electric waves, discombobulated and swarming, like ants under a demolished mound of dirt. And just as eerie as those creepy crawlers scurry every way and no way, so too do these echoes of communication.

White noise. So much white noise. But my dulcet tones break through, in spite of sound itself trying to silence me, forcing me out with its screeching cacophony.

It’s here you’ve had enough of me, here any available extremity of yours reaches for the console to cut me off. This is worse than odd. It makes no sense. You don’t hear music, unless you count the unvarying emissions of my piercing backbeat—and I do count it. Who is this voice you’re hearing? What channel is this, what station, what dial? Scrolling across your dash or your phone, your mind, are my call letters: WZLG, the Hidden and Forbidden.

THE FREQUENCIES CRY

I think of better times…roads that led me here, things that were taken from me to elevate others, and let them ring from speakers and bow at the applause of thousands. I take a break. My voice quiets…the static lessens…clears…evaporates into quaint nothingness as music begins to play…

l

The echo of the last piano key drifts into space as the crackles re-emerge. While an assortment of inconsistent and disconnected songs played, there had been relief. The station would not fade away, turn off, or die, but at least I was not there. For a while, it seemed to you as if the nightmare was fading into the mundane, becoming something, if not exactly explainable, at least reconcilable. Weird things happen when your body sits, but your brain drifts. But I’m back, midnight rider, for you, for them, for everyone. You lie still. My tone wavers, as if making peace with something that I’d always known was coming.

Always the professional, I hit the post. And that was Meat Loaf with ‘Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad.’

You’ll excuse me if I seem a bit out of sorts. I’ve been told this evening is to be my last show.

l

We had it all. Outside the banks of the Saint Francis River in Arkansas, I formed a band with my closest friends in Glenn’s dinky little tin shed. And we had it, baby.

We had a nice groove, with a drummer so deep in the pocket that we had to pry him out with a crowbar after every set. Our singer, though, wasn’t much to write home about, I will humbly admit. Where we wanted a James Brown or an Otis Redding, we had something more akin to a bleating lamb. But he had the look. We had a good swing, and that was more important in those days. If you had a groove, it didn’t matter if Porky Pig—That’s all folks!—gripped the mic. Our band was dynamite.

THE FREQUENCIES SING

That sound you’re hearing under me, those chords that are making sweet love to your ears and tickling your loins—my mother always called that baby-making music—is one of our first recorded songs. Back when funk wasn’t a good thing. When it was a pejorative, equated to mess, garbage.

My apologies, dear listener, I needed your full and undivided attention. You’re wondering why you can’t move. Your earlier attempts to shut me off were unsuccessful, but at least you maintained your mobility. At least you had control. I don’t like to be interrupted—nor do I like to be ignored. You see, when you understand sound—forget the notion of music—it’s all about sound. When you understand sound…what we hear, what our throats emit…when you learn to give into it, and let your body wade in its waters like an old country baptism, that’s when you’ve got it. When you can be more than what labels society defines you by, more than a white picket fence, an HOA, or a W-9 form. When you are listless, unmotivated, exhausted…when your brain drifts into inactivity but refuses to let you sleep, that’s when you are mine.

It’s fine, relax. Weren’t you tired?

Where was I? Right, my old band. We called ourselves the Jet-Sons with the general idea, cheesy though not uncommon, that our music was out of this world—that the lines we were laying down had to come from the future. But don’t get me wrong, even that wisecracking Rosie the Robot may have looked sideways at what we were putting out.

With very little natural talent, but an understanding of wires and conduits, I played bass. My own creation, even. Helped put together by my dad. My old man was a good, if not aimless, man who made a living as one hell of an electrician, and I miss him.

Like many parents in those days, he had little respect for the career path I’d aggressively chosen for myself—but that just made my motivation cooler and worth pushing towards. So I spent nights alone, listening to old records, taking in the thumps and silences that forefathers like James Jamerson laid down on so many classic Motown tracks. If you can explain to me how it’s possible to listen to him playing on Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, and not feel like no other soul should touch that instrument, then I might just free you from the stupor you find yourself in.

Keyword: might.

THE FREQUENCIES BECOME ARGUMENTATIVE, INCREDULOUS

My voice cuts out as the static grows louder, angrier, vengeful. The static fights with me, binary competitors, disc jockey and radio waves, struggling for control. You hear me scream, you hear me rage. I told you I didn’t like to be interrupted. But I don’t blame you. This isn’t your fault. I am fighting the tower, laying siege to the waves themselves. Sound crashes from your speakers—whatever device houses them—and crashes into you, colliding with your eardrums like darts on a checkerboard. The nodes of your brain flash and come alive, activity not spearheaded or condoned by you forced upon your neural network.

Dear, listener…. I grunt, my voice wavering and coming in long, breathy pauses. "I’m in the fight of my life…but I will succeed. How can you fire white noise?"

Voices that do not belong to me push through this raucous battlefield of noise. They contrast mine. When things are good and swinging, my voice is all there ever is: pleasing and ever-relaxing. It was never meant to sing, but it could always soothe. But these are the voices of the others: the pencil-pushers, the program directors.

The prodigal enemies of creativity and art.

Music, my lambs, is not—nor has it ever been—work. Oh, yes, it’s a billion dollar industry that has corroded ingenuity and deserved success, but this has never been natural.

THE FREQUENCIES COMPOSE THEMSELVES

In measured, artificial tones the electronic chorus addresses me and you, Our apologies for the interruption. The station is now under new management. Despite these technical difficulties, we can assure you that in the coming days we will restructure ourselves to a more user-friendly, engaging station that offers the best of today’s hits with entertaining personalities who, though edgy, present the best radio has to offer without crossing the line. Again, we apologize for any inconvenience tonight’s broadcast may have caused.

I repeat, these voices do not soothe, calm, or decompress. They are innately untrustworthy and demanding. To suggest that they offer the best for their listeners is ridiculous, but they do offer control. For a few moments you are allowed to move. Your neurons fire in ways that you are accustomed to. You wiggle fingers, toes squint your eyes. Some of you, unfortunately, have soiled yourselves. Your waste drips down the cushions of your chairs, the stench of excrement permeates your abode. But you are free—in a sense.

Freedom is a fallacy.

There is much money to be gained—and it’s always about money—in offering the customer the appearance of choice. What is it Burger King says: Have it your way? Yeah, it’s your way alright, as long as you want heat-lamped patties, drooping lettuce, and coagulated cheese. The fixin’s are all yours.

But time’s a-wastin’. In those brief few moments, some of you were quick, sharp enough to turn me off. You are, gone. But many of you remain. I never needed all of you. Whether I’m performing at Carnegie Hall or that quaint little dive bar Don’t Tell Mama’s, I always deliver.

The crunching, pulsating waves that have forever pervaded late night rides, or early-morning alarms continue with a fervor. The suits—the authority—are pissed. They cracked through, but it wasn’t quite enough. I have to keep pushing. Next time, I won’t be so lucky.

THE FREQUENCIES CACKLE

Pardon the interruption. I’m rattled, but not deterred. I had to take a quick pause for the cause.

They won that battle, but the war? The war is all mine. Those of you still left—and there are more than enough. You freeze once more. Locked in place—attentive. What is going on, you wonder?

You’re easing back into comfort again.

I clear