Sunday, October 30, 2022
👻🎃Sunday's Short Stack🎃👻: Monster Till Midnight by EJ Russell
What if you staged the best haunted house in the history of the holiday, but nobody came?
Brady is prepared with mounds of treats, stellar special effects, and an extraordinary welcome for the throngs of trick-or-treaters he expects in his first year at his new place—a gloriously gothic house with the reputation for really being haunted! But the trick’s on Brady: Halloween is almost over and not one person has knocked on his door.
Once a top Interdimensional Law Enforcement agent, Rej was busted down to Creature Control after a run-in with his arch-nemesis. When he tracks a non-sentient construct across the dimensional barrier, he’s sure he’s about to confront Gorvenath again. But the person who bursts onto the porch in a swirl of tuxedo coattails is a monster of a very different sort—but is he Gorvenath’s accomplice or his victim?
Monster Till Midnight is an 11,000-word gay romance featuring a hopeful samhainophile, a suspicious LEO, gratuitous candy corn, and a relationship that threatens to be really, really, really long distance.
Monster till Midnight is a brilliant short story!
Some perfect Halloween stories are long, in-depth, highly detailed tales of terror and mayhem and then there are those that offer up the same level of thrills in a condensed package. Truth is, some of the all time classics were just that: short stories from a collection or even magazine shorts. Just because something is short on quantity doesn't mean it will be short on quality.
So honestly? Monster till Midnight is a flat out brilliant story, short or otherwise.
I won't give away too much, this is another older story I just discovered but I don't want to ruin it for others who like me are just discovering this EJ Russell gem. Is it paranormal? Sci-fi? Fantasy? I found it to be a bit of all three with just the right helping of heat and humor to balance out the Halloweenie flavor.
Rej and Brady are a delight! I feel for Brady, going full-on Halloween party mode and no one shows up, I grew up in the middle of the boonies and the only trick-or-treaters we got was the neighbor's grandkids so I can sympathize with his disappointment to a degree. You just want a line of cars to appear but they don't. As for Rej? You can't help but cheer for him in his quest to capture his archnemisis, kind of like Doctor Who vs The Master, almost glad when he doesn't locate him as he expected because you know there's more to the story than he's telling and yet you don't want him to fail either.
Think I'll end there before giving away too much but if you, like me, havn't read Monster Till Midnight by EJ Russell, I highly suggest forgoing the tricks and seek out this fun little sneaky treat.
Rej hadn’t intended to break the terms of his probation. He was doing exactly what his restricted duties demanded—tracking a non-sentient construct that had slipped across the boundary from a techno-sorcery node into Alpha Prime two-niner, a magic-null time thread.
But when he broke out of the tree line and saw the house looming beyond a dying corn field, he knew he was screwed. Or rather, Alpha Prime two-niner was screwed. Because Rej would have known that house for Gorvenath’s anywhere. The bastard had a taste for turrets.
At least they’re not made of bones. Yet.
Gorvenath. Rej ground his teeth together. Gorvenath was the reason for Rej’s probation, the reason he’d been busted down from Interdimensional Law Enforcement to Interdimentional Creature Control. But Rej’s professional setbacks were irrelevant compared to the real danger Gorvenath posed to the time stream.
Rej’s captain acknowledged the threat, even sympathized with Rej’s point of view. But until they had clear evidence that Gorvenath was behind the attacks across half the post-2K time nodes, their hands were tied. And I’m stuck as a cross-dimensional dog catcher for the foreseeable future.
Sure, the criminals could break the rules, but let a LEO bend one little regulation…
He studied the layout of the grounds. The house was isolated—no other buildings within sight, either on the narrow gravel road or beyond the sparse woods—and sat in the middle of a wide expanse of rough grass, dotted here and there with flagpoles sporting orange or black banners.
Rej squinted at one of the flags as an errant breeze sent it flapping. Bones. No, a full humanoid skeleton. In a top hat.
Typical of Gorvenath’s twisted humor, the cocky bastard.
Was Gorvenath inside? Rej checked the tracker on his wrist. The NSC still registered as being within range, but now that he was fully phased and attuned to Alpha Prime two-niner, another, more confusing reading joined the first. It definitely had Gorvenath’s flavor, for lack of a better word. Rej’s fellow ILE officers—former fellow ILE officers—had always mocked him for his gut feelings. But damn it, when you policed both technology and magic, it made sense to trust your instincts.
Since the oddly shaped corn patch was the only cover that would get him closer to the house, Rej crept straight through it, wincing as the dry stalks rustled against his tactical gear.
When he reached the last row, he eyed the distance between his position and the house. Its wrap-around porch was a good six feet off the ground on this side, which meant the windows overlooking the lawn were higher than his head. His gear was black. If he kept low and moved quickly, he ought to be able to reach the corner of the house without being seen.
He flipped his visor down, automatically activating its telemetry, then took a deep breath and blew it out in a whoosh.
Time to rock and roll.
He broke out of cover and sprinted across the lawn, but he’d only made it halfway when an alarm bleeped inside the house, clearly audible from his position.
“Blast!” Rej hesitated, not certain whether to sprint for the trees or continue onward, but then the alarm ceased, and the door burst open.
Rej’s breath caught in his throat. Because there, back-lit by flickering orange light, was a monster.
The figure had a slim, even graceful humanoid body, the V of its torso and the length of its legs accentuated by some kind of well-fitted suit.
But its head… Outsized. Misshapen. Grotesque, with no discernible neck, its eyes and mouth blazing with hellish inner fire.
The creature held something in its hand. A sword? A club? No, it was too narrow for that, but Rej wasn’t foolish enough to fall for appearances. Countless nodes used seemingly innocuous artifacts to deal death. That cellular disrupter in thread Beta Secundus three-zero? No less deadly for looking like a lemon zester.
Rej fumbled for the weapon at his hip, but before he could draw it, the air was filled with… music?
The porch light flared on and Rej got a good look at the monster.
By all the powers, has Gorvenath finally succeeded in animating vegetables?
Because that head differed only in size from the jack-o’-lanterns peeping out from between the porch’s balusters. The weapon in its hand was an ebony cane, and the suit… Was it actually a tuxedo?
As Rej goggled at the creature, it struck a pose and then whirled, its coattails flaring out behind it. Words joined the music, and Rej crouched, lest they were an incantation of some kind.
“When you’re blue and you don’t know where to go to--”
That didn’t seem to be spell work, unless it was a banishing spell with a coercion component—urging Rej to head somewhere and put on the ritz, whatever that was.
The monster danced across the porch, its feet beating out a bright cadence on the weathered boards, striking the wood with the tip of its cane in a syncopated rhythm that made Rej want to tap his toes in time.
Is that what this is? A St. Vitus’s curse?
But as Rej was debating whether to stun the creature and transport it to headquarters for study, it stopped mid-twirl, then crept to the porch rail and peered into the dark, scanning the yard from corn field to graveled roadway.
Its shoulders slumped. “You’re alone? Nobody else came with you?”
Rej’s neck prickled, and he was immediately on guard. Would it report to Gorvenath that Rej was here without backup? Launch an ambush of other constructed warriors in an attempt to eliminate knowledge of Gorvenath’s plans? Not that Rej had any idea what they were yet.
“Shoot.” Rej ducked, checking for incoming, but the monster simply hooked its cane on a convenient nail next to the still-open door, its chest heaving with a sigh. “I get it. You’re from the agency, aren’t you?
Play along. Find out what it wants. You can always kill it later.
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
Multi-Rainbow Award winner E.J. Russell—grace, mother of three, recovering actor—holds a BA and an MFA in theater, so naturally she’s spent the last three decades as a financial manager, database designer, and business intelligence consultant (as one does). She’s recently abandoned data wrangling, however, and spends her days wrestling words.
E.J. is married to Curmudgeonly Husband, a man who cares even less about sports than she does. Luckily, CH loves to cook, or all three of their children (Lovely Daughter and Darling Sons A and B) would have survived on nothing but Cheerios, beef jerky, and satsuma mandarins (the extent of E.J.’s culinary skill set).
E.J. lives in rural Oregon, enjoys visits from her wonderful adult children, and indulges in good books, red wine, and the occasional hyperbole.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)