A Midsummer Night's Mare: Poppycock, #1

By Andrew Michael Schwarz

"A masterpiece of Shakespearean horror. A first of its kind." 

"It's Shakespeare meets Freddie Krueger. Serial killers, fairies and the apocalypse, the bogey man just got a hit of steroids."

"An instant cult classic."  

Faeries return to San Francisco, and they don't believe in happily ever after's. 

Sarah Montgomery wasn't planning on saving her relationship, let alone an entire city, but when she learns of her father's transformation, she is swept into a world of weird magic and decayed gods. 

Here the rules don't apply, the police can't help you, and to stay "real" a serial killer called Poppycock commits his foul deeds on a race that no longer believes. 

Thus begins the killing spree.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrew Michael Schwarz
• Release date: Mar 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781507009550

Book preview

"My mistress with a monster is in love."—Puck

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

"Fear is the most real belief there is."—Poppycock

A Midsummer Night’s Mare

Possession

They resembled clouds of smoke. Pollution. If it had been daylight, an onlooker would simply have seen puffs of black, noxious fumes and wouldn’t have thought it possible that it could be anything else.

It was, however, not daylight and no one was gazing up to look at them. They watched together. They had always been together. It had never been any other way, despite the contradictions of history, story books and anyone living, dead or in between.

Always Puk and Poppycock.

The ground lay beneath them, grassy and cold. A dusty country road rambled nearby, with trees, bushes and weeds. A frog croaked in the distance. A car idled, its exhaust mixing with the red tail lights like a bloody fog.

Nothing particularly distinct or interesting marked this spot of land, except for one detail: a shallow ravine with two dead men in it. Evidently, a struggle had taken place. These two mortal men, intent on destroying one another as they had been, wouldn’t be missed much.

A larger bloke, dumpy and swollen at the waist, hair a mess of unkempt curls, lay over a thin necked, reedy fellow with gangly limbs and slicked back hair that grayed at the side burns. This dumpy bloke, holding a switchblade, had fallen dead on top of the reedy fellow who was holding a handgun.

The time had come to do the deed. A hundred days of planning and a hundred years of waiting, all coming together right here, right now.

In the sky the smog clouds roiled.

Chapter 1: The Life of Sarah M

Fog, observed Sarah Montgomery, can hide things. It can hide a great many things, such as decay and grime and all those little parts of a city that can never truly be cleaned. Yes, those deviant eyesores can be covered up; they can be blanketed and blotted so the eye can fixate on something else more palatable, more agreeable, more beautiful.

Like the Palace of Fine Arts.

She inhaled deep breaths, hands on her hips. Her watch showed ten past seven in the morning. A greening koi pond glimmered before that wondrous Romanesque extravagance in the middle of San Francisco’s Marina District.

The Palace of Fine Arts was a left over remnant from a world’s fair of decades past. Its enormous Corinthian columns and vaulted arches did nothing if not inspire. Sarah enjoyed running around it, partly because she could go four times for the perfect workout, but mainly because the structure made her forget about the real world, particularly on a foggy morning.

She gave herself up to the swirling mist and closed her eyes. She could feel her soul quiet with each beat of her heart. Sweat slicked her skin, blood thumped comfortably in her ears, her body radiated heat. It felt good.

Then, out of her control and unable to accept the idea of inner peace, her mind reverted back. Back to the place she’d tried all night to forget. No. No, she couldn’t forget. Couldn’t get that image out of her head.

She began her cool-down around the pool. Her mind dwelt once again on the image she hoped to forget. Perhaps her mind would find itself capable of discarding the memory once she sucked every detail out of it. Like a desiccated worm baked in the sun, if she could just get out the meat, it might blow away.

She followed the deep furrows of her memory back two days ago, back to Los Angeles, to the coroner’s office and the city morgue. She followed her thoughts again, down those cement steps, past that little room with the dentist chair and the cadaver that sat there as if waiting to have a cavity filled, past the man-sized scale and sink for God knows what, to the gurney and sheet and the bloodstained flesh.

To the body.

Why into the morgue? Why did they have to go into that crypt? I’m so sorry, Miss Montgomery, our viewing room is full.

Her mind brought it back in agonizing detail: the blackening skin, the incisions in the wrists and ankles that had been made with the utmost surgical accuracy, no slightest jag, no hitch in that gray bone stump. She let her mind drift and hover there, remembering the decomposing and defiled thing, the stench of rotting meat that mixed unhealthily with some awful cleaning agent. It had clung inside her nose, as if its molecules had fused permanently with her olfactory nerves.

She sneezed.

Just how had those cuts been made? The forensics team, Detective Logan had said, had determined that the killer had removed the feet and hands on site, right where that goddamned cadaver had lain. The lab boys confirmed it, the time of death had been coincident with removal of said appendages and the body had not recorded—in skin scrapes or other external trauma—having been moved. Not one inch.

Into her already distraught mental detail emerged the absurd image of a killer with a bone saw, plugging into a heavy-duty 12-gauge extension cord as he hunched over a fear-paralyzed victim.

The body had lain right where it had been found, chopped stumps where hands and feet should have been, in that awful dumpster, was it? Isn’t that what the burly detective had told her? That the poor sonovabitch had been killed, naked, amidst the dirty diapers and dog food?

Jesus. A swear word that became a prayer. Yes, Jesus, have mercy. If you’re out there, have mercy on us all.

She had yet another thought as she rounded the first turn in the paved path, the part crowded out by fir trees and scrub; "Why me?"

In her travels to meet up with Detective Logan, once she had denied that the victim was her father, Samuel Montgomery, she had not considered that that same father might then be implicated in the murder, until the detective had made a subtle hint to it.

How do you go from victim to suspect in all of five seconds? Logan had said how on the way back to his office. "There were two men at the scene that night, in that strip club where the body was found, one of whom was identified as your father.

"But there were also two men who went missing around the same time, your father and a man named Jacob Hexler. So, we just didn’t know if this victim and your father were the same person or if there was some other explanation."

It was that other explanation that had set her teeth on edge.

She paused to contemplate the placid waters and the low hanging clouds. True, she did not know her father. True, the man had been carted off to prison when Sarah had been little more than eight years old, but somehow the knowledge, or rather the very idea that he could be involved, engendered its own form of alarm. Yes, Why me? meant Why was I born to such a rank derelict?

Had some part of his inadequate and criminal constitution been ferried down the gene pool, straight into Sarah’s own stock? Can that even happen? The thoughts were a disjointed hodge-podge of self-doubt and nonsense. Still, it held some alien power to unnerve her.

She continued her cool down, filling her lungs with that misty, cleansing air.

She recalled sitting in front of Logan, that odd expression on his face, as if he were saying, Now, Miss Montgomery, if you are aiding and abetting him, you’re just as guilty as he is, you know that right? Only he had not said that, he had simply implied it with, Miss Montgomery, you would tell us if you had any information regarding the whereabouts of your father, wouldn’t you?

The detective had squirmed in his seat after that, shifting his copious gut about, preparing to deliver the next blow. He’d breathed out his long nose and pushed a cloud of stale coffee breath into the space between them before delivering the next round of disgust and fright.

Logan had opened a drawer, pulled out a file and flipped to the middle of it. He’d held up a piece of paper sheathed in plastic.

This was nailed to the victim’s forehead, he’d said, too calmly, holding the paper out to her. She’d noticed the filthy nail, dried and crusted with organic debris. It had been about three inches long, resting dangerously at the bottom of the pouch under a blood smeared note:

Compliments of your friendly neighborhood Poppycock. Have you hugged your Poppycock today? Poppycock: it’s good for all that ails you! What’s the name of the big, bad wolf? The big, bad wolf? The big, bad…?

Sarah had had the distinct impression of a singing man and if she hadn’t been so god-awful nauseated she would have burst into…glee perhaps? Yes, a singing man, on some perverted stage acting out his horror-fest for all the world.

At the bottom it had read: kcocyppoP.

Who is this person? she’d asked, stunned.

Yes, she thought now, staring into that shapeless fog, the fog that erased the world and somehow reformed it according to her own illusion, who is this person? This Poppycock?

Her father? Even the fool that he was, even the idiotic fool that he was, he wouldn’t have been able to do that…right?

Suddenly, the cool air on her skin grew clammy. Suddenly, the solitude brought on by the morning mist didn’t seem so pleasant or innocent anymore. She was all alone in a city full of people.

She shivered. Got to get home, get in the shower, get ready for work. She began retracing her steps along the now frigid path. She began to jog. At least she could run, fast too and, yes, get back to work. Get back to the real world of make-believe, her world of make-believe, of public relations, acceptable lies and half-truths about people and products and other meaningless nonsense of materialism. Just before she willed herself back, she imagined something parting the mists and stepping forward. From a nightmare, another time, some strange other-world.

Enough.

She began to sprint, shaking away her hyper-imaginations. Her mind was wired that way, always able to concoct the worst, push it into her synapses and make her body react.

She felt the secure hold of her shoes against the solid ground, concentrated on it, felt the trusty laws of gravity, felt the earth below her feet, solid and real. Her legs carried her out of the park, back to Bay and Broderick, to her apartment and to that shower.

Her mind switched channels then; she forced it to and it obeyed. She felt herself come back from that ghastly scene in LA, from the inner realm of doubt and cerebral overload, from that stinking morgue and eerily suspicious cop, to her own life and her work and, fortunately or unfortunately, to Brad.

Chapter 2: Sarah Gets a Surprise

He squeezed a blood bag and traced his eyes over the woman’s chest again. He settled on the imprint of her nipples underneath the white sheet. He’d seen many mortal women naked, but only as electronic television signals transmitted from several thousand feet, which he rather preferred over the real thing.

His brother entered the room toting a gray feline; scratch marks covered his forearms. The feline growled.

"It did that to you?" he asked. But the question was rhetorical. He didn’t really care. He found the sight of fresh blood more erotic than the woman’s breasts.

The woman’s eyes went wide, terrified, as he splayed his fingers above her, hunched and poised, before he made the cuts.

Shhsss, he whispered. All’s well that ends well, eh?

He placed one hand over the woman’s forehead and with a bare fingertip of the other, drew a line from cheekbone to chin. She screamed beneath the gag. Her skin split open. Blood coated one side of her face. She thrashed under her restraints, gnawing at the leather strap between her teeth, making one hell of a lot of noise.

She’ll pass out, he shouted, to his brother who was nursing his scratch wounds and dripping blood onto his own shoes.

Her screams fell to whimpers, her eyes fluttered, she drooled.

Don’t let the bedbugs bite, he advised, as he pulled the skin back and tightened it around her cheekbones. When he got it right on that side, he slapped her head the other way.

Don’t hurt her, protested his brother.

Do it yourself if you don’t like how I play.



For Sarah, the week moved quickly after the encounter with Detective Logan, which was a good thing.

All week she had specialized in the cold shoulder routine with Brad. She’d done it so well and with such conviction that he had apparently given up on trying to get her attention, which, of course, had disappointed her.

She pushed her mind off of that and put her attention on closing two big accounts.

Yes, Mr. Walberg, I totally understand your concerns and let me assure you that blah, blah, blah…

Friday came and she welcomed it. Next week would be a better week, a week to apply herself, get her groove back, and reel in some more accounts.

Each hour dragged out, until four o’clock when she started putting her pens away and rearranging her paperclips. At a quarter past four she ducked out early. Most people ducked out early on Fridays but Sarah always felt guilty about it.

The fog had lifted and come back. It was an endless cycle.

When she arrived home, a vase with a dozen or so red roses sat on the porch. Beside it, a midnight-blue box tied with a silver bow and a card that read "Forgive me yet?"

Ugh! Brad! He was just trying to wear her down, only now he was doing it romantically.

She and Brad had been a lukewarm affair, until she’d recently ended it. It had begun, as these things so often do, with harmless flirts and smiles. In the break room, in the hallway. A banter of catchy remarks and faint innuendo.

Then things had led to other things and the flash of white teeth and standing just a little too close in the elevator had translated into an invitation to a drink, a going Dutch arrangement, the way partners or friends would do it and this, of course, had led to the bed and then the sex.

She had underestimated him. She had truly underestimated his mastery of disguised bedroom dialogue, the eloquence of meaningless compliments and the easy-mannered gestures all meant to pray upon a woman’s delicate sensibilities. The drinks had been good, they had been fruity, and the talk, though empty, had been fun.

Perhaps, in the weeks that followed, it had been the casual way he had expected her to invite him over all the time, the all too quickly unbuttoned blouse in the front seat of her car that had turned her off.

It seemed sex was all he had really been after. Compliments of her person had degenerated to compliments of her breasts. Small talk had become sex-talk and gestures once meant to put her at ease had vanished.

She took some pride in not having given in since she’d broken it off. Of course, it had only been one week, during which she’d managed to ignore him whenever he undressed her with his eyes.

No, she had not given in. Yet. That single, monosyllabic word haunted her mental monologues. Somehow, ever-present in the back of her mind, a snickering little demon kept saying Yet! Haven’t given in, Yet! Haven’t screwed him again, Yet!

A wave of calm washed over her as she entered her condo. She set the box down on the counter and put her attention elsewhere. This was the perfect place for her; her shelter and solace against the world.

She’d moved in about three years ago and had never once regretted it. Positioned on the corner of Bay and Broderick in the elegant Marina District, it was a split-level townhouse, equipped with oak hardwood floors and warmed by sunshine when the city’s fog bank would allow it. It pleased her without reservation.

She cranked up the heat.

Her mother and her mother’s husband, Carl, had provided the down payment and—speaking of her mother; she hadn’t even bothered to call about her father’s possible Missing Person status. She called and got the voice mail so left a breezy message, omitting any and all details of Poppycock and the cadaver.

A polished black baby grand piano that her mother had purchased twenty years ago commandeered the far corner of the living room. Her mother had been intent on learning how to play it, of course, but never had, so when she’d moved out East, she’d given it to Sarah.

An overlarge bay window gave a perfect view of the neighborhood.

She sank into her favorite Papasan chair opposite the baby grand, feeling far away from the world. Her mind drifted, her body relaxed. TGIF. She had all weekend to clear her head. She closed her eyes.

What about Poppycock?

A sudden weight dropped on her lap. She jolted. It purred. Darn it, Prissy! You scared me.

Miss Priss blinked and licked a paw. Sarah hugged her cat and stroked her whiskers.

Yeah, I know, you don’t know any better.

Miss Priss motored and kneaded and otherwise