The Black Maybe: Liminal Tales

by Attila Veres, Steve Rasnic Tem

Genres: Short Stories; Horror

Synopsis

Attila Veres, Hungary's leading horror writer, makes his English debut at last in this groundbreaking new collection featuring ten of his finest tales. The volume opens with 'To Bite a Dog', in which a man's budding relationship is jeopardized by his girlfriend's bizarre and macabre habit involving dogs. 'Fogtown' tells of a legendary '90s rock band whose music nobody has ever actually heard but which might nonetheless spell doom for a man obsessed with finding their recordings. 'Multiplied by Zero' is a wry travelogue in which a man recounts his hellish experiences on a holiday tour exploring Lovecraftian landscapes. And in the title story 'The Black Maybe', which Steve Rasnic Tem calls 'one of the weirdest tales I've read in years', a girl and her family escape the city bustle to experience farm life, only to discover with unimaginable horror the truth of what is really being harvested there.

These tales showcase a range of genres and styles, from weird fiction to folk horror to cosmic horror, and reveal a dazzlingly original new writer whose stories are thrilling, frightening, often blackly humorous, and totally unlike anything you have read before.

'Every decade or so, a writer comes along who reconfigures the way we think about the Weird. First Thomas Ligotti, then Laird Barron, and now Attila Veres. An astonishing collection, really unlike anything out there, which suggests a new way forward.' - Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World

'These stories dwell in the in-between places of life and death, that place where nightmares wait to be harvested. These are your nightmares, or they soon will be, so settle in for an excursion to a horrific mental, emotional, and spiritual landscape like no other. A brilliant work.' - Elizabeth Engstrom, author of When Darkness Loves Us and Black Ambrosia

'A stunning parade of terrors surreal and horrors sublime. The uncanny stories in The Black Maybe are as originally chilling and imaginatively dangerous as anything you'll read this decade, if not your lifetime, and Attila Veres deserves the worldwide acclaim this inventive work of horror will surely bring him. His approach is genuinely fresh. No maybes about it: this book is pitch black and totally engrossing.' - Michael Arnzen, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Proverbs for Monsters

'Original, brilliant, distinctive. These masterful stories by Attila Veres are a breath of fresh air from out of the darkness.' - Michael Cisco, award-winning author of The Divinity Student

'The Black Maybe, by Attila Veres, is a refreshing blast of cold cellar air. The horror is insidious and surreal, slowly chewing away what you think is real until you find yourself surrounded by a nightmare. I love this book!' - Nathan Ballingrud, author of Wounds and North American Lake Monsters

 

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Release date: October 4, 2022

Publisher: Valancourt Books

Print pages: 312

Sample

To Bite a Dog

The room smelled like a used kitchen sponge. It was his flat. They lay in bed, waiting to be aroused again. Mutual attraction was inches away from turning into love.

‘Where did you get the scratches?’ he asked the girl.

This happened on their third date. It started as a Tinder relationship, but it had gotten off to a bad start. Their first date was at a park. The restaurant where they were supposed to meet was closed due to a sudden, unspecified tragedy. The park was nice, except that their rendezvous was somewhat disrupted by three homeless men fighting over the ownership of half a bottle of red wine. They promised each other a second date, feeling that circumstances had played against them. The second date was uneventful. Maybe even boring. They met in one of those hipster coffee shops that have popped up all over Budapest, promising the illusion of being somewhere abroad. They tried to maintain a conversation, but the coffee machine was shrieking the whole time, and the discussions they overheard seemed more interesting than their own. At the next table, a pair of sisters were talking about their father’s recent vasectomy, at another a man was trying to convince his friends to buy a house on the island of Krk, in Croatia, because he could get an excellent deal. Zoltán didn’t dare to order a second coffee; he barely had enough money for the first one.

The third date was their last chance, they both knew it. Nikolett arrived with fresh injuries. Scrapes on her knee, on her arm, and minor bruises basically all over her body.

A few hours later they were lying in his room, reeking of sweat and sex. The boy hated the room now for not being more glamorous. Zoltán had wanted to move out of it ever since he moved in, but he never had the money, and now he feared Nikolett would be turned off by the state of the place.

‘All right, I’ll tell you about the scratches,’ said Nikolett. ‘But you won’t believe it.’

Zoltán shrugged. ‘Try me!’

‘I bit a dog!’ the girl said, giving an imitation of laughter. Her voice shivered from anxiety. The boy got up on his elbows in the bed. Now it was getting interesting. She began her story.

Nikolett had promised a friend of hers she would watch his dog while he was away on vacation at a Croatian ski resort. She wasn’t a fan of dogs, but she didn’t hate them either. To her they seemed like practical tools. She never got the whole emotional aspect of owning a dog. Dogs were not man’s best friend. They were man’s subordinates. Still, she liked her friend well enough, and it was no problem looking after his dog for a few days. She and the dog got along well.

The dog was a large mixed breed named Zeus. Nikolett took him to a nearby dog park twice a day. One morning Zeus got into a fight with a smaller but far more ferocious dog. The other dog was called Bandido. The cause of the clash between the animals was unclear. Maybe just as there are people who are meant for each other, there are dogs who are meant to be mortal enemies.

The park turned into a battlefield. Zeus aimed his teeth at his rival’s throat, while Bandido attacked Zeus’ cheek and nose. It was a chaos of bared teeth, of growling, of blood and violence. A bearded man shouted: ‘Bandido, spit it out! Spit it out, Bandido!’

Nikolett threw herself on her knees and, grabbing his collar, tried to drag Zeus away from the fight. She was unprepared for the animal’s strength. The dog swept Nikolett off her feet, dragging her along on the gravel. Hence the scratches.

Nikolett panicked, and since she had never had a dog, she didn’t know what to do in a situation like this. Bandido’s owner didn’t know either. ‘Spit it out, Bandido!’ he repeated over and over again, and the meaningless sentence became emptier with each repetition. He stood in a pose that made him look like he was about to jump into a pool, but he didn’t move.

Finally Nikolett launched herself at Zeus, although in hindsight it was a rather stupid and – considering Bandido’s uncontrolled fury – dangerous move. She acted on instinct.

She bit Zeus on the ear. Blood poured out.

The dog let out a surprised howl; Nikolett kept biting until Zeus let go of Bandido. Everyone at the dog park went silent. Even Bandido retreated, tucking back his ears and tail. Nikolett held Zeus and smiled at the other dog’s owner, trying to make a good impression before the inevitable argument over who was responsible. Bandido’s owner looked at Nikolett, then stepped away from her just like his dog had.

Only later did the girl notice that her teeth were bloody. She had a dog’s blood in her smile.

‘What did it feel like?’ Zoltán asked in bed. ‘What did it feel like biting Zeus?’

Nikolett took a deep breath, her mouth open, as if ready to formulate an answer right away. Her mouth hung open, then it closed. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. She had goosebumps all over her body. They laughed at this, then fucked again, even more ferociously than before.

That date was an icebreaker. Afterwards everything went smoothly. They met almost every day at his place or hers and continued their explorations of each other. Each time they met they found yet unconquered or undiscovered territories, or new pleasures in the lands they had already mapped out. A few weeks later Nikolett lost her apartment because it was turned into an Airbnb. They decided to move in together. With their combined incomes, they could get a bigger and nicer apartment than either could afford on their own.

The new flat smelled like fabric softener and plywood. The kitchen window and the tiny balcony looked onto a park from the building’s seventh floor. One Sunday the sun shone with such magical golden intensity through the kitchen window that Zoltán sat down on the floor looking at the honey-colored light and let the feeling wash over him: he was in the right place. After so many years spent wandering, this was finally home.

Nikolett felt likewise. They bought a bottle of Prosecco at Aldi; they drank it on a Thursday night sitting by the open kitchen window, and when they were sufficiently drunk they confessed their love for each other. They both loved the apartment just as much as they loved each other, but neither of them minded that. After that night, whenever they cleaned the floor or washed the kitchen counter they felt they were caressing the body of some great lover.

It was a liberating feeling to be in a relationship; it made everything easier. At dawn, before work, they would often make love; the warmth they generated in these moments helped them through the coldness of the days. They shared the bills, so by the end of the month they managed to save some money. They hadn’t decided yet what to spend it on, but they cherished the idea of savings as if it were some kind of precious seed, from which an unknown, exotic plant would gradually grow. Even when the pandemic started they didn’t feel threatened. They switched to working from home and saved even more money by not having to commute. She sometimes needed to go to the office, but she rode a bike.

‘Is it this easy?’ Zoltán would ask himself from time to time. ‘Is it this easy to be happy?’

It seemed like it was, and he hoped that these days would turn into weeks, months, years, and an eternal life.

He was at the greengrocer’s picking out onions when he first heard the news of the bitten dog. A middle-aged woman was selecting cucumbers. She recounted the news.

‘The Budai family, from the seventh floor,’ said the middle-­aged woman as she made a grand show out of picking the freshest cucumbers. ‘It was their dog. The daughter took it for a walk in the park. She let it off the leash, and after a while the dog came running back to her whimpering. It was bleeding from a wound. A bite, apparently. Terrible, isn’t it?’

Surely it had been wounded by another dog. Or some other kind of predator. Maybe a hedgehog acting in self defense, or a cat. These wounds happen all the time in a dog’s life.

Zoltán had a hard time falling asleep that night. He watched Nikolett, who was turned away from him, sleeping soundly. He watched for so long that the girl’s body parts turned into abstractions in the obscurity of the night. She was nothing but a pale stain here, a small purple blur there. Zoltán watched these abstractions the girl had become in her sleep and searched for any telltale signs of change. He couldn’t find any, so finally he fell asleep and dreamed of the park at night.

A few days later a new case of a bitten dog was reported at the grocer’s. This second incident gave rise to more concern than the first. It had happened at night again; the dog was bitten on its nose. This bite led to the discovery of yet another incident that had happened the previous night. In that case the animal was bitten on its belly. From these two bites it became obvious that the perpetrator was not a beast – the wounds were shaped in the pattern of human teeth. The owners drifted towards panic and had a million questions nobody could answer. Should they take the dog for a vaccination against infections? Could a man be rabid and pass it on to a dog? Should the police be involved? Do they even handle this sort of case?

Zoltán decided to get his produce at the local Spar, a more impersonal place, in order to stay away from the news and rumors. He didn’t have a dog, so he really saw no reason why he should be involved. Still, he was anxious. He knew he shouldn’t be; just because Nikolett had bitten a dog once didn’t make her the serial dog-biter.

By the shop’s counter tiny plush dogs were being sold as part of some promotional campaign. Zoltán put one of the stuffed toys into his cart, just to prove that he didn’t take his own silly thoughts at all seriously. Everyone in line wore a mask, including him. For several months now he had seen human faces only on television, in reruns of old sitcoms and crime shows. He was even starting to doubt whether people still had faces; maybe this last year everyone’s faces had vanished, leaving nothing behind but long rows of teeth that everyone covered up now for aesthetic reasons.

Or for safety. Masks are like a muzzle on a dog, protecting us from our own teeth. Zoltán looked at the queue and had a thought that disturbed him. All he saw was hundreds and hundreds of teeth, all standing in line to buy ham and discount laundry detergent, hiding away behind these black and green and blue masks. Before paying, he threw the stuffed toy back where he had found it.

Nikolett was young and cared about her physical fitness, so she often went for a run in the later hours of the night, even if it was against the law now with the curfews kicking in. Legally only people walking their dogs could be on the street after dark. Still, she went running night after night.

She purchased the proper attire for this purpose: black pants, black T-shirt and jumper, and a black mask, so if the police stopped her she wouldn’t be fined for not wearing one. As soon as she came back from running, she headed straight to the shower to wash off the grime of physical exercise. Only when she stepped out of the bathroom would she talk to Zoltán, as if she hadn’t only washed herself but also changed her face, and if they were to talk before she entered the bathroom Zoltán might see some other Nikolett, the one behind the mask when she was out running in the streets.

Out running in the park.

One night, however, Nikolett didn’t enter the bathroom. Zoltán was already lying in bed, waiting for her to return home. The TV was on at a low volume, but Zoltán wasn’t paying attention to the program. He heard her enter the flat, kick off her shoes, and head straight for the bathroom. There she paused. She changed direction; Zoltán heard her walking towards the bedroom door. Then she stopped. Zoltán could hear her breathing, but maybe it was just his imagination. There was a long stretch of silence, and Zoltán started to doubt she was out there. Maybe he’d just fallen asleep and dreamt the whole thing. Maybe she was still out there, outrunning the police.

‘Turn off the TV!’ said the girl in a hoarse, raw voice.

Zoltán reached for the controller, but his hand stopped in mid-air. If he turned off the TV, he would admit to being awake. A thought crossed his mind: maybe he should pretend to be asleep, like the prey that feigns death when the predator approaches. He found this thought dreadful. Nikolett was his girlfriend, they lived in a healthy relationship, in almost complete emotional and financial interdependence. What reason could there be for lying in a relationship like theirs?

Zoltán turned off the television. He went blind in the sudden darkness. He shrank under the blanket, like someone anticipating an attack. The door opened with a quiet creak, and Nikolett entered. The room felt hotter. Zoltán wanted to neutralize the tension with a joke, or ask a meaningless question like ‘How was the run?’ or ‘Home so soon?’, but he decided to remain silent instead.

The girl cuddled up to him in bed. She was naked, her skin hot and sweaty. She pressed herself against Zoltán, tightly and possessively. Zoltán suddenly felt sick because over Nikolett’s usual smell he could smell something else, something he only perceived with the animal part of his brain and couldn’t put into words. The smell of power, the scent the body discharges when it has conquered something, when it wants to declare its superiority over other animals.

That was what he smelled, and the stink of a wet dog too.

Nikolett kissed the boy’s face. It wasn’t an act of love, but an animal sniffing its mate. Her mouth smelled of blood, and Zoltán thought about the pain of the bite that would be coming soon. He anticipated the sharp pain because he knew Nikolett was going to bite him with her already bloodied teeth.

Zoltán let the girl do whatever she wanted with him. She used him like he was an object, a subordinate. He had no say in what happened in the following hour, he had to take every bit of pain and joy soundlessly.

Later, when Nikolett was asleep, Zoltán lay awake. He had the sense that things were going irreversibly wrong. What was happening now was only the ultimate expression of the nature of their relationship. They both earned money, but the girl earned more. She managed their affairs, took care of the bills and contracts. She was the one to define the direction of their lives. She would also be the one who decided how to spend the savings. Of course she would leave some room for Zoltán’s ideas as well, to make it look like he had a say in things, but the important decisions would be up to her. Tonight the girl demonstrated her physical dominance as well. The only question was whether the boy would accept it.

As a man, his answer was supposed to be an absolute no. A man should piss all around his territory. A man should rule, and rule alone in this extra comfortable two-room rental, as well as in the life attached to it. If that wasn’t possible, he would have to end this life, break up with the girl and start fresh with a new one, one who was more submissive to a man’s needs.

He also knew that the times when men thought this way about themselves were long gone. He wasn’t a ruler in this flat; he wasn’t a hunter in the jungle. He and she were equals, even though that equality had been upset tonight.

Of course, he could look at it from a different angle. What if Nikolett was sick, in need of some sort of help? No matter how you looked at it, biting dogs was a habit that wasn’t widely accepted in society, therefore it could very well be considered a pathological condition. Maybe with some therapy she could be made to give up this new habit, and a new kind of balance could be reached in their relationship, a balance where Zoltán could finally be dominant. But again it meant that when a woman dominated a man it was a sort of sickness to be cured. Zoltán, on an intellectual level, disapproved of the notion, but at the same time, deep down, he agreed with it.

What if one of these nights Nikolett gets caught biting a dog, he asked himself. She would definitely be prosecuted for vandalism or animal abuse or both. In any case, this life would be over, only in a more humiliating manner than if Zoltán walked away right now.

He thought back to the honey-colored Sundays, the Prosecco from Aldi, the extra comfort, and his heart ached with grief. How could he just walk away from all that?

He curled into a fetal position in the bed and fell asleep.

In the morning they didn’t talk about it. Nikolett put on her mask and left for work. Zoltán switched on his computer because a call was starting in half an hour.

At night, Nikolett went running again.

Zoltán sat in the window, watching the park, a place that used to promise serenity, offer coolness in the summer heat, leisure and recreation. Now the park seemed like a jungle, a closed ecosystem where two types of beings existed: predator and prey. Somewhere under the disguise of darkness the battle for life is being fought every moment. Zoltán felt thrilled and fearful as the park rose above its own mundanity. He listened carefully to hear the painful whining of a dog from between the trees, to hear the gasp of the dog’s owner realizing that their pet had fallen prey. At times he thought he heard something, but it must have just been his imagination.

When she came back from the hunt, in a sense everything returned to normal. There were no secrets anymore, which made both of them feel relieved. The girl’s pants were dirty, her lips red from the blood. She sat down next to Zoltán at the kitchen table. She smelled of struggle and blood and he smelled of comfort and soap. He looked at her and understood that he was not going to break up with her; ...