Free Fossil Lake: An Anthology of the Aberrant by Ramsey Campbell, Peter Rawlik, Mary Pletsch, Jerrod Balzer, John Goodrich, Scott Colbert, John Claude Smith, Ken Goldman, Doug Blakeslee Page A

torture before slitting Bossie open along the seam they’d created with the fishing line. Bert smiled behind the duct tape, sure that it must be them, and that it was only a matter of moments before they’d cut him loose.
    And Grammy would be out there, and so would all those asshats who’d stopped by to make fun of him. He’d give Grammy a swift fucking kick in her support hose, and tell Connie Fucking Lesbo Bitch Maxon and her new cunt girlfriend and her uncle-fucking brother and all the rest what he thought of them.
    The clanking of a chain drove those thoughts from his brain. Shadows moved across the beam of light entering through the anus. The engine was closer, louder, obliterating any possibility of hearing the men outside. On top of the growl of the V-8, there was a high whine. Bossie shifted, moved, lifted. Bert slid back down towards her head as she was raised into the air.
    He stood on the thick, rancid beef of Bossie’s shoulders and peered at the now distant bung hole that was his only view of the world. Past it, he saw a chain wrapped around her back legs, and beyond that, the winch hanging from the John Deere green painted crane that had lifted him and Bossie from the ground. The carcass swung back and forth, making the light dance around him. The whine of the winch stopped, and Bert heard one last thing before his mind gave up on reality.
    “Got no choice, Stu,” a man who didn’t sound at all like Jerry Maxon said. “You find a cow that’s died of anthrax, you just gotta burn her before she can infect the rest of the herd. Don’t even want to get close to her, poor thing, except to loop that chain around her ankles. Poor Old Bossie. Okay, boys, swing her around, into that fire pit. Gotta douse her with gas and burn her up.”
    Bert’s mind gave up its tenuous hold on reality, leaving only one marginally sentient thought echoing in his tormented brain, a line from Poe that should have occurred to him hours before.
    For the love of God, Montressor.
    For the love of God, Maxon.
    For the love of God.
    The cow spun as she was positioned over the fire pit, but Bert didn’t care. He didn’t notice when she was dropped six or eight feet, even though the shock shattered both his legs and one side of his pelvis. The aroma of Texaco was just one more insult to his olfactory, not worth noting.
    The blazing heat that baked him in the oven of Bossie’s body couldn’t reach the place he had retreated into, which was the first merciful thing that had happened to him in almost twenty-four hours.
     
    *     *     *
     
    A few hours later, a bulldozer shoved a ton of dirt onto the bovine and human ashes mingled together.
    Grammy reported him missing, and suggested the names of a few suspects, but there was little enthusiasm on the part of the police over Bert’s disappearance. His enemies were so many, none stood out as potential culprits. After a while, even Grammy realized how much better her life was since he’d gone away, and the world went on just fine without him.
    Every so often, though, an e-mail might pass between one or another of the legions of Bert’s victims and foes, a sly “asshat” or “cuntboy” between friends, just to remind each other of the infant terrible who had brought so many people together in their common hatred of him.
    Not the best legacy anyone could hope for, but neither is it the worst.
     

ALCHERA
     
    DJ Tyrer
     
    “Sometimes, when the weather is just right like this, the lakebed will trap a layer of mist and it will seem as if the lake is there as it once was.”
    Cammie listened as Rob told her all he knew about the old, dried-up lakebed that lay just a little distance from the house. He, of course, had lived here for years, knew all about the place. Outback-born and bred, Rob was an old hand in the sun-baked heart of Australia. She, on the other hand, was a ‘Pom Sheila’, as he delightfully put it, and everything about the land of the kangaroo was novel to