The Little Pen Shop of Horrors: Halloween 2003
For Halloween 2003, five Pentrace writers each took the same title, "The Little Pen Shop of Horrors," somewhere different. Bernard Glassman edited the collection and wrote its frame story and closing poem.
My Little Pen Shop of Horrors
By Bernard Glassman (with gratitude to Shirley Jackson)
We have always lived at the pen shop — even before it was a pen shop - when it was an apothecary, owned by handsome Horace Hunt, who lived upstairs, alone. Horace was everything in those days, compounder of nostrums for whatever ailed one, friendly shoulder to cry on when a loved one died despite those nostrums. And somewhere along the way, Horace began to collect pens.
It began the day Lydia Richards, Ansel Richards' widow, brought in Ansel's fountain pen. She didn't seem all that distraught, really; a little shy, perhaps. "Horace," she said, I've just come from the reading of Ansel's will, and it's the strangest thing...he wanted you to have this."
She placed the pen in Horace's hand, letting hers rest there a little longer than you might have expected.
"Did he say anything about why?" Horace asked, sounding a lot more nervous than grateful.
"Not really. He just said, 'I want Horace Hunt to have my Waterman's eyedropper. He deserves it.'"
Horace strode to his safe, opened it, nearly threw the pen in, closed the door and spun the combination lock. Lydia was right behind him; her arms encircled his waist. "Horace, he died so peacefully. Now it's just you and me." Horace twisted round as if he had been shocked. "I'm not sure that's such a good idea, Lydie. Maybe soon, but right now we've got to be careful." Lydia started to disagree, shook her head sadly, then walked slowly toward the door.
"Lydie, come back a moment. Here, take these. They'll help you get to sleep until, well, until I can help you sleep without medication." She blushed, took the little vial of tablets, and left the store. The townspeople thought it sad, but romantic, that Lydia followed Ansel so soon. "And she was so young and pretty," they said.
The next pen Horace acquired was from another new widow, not quite so young. She brought it to him saying that she had "heard it talking to me, telling me it wanted to come be with you, just like I do." As soon as he had locked the pen in his safe, he gave her a little something to help her stop hearing things. And sure enough it did.
The years passed, Horace's collection grew, each time in the company of an adoring widow, but each with a slightly different twist — a note that seemed to have written itself, a pen that just appeared in a purse, and one that was under a bed sheet that was pulled back during an inappropriately celebratory moment. But it was always as if the pens wanted to be with Horace.
He began to behave strangely. He'd be waiting on a customer, then turn abruptly toward the safe, then turn back, embarrassed. Soon thereafter, he began to shout at the safe, "Shut up!" His hands would shake as he tried to prepare medications. Eventually, they made him stop being a druggist. They took away everything but the display cases, the safe and his collection of pens, pens that despite the thick walls of his safe, called out to him. Pens to which he answered, crying, "Be quiet!"
He decided to sell them. He arranged the best-looking of them in his emptied display cases, added a few blotters and some ink, and replaced the mortar and pestle over the door with "The Little Pen Shop of Horace."
But hardly a soul came into that store. The occasional stranger, asking for directions, bill collectors when things became really bad, but the townspeople knew better. Too many of Horace's customers had died. No one wanted to see him in his steady soliloquy with those pens. It wasn't long before barber across the street started to call it "The Little Pen Shop of Horrors."
It was, in the end, a bill collector who found Horace. Somehow he had pulled that enormous Mosler safe over on himself. Before running to look for help, the bill collector took the best looking of the pens in the display case with him, since there wasn't much else to take and he felt he deserved them. But he, too, died soon thereafter, and only recently have his grandchildren begun to sell some of Horace's collection over something called "eBay." The advertisements always seem to read "Found in an estate." "Found in an old desk." "I don't know anything about pens."
But that safe is still in that shop, with the ugly pens in it, with the windows boarded up all these years. And in the long evenings when the town's old-timers recount for each other the town lore, they inevitably get to Horace and how he died, and someone always asks, "Who knows how long he spent under all that weight? Who knows how much of that time he was alive? Who knows how long he cried out for help?"
Who knows? We do. We have always lived at the pen shop, since the days it was an apothecary.
In the dark, we ugly pens, we with the silver snakes and spiders wrapped around us, and one of us who looks like he just walked off an Indian reservation, we read each other poems and tell each other stories. Here are a few.
Slime Monsters
By Anna of Pentrace
Edwin trudged out from behind the counter of his great-great-grandfather's battered old store, The Little Corner Pen Shop, that had for longer than anybody could remember been on the only stop-sign corner of the tiny backwoods Tennessee town. He dragged himself to the door and turned the "Open" sign around to read "Closed." It had been a long, long, long week, with every person to whom he'd sold ink in the last six months having returned every single bottle, complaining about slime monsters.
Edwin knew this was absurd. Slime monsters. In ink? Get real. He'd been away to college; you couldn't fool him. In sewers, maybe. A little mold floating in an occasional bad bottle, maybe. But slime monsters? And in every single bottle? No way. It was a conspiracy. He knew it. They were trying to run him out of town. Again.
He sank wearily into the ancient wooden chair, a round-seated model his great-great-grandpa had "borrowed" from a soda fountain, leaned his elbow on the even more ancient roll-top desk that had been his great-great-great-grandfather's, and pondered the peculiarity of the human race. He leaned back, stretched, and yawned widely, his eye catching a slight movement to his side as he did so. Turning his head, he beheld a yellowed paper fluttering to the floor, apparently having fallen from an old bookcase lined with books so old and dusty that he'd never had the courage to take any of them out and look at them.
Edwin picked up the paper. Spidery but graceful handwriting in faded ink. Many of the words were illegible; probably sun fading. He frowned. Sun fading? No. Not possible.
He yanked the chain on the green-shaded lamp on the desktop and squinted at the writing. Something about a curse... every 45 years, but only if the year ended in "3"... desperate evil... horrors, many horrors... the curse would be eternal unless the shop were renamed The Little Pen Shop of Horrors...
Yeah, right, Edwin thought, placing his arms on the cluttered desk and resting his head on them. Just for a minute... so tired... As he drowsed, his subconscious took note of a quiet bubbling sound...
On the shelves behind him, a bottle of Bubble Gum Pink began to quiver. Mist seeped from beneath its lid; the lid slowly, slowly began to turn. The bottle trembled, then shook; suddenly, the lid flew off. Shortly, other bottles followed it, until the air was thick with flying lids, rattling glass, and the sound as of corn popping — giant corn. Loudly.
Edwin jerked awake and turned toward the sound. Horror gripped him. He ducked to avoid the flying caps. He watched in helpless terror as pink slime sloshed from the uncapped bottle, became slitheringly corporeal, began to ooze, then to grow and swell. Shortly, Tangerine joined it. They rose as would bread dough, their volume doubling and quadrupling rapidly. They merged; became orange; green oozed toward them, then red, then brown, then purple, turquoise, claret, Persian rose, a thousand colors! A thousand colored bodies, merging, sliming, glowing, expanding toward him!
As they merged and enlarged, the colors intertwined until the whole became one enormous, amorphous, pulsating, writhing, ghastly, hideous, terrifying, sewage-brown... slime monster!
"Gawrsh," said the elderly sheriff the next morning, scratching his bald dome as he pondered the remains of the poor little pen store. All that had been recognizable in the rubble was a small, badly stained piece of paper containing bits of old writing and multicolored ink stains. Turning it over and over in his hands, the sheriff spat a stream through the gap between his front teeth, then said, "I reckon it'll ferever be one o' them thar mysteries, what Edwin drewed."
The Ravin' Ink Maniac
By Bruce Herbitter
"With a doff of the hat to lots of people from whom I borrowed in good fun."
On a night so dark and dreary
my pen hand hangs limp, so weak and weary
I hear a scratching at the floor
quoth the African Gray, "Homer, get the door!"
I raise my rump from padded Barca
All my mindless prose is cruddy caca
Will this intrusion into my seclusion
orientate and affect a life infusion?
The postman only rings once the bell
Silently he slides the paper in hellish
tones of ocher, for me to affix my sign.
Outside in the distance dogs howl and the wind begins to whine.
With Saruman eyes he hands to me
the box that has come from faraway across the sea.
Will he come back again tomorrow?
The box is from "The Little Pen Shop of Horrors"
Hastily I pull off the tattered string.
What could possibly be IN this thing?
I never ordered from this place before,
Their web address is www.mordor.orc
The inner case was artfully worked
and in my zest I was nearly berserk
but finally it's arcane seals were broken.
the bottle inside was not yet open.
My wild Persian Rose! I had to L@@K!
This ink is so "RARE"
Greg Clark's Sampler book
has no samples of it there.
But the Ebay gods were smiling
and there would be no denying
though the feedback for "GremlinPens" was nil
My $150/bottle nectar remains with me still.
Now how many bottles of Penman Sapphire
can these people send me?
Little Pen Shop of Horrors
By Rob Astyk
It stood in a part of town once bustling, now seedy; once vibrant, now moribund; once teeming with busy life, now crawling with living infestations Despite the decay around him, the derelicts, the drug addicts and hookers Cashel loved the little pen shop. Of whores or urban blight he took no notice. It was his. It had been his grandfather's and then his mother's - though she let it out to an apprentice of her father's until George, too, had retired.
As a child he'd played beneath his grandfather's repair bench. Later he'd lugged boxes of stationery up from the musty basement. He'd polished the counters and the metal trim on the fountain pens. Always, always Cashel'd had a love for the place. When George retired his Mom was going to close the shop. Hardly anyone bought fountain pens any more. Very few came in for repairs. But Cashel'd insisted that she give the shop to him. The building belonged to his mother. The shop and all its contents were his for the asking.
Now, a decade later, Cashel had no regrets. Days might go by when nary a customer crossed the threshold but Cashel didn't care. He contented himself with assembling complete Waterman Patricians, Eversharp Dorics and Moore Safeties from his grandfather's huge parts bins. Those few who did come in wanted only two kinds of pens. Most people wanted cheap ballpoints and the pimps and drug dealers wanted Mont Blancs or Krone and other limited editions. He appeased them all and then went back to his repair bench to look at his gleaming handiwork.
One night, short on Caw's parts, Cashel went digging through a particularly deep and musty bin. Sifting through the parts turned to sorting them. Clearly this bin, an ancient oak file drawer hadn't been sorted since his grandfather filled it. Metal caps of the 1940's and 1950's gave way to multicolored plastic caps of the 1930's and thence to hard rubber mid-way through the 1920's. And still he dug.
Screw caps gave onto layers of slip caps and their matching barrels. Those, in turn, changed from larger than the barrel in diameter to caps of equal or smaller diameter. He'd excavated 130 years into the past of fountain pens when he found the box. It was a total anachronism. A box for a Parker T-1 buried among parts for MacKinnon Stylographics.
Cashel dug it out, carefully raised the lid and withdrew the folded sheet of paper. In the box lay not a titanium marvel from 35 years ago, but a slender, delicate black pen, gleaming just as bright as the day it had left the factory. Tempted as he was by the pen he opened the paper and read the curling hand he knew was his grandfathers.
Cashel, my boy, I know you will read this one day. I only hope that you read it before opening the pen. In the Celtic world from which I came some things develop a soul external to themselves. You hold the soul of this pen shop in that box. I conjured it into that pen before you were born that the store might continue to thrive for your mother and for you. All the joys of the past that you see around you will dissolve in an instant if you release that spirit. Guard it well. Hide it well. I know you'll care for it as I did.
Cashel sat there a long time before he lay the pen back in its bin and poured the parts over it once again.
The Little Pen Shop of Horrors, New Orleans Style
By Rhonda J. Foster
All the tourists to New Orleans came to see the Little Pen Shop of Horrors located in the older part of town, where it was reputed that things like voodoo still occurred on a regular basis. Rumor had it that the shop was run by a gorgeous brunette of indeterminate age who liked to pour an entire bottle of vintage Sheaffer Skrip Persian Rose ink into her bath once a week to keep her skin that rosy tone that she was so famous for. To pen collectors it was blasphemy — they would rather she had been the real Elizabeth Bathory bathing in human blood! One noted collector, a gentleman from Spain, had paid to have her assassinated for this insult to his signature ink, but to no avail. The assassin had fallen for her in a big way while watching her bathing ritual, both literally and metaphorically. The next day his body was discovered, tinged a lovely rosy shade in death. Somehow he had fallen into her tub after she was finished and drowned his foolish self.
Now this time the tourists were newlyweds and pen collectors, too, so this made the Little Pen Shop of Horrors a must-see for Craig and Lisa. Lisa pinched his arm before they went in, and made him promise not to ogle the inkly beauty too much. They looked around in awe at the bottles of ink lining the shelves, row after row, gleaming in the air enhanced by flying dust motes. Strangely, no one was around, so they made themselves at home, and curious, ventured into the other rooms. Lisa was clearly getting nervous.
"Craig, let's get out of here — someone lives here!" Her whisper was a hiss.
"I just want to see the tub — it's famous — then I can tell Weakley about it. Besides, we haven't seen anyone yet."
He pressed on, through the beaded curtains across the next doorway and looked around in awe. A huge round tub filled the room, steam rising off the surface. Only one candle in the corner lit the room. Lisa, hanging back already, had started to make her way out of the shop, back through the maze of rooms. Craig took his hand out of his pocket and reaching into the water, swished his hand through the tub. He rejoined Lisa outside, where they managed to locate a more conventional pen shop along with other traditional tourist attractions.
The next day he insisted on passing by The Little Pen Shop of Horrors again. There was a sign in the window: "Closed Until Further Notice." In very small print at the bottom, it read, "I curse you." The veteran prankster laughed as his wife exclaimed how odd it was. They enjoyed the rest of their honeymoon in the city, their food, their wine, their pen purchases.
When it was time to go home and the suitcases were packed on the bed, Craig went down to the hotel lobby to check on a shuttle to the airport. Lisa, checking the room to make sure nothing had been forgotten, noticed an empty bottle in the trash. Curious, she picked it up and turned it over to read the label: Skrip Permanent Green Ink.
My Little Pen Shop of Horrors (a poem)
By Bernard Glassman
Once upon a midnight inky,
As I fiddled with a Dinkie,
And other quaint and curious pens from days of yore,
As a cat-nap I was catching,
Distantly there came a scratching,
Scratching, oh, so softly scratching,
from a long-unused desk drawer.
'Must be cockroaches' I chuckled, 'scratching 'round inside my drawer — only this and nothing more.'
Tho' I wasn't all that sober,
I remember 'twas October,
Waning days of late October,
When goblins walk from door to door.
How I wished that it were daytime,
Happy, sunny, bright-lit May-time,
How I wished that I could stay time,
Turn it back to times before — before I lost my one Mentmore.
That flexy-nibbed and steady flowing
Pen the angels named Mentmore.
Open then my desk I threw,
As horrified, one breath I drew,
Stared in terror at a pen that wrote and wrote inside my drawer;
Seldom slowing, never ceasing,
Steadily its ink releasing, scribbling words that kept increasing,
As it wrote inside my drawer.
The dismal darkness of my drawer.
Wrote on every scrap of paper
In my deep and dusty drawer.
Just the pen and nothing more.
"Pen," cried I, "what dead hand steers thee? Know you not how my heart fears thee?
Can't you see that no one hears thee?"
But the pen did me ignore. Just kept writing, nothing more.
As I stared wide-eyed with fright, I watched that pen just write and write,
Without benefit of light, in the night within my drawer.
It only wrote, and nothing more.
I picked up a stump of taper. "I must see what's on that paper! Read the words upon the paper, scraps of paper in my drawer. Read the words and nothing more."
With the flickering candle's lighting, I could just make out the writing,
Read the ghostly, ghastly writing, terror-stricken to my core.
Again, again, each time the same, the pen had written out a name,
"Whose name this is, my God, I know!"
The name was Edgar Allan Poe.
And even as I watched fixated,
Filled with terror, yet elated,
The pen that I had shone my light on, found one final scrap to write on:
"You who yet with breath are blessed,
Whose heart still beats within thy breast,
Pray, grant me peace, I do implore,
What will you take for this Mentmore? For just this pen and nothing more."
"You found my Mentmore!" I was screaming. "Is this real or am I dreaming? I can't sell it, I adore it!
Hmmm.....
What would you give me for it?"
Nearly dead with lack of slumber, I watched Poe write out a number.
Bleary-eyed, benumbed, bedragged, I sat with that ghost and haggled.
Talking into my desk drawer,
To a pen and nothing more.
Night's gloom gave way to morning light; the pen had nowhere else to write.
As distant bells began to peal,
Poe and I had struck a deal.