Fiction for the Cosmically Disturbed - 2026, 2

Skull Forest, Chapter 2

Hello, and Happy February. This is Fiction for the Cosmically Disturbed, a semi-regular newsletter for family, friends, and readers of me, Splatterpunk Award-winning author Lucas Mangum. January was tarnished by an ice storm here in Central Texas and a flu outbreak in the Mangun household, but it wasn’t without its bright spots.

I took a trip to Tampa to visit my brother for his bachelor’s party. I know that conjures some imagery for some, but it was a low-key affair. Just golf, beers, cornhole in his buddy’s backyard, and football on the TV—admittedly not how I normally spend my time, but it was cool to see my brother and his bride-to-be. He’s found his people, which is all anyone can ask for at the end of the day. He’ll be getting married around the time you’re reading this post, and I’ll be flying up to Pennsylvania with the whole family for it. It’s all my daughter can talk about—she’s so excited to go to her first wedding.

Like a lot of you (hopefully all of you), I’m heartbroken, enraged, and terrified by everything happening in our country. It honestly feels gross to promote myself in any way at the moment, but putting words on the page is one of the only things I know how to do well, and to not write is to court insanity. So, here we are.

According to Banksy: “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” I’ll take his word for it, and hey, what’s the name of this newsletter again? If you’re cosmically disturbed—by world events, your personal life, or some hellish combination of the two—I hope coming here brings you comfort.

As promised in the last issue, here is the second chapter of my novella Skull Forest.

Chapter 2

I considered calling Haley first, enticed by the prospect of talking to her alone. Not that I knew what I’d say. Probably just complain about Eldon, mention anything cool that might have happened that day, in case I’d forgotten to tell her something earlier. Maybe tell her about Mama’s new painting, though I wasn’t sure I was ready to talk to anyone about that yet. This compulsion to talk to her one-on-one confused me like the way she sometimes made me feel.

On these group video calls, where we played a dark fantasy storytelling game called Island of Teeth, I usually called Donner first, and I decided not to break from routine.

The CALLING icon blinked on the screen of my laptop for a few seconds. Then the postered wall of Donner’s room materialized. I hadn’t seen half the movies these posters advertised but Donner often talked about them with near-religious reverence. The Fog, “a creepy classic.” The Gate, “so freaking cool.” C.H.U.D., “hilarious.” There were many more posters, even some for more recent films. It, Chapter 2. The Witch. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. I had seen a few of those.

Most of the posters had been accumulated in the past year or so, after his father left. There was even a poster for one of Uncle Rudy’s movies, Goblin Gods.

I saw Donner’s room, but where was Donner?

“Hey,” I said. “You there?”

“Yeah, sorry.” Donner’s stood up in front his computer. The dark curls framing his face were untamed as usual, and he was cradling a fluffy orange cat. “Stupid Chips was trying to get under my desk again.”

He scratched the cat’s belly, which instantly earned him a swat on the hand.

“Aw, hi, Chips!” I said, grinning.

“Don’t encourage him. He’s a jerk.”

With that Donner tossed Chips toward the door. A frustrated meow followed, but the cat didn’t come back.

“He’s gonna eat your eyes when you sleep, you keep tossing him around like that.”

“I’d like to see him try.” Donner settled into his desk chair. “So, what’s up?”

“Nothing, you?”

“Eh, watching Twilight Zone.”

“That show sucks.”

Donner frowned and shook his head. “No, the old one.”

“Never seen it.”

“Aw, dude!”

“Yeah, I know. I haven’t seen anything cool.”

“That’s not true. I’ve shown you some stuff.”

“Like I said…”

“Hey!”

“Well, anyway,” I said when the laughter wore off. I was trying to sound nonchalant. “I guess we should call Haley.”

“Yeah, I guess so. You wanna?”

“Sure.”

I added her to the call. A third window popped up on his monitor, the CALLING icon blinking. Haley answered. Her cornsilk hair was wet and she was carrying her laptop through some hallway in her house.

“Just wait a minute,” she said. She walked to her room, which was far less decorated than Donner’s, though she did have a couple of mostly full bookshelves. “Okay. Hi.”

“Hi,” Donner and I said.

“So, who’s calling Ben?” she asked. “Pretty sure he’s still mad at me.”

“I can do it,” I said. “Though I’ll probably tell him he had it coming.”

“We were just messing around,” Donner said.

“Yeah, and I cut him off when I thought he went too far,” Haley said. She frowned. “Maybe I should call him then. Apologize for making fun of his laugh. He was right; it was a low blow.”

“You don’t have to,” I said. “He’s probably fine.”

She shook her head. “Me calling is best.”

A fourth window popped up on my screen, CALLING icon blinking.

It kept blinking. Thirty seconds passed. Donner shrugged. Haley frowned.

“Maybe he’s really mad at me,” she said when a message popped up to say Benny Bird couldn’t be reached. “You want to try him, Nathan?”

“Sure,” I said and tried adding Ben to the call.

My effort yielded the same result. Confused looks all around.

“So, what now?” Donner asked. “Should I call?”

“Doubt it will make a difference,” Haley said.

“You guys still feel like playing?” Donner said.

For several seconds, everyone held their peace. Though I couldn’t speak for the others, playing Island of Teeth without Ben felt wrong. Island of Teeth had no Games Master. It was collaborative storytelling meant for two to five players and centered on an adventure scenario. Ben’s ideas were always the strangest and sometimes even funny. Usually he included side characters that were either clowns or robots, sometimes both. Neither type of character made much sense given the Mysterious Island vibe the game gave off, but I got a kick out of Ben’s contributions, and so did the others.

“I don’t want to play without him,” I said.

“Aw, why not?” Donner asked.

“I’m with Nathan. It doesn’t feel right.”

“Do you think he’s okay?” I asked, mostly directing his question to Haley.

“Why wouldn’t he be?” Donner asked.

Haley said nothing. Her face held a solemn expression, and I would've killed to know what she was thinking.

“He usually lets us know if he’s not gonna make it,” I said. “We all do.”

I had nothing to base this on. None of us ever missed game night. It was sacred. Sometimes we had to move it due to heavy homework loads, but we never went a full week without getting together like this. Ben’s absence gave me an uneasy feeling, especially when I thought about Mama’s painting and the faces in it that only I could see.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Haley said, but her expression didn’t change.

“Why wouldn’t he be?” Donner asked again.

He sounded a lot less sure of himself.

After I hung up with my friends, I went to the kitchen to get some water and tried not to think about Ben. Sure, he could be a jerk, but I’d hate if something bad happened to him, especially on a day where I was still kind of mad at him for the dumb prank in the fog. That gave me a sinking feeling for a reason I couldn’t articulate in a satisfactory way.

My mothers were sitting in the living room watching TV. Some cop show, it looked like. I didn’t really like that kind of stuff. Too much procedure. Too much talking. Not enough dragons.

On my way back to my room, Mama called out to me. I faced her, and Mom was looking at me too. She had her hair wrapped in a towel, no doubt having showered after working in the garden all afternoon.

“What is it?” I asked.

“We just wanted to remind you Uncle Rudy will be here in a couple of days,” Mama said.

“Really? Cool!”

Mom smiled, and I returned the expression.

I liked Uncle Rudy. The prospect of seeing him almost made me forget about Ben. I always looked forward to his uncle’s visits. He didn’t work on movies anymore, but he had a ton of stories from back when he did. Now he worked on cars. Classic cars like his Mercury Comet and the Ford Galaxy that he sometimes let me drive in vacant parking lots.

“Is your room clean?” Mama asked.

“Yes, I cleaned it yesterday.”

“Okay, good.” Mama cocked an eyebrow. “All your homework done?”

“Of course.”

“Isn’t tonight game night?” Mom asked.

“Yeah but Ben…” I thought about how to proceed. My mothers were good parents, but they were still parents and adults sometimes made a big deal out of nothing, and of course this was nothing because Ben had probably just forgotten, even though he never forgot before. There was a first time for everything, of course everything was okay. “He couldn’t make it. I’m sure he’s fine,” I said, trying to downplay it.

But maybe this is something worth making a big deal out of.

Maybe you should tell your mothers about this.

Tell them what, exactly?

My indecision made me want to leave the room.

“Well, I’ll see you guys in the morning,” I said.

“Folks, ladies, or y’all,” Mama corrected.

“Good night, y’all,” I said in a put-on cowboy accent.

My mothers wished me good night, and I went to my room. I took a sip of water, kicked off my shoes, and lay down.

Then I jumped back up.

I forgot to print out my social studies homework. With a sigh, I rolled out of bed and went to my laptop. I brought up the document and hit PRINT. Then I left my room. My mothers watched me cross the living area.

“Everything okay?” Mom asked.

“Just forgot to print something,” I said.

As I went from the living room to the kitchen, through the garage and toward the den, I put my worry about Ben out of my mind. Instead, I thought about seeing Uncle Rudy again. It’d been a month, but it felt like a lot longer. I wondered if my uncle would have comic books for me. He had a bunch of stuff from the old days, long before I was born. They were all in great condition, too, and even though Mama said I should keep them for a few years and then sell them back to make money, Uncle Rudy and I both agreed they were better off read. Rudy liked to tease Mama about being a writer who didn’t value good literature. She always retorted that comics were not good literature but fluff. Stuff for kids. She didn’t care what Marvel movie won the top spot at the box office that weekend.

I entered the den and approached the printer. My document was nearly finished. Mama’s printer was outdated and always so slow. She probably overworked it. She insisted on editing all her manuscripts by hand, just like Eldon insisted on physically marking up homework instead of using the portal like every other teacher in the 21st century.

While I stood there waiting for my homework to print, I turned toward the painting and froze as if an icicle had impaled me from the top of my head and all the way through to the base of my spine. The dread inspired by what I saw paralyzed me.

It was Ben’s face. One of the featureless faces embedded in one of the tree trunks had taken on Ben’s features. His mouth was an ‘o’ of sheer terror, his eyes were wide open and filled with panic, as he screamed without sound. The details were unmistakable. It was Ben all right: even the scar above his left eyebrow given to him by a stray B.B. fired by his older brother was present.

I tried to make sense of the sight but could not. It defied everything I knew about the world. At nearly thirteen, I knew that such a thing was not possible. It was the subject of nightmares or one of those dumb movies that Donner watched all the time, not reality. And yet here I was, staring this impossibility in its literal face.

The printer spat out the last page of my document with a rapid series of mechanical whines and groans that made me jump.

I closed my eyes and counted to three. Clearly my imagination had run away from me. No way was Ben’s face really in that painting. Both my mothers had insisted there were no faces at all. Since both of them had denied seeing the faces earlier in the afternoon, I almost convinced myself that maybe I hadn’t seen what I thought I’d seen. But here I was again, seeing not just the featureless faces in the painted trees, but Ben’s face among them.

I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. Maybe I hadn’t really seen it, I thought, looking down at the newly printed pages. I looked toward painting again.

Ben’s face was still there.