Mulch

by S. Scott Whitaker

Hidden in the corpse-fertilized fields of father, farmer, and crime lord Mulch Hayes, is a magic box to imprison Hayes’ half-mermaid daughter, Marina, whose power is matched only by her innocence. The box will transport her across the sea to Amsterdam, where her aunt Cilia waits to harness Marina’s power for her own purposes. Mulch has entrusted Marina’s capture and transport to Mr. Bill, an ageless ally of the Hayes family with secrets of his own.

But Mr. Bill secretly doubts Mulch, mistrusts Cilia and her creepy brother Pembroke, and feels pity and love for Marina. He follows the box’s route from Virginia to Boston, leaving a doppelganger behind on the farm to confuse Mulch. Marina, locked away from the waters that keep her alive begins to grow mad, and reaches out the only way she knows how: through dreams and nightmares, thinking of the one nice boy she met at the movies years ago.

Meanwhile, Nick Adams begins to paint huge abstract paintings in his sleep. Haunted by "a thing" in the forest, eventually, Nick begins to have dreams about a beautiful woman who may or may not be a mermaid. His best friend George is mystified by his friend's sudden painting habits, but is having adventures on his own, for a genie pops out of a paint can offering him three wishes and the girl he is in love with glows like a lighthouse. Nick, convinced his dreams are leading him to someone, follows them up the East Coast, ghosting George.

All the while, Mulch's other daughter, Virginia, begins to suspect her father and her boyfriend, Adam Taylor, are more than a little acquainted. When she makes a discovery that turns her world upside down, she realizes the father she knew is not a decent man, that her family are not decent people. Her harrowing journey at the hand of Cilia's cousin, Pembroke, threatens to break her, but that's before she becomes the depository for Nick Adams' memories, and an agent of magic as old as the earth.

Soon the action barrels towards Boston, everyone on the heels of Marina, or Nick following Marina, where Mr. Bill, Nick, George, Abdullah, the genie, and Rufus the dog, meet up with Spider Jones and his cohort of photographers documenting and chasing Nick’s graffiti as it appears, at night, on billboards and sidewalks along the East Coast.

Magic is pitted against magic in this novel of weird fiction, body horror, organized crime, and family corruption from Montag Press.

688 pages, Paperback

Published March 4, 2023

About the author

Stephen Scott Whitaker' s poems have appeared in Oxford Poetry, The Scores, Crab Creek Review, & Third Wednesday among other journals. They are the author of four chapbooks of poetry, and a broadside from Broadsided Press which was featured in a special exhibition at the University of Arizona.