Moon Regardless

by Nick Manzolillo

  Hap awakens in the dark with something crawling down his mouth. His jaw hurts. Is Augustine free and trying to strangle him? A squeaking sound comes from within his throat, filling his ears, scratching up the insides of his mouth. Something is scratching his lips, and there’s what feels like a snake smacking his chest. A tail! A tail! He grabs at the wriggling end of the massive furry thing in his throat, and, gagging, he pulls at the creature trying to burrow into his gullet. He can’t breathe; he’s falling, knocking his glass of water off the coffee table. Augustine is laughing great, screaming peals from the bathroom. With a great pop and a burst of pain across his lips from the rodent’s flailing teeth, Hap pulls the wriggling, squealing rat from his mouth. The little bastard jerks out of his hand and disappears along the floor.

  Hap cries and screams and begs into the darkness, softly bleeding from his mouth. Augustine really is a witch, Hap thinks. Weary and half besieged by sleep, he spends the rest of the night in Otis’s room. He sits in a chair by the sick man’s bed with his head tucked into a pillow against his chest. The rats and their fellow creeping things have claimed the living room.

  In the pale of the morning light, Hap watches as Otis pisses the bed, a wet stain slowly seeping through the covers. “Moon won’t burn ya, will just lead ‘em to you,” Otis mutters.

  “Hey, can you hear me?” Hap whispers. “That’s good advice, bud. Otis?”

  Otis remains silent. His twitches have become infrequent but, when Hap conducts the repulsive task of changing his bandages, Otis’s chest wound and the slashes along his neck aren’t covered in anything green; they appear normal, although a bit oozy. The stitches have held, and the bandages are mostly covered in yellow pus. There’s something new, though—a rash along Otis’s arm. A few bubbly blisters have formed as if he came into contact with poison ivy or something equally venomous. The rash forms a jagged spiral around his arm as if he were wrapped with rope—a tentacle. Maybe there’s a simple medical answer for what it is, but Hap is too stupid to think of anything.

  At some point, Hap will throw Augustine a wet rag and a sandwich because he can’t just starve her, can he? Beyond tending to the madwoman, Hap hesitates to imagine leaving Otis’s bedroom and finding something productive to do with his time. He is sure he hears rats scurrying in the kitchen and the living room, talking to one another, planning something. Maybe they’re eating Otis’s moldy notebook pages. They are in the walls. They want to be inside of him.

  Hap spends the rest of the day at Cidalia’s to avoid the ever-mumbling Otis and Augustine’s presence. After telling her that Otis is sick, he asks Cidalia to put him to work, helping her out around her house and backyard in exchange for food for him and Otis. She asks him if he’s not getting enough work at his job, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to lie, to tell her that his hours had been cut. Just like that, an old lady was taking care of him. There has been no word in the news as to what happened to Mr. Lorice, or, more ominously, Mrs. Lorice. Hap stops by the Scituate library to browse its computers and finds nothing.

  That night, while sitting beside Otis and reading an old issue of Spawn from Otis’s boyhood comic collection, Hap hears, “Mercy me, mother above, mother below…there is a pharaoh,” from up in the bed. He has never been more relieved to hear the sound of nonsense. He tosses the comic aside and leans toward Otis, his heartbeat quickening as the killer opens his eyes.

  “Otis, Otis,” Hap repeats, but Otis only blinks at him. After twenty minutes of blinking, Hap wonders if he has brain damage. Further brain damage. Hap tries again for nearly an hour, but the killer is wordless. When Hap brings him some leftovers from his lunch at Cidalia’s, the killer, who has been propped up on a stack of pillows, gently raises his hands and takes a bite from the sandwich, chewing meekly.

  “Take your time.” Hap holds his breath as Otis finishes the sandwich and stares at the blank TV across the room. As the night draws on, Hap waits and waits. He resumes his usual sleeping spot, in the chair beside Otis, sitting up with the lights on. At night, the rats own the living room in this witch house; he’s sure of it.

  The next morning, Otis’s bed is empty. Hap rushes to the bedroom window to get a good look at the Cadillac that isn’t there. From out in the hallway, Augustine starts begging for him to let her go “before he comes back and lets out the thing in his head.” Hap stares at Otis’s bare driveway and the unfolding foliage of another beautiful summer day, wordless.

  ***

  There’s something Otis wants to remember about seashells and how they are just pretty skeletons dragged ashore. There’s also something to remember about a mother he will never see again and a template for a father he has never looked in the eyes. Daddy was a drunk; Daddy was a fool; Daddy didn’t know how to handle his own tool. He finally met his dad in that place where dreams grow, detach, and sail off. Mommy worked at the hotel his whole life, stealing toilet paper and soap to clean his bum. She met a Miskatonic man, and he filled her with glee and then out hopped me. Otis can’t stop his thoughts from singing. He went to the place where all the eyes he’s collected over the years are planted into the ground. They sprout songs that sing themselves into keys; in that dream place, he hung each of those many, many keys from his belt.

  His most recent sleep was different, despite how familiar it seemed. That damned thing snuck into his blood. Before the plane of death, there was a second option, a fork in the road leading to a familiar shack that never looks the same, no matter how many times you see it. The Shack possesses all the abandoned shacks in the woods of the world, hopping from each one like an antsy devil looking for the right host. Otis resisted, still, that beckoning door and the strange pipes that played within; he has a code to keep. Otis could not resist peering in through the Moon Shack’s window, though. He saw his father. He saw the dimly lit piss-stained mattress his mother was thrust upon while the early morning garbage trucks snacked and smashed their ways through the city streets.

  His father tried to double-cross them. He didn’t love Otis; he didn’t love Otis’s mom. But he loved life, and he didn’t like what they did with their knife. He is choked, and then his heart bursts while two boys from two moms go their own way; one starts killing and learning his way up the food chain; the other boy goes about kissing the asses of things who could eat him. Funny thing is the Moon Shack isn’t even mad it got the pussy instead of the ape.

  Otis’s beard is gone; he hacked it away while the boy slept, and the latest Purple Witch hissed at him and shrank into her corner of filth. He didn’t deserve the noble creatures she gutted. They blocked his dreams, kept their rats away and gave him his sanity. What Otis needed all along was one final dose of delirium so that he could see why the pharaoh with a thousand faces has been so patient. Otis has seen a day when the Shack meets the sunlight in a public square, full of curious pigeons and a sea of spectators who have never had the blood of another between their fingernails. Otis has seen a well-dressed man and a woman, both teeming in color-choking purple, as they lead a ceremony in honor of a new religion that all must try for themselves, while people enter the Shack one by one and their screams are muffled by the applause as the whole world is fooled. The killers are waiting, idly drawing their knives over identical rooms. Otis has seen the face of their leader just as he has seen the face of the gate.

  As a clean-shaven man dressed in rags, Otis parks in front of a No Parking sign across from the Kennedy Plaza bus station. In the park up ahead, there’s a fountain of mermaids and fish faces etched in greening bronze. When he was a boy, Otis thought they were magical. Now he knows where they come from and that sometimes gargoyles fly.

  He spits all over himself when he sees the Miskatonic’s neon sign. He thinks of the seven-pointed spiral star, a mocking salute to the eventual constellations that will be the end of man. He misses his beard to pull, so he reaches up to his hair that has grown out of combat proportions, and he gives it a good tug, removing a f
ew strands to rub between his fingers. The Moon Shack thinks the malice of man is so potent as to be regarded among the legions of the unnamable. The followers of the Moon Shack think that mankind can stand against the unknowable, vast cosmos and all the horrible things that lurk there. They think humanity is wicked enough to earn itself the respect of being spared when the doom inevitably arrives. There will be no war, just an execution. The problem with mankind in general, Otis knows, is that it clings to even the slightest lick of hope.

  The lobby is so busy it could be mistaken for a French restaurant at quarter past noon. Otis remembers the elephant’s dance of footsteps miles above his head as he roamed their crypts and followed a guide that specialized in the in-between places where secrets are stacked up on parchments of clay. Providence has its share of manholes with geometrically ordained covers. Holes are scattered across the earth where bodies are stored. A small line forms at the front desk, and it’s full of summer tourists making funny faces as they are told the hotel is overbooked. The office in the back is empty, the door unlocked.

  ***

  When Paul lifts his head, Randal is nowhere to be found. When he looks back down to the oak of the bar, he realizes he’s been laying on a picture. It must’ve been slipped under his head after he fell asleep, but it’s enough to make him not question why he’s suddenly sober. The picture is a photograph of the rogue bellhop, Hap and a blonde girl. His girlfriend, Paul realizes, a numbness creeping through his chest. Front desk girls are disappearing. Nicky Namaste, his favorite bum in the whole wide world, hasn’t been around in weeks. Paul didn’t even notice at first, which made him feel even sorrier for the poor bastard, but Angie is right. A ceremony is on the way. He is the Moon Shack. Did that mean he was the only one among them with a heart?

  He studies the blonde girl next to Hap in the picture. Blonde was her natural color. She was nearly a foot taller than him. He’s never known tall girls to prefer shorter guys. Hap must’ve been something special to her. Once. He traces his fingers over the photograph. He remembers Cassandra’s scream. A while back, he remembers seeing a face that might have been familiar on the news while he was at the bar across the street from his apartment. A grad student at Keane College in New Hampshire. A girl, one of those out-of-place guests who may have been at the Palace of the Komodo. Paul is the Moon Shack, but that’s not entirely true, is it? He is the one who stands outside the Moon Shack, welcoming the citizens, the Candle Lighters, as they enter, but is forbidden from stepping foot inside himself. They think they can make him one of them without being one of them—what a joke.

  Paul ignores the panicked stares of Lindsey and the new kid at the front desk. He needs his gun. Lindsey says out loud that she needs him, and he’ll help. When everybody hears that shot ring out, they’ll leave her alone. The crossing of the doorway threshold works its psychological charms on his brain. His darkened office is soothing in its emptiness. The old purple lady said his desk was a throne….

  Paul takes his seat, and that gun isn’t meant for him. Johan was right about that. There is a boy out there who believes his girlfriend is missing. Hap was not a college boy. He believes he is in love, and he fucking crept right into the Miskatonic, donned his disguise, and went about fooling Paul until the Candle Lighters caught on to him. Paul remembers his dreams, the nightmares from outside the universe, but the thing about them is that they don’t go disappearing women. There is a killer out there; he is a soldier for the other side...the enemy of man, but more importantly, the enemy of the Moon Shack. Angie mentioned pictures you hold onto in war. Hap has one. Paul doesn’t. Paul doesn’t have anything. Paul has to take responsibility for the missing girls, and he can’t do that by putting a bullet into his brain. He is still a man, a person. Murder is for the beasts.

  Cool air blows behind Paul from the draft in the passageways between the walls, and he can imagine slender hands reaching around his neck. He can feel his mother stroke his cheek. What the fuck would she think of him? He has already betrayed her. She is with him, still. Ghosts and dreams, there is no difference. He can feel her arms around him, but if he turns in his rolling chair, there will only be darkness.

  If Hap had come to Paul, if he had come right out and said what he was doing…hah, well, the kid wasn’t stupid. Paul has been looking for a kid like him to do just that. To tell him he needs help. Angie, that old purple hag, she was right about kids. She was right about Paul needing to do something right for once. It is not too late. Hap, as lost and scared as he may be, needs an ally.

  Paul flips his phone out, and it’s nearly useless. The kid probably ditched his phone, but Paul scrolls until he finds Hap’s number and clicks call. While doing so, he pulls open his top drawer. The gun is gone. From the thick shadows behind him come footsteps, perhaps from the hidden wall. A voice says, “Dear Abel.” Paul whirls around in his chair as a tall stranger with a weak chin and sunken eyes raises his father’s revolver toward him. The phone reaches a voicemail, and Paul lets it drop to the floor.

  “I am the shepherd that imprisons the Shack. I will cut down all those who wish to enter, for the glory of innocence!” the stranger shouts, and before Paul can open his mouth in protest….

  ***

  Otis shoots him in the jaw, and the lower half of the Miskatonic manager’s face unhinges in a black mist made crimson by the light showing from beneath the office door. The Miskatonic man’s body spins around in his chair, and he crashes over his desk as his back extends in a series of spasms. Not bad. Otis hasn’t shot anybody since his return to the Island.

  Taking in deep breaths of nostril-scorching gunpowder from the tip of his short barrel, Otis steps out of the office and into the diluted lobby light. He shoots through the eye of the first man he sees wearing the red and yellow décor of a valet attendant’s uniform. Otis swims toward a floundering crowd of screaming fanatics, taking a shot at a bellhop who raises his hands in protest before falling to the floor a shriveled lump, clutching an arm as the rush of hotel guests tramples him.

  A man in a Hawaiian shirt runs the opposite way toward the elevator, body slamming his way through the crowd. It couldn’t be more clear to Otis that he is one of them, seeking the rest of the limp-dicked army that has booked out of the Miskatonic. He lets loose a shot that zips through a screaming woman’s collar, and the man running in the opposite direction gets away. Otis raises his revolver high in an attempt to shatter the elevator’s glass, but there is only a click from the empty barrel. He tosses the revolver to the floor. This is why he prefers knives. He disappears into the fleeing crowd of guests and staff alike, crouching to mask his height. He’s decided that the only guilty mistake he’s made is when he killed the wrong woman, but he’ll make all of that up. All he has to do is make it home one more time before coming back with what it takes. The place will be well evacuated by then, save for the kings who hide at the top of their tower.

  Chapter 20: The Problem with Maniacs

  “You think I’m a bad girl? He’s sold his soul to something much uglier than the Shack,” Augustine moans from the bathroom. Hap hears the slam of a car door and heavy footsteps as Otis stomps through the living room. A monster has entered the house, and Hap is in a bedroom with a window too small to crawl out of.

  “Otis?” Hap calls, cautious.

  “You here, my mad, mad Arab?” A heavy metal thud reverberates from the kitchen countertop. Augustine is hunched over, cowering in the bathroom. Hap can’t allow himself to forget where the dried blood on the floor and under her fingernails came from.

  “None of these will do!” Otis lurches slightly, his hands on his hips. There is a faint spray of blood noticeable on his shaved, now alien chin. His wounds have bled through the white of his shirt. If his hair were trimmed, he’d look like some weak-jawed man from the nineteen hundreds, a professor or a librarian. On the kitchen counter before him, there is a blue duffel bag covered in dirt stains and small clumps of earth. Inside ar
e what seem to be gardening tools: hedge clippers, an old-fashioned axe with a wooden handle, and some kind of saw. “This is a modern age. We need firepower. Bombs, all over the city!” Otis raises a hand in the air. Hap backs away into the refrigerator, and his sneaker cracks on one of the ceramic cat’s shards he missed picking up.

  This man seemed half crippled last night. “Where did you go?” Hap asks. For the past few hours, Hap’s wondered if this was a miracle or delusion.

  “To the Miskatonic!” Otis spreads his arms out, leaning toward Hap, who flinches and tries to burrow against the fridge. The clean-shaven killer hugs him, lightly patting both his arms, getting a smudge of blood along Hap’s dirty shirt. “I ache yet, but I am free from feeding the worms below. You were a ghost in my dreams. I saw their clowns. They are real clowns with real red noses and real white skin and stripes along their faces. No make-up, no clown college, groundskeepers that roam and come with the Shack like the carrion in the sky that follow a pack of wild lions. The clowns came from the stars and formed an alliance with us—I mean, with the Shack.” The fucking guy’s brain is gone; there’s blood on him….

  “What did you do at the Miskatonic? Did you find something out? Who did you kill?” Hap asks.

  “I am killing all of them—one big boom. I was a fool ta think we had to figure something out. Blow them up, over and over; that’ll do. Then I die, enter the shack with a smile and poison them from within.” Otis is talking differently. The hitch in his words is gone as if he can find them in his head clearly now. “We are going to rob a gun store. Walk in there and open up,” he screams to the ceiling, and there comes a rustling from the bathroom.