Moon Regardless

by Nick Manzolillo

  “Oh yes,” Otis smirks, reaching into his bag for the axe. “I forgot about her.” Otis pushes past Hap before he can put it together. “Time to kill the right woman!”

  “No, wait,” Hap says, unsure of his suspicions. The crooked-toothed killer cautiously pushes open the bathroom door with the head of the axe. “There’s a way we do this without becoming like them; we aren’t going to hurt her.”

  Hap tries to make him see reason as Otis takes two purposeful steps forward out of sight. There is a stomach-wrenching howl of terror from the bathroom, followed by one cracking thunk after another, and the screams don’t stop until the third. Hap hears an axe blade scrape against the tile. As he falls back against the hallway wall, he catches glimpses of a crimson bathroom and an equally crimson maniac coated in red.

  “She was tied up,” Hap says, and he is out of puke and tears and…. What just happened? What was he doing these past few days? Video games, comic books, playing nurse, and trying to ignore his dreams.

  “You’ve gotta stomach up.” Otis emerges from the bathroom. His mad, beardless grin is gone. “I won’t fill you with lies no more.”

  Hap opens his eyes to see the red-rimmed blade of an axe hovering near his neck.

  “You’ve gotta stomach up ‘cause they’ll get you. We will slaughter women and children and mothers and sisters and fathers and husbands and little boys who support the Moon. We have to fight fire with light, with a sun that burns it all out. That runs them to the maximums of what they think they are. We’re gonna rend them exhausted by their own treachery, and then they will weaken and die. We’re getting guns, and then we’re gonna give them a massacre that’ll make the front pages of every paper from here to fucking La La Land. We’re gonna wear masks, and we’re gonna sing while we do it. Come on!”

  Otis shoots spittle across Hap’s face as he presses the blade of his axe to Hap’s throat, forcing his head back against the wall.

  “What the fuck man, wha—?”

  Hap can no longer speak clearly. Otis angles the blade, and Hap is looking into the bathroom at the Miskatonic witch, hacked up beyond recognition.

  “Now I’m gonna write a map for us. A list and a map.” Otis shrugs away from Hap and trails the blade of the axe along the wall as he walks into his bedroom. What happened to him in his sleep? What did he see?

  Wandering into the bedroom after Otis, Hap picks up the knife from the floor. He thinks it’s the one Otis had when they first met; he pokes his finger against the blade and realizes that it’s sharper than he ever imagined.

  “Your stomach’s going to have to get thicker. Thicker. I want you to kill the man at the gun store. We’ll have him lean over his display case and then pop. We’ll have to stop anybody else there. We have to get to the city without the cops behind us. We’ll then go into the hotel through two exits,” Otis says, and Hap can’t get over how clear his words are. Did he get an English lesson while he was asleep?

  “You’ve got to calm down. We’ll be worse than them if we do half of what you’re saying,” Hap says. Otis can’t be so bad deep down; Hap’s seen him be reasonable. With the knife held cautiously in one hand, Hap reaches for Otis’s axe with the other. “Think of your mother. What would she say?”

  “I have…I always think of her! I think of how they raped her! How they murdered her! How they did this to me! Calm? Drink a cup of tea, see their symbol at the bottom. Calm? Try and be calm, see what will happen to you!” Otis hefts up the axe, sliding his chair back. “I spoke with the Gate. A great old one visited me in my dreams.”

  Hap places a hand on the shoulder of Otis’s arm where that ropey, tentacle-like rash appeared. A fly buzzes off and away into the house as if Otis is a rotting thing. “Listen, take a deep—” Then Hap is thrown to the floor, and he should’ve known: never, ever touch this man. The killer leans over him, his eyes now flashing different colors, even a trace of purple. A sun rises in Otis’s irises, orange and red. “I saw the gate; I know the gate; I am the gate. I am the axe of Yog-Sothoth, and you will never understand me.” Otis jerks the hand holding the axe, and Hap isn’t sure if it’s the dull backside or the blade that’s pushed toward him. Hap thrusts his old knife into the babbling murderer’s throat. The axe spasms away from them.

  There is confusion across Otis’s face as he slinks back and sits against the legs of his chair. The knife entered his throat at an angle. Hap has stuck kitchen knives into the pumpkins and pineapples, the sides of trees in his backyard as a boy. A throat is softer than fruit. Otis’s hands go to the wound, and fresh, bright blood is pouring between his fingers. He was going to kill Hap, right?

  “Moon makes the dark stronger, but we need ‘er. She ain’t the enemy, but some kinda hope they mock.” Otis’s mouth fills with blood, and he can’t babble anymore.

  “I’m sorry,” Hap says. He sits at the edge of the bed, unable to move. Otis grabs the handle of the knife with one flimsy, shaking hand. Blood spritzes across the room, decorating the TV and the stack of comic books on the floor. He looks into Hap’s eyes, and then his pupils roll up into his head like a camera without a memory chip. Otis falls toward Hap, holding out the knife to him like a final offering. An attempt to pass the torch that guided his poor ass for decades.

  There is a time lapse, a gap in Hap’s consciousness; when he awakens, he is stumbling through the woods beyond Otis’s house, tripping over fallen tree branches. “I’m sorry; I’m sorry,” Hap can’t stop muttering as thorn bushes claw at his clothing. Eventually, he stumbles into somebody’s backyard and encounters three little children running around a Slip and Slide. One of them, a little girl in a one-piece bathing suit, stares at him with wide eyes before crying out for her parents. Hap is a dead shambler from the forest. He flees, losing himself farther in gullies and dips in the earth. It is dusk before he finds Otis’s house again.

  Hap sits on the couch, staring at the piles of scrawled notes stacked up neatly across the table. He tried organizing them at one point in the days prior. It was impossible. What in the hell does he do now? He hasn’t eaten all day. Fuck, he still can’t. He can still hear the reverberations of Augustine’s final screams and see that look in Otis’s eyes as he died. Was he at peace? He needs to wash his brain. He needs weed; that makes you calm, right? He needs….he can’t wander into Otis’s bedroom and get the whiskey, comic books, or video games. Not without walking past the corpses. Ah, he is fucked all right.

  The encroaching night brings with it the sound of drumming. What has to be a pickup truck or something pulls into Otis’s driveway. There are no flashing police lights sprinkling through the windows. Whoever this is, they won’t waste time putting Hap in handcuffs.

  The pounding of the drums spreads between five seconds of pause. The sound of several car doors opening and slamming is accompanied by low murmuring and a clunk of boots in the driveway. The chills binding Hap to the couch subside as he crouches over to the window, peaking out of its corner panel. Two pickup trucks form a V, blocking the driveway and Otis’s Caddie. There are half a dozen men, mostly in jeans and T-shirts. They wear cotton masks over their heads with black goggles sewn into their eyeholes. Some of the masks seem dirty like they’ve been worn recently. The men pass around flashlights. Lanterns come aglow in the beds of their trucks. Four of them have shotguns, and the others have bladed instruments. Behind the house, things creep and crackle through the woods. “Moonshuck” is repeated several times by several different mouths. No, “Moon Shack” is being croaked, froglike, by unseen things in the dark, things waiting for Hap to try and escape out a back window.

  A crudely spray-painted seven-pointed star surrounded by dancing orbs is etched along the side of one of the trucks. One of the men holds up what looks like a big stick with a metal basket on top. There’s a faint flicker of a lighter. A torch is stuck into the grass beside Otis’s driveway. Otis could have saved Hap. Otis could be here right now, ready to knife th
ese dogs down. Otis probably led these fuckers here and has damned Hap in more ways than one.

  The drumming speeds up as the men begin to chant in low, murmuring voices. The croaking things behind the house join a chorus of crickets. Hap goes over to the coffee table and picks up a knife. They are all murderers; now he is one, too. Hap takes off his shirt. He’s never so much as pricked his finger on purpose before. He focuses on a single image and begins to draw the knife across his skin.

  ***

  A second torch is thrust into the ground as the drumming continues from within the woods. As soon as the tempo stops, the men will be free to speak, laugh, and taunt. Then, they converge. They swarm. The groundskeepers, sent from the Shack itself, will hold up the rear.

  But before the hunting party can reach the front door, it slowly swings open, and a shirtless boy steps out with his hands raised. Shotguns, cracked, peeling, and forged a lifetime ago, rise to the ready position. The boy enters the torchlight before sinking to his knees. A knife slips from his hand as he spreads his arms and bows his head. A gleaming diamond wedding ring sparkles on one finger. His chest is crimson. One of his wrists is covered in a rectangle of ink. He has carved into his skin a dripping, seven-pointed star that trails up from his stomach and aligns with each of his nipples. The planets follow, crude and ovular along his ribs, forming a spiral from each point of the star. The symbol and the message are understood. There is a half-moon lightly etched into Hap’s forehead, and on his wrist, a most dreaded symbol has been obscured by black marker. The shotguns lower, and there is an exchange of looks between unblinking glass goggles. The offering is accepted.

  Chapter 21: The Initiate

  Well past visiting hours, a trio of men arrive at Providence General Hospital in silence, their hats tilted low, lips grim. A dear somebody’s son has pull at the building, so they enter through a backdoor and ascend a winding staircase to Room 2419. Currently, the room hosts two victims of the recent shooting spree at the Miskatonic Hotel. One is stable, the other barely alive. Both are fresh out of surgery and in no condition for visitors.

  Mike Santalio removes his hat, a fedora, and places it over his chest out of respect as he enters. Call it old-timey, but the hat’s a symbol and, as of late, a running joke, a testament to the days of old and the types of men who used to run Providence. Mike’s business associate, Dino Marcello, bows his head. The Southerner smiles; not wanting to appear rude, he lifts his Red Sox cap. The Southerner claims that his affinity for Boston dates back to his childhood. Mike doesn’t want to consider the kind of upbringing that makes a man like the Southerner become who he is today.

  Propped up in his hospital bed, Politician Paul Jones lives, if only through the steady beeping of the machines by his side. Below his nose, a mess of gauze and bandages disfigure his face. Across the room, a boy no older than one of Mike’s own nephews moans in his sleep. The kid’s bicep is covered in gauze, and an IV is stuck into his wrist. From what Mike knows of his experience visiting hospitals, it looks like the poor kid had to receive a blood transfusion.

  Approaching Paul’s bedside, Mike mutters, “You should’ve told me you needed help.” He places a hand on Paul’s arm and mouths a prayer for him.

  “And they haven’t caught the guy who did it yet?” the Southerner asks from over by the window, spying on the city below. Across town, the edge of the purple neon sign bearing the Miskatonic’s name is like a spy poking their head around a corner.

  “No, the scumbag,” says Dino, a big bastard Mike has been lovingly smacking in the belly for the last twenty years.

  The kid across the room groans and mutters something, repositioning himself to sit up as best he can. “Who am I?” he says, sitting up partially. “Wait, I mean, who are you…?” He’s drugged but somewhat awake, addressing Dino.

  Mike marches over to the kid’s side, trying his best to look like a bullish man of power to whom you spill your secrets, instead of an old man who’s finding it harder and harder to urinate properly. “Did you see who did this? How many of them were there?” Only four people were shot, with one death and about a half dozen broken ankles and ribs from the poor bastards who got trampled in the mad rush out of the hotel lobby.

  With his eyes closed, the boy tells Mike, “Eyes sunk into his face. Tall. Then dudes with knives while I was layin’ bleedin’. Dudes looking over me. Thought they wanted to turn me into ham. Knife dudes talked to cops. One man wouldn’t stop licking up the blood. I was trying to help people.” The dope in the boy’s veins begins to haul him back into the land of dreams. “People were running the wrong way, up the elevator, like they had nowhere to go….” He sings those last words before passing out. Mike forms a fist over the fedora.

  “Hey, you,” Mike says to the Southerner. The man’s smile widens as he hooks his thumbs between the belt loops of his jeans. “It’s a go. Do your best. I’m happy with a message, but do as much damage as possible. I’ll be leaving town, but the money will find you.” There’s a vacation house in Sanibel, Florida, with Mike’s name on it. It may be time to stay there and never come back.

  The Southerner tips his cap and laughs. “Or I’ll find it! Diggity. It’s empty, right?”

  “Empty of the good ones,” Mike mutters, staring at Paul’s face. Maybe the doctors will give him a new jaw. He’ll never form words properly again.

  The Southerner tips his hat and leaves. The door closes just as Dino sighs, glancing semi-nervously at the kid to make sure he’s still asleep.

  “You know,” Mike says. “Pauly’s mother was a great, great gal. I’m going to hell for suggesting he work there after what they did to her.” Mike bows his head. He finds solace in the idea that, even if the Miskatonic curses its dead to wander its corridors, then the walls of their prison will soon be ash.

  ***

  A sheet sticks to Hap’s cuts, and he is wrapped up like a grand feast yet to be devoured. His abductors are gentle as they lift him over their shoulders. The burn from his wounds, pulsing with his heartbeat, is nothing new. After he sliced the first jagged point of the star into his chest, Hap was amazed at how easy it was to disfigure himself with Otis’s knife. He is met by sirens and a light breeze as he enters the open air before being lowered between swinging hips and the gasoline-churned stink of his abductors. They are in downtown Providence, of course.

  They burned down Otis’s house. He smelled the first tidings of smoke as the last of his silent abductors loaded him into the truck. Though he still doesn’t know whether his attempt to make himself a holy relic has actually worked, he has been spared the act of being pumped full of holes by those rusting guns. The determination of his fate has been delayed. He can feel the executioner slipping on his black hood. Maybe he’ll die with one less question on his tongue.

  A low murmuring reaches Hap as he’s carried into an air-conditioned space that does little to unstick the sheet clinging to his wounds. He has become a willing totem of flesh and blood. A slow clapping of bemused applause begins from either side of him, and he imagines the grinning faces of the Moon Shack’s lunatics.

  Being suspended by the half dozen arms of his pallbearers makes the elevator seem like some kind of invisible string plucking him up through the atmosphere and into the gravity-defying damnation of space. With Hap’s perspective infused with that of the floating cosmos, being dragged from the elevator is as pleasant an experience as Hap could have wished for. He is ready for death, to be reunited with Tiff in that eternal twilight cage.

  Hap’s pallbearers stop short as he sways in their grip. “Otis Lusk is truly dead,” a nasally voice marvels; the speaker is some kind of man-killing snob, some intelligent and elitist asshole who uses his brains to ruin other people’s lives. It’s fitting, of course, that the people who run the cult aren’t idiots, just assholes. They are more devious than Hap could ever hope to be. He has only acted out of emotion, but they act out of need and faith. If the cult consis
ted of merely dog-eating maniacs like Woodbury and sexual deviants like Augustine, there wouldn’t be a cult worth maintaining in a redneck farmhouse in the middle of Vermont, let alone one that is capable of manipulating the vital heartstrings of an entire city.

  “Cut his own throat. Drove this little jihadist up some kinda wall,” one of Hap’s abductors says, all too happy to add “racist” to his identity as a murderous fanatic.

  “Please, please. He’s Indian,” a stranger with a kind voice says. The sheet is lifted, and a curious, slightly overweight older man with delicate glasses examines Hap’s face. What looks to be a blind man grumbles from behind the kind man and walks out of view. “I couldn’t be happier to learn you turned out to be special,” the kind stranger says, pressing his hand against Hap’s face. He is that peaceful, generic sort of old man who always seems to serve as the undying face of the Catholic pope. This guy must be the craziest one of them all. Behind the kind man and before the entrance to the Miskatonic’s grand ballroom, Otis’s body is crucified on a plywood cross. He does not wear a crown of thorns. Instead, he is bound by twisted strips of wire to the mocking lowercase “t” that is Christianity’s answer to the seven-pointed star. The former eye doctor’s gaping throat has congealed into an insect-like proboscis as if his rigid body has been frozen amidst some kind of strange metamorphosis.

  The sheet is crumpled into a ball and tossed beneath a podium as the pallbearers carry Hap into the ballroom, setting him down on a giant old rocking chair three times as big as it should be. Before Hap is a grand ballroom full of empty, black, folding chairs. The thugs hold Hap down and use biting strips of wire to bind his neck to the wooden rung of the chair. Could there really be enough lunatics from the Shack to fill a room this big?

  Johan rubs a hand over the side of Hap’s chair and says, “It still remembers who it was. All things do.” Facing Hap, Johan seems so gentle, like Santa Claus at the meet and greets at the Warwick Mall. “We do not honor a man who spills his own blood. You have made yourself a curiosity.” Johan has an arm draped over the podium. His tuxedo is complemented by a purple bow tie. “On a day as horrific as this, a curiosity that will bring a smile to my citizens’ lips is a blessing from the Else itself.” Carved into the arms of Hap’s rocking chair, as if by a crude pocketknife, are strange, companion symbols to the seven-pointed star and its vortex of orbs. Centipedes and other winged worm-like bugs also adorn the wood. Hap reads the word “family” and the phrase “plank by plank.” The most detailed pictograph shows stick figures with their stick arms in the air, holding what look like little logs standing around a square hut.