Moon Regardless

by Nick Manzolillo

  “I have a girlfriend,” Hap tries to say but only croaks. Like those things in the woods behind Otis’s. What were they? Why did he waste so much energy running and weeping through the woods? Was he really so shocked at how easily that knife dug into Otis’s neck? “She—”

  “Yes, of course. Tiffany Lorice. A posthumous orphan. About that night, now, did Derrick mention his father before Otis killed him? He always mentions his father. David Woodbury, the son and father of killers, but not one himself. I was fascinated with what kind of being Derrick’s own offspring would turn out to be. Shame I’ll never find out. Now, Otis—”

  “Where is she?” Hap smiles at the look of disgust on Johan’s face; it’s as if he yelled “shit-cunt-cocksucker” in the middle of a mass.

  “No wonder you’ve been floundering about like a fish on a dinner plate. I was in the middle of telling you something you never would have known on your own. For a boy like you who tries too hard to understand, all of your mistakes come from your attitude. The least you could do is learn about the man who allowed you to last this long.”

  “Tiffany,” Hap moans and sits up, nearly choking himself on the wire.

  “Tiffany Lorice? You really want to know? You really haven’t figured out the mystery by now? To be honest, the citizens go through a Tiffany Lorice every other week. I can’t tell you what specifically happened to her, as in what order of horrific events she met before her fate, because I don’t care enough to know. I don’t remember her or who she may have become; I doubt anyone else will either unless you show them a picture of her when she still had ears and a nose and a little pink tongue. Maybe one after another, she was raped, cut, murdered, made to eat her own flesh as well as ours. I’m sure you’ve already imagined this. Maybe she saw the light and killed one of the other captives, or perhaps she gave up everything about herself to become one of us. We get a lot of new recruits, and by choice, I refuse to acknowledge who my brothers and sisters were before they gained their citizenship. Maybe she’s with the group that escaped into the sewers. Wait, no, that was last summer…. Well, if she was with that group, then I can assure you, the things you aren’t capable of hallucinating that got to them were much more cruel than any man or woman you will meet today. Now, Otis….”

  A sob dies before it can clear Hap’s throat. He’s going to die at the end of a fishhook of a question mark.

  “We are not concerned about your Tiffany. Today, we feel regret for that poor, misguided Mr. Lusk. Did he tell you of the old, undying gods that don’t even deserve such a title? They don’t create or destroy with any purpose. They are cosmic roaches that hide beneath what we can see and touch. They are bacteria that kill and give life at the same time. They are…horrible.” A sheen of sweat glimmers across Johan’s brow. He speaks with the same level of bitterness that Hap wants to spit across his face, if only his lips weren’t so dry. “They don’t care about us; they will make girls and boys like you kill themselves if they so much as twitch in their sleep. We citizens fight to be recognized. Otis could have been one of our best and most wicked. You see, it takes us fighting against our nature to stand out to them. It takes us becoming more than human compassion, more than empathy and revenge, much, much more than love. People, when they’re dead enough, forget the love. No matter how much a wife remembers her sick husband, after she is dead, after her children’s children are dead, love goes away like the end of a long blink. The cancer is the victor. Cancer is to be worshipped. We wield death. I wonder, did Otis try and train you? You carved our emblem into your chest; do you know what it means? It is our solar system. It stands for all that we are, as mankind. All that we will defend as death’s disciples.”

  “Otis is dead because he…because you took his mom,” Hap spits out. It’s getting harder to breathe; the wire around his throat is slowly strangling him. There are several men and women scattered throughout the sea of folding chairs. More are coming, slowly, clicking into their spots as they sit with their backs firm and their eyes burrowing into Hap and Johan.

  “You think we don’t understand vengeance? You think we wouldn’t let Otis duel with the man who killed his mother? Sure, we’d pick a citizen at random. We wouldn’t remember who it was in a million years, but we respect revenge. We would’ve lied to him so sweetly. We have the utmost compassion for line-crossers, except when that line happens to cross into the unnamable. Otis sold his mind to the atomic bomb, and he couldn’t take it anymore. That’s why he cut his own throat. He didn’t give up on his pursuit, you see. He imploded.” They don’t know Hap is a murderer. Maybe…just maybe, that’s the card he can play here.

  “He would have killed you,” Hap says. “He would have killed everybody here.”

  “I would have told him it was one man who did it, and he would have believed it. Knock, knock, common sense makes it plain that revenge causes you to become blind. Speaking of which, are you seeing clearly? Have you been looking closely? Maybe the answer to your beloved’s fate was right in front of you.” Johan shakes his head because Hap doesn’t seem to be learning. “You know, we humans aren’t engineered to kill one another. Soldiers get PTSD for a reason because we aren’t created to kill. It’s not a natural thing. We have to adapt. Man is best at adapting. That’s what makes us different. That’s what makes us the next step in evolution. If you can slit your fellow man’s throat and do the same to his wife and kids, then you can face the true darkness with a thousand faces. Let me ask you a question before the ceremony begins.”

  Johan is going to talk no matter what Hap says. The silent crowd is building, washing ashore from a strange tide. They aren’t all dressed up; some aren’t wearing shirts. For the most part, they look just like people. Save for an unusually high count of long, tangled beards and tattooed faces, nothing screams murderer about them. Speckled across a city, even one as small as Providence, these people fit in easily enough. Hap imagines that the members of the cult form a line outside the ballroom doors that must snake around the entire eleventh floor. Cult members bow, one by one, before Otis’s cross with their fists over their hearts. What about the other hotel guests? How can it be a sure thing they’ll avoid the crucified man and roomful of lunatics on the eleventh floor?

  “Hap?” Johan says, and Hap flinches as the demented priest rubs a hand along his cheek. “Good, stay with me; you’re not bleeding that badly. You’re not on anything, are you? I don’t know what Otis’s false religion led him to consume, but it would be a shame if you were poisoned and neither of us knew it.”

  “I don’t do anything,” Hap says. He reaches a hand to the wire, and Johan doesn’t stop him as he begins to try to loosen it from his throat.

  “I was asking you, now, whether you think it’s funny that there are so many different breeds of just about every animal there is, but there is just one human. I’m not talking monkeys, certainly not race. We come from those that slaughtered the Neanderthals.” Johan laughs, looking to the crowd. The front rows are filled. The room is growing smaller, hotter. The Moon Shack’s lunatics are too silent. Their stare makes Hap want to shrink into the cracks of the rocking chair. If only it wasn’t so big. His feet don’t touch the ground. He is made small like a child.

  “We…. Hap, come on now, listen to me. This is fascinating.” Hap knows it’s all in his head, but his efforts to remove the wire are useless. He can feel the wire growing tighter, drawing fresh blood. “Neanderthals were one of many, many other subspecies of early humans. Not monkeys. I repeat, much different from monkeys. There were lots of variant types of what could still be classified as man. Some of them were giants compared to us. Some of them were like little leprechauns, I imagine. You want to know what happened to the rest of them? Everybody but us? It wasn’t the eldritch fungus, and it wasn’t a meteor. Our version of humanity was born because men were able to overcome their compassion, their trauma, by killing all the others, by massacring all the competition. By killing and beating and ruli
ng, we prevailed. We are superior now, Hap. Mercifully.”

  There is a loud click as the ballroom’s doors close, and the last few citizens find their seats. A silence sweeps across the room like a crinkled piece of paper that’s finally been smoothed out. Not a single one of these people so much as rustle in their chair; aren’t they supposed to be lunatic killers? It’s as if the idea of a community mellows out their uncontrollable twitches. Johan nods at the audience and then pats Hap’s cheek. Hap tries to draw his head back as far as the wire around his throat will let him. Slow smiles grow across the faces of those in the front row. Johan stands above the plain podium, tapping a microphone and causing the room to thump as the speakers hidden along the walls reveal their presence.

  “You are all brought here today because we have experienced what some would call a setback. Our nuptial celebration is ruined.” Johan looks down at the podium as if he is reading from a notecard, but Hap can see there is nothing there. Johan lifts his head, and his eyes are different. He’s molding them with tears that may as well be flames for his audience. “This saddens me, but it will not break me. I would like to thank our dear purple mistress, Angie, for all the work she did preparing the bride and groom who will never be.” An old woman stands up too quickly for her to be considered fragile, and she is made of purple; like an insect’s shell, she is completely shrouded, with her face hidden by a veil. The citizens applaud, offering a controlled and calculated response as if every clapping hand falls to meet another at once.

  “I would like to say farewell to Providence, but not to all of you. Stars be damned; come tomorrow, there may be a new speaker for our group. Part of me wants to hold on…the selfish part of me.” Johan walks over to Hap and plops a hand upon his head. He shouts now, wrenching his point home. “The citizen in me wants our message to be clear. No matter how much longer the other forces knock us down, we will continue to grow. We will continue to influence, to expand. Soon, very soon, we will, at last, go to war. The final war. If I am to die tonight, I hope I can die for all we believe in.” Hap squirms as Johan squeezes the top of his head. “I will see you all in the Shack. I will greet you all as we find shelter together. Now, what else?” Johan says, before taking a bow.

  “The Else!” booms the ballroom as the citizens’ voices become that of a titan.

  “What Else?” Johan screams into the microphone, gripping the podium as tears mix with the sweat dripping from his brow.

  “The Else!” The same synchronized clapping follows, creating galaxies in the space between every smack. Johan points to two men in the front row, and they run toward Hap while the crowd keeps up its clapping, its chant of Otis’s fairy tale thing who lives in the Shack.

  The two henchmen slice away the wire, and a bald-headed bastard in a jean jacket, riddled with blue tattoos all over his face, grabs Hap by the arm. Other men appear on either side of him, motionless, waiting to participate. A razor catches the light, and the crowd’s unified voice is booming to the point that Hap’s screams are drowned out. His arm, with the still-healing five-limbed branch tattoo of the Elder sign, is raised in the air as the other men hold him to the ground. The Elder sign, along with his skin, peels off in ribbons. There is more blood, more of that familiar fire: the rubbing of coals against his nervous system. The tattooed fucker in the jean jacket is holding the light strips of Hap’s wrist to his mouth as he prods the flesh with his tongue, slurping the strips down like sushi.

  Released, crawling along the floor, Hap attempts to make his way down the aisle between the folding chairs. The men are returning to their seats, resuming their shouting. Johan helps Hap to his feet, throwing his arm around him as the two of them make their way to the elevators at the back of the ballroom. “The Else! The Else!” the crowd shrieks from behind them.

  “You tried to cover it up. Maybe you should have done the same to Otis. The Elder sign…the Moon Shack doesn’t deserve the disrespect. When you see it, oh, when you walk inside, Hap…you’ll be thanking me.” Johan has something in his hand obscured by his side. The elevator dings, closing them in together. Even as the steel doors fold shut, he can still hear the crowd’s frantic cheering. A long dagger appears in Johan’s hand, like a massive silvery toothpick.

  “Where are…?” Hap begins as the elevator begins to rise. They’re already on the top floor, though—they’re going to the roof? Is Johan going to throw him off the side of the building?

  “It’s waiting for us. The Moon Shack is here. It showed up after the evacuation. We are all that’s left, dear. You are the only unblessed virgin in the building now that the old witch has popped her cherry, but you deserve a chance; you’ve earned at least a chance. Here, hold this, would you?” Johan hands the blade to Hap, offering the handle first. It’s pale, like a sliver of moonlight made solid. He ignores it; he doesn’t understand.

  “You and your girlfriend were so young. Do you even know what happens to a relationship after five years? After ten? What are you holding on to? I had a wife and daughter, and I’m not ashamed to say I killed them. I spared them from what’s coming one glorious evening after the sunset.”

  If what Johan’s saying is true, then why couldn’t Hap have just let Otis go on his mad killing spree? These people are so much worse, and they’ll continue to do worse. One man could’ve exterminated them, innocent casualties and all, and Hap had to go and stop him. Johan draws on.

  “I killed them because I realized I had allowed them to become my everything. But when I took a step back, I realized I had lost myself. I had traded in my soul to them. If that sounds crazy, it’s because I was for a time. But the Moon Shack was there to redeem me. A great man, Charles McKinley, was waiting for me beside the door. He welcomed me in. He introduced me to his family. I liked them—I loved them. You’re going to deliver me to them. Whenever you feel it—whenever you want to drive that little nail file into me—do it, boy. I’m ready. Then you get to go inside. Then you get to dine with the Else and all the others who have come before you.” All of this shit Johan has been talking it’s not just insanity. It’s a sales pitch.

  Johan prods the handle toward Hap’s arm; his wrist feels so ruined he can’t raise his hand, can’t grasp the handle. Johan lets go, and the blade slips from Hap’s weak fingers, clattering to the elevator floor. “Come on, like what you’d do with your woman. Get a grip! Stick it in; come on!” Johan grabs Hap’s left hand and places Hap’s own fingers around the blade. The door dings open, and the Providence skyline, lit up for the evening, sprawls out before Hap. Before him is a dirty rooftop speckled by great columns of air conditioners. On the far side of the roof sits a squat, ugly little shack. Drumbeats, the same maddeningly monotonous kind that he heard at Otis’s house, echo from all around him.

  “You know, if you kill me, you get to live. We’ll find out if Tiffany saw the moonlight, too. Maybe she’s in there. Maybe she killed for us. Maybe she’s waiting. Come on, I’d prefer to look at the city while you do it. I love it here, you know. Everybody always underestimates Rhode Island. You could push me off the roof if you’d like, but you need to put some effort into it. If I subconsciously jump, then you won’t be a killer.”

  Johan is holding the elevator doors open, and Hap is still confused. Hap’s also holding the knife. They want him to be a killer amongst killers and kill ‘til the days run red. His legs are shaking. They don’t know he killed Otis, that he’s already a killer. They don’t know anything about him. What does this even mean, then, about the Shack? About what it expects from him? About what it wants from him? The Shack. It’s real now, isn’t it? It stands beside a series of rusted cages stacked upon one another. Did they keep people up here? To look across at the city? He killed Otis. He can kill Johan.

  Hap lunges forward as Johan steps back reflexively, but not before the blade rips through the fleshy part of his leg above the knee. The fake priest crashes to the rooftop just outside the elevator’s threshold. The Shack, in t
he distance on the far side of the roof, seems to glow. It has pale walls with splotches of brown, and there’s a backwards half-moon carved into the door. The Moon Shack. Its wooden walls are filled with jagged carvings too far away to identify, though Hap recognizes the rough outlines of the symbols the citizens like to wield. Two windows on either side of the door exist as black portals to another world.

  Johan chuckles to himself, devoid of pain or fury. “Won’t let a doomed man have his last wish. Oh, you are evil. Go on now, the chest or the throat. You can make it slow, but make sure I’m not breathing when you’re done. A man can survive the strike of a hundred knives. I’ve seen it. Women too. Make it count. Go for the arteries; make me bleed. Come on; you’re doing so well, better than I thought you would. I’m thankful you’re drawing this out, but come on!”

  Johan’s chanting, leaning back, not clamping a hand over the gushing puncture in his leg. Hap turns, staggers back into the elevator, and jabs a hand at the button for the first floor. Johan can’t scramble to stop the doors in time. “The Else! The Else will punish you!” He’s shouting from the other side of the steel doors as Hap repeatedly jabs the “Close” button until there’s a click, and he starts to descend. The last thing Hap hears is a distant howl from beyond the doors, beyond Johan. It could be anything. Why would it have to be coming from the Shack?