The Other Side

by Daniel Willcocks

  I awoke at the bottom of the stairs with aches and pains shooting up my legs. It was dark, but I could make out a series of glowing candles flickering in a large circle. As my eyes adjusted, I could see a group of individuals in leathered beaks surrounding the configuration of candles. There appeared to be no edges between their robes and the darkness.

  In the middle of the circle was the bent body of a man lying next to a skeleton. They rested on an etching that was carved into the ground. I thought to call for help but could not find my words. By the time I could process what I was seeing, I realized I was shrieking and already scrambling to find my way up the stairs. In my raucous fumbling, one figure broke from the formation and removed the beak and hood from his head. The last image I have of the night was a skinless man without ears.

  I told you, my memory of that night was bleak.

  3

  There are hangovers and there are hanged-overs. I woke up the next afternoon to a blistering fever, having somehow been passed out and up all night at the same time. The worst thing about a fever is that it makes your bones ache, your blood boils, and everything is sensitive to touch—like you have no skin.

  I never did get that coffee from Ellie at the end of the night, or maybe I did, and I didn’t remember. I spent the next week or two as a zombie, just puking my brains out; I remember that. Classes and finals were missed and, before I knew it, I was a community college dropout with nothing to say to anybody—not hard to do when you grow up a foster kid, always a ‘son’ with an unspoken asterisk.

  In the days and weeks and years that followed, there had been thin stretches of sobriety, but there had also been profound stretches of walking the highway and kicking stones in a drunken stupor, like some kind of demented animal on the prowl. As weeks bled into months and years, I lost my home, my friends, and my so-called family. I never worked up the courage to talk to Nicki again, either. In those days, well before cell phones, it was easier to just disappear, and I made a habit of it. I did well to stay away from Marvin’s though; the idea of going back was about as good of an idea as sending a werewolf to live on the moon.

  But, eventually, I saw the thing I always hoped for and dreaded at the same time: a ‘property for sale’ sign. Apparently, Marvin’s Tavern was going to disappear. I guess I decided that if there were ever a reason to go back, it was to say goodbye.

  4

  I took the long walk to Marvin’s, trekking up the backside of the hill and taking my time to remember what it was like when I first found the place—my clothes soaked, my body exhausted, and totally out of breath. I couldn’t decide if I hoped to find Ellie still working there or not. Even if she did still work there, would she remember me, one of her favorites?

  I made my way around to the front, admiring the construction that two hands had built, and two more hands maintained for so many years—at least in the places where you could see the original work. A cold sweat broke out on the back of my knees; I wasn’t sure of what I was hoping to find or do when I opened the door.

  No, I knew the answer to that: have a drink.

  Touching the doorknob, I remembered the image of Maurice—the bloodied man without ears from the cellar. He had taken up residence in the back parts of my mind over the years, a reminder that I just might be clinically insane. God knows what happened down there that night or what was in my drink. I turned the knob and had to kick it in a bit—stubborn as ever—making for more of an entrance than I intended. I closed the door behind me and was greeted by a round of applause from a full room of patrons.

  “Hey, there he is, the guest of the hour!” one of them yelled. Men and women across the bar rose to their feet in a gradual wave and continued to clap for me.

  I was dumbfounded by the reception I received—half unsure if I was hallucinating, or if I was standing near someone else who recently arrived and deserved the celebration. I was most struck by the sameness of the place, as if I had walked into some kind of living, breathing, time capsule. The whole thing was like walking into a dream. I’ve been called delusional before, but, I swear, they were waiting for me.

  Cheers continued to follow and deflate as I smirked and nodded, doing my best to hold back the sense of panic building in my chest. Something was wrong. Something was oh-so-very wrong.

  “For you, Ryan!” a guy named Ed called out from the entrance of the bar. He lifted his drink and took a swig. I remembered him; he was the local dancing drunk.

  “Oh, c’mon. What is this shit?” I muttered under my breath. I was ready for the Marvin’s Tavern experiment to end immediately. I hustled to turn back to the door but was blocked by a couple wearing what looked like party clothes from the 1920’s.

  “It’s for you, Ryan!” they answered with obscene smiles.

  “How do you know my name?” I asked in a whisper. I shrank back in an effort to distance myself from the attention. A pit of nausea rolled in my stomach, and I tried to make my way again for the door. But, no matter how I turned, the whole tavern seemed to bend and turn with me, giving me the feeling I had been drugged and dizzied. The bar was the only way forward.

  A man seated at a booth tipped his hat to me. “Up there, Ryan,” he said. He pointed to the stool a little right of center from the bar and nodded.

  “Don’t let them bother you. We’re just happy to see you is all,” another voice called out.

  It was like someone stuck me on pause while everyone else around me was allowed to keep moving—drinking, cheering, celebrating. A woman in a navy blue dress approached me and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Drink with us, Ryan,” she said.

  “Ye-yeah,” I stuttered out, finding my voice. I scanned the room in detail, taking in the worn, wooden flooring and pinstripe wallpaper still splitting at the edges. The odd assortment of customers in the bar looked to be attending something like a decade party with everyone in costumes from the 1920’s and on. Regardless of their outfits, all eyes were on me, encouraging me to make my way towards the stool that seemed to be waiting for me. I walked to it with hesitation, skimming my hand against creaky tabletops along the way.

  As I approached the bar and my old, wobbly stool, I saw Ellie posted behind the counter, still looking as young and spry and joyful as ever. We made eye contact and she patted the place at the bar in front of her. Something about her calmed the waves in my stomach.

  “What’ll it be tonight, young blood?” she asked with a smile.

  “Whoa, hold on,” I exclaimed with pause. “What in the hell is going on here?”

  She laughed. “It’s good to see you again, Ryan,” she said.

  “I mean it. What the hell is going on?” I stammered, looking at the countertop and back to Ellie. “And look at you, what is your secret?” I asked, dragging out the words.

  “Just breathe, Ry Guy. Here’s a gin and tonic. Let’s ride that train for a while,” she said.

  I nodded, forcing a false sense of ease.

  Ellie poured my drink, slid it to me, and then took a swig off the bottle. “Don’t tell,” she said and winked.

  “Yeah,” I replied with a sneer. How was it possible that this place, that these people could look so much the way I left them a decade or so ago? The question had me scrambling to make sense of my sanity.

  “Nothing they can do to you, now,” the man to my left said. It was Hank. I was so distracted by seeing Ellie, I didn’t even realize he was sitting right there with me, looking not aged by a day since our last night together.

  “Goddamn, Hank!” I reached over and shook his hand, surprising myself with my own enthusiasm.

  “Goddamn yourself,” he chuckled, still grasping my hand. “It’s been too goddamned long.” He gave my arm another shake.

  I surveyed the place from over Hank’s shoulder, noticing a cluster of crooked pictures adorning the wall—still not straightened since I last saw them. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Ellie watching me with a look of warmth and concern. A part of me wished to let my guard down, w
ished to admit that—despite my questions—it just felt good to be back.

  “Alright, let’s have a round for Ryan here, a drink in his honor!” a man called from a table in the back.

  “Cheers to that,” a woman next to Hank said, and took a sip of her beer. She was wearing a green dress that left me feeling unsettled—a reminder of the night when everything unraveled. The resemblance was unsettling.

  “Cheers!” Ellie returned.

  I sat back firmly on my stool and took a sip from my drink. “I just don’t understand any of this,” I started. “How did any of you know I’d be here? How do you all look the same?”

  “We’re just so happy you’re finally here with us,” Ellie smiled.

  Hank nodded after taking a sip from his drink.

  “Why is everyone saying that?” I asked with rising tension in my voice.

  “C’mon, Ry Guy. Don’t be like that. This is your night,” the woman in green encouraged.

  “My night? I don’t have a night.” My frustration was building again with every statement that avoided my questions. Nothing made sense—the round of applause, everyone knowing that I’d be here. “How do you know my name?” I asked her. “How does everyone know my name?”

  “Poor bloke’s confused. Still doesn’t know, does he?” a man replied from behind Ellie. He reached for a bottle on the top shelf behind the bar, presenting his back to me. “If he doesn’t know, he can’t see the world as it is,” he continued, reviewing the handwritten label on the bottle in his grip.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  He turned around and placed the bottle on the counter. Pound for pound and mustache for mustache, it was the man from the picture wiping down the glass; it was Marvin. “Should someone tell this poor bloke what happened?” he asked.

  “This is impossible!” I yelled. “Y-you’re impossible,” I stuttered in disbelief. The pit of nausea in my stomach rose with immediacy. Something was brewing in my gut and it was just moments away from pouring out of me.

  Marvin placed two glasses beside the bottle. “Welcome to my tavern,” he said with arms raised, presenting the bar to me.

  “Maybe you should tell him,” Hank suggested to Ellie.

  “You can’t be here,” I muttered to Marvin, to Ellie—to all of them. The sensation in my stomach continued to churn.

  Ellie let out a sigh. “Ryan, Ryan, Ryan,” she said after a deep breath.

  I stared at her blankly, wondering if I would make it to the bathroom in time to throw up if I had to. Even if I could make it, I decided I’d rather puke all over the countertop than to see a bathroom in Marvin’s Tavern ever again. “You can’t be here,” I repeated.

  Marvin poured two drinks from his mystery bottle and pushed one towards me, taking a sip from the one he poured for himself.

  “Is the bar closing?” I managed to ask, pushing the drink away. I didn’t know where that question came from, but it felt important to ask—otherwise, it was like I had fallen into a spider web.

  “We are at the end of our lease, I guess you could say,” Marvin returned with a laugh. He glanced to Ellie and waited for her to fill in the blanks.

  Ellie caught Marvin’s gaze and turned back to me. “We hoped the sign might get you to come back,” she said. Ellie took a deep breath before continuing. “Do you really want to understand?” she asked.

  I nodded. Every part of my body was crawling with dread. This was definitely an oh-so-very-bad idea to come back here. I had officially shipped a werewolf to the moon.

  “The last night you were here, you asked me for a special drink. Do you remember that?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  Marvin pointed to the drink he poured me.

  “So, I gave it to you,” she explained, “but the drink I made you was a concoction of sorts—something that allows the user to see through time and space. I was trying to break the news to you, hon, because I didn’t think you knew.”

  I couldn’t find my words. “Knew w-what?” I choked out.

  “Well, that you’re dead, hon,” she continued.

  I gasped for air and could find none. The rush of nausea in my stomach took over and pumped waves of vomit out of my mouth. But it wasn’t thick or heavy or acidic; it looked like water.

  Marvin snatched my glass away with haste. “This,” he said, “would’ve helped with that.” An air of disappointment stood out in his voice.

  “I’m sorry, Ryan,” offered the woman in the green dress.

  “But, but–” I stammered between bouts of heaving, looking to Hank.

  “Yeah, Ryan. When you were out on the lake,” Hank started, “I think you drowned.” He put his hand on my shoulder and nodded quietly.

  A trail of water drooled from the corner of my mouth.

  “My tavern is for the dead. You can’t find it unless you’ve already passed on,” Marvin explained. His words pulled the wind from my lungs. The lights above the bar wavered and burst with a blast of electricity, forcing me to shield my eyes from the raining broken glass. I turned back to Marvin; his neck looked like it had bent and broken sideways. He watched me from an impossible angle and smiled. “It burned down after the bottle bomb in the ’20s,” he continued. His voice was strained and pressured, attempting to speak at his contorted angle.

  I turned my gaze to look back at Ellie. Her smile and warm cheeks were replaced by divots in her skin and gaping holes of missing flesh. I gasped and fell off of my bar stool. As I hit the ground, the entire tavern devolved again. It was charred and black, and it smelled of death. Water, again, welled up into my throat and mouth.

  “Old places like this, the Muslin curtains over the windows, they burn quick and easy,” Marvin continued. “No fire escapes, no emergency lighting, just a bunch of burning people trying to pull open a jammed front door with bodies blocking the way.” He struggled to make his voice heard through his crooked neck.

  The top of the bar cracked and fell to the ground with a thud, sending smoke and ash into the air. I scrambled backwards on the floor and pushed away from them. Ellie was riddled with bullet holes and missing pieces of her body.

  I crawled backwards and bumped into a man at a table. He looked down at me with a grotesque smile, his teeth pressed through bubbling and decayed skin that hung melted over his mouth. “Here, let me give you a hand,” he laughed. He extended his hand down to me and it was nothing but burnt bone and tendons. His clothes had welded to his body, making it impossible to identify charred cloth from skin.

  “But the people downstairs!” I managed to say. Water ran from my mouth with every word, choking my breath. “They were real!”

  “No, honey, not anymore. Not when you were seeing them,” Ellie answered. “Places like this, they gather memories of the things that happened, and they like to dwell on them from time to time. I was trying to show you the coven meetings that took place in the cellar during the prohibition years. I wanted to help you make sense of things—of me and my family.” Blood sprayed from her mouth with her every word.

  “Your family?” I asked through a series of muffled attempts. Water pooled in my mouth and nose.

  Marvin put his arm around Ellie’s vibrant corpse. “This is my Beth,” he explained.

  “Ellie is short for Elizabeth, Ry Guy,” she replied. “And the memory of this place that I was showing you was that night. I wanted you to see. I wanted you to know!”

  I looked back to Hank on his bar stool. His beard was scorched, and his skin hung from his body like loose sheets drying in the wind. “It’s true,” he said. His eyes looked as if they had boiled in his skull and dripped down his cheeks.

  “What night?!” I wanted to scream but couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. I scooted myself back into another table and knocked a pile of bones to the floor. Footsteps approached from behind; it was the skinless man without ears from the basement. The muscles in his face pulled to form a smile.

  “You met our boy, Maurice,” Ellie went on. “During
those prohibition years, after Marvin died, Maurice wanted so badly to have his family back that he found a way to do it! Every night, he hosted coven meetings in the cellar. He gave of his flesh to resurrect his flesh—just like the others taught him to do, you understand?”

  Maurice reached his red and fleshy hand down to me to pull me to my feet, but the strength had left my body and I fell back to the floor in my puddle of watery vomit.

  “And he kept at it until we could return to him,” Ellie went on. “But, by then,” she chuckled, “there wasn’t much of him left.”

  “W-what night?” I stammered again.

  “The night Maurice finally succeeded!” Ellie answered. “The night we were reborn.” A ball of maggots fell forth from one of the holes in her neck. I wanted to shriek but gagged instead.

  “Oh, you’ll get used to the pain of it,” Marvin said in his cracked voice.

  “Good to have you with us, Ryan,” a voice called out from the front of the bar. It was Ed. He was smashed against the front door where he had been hoisting his beer bottle only moments ago. Burnt bodies littered the ground around him and on top of him.

  “We didn’t mean for you to find out like this,” the woman in the green dress said. She stood and approached from behind Maurice. The skin was missing from her entire body. “I’m sorry, Ry,” she offered.

  I crawled to my feet and attempted to worm my way across the ash-laden ground towards the door. With every effort, the door seemed to stretch further away.

  “How do you know my name?!” I choked through mouthfuls of water. “Why me?!”

  The skinned lady continued towards me, wincing as her vulnerable flesh made contact with ash floating through the air. Maurice joined her, both of them standing side by side in front of me.

  “She’s your mom,” Ellie explained. “She and Maurice, they’re your parents. But the government took you away from her when they found out about some of the things she did.” Ellie paused and smiled revealing her blood-stained teeth. “But we wouldn’t let them keep you from us forever, Ryan. We’re your family.”