He got up and stood there, swaying a little, feeling sad and lost.
Everyone looked at him.
He saw the same hunger in their eyes that was always there. But now, for the first time, he thought he understood it. A little.
Gail tried to snap at the air between them, but the gag didn’t permit it. Would she chew through it eventually? Mom did that once. She even ate part of the leather. It was cow, after all. Maybe they’d all have a last meal together. Leather. Cotton, too, but so what?
An ache opened up in his stomach. That was the best way to describe it. Opened. As if his whole body was a mouth. He thought about the popcorn and the Milk Duds. No. He didn’t really want those anymore. Maybe not even the beef jerky.
He knew what was happening. Gavin understood what he was getting hungry for. It was happening so fast, though. Or … was it fast? How long had it really been since Gail bit him? Hours. He closed his eyes and in the darkness behind his lids he saw his veins drain of their redness and go dark. His face was starting to get cold, too.
He felt two tears break and roll down his cheeks, but when he wiped them away and looked at his hand, he saw red-black smears.
The hunger was getting bigger. It was becoming insistent.
Gavin looked at his family and friends.
“I’ve got some stuff to do,” he said thickly. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He turned and hurried out, and he only fell twice.
-10-
It was dark out, so he turned on the exterior lights. He rarely did that because it drew other hungry people. That didn’t matter anymore, though.
Gavin worked as fast as he could, attaching the hoses from the tanker truck to the line of generators he’d networked together. They chugged and hummed and poured electricity into the cables that ran like snakes across the ground and into the back of the theater. A lot of power to operate the industrial projector. He tested the system and checked the redundancies. Everything was working perfectly, and he managed a smile. Or, thought it was a smile. It felt weird, though, and his teeth clacked together.
As if biting.
That frightened him, so he hurried. His fingers were so cold, and his feet were blocks of ice. Walking was getting hard because the cold was in his knees and hips now. It hurt, too. All his joints did.
Gavin set up the laptop in the projection room, opened the master file and started the software running. Then he peered out at the house, seeing the screen display appear, announcing a few trailers. Another smile. Another clack.
“Hurry,” he told himself, but the word didn’t sound like a word. Just a sound. A moan.
He double and triple checked everything, then he dimmed the house lights and shambled down to the theater. He picked up one of the big rolls of duct tape. Blue. Nice. His favorite color.
Gavin shuffled sideways along the row and sat down in the empty seat next to Mom. She stared at him but now her eyes were different. No hate anymore. It startled him and he looked around. Everyone was studying him. No one was glaring. No one was thrashing as if trying to lunge at him. No one was trying to bite.
They just looked at him.
He stood there, watching them watch him.
“Mom …?” he said tentatively.
There was no reaction. At least nothing like what she’d done every other time since she’d died and he brought her here. He raised his hand—the one with the bite—and held it close to her nose. She sniffed at it. And that was all. No anger anymore. No hostility. Sniffing his hand as if sniffing his newest cologne, or a bunch of flowers he brought her on Mother’s Day.
Something else opened in his chest. Not a hungry mouth this time, but something beautiful. She was Mom again. Okay, not really, but as much Mom as she could be. More than he ever expected her to be.
Gavin bent and kissed her cheek. Not even a flinch.
The coldness was growing inside of him, and despite the lovely glow inside he knew that the hunger was going to take him soon. It would make him want to go outside looking for something to eat.
“No,” he said, forcing him to shape that word. To make it sound like a real word and not a moan.
Gavin sat down. It took so much of what he had left to peel off strips of the duct tape. So much to bind his ankles together. So much more to wrap it around and around his stomach and chest and the back of the theater seat. He looped zip-ties around each wrist and bent to use his teeth to pull them snugly. The left was a little too tight, but he knew that soon it wouldn’t matter.
On the screen the trailers ended and the cartoons began.
He made it all the way through them. He thought he even laughed once or twice. But he wasn’t really sure. The rest of the family and friends sat with him. They were all watching. The last time he looked around he saw that they were staring at the screen. Entranced by the people moving there. By Charlie Chaplain.
Gavin settled back to watch the movie marathon.
It played for hours.
For days.
For weeks.
As far as Gavin and his family were concerned, it played forever.
Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times bestselling author, five-time Bram Stoker Award-winner, and comic book writer. His vampire apocalypse book series V-Wars is now a Netflix original series. He writes in multiple genres including suspense, thriller, horror, science fiction, fantasy, and action, for adults, teens, and middle grade. His works include the Joe Ledger thrillers, Glimpse, the Rot & Ruin series, the Dead of Night series, The Wolfman, Ink, Mars One, and others. Several of his works are in development for film and TV. He is the editor of many anthologies including Aliens: Bug Hunt, Don’t Turn Out the Lights, Nights of the Living Dead, The X-Files anthologies and others. His comics include Black Panther: DoomWar, Captain America, Pandemica, Highway to Hell, The Punisher, and Bad Blood. He is a board member of the Horror Writers Association and president of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. He lives in San Diego.
Flickering Dusk of the Video God
Luciano Marano
Flickering Dusk of the Video God
A fresh burst of white noise roars through my head and jittery tracking lines wiggle and squirm through my vision again, even worse this time. The world stretches and distorts like in a mirror in a funhouse that’s no fun at all.
The girl behind the bar pushes my pizza and a sixer of sweaty beers forward, a look of disgust on her small-town pretty face. If this were a movie she’d be played by Lori Petty, circa a few very hard years after Free Willy. She was nicer to me yesterday, even nicer when I first came in four days ago. I know how I look, enacting this, our daily routine, in the same wrinkled clothes again. I know what she’s thinking.
I desperately shove my fingers into my eyes until pain stars flare up and drive away the other stuff, blink hard. Things are normal again, and I realize I know this girl. I’ve seen her before, and not just in the bar.
She’s on the tapes.
For a second, even though it’s stupid and doesn’t matter, I want to defend myself. It’s a reflex. I want to tell the pizza princess that I’m not nuts, that she’s not so hot. A Rust Belt eight’s an L.A. two at best, baby. Back home, I’ve kicked hotter than you out of bed for snoring, for hogging the blankets. Ask my ex-wife. I’m still someone who matters. But I’ve been away from the house too long already.
Money down, sustenance acquired, I go back outside into the dishwater-gray afternoon, into my dad’s rattly Buick, down the only real road in this dead-end western Pennsylvania town I thought I’d escaped half a lifetime ago.
The world warps again. It’s happening more often. The ragged staticky lines do their awful dance and I pull over into the gas station lot, jamming my fingers back into my eyes until I begin to cry.
A knock on the window makes me jump. Fred—hardware store swami, bestower of king-size Crunch bars at Halloween—leans over me with an enormous CinemaScope smile. If this were a movie Fred would be played by Brian Cox circa Super
Troopers. He smiles and raps again on the window, insistent. I roll it down a crack, but just a crack. He’s on the tapes, too.
“You all right, Davie?”
I nod, wiping away tears with my sleeve.
“Sure is a shame about your old man. We’re all real sorry.”
His face is doing a strange twitchy thing, movements all herky-jerky like a movie watched in fast forward. His eyes don’t match up with his smile, words don’t match his lips. The soundtrack for this scene is out of synch.
“Need any help up at the house?” he asks, words coming a full second after his lips cease to move. “Going through their things can be real hard. And your old man, well, he never did throw nothing away, did he?”
I put the car in drive.
“Did he, Davie?” Fred’s smile is gone, his face too close to the window. “Did he keep… everything?”
I start to laugh as I drive away, leaving Fred behind. He looked so painfully earnest, so awesomely dramatic. If this were a movie—not one of mine of course, a good one—such a display would never fly, it’s too operatic. But in real life people in crisis often behave like bad actors. Life imitates camp, so maybe my stuff’s more realistic than the critics say. I mean, just look at me. Behaving like one of the characters in my own trashy films instead of doing what I know I should: Get the hell out of here.
Past the old white church, abandoned and covered in peeling paint. Stained-glass windows shattered by vandals. Other than that, though, things look shockingly great around here. Aren’t places supposed to be worse in reality than memory? Isn’t it the real world that comes up short, not time-tinted recollection?
I drive past the grocery store, marquee promising a sale on organic juice. Gone are the discount notices for Mountain Dew by the case. The parking lot is free of young mothers with too many screaming babies clinging to them. I don’t see a single obese form straddling a scooter puffing Pall Malls. Gone are the slouching junkie kids, and the shambling homeless drones with filth clouds in tow. The sidewalks are even and unbroken. Lawns are clear and mowed. Houses are freshly painted. Good God, is that a jogger?
It’s as if a Mayberry filter’s been applied to footage of my hometown, and that’s what I’m seeing projected on the car’s windows instead of actual passing scenery. What happened here? I drive past Dad’s shop and the familiar neon Video Realm sign, darkened now for good. No point going back there again. All those tapes are just movies.
Four days ago, it was the first place I went. Took a cab from the airport, a two-hour drive and a hefty fare, to find the door wide open, locks busted, tapes scattered all over and the sheriff (a pudgier young William Hurt, if this was a movie) already there, too eager to help me straighten up and figure out what had been stolen.
“Kids,” he said, greedy eyes scanning the scene, looking everywhere but at me.
“Meth heads?”
“Oh no.” His face was full of condescending civic pride. “We got none of that around here, thankfully. Not anymore.”
Maybe he was right. Nothing was missing. In fact, only the VHS section had been touched at all. The few DVDs and Blu-rays the old man had tentatively begun to stock, the only stuff in the place worth any money, were arranged just as they should be. Nobody cracked the register. Hell, there wasn’t even any candy taken. What kind of thieves break into a dead man’s movie rental shop to riffle VHS tapes and don’t even take any?
I came back and went through the entire inventory the next day. Every copy of every title was accounted for. Of course, by then I’d already found the tapes they’d been looking for. They were at Dad’s place the whole time. Safer there, he must have thought. And he was right.
I began to see what happened. Even a Z-grade schlockmeister like myself, the infamous David “Hacksaw” Holland, can put a plot that obvious together. There was no way they could have known I was in New York for a convention, no way they could have known I’d be home in hours instead of days. I surprised them, and nobody had time to check Dad’s house before I got there. Now I have the tapes, and they know it, too. But what does it all mean? What’s happening and who is involved? I’m only halfway through the tapes and already—
Tires squeal as I slam the brakes, jerk the wheel. A huge stag stands in front of the car. Dark charcoal, with an enormous ornate antler spread, eyes shiny and black. It appeared in front of me as if inserted somehow, out of nowhere. I watch it begin walking away, moving too slowly and then too quickly, like the fast forward thing is happening again. Like frames of this movie are missing.
The buck looks back once as it bounds away and out of focus. Not out of sight. Not into the woods that line the state road. It just gets blurrier and blurrier until it’s gone, worn-out film that’s been rewound too many times at last dissolving to nothing.
When I get back the door is open. Someone has been inside, but it doesn’t matter because the tapes and ledger were in the trunk of the car. I bring them in, along with the pizza and beer, and get back to it, my own little private film fest.
My father had still lived in the same small shabby two-story structure I grew up in, a glorified cottage crouching at the end of a short gravel drive, nearly impossible to see from the paved road if you don’t know what to look for. I’m bivouacked in the den, semi-unpacked duffel bag in the corner spilling clothes. I rearrange the VHS tapes in their clear cases into small stacks before the enormous widescreen television—the nicest thing he ever owned—like a miniature plastic Stonehenge.
Bottles of scotch stand ineffective guard around the room, the only thing the old man loved more than movies. He had good taste in both. Authentic classic posters adorn the otherwise drab walls. He was a cineaste of the highest order, my dad, which only made my discovery of the prominent David Holland display at the shop all the more shocking. Two or three copies of all my films—even To Serve the Devil’s Favor, hard to watch even for me—sitting by the register. Each one had a detailed synopsis attached, written in a tight professional script I know well. I didn’t think he’d even seen any of my movies, let alone that he’d promote them.
I’m only more certain he didn’t kill himself.
The store was somehow thriving. Even in the age of Redbox and streaming services, Frank Holland was the movie man in Pritchard County. In this part of the country yesterday is sacrosanct and tomorrow is suspect. Being the patrons of quite possibly the last video store in America would have been seen as something to be proud of, another fine tradition being upheld. And poor people are weirdly obsessed with customer service. Rich folks enjoy automation; they don’t want to hear the lawn boy at work. But these people, my people, know they’ll only ever be the boss when they’re exchanging cash for momentary privilege. They liked knowing somebody was there at the video store waiting to serve them.
Also, half the kids who grew up around here worked in the shop at one time or another. I spent most of my young life there. It worked out for all involved. Dad got cheap help, the kids got free rentals, and everybody in town either worked, had worked, knew or was related to somebody who worked there. Hence, the video store was an institution. Hell, more than an hour’s drive to the nearest theater, it was practically Hollywood.
It doesn’t make sense. Mom died more than a decade ago. He was as over that as he’d ever be. I suppose I can’t be certain he wasn’t sick. When was the last time we even spoke? I can’t remember. I ignored so many calls, deleted how many voicemails unplayed? I left him here, all alone. Would I have even believed him, would I have believed any of this, if I had bothered to answer?
He hated guns anyway, never owned one in his life. So I find it hard to believe my old man would have chosen to go out chomping on a pistol, like the sheriff said, even if I could picture him punching his own ticket—which I can’t.
I eat little, drink more—two, three beers rapidly. Plastered is my preferred state of mind to work in, nobody sober could have made Nasty Nuns Tame Sasquatch, but these are strange waters in which I can take no chances. I st
op at three for now, select the next unwatched tape from the nearest wobbly stack, push it hesitantly into the bulky VCR.
The cool feel of plastic, the smooth electronic sound of the tape being accepted, the closing of the little front door, the whirring as it begins to play: familiar reassuring things I did not realize I missed. I am comforted. The glaring TV screen is the only light in the house and I huddle before it like a campfire, a man lost in the woods, clutching my father’s ledger.
Then, the images begin.
I’d thought myself desensitized to violence. Hadn’t all the panic-ridden shrinks and parental groups promised that would eventually happen if only we watched enough? I’m a professional provocateur, a connoisseur of atrocities, but this is different. This is real.
In a large empty barn, three men are wrestling with a struggling young girl. She’s wearing an oversized T-shirt, hair wild from fitful sleep, eyes wide with panic. Her bare feet and legs are kicking, fighting desperately. If this were a movie—a real movie, I mean—the girl would be played by some unknown. Somebody cheap with great legs.
Over the girl’s mouth, muffling her screams, is a thick patch of duct tape. One of the men grappling with her is Fred, good old smiley Fred.
The men never speak. It’s clear they don’t know about the camera, never once even look in its direction. They tie the girl to a large wooden post and leave. She sobs into the gag. The picture is black and white and grainy, clearly recorded on video with a cheap camera. The sound is scratchy and clipped. A lantern is hung near the girl cutting out a section from the surrounding dark like a theater spotlight. The contrast of the picture is high, making the edges of the room impossibly black.
Monsters, Movies & Mayhem Page 3