Mike felt the geas release him, and he ran into the house. Taking the final bottle of wine from the rack, he poured half into the sink. Then he added Castalian Spring water into the bottle, mixing it with the remaining wine.
Returning, he held the bottle out to Dionysus. The winged creature took it without taking eyes off the forced Bacchanalia and downed it without hesitation. When Mike plunged his knife into Dionysus’ chest, the newly risen god fell without a whimper.
People, suddenly released, screamed and scattered in shock and panic. Most ran for their homes. None seemed to note the ash pile at Mike’s feet.
Mike sipped whiskey in front of his fireplace as he listened to the speakerphone.
“The effect of the media coverage about the attack on you by a crazed fan has been unbelievable,” his new agent was saying. “We got another offer for the rights to the story. I think you really need to consider this one.”
“I think,” Mike said, his eyes rising to the portrait and meeting Glen’s kind smile, “I’ll write this one myself.” His gaze flickered down to the two urns on the mantle. Between them, they represented the best and worst in his life, his muse and his monster.
Sam Knight has worked for three different publishers, curated four anthologies, authored six children’s books, four short story collections, three novels, and nearly five dozen short stories, including a Planet of the Apes story and a Wayward Pines story, both co-authored with Kevin J. Anderson.
A stay-at-home father, Sam attempts to be a full-time writer, but there are only so many hours left in a day after kids. Once upon a time, he was known to quote books the way some people quote movies, but now he claims that having a family has made him forgetful—as a survival adaptation.
Toad Man, Toad Man
Hailey Piper
Toad Man, Toad Man
Toad Man, Toad Man, hoppin’ along,
Best hope he don’t look at you wrong.
Almost to the front of the concessions line, a pointed finger prodded Sandy’s shoulder from behind.
“How dumb is this going to be?” Colette asked. Melanie nodded beside her.
“Licorice dumb,” Sandy said. Her friends didn’t push the point, it being her parents’ money that bought their tickets, sodas, popcorn, and candy. They just wanted to escape summer’s oppressive heat.
Sandy came with purpose. Magic lived at the antiquated Johannesburg Cinema in a way that it was dead everywhere else in town. The lobby’s velvet ropes, scarlet carpet, and old-fashioned marquee radiated glamor that lay distant in both space and time, but she pretended that glamor was present, that the four-screen, has-been cinema was a special place. Movie posters old and new drew her eyes with mystery and intrigue, haunting the walls with the promise of story.
One poster promised Blood-Curse of the Toad Man, ringed in golden lights outside Auditorium 2. She’d spotted it last week, an ad for today’s one-time screening. Despite the hokey title, its dark painting had a spellbinding aura. Against a marshy horizon pockmarked by mangrove trees and brush, a dark figure loped from the water toward Sandy. His lumpy silhouette was pitch black except for two mustard yellow eyes.
The movie was rated R and the girls were only fifteen, but the boy at the ticket counter was sixteen and easy. Sandy had convinced him with nothing more than a smile. It helped that apparently no one else had yet bought a ticket. The scent of faux leather seating mixed with popcorn as she ushered her friends down the aisle to the best seats—close to the front, but not too close.
“Fingers crossed that nobody else pops in,” Colette said, propping her feet atop the seats ahead. “Just us gals and a Toad Man.”
Sandy and Melanie began to dance in the aisle, their sneakers making smacking noises each time they left the sticky floor. They had done this on a bridge last July. Colette hissed for them to stop goofing off that day, too, in case someone showed up, but no one did. They’d only quit when the wind grew fierce enough to tear the girls away, never to return.
Some nights, listening to her parents shout at each other through the walls, Sandy wished it had. Perhaps the movie would carry them off instead.
Lights dimmed, she and Melanie scrambled into their seats, and the projector ticked behind them. The Johannesburg Cinema kept its trailer reel short. No point previewing more movies than it could show.
Colette’s finger again jabbed Sandy’s arm. “Take a sweet straw.” She offered a fistful of licorice and had dunked several into hers and Melanie’s paper cups. Sandy took a couple and sucked up fizzy cola as the movie began.
Darkness circled a boy and his dad, who sat in a bobbing wooden boat, a dim lantern between them. They chatted how their night fishing was going, their dialogue hardly audible under the chorus of crickets and frogs.
Or toads, Sandy supposed.
A fishing line snagged. The dad reached into the water to untangle it, only to be yanked under by hands unseen. “Pa?” the boy called a few times. Unanswered, he dipped his oar into the water, perhaps to row for help. The water tugged the oar underneath and the boy with it.
He could’ve let the oar tear out of his hands, Sandy knew, but this was the movies. Nonsense was part of how they worked.
The pond’s surface stilled. The title card appeared, Blood-Curse of the Toad Man, with red rain dribbling down each letter. A synthesizer ticked out the rhythm of a heartbeat, and children chanted over the opening credits.
Toad Man, Toad Man, a nest of bones,
Best hope Toad Man leaves you alone.
Their chanting faded as the auditorium door swung shut. Sandy glanced back.
The girls weren’t alone anymore. A stranger nestled into a seat several rows behind, his frame bundled in thick clothes. Why the layers? No sense escaping summer’s heat only to fight the air conditioning.
A slender ice cube fragment slid up Sandy’s sweet straw and across her teeth, making her shudder. Maybe the stranger had it right after all. She returned to the movie.
A detective, the lead, arrived in a swamp village to investigate a series of murders that were holding up a construction project. Real estate businessmen swore it was a conspiracy. The village madman ranted about a curse. Cut to night, something dragged a villager and construction worker underwater to the chant of unseen children.
Toad Man, Toad Man, he won’t wait long,
When it’s your turn, you’ll hear our song.
Colette shifted impatient legs. “But when do we see the Toad Man?” Melanie shushed her.
Panning shots followed the detective across indistinct swampland as another day faded to night, the world nothing but lightning bugs, moss-coated trees, and odd footprints in the mud. He and a village woman became romantic too fast.
A sticky rhythm began at the back of the auditorium, someone pacing the soda-stained floor. Sandy tried to ignore it, but when it kept going she looked over her shoulder to the stranger.
He was still seated. Was he lifting his shoes up and down? The sound came again, wet lips smacking shut and open. Melanie looked over with Sandy and shushed at the stranger. He wriggled in his seat, but the smacking stopped. The girls glanced at each other, shook their heads, and turned again to the screen.
The movie cut to the village and panned a black pond. Footsteps trudged through water, coming ashore, each louder than the last.
Sandy clenched her teeth. She knew when to expect a jump scare.
But the timing was off, and the clumsy Toad Man waddled from off-screen. He was nothing like the poster’s loping shadow, steeped in mystique and dread. His blood-curse was to have rubbery, fake-looking skin and white plastic eyes, a cheap Halloween costume in place of a special effect.
Colette and Melanie screamed laughter. Sandy sank low, her face burning. She’d wasted her mom’s money on this ’70s B-movie of all things? She tried to join in the laughter, but the children’s chant drowned her out.
Toad Man, Toad Man, comin’ at night,
Before that, pray you die of fright.
T
he chanters sounded like they believed it. They must not have seen the costume before recording the audio.
Colette and Melanie were still laughing when that wet smacking came again behind them, only once this time, but that was enough to kill their good mood. On-screen, the Toad Man’s mouth smacked open and shut, the noise almost identical.
Sandy leaned forward, transfixed as the Toad Man assaulted the swamp village. The costume didn’t look so funny anymore. It didn’t look realistic either, but she would’ve rather it had. Everything else in the movie—acting, sets, props—at least passed for Hollywood genuine, the most kind of real she would ever hope for in a movie.
The Toad Man wasn’t genuine or even Hollywood passable. His unreality shambled through the scene, a child’s dreamlike creation somehow manifested from crayon into an R-rated movie. He did not belong in this world. Every clumsy step threatened to throw him through the screen where he’d plop into a theater seat, its leather fake as his flesh.
Why was he here? He had no right. A better costume must have been thrown aside for this uncanny abomination. Sandy chewed a licorice whip down so fast that her teeth nicked her fingernails
Toad Man, Toad Man, closer he be,
Best he gets you and won’t get me.
When the nocturnal massacre ended, Colette sprang out of her seat. “Need to use the restroom. Mel, too.” Melanie nodded.
Sandy started to stand. “I’ll go with you.”
“Then who’s going to tell us what we missed?” Colette jogged up the aisle, Melanie close behind. Their purses knocked their sides as they ran.
Sandy watched them slip out the door and eyed the bundled-up stranger four rows back. He watched them too. Had he moved? She hadn’t counted the rows dividing them before, but he seemed closer. His shadowy, indistinct head turned from door to screen.
To Sandy. She looked to the movie before he could notice her stare.
The detective wanted to evacuate the village, but the local madman said everyone had to pay for the curse and blew up the bridge to the highway. The only escape was to hike through the swamp. Between scenes, the Toad Man waited for nightfall. Plastic eyes peeked through the pond’s surface as if watching all who watched him.
Sandy caught her teeth at her nails again and sat on her hands. It was just a movie. At the end credits, she would find out what poor guy had to crawl into that Toad Man costume and traipse through mud and pond scum. All this was fiction.
But she already knew that. That it was fiction didn’t comfort her this time. His being a costume meant the surreal Toad Man was only a skin that anyone could put on and bring to life.
Wet smacking started again, louder now. Sandy hoped it was Colette and Melanie crossing the sticky floor, but the auditorium door hadn’t opened. What was taking so long? She glanced at their seats, where red licorice poked out of soda cups. Usually she could make out every row once her eyes adjusted, but fingers of darkness coated the far seats, shrouding patches of the auditorium in false night. Her friends were the smart ones. They had probably abandoned her, realizing it was a mistake to leave the safety of warm daylight for hours of silence with strangers in the dark.
Toad Man, Toad Man, nowhere to hide,
Locked your doors, but he got inside.
Had Sandy wanted to be alone and miserable, she would’ve stayed home. Let her parents keep the bribe money that sent her out on the town where she couldn’t find divorce papers left on the kitchen table, the stuff of genuine chills that thankfully no movie could replicate.
Except she wasn’t really alone. Another wet smack forced her to glare over her shoulder. She couldn’t see four rows back anymore, only the distant projector’s white glow and the shape of the bundled-up stranger, now three rows behind. She hadn’t heard him get up. Shadow added another layer across him, thick as his clothing.
The darkness deepened when the movie again turned to night. Villagers, construction workers, the detective, and his love interest waded single file into the stagnant black swamp. Chanting rang through the trees, but there were no children among the fleeing survivors. The chant was in the wind.
Toad Man, Toad Man, what does he find?
Don’t you look back; he’s right behind.
Sandy tried not to look but couldn’t help it. The stranger sat two rows back. She could almost make him out, but the flickering projector flashed in her eyes, casting a ghostly circle on her sight. Clearer came a stench that overpowered popcorn. She recognized it for putrid, algae-coated pond water, undisturbed unless this stranger had washed his stinking clothes in it.
The auditorium door swept open. Shoes kissed the floor, Colette and Melanie dropped into their seats, and Colette leaned over with a whisper. “What’d we miss?”
Sandy couldn’t look at them. “They can’t get out.”
Melanie leaned over to ask a question, too, but gurgling drew her eyes to the screen, where the Toad Man snatched another victim. Watery screams rattled the auditorium speakers. Sandy smelled the broken pond surface and recoiled against her seat.
Weight pressed at her back. She didn’t look over her shoulder again, didn’t need to. The stranger now sat behind her. Clouds of swampy stink rolled out of his clothes. Didn’t the others smell that? Colette should’ve been whining about it by now, but she and Melanie only slurped soda through licorice, clueless and content. They had been out of the auditorium too long to sense the danger.
Victim after victim went to watery graves. The survivors dwindled until only the detective and his lover remained. He aimed his pistol this way and that, while she clung to his arm and shrieked at every shadow.
Just a movie. Not real. But what did that make the bundled-up stranger? Sandy couldn’t escape reality into movie magic and hide from the movie at the same time. If there was a third category between reality and fantasy, it had spawned the Toad Man.
Bubbles climbed her throat. She was sinking into the pond with the dead, algae pressing inside her lungs. The stench wafted from her soda when she tried to take a sip. Someone had replaced it with brew from the movie’s swamp. Wet smacking echoed through the auditorium, but this time it came from her sticky lips.
Toad Man, Toad Man, there’s one way through.
Offer your friends instead of you.
She glanced at Colette and Melanie. If they looked at her, what would they see just behind? A man bundled in clothing, a rubbery costume, or something worse, an avatar of swamp and decay? Their eyes never left the screen, no matter how badly Sandy fidgeted. She tried to focus, but the weight on her back grew heavier.
The detective and his love interest neared the shore, but chanting and croaking chased them. Water bubbled nearby, the Toad Man about to strike. “I’m sorry,” the detective said. He aimed his pistol, shot his lover in the knee, and trudged toward shore. The camera followed him, abandoning his lover as the Toad Man came for her.
Colette clicked her tongue. “So chivalrous.” She didn’t understand.
Hot breath clouded the rows. Sandy squeezed her eyes shut, but the back of her eyelids brought no relief. The projector light’s ghostly afterimage had transformed into the mustard yellow eyes of a creature wholly separate from the world. It was neither part of real life nor the product of human imagination, a thing impossible and yet absolute.
Best he gets you and won’t get me. Offer your friends instead of you.
The stink was inside her, infectious. Vomit threatened the edge of her throat. She stood sharp from her seat and charged toward the aisle.
“It’s almost over,” Colette said. “You’ll miss the end.”
Melanie must have spilled soda after they returned; the floor was stickier than before and sucked at Sandy’s shoes like mud. Smacking sounds stalked her, but she didn’t dare glance at the stranger now. She made it out the auditorium door and darted for the ladies’ restroom.
There was no one inside. Swamp stink traded for the chemical sting of cleaning supplies. Sandy hunkered over a dingy sink and splashed water i
n her eyes and mouth. It tasted muddy. She spat and stared at her reflection in the stained, cracked mirror. She didn’t mean to blink, fought the urge hard as she could, but it was a losing battle.
Brown eyes gave way to yellow. She forced her eyelids open. Familiar eyes. Blink. Alien eyes. Chanting floated at the edge of earshot, the words no longer distinct but muffled by the wall between restroom and auditorium.
Her voice came hoarse. “What do you want?” she asked but already knew. Her eyelids shut, locking her in with a sickly, inhuman glare. “I’m sorry.”
She tried not to think of Colette, Melanie, and the bundled-up stranger, instead thought of home and the hell that brewed there. It was solid, real, broke no rules like the movie had broken, promising fantasy but giving something that was neither fact nor fiction but Other.
The movie had to be getting loud, its screams piercing clear through the wall. Smacking came again, quieter now. Sandy was surprised there was anyone left for the Toad Man to kill. Her eyelids slid up and down again, and at each blink the phantom yellow gaze shrank into blackness.
Toad Man, Toad Man, hoppin’ away,
You get to live a few more days.
When the chant faded, Sandy left the restroom. Ten minutes must have passed inside, but eons had worn through Johannesburg Cinema. New posters appeared muted, as if years had drained all their color. Lights still bordered the poster for Blood-Curse of the Toad Man, but now several bulbs flickered or had gone out. Sandy avoided looking at the loping figure as she pressed open the door to Auditorium 2.
A glistening yellow eye filled the movie screen, wide as the auditorium. It was not the costume’s plastic, nor was it a real toad’s eye, but deep and ethereal in a way known only to nightmares. Liquid slid between its pupils and iris. It seemed almost human.
Then the movie cut to black, the synthesizer soundtrack repeated its heartbeat rhythm, and children again sang the Toad Man’s chant.
Monsters, Movies & Mayhem Page 20