again. “Just want to be alone for a while.”
My mother smiled. “Your dad wanted me to yell at you for causing a scene at the funeral,” she half-whispered. “Let’s say I went ahead and did that, okay?”
I smiled back at her. “Okay,” I said. “Anything you need,” she said, raising her eye-
brows. I nodded. She closed the door behind her. “Anything I need,” I repeated. I went back to the desk and retrieved the sheet of paper. I would drop it in my dad’s industrial shredder once I’d
memorized the contents.
What I needed, apparently, was a stiff drink, which I’d never previously had nor craved.
“Not an issue,” Steve said three nights later. “Here, drink this. It’ll warm you up.” He handed me a little metal flask. “Make that little scratch feel better, too.”
I hesitated, pressing down on the bandage I had wrapped about my left hand. As part of the conditions for the ritual, Julie had made rather deep (I thought) cuts in first Steve’s palm, then mine. In typical fashion, Steve had insisted that Julie cut herself as well, a request she ignored as if she hadn’t even heard it. We had then both held our hands over a cloth sack (roughly the size of a human body, and filled with what I didn’t want to know) set over Michael’s grave and shook some of our blood onto it, per Julie’s instruction.
“Go on, drink it!” he repeated. “I ain’t got all day.”
“Steve,” Julie said in what I had identified as her “usual tone” with him. She seemed a lot more like a tolerant mother than a sixteen-year-old girl with a severe nicotine addiction.
I shrugged and took a swig. Fire.
Coughing, I handed the foul contents back to him. “Ah, young man!” Steve said, tipping the flask back. “You fail to appreciate the Amontillado! Curses on thee!” He shook his fist at me. “Curses!” “Steve!” Julie was lighting the wick of an oil lamp she had set beside Mike’s headstone. Already, a small stone bowl of some wicked-smelling herbal concoction was burning in front of it, smoke wafting gently over the tightly cinched cloth sack. The latter appeared to be leaking a dark substance now, an amount far in excess of the blood it had
already been sprinkled with.
“Wasn’t the Amontillado what he promises the guy he’s going to—” I started.
“Guys, let’s get focused here,” Julie said. “I hope I get these fucking words right.” She took out a small sheet of paper and reviewed it by the dim light of the oil lamp. The wind was starting to pick up.
I glanced out over the little valley below. In the darkness, you might almost believe that the gravestones peppering the area were tiny dancing shadows, all gathering to witness the strange rite on the hill where we stood.
She produced a dark green wine bottle out of the black bag and pulled out the cork. “Okay,” she said.
“Woah,” Steve said, suddenly interested in the proceedings. “Pass that on over here—”
“Trust me,” Julie said flatly. “You don’t want what’s in here.”
Steve frowned dramatically.
“Now. Just can it for a few minutes, okay?” She was looking directly at Steve as she said this. He smiled and shrugged with mock innocence.
Julie gazed at the bag set over the grave of Michael Flowers, and began to mumble something under her breath. Within seconds, the temperature dropped substantially. I began to shudder. Even Steve appeared uncomfortable.
I pulled the hood of my black wool jacket over my head.
Julie’s eyes closed. The oil lamp began to flicker, and smoke from the burning herbs began spinning tornadically this way and that in the weirdly uncertain breeze. What in the world was she mumbling? It almost began to seem like it was echoing throughout the graveyard.
Slowly, she began to pour the contents of the bottle over the cloth sack. I could hear part of what she was saying, now; something like: “Mortui vivos docent! Mortui resurgent! ”
The bag began to move, as if there was something in it. I stared, terrified, riveted.
Julie continued to chant for a few moments more, and after emptying the contents of the bottle on the sack, a pale, purplish-mauve radiance began to emanate from it. She stepped back as the luminosity grew.
My eyes widened in astonishment. This was just like a scene in a horror movie—what had I just stumbled upon? Who the fuck were these people? Dreams of weird creatures were one thing—but actual resurrections from the dead?
The luminescence became stronger, and the contents of the sack began to writhe and moan. In stark terror, I chanced a look at Steve; he was literally standing there on the other side of the grave, frozen in place, eyes agape, mouth open in astonishment.
Julie was clearly in some sort of trance. She slumped down to her knees on the ground, eyes half-lidded, gazing impassively at the cosmically un-fucking-believable event transpiring before us all.
The bag began to shred. Light escaped from the bag like a luminescent fluid, pouring out onto the earth around it, which appeared to heave slightly in response, as if quenching its thirst after a long drought.
There was a final blaze of light, so bright I had to shield my eyes from it.
When I opened them again, it was to see a lean and muscular figure, naked and soaked in blood, standing in the place where we had all been looking a moment ago. The wind had died down. Silence returned.
Michael Flowers gazed down at his hands, then at the full moon in the sky above. Somehow, I knew that he was utterly aware of our presence—an aura of total control radiated from him, dominating the situation in its entirety. Julie rose up, suddenly bearing a large swathe of dark cloth, which she draped over him as he raised his arms. With his face covered in blood, he looked like some mad, cowled monk.
“Well then,” he said without taking his eyes off the sky. “Let’s begin our lessons, shall we?”
And thus began what Mike called the Bhairavi Society. The monthly lectures...the secrecy...the Ordeals...we basked in it, we absorbed it, and— whether or not we could actually trust Mike—we got stronger.
All the while, I kept my knowledge of the message from “Pete” utterly to myself. I hid the pen at the back of one of my desk drawers. I tried writing out the other side of the sheet as I had memorized it—the side that seemed comprehensible initially— with the “magic pen,” but all I got was garbled nonsense.
I was frustrated, yet something intangible kept me from relaying any information about the affair to anyone else in Fear Club—especially Mike Flowers.
But everything changed on the night of Amanda Whitfield’s party.
part three
QUICK FIX
When I saw the grid of letters reproduced in the little journal, embers of memory suddenly erupted like an inferno.
...Steve snorted. “So obvious,” he said.
“Wait a second here.” I said. I stood up slowly from my seat at the patio table in the backyard of Amanda Whitfield’s house. “I know this.”
The party rang out in full force just around the corner. Something battered at my conscious awareness as I read the uncanny journal I had removed from the box in the Murk. Like the sensation you get just before something truly terrible happens.
“What are you talking about?” Julie said. “You mean that you—” Steve said.
“Yes,” I said, pointing at the grid of letters in the little book. “Yes. I can read this!”
“So what the fuck does it say?” Steve said.
I hesitated for a moment. “It says—” I stopped. “Oh, my God.” As I rehearsed the words in my mind, the floodgates opened. I saw what was about to happen—or, at least, I began to see it with increasing clarity, as each moment passed.
I grabbed Steve by the shoulder. “We’ve got to get the fuck out of here! ” I whispered harshly. “Right now! ”
Julie was up already. I grabbed the key and sho
ved both it and the book into my jacket. We started back toward the party. And that’s when I saw the “wolfman” again, in the John Travolta getup, dancing in the midst of the crowd.
“Shit!” I backed against a wall. Julie and Steve seemed to sense the seriousness of the situation and followed suit.
“Dude!” Julie said. “What the fuck—”
“That guy’s about to kill someone!” I tried to keep my voice down and my wits about me.
Steve glanced around the corner. “Which guy?” he said.
“The wolfman!” I said.
Steve turned to Julie. “I think our boy’s finally lost his shit—”
“Steve! I’m fucking serious!” I said. “Can we save her?” I was frantic now. “Oh, shit. Molly. Molly’s about to come around the corner.”
Julie peeked around the corner. “Holy shit, Charley!” she said. “She’s right over there. She just headed out the back door—”
My mind was racing. Save Molly? Save the wolfman’s dance partner. Diversion? The bat-winged creature on the roof of the house...the four monster hunters...
I knew what to do. At least, it seemed like our only chance.
I grabbed Steve by both shoulders. “Don’t follow me,” I said. “You and Julie go grab Molly. Fucking kidnap her if you have to. Then go that way” —I pointed to the side of the house— “to get to the car. And don’t go back to the fucking party.” I shook him once to show him I was serious. He nodded. I sprinted for all I was worth to the back
fence and over it without a second glance.
About twenty yards of lawn lay beyond the fence from the street, where the monster hunters’ Pontiac 6000 was already rumbling toward me. I ran directly for it. They screeched to a halt.
“Werewolf!” I yelled as I ran up to the window.
I bent over double for a second and retched. “Woah, dude,” the long-haired guy who was
driving said. “What’s up? Are you all—”
“Werewolf! Killing girl! Please!” I pointed, then retched again.
The amazing thing about monster hunters is, I guess, the speed with which they can mobilize when their life’s work is at stake.
I collapsed to the ground briefly, and one of them—the guy who had been working the camera— came over to check on me. The driver had taken one more quick look at me, then extracted a handgun from within his army-issue jacket, cocked it, and leapt out of the car. He and two of the others were practically at the fence before I could even rasp out my name. The guy who had been working the video camera knelt down by me.
“My name’s Fitz,” he said. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
I gazed at a black-gloved hand holding up three fingers against the glow of an orange street-lamp. “Um—” I said.
“Good. Can you get up?” He offered me a hand. I grabbed it and unsteadily began to pull myself up. Gunshots rang out from the direction of the party.
I collapsed again.
“Hey, it’s all right,” Fitz said. “No one’s gonna get hurt. We’re on it.” He lifted me up and leaned me against the car. “We are, however, going to need to get the fuck out of here in about sixty seconds. I figure, nice ritzy neighborhood like this, cops’ll probably take no less than a minute to get out here.” He laughed. “Rich bitches in trouble? Oh, you bet your fucking ass they don’t want to be handing out any goddamned suspensions!”
I heard car engines revving and tires screeching from the direction of the house. Some general commotion. No further gunshots, though.
He pulled out a handgun. “This will get you in trouble with the law,” he said, cocking it. “It will also get you out of trouble when the law ain’t around.” He laughed again. “Can you breathe?”
I could breathe. “Yeah,” I said. “I can breathe.” “After you,” he said, opening the car door.
As soon as I got in, Fitz’s cool demeanor became focused intensity. We were swerving around the corner toward the front of Amanda’s house about thirty seconds later.
One of the other hunters was already waiting in the circular driveway out front.
“What took you so long?” he said.
“Dead weight,” Fitz said, jerking his thumb back at me. He laughed. I cringed. Fitz had popped the trunk and the other hunter rummaged through it briefly.
I noticed with relief that Julie’s Honda was gone. A number of doors and windows on the house were flung open, but not a soul was in sight. Lights burned everywhere. I noticed with chagrin that I could still hear music from within the house, dimly. I noticed with even more chagrin that it was still the fucking Bee-Gees.
Seconds later, the other three hunters emerged from the party. Two of them ran fore and aft of a body bag—
“Um, did you guys—” I said.
Fitz looked at me in the rear-view mirror. “Yup,” he said. He put the car in gear.
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” shouted the longhaired guy, leaping into the front seat. The other two crowded in beside me after dumping their corpse into the trunk and slamming it shut.
We peeled out just as sirens became painfully noticeable. Everyone in the car was silent, breathing heavily. The guy next to me smelled like fresh dirt and cap-gun smoke.
Fitz seemed to drive brilliantly, on instinct, and even cut directly across a small playground at one point, emerging onto a larger street that fed out the other end of the neighborhood. In a few moments, we were clear of the neighborhood itself. Fitz pulled up to a red light on one of the Forty Winks main streets and stopped.
“Back to Pete’s for a midnight snack?” he asked.
“Can’t,” said the long-hair. “Pete’s dead. We just killed him.”
“Pete’s DEAD?” I repeated. It had to be—it certainly was—the “Pete” who had written me the note. Who else? Before this had happened, the connection would have been maybe arbitrary—but now?
The long-haired guy turned to look at me and nodded. “Took me by surprise, too. Pete Jarry! A fucking werewolf. Can you believe it?”
“I—” I didn’t quite know what to say. Pete— the stoner kid from English class—Stek’s brother, of course... “Are you sure?”
“Well, that’s what he said,” the long-hair insisted. “I pulled the gun on him. He drops that body he was munching on and starts waving his hands. ‘It’s Pete!’ he yells at me. ‘Pete Jarry! Don’t shoot! I can control it!’”
The other two hunters were nodding their heads in agreement.
“That’s what they all say,” he continued. How many times had they done this?
He finally introduced himself. “Booker Reuchlin,” he said. “Who are you again?”
“I’m Charles—”
“Head back to rendezvous,” he interrupted, speaking to Fitz. “And try to avoid the main streets?”
Fitz nodded.
“Charles?” Booker turned back to me. “That’s Barton next to you,” he said, pointing. “That’s Staley.” They both waved. “Now tell me,” he continued, “just how the fuck you knew we were going to be there?”
“It’s kind of a long story,” I said. The sensations of foreknowledge I had experienced at the party had begun to fade. It felt like something substantial had changed—like whatever timeline I had experienced before had now been irrevocably altered, and the usual future randomness or fate or whatever had kicked back in. “What do you want to know?”
“Well, we’ve got about eight minutes,” Booker said. “So give me the eight minute version.”
“Okay,” I said. “Um—”
“Let’s make this easier,” he said. “Do you know Michael Flowers?”
My eyes widened. I nodded.
“Do you know where he is right now?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No—I mean, I don’t think so—”
“You don’t think so?” he said
.
“I mean,” I said, “he could be back at the Brake Street house?”
Booker looked over at Fitz, who nodded without skipping a beat.
“Good news, then,” Booker said. “We’ve got to dump this body. May he rest in peace. And we’ve got to stab Mike Flowers to death—”
“Wait a second,” I said. “Why do you have to—”
“You want out of this dream? Back to your real life?” Booker said.
I breathed anxiously for a moment. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“This is very simple,” Booker said. “Golem Creek isn’t real. It’s just a made-up place. Which means you may very probably be just made up, too. Do you want to find out?”
I didn’t quite know what to say. I glanced at Barton, then Staley. They both sat silently staring ahead, as if this was routine conversation.
“I—” I started.
“When we get to Brake Street—” Booker began. “No! ” I yelled. “Shut up, goddamnit, for one goddamned fucking second! ” Silence.
“All right,” I said. “So, you’re telling me I may not exist—”
“Right, that’s—” Booker interrupted. “Shut up!” I said again. “Please.”
He fell silent again.
“Maybe I don’t want to find out if I’m not real, you know?” I said. “I mean, you’re not offering me much of an option.”
“It’s like the fucking Matrix, man!” Booker said. “We’re from Tulsa—and that’s physical reality. This ‘Golem Creek’ place is just some weird blip in the cosmos.”
“How do you know that?” I asked. “What if fucking ‘Tulsa’—wherever the fuck that is—turns out to be the ‘fake’ place? Huh? What happens then?”
“Then we party!” Booker said. He laughed. “Do the rest of you agree with him?” I asked,
looking at the two beside me.
“Well,” Staley said. “Mostly. But one thing’s for sure: we’ve got to find this Mike Flowers guy. He’s the key.”
I began to realize that I sat in a carload of crazy people—maybe even just plain, old murderers. These guys weren’t “monster hunters”—they were just hunters. They even expected me not to care whether their actions destroyed Golem Creek, destroyed me.
Fear Club- A Confession Page 12