The Summoning

by J. F. Gonzalez

  “Precisely, my dear.” Montivaldi raised a forefinger tentatively. He looked like a shriveled, eccentric professor detailing the wonders of life. “You have just provided the answer to your own question. Nobody really sees tattoos for what they are. And people don’t seem to realize, or care for that matter, what they could be. After all, this is the dawn of the twenty-first century now, is it not? Tattoos aren’t just crude designs for sailors and bikers. Tattoos aren’t just displayed to show masculinity the way they were when I was a young man. You aren’t branded a thug, or a social deviant anymore, if you get tattooed. Tattooing has regressed back to its original state of being: an art form.”

  “Yes,” Nicholas said, his voice low and smooth. “The ancient Egyptians used to tattoo each other, as well as the ancient people of the Pacific Islands. In some of those cultures, tattooing was a form of religious expression; paying homage to certain pagan gods. Some cultures even consider tattooing as marks of beauty.”

  “That is correct.” Montivaldi walked over to a small sink set against the wall and washed his hands. “Japanese and other Asian cultures have regarded it as an art form long before Western Civilization picked up on it. Some of the most elaborate tattooing was done, and is still being performed, by primitive cultures.”

  “And now it’s closed to a full circle,” I said. I hugged Nicholas closer to me, feeling his hot skin on my cheek. “There’s always a rebirth in everything, always a circle.”

  “Precisely!” Montivaldi began drying his hands on a fresh, white towel. He mopped his tired, strained face as Ashley rose and began shutting things down for the evening. “No longer is it a custom practiced by soldiers and derelicts. Tattooing has gone out of the back alley and into the main thoroughfare of Beverly Hills.”

  “Which is exactly why I’m a little bit worried.” I couldn’t help it, but I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind. The image of Nicholas being hunted down like an animal for his pelt by crazed collectors sprang to my mind. You might be thinking why this hadn’t crossed our minds before we committed to having Montivaldi etch his work permanently to Nicholas’s skin, but then if you’ve seen his work you’ll know why common sense took a back seat in the decision. “I just don’t want anything to happen.” I accented my concern by giving Nicholas’s midriff a gentle squeeze. He responded by patting my hands affectionately.

  Montivaldi stepped forward and touched both of us. His bony, callused hands were smooth, yet strong. Reassuring. “I guarantee you, my friends, that nothing will happen. I will resume my work with Nicholas in approximately six months. Your friends and acquaintances will notice your new tattoos, will marvel at them, admire them. Some will find it disgusting that one so young will want to mar his body in such a seemingly unhealthy way. But they will not suspect that these markings are the work of a real artist. If you were walk into this gallery with a sleeveless shirt on tomorrow, art aficionados wouldn’t give you a second glance. I know how they are.” He swiped the air in front of them, as if banishing some unseen and unwanted insect. “I know what a lot of people think of fantasy art, especially art depicting dark themes. I know what most people think of body art. If Munch were to have come back from the dead and render The Scream across your chest in stunning detail, the elite in the art community would be unimpressed.”

  Ashley joined him, a blue denim duffel bag in tow. Time to leave. “He’s right. I’m in this gallery every day, and if it’s one thing I despise its snobs.”

  Montivaldi harrumphed. “Yes. Know-nothings who lack the talent to produce anything themselves but would rather choose to attack and ridicule anything they can’t, or refuse, to understand. I know their type. They’re everywhere.”

  Nicholas and I nodded. We knew it too. When you lived in the real world you ran across them every day of your life.

  Ashley stepped to the light switch near the door. “Well, I think we should call it a night.” Montivaldi sighed, and stooped down to gather his belongings. Nicholas moved to the sofa where his shirt lay and put it on. We moved out silently, each of us absorbed in our own thoughts of self-satisfaction and personal joy. Outside, we parted with hugs, handshakes, and good-byes, with promises of meeting again in six months. Montivaldi was off to New York for two months, then Paris, and then London. Most of his engagements were for art festivals and other artistic endeavors, but he was also traveling to Iran to follow up on his occult studies, something he’d mentioned casually the week before. When he returned he would begin work on Nicholas’s left arm and perhaps his back. In the meantime, he told Nicholas to begin formulating ideas of what he wanted. He even told me that if I wished, he could do one for me. “We could perhaps start with something on your back, or above your breast. Something along the lines of the themes we were talking about earlier; something dark and cosmic. Maybe something relating to the work we will be doing with Nicholas next time we meet.” The invitation sounded so alluring that I tucked it away in the back of my mind for future reference. Just in case.

  The temptation stayed in my mind for the next six months.

  * * *

  Nicholas’s new glorious display of eye-catching designs was an immediate hit. His clients at the photo studio were impressed. He got curious stares in public: when we were dining in restaurants; when we were walking along the beach, or along Ventura Boulevard window-shopping. We even took Montivaldi up on his dare that those in the gallery wouldn’t give Nicholas a second glance. None did. We walked in and spent half an hour in front of a Montivaldi original, admiring it while people stopped to scrutinize the painting, not even giving Nicholas’s arm a glance. Stereotyping in action. It was proving to be our best shield.

  During the next six months I formulated ideas as to what designs Montivaldi could imprint on my flesh. I had several, but none inspired me as much as Nicholas’s next one. When Nicholas first proposed the idea to me I didn’t like it. It sounded too risky. But the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. When I stopped to consider what Montivaldi could do with those visions and mix them with his own, the idea seemed more attractive to me.

  When Montivaldi returned six months later it was like a family reunion. We dined at a small, but intimate, Italian restaurant on Ventura Boulevard that first night and talked aimlessly. Montivaldi shared his past month’s travels and experiences, which I’m sure Nicholas soaked up. After the meal, when we were safe within the haven of the gallery, Montivaldi popped the question. “So, what will it be?”

  Grinning, Nicholas unveiled his ideas. Montivaldi nodded, soaking it all in. When Nicholas was finished, Montivaldi clapped his hands together once. “Fantastic. I love it. What you want dovetails perfectly with the inspiration I got on my trip to Iran. It will work perfectly! You shall have that and more. Much more.”

  Nicholas and I turned to each other, excited.

  The limits of our fantasy were endless.

  The next evening Montivaldi let the dreams run wild.

  * * *

  The news of Montivaldi’s death from a heart attack came as a crushing blow to us. But what became even more ominous was the series of strange events that followed it.

  If Montivaldi was sick we surely didn’t notice it. That first meeting after not seeing him for six months was a reunion of old friends. The next time we saw the artist was at the gallery, after hours, during Nicholas’s first session. If he seemed unusually hurried I figured it was because he was feeling rushed. Nevertheless, he did a splendid job that first session on Nicholas’s left bicep. He followed it up over the course of the following day by adding color, tint, and background. Montivaldi appeared preoccupied, as if there was something on his mind, though I thought nothing of it.

  Three weeks after starting on Nicholas’s left arm he asked if he could temporarily abandon that and start a new piece on his back—he had a vision he wanted committed to skin, one that was true to his portrait of “The Traveler” in its cosmic spirit. Nicholas agreed; they talked about it, and Montivaldi gave him an idea of what he was try
ing to accomplish. Nicholas was excited at the possibility, and gave his go ahead.

  Montivaldi began working on Nicholas’s back. I watched as the design took shape. As it burst forth amid its vast array of dark colors, I felt a mixture of excitement and dread. The image Montivaldi was etching into Nicholas’s back was the conjuration of dark nightmares from the abyss, punctuated by a section of parchment-like designs with some hieroglyphic writings. Between his sessions with Nicholas he turned to me, rendering a similar design over my right breast; Nicholas could only take so much per session—the more Montivaldi worked along the top of his shoulder blades, the more it would hurt. But that’s only natural.

  Every night we would go home and examine our new tattoos. I was excited by mine, as was Nicholas, but for some reason I began to feel a slight sense of regret. It began subtly. It would soon grow stronger as the days passed into weeks.

  Montivaldi’s ramblings on the evening of what was to be our last session with him were startling to me. He seemed nervous, and kept muttering that his studies and his recent trip to Iran had given him a sense of wisdom that he did not desire. “I must write it down,” he said at one point as he worked on Nicholas’s back. He muttered as he worked, and as he muttered Nicholas and I traded worried glances. I only remember certain phrases that he kept repeating between other bits of conversation. One of them was, “I must write it down lest I forget, and I must do it quickly.” Another phrase that leaps into mind is this: “But I am afraid that if I don’t get it down right, if I don’t get it down quickly, they will come in and finish it for me. Only they will seek the opportunity to write down the formula that will throw open the gate.”

  Nicholas and I had looked at each other with worry. Montivaldi had been working on a very small portion of the small of Nicholas’s back, and my first impression was that the man was drunk. I asked him if he was feeling okay and he finally stopped his work. “No,” he said, his eyes fearful and haunted. “I am exhausted. Please forgive me…”

  We both insisted that he stop the work immediately. Nicholas further insisted that Montivaldi get some much needed rest. The artist nodded, then said cryptically, “Perhaps if I get away they will leave me alone.” Nicholas and I glanced at each other again, wondering about our newly found friend’s mental stability.

  We made tentative arrangements to continue our sessions a week later.

  And then came the Sunday morning we learned of Montivaldi’s death.

  The real nightmare started with a slight itch over my right breast a few days after we learned of Montivaldi’s passing. It hit Nicholas at precisely the same time, on his back. It was so subtle that I wasn’t even aware Nicholas was afflicted with it. With me, it started in the area immediately surrounding my new tattoo, which lay above the swell of my right breast. It trickled down to my right nipple, then blossomed to the valley between my breasts. At first I thought it might be the signs of a rash, but when none came and the itch died down, I forgot about it. It was around then that the phone calls started coming.

  I got the first one. I picked up the phone on the first ring one night when I was up late working, hoping it would be Nicholas. Nicholas was working late at the studio.

  “Hello?”

  There was a strange sound over the line, like a hollow echo. “Hello?”

  The echo intensified. It sounded like the rushing of the wind.

  I hung up.

  Ten minutes later the phone rang again. “Hello?”

  The same sound came out of the receiver. Only this time the rushing of the wind sounded like something else. It sounded like the wailing of the damned, coming out of a deep abyss. I don’t know why I felt this, but I had the feeling that this sound, whatever it was, was traveling across a vast abyss of time and space to reach me.

  I hung up again, dread filling me.

  My thoughts flashed on Montivaldi’s obituary in the paper and our newly acquired tattoos. I thought about the artist’s state of mind during the last few sessions. I began to wonder.

  The phone rang again. This time I let it ring into the answering machine.

  I pressed the PLAY button a few minutes later, after it reached the end.

  That echoing of the damned boomed out of the tiny speaker of the answering machine, filling my living room with its awful sound. I jabbed at the STOP button and rewound the tape. Now I was terrified.

  Nicholas came home an hour late, reporting that he’d also received phone calls in which nobody spoke on the other end. He said it sounded like voices of the dead. He also had the vague feeling he was being watched.

  “Let’s pack up and get out of town for a few days.” Nicholas began removing clothes from the closet, throwing them in a large suitcase he’d brought down from the closet. I moved closer to him, unable to understand what was going on.

  “Nicholas, we can’t just leave!”

  Nicholas looked at me. “Don’t you feel it? Your tattoo?”

  My response stuck in my throat. It was happening to him, too. It was then that I went into the bathroom and looked at my tattoo.

  The scream shattered my nerves. Nicholas burst in and took me in his arms, trying to calm me down. By the time I regained control of my senses I realized that it was I who had been screaming.

  That tattoo Montivaldi had inked over my right breast had started to inch its way outward, spreading down toward the nipple and reaching up toward my collarbone.

  After our things were packed and we were nearly out the door, Nicholas got the idea to call Ashley at his private number. There was no answer. “We’ll drop by his place on the way,” he said, placing an overnight bag in the hall. “He’s off tonight, and he usually spends his time at home in front of the TV. I’m surprised he didn’t answer the phone.”

  “Maybe he stepped out.” My voice sounded strangely hollow to me. What I really wanted to say was, maybe Ashley got the same phone calls we got and was afraid to answer the phone.

  The drive to Ashley’s apartment in Encino was made in funereal silence. My body felt weak, my mind on the brink of madness. Everything felt distanced; as if I was viewing it from a distorted, surreal point of view.

  We pulled up in front of Ashley’s modest apartment complex and made the walk up to his place. Nicholas rang the doorbell. No answer.

  From within we could hear the sound of the television.

  My heart hammered in my chest just then, and now I was more scared than I had ever been in my life. My body felt numb and I closed my eyes to fight back the sudden rush of dizziness that swooped over me. The disengaging of locks as Nicholas fumbled with the door snapped the feeling away, and I opened my eyes to what Nicholas had stumbled on as he opened the door and stepped inside.

  I choked back the scream that threatened to spill out of me.

  Ashley sat on a single chair in the middle of the room in front of the TV, his hands tied behind his back, his feet tied to the legs of the chair. His head was tilted back, dead eyes gazing at the ceiling. A second smile had been engraved below his chin, and it had vomited forth a great cascade of blood down his chest where it stained the white carpet a deep red.

  Nicholas emitted a coughing gasp as he stood in front of Ashley’s prone body. He brought a hand up to his mouth, stifling back the cry that I knew was threatening to bubble its way out of him. As it was, I was having a difficult time keeping my screaming inside for I saw what Nicholas was seeing. They hadn’t taken Ashley easily.

  You could tell by the ripped fingernails lying like bloody, discarded scraps of paper.

  Bloody stumps of teeth decorated the floor amid the fingernails.

  There were no visible bruises on Ashley’s face that would indicate he’d been beaten, but his teeth had been pulled out. A pair of bloody pliers lay on a small end table next to the chair Ashley was tied to.

  I don’t know how long we stood there in shock, hugging each other, trying to fight our way out of the sudden devastation of what we’d just stumbled upon. By the time I finally gained contr
ol of myself, I realized the sudden implications of the dilemma we were in. Ashley’s tortured, mutilated body and the smell of death that permeated it woke me up. I grabbed Nicholas’s shoulder and he turned toward me, his face filled with horror. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he whispered.

  We left, leaving Ashley’s ravaged body behind. And we never once looked back as we fled that bloodbath. I was half-crazed out of my mind with fear by then. I was afraid that if I looked back that I would see somebody following us, and I didn’t want to admit to the fact that we were being pursued. To look back and see somebody tailing us, to even imagine it, would only confirm it. Therefore I looked on at the unwinding road in front of me as Nicholas drove.

  And drove…

  * * *

  Even now it’s the same road it was when Nicholas and I originally fled Los Angeles. The only difference is the scenery.

  The Arizona desert bears the same scenic landscape in the winter as it does in the summer. Barren. Dry. Wind-blown tumbleweeds flutter across the bleak landscape like dry finger bones playing a daddy long-legs dance. Tall silhouettes of cacti stretch curved arms to the sky. The scarce foliage of sagebrush dots the landscape with the occasional beady eyes of a jackrabbit, or a badger, hiding beneath its shelter. Sometimes I felt that the eyes of the natural inhabitants of the desert were watching me as I drove down the highway and that they were whispering to each other, relaying messages to each other, and to others unseen. Despite the buffeting howl of the wind creating a whistling cry through the desert floor, confirming my isolated state, the feeling that I wasn’t alone continued to hound me. It got worse every time a car passed me on the highway, or when a vehicle materialized in my rearview mirror.