Magic Man Plus 15 Tales of Terror

by A. P. Fuchs

  * * * *

  I don't love my son, Carry thought and though the words pained him, he also knew them to be true. If he did love Philip---truly love him---he would be willing to die a thousand times for him, tens of thousands. After all, didn't Jesus say, "The greatest love comes from he who would lay his life down for his friends"? Philip was his friend. Best friend. But Jesus didn't say anything about laying your life down more than once. When you died, you died. There were no repeats.

  How many times did he say he'd give anything for fill-in-the-blank? Carry realized those words were empty because when it came right down to it, people looked out for themselves despite good intentions.

  Floating there in the dark, cold water around him, swirling up his clothes, cooling his wrinkly skin, he thought about Fae. Pictured her here with him and knew that she'd die for Philip.

  Over and over.

  He remembered the day Philip was born and the fourteen hours of labor she endured for him. He remembered the look on her face when the nurse told her she had to have eight more contractions before she'd be allowed to push. The look of longing---begging---she gave him, pleading with him to somehow step up Time and let her push their son out. To take her pain away . . . . Afterward, he felt small because he knew he couldn't have gone through what she had. That was one of the reasons why they never had another child. He couldn't put her through that again. Later, when Philip was asleep in her arms, she told Carry she'd do anything for their son, go through labor for a lifetime if it somehow meant their boy would be happy.

  I'm not a man, Carry thought. He tried swimming upward but the water pushed him back down. I'm so sorry, Phil. I'm sorry that you died. I'm sorry for not saving you. Sorry for just sitting there in the canoe, watching you fall into the lake like some kind of movie. If I could do it over again . . . . I just want to see you.

  His lungs burned, his limbs jittered. He was so cold that even beneath the water his teeth started to chatter. Water went up his nose, burning his nostrils, dripped down his throat. He tried swallowing but only gagged and inhaled Bedright Lake.

  He sank toward the bottom.

  * * * *

  The light pierced Carry's eyes, warm and welcoming. When he opened his eyes, he was in the canoe with Philip.

  Philip was coming toward him and when he looked up, he saw Philip was hanging onto the branch.

  Where am I? Wasn't I just---Those would have been the words in his head but they were more just feelings rather than thoughts. He was startled from them when he heard his paddle splash as it hit the water.

  Philip came at him, back first, and bumped into him, landing in his lap. The canoe rocked and Philip tumbled into the water.

  He disappeared into the darkness below; Carry watched as he sank.

  Over and over.

  * * * *

  Theatre of Skulls

  Driving through the streets of Winnipeg carried the same monotonous tone as a consistently busy phone line. Same streets. Same people. Same middle fingers. Gloria Riler hated it, but she didn't have a choice. She had to take her two boys to her mother's house on the other side of the city so she could go on a string of errands and meet up with a friend for coffee later on. And ever since construction season began, she hadn't been able take her usual route: over Chief Peguis Bridge, down Main Street, turning right to get to the suburbs.

  Instead, she was forced to make a detour which, after driving over the Disraeli Bridge and getting onto Main Street, made her double back then turn left into the 'burbs. Despite all challenges and frustration---it had to be done.

  Oma (German for grandmother), was always happy her two grandsons Keith, age four, and Alex, two, could come and visit. Sometimes Gloria caught herself wondering if Oma loved Keith and Alex more than she loved her when she was a child. It didn't matter. At least Oma was willing to sacrifice three evenings a week to watch the kids so Gloria could have some semblance of a real life. In fact, the three evenings Gloria did this were the highlights of her week. She also knew it was the highlight of her mother's as well.

  Gloria's thoughts were interrupted when a horrible screech ripped throughout the car's interior. It was Keith. Gloria peeked into the rearview mirror.

  "AAAEEEE!" Keith yelped, ripping Alex's hand from his golden curls.

  "What's going on back there?" Gloria put her eyes back toward the road, returning the vehicle to center-lane.

  "Alex keeps pulling my hair, Mom," Keith said.

  "Alex, leave your brother alone."

  Alex's hands snapped back to his lap. In the rearview mirror, Gloria saw him look at her, mouth drooped at the sides: his way of apologizing. She continued driving. After four years with kids and two of those years spent with Alex adding to the weight of parenthood, she had pretty much grown immune to frustration and impatience. But, like all mothers would tell you, one's shirt could only get stretched so thin.

  Gloria turned on to Main and habitually locked the doors as she drove through the north end of town. You can never be too safe, especially out here.

  The road was blocked up ahead with a barricade of orange and black signs, telling that construction hell was about to break loose. An arrow on one of those signs said to take a left and travel down the street that ran parallel to Main. With a sneer, Gloria turned and took yet another detour.

  "Are we there yet?" came Keith.

  "Er wee ther et?" Alex said.

  "Almost, honey," she said.

  Finding the street she needed, Gloria slumped her shoulders and gave herself a moment to relax. Traffic and bloody construction always got her worked up.

  It suddenly grew dark inside the car. Nothing felt right. At first the outside world appeared the same, but when Gloria slowed to search out the source of the giant shadow, she saw everything around her had changed. She was still downtown, on the detour street, but she didn't know where she was. The buildings looked as if someone had dumped bags of sawdust and dirt on them. Blotches of what looked like melting tar were speckled against the bricks, the windows fogged with either smoke or steam

  She stopped the car and noticed everyone else who had been driving beside her had disappeared.

  "Why we stopped?" Keith asked.

  "Mommy just wants to stop and look around," she said as comfortingly as possible. She wished someone would comfort her.

  There was an alley adjacent to the street she was on. In it a swarming tribe of homeless people milled about. Some were sleeping on broken mattresses, others in rusted cars with half the parts missing, some just treating the muddy pavement as a bed. Gloria looked through the window on the passenger side and saw the same thing. More people. More debris. More hopelessness.

  Straining her neck so she could see better out of her window, she noticed the sky had also changed, turning an ashen gray instead of the normal blue. The clouds seemed to be melting off the sky.

  Alex began to cry.

  "Shut up, you baby!" Keith told him and gave him repeated jabs with his elbow.

  "Keith!" Gloria said and unbuckled her seatbelt. Keith immediately stopped. His head sank into his shoulders. Though only a boy, he, too, seemed to feel the shadows start to penetrate him.

  Gloria paused and placed both palms on the steering wheel, trying to determine what she should do, and precisely where they were.

  Okay, she thought, we were driving along and BOOM! out of nowhere, a cloud of darkness settles and everything around us changed into some sort of slum.

  Alex cried louder.

  "Shhh, honey. It's okay," she said, turning to Alex and patting him on the thigh.

  "Mom---I'm scared," Keith said.

  "I know, dear."

  All three of them jumped when an awful banging thundered throughout the vehicle, causing all sides to vibrate. Gloria looked out the windshield. A disheveled man banged a squeegee against the hood of her car. Once. Twice. Three times. As if sensing her gaze, he jerked around and faced some of what she presumed to be his friends in the alley opposite to them. He poin
ted at the car and started shouting . . . something. Gloria couldn't make it out.

  "What's he doing, Mom?" Keith asked.

  "Uht's he doie, Mom," Alex said.

  "I don't know." She tried to start the car again. The engine wouldn't turn over. She pumped the gas and again turned the key.

  Nothing.

  The squeegee man pressed his face against the driver's side window with a thud. Keith and Alex yelped. The squeegee man's filthy skin left a film of gray upon the glass. Then he smiled, displaying a mouth with only three crooked, yellow teeth. He let out a chuckle. There was another thud, this time coming from the roof of the car. Someone was on top of it. The boys kept yelling and crying. Gloria didn't know what to do. Should she leave the boys and try to ward off the pugs who were wreaking havoc on the car? Panic set in.

  Like a bear protecting her cubs, Gloria thrust her door open, knocking the squeegee man off balance. She hit the power-locks and closed the door all within an instant. Her kids would be safe.

  The squeegee man was on the pavement. For his size, he seemed to have the stability of a coat rack and couldn't hold himself up properly. Gloria remembered something had landed on the roof of the car. Turning around to see what or who it was, she saw a black man doing a tap dance on her roof.

  "Get off!" she shouted, her fist banging against the roof. The man only sneered at her and looked down at his new dance floor, increasing the speed and aggression of his tap-tap-tapping.

  Inside the car, Keith and Alex screamed as the whole vehicle began to wobble from side to side. The driver's side window smashed, catching Gloria off guard. A second later, the squeegee man grabbed her from behind, putting an arm across her throat. Her boys unbuckled and banged on the back seat glass in a seeming effort to somehow scare this stranger away from their mother. The squeegee man laughed.

  The black man came down off the roof and rammed his elbow against the back seat window. The sound of his elbow against the glass sent a dull clunk through Gloria's chest as he did. The black man appeared to be much stronger than the squeegee man. Oh no! she thought, acknowledging the man was trying to get to her children.

  "Staurp---" Gloria gasped, her voice a garbled mess. What she meant to say was "Stop!"

  The black man continued his assault on the window. Keith and Alex backed up into the far door. Gloria stepped on the squeegee man's foot, causing him to lose his grip. She faced him and delivered a right hook that connected squarely with his jaw. The man fell to his knees then to his side, and lay on the pavement perfectly still.

  Not slowing her attack, Gloria spun around to face the black man. The sound of shattering glass pierced her ears. The man had gotten through. The boys screeched in terror. Gloria ran toward her children's assailant and jumped onto his back. She hammered away at him with her fists, hitting the back of his neck and the top of his head. The man shrugged her off. She fell to the ground and bruised her tailbone. He swung open the car door and grabbed the boys: Keith by the arm, Alex by the neck of his shirt. More screaming. Gloria stood. A jolt of white hot pain pierced the back of her head.

  She saw stars and fell back down.

  * * * *

  She woke up to the sensation of water dripping across her forehead. Focusing her eyes, Gloria saw an old Native woman leaning over her, dabbing a cold, wet rag above her eyebrows. She sat up, immediately running her fingers along the back of her head. It was tender and sore. Luckily, a bump hadn't formed.

  She looked at the woman. The woman smiled back, forming creases of skin in her cheeks. Gloria stared at her then took a moment to take in her surroundings.

  Like recalling a dream, she remembered her fight with the squeegee man and the other fellow. The attack on her boys. Her bruised tailbone. The black man. Did he take Alex and Keith?

  Gloria stood up with a start. "Where's my boys?" she exclaimed, grabbing the old woman by the shoulders.

  The Native didn't respond.

  "Tell me!"

  The woman smiled again and pointed across the street to the alley opposite them. Deep within it, Gloria saw an old, abandoned movie theatre.

  She ran toward it.

  * * * *

  Gloria slowed her steps and cautiously proceeded toward the entrance marked by an old revolving door. She looked around and made sure she was alone. The last thing she needed was another run-in with the squeegee man or black man or anybody else for that matter. Fortunately, the coast was clear. There was nothing but the silence of a garbage bin, some cardboard boxes, and few shards of ragged clothing that littered the street.

  She went to move toward the door when a short, stubby man jumped out of the garbage bin and landed on her shoulders, forcing her to the ground. The fella's weight was incredible! She assumed he weighed at least sixty to seventy more pounds than he was supposed to. Gloria pressed her palms to the gritty cement beneath her and pushed as if doing a push-up. The beggar, bum---whatever he was---jerked his weight and forced her down again. Her face slammed into the pavement, her nostrils getting a nose full of old, muddy water mixed with fresh spurts of blood.

  In a fit of vengeance, she pushed up again, this time rolling onto her back, squashing her assailant. She freed herself from his grip and got to her feet. Turning around, she looked down at him. He stared back at her from beneath the hood of his filthy tan-colored coat. His eyes were washed with innocence, his lips pursed as if apologizing. As if to say, "I'm sorry. I didn't know any better." Yeah, right.

  Giving no sympathy, Gloria gave him a swift kick between the legs, the sharp toe of her shoe landing decisively between privates and rectum. The short man yelped an awful shriek that sounded like an old bus screeching to a stop.

  Leaving him to writhe in agony, Gloria bolted for the revolving door. She pressed into it, followed its spin, and fell to her knees from the momentum of her speed and the door pushing her from behind. It took her a moment to slow her breathing and heart rate down.

  With a trembling hand, she wiped a slick film of sweat off her forehead. It was hard to put everything into words. Her motherly instinct banged on the door of her mind, as if having a voice all its own, repeating the same stanza over and over: Alex and Keith. Alex and Keith. Alex and Keith. Alex and Keith, except there were no words, only feelings and images of her kids. She stood up and stepped further into the theatre.

  The lobby was dim with no other lights visible. The only illumination was a misty gray ray of light seeping through the fogged windows of the revolving door. A ticket booth was in front of her and a little beyond that, a concession stand. On either side of the concession stand were aisles, which she assumed led into the rest of the theatre. She slowly moved forward. "Alex? Keith?" Amazingly, her voice did not echo, instead seeming to be absorbed by darkness.

  Just go slow, she told herself. She had been passing the ticket booth when it suddenly lit up. The scorching light pierced her eyes and once they had focused, Gloria screamed. Staring back at her was a grotesque, zombified man in a tuxedo, running his twig-like fingers along the smooth inside glass of the booth. Gloria tried to run but couldn't. Her shoes were stuck to the floor. Each struggle to pull her feet out only caused the laces to grow tighter until her feet were nothing but pins and needles.

  "You cannot enter without a ticket," the zombie stated as-a-matter-of-factly. Gloria swallowed what felt like the pit of a plum. "Come closer. Buy a ticket. It's all right. You must have a ticket to enter. Please, we haven't had business in so long."

  She looked toward the concession stand half expecting to see somebody like the zombie-man there, and was relieved when there was none. Her boys were somewhere inside and no one outside the theatre seemed to want to help. Anyone outside just wanted to hurt her and her kids.

  Gloria faced the zombie and mustered up the strength to get a ticket. She approached the glass, expecting the monster to speak. There was silence for several moments. Then the zombie growled, "Aren't you going to say 'one, please'?"

  What? was all Gloria could ask herself. The
n she understood. It was only polite to ask for a ticket than to expect it. "One, please," she said.

  Hoping not to be asked for any form of payment, Gloria watched as the zombie rang the ticket into an old cash register on the counter beside him, his decaying fingers crudely banging on the web-covered keys. The price of the ticket rang up. The cash register displayed: $XXX. Gloria furrowed her brow. The zombie printed out her ticket and slid it across an opening in the glass. When she went to grab it, he pulled it away.

  Here it comes, she thought. How much could this possibly be?

  "The ticket is on the house tonight, Life-girl. You have already made it up to us," he said, a grin sweeping across his face and displaying his shriveled gums.

  Gloria snatched the ticket and pounded against the glass with her fists. "My boys! What have you done with them! What the---" The booth grew dark and the zombie was gone. She looked at the ticket in her hand. The top of it read: Welcome to the Theatre of Skulls! We appreciate your business. Then below that was a photograph of a skull with deep, foreboding eyes, and a pentagram carved into its forehead. Underneath the skull it said: Enjoy the show! You're in theatre no. 6, 6th row, 6th seat. Thank you once again for coming to the Theatre of Skulls! Be sure to pop by our concession stand!

  She dropped the ticket in disgust then picked it back up again. She scanned it once more and walked over to where, forming out of nothingness, a female ticket-taker stood. She was robed in an almost-transparent white gown, her eyes dark.

  At this point Gloria was running on instinct. The instinct to save her boys. She walked to the ticket-taker, her hand outstretched, offering her ticket. The ticket was removed from her hand by white fingers with red-painted nails. Gloria noticed how stark white the ticket-taker was. Aside from her eyes, everything was white. The only hint of color was in her long, wavy hair: a pallid yellow.

  The ticket-taker ripped the ticket in half and handed Gloria the stub. The other half was eaten. Gloria held the ticket in complete bewilderment. The ticket-taker smiled and pointed in the direction of theatre number six. Gloria dropped her half of the ticket and ran down the corridor.