I spent the remainder of the night in Dad’s favorite chair, watching the door and waiting for a knock that didn’t come. Sleep overtook me and in nightmares the disembodied heads of Not-Peck and his cohorts floated in a void, jeering my callow impetuousness.
* * *
Mom and Dad arrived on the sixth morning while the rest of us were barely roused for breakfast and chores. She could sing like an angel, our mother. Her voice echoed along the winding trail and into our meadow. I peered out the window and witnessed Dad sweep her into his arms for a brief song-and-dance number. Both of them were restored to carefree youth, especially Mom. Radiant and free. Free. Dan the mule followed in dumb bemusement.
The kids scurried to meet them. Our parents froze momentarily. Their jaws hung slack enough to draw flies. Then it was hugs and kisses (gruff ones in Dad’s case) all around, and later, pancakes with honest-to-goodness maple syrup. The children celebrated their windfall of food and cheer because such occasions were fleeting.
Inevitably, Dad noticed I’d drunk his wine (he upended the empty jug while frowning ominously). Worse, he detected my fiddling with the projector. I’d striven to replace everything precisely as he’d left it. A fool’s game. He roared with furious indignation, caressing the machine with the tenderness some men show a prize hunting dog, or the love of their life. He glared at me with the promise of an imminent thrashing. Theodora and Salamanca cried, hoping to soften his heart. Marlon offered to fetch a whipping stick (a big one!), and Flynn muttered that he knew this would happen, we should’ve stuck with the magick lanthorn, et cetera. Mom shook her head once and Dad swallowed whatever curse he’d intended to utter and stormed outside to chop firewood. Chopping firewood served as his go-to stress reliever besides batting me like a wicket ball.
Mom smiled wanly and kissed my cheek. Her lips were cool. Age and melancholy had descended upon her. Other than that, our household was a temporary bastion of love and light. There was even semi-fresh fruit and a chunk of beef from the market to reinforce the usual roots and tubers for supper. Truly, the horn of plenty overflowed.
Dad, despite professing road weariness, rolled out the projector and played The Old Woman in the Hobnail Boot, a grim comedy satirizing the famine of 1320 and the plight of harried moms with far too many mouths to feed. Work camps, brothels, and academies of experimental medicine were apparently ready, willing, and able to deal with surplus offspring. Beneath the comedic veneer, it dealt with similar themes as Ardor of the Damned, except without laying man’s cruelty to man at the foot of monsters or generational curses.
Was it a coincidence that Dad selected a scathing commentary on poverty and the burdens of large families the first night back from a venture to the bright lights of town? Was it, on the other hand, a (rather sharp) message?
We retired to bed. I lay awake, fretting.
Then I dreamed that far below the cottage foundation, far below the rocks and farthest-slithering roots of the entire forest, abominations congregated in a pitchy cavern, black save for a bloom of aqueous light on a dank wall. Ardor of the Damned played on and on to gibbering applause. My family knelt in manacles at the fore of the assembly, shrieking and laughing. A vast, half-glimpsed monstrosity coiled among the stalactites. Its slavering maw dripped glaucous slime upon them and befouled their tortured countenances. Flesh deliquesced and bone blackened, yet they harmonized in agony.
Voices woke me. I pretended to snore and observed Mom and Dad in repose. They whispered, and by some trick of the hearth embers, their eyes shone in the gloom. Dad spoke my name. I kept on with the fake snoring. Soon, the fire died and so did their secretive conversation.
I crept away before dawn with a knapsack of food and the boar spear.
A decent man would’ve snatched one of his smaller siblings, taken the hapless child out of the black forest and given him or her a chance at a life. My flight was over and through inhospitable terrain. It deviated from the well-trod paths Dad would follow, were he to give chase—and were he to come after me, bent on fulfilling his pledge to the demons of the wood, or from pure spite, a kid on my back wasn’t a handicap I was willing to accept.
* * *
Years passed. I sought my fortune as a remarkably well-read soldier (later, a mercenary freebooter) and so doing, endured violence, privation, and suffering for coppers on the pound. How convenient that my childhood indemnified me against such petty travails! Incidentally, I aver from experience that maidens dig scars.
My moods were strange, alas. These moods, and a murderous temper, tended to isolate me from gentler folk. I spent many nights alone, huddled near a campfire and complaining to the shadows that plagued me in ever greater numbers. When I finally yielded to sleep, my dreams manifested as dreadful, animated visions of my abandoned family in dire extremis. Frequently, the baron and his lady beckoned my astral self with knowing smiles. These visions compelled me to circle back to the homestead as a dog will to its own vomit.
I returned on a bright spring day to find the cottage in ruins. Fire and time had reduced the structure (and that of the shed) to charred timbers and soot-caked stones. Wildflowers sprang from the ashen soil. An eagle nested in a dead tree nearby. The bird glared and cried for its mate, disturbed by my presence. In trudging the edges of the property, I stumbled across a long, barren depression in the earth; a shallow trench lined with the intact skeletons of eight children and two adults. Wind had scoured the soil and planed it so the bones were partially exposed.
The grave confused my sense of time and objective reality.
During my travels, I swore I’d glimpsed several of the kids fully grown. At those crucial moments, I quickly turned and fled, lest our gazes meet and they recognize the elder brother who’d deserted them. And if I’d deftly avoided Salamanca and Marlon one enchanted evening during the Fire Festival, or ducked aside in the nick of time as Lazy Eye Larry (his large, boisterous family in tow) lumbered along the lane of a village at the edge of this benighted wood not two winters gone, how could all eight of their fragile, moldering skeletons be entombed here? The worst part was that years of drink and anguish had taken a savage toll upon my mind. I could not, no matter how much I racked my conscience, remember if it had been me who’d committed this massacre.
I lay among them under the stars. Fluffy and Atticus kissed my face and I sat bolt upright in the gray dawn, and it was raining.
* * *
Tormented by relentless nightmares, I went hunting for K. M. Wanatabe. Although it stood to reason he’d long since perished at the hands of his detractors, if not old age, I proceeded, bolstered by faith in the adages that the devil protects his own and only the good die young.
The Fates were kind—the filmmaker proved elusive rather than dead.
This land may seem endless, but there are only so many hiding places that aren’t under a rock or in the hollow of a rotten tree. Assuming one is infinitely patient, and also willing to employ red-hot pincers to the tender bits of less-than-forthcoming witnesses, one will usually succeed in running quarry to earth.
Intelligence provided by a minor actor who’d starred in several of Wanatabe’s films, and a cousin who’d shared Wanatabe’s confidence once upon a time, brought me at last to a stinking, muddy city on the edge of the sea. I took residence at a sty passing for an inn and curled into myself, like a spider drawing down tight, to watch and wait.
Wanatabe dwelt in a hovel at the end of an alley and received no visitors. He frequented bathhouses and a decrepit theater that hosted third-rate stage productions and obscure, unpopular films. Those who knew him were apparently ignorant of his past, nor would they have likely cared. He was just another toothless, spindly senior citizen who’d outlived family, friends, and usefulness.
Late one night, the ancient filmmaker (practically mummified) blinked awake in his narrow bed. He focused on me. I patiently crouched, my spear point hovering a gnat’s hair from his ey
eball. Mummy or not, his brain remained agile; he took in the situation expeditiously.
“My coin purse hangs from the back of yon chair. There is nothing else of value.” The latter was not entirely true.
“Mr. K. M. Wanatabe?” My spear point didn’t waver. “The Mr. K. M. Wanatabe?”
“It warms my heart that someone cares.” His lip twitched with a trace of reflexive conceit. No artist wants to be forgotten, not even an artist who’s gone to pains to ensure that very outcome.
“Why did you unleash Ardor upon the world?” I said.
“Bitterness,” he said without hesitation. “Youth is wasted on the young, and so on.”
“Some say the devil wrote the script.”
The ubiquitous “they” had many theories about the occult provenance of Ardor. The emulsion formula contained the blood of innocents. Phantoms are trapped within the frames. The spirits call, they beckon, they hypnotize, they implant nightmares and visions. The most passionate conspiracists posited that Wanatabe was no filmmaker, but rather a black magician in league with the Great Dark.
“Did the Church send you?” He spoke carefully, soothingly, as one might to a rabid animal. “Trust me, superstitious drivel notwithstanding, it’s merely a film. I’ll confess to artistic wizardry. No black magic was necessary, however.”
He studied my face, searching for a clue to my identity. I saved him the suspense and explained in brief, concise detail.
“Oh!” The old vulture actually cracked a smile. “Your mother was a beautiful woman,” he said right before I drove the spear through his eye and deep into the headboard. His body trembled as he feebly pawed at the haft.
I left him pinned there as I ransacked his chamber. Locked away in a cheap armoire, tucked under soiled linen, lay the sole existing copy of Ardor of the Damned. I cradled the reels to my breast. Tears of joy (it shames me to say) streamed down my cheeks. Reunited, at last!
Behind me, Wanatabe wheezed and choked and proceeded to mutter his life story, which, of course, began with the recounting of a terrible childhood.
SNUFF IN SIX SCENES
Richard Kadrey
Scene 1
FADE IN
We see a basement or a room in a warehouse. The walls are old, scarred metal. The floor is concrete. Fluorescent lights illuminate the space in a greenish glow. There are two chairs and a metal meat hook hanging by a chain from the ceiling. The walls, floor, and edges of the room are covered in transparent plastic held neatly in place by identical segments of gray duct tape. A rolling table stands nearby. It’s piled high with tools: hammers, carpet knives, saws of various kinds.
A man in white Tyvek coveralls, a hood, gloves, and booties is in the foreground, making adjustments to the white balance on the camera. We look straight into his face through the lens. He is middle-aged, with fine crow’s-feet around his eyes. In the background is a young-looking woman. She has a blond Mohawk and is dressed in boots, shorts, and a torn EAT THE RICH T-shirt. The young woman rubs her arms as if she’s cold.
Finally, the white-suited man nods and steps away from the camera. He turns to the young woman. “Say something so I can see if the audio levels are right.”
“What should I say?”
“Why don’t you start by saying why you’re here today?”
She nods and looks down at her boots. “I’m Jenny…”
“Careful. No last names.”
“Right. Hi. I’m Jenny. I’m here today to get murdered by Ward over there.” She holds her hands out to the side, like a model on a game show indicating a prize. “Is that all right?”
The man looks at something off-screen. “It’s perfect. The levels all look good.”
“Now you introduce yourself?”
“Indeed I do.” Ward beams into the camera. “I’m Ward. No last names, like I said earlier. And I’m here today to murder Jenny. It’s important you know that what we’re doing is entirely consensual. Isn’t that right?”
Jenny purses her lips, uncomfortable. “It’s true. I volunteered to let him kill me.”
Ward looks at her. “Should we talk about how we met?”
Jenny shrugs. “It’s your movie.”
“That’s true. Okay. Jenny and I met through an online app called—”
“Maybe you shouldn’t say the name. You might lose your membership.”
“Good idea.” Ward stands next to Jenny with a hand on her shoulder. She rubs her arms again, trying to warm them. “Let me just say that I recently became aware of a certain phone app—not unlike Tinder—on which people with exotic needs and desires can meet. In my case, I wanted to kill someone. In Jenny’s case, she wanted to die.”
She holds up a finger and says, “For a price. I’m not dumb.”
“And a pretty price, too. Fifty thousand dollars. Who’s that money going to, by the way?”
“My mom. She’s kind of an asshole, but she’s sick and Dad left. Fifty grand will help a lot.”
“That’s sweet of you.”
“Thanks.”
Ward thinks for a moment. “Is there anything else we should say?”
“Um,” Jenny says as she ponders this. “I know. I was wondering why we’re doing this today and not, say, last week or next? You were very specific about the time.”
“Right. I almost forgot,” said Ward. He walks to the tool table and picks up a long steel cylinder with two prongs on the end. When he presses a button, there’s an electric buzzing sound. “I kill people every ten years. It’s kind of my thing. But this year is special. I just turned fifty. It’s why I’m recording this session. I figured that I needed to get in one more big kill before I’m too old for this stuff anymore.”
Smiling, Jenny says, “I’m your midlife crisis.”
Ward laughs. “Exactly. It was get a Corvette or kill you.”
Jenny laughs, too, and says, “That’s funny. You’re funny.”
“Thank you. Anyway, I think it’s about time to wrap up this first chat. I’ll be getting to know Jenny more throughout the session. We’re going to talk about all kinds of things before I let her die.”
“I have one more question,” Jenny says.
“Hold it for later.”
Ward jabs the metal cylinder—a cattle prod—into Jenny’s side. She screams and writhes in pain.
CUT TO BLACK
Scene 2
FADE IN
Jenny is blindfolded and bound to the chair with duct tape on her wrists and ankles. She’s sweating and breathing hard. Ward slaps her and she jumps in surprise. When he walks around behind her she cranes her head back and forth trying to figure out where he is.
Ward has something in his hand. When he turns we see that it’s a circular saw. He puts it close to Jenny’s ear and turns it on for a second. She jumps in her seat, frightened by the sound.
“Fuck!” she yells.
“Are you scared?” says Ward.
“Of course I’m scared, you bastard.”
He sets the saw on the tool table and rolls the whole thing in front of Jenny so that when he takes off her blindfold, she can see what he has in store for her.
Quietly Jenny begins to cry.
Ward says, “It’s a bit more than you bargained for, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” she says and looks up at him. “Tell me about yourself, Ward. Please? It will help.”
“Why should I help you?”
Jenny tries to wipe the tears from her eyes with her shoulder, but can’t reach. “My life sucks. I bet yours is great. Tell me about it. Please?”
He picks up a curved carpet knife, drops it. “I know your life sucks, you fucking idiot.” When he finds a hacksaw, Ward weighs it in his hand. “Who else would volunteer for this?”
“Don’t be mean,” whispers Jenny.
Ward takes a breath and lets it out. “Unlike you, I come from a good family and I’ve gotten pretty much everything I ever wanted. I’m a partner at work. I have a great wife and a smart, lovely daughter. A nice home, too. Even a motor boat where Carla and I go fishing on weekends at the lake. Carla is my daughter.”
Jenny opens her mouth, then closes it.
“Go ahead. Say what you want,” says Ward.
“It’s going to sound weird.”
“That’s okay. You’ll be dead soon, so it won’t matter.”
She bites her lip and in a rush of words says, “I wish I had a dad like you when I was growing up. Mine didn’t give a shit about any of us. You know, he tried to fuck me once. He only stopped because Mom came home.”
Ward frowns. “That’s awful.”
“Yeah. It was.”
“Well, thank for your kind thoughts about me as a father. I tell you what. Seeing how much your life stinks and how fulfilling mine is, when I kill you, I’ll do it fast.”
Jenny sits up. “You promise?”
“I promise.”
“You know,” she says. “Your ad didn’t really specify that you were going to torture me. You just wanted to kill someone.”
He comes over and sets the blade of the hacksaw on Jenny’s arm. “I guess I lied.”
She turns and says, “Did you ever consider that maybe I lied, too? Maybe I’m a pain freak. Maybe I’m getting off on this. Would that ruin things for you?”
Ward chuckles. “I saw your face. You were scared shitless.”
“That’s what I mean. Maybe I get off on being scared.”
“Oh yeah?” Ward moves in front of her, blocking Jenny. He tosses the saw away and grabs something else from the tool table, but we can’t see what. “You get off on scared? Well, try this.”
Final Cuts Page 17