The pale mannequin, its mouth agape and eyes wide open in self-aware horror, moved its hand inside the grinning dummy’s back, causing it to do the same to the glowing-eyed wax doll, which induced the faceless voodoo doll to turn the crank on the wooden box.
“It’s TERROR MANNEQUIN!” Glont cried again. “Don’t look at the jack-in-the-box!” But his pleas and the tinny music-box notes of “Pop! Goes the Weasel” were lost in the chaos and cacophony of the surrounding mass exodus.
Pop!
Still screaming from getting his face dissolved off, Lance was the first to look over in the direction of TERROR MANNEQUIN, the wooden box now sprung open. He immediately clutched at his chest, his heart collapsing in on itself and metamorphosing into a Totino’s pizza roll while his brain melted and transmogrified into a mixture of dogshit, worms, and maggots. His eyes swelled up like water balloons and burst, allowing the dogshit, maggots, and worms to extrude from his eye sockets and slide down his cheeks—basically big, brown dogshit-tears of death—before the man pitched forward onto the liquified front of his skull.
Just as Lance’s heart collapsed, Old Crub was the second person to see TERROR MANNEQUIN. He ceased eating his own face and dancing to fall to his knees and suffer the same fate. Dozens of guests collided and stumbled over one another as they shoved their way out of the house and down the front steps. Falling to the ground, they too beheld whatever unimaginable horror had sprung from the box.
Still facing away from the thing, Glont went over to Tom Two, The Membrane, Ma Ruth, and Amanda, who were huddled together on the driveway. Several dead or dying bodies lay scattered around the group, dogshit oozing from their skulls. Apparently, Ma Ruth and Amanda had left the car when they saw Lance attacking Glont. Luckily, they had been close enough to hear and heed Glont’s warning in time, so that each of them had covered their eyes with their hands. Though The Membrane had neither eyes, heart, nor brain, it had erred on the side of caution by scrunching up into a tight ball to cloak its weird eyeless sense of sight.
“Glont!” Chillington’s hoarse voice called from off to his right. He turned to see a bloody, lacerated arm reaching up towards him.
“Wait here!” he said as he grasped Amanda and Ma Ruth each by the shoulder. “I’ll be right back. Keep your eyes covered until I say otherwise.” He made his way over to what was left of the Chillmaster, quickly stepping over several bodies while holding his right hand to the side of his face like a visor so he wouldn’t see TERROR MANNEQUIN.
Mrs. Smith had retreated back behind the pines, apparently content to leave Chillington for dead without finishing the job. Not long for this world, all that remained of the man was his right arm and a flayed head attached to an equally peeled half-torso. One of his eyes was gone. Everything below his ribcage was basically just a big red splat, and a trail of gore led several feet back to the spot where Mrs. Smith had brought him down. Chillington’s head was propped up against the tire of a parked Cadillac Escalade. When Glont knelt down by him, Chillington grabbed him by the breast of his jacket with his remaining limb, pulled him in closer.
“Glont,” he croaked “I’m…I’m sorry that I killed those people earlier tonight. Especially those two kids.”
Glont was silent for a moment, unsure of what to say. “Hey, man. Um, like, it’s okay. I mean, who knows? Maybe those two kids would have grown up to be serial killers or something.”
“But what if they’d grown up to be great artists or philanthropists or doctors that cured cancer?”
“Well, I don’t think it matters, man. I mean, it wasn’t really your fault. Like you said, you had this dark unchill energy inside you, basically controlling you, ya know?”
“Aw-Yeah’s head…it rolled under this car. I can’t reach it. Can you grab it for me, muh…muh…my tiny little son?”
“Of course.” Glont got down on his belly, peered under the SUV, where he saw a small dark lump sitting under the center of the vehicle. He reached under as far as his arm would go, straining until his fingers closed around the thing. He pushed himself back up onto his knees, set the McNugget in Chillington’s extended bloody palm. As soon at the thing came into contact with its master, the dark lines of its face once again kindled with ember-orange light.
“Listen,” Chillington said before hacking up a thick plug of clotting blood. “Despite my transgressions, I’m still the Chillmaster of Chillville. I want you to go to Chillville and tell the chillagers that, just before my death, I appointed Tom Two to be the new Chillmaster of Chillville. That is, of course, if he wants to take the job. If he does, he can bring you and your family to live there with him if you like. Please do this. It’s my…my dying wish.”
Glont was taken aback. “Wow. Yeah, of course. I’ll tell ’em, man. And, um, thank you.”
“Now, move to the side so I can finish this,” the former Chillmaster of Chillington said as he held the McNugget above his head. Aw-Yeah’s face now burned brighter with golden light. Chillington cocked his arm back, closed his one remaining eye.
Glont had a pretty good idea of what was about to happen. He got up and sidestepped away from Chillington with his back to TERROR MANNEQUIN.
Chillington opened his eye to a slit, immediately sighting his target not twenty feet away before him. Just as his heart began to shrink in his chest and just as his cerebellum transmuted into worm-riddled dogshit, he tossed Aw-Yeah’s head at TERROR MANNEQUIN, his aim true.
Flying in a high arc toward its target, Aw-Yeah spoke one last time: “Awwwwwwwwwwww Yeah!”
Chapter 28
A bright red light flashed behind Glont, momentarily illuminating the pine trees in front of him, followed by a blast of heat that nearly knocked him off his feet, thrusting him into the side of the Escalade. After the light faded away, he slowly turned around. A low mound of gray ash remained at the edge of the lawn where TERROR MANNEQUIN had stood a moment ago—a plume of gray smoke twisted up into the air from the mound to break apart in the wind.
Glont rushed over to the others. The heat blast had knocked Tom Two, Ma Ruth, and Amanda on their asses. They were just getting up from the ground, Amanda helping Ma Ruth.
“Is everyone okay?” Glont asked.
“I think so,” Amanda said. Tom Two gave a thumbs up.
“What the heck happened?” Ma Ruth asked.
“Chillington threw Aw-Yeah’s Chicken McNugget head at TERROR MANNEQUIN. Because Aw-Yeah was the cree-craw that had been specifically summoned to destroy TERROR MANNEQUIN, they annihilated each other on contact.”
Glont turned in place to survey the gory scene. Dozens of costumed dead bodies littered the veranda, the front steps, and the top of the driveway. From what he could see, they were the sole survivors. The air reeked of ripe dogshit.
Amanda rushed forward, embraced Glont tightly. She pressed the side of her face against his chest, her head fitting perfectly under his chin. “You saved us!”
“Well, Chillington actually saved us. But, yeah, I guess I helped.”
“You warned us to close our eyes,” Amanda said as she released him.
“Fuck, I just wish more people would have heard me.”
A twig snapped nearby, causing everyone to look towards the tree-lined side of the driveway. That’s when Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me emerged from between two pines, halting at the edge of the driveway about two car lengths down. Everyone immediately redirected their eyes from her face when they saw her.
“Oh, you made it,” Glont said, looking down at her ruby slippers.
With her brow knitted in a sharp “v” and her lips smushed in a pouty frown, Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me raised a condemning index finger at Amanda. “Ma...she’s makin’ eyes at me!”
Aghast because her line of vision had been nowhere near Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me’s face, Amanda shouted, “What! That’s not true! I completely looked away the second I saw you!”
Still pointing at her, Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me repeated the awful death sentence, but lo
uder this time: “Ma, she’s makin’ eyes at me!”
“No! no!” Glont cried as he got in front of Amanda and held his arms out to defend her. “That’s not fair. She didn’t fuckin’ look at you, and you know it! Take it back, Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me!” He glanced back at Amanda. “You’re sure you didn’t look her in the eye for more than a second, right?”
“Of course I’m sure!” she said, tears springing from her eyes.
But Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me was relentless. “Ma, she’s makin’ eyes at me!” she said a third time.
Glont was in the middle of yelling, “Run, Amanda!” when the invisible beast knocked him out of her way, sending him tumbling onto the concrete.
Amanda screamed, but her cries stopped abruptly when she appeared to levitate three feet off the ground, her Sexy Little Red Riding Hood cloak flapping wildly in the wind. Apparently, the beast had lifted her up by the neck.
“Now we’ll see how red this Sexy Little Red Riding Hood really is!” Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me! said before laughing maniacally.
“Make her stop!” Glont yelled at his ex-girlfriend as he pushed himself up off the ground.
“No! You’re my boyfriend, Glont. And she tried to steal you away from me, the slut!”
“I’m not your boyfriend! We broke up ages ago! You know what? Just, wait! Okay, okay. I’ll be your boyfriend. Just please let her go! She’s innocent! Please don’t fucking kill her!”
Amanda’s ripped-off, balled-up face then pegged Glont in the forehead like a warm, wet rag, painting his face scarlet with hot blood. The rubbery thing opened as it fell onto the concrete—a ghastly oval flap of skin with eyeholes, nostril holes, and a mouth hole—Amanda’s luscious lips still intact.
“Fuck,” Glont muttered as he stared down at the thing, clutching his head in both hands while Mrs. Smith continued to flay, eviscerate, and skeletonize Amanda in his peripheral vision.
“Glont!” Ma Ruth screamed. “Get Tom Two! He’s running out to the street!”
Glont turned to his mother and saw that Tom Two was no longer at her side. She pointed over at the front lawn and cried “Get the baby!” just like Mrs. Creed did in Pet Sematary.
He followed her finger and, sure enough, there was Tom Two—bareheaded—out near the middle of the front yard chasing after his sombrero. A gust had apparently knocked it off his head. Still propelled along by the wind, the hat skated and tumbled across the lawn toward the street.
Glont took off running as fast as he could.
“Get the baby!” Ma Ruth cried again, hobbling after Glont as if she could help him.
“Double T!” Glont shouted after he crossed the landscaped island and reached the front yard proper. “Stop, dude! Let the hat go!”
Tom Two apparently did not hear his uncle—he kept running after his hat.
Glont was gaining on him, but Tom Two was a quick and determined little bugger. Nearly halfway to the street, Glont spotted headlights coming around the bend in the road.
It was a semi-truck.
And it was approaching fast.
In fact, remember that truck that ran over Gage Creed in Pet Sematary? Well, this was the exact same red Peterbilt eighteen-wheeler and the exact same driver. Can you fucking believe it? How could that asshole still be allowed to drive a rig? Yet here he was barreling down Diamond Boi Drive in his rig at two-thirty in the morning on the day after Halloween in Selohssa, Pennsylvania. And he was drunk as shit to boot. I mean, what kind of bullshit is that? In fact, it makes me so angry that I’m tearing out what little hair remains on my head with my right hand as I type these very words with my left hand, and I’m about ready to chuck my laptop across the room here in the fucking Taco Hell where I’m writing.
Anyway, Tom Two’s sombrero tumbled out into the middle of the street, where it finally rolled to a stop. Glont was about thirty feet back when Tom Two scampered across the tree lawn and over the curb.
At this point, everything was in dramatic slo-mo.
“Tom, stop!” Glont cried out as he pumped his legs and arms harder. He stumbled, lost his footing, fell to the ground just shy of the sidewalk—just like that idiot Louis Creed did in Pet Sematary.
Had the potentially eons-old part of Tom Two been more dominant at this moment, he would surely have been more mindful of the cries of his uncle and grandmother, of the semi’s screeching brakes and shrieking air horn. But as it happened, the two-year-old part was dominant, so that Tom Two remained intent on his simple purpose. The newly appointed Chillmaster of Chillville—though he would never know he had attained that singular, illustrious honor—stopped beside his big hat, stooped down, snatched it up, and put it right back where it belonged on his big, lightbulb-shaped head.
And even as he looked up into the bright, yellow eyes of the oncoming semi, Tom Two still trusted that, despite a Halloween filled with unkind people doing unkind things, buckets of blood and guts, monsters (both visible and invisible), exploding heads, skeletons and circulatory systems tearing out of people’s bodies, dogshit and worms oozing out of eye sockets, and beating hearts shriveling up into Totino’s pizza rolls, the world was still more or less a good place.
Epilogue
T om Two’s ill-attended graveside funeral service took place on a miserable, dismal, cold-ass, gray-ass, rainy-ass, shit-morning five days later. Present were the officiating priest, Glont, Ma Ruth, The Membrane, Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me, and her invisible mother. All the visible attendees were dressed appropriately in black. Even The Membrane was draped in a somber black cloth that Ma Ruth had trimmed to fit its shape the previous night. Tom Two’s tombstone was inscribed thusly:
HERE LIES
TOM TWO
BELOVED NEPHEW, GRAND NEPHEW, BROTHER, & THE GODDAMN, MOTHERFUCKING CHILLMASTER OF MOTHERFUCKING CHILLVILLE (IF FOR BUT A MOMENT)
???? – 2019
RIP
Near the end of the service, a black stretch limo edged up the drive and parked behind the hearse. A chauffer got out, opened the passenger door, and the screaming figure from Edvard Munch’s The Scream stepped out. Everyone watched in amazement as he approached the gravesite.
“I’m sorry for your loss, everyone,” the figure said in a heavy Norwegian accent. He pulled a rose from the flower arrangement and tossed it into the grave, where Tom Two’s diminutive coffin had just been lowered. He took a step back, folded his arms near his waist, and respectfully bowed his big lightbulb-shaped head.
Glont eyeballed him quizzically. “Um, are you who I think you are?”
“Probably. I’m the screaming figure from Munch’s famous painting. Like the painting, my name is also The Scream. I am Tom Two’s father.”
The other mourners emitted a collective gasp.
“I…I felt his death. Felt it kind of like a disturbance in The Force, I guess you could say. So as soon as I was able to, I climbed out of The Scream—as in the painting—at the National Gallery in Oslo, Norway, and booked a flight to the U.S. It was a long trip. I’m glad I made it here before the funeral ended.”
He reached into a pocket in his sooty robe, pulled out his iPhone XS to check the time.
“Ah, unfortunately, I must be off. Wish I could stay longer, but my flight to London leaves in less than two hours. The director at the gallery wants me back as soon as possible. I guess the Queen of England, the Prince of Liechtenstein, and the Grand Duke of Luxembourg are in town this weekend and will be visiting the museum. As you might well imagine, the museum’s most popular attraction—Edvard Munch’s The Scream—is somewhat uninteresting when I’m not there.”
Glont’s mind buzzed with dozens of questions for The Scream. Did he know how or why Tom Two never aged past two years? How old was he himself? Who was Tom Two’s mother? And how the hell did he come to life and leave the famous painting he lived in?
But he didn’t ask The Scream any of these things. Instead, he asked the only fucking question that motherfucking mattered: “Hey, if you’re really his dad, then w
here the fuck have you been all these years, G?”
The Scream was taken aback. “Why, in the Munch painting, of course. I mean, that’s my job. I’m The Scream. That’s what I do.”
“But you had a son, dude. He didn’t even know about you. You never visited. Never sent him a dime. You never called him. Never even wrote him a lousy letter!”
“You don’t understand. You don’t know what it’s like being an iconic figure in a world-famous, priceless piece of art. Let’s just say that I’m very, very busy.”
Ma Ruth said, “Apparently not too busy to sneak out of that dang picture and knock up some little hussy somewhere, ya screamin’ rascal, you!”
“Yeah,” Glont said, getting in The Scream’s face.
“I…I have to get going now,” The Scream said nervously as he backed away from Glont.
Glont took a step toward him, The Membrane sliding alongside him. “Why, you’re nothing but a deadbeat dad!” he said before he and The Membrane pounced on him.
They beat The Scream’s deadbeat-dad ass good. In fact, they beat him down to a pile of oil paints, tempera, pastels, and cardboard, effectively destroying him.
Nowadays, if you visit the National Gallery in Oslo, you can still see Munch’s iconic painting. You can see the swirling red-orange sky, the blue-black fjord, the fenced-in road, and the two figures in the background, but the painting’s superstar is conspicuously absent. As such, the painting sucks a big, blue, spiked dick now, so much so that museum had to change its name from The Scream to The Shit.
***
About two months after Tom Two’s funeral, The Membrane starved to death.
See, not everyone knows this, but apparently Totino’s food products—namely Party Pizzas and Pizza Rolls—were actually made by a guy whose name was actually Totino, kind of like Prince or Madonna. One night, your boy Totino went fucking nuthouse-bugshit insane, locked himself in his factory, and set the place ablaze. The building burned to the ground with him in it. No more Totino meant no more Totino’s Party Pizzas and Pizza Polls, and the world’s remaining stock of those products depleted in no time.
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