You grunt in reply, but it’s a weak protest.
The rain picks up. The wind gusts around you.
He seems to smile. “The light,” he repeats.
It almost sounds like he says delight.
Then he takes three steps back, gauging his position in relation to the camera slung from your shoulder. He outstretches his arms, crucifixion-style, pointing at the other two impaled bodies on his left and right. “Welcome,” he says, evidently speaking to your camera. The campfire crackling behind him casts a pink halo around his naked figure, his features dark and mottled by moonlight. “We are gathered here today for the new Sermon on the Mount.”
He sounds more like a circus carnie at a funeral than a preacher sermonizing, but the bald man clearly is a holy roller, and knowing this only adds to the sense that this is an insulting way to end your life. His private show is a parody of all you’ve ever done of value in your lifetime, not only as director and camera operator for The Cyclone Cowgirl–the top-rated program on Cable Weather Central–but also with several prized short documentaries in the can and ready for release. Why must you be frozen in place like this, like something out of Kubrick film, forced to watch this man make heresy of your life’s work as you breathe what are assuredly your numbered last breaths?
“That’s right, I say ‘new’ Sermon on the Mount–and it’s long overdue in this world of dark and blight. We are gathered to bear witness to the power and glory, to the kingdom of all that is right. I know this for I have seen the way, the truth, and the light!”
The poetry of his blasphemous chatter convinces you of his psychosis. Part of you darkly wonders if all the writers of the bible were just as nutty.
He lowers his arms and cocks his head to one side as he walks a few steps closer to the camera, and you can’t tell if he’s ogling you or the lens as the muscles over one of his eyes pulls up high. “I have seen it before. God has blessed me with his presence. You hear me right: I have seen His face. I have seen God in the lightning.”
He sweeps his head from left to right, slowly, then tilts it downward. His lightning-bolt eyes seem to penetrate you with their glare. “And in a thunderous voice, he spoke unto me. He foretold of this heavenly event. Tonight, he returns! And–God’s will be done–he has chosen to give me this camera to testify to his coming!” He turns his chin up to the sky, grinning, swishing his head left to right in ecstasy, unblinking in the rain that falls. “And God will return in a pillar of light–just as he did when he led the Israelites–to baptize these sinners in his heaven fire, just as he did at the crucifixion!”
You grunt. Can this freak not hear how corny and convoluted he sounds? Does he really believe these inanities, or is it all just some sick psychotic joke for the camera? If only you could talk to the man, speak reason….
Thunder roars in the sky like a mortar blast and you recoil in surprise, tearing pain back with you as bright light dances behind the canopy of clouds and the rod swizzles sticky and hard in your body, zinging with ache. For the first time you feel the entire length of the unthinkable tunnel in your torso–an absence that runs all the way through you–all at once. As you hold your breath and tighten your muscles and struggle to remain still, you wonder what will be left when all that absence inside you expands to the point where there’s nothing left of you at all.
The lightshow above continues, illuminating the rain that now curtains down, sputtering in the campfire. You can actually hear its droplets hitting the bodies of your film crew, and when you strain to peer down your cheeks to look at them–straining, too, to hold on to the only thing resembling civilized culture in this forsaken slaughter camp–you realize that this naked holy roller has created something akin to Golgotha near the Mount of Olives. The place where Jesus–you dimly remember from a religious studies class the college forced you to take–was nailed to the cross alongside two criminals.
Thunder quakes and you wish you knew more about Jesus, about the Bible, about God. You haven’t been to church since grade school, but when you moved from Kansas to Colorado, your parents figured your young immunization against sin was enough to set the foundation for goodness in you and never bothered to find a new congregation.
Until now. Your dead friends, pinned to the ground, forced to hear the homilies of a madman.
“…and God showed me the Way, and the way was through TV–that broadcast of electricity across the sky! And He showed me the Truth, and the truth was that the church has lied about the crucifixion, and that there were no wooden crosses, only metal spears! And He showed me the light, the glorious lightning, and I knew that I had seen the face of the Creator of all things, all things good and evil, all things holy and un….”
The air is so thick you can feel the static. The madman’s voice bobs in and out of the sound of rain, the sound of thunder, as flashes of lightning zip down in the distant sky behind him.
The naked man–now worked into a frenzy–slaps his own head the way a wrestler sometimes does, leaning forward in a step toward the camera. “God struck me when I saw him. Struck me hard when I was down on my luck. He hit me right upside the head with his light.” He points at his eyes with forked fingers. “And I seen Him right here. I ain’t saying it didn’t hurt. Only through pain can one dare to know the power…and the glory. But only when all that power, all that glory enters into you can you truly see the glorious face of the Almighty!” He shakes his head straight and spits. The plastic lenses on his eyes illuminate and flicker crazy with skylight. “I lost part of my eyes that day because I dared look God dead in the face. I only see things sideways now–I must look around the imprint of God on my eyes–he is always there, but always gone. Until tonight, when I will see him again!”
He pounds his chest once, hard. “God is energy, you see? God is in the tiny strike of a match head and in the core of the earth that spits out the volcano. Understand? God is in the earth and sea and the sky. You know what I mean! He is all! He is always, always all around us, even when we can’t see Him. Especially then! His mysterious ways are always working on the fringes of what we think we can see. These eyes…“–he hits his head again–” these eyes can never forget! And on nights like these, we must remember! God’s thunder strikes everywhere around the world and with every bolt of energy he is reaching out to touch us, reaching out His holy hand! We can touch Him–see Him–if only we can know how to reach back.”
Something in all of his lunatic ranting registers and you suddenly realize what you and your crew are impaled with. Lightning rods. The madman has recreated his own version of the crucifixion, here on a remote hilltop, in a storm of lightning; his attempt to “reach back” to touch the fiery fingers of God in this lightning storm.
Two wiry bars of light flash, crackle into a central point and find hold of a tree in the distance. Then three more strike down on a nearby hill. Still a few miles away. But the storm is rapidly getting closer.
All those days and nights chasing storms for TV…now the most spectacular storm you’ve ever witnessed is chasing after you.
Part of you–a very small part–is pleased that the camera is still rolling.
The lunatic priest now stands beside Judy, shouting toward the camera. “…I may be blind, but tonight I will see! I need no blind man’s cane!” He reaches out and grasps the gory pole that juts out from Judy’s pelvis. “Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me!” Thunder rolls and he cackles, shaking the rod. Her body slumps backward and hangs sickeningly from the pole, the flesh tearing further, a red gash spreading closer toward her pubis, spitting coils of yellow and purple.
You cannot tear your eyes away when he repeats: “They comfort me!” He tilts his head skyward, grinning, and strokes the rod sickly in his hand, fist sinking deep into the bowl of her pelvis and you remember that Judy had a Caesarean section once in this very same place, the place where her children were born, and as he leers at the camera and pushes his arm deeper into her, you gag on the rod that impales you and you shut your e
yes tightly and try to hold down your choking. You refuse to look, because refusing to watch is all you can do now. Your eyelids are the only thing under your power to control, but then you think about maybe moving–maybe moving just a little bit to the left or right, and ending this whole travesty right now before he violates you the same way….
And at that precise moment, all is still for one heartbeat, save for the sound of his hand mashing wetly into her amid the patter of rain, before you feel your hair tingle and rise into the air all over your body as an enormous crash slams down around you like a giant anvil of hard light so bright that it seems to explode out of your eyes rather than into them and you gasp as the electricity blares and then crackles in the air, its wake leaving you clenching and shaking painlessly numb around the pole.
This is what a nuclear blast would feel like, you imagine, but when you recognize that you are actually forming a coherent thought, it occurs to you that you still live and haven’t been struck by lightning at all. You open your eyes to survey the camp, but everything seems lost behind a gauze of brightness, until it throbs into focus and you notice that the madman still clutches Judy’s rod–his arm blackened, his scalp afire. With his free hand, he bats at his head, trying to put out the blue flame. His other hand seems stuck to the pole–as if melted there and bonded to it somehow–and he tugs while clawing at his head, causing Judy’s scorched body–also afire–to flop about like a doll. You almost laugh at the absurdity and the joy of seeing your tormentor in such slapstick pain. He seems to have put out the flame on his crown, but he continues to scrape away at the flesh there, and as he gores himself worse you notice metal sparkling beneath the smoldering flesh.
The man has a titanium plate in his head.
You laugh a little but it sounds like choking.
You blink and then realize something is not quite right, as if any of this even could be. Judy continues to twitch and flop, even though the lunatic has stopped pulling on the lightning rod lanced in her belly. Indeed, her wobbly motions seem to intensify…as if she’s merely drunk and trying to find her balance so she can stand up straight again, and with one quick motion she finally, impossibly, bends upward and clutches the post jutting out of her.
By the time you realize that she has resurrected, she is already on him, hoisting her body forward by his scorched arm and pulling herself closer toward him. He blindly stretches as far away as he can get, shaking his head madly from side-to-side, and you can’t tell if he’s saying NO or simply trying to better see, see through his peripheral vision, see the miracle that is climbing up his arm and reaching toward his face.
The thunder rumbles around you, as if summoning up enough force for another strike.
You watch Judy clutch the man’s skull. A thumb sinks into his left eye, the melted lightning bolt lens popping over her knuckle in a glop of ocular jelly. The other lens jitters as he screams for God’s mercy, but then his voice is finally snuffed by the fingers that pierce his throat and squeeze. Blood gouts down his neck and you see his Adam’s apple spit out from between Judy’s fingers like some horrendous yellow gumball. And it’s all too much to believe so you close your eyes and try not to hear the creature that was Judy sloppily tearing its groin free from impalement.
Then the tearing of another body.
Ben?
You refuse to look.
It takes all that you can, not to.
But the sky pulses so bright behind your eyelids and you hear footsteps approaching between the roiling thunderclaps. And in the midst of it all you hear the sound of your own voice, groaning something deep in the hollow of your wheezing chest, something unintelligible that might be prayer, before the video camera snaps to a stop.
For a moment, silence and cool rain and again you feel like a billowing mast at sea.
Footsteps.
And then there is light.
Michael A. Arnzen’s latest books are the novel, Play Dead, recently re-released in paperback and ebook from Raw Dog Screaming Press, and Instigation: Creative Prompts on the Dark Side, an ebook helper for writers. A four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award®, Arnzen teaches horror writing in the MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill University. See what Mike is up to now at: www.gorelets.com
-Footprints Fading in the Desert
by Eric J. Guignard
The footprints left in the sand seemed a mysterious impossibility. They were the etchings caused by bare feet, and Lisa shook her head, woozy and perplexed by their appearance.
She thought at first it must be a hallucination, an early morning dream or desire for rescue projected onto the desolate land. But then she crouched down and ran a slender finger through one of the shallow imprints. The soft ravine her finger carved in the sand crossed over the footprint, disrupting the indentation of its heel, and then curled up to each toe print, which was remarkably preserved in that coarse, white grit. The tracks revealed human feet, just a little bigger than her own. The left footprints stepped in a normal linear direction, but the right footprints had a slight odd angle to them, drag marks at each step, as if that side were lame. The prints were fresh, and she scanned back to the horizon for a source of origin, but the tracks just shrank away from her and faded into the distance. Conversely, searching for a point of destination led to the other horizon, one hundred eighty degrees in the opposite direction.
Lisa was short and slight, and she normally wore gold-rimmed glasses. Those glasses were gone now, so her view was fuzzy and further hampered by the constant blowing sand, driven by hot wind. Could there be refuge nearby? Some place just beyond her field of vision, close enough that someone could romp about this expanse of barren earth without shoes? She couldn’t fathom that as possible, yet those footprints came from somewhere and led elsewhere in a teasing invitation. Lisa contemplated the chance of those tracks passing by and then wondered if it were not just someone else stranded out in the wasteland like herself; a misplaced socialite plucked from hotel-top cocktail parties in an irony of the cosmos. She decided that whether the person was lost or simply enjoying a midnight stroll while she had slept, she must find him or her. Anything was better than withering away alone, under the wreckage.
Fifty feet away lay the twisted and burned remains of the Cessna 172 aircraft. The shattered rear fuselage, resting underneath the shadow of one severed wing, had been her home for the prior three days. Away from that (not far enough away, though she had been too hysterical to go any further) were two mounds, covered with sand and rocks and each projecting a pair of feet like grim armaments. One grave contained the Cessna’s pilot, a crusty old redheaded man with crimson whiskers and stagnant breath. He was brought on as a replacement for the regular pilot. The second grave contained the love of her life, her husband, Phil Strancell. The impact of the crash had split Phil nearly in half, from crotch to neck. Somehow, he lived for almost a full day after the accident, strapped into the co-pilot’s seat looking like a snapped turkey wishbone, his critical organs and arteries held together miraculously by the same portion of torn fuselage that had also performed his grotesque bisection.
Lisa knew she was in the Great Basin Desert, somewhere between Idaho and Nevada or, as Phil likened it, halfway between Hell and Hades. The Cessna had nosedived into an ancient fissured lakebed, blanketed under wind-swept sand. There shouldn’t have been a mark of civilization for hundreds of miles around to disturb the dotting sagebrush and rolling dunes, yet, looking down at those footprints, Lisa saw hope. She considered that whoever left those tracks came by during the night, walking obliviously past the wrecked plane. The nights were so dark, black as ebony slate, it was impossible to see more than a few feet away at a time. Within that forsaken land, she now knew another person existed, one who limped by as she fitfully slept. Each night, she rolled back and forth in haunted slumber, dreaming of rescue from her worsening nightmare. Lisa knew it didn’t make any rational sense… the trail of a barefoot man or woman wandering the desert through the dead of night. But the pr
ints were fresh, and they led far away from that aircraft crypt. To Lisa, that was motivation enough, and she knew she must follow them.
The morning was young, but time was against her. Lisa would have only a few good hours to pursue the tracks until the summer sun began to crush her; the sun she cursed with its choking, heavy heat. There was no thermometer, but she guessed the temperature rose above 110 degrees. She rushed back to the mangled Cessna and packed to leave. Fashioning a hobo’s knapsack by looping a beach towel around a broken pole and tying it in place with loose electrical wire, she filled it with a bit of food and a few other trinkets. She also carried a thin blanket and, most importantly, two of the eight-ounce plastic water bottles, the last of her one-a-day rationing.
By the time Lisa returned to the footprints, they were already beginning to fade, melting to ghostly imprints that cut into the flat, gritty earth. Wind blew the sand along, covering the line of tracks as it covered everything else. Lisa jogged quickly along the trail, each footfall sinking down to leave mirroring marks like the ones left for her to follow. She looked back only once at the wrecked aircraft, bidding a silent farewell to the graves she was forever leaving behind.
It had been only three days since Lisa’s life was split abruptly apart, much as her husband’s body had been. Three long and devastating days of cooking under the desert sun, her skin once moist and fresh, now turning brown and cracked like dried jerky. Before the crash, she had napped quietly in the rear passenger seat until a sickening drop in the plane jolted her awake, and her face slammed against the metal ceiling. The plane fell, and she bounced backward behind the seat in slow motion while trying to remember how to scream. She saw only the backs of Phil’s and the pilot’s heads. Like herself, Phil was silent. He was frozen, and his hands clenched into claws upon the armrests of the co-pilot’s chair. The pilot screamed into the radio, “Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap,” as if that were the latest in lingo for a mayday request. The plane shook apart as it fell from the blue sky. The pilot pounded on dials and struggled with the throttle and almost seemed to bring the craft under control, just before it slammed into the sandy earth. Lisa blacked out.
Horror Library, Volume 5 Page 12