Virtual Terror

by David Bergantino

  "Calm down," Mel said soothingly. "Have some yogurt. You'll feel better."

  "I said Mario's trying to kill me!" Keith was frantic.

  "I know. I know," Mel laughed. "It's all part of the act, right? Here, just have some yogurt."

  A yogurt cone floated out of the darkness. Confused, Keith reached for it. At the same time, lightning flashed, revealing the bony claw that held the cone, which was filled with dark red liquid. Keith looked up as lightning flashed again, enabling him to see a skeleton standing behind the counter, covered in gore, wearing a name tag that simply read MEL. Stringy hair framed a leering skull. Thunder boomed in the distance as blood began to gush from the yogurt dispensers.

  "Mario can't hurt you now," the Mel-thing cackled. "The only thing he can do to you is give you a taste sensation!" Then it brought the cone up to its teeth and poured the blood onto them.

  Terror froze Keith in place. As the skeleton slurped noisily at the bloody cone, a blue glow illuminated the yogurt stand. A grinding noise from one of the dispensers made Keith look up. Out of the top of one machine, Mario's limp, dead body twitched. As the grinding became louder, Mario began to disappear slowly into the dispenser. The machine was chewing him up, making him into yogurt. Keith screamed, but no sound came from his mouth.

  His attention riveted morbidly on the scene, Keith saw that beside Mario's corpse — now only visible from the shoulders up — Pam's body protruded from the neighboring yogurt machine. Like Mario, her body twitched and sank slowly, accompanied by the sickening grinding sounds.

  Keith shut his eyes against the horrifying image of his friends, but Carrie's voice made them snap open again.

  "Keith!! Help!!"

  Carrie had appeared in the machine next to Pam. Only, she was alive. She struggled against the bony arms of Mel, which were holding her down. The leering skull turned abruptly to Keith.

  "You wanted Carrie all along. Let me make some for you… fresh!"

  Holding Carrie firmly with one skeletal arm, Mel reached with the other toward the button that would activate the yogurt machine. In an instant, Keith overcame his paralysis and leapt at the creature. Hooking his fingers in its rib cage, Keith pulled back with all his might, hoping to tear the thing apart. It barely moved, but withdrew its hand from the button. Quickly it plucked Keith's left hand away from itself and began to crush it in its claw. Bones splintered and crackled. Keith's bones. The Mel-thing began to laugh.

  "Don't fight it, man. I'm just trying to give good customer service!" The skull nodded upward, past Carrie, who was still struggling desperately. There was one more yogurt machine. It was empty, and Keith's name was etched on its surface. "And it'll be my pleasure to serve you next!"

  With that, the skeleton pushed Carrie violently backward, slamming her head against the inside wall of the machine. Her eyes fluttered, then closed. The claw, now free, reached for the button once more. Crumpled to the floor, his hand still in the creature's vise grip, Keith felt utterly helpless. He watched Mel depress the button. The grinding noise began immediately. He could hear it as his mind overloaded with pain and despair, and he finally blacked out.

  Chapter 5

  Keith awoke lying on his stomach, his face buried in his pillow. Hard plastic pressed against his chest. Gasping for breath, he flipped over, relieving the pressure on his bruised hand. Cold sweat flowed from every pore. He tried at first to relax in an attempt to fall back asleep, but the images of the skeleton, the blood, and, worst of all, Mario's cruel face were tattooed onto the backs of his eyelids. Sleep was not an option.

  His clock radio told him it was 7:57 a.m. The sky was light. The aroma of coffee weakly invaded his room. He could hear his mother's slippered feet padding around in the kitchen. Normally Keith would have gone on downstairs for a cup of coffee, but he was still unready to explain his injured hand. He headed directly for the shower instead. Keith was, as always, grateful to have a bathroom that adjoined his bedroom. He could avoid being seen and kill time easily. Hopefully his mother would be gone before he had to go down.

  Nearly thirty minutes later, Keith stepped from a hot shower. Steam clouded over the bathroom mirror. He opened the door that led into his bedroom to dispel the mist hanging in the air. He pointed the blow-dryer at the mirror and switched it on. Soon a round area on the mirror's surface cleared. Condensation framed Keith's face when he looked at his reflection.

  A warp in the mirror distorted his image, giving him a very tall, Frankensteinesque forehead. When he tilted to the side, one eye became decidedly larger than the other. Sometimes Keith would experiment with the position of his face in the mirror, finding new ways to «sculpt» his features. But his nightmare had stayed with him like a vicious hangover, and now he just growled at his reflection, quickly ran some gel through his hair, threw on some jams and a T-shirt, and went downstairs.

  The kitchen was empty. His mother had already left. It was Sunday, so there must be some garden club breakfast or brunch. A half pot of hot coffee sat in the coffeemaker. Keith filled a large mug and toasted a bagel to complete his breakfast.

  By the time Keith finished, it was 9:30 A.M. Early, but late enough for Carrie to be awake. She would probably be sitting on her back porch, painting. This had been her Sunday routine for as long as he had known her. Carrie's heart had been set on going to art school since early childhood. She was a gifted painter, the influence of the Impressionists obvious in her work. She had no use for computers, nor graphic or commercial art. Museums and tasteful homes would display her work, she claimed. Not billboards or juice bottles. Yet, for all her desire to become a "pure artist," she lacked the pretension of other artsy types at Springwood.

  Keith had not called Carrie in months. Just the thought of doing so now gave him butterflies in his stomach. This was not the sick feeling of the night before but nervousness, plain and simple. He stared at the telephone for several minutes before reaching for it. Holding the receiver in his hand, he stared at it longer until a recorded message asked him to hang up and try his call again. He held the button down until he got a dial tone once more, then punched in Carrie's number. Slowly.

  "Hi," he said lamely when she answered the phone. "It's me, Keith."

  "Hi, Keith," she said cheerily. He had called during her morning painting for a reason. She was usually in a calm, peaceful mood as she painted. He heard no recrimination in her voice.

  "First," he said, barreling forward, "I want to apologize for what I said yesterday. I don't know what my problem was."

  "It's okay," she told him. "I think we were both kind of nervous." Keith silently agreed.

  "I was hoping we could try again," he said. Then, before she misunderstood him, he added quickly, "The four of us getting together. On a double date. And act normal this time."

  "That'd be great," Carrie said without hesitation.

  "Really?" he said, stunned. He had expected this to be a lot harder than it was turning out to be.

  "Really," she said. He could tell by her voice that she was smiling.

  "In that case, how about if we meet at Wide Awake tonight around eight?" It was short notice for everyone, but he was on a roll and didn't want to give anyone, particularly himself, time to change their mind.

  "Sounds great," Carrie told him. "But I can't stay out too late. School night and all."

  "No problem," he assured her. "This'll just be casual, anyway." It was really happening. He couldn't believe it. "I'm looking forward to it," he added.

  "So am I," she replied, utterly sincere. Then she hung up.

  Keith sat and breathed deeply for a minute after he hung up the phone. He had been worried that just talking to her again would awaken old feelings, that just the sound of her voice on the phone would make him fall in love with her again. But that had not happened. Instead, he felt as if he was reestablishing ties with an old, close friend, the way it had been when he and Mario patched things up.

  Keith did not see Mario as planned that afternoon because his aunt insi
sted that he make up the homework time he had missed the night before. But he was happy to hear that Keith had called Carrie, and said he looked forward to all of them getting together later. When he told Pam about the plan, she said she was very proud of him. He felt like celebrating the moment with her alone, before they saw the others that night. But when he told her he was coming over to take her for a drive, she said she couldn't. If she was going out that night, she had to finish all her work in the afternoon. Reluctantly Keith let her off the hook and said he'd pick her up later.

  Hanging up the phone, he felt let down. It was his own fault for getting so excited.

  Because he had no one to hang out with during the day, time crawled at the pace of a snail on Valium. He attacked his homework and finished it quickly. MTV absorbed a few hours, but not enough. Finally he showered and changed and found himself ready to go an hour earlier than necessary. The house was utterly silent as Keith sat nervously at the edge of his bed, watching time march inexorably by. He stood and began to, pace restlessly, at one point stopping before the Virtu-Illusions poster which still rested on the floor. Might as well hang it, he thought. That should kill a few minutes. A blip of apprehension shot through him when he touched the frame, but he ignored the feeling. Just more jitters, he thought. Carefully catching the wire on the back of the frame on the nail, he mounted the poster to his wall. When he stepped back, he judged it to be straight. And on the first try, too, he thought, impressed with himself.

  Might as well give this another try, Keith said to himself. The memory of his strange experience in the mall reared up in his mind, but Keith dismissed it. The whole thing had probably just been the result of a glorified head rush. So he focused his eyes on his reflection in the glass.

  Several minutes passed before Keith looked away from the poster. The image had not yet materialized. Strange, he thought. It shouldn't be that hard — unless there was no image to see. But why would Virtu-Illusions sell a bogus poster? They wouldn't, he answered himself. Besides, he thought he had caught sight of some kind of image in the poster while he was at the mall. So he tried again… but still no luck. Rubbing his temples to relieve the building tension, he wondered why an image in «Mysteria» was eluding him. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, relaxed, then started again. The next time he looked at the clock, nearly forty-five minutes had passed. He had no idea he'd been staring that long. How did that happen? he wondered. If he didn't leave soon, he'd be late. But conjuring an image had now become an obsession, and Keith resolved not to leave his house until he had seen it. Ignoring a growing headache, he put all his concentration into discovering "Mysteria's" hidden picture.

  This time he had better luck. Keith caught the edge of a shape, but a twinge of pain caused him to lose it. His eyes felt like they were being pulled from their sockets. But he was close. He'd get it this time. One more try.

  The colorful dots soon diverged again and then began to re-form. A shape appeared, and Keith fought off more pain to keep it in his sight. It worked. An image sprang from the poster.

  Keith gasped. Fresh pain flared behind his eyes, but he held his focus. This image was so unexpected that at first he couldn't tell what it was. Fear replaced shock as the image became easily recognizable. He was looking at a male human face. It seemed vaguely familiar, but he could not understand why. A mask of terror and agony stared out at Keith. The eyes were wide with fear and pain, the mouth open in a silent scream. An unidentillable inverted V-shaped object protruded from the subject's mouth. Cat scratches of dread crawled up his back. But Keith could not look away. The image seemed to be drawing him in, infusing him with the terror expressed in the face floating before him.

  Finally a vicious bolt of pain, much worse than the earlier ones, caused Keith to clamp his eyes shut, breaking the connection. He staggered to the bathroom. As he swallowed two Tylenol, he wondered why a virtual-image poster would contain an image like that. Usually they showed planes or dinosaurs or dolphins — innocuous stuff. And how could he recognize the subject of one? The really strange thing was that the three-dimensional images were normally very crude and appeared as objects cut from Styrofoam. The face Keith saw was much more detailed than usual. He had been able to discern individual hairs on the subject's head. Hairs that were standing straight up.

  His own head throbbing, Keith leaned against the basin. Closing his eyes again, he let his head hang forward. He breathed deeply and tried to relax. After a few moments, he looked up. His distorted reflection gazed back from the mirror and he quickly looked away. Leaving the bathroom, Keith peeked apprehensively at the poster. Just a swirl of color, no image. Still, he felt a strange attraction to it, as if it wanted him to look into it.

  Uh-uh, thought Keith. No way.

  Keith averted his eyes and his gaze fell on his alarm clock. Disorientation hit him as he saw that another half an hour had gone by. He was very late. Pam would be waiting and angry. If it were just her, he'd call and cancel the date. But tonight he had the others to think about as well. Canceling now would be viewed as chickening out. Besides, his only alternative was to remain home with "Mysteria."

  Definitely no way.

  Pam was waiting on her front steps when Keith pulled into her driveway. She was at the passenger door almost as soon as he stopped. He started to apologize, but she cut him off.

  "It's okay," she told him as she got in. "I was worried."

  "I took a nap and overslept," he told her. And miraculously, she accepted his excuse without question. Usually she wanted full details as to why she was kept waiting. He glanced her way and she smiled at him. Then the smile changed quickly to a look of concern.

  "You okay?" she asked. "You look kind of pale."

  "Just a little headache," he told her, lying. It was actually a very big headache. The entire drive over he had been trying to forget the tortured face in the poster. But his throbbing temples would not let him. "Took some Tylenol before I left. Should kick in pretty soon."

  "Okay. You nervous?" she asked.

  "Yeah. A little," he admitted. In truth, however, he was too shaken by the image in the poster to be nervous about his official reunion with Carrie. If anything, Keith was looking forward to being in familiar surroundings with friends.

  "You'll be fine," she told him reassuringly. "It'll be like old times."

  He returned her encouragement with a smile, but frowned inwardly. Like old times? He wondered what she meant by that. As far as he was concerned, the old times were the days when he and Carrie dated. Those old times wouldn't be returning. The idea was to start new.

  "Why are you frowning?" Pam asked suspiciously. Apparently his inner feelings had surfaced.

  "Just the headache," he told her. He decided he was overanalyzing Pam's statement and dropped the subject with himself. I am nervous, he silently admitted.

  * * *

  Mario and Carrie were already sitting at a table when Keith and Pam arrived at Wide Awake. The place was filled with teenagers, as were the sidewalk tables. The coffee shop was a popular teen hangout. In Springwood, all the coffee shops were popular teen hangouts.

  Keith left Pam at the table while he went to the counter to order drinks. Since Mario and Carrie had already been served, he brought back a cappuccino for Pam. Because he could only carry things with one hand, he had to make a second trip for himself. He ordered a glass of steamed milk with almond flavoring. Normally he was a coffee person like everyone else, but tonight, between the headache, the poster, and the significance of the evening, he opted for something that would relax him instead of making him hyper. On top of everything else, being with Mario reminded Keith of his nightmare. A chill ran down Keith's spine as he remembered the look of hate in Mario's eyes. At the moment, there wasn't even a hint of displeasure in Mario's expression. Seeing that made Keith feel a little better, but the image would not go completely away.

  "Sounds like we all had pretty weird dreams last night," Pam told him as he returned with his drinks. "We're gonna do the
Dream Exchange."

  Keith panicked. He did not want to tell this group last night's dream. But for the moment, he didn't know how to get out of it.

  The Dream Exchange was a ritual peculiar to Springwood. Whether it confirmed the legend of Freddy Krueger — or simply perpetuated the myth, as many claimed — Springwood teenagers tended to have vivid and frequently violent nightmares. The teenagers found that by talking about their dreams with friends — by exchanging them with others — the dreams became much less frightening. The first time Mario had heard of this, he thought everyone in Springwood was crazy. After experiencing several nightmares of his own, he soon realized that the Dream Exchange kept people from going crazy.

  One of the cardinal rules of the Dream Exchange was no lying. That violated the sanctity of a game in which trust was vital. Keith had never lied before. But he had never had a dream like this about his friends before.

  "It doesn't have to be last night's dream, does it?" he asked. Often that was the rule. But sometimes a group would agree that any dream within a week was eligible.

  "Why?" asked Mario suspiciously. "Did you have a dirty dream last night?"

  Keith found himself blushing. The reaction was involuntary, but well timed. "No," he insisted, too strongly, hoping to convince them he had dreamed something obscene the night before. "It just wasn't very interesting. But I had another one a couple nights ago." His plan worked. Mario smiled lasciviously. Keith could tell he would want to know the details of the supposed "dirty dream" when the girls weren't around. By that time, Keith would have made up a dream, and he wouldn't feel bad about lying.

  "Okay," said Pam. "As long as it was recent. But I'm gonna go first." Keith was relieved. He couldn't remember any other dreams at the moment.

  The table became silent. No one could interrupt during the Dream Exchange. Before Pam began, she grabbed her cup of cappuccino and clutched it like a security blanket.