by David Gordon
“Hold! Who goes there? Declare yourself!” The gristled beast faced me with red eyes like boiled beets sunk deep into blackened sockets. He showed stubbly teeth. I stepped back, eyes on the weapon, prepared to flee, but Milo emerged from the clouds.
“That’s OK, Bjorn, this is the guest of honor.”
Immediately, the gatekeeper stood back, his sword raised at attention. “Enter at will.”
“What the fuck, Milo? What is this?” I asked as he guided me toward his command post behind the counter.
He shrugged. “Word must have slipped out about the films. They’re a legend all through the community.”
“What community?” A Satanic dude wandered past with a shaved head, droopy waxed mustache, heavy eyeliner, and a pentagram pendant over a black velvet tunic.
“The underground-art-rock-magic-kink-noise-film-spooky-stoner-occult-metal scene, I guess. Don’t worry. Everyone here is very low profile. They mostly have criminal records.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“And once these copies are run off, we’re going to make a nice little pile. I’m already taking orders.” I was about to raise several objections, but a gaunt graybeard in a pointy hat and a tie-died purple robe appeared and grabbed my hand.
“Thank you, sir, for finding what was lost. I am White Wizard. If you ever need me, just call.” He raised his furry eyebrows and gleamed. “With your thoughts, I mean. There is no phone in my van.”
“Right, I will think about you. Thanks.”
The topless girl I’d seen before tapped my shoulder. I jumped.
“Hi,” she said, and handed me a beer. Her tattooed boobs jiggled and the creatures inked over her soft skin jumped and shivered. “I’m Bluebell. I love what you’re doing for the community. Thank you so, so much.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Ladies and gentleman, and everyone in between, your attention please!”
Distracted, I hadn’t noticed that the music had stopped. Milo was standing on a chair, brandishing a remote. He went on. “Welcome, cinephiles, Satanists, metal heads, stoners, and sexual deviants of all stripes.” There were scattered cheers and a confused dash of applause as the crowd appraised each other. “Tonight we have gathered for what may be the very first screening of a lost treasure, Invitation and Consummation, parts one and two of Zed Naught’s legendary Infernal Trilogy.” A roar went up. Bluebell hopped up and down. Her beer foamed. The White Wizard tossed some glitter in the air. I spotted MJ by the door. She waved. Then someone handed her a bottle of tequila and she took a slug. Milo went on: “But first let me introduce you to the man who made it all possible, the hero of our community…”
Spitting beer, I poked at Milo. “No, no that’s fine…”
He pointed the remote at me. “My dear friend, the experimental, nonlinear novelist and junior private eye… Sam Kornberg!”
A roar went up. The gathered tribe shook their various weapons, pipes, and wands. MJ hooted and waved her bottle. A handful of barbarians began to chant and pump their veiny arms. “Korn-berg! Korn-berg! Korn-berg!”
“Let the films begin!” Milo shouted above them. “Lights out!”
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INVITATION IS ONLY EIGHTEEN minutes long, and appears to be shot on 16mm. There is no synch sound, only a lurching, soaring, screaming score attributed to none other than Daemonica herself on synthesizer and church organ and her rock star then-husband on electric guitar, appearing, according to Milo’s quick Internet work, under the pseudonym High Lord Assmore. The film begins with a sunset, in fact the whole thing takes place during a protracted sunset, while an orange lump of fire melts, like a child’s fallen snow cone, into a neon-blue California sea. This slowed footage of the day’s last drops dripping into darkness is intercut with a kind of fast-forward course in Western civilization coming to its conclusion, an apocalypse composed of stock footage, amateur theatricals, and the occasional flight of fugitive beauty snatched from thin air.
As the sun sinks, shrinking and swelling with a diseased organ’s glandular grandeur, the guitars begin to howl and a whole series of creatures seems to answer the summons: An ancient Egyptian pharaoh (who looks a lot like Kevin the warlock, but much younger with black eyeliner and a shaved chest) emerges from a cardboard temple covered in crayon hieroglyphics and throws a spear into the air. A Greek oracle (garlands in her long blond curls, fake boobs under her toga) rises from the smoke of a cave and runs through the woods, pursued by a hairy Pan in plastic horns, tooting on his pipes. An Aztec goddess in gold body paint and a feather mask climbs a plywood pyramid (close shot on the peak only) holding a bloody sword. (Was this the unnamed Mexican chick, third wheel in the Naught Family Triathlon? The credits called her only Rosa Negrita.) The parade continues and some actors reappear in new guises: the milky blond returns in a white wig and a Marie Antoinette bodice with a beauty mark on her cleavage; Kevin pops up in a mustache and full Fascist ensemble. (Continuity, problematic throughout, gets especially shoddy here. Marie’s beauty mark jumps from right breast to left, and Kevin, when appearing next as Manson, has a seemingly real beard in one shot and an obviously fake one in the next.) Animals leap into action as well, in nature doc footage of bounding stags, soaring bird flocks, and barking wolf packs. Things reach a sort of crescendo when we see these animals dying, falling, bleeding, intercut with zoomy flashes of knives, swords, spears, and arrows being waved around. Night falls. Total darkness fills the screen. Then, in a gorgeous bit of business, a full moon forms like a pearl on the ocean’s silvered tongue. There is a meteor shower, a real one, bright traces like so many scratches raining and dying on film. A flame jumps, we think it is another, brighter comet crossing the heavens, but it is a match tossed into the darkness right before us. It lands, igniting a bonfire. As the flames flare up, apparently in Zed’s backyard, we see the various characters from the film, Greek, Roman, Aztec, Nazi, and so forth kneeling around it, cleverly cut so that the doubled and tripled actors can all be seen. Even the animals seem to be there, though obviously stuffed, a stag, a wolf, a goat. Then, hazily through the flames, two figures emerge in hooded cloaks, holding hands. The assembly cheers, fists raised. The music orgasms. The end. The credits are a bit of a letdown after this, since they are poorly set in shaky letters and the musical score, a bit too short, suddenly begins again, only to end abruptly about thirty seconds later.
The audience, now sprawled on the floor or leaning against the walls, burst into ecstatic applause. “I can see why that is a legend!” Milo shouted into my ear. “Wait till I go online. I will rule the nerdosphere.”
I shouted back, “Don’t forget we’re not supposed to have seen this! We stole it.”
“Borrowed. Art belongs to the people. And I’m charging them like a hundred a copy. You want to run over to 7-Eleven before the next feature? I’m getting hungry.”
“No. It’s short. Let it roll. We better get these back quickly.”
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IF INVITATION WAS AN AMATEUR production twisted into high art, Consummation was homemade avant-garde porn. The film seems to begin where the first one ended, on a fire-lit night at Zed’s, but the cast and props are different. Now there are torches blazing in a large ring, with the trees and ridges of Laurel Canyon outlined in black above. Now the circled participants are all in black hooded robes, with their faces variously masked (demon, gorilla, ghost) or painted (whiskered kitten, red devil, mime white). A giant pentagram is painted on the ground, and in the center of the star stands an altar draped with red velvet and a large upside-down cross that looks like the one in Kevin’s closet. Then, as the music climbs and wails, a kind of royal couple emerges, a man in a purple robe with a goatish mask covering the top of his face, Batman-style, and sprouting small horns, and a woman in a white robe with a white Zorro-type mask revealing pouty red lips and bright eyes blinking through its holes. Zed and Mona. He holds a sword in one hand. Mona cuddles a white rabbit. In their other hands, each holds a chain, and crawling behind them, both
bare-bottomed, are a priest and nun, the nun holding an incense burner in her mouth, the priest with a pillow on his back, on which, as a drunken zoom reveals, rests the consecrated host.
“Holy shit, here we go! Black Mass!” Milo said, opening a bag of chips.
“You mean unholy shit,” I corrected him.
The onlookers hail them. The Priestess disrobes. She is completely nude except for dagger heels, and completely shaved. She lies down on the altar and a couple of worshippers chain her with cuffs that dangle from it. Then the Satanic priest, Zed, drops his robe. He is nude as well.
“Uncircumcised, interesting,” Milo said, crunching a chip. He handed me the bag but I declined, as Zed begins vigorous intercourse with Mona and the worshippers chant and clap. There is some wilderness footage of wolves crying, forests burning, asteroids vaporizing into the sun. Back to Zed, who turns, tumescent, on the priestling, who worshipfully holds out the pillow. He ejaculates over the host.
“Nachos!” Milo shouted. The crowd in the shop went howling mad. Warriors high-fived. Wizards wailed. I thought I caught a glimpse of MJ hugging Bluebell, snuggled in her cleavage.
On screen, a volcano erupts. A comet crashes. A toreador slaughters a bull. An ax splinters a door while a girl screams. Lava spurts and flows, igniting the darkness. It drips into the sea and becomes glass. An island is born. Then a worshipper, with a clown mask under his hood, slits the rabbit’s throat and lets it bleed into a chalice.
“What the fuck? I’m going to have nightmares,” I said.
“That was unnecessary,” Milo agreed.
Zed breaks the host into pieces. Still nude, he climbs onto a throne that I recalled as the chair Kevin lounged in during my visit, and the congregation lines up. Each kneels to eat a piece of defiled host, sip bunny blood, and plant a soulful kiss on Zed’s hairy bottom.
“What the fuck?” I groaned again.
“That my friend, is the devil’s kiss,” Milo whispered.
Then the congregants gather around the altar, dropping their robes, and as the music soars and dies, they approach the masked priestess, to worship at one of her three open gates.
53
THIS TIME THE CREDITS rolled in silence. Someone turned on the lights. The community was now strangely subdued. Whether due to substance overload, moral queasiness, or just shooting their aesthetic wad, they seemed lethargic, sated, even depressed, rather than whipped into the orgiastic fever I’d feared. The White Wizard was downcast, picking sparkles from his beard. Bluebell was still topless, but she now sat on the carpet hugging herself, as if she were cold. MJ was nowhere in sight.
“Well,” I said finally to Milo. “I can see why this was kept secret. It’s a real buzzkiller. Thank God I don’t have to explain to Lonsky how the love of his life was a nasty ho.” Despite the evidence, I found it hard to believe myself: this was the real Mona, the girl I’d found and lost, studied and mourned? “I quit that job just in time.”
“Here’s to Buck Norman and his shitty movies,” Milo announced, uncapping another beer.
“I guess. That thing still seems screwy, though. Why would he want me?”
“Who knows? Maybe he owes Margie a favor and she’s doing it because MJ asked, to keep you from killing yourself.”
“Did she say that to you? She thought I was that fucked up?”
“No, but I might have mentioned it.”
“What? Fuck you.” I shrugged. “And thanks, I guess. For caring and shit.”
“I love you too.” Milo pulled out the tapes. “And you can thank me by putting these back in the warlock’s magical closet.”
“No way. You’re the one who stole them.”
“If you haven’t noticed I’ve got customers here. I’ve got to burn disks, get the place shut. Kevin is gone for the night but if the tapes aren’t back tomorrow, who’s he going to suspect?”
“Shit,” I said, sighing. “I take back my thanks, you fucker.”
“It’s easy. The side window is open. Just creep in and split.” He handed me the two cassettes. “I sure wish we had part three. Ascension. What the hell could top this? Maybe they actually shove live bunnies up each other’s asses.”
“That’s why you’re not a storyteller like me and Buck,” I told him. “You don’t see the arc. Part three is where Satan appears.”
54
ON MY WAY OUT I saw MJ in the shadows. She was next to Margie’s big black BMW and I started over to say hello. Then I saw: Margie was on her knees, crying, while MJ stroked her hair. I hurried past to my own car, pretending not to see.
I realized then how truly self-centered I was, too busy headlining in my own dramedy to see that she was a star too. It finally occurred to me that hanging out at my house, drinking and watching movies with Milo and me, and loitering in the bookstore, was a way of avoiding her own home and life and wife. Her relationship was in trouble and it was big-shot Margie who was the pursuer, the bereft, the wounded soul, at least for today. I felt sorry for her, stuck feeling like me.
It is one of the simplest, most difficult truths: the amazing fact that other people are real and thinking all day about their own complex lives, just like we are. In a restaurant, a store, an office, look around: each one of those random brains is a whole world, same as yours, a spinning globe of worries, desires, memories, and fears, with families and friends, enemies and half-forgotten faces, reaching back deep into time, and somehow existing right across the bus. Now multiply that by 6.7 billion. That is our reality: an endless number of endless universes, each one dancing about the others, changing and evolving, blinking out and shining on, appearing and dying, forever, an infinite darkness alive with brief little stars.
55
MILO WAS RIGHT FOR ONCE. I snuck into Kevin’s without a problem, under the window and over the sill, into a crouch on the floor. I took one step in the dark and tripped over an armchair that seemed to be in a different spot than before, stumbling into a table full of doodads, which jiggled and rolled. I flicked on Milo’s flashlight, gasping as the beam fell on a mounted cow skull with a baby doll’s head in its mouth. It had little glass diamonds for eyes. Then I picked my way across the room, spotting bits of set dressing from the films—a fake dagger encrusted with plastic jewels on the mantel, a dirty white wig now draped on a stone Buddha head. At last I found the linen closet and opened the door, then drew back the hidden panel. I berated myself for not remembering exactly where the tapes had been before. But it would be fine, I told myself. He had no reason to suspect anything, and how often did he even check? I set the tapes to one side of the pentagram and shut the panel. I pushed the Lysol and toilet paper back in place. As far as I could tell, it all looked the same. I shut the closet and, as I turned to go, relieved to be done with this paralegal errand, the flashlight beam swung over the dark room and landed on Kevin the warlock’s face.
He didn’t look happy to see me. He didn’t look happy at all. For one thing, his face was upside-down. And the eyes and mouth both gaped, aghast, in horror and very clearly without life. Kevin the Satanist had finally met his dark maker, and it did not seem like the reunion had gone well. I jumped, and without thinking, like a child trying to blot out a scary movie, I shut the flashlight, plunging Kevin and myself both into darkness. That was much worse, of course. Now literally in a blind panic, I ran straight into the coffee table and rammed my shin against the marble edge. I howled, then choked it off into a whimper, afraid of what might be listening. I stumbled to the door and found the light switch.
Kevin had been crucified, nailed to his upside-down cross, from which the trailing Christmas tree lights still blinked, now that I’d switched on the power. The nailing had been done with a gun, I surmised, from the many tightly grouped nail heads that lined his blood-encrusted palms like rusty rivets or clustered like thorns on his twisted feet. I also noticed, with a lurch in my stomach, that all of his fingers had been cleanly if brutally removed, sliced right off near the knuckle, as well as both of his big toes at the j
oint. The cause of death though, I would guess, was the handful of nails driven into his heart, and the single steel head, which I had failed to see at first glance, that was hammered, skin-deep, between his eyes.
I’d seen enough. Too much. I turned to flee by the front door, switching off the light, then froze again as the thought “fingerprints,” flashed in my brain. Fingerprints, right there on the switch even. I flipped it back on and then, wishing I was the sort of fellow who carried a hanky, grabbed a stuffed bunny doll from the shelf and retraced my steps, wiping the doorknobs, closet, hidden door, tapes, windowsill, and window with a shaky hand. I stole the bunny, fearing DNA. Then I vaulted the window, stumbled, and fell with a splat into the garden. The glass window came slamming down and I heard it crackle into shards and fall, with a sickening tinkle, like a bell. A dog barked somewhere and I scurried to the car in terror, expecting a nail through the mind at any second. As I got into my car, cranked the engine, and split, I thought, or imagined, that my headlights caught Tora, the cat, watching from the shadows with a wicked grin.
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