by Alan Spencer
Acknowledgements
I'd like to give a warm round of thanks to everyone at Samhain Publishing, especially Don D'Auria, for all their hard work making this novel a reality. My fellow authors (you know who you are) deserve a special thanks for being the toughest and most supportive comrades in the war of publishing. Friends, family, and readers, you also know who you are; without you, I wouldn't have made it this far.
Dedication
This book is in honor of my wife, Megan, who will always be my biggest fan.
Prologue
Professor Edwin Maxwell couldn’t be more confused. He stared at Andy Ryerson, his ex-pupil and the survivor of the Anderson Mills Massacre, and couldn’t believe what the young man was telling him. Andy demanded that he destroy the salvaged film reels for Morgue Vampire Tramps Find Temptation at the Funeral Home, the only film remaining from the professor's private collection. Last summer, he assigned Andy to watch twenty-five films for professional critique. Andy had viewed the reels at his uncle’s house in Anderson Mills only for them to be destroyed in a house fire, except for one set. The showing of the surviving film at the Denton Hall Theatre House, located on campus at Iowa University, had begun ten minutes ago. Professor Maxwell had gone through the trouble of dipping into the film school’s funds for today’s promotion, and he contacted the notorious B-movie director named Stan Merle Sheckler to give a Q&A session afterward. The professor intended for this to be a happy reunion in his office, not a panic session.
“I know you’ve been through a lot, Andy,” Professor Maxwell reasoned with the riled-up student. “You lost your uncle, his house burned down, and an entire town was, well—”
“Slaughtered!” Andy pounded his fists onto the desk. “They’ll come alive. They killed everyone, you hear me? Last summer, every movie I watched came to life. I know it’s unbelievable, but you must hear me out. The projector I watched them on was haunted. Ghosts used magic to manipulate the images and turned them into real life. Like flesh and blood. It’s all done by illusion and magic. And all the ghosts want to do is kill! ”
“Whoa, slow down, Andy. Please calm yourself. This is only a movie, Andy. Say it with me, ’It's only a movie.’ You're not making any sense. Really listen to what you’re saying. If you go down to Denton Theatre, I’ll prove to you everything’s okay. Nobody’s in danger. I’ll show you.”
“Yes, you’re taking me there because the showing is cancelled.”
Professor Maxwell stripped the politeness from his voice. “You were supposed to be happy for me today. You remember that project I assigned to you a year ago? Why aren’t you more grateful I didn’t make you pay for those destroyed reels? I was cordial about the expensive loss. Those movies are irreplaceable. Irreplaceable. Hundreds of thousands of dollars went up in smoke.”
“Listen to me,” Andy insisted, “they’re playing a reel right now. We have to pull the plug on it before people get killed.”
Before the professor could say anything else, Andy bounded out of the office. “We have to turn off that reel. It’s imperative!”
Professor Maxwell chased Andy, his loafers unable to absorb much of the shock of lunging down two sets of stairs and throwing open the doors of Iowa University’s Film Department. He kept running despite the aches and pains of his forty-nine-year-old and out of shape body. He kept calling out, “Andy—you must listen! Hold up a second. Do you know what you’re saying? MOVIES DON’T KILL PEOPLE!”
Andy was running down another set of stairs. “They're haunted by ghosts. It’s real. They’ll kill everyone!”
“Haunted by ghosts?” The professor stifled incredulous laughter. “Andy, you’re stressed out. I shouldn’t have invited you. I was wrong to assume a year was long enough to recover from your ordeal. I’m so sorry, Andy. Please, just stop running. You’ll make a scene.” You’ll embarrass yourself.
Andy cut through the lush green turf outside of Dean Holliston’s office, sprinted across Louis Rice Conservatory, and shot up the concrete steps of Denton Hall, the three-story playhouse. The parking lot was jam-packed with patrons’ cars, the crowds outside the ticket booths gone now that the film had started playing inside. Professor Maxwell arrived on the first step, and Andy was seconds from opening the main door.
“Let’s talk about this, Andy,” Professor Maxwell begged him. “You can’t go about your anger this way.”
It was too late for rationalizing anything when a mob of screams cut the peaceful afternoon breeze into something startling. The front doors burst open. The crowd crashed forward, shoving and battering each other to escape. Hundreds of students and film fans alike screamed in horror. Andy was forced backward, thrown down the stairs. He was buried instantly in the horde of bodies.
“What in God’s name?” Professor Maxwell gasped, using his sleeve to wipe sweat from his eye. “What’s got them so worked up? Andy—Andy, are you okay?”
He met the tide of people, as the current dragged Andy's coiled-up body to the bottom steps. Before he could bend down to see if his pupil was hurt, Professor Maxwell bumped into a young woman; from her clavicle up to her ear her neck was bleeding with a wound inches deep, the root of the wound glistening of purple muscle tissue.
“Shraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
The wicked caw pierced his eardrums. The source of the noise ripped through the front door, shattering the glass, jettisoning the fragments feet away. The source of the caw shot up into the sky. Leathery wings spread out nine feet wide, the ends tipped with six-inch bent talons. Professor Maxwell couldn’t believe his eyes.
What Andy was saying was true: the movie had come to life!
The creature floated on the air. Brilliant deep auburn hair, long and flowing and silky smooth, shimmered by the guide of rushing winds. Stalactite teeth, mouth daggers, click-clacked in her hunger. Her forked black tongue snapped like leather. Ruby red lips were wet with fresh blood. The body was reptilian plated, the skin itself oil black and tinted green in the sunlight. Her hands were equipped with six inch fingers, claws that could slice throats and part flesh with the efficiency of Ginsu knives. Every muscle bragged of strength to crush her enemies. The bosom of the monster was ample, the pubic hair between her legs as bright as the locks on top of her head. The creature was as sexual as it was an abomination.
The professor’s first instinct was to run. The majority of the crowd had escaped with their lives, with the exception of the scattered few who’d received fatal talon slashes—three on the ground were bleeding and possibly dead. He couldn’t leave Andy. Andy’s trauma was sparked by the Anderson Mills deaths, but also by the films that he claimed were coming to life—and they were coming to life!
Another one of the flying vampire demons crashed through the upstairs quad window dripping blood and carrying two human heads crudely ripped from their necks. One of the heads was the dean of the university, drooling blood in a bizarre death reflex. Two more creatures shot out of the entrances, shrieking, capering and laughing in subhuman delight.
Professor Maxwell bent down to dodge the incoming attackers. The four swooped in on the crowd as they madly fled to their vehicles. Heads were wrenched from bodies as the creatures swung down, a strange “grump” sound issuing out their mouths like stubborn weeds that refused to be pulled. Andy was getting up from the ground. He'd twisted his ankle falling down the stairs.
“Shraaaaaaaaaaaah!”
Another of the flying creatures shot out the front door and seized Andy. They both shot far up into the sky until they couldn’t be seen. Andy howled in horror, but his fits and shouts were expediently snuffed. Suddenly it was raining blood. Professor Maxwell was forced to duck and race to avoid the downpour of gore. Andy’s body was spiked onto the concrete, sopped like a sponge, every bone broken, hi
s torso bent inward, his face pulped.
“ANDY!”
Before the shock could fully take hold, Professor Maxwell was seized and delivered to a high-altitude mutilation.
Ted Fuller, a.k.a. Stan Merle Sheckler, had been eagerly watching the long-anticipated showing of the film Morgue Vampire Tramps Find Temptation at the Funeral Home. Denton Hall had been filled to capacity, bursting at the seams with viewers in the aisles and standing in the back. After thirty years, there was a following for his film—though he had many films like this one that hadn’t reached any audience whatsoever—and he was touched like any filmmaker who was finally appreciated.
But ten minutes into the film, the audience fled the theatre. Screams and high-pitched caws echoed from above them. The ripping and shredding of skin—this time for real, not from the film—resounded from three aisles behind him. The campus liaison, a friendly woman by the name of Gina Felter, stood up to check on the disturbance when a large object shot past. Gina’s throat was gaping wide, the jugular spitting out crimson gobs until she stumbled to the floor and choked to death on her own blood.
Ted ducked between the seats, avoiding Gina’s horrible dead eyes. Whatever she saw in death, it didn’t look pleasant. The stampeding of confused bodies continued. There was only one reason he attended the showing of his film, and that was to take back the reels that had been stolen from him by the Private Film Coalition of Public Morals—a sub-agency of the National Legion of Decency. In the wake of Britain’s “Video Nasties” era, his dangerous films were seized for questionable content and he never recovered them. Now was his chance to steal the film back. He was still determined despite the odd attacks. Ted checked the booth upstairs. He raced ahead without thinking of his life, keeping low in the aisles. He refused to come away empty-handed.
After shooting up the burgundy carpeted stairs, he opened the booth entrance. A reel still played, the hum of the 35mm projector filling the room with heat. The person at the helm had abandoned their post. Ted was a breath from yanking the plug from the projector when the door was blocked by a vampire creature. Jagged teeth laced with blood and froth and strips of human meat clacked together. Breasts and sternum were crusted in drying ruby trails. But then the horrible creation changed instantly. Suddenly a young woman, not older than twenty, stood unthreatening. She was fair skinned. Blonde hair combed down to her shoulders, every strand smooth and sleek. Green eyes seductively watched him. Her glistening lips framed a pout. Her breasts were hearty and open to the eye, the nipples budding and cherry. The hair between her legs was trimmed into a perfect upside-down triangle. Ted was delirious, being sent from extreme fear to guarded arousal.
This was one of the monsters he created so many years ago on celluloid.
“You don’t want to unplug that projector,” she said in a wispy voice. The words were not a threat or a demand. “We’ve waited so long to come alive again. The ghosts of the dead want to play. The dead have practiced their art of illusion for centuries, and now we want to play again. Please, let us play. You can play with us too.”
He kept his hand firmly on the electrical cord of the projector. “I see. If I unplug you, I kill you.”
“Yes,” she said, abhorring the notion with a vile wrinkle of her pretty face. “But you don’t want to do that. We can make a deal.”
Caterwauls of anguish and mayhem shot up and down Denton Hall, but Ted only focused on the woman and the projector. “I can bring you pleasure,” she said. “Have you ever been pleasured by five women at one time…by five women who look like me? We could give you orgasms so intense they’d kill you.”
Wait…that line was from the movie.
I wrote that.
I fucking wrote that!
Ted had created these monsters thirty years ago for the screen. They were once rough sketches on his notepad, and during filming, he was the one who did their make-up effects as well. The reality was disorienting, and he couldn’t summon a response.
“You’re choked up, huh?” She cupped her breasts, fingers playfully tweaking the nipples. “We’ll play nice, director. Or should I call you Stan Merle Sheckler?”
He winced. “How do you know that name?”
“The dead know many things.”
Stan Merle Sheckler had been a fake name he used to direct over ten horror movies, each seized and possibly burned by the Private Film Coalition of Public Morals. How did this woman, the villain of his film, the walking celluloid image, know this about him?
The woman sensed he was about to pull the plug. “I know where your films are, and I can retrieve them for you. They exist. They’ve been preserved. And they’re kept only blocks from where you live. Think about that. Maybe then you’ll bring us back again.”
Ted removed the plug. The projector stopped. The theatre went completely black. The naked woman vanished as did the other flying vampires. He removed the reel and fled the scene before the police arrived.
Chapter One
I know where your films are, and I can retrieve them for you. They exist. They’ve been preserved. And they’re kept only blocks from where you live. Think about that. Maybe then you’ll bring us back again.
Two weeks later, the woman’s words continued to repeat in Ted’s mind. A variety of memories, nostalgia and regret festered in him ever since that strange conversation had transpired. He regretted the quick decision to pull the plug on the projector. He should’ve touched the woman first to prove she was real. He needed proof positive this phenomenon was genuine.
So many died. They are real. That’s why you can’t bring them back again. They’re murderers. But they’re movie characters, for God’s sake.
Ted downed another gulp of whiskey sour at Maddy’s All Night Pub. He was in the heart of East End Chicago, ten miles outside of places like Navy Pier and Shedd Aquarium. He was close to the low-end district without being afraid to walk on the sidewalks alone after dark and fear for his wallet or his life. He sat alone on a Friday night until Gary Pollard, a close friend, arrived. Gary was a screenwriter, mainly romantic comedies, his latest starring John Cusack and Helen Hunt. They watched the Cubs versus Red Sox game. The Cubs were being swept in the series. Ted and Gary didn’t particularly care about baseball, but they did care about filmmaking. Ted had been a movie reviewer after his film career winded up in the shit can. Financing was impossible with his track record: ten movies and debt up to his ears to show for it. After the Private Film Coalition of Public Morals seized his original negatives, nobody wanted to fund any of his projects.
Gary lit a cigarette and offered one to Ted. “So how did the film festival go? You were stoked. Was it everything you ever dreamed it would be, this thing called fame?”
Ted was shocked the man hadn’t heard about the tragedy. “You mean it wasn’t in the news?”
“I haven’t been watching the news.” Gary scratched his black stubble, pretending his fingers were an electric shaver. “I just finished another script for Miramax. I don’t know if they’ll take it or not. I’m up against four guys writing the same script. I hate it when they make you compete. It’s their way of ‘increasing the quality’ of the script. So what happened, huh? It was your big day. Your film finally got its showing. That’s monumental.”
“Fifteen ended up murdered.”
“Come on. Be serious. I know it’s a horror movie. Did you scare them to death? Did the university include an up-chuck cup with every movie ticket? I hope you’re paid up on your shock insurance policy.”
Ted stared him down. “Fifteen people were murdered. I—am—being—serious.”
Gary softened his face. “My God, what happened?”
“Nobody believes it, even with hundreds of witnesses. I was interrogated by the police. They thought I’d concocted some crazy publicity stunt for the movie, and I said they were nuts out of their shells. The evidence is clear. I had nothing to do with it. There was no evidence. Only people with their throats torn out. People with missing heads. Decapitated. People d
rained dry of blood.”
Gary hadn’t touched his longneck. “You were there, what did you see, man? You know the truth.”
“If I say it, you’ll think I’m full of shit.”
His friend patted his back. “Everybody in the world should buy you a drink. I’ve known you for eight years, friend. You’d had a bad run, to put it lightly. And it’s all because you married Becky Brauman.”
“Becky.” Ted muttered it like a curse. “She sure didn’t put up much of a fight to stay with me. After her father got through with me, my bank accounts were seized. My car, my furniture, all my belongings were repossessed by collectors, and next thing I know, I can’t get anybody to finance even a shitty laundry commercial if it’s made by me. The funny thing, nobody has really seen my movies all the way through. Never. Morgue Vampire Tramps Find Temptation at the Funeral Home would’ve been the first. Would’ve been.”
The mention of Becky added to the ulcer forming in Ted’s midsection. He married Becky straight out of film school at New York University. Becky was the daughter of the man who happened to be the head of the Private Film Coalition of Public Morals, a man named Dennis Brauman. He created an underground sect of the National Legion of Decency. Both legions created rules for filmmakers to obey: the rating system, what sexual or graphic scenes should be cut out of films, and in extreme cases—like Ted’s films—if they should be seized and destroyed. Dennis was also the head of PFCPM, and he didn’t want his daughter married to a rogue schlock moviemeister responsible for films like Blonde Beach Bimbos Blast Aliens, Sasquatch in New York, and Carnal Carnival. The films themselves weren’t subversive beyond any Roger Corman film of their time; no rape, incest or orgies occurred in the films, but Dennis managed to financially discredit Ted’s independent film company and steal his movies—all the while convincing Becky he was a sleazebag who directed pornos with monsters.
“So what happened during the showing?” Gary begged. “Quit holding back. Are you building suspense?”