Had the staff activated the Oscillator? He hadn’t seen anyone working here other than the old woman in the ticket booth. But he was sweating profusely, a nervous knot clenched in his gut. He had no idea why anyone would have started the device during this film though—he’d assumed it was for Film Maudit only. Maybe someone had accidentally thrown the switch?
Something slithered low near the bottom row. It moved with a muscular grace, like a python wrapping itself around a branch, reflecting a gray moist hide. Leslie pushed himself up in his chair, peered into the gloom. Just a glistening stain and erratic light worming across the floor.
The next feature started immediately.
Filmed in FANTASCOPE flashed on the screen. Music swelled as MDCCCCLXXXVII was followed by a crude hand drawn intertitle:
THE LATEST IN BLOOD AND GUTS
The soundtrack erupted with a chorus of unfamiliar animal cries spiraling into screams. A menagerie of species Leslie didn’t recognize paraded across the screen.
He’d once read an essay on Edison’s Electrocuting An Elephant, but this was far more horrific. How the filmmaker managed to incite the creatures to do such things to each other was baffling; even a starved beast wouldn’t inflict such hideous acts in such an imaginative manner. He couldn’t believe that what he was watching wasn’t some elaborate visual effect. But the film was far too old to deceive with sophisticated digital tricks.
The Latest In Blood and Guts ended with no credits. Leslie assumed there’d be a break now so he stood up with the intention of using the bathroom. If it wasn’t the Oscillator churning his guts it must’ve been the alcohol. But the next film began right away. He sat back down, crossed his legs to alleviate the pressure on his bladder and bowels.
Several more films were screened. Alcohol must have dulled his memory; he was hard pressed to remember the names of any he’d just seen much less plot details. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could remain seated.
Finally, Film Maudit began.
Leslie clapped but stopped when someone a few seats down turned to glare at him. He thought it was cool that some horror fans were so devoted they’d dress up in grotesque masks even for a small festival like this.
He tensed. Listened for any auditory cues, a blinking light in the dark, a change in the air. Nothing. But they must have activated the Oscillator— why else would the aisle seats seem to be undulating like waves?
Film Maudit opened with a medium shot of a dirt floor surrounded by three concrete walls, the fourth removed for the camera crew. An uncomfortably young looking girl sat in the center of the room. She was naked and kneeling, face covered by a mauve paper butterfly mask. Her arms and stomach were wet with fake blood that looked like the melted-crayon waxy gore in Profondo Rosso.
The girl’s skin, her mouth, the way she moved—all seemed hauntingly familiar.
She slowly stood.
Her waist was impossibly narrow, tapered to a wasp-thin shape. The soundtrack was just the swish of limbs against wet skin. Cries spilled from the speakers. The tension was nearly unbearable.
She walked towards the camera.
The girl’s breathing didn’t match her sobs. The screen filled with her face and plump crayon-red lips. She broke into a smile that threatened to become beatific. Her lush mouth dominated the theater. The soundtrack’s crumbling stone sound vibrated the room.
Her knees were bent the wrong way.
The film must have been missing a reel; she suddenly appeared in another room with several other actors, all sitting cross-legged on a dirt floor. Everyone wore butterfly masks but nothing else. An intertitle read:
Sex-Welle!
Sex-Welle!
Sex-Welle!
Leslie found the makeup effects disturbing but not particularly convincing (especially that hyper-saturated blood). He thought the mutilation of the actor’s genitalia was amateurish prosthetic work, but their horrified reactions made him queasy. Not bad for such a low budget sleazefest.
The audience sat completely motionless, slumped at awkward angles in their plush seats. The masturbator was mewling in what Leslie thought was prelude to orgasm. On listening further it sounded more like the panicked cry of someone too deeply submerged in nightmare to wake up.
If the Oscillator hadn’t been on before it must be operational now. A growl reverberated, rattled Leslie’s chest, spread through his muscles.
The theater walls felt as if they were closing in. Film Maudit was off somehow, the frame rate wrong. Leslie still had to use the bathroom. He needed to talk to management, request they turn off the Oscillator. That should clear things up.
He stumbled up the aisle. Couldn’t believe he was taking a break from a film he’d always dreamt of seeing. But his head was filled with a strange soundtrack, the chattering susurrus of an unseen ensemble. It felt as if his brain was pulsing against his skull.
He had to get some fresh air. Had to get away from the radius of that Oscillator fucking with his head. He couldn’t have been the only one to complain about the machine.
The lobby was empty. The old woman in the ticket booth was gone.
A loud knocking emanated from inside the unmarked theater. The gibbering music in Leslie’s head made him retch.
The theater door shook. Something within made the sound of oily plastic sliding against rusty metal, the clank of gears and a moaning like blowing into a bottle.
Someone frantically pummeled against the other side of the door.
Leslie took a step away but not quick enough to avoid the door striking him in the face. Metal hinges tore, a stray screw sailed across the room, pinged off the ticket booth’s glass. He collapsed, cheek and chin pressed so forcefully against the filthy carpet he no longer looked like himself.
An impossibly thin figure stood just inside the theater. Its form subtly distorted, not bilaterally symmetrical, like a poorly constructed clay model, one side drooping lower than the other. The screen behind it glowed with an otherworldly haze. Atavistic images caroused up there. Odd animals frolicked. Clucked and chittered and brachiated and crawled in a sinuous manner with difficult to define limbs.
A little girl stepped into frame from the right. Her face was shiny. Leslie couldn’t explain why he knew she was slathered in lard much less why he was certain he’d seen those cheekbones and eyes before.
Something released itself from a phlegm colored edge fog at frame left. It lovingly coiled itself onto the girl’s face, in a precise shape, like a carefully applied swirl of feces. She was silent as several other weird predators joined in to rend her features anonymous.
Leslie was screaming so loudly he tasted blood from his raw throat.
The person towering over him was far too tall to be anything but a distorted shadow. He’d suffered a concussion. The contours of the man’s face were wrong, Leslie couldn’t fully comprehend what he was looking at. A concussion.
It hunched to pass through the doorway.
Head of amber, a gelatinous sculpture, special effects prop used for exploding headshots in gory film scenes. Far too many narrow limbs propelled it in one long stride until its make-up effect face was touching Leslie’s face.
Invisible bodies press against him, slide over his skin with the texture of tangled kelp bulbs washing over a drowning victim as he sinks into unconsciousness.
Leslie woke up back in his theater chair. The Oscillator’s music roared. The seats were now all occupied, the audience clapping and whistling enthusiastically. A remarkably skinny form sat next to him, but he couldn’t turn his head to see who it was. It didn’t matter much; his attention was fixed on the bizarre antics projected onscreen and he couldn’t imagine why he’d want to look at anything else.
The thin companion touched Leslie’s forehead with a long finger. Carved out a perfectly smooth circle, plucked the bone coin away. Poked its finger through the skull into the hole.
Exposed to the air, the film’s colors bled into Leslie’s fevered brain, the hue of deformed peacocks glass-
tailed and shimmering. The projector’s light revealed crevices in the screen. Leslie remembered a book on caves he’d treasured as a child. It had the most beautiful full-page pictures of speleothem in ancient caverns.
Film Maudit’s third act. Something with far too many tongues smeared its saliva across an expanse of hairless flesh stretched taut across a room. The camera panned up its length to a pair of swollen eyes framed by a mauve butterfly mask.
The audience hooted and screeched, wriggled in their seats with excitement. Upright ticks, starved bags of viscera adorned with hair and teeth clamoring at the screen for nourishment. They turned their far too large heads towards the rear of the theater and siphoned the projector’s light into mouths as dark as a changeover cue.
The Oscillator’s drone masked all other sounds. The dark filled with colors both wonderful and impossible. The wound in Leslie’s head slurped more light into its depths.
He could truly see now, true sight finally recognizing those eyes on the screen.
An intertitle appeared:
The streets grow active
with feral hunger.
“Stop the film please.” Leslie whimpered.
After Samantha had failed to develop normally, Leslie quickly realized that watching a loved one suffer the pangs of existence would slowly destroy him as well. It wasn’t his fault she’d never have a normal life, it wasn’t his choice to be saddled with the responsibility for a girl that would never read a book without assistance, drive a car, or graduate from college.
He knew he was selfish and petty and abusive, but existence was all that and more. The universe wasn’t apathetic, it simply had an obscene sense of humor and Leslie was the victim of a genetic pratfall he’d named Samantha.
You can turn the Oscillator off now. I don’t wanna see everything any more.
The final intertitle flashed on the screen:
Scavengers scurry from the sewers
to lap at the wet afterbirth of night.
I don’t wanna dream anymore please.
He prayed the reel would change but he knew it never would. As Samantha’s eyes filled the screen the camera pressed in with a zolly shot. A phosphorous-white light filled Leslie’s vision. A light as harsh and raw as peeled stars flooded the theatre.
NINESIGHT
Christine Morgan
“They’re doing it again,” Mel said.
Her sister, flopped on the bed with her phone, didn’t answer. Courtney was practically almost a teenager, and she made no secret of how she was way too grown up and mature to pay attention to a little baby bratty-brat like Mel.
Courtney made no secret of lots of things. Like how annoyed she was that Mom and Dad had sent them to spend the week with Aunt Vera and Uncle Joe, instead of letting them stay home by themselves. Or, better yet, sending Mel, and letting Courtney stay home by herself.
“You don’t even trust me, gah!” she had said during the Big Family Discussion, then done the drama-queen huffy hurt flounce to slam her door and sulk.
She was annoyed that Mom and Dad were going on vacation without them. But, of course, she would have been just as annoyed to be dragged along, complaining about the plane ride and the hotel and the beach and there not being any cool kids her age to hang with or whatever.
Most of all, she was extra-special-double-bonus annoyed because, at their aunt’s house, she and Mel had to share a room. It was, like, worse than prison or something, the way she went on about it.
They had to share a room, there was nothing to do, she couldn’t hang out with her friends, the house was old and weird, she didn’t like Uncle Joe’s cooking, there was hardly even decent internet, and she was totes going to die of boredom already!
And she hated Aunt Vera’s cats. The cats were mean. The cats were creepy. The cats did that thing, that thing they were doing now, and it freaked her out, and she hated it, and she hated them, and she hated everything.
“Courtney,” Mel said, knowing it was teasy-needling bratty-brat stuff, but so what? “Courtney, looooook, they’re doooing it again.”
Mel thought the old house was neat, full of creaky steps and dusty nooks and explory-corners. It was great for pretending she was a detective, spy, or secret agent. It would have been even better for hide-and-seek if she had anybody else to hide from or seek for. The room she and Courtney had to share was still bigger than both their rooms at home put together, the beds with carved wooden posts, and a windowseat where the windows angled out on three sides. She enjoyed helping Aunt Vera in the garden, enjoyed what Uncle Joe called his crazy kitchen experiments, and enjoyed the old-timey card and board games they brought out after dinner, instead of just watching TV until bedtime like normal people.
The cats...
Well, okay, maybe she didn’t hate the cats like Courtney did—she wanted to like them, and have them like her, too—but they really were kinda mean. They wouldn’t cuddle or play. They hissed if anybody tried to pick them up. Sometimes, they’d let her pet them a little bit, and they might even lean into it, but then just as suddenly they’d whirl and claw and bite her hand.
They also really were kinda creepy, like when they did the thing they were doing now. Mel tried not to let her own goosebump-feelings show, though, because it was more fun to see how much it bugged Courtney.
Aunt Vera had asked them to leave the door always propped open a little, so that the cats could come and go as they pleased. Otherwise, she said, they’d scratch at it and yowl, and it was their house, too, and they were used to having the run of it, and were stubborn and set in their ways. It gave Courtney something else to complain about—”We don’t even get any privacy, gah!”—but she would have complained more if they did go scratching and yowling all night.
The biggest cat, Ulthar, was what Aunt Vera called a ginger-stripe. His short fur was a few different colors of orange, his body was thick and heavy but not fat, and the yellow-green color of his eyes made Mel think of sour pickles. He had been all sprawled on the windowseat cushions as if inviting someone to come give him a tummy-rub, though Mel had found out the hard way that was an arm-shredding trap.
Now, he’d gotten up and sat straight like a tiger on a throne, those sour-pickle eyes fixed in an unblinking glare on the part of the wall where it met the ceiling. His nose and mouth were wrinkled in the kind of face cats made when they smelled a yucky-gross smell.
Ishtar, sleek-slim and blacker than black, was no longer prowling around the edges of the room but had stopped, hunkered low in the space between the dresser and the tall floor lamp. Her eyes, which were bright gold, stared up at the same spot that had Ulthar’s interest, and the white points of teeth against pink gums showed that she was also making the yuck-face. Though no other part of her moved, the hair along her back rose up into a fuzzy line like a Mohawk, and her long thin tail bushed to twice again its normal size.
Fluffy grey-and-white Queenie stood in the doorway with her front paws just over the threshold. Thanks to her flat, squashy, pushed-in nose, it was hard to tell if she made the yuck-face or not, but her wide sky-blue gaze exactly followed those of the other two.
“Cooooouuuuurtney—” Mel began, drawing her sister’s name out in a sing-song.
“I see them, okay? Gah!” Courtney lowered her phone long enough to glance at the cats. “Why do they do that? It’s, like, so creepy!”
“Maybe they see something.”
“There’s nothing there!”
“Well, maybe there is, and they can see it, but we can’t.”
“Shut. Up.”
“What? I’m just saying—”
“I said, shut up, Muh-liss-sa!”
“Look,” said Mel, dropping her voice to a whisper. “It must be moving, whatever it is.”
True enough, all three kitty heads silently turned, as if their three sets of eyes—still unblinking in blue, gold, and sour-pickle green—followed a slow, tracking course across the ceiling. Not in a straight line, but in a sort of meandering lazy-curvy one.
Queenie slinked the rest of the way into the room, ears laid so flat they almost disappeared in her poofy fur ruff. Ishtar made a kind of “eh-eh-eh” noise through her bared teeth. The tip of Ulthar’s tail snapped twitching back and forth.
Courtney shivered. “Gah...make them stop.”
“What do you think they see?”
“I don’t care. Stupid cats. I hate them.” In a sudden lunge, Courtney seized her pillow and flung it. “Go on! Pssst!”
She missed any of the cats by so much that Mel couldn’t even guess if she’d been aiming at one in particular, but the whirling thump of it into their midst made them all jump half out of their skins. Ulthar hissed and leaped over Queenie, who tried to whirl and bolt for the door but got a claw hooked in the rug and stumbled. Ishtar streaked past them both in a black blur.
Then the cats were gone, and Mel looked accusingly at Courtney.
“I’ll tell Aunt Vera.”
“Go ahead, tell her, so what?”
“They weren’t hurting anybody.”
“They were creeping me out!”
“Why are you so scared?”
“I’m not! I told you, it creeps me out when they do that! They’re always doing that, staring at nothing, getting all weird!”
Mel snickered. “Maybe the house is haunted. Maybe they’re chasing ghosts.”
“That’s not funny, and there’s no such things.”
“You believe in Slenderman.”
Courtney scowled. “Well, you believe in Santa.”
“Wait, what? Santa’s real.”
“Huh-unh.” Her lip curled in a bitter kind of triumphant sneer.
“Yeah-huh!” said Mel. “He left me my deluxe junior investigator kit for Christmas!” She pointed at the playset, which was her favorite toy ever and the main one she’d chosen to bring along on this visit.
“How dumb can you be? Gah!” With that, Courtney hopped off the bed, grabbed her phone, and stepped into her shoes. “I’m going out on the porch so I can text and stuff without stupid cats and sisters everywhere.”
Resonator: New Lovecraftian Tales From Beyond Page 7