Get Blank (Fill in the Blank)

by Justin Robinson

  We were a block or two south of Franklin, so Father Liam hadn’t been far off. VC turned the Caddy down the block, and the businesses of the main thoroughfare instantly turned into wide craftsman homes on either side of the street. Parking was hell, especially for the boat VC was driving. He found a spot a few blocks down and parked with machine precision. The street was enclosed by corpulent cedar trees, making me feel like I was indoors.

  We got out and I put the shades back on as we walked toward the theater. It was a low black building, apparently one story, but I would bet money there was at least one subterranean level. Two displays stood on either side of the doors with a section overhanging to protect theatergoers from the nonexistent Los Angeles rain. Some street art had been sprayed on the walls, a collection of symbols meaningless to most, but legible to me: mostly Luciferian rambling. Blah blah original rebel blah blah true good blah. According to the advertisements, they were performing an original piece written by “local artist” Hollis Nguyen, called Salvation from Space. Well, that sounded like a piece of shit, but I held out hopes for a Wiseauian level of incompetence. A man can dream.

  VC and I strolled into the lobby. A small box office was on the left, with a few flyers and band postcards waiting for whoever wanted them. They had a concession stand with theater candy, pretzels, and a beer tap. The place’s liquor license was framed on the wall behind it. There was no one out front, and that made me nervous. Places that didn’t care whether you broke in were often much more dangerous and unsettling than those that did.

  I went around the side of the concession stand and opened the door into the theater proper. It was fairly large, with easily twenty or thirty rows of seats. Three people sat dead center watching the action onstage.

  One thing about LA is that we have great theater, at least from an attractive-actor standpoint. The reason being, we have an unlimited amount of actors, the vast majority of whom are extremely good-looking, and there is a limited amount of work. To stay busy, they do theater.

  The people onstage looked like the cast of a CW show. The actual acting wasn’t great, but they were all chiseled from really sexy marble. So sexy it took me a second to actually hear what they were saying.

  Guy With Ridiculous Abs: “The world is dying. Rape, child molestation, genocide. Who will save us?”

  Girl With Inflatable Chest: “We need a savior!”

  Guy With Blue Eyes To Die For: “Look to the sky!”

  “No, no! You sound like robots!” the director shouted. He had a bit of an Asian accent of some kind, but I’m lousy at identifying those. I could guess he was Hollis Nguyen until something changed that.

  “The savior exists in a vibrational state,” VC said to me.

  “That’s great. Come on, I want to find a way backstage to look around.” I headed back into the lobby. A door near the box office opened up and an attractive young woman exited. I knew her. Brenda something. She looked up at me and I could see the wheels turning. She knew me, too, and I could see she was right on the edge of fighting past the suit and nose to recognize me. Play it where it lies.

  “Hey, Brenda! How are you?” I enthused.

  “I’m good... Eli?”

  “Yeah!”

  Elijah G. Simms, member of the Order of the Morning Star. Discipline problems in elementary school, leading to more pronounced rebellion in junior high and high school. Way cooler than me, in point of fact. Smarter, too; Eli Simms scored at the top of most standardized tests. If he really buckled down and applied himself, there’s nothing he couldn’t do. But Eli was too much of a rebel. Sure, he was into his poetry and even had a few published in some zines and online, but he would never spend too long on one thing. He was all potential, attitude, and cool. Perfect for the Order.

  We hugged. She had grown out her hair into a loose afro. It looked good on her. “I can’t believe you joined up. I heard you’d disappeared.”

  “You know, I was upset with the direction the Order was taking, you know. So I kind of freaked out and went my own way. Then I heard about the Sons and I thought I’d check it out.”

  “I’m so happy you said that!” She flashed very white teeth. I think Brenda was an actress or something, when she wasn’t worshiping the devil. “Who is this?”

  “This? This is my cousin, Victor.”

  “Hello, Victor.” She reached out to him.

  He took her hand, wrapping her healthy brown skin in sickly gray. It was dim in here, but VC still had the shades on. That was good, because his bulgy eyes were not his best feature. He didn’t have a best feature. “Hubba hubba. The savior is harmonically sound and vibrationally varied.”

  “Uh... thanks?” She pulled her hand away from his a little too fast and turned a wince into an almost-convincing smile. “So, Eli, can I show you and Victor around?”

  “We’d love that.”

  “We have to be quiet. The play is rehearsing—we open in two weeks and nobody is off book yet. Hollis is losing his mind.”

  “Isn’t that always the way?”

  “You’ve done plays?”

  “Never, but I’m from here.”

  “You know, Eli, you’re like the only man in LA who isn’t an actor.”

  I laughed at that, since there was no other sane reaction. Brenda took that in stride, smiling along like she got the joke.

  “Come on,” she said. “Remember, be quiet when we go through the theater.”

  “Got it.”

  She pushed the door open and VC and I followed. The action onstage had proceeded as unfortunately as it began. The actors weren’t worthy of the embarrassing words they were being compelled to say. I immediately knew there was an NBC show in their futures.

  I turned my attention to the man in the center of the seats, the director who had been shouting. He was a small man. Tough to tell how tall when he was seated, but I guessed he might be a hair over five-and-a-half feet. Impressive hair, too. Streaked with silver, it was done up into a perfect Elvis pompadour glistening with oil. His angular face was a mask of concentration, and his neat van dyke made him look a bit like a swashbuckler. Despite his periodic rants directed at the actors, I wasn’t getting a bossman vibe from him. Besides, I didn’t remember him from my association with the Order, meaning either he rose quick or he was from outside. There was someone else. Had to be. Or this guy had fallen ass backwards into a hell of a gig.

  “That’s Hollis Nguyen?” I whispered.

  Brenda nodded and put her finger to her lips. We went up a short wooden staircase, through a dusty curtain, and we were backstage.

  “Where did you find him? Was he in the Order?” I asked her.

  “Yes, but he was one of the first to come over to the side of the savior.”

  “Lot of talk about the savior.”

  “He walks among us,” Brenda said with the terrifying joy of the true believer.

  “What, here?”

  Brenda favored me with an Oh, aren’t you cute laugh. “No, He is not in the theater. The play we’re doing is all about His arrival, although Hollis wanted to cloak everything in a layer of metaphor. You know, to make the critics happy.”

  “I think they should be pleased.” Pleased at getting to come up with new synonyms for “trainwreck.”

  Brenda led me through the backstage, mostly a maze of pulleys where we were. I reflected that if my mysterious enemy was here and even the slightest bit respectful of proper conventions, he’d at least try to drop a sandbag or stage light on me. I superstitiously peered up to the catwalks over the stage. There was not a single living thing up there.

  Near the back wall and off to the left, the scuffed wooden floor opened up into a stairway down. “Dressing rooms and so on. I really want to show you something.”

  That line was enough to make me feel like I was getting tickled by a ghost. If someone ever offered to “show me something,” it was either a kid wanting me to check out some roadkill or it was someone about to show me my future murder weapon. I shrugged. I pretty
much collected those now.

  The hallway was cramped down here, and painted the same Bohemian black as the theater proper. It looked like whoever had taken over had done a few repairs, given the place a coat of paint, and called it refurbished. There were doors on the either side of the hallway and Brenda headed unerringly toward a specific one. Second door on the right.

  She opened it up, revealing a dressing room. One side had two tables with lighted mirrors, where someone would put on stage makeup. A bench bolted to the floor, like in a locker room, stood on the other side. Large closets were just beyond, and a couple full-length mirrors leaned against a third wall.

  “You’re going to love this,” she said.

  I tensed for a fight. Not that I can fight. I pretty much have one move, and since Brenda lacked testicles, that meant I was down to zero.

  She rummaged through the nearest closet. I heard a soft clink. Here we go. VC might be with me, he might not. I would be committed.

  “Behold, the Savior!”

  She whirled around, and I might have flinched. She brandished a gray costume with big wings and a terrifying face topped with two huge red eyes. It was a face I’d seen before.

  That thing had killed Burt Shaw.

  [16]

  ALLOW ME TO DIGRESS TO 1961 in a small town called Point Pleasant. It’s on the West Virginia side of the Ohio border, with the Silver Bridge spanning the river. Things were going fine until one night when a couple was driving home and saw what looked like a man crouching in the middle of the road. Only when he stood up, stared at them with giant glowing red eyes, and unfolded a pair of wings did they start to suspect he wasn’t a man at all. The monster, who would later become known as Mothman, took to the skies, following the car as it reached speeds of a hundred miles an hour. And the monster never once flapped its wings.

  Mothman popped up from time to time after that, getting variously ID’ed as an angel, a crane, a butterfly, and once as Batman. Things kicked into high gear in ’66, when Mothman was sighted first at a private residence (carrying off a dog in the process) and later at a local abandoned munitions complex (where it was eating a dog). Mothman was described in roughly the same way every time: manlike legs, no real head, hypnotic red eyes seemingly growing right from its chest, and a pair of giant wings. It moved around in a stiff shuffle, or flew at dizzying speeds and not at all like an organic creature. It shrieked or squeaked at times, and mesmerized people with its gaze.

  Mothman continued to bother folks in the Point Pleasant area, generally acting like a curious drifter. Its presence, other than being unnerving, made electronic devices go haywire. Televisions tumbled into zigzag static while radios played a speeded-up voice muttering gibberish.

  This is when Mothman got his name. It started out as “the Bird,” but that didn’t really carry the necessary mystique for a cryptid as unique as that. Then they went with “Big Bird,” but since there was no accompanying Snuffleupagus, that had to be jettisoned as well. Finally (and partly due to the Batman incident), they went with Mothman.

  Only one person ever got a clean look at his face, and she described it in the most unhelpful terms: “Like something out of a horror movie.” She also suffered Klieg Conjunctivitis, sort of an eye sunburn commonly afflicting people who see UFOs too close. Unsurprising, since Point Pleasant was in the middle of a serious UFO flap, with accompanying cattle mutilations, poltergeists, and Men in Black. This has associated Mothman with the Little Green Men, but that’s not really accurate, at least from what I know.

  Anyway, at a certain point during the paranormal chaos in Point Pleasant, people started getting phone calls from something identifying itself as a UFO entity. It warned that on December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge would collapse. Other people hypnotized during Mothman sightings reported reoccurring dreams of Christmas presents floating in the Ohio River.

  Sure enough, at 5:05 p.m. on December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge did indeed collapse, dumping Christmas shoppers into the frigid water. Forty-six people died. Mothman promptly vanished.

  Some people claimed he was harmless, that he just wanted to communicate. Chances are, they were right. The poor guy was too alien to make himself understood or just didn’t get that he was scaring people. Although the dog thing was still weird.

  Granted, my own encounter with Mothman wasn’t so grandiose, but the big guy saved my life. Not once, but three times, including once when he appeared in person, dragging Burt Shaw, high-ranking member of Quackenbush Security, into the sky and possibly another reality. Thanks to Heather, I found out I had gotten the blame for this, but better that than what Shaw had planned, which was to put a bullet in my head.

  And now these dime-store Satanists had a Mothman costume.

  “This is the savior?” I asked.

  She grinned. “He is risen! Lucifer Himself walks the earth!”

  “This is Lucifer?” I rephrased. “Somehow I imagined something more... shining Greek god. Less Guillermo del Toro.”

  “Lucifer is an angel. Read the Bible. Angels don’t look as we picture them. That’s a construct of artistic tradition. They were much more inhuman than we imagine.”

  “I see.” According to the Bible, angels looked like rings with eyes on them, or else like four-faced monsters. Then again, if I expected everyone who said “read the Bible” to actually have read the Bible, I’d probably go insane.

  “And He’s here! Makes sense, right? It’s the City of Angels, after all.”

  Fighting the creep-me-out vibes Brenda was throwing my way, I said, “So how about we go back topside?”

  She rehung the Mothman suit, tossed another smile at me, and led the way back into the main theater. Emerging from backstage, I first noticed how many more people were in the theater. Other than the director, his two companions, and the actors onstage, the seats were now peppered with other people. They were pretending to watch the rehearsal, but as we came out into the muted lights, I felt eyes on me. Phones came out, some dialing, others texting.

  “So, what did you think?” Brenda whispered.

  “Just fantastic,” I said, picking up the pace for the door.

  “I’m so happy you’re joining us, Eli,” she whispered, quickening her own steps.

  I glanced around. Some of the audience had gotten up. They were openly staring now, speaking into their phones quietly so as not to disturb the rehearsal of the terrible play. “I’m thrilled, too.” You might be changing your mind soonish, though. I hit the door, glad this room was empty. VC came abreast of me, using an admirable g-man quick-walk. He would have looked good closing in on John Dillinger at the Biograph Theater.

  “Do you have to go?” Brenda asked.

  Her phone buzzed with a text.

  “Yeah, I think I should go.”

  “Well, okay. It was great seeing you.” Brenda pulled out her phone to look at it. I was through the door and on the street when she shouted after me, “Eli, hang on!”

  I broke into a run and VC did the same. The Sons didn’t come boiling out of the theater like I thought they might. We made it to the black Caddy a block over and VC pulled into traffic on Hillhurst.

  “Input destination.”

  “I’m hungry. Are you hungry?” I desperately needed some calories to run my brain, try to navigate this maze I’d found myself in.

  “This unit requires five hundred calories per day to function.”

  “That’s a yes. Wait, five hundred? That’s it?”

  “Affirmative. This unit has an efficient metabolism.”

  “Well, this unit doesn’t. Go to Chinatown.”

  I’ll admit it. I was morbidly curious to see VC eat. There were so many stories of Men in Black being baffled by everyday objects, including food. If any food were already a little weird, it was dim sum, so I figured it was worth paying for a dim sum brunch over at the Empress Pavilion to find out.

  VC pulled into the parking garage, where there were only a handful of cars, and we walked down the stairs into the
odd, one-building outdoor mall housing the restaurant. The parking garage surrounded the few storefronts on the three-level building. Tables were set up along one walkway, selling knickknacks, and in the store that sold bamboo arrangements, there was a guy who would tell you how you’d die if you bought a jade Buddha from him. As I came up on the restaurant, I saw a Closed sign on the glass doors. Peering through them, it looked like the restaurant had been completely abandoned, along with every other shop in the shopping center. A year is apparently a longer time than I thought. Long enough for your favorite dim sum place to close with nary a word. Depressed, I led VC back to the car and we went a block down to a little place situated inside a ground-level courtyard.

  Since it was a weekday, we got a table easily (although I strongly suspect it was partly because the mostly immigrant staff believed us to be from the government). Unlike the Empress Pavilion, which had picture windows overlooking Hill Street, this place was as dark as a tomb, most of the light coming from a fish tank stuffed with lazy koi. As the carts stopped in front of our table bearing a variety of Chinese pastries and dumplings, I picked my favorites and ate in silence, watching VC the whole time.

  “This unit eats a thick paste made from peanuts and fish oil.”

  “Then you should be thrilled for a change. Try one of the big white fluffy ones. There’s pork inside.”

  Seeing him insert the chopsticks in his ears and eat the dumplings with his fingers was strangely calming, like tuning into a public access show in the middle of the night to get to sleep. My mind wandered as I shoveled food into my mouth. Empress Pavilion was closed. That’s what happens when you leave town for a little while: your favorite brunch place in the whole city closes. I had eaten there so much, I was almost offended they hadn’t sent me a condolence card.

  I initially found Empress Pavilion after a job. It wasn’t much of anything, really. INT-13 had me in an empty brick apartment building overlooking the 101 freeway. I had to stay up, keep the door locked, and at five in the a.m. the next day, I had to let the guy in who knew the password (I still remember it because it made me laugh: “Rear Admiral.” Yes, I’m in the fifth grade). Anyway, that was the entire job. I mean, I worked out what I was actually doing there pretty quickly, because despite all the blows to the head I’ve suffered, I’ve miraculously escaped any permanent brain damage. I was keeping the place clear as a sniper’s nest. It was an empty apartment building, and I brought something to read, and that’s how I spent the night, hunkered against one freshly painted wall, reading old issues of Tales From the Crypt by flashlight like some kid.