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.
A PLAGUE OF NAKED MOVIE STARS
Vince woke from his nightmare yet his body still felt as if it were descending into tar black sewage. His hand was lodged inside something warm and wet. An impossibly wide mouth.
“Happy Halloween, loser!” The room exploded with light, went dark, lit up again as Jason kept twisting the dimmer switch. Vince’s eyes slowly adjusted until he saw that the mouth was just a plastic trick-or-treat pumpkin pail filled with tepid water. It took a few moments more for him to remember who and where he was. Adam and Jason were both out of breath from laughing.
“Yeah, classic one, dumbass.” Vince slapped the pumpkin. Water splashed over the edge. His eyeballs must still be sticky with sleep; Jason was tall but his head shouldn’t be scraping the ceiling at that unusual angle.
Adam started to sop up the water with his dirty Mercyful Fate t-shirt. “You retards gonna help me clean up?”
“Depends. We still checkin’ out the Satanic murder house?” Jason flashed devil horns with both hands.
Vince still felt nauseated from all the candy he’d eaten. He’d taken a nap in an attempt to recuperate. He was dying to go with his friends to the Stanton place, but he knew he should’ve gone home after their day of pranking and treat pilfering. The last thing he wanted to do on Halloween night was check out the crime scene where Mr. Stanton had slaughtered his family in some sort of occult ritual.
The only reason he’d agree to spend the weekend at Adam’s house was because this had likely been his last chance to gorge on chocolate and run around town knocking over stranger’s witchy decorations. By this time next year he’d be far too old to engage in such juvenile stunts. “I’m out. Stomach’s killin’ me. I’ll stay and watch TV or something.”
“Strawberry Shortcake on this late?” Jason taunted.
Vince didn’t want his friends to notice how rattled he was from his nightmare.
(Robed figures dancing around a twig shrine held together by mud and manure, plaster Virgin Mary statue perched at the top. Faded indigo robes, chipped hands clasped in prayer, flaking bright blue serpent under her heel. Stars shedding skin revealing brighter stars)
He didn’t acknowledge Jason’s taunt, just closed Adam’s bedroom door behind him without a word.
Earlier that evening, after returning from their vandalism spree in Cottage Hollow, the three boys had enjoyed a marathon horror movie run starting with City of Corpses, and wrapped up with the Treehouse Massacre trilogy. Afterwards, Adam insisted they watch several religious tapes from his dad’s VHS library. They’d endured 90-minutes of fire and brimstone homilies warning about human sacrifices, ritualistic torture and cult conspiracies. Satanic cult crimes were no laughing matter to Adam, but Jason found the whole thing hilarious.
Though the Christian propaganda had taken a toll on Vince’s sleep, he was ambivalent as to the plausibility of the accusations. While all too familiar with Adam’s rants about backmasked subliminal messages in black metal, the dangers of Dungeons & Dragons, and warlocks kidnapping sacrificial virgins on Halloween night, he also thought most of the claims were urban legends at best, pious lies at worst. But Adam insisted that role-playing games and music were all precursors to the Satanic takeover, dark covens plots to weaken the populace with psychological warfare through occult propaganda hidden in pop culture, or blatantly offered up on a sacrificial tray.
As stupid as the whole thing was, the cult stories were still responsible for some brutal nightmares.
(Devil worshippers puking streams of black blood onto the shrine, wet dirt soaking up the vomit as if famished. Stars defecating sickly blue light across the planet)
Just thinking about it forced stomach acid to the back of Vince’s throat.
He was surprised Adam’s devout parents were ok with their son’s love of horror films and role-playing games. As long as Vince had been friends with Adam his parents had always condemned such things as filth, derided it as a testament to the moral decay corrupting the country. They’d often quoted Zephaniah 3:3 as an example of how a once Godly nation was well on its way to becoming an open sewer if they stayed on the path they were on.
But something had changed in the last couple of Halloweens; Adam’s parents gone all out on the 31st. Now jack-o’-lanterns and rubber bats and plastic skull decorations peeked from every nook and cranny of the house. They’d even let Adam dress up last year.
Vince didn’t get it— sometimes people held beliefs that dictated one thing, but acted in ways completely contrary. Very little made much sense to him lately.
He turned on the TV. The snow-filled screen meant the satellite dish was down so he wouldn’t be able to watch the latest episode of The Master. There went his weekly dose of Lee Van Cleef’s stunt double kicking ass.
He dragged out Adam’s Intellivision, slid a laminated sheet over the controller’s keypad. He couldn’t help but smile when he remembered how Adam thoug
ht that even video games had mind altering subliminal messages.
He pushed the Treasure of Tarmin cartridge into the console and began slaying skeletons.
“Good to go Jas’?” Adam asked.
Jason turned the dimmer knob down to darken the bedroom. “More than ready. I brought my weapon.” He pulled a lightsaber out of his backpack, flipped the switch as the plastic blade lengthened like a telescope. He waved the toy in circles, a zigzag of red light slicing the gloom like a cigarette tip in a dark bar.
“Wasn’t that for your costume last year?”
“Yeah. Your point?”
“C’mon Jas’. Someone might see our flashlights. That’ll stand out even more.”
Jason sighed. “Gay in this one, the Force is.” He collapsed the saber and wedged it into his back pocket.
“This is illegal as hell right? Like tampering with evidence or something?” Adam was usually the first of the gang to agree to some stupid stunt, and the one who invested the most effort into following through. But he also second-guessed every detail, eagerness to impress friends tempered by cowardice. He couldn’t even explain why he’d let Jason talk him into hiking to the Stanton house on this night of all nights, when his mom and older sister were out with friends and his dad stuck doing a late shift. On Halloween. That time when the tenuous skin between the dead and the living was weakest. Adam took a deep breath to calm himself.
Jason playfully smacked Adam’s arm. “Easy there Short Round. Newspapers said Stanton just hacked his wife apart. Place was full a black magic shit. Buncha Crowley and Anton LaVey books. No way I’m not checkin’ it out.”
“Since when did you read?”
“Hilarious. My dad’s buddy works at the Cottage Hollow Review. Said the house is all boarded up but the cops do drive-bys to check for trespassers. Like twice a day. We’d see their headlights long before they got close enough to see us.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And my dad’s buddy also said that Stanton slit his own throat.”
“That’s sick.”
“Just sayin’. His daughter is still missing too. They only found Stanton and his wife. She had all sorts of weird symbols carved into her skin. Also found the linoleum knife that did the deed. And get this…,” Jason lowered his voice conspiratorially, “both of the bodies were naked.”
Adam was bothered by Jason’s enthusiasm. He thought about his sister Dana or his mom being brutalized and it made him furious that his friend seemed so callous about the violence.
But he was also drawn to the salacious aspects of the murders. It didn’t matter if the ritual mutilations were true or fabricated tales picked up at school; he was filled with an inexplicable need to contribute to the conversation, a secret desire like his growing collection of adult magazines hidden in the slit of his mattress. It was a compulsion he found increasingly mortifying in light of his faith. “I heard Stanton drew a pentagram on the walls in blood and there were astronomy books all over his house.”
“You mean astrology genius.” Jason rolled his eyes.
“No. Astronomy.”
“Stanton was a Jesus freak. Wonder why he snapped like that.”
“Two words: demonic possession.”
“A demon? You actually believe that crap?”
“I do because it’s true. Hear about that pre-school in California? They molested the kids. Made them worship something in the tunnels under the principal’s office. Demons made them do it.”
“Oh yeah. Didn’t they take nude pictures, played some perverted game?” Jason asked more to rile Adam than out of any genuine curiosity.
“The Naked Movie Star game!” Adam’s face was bright red, whether from embarrassment or excitement, Jason couldn’t tell.
“Did you hear about how the cops found nudie Polaroids of Stanton’s daughter?” Jason mimed taking a photo of Adam.
“You’re messed up.”
Jason shrugged. “And you’re way too into Halloween fairy tales. Satanic cults are bull dumbass. Anyway, we going anytime soon?” He pointed towards the living room where they could hear Vince playing his game.
“Ask him if he still has the shits. I left my jacket in Dana’s room.”
Jason reluctantly went to ask Vince if he was well enough to join them, while Adam entered his sister’s room and grabbed the coat off her chair. He snooped through the term papers on her desk. Just essays on astronomy and one lengthy paper about mass riots in Quito Ecuador, way back in 1949. He didn’t recognize the handwriting. His sister had a distinctive style and this was unfamiliar.
They’d drifted apart so much over the last several months. Dana didn’t offer to help Adam with his costume this year though he hadn’t planned on dressing up anyway. He was still hurt by the dismissal. The previous Halloween she’d made his deformed twin Belial out of papier-mâché and doll parts while he’d carried the monster around in a picnic basket. Their greatest costume collaboration ever.
He’d always been impressed by Dana’s artistic skills and imagination, but she no longer watched cheesy Italian post-apocalyptic flicks with him and had lately taken to mocking his role-playing sleepovers and weekly trips to the comic book store.
Maybe she was right; maybe he was too old for superheroes and dungeon crawls and dressing up as his favorite movie monsters. He only had a fleeting connection with Vince and Jason these days, just habit that made him invite them over every other weekend to hang out. His mom seemed different lately as well. Even his dad had taken to spending most of his free time on his transistor radio hobby.
Adam wondered if Dana still drew cartoons or if she’d outgrown that too. He opened a drawer, moved around some loose sheets and pens, found a few unfinished drawings. One was more complete than the others, the charcoal and colored pencil applied so heavily he could feel the shading details. It was an illustration of the shed and woods behind their house with something that might be the rudimentary outline of a face scribbled across the tree line. Its bright blue eyes gleamed in stark contrast to the dark background.
He set it aside and found a sketch of an astronaut, hose trailing behind, the end drawn with jagged lines to show it had been severed. A thought balloon read In space no one can hear me sing!!!. Musical notes spread like ripples into a starry sky. The astronaut’s nametag read ADAM.
Adam looked closer. They weren’t music notes, but strange occult symbols. Whorls and spiky edged shapes coiled into shapes that hinted at pentagrams, threatened to coalesce into goat skull-shaped sigils.
He folded the cartoon and put it in his coat pocket.
When he joined Jason on the back porch he was disappointed to see that Vince was not there.
“No Vince?”
“Nope. Said he wanted to jerk off to Thundarr in private.”
“Better than you spankin’ it to Ookloa.”
Adam glanced back at his house and wondered why his mom had placed a jack-o’-lantern on the porch when no trick-or-treaters had ever visited in all the years they’d lived here. He watched the pumpkin’s candle flame grow smaller the deeper they traveled into the forest.
They continued walking into the woods while cracking crude jokes at each other’s expense.
The rain fell in a fine layered mist. Adam was confused; they should’ve been on top of the Stanton house by now. He assumed if they cut across the mountain they’d come out near the murder house. So where was it?
He felt detached, floating above the trees, watching himself trudge along as the hill rose slightly. The area was covered in a lush carpet of moss that squelched at every step. The sweet scent of burning oak wafted from distant fireplaces. Jason kept swiping a thick branch against the trees, spraying chunks of bark with each blow. Adam winced at every strike; the thought of these centuries old woods being abused bothered him.
They reached the top of the rise. The trees thinned out below into a shallow valley darker than the drizzly night. A breeze dipped into the sunken area blowing an earthy odor into their faces, like molde
ring leaves or wet fur. The sky was obscured by plump black clouds. Adam thought there was a hint of illumination behind them.
“Jas’, I think we must’ve walked by Stanton’s house alre—”.
Adam’s flashlight illuminated a body partially buried by tangerine and scarlet veined leaves. He could make out an outline that suggested a petite head and legs roughly the size of a child’s.
“Oh Jesus.” Adam said. “I am so not going down there.”
“What the hell wuss. Someone dumped their trash bags or something.” Jason skidded down the short decline by pushing himself from tree trunk to tree trunk.
“See?” Jason tapped the form with his foot. It gave a hollow sound. Brushing the leaves away revealed a 3-foot tall Virgin Mary statue.
Adam moved forward for a better look. Something crumbled underfoot.
He moved his light to the object. It was a large plaster crucifix shattered into several powdery segments. The messiah’s chest now bore a hole in the shape of his shoe.
Their flashlights reflected off of lacquered plaster fragments. Dozens of Christian icons were strewn about, the remnants of a few still hanging on the trees like folk art.
A branch cracked loudly somewhere in the woods.
“We’re surrounded.” Adam wasn’t sure why he’d said it.
Jason assumed he was referring to the scattered figures, so he started to kick at the leaves to find more.
“Check this out.” Jason held up another plaster Virgin Mary. She had a bright turquoise 5-pointed star glued to her neck. Her robe was spattered with red and black candle drippings.
Adam was both terrified and confident now that his faith in the spread of cults could no longer simply be dismissed as fundamentalist paranoia. “You know what this is. A coven. Gotta be. Halloween night. The murders. This desecration of Christ stuff.” He looked around the forest nervously.
Alectryomancer and Other Weird Tales Page 13