“Stand still,” Kezia says to me. “Listen.”
The wind is singing, or perhaps hidden within it is a voice calling from the deeps. Melancholia steals over me. I’m overwhelmed by a feeling of reverence.
“This is the best spot to hear the song of the wind and sea,” Kezia tells me.
I realise she’s opening up slowly, if not exactly warming to me. “I can see why you love it here,” I say. I notice Robert has wandered off towards the open ocean to the east. He’s of course drawn mournfully to what he believes lies beneath the waves.
Kezia and I walk in the same direction. The smell of salt and fish is overpoweringly strong. We climb a rise of dunes and, once at the apex, gaze down a stone-littered sandy slope towards the sea. To our left a tall, sagging lifeguard’s chair still stands, if leaning dangerously towards the ground. It’s hard to imagine that once people spent summer days here, children running in and out of the waves, women lying down on the sand wearing sunglasses. Now, the beach lies desolate and abandoned, as if we’ve walked into the far future of the world and no one is left alive, anywhere. But what kind of people once came here?
As the wind grabs handfuls of Kezia’s hair, I photograph her against the backdrop of the open ocean. Devil’s Reef is clearer now, the suggestion of land upon the horizon. If we drew closer to it, we’d be able to see it is jagged and deadly.
The Deep Ones come from below, it’s said, to cavort upon the sharp rocks, to take the sacrifices offered to them. Here is the sea priestess, ready to preside over the festival of death. She’s disguised in dingy clothes, but her eyes are on fire and her smile fierce. She gives herself to the air, at one point throwing out her arms, her head flung back, a laugh pealing from her. Robert stands behind her, some distance off, a thin black shape amid the dune grass.
In Kezia’s moments of joy, it’s hard to credit she’s a native of this place. Surliness is a documented accessory to the Innsmouth Look. She’s in love with the town and its landscape certainly, fascinated by it, perhaps obsessed, but is she that different to me? Has she moved here to live or, when she told me Innsmouth was her home, was that only her dream?
“Have you ever seen the ocean glow?” I ask her.
She glances at me suspiciously, then answers guardedly, dropping back to sullenness. “Sometimes it does.”
There’s a silence, then I say, “This place is precious. We should be glad people are taking care of it, even if they don’t fully realise what it is they’re looking after.”
“Shouldn’t be this way,” Kezia snaps angrily, loudly. Her sudden mood change is unsettling. “One man killed old Innsmouth… just one man. Couldn’t leave it alone.”
I glance somewhat nervously at Robert and say gently, “If it hadn’t been him, then it would have been someone else, Kezia. Innsmouth couldn’t have stayed hidden for ever. The modern world doesn’t allow that. If Innsmouth had—or has—an enemy it is time, the changes in society, not merely the word of one man.”
“He was bitter,” Kezia says, in a voice craving for vengeance. “He wanted to be here, he was one of them, but he ruined it. They chased him out and then, like a mean little boy, he told tales.”
Her impassioned words make her sound more ordinary—rooted in the mundane world—and yet at the same time more credible as the opposite. I realised her summary is accurate. In no single account did anyone ever wonder if the people of Innsmouth had been frightened, could perceive the potential of their own fate in this meddling, damaged man.
“She’s right, isn’t she?” I say to Robert, not even sure if I’ve bothered to keep the words silent.
He stares at me mulishly. “I want to go home.”
The crossing is easy, of course, at this time of year.
Kezia has also fixed me with a stare. “Can you take him?” I ask her. “He was never quite himself, you know.”
Her eyes are fathomless, and she is so still, like a picture. Then she turns to where Robert is standing. I raise the camera before my face but close my eyes as I take the shot.
I remain like that for some time, and when I lower the camera, I’m alone. I leave fifty dollars on the grass and hold down the notes with a stone.
The War on Halloween
Cody Goodfellow
When they were ready to open the doors, the Devil took a velvet knee and led them in prayer.
“Lord,” he prayed, “we beseech thee, help us to touch the hearts of both sinners and saved who come to us on this unhallowed night, when the forces of darkness are at their most potent. Let our humble show be the hand on the shoulder that turns lost souls to the light of your divine countenance… And grant us the strength to forgive whoever wantonly vandalized our frontage with spraypaint and, uh… excrement today… I know they know not what they do, but they also know not whom they’re messing with… Amen. To Hell with the Devil!”
“To hell with the devil,” replied the assemblage of the damned, just before All Souls Southern Baptist Church of Shafter’s Devil’s Dungeon attraction opened its doors on Halloween night.
The attraction was Pastor Gary Horton’s brainchild, and he’d run it for six years out of the abandoned Wal Mart on Main Street with the devoted if not capable support of Leah Dupar, Wenda Orlick and Burt Coughlin. While the other pastors begged for pennies from their aging, underemployed flock, Gary summoned the whole county’s godless masses and shoved the wages of sin in their faces every weekend of October, the unholiest month on the calendar, at ten bucks a head. He was the reason the church’s youth group was so successful, and God-fearing families with theatrically-minded teens from up and down the state moved to the dying agricultural town to work the annual event.
Though they tried to take it from him every year, Horton had clung to the Devil’s Dungeon as his family left him and his middle school teaching job was ripped away for ministering to students in danger of turning to the gay lifestyle, and as servants of Satan throughout the county targeted him for advocating a ban on trick-or-treating and secular “Satanic entertainments.”
Pastor Gary was a Christian warrior, and Halloween night his annual battlefield for the souls of the youth of his town. But he had never stepped into an acting role himself, choosing to watch from on high and sometimes ambush teens making out in the dead-end corridors of the house.
Dane Duncan was their regular Satan. Waiting at the end of the maze, he judged the pie-eyed rubes as they stumbled out of the last of the five major rooms and were shoved down a spiral slide to the exit.
When Dane missed his call time and didn’t pick up his phone, Pastor Horton suspected it had something to do with Trisha, the young ingénue anchoring the abortion room this year. Eating all the snacks in the break room and crying a lot was expected. The role called for nonstop hysterics, but Gary had a director’s sixth sense for when it wasn’t just acting.
Gary was looking for a substitute when the spirit suddenly came upon him, and he sat down in the chair himself and told Wenda to get busy.
Acting was a dangerous art, but that was exactly why they used it to reach the sinners. They had to scrap the gay rave torture chamber, because the pressure of living such a role for two weeks plus rehearsals put ideas in one’s head that never washed out.
They were getting ready to open when Gary did the final walk-through. Every inch of the Cutting Room, a gallery of teen suicide and self-destruction, dripped pop and rap lyrics, scrawled in stage blood. The Rumpus Room reeked of fake vomit and stale beer, but the old drunk driver’s Honda Civic was replaced at great expense this year with a Burning Man scene, where wild-eyed hipster savages in day-glo warpaint put the torch to a screaming Christian family.
The Chat Room was a labyrinth of mirrors and old monitors streaming sexy ads, youtube vids and sexting messages, the screens dazzling you while depraved sex offenders and werewolf child molesters leapt out to ambush and drag you back to their blacklight suicide
booths.
The Sacred Grove was set for its endless pagan ritual, where gay satyrs and lesbian centaurs frolicked to New Age Muzak and hooded acolytes chanted blasphemous factoids about evolution.
He skipped the Black Chapel, where he would judge the damned, turned for the exit when he heard voices, felt approaching footsteps through the plywood floor.
His pulse doubled, teeth gritted until he tasted flakes of enamel. Did he hear that rasp and thud, like shuffling, dragging feet? If those darned vandals came back—Did he smell that stink of ammonia, of mothballs and dead animal musk?
No!
Someone ran into him. He screamed and shoved the assailant into a painted flat. The other fell ass-first through the canvas, clutching his throat, giggling like a lunatic.
“Trick or treat, Pastor Gary,” he croaked. “Smell my feet.”
“Quit clowning, Todd.” Gary offered his hand. “Are you high on something?”
Todd giggled maniacally. His glasses hung askew on his face, which was the ashy gray of soap scum, slimy with snot and tears. His hair was shot through white streaks, his eyes like puddles of mud. If it was makeup, Wenda had really outdone herself.
Jaws working, one hand clutched at his neck just under his ear and a gush of glistening red shadow came out his mouth. Then it was gone, just a trick of the light.
Half the time, the kid smelled like pot. Maybe he’d given Gary a “contact buzz.” Todd Chicoine was the haunt’s semi-official photographer. Never a member of the church, Todd lurked in the corridors and snapped flash photographs of patrons screaming, which generated a nice extra revenue stream.
“Todd, get your act together, we’re about to open.” He reached for the kid’s hand again, but Todd scooted backwards until he hit a solid wall. His movements had the spent, underwater quality of a marathon runner collapsing on the finish line. His camera snapped off a couple pictures, the flash stunning Gary.
“I can’t believe it… I’m not… I’m not really out, it wouldn’t just let me out…” He touched his neck, then looked at his hand. “You did it… Was it you? It wasn’t you… was it?”
“Where have you been, Todd?” He began to wonder if he hadn’t solved the mystery of today’s vandalism, in the bargain.
Todd stared at him like he’d never seen him before. “Why, right here, Pastor Gary. In the Black Chapel. I tried to leave, but it won’t let me. Where have you been?”
“Looking for you, Todd. And praying for you.”
A giggle like a seizure shook Todd. “Oh please, Pastor Gary, pray for me!” He pounded the floor with his fist. A blood vessel seemed to burst behind one eye like a shadow leaking out, as he coughed, “Looking for me… I… oh, God… I’ve been looking for you, too. And I found you, at the end…” He laughed harder, and then he was crying, clearly a candidate for the Burning Man room tonight.
Gary tried to lift Todd to his feet, but the kid screamed, “Get off me, God damn you!” Gary dropped him. For just a second, when they were pressed together, Todd felt wet, sticky, like he was covered in fake blood. Or the other kind…
“Stop talking like that, Todd.” He couldn’t stop wiping his hands off on his cape. “You don’t know the first god—the first thing about God or the Bible.”
Todd giggled. “I know all about that part where God and Satan are like, wrecking this guy’s life just to see if he’ll curse the Lord. Like a rich man making a bet with his chauffeur, about if a loyal dog will bite you, before you kick it to death?”
“That’s enough.”
“I have it straight from the horse’s mouth, it’s the only part of the Bible that’s true.”
“Shut up, Todd.”
“I’m just the message in this bottle, man. What did you build this place to show people? It wants to show you, Gary. Go look in the last room. You’ll see… You’ll see who wrote the message…” He laughed again, harder. Gary was barely reining in his temper when Todd went into convulsions, swallowing his own tongue. Gary tried to hold him down, shouting for someone to call 911.
It was too late. His eyes fixed on Gary’s hairline, he just stopped. Gary set the kid down. Picked up his camera and flicked the screen on the back to review the pictures he took, to find out what the heck happened.
He wanted to drop it. Smash it and stomp on it. There could be no doubt, unless they were both losing their minds.
Todd had indeed been to Hell, and come back with pictures.
They were blurry, lit only by fire, rendering the capering silhouettes into literal devils, demons, monsters and witches. Amid the flames they reveled in and worshiped, bodies hung like rotisserie chickens just above the heads of the crowd, dangling from the lamppost in the parking lot out front of the Devil’s Dungeon—
He dropped the camera. The floor squirmed underfoot and nearly missed him when he fell on his ass. He saw it watching him.
In the doorway of the Black Chapel. He saw a thing of black glass. Regal and rigid, a faceless pharaoh. Its skull opened like an orchid and a crown of mouths did say his name, and the sound of its wings was a voice like frigid mercury knives rasping between his teeth that did tell him the wicked would be winnowed away from the righteous, and he would be the instrument of their deliverance.
Nearly tearing his velvet-trimmed cape when he stood in his cloven-hoof boots, Gary unclipped the pepper spray off his belt and ran to the Black Chapel. He took no notice of the sound of a massive door slamming behind him, for he knew the Black Chapel, like every room in the haunt, had no door.
***
“Gary, do you still believe that Todd’s death was a sign from God?”
Gary blinked and resisted knuckling his eyes like a kindergartener at nap time. Lean back in the leather recliner, try not to make fart noises the microphone under your sweat-sticky shirt will pick up. “Nancy,” he said, then remembered to look at the host, “I’ve asked myself so many times… Look… What happened to Todd was between him and God, but every one of us can draw our own conclusions.”
It still rankled him that he had to answer these questions, but resisting the revisitation was all part of the act that had, in the twelve months since that fateful night, propelled him into the national spotlight.
Nancy dragged the bait back in front of him. “In your sermons, you still call him a casualty of war.”
Gary shrugged and tried out a disarming smile that looked better on almost anyone else. “I know I should go off foaming at the mouth and giving you the soundbytes you need to throw more gas on this fire without ever teaching or convincing anyone… but here goes.
“I’m not afraid to say it. We’re fighting a war against evil. And I still believe poor Todd Chicoine was struck down by a vision he had of the world to come, if we continue to lie to ourselves about the nature of evil, while we’re all marinating in it.”
The host simpered, “I think everybody’s onboard in the fight against evil… but why Halloween, Gary? It’s America’s second most favorite holiday. It’s about fun and fantasy, not Satanism.”
He pivoted to mad-dog the host’s eyeline, though she’d wandered off the set to refresh her drink. “People don’t need to cut up black cats or listen to Judas Priest backwards to worship Satan, Nancy. They just have to sit back and please themselves. Halloween is the second most lucrative holiday for retailers, so speaking out is a threat to America’s real religion. It mocks God and celebrates darkness and evil in the worst way possible, with a nod and a wink that says it’s all a big joke.”
Turn to look dead into the camera. “But it thrills the Devil to see folks who think they’ve outgrown faith wallowing in pagan idolatry, and giving in to their most self-destructive urges. It exalts him to see empty people playing at cartoon monsters while real monsters walk among us every day, because we all believe there’s no plan, no God watching, no reason to be good.”
Drink discreetly out of frame,
Nancy cut him off and took Camera 2 for a tight close-up. “A lot of people are taking your message seriously, and they’re saying this Halloween, they’re not going to be silent. But a lot more people are pretty angry at you, Gary Horton.”
Gary sipped water from a coffee cup, noticing he had white curds of foam in the corners of his mouth. These cable hosts were easier to work than a pro wrestling referee. Gary smiled, and said what he always said. “I’m not even the messenger, killing me won’t stop what’s coming. I’m just an envelope, containing the message. It’s up to you folks out there to take it in, or stamp it RETURN TO SENDER.”
It’s never stopped feeling like a miracle, he thought as the segment cut to commercial, and the kids watching in the break room burst into wild applause. He shut off the TV, told them to get back to work and went to check the crowds.
If he didn’t believe before that the Lord had a plan for him, then the last eleven months had made him a knower. Without setting his foot on the path, some force had not so much guided as pushed and prodded him up out of obscurity. Presidential and congressional candidates wanted photos with him, and knitted their brows seriously as they endorsed his crusade. Many authoritative voices on the national stage agreed that the seeds of this “innocent” children’s holiday had blossomed into pernicious weeds of adult lawlessness and violence, and statistics showed ever-escalating acts of hostility towards the church and anyone who opposed vice and blasphemy, that would only worsen with every return of that cancer on the calendar.
With Todd’s death, the Devil’s Dungeon was shut down by the Sheriff last Halloween night, but the notoriety of the hell house that scared a man to death, fueled by the video of Gary railing at the deputies who dispersed the rowdy crowd, went viral. Most folks laughed at the wild-eyed hick ranting about the Devil in his cheap Devil costume, but god-fearing folks from all over reached out, telling him they felt his message, they saw the same signs he did, and they wanted to help.
What October Brings Page 4