Fantastic Tales of Terror

by Eugene Johnson

  Elvis wheeled over to Jack, leaned forward and whispered: “Mr. Kennedy.”

  Jack’s eyelids fluttered. He could barely move his head, and something grated in his neck when he did. “The President is soon dead,” he said, and his clenched fist throbbed and opened, and out fell a wad of paper. “You got to get him.”

  Jack’s body went loose and his head rolled back on his damaged neck and the moon showed double in his eyes. Elvis swallowed and saluted Jack. “Mr. President,” he said.

  Well, at least he had kept Bubba Ho-Tep from taking Jack’s soul. Elvis leaned forward, picked up the paper Jack had dropped. He read it aloud to himself in the moonlight: “You nasty thing from beyond the dead. No matter what you think and do, good things will never come to you. If evil is your black design, you can bet the goodness of the Light Ones will kick your bad behind.”

  That’s it? thought Elvis. That’s the chant against evil from the Book of theSoul? Yeah, right, boss. And what kind of decoder ring does that come with? Shit, it doesn’t even rhyme well.

  Elvis looked up. Bubba Ho-Tep had fallen down in a blue blaze, but he was rising up again, preparing to go over the lip of the creek, down to wherever his sanctuary was.

  Elvis pulled around Jack and gave the wheelchair full throttle. He gave out with a rebel cry. His white scarf fluttered in the wind as he thundered forward.

  Bubba Ho-Tep’s flames had gone out. He was on his feet. His head was hissing grey smoke into the crisp night air. He turned completely to face Elvis, stood defiant, raised an arm and shook a fist. He yelled, and once again Elvis saw the hieroglyphics leap out of his mouth. The characters danced in a row, briefly—

  2

  —and vanished.

  Elvis let go of the protective paper. It was dog shit. What was needed here was action.

  When Bubba Ho-Tep saw Elvis was coming, chair geared to high, holding the paint sprayer in one hand, he turned to bolt, but Elvis was on him.

  Elvis stuck out a foot and hit Bubba Ho-Tep in the back, and his foot went right through Bubba. The mummy squirmed, spitted on Elvis’ leg. Elvis fired the paint sprayer, as Bubba Ho-Tep, himself, and chair, went over the creek bank in a flash of moonlight and a tumble of shadows.

  Elvis screamed as the hard ground and sharp stones snapped his body like a piñata. He made the trip with Bubba Ho-Tep still on his leg, and when he quit sliding, he ended up close to the creek.

  Bubba Ho-Tep, as if made of rubber, twisted around on Elvis’ leg, and looked at him.

  Elvis still had the paint sprayer. He had clung to it as if it were a life preserver. He gave Bubba another dose. Bubba’s right arm flopped way out and ran along the ground and found a hunk of wood that had washed up on the edge of the creek, gripped it, and swung the long arm back. The arm came around and hit Elvis on the side of the head with the wood.

  Elvis fell backwards. The paint sprayer flew from his hands. Bubba Ho-Tep was leaning over him. He hit Elvis again with the wood. Elvis felt himself going out. He knew if he did, not only was he a dead sonofabitch, but so was his soul. He would be just so much crap; no afterlife for him; no reincarnation; no angels with harps. Whatever lay beyond would not be known to him. It would all end right here for Elvis Presley. Nothing left but a quick flush. Bubba Ho-Tep’s mouth loomed over Elvis’ face. It looked like an open manhole. Sewage fumes came out of it.

  Elvis reached inside his open jumpsuit and got hold of the folder of matches.

  Laying back, pretending to nod out so as to bring Bubba Ho-Tep’s ripe mouth closer, he thumbed back the flap on the matches, thumbed down one of the paper sticks, and pushed the sulphurous head of the match across the black strip.

  Just as Elvis felt the cloying mouth of Bubba Ho-Tep falling down on his kisser like a Venus flytrap, the entire folder of matches ignited in Elvis’ hand, burned him and made him yell.

  The alcohol on Bubba’s body called the flames to it, and Bubba burst into a stalk of blue flame, singeing the hair off Elvis’ head, scorching his eyebrows down to nubs, blinding him until he could see nothing more than a scalding white light.

  Elvis realized that Bubba Ho-Tep was no longer on or over him, and the white light became a stained white light, then a grey light, and eventually, the world, like a Polaroid negative developing, came into view, greenish at first, then full of the night’s colors.

  Elvis rolled on his side and saw the moon floating in the water. He saw too a scarecrow floating in the water, the straw separating from it, the current carrying it away.

  No, not a scarecrow. Bubba Ho-Tep. For all his dark magic and ability to shift, or to appear to shift, fire had done him in, or had it been the stupid words from Jack’s book on souls? Or both?

  It didn’t matter. Elvis got up on one elbow and looked at the corpse. The water was dissolving it more rapidly and the current was carrying it away.

  Elvis fell over on his back. He felt something inside him grate against something soft. He felt like a water balloon with a hole poked in it.

  He was going down for the last count, and he knew it.

  But I’ve still got my soul, he thought. Still mine. All mine. And the folks in Shady Grove, Dillinger, the Blue Yodeler, all of them, they have theirs, and they’ll keep ’em.

  Elvis stared up at the stars between the forked and twisted boughs of an oak. He could see a lot of those beautiful stars, and he realized now that the constellations looked a little like the outlines of great hieroglyphics. He turned away from where he was looking, and to his right, seeming to sit on the edge of the bank, were more stars, more hieroglyphics.

  He rolled his head back to the figures above him, rolled to the right and looked at those. Put them together in his mind.

  He smiled. Suddenly, he thought he could read hieroglyphics after all, and what they spelled out against the dark beautiful night was simple, and yet profound.

  ALL IS WELL.

  Elvis closed his eyes and did not open them again.

  THE END

  Thanks to

  (Mark Nelson) for translating East Texas “Egyptian” Hieroglyphics.

  1 “By the unwinking red eye of Ra!”

  2 “Eat the dog dick of Anubis, you ass wipe!”

  GORILLA MY DREAMS

  JONATHAN MABERRY

  “Let me get this straight, Mr. Karlson,” said Abraham Schuster, “you want me to get you a major Broadway theater booking for a . . . gorilla?”

  “Did I say ‘gorilla’?” cried Jack Karlson. He began waving his hands, because that usually worked with people. They thought something important was happening. “No, did I say that it was ‘just a gorilla?’ I did not.”

  “You did say gorilla,” Shuster assured him. “Those exact words. You hear that? It’s inflection. Did I say this was only a gorilla? Did I, in fact, say it was only a regular gorilla? No, sir, that is not how I said it. Mr. Schuster, hold onto your toupee because I’m talking about the biggest damn ape you ever saw!”

  Schuster leaned back in his chair. He wore a nice suit, but not a new one. Everything in the office was nice, but not new. It had been new before the Depression mugged the entire entertainment industry, picked everyone’s pockets, and engendered within Schuster and all of his colleagues a talent for squeezing all the life out of every single penny.

  “I’ve seen a lot of apes in my time,” he said dryly. “One of them is dating my daughter.”

  “Yeah, well this one is different?”

  Schuster steepled his fingers. “And, pray, how is he different? And please note that I, myself, have inflected, just to show you that I understand the concept. Now, tell me how your gorilla is different from every other gorilla in every monkey act that has come through vaudeville and the grander stages since . . . oh, let me see . . . Nero’s Rome?”

  “Well,” said Karlson, “mine is big.”

  “As opposed to all of the midget gorillas walking around Manhattan?”

  “No, no—I mean really big.”

  Schuster sighed. This was giving
him a pain in one of his internal organs. His spleen perhaps. “How big is big?”

  “Big is, well . . . really pretty big.”

  “Oh, thanks,” said the booking agent, “that makes it so much clearer.”

  “No, I mean really, really, really big.”

  “That’s a lot of reallys. Gadzooks, he must be a corker.”

  “Oh, he is!”

  “Pardon me while I yawn.”

  “Yeah, yeah, crack jokes, Schuster, but I’m telling you, this is no ordinary ape.”

  “Oh, I believe you, Mr. Karlson, truly I do. You see it’s just a matter of my not caring one little—”

  “There’s a girl.”

  Schuster paused. He leaned forward and placed his elbows on the desk, made fists, put them together like a ledge and leaned his chin on them. “Oh?” he said, drawing it out.

  Karlson’s eyes twinkled and he gave Schuster a small wink of the kind that would make the father of any female children reach for something with which to hit him. However, Abraham Schuster had no daughters. He had sons. Four of them, and they were looking for wives. With the economy continuing its slide down a very smelly pipe and business as bad as it was, Schuster was hoping for one of them to marry money. Right now they all worked for Abraham’s brother’s meat packing plant, which was teetering on the edge of financial ruin because meat was expensive and without which there was nothing to pack. If something didn’t turn things around, then the whole Shuster family was going to fold up and they would all be living in a car parked somewhere in New Jersey, most probably an unpaved road in the Pine Barrens. The booking agency right now was paying some of the bills, but the two bottom drawers of his desk were filled with the real truth about how things were going. The left-hand drawer was filled with unpaid bills, and the right was filled with bottles of very illegal gin.

  The gin had been a gift from Uncle Morty, who was now doing six to twelve for running booze down from Canada. There was some talk in the papers about Prohibition being repealed, maybe as soon as December, but it hadn’t happened yet.

  “A girl, you say?”

  “A pretty blonde,” said Karlson.

  “For future reference,” said Schuster dryly, “your pitch would have been better if you’d led with the blonde.”

  “Instead of a really big gorilla?”

  “In almost every instance, yes.”

  “It’s a pretty special gorilla,” Karlson assured him.

  “Let’s stick with the blond. What does she do?”

  “Do?”

  “Yes. What’s her talent? What’s the act?”

  “She works with the ape.”

  “’Works with’ . . . ?”

  “I mean she has a special relationship with the ape.”

  “Ah,” said Schuster, sitting back. “I see. Mr. Karlson, although times are tough here in New York, and although some members of my profession have taken to showcasing more, shall we say, outré, acts . . . I have just enough self respect left to abstain. I’m sure there are those other agents who would be eager for that kind of show, but surely Times Square is not the place for—”

  “No, you don’t get what I’m saying,” growled Karlson, throwing up his hands. “The girl and the ape aren’t like that. Don’t be disgusting. They have a link, a bond. She’s the queen to his king.”

  “A link? Yes. Yes, I’m sure they do; and there are doctors who can help the poor girl. But it just doesn’t belong in front of a family audience.”

  “I’m telling you, this is a great act. The Eighth Wonder of the World!”

  “Why are there always exclamations points implied in many of the things you say?”

  Karlson ignored him because he was clearly in gear. “This is a classic, Schuster. It’s a real ‘Beauty and the Beast’ story.”

  “Yes, I have read French magazines, but I—”

  “No, no, this is on the level. Garganto is head over heels for the broad.”

  “Garganto?”

  “The ape.”

  “The ape’s name is Garganto?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s Chinese then, is that it?”

  “No, he isn’t Chinese. I don’t think there are gorillas in China anyway. Not like this.”

  “What is he then?”

  “Well, I dunno . . . I guess he’s kind of South Pacifican. Comes from a place called Kaiju Shima.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Island of Very Big Monster Things. Or something like that.”

  “Mm. Sounds like a garden spot. Nicely lurid, though. Is this a real place?”

  “Real? Why, it’s a savage tropical jungle filled with monsters the likes of which man has never seen! Creatures from the very dawn of time.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I’ve been there, I’ve seen them, I tell you!”

  “Which means man has seen them, then . . . ”

  “Well, yes . . . but—”

  “Well, I’m sure Garganto of Kaiju Shima is very interesting, Mr. Karlson, but this Broadway.”

  “We could call him Prince Garganto!”

  “’Prince Garganto’?”

  “Sure, he was the prince of that island.”

  Schuster smiled thinly. “Was he an actual prince? I mean with a crown and all? Was there a king? Or a queen? Or is this more of an honorary title, him being an actual simian, I mean?”

  Karlson looked momentarily flustered. “More of a stage name, but he makes it work. When you see him you’ll understand.”

  “Oh, I’m positively breathless with anticipation.” Schuster opened his desk drawer and removed a packet of sourballs. He shook one into his palm and put it in his mouth. He did not offer one to his guest. “Mr. Karlson,” he said as he sucked, “if this ape of yours is so big and impressive, how could you assure me he wouldn’t terrorize the audience. How do you control him?”

  “Gas. He has a problem with it, you see.”

  “Gas? Your Mr. Garganto has problems with gas? Wouldn’t that present a rather distasteful problem onstage?”

  “Huh? What? Oh. God . . . no! That’s not what I meant. I mean we control him with gas. We caught him by using gas grenades. Now he’s chained up.”

  “I . . . see. Exactly what do you plan to do with a large, gassed-out ape onstage? Does he do tricks?”

  “No.”

  “Is he funny?”

  “Not really.”

  “Do you dress him up in a clown suit and have him ride a bicycle? I saw a bear do that once in a circus and it was quite clever.”

  “No. He doesn’t do anything like that.”

  “Well, then, what does he do?”

  “Well, he’d just be standing there. In chains.”

  Schuster sat there. He did not say anything. He tapped his fingers slowly on his desk top. Waiting for more. Not getting anything.

  “Stands there,” he said after a very long time.

  “Well . . . yes.”

  “In chains.”

  “Kind of has to,” said Karlson. “He’s really big.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “And strong.”

  “Right.”

  “And dangerous.”

  “Sure,” said Schuster. “But . . . to make sure I grasp the central conceit of your act . . . a pretty blond girl is on stage with a big gorilla who doesn’t do anything except stand there in chains?”

  “Sure. She’ll tell her story. It’s a corker.”

  “It would have to be,” said Schuster. “I can see how that could guarantee at least a dozen curtain calls.”

  Karlson cleared his throat. “And we’d talk about how we captured him.”

  “Sure. Let me see if I have this clear in my mind, Mr. Karlson. You want me to book you and your ape into the biggest theater on Times Square so the audience can see an overgrown monkey stand there in chains while you explain how he was captured with knock-out gas while mooning over some blonde? Is that about it?”

  “Well . . . yes. In a nutsh
ell.”

  “If we’re going to talk about ‘nuts’, Mr. Karlson, let’s start with you.”

  -2-

  Residence of New York Mayor John P. O’Brien

  December 2, 1933—12:01 a.m.

  “Your honor? Sir?”

  “It’s after midnight,” grumbled Mayor O’Brien in a vaguely threatening tone. “If this isn’t a fabulously gorgeous redhead I’m hanging up the phone.”

  “Sorry to wake you, sir.”

  “If you’re not sorry, you will be. Who in the flaming hell is this?”

  “Commissioner Murphy, sir,” said the caller. “We have a situation happening near Times Square.”

  “I’m not sure I like the word ‘situation’, Murphy.”

  “No sir.”

  “What kind of a ‘situation’ are we talking about? Is it the Meat Packers union again? I spent all day trying to explain to them that the meat that was shipped in from the Midwest was unfit and we just can’t have them package it for sale. I told them today that we—”

  “Well . . . sir . . . not to interrupt, but apparently a giant gorilla is rampaging through Manhattan.”

  “ . . . .”

  “Sir?”

  “I’m sorry, I must not be awake yet. It almost sounded like you said a giant . . . ”

  “Ape, sir. Yes.”

  “Rampaging.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who did you say this was?”

  “Murphy, sir. Police commissioner.”

  “Did I appoint you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Should I regret that, Murphy?”

  “Well, sir . . . there really is a giant ape. And he is on a rampage, mostly through the theater district.”

  The mayor sat up and rubbed his eyes. Despite the ban on all alcohol sales across the United States, he was a bit hung over. Drinking from his private stock. Drinking, in fact, quite a lot from that stock. Very good whiskey. The kind that went down easy but later dragged you outside and roughed you up. His head hurt. “When you say ‘giant’, Murphy . . . what are we talking here?”