Fantastic Tales of Terror

by Eugene Johnson

  Two of the skin-walkers pursued him. They were little more than sleek shadows. Jake settled and drew a bead. He pulled the trigger and cursed beneath his breath as the bullet kicked up dirt inches behind the charging monster.

  He readied the rifle and fired again.

  The bullet shredded the skin-walker’s hind quarters as it crumpled into a whining ball of agony. Jake was already seeking his next target. He spotted the second wolf and sighted down the barrel. It would be on top of Roosevelt within the next few seconds. Jake exhaled and squeezed the trigger.

  The rifle issued a dry click.

  Roosevelt tossed the rifle aside and reached for his Colt revolver as he ran. He had never been a slight man, but at that moment, he regretted neglecting his evening constitutionals. With every step he ran, his belly felt more and more as if it were made of lead rather than flesh. His breathing was coming in harsh bursts and his glasses were fogged with sweat.

  He slammed into the enormous rock and immediately spun. The skin-walker’s eyes were as large as wagon wheels as it leaped at him. Roosevelt drew his revolver and fanned the hammer.

  A barrage of bullets tore through the wolf’s throat and torso; the dead weight of its corpse crashed into the ground and rolled to a stop inches from Roosevelt. Gunshots echoed off of the canyon’s stone walls as he gulped for air and staggered back into the night.

  Avonaco reloaded the shotgun as he searched for the remaining two skin-walkers. He could not see or hear them, but he could feel their presence in the air like coming rain. Pebbles crunchedunderneath his boots as he cautiously crept toward the edge of the firelight.

  The skin-walkers’ aggressive assault had failed, but Avonaco was certain that the pack would not retreat. The remaining members would no longer work in tandem. They would divide in an effort to conquer. They would do what they did best. What they were born to do.

  They would hunt.

  Avonaco moved to the far wall of the canyon. With his back to the wall, that was one less avenue of attack for the skin-walkers, and made him much more visible to Jake—if the young man was still with them.

  Jake saw nothing. Both Avonaco and Roosevelt had been swallowed by the shadows, and the skin-walkers were natural nocturnal hunters.

  Unnatural nocturnal hunters, actually, Jake reminded himself.

  He could discern furtive movements within the shadows below him, but nothing tangible. Nothing he could target. An anxious knot formed in his stomach. He could not shoot what he could not see, and he was trapped on his perch. He was effectively useless.

  Roosevelt and Avonaco were on their own.

  A low growl issued from the oily darkness ahead of Avonaco. He froze in mid-stride as he peered into the black void. He saw nothing. His hands tightened around the shotgun as he took another step. The growling intensified.

  It was a skin-walker, but something was wrong. It had the advantage, but it was not attacking.

  It was wounded.

  The tracker advanced, slowly. His nerves were wound so tightly his trigger finger was threatening to cramp. Ahead, he could see hints of white glimmering in the night.

  Teeth.

  He raised his shotgun as he stepped forward. The moonlight outlined the quivering wolf. It was crouched and its fur stood on end. It was a silhouette of pure menace. Something about the situation was wrong. Very wrong.

  The wolf was a diversion.

  Avonaco spun and fired as the wolf that had been stalking soared toward him. The blast from the shotgun vaporized the attacking beast’s head. Blood sprayed from its useless stump of a neck as its dead weight collided with Avonaco. The Native toppled backwards onto the ground as the air escaped his lungs.

  The skin-walkers had deceived him. He had emptied both barrels of his shotgun and now he was lying stunned on his back. Warm saliva plopped onto his cheek. He tilted his head backward and looked up into drooling jaws. Hot breath steamed against his exposed flesh. The skin-walker would be the instrument of his death and—

  BLAM!

  Roosevelt fired once. The wolf collapsed as if it were a marionette with clipped strings. Avonaco looked up to see his friend straightening his spectacles as he approached.

  “Laying down on the job already?” Roosevelt quipped as he offered his hand.

  “The day has been long,” Avonaco responded as Roosevelt pulled him to his feet.

  “Close enough,” Roosevelt conceded. “Is that all of them?”

  “Perhaps.”

  It was not a howl, it was a shriek. More human than wolf. It was a sound familiar to anyone that had lost someone close to them. The sound of anguish. The sound of rage.

  Both men turned as the last skin-walker charged them with the speed of a runaway locomotive.

  Roosevelt raised his revolver and fired.

  Nothing. The cylinder was empty.

  Avonaco discarded his shotgun and unsheathed his knife. It would prove little help, but it was better than his bare hands.

  Roosevelt snapped open the revolver’s cylinder as he fumbled for a silver round. His fingers were slick with sweat. There was not enough time.

  SNAP! CLANG!

  Jake’s bear trap snapped closed around the skin-walker’s leg. Bone shattered; the wolf twisted as it collapsed. It mewledand ground its teeth as it attempted to pull its mutilated leg from the trap. As it writhed, it looked up at Roosevelt and Avonaco with eyes that were nothing more than deep wells of hate.

  Roosevelt snapped the cylinder shut as he stepped forward and cocked the hammer.

  “Whatever grace you sacrificed in this life,” he said softly, “may you earn it in the next.”

  He pulled the trigger and the night fell silent.

  THE GREAT STONE FACE VS. THE GARGOYLES

  JEFF STRAND

  The entire side of the two-story home toppled over and landed flat on the ground. The only thing saving Buster Keaton from being crushed was an open window, which he passed through with only inches to spare.

  He glanced around, confused by what had just happened.

  Once again, he’d evaded almost certain death. These types of antics occurred so often that he’d taken to having a film crew follow him around when he tried to do something like build a house, because he knew these sorts of things would happen and he could edit the footage into a financially successful motion picture.

  “You should be squished right now!” shouted the horrified cameraman. “Completely squished!”

  Buster nodded. Even with an above-average dose of good luck on his side, the house should’ve at least taken off an ear, yet he was entirely unharmed. And he felt perfectly calm—his heart wasn’t racing at all. He should have been having a panic attack and screaming even louder than the cameraman: “Aaaahhhh!!! I almost died! Did you see that? And now I have to rebuild the whole house!” But he never panicked. Never broke a sweat. His reaction, invariably, was “Hmmm, that’s odd.” That’s why they called him The Great Stone Face.

  “Great work, Buster, great work,” said the producer, walking over to shake his hand. “One of these days you’re going to die on the job, but it didn’t happen today, and audiences are going to love it. Did you hear me laughing? Funny, funny stuff. Because you didn’t die. Obviously, it would have been less funny if you didn’t survive. Or were terribly injured. But you’re just fine.” He brushed some sawdust off of Buster’s shoulder.

  Nobody knew that his films were essentially documentaries. The studio would never have been able to get insurance for his productions if they were aware that the death-defying situations were real. Later, he’d concoct a story about how much planning went into the stunt, the sheer precision required to ensure that he was not injured.

  Buster Keaton, who “directed” his own movies, was a prolific filmmaker, but he’d estimate that if camera crews had been in the right place at the right time, he could’ve made ten times as many movies. Once he’d been ice-fishing and the shack broke through the ice. He’d calmly stepped over its roof before it disapp
eared beneath the surface. The camera crew was still setting up, so this astounding feat was lost. He’d also lost the time he fell off a roof and his landing was cushioned by a wedding cake, the time a vicious dog kept tearing away his clothing without biting him or exposing anything that should not be seen in cinemas, and countless other moments. It was frustrating, but he knew there’d always be another one.

  For his next film, Buster had been alerted to a dilapidated gothic mansion. The owner had died under mysterious circumstances and his heirs were happy to let Hollywood use the place until they tore it down to make better use of the land. There had to be plenty of craziness that could happen here.

  Everybody arrived early in the morning. “This place is huge,” said the lighting director.

  One of the cameramen smirked. “That’s the definition of a mansion.”

  The lighting director glared at him. “I’m just saying, is all.”

  “We’re making a silent film. You don’t need to say anything.”

  “All right, all right, no bickering,” said the producer. He looked up at the mansion and whistled. “I see lots of potential here already. Check out those gargoyles.”

  Buster had already checked them out. There were four of them draped over the roof. A lion with wings. A panther with wings. An ape with wings. And a demon with wings. Ironically, the ape was scarier than the demon, but all of them could be put to good use in a story about a hapless man who inherits a big spooky mansion and has two reels’ worth of slapstick misadventures.

  The camera crew set up and began filming as Buster walked around the perimeter of the mansion, inspecting it in character. He expected one of the gargoyles to come loose, plummet to the ground, and nearly crush him, but they all remained firmly fixed to the roof. There was a rake lying on the ground, tines up, but Buster tried never to consciously create a moment of amusing self-injury. Anyway, stepping on a rake was too easy of a gag. He was better than that.

  The crew moved their equipment inside, and Buster walked through the house, room by room. There was a lot of dust in the mansion, and his sneezes created several classic cinema moments, including one where he sneezed so hard that he struck a shelf of valuable heirlooms. Well, they weren’t really valuable; it was junk that the heirs hadn’t bothered trying to auction off, but for the purposes of this motion picture each of them was priceless. Using all of his appendages, Buster caught each one of them before they could shatter against the wooden floor. That is, except for the last vase, which he would have caught in his porkpie hat if it hadn’t ripped through the top. Buster scratched his head at the damage.

  At lunchtime, everybody left the mansion and went out to the craft services table that had been set up outside. Buster was extremely happy with the way the shooting day was going and was in the mood to smile, but he didn’t dare with so many cameras around. The Great Stone Face didn’t smile on camera.

  “This is going to be one of your best,” said the producer, speaking through a mouthful of ham sandwich. “When that vase ripped through your hat I thought I was going to bust a gut laughing. You’re a genius, even if it’s all accidental.”

  Buster shrugged. He never felt like a genius.

  “Anyway, I can’t wait to see what you come up with for those three gargoyles.”

  Buster almost smiled at his producer’s math error, but when he looked up at the roof, he saw that there were indeed only three gargoyles. The demon one was gone. Where would a giant stone gargoyle go? He assumed that some crew members had removed it, probably to leave in a yet-to-be-explored room so that he’d be hilariously startled. They weren’t supposed to do this kind of thing without his direction, and it would be out of character for him to react with shock or terror, but he decided not to say anything. Maybe the gag would play well.

  They finished lunch and started to file back into the mansion. Which is when Buster noticed that only the panther gargoyle was still on the roof.

  “Weren’t there more gargoyles up there before?” asked the producer.

  Buster nodded.

  “What do you think? Group hallucination?”

  Buster shook his head.

  “Oh well. It’s definitely odd, but what can you do?”

  Lunch had been pretty good, but Buster Keaton wasn’t the type of person to let a tasty meal distract him from giant stone gargoyles being removed from the roof of a mansion while he sat in the front yard. His crew was efficient—they had to be, since they never knew exactly what mishaps they’d be capturing on film—but they weren’t good enough to move heavy gargoyles without him noticing. Even if you assumed that the gargoyles were just sitting up there without being attached to the roof in some way, they would’ve required machinery or a dozen men to lift. It made no sense.

  Unless they weren’t really made of stone. They could’ve been made of something lightweight that was painted to look like stone. If that were the case, yes, a crew member could’ve swiped them off the roof without calling attention to himself. That made a lot more sense. Buster would quit worrying about it.

  He went back inside the mansion. The crew had set up in the main foyer, with the expectation that Buster could find many ways to climb the large staircase with comedic difficulty. He looked at the top of the stairs and froze.

  The ape gargoyle was there. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought it was in a different position than it had been on the roof.

  “Oh, hey, look at that,” said the producer. “Maybe when you get to the last step, it would topple over and bounce down the stairs after you as you flee.”

  That seemed like a fine idea in terms of the movie they were making, but Buster couldn’t shake the creeped out feeling that the gargoyle gave him. Even if it was a thin plaster replica that would shatter as soon as it struck the carpeted staircase, Buster still believed that its wings had been placed differently when he saw it on the roof.

  He also believed that he just saw it blink.

  He also believed that he was watching it breathe.

  He also believed that it turned its head to watch him watch it breathe.

  “Does anybody else think the gargoyle up there is alive?” asked the producer.

  Buster nodded.

  The producer shoved him forward. “Then get up there and do battle!”

  Buster had no lack of courage, but fighting a supernatural stone gargoyle held little appeal for him. Though he’d been in many, many dangerous situations, none of them had blatantly violated the known rules of the universe. This seemed like a good way to get killed.

  “Go on!” said the producer, giving him another shove. “Look at the production values happening up there!”

  As Buster opened his mouth to protest, the lion gargoyle crept into view at the top of the staircase. He had allowed himself to possibly consider that the first gargoyle was a puppet created by his extremely talented crew, but no puppet could walk as smoothly as the lion gargoyle just had. No, there were two living stone gargoyles at the top of these stairs, and the only intelligent decision he could make right now was to rapidly exit the mansion and shoot a different film in a safe padded cell.

  “The cameras are rolling!” said the producer. “This will be your masterpiece! Charlie Chaplin isn’t doing a movie where he fights giant gargoyles! Harold Lloyd would never go up those stairs! You think Fatty Arbuckle could win this war? You’re Buster Keaton! Get up there and kick some gargoyle posterior!”

  Buster took the first step, then hesitated. This was a terrible idea.

  “Do it! It’ll be poetic on a level beyond anything ever seen on the silver screen! The Great Stone Face versus creatures of stone! Amazing! You were going to be a legend already, but this cements it! Are they made out of cement? Cement isn’t stone, is it?”

  Buster felt that his producer was getting sidetracked a bit.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said the producer. “What I’m saying is that even if you die a gruesome death, it’ll be worth it! It’ll be the most successful studio-produced motion pi
cture in the over thirty years that the medium has existed! I’m not saying that anybody wants you to die, or that you should want to die yourself, but if you were able to choose the method of your death, how could there be a better one than going out fighting a gargoyle? It’s simply not possible. We could hire every writer in sunny California and ask them to come up with a pitch for how the legendary Buster Keaton should die, and not a single one of them would . . . you know what, I don’t want to take it that far; some of those gentlemen are quite talented. All I’m saying is that you fighting a pair of stone gargoyles—well, make that a trio of them now—is a gift from the movie marketing gods.”

  The demon gargoyle had joined the ape and the lion. Presumably creatures made of stone didn’t eat anything (surely they didn’t have a digestive tract or anything that would allow them to absorb nutrition) but these three all looked ready to devour him.

  Buster didn’t much want to do this. But it wasn’t simply about big screen immortality. It was about monsters that could potentially go on a killing rampage if he didn’t face off with them right now. He’d feel terrible if they left the mansion and killed dozens of innocent civilians, and as Buster Keaton, he was humanity’s best chance for that not happening.

  He calmly walked up the steps. Behind him, various members of the production crew wished him luck.

  The panther gargoyle stepped into view behind the others. Okay, his current situation was now thirty-three percent more dire. Still, if he was confident enough to go up against three gargoyles, he should be confident enough to go up against four of them. He clenched his fists, kept his stone face rigid, and continued walking up the stairs.

  “Don’t do it!” wailed one of the more cowardly crew members. “You’re gonna die! You’re gonna die!” Another crew member slapped him and he went silent.

  At the top of the stairs, Buster wondered why he’d been so sure that these gargoyles wished to inflict violence. Maybe they were peaceful gargoyles. It wasn’t the demon’s fault that he’d been carved into something terrifying and blasphemous. Perhaps the hilarious set piece of this movie would be the damage wrought by these oversized beasts when they tried to help him fix up the mansion.