Black Static Horror Magazine #3

by TTA Press Authors

  I thought of the scars on Sarah's hands, the scars I had first caught sight of years before. Then I thought of the gloves she had been wearing at our last meeting, and how long they were.

  I had once asked her who had told her of the blood trick. It had been a distant relative of hers. He had sworn it worked. Later, however, he had disappeared. No one knew what become of him.

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  A year later, the pit came for Sarah. She wanted to die, but she didn't come and find me. She didn't give me the ten days she'd promised. She didn't call me. She didn't call anyone. She stayed alone in her flat, up in Edinburgh, for a couple of days. I know what she was doing: waiting. Simply that. Waiting on the edge of the pit, waiting to see if she would fall in. Sitting alone in the night, listening to the wind, and the muttering of the streets, waiting for her mood to swing back up, to swing back, to come to rest. Waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

  Then she slipped off her shoes, and hanged herself in the bedroom.

  The neighbours didn't hear a thing. The police were curious, and nosed about a bit, but in the end they decided there were no suspicious circumstances. So that was all right, then.

  Sarah died between two and four. The smallest hours. The hours when life is at its lowest ebb. Most suicides happen later, though, between six and eight. People find that strange, they think the dawn would help somehow. In fact it probably makes things worse. You wait for the dawn, imagining things will look better, or at least different, in the light. You allow yourself a measure of hope. Then the sun rises, but sometimes, through the dark filter, everything looks just the same. If you see the light at all, then it sears, burns, more painful than the darkness it has swept aside. You know your hope was illusory, and there's nothing left to keep you here.

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  I woke with a start, still on the sofa, my head swinging suddenly up, my neck throbbing with a dull ache. Five o'clock. There was a bellowing of the wind outside my window. A handful of rain hurled itself against the glass. A sudden white light crossed the sky and was gone, chased almost at once by a bark of thunder. A storm, I thought: a storm must have descended while I slept.

  I felt awake, awake as I had not felt since I began my treatment, awake as—if I were honest—I had not felt for years. As if I had been plunged into icy water. But though the sun had risen, there was still a darkness over my vision and a coldness on my skin; and the world had turned hard and sharp, and my thoughts were turning in my head, over and over and over.

  I climbed from the sofa and went to my window to watch the dawn storm. That was when I saw the pit, though I think I must have known it would be there.

  The city was gone, vanished into the pit-mouth. The walls of the pit were far on the horizon. All that remained of the city was a pinnacle of stone rising from the centre of the pit. My building stood on that pinnacle, on the very edge.

  Lightning struck again, arcing from a sky now grown as dark and rugged as a cavern roof, down into the pit, down into the dark; thunder followed it down, rolling past the window and fading as the pit swallowed it. Dust and vapour streamed into the great opening. Below me, on the corner of my building, a car rolled along to the edge of the broken road, clung to the edge for a moment with its rear wheels, then fell. A row of iron railings tore one by one from the ground, and struck orange sparks as, tumbling, they scratched at the sides of the pit.

  * * * *

  I climb down to the ground, and seat myself at the edge of the pit, peering over its lip into the infinite dark below. I wait for the pit to speak, but it says nothing. Nothing more need be said. I know what it wants of me.

  This time I have a knife with me. A kitchen knife with a serrated edge. I usually use it for crusty bread. My flesh would cut more easily. But there isn't enough blood in me to soothe the pit. Nothing less than my self will do it.

  Laying the knife aside, I think of Sarah. I imagine her body still moving, after the life had gone out of it: swinging, oscillating. Too late to change her mind. I wonder how long it took her to come to rest.

  I can hear no sound other than that of the pit. I realise I have been searching for Sarah, and that once again I have failed to find her. With a half-smile I turn, and look back over my shoulder. She is not there.

  I realise, too, that I had stayed awake, disrupting the rhythms of my sleep, to send out a call, a summons; and the pit has answered, and come to me.

  For a long time, I sit, not really thinking, but not really thinking of nothing. Thoughts come to me. Thoughts, and memories, streaming past me and down into the pit-mouth. I recall the first time we had spoken of the pit. Sarah had said: “Some say you just vanish, and no one knows what happened to you. Some say it isn't like that, that it only takes the quick part of you. So you come back as a husk."

  Was that a husk, then, the body left hanging there after the quick part of her had gone? I believe that it was. And now I know what I must do.

  Composing myself, I touch my forelock and nod to the pit. My old enemy. My old friend. My reflection. A mental state, a neurochemical sigil; but not mine alone.

  I stand on the edge of the pit. Then I turn, and lower myself down. Why should I cast myself in? Why should I fall? I will go willingly, by my own choice. I will climb down step by step, stone by stone. If I fall, I fall. If not, then I must reach the base of it sooner or later. Nothing truly lasts forever. Nothing real.

  Somewhere, at the base of the pit, I may find the quick part of Sarah. I will search everywhere; and if I do not find her, perhaps she will find me. And we can climb back up together.

  Down, and down; and for the last time I glance up, and see the sky through the mouth of the pit, already high above me: a mote of light, searing, too bright to look at, so that it hurts my eyes to see it. I do not look up again.

  Copyright © 2008 Alexander Glass

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  BLOOD SPECTRUM—Tony Lee

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  GLOOM & DOOM

  Night Watch (aka: Nochnoy dozor) started a trilogy of occult horrors, based on novels by Sergei Lukyanenko (whose Twilight Watch was published in English by William Heinemann), and was heralded as the first Russian fantasy blockbuster. Timur Bekmambetov's wonderful sequel Day Watch (aka: Dnevnoy dozor) continues a fascinating tale of supernatural warfare hampered by Kafkaesque bureaucracy, and shows how the fragile truce between forces of light and darkness is broken by the fulfilment of a prophecy. ‘Gloom’ is the sideways reality of invisibility or detection where dust or bugs drain the very life from unwary visitors on both sides of the shadowy conflict. Repressed vampires, formidable witches, shape-changing characters, and world-weary immortals of wilfully undefined yet clearly prodigious abilities, struggle to exert a moral authority or commit sundry acts of mischief. The legendary ‘chalk of fate’ is a clever macguffin by which troubled hero Anton (Konstantin Khabensky) may quite literally write-right all wrongs, and thus save the world. Although these watchmen fail to deliver the same pure comic-book fun as Guillermo del Toro and Mike Mignola's more engaging BPRD agents, this cult foreign movie will do nicely, until Hellboy II: The Golden Army, arrives (due summer 2008).

  There's gender body-swap farce (with perhaps the most hilarious faux-lesbian/hetero-romantic shower scene ever filmed?) featuring the comedy talents of Galina Tyunina as wry sorceress Olga. Zavulon and Geser (archetypal ‘big guns’ of this good against evil premise) both receive story-arc development of their previously established supporting characters, and all your day/night watch favourites, team-players and loners, reappear here, even if they are relegated to sideshow duties.

  More take-no-prisoners antics by Alice (striking Zhanna Friske) provide thrilling CGI action, and while new visual effects sequences preserve the previous film's murky affect, eschewing the acute realism of Hollywood for a whimsically impressionistic style, the contrast with an urban grittiness (Russian street life and office politics) actually benefits the typically earnes
t drama. If the ‘strange boy’ plotline (and the curious happy ending!) marks this potential epic as formulaic populist tripe, it really doesn't matter. Startling or inspired cinematic moments worth seeing and savouring, and plenty of clever myth building, make this far superior in every way to Highlander: The Source, Brett Leonard's almost boring variation on the ‘battling immortals’ theme. After three passable to middling follow-up movies (and a brace of live-action/ animated, inexplicably admired, shows) to Russell Mulcahy's original centuries-spanning adventure, it's a shame that this futuristic sequel is so exasperatingly wretched compared to those previous sword-fighting fantasies.

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  While solar planets (and, we're told, many stars) break “the laws of celestial mechanics,” shifting from orbital paths into a fateful alignment, Duncan MacLeod (Adrian Paul, from Highlander TV series) unhappily joins surviving immortals hunting for the Source. Duncan's apparently psychic, estranged wife leads this quest but, stalked and outwitted by a mysterious Guardian, the warriors somewhat carelessly lose their heads, in turn, usually during another furiously edited montage of annoyingly jittery visuals (bad rock songs are optional!), shot with digital cameras on Lithuanian locations. Episodes of the cheaply produced 1990s’ television series proved unmemorable, or just plain dull, but this film's a low watermark for director Leonard (enjoyably daft Lawnmower Man, lurid sci-fi chiller Virtuosity, the underrated Man-Thing), who's capable of better entertainment.

  "Didn't you ever watch Scooby Doo?” asks one of the girls in House Of The Dead (aka: Le jeu ne fait que commencer), when a friend ignores her safety-first warning. Produced and directed by the German-born Uwe Boll, and filmed in Canada, this mockingly irreverent zombie flick attempts to blend Raimi-style gore with sub-Matrix CGI, but it lacks the spite and polish of either. A group of co-eds, overly keen to attend the rave party on a remote island, disregard the hazards, insist on an unprepared boat trip and risk ending up as prey, and snacks, for hordes of the undead. Capable of athleticism to Olympic standards, these creatures are supposed to be more frightfully dangerous than the usual breed of ghoul, and even zombie-vomit is toxic to a skin-blistering degree. Overall, though, the movie is devoid of suspense, common sense, dramatic interest, or curiosity value. It's hampered at every turn by poor dialogue ("There must be some kind of scientific explanation for this"), and—from start to finish—lacks a modicum of authentic plot development. Thanks to star names and adequate budgets, the Resident Evil movies succeeded as adaptations of shoot ‘em up computer games, and their directors made fairly enjoyable actioners out of desperately mediocre genre material. This, however, is simply trash cinema of a lower order. Mike Hurst's pleasing, yet hardly innovative, TV-movie sequel House Of The Dead II: Dead Aim features two heroines—played by Emmanuelle Vaugier (Smallville, CSI: New York), and Victoria Pratt (Cleopatra 2525, Mutant X, Kraken) for the price of one. Both actresses share enough B-movie and TV experience to maintain viewers’ interest whenever the feeble production-line script lets them down. With an almost non-existent plot (zombies infest university campus, military exterminators clean house), and a director clearly more interested in cheap stunts or lame comedy than even basic characters, it's no surprise this low-budget fodder only works because of its appealing stars. Most of the time, these zombies are not especially threatening, the undead having reverted back to more traditional drooling and shambling about, instead of ferocious lightning-fast attacks. Some of the mutants do ‘evolve’ nasty incisors, however. Well, okay, the film's ability to provoke stray distracting thoughts about the horrors of dentistry may not be a sufficient or valid reason to wholeheartedly commend it to genre fans, but it does suggest another point of interest. Expect more zombie crossover films.

  Here's one now ... Written and directed by Glasgow Phillips (a great name!), Undead Or Alive is a weird western/romance, in which lovelorn cowboy Luke (Chris Kattan) teams up with US army deserter Elmer (James Denton) to escape from jail. The crooked sheriff's posse pursues them, but all the bad guys succumb to zombification and turn into ‘geronimonsters'. Yes, Geronimo's niece, Sue (Navi Rawat, Numb3rs), explains that her late uncle put a curse on white men. And so, in the comedy-horror subplot to film's primary rom-com story of how Luke falls in love with New York-educated ‘squaw’ Sue, we see how a resultant blood plague overwhelms a small town. Apart from rapid-cuts for the stylised gore scenes, and plenty of scatological humour (including an inevitable zombie ‘dick’ joke), there's also a very amusing history-lesson exchange between Elmer and Sue, casually undermining the entire mythos of the wild-west frontier. With its surprisingly downbeat finale (only the family of zombies are blessed with a happy ending!), watching supposedly heroic cowboy partners riding off into a glorious sunset will never be the same again.

  For the uninitiated, Dr Stephen Strange is Marvel comics’ master of the mystic arts, and superhero detective; a formerly amoral surgeon until his conscience returns when he's injured in an accident caused by supernatural forces. Animated movie Doctor Strange follows a redemptive-quest plot. Shocked after witnessing a magical battle on city streets, Strange meets veteran wizard the Ancient One, and becomes the kung fu mage's top student, and eventual successor, as secretive defender of the human world from incursions by quasi-Lovecraftian things of nocturnal dimensions. Character origins vary from 1963 to 2007, so while a mere dreamscape visitation was sufficiently weird for forty-five years ago, this 21st century feature plumps for repetitive demon-slaying heroics grounded in urban reality, leaving the astral-plane combat-exorcism sequences for a vividly colourful climax. In noted contrast to the seemingly endless parade of needless remakes and overly commercial sequels, Paul Schrader's Dominion: Prequel To The Exorcist was the first picture to officially use the word ‘prequel’ in its title. This film was regrettably sidelined by the ‘studio’ (where Morgan Creek chiefs demanded a lightweight blockbuster action thriller, not a gloomily conflicted drama of hearts and minds that failed to meet expectations), so denied a proper release until long after their preferred version, Renny Harlin's wholly artificial Exorcist: The Beginning, had done its rounds, muddied the water, and left many with doubts that another filmmaker could have anything else worthwhile to contribute to the notorious Exorcist saga. But the capable Schrader (director of that impressive Cat People remake) was obviously prepared for the challenge.

  Following a varied trilogy of films by William Friedkin (the original classic), John Boorman (cult SF styled Heretic), and the tremendously scary third outing created by original novelist William Peter Blatty, Schrader offers a powerful chiller of considerable emotional subtlety, showcasing a strong cast delivering performances that provide more consistent entertainment than the moral transparency of Harlin's empty spectacle. Compared to Harlin's film, Schrader's has a leisurely pace, but Dominion is all the better for that, as this allows for an appropriately expansive story, instead of merely hitting viewers with a flurry of visual effects’ set pieces. As Father Merrin, the sceptical priest away on sabbatical for an archaeological investigation in the desert of East Africa, Stellan Skarsgård (King Arthur, Ronin, Insomnia) fits the role perfectly, as a younger version of star Max von Sydow (from Friedkin's 1973 film). In Harlin's film, some characters were re-named or excised, a few key roles were re-cast (Clara Bellar as Dr Rachel Lesno; Gabriel Mann as young priest Father Francis), and the entire pitch and thrust of William Wisher's plotline re-structured, but Schrader's more thoughtful and absorbing story, about the importance of faith, is a superior take on this material. Dominion remains a rare opportunity for genre fans, and film students alike, to study vastly differing techniques and creative approaches, and consider the numerous problems caused for writers and directors when foolish moneymen call the shots.

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  An updated Rear Window primed for gadget-hungry thriller fans, Disturbia stars Shia LaBeouf (Transformers) as delinquent juvenile Kale, grounded and tagged as a potential hazard to society. Bored under ho
use arrest, he naturally spies on neighbours for a private version of reality-TV, and promptly spots the local serial killer, still at large. David Morse (St Elsewhere, Green Mile, Hack, 16 Blocks) is perfectly cast as the sociopathic menace to quiet suburban family life, Sarah Roemer (Grudge 2 remake) graduates to leading lady status—though only to play the quirky new girl next door, but as the young hero's widowed mother Carrie-Anne Moss fails to make a solid impression here. D.J. Caruso's slickly produced chiller is recommendable as no-brainer fun. Just don't expect big surprises in characterisation, plot development, or dénouement. Much the same can be said of Joe Lynch's Wrong Turn 2: Dead End, which starts with a deliciously surreal axe murder, and tries for delusions of grandeur with its satire on decadent America but, overall, it's really no better than other recent imitators of sundry Texas Chainsaw clichés. West Virginian backwoods savages toy with their food (while collecting expensive vehicles and swag during their grossly cannibalistic lifestyle), and take obvious delight in the suffering of captured females. Henry Rollins is naturally cast as the ex-US Marine survivalist/TV-show host, striving manfully to save the day, throughout contestants’ shenanigans orchestrated by the garage-Kubrick director intent on top ratings for his ‘Apocalypse’ game.

  Despite copious blood ‘n’ guts table manners replayed without irony, competent gore and special-makeup effects (but not that atrocious ‘mutant baby'), and due acknowledgment to Japan's Battle Royale for necessary subgenre inspiration, this monotonous sequel lacks anything more than the simplistic appeal of grungy violence for its own sake and offers insufficient amusement when few among the main cast, apart from wickedly tormented Nina (Erica Leerhsen, Marcus Nispel's TCM remake), manage to avoid being charmless, unsympathetic, or not long for this world. “Is that all you got?” (Taunts our undefeated hero.) No, the inevitable coda leaves this freaky franchise open to further viral exploitation, by mixing Hills Have Eyes with The Crazies. Adam Green's back-to-basics slasher Hatchet stars horror favourite Kane Hodder (Jason Voorhees in four Friday 13th movies) as deformed Victor Crowley, legendary fiend of Louisiana swampland. This power tooled-up monster man represents yet another attempt by a fledging director to create an iconic slayer of hapless tourists. Heads or limbs get ripped off, blood spurts left and right, north and south, while bodies and minds are smashed. Soon, everyone's a goner except for the moody heroine Marybeth (Tamara Feldman). Cameos from Robert Englund (those Elm Street nightmares), and Tony Todd (Candyman, Minotaur) might appeal to completist fans of bloodthirsty mayhem, but this unfunny black comedy has less narrative coherence than a 1980s’ videogame, and the storytelling matches the standards found in bad TV episodes of Scooby Doo. All it really has going for it are the bouts of nonsensical gore. Though defenders of trashy horror might argue that Hatchet's faults are like the victimless crime of guilty pleasure, there's enough circumstantial evidence of premeditated schlock to get a first-offence conviction of screenwriting negligence against Mr Green for this.