Unger House Radicals

by Chris Kelso

  Working in close quarters with NYU’s Red Dragon society we could assemble our group in absolute privacy—as well as safely structure a counteroffensive on the Ultra-Realists, who by this stage had gone public with their cause and were vocally hell-bent on convincing society to commit mass suicide for the sake of art. Humanity seemed ready to throw itself onto the sword. I had no idea we were so close to giving up on ourselves.

  I was the first born and therefore not sexually abused, although I was circumcised. It’s funny, I must have over 20 illegitimate brothers and sisters scattered across the country that I’ve never even met. From the various accounts given, my siblings got a much rawer deal than I did. I went to see my father in prison once (before he was killed by a fellow inmate) and he told me I was conceived during a hike to a mountainside retreat he called ‘Eternal Mountain’ in Saint-Jogues, Quebec. He said it was a beautiful, simple birth and that I was his favourite Ant Hill Kid because I was the first. We didn’t have much else to say. I shook his cold, coarse hand and never saw him again. Thériault wasn’t always so cordial.

  In truth, Shane’s no-nonsense strategy was difficult to implement. The Last True Hope attracted a lot of young idealistic artists, environmentalists and human rights campaigners who couldn’t come to grips with the singular vision of the group. They thought we were unambitious, staid. I was their age, once; I understand their frustration. I’ve run away from closed thinking, or tried to at least. I personally think that fighting against a fundamentalist group who promote worldwide suicide is about as noble a cause as they come. The kids obviously felt there were other issues to be dealt with. We weren’t qualified to deal with those issues, I think they forgot that and used the veil of our organization as an excuse to rebel.

  A year ago we were nearly exposed completely after some of our younger, more naïve, members crashed the annual induction ceremony of Kappa Beta Phi, a secret society for elite Wall Street financiers—most of whom were Ultra-Realist sympathizers. Keeping a low profile has always been a priority. After the incident, many of the young men and women involved were exiled from the group. They had to be. Many formed their own radical factions who rallied against the LTH; some of the more disillusioned even joined the Ultra-Realists.

  I’ve lost track of the kids we lost to the other side. It depresses me…

  I remember trying to run away from the commune when I was 5 years old. When my father caught me he defecated on me as I ate dead mice. This punishment went on for a long time but I got off easy. He made my mother break her own legs with a sledgehammer, the wounds of which she never recovered from. There are people who still think he was a great man, a prophet.

  Every day is a struggle. People have already sought out abandoned tenement buildings in preparation for the Great Isolation. People are throwing their money into bunkers and isolation booths. Otto Spengler’s face is already appearing on printed t-shirts and sewn onto rucksacks across the country, I see it even here on campus. Apparently a local high school football team have called themselves the Greensboro Gutters. Unger House made a list of ‘30 Things to do in Texas before you Die’ on TripAdvisor. It won’t be too long till we see tourists coming to visit a garlanded image of Spengler on a hill beneath a big Cypress Tree. I fear we are fighting against a ghost being hailed as god, a rebel figure adopted by bourgeois romantics. How people can submit to the teachings of Spengler, Swarthy and Bittacker I will never know. I am more baffled by this than by the following my lunatic father received in his hay day. People have been easily convinced, I maintain that I’ll never buy into their farrago of self-righteous, misanthropic gibberish. They believe that to truly achieve the end of art one must eliminate all artists and their audience. The only way to achieve this is by destroying ourselves. There will be no one there to appreciate our work (unless occupying aliens come on the scene) but that is the true dignified artistic position to take. Great artists do not create to make statements or for the acclaim, they create because they are simply compelled to create. I say bullshit…

  There have also been lookalikes claiming to be Otto Spengler, disturbing but true. So far we’ve had two men infiltrate our secret on-campus headquarters claiming to be the man himself. Both men entered the organization under pseudonyms; both men passed our initiation rituals and were among the quickest to learn our secret handshake. Members claim that these men, (the first Michael Mugratroyd, second Billy Fryer), looked very different upon their initial arrival at NYU. I have members swear blind that the men had completely different anatomical shapes, sizes and psychological dispositions. At first I assumed that Spengler had fashioned himself a convincing disguise, but there are minutes from previous LTH meetings where both Mugratroyd and Fryer were apparently present. Spengler could not be two men. He may be vicious and evil and a long time dead, but a self-replicator he is not. I refuse to be sucked into the mythology of his posthumous infamy. Otto Spengler is not alive. He died over half a century ago. He is not alive. He is NOT alive. Only his commemoration by fanatics and nihilists keep his evil spirit active. That’s basically what this is—good versus evil, classic Manichean struggle. This is the first purely evil movement I’ve come across. In a past life I have seen the worst violations of human and animal rights by men and women who can only be described as lacking in basic moral fiber, but there were always reasons behind the bad behaviors—mental health issues, medical reasons and monetary gain. No one knows why the Ultra-Realists have come into prominence. One can only assume that its perpetuation and success is a classic evolutionary response to the innocence that exists in the world.

  I tell you, it is not easy to stay positive during times like these. We are getting nowhere and with every one member we convince to support our cause, the Ultra-Realists gain another five. There are even times, dear friend, where I think we might as well get on board with the Great Isolation. We have made such little impact. But I know this kind of thinking is not useful. It’s important to remain strong during periods of extreme hopelessness.

  In the old Unger House, Otto’s children are still screaming. Those little girls he killed, each one as sweet and lovely as a white carnation. In my mind, I walk up to the front porch where Swarthy and Bittacker made their tape, the vast Potemkin Stairs before me. I think about my father and how he was hugely influenced by the early Ultra-Realists, although they weren’t called Ultra-Realists at the time, that’s the new generation’s movement. He believed in purification and that humanity had to end in its current state. Have you ever noticed that a lot of psychopaths like to think of themselves as artists? This place feels important somehow, as if human history would be concluded here. The wails draw me inside. I know this is Spengler’s territory. Those children will never stop screaming. Even after they bulldoze over Unger House, tiny ghosts will continue to roam around in agony together; because Unger House could be the centre of our universe. Maybe that’s our god-body? Maybe we’re all responsible for Otto Spengler’s murders? Maybe all those kids were a personal sacrifice to ourselves. If we’re all the same. Walking through the house, it occurs to me that this is nothing more than a shack in the woods. I see through time and the pain infects me like a virus. I am on my knees, my anus clenched, my fingernails stabbing into my palm, knuckles fit to burst in a clutched fist. I remember my father, Thériault, claimed to have power of resurrection. He killed more people than was ever documented. I remember he bore a hole into a girl’s skull with a drill, and then ejaculated into the cavity.

  It is a worrying statistic that the children of The One True Hope are disappearing. That’s four children in total, snatched from their beds—no blood, no prints of any kind. It’s as if they evaporated. People are already becoming irrational, demented by grief and fear. They actually believe Spengler has snatched their children and taken them to Unger House. Others might postulate that Spengler is the real killer and Swarthy is his Jungian shadow.

  What do you say to people who are so bereaved as to believe in demons? The members who lost their childr
en have also started complaining about vivid nightmares in which a bearded troll with his feet bent backwards flaunts a coat he’s fashioned from the clothes of their dead children. They all claim to have had this dream, exact in every detail. What is to be done about that? The Last True Hope cannot just excommunicate every member who suffers trauma. But equally, we can’t keep individuals within the organization who will upset the order of our community.

  People have let their imaginations run away with them. They believe that Spengler never died in prison at the hands of a fellow inmate. For someone like Spengler to survive prison is a virtual impossibility. He was detested more by prisoners than the families of his victims. Apparently Spengler, while serving the first round of his sixteen life sentences, used to taunt other inmates by constructing severed limbs out of food and ketchup. He boasted about how he tanned children’s skins to make paraphernalia and eat their organs for sustenance. This was a gross exaggeration. Spengler never kept trophies or made paraphernalia. He was attacked in a prison shower for stealing a bag of smuggled vacuum packed, freeze-dried marijuana. Other people claim Spengler was Greek Orthodox but you should know by this stage to take anything you hear about him with a pinch of salt. He wasn’t from anywhere. No one knew anything about Otto Spengler. He had no immediate family and no former lovers. Not even in prison, not even a Mexican with a sundial tattoo on his neck…

  I walk out into a New York street to get away from all the ghosts I know but don’t like. I see a young girl, a beautiful cherub-faced thing. She’s come-hithering me. My heart starts to inflate. I’m still wanted. I still have some worth and this innocent creature sees the good in me. I start moving towards her. Her smile broadens. I smile back instinctively. I prepare my arms to gather her up. Then I feel someone push past me, knocking my cell phone to the sidewalk. It explodes in a pinwheel of circuitry and plastic casing. A man rushes in front of me and grabs the girl. She starts laughing merrily. I realise I was mistaken. She wasn’t waving at me. No one is ever waving at me. Innocence smells the inherited evil on me. It wants no part of me. I feel like saying, “but we’re all the same you and me. We’re the same person, the same god!’ —but even I know that sound insane.

  The awful and fantastic screams that echo throughout the cosmos. The deafening and spine tingling screams, the Lovecraftian screams that inspire so many creative types, myself not included. But there is always room for one more children’s scream.

  I say fuck art. I say, if you’re an artist, do what Marcel Duchamp says—give it up immediately in favour of chess! The UltraRealists are just pepped up culture jammers

  Owls form in flocks, combing with their claws, hooting territorially. Owls also know.

  Carla Jenkins, Documenter

  I’ve seen him you know. That is to say, he was in my house…

  I was married to a cop a long time ago, before all the talk about kids and money and the other irreconcilable issues. We were both obsessed with serial killers. My favourite was Ted Bundy, Larry’s was Ed Gein—pretty obvious choices but there’s no denying the prolificacy and downright evilness of both men. That made them more fascinating to me. To both of us. In the end, I know, Larry met an ironic end. Quite a way to go, begging for mercy, knelt before one of the lunatics he’d once been so fanatical about, but I’ll get to that.

  While working as a journalist for the Ventura County Star, I came across a case that baffled me, riveted me and tested my ex-husband’s knowledge of police investigative methods and evidence-gathering techniques to their extreme—the Greensboro Gutter. I know, I know, wasn’t everyone kind of obsessed with that case at the time? Everyone I knew had an interest in the Gutter. It became a popular campfire tail fairly quickly. Was he some spectral shadow dancing in the perverted night or a manic and meticulous trucker? Was he even human? But there was no talk of, nor was there any perceived connection with, Otto Spengler and the Ultra-Realists when the Gutter started coming to prominence. Long before Swarthy’s theories started gaining any traction.

  Before the murders in the Texas outback, there was an unidentified serial killer and rapist murdering people in Southern California from 1979 through 1986. Everyone was terrified to go outside. There were no kids on the street past 8 o’clock. The killer had an entire state in their grips. Then, suddenly, he (or she) stopped killing abruptly in 1986 but returned to murderous habits in the early noughties, following the same patterns and style. Only this time he’d switched States. My husband had a feeling it was some high-ranking member of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang but this theory was later dispelled in 2004 thanks to Proposition 69.

  A few years before Larry and I separated, we got home one night and found we’d been burgled. It’s weird, Larry was so jolted by the intrusion. All day he’d chase rapists and murderers but the minute a small time cat-burglar shows up on his home soil, he loses his shit. It took him a long time to feel safe in the house again. I’m not sure if he ever really did feel safe again. Ok, so this was a little more severe than a simple breaking and entering. All the intruder stole was a lamp and crystal curio but he also strangled our cat Daisy, set fire to the curtains and defecated on the carpet. There was no matching DNA on the California database. This effectively meant that the man who broke into our house either had no prior convictions or he simply didn’t exist in the first place.

  Larry and I weren’t like normal married couples. We worked together off the clock for years to try and solve the Gutter killings. It’s how we bonded actually. Most couples go hiking or play doubles, Larry and me immersed ourselves in the depraved desires of madmen. I think, before we separated, that we were a good team. I don’t know why, but he seemed to know that our burglar and the Greensboro Gutter were connected somehow. I think the intruder was also responsible for the Goleta attacks. Again this was just intuition but surely there’s something to be said for journalistic instinct?

  I woke up in the middle of the night while Larry was doing a graveyard shift and found someone holding a knife at my throat. I didn’t manage to get a good look at his face. It seemed to be a mask of shadowy shapes. It didn’t help that my vision was blurred with a mist of tears. His breath was fetid and his grip of my shoulder was vice-tight. The whole weight of his body was on my chest, both arms pinned beneath his knees. Every time I gulped my throat touch the cold steel of his machete. I heard him say "I'm going to kill them".

  He took off his shirt and I could see he had tattoos, again—it was dark in the room and I could only see the faint impression of body art against the lunar light. I thought he was going to rape me. I was completely at his mercy. Fear had me frozen and stole the words from my brain and the noise from my mouth. Words could not describe the feeling of utter revulsion and terror at what he said next. He leaned in close to my face, blew a gust of garlic death breath up my nostrils and said

  - I killed your cat and shit on your rug. I’m a baaad dog.

  I knew this was the same weirdo who broke into my house previously.

  - Did you know that we’re all the Greensboro Gutter? That we all killed those kids?

  He leapt off of me and into the shadows. He seemed to disappear into thin air. I didn’t tell Larry about the second break-in. I don’t know why. Larry and I had started to drift by this stage, we didn’t really communicate like normal human beings anymore. It was impossible to start up a discussion about anything, even serial killers. You see, he wanted children, I didn’t want to have to push one out of my vagina. Larry said I broke his heart. We stopped having sex altogether. When I let my frustration vent itself all over our next door neighbor’s 22-year old nephew, I really did break his heart. To his discredit he stayed with me. I wouldn’t have stayed with me.

  Larry came home one night, more exhausted than usual. When I asked him what was wrong he told me he’d had the craziest day, that he’d been chasing some masked bicycle rider in the early hours of the morning. Larry chased the masked cyclist for 4 miles. The suspect eventually abandoned the bike and a foot-chase across b
ack yards ensued. The masked suspect vaulted a series of fences and disappeared into thin air. I was tempted to tell him about the tattooed psychopath who broke in and subdued me in our bedroom, but I just couldn’t talk to Larry. I don’t think I trusted him, or maybe I didn’t believe that he trusted me. It did sound pretty far-fetched. He’d most probably think I’d been having another affair.

  The last thing he said to me was:

  - He’s going to kill us anyway. We all killed those kids. I was Jack the Ripper you know? Oh yes…

  A few years ago, I opened the newspaper and was horrified to see Larry’s face on the cover beneath a headline that read ‘THE GUTTER TURNS COP KILLER’. They found him disembowelled, his wrists and ankles bound with a drapery cord. I knew it was the Gutter. All I could think was, I killed him.

  I like to masturbate to the rape scene in Gaspar Noe’s ‘Irreversible’

  Nihilism doesn’t have to be merely an abstraction

  Neither does evil

  There are five fundamental hungers rising from the human condition

  The first hunger is survival

  The second is pleasure

  The third is validation

  The fourth is art

  The fifth hunger should be for a dignified death

  *

  Otto Spengler announces myself in the hotel lobby by pressing his palm flat over the service bell three times.

  *Ding. Ding. Ding*

  A receptionist appears a moment later—a young male, portly and full of nervous energy. Spengler leans on the counter and grins widely, trying hard to conceal any trace of his malignant personality. The receptionist returns the gesture and apologises for the wait.

  - Wait? Why not at all my good man. You made it here in impeccable time. – Spengler taps his watch to illustrate. The receptionist introduces himself as Denny.