Ugly Little Things

by Todd Keisling

  He shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. By my research, Maggie Dalton should be an old woman.”

  She let go of him, took a step backward, and separated her robe. Underneath was the pale body of a supermodel: agonizingly thin, but perfectly tone, with breasts that hadn’t yet learned the aging effects of gravity, and hips that hadn’t known childbirth. Maggie put her hands on her hips as Felix gaped. She smiled.

  “Do I look like an old woman to you?”

  Felix wanted to speak but found he couldn’t. He was too stunned, too enamored by her beauty to focus on anything else other than his own lust. He finally made himself look away, embarrassed that the bulge growing in his pants would give away his desires—not that she would mind. Maggie Dalton hadn’t struck him as the type who would be put off by something like that.

  “N-No, ma’am.” Felix strained to avert his eyes, but they just kept wandering back over to that beautiful, pale body shimmering in the moonlight—

  “I am seventy-two years old.”

  Those words broke his trance. He met her gaze, relieved to see that she was closing her robe.

  “How is that possible?”

  She sidled up to him and hooked her arm with this once again. “The Buried One has made many things possible for me, Felix. It saved my daddy’s empire when it was failing. It let me keep my good looks as I aged. And it gave me all the children I would ever want. Isn’t that right, kids?”

  A strange skittering noise rose up around them, and where at first there had been nothing but pigs and shadows, there now stood tiny figures with white emotionless faces and dark, empty eyes. Felix stopped, frozen by a seeping fear that dribbled into his veins. Maggie sensed his tension and gave his arm a squeeze.

  “They won’t hurt you, Felix. These are my children. We forgive you for what you did to Noah, don’t we?” The dolls said nothing. They stared at him with their empty disdain. “My children are Dalton’s sentinels, Felix. When Henry told you about the church, when you tried to leave, they thought you would bring harm to Dalton. Please understand, most outsiders have been . . . unkind to us in the past.” She paused, gesturing to the army of hateful dolls watching from the shadows. “But we know better, don’t we, children? He is the one we’ve waited for.”

  “You were waiting for me?”

  “Oh yes,” she grinned, “I’ve been waiting for you for a while, Felix Proust. That’s why I asked for you specifically. The Buried One told me you would come, and He has never lied. Not when He promised to keep me young. Not when He promised to keep me wealthy, or when He promised to let Dalton prosper. And now you have come to me, my love.”

  His head swam with alarm and confusion, but that warm smile and touch of her right breast pressed against his side kept his feet moving. He opened his mouth to speak, but she put her finger to his lips. She smelled of lavender—the first pleasant thing he’d smelled since arriving in Dalton.

  “No more words,” she said. “Let me show you something.”

  She led him across the row toward the next barn. The lights were already on, and there were screams coming from within, followed by a low series of gurgles. Men and women cheered. They strolled through the doorway and into a congregation.

  There were hundreds of people gathered within, hands raised to the ceiling in unison, their attention directed at a platform off to the far right. Felix stood on his toes to get a better look.

  A man and two dolls stood on the platform; beyond them stood a pair of beams affixed in a T-shape, with what appeared to be a system of pulleys affixed to both ends. A rope was threaded through the device, and the end on the left shook violently.

  “Traitor,” the townspeople chanted. “Traitor. Traitor. Traitor.”

  He thought back to the desecrated church. A chill crawled its way across his neck. What would a town of religious zealots do to heretics?

  “Maggie,” he began, trying to swallow back the dread rising from his gut, “what are they doing?”

  “He wasn’t supposed to tell you about the church. You weren’t supposed to know until you were ready. He tried to taint your purity, to turn you against us.”

  The rope stopped shaking. The man on the platform pulled on the other end, wrenching the rope through the pulleys, and acting as a counter-weight. Felix watched with mounting distress as that familiar pit opened in his gut, threatening to swallow him whole. He already knew what was on the other end of that rope before they pulled him up, and when Felix saw the old drunk, he almost vomited on Maggie’s black robe.

  Henry hung limp from the end of the rope like a drowned worm. Pig shit and offal clung to him in patches, dripping off him like drain water. The crowd cheered, erupting into their violent chant once again.

  Maggie squeezed his hand. “Come. We’re almost ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  She smiled. “Our consummation.”

  ***

  “Our . . . wait, what?”

  But Maggie said nothing, merely pulling at his hand in reply. One by one, members of the congregation turned to face them, smiling gleefully while tears rolled down their cheeks. Felix glanced across the sea of faces, realizing their flesh was wrinkled, sagging, and liver-spotted. The children were murdered, he thought, swallowing back the sour taste of bile.

  The townspeople of Dalton separated, forming a path toward a candlelit circle in the center of the barn. Dazed, his head still pounding from the attack earlier that evening, Felix felt his legs move of their own accord, following the black-robed woman toward the circle.

  “The Buried One gave us so many gifts, Felix.”

  “You killed . . . you murdered all those children.”

  Maggie tightened her grip on his hand as her pace quickened. Felix shuffled his feet behind her, struggling to keep up. The world swam around him, throbbing to the tune of an indecipherable mantra whispering in his head.

  “They were parasites, draining this town of its life. Heretics of the one true faith. The Buried One helped me see this, and then I shared that vision with the rest of Dalton. Together we sacrificed those awful things and left their bodies to rot at the pulpit of a false idol.”

  “But they were just children.”

  Maggie turned and placed her hand on his cheek. Tears rolled away from her eyes, leaving streaks across her porcelain face. “So sweet in your ignorance. You’ve so much to learn.” She took his hand and lifted it into the air. “My flock! Our harbinger has come!”

  The crowd exploded with cheers. Some of them openly wept, their hands clasped to their chests, sobbing prayers that Felix could not hear.

  “I don’t understand,” Felix groaned. The cheering, chanting, sobbing, and now that damned voice whispering in his head—he could hardly think straight anymore. And then there was Maggie’s pale, smiling face. She put her hands on his cheeks and kissed him. The world fell away for a moment, leaving just the two of them standing in a circle of candles, the volume turned way down except for his beating heart and her soothing, southern voice.

  “My dolls are my children, Felix. Dalton’s children. Behind their eyes are lifetimes of suffering, nightmares, broken hearts, and unimaginable cruelty. The Buried One showed me that all of these ugly little things can be taken away and hidden behind empty faces, used to give life to perfect children who will never talk back or speak out of turn, children who will embody the sins of their fathers. These children—our children, Felix—will purge this world of its heretics and bring about a new age. And you, my love, will be their harbinger.”

  Felix blinked away his tears. The world came back into focus. They stood inside the circle of candles, just to the left of a wooden pedestal upon which sat a small figure carved out of stone. He staggered toward it and took in its features. Maggie’s “Buried One” was of simple workmanship, its features carved to portray a fetal child in effigy, complete with an umbilical cord wrapped around its curled legs. Two lumps of coal were affixed to its grinning face, and when Felix looked into them, his mind
was filled with that same lurid, whispering chant.

  Harbinger, it told him. You are chosen.

  “I am chosen,” he repeated, holding his gaze with the idol.

  “You are chosen,” Maggie said. “The Buried One told me you would come. You will be our harbinger of a new dawn.”

  Somewhere in the back of his mind, Felix heard himself screaming, but his body would not react. His body and its motions belonged to that grinning idol on the pedestal. He had become detached from himself, watching as a spectator would from the sidelines, and after struggling with all his strength he found he could not break free of that mental prison, nor could he look away.

  Maggie peeled back the black robe, letting it fall to her feet like a silk cocoon. She ran her hand through his hair and kissed him once again. She traced her lips across the side of his face and ran her tongue across the tip of his earlobe.

  “Consummate with me,” she whispered. “Let me take away your heartbreak, your pain, and the demons haunting your soul. Let me give you the child you always wanted, Felix. Let me give you what Helen wouldn’t.”

  Felix gave in to his desire, letting his hand slide up the length of her thigh while his lips returned her kiss, ignorant of the leering crowd around them. Maggie pulled away from him, smiling as she knelt down on the bed of her black robe. There she reclined backward and spread herself for him. Felix smiled softly, stripped off his clothes, and joined her. The sounds of their coupling were masked only by the sudden squeals of swine.

  “Spill your seed,” she told him. Her eyes had darkened over, and her nails dug into his back. “Fill me.”

  And so he did, arching his body as he thrust into her one final time, giving the last of himself over to Dalton’s matriarch. Exhausted, his head lost in a cloud, Felix collapsed beside her, listening to the thrum of his heart. A new chant had risen from within their audience. They clapped their hands in praise, reaching an almost hymn-like quality as some of them sang “Harbinger, Harbinger, Harbinger!”

  Maggie brushed her finger across his cheek. “Thank you, my love. I must give our child life now. But you may rest. Your task is just beginning.”

  Confused, Felix rolled onto his back and watched as she approached the pedestal. She knelt before the stone idol and bowed her head.

  “Accept this offering, my Lord. Accept this, my flesh and my blood. Bear this fruit so that our child may spread your word.”

  An old woman emerged from the crowd with a bundle in her arms. She placed it at the foot of the shrine, bowing her head in reverence before returning to her place among the masses. Maggie unwrapped the bundle, revealing the open body of a plastic doll, its chest peeled back like a cadaver. Felix crawled forward but recoiled when he saw what was inside.

  The manure was fresh. Straws of hay clung to it, and a slow tendril of steam rose from the pile’s center.

  What happened next drove Felix to the brink of insanity; perhaps, in some ways, what he saw may have even driven him over into that unending abyss.

  Maggie squatted over the open doll, ran her hands across her belly and down between her thighs, murmuring words that Felix didn’t understand. Her eyes had gone black, mirroring the idol’s own lumps of coal, and when she raised her head he saw that she was not Maggie anymore. Not really. She gnashed her teeth at him and flicked her tongue like a beast while a steady stream of darkened blood poured out of her into the empty corpse of the doll.

  “This is impossible,” Felix whispered, his mind reeling from the shock of what he was seeing. Maggie’s beast-like demeanor became more erratic, thrashing her arms and flicking her tongue to the air as more of her dripped into the doll. She cocked her head and leered at Felix, grinning with clenched teeth.

  “Harbinger,” the thing that was Maggie said, “your will is now mine.”

  The world swam before him as the idol’s words spoke through Maggie, and he tried his best to focus and regain his strength, but his limbs were heavy. Your will is now mine. Those words repeated in his head in a mantra he could not escape.

  His mind was filled with images of the church. He saw its pews overturned and piled with the rotting bodies of Dalton’s former youth, sacrifices made to Maggie Dalton’s buried god. He saw a town devouring itself as brave parents were cut down by their neighbors for trying to defend their kids. A shrill chorus of screaming children filled his ears, accompanied by the commanding whispers of the stone idol.

  Purge, the Buried One said. Purge the heretics. Cleanse this world for my return.

  “Let it happen,” Maggie whispered, smiling as her eyes returned to normal. “You’re going to be a daddy.”

  He looked down and saw the doll’s hand begin to twitch. That was the moment that sent Felix Proust spiraling over the abyss, shrieking in maddening horror as the world he knew fell away from him in a single, agonizing gasp.

  ***

  Felix stared out the window of the limousine, watching as the morning sun rose from between the mountains, spilling light over the streets of Dalton. Sleep tugged at his eyelids, but every time he closed his eyes he found the rigid, glaring face of the Buried One staring back at him. Fragments of the previous night remained embedded in his mind like shards of broken glass, leaving scars that would never fully heal.

  There were a few moments he tried to open the door during their drive back from the pig farms. He wanted to fling himself from the car, but his hands would not cooperate. Your will is now mine, the Buried One whispered, asserting its dominance with an almost gleeful tone. Even death would not come without its say-so.

  The limousine parked beside his rental car at the Dalton R&R. Maggie nuzzled her head against his shoulder like a feline.

  “You will do fine, Felix. I know you’re nervous, but I have faith in you. We all do.”

  She leaned up and kissed his cheek. The driver climbed out and opened his door. Felix squinted at the piercing light of the sun.

  “Felix?”

  He turned, staring into Miss Maggie’s tired bedroom eyes and wondering absently what nightmares waited behind the mask she wore. One day, he supposed, he would find out. But not today.

  Today he had another task at hand.

  “Yes, Miss Maggie?”

  “Take care of our child.”

  “As you wish, Miss Maggie.”

  They were words spoken by his voice, but they weren’t his own. If he’d had any control over his faculties, he would’ve screamed at the top of his lungs, but the Buried One wouldn’t allow that.

  She reached across the seat and handed him the fruit of their union: a simple, girly doll with brownish-blonde curls and a peppermint-striped dress. The doll stared at him, unblinking, uncaring.

  “Spread our will,” Maggie said, smiling. “Come back to me when you are finished. We will birth a new world together.”

  Felix felt himself nod, his muscles pulled by phantom strings, and then turned toward his car. The doll was rank with the stench of excrement but he couldn’t smell it anymore. Like the rest of the town, he’d grown used to that smell, ignorant of its meaning.

  He glanced toward the limousine once before climbing into the rental car. Maggie reached out the open window and blew him a kiss just before the limousine pulled away in a cloud of dust. Felix was alone again with their child. He tossed the empty box into the parking lot and buckled the doll into her seat.

  Felix Proust sat there for a few minutes with his hands on the steering wheel, trying everything in his power to open the door and run for his life, but the Buried One would not let him. He was its slave now, its harbinger. He would do as it bade him, taking the doll back to civilization where he would spread its gospel.

  He glanced down at the doll, noticing for the first time the simple, brown nametag stuck to its hand. Written in sharp, black calligraphy was a single name that made his last ounce of hope sink to the bottom of that shrouded pit within: HELEN.

  A flood of tears escaped him. Felix sobbed in quick, uncontrollable convulsions as he started the c
ar.

  Helen the Doll reached over and placed her hand on his arm.

  “Daddy,” she said.

  THE FINAL RECONCILIATION

  LINER NOTES

  The Yellow Kings present “The Final Reconciliation”

  Tracklist

  1—Reconciliatory Matters

  2—The Gypsy on Darkened Shores

  3—Lost in Dim Carcosa

  4—The Usurper’s Ascent

  5—Season of the Leech

  6—Beneath Black Stars

  7—Behind Pallid Masques

  8—The Final Reconciliation

  9—Tatters of the King

  The Yellow Kings are:

  Johnny Leifthauser (Vocals & Rhythm Guitar)

  Aidan Cross (Lead Guitar)

  Hank Jones (Bass)

  Bobby Stone (Drums, Synth)

  Management:

  Reggie Allen

  Special Thanks:

  Camilla Bierce

  “Songs that the Hyades shall sing,

  Where flap the tatters of the King,

  Must die unheard in

  Dim Carcosa”

  “Cassilda’s Song,” The King in Yellow, Act 1: Scene 2

  -TRACK 1-

  RECONCILIATORY MATTERS

  Miles Hargrove peered at the old man through a curtain of cigarette smoke. The lights in the community room were turned down at the aging rock star’s request, but he still wore sunglasses, and Miles realized he could see the cameraman’s reflection in them.

  “Jody,” the producer said, snapping his fingers. “Can we get a different angle?”

  Aidan Cross sat back in his seat while the producer sought a better shot. He sucked down the first cigarette in two long drags and chuckled when the thought occurred to him: Maybe this is what Keith Richards felt like.

  Keith was dead, though. Had been for years. He’d shuffled off to that long-lost Valhalla to spend eternity drinking wine off the tits of beautiful women.