Midnight Theatre:
Tales of Terror
by
Greg Chapman
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Greg Chapman on Smashwords
Precious Blood, Relish, Hell-O-Ween, Patrick Oswald Edwards and The Breadth of An Instant
Copyright © 2011 by Greg Chapman
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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Precious Blood
Not even St. Joseph’s Church, in the little Irish town of Arklow, was immune from the icy grip of the North Sea.
Night after night, a foul wind crept in through the cracks of the stone walls of the church and each night Father Duncan Malloy watched as every candle was snuffed out by its frozen hands.
The only difference to this night from the last was the wind felt even colder. Father Malloy had been placing the Eucharist inside the Tabernacle when, right on cue, the church was plunged into darkness as the tiny flames flickered and succumbed to the icy currents.
Father Malloy sighed and offered a prayer to St Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, as frustration found its way into his heart. Being the sole priest for the congregation of Roman Catholics for twenty-five years had sent his hair grey and his eyes cracked with crow’s feet. But despite that, and the freezing cold wind that howled around him, he loved devoting his life to his church and his God.
This day, however, had been long and painful and it had tested him. Many parishioners had attended his masses to seek solace from the Lord. After years of relative peace, the scourge of terrorism had returned to Northern Ireland – a police officer and two soldiers had been struck down and killed in the town of Craigavon. Innocent blood had once again been spilled on the Emerald Isle.
Understandably, the parishioners had come to him hoping to strengthen their faith, but even he had wondered if God had forsaken them.
He tried to push the thoughts from his mind and again uttered a prayer to St. Jude. Evil tests us all, but God always casts the wicked into darkness. Innocent blood is spilled, but those lost souls are welcomed into the glory of heaven.
Father Malloy walked down the aisle and retrieved the kerosene lamp he had stored behind the lectern. It burned a faint blue in the darkness when he ignited it; a glow Father Malloy welcomed as he secured the doors. As he did, the cold breeze became thinner; the sound of its howl intensified under the pressure, as if it was coming from the depths of hell.
Satisfied the doors were locked, Father Malloy started to walk back to the Tabernacle. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a dull orange light emanating from within the confessional. Someone was inside, seemingly waiting for their confession to be heard. He hadn’t seen anyone enter the church and it was too late in the evening to hear confession. Curious, he went to the door to investigate.
The smell coming from inside the booth was overwhelming; a distinct aroma of filth and decay. But overpowering that smell was the sharp tang of iron. Father Malloy could almost taste it.
‘Is someone there?’ Father Malloy said. ‘I’m afraid I won’t be hearing any more confessions until the morning.’
‘This cannot wait until morning, Padre.’ The voice was male, but it stank with the scent of rotting meat.
‘Well, I’m sorry,’ Father Malloy continued. ‘I am closing the church and I will have to ask you to return in the morning.’
‘No, you will hear me now,’ the man demanded. ‘I need to confess.’
Father Malloy could tell the man was desperate, perhaps even dangerous. His heart told him to play it safe with the stranger.
‘All right, son,’ he said. ‘But you mustn’t be long. I must close up the church, before this cold freezes it solid.’
‘There are worse things than the cold, Padre,’ the stranger said. ‘I have come in from the cold seeking refuge. I didn’t think that I could ever set foot in the House of God.’
The stranger seemed lost; lost in hope and faith. The priest braved a closer look at the man through the mesh screen that separated them; his hair appeared matted with filth and his thin skin was wrapped so tight purple veins bulged on the surface. From his unkempt state, Father Malloy assumed he had taken the wrong path in life. But it was the stranger’s eyes that sent a shiver through the priest; dark orbs sunken deep into the flesh.
‘You haven’t been to church before?’ Father Malloy asked.
The man chuckled, but it was an unnatural sound. ‘No. I’m not the praying type.’
‘But you do believe in God?’ The priest strained to hear the man’s breathing, but he could only hear his own.
‘I know that He exists,’ the man stated. ‘He makes the sun rise and He brings the night. He created Adam and Eve and He gave man free will. He cast man out and left them alone to make their choices; some good, but many more were unforgivable.’
‘What is your name my son?’ the priest asked.
The stranger turned to consider him. ‘I thought that confessions were meant to be anonymous?’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ Father Malloy said. ‘But I sense that your troubles are different to the others I have heard in this confessional booth over the years. Perhaps we could speak outside, face-to-face?’
The stranger hesitated and with frail hands, pushed his filthy hair behind an ear. Father Malloy caught a glimpse of his fingernails; they were almost talons.
‘I daresay that you would not wish to see my face, Padre,’ the stranger said. ‘Few people have. I keep to the shadows, like the snake in the Garden of Eden.’
‘We are all created in God’s image, my son,’ Father Malloy said. ‘And beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Remember that Jesus accepted all people, He healed the blind and the infirm, even the leper.’
‘He also cast out demons, did He not?’
‘Yes.’ The priest frowned; he was concerned by the stranger’s dark words. ‘But He set the people the demons inhabited free.’
‘What happened to the demons? Were they cast back into hell?’
The priest went to reach for the screen between them, to open it, but he hesitated; his heart pounded out a warning to stay away.
‘What is really troubling you my son?’
The stranger turned to face the priest, his eyes like forbidden wells.
‘I have sinned, Padre,’ he said. ‘I have killed countless times. I have hunted and feasted on many souls.’
Father Malloy retreated from the screen. He could feel the darkness coming off the man and it terrified him.
‘Feasted?’ the priest said.
‘Yes. Even here tonight, in this town, I drained the life from one of your townsfolk.’ The man’s voice suddenly trembled. ‘Irish blood can be so sickly sweet.’
The stranger was unstable, Father Malloy thought. Drinking blood was the stuff of nightmares, of folklore.
‘Do you think so Padre?’ the stranger asked.
The priest could feel something digging around in his thoughts.
‘Do you think we are just stories? We are no different from you and your congregation. You too drink blood – the blood of the Lamb. Of course you use ceremony to disguise what you do, but you are still no better than me. So I have come here to taste that Precious Blood.’
Father Malloy felt the urge to run from the confessional booth. A hissing rose from the space beside him and suddenly the wooden frame of the booth shattered, sending splinters flying. The man’s stench filled the priest’s nostrils and he felt something sharp at his throat.
The stranger was on top of him. His wet lips burned the skin on the priest’s neck and a metallic taste threatened to make him gag. The stranger’s strength was tremendous and Father Malloy could only lie limp in his arms and listen to the deep gulps as his blood was swallowed. But then it stopped.
‘I won’t kill you Padre,’ the stranger said. ‘I need you. You have to do something for me; something that I should have done a long time ago.’
Father Malloy felt himself being lifted as the stranger carried him past the altar and set him down in a chair. Strangely, the candles were again filling the church with their luminescence. The priest struggled to stay conscious, blinking at the man who had dined on his blood. The stranger was standing before the altar, gazing at the crucifix hanging on the wall above it.
‘I came here to be forgiven,’ the stranger said. ‘For what I have done, for what I am. I need Him to forgive me, so that I might be free.’
The priest gasped when the stranger turned to consider him; his eyes were no longer sunken and his veins were now engorged with blood.
‘If you want proof of the Son of God, Padre then here I am. You see I met Him, in the flesh, more than two thousand years ago.
‘I was there, at the Place of the Skulls. I watched Him be crucified. In those days I frequented places of execution on the off chance I could taste the spoils of justice. Crucifixion was the bloodiest form of all.
‘I was made a vampire long before that day and I had killed many of God’s kind. As I looked at Him, I knew He wanted to free me, but the sight and smell of His blood simultaneously enthralled and frightened me. He was the Son of God and I believed He would damn me for all eternity.
‘I remember how, as I watched from the shadows, He turned to look at me. Oh, there was so much pity in His eyes! Pity for me! I couldn’t turn away from His eyes; they shone as brightly as His blood. The few that were with Him shed many a tear for Him, but he chose to mourn me.
‘After I watched Him die I turned my eternal soul away from Him and I have regretted it ever since.’
The vampire kept his dark eyes on the crucifix. ‘I never would have come here, Padre, but something happened to me tonight. I feel as if I am being offered a second chance.’
Father Malloy cringed with fear as the creature knelt beside him and spoke with a growl.
‘The man I killed in your town tonight was just another meal to me, but after I feasted I saw something and for the first time in a long time, I felt terrified.’
Father Malloy watched as blood-streaked tears rolled down the stranger’s pale cheeks.
‘When I stood over the corpse I didn’t see a man; I saw God’s Son, all splayed out in that pose. He just laid there smiling up at me. Then he said:
‘This is my blood.’
The vampire strode around behind the altar and slammed his hands down.
‘And then he was gone! The dead man was in His place!
There was a blur of movement and the vampire was beside Father Malloy once more.
‘It was a sign – he is giving me another chance. That’s why I have come here tonight.’
‘I can help you,’ Father Malloy said, his senses returning to him. ‘I know a doctor, a psychiatrist … he can help you.’
Suddenly the vampire was in the priest’s face, gazing at him with eyes that pulsed with blood.
‘Do you think me mad, Padre? What do I have to do to convince you that I am what I am? Haven’t I fed on you enough? Haven’t I fed on the world enough? But, perhaps you’re right. I have drunk so much blood that I have drunk in the world’s madness. Maybe I am a monster because you are all monsters – monsters created by God.
‘Ever since I watched Him die I wondered what it was all for. He claimed it was to save you from your sins, but here the humans are two thousand years later, still cavorting and murdering and destroying.
‘Those same thoughts have entered your mind, haven’t they Padre? Why do humans kill each other, why do they torture and rape? How can God have created such … evil?’
Father Malloy thought of all the deaths from terrorism in Northern Ireland and God help him; he knew there was little difference between vampires and mankind.
‘The Son of God’s blood was wasted when He sacrificed Himself and it has been ever since,’ the vampire continued. ‘Your people have no idea the power that is held within each drop. I knew, but out of fear, I turned my back on it – but never again.’
The vampire hauled Father Malloy to his feet and dragged him effortlessly past the Tabernacle into the vestry. As he kept an impossible grip on the priest’s arm, the creature found a bottle of communion wine and broke it open. He grabbed a chalice and forced the priest to the altar.
‘Now Padre,’ he said. ‘Say it just like you do during Mass.’
The monster placed the chalice and the bottle of wine in the priest’s hands and made him stand.
‘I cannot do this,’ Father Malloy croaked. ‘This is not the way.’
‘Do it!’ The vampire bared his fangs.
Father Malloy held the wine high, his arms shaking with fear.
‘Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation,’ he said. ‘Through your goodness we have this wine to offer, fruit of the vine and work of human hands. It will become our spiritual drink.
‘Pray, my brothers and sisters, that our sacrifice may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father.
‘Through him, with him, and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honour is yours, almighty Father, for ever and ever.’
‘Faster!’ the vampire roared.
The priest faltered. ‘This isn’t the correct Order of Mass, there cannot be any transubstantiation.’
The vampire tore around the priest and knelt before him, gripping the chalice to his lips. Father Malloy gazed down at the horror that was the vampire’s face; his long sharp teeth and bloodied eyes seemed to beckon him.
‘Serve me His blood,’ the vampire commanded.
‘The Blood of Christ,’ Father Malloy said, letting the vampire drink.
The fluid rushed into the vampire’s mouth in an incredible geyser. He engorged himself on it, his whole mouth and face showered with blood. As he drank, the vampire looked up to see the visage of Jesus smiling down on him.
Father Malloy struggled to hold the chalice as the blood spilled all over the undead figure and threatened to overwhelm them both. Through the rush of the wave, Father Malloy heard the vampire speak.
‘Amen,’ he said, his mouth blossoming with Precious Blood.
The priest dropped the chalice into the red murk as the vampire closed his eyes.
‘He has forgiven me,’ the vampire said. ‘He has forgiven you.’
Then the blood pool burst into flame around the vampire. There were no screams, no heat – only a dazzling, all-consuming flame. Father Malloy watched as the beast and the blood were reduced to nothingness in seconds.
The cold wind was gone and the church once more silent. Father Malloy touched his throat; the bite marks were gone. The candles burned softly and he knew that God’s work had been done.
Tears stung his eyes as he thought of the blood the vampire’s victims had shed over the thousands of years; he prayed for their souls. He prayed for the victims of terror and he prayed for the wicked men who had inflicted it upon them. If God would cast a vampire into the fire then what punishment would he hand down to humanity? Perhaps, he thought, humanity was already being punished.
He turned back to consider the candles and spoke one last prayer for the dark soul that had come to him for absolution.
* * * * *
Relish
The heady scent of moist soil and blood shook Jerry Thornton back to reality like a slap to the face.
It was impossibly dark and cold and he could feel the touch of midnight dew on his body. In fact, he could feel it all over and as he forced his eyes to pierce the black, he came to the realisation that he was stark naked. His knees rested in the wet grass and his hands were pulled taut away from his sides at right angles.
He was naked, tied up in the dark, in the middle of nowhere and he didn’t know why.
The sweat seeping to the surface of Jerry’s skin sent a shiver through his spine. His shuddering triggered shards of pain in his jaw and he could taste blood in his mouth. He ran his tongue along his gums and found that at least two teeth were missing. His efforts to work out where he was and how he got there intensified the pain in his head.
He cried out for help as loud as he could, but his echo was the only reply. He pulled at his bonds, but the thick ropes only obliged by cutting deeper into his wrists. His fingers ached in the cold night air and his heart pounded with fear, as if someone was beating on his chest like a drum.
Jerry closed his eyes and tried to breathe, to calm his thoughts. He was smart, he could figure out what had happened. He was always one step ahead. So what went wrong?
He lifted his knees off the ground and crouched into a squat position. The move pulled tighter on his wrists and shoulders, but at least he could take the weight off his knees for a while. He was fairly tolerant of pain, but he couldn’t tolerate being taken by surprise.
Slowly Jerry’s thoughts came back to him. The last thing he recalled was sitting in Reilly’s Bar, enjoying a scotch and the enticing sights around him. He’d been watching a blonde waitress serving drinks; she’d served his scotch and he was enthralled by her casual smile and southern drawl.
He got talking to her and took great pleasure in watching her full lips move with each syllable. He couldn’t remember much of what she told him, but he would never forget the angle of her hips and the black silk stockings that seemed to go on forever, all the way up under her ridiculously short skirt. She was lithe and fit, just the way he liked them. He watched her the whole night, enjoying her and his drink. The smoothness of the scotch equalled the smooth look of her fine skin. He planned great plans for her, but then everything went black.
What happened? Jerry shook the beads of cold sweat off his brow and pushed through the pain in his head to think. He’d just been drinking and enjoying the show. How the hell did he end up in this mess and who put him in it? Whoever ruined his plans was going to pay – big time.
His sudden anger flowed into his arms and again he tried to pull himself from his bonds, but all he freed was a scream as his right shoulder threatened to dislocate. The new pain mingled with the one in his jaw and rocked around inside his skull. Nausea quickly followed and before he could stop it, he threw up on the grass. The foul stench of malt whisky and gastric juices burned in his nostrils.
The drink! That was it!
Jerry thought again of the earlier hours of the night. While at the bar he had to use the john and he left his drunk unattended. Some asshole must have spiked my drink and kidnapped me, he realised. Jerry suddenly felt clear and victorious and he shouted out into the night.
‘I’ve figured it out, asshole! You might as well come out!’
There was no reply. No kidnapper. But Jerry wouldn’t relent. He knew he had his man.
‘Show yourself!’
A sharp scratching sound suddenly struck the air, like steel on stone. There was a tiny spark and Jerry was bathed in a soft golden light. He could see tombstones sprouting out of the grass and a black man sitting in a fold-out chair, just metres away, holding a thick, black candle.
He had been sitting there the whole time.
The black man stood and Jerry flinched backwards. His kidnapper must have been more than six and a half feet tall and built like giant. He was dressed in a black wool suit and a floral print silk scarf was tucked tight around his neck. Between his teeth was a cigar.
‘Hello, Jerry,’ he said, with a thick Caribbean accent.
‘Who the hell are you?’ Jerry yelled back, his scream becoming fog in the freezing air.
‘My name is Legrand, Rene Legrand.’
‘Who?’
‘You don’t know me Jerry, but I know you. It has taken me a long time to find you.’
Jerry squinted; the light from the candle was actually hurting his eyes. He tried desperately to recognise the black man, this Legrand, but he had never met him in his life. Legrand smiled at Jerry through the cigar smoke.
‘What are you smiling at?’ Jerry said.
‘A man who is helpless for the first time in his life,’ Legrand replied. ‘The irony is amusing.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Legrand crouched in front of Jerry and stared at him; there was something not right about the Negro’s eyes.
‘I know who you really are Jerry. I know about the secret life that you lead.’
Jerry recoiled, but he tried hard not to show his surprise. ‘What do you mean?’
Legrand stood and walked around behind the tombstone. ‘You like girls.’
‘What?’ Jerry said, exasperated.
‘You like watching them. You like seducing them – but not as much as you like raping them and gutting them like fish.’
Jerry felt his body trying to pull itself free; the rope was stripping the skin off his wrists. His other life was meant to be secret, but this Legrand knew everything about it. The sweat began to pour faster and the drumbeats of his heart pounded deeper and harder.
‘What do you want with me?’ Jerry heard fear in his voice. He hadn’t heard that tone since before his father died.
Legrand gazed into the candle. He wouldn’t look at Jerry. The flame seemed to jerk towards Legrand’s lips as he spoke. ‘There was a girl – here in Memphis. You watched her. You seduced her. Then you raped and gutted her. Do you remember?’
Jerry tried to focus on getting free, but he could not look away from the flame reflected in Legrand’s murderous eyes.
‘Do you remember her?!’ Legrand roared, his breath quivering the flame.
Jerry recalled the last girl in Memphis. It was about a year ago in yet another bar with yet another girl – a black girl. She was sexy, with skin like melted chocolate. He conquered her and left her to die in the swampy marshlands of the Deep South.
‘You knew her?’ Jerry muttered.
Legrand slammed his hand down on the tombstone and Jerry thought it would break. ‘She was my kin!’
Jerry’s head dropped, but oddly he didn’t feel afraid, he felt like laughing – and that’s exactly what he did.
‘You’re family,’ Jerry’s whole body rocked with laughter. ‘That’s just perfect!
‘Do not laugh at me!’
Legrand’s bellow shook Jerry’s bones and he stopped laughing. The huge black man strode over and gripped Jerry’s tiny jaw in his hand and squeezed. Jerry wailed as he felt bone crunch on bone. Legrand’s eyes were as black as the night that swarmed around them.
‘You will not laugh again! Not after this night!’ Legrand told him.
Legrand slapped Jerry across the face. Then he left him, striding back to his place behind the tombstone. He picked up the candle and poured hot wax over the stone. The drops looked like foul blood. Then the Negro started to whisper and chant and move, as if he was caught in some strange waltz of madness.
‘What are you going to do?’ Jerry begged him.
Legrand kept on with his barbaric dance, leaping and twirling through the candle smoke. Jerry watched as Legrand retrieved a small cloth bag from his coat. In a seamless rhythm, the big man emptied its contents onto the wax. The dust lingered in the air like flakes of ash.
‘Let me go!’ Jerry pleaded.
Legrand ignored him and instead tore off his coat and shirt, revealing a muscled torso, slick with sweat. His eyes were glazed white and Jerry wondered if he could even hear him anymore. Jerry’s fear swelled and he tried again to free his hands. Legrand pounded on the top of the tombstone, boom-boom-boom, boom-boom-boom, over and over, a crescendo that quickened the pace of Jerry’s already screaming heart. Jerry pulled and pulled at his bonds until finally his shoulder popped in wrenching agony. His scream became the climax of Legrand’s sickening ballet.
‘This pain you feel now,’ Legrand said, suddenly beside Jerry again. ‘Is nothing compared to what she felt; you cut her and stabbed her and bled her dry into the ground Jerry, but so much more will you feel.’
Legrand painted Jerry’s face with the wax-tainted ash and sneered.
‘She will relish this.’
‘Who is she?’ Jerry screamed through the pain.
Legrand leaned back, and like a crazed game show host, he underlined the name on the tombstone with his hand, a great toothy grin on his face. The engraved letters shimmered in the candlelight and Jerry feared the name had come to life:
Marie Legrand.
Legrand stood over Jerry and smiled. ‘She was my daughter and you killed her. It took me a long time to find you Jerry, but eventually all your girls led me to you. Their bodies spoke to me and told me where you would be – tis strange that you would come back to the same town where you first met my Marie.’
‘Look, I’m sure that nothing I say will go as an apology, but I think we can both safely say that I have a problem,’ Jerry explained. ‘I need help. But I’m also very wealthy. I could repay you for your loss.’
Now Legrand laughed – a laugh that seemed to come from the depths of hell.
‘Repay me? You do not need to repay me, Jerry Thornton.’
The air was still, but the ground beneath Jerry’s knees began to shake and split. The grass at the base of Marie Legrand’s tombstone burst upwards and maggots, in the hundreds began to crawl to the surface. Jerry tried to scream, but no sound would come. He could only gape at the squirming, slithering mass as it swelled higher and closer.
Yet something else stirred under the moving carpet of living filth – something much larger. How slowly it emerged; five mottled stalks broke through and wriggled more freely than the worms. At first, Jerry thought they were stems, but then he saw the fingernails at the tips.
The rotten hand pushed the worms aside with ease and stretched out of the ground. Jerry jerked and pulled at the rope around his right wrist and surprisingly he slipped free. When he forced himself to turn away from the thing coming out of the ground to look at the rope, he beheld the skin of his right hand hanging between the bonds. He shrieked in agony.
But Jerry’s cry was cut short. Feeling the cold, dead hand on his shoulder, he turned back to see more of its owner bearing down on him. The corpse was half-free from its grave; its skull was almost stripped bare of flesh, its teeth cracked and brittle in its jaw. Spiralling threads of raven black hair were scattered about its crown, but its abyss-like eye sockets were what burned Jerry’s heart the most.
He swatted its hand away, but it just keep reaching for him and crawling towards him. Jerry tried to free his left hand, but his raw right hand was a useless mass of blood – blood that he knew the corpse could smell.
‘Look at my Marie,’ Legrand cried. ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’
Marie’s corpse pulled itself along the ground towards Jerry, as if he was its one singular purpose in death. It shuffled on its ribcage towards him, making a squelching sound on the bloody carpet of maggots. Its hips broke free of the ground, then its thighs and finally its feet.
Jerry began to scrape and pick at the broken flesh of his left wrist like a man possessed. He didn’t want to look at Marie’s corpse. It wasn’t real. She was dead and he killed her. One year ago. He raped her and then he slit her from crotch to throat. He watched her bleed out into the swampy waters of the Mississippi. He left her for dead.
He felt tears on his face as Marie’s corpse reached for him; its claw-like fingers digging deep into the flesh of his thigh. He kicked it away, but it just kept coming. He felt its fingers again, this time groping at his stomach. He tried to fight it off, but he knew it would never stop.
Jerry bellowed and writhed, but Legrand’s laughter was even louder than his screams. Marie’s corpse bit into his chest and neck and Jerry felt his blood explode into the air. The last thing he saw was Marie Legrand’s blood-soaked teeth sink into his eye.
The last thing he heard was Rene Legrand’s voice:
‘Don’t worry Jerry, I not finished wit’ you yet.’
* * * * *
HELL-O-WEEN
Hell is always at its brightest in October.
A deep orange glow, powered by a billion, billion candlelit human skulls, is a sight to behold. The light seems to seep into the rock tunnels and brighten flames in even the darkest pits of the Underworld.
Demon children can’t help but be excited by the festivities and their contemplation of All Hallow’s Eve – Halloween is infectious. Therefore, October 31 is celebrated with much spectacle. Like those children in the living world, the demon children take to the pastime of “Trick or Treating” with equal gusto. They don their traditional vampire and mummy costumes and head out to knock on the doors of the neighbourhood.
The “neighbourhood” in Hell however, is well beyond the norm. Streets can disappear into shadow, houses don’t necessarily have walls and the people who greet you at the door can be quite temperamental.
Such was the case when four young demons set out to Trick or Treat the bowels of Hell one particular Halloween.
Xek, a rather rambunctious little fellow, was considered the leader by his friends: Glod, Sysk, and Sannastasia. Xek, dressed in the cliché-worn Dracula costume, complete with pointed fangs and real blood on his chin, was the poster boy for the celebration. Glod’s approach to costuming was minimal; an executioner’s hood with the eyeholes cut out and a tomahawk. Sysk wanted to go as a werewolf, but due to a mishap involving him standing too close to a pit of flames, he had to go as a mummy instead. Sannastasia looked adorable in a Lizzie Borden costume; complete with an axe that Glod was most envious of.
The quartet set off down Blood Brick Road, determined to make this particular Halloween the best ever.
‘Where are we going first?’ Sysk said with a voice slightly muffled by his blood-soaked facial bandages.
‘Machecoul Castle,’ Xek replied, a wide smile on his unnaturally white face, courtesy of an acid bath from his mother.
‘I thought we were going to check out Amityville?’ Sannastasia complained, her axe dragging along the ground.
‘No, not this year,’ Xek told her. ‘I’ve got it all planned out. We’re gonna see some real sights tonight.’
They followed the Blood Brick Road for about half a mile and passed other demon children screaming in fear as one of Cerebus’ pups gave chase. They saw other children knocking on the Black Gates only to lose their hands to some huge shape on the other side. The sight brought raucous laughter from the foursome.
Eventually the children came to the ruins of the Castle of Machecoul. Hell isn’t all just fire and brimstone; it is also the graveyard for the living world’s most evil locales. The Castle was a pile of stones and dust, blackened by Hell’s flaying heat. The children tried to find the front doors.
‘Maybe it doesn’t have a front door,’ Glod surmised, scratching his hooded head with the edge of his tomahawk.
‘Of course it has a front door,’ Xek reprimanded him.
‘Had a front door,’ Sannastasia said, somewhat annoyed. ‘Can’t we just go onto the next house? There’s no one here.’
A voice suddenly rose out of the shadows, thick and French. A man, long dead, dressed in rusting knight’s armor fused to his skin, stumbled towards them, his neck crooked from being hanged.
‘Children! Children!’ he said. ‘Please don’t fight on my account. I am here now.’
‘Who are you?’ Sysk said, trembling beneath his bandages.
‘Gilles de Rais, at your service,’ he said with a bow that looked awkward because of his neck.
‘Is this your house?’ Glod asked.
Gilles de Rais looked around him. ‘It was once, yes. But it was knocked down a long time ago.’
‘By who?’
‘You mean, “by whom”,’ de Rais corrected him. ‘My enemies knocked it down.’
‘Why?’ Sannastasia asked, curling the hair of her lice-infested wig.
Gilles stepped towards her, his steel shoes clinking on the rocky ground. His gaze was menacing.
‘They hated me. They hanged me and then they burned down my castle.’
‘They hanged you? Cool!’ Xek exclaimed. ‘You must have been pretty mean when you were alive Mr Deranged.’
Gilles snapped. ‘de Rais! Gilles de Rais, you insolent little cretin!’
Xek and the other children withdrew, heading for the Blood Brick Road. De Rais kept after them, his armored body creaking and bleeding.
‘Wait! Don’t go! You can come inside and play! I promise I won’t hurt you!’
‘No thanks Mister,’ Glod told him, shaking his hooded head.
‘Treats!’ de Rais continued. ‘I have treats inside! Come and play with me!’
But the children were gone, leaving the decrepit knight and his filthy home behind. They ran together holding hands, all keeping a watchful eye on the madman who fell to the ground to cry into his skeletal hands.
‘Who was that guy?’ Sysk asked.
‘Some looney,’ Xek told him. ‘There are so many of them on this road.’
‘Then why did we come here?’ Sannastasia whined. ‘How are we going to get any treats if we don’t knock on any doors?’
‘Okay, just settle down,’ Xek ordered her. ‘It’s not much further to the next house.’
The next house they find was just around the corner. But it wasn’t a house, it was more like a small city. Gas lanterns burned in the boiling air and the brick walls seemed to sweat in response. The demon children huddled together in fear as a thick darkness crept towards them. More corners appeared, leading to alleyways, where, at the end, was a half-naked eviscerated woman.
‘I don’t like this place,’ Sannastasia said.
‘What are you kidding? It’s fantastic,’ Xek replied, barely able to contain his excitement. ‘We’ll get treats here for sure.’
‘But I don’t see any doors, there are only walls and alleyways,’ Sysk said, worriedly looking over his shoulder.
‘We have to keep going,’ Xek reminded them. ‘We can’t go home yet.’
So they walked hand in hand, trying not to look down the alleys, but they were everywhere, as if they were sprouting from the shadows. There seemed to be more and more with each step and the women’s bodies got bloodier and bloodier.
Abruptly a shadow in a top hat and coat burst from the cobblestones at their feet. The children screamed and howled like a pack of wolves.
‘Hello, children,’ the shadow said. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Trick or Treating,’ Xek replied, putting on his bravest Dracula grimace.
The shadow gasped. ‘Truly? Is it that time of year already? Although it’s not really celebrated where I come from. It’s more of an American pasttime.’
‘But it’s about witches and they came from Europe,’ Sannastasia pointed out.
The shadow produced a shadow-gloved hand, which held a very long and very sharp knife, fresh with blood. The children shrunk back.
‘That’s true, my dear girl, but by tradition, the New World is the one pagan nation. Yet we are far too civilised for such things. We have order here. Everyone knows their place. The Queen sits upon the throne and her subjects give their lives for her.’
The shadow, like a stage performer, turned his hand deftly to show the children the end of an alleyway. There, in the corner, was a woman holding her entrails in her skirts.
‘Mary here gave her life for the Empire, as have all the other girls. It’s only fitting that I take care of them.’
Xek tried not to look, but couldn’t turn away. The other children all had their eyes squeezed tight shut.
‘Do you … have any treats, Mister?’ Xek asked.
‘Please, call me Jack. Everyone else does.’
‘Jack … do you have any treats?’
Jack reached into his black cloak and produced a leather apron, dripping with blood. He handed it to Xek.
‘This is all I have, I’m afraid.’
Xek snatched it and turned to his friends. ‘Run!’
They ran, almost tripping over each other to get back to the Blood Brick Road. Tjack waved them goodbye, but seconds later he was stalking another woman down another alley. She looked just like all the others the children were forced to see. They breathed a lot easier when their little clawed feet felt the familiar pulse of the Road.
‘Who was that?’ Glod exclaimed.
‘I don’t know, but I don’t ever want to see him again,’ Sysk said.
Xek stepped forward and waved the bloody apron in the air triumphantly.
‘Yeah, he was weird, but check out the treat he left us.’
The children mingled to get a better look at the apron. The only thing remarkable about it was the fact it appeared to be bleeding, not just soaked in it.
‘That is so cool,’ Xek whistled.
‘How are we going to share that?’ Sannastasia said.
‘Gee, I don’t know,’ Xek said. ‘What, do you expect me to cut it up into four pieces?’
Sannastasia’s gaze could have turned him to stone. She turned and started to head up the Blood Brick Road.
‘I’m going home,’ she squealed. ‘This is the worst Halloween ever! I should never have come with you!’
‘Fine! Go home then! See if I care!’ Xek shouted back.
Sysk tugged at his bandages. ‘I don’t want to go if she doesn’t.’
‘What are you a bunch of wussies? We can’t give up now – we’ve already got one treat.’
Glod looked at the ground. ‘I thought we would get a bag of maggots or some eyeballs. I don’t want a yucky leather apron.’
Xek wrapped his arms around his friends. ‘Come on guys! This is Halloween. There’s a few more houses this way.’
Reluctantly, Sysk and Glod followed Xek along the Road. They were all quiet for some time. Great hungry bats screeched overhead, running circuits around them. They came to the crest of a hill and found a man sitting in a battered old Volkswagon. He was dressed in a dirty, blood-stained suit. He gave the boys a wry smile.
‘Hey, fellas,’ the man said. ‘Aw, are you guys trick or treating?’
Xek was enthused to run into someone else, but he frowned when he saw the man was strapped to the driver’s seat by a plethora of cables and wires. On top of his neatly parted hair was a metal cap.
‘Yes, sir,’ Xek replied. ‘Do you have any treats?’
‘What’s your name kid?’
‘Xek.’
‘Mine’s Ted. Hey, if you help me out of the car, I can help you look for treats.’
Sysk and Glod, who were standing back aways from Xek and his new friend, whimpered. Xek turned to them and saw they were both shaking their heads.
‘You’re not scared of me are you, Xek?’ Ted said.
Xek gulped. ‘No, sir.’
‘Well, why don’t you help me out?’
Ted smiled even wider and winked at Xek.
‘Why are you tied up in your car?’ Xek inquired.
‘I did some bad things and I’m being punished.’
‘Oh, okay, that makes sense,’ Xek replied, but then he thought for a second. ‘What bad things?’
Ted sighed and put his head back. He seemed very tired.
‘I couldn’t control myself around women,’ Ted said. ‘I liked to get my rocks off with them – whether they liked it or not. Usually it ended in them being dead.’
He ended the last sentence with another smile, a smug bastard smile.
‘Why?’ Xek.
‘Geez, kid, you ask a lot of questions. Tell ya what, you let me out and I’ll answer all the goddamn questions you want. Okay?’
Xek stared at Ted for a long time, contemplating. Then he said:
‘Give me the treats first.’
‘What?’
‘You tell me where your treats are and I’ll let you out.’
Ted laughed heartily.
‘You got some balls kid. They’re in the trunk.’
With Sysk and Glod’s help, Xek cracked open the trunk. Inside was a duffle bag. They opened it and inside were ropes, gloves, a balaclava, handcuffs, an ice pick, a box of trash bags, a flashlight and a crow bar.
‘Awesome!’ Xek said.
Sysk and Glod sighed miserably.
Xek bundled the duffle bag in his arms and ran back to Ted.
‘Thanks, Mister!’
‘You’re welcome kid. Now what you’ve got to do to get me out is – ‘
But it was too late. Xek had pulled the door handle and a series of electric sparks cascaded over the car. Inside Ted writhed and screamed and spat as tens of thousands of volts riddled his body. The energy was so fierce the car’s cabin burst into flames. Ted was fried.
The boys ran and ran all the way along the Blood Brick Road to escape the ensuing fireball.
‘I can’t do this anymore!’ Sysk said. ‘I want to go home!’
‘All the more for me then,’ Xek said, excited by his second lot of treats. ‘Man that guy just exploded! Lucky I got his stuff out of the trunk.’
Xek stopped and looked for his friends. They were some distance back, running for the hills.
‘Wimps!’ Xek yelled after them.
The little Dracula demon hefted his duffle bag and tucked the piece of leather apron into his shirt pocket. He began to chuckle at how much luck he’d had. He couldn’t wait to see what was around the corner.
Over another craggy hill was a large house swarming with crows and flies. Xek fought his way through them and got to the door. He knocked and a short fat man, dressed in a tattered, but colourful clown outfit greeted him. The make-up made his face look like a skull.
‘Hey there,’ the clown said.
‘Hi,’ Xek said. ‘Trick or treat.’
‘How old are you?’ the clown asked.
‘1400.’
‘Fourteen-hundred?’ the clown suddenly looked anxious and licked his lips, the make-up coming away.
‘Yes, sir. Do you have any treats?’
‘Why don’t you come inside and we’ll have a look?’
Xek looked past the clown and saw many corpses rotting away in the living room. He cringed, but more at the thought of the smell than anything else. He’d seen worse.
‘No, thanks!’
The clown sniffed and feigned a smile. He didn’t know what else to say.
‘I like your costume,’ Xek told him.
The clown looked at what he was wearing. ‘It’s all I have.’ He considered Xek’s Dracula costume. ‘Yours is nice too.’
‘Would you like to swap?’
The clown mulled it over for a while. Occasionally, he turned to observe the mass decomposition occurring in his home. Then he took off his clown hat and kicked off his clown shoes, finally the whole costume fell to the floor. Xek undressed and gave the clown the Dracula costume. It looked way too small on the fat man. Xek was over the moon with his new costume.
‘Thanks Mister,’ he said.
‘That’s okay. I have to go now. I have to put all this …’ he indicated the bodies ‘…away.’
With that, the clown closed the door and Xek, dressed in his new costume, and carrying his new treats set off down the Blood Brick Road. He thought about heading south onto the next house, but abruptly he could hear laughter and thoughts in his head of catching up with his friends and making them feel sorry for leaving him to haul or the treats.
As the Halloween fires raged on, Xek smiled and headed north after them.
* * * * *
Patrick Oswald Edwards
My name is Patrick Oswald Edwards. I feel at odds with myself. Each day I suffer a quiet discord and it's beyond my comprehension. Writing anything, in fact any instance of creativity is near impossible, as if I am inflicted with some obscure mental sickness. My intellect and imaginative spark seems lost to the darkness, like a child fallen into a well. But strangely, objects and visions still attempt to inspire me.
My neighbour, Mr Pym, is a unique individual. Each day he tends the pond in his yard, calling to his goldfish, telling his scaly sons and daughters stories of journeys to places far and beyond. Sometimes I overhear him and his words puzzle and astonish me all at once. He tells the fish of a great hunt that he cannot remember the ending of, but it is vivid with details of great bow ships and wild open seas.
If I ever brave the cold air he calls to me over the fence and insists upon giving me trinkets from his seafaring days. The last gift, which he literally pushed into my hand, was an ornate mariner's compass, and he instructed me that it would help me find the path back to who I am destined to be.
Ironically, that is my conundrum -- who I am. I live in the home I was raised in. It is a modest two storey home, but it serves my purpose. I eat and sleep on the upper storey and the lower floor is my creative domain. But as of late, it has become little more than a cesspool of lost thoughts; pieces of paper stained with the scratchings of a creative psychotic. On occasion I stop and look at what I have written and the words disturb me.
Then there is the bird.
A black carrion or suchlike crows to me in my sleep and becomes whole when I wake. At night it translates what I have written and during the day it visits, begging me for sustenance. It gratefully accepts any food that I have to give, but it has a taste for insects especially. When daylight breaks through my curtains sometimes I find a pile of dead insects at my feet, mealworms, flies and spiders, all dead. I have no inkling of where they came from or how I happened to invite them into my bed. But the bird knows, and when I let him in each morning he flies into my room and picks the sheets clean.
Stranger still is the reflection in the mirror. It shows me flesh and bone, but it is blurred and there seems to be someone else trying to peer back at me. The eyes of the unknown visage are sunken and cold, the apex of an unwavering suffering. Often the face is talking to me and trying to write something on the glass, but the words are lost to me. The only word I recognise is floorboards.
This word becomes a sliver in my subconscious and I find myself obsessed to the point where I have an uncontrollable urge to delve deeper. Before I can inhibit myself, I am digging a great pit in my backyard. Mr Pym notices and he seems to savour my calamity. At one instance he hands me a small grandfather clock and instructs me to bury it. I make no argument and gladly commit the time piece and its pendulum to the soil. Soon after the pit is full, I feel calm again.
My melancholy returns at twilight and bizarrely I find the carrion at my writing desk, the pen in his beak, and he has written a single message for me -- floorboards. The words sting like a knife and I find my obsession returning in waves. I scan each piece of wood at my feet, studying the swirl of the grain and the gap between each plank. My fingers, now shaking with anxiety, locate a gap that is far wider than the rest and I find myself tearing at the wood to see what lies beneath. Splinters pierce my fingernails, but I pay no heed to the blood. All I seek is what has been hidden from me.
There in the dank darkness is the sum total of two lives, one past and one that is now. A photo of a solemn fellow peers back at me and he is like an old friend who has been a stranger for many a year. His high forehead and dark gaze are all too familiar. I know this man; I know his words and it is here, under the floorboards, that I discover what he has been trying to tell me. I am then drawn to a photo of myself; the eyes look the same as his and for the first time in a long while I smile. My memories are his memories and his words are my words.
And there on the floor, below the floorboards are his and my words, pages and pages of text that I had feared lost. I read and re-read his words and mine and I understand now the raven, Mr Pym and the pit and the pendulum. These words have been calling to me across the shadows of time.
I crawl down in the depths and lay with our words and purposefully I pull the boards back over me. I feel calm again as the boards envelop me like a funeral shroud. Now I can sleep and dream and think and reacquaint myself with my soul. Then, when he says my heart is ready to tell tales, then and only then will I return to spread his dark message across the world.
* * * * *
The Breadth of An Instant
Time is lost to us.
Perpetuity and motion have ruled our existence since we were first spawned from that divine spark, but we have never been able to grasp its true meaning. We have only begun to understand its complexities. But hairsprings and crown wheels are not the true measures of time.
For more than fifty years, time has dictated my life. I have sought to repair the seconds and the minutes and the hours until they were mechanically sound again. However I am nothing more than a humble watchmaker. Even with all my expertise, time is beyond me, it is beyond all of us. I can see its influence every time I look in the mirror.
Time is the constant. We try in vain to slow it down, but all we can do is count the days until we are dust. My wife, my love, is dying. Forty-three days ago, time caught up with her. Foul cells, festering inside her, have reached their horrible zenith and she is coming to an end. Now I am counting the seconds as she lies in her bed, motionless; out of sync with the woman she used to be.
As I watch her weaken and wither and hear her moan with agony, the swing of the pendulum in my grandfather clock is ever constant; it is her death knell. My beloved is dying before my eyes as time takes her away from me.
I first met Claire when we were both twenty-four. She brought in her grandfather’s fob watch to be fixed, a beautiful heirloom, as radiant as she. I fell in love with that timepiece and I fell in love with her. I restarted the watch and in turn, we started a wonderful romance. I counted the seconds between our engagements and I savoured the time we were together. Now, time is mocking me.
I have cuddled Claire to sleep through the pain, but the pendulum’s call is becoming too much. It was the first grandfather clock I owned and it always soothed me, but now I want to be rid of it.
I try and get away from its call by going out into the yard, but I can still hear the tick tock in my head. No matter how far away I walk, it’s right there with me. I end up crouching in the garden shed with my hands over my ears, hoping for the answer to make it stop.
Then I see the garden tools, rusted from lack of use. I see the shovel and the axe.
I carry the axe inside and stare at the clock one last time. Its mahogany frame and glass face smashes into a thousand pieces when I swing the heavy blade down. The screaming symbol of time is no more. But, when I turn back to my beloved, I realise that as I was tearing the clock apart, she was taking her last breath. Alone.
As I stare at her with tears in my eyes, she looks so calm while my heart burns with hatred and contempt. It is not her time; the years, months and days of our future have been stolen away like a whisper in the wind. In a rage I wander the house and collect every timepiece I can find: digital alarm clocks, wristwatches, wall clocks and even the fob watch. I take them all to the fireplace and I toss them into the raging fire. Time can go to hell for all I care.
Suddenly I hear the swing of the pendulum again. I turn and there is the grandfather clock, reconstructed and repaired, as if I never smashed it. The rhythm of its pendulum sends me into a trance. The hour strikes twelve and the great gongs shake my ears. But as I reel, to my horror, the door of the clock opens and a robed figure steps out.
The figure is encumbered in a black shroud. His skin is as white as alabaster and his eyes pulse with a deep darkness. He calls to me with a voice that seems far away and in my head at the same moment.
‘I am the Hour,’ the robed figure says. ‘I am the twelve and I am the one. I am the herald of the sun and moon.’
My body is frozen and I cannot speak. The entire house and the air within it grinds to a halt. The robed figure pulls down his hood and there on his face is my expression, my eyes, my mouth and my lengthening wrinkles. He is me.
‘You have defiled yourself,’ the robed figure says. ‘You, a servant of time, have blasphemed.’
Suddenly I can speak, as if the robed man turns something on inside me.
‘What do you mean?’ I say, quivering.
The robed figure walks to me, a staccato movement that moves in harmony with the giant pendulum. Soon I am looking at my face; a face that has aged a hundred years.
‘You are our servant,’ he says. ‘I, the Hour and my brothers the Minutiae and Seconds ordained upon you a gift; a gift which you have squandered.’
‘Squandered? I am just…a watchmaker.’
The robed man bellows with rage and the pendulum begins to swing faster.
‘Watchmaker? You are our disciple! You were chosen to craft our language into the weave that holds the universe together – you and so many others. We gave the world the sundial and the clepsydra and humanity lives by our laws. But you have broken them.’
I stare at him. He is condemning me, but it is he who has cursed me.
‘You took her from me,’ I scream back. ‘All I had was those stupid watches and then she came and time took on a whole new meaning. Now she is dead. If it wasn’t for you I would never have met her and now I have to live the rest of my life alone – all because of you!’
The Hour considers me with a turn of its head, then in a nanosecond he reaches inside my chest and I feel an incredible pulse pass through my body. There is a blinding light and then an overwhelming darkness.
Tiny shards of light appear in the black void and pass through my being. Then I am outside my body and I watch my physical shell as it’s twisted and turned across the fabric of space. After what seems like forever, the door to time finally closes and I find myself back inside my body, sitting in my old watchmaker’s shop.
The bell above my shop door chimes and I look up.
My wife, twenty-four again, steps inside, smiling. I know that smile; I know this moment. The Hour has blessed me for my patronage. My future wife steps up to the counter and presents that immaculate fob watch. I cannot wait to relive the conversations, to hear her speak again. Time has given me the chance to love her all over again.
But wait.
The bell chimes again and I look up. My wife, fifty years older, crawls inside, screaming. I know that scream; I know this pain. The Hour has cursed me for my treachery. My wife, struggling to breathe, tries to cry out for me. I dread the thought of having to watch her die again.
Time has cursed me …
But wait …
The bell chimes and I look up …
Time has cursed me.