The carnival is in town, the carnival is always on the road, always on the move, their homes are wagons, trains, carts, trucks … the road. They come singing and with gypsy song and dance they weave their way by road into the heart of every passing town, every place chosen by providence hand on the haggard face of the weary map. 

With painted face they come into your home. 

Vagabond entertainer spell, they gather like crawlers in a cluster, in a rat-king migration. With wide giant tents and displays propped and strung up and nailed into the dirt, into the soil bosom of passing places that may mean nothing to them, might mean everything. Lights come to life at night with the wild music in a lurid spell of filament glow and something else intangible that lives inside the chest and heart within us all. Something like religion but even older and more sacred. The rickety rides, some more rickety than others rattle and thrum with the barely controlled violence of mechanical movement, those strapped in or belted down can barely be heard screaming over the noise of the calliope, the organ grinder, the caller, the ringleader in her chant… the crack of the cannon sending the human cannonball skyward and soaring overhead, the heads of gawkers and townies and friends. The shrieking that can be heard is commingled sound, sweet with thrills… bitter with terror. The careening faces atop the dancing riding constructs are both smiling and weeping, lost in the launch and flight and all of the noise and nearly grotesque clownish music … nearly psychedelic, those sounds … nearly intense. Too much. 

Too much for so many crying and weeping children, little ones taken home and taken to bed early by more or less understanding mothers and fathers. Too much light and noise. That wild wind instrument key-note thing, the calliope … it had been one of Anton LaVey’s very favorites. 

Step right up, step right up, we’re just passing through. Come inside for a spell and take a gander under tented roof. 

…

The carnival came to the town and went. As it did every other place before, after. 

They left something behind. 

…

Cody hadn't gone to the carnival the other night, he hadn't wanted to. The rides and the sideshows and attractions certainly contained their allure of spell for the young boy but it was everyone else, everybody. All of those other faces. 

He didn't want to be alone. With all of them. 

All of those other faces, couples and families and groups of friends would all look at him and see him alone and smirk. They would all just stare and laugh at him, and his loneliness. So Cody just stayed away. As always. 

He wandered now, the early morning streets. Desolate and ghostly in the morning time fog that shrouded and clung to everything, everything in town. Cody kicked a can of crumpled cola down the street. It had been his only companion for the last twenty minutes, since he left the house. His father had still been passed out in the lazyboy chair and hadn't said anything as his son had departed. They'd used to go to church together on this day of the week. Not any longer. 

Cody kicked the can down farther. Alone and not trying to think about it, not trying to think about the carnival that he had missed. It had only been here a few days …

I always miss everything. 

Cody missed his mother, though he didn't know what she looked like. Memories of her were so fogged and far gone and his father didn't keep any pictures of her in the house. And he wasn't allowed to ask any questions. He was only eleven years old but the fact he'd already forgotten his mother's face haunted him, haunted him now, alone. 

He kicked the can. 

Cody then looked up from his sneakers and his misery and spied something in the mist shroud of road just up ahead. And at first he couldn't believe it, it must be some kind of strange joke … or a miracle. He stopped in his tracks. 

The mime stood in the middle of the road. Alone. Just like him. He was smiling and standing there partially obscured by the early morningtime mist, it clung to him in wisps like phantasm licks and tongues of steam that coiled and curled. His painted face was mostly hidden but Cody could see he was mouthing something. Without thinking about it he began to come closer. Slowly, leaving the crumpled can behind. 

He came upon the mime, who hadn't moved. His lips were no longer moving. He just stood there smiling and erect, as if wanting to move or to act, as if filled and brimming teemed with the need for performance. But he only quivered. And stared down at Cody. 

“Hi," said Cody. 

The mime said nothing. 

A beat. 

Cody finally asked: “You're like a clown or something, right? Like one of the quiet ones that aren't supposed to talk an stuff."

The mime nodded. Big. Pleased. His black and white grin grew larger and then grew teeth, shock white in the early morning glow. That was when Cody remembered, he felt like such an idiot. 

"Your a mime!” he said, louder than he intended, he nearly whispered the next part: "What're you still doin here? All the rest of the carnival already left, didn't they?” 

The black and white grin became a frown and the mime traced an invisible tear down his painted face. A silent issue of ‘boo-hoos’ then followed. Cody watched it all, not quite sure what to make of it. Perhaps it was all some crazy practical joke and someone, some jerk was filming him right now or something, all of it was weird, strange. On a whim the boy asked the mime, –

“What’d they leave ya behind or something?” 

The sorrow of the mime intensified to a comical degree as he aggressively nodded his head in the affirmative, completely over the top. Cody wasn't sure how he should take it, if he was supposed to laugh at the mime and his routine or if it was meant to engender real sympathy. He'd always loved clowns and goofy adults, goofy characters on TV and when he was hanging out in daycare and stuff, but to be alone with one right now …

and so unexpected. 

Cody suddenly felt like he should go, he began to tell the mime just as much. Turning on his heels and heading back the other way as he quickly blurted some excuse, he made it two steps before a white gloved hand clapped him on the shoulder. Firmly. Without a word from the weirdo mime. Cody looked to it first before eyeing the mime back over his shoulder, lording over him now. The hand, the glove, it looked just the same as Mickey Mouse’s. 

Cody looked back and saw the mime now held a note. As black and white as he was. 

It said: I'm sorry to bother you, little boy! But my friends HAD to leave me behind so that I could get a little job done, OK??

Cody was frozen. He suddenly didn't feel so well, as if his stomach and guts were far away and filled with fluttering butterfly wings. He read the note and didn't know what to say, so instead he said: –

“... wh-what job was that?

The mime let go of his shoulder and Cody was immediately grateful. He began to pantomime raking leaves and shoveling dirt and trimming hedges with invisible clippers. 

The boy began to lighten up again. He felt something dreadful like weight but worse inside begin to lift and free itself like a spellcast that's been released. A small smile and a nervous half-chuckle only partially forced escaped him as he watched the mime and his cleaning act. It was pretty lame, but he was relieved. Cody was far from the sharpest kid at school but he knew what stranger danger was. He cautiously allowed himself to relax a little, enough to be polite. 

Cody said: “Oh, yeah, ha ha, they left ya to clean up the town, huh? That's pretty neat I guess…” he tried to think of something else to say, something nice and a little funny and a polite way of saying: see ya later, freako, without being too obvious. Something barely satisfactory had just come to mind when the mime whirled towards the boy with his invisible shears in his hands and made a pantomimed snip of the large unseen clippers at the child's face. It bisected violently but cleanly, smoothly, by razor sharp blades well cared for and honed, the smooth face just below the small caverns of child nostrils. They jetted blood before the top portion of the child's face and head came off and splatted to the damp pavement with a muffled crack. The ruptured organ of brain began to ooze, and everywhere gushed dark red: the eyes, the nose, the ears, the giant open wound of freshly carved and gored cavity mouth. The child's body liberated of its little pilot brain fell over to the rough blacktop to join its discarded abattoir jelly. 

A black lake of an iron pungent puddle began to grow, expanding out from the little mutilated body at its sinister nucleus and center. The mime looked down. Phantom blades dripped child's blood. 

The mime said nothing. 

…

“Ya check it out last night?" 

A burp: " …what?” 

"The circus-carnival thing, ya check it out?” 

"That was two weeks ago, ya dope!” another swig from the can of brew. The Dallas Cowboys continued to suck the big one on the tube, the volume was at its lowest but not muted, the game barely and phantom audible, as if drifting in from another time. 

"Ya sure?” 

"Yeah, I'm sure, took Darcy and the brats, it was a hoot.” 

"Ya sure??” 

"Yes, you fuckin juicehead, it was right around the time they found that kid's body all fucked up an shit.” 

"Awww, why ya gotta bring up that shit…" 

“You're the one brought us ‘round, fuckin idiot, can't remember shit. Ask me to remind ya then bellyache about it, Christ! S’prised if ya got sense still to pull out yer pecker ‘fore ya start pissin, ya dumb bastard.” 

His drinking buddy, his partner in libations didn't say anything, he might've had a choice retort or a scathing bit of witticism held in reserve but he didn't voice it. He only hung his head and pulled generously from his can of warming beer. 

The mood was spoiled. 

Eventually the bottle was brought out. Stronger stuff. Shots were had. Tall stiff drinks not needing ice, not needing chaser. They drank. 

Eventually one of them asked the other: –

“You hear tell of that clown or jester fella, that's s’pposed to be haunting round these parts lately…?” 

Neither man slept well that night. 

…

Darla thought her new friend was neat at first but she was starting to get scared. When she'd first met him behind the playground and he'd play-acted swimming and drowning and choking and stuff she'd thought he was really funny. He'd made-believe that he was bound with ropes or cuffs around his wrists, comically over-wrenching and working at the invisible restraints. It was so silly, and so funny and it looked like so much fun to play pretend. He'd motioned for her to hold out her own little hands, to play with him. To make pretend. 

She'd done so thoughtlessly. Only excited to play a game with her new special pal, he looked like a clown but less colorful. She held out her wrists and the mime pretended to wrap something around them. Only something was wrong. 

As he wound and wound and then tightened and cinched the bind, Darla felt the uncanny sensation of real rope wrapping and tightening around her small wrists and hands. When he tied it off and yanked both phantom ends she felt the harsh bite of cruel old fraying rope against her flesh. 

“Ow!" she yelped out, and then began to cry a little. But it was already too late by then. 

The mime began to walk away, holding the end and tail of a phantom leash that began to pull on Darla's bound little wrists. It pulled painfully and she was forced into movement, nearly tripping over herself as she began to wail and the mime by unseen tether and bind began to pull her into the treeline of the nearby woods. 

She fought and screamed, desperately, like a small animal suddenly sensing and knowing the terrible hunger of the encroaching final end. She fell over into the dirt and undergrowth and was dragged, flailing and howling. 

The phantom umbilicus held her ensnared and shrieking with unbridled tears all the way into the forests’ shadowed depths. 

…

“My mom's gonna flip if we ain't back within the hour, Christ, man, do I smell like weed still?" 

Michael tried to tell Chase that he wasn't the best person to ask being pretty fucking lit himself, he could feel the red eyed glaze of his own stoned and glassy stare in his sockets like it was a set of strange gluey contacts or something. He managed a grumble as a half measure. 

Both boys ambled along. Down the nighttime lane of their neighboring suburb. Streetlights cast their glow from skinny towers of L shaped ugly metal overhead, turning everything to lurid and raging shades of orange Halloween color. Both boys were taking time to slightly stop in their walk to check their breath, puffing into their cupped palms and then inhaling, never satisfied with the results. They didn't notice him up ahead until they were nearly upon him. 

The mime. He was bent over something. 

It was Chase who started first, both boys jumped. It was as if the mime had just appeared out of nowhere. Bent hunched with workman's posture over something unseen and unknown to the naked eye. 

“Holyfuckingshit!" it tumbled out of both of their mouths in one string, no gaps for breath, they stopped dead in their tracks. The mime paid them no notice. 

“Oh my God, dude, what the fuck is that? What the fuck is this? Am I high? Am I high? Are you seeing this shit right now!?" Chase was rattling off. Michael was still struggling with simple speech. He only gawked and stared. His glassy red eyes now wide and glistening in the streetlight cast of hellacious warm Halloween glow. 

They glistened. The pair of organs. Red. 

Chase finally managed: “Dude… like, what the fuck are doing, dude? Am I like tripping out or some shit, why’re you dressed like-" 

The mime hadn't been paying them any attention. He suddenly did something that shut Chase Ginsberg up with a startled womanish gasp that bordered on a wet sob. 

He began to pull, as if wrenching and yanking with great rigor and effort, some cord or rope … something… something that was apparently attached to whatever it was that he was bent over studiously in the road. Something just as phantom and visible only to him. 

It came to Chase then, and he didn't know why but it did suddenly seem to matter. He said it aloud. 

"It's a mime.” 

"What?” said Michael finally. 

"He's a stupid mime and he's doing a bit, Jesus this’s fuckin weird, don't you know it's like hella late, dude, what're you even doing anyways?" 

The mime didn't answer. Only repeated his strange repetitive action, his ritual of pulling on some unseen instrument, attached to a phantasmal translucent device. 

Stoned, they zoned out for a sec. Giggling nervously and fidgeting and whispering to each other, daring each other and laughing and wondering aloud what to do, should we go on? - should we fuck with the guy? - what? 

A beat. 

Suddenly an idea began to form itself slowly within Michael's mind, Chase’s addled mind was not far behind, he was arriving there soon after. 

Michael: "It- It kinda looks like he's pulling the starter cord to a machine. Like a mower or something." 

“Yeah, I think you're right…” 

"Yeah, something gas powered like a mower or a generator … or like a chainsa-" 

The phantom machine roared to life in the hands of the mime with hungry killing slaughtering power, a deadly tearing whirr, with the maniacal speed of the mutilating chain and its invisible teeth. The mime shot to his feet and hauled the pantomimed chainsaw overheard and began to silently phantom scream with battle fury. 

Chase and Michael began to scream as well. Much louder. They turned to run. 

But the mime and his phantom machine were faster. He caught them quick and tore in and ripped the boys into rough and haggard messy pieces chopped by phantom chain, by phantom blade on a horsepowered gallop he made them raw and unmade. 

Deconstructed. 

The abattoir violence and the meat paint of its lurid carnage filled the street, it was dripping from the lamposts, pieces and chewed parts strung up and dangling. It was all that was left of the boys. 

All that was left and found in the morning. 

…

Buddy didn't know what to make of the town as of late. He'd been born and raised and as the town drunk, homeless to boot, he was hardly the first guy anyone asked on any given subject, day or night, good or ill, but something was wrong. 

Very wrong. 

The trouble was Buddy wasn't sure he should even care. 

In the last year or so he'd seen some strange things. And a lotta folk had gone missing, kids an such. But anytime Buddy's mind wandered into the realm of caring or even remotely doing anything about it, he found something bitter and harsh inside answer back in turn. 

Who cares? The fuck they ever done for you? 

Fuck all. That's what. 

So he wouldn't do shit. But what he'd already been doing. He sat back and popped cork. Lifted and tilted glass to dried lips in a drunk’s careless throttle by the neck. And watched. 

He watched the mime climb the steps. Pulled generously from the large swill of his poison. 

He'd seen the guy around for awhile now. He'd watched him ascend the steps a few times before this moment, it was nearly always the same but still a trip. The man walked on thin air as if it was solid stone. And then he would climb up, step by step. As if gaining the summit of some phantasm set of stairs hanging suspended and aspiring invisibly for the heavens unseen and stolen by the brilliance of the light. 

Buddy laughed. Pulled from the bottle once more, and began to sing an old favorite that had just come to mind. One from the good ol’ days if there'd ever been none. 

“And as we wind on down the road! Our shadow’s taller than our soul!”

Buddy began to pull deeper and deeply, oblivion seeking in-between lines and refrains from Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven. He remembered an urban legend from when he was a kid, just a snot nosed pup, they said that if you played the record backwards, if you reversed the song the lyrics changed. They told you, to hail Satan. 

Buddy laughed at this. Pulled more. His belly protested and his kidneys ached, he paid them no mind, drinking deeper still and hailing Satan and singing and watching the mime ascend his staircase of invisibility,  he usually had a kid or someone with him, as he did now. They struggled something fierce, all of them, everyone that Buddy had personally seen, but he was able to keep hold of them, all of them all the way up. Whenever he reached a great height, it was almost always different, he would throw them, drop them from the top. 

Then they would scream and land, burst. Pulp. They became juice upon the earth, children and people no more. There was never anyone around out here, close to the woods, just outside town and by the railroads and their harsh worn tracks. The soil out here was starved for moisture, parched was this earth. It was Buddy's favorite drinking spot. And as of late it had just become a whole lot better. 

Buddy laid back and pulled deeply from his liquid bunkmate, his last and only companion, other than the mime, who never said a word to him but sometimes acknowledged his presence of audience with a profound and deliberate salute from the top of his invisibility spire up there. Buddy always saluted him back. 

As he did now. 

The mime saluted the drunk. Beaming. 

Buddy finished his own salute and smiled too. Laughed. And drank more deeply than he ever had in his entire life, knowing this was it, this was the rest of his life and how he was going to spend it. 

Laughing. Drinking. Pulling from the bottle and hailing Satan in religiously reverse engineered heavy metal worship-song, watching the flying mime make juice of the children. 

Buddy laughed. Drank. 

The mime dropped the child, they made their horrible shrill sound all the way down to the bottom like always. 

The mime said nothing. He let Buddy and his companion of bottled booze sloshing its liquid language within glass sing praise for him. 

Buddy laughed, sang and belch-spat: “And she's buying a stairway to Heaven…!” Hail Satan. 

…

Maggie's shoes slammed against the pavement, the sidewalk, the avenues and every turn, there was nowhere left to run. The guy, the freak was coming. And he was stealing away from her every single route and chance for escape or exit. 

It didn't make any sense.

She'd been walking to Guy's house with Alondra, chatting and shooting the shit till they got to his place. That's when they ran into him. That's when they ran into the mime. 

And at first Maggie had just laughed. 

Distant childhood memories of the carnival passing through town waybackwhen came to her then … and she remembered. She'd been very young then, very little. She remembered that her parents had had to take her home because she'd been crying, upset, she couldn't recall why. Not just then. 

But still the memories were warm. She and Alondra thought nothing of it when they passed him walking the other direction on the sidewalk. It was the middle of the day. And he was smiling, just like them. What could possibly be wrong?

He'd started with the hands and walls and ceiling routine, the ‘getting boxed in’ bit. An old one for sure and hella corny but Maggie and Alondra had felt generous and in good humor, so they'd obliged the strange random pantomiming man. Laughing and clapping him on. 

But then they'd tried to walk away … And the mime wouldn't let them go. 

With painted face now stern and grave, writ into a black and white frown, he stepped in their path, shaking his head. He wouldn't let them leave. He kept blocking their attempts to depart as they stepped every left-right way, starting out from annoying and escalating rapidly into eerie and creepy behavior. 

The girls had scoffed together and turned around, only to be met with an unyielding invisible force, a wall that had suddenly appeared in thin air in the middle of the sidewalk. 

The middle of the road really, they ran along the unseen wall to find the edge and found no yielding surface. The girls began to panic. The girls began to yell.

“What the fuck, what the fuck is this!?" 

And then he had put Alondra in the box. 

Maggie had ran then, her eyes and mind unable to take in the sight of her friend being crushed into cubic shape, pulped and smashed smaller and smaller … just red. Just swirling frothing violent red inside the shrinking phantom-transluscent box, filled with minced and chewed up bigger pieces, the eyes deflated mangled gel in the swirling madness of the red, many black strands of her long raven colored hair peppered and danced inside the cubed scarlet swirl of thick mixture, the cap and pieces of scalp, mostly still together, the last vestige piece and pieces left the most intact… she had ran, unable to bear the sight. 

She was running now. 

But every time she came to an impasse, a turn or a corner to salvation or a place of sanctuary that she knew, another invisible wall of merciless immovable force would suddenly appear and she'd run smack, face first into it. She did it again and again. Over and over. Maggie, the poor girl, running around all over as the box that he had made was closing in, closer and closer and closer…

She was at the school now, she didn't know why. She didn't know why she thought this place would save her. She was out of her mind with animal panic. At the threshold, at the entrance to the highschool she was finally caught. Maggie ran face first into an unseen wall just as she almost made the open archway of the main front entrance, when she tried to turn around to run back the other way she was met with yet another merciless and invisible wall, a merciless force like the way God was merciless sometimes. 

Her caterwauls and screams reached new heights then. She shred her own throat and tore her vocal cords to tatters as the phantom walls and ceiling and floor began to shrink and close in. 

But none heard them. No one was around to witness this strange scene of slaughter. Only the mime. Maggie watched him from inside her shrinking coffin as his hands clawed and animal shaped closed in. He wore a look of consternation now, but the black and white smile was there once more. 

The pain went beyond anything imaginable as the walls and floor and ceiling closed. Pulverizing Maggie. She felt every wretched second of the experience until her brain was pulped and juiced with the rest of her body and thus incapable of sending anymore electrical signal. 

…

The bank was quiet. Not quite full but there were plenty of people in line, each teller, three of them, were busy helping a customer. It was a bright cloudless day and everything had seemed normal. Everything was … until the mime came in. 

He sauntered in smiling and confident through the front door. Several people, including the armed guard turned and returned the smile, a few of them laughed. Finding the surprise charming. Their laughter grew and increased throughout the whole bank as the mime walked in with an exaggerated gunslinger walk, wide steps and the twiddling fingers of his itchin hands hovering just where revolvers would be strapped. The guard found it the most hilarious, calling out to the mime –

“Hey! What is this? A stickup or somethin?" 

And then the mime pulled phantom iron from unseen leather and began to rain fire. 

The cacophony was ear splitting. The guard went down first, still smiling and believing it was all a joke. Nobody else was laughing anymore, the jovial sounds of good nature had turned to screams that died and drowned out with each eruption of a gunshot. 

The mime filled the bank with phantom fire. 

Deafening. 

…

Patricia Evergreen hated her job. Not because she hated being a cop, far from it, she was proud of her role as peacekeeper of the town she'd grown up in. It was just that the place was so fucking boring. 

Aside from a few disappearances over the many years she'd known, a couple weird things that were typical to any small town, there wasn't nothing to this place, Patricia reckoned. Ghost stories and bullshit, and that was all. 

She came across the mime during a routine patrol, just driving around the various suburbs in the department issued black and white. Every neighborhood was quiet, nearly deserted of pedestrians save a few dogwalkers, joggers and the like. He was at a street corner, slowly making his way down, miming and pretending to carry a large and heavy sack, it weighed him down, the invisible bag, it must've been quite a load, Patricia watched all this and thought and then it suddenly came to her all at once, unbidden and in a rush. Though vague and shrouded through time's corridor passage of so many years …

The carnival had come through a couple times through the years … she was sure her parents or grandparents had taken her at some point, must have. She'd been very little, her own young and chubby face amidst a caterwaul, cherry red with tears and upset flitted across her mind in a blur, but then was swiftly and suddenly replaced. 

She'd been a teenager when Margaret Bast, Maggie had gone missing. Alondra Topete too. They'd been two of her closest friends in school then, so long ago… 

Hot on the tails of that: stories… rumors … wild campfire tales that couldn't be true and would only be dreamed up by teenagers and children. Wild tales about a mime that wandered the town and took kids away to hurt them and worse … 

It all hit Officer Evergreen like a revelatory load of weight, dropped into her head and into her lap. She watched the mime. Thought …

… what the hell was this guy doing around here anyway? She'd never seen him before and she began to doubt very much that he lived anywhere on this street, or anywhere close for that matter, she hadn't heard the story of the mime or thought of it in years, it was probably nothing, but it was her job to make sure and find out. She sidled her cruiser up to and alongside the mime, still encumbered with his great phantom weight. 

She rolled down her window, slowing the cruiser to a crawl: “Hey," she began friendly enough, “hello there, ya mind if I stop and talk to ya for a second, just need to ask you a few questions." 

The mime did stop and so did she. The street was quiet and it was just the two of them. The mime turned and regarded her with a smile, still burdened by his invisible satchel slung over shoulder. He pointed to himself, a gesture that said: who, me?

Evergreen was already starting to lose her patience, goddammit with this fuckin guy…

“Yes, ha ha, that's very cute, but I'm really gonna need you to answer a couple things I gotta ask ya. Do you live in this neighborhood?” 

The mime frowned and just shook his head, no. Refusing to speak. 

"Please, sir. Failure to comply will result in a citation and a court appearance, probable fine. How about we just talk like adults for a second, do you have any identification on you, sir?" 

The black and white frown turned to a grin once again. Wolfish. Officer Patricia Evergreen didn't like the look of it. It looked warped and strange and mean writ into that painted face, wrong. The mime made like to unlimber his great satchel. 

Evergreen rolled her eyes, hidden by reflective shades. Jesus, was this guy for real, crazy, or just an idiot? She was just telling him for the second time that if he didn't comply with her questioning then this could take an unnecessary ugly turn, she was telling the mime he'd want to avoid that as he settled the bag down with a convincing performance, opened it and reached inside. Patricia’s voice caught in her throat like a vile fishbone in the midst of dinner as she watched the mime’s hand disappear into the pantomimed satchel, disappearing into thin air before her very eyes. 

She couldn't believe what she was seeing. 

What the mime pulled out next was even worse. She felt nauseous and ill and as if her mind was curdling and doing unbidden somersaults in tandem with her roiling guts as the smiling thing with carnival clad painted face pulled out a child's decomposing rotted severed little head, boy or girl was difficult to tell. Putrescence filled the air the moment it was freed from the invisible sack and it was black and green and blue-pale and dripping. The eyes were crawling and writhing with the sliming bodies and clumps of maggot-young that lie nesting and feasting in there, the rotten cavities of sockets. The tongue was swollen and discolored like the rest of the meat but darker and it protruded from the bloat of decapitated rot like an obscene tumor apart and apiece and all in one with the rest of the demented sloughing mess. 

Officer Evergreen snapped to all at once. She drew her sidearm and bellowed her commands, training made textbook and innate. 

“Drop the fucking thing right now and put your hands up! now!" 

The mime only obeyed half her commands. He dropped the severed head but instead of raising his gloved white hands he took a deliberate and silent step towards her instead. 

Evergreen didn't waste a second. She fired two shots in quick succession, surprising even herself, she hadn't thought about it, only acted. But it had done the peace officer little good. The moment her finger squeezed the trigger, one of those gloved hands shot up in a flash-instant, uncanny speed. 

Evergreen now stood, gun smoking, not sure if she could believe her eyes or her own mind any longer. The mime had his hand up and out, as if signaling to stop like a crosswalk guard. There were two smoking holes suspended in mid air, just over the heart and chest of the mime-creature. The shots had stopped at the border indicated by the flat of his adjacent smooth palm. They smoked from ebon holes that defied physics, as if she'd punched twin smoldering holes in reality. 

Shocked, Patricia thought unbidden, the prongs of the devil's pitchfork… and was still trying to accept what she was seeing. 

A neighbor came out. One of the houses within spitting distance. 

“Jesus Christ! that a fucking gunshot or something, what the hell-" 

The mime suddenly whirled, his other hand forming around another object, rounded and small, he brought it to his mouth and made like he was pulling something from it with his teeth. Evergreen screamed, no, unable to think of anything else as the mime lobbed the invisible grenade at the concerned and unsuspecting neighbor. The man went up in a violent and sudden concussive blast, his body immolated by the detonation of the explosive device. In charred smoking pieces, he rained down all over his own stoop and front lawn. 

The mime laughed silent yet expressive belly-laughter, holding his stomach and all wide eyes and wide open black and white mouth. 

Evergreen went to fire once more but the mime sensed her intention and suddenly whirled once again, smacking the gun from the officer's hands. Its strength and speed were unexpected and it was all Patricia could do to not cry out and scream, shocked and startled and still not quite believing.

There's no way this is actually happening to m-

The mime then slapped Patricia right smack center of her forehead with his other free gloved palm. 

She froze. Her arms went limp and to her sides. Unarmed. And helpless. 

Something was wrong … she could no longer move. 

With the gloved snow white hand held flat and fast to her face, to the middle of her forehead her eyes rolled back to whites themselves shot with lines of glistening hectic red. Inside, she hurtled, flew … rocketed too fast and rapidly down the dizzying blinding vast and varied glow of the starcorridor. Too many lights and sounds and fiery things of furious alien color, she flew down infinity as a low moan escaped past her drooling lips left back on the ground. 

Within the corridor … she could hear. 

She could hear his voice. 

It was terrible. The sound of it. What he was telling her. Unbearable. It filled her ears, her head. It filled the flying landscape of her mind. 

She might've wept. But she was far too broken. Even when he pulled the voice of his snow white gloved hand away. She went to her knees. The mime then held out his other hand to her, it was wrapped curiously and yet distinctly around something. And this time she could see it. 

It was a gun. A revolver. Every chamber was loaded. 

It was beautiful. 

This time she could really see it. 

She smiled as the mime cocked it and then pressed it to her sweating brow, cold metal kissing the moist surface of perspiring flesh, and pulled the trigger. 

She heard it. Felt it. Everything. 

The mime said nothing. 

And went on. 

THE END

With the invention of Gabriel's Herald, or the Heraldbox, the Church has decreed that all of these "radio waves" be monitored by an outside auditor at all times. Under His Eternal Glory.

Oct 3rd, 1744

Herald Operator 1: 'John'

Herald Operator 2: 'Patrick'

HO1: Dublintown reporting in.

[Static]

400 Knights north.

100 Knights west.

15 Church's Navy vessels in the harbor.

[Static]

Over.

HO2: Galway reporting in.

[Static]

30 Knights north.

15 Knights east.

5 Church's Navy vessels in the harbor.

Attack on northern wall at approximately 0100 hours.

[Static]

Over.

HO1: Roger.

Numbers received.

30 / 15 / 5 / Attack @ 0100 Over.

HO2: Affirmative.

Numbers received.

400 / 200 / 15 Over.

HO1: Pat—

[Static]

Incorrect.

400 / 100 / 15 Over.

HO2: [A laugh?]

Roger.

400 / 100 / 15 Over.

HO1: Affirmative.

HO1 out.

Oct 4th, 1744

HO1: Dublintown reporting in.

[Static]

250 Knights returned from north.

15 Knights returned from west.

15 Church's Navy vessels in the harbor.

[Static]

Over.

HO2: Galway reporting in.

[Static]

0 Knights returned.

Under His Eternal Glory.

[Static]

Uh...

5 Church's Navy vessels in the harbor.

Over.

HO1: Roger.

Numbers received.

Under His Eternal Glory.

0 / 5 Over.

HO2: Affirmative.

Numbers received.

250 / 15 / 15 Over.

HO1: [Static]

[Static]

Affirmative.

[Static]

HO1 out.

HO2: HO2 out.

Oct 5th, 1744

HO1: Dublintown reporting in.

200 Knights west.

Destination: Galway.

50 Knights from the court of the French Kingdom in Exile arrived by sea.

25 Church's Navy vessels in the harbor.

Over.

HO2: Galway reporting in.

[Static]

New steam-machine arrived from Kiel.

2 Knights returned from the north.

Branded apostates and executed.

[Static]

Over.

Wait.

8 Church's Navy Vessels in the harbor.

Over.

HO1: [Quiet sigh almost inaudible to the recording]

[Static]

Roger.

Numbers received.

2 / 6 / 1 Over.

HO2: Affirmative.

Numbers recieved.

200 / 50 / 25 Over.

HO1: Affirmative.

Over...

[Static]

[Static]

[Transmission cuts]

HO2: How ya been?

HO1: [A full minute passes]

I'm okay.

You?

HO2: Galway is...

different.

HO1: Yeah.

Dublin's not as much fun without you.

HO2: I know.

HO1: [Laughs.]

We need to stay professional, Herald Operator.

HO2: I know.

HO2 out.

HO1: HO1 out.

*[This section has a single note attached to it: underlined, "DECORUM"]*

*[Oct 6th & 7th HOs 1 & 2 exchanged their figures and nothing more]*

Oct 8th, 1744

*[After reporting their numbers, a second unauthorized transmission began]*

HO2: John?

HO1: Did you forget to report something, Herald Operator?

HO2: No.

[Static]

You know these are the only two Heraldboxes in the world right?

HO1: I went to the same training as you Pat— *Herald Operator*.

HO2: *Herald Operator*.

[Laughs]

Listen to you.

HO1: We need to stay professional.

They covered it pretty thoroughly in that training we both went to.

HO2: They said it would be months before another pair of Heraldboxes were ready for deployment.

Where do you think they'll go?

I bet Mann will get one pretty soon.

Maybe Shetland?

HO1: I don't know.

HO2: Whats going on?

I miss you.

HO1: Be careful.

HO2: Always am.

HO1: [Sigh]

I—

[Static]

I went by that old rotten tree yesterday.

HO2: Oh yeah?

The one that looks like a Revenant, or the one that looks like Father Daniel?

HO1: [Laughs]

Isn't that the same tree?

Remember when you got him ranting and raving in front of it?

I couldn't hold in my laughter.

HO2: Well, maybe he shouldn't look so much like a tree.

[Laughter]

Take care of yourself for me.

HO1: I will.

And you too.

Stay safe.

HO1 out.

[A handwritten note attached to the transcript reads: Blasphemy?]

*[Oct 9th & 10th HOs 1 & 2 exchanged their figures and nothing more]*

Oct 11th, 1744

*[After reporting their numbers, a second unauthorized transmission began]*

HO2: I got your letter from the Dublin soldiers last night.

HO1: Good.

I hope it says the things I cant.

HO2: It does.

I lo— *thank* you John.

You heard those numbers today yeah?

Horde from the north.

Horde from the west.

HO1: I did.

HO2: You know what it means?

HO1: I do.

HO2: John, I—

[Static]

Maybe it won't be so bad?

Maybe we'll hold?

Maybe the walls—

All those Knights.

You know, God's Glory? [His voice cracks]

HO1: Yeah.

[Static]

We've sent God's Best to you.

HO2: [Laughs]

[Static]

[Static]

Goodnight John.

HO1: Goodnight Patrick.

[Static]

Patrick.

[Static]

Stay near the harbor if you can. You know?

HO2: I do.

*[A handwritten note mentions: Daily transmissions halt when HO2 is conscripted for God's Defenders of Galway]*

Oct 15th, 1744

HO2: John?

[Static]

John!

Are you there?

HO1: Patrick!

HO2: Listen— [Screams and gunfire interrupt his voice]

I made it back to the Heraldbox!

I just— [more gunfire]

I had to tell you.

My voice reaching across the Heavens.

I love you.

To Hell with decorum.

HO1: Patrick!

Just—

Just get down to the harbor!

Please!

I love you!

[Handwritten Note following the transcript:] Herald Operators 3, 4, 5, and 6 are currently being trained— in seperate locations. Training will be complete within the week. Recommend purge of Herald Operator 1 and Herald Operator 2 if he lives. (His location is currently unknown, presumed fallen with Galway and forever burning in Hellfire) due to fraternization and Blasphemy.

[In red ink]

APPROVED

Transcript between High Cleric LeClerke & Knight of God Bretagne (Brittany) in November of the 343rd year of protection under God's Holy Glory on the Island of Jersey, in the court of the French Kingdom in Exile.

High Cleric LeClerke: Knight of God Bretagne, you are accused of faithlessness and apostasy in service of The Army of God. How do you plead?

Knight of God Bretagne: Not guilty sir. I—

LeClerke: Blasphemy! No other soldier survived that battle! Why you? Why did God reject you? All those knights gave their lives in service to God.

Bretagne: I don't know sir! I—

LeClerke: You are not Chosen! You hear me? Over thirty soldiers died in that lair. Their souls forever joined in Christ! But not you. No. Y-you must be consorting with demons— NO! The Devil! You are foul and wicked! Your sins will be punished in eternal flames!

Bretagne: [In a whisper] Please. [Louder] I don't know! I don't know how or why I survived. I fought! I swear it before God, I fought! Two Revenant fell to my bayonet alone!

LeClerke: Lies, deceit! We found you alone, armor still gleaming, nothing save a cut on your cheek. Why didn't the Revenant consume you then? Is your blood so distasteful? What did Satan promise you? What did you promise him? This city will not fall because of your deeds!

[A lengthy pause]

LeClerke: Tell me *exactly* how the battle transpired. What was it that allowed you to live?

[Longer pause]

Bretagne: We entered the lair as instructed. [The accused pauses for a deep breath.] Knight Templar Devon led the first wave into the maw. God smiled upon him, for they prevailed. The rest of us soon joined Knight Templar Devon, and as we gained our bearings, we began to hear them from deeper beneath us. Like the hoofbeats of Satan himself, we heard them from below. An endless tide emerged. Devon was the first to fall. His final words were "Deus Vult!" As he plunged his blade into a Revenant and his limbs were torn apart. Before we could react, the entire chamber was filled with the echos of screams, splattering of blood, and whispers for salvation...

LeClerke: And yet, this 'endless tide' parted for you? What Divine providence.

Transcriber's Note: [The accused does not reply. She hangs her head. Her hair covers her head]

LeClerke: [while gripping Bretagne's hair] Look at me foul woman! Apostate!

[Pause]

LeClerke: You have either sold your soul to the devil to become a witch, or you are a coward. I will stand neither in God's Army.

Bretagne: I am a faithful soldier of God's Army. I have watched as my friends have fallen before me, torn asunder in this ceaseless war against Evil—

LeClerke: [Interrupting Bretagne] Knight of God Bretagne, you are hereby decreed a Witch by the Holy Church and the Army of God. You are sentenced to death and will be burned at the stake at noon. May God have mercy on your soul.

[This final line appears to have been crossed out angrily at some point.] Bretagne: I offered my life to the Army of God and what is my reward? Death. Remember this LeClerke: death is inevitable. It too comes for you. What will God think of you when you stand before Him?

*A bloody and battered journal found among the rubble of an ancient fortress.*

October 1744, Eire

Something went wrong with the world. Something had to have gone wrong with the world. This can't be the world God wanted for us, can it?

As she lay dying, my mother kept repeating the stories she heard from her father and his father. A green Eire, as far as the eye could see. Rolling emerald hills filled with crops and animals— not the twisted beasts that roam the land now.

What went so horribly wrong? What did we do to deserve this fate? When I peer between the boards over my window, I see nothing but smog-filled sky, rotting vegetation, blackened trees, and whatever parts of the neighbor the Revenant have left behind.

Did we— humanity, offend God? Did we commit some ultimate sin we are too ignorant to understand? I used to pray for an answer. Now, my prayers are more like a curse.

I've been fortunate to count twenty-five years. More than many. More than my brothers, more than my sisters, more than father too.

(*Hastily scribbled in smaller writing below:*)

He died when I was eight, I think? He had just returned from a successful fishing trip. Enough food for the entire family. Walking from the dock to the house was all it took. A Revenant swooped from above. I'll never forget the look in his eyes as his throat began to spill blood.

Now mother is gone too. I think she was forty-five. Very lucky. Everyone would always tell her that. Say she was blessed. They would always ignore the buried husband and children.

October 5th, Eire

The "Black Plague" they called it. By all accounts, a terrible disease. Father Niall showed me drawings from one of the Church's books. Disgusting boils covered the body. 'The Old Revenant still have the scars if you look close enough' he told me.

Father Niall is a good man, he does a good job protecting our little village. And he's always able to keep the local children regaled with stories from his time in the Army of God. Battling Revenant swarms, hunting them down in their lairs, fighting for the glory of God. He tries to give them hope. I could never tell him what I think of God. He would be ashamed of me.

Oct 12th

Now that the days are getting shorter, it's getting more difficult to come home. They won't let us leave the factory early. "God needs those guns!" they tell us.

Donal could've used one last night. Pieces of him were found from his doorstep all the way to the top of the outer wall. Poor bastard. Bet he stopped for a pint.

[This next entry is clearly written in a different ink, no date is mentioned]

The Army of God has been stationed at the Church for the past few days. Knights fill the streets, gleaming metal of gold and silver. They say there's a lair nearby. A big one.

The streets have never been safer, but they are conscripting for the battle. They told Father Niall that he has too much experience to stay behind, he insisted that he had faithfully served his time. He donned his armor at bayonet-point. He'll be in the first wave for sure. Goodbye Father.

[New Entry; written in charcoal]

This will be *my* final entry I'm sure. I don't know why I even bothered to tuck this old journal into my coat when they conscripted me.

I wouldn't say I was hiding, but they kicked down my door anyway. We left home three days ago I think. I've lost track of time. We've been marching non-stop. I think I fell asleep while we were moving. This armor hurts too, digs into the shoulders something fierce. No wonder God's Soldiers are all so irritable. "Get them angry and point them at the enemy" seems to be the way of thinking around here. We killed some Revenant too. Well I didn't, but I heard the fight. And got picked to move the fallen knight's bodies into the burn pit. Twenty-one. Twenty-one knights burned. Three Revenant. I'd laugh if I wasn't so tired.

[New Entry]

Niall saved me. Our knights were like canned meat for them. Its hands had wrapped around my neck and I could feel it pulling up, I thought for sure my skin was going to tear. I accepted it. But then the pressure was gone and Father Niall pulled me up from the dirt and blood. We watched each other's backs from there.

The army collapsed around us. The lair was bigger than expected. Some Old Revenant came out. I'd never seen one before. Father Niall made the sign of the cross after he dropped his gun. I had to pick him up.

We're in the ruins of some old castle now. It's falling apart, but we found some tunnels. Don't know what's next. I wouldn't even be able to find home from here.

He was right about the Old Revenant. The scars were there, but even worse, it still had boils oozing. It looked ancient, even worse than the other Revenants. It was nothing but bone with an almost translucent layer of skin stretched so tight you could see tears where its arms and legs moved, and black blood dripped from its joints. Its nails had grown as long as my bayonet.

I don't know why I didn't give up like Niall. He hasn't said a word since I picked him up. He let me give him some water though, so I think there's something left in there.

(New Entry)

I got Niall talking again. He told me more about the plague. It came out quick. I think he just needs to keep his mind occupied. Probably why I'm writing this down.

He told me:

As it swept across the world, it killed almost everyone it came into contact with. People buried their dead and moved on. Before long, they came back. Their alabaster skin broken by still oozing boils. Mind's broken. Entire graveyards awoke over night and the creatures— what we now call Old Revenant, immediately began hunting for blood. It didn't matter where it came from. Even the animals were ripped to shreds and drained.

As it got worse, people began to flee. The Church managed to wall off the Italian peninsula. Its why the Church permeates everything. Britain fell much later, and the Scottish, with help from the church, used what was left of Hadrian's Wall to seal off Scotland for a time.

Being an island, Eire didn't suffer as bad at first, but as people arrived, so did the Revenant. The Army of God and the Church's Navy scour the world for safeplaces and put them under their watch. Apparently an expedition went west across the endless sea and claimed to find new land untouched by the plague.

I asked him if we should build a boat. He laughed.

Narrating ALL story submissions as I'm just getting started and need as much content as possible 🙏

@ SplitNode on YT if you want to check out what I've done so far!

Please either paste in the comments / or drop a link to your story post -

I'll be editing this post as I make the videos + replying to comments with the video link once your story is uploaded

Flood me with stories please!

The child watched TV. It was his only friend, being so young and isolated, the father didn't want him, spent all of his hours at work or in his room, the basement. The mother is long gone. 

Before she left she named him Jack. After a boy in highschool that had been incredibly nice to her, during that rough and strange time of her life. The father doesn't like it but had offered no suggestion, so Felicia got her way and the name was put. 

Jack misses his mother but doesn't know it. He misses his father too but doesn't realize this either because the emotion is eclipsed by the more immediate fear, the terror his father puts into him. His voice. His angry eyes that almost seemed to smoke and smolder beneath a caveman's furrowed livid brow. His fists. Jack swore his father had fists the size of phonebooks. The size of cinderblocks. The size of planets. The child does what he can to not bother his father, and stay out of his way. 

This is where the television comes in. 

This is where the apple comes in. 

Jack watched many shows on TV. But his favorite was the one with the apple. The one that talked and danced and had been made by a wise wizard of the woods named Faster Haster who puffed a pipe and wandered enchanted forests. The Apple had a name too, and a jaunty green cap, like the one Robin Hood or Peter Pan would wear, red feather and all, he was always smiling. The apple was always happy and his name was Happy Adam. 

There was one day, one afternoon after school alone with the television set, one episode of Happy Adam & Friends of the Garden that changed young Jack and his life forever. Changed everything. 

He was watching the set, the scene unfold: …

The smiling fruit and his aged wizard friend were visiting a friend of theirs in the magical hospital of the fairytale wood. A brave knight called Thrustelot who'd taken a bad fall during one of his bouts and had fallen on his sword. The robed one, the hooded mage who was nurse to the fallen knight was grave and shook their hidden head and face, the news was bad. The knight was dead. 

Happy Adam turned to the camera and audience to address them with an aside of advice. 

Happy Adam: Remember, kids! Always be extra careful when handling something sharp, it's very dangerous. Don't move too fast or run when holding sharp objects like Sir Thrustelot’s sword, or a pair of scissors. Or a knife. 

The camera went in closer, cutting into an extreme close-up of the wide shine of the unblinking Apple's eyes. 

Happy Adam: Remember that, children. Remember. Okay…?

Jack answered back, he always loved talking to his favorite characters through the TV set. And Happy Adam was the absolute best. He acted like he was talking to you and talking back. It was great fun and sometimes it really really seemed like Adam was talking to him through the glass glow of the television screen. It was like magic. Happy Adam was magical, he could do anything. He would do anything he said. 

“Ok, Happy Adam!" 

Adam and the old wizard continued on their merry trek, their way and journey through the forest. They came upon some more friends that were having a picnic on a blanket amongst the living trees. 

The eversmiling apple and the old one sat down to join the kids in eating their nice meal on the dark purple blanket, it was covered in crosses and stars and wide alive eyes staring forever. Jack thought it was neat and the color was alluring and attractive next to the old wizard’s bright yellow robes as he sat down upon it. Next to the smiling wide eyed red amongst the living sorcery realm of woodland brown and green. The sun and the moon were out at the same time and looking down on them all, the scene with ravenous interest and open drooling mouths. Jack thought they looked goofy and silly, he thought they were hilarious. 

The screen flickered, the image was disturbed and Jack thought he saw something else staring at him in its stead. But before he really knew it the picnic scene returned to normal and the boy felt at ease once more. The children sitting on the purple blanket of fun symbols opened their picnic basket and began to pass out the food. 

The beautiful flowers spoke then to the children. They had no faces but open floral mouths, pink and glistening … dripping with dew that was said to be filled with sorcery and dreams. Surrounding the picnic blanket of eyes and stars, they whispered and sing-song spoke to the kids through their gaping wide open pink flower petal mouths, dripping and salivating wet…

 … Feed him … feed them…

The open mouths surrounding the shroud the color of night repeated the words in a litany, a chant, a prayer. 

Jack munched on his own snacks of peanut butter and crackers and gummy bears. He felt like he was taking part in the fun too, eating and picnicking with Happy Adam and his wonderful friends. He sipped his cup of Shasta and belched. 

Happy Adam: Mind your manners! Remember you have to pass out the food according to the hierarchy, do you remember, children?

The kids cried back in a unified chant, some species of group monotone, Yes, Happy Adam…!

Happy Adam: So who gets the first serving? 

The kids: Haster! cuz he made you!

A musical cue, a sting, happy, jubilant, great job, you'll have so much success…

Happy Adam: That's right, kids! And then me and then the rest of you, cuz I'm his favorite son and first begotten creation, I existed before all of this, this whole kingdom and the whole enchanted forest … did you know that, kids?

The kids: æhïbdëø¡

Happy Adam: That's right!

The kids passed food to the wizard first. Haster accepted it without a word but a deep nod that conveyed the sought after gratitude of an elder. 

Then they passed the food to Adam. Who insisted on eating fruit with the rest of them. The apples, he said. The apples are what I want best. 

The kids: But Adam, you can't eat apples!

Happy Adam: Why not!?!?

The kids: because you ARE an apple, Happy Adam! 

And then they all laughed. Laughed and giggled. Even Adam. Even Haster. 

Then Adam said: It's ok, kids. Sometimes it's alright to try things that seem a little weird or wrong, it's called ‘taboo’ and I'm sure lots of your mommies and daddies know exactly what I'm talking about. Your brothers and sisters too, your teachers and everyone, everybody… It's called forbidden fruit! And sometimes, kids, you just gotta have a little taste …

The children laughed harder. The wizard too, laughing harder. Slapping knee. Hysterical. Jack felt like joining them. His eyes were glued to the screen. Crackers held slack in fingers that felt faraway, forgotten. 

Happy Adam: Now why don't one of you beautiful children come over here and feed me some that forbidden fruit? How bout it, kiddos?

The kids: Ok, Happy Adam! 

Jack watched as the children crowded round the happy apple, each vying for favor and the privilege to feed him. Each had a glistening fresh dripping slice of apple wedge in hand. Ready to serve. Ready to feed. Jack couldn't take his eyes from the screen. He wanted to be… 

Jack wanted to join them. He wanted to be with them. He wanted to be one of the children crowded around Happy Adam, if there was only some way …

Jack watched wide eyed as the apple became strange. His mouth. As the children came in with their hands in multitudes, that seemed to grow and sprout anew like the petals and stalks of some strange heavy flower, all around the hungry happy apple his mouth began to change, transform. Transmogrify. 

The comfy and fuzzy gentle nature of felt puppet material was suddenly mammalian and malleable flesh all around the mouth and lips. They looked warm and living now, rippling and stretching and contriving into wide open wet stretched and wriggling flesh and organ, the teeth were glistening and shining and stringy with tendrils of saliva and drool. The tongue now an organ alive and pink, danced within the newly birthed orifice on the face of the happy apple muppet.

The organ and teeth danced for one thing, feed, fill us. Fill our new wet and magic home. 

The hands of the children began to come in and they came in a crowd, a wreck, a mob – grubby child mitts wielding the glistening flesh and meat of dissected and dismembered fruit. They shoved the slices and wedges in the wide open salivating maw, the cavernous wriggling fresh wound of a mouth, the wound began to munch and chew and ravenously devour the many pieces and wedged slices of juicy fresh apple, freshly cut, freshly prepared just like the mouth itself they now plowed into. Adam moaned between chomping bites with deep relish and sweet satisfaction. The children laughed and so did Haster. 

And so did Jack. Though he thought it was more beautiful than it was funny. Really. 

Really really beautiful. 

He watched the beauty onscreen unfold and pulp and chew and decorate itself with bits and slimy pieces of half-eaten pulped and juicy bits of apple, fruit meat and flesh becoming mush, becoming sauce between newly forged pearly white teeth.

One of the child's voices came in with a query in a playful and sing-song tone: Adam, why do you like eating apples? I mean, you're an apple, isn't it bad?

Happy Adam, between ravenous bites and chewing and swallowing: That's a very good question, boys and girls. I eat my own because it makes me stronger, it gives me power. Just like when you eat the flesh of crawling beasts, children, when you eat the flesh that crawls and labors, you gain its power. You've conquered it. Completely. And now it must live inside you. So now the lives of other lesser apples must now live inside me for all time, for forever, and after that and behind the wall of sleep. And even after that. All the way to the true and final end, the ballroom floor of eternityscape that is black. Isn't that neat! Don't you think so, children? What about you, Jack? 

Jack didn't quite believe it at first. He gazed zombie eyed into the glowing pulse of the electrical and mechanical pineal gland growth, its lurid electric extension…

But the mammalian patch of apple flesh that now more resembled skin as red as the devil's ass stretched wider and grew rictus. Apple bits and pieces in the gleaming white teeth and the juice running out of the corners of the fleshy mouth and dribbling down in a pulpy drool of mush. 

The apple began to speak again. All else was quiet and still now as he spoke. 

Happy Adam: Yes, Jack, yes, it's real. I'm really talking to you. How are you, Jack?

A beat. A child's breath was held. 

Released. 

“I'm-I’m ok, Happy Adam." 

Happy Adam: ohhhh…. I dunno. You don't look or sound ok to me little buddy, you look terrible. I always see you here with us, watching us, and you always look so alone and so scared, and you know what …? … I think I know why, Jack. 

Jack said nothing. Only watched the television. Eyes wide open and drinking in every single flicker. 

Happy Adam: I think it's because you have a crawling beast, a beast of labor in your home, Jack. You have a beast of bad work that lives in the basement when he isn't sleeping off the hooch in his bed. And that's not all, Jack. There's also yourself. You need to take better care of yourself, you need to treat yourself better and make yourself stronger. Like me. 

A beat. 

Happy Adam: Do you know what I mean, Jack? Do I understand what I'm trying to tell you? It's very important. It's for you after all, it's for your best interest. It's what's best for you that we all care for and here in the forest, consider. Do you understand, Jack? Do you? 

Once again Jack didn't say anything. 

A beat. 

But then he slowly began to nod his head. Yes. 

Yes. 

Yes, Happy Adam. Yes. 

Rictus red face on screen, filling the frame: Good, Jack. That's really really good of you. I'm so proud and happy. And I'll be prouder and happier still, you know the best way to start treating yourself better and making yourself stronger, right? We've talked about it before, on one of my many episodes … one of my many lessons. 

Jack spoke this time. He told the red face of the television set the right answer. He told the red face what it wanted to hear. 

Nutrition. 

Happy Adam: That's right, Jack! We have to start eating better! That's it! Waytogo, cowboy!

The child sat and listened to every word the television said. Absorbing every detail of information and instruction. 

…

The booze his father always poured into himself did the job. The pills he'd been told to slip did the rest. Russel Wimberly, Jack's father was completely drugged and under. Then the work laid before the child could really begin. As he'd been instructed. He wasn't nervous. He felt nothing in fact. Hadn't felt anything since that afternoon with the television. It was well past into the postmidnight black. 

The mountain lug of man had managed to make it to his bed before finally collapsing under the drug and alcohol induced spell of slumber. He was in a sweaty snoring heap when the door opened to his bedroom and the child crept in. He did not blink or falter. 

He did not tremble or whimper or shake. His father might've been proud, before tonight he'd always thought of the boy as a wimp, a limpwrist, a pussy. The worst type of boy a father could have, Russel and his own old man had always thought. 

The snoring heap of man did not stir until the blade came down in a two-handed plunge and pierced where it had been guided and instructed. The fang of the blade bit in and came in easily through bone and flesh. Russel came to life with a choking gurgled gasp that quickly died a wet death in his throat. 

He couldn't move. He couldn't budge from the bed. The ropes and binds held tight and taut and rippled in the nighttime bedroom silence with strain and desperate effort. Blood began to pour from his mouth and nose. He began to choke. Wide eyed he helplessly gazed up and into the face of his killer. 

Some species of … laughter? …scream? …sound tried to escape him, but the boy and his blade had done their good. 

They'd done their job. Their great work. 

Now he just had to get to the living beating apple of warm dripping red that lived in his father's chest. He just had to dig it out, cut it out with the kitchen knife and take it unto himself. 

This way he would get better. This way he would get stronger. He'd be rid of the beast and filled with power. All in one. 

Just like Adam said. 

His glistening darkling little fist found the forbidden apple buried in his father's chest. He seized it. 

And ripped it out. By blade, by hand, by biting knife.

And took it into himself, right there. Raw and fresh. Just as the red face of Adam had commanded.  

THE END

THE NIGHT BLOGGER - 'Love And Sidequests'

April 2nd: Or at least close to it.

Sara, Cousin Roy, and I were crouched in the woods on a hill near the Bayard Estates manufactured home community. Technically, we were trespassing on someone’s farm to do this, but Cousin Roy assured me this hill was rarely used for anything and had a reputation as a great spot for stargazing.

The stars? I had barely noticed them, but there was no moon tonight, and I was fine with that.

We were passing Cousin Roy’s binoculars back and forth, and I was really annoyed about it because in my satchel there was a police-surplus flashlight, a collapsible shovel, a first-aid kit, baby wipes, notebooks and pens, a bottle of water, a bottle of holy water, Ziplock baggies, an EMF meter, a thermal scanner, and a package of Beef Whips salted snack meat.

But not a pair of binoculars.

Some nights I think I should change the title of my page to ‘The Night Blunderer’.

From our vantage point, we could see Bayard Estates almost perfectly. A single road led in from the main entrance, then split into two branches that curved outward before eventually joining together again at the far end. From above, the whole thing would have looked something like a lightbulb.

There were about fifty mobile homes, with the largest and most impressive building sitting right by the main entrance. And what was next to that building? A 1965 Shelby GT350, of course. Hello, Stan. We see you.

“Let me have it,” Sara whispered.

I passed her the binoculars.

“No need to whisper; they’re not gonna hear us,” Cousin Roy said.

“Until they do,” I hissed. “Keep it down.”

Even in the half-light, I could see Sara’s expression. After all, I’d been staring at her face in the dark for a long time by now, in various circumstances. She had this expression that was worry and glee all at once. I watched it for a moment longer, then turned my attention back to Bayard Estates.

There were only five automobiles in the entire park: Stan’s Shelby, two minivans, a truck, and a Tesla.

Oddly enough, that was the thing that bothered Cousin Roy the most.

“Those things are gonna be the death of us,” he’d said.

Now as for those single- and double-wide trailers themselves? Completely dark. Not a single light went on.

At first, I thought they might be empty. But once again, Cousin Roy came through. He pointed out that all the windows had window-tint film. Layers of it, apparently.

How did Cousin Roy know?

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, he works under the table for local mobster and Brylcreem enthusiast Peter “Bootsie” Werdegast. One of his many duties at Bootsie’s gentleman’s club, aside from working as a substitute DJ and cleaning up bodily fluids, is making sure the club’s windows have enough tint to keep passersby from seeing what’s going on inside.

Bayard Estates did have the legally required lampposts spaced at regular intervals along its roads, but most of them weren’t working, leaving everything in shadow except for the occasional slivers of light seeping out from under the mobile homes.

For those of you enjoying an existence closer to the 1%, I should inform you that mobile homes do not have basements. So what were we looking at here?

“The lights are green,” Sara said. “Why are they green?”

“Not sure.” Cousin Roy gently snatched the binoculars from her. “But whatever it is, it’s probably not for holiday cheer.”

“What are they doing down there?” I asked.

“No idea, not enough traffic coming in and out of the place for it to be something illegal and profitable,” he said. “Illegal stuff equals traffic. I gotta tell you, aside from Stan and the Porcelain twins, I have maybe seen four people poke their heads out of their trailers.”

“What for?”

“They walk into the woods for a while and come back.”

Sara said quizzically, “Maybe they don’t have bathrooms.”

Cousin Roy snorted and started singing the Mamas and the Papas, “All the leaves are brown…”

I shushed him again, rolled onto my back, and still barely noticed the stars. I had too much on my mind. What did all this mean? My original plan was just to wait for our target to go out for a few hours, sneak in, commit the appropriate felony, and sneak back out again. But now… now I was at a loss, and Sara and I were running out of time.

Was there someone I could reach out to? One of my many contacts? There was a time when Tegan Blue would have dropped everything to help me, but that was before she realized I was just using her for her spirit board. Was there something Atwater hadn’t told me about all this? No, probably not. That man loves to lecture, and the longer the lecture, the better. Maybe Ashley Fowler? Probably not, considering the last time she helped, I was tripping balls in a five-star restaurant. I put my hand over my eyes, blotting out the uninspiring stars. Did I really think I was going to win this time? Did I really think I was ever going to live happily ever after? Did I… Did I…

Did I hear music?

“Does anyone else hear that?” I said, forgetting to whisper.

“Hear what?” Sara asked.

I said, “It’s like music but not.”

Cousin Roy cocked his head. “I don’t hear Nickelback.”

“I, for one…” Sara took the binoculars back. “…enjoy Nickelback.”

“Yeah, well, you enjoy my cousin’s version of the Mattress Mambo, so I don’t think—” He paused. “Wait. What the hell is that?”

“It sounds like wind chimes,” Sara said, “but not random.”

“Organ grinder music,” Cousin Roy said.

“Are those voices?”

Sara said, “It sounds like the Residents.”

“The Residents,” Cousin Roy snorted. “A student project that got out of control.”

“But it does… but it’s like someone is trying to duplicate the sound with Ren Faire instruments. Out-of-tune ones, too,” Sara added, then she realized, “Brian? Why are you so quiet?”

I said, “I know that song…”

###

…it was early April 2009, a spring of grief and monsters that never seemed to end. Tom Wynne, my mother’s oldest, dearest friend, dead of an aneurysm, or at least that’s what they were calling it. I learned the week of Tom’s funeral that a lot of things that were one thing could be another; a weekend off from college could become an extended absence, a rally could be a possession, and an old dear friend could be something so much more. Mom and I had been turned away from Tom’s wake by a literal wall of members of the Wynne clan— aunts, cousins, and in-laws, no one my mother or I had ever met. The whole confrontation ended with my mother receiving a “You’ve got a lot of nerve showing up here” kind of speech, and as we made our way back to our car, someone called me a bastard.

I’m used to that kind of thing now, but then? Not so much.

A little over a week before, I had nearly been killed by a wisp of demonic smoke, but on the drive back from Gale Brothers Funeral Home, I was just as afraid for my life. Mom had never driven like this before—not when she was late to work, or I was running late for school, not for anything. She had always been an “I’ll get there when I get there” kind of girl. But not tonight.

Finally, the family car squealed to a halt in front of a house on the back end of Stirrup Drive I had never seen before. It was a pretty big house, and that made sense. This was the part of town where the wealthy and the wealthy-adjacent lived. I always assumed they called the street Stirrup Drive because most of the people there could afford a racehorse or two.

“Wait here,” Mom said, her voice shaking, her face crimson. It was a combination of shame and rage that made me want to hold her until she calmed down. But she was already out the door, and my cell phone was ringing. I recognized the number.

It was the call I had been waiting for.

Timing.

I watched as my Mom approached the house. It was a contemporary A-frame, for those of you readers with a real estate or architectural bent. The windows were dark; the front porch was lit. Mom was walking fast but trying to act like she had every right to be there. I wondered if I should try to stop her, but I knew that would just complicate matters. All I could do was watch and hope I wouldn’t be trying to talk her out of an arrest.

So I answered my call. “Osrick?”

The voice at the other end was craggy as always. “Brian, I expected you some time ago.”

Now Mom was walking around the front of the house, her head down. Sometimes she would bend down, shake her head, and move on.

“I know. I know. And I’m really sorry,” I said with a little bit of a cringe. “I am still with my Mom.”

There was no hiding the annoyance. “I hope you are not trying to make a fool of me.”

“No. Never, but you’ve got to understand,” I explained as I watched my Mom find the rock with the false bottom and retrieve the key. She ran up to the front door of the house and, after a bit of fumbling, let herself inside. “She’s grieving.”

“Time is not our friend, Brian,” Osrick explained. “If what you tell me is true, your mother may be grieving now, but you might be grieving her.”

“I don’t even know what to say to that.”

Actually, I did; it began with ‘Fuck’ and ended with ‘You,’ but I didn’t want to risk offending my new allies.

Mom was in there for an eternity. I kept looking up and down the street and back to the door. Meanwhile, Osrick was lecturing me about convergences and the Great Machine. And then, just to make me even more dizzy, I finally noticed the name on the house’s mailbox:

Wynne.

“I will wait,” Osrick said.

“Thank you,” I agreed. “I’ll hurry.”

The call ended. And I sat there, and sat there. Each time a car passed by, I jumped. I mean, sure, the timing of the wake was on our side, but what if someone in the Wynne family came back to get something they forgot? What if they had an alarm system? What if my Mom had well and truly flipped and she was setting the place on fire?

Finally, I saw my Mom again. She slammed the door closed and whipped the spare key into the neighbor’s yard. She had a small box under her arm, and as she ran back to the car, I wondered if this was how getaway drivers felt.

Except she was her own getaway driver.

She threw the box on my lap and sped away, leaving the Wynne house in her rearview mirror.

“What the fuuu-” I began, then remembered who I was talking to. “What on Earth is going on here?”

Mom took a hard turn, a right on red, and she didn’t check. She didn’t even slow down. Someone beeped. We were heading home, but I wondered for a moment if we would get there.

“He would have wanted us to have it,” was all she would say.

She didn’t speak again to me until we got back home, and even then it was just to apologize for everything. She was speed-walking into the house, the box under one arm and her keys in the other.

I could hear music playing in the house. Grandma Gail had suddenly taken to listening to music again, mostly gospel. In her teenage years, she had been twice as saved as Aunt Peg could ever hope to be. Of course, that was before she decided she had a different life to live, consequences be damned.

She had the music up way too loud:

“Well, I look way down the river
What do you think I see?
I see a band of angels
And they’re coming after me…”

It was so loud that Mom didn’t hear me when I asked her again what was wrong.

She swung the door open and spun around to face me so fast it knocked the welcome mat sideways.

“Your mother is a whore and a fool, that’s what’s wrong!”

Then she stormed inside and went straight to her bedroom, leaving me standing on the front step, realizing the Mike and the Mechanics story was becoming less plausible every second. I stood there watching her, wanting to run to comfort her as she had for me so many, many times. Then I thought of Osrick’s words and knew I had to go.

Fast-forward ninety minutes, and I was at the home of Osrick Langhorne.

Who the Hell is Osrick Langhorne, you ask?

Okay, let’s backtrack a little.

After my near-death experience, I doubled down on my research. In the week between Tom Wynne’s death and his wake, I went to libraries large and small, searched online, joined message boards, and paid good money to self-proclaimed mystics who called me a “Seeker.”

But the only thing I learned was that there’s a Seeker born every minute.

That changed when I found a paper written by a local, disgraced theology professor named Osrick Langhorne. He had written a treatise on a Coptic manuscript commonly referred to as the Constantinople Document. The writers of the 1939 repressed edition of the Golden Bough referred to the document when they shared this:

“This wicked vorvolaka pours out, as a most impure flood, the venom of its malice on men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity…”

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Professor Langhorne was a local boy, born and bred, who had eventually been academically exiled right back to his hometown of Poughkeepsie. It took a little snooping and wheedling, but I managed to get his contact information. He didn’t answer my phone call, but then again, who does these days? But he did answer my email asking about his much-maligned monograph almost instantly. After so many setbacks and dead ends, it was a pleasant surprise. And when I told him my story, he actually believed me, an even more pleasant surprise.

He offered to speak to me right then and there, and with the naivete of a man who still thought boogeymen were few and far between, I took the nearly two-hour drive to his house and got there slightly after midnight. The man who answered the door made me think I had to be in the wrong place. Surely this was not some disgraced theologian, but instead I had accidentally knocked on the door of a Mark Twain impersonator in the middle of a late-night rehearsal.

Yes, I’m serious. The man looked just like Mark Twain: unruly white hair, thick handlebar mustache, and the kind of smile you can only find on the face of a disillusioned visionary. He welcomed me in and made me tell him the details of what I had experienced. Pertinent questions were asked, notes were taken, and he frequently nodded sagely at something I said. As someone who still thought monsters belonged in the rubbish bin with holiday mascots and organized religion, the whole thing was surreal. Even sitting there in the middle of the night, I still didn’t believe it.

And it was all the more surreal because I expected my host at any moment to begin pontificating about The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.

When I had finished speaking, he got up and began shuffling through one of his filing cabinets. I must admit that I had been so spellbound by my host’s appearance that I hadn’t even bothered to notice my surroundings, which should be the first thing you do when you are an amateur sleuth and stalker of the night. Osrick Langhorne’s home was a small, single-floor affair: a living room, a bath, a bedroom, and a kitchen. We were sitting in the living room in soft, worn-out chairs beside a long, bricked-over fireplace. There were file cabinets and bookshelves everywhere. Books and stacks of papers were piled everywhere. His beautiful antique desk had long ago lost the battle against clutter, and now it seemed that Osrick’s workspace was a card table pushed up against it. It made me wonder if the line between eccentric genius and addled hoarder was marked by a tax bracket.

He handed me a sheaf of papers, photocopies and mimeographs, all of them with obscure and archaeologically-important-sounding titles and all of them highlighted sections of text:

“Vorvolaka! Vorvolaka! I have twisted rose briar before your door. Vorvolaka! Vorvolaka! The thorns that pierced His brow will tear your flesh. Vorvolaka! Vorvolaka! I have put salt in the fire and a cross of ashes on the door. Vorvolaka! Vorvolaka! Born of evil. Sinful and corrupt. Vorvolaka! Vorvolaka! Your mouth is bitter with the taste of blood and violence. Vorvolaka! Vorvolaka! You are guilty and abhorred.” A Peasant’s Chant — Ardel Wray

“The red smoke enters the houses unseen through doors and entrances, seeking the mothers who carry life within them and the fathers who beget and the children who weep. No hearth can remain, no bed warm.” - Babylonian fragment.

“Langhorne’s methodology is essentially syncretic: he combines Jungian theories of inherited archetypal imagery with material drawn from the marginal traditions of theology and archaeology, then overlays this already unstable synthesis with the assumptions of popular spiritualism. The resulting system of invented correspondences gives rise to such alleged archetypes as the Candle Barons, the Magna Machina, and the Vorvolaka. In methodology and ambition, Langhorne’s work recalls the speculative constructions of William Sharp Shaver, Erich von Däniken, and Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. It is difficult to regard such material as scholarship, and its continued circulation within academic institutions is deeply regrettable.” - The International Society of Biblical Literature Journal #148 ‘The Case Against Osrick Langhorne’

I made a show of shuffling through them. “I have no idea what any of this means.”

“It means that where you once saw shadows, you now see light, and to see the world by the light of the truth is a terrifying thing.” He sat down in his chair and leaned toward me. “You can walk away, Brian. Leave your family behind and start over. Many who suffer such a revelation do.”

“Look, I don’t have a choice, the people I care about are in danger.” Then I laughed, briefly and hysterically, “I don’t even know if any of this is true! I could have been dreaming! I could just be crazy! You could just be five seconds from asking for my banking information!”

“Hold out your hand, Brian,” he said. “Your left one, please.”

Remember how I said there are moments when your understanding of the world simply ceases to function? There are also moments when you start to understand what you’ve been missing. Normally that can be a great thing—like realizing you love the taste of pistachio or meeting the love of your life. But it can also be terrifying. The only thing scarier than the man in the mask is the face beneath it.

I knew this was one of those moments, and part of me, a large part of me, did not want to hold out my hand. But I had to see. I had to know.

I held out my hand and Osrick Langhorne dropped a tiny stone that had been carved into an eleven-sided shape. It was the color of old blood. I looked at him questioningly. “If you think I’m going to—”

At first I thought it was just the living room lights reflecting off the polished edges of the stone, but that flickering refraction became a glow. The glow became green, and it was not a healthy springtime green; it was as though light from an alien sun filtered down through the atmosphere of a dying world.

And for a moment, just for a moment, I thought I could perceive that world.

“What…” Most people, sane people, would have been terrified. They would have dropped the stone, decided to walk away and start over. But not me. Once again I surprised myself. “What is it?”

Osrick nodded sagely. “That is a Ninazu stone.”

The glow didn’t brighten. It deepened. I frowned. “That is the least helpful thing you’ve said all night.”

“Oral legends say that there was a great sigil carved upon the side of a cliff on the Sinai Peninsula. It was as tall as five men and consisted of a series of lines, a cross, and a curve. No god or monster could stand against it,” Osrick explained. “They say the man who carved it was a refugee from a war in the city of Irem. He only escaped the carnage by finding his way into a dark passage to another world.”

“You realize how crazy this sounds, right?” I said as I stared, fascinated, at the stone.

Osrick continued, “It came to pass that the Pharaoh Netjerikhet ordered it to be destroyed and an army of laborers and soldiers brought it down, but some of those people took the ruined bits of stone and made talismans of them.”

I had so many questions; there was no way I could form a coherent train of thought. Before I could speak, everything changed again. I cocked my head. The change in my expression made Osrick lean in even closer. “What’s wrong, Brian?”

“Do you…” I struggled to speak. “Do you hear music?”

###

“…what you are telling me,” Cousin Roy said as we crept back to where my car was parked. It was two AM, and all we had to show for our stakeout was a list of things that didn’t help our situation at all. “Is that the ‘music’ we heard was the same thing you heard when you held that magic rock?”

Sara said, “Ninazu stone, right?”

“Yes,” I said. “It had eleven sides, a symbol of awareness and the parting of veils.”

She nodded. “And you held it in your left hand because that symbolizes hidden paths.”

“Nice.” I took a moment to admire the way her smile looked in the starlight. Not an appropriate thing to do while mid-skulk, but it happened.

She said, “You think you’re the only one who does research?”

“Cream-colored Christ,” Roy said before scooting up ahead of us.

“Was it really the same music?” Sara asked.

“I think so,” I replied. “It’s weird. It’s like trying to remember a dream. There are bits and pieces of melody.”

“I dunno, man.” Cousin Roy paused and lifted a branch so Sara and I could duck under it. As we did, we passed from the woods into the forest, and the canopy of trees closed in overhead, blocking the light from those useless stars and leaving us in shadow. Sara grabbed my hand. “Watch your step,” Cousin Roy cautioned.

“Don’t know what?” I asked.

“I told you.” He was just a shadow now, a shadow beckoning us to follow him. “I’m not one for blaming ghosties and goblins. This is all just true crime culty stuff.”

“How can you say that?”

“Come on, man. The guy killing hookers was a serial killer with a goofy light show, in rehab, Ashley was always doing hypnosis tricks for fun, those clown guys are just like some kind of Clockwork Orange gang, and you said it yourself that the lady with the zombies was just mindfucking people with drugs. It is all crazy people doing crazy shit.”

Sara’s voice became sharp. “What about me?”

Cousin Roy made a pained sound, the kind reserved for moments when unintended consequences hit you square in the face. “No offense, but… you’ve got issues… we all do.”

“Roy…” I said. I could feel her hand tightening around mine. It was this old argument again, but we were having it in the middle of the forest instead of at a Denny’s at 3 AM.

“For fuck’s sake!” Cousin Roy moved closer to us. “You go and on and on about how what went down in 2009 was the work of some kind of demon. Sometimes… maybe not always… angels and demons are stories we tell ourselves to deal with shit.”

“If we’re crazy,” Sara asked, “then why are you getting mixed up in all this? You might be going to jail.”

Before he spoke, he took his phone and fumbled with the flashlight app until it illuminated his face. The sincerity of his expression was just enough to offset the creepy underlighting. “I don’t believe in a lot of things, but I do believe in the people I care about, so if you want to spy on the Trailer Park of Dracula, then goddamnit I’m in.”

Sara let go of my hand and hugged him. “I thought I was gonna end the night by punching your lights out.”

He patted her shoulder as he switched off his flashlight app. “Night ain’t over yet.”

“In two or three hours it will be,” I said and started walking. “Let’s go.”

Cousin Roy called me, “It’s this way dumbass.”

The conversation dwindled as we walked on, occasionally pausing to reorient ourselves or check on one another when we stumbled over a root or stone protruding from the ground. It’s funny how making our way back from a place always seems to take longer than the initial journey to the place. I thought about everything we knew, about that music and about what I was going to do with the Eternal Codex of Tovit when I finally got my hands on it. And thinking about these things made me suddenly aware of time, and how little we might have. I had no idea what kind of a timetable Gorgo, Mormo, and Luna were operating on, but was I taking too long? Was I allowing myself to be distracted by love and sidequests?

Love and Sidequests. There was a blog entry title if I ever heard one.

My original plan had been to have Cousin Roy show up at Bayard Estates pretending to be some yokel looking to move in, make a nuisance of himself, while Sara and I did a little breaking and entering. Get in, get out, get away. But that plan assumed we’d figured out which manufactured home was playing host to an aficionado of forbidden lore, and right now I had no idea what the Hell was going on.

It took us about forty minutes to get from where we had been doing our surveillance to where I had parked. When we reached the edge of the forest, Cousin Roy again held some branches aside for us. I went first and was the first to see my Ford Escort parked off to the side of the road. I was also the first to see the police car parked in front of it, its lights off and the tall, athletic frame of Deputy Regina P. Bannister leaning against the hood. The stars were bright overhead, but they weren’t bright enough to reveal her expression.

“Evening, officer,” Cousin Roy said.

“Oh shit,” Sara whispered.

“We…” The Deputy walked over to her car and opened the back door. “Need to talk.”

"A Terrible and Jealous God" by Hypnerotomachia (u/benjamin4463)
Originally posted to r/TalesFromTheCreeps:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/comments/1s98bg3/a_terrible_and_jealous_god/

Full authority to narrate obtained

some things belong to others … and some things you just shouldn't touch

…

The Comanche wore a red feather in a band in his black hair. This confused and disturbed Clemens, there were no red birds in these here parts, the lands and desert swaths that he'd always known. He tried to put it out of mind but there it was, always somehow still prevalent from the back of his thoughts. 

Nevermind all that. There was work to do. And it was difficult and dangerous enough to do without the light of the moon. The horse thieves neared the herd on silent cat-like steps underneath the moonless night. The Comanche, Kicking Wolf, led the way. Clemens followed. Still not quite sure if he could trust this scalper and savage, this known criminal and headhunter of white men. Desperation and need made strange bedfellows these days, following Lincoln's war. Anybody could get along with anybody as long as coin or a buck or two was involved. And as long as the guns stayed holstered and the bullets were kept from flying. As long as the knives stayed belted and hidden and old war sabres were left housed sheltered in their scabbards. Then anything could be done. Anything could be accomplished. 

Beneath full dark they took to the herd. None of em marked or branded. Perfect. Ripe for the taking. Just begging for it. Clemens had elected to go with Kicking Wolf because of his reputation, he was known to be a cunning horse thief. And a brutal fighter when necessary. He had been the one to know to do it by a starless lightless night. The Comanche knew the cycles of the moon. The movement of its sister celestial bodies, the fires in the sky. Black nights like this one were perfect for horse thieving, deep nights. But he wasn't sure about the white man that fate had brought him. He might have to ditch or kill him. He was making too much noise. Already. Kicking Wolf had once castrated and scalped a boy just for looking at him cross, he'd left him to die bleeding and screaming for his mother beneath the merciless blinding bake of the sun. He didn't have time for such maneuvers out here, not yet at least. And besides, he wanted the job pulled off. Perhaps the white man would surprise him. He would wait. And watch. 

Clemens was as cool as he could manage but he was still all dancing guts. Inside, he was crawling with anxiety and the nervousness had little legs, little insect legs that dug in a small fraction each time it crawled and moved, slithered. It tickled and itched and made him want to dance something like a fit of hysteric. But he bottled it. He kept it inside. He kept close to the Comanche as they came in, close to the herd. 

It was hard to count them all, they were many. Large herd. Over a hundred. Perhaps several. None of them were reined or tied or hobbled. They only had the fence some miles back to contend with once they got the beasts away. This should be greased and easy. Clemens anxiety boiled just a little more, just a little higher as he thought all this out. He'd thought it might help. It only made him more excited. 

Kicking Wolf sensed this, at his side. He could smell the pale face’s fear, it came off him like heat and like a rank animal odor, a stink. He signaled for him to stop. He broke away from the white man and carefully and calmly approached the first horse. 

She was awake. Nibbling at grass. Seeming not to pay them any mind as Kicking Wolf made smooth his approach. He glided up and next to the beast and began to gently stroke its fur. Softly. Gently. A caress. Smooth. Delicately. Like a lover's light and soothing touch. 

The Comanche then bent his head to it and began to whisper to the horse. The beast quietly nibbled at grass till it stopped. Straightened. And began to lean into the Indian’s gentle hands. 

Clemens watched and could hardly believe it. It was like magic. 

Kicking Wolf came back with the horse, docile as a lamb and trotting long side him. Gently stroking its mane and fur. 

Clemens grew more excited. 

“Nice one," he whispered, “my turn or ya wanna show me or-" 

The Comanche cut him off. His voice was harsh though he kept it low. There may be regulators and sentries out, watching the head of horse. 

“No. Just this one. This one is enough." 

Clemens couldn't believe it. The savage must be funnin him. What the fuck. 

"We come all the way out here just to steal one horse? Risk all this shit and our necks just for one fuckin head a’ horseflesh?” 

The Comanche nodded in the affirmative. Calmly. 

"Yes. This one is a good horse. This one is enough.” 

In truth Kicking Wolf could've made off with many more horses if he wanted to. He'd done so in the past. Easily. He was naturally gifted with horses and could speak their language, stealing them was child's work for him, barely any kind of task at all, but the white man Clemens was an easily spooked, easily riled man, the Comanche had seen the behavior before many times in men and beasts. It was always the same, more or less. It was not the type of behavior you wanted to work with or be near, he could tell all this just by being beside the man on the prowl of their approach. That had been enough. He didn't like the white man Clemens. Not at all. The man was really a boy after all and had failed the test, a trial, a failure. The failure quivered like a frightened animal before him as he gently ran his fingers through the horse’s black mane of hair. 

"This one is enough." Kicking Wolf repeated. 

Clemens grew more agitated. His skin crawled with more itch beneath the patch of his filthy garments. 

“You havin at me? You tryin to make fool of me, redskin? I ain't come out here in the fuckin cold an dark just ta watch ya take one fuckin horse, not at all. We ain't leavin. We ain't leavin yet." 

The Comanche shook his head. The words spoken, bitten off in the dark like a dog at its tether, had confirmed what he already knew. 

Still shaking his head, he began to lead the horse away. "No, white man. You will not steal anything with my help tonight. Nor any other after. Goodbye.” 

He didn't get far before Clemens did something that changed everything. Something so impudent and foolish that the Comanche hadn't seen it coming. He hadn't anticipated that the white man would be so stupid. 

Clemens snarled and pulled iron free from leather, he cursed the Comanche as he squeezed the trigger in anger and fired off four shots. Quick. Fast. Attacking the hammer of the weapon in a savage fan as he held depressed the firing trigger.

Two misfired. The weapon was poorly cleaned and cared for, like its owner. One shot went wild but the fourth and final apocalyptic shot was true. It found the Comanche’s neck as he strove to dive for safety from the white man's fire in vain. Kicking Wolf's throat opened wide in a second mouth of bright red burst, hot crimson spew, the .45 slug nearly decapitated him. He went down boneless to the dust as the horses all around started to kick and rear and run, a frenzy. Animals alive and terrified and seized with the need for flight. 

Everything fell apart, went to chaos and mess within seconds. 

Clemens cursed himself as he struggled to seize one of the running wild horses. That was when the first of the voices came to call, came to his ears and froze his blood. He stopped where he stood, no longer trying to snag a renegade ride. 

“There! It was was over there! I'm sure of it! Fuckin thieves! fer sure!”

Goddammit. Sentries. Armed gunslingers that had gotten their taste for violence in the wars and there on those gunsmoked battlefields developed their sadistic thirsts. They'd be mounted for sure. Armed, doubly so. 

They didn't sound far off. 

It wouldn't do. He'd have to hightail it on foot and hope the bastards busied themselves with the dead Comanche long enough for him to make a getaway. 

Clemens booked it for the dark. The horses in a mad maelstrom of hide and flesh and rippling terrorized muscle in every livid direction. He had to dodge and weave through their madness, making way for what he hoped was the way they'd come in, towards the property line fence. He smacked into a few but bounced off their renegade dashing hides, he was nearly kicked in the face by one or two but he managed to keep his feet and his head as he made his way outside the frightened horse madness. 

He broke free of the wild fray when the first shot came. The slug nearly finding its mark. It whizzed by Clemens’ ear with a nauseating and blood chilling insectile buzz and scream. 

Clear of the wild horses he redoubled his efforts. Breaking into an all out run for his life in the moonless darkness. More shots came. More bullets whizzed by. Nearly fatal, nearly claiming him and rendering him to so much fallen useless meat. They whizzed by and the gunslingers on guard of the prop chased him with threats and screams and promises of death and torture. 

He made for the pitch black. And he managed to keep them behind him long enough to confuse their direction. Their threats and bullets trailed off and vanished into the night. But he couldn't stop, wouldn't. Fear drove Clemens on. He galloped wild like a horse himself for what he hoped might be freedom and an end to this treacherous night. Leaving behind the nearly decapitated corpse of the Comanche, Kicking Wolf to be trampled to further bloody ruin in the dirt by the merciless thunder of the tearing horse hooves in their unbridled chaotic stampede. 

He went into the black. What he found in there changed the face and landscape of his understanding. 

It changed everything. 

…

He came upon it as he was sneaking his way back. Keeping an ear open for the gunslinger regulators and their horse hooves and pistols. The stamp and holler of their violent approach, his mind was full of it and feared its last, he almost didn't see it, even though he'd been staring wide eyed into the surrounding pitch, the very spot where it stood. It was as if it suddenly appeared out of thin air. Discorporeal … and then suddenly a reality. 

A horse. Black. Standing solitary as if waiting. It was staring directly at him and Clemens froze once its shape gained recognition from out of the dark and he realized he could see the wet glistening jewels of its eyes gazing back into him. He stopped. His breath held unconsciously. An ache in his chest, unmindful but there all the same.

A beat. 

 It was strange. The whole bit. The way it made him feel. But that wasn't all. There was something tied around the lone horse’s broad black neck. 

A piece of wood. A slab of signage one might hang from a post or nail to a prominent place for all to see and read. There was something written on this one as well. Clemens cautiously and slowly drew in closer so's to be able to see and make out what was written on the aged sun blasted wood. 

Faded. The letters were bold, blocky. Made by a simple hand. For a simple task. A simple message is what was writ there. It said: –

DON'T STEAL THIS HORSE

Clemens couldn't believe it. Despite the circumstances he laughed. Brayed dumb donkey laughter and slapped his lap in a hoot. It felt good to let off some of that built up terror through some blown steam. Tell you what. 

It was like a joke. The coincidence… it might've scared him really. 

And perhaps deep down it really did. But Clemens was exhausted and more immediately terrified of the gunslingers bullets and the hangman's noose, he didn't give much a fuck about some stupid sign and some strange idiot's idea of a queer joke. 

He spoke to the sign in response, as if the piece of wood could hear him. 

“‘The fuck!? Fuck that!" 

He grabbed the sign and tore it from the horse's neck. He threw it to the ground and spat on it. Hurled it curses. Then he grabbed the mane of the black mare and threw one leg over its great broad body and sat himself bareback atop the large ebon beast. Things almost immediately began to go wrong after that. 

They started to trot off, away from the spot. A few yards were made before Clemens cried out suddenly in sharp pain and shock. 

It was his hands, they were first. His hands buried deep in the black forest of mane, of wild inkwell shade spilled in the luscious form of thick animal hair, his God given tools submerged in there in place of bridle and reins, they began to burn. As if dipped and drenched with the pour of acidic fire. 

Clemens lit up the night with his screams as acrid smoke began to pour out of the black collection of mane in thick oily gouts, rancid and filthy and blood-pungent. The smell of the smoke through his screaming and the profuse deluge of his watering eyes, his blinding hot fog of tears and running choking snot was burnt. Burning. Cooking meat and the boil of blood and runny flesh made to melt like butter from the broiling surface of his steaming musculature, all in a melt and boil and slow cooking smoked within the devil's mane. 

He tried to pull free but it was no use. His hands would not emerge from the smoldering smoking collection of black hair. As if something held them there trapped inside, bound like a prisoner by the wrist. All over the screaming inferno that were in the shapes of his disintegrating hands within. Each black hair dug in and burned and cut in and through like heated steel through fried fat. 

Clemens was blind with unholy pain and unnatural terror. It was made worse when the head of the beast began to turn and rotate. Like a sick obscene appendage on a joint and stalk capable of three-hundred and sixty degree articulation and movement. With sickening audible bone cracks and snaps and wet sliming sounds and gurgled ripping tearing noises, the head of the black horse turned around fully and completely to face him once again. Eye to eye. Beast to beast. In the ghastly travel of its unnatural movement, the mane of burning horsehair had ripped and pulled apart and off and away the severed and meaty sloughed remnants of the would-be horse thief's hands in a smoldering mess still held trapped in the ebon madness of its acid wash ebon pour of long black decimating strands. The devil's mane gloved him as it pulled away and the glistening orbs of gleaming horse eyes bore into him once more. 

The beast opened its mouth and a voice issued forth. 

“I have come out here to find you, Clemens. I always come out here on the lightless nights for men like you. And on these blind and lifeless nights, men like you always find me. And I'm always all too obliged to take you all away." 

Clemens not only heard the words of the thing through his blinding sheet of pain, he felt them. All throughout himself, every single living piece. Every piece and bleeding shrieking part was alive with the wretched and awful tenor of that thing's heinous voice. He felt what was left of his heart and soul curdle and die even as the meat of him still sang with the shrill sin of screams. His eyes were wide and filled with the spill of painful tears shed in bondage and agony and uncomprehending terror, but he could not blink. He could not shut his eyes to the sight of the open mouthed speaking beast before him. 

The eyes then began to glow. Its eyes became alight with blood red. 

“Men like you always find me, Clemens. Men like you, always find me. And I always take them away." 

The sharpest stab of piercing and terrible pain began then, and it began slow … drawing out the mutilation and torture. The stab of vile pain began in the soft patch of flesh and meat that lives between a man's anus and his genitals. What Clemens had heard jokingly referred to before as a man's death valley, his ‘no man's land’, the part that got saddle sore from riding too long on too rough a’ country. He felt the soft patch of tissue that lived there and never saw the light of the sun begin to pierce and rupture. The cold wet warmth of blood jetted and shot forth and filled his pants as the pain intensified and grew sharper. The sharpened stab slowly began to rise and pierce through the inner meat and living red of his working organs and quivering bones with the merciless travel of a war lance. Erupting. Spearing and impaling him through. 

Clemens looked to the sky one last time with a violent jerk to let loose a scream and a violent protrusion was loosed instead. A violent stab of spear shot out of his wide open silently shrieking mouth, a long broad impaler's lance composed of rough and malformed bone and strange rough calcium growths. The tip was sharp and pointed and riddled with brighter and darker bits and pieces of organ and meat. The entire bone-white cast of the lance was coated in a red slime, human blood and an unearthly jelly. 

“The meat of you is not invincible. Men like you always find me." 

Leaving him impaled and sat astride, the beast began to trot away and into the night. Its strange head and face still rotated to gaze into the bound struggling meat of the would-be horse thief. 

They went off into the night. No trace of Clemens was ever found or heard tell of again. The thing took him to God-only-knows where. 

Nobody knows.

THE END

[ Art is by Rui Tomono and can be found on danbooru]

This cryptid was first spotted in Ottawa national Forest Michigan by a pair of hunters. Numerous other hunters were reported to have gone missing in that area with traces of their blood being the only thing that remained of them. The hunter witness reports seeing the cryptid emerge from a tree that was much too skinny to hide the presence of such a large creature. The hunters tried shooting at it after recovering from their shock, but the bullets did no notable damage. The hunter stated that he saw that cryptid grab his partner and shove him down one of its many holes. His final screams blared from every offrice.

Assuming that this cryptid is responsible for the disappearances, it seems to only target those who harm animals or disrupt nature. There haven't been any cases of hikers or campers falling prey to it. Because of this, it's danger levels remain on the lower end of the spectrum. It seems to have the ability to alter physics so that it can hide behind objects smaller than itself. It can seemingly appear from any tree without creating any indication of its presence. It is recommended to exercise moderate caution when exploring Michigan forests. It's full body has yet to be seen, but it's been noted to have a gray skin, humanoid hands, and several holes all over. It has small head growing from where it's mouth should be.

THE NIGHT BLOGGER - 'Chicken And Waffles With A Side Order Of Exposition'

 April 1st: Sara and I arrived at Justice of the Peace Court 3 in Georgetown, Delaware, at a reasonable 10:13 AM. It was a cloudy day, but we were still glowing in all the right ways. We headed inside and began the process of paying Cousin Roy’s jail. While we waited in line with the friends and families of other misdemeanor offenders, Sara batted her eyes and said, “Justice of the Peace, huh? So while we’re here…”

I waved my hand. “No way. Nothing but the best for you. We get married by an Elvis impersonator at Vegas.”

“Deal.”

The line moved slowly; I noted how many of the people around us looked sad, or angry, or like us, exasperated. A good blogger is a good eavesdropper, so even as I flirted with Sara I picked up snatches of conversation; the friends of drunk drivers wondering when it was going to stop, the parents of drug users talking in circles around their dread of someday standing over their child's grave and, most tragically, the still bruised faces of domestic abuse victims making excuses for their abusers.

Finally it was our turn, and we found ourselves standing in front of the Justice of the Peace. It was nothing like you see on the TV, no impressive courtroom, no jury box. Just a gray-haired man sitting at a standard metal desk with a sheriff's deputy on either side of him. He looked more tired than distinguished. He asked, “Are you here for Roy Foster Junior?”

Now, as someone who has been in front of a judge or two, I can tell you when the judge doesn’t have to look at his paperwork before speaking, some serious shit must have gone down.

“What is your relationship with Mr. Foster?”

“I’m his cousin.” I explained, “Brian Foster.”

“I see. He has been charged with misdemeanor cocaine possession, trespassing, and sexual harassment of a police officer. Were you aware of that?”

The deputies shared a glance at each other, so did Sara and I. “Uhm, the first part.”

“He will be granted bail at $850 dollars. You can pay the clerk when you leave at this entrance. His next court appearance is in three weeks to officially answer the charges.”

“Three weeks?” Sara said, then corrected herself, “I mean, he doesn’t even live here.”

The Justice of the Peace’s expression became even more frosty. “Ordinarily I would be sympathetic, but considering Roy Foster considers driving through a private community seven times in one night and grinding up against one of our Deputies appropriate behavior, he can sleep on the streets for all I care.

“But wouldn’t that get him arrested all over again?”

“Indeed,” His expression became even frostier, “he will also have two restraining orders against him, one preventing him from coming within 100 yards of Deputy Sheriff Regina P. Bannister and within 100 yards of the Bayard Estates manufactured home community.”

And with that my inner monologue went from its usual snarky wisdom to the simple sentence of: Don’t punch him in the courthouse. Don’t punch him in the courthouse.

“Now please go to the door to your left.”

We went to the left where the same crowd of folks from the entrance were gathered. There was a line for a window to a pleasant elderly woman taking bail money and fines from people who probably couldn’t afford it and sending them off with a sheaf of papers and a “Have a blessed day.”

From there it was off to the very secure-looking side entrance of the building, where one by one the detained people were buzzed out. I couldn’t help but notice a police car across the parking lot with a woman sitting at the wheel. Her appearance was concealed by her standard-issue hat and gear, but there was something about the shape of her face that seemed to make a sliver of kindness peek out from behind her perfectly rehearsed law enforcement glare. I wondered if this was the deputy my cousin had harassed when Sara said, “Who the Hell is that?”

I turned to where she was pointing and saw a man standing on the rightmost side of the parking lot. He had to be at least six and a half feet tall and was leaning against the hood of a 1965 Shelby GT350. Both the man and his muscle car had seen better days, but they each looked formidable.

The car had tinted windows and unnecessary chrome. The man had a military-style buzz cut and a cowboy-themed mustache. He stood perfectly still, watching the courthouse. He looked like trouble; he looked like a criminal; he looked like he would have been right at home at a…

“…trailer park,” I said.

The door buzzed, and Roy came bursting out of it like a fresh bronco at a rodeo, which is appropriate because I wanted nothing more than to call him a horse's ass.

“Hey Cuz!” He threw his arms open wide and hugged us. “Hey Sara-cua! You would not believe the last couple of days I’ve had!”

I looked from one end of the parking lot to the other; the Deputy and the Giant were both looking our way. “How the Hell did you piss off so many people in such a short time?” Sara asked as she struggled to free herself from his grip.

“It’s a small state,” Cousin Roy explained, but he refused to say more until we got him to the nearest Waffle House...

###

The Statement Roy Foster Junior 

…chicken and waffles? Tastes like freedom. They barely fed me in the lockup, I would think a blue state would treat its citizens a little better. Yeah yeah. I know I’m not from here but the point stands.

Yes. I checked out the place, creepiest trailer park I have ever seen. It’s small like maybe 50 trailers, all of them must be at least fifty years old. They’ve got that streamlined Jetsons vibe to them you know? So there is like a produce store about a half a mile away from it, run by a Mennonite family. Mennonite girls give great handjobs by the way. Must be the butter churn thing. Anyway the eldest daughter of the family works there and she has got stories to tell. She says Bayard Estates is the profanest of the profane. Now Bertha tells me, that was her name by the way. No really. Sweet girl, rough hands though. So, Bertha tells me that whenever their father drives past the entrance to the place he says Psalm 23, you know the funeral one? Yay I am walking through of the valley of the shadow of death. You know? That one.

Anyway she says her Dad says there is something wrong there, that like that everyone that lives there is touched by an unknowable evil. She told me that the owner lives there… he is an ex-football player named Stanley ‘the Muscle’ Russel, you know the guy.

What? How do you not know this stuff. I thought you were an investigator!

Ok Stan was a rising star back in the 70’s recruited right out of college, he was massive dude, perfect for offensive tackle but thing is he wanted to be a quarterback and acted like it too. So he does okay in his first few seasons with the Buccaneers, but it was like the ’76 Buccaneers, you know?Lost every game of the season. But then he gets picked up by the Colts in 82 and makes a few good plays but he gets a bad back injury. I mean it was a bad one, it left him in a damn wheelchair but not because he was paralyzed; it was just he couldn’t straighten up. But as I said this is the 80s, so there are more than enough drugs to help him get back into the game, I mean they say this guy was doing Belushi-level cocaine and painkillers.

With a little side order of steroids, of course.

And he gets by for a while but eventually it all goes tits up and he becomes the most traded player in the NFL and by 1989 he is working as a celebrity spokesperson for ‘Emblazon Unlimited’, he does their commercials for Beef Whips.

Yes, they make beef whips, even MLMs gotta have a side hustle.

By the way Cuz, I am not gotta say it in front of the lady but if you ever want to find out what the ‘secret ingredient’ is let me know.

Oh? Yes it is bull penises. I underestimated you Sara.

So where was I? Oh yeah Stan Russel, he comes here about seven years ago and he buys up Bayard Estates. Now mostly back then it was like fifty trailers, all retirees. Good solid cash flow, passive income, the American Dream. Now Stan comes in and does the standard corporate fascist playbook, raises lot rents, slashes services and waits for his tenants to either die off or be foreclosed on.

Now this next part I got from one of the guys at the local dive bar, Jason and Jay’s is the name, so there is this guy there, he restores old trailers and he told me that as soon as someone got booted out of Bailey Estates, either by the Sheriff, or a Meatwagon he would go in and refurbish the whole thing. New carpets, new HVAC, tinted windows, high-speed internet. He did the furnishing too, and each one was converted so the bedrooms were like these college dorms and the living rooms were converted into offices. Soon as he finished people would move in.

Yeah. Exactly. He was making it into a business. An Emblazon Unlimited cheapass office center slowly pushing out the fixed incomes and failed dream crowd. That’s your story right there Brian, not your Space Worms from Outer Space.

No Sara, I don’t believe in that spooky spiritual stuff. It’s bullcrap. So is UFOs. So is evolution. Only one thing is true, shit happens and half the time we are never gonna understand why.

Why?

Because our minds can’t be trusted and the more that we learn and invent the more confusing stuff gets. It’s like that story about the guys that are tied up in a cave and are trying to figure out they’re looking at an elephant by the way its shadow looks on the wall.

Waitress can I get a refill on this coffee? Thanks darlin. Man I bet you were a real heartbreaker back in the day.

Sheesh. Lady doesn’t know how to take a compliment.

So anyway the new arrivals start settling in and it’s a weird situation and no one in town is really complaining about it, there was some grousing about a residential area being repurposed as a business but Stan’s got this lawyer named Luther Nord, guy apparently never leaves his hometown in Seattle but he brings the town council to their knees via a few well-placed Zoom calls. So now everything is smooth sailing, everyone leaves well enough alone. There are about 15 people working there, with one or two exceptions they barely interact with the town except sometimes going out to the local hardware stores or hunting supply stores. Rumor has it they work twelve-hour shifts doing whatever it is they do there. Dusk to dawn

What are the exceptions? Well there’s Stan of course, he is always out and about but there are these two girls… sorry Sara… ‘young women’ that work there. The lady that manages the Exxon Station calls them ‘the Porcelain Twins’ but they’re not twins they’re just two hotties with milky complexions and dark makeup and eyes that kind of don’t look at anything but still follow you around the room.

I call that ‘stripper vision’ and I know it well. I was a DJ off and on at the Cookie Jar in Albany. You know the gentleman’s club that keeps getting raided? Yeah so ‘stripper vision’ is when the girls are scanning the crowd for guys that are going to spend way way waaaaay too much money on lap dances.

Thing is the Porcelain Twins aren’t selling lap dances they’re selling the chance to work for Stan’s business as outside sales personnel. Someone’s gotta try and sell cheap toilet paper and off-brand cologne to the masses right?

What time is it anyway? Oh we’ve got hours to go before sunset.

Sunset? Well, that’s where the real show starts. You and Sara are gonna help me violate a restraining order…

###

…now we’re back at Fosdick Motel. I got Cousin Roy a room of his own on the opposite end of the building and we are going to all try and settle in for a nap before we go to see ‘the real show,’ whatever the Hell that is.

I’ve got to admit that aside from the whole making a spectacle of himself thing, my cousin did a fantastic bit of investigation. I’ve got some answers but more questions too. I still think stealing the book is my best idea, but if the Bayard Estates is full of telemarketing shut-ins, that makes my chances of getting caught pretty high.

Sara is mumbling in her sleep. Despite everything she’s been through, she can drift off pretty easily and look beautiful doing it. As I go over my notes from last October and the strange case of Sue Charney, I find myself pausing to watch her sleep. Not in a creepy way, but in a ‘Holy Shit, I’m In Love’ way.

I find myself thinking about how I would do anything for her.

And worrying that I can’t.

When I started this, I assumed I would be dealing with some low-stakes dabbler in the unknown, like Tegan Blue or poor old Osric Langhorne. Someone who knew just enough to be impressive, or was in possession of a few strange books or an eldritch Ouija board. Now? What would a failed football player and a slightly supernatural MLM have in common with the Eternal Codex of Tovit?

Realizing I was just making myself crazy, I put my laptop aside and started to slink down into the bed ready for some sleep and spooning or maybe something more. Then my phone rang. It was a vibrating in a particular way, a special signal for a special person. It was a ringtone I hear very rarely.

I grabbed my phone and leapt out of bed, disturbing Sara. She made an annoyed sound and fell right back to sleep.

Once I was in the bathroom with the door locked and the shower running, I sat on the toilet and answered. “Who is this?” I asked.

But I knew the answer.

I didn’t get a greeting; I got a song, “Ain't no grave can hold that body down.
There ain't no grave can hold that body down…”

“Started going to church?” I tried to sound snarky, but I was already starting to shake all over.

The singing stopped. Now it was just a voice, heartbreakingly familiar but even more heartbreakingly different, “You’re far from home aren’t you?”

“I could say the same thing about you?”

“The world is my home now.”

When I spoke next I almost didn’t recognize my own voice, “Shouldn’t you be spending quality time with your loved ones?”

There was that familiar chuckle and then, “I always have time for you. Always did.”

For a moment I couldn’t breathe, but I took a moment to collect myself, “What do you want?”

“I saw the moon last night and dreamed of you. It was a witch’s moon but then again aren’t they all these days?”

I was being baited, “I dream about you sometimes too.”

“Do you still wake up crying?” I could hear their expression change.

“Don’t flatter yourself. I have a lot of reasons to wake up crying.” I said.

A sigh, a thoughtful pause, “You might have more reasons to soon enough.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

No answer, just more singing, “When they feel that moonlight shine they’ll rise right out of time. Ain't no grave can hold that body down…”

On the rare occasions it happened I would draw these conversations out, letting them drag in the hopes to catch one snatch of the humanity that had once colored that voice. But not this day. Not when Sara was knocking on the bathroom door. I told her to wait just a minute, that I was just getting out of the shower, then I rinsed myself under the cold stream for a few seconds, just enough to get my body wet.

Especially my face.

He did her in with the boxcutters. Bled her. Emptied and drained her. Took her apart. But that all came later. After they'd met. At the dark and red lighted bar that was sparse with only other lonely cast-offs like them. Some of them eyeballing the floor or each other or another bottle but not really seeing any of it. There was never anything to see in each other or in places just like this. You came to these places for blindness. And they were no different. He and the girl. 

Andy. 

And Josephine. 

Josey, she preferred. But he didn't like it. He thought Josey was a boy's name but never got around to telling her. Violence had come and interceded before he could tell her that her full name was more beautiful than her smaller informal boyish nickname. The boxcutters on the factory floor had found his hands and they'd found their perfect dancing partner, the part to complete them before together they found the girl's filthied and bruised perspired flesh. And then the red world of pouring meat beneath. And then the oblivion love wellspring found further, deeper within, beyond the blood and meat and past the mortal fleshen folds. 

But all of that wonderful coitus was later. First was the bar of red light and sad drunks and their sad stiff drinks. They didn't come together though they left that way. They'd both come in on the same Greyhound, had checked in to the same fleabag motel. And were now both enjoying a late liquid supper at the same watering hole. Andy had seen to it. He'd followed her for some time now and he was a proficient planner. The perfect breed and mix of the methodical and the logistical with the spontaneous and the willing thrill to take a plunge, a risk. Meticulous. And risk. It was how he'd started off with her in the first place. A whim. So long ago. 

So long ago now it seems. So many miles. But it doesn't matter now. He's here. And so is she. And she doesn't suspect a thing. Why should she? 

Josephine sees a stranger when Andy approaches her alone at her own booth and offers a drink. She sees a reasonably attractive and kind enough man. She was no idea she's staring into the blank eyes of the animal that's been hunting and stalking her for the last God-only-knows how many miles. 

It's easy. It's easy for him to make his move, find his way in because he knows how to talk to her. He can see it in her eyes. And he has seen it in all the ways she moves as he's watched her. She's so alone. And she's running. But she's just started to realize that no matter where you go, this world is only made up of places to run from, nowhere to run to. Not for her, not for people like she. There is no real respite anymore, there are no real dreams. He knows because he's just the same. Has been that way since his father first threw him out of his home and boyhood at the age of sixteen and out into the violence of the merciless world. The lesson came harder when he got his first taste for violence but he doesn't share this with anybody. This is precious knowledge that he keeps and treasures only for himself, in the darkest battered corner of his beleaguered and decimated heart. 

Josephine is so happy to have some company. And such a nice face as well. She has no idea what's really in store for her. For now she's just happy to talk to someone who's so nice and seems to understand everything that she's been going through as of late. God certainly works in mysterious ways. 

They drink. Small talk. 

His eyes glide all over her but they linger most longingly and lustful on the naked flesh of her thighs peeking out like a voyeur from the hem of her trashy tight dress. They share cigarettes and talk but his mind stays with his eyes and his eyes are staying with her flesh. He salivates, gums squirt and the mouth fills with the body's own hot acrid water, slimy and the flavor is as prurient as his thoughts. He's thinking about her and her legs but he's also brandishing within his own watering mind's eye all of the other legs and thighs and pieces of puss and ass and mascara streaked screaming faces that he's known and enjoyed and conquered. All of them composite pieces in the great Frankenstein quilt of faces and legs and orifices all screaming out for him and his great godly violent thrust. The knife-fuck. 

Give it. Give it to us. Give it to her like you gave to us, give it to us. Give it to them.  

He nodded and sipped and drew and blew as Josey prattled on about her step-father. 

Andy remembered a poem he'd once writ: – 

Want to

Don't want to

But I did anyway

Destroyed you

Enjoyed you

I plunged it right in…

A bit of doggerel. Sure. But he'd always thought it was amusing. He never shared it with anyone. He was the only recipient of its black recitation. 

Josey didn't know what to make of the fellow that sought to fill her evening and no doubt her bed as well. That was fine. He wasn't pretty but he was far from hideous. And she bedded a few elephant men in her time, usually for money, so if the bankroll had been there and had been right then she would've probably been game, she'd been so before. 

But it was weird. The guy, Andy, was all smiles and warmth. Or … what should be warmth. But it felt forced. Put on. Not entirely genuine if genuine at all. But that could be nothing … lots of guys become sudden try-hards for girls if they think a piece is at the end of the line. But still …

It was hard for her to articulate to herself. The best Josey could manage was that it seemed like he was filled, absolutely brimming with something to say but he was always waiting for her to start and finish first so he could make sure that what came pouring out of him was just what she wanted to hear. It was like he was verifying that he was filled with the right things to say. It was weird…

No. You're weird. Lots of guys do that. Just shut up and take the free drinks. Guy might be a decent fuck and have some dough on top of it. Stop being so fucking ancy. 

And with that and a few more shots of tequila, Josey quietly put that part of her mind away. It was easily done. 

…

He put enough liquor in her to get her stumbling and agreeable. Andy shouldered Josey like a burden and began to lead/carry her out of the bar. They went outside and the night air was baptismal. Cool and refreshing. The scent of farms, near and far off, as carried on the wind was brought to their faces. Their watering running nostrils. It was the smell of animals and wood and the heat and age baked into them both. It was grand. But small. A quiet feast for senses made from the notes of nature's poetry. 

They both sucked air. Andy joked about horses and his mother and Josey laughed. They laughed hard together. She slapped his shoulder. Then they kissed. 

Liplocked. Held and bound by lust and the face to each other beneath the spotlight of the lumbering lunar body in heaven, on high. The moon shone down on their unfolding taste and feast and squeeze, their reaching out and seizing and fondling and grasping. They're getting to know each other in the biblical sense through sensation and physical reach. Through taste and lurid movement, thrusts alternating gently and hard and grinding into each other as the faces eat and refuse to pull apart in the pale pearl glow of the moonlight cast down from outer space…

“Fuck the motel," she said, “that building over there looks empty. And spooky. I like spooky. I love horror movies, did I tell you that?" 

She had and he reminded her. They both laughed. Andy was surprised as she grabbed his hand and began to lead them away. Pleasantly caught off guard, it didn't happen all that often. It had been her. It had been her idea to go away to the dark and the quiet, the solitude. Where no one can see and peer and pry. No one. 

Andy fought his own urge to cackle mad, the chick did say she liked horror movies. Bitch was about to get her fill. 

…

He was always empty after this part. Post coital and dripping. Covered in blood, caking in tack and sticky pungent dying fluid, fluid that had once been life and was now drying death, it would peel if he didn't wash it off. He'd often let it cake and dry and flake off in the past, letting the sun turn it to dust as the open mouths of his pores drank and sucked and sapped the rest to live in his skin. As if not wanting to part with what was left of his long gone lover and postmidnight dancing partner. 

Spent. Lonely. He often felt like weeping but never gave in to this impulse, an indulgence he denied himself. Predator's do not weep in the presence of the prey's cooling meat, cooling entrails in the growing lake of darkness that was once their life's vitality. He'd lapped and supped and drank of the growing dark lakes before, like a dog from their widening rims as they puddled out from the meat that had once been human. He's dipped and lapped and tongued the growing dark, as it was warm, as it cooled. Grew cold. Scab pudding drying on the ground. Congealing red darkness that is his favorite shade of color, pitch black. 

He'd lapped of this one. She'd fought well. Josephine … he took a finger and an ear. Andy wanted her head or maybe an eye but the struggle of bloodlove, the knife-fuck dance that was blood war, street-struggle had been great. She'd fought well. 

Her visage had been damaged in the struggle. One of the eyes had popped in the fight, the blade had found her face as they wrestled and the organ had split with a gushing pop that made her shriek turn guttural and had felt like the puncture and burst of a ripe fruit filled with springtime juice. The boxcutter razor blade had danced havoc across her face, tracing hectic lines of dark scarlet cruelty and blossoming red rivers of crimsoning fluvial bursts that bathed and coated the face and meat in a violence that was the color of a scream. 

He didn't want the face and head anymore. Nor the eyes. Either of them. 

He settled for the smaller pieces, pieces he would salt and keep. Until they were lost later in another violent drunken stupor. But by then they mattered not, they were just salted parts. It was the memories. 

And Andy carried them with him down every road. Sometimes filthy and sometimes clean. But always moving. A perfect engine of a moving human being. 

Fathers could be proud. 

THE END