Video Nasties

by Ralston, Duncan

  She thought of her father's gray face. The noose. The creak of the bannister. Annie had been the first one home that night. If Lydia Watkins hadn't stopped for groceries on the way from work, she might have spared her daughter a lifetime of questions, of nightmares. "I couldn't do that," she said, her voice weak. "Play God like that."

  "Aren't you already? I mean, I don't know if you noticed, but it seems to me like God's been on extended sick leave, don't it, sugar?"

  "Don't call me that. All you old-timers call me sweetie and sugar and it drives me up the fucking wall."

  "Annie it is." Burt grinned sarcastically, holding up his hands in mock surrender. "Wouldn't want to upset you. You might wind up making a standby for me."

  "That's not fucking funny. And I wouldn't. I can't. I can't do it again. Not ever."

  "Suit yourself," Burt said. "Sooner or later fate or destiny or whatever it is makes you and me and Gottlieb do what we've done is gonna force your hand. All I know is, when I hated my job, my life, I did everything I could to make it as painless as possible."

  He plucked the twisted butts off the table, and pushed himself up with a groan, both from himself and the aging wood. "I wish you all the best, Annie Watkins. Sincerely, I do. But if I spend any longer out here shooting the breeze with you, the wife'll be fixin' to Bobbit my ass."

  Annie watched him go, shrinking into the distance across the long expanse of grass, the weight of helplessness pressing down on her, stopping her from chasing after him and screaming at him until her throat was raw.

  The table creaked as she stood herself, creaking like the bannister, like the noose around her father's neck. She wondered, and not for the first time, if suicide was her legacy, too.

  ❚❚

  MAXINE WATKINS KEPT shop in Bywater, selling Central African-inspired art and sculpture out of her home. Fat little terra cotta heads with bug eyes and fish-like mouths were her biggest seller--one even graced the Contemporary Louisiana Art exhibit at NOMA. As a child, they'd always reminded Annie of the illustration from the books of Roald Dahl.

  Maxine poured her niece a glass of iced tea, then sat on a small stool at the worktable. She did good business with her art, good enough to move into a larger home in Algiers or the Garden District, but she'd lived in the "Sliver by the River" long before her name became known in the local scene. She had her studio, her kiln out back, and a small living quarters in the camelback upstairs, and that was all she required.

  Annie sipped her tea. Bitter, the way she liked it.

  "What's on your mind, child?" Maxine asked, kneading a large hunk of clay. "You didn't come all the way out here to drink my tea."

  A ghost of a smile crossed Annie's lips. "No, I didn't. But I would, you know. It's that good."

  Maxine waved the compliment away. "Is this about your job? I never did congratulate you, did I?"

  "No. Thank you, Auntie Maxie."

  "Well? Are you going to tell me or would you have me drag it out of you?"

  Maxine wore her hair in a scarf, and her overlarge, brightly colored shirt couldn't hide the many paint stains and smudges of dried clay. Annie had always admired her aunt's artistic abilities, but she'd never envied her wardrobe. In snug blue jeans and a white t-shirt, Annie felt underdressed. She told Maxine everything.

  "Well that's quite the tale," Maxine said, pushing aside another fat little head ready for the kiln. "If you weren't your father's daughter, I wouldn't believe a word of it."

  "You believe me?"

  "I've never known you to lie, even when you should have. You didn't come to tell me a story, though, now did you? You came to see if I could speak to the Loa on your behalf."

  Maxine was the only family member who practiced what Annie thought of as "authentic Louisiana Voodoo." Annie's father had disavowed it, ashamed of the commercialization and skeptical of the religious aspects, although her grandparents had been traditionalists, like Maxine. Annie had loved Maxie's sculptures and paintings, but the Hoodoo charms, the dolls and Gris-Gris in her aunt's bedroom, had always intrigued her most. She'd often wondered if they were merely decorative, or if Maxie had ever used them.

  Tears stood in Annie's eyes. "Please," she said. They fell, moistening the clay in two spots on the table. "I can't live like this."

  Maxine took her niece's hands. The dried clay felt chalky against Annie's skin. Maxine held them firmly, glittering green eyes fixed on the deep brown of Annie's. "Though it works through modern tools, this evil is old, Annie. Make no mistake."

  Annie shivered. Despite the late-spring heat, the warmth from her aunt's hands was just about the only place she didn't feel cold. "Can you help me...?"

  Maxine kissed her fingertips. The warmth spread to Annie's wrists.

  "I can try."

  ❚❚

  THE HALLS OF Channel 5 were virtually empty when Annie brought Maxine through. The security guard on duty looked up from whatever he was watching behind the big desk and gave them a nod. Annie used her card on the door, and held it open for her aunt.

  "He's cute," Maxine said once they were safely behind the door. "For you, I mean."

  Annie shook her head, proceeding down the main hall. Maxine followed, lugging the cloth bag onto her shoulder, glass clinking inside. A spiral staircase took them down toward the newsroom. As short as the two of them were, they still had to duck under the ceiling. The overheads came on as they entered the carpeted hall leading toward the edit suites, startling them both into an embrace.

  Maxine clucked her tongue. "Look at us. Scared of the lights."

  They chuckled nervously and let go of each other. Annie continued to her suite, flicking on the light before entering. Maxine settled her bag on the chair.

  "I expected something more ominous. This..."

  "Is it cursed?" Annie wondered.

  "We'll find out, won't we?" Auntie Maxie opened up her bag of tricks. She brought out the candles first, white and black, a half dozen of each. "To send the evil back from where it came," she'd said while taking them off the shelf and packing them into the bag. Next came the checkered cloth in red and white, which she laid on the chair, setting the fat candles atop it. "Red and white. Those are Papa Legba's colors," she explained.

  Annie repeated the name as a question.

  "You'll see, Annie-dear." Maxine began marking out a large circle on the carpet, a cross in the circle. "Can't do this without the cosmogram," Maxine explained, reacting to Annie's mortified gasp. She laid the cloth over the center of the cross, placed candles at the ends of each line. She removed two tall wine glasses from the bag, a bottle of water, a bottle of white rum, and a clay pot painted red, then placed them on the cloth. She poured water into one glass and stood it in one of the pie-shaped areas she'd chalked, and the contents of the rum bottle into the second. Into the bowl, she placed a handful of salt water taffy, a cigar and a tea candle. She scattered some coins beside it.

  "For the offering," she explained.

  Maxine poured water into a rag, and held it out to her niece. "You might want to cover the smoke detector." Annie did so, wrapping it with the dampened fabric. The two of them lit the candles together, then Maxine stood in the circle, holding out a hand to Annie.

  Annie took it. Stepped into the circle.

  In the silence, the hall lights went out. They turned to each other, momentarily frightened. "Somebody ought to do something about those lights," Maxine said. Annie agreed with a nod.

  Maxine led Annie in reciting The Lord's Prayer, Hail Mary, and the Apostle's Creed. Once finished, she let go of Annie's hand, got down to her haunches, and raised the bowl. "Odu Legba!" she cried, holding out the bowl to the four directions. "Papa Legba, open the door! Open the door for me, so that I may pass!"

  Annie listened to the dull hum of electricity, watched their flickering shadows on the wall. There was no live wire feeling tonight, senses dulled by too much crying, too much worrying.

  "Open the door, your children await!"

  The monitors
flickered on. Annie sucked in a nervous breath.

  "We wish to speak with the Loa! We wish to speak to Baron Cimetière!"

  Video was already playing in on the twin monitors. Watkins family home movies. The two women shared an anxious look. "That wasn't you, was it?" Maxine asked, an edge of fear in her voice. Annie merely shook her head. Something about the videos troubled her. Something was different, but she couldn't put her finger on what it was.

  The hall lights buzzed on.

  Both women turned, expecting the Baron's dark figure to enter the room.

  Suddenly it hit her: Orville and Lydia Watkins weren't present in the video. All the time she'd spent cutting it, making it just right, and someone had removed all the clips of her parents, leaving only herself and Aunt Maxine.

  Boots clomped down the hall toward them. Maxine clasped Annie's hands tightly in her own as a tall figure stepped into the doorway, candlelight flickering over the figure's brute features. She recognized him immediately. Not a supernatural presence, but the night security guard, the one Auntie Maxie called "cute."

  "You ladies can't be burning candles in here," he said, eyes wide to take in everything. "You can't be doing Voodoo in here, neither."

  "Hoodoo," Maxine corrected, before apologizing and hurriedly blowing out the candles. Annie joined her, fear still gnawing at her like animals chewing on electrical cables. The videos had played by themselves, for one. For another, they seemed only to feature herself and her aunt.

  The security guard stood out in the hall while Annie and her aunt gathered everything back up into the bag. "You know, you could get into a lot of trouble bringing alcohol onto the premises," he warned Annie.

  "We'll keep that in mind," Maxine said for her. "Have a good night."

  A light rain had slicked the pavement as they made their way to the car. "You felt it in there, didn't you?" Maxine asked. "An evil presence... reaching out from beyond?"

  "I don't know."

  "Those videos... playing by themselves... Did you make those?"

  Annie got in behind the wheel. "It was the video for Mom."

  "I thought you said it was a tribute. I didn't see your father in them at all. Didn't see your mother, either, come to think of it."

  Annie started the car, drove out of the empty lot, her mind still on the videos. She pulled out into oncoming traffic without looking--

  "Watch out!"

  Annie jerked the wheel, swerving a hair too late to avoid the oncoming car. The sedan clipped the driver's side and Annie's car spun out, skidding over the slick street, leaping over the opposite sidewalk. It struck a tall hydrant head on.

  Shattered glass silenced Maxine's rising scream. The air bag exploded in a cloud of talcum, bursting Annie's nose, the pain dulled by the agony in her lower back as the seat belt jerked her backward. Stars flooded her vision. The horn bleated out into the night.

  She came around a moment or minutes later. No one had come across the accident yet, so she assumed it was the former. The airbag had deflated. Blood smeared over its silver surface, her own blood. The windshield lay in pieces on the crumpled hood.

  What she at first took for rain pattered on the roof and fell in through the window frame. Even in her semiconscious state, she understood the collision had popped the hydrant.

  With immense strain, she turned toward Maxine.

  Rain fell into her eyes. Her vision blurred, went pink, as she stared at the empty passenger seat. Blinking away blood, it struck her: Auntie Maxie had gone through the windshield.

  Please, she thought, as a queasy wave of oblivion washed over her. I'll do whatever you want... just please... don't let us die...

  The promise echoed in her ears as her world faded to black.

  ❚❚

  GETTING BACK TO health took time. She'd suffered fractured discs, had broken two ribs and fractured two more. The surgeons had straightened her nose, stitched gashes in her forehead and cheeks. After weeks of healing and physiotherapy, Annie once again sat in front of the editing monitors in her eight-by-ten cell, a sentence she would serve forty hours a week until her time came to pass the torch.

  Ray Smart welcomed her back, told her he'd "touch base" with her at the end of the week. For the constant pain in her back, he'd brought her an orthopedic chair.

  Maxine had survived the crash with extensive internal injuries. Blood was drained from her skull, her punctured spleen removed. Due to compound fractures in her left leg, she walked with a cane. Walt Brenner, drunk and speeding toward an overtime shift, had passed away in the second ambulance.

  Annie eased into her new chair, gazed for a moment down at the indistinct chalk marks left on the carpet between her feet. The pain wasn't so bad with her pills. She'd been taking too many, but the haze was navigable. She settled in behind the monitors, and got back to work.

  On the streetcar ride to work, she'd read about Congressman Lassiter, a staunch homophobe and segregationist currently suffering from heart troubles. When the P.A. jingled down the hall, dragging her feet on the carpet, Annie was ready.

  "How did you--?" Hilary began. But of course she knew. They all knew.

  "Just keeping the balance," Annie said with a morose chuckle, handing it over.

  Kyra peered over from across the hall, and for a moment, their eyes locked. She turned away quickly without expression, and the P.A. crept out of the room, standby in hand, glancing back at Annie until she was gone.

  CHOMPERS

  DR. BARRERA--IF he was a real doctor--worked out of an abandoned warehouse in the factory district. Shipping containers stood empty amid slats of dust-swirling lamplight, scattered like broken teeth after a bar fight. Dim light poured in through holes in its painted-over windows. Shreds of wiring hung loose from high catwalks, where metal staircases had rusted and toppled. Somewhere deep inside, a generator grumbled.

  At the far end of the warehouse, one shipping container had been set up with a dentist's chair, a small sink, a white cabinet, and an instruments table. Long orange cables snaked from its insides to the rattling power supply. A garden hose led off into the darkness beyond the container, toward a source of water. The contents of the container were pristine white and shimmering steel under large halogen lamps strung from its corrugated top. A mid-fifties Hispanic man dressed in white, dark hair with silver-gray wings at the sides, and an older woman with curly hair and large tinted glasses on a lanyard--clearly his assistant, possibly also his madre--stood on either side of the dentist's chair. They both smiled, showing off perfect white teeth in their tanned brown faces.

  Ray Havers thought of a tropical spa in the desert.

  How Ray had ended up here was simple: his teeth hurt like heck. Several wiggled painfully when he ate, and his gums had months ago turned an angry crimson. Since he couldn't afford the insurance, he'd already put off going to the dentist for several years. With a wedding to pay for, with a fiancée too timid to get a job, and a temperamental diabetic cat who required two daily shots of insulin, he just couldn't afford to get any sort of dental work done on his meager salary working night security at the West Midland Mall... especially so close to Christmas.

  Ray turned to his friend and coworker Santiago Tinto. The older, slimmer security guard had suggested visiting Dr. Barrera--a possibly illegal dentist he'd heard spoken of through friends of friends--but now that they stood here, he seemed to think better of it. Ray shrugged, and Santiago said something in Spanish to the dentist. Dr. Barrera replied with a single word Ray recognized: "Si."

  "Bueno," Santiago said, and to Ray: "Go on."

  Pausing at the heavy steel doors, thoughts of cartel death squads and organ harvesting squirmed through the spongy gray tissue of Ray's brain. He knew Santiago would never have deliberately led him into a trap, but his entire adult life until this moment had taught him to expect the worst.

  He might actually have turned and gone back the way they'd come, sparing himself the trouble that followed, had his teeth not suddenly felt like the keys of a
badly tuned piano slammed discordantly by an angry student. The agony doubled him over, grasping at his jaw before quickly withdrawing his hand with a wince. In that moment, he made up his mind to do whatever Dr. Barrera said, no matter where the man had received his diploma... if he'd gotten one at all.

  Ray's hard soles made hollow clanking sounds as he staggered into the container. "What? No magazines?" he said, joking to cover his nervousness.

  The dentist gave Santiago a quizzical look. Santiago translated, but neither the dentist nor his assistant appeared to get it.

  "You have money?" Dr. Barrera struggled with his English. "Jes?"

  "Yeah, I've got money."

  "Show me."

  Slightly irritated, Ray pulled out a wad of bills, a good chunk of his wedding fund. He displayed them for the dentist and his assistant with his eyebrows raised challengingly.

  "Hokay. Seet. Please."

  Ray stuffed the money back in his wallet, and sat in the chair. The assistant put a bib around his neck with an ingratiating smile, and Dr. Barrera leaned over him. The man's breath smelled like cinnamon and cigars when he said, "Ahhhhh," sticking out his tongue like a wizened brown lizard.

  Ray mimicked the action, opening his jaw until it hurt.

  Dr. Barrera picked up the scraper and pressed it into a molar. Pain erupted on the lower right side of Ray's mouth, white explosions blooming behind his eyes. When the dentist removed the instrument, Ray felt a tackiness, as if the molar itself were gummy. Spanish was muttered to his assistant. Out of the corner of his eye, Ray saw Santiago recoil at whatever Dr. Barrera had said. The dentist did the same with ten more teeth, poking them and--Ray assumed--naming them to his assistant, who scrawled them in a chart while Ray tried not to squirm in the chair.

  Finally, Dr. Barrera withdrew from Ray's open mouth. He lowered his green facemask with a sour look, and shook his head.

  "What? What does that mean?"

  Santiago repeated the question to the dentist. Dr. Barrera spoke hurriedly.