by Alan Spencer
“I’ve been good,” Andy said. “My left arm still feels numb sometimes, but other than that, I’m okay.”
“I heard about Anderson Mills,” the professor said, shaking his head. “I’m glad you survived. You’re a good kid. I asked you to visit because I have a surprise. I just learned about this a month ago, and I arranged it in just two weeks. It’s very popular on campus.” He paused, lowering his voice. “I’d hate to say why.”
“How come? Just hit me with it.”
“I’d hate to say it,” he repeated, “but in a way, I’m exploiting you. Now don’t worry, nobody knows you’re here.”
He instantly grew concerned. “What do you mean?”
“The reels that burned up that night, that’s what I’m talking about.”
“I’m so sorry those reels were lost. I know they were worth a lot of money, and they were full of sentimental value. It was a complete loss.”
“No,” Professor Maxwell said. “Not a complete loss, Andy—not at all. God, nostalgia is as potent as an orgasm. Those movies were the glory days of the double feature, none of this crap plaguing the big screen these days. I could watch The Gore Gore Girls and catch Beach Babes Versus the Swamp Monster in one sitting or Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things and Night of the Living Dead. Now you have to pay outrageous prices for a single inflated movie, and most of the time, it sucks.”
Andy was confused. “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
His professor understood his puzzlement. “Okay, here goes. A friend of mine is a firefighter in Green County. He knew about the project I assigned you. We talked about it in passing because he’s a fellow schlock movie fan. This man was one of the men at your uncle’s house who helped put out the fire.” The man’s smile spread and his face lit up. “We salvaged a set of reels. I’ve advertised it on campus as the only surviving movie from the Ryerson house. Oh, and it’s so popular that Schlock-Shock-Cinema is sending me offers for the rights through the mail and calling me five times a week.”
The wind was knocked from Andy, and his blood turned to ice. He shook his head with throbbing, stabbing pains. “No, no, no, what are you saying?”
“I thought you’d be happy. Oh, maybe you weren’t ready to think about the accident again. I’m so sorry. I wasn’t, I wasn’t taking that into consideration.”
“It’s not that.” Andy leaned against the wall, almost falling to the floor by the weight of the anxiety. “Your friend saved the reels of one film, which one?”
“Why, what’s wrong?” Professor Maxwell was flabbergasted. “You look sickly, Andy. Have a seat. You need a drink of water?”
Coming alive, Andy seized him by the collar, and Professor Maxwell yipped, startled.
Andy asked through gritted teeth, “What movie was saved?”
The professor politely brushed his hands off despite his frightened expression. “You’re having a bad reaction. Perhaps it’s my fault. I should’ve been more sensitive.”
He gulped in a breath of air and resisted the urge to vomit. His ears rang and his stomach lurched in his throat. “Tell me what movie.”
“Morgue Vampire Tramps Find Temptation at the Funeral Home,” he finally answered. “It was banned by the Dean, but his decision was overturned by a petition signed by over half of the campus’s students. It was wonderful. The film school is really making headway. Our funding will probably increase next year.”
Andy searched the office for the reels. “Where are the reels? You must tell me! YOU MUST DESTROY THEM!”
Professor Maxwell was so shocked he walked behind the desk to distance himself from Andy. “Destroy them, are you kidding? No offense, but I lost over twenty movies—lost gems, they’re irreplaceable. I’m sorry you’re disturbed by it. I thought a year was long enough to let you recover. I didn’t think you’d be this upset about the movie. I thought you’d be more excited for me.”
He lowered his voice into a soft growl, trying to calm himself despite the horrible situation that could unfold. “Think about it. If those are the same reels that I played on my uncle's projector, there's a strong chance that movie could come to life. The reels themselves could be controlled by the spirits of the dead. Who knows what the spirits possessed and didn't possess when that town was slaughtered? I don't fully know what they're capable of, and either way, it's not a risk I'm willing to take."
The man checked his watch, trying to ignore Andy's speech. “I was going to take you to the matinee feature. They’re going to show it on campus two times today.”
Andy shuttered hearing this. “Wait, what are you saying?”
“We’re late to the first feature. The movie started twenty minutes ago.”
About the Author
Alan Spencer is a horror writer from Kansas City. B-Movie Reels will be his sixth novel. His previous small press books include situations involving zombies with power tools, vampires operating a cider mill, and drug cartels battling cave cannibals. He's an avid horror movie enthusiast and is constantly on the lookout for his next fix. The author welcomes e-mails at [email protected] or visit his blog at horroralan.blogspot.com.
Look for these titles by Alan Spencer
Coming Soon:
B-Movie Attack
No B-movie monster stays dead forever!
B-Movie Attack
© 2012 Alan Spencer
It was supposed to be a fun screening of an old schlocky horror film at a university auditorium. Unfortunately, Morgue Vampire Tramps Find Temptation at the Funeral Home was possessed by demons able to bring the hideous title characters to life. Now the vampires are alive…and they want company. After gaining access to a vault filled with horror films confiscated by film censors, the vampires have set out to unleash an army of monsters on Chicago with each reel they show. Who will survive an invasion of creatures from B-movies like The Intestinator, Slasher Girls, and The 500 Foot Hooker? And what will be left of them?
Enjoy the following excerpt for B-Movie Attack:
Andy cut through the lush green turf outside of Dean Holliston’s office, sprinted across Louis Rice Conservatory, and shot up the concrete steps of Denton Hall, the three story playhouse. The parking lot was jam-packed with patrons’ cars, the crowds outside the ticket booths missing now that the film had started playing inside. Professor Maxwell arrived on the first step, and Andy was seconds from opening the main door.
“Let’s talk about this, Andy," Professor Maxwell begged him. “You can’t go about your anger this way."
It was too late for rationalizing anything when a mob of screams cut the peaceful afternoon breeze into something startling. The front doors burst open. The crowd crashed forward, shoving and battering each other to reach outside. Hundreds of students and film fans alike screamed in horror. Andy was forced backwards, thrown down the stairs. He was buried instantly in the shuffling horde of bodies.
“What in God’s name?” Professor Maxwell gasped, using his sleeve to wipe sweat from his eye. “What’s got them so worked up? Andy—Andy, are you okay?”
He met the tide of people, the current dragging Andy's coiled up body to the bottom steps. Before he bent down to see if his pupil was hurt, Professor Maxwell bumped into a young woman. Her neck up to her ear was bleeding with a talon scratch inches deep, the root of the wound glistening of purple muscle tissue.
“Shraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
The wicked caw pierced his eardrums. The source of the noise ripped through the front door, shattering the glass, jettisoning the fragments feet from the collision. The creature shot up into the sky. Leathery wings spread out nine feet wide, the ends tipped with six-inch bent talons. Professor Maxwell couldn’t believe his eyes.
What Andy was saying was true: the movie had come to life!
The woman flying through the air was horrifying. Brilliant deep auburn hair, long and flowing and silky smooth shimmered by the guide of rushing winds. Stalactite teeth, mouth daggers, click-clacked in her hunger. Its forked black tongue
snapped like leather. Ruby red lips were wet with fresh blood. The body was reptilian plated, the skin itself oil black and tinted green in the sunlight. Its hands were equipped with six inches fingers and equally as long of claws that could slice throats and part flesh with the efficiency of ginsu knives. Every muscle bragged of strength to crush its enemies. The bosom of the monster was ample, the pubic hair between its legs as bright as the locks on top of its head. The creature was as sexual as it was an abomination.
The professor’s first instinct was to run. The majority of the crowd has escaped with their lives, with the exception of the scattered few who’d received fatal talon slashes—three on the ground were bleeding and possibly dead. He couldn’t leave Andy. Andy’s trauma was sparked by the Anderson Mills deaths, but also by the films that he claimed were coming to life—and they were coming to life!
Another one of the flying vampire demons crashed through the upstairs quad window bathed and dripping in blood and carrying two human heads crudely ripped from the neck. One of the heads was the dean of the university, his maw drooling blood in a bizarre death reflex. Two more creatures shot out of the entrances, shrieking, capering, and laughing in subhuman delight.
Professor Maxwell bent down to dodge the incoming attackers. The four swooped in on the crowd as they madly fled to their vehicles. Heads were wrenched from bodies as they swung down, a strange “grump” sound issuing out their mouths like stubborn weeds that refused to be pulled. Andy was getting up from the ground. He'd twisted his ankle falling down the stairs.
“Shraaaaaaaaaaaah!”
Another of the flying creatures shot out the front door and seized Andy.
B-Movie Reels
Alan Spencer
Off of the screen and out for blood!
Andy Ryerson, a film school graduate, has been hired to write commentary on two dozen cheap, b-horror movies. It seems harmless enough, and he might even enjoy it. But the people in the town around him won’t enjoy it at all when one by one, the films he watches come to life. Andy chose the wrong projector to screen his movies. This one is out for blood. While Andy grumbles about low budgets and poor production values, a hungry butcher, a plague of rotting zombies, demonic vampires, a mallet-toting killer, flesh-eating locusts, and many other terrors descend on the unsuspecting innocent. By the time he realizes what he’s done, the town is teeming with evil, and it’s up to Andy and the few survivors left to stop the celluloid horror he’s unleashed.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B
Cincinnati OH 45249
B-Movie Reels
Copyright © 2012 by Alan Spencer
ISBN: 978-1-60928-737-5
Edited by Don D’Auria
Cover by Angela Waters
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: February 2012
www.samhainpublishing.com
