Camp Arcanum

by Josef Matulich

  Brenwyn was distracted from Marc and his sudden fascination with interior design by her social obligations. The last fifty feet to their seats was a gauntlet of hugs, air kisses, and hurried conversations. As they settled into their seats, she exhaled as if deflating.

  “I agree,” said Marc. “I was getting tired just watching you.”

  “The proceedings are a bit wild,” Brenwyn said, “but you will love it.”

  She gestured towards the front of the theater where a live show was being presented before the screen. A trio of young women was doing an impromptu musical number. They wore lacy black dresses, red-and-white striped socks, and cheap pointy hats. They swung dime-store broomsticks to their tune:

  You say ath-AIM, I say uh-THAM-ay.

  You say sam-HAIN, I prefer so-WEEN.

  Ath-AIM, uh-THAM-ay

  Sam-HAIN, so-WEEN.

  Let’s call the whole thing off!

  Though he had never been big on musical theater, he smiled and gave Brenwyn a “thumbs-up.” She cuddled up against him as the lights dimmed and the other witches settled into their seats for the spectacle.

  * * * * *

  The Craft was the first feature of the evening. Marc noticed right away that the improvised screen condom made the picture blurry and uneven.

  Good thing no one is actually here for the movie.

  The chatter of the hundreds of women had settled into a dull rumble as the film started. Decorum was shattered within a few minutes as the callbacks started. Marc worked out the standard forms fairly quickly. With any appearance of Robin Tunney, the audience shouted “Witch!” Anytime Fairuza Balk appeared in a scene, everyone screamed: “Bitch!” When any character mentioned “Manon,” a fictitious God of the Witches as Brenwyn explained, the response was “Who the Hell is that?” Any use of the classic Wiccan greeting “Blessed be” was greeted with “Blessed jujubes” and a hail of flying candy.

  Brenwyn showed Marc how to pre-chew a jujube so it would stick to polyethylene.

  “Traditionally,” she explained, “three jujubes are chewed together, but only long enough to make them stick to each other. Any longer,” she said, “and they might disintegrate in flight.” She lobbed the glob in a high trajectory towards the screen, avoiding the heads of other witches trying to do the same. Marc took a handful of ammunition and started chewing.

  Though the movie itself wasn’t that bad, the audience was getting angry. The atmosphere felt more like a public stoning. Marc started to get caught up in the spirit of the crowd. After all, almost everyone depicted on the jujube-covered screen was either stupid, evil, or crazy. Even he was getting offended and he didn’t call himself a witch.

  He chewed up three of the much larger Jujyfruits and hurled the wad at the screen with all his strength. He caught Fairuza Balk right between the eyes and the impact could be heard over the general noise. A mighty roar rose from the crowd and another wave of jujubes ascended. Brenwyn beamed at him with pride.

  Everyone, Marc included, was worked up into a frenzy by the finale. As the Goth witch fought against her restraints in the asylum, insults and pre-chewed candy flew. The air and screen were black with jujubes. The sound was like a heavy rain on a tin roof.

  The projector shut off before the end of the credits and the house lights came up. The pandemonium continued. Everyone stood in their seats and shouted to be heard over everyone else.

  Brenwyn leaned in close to Marc’s ear. “Was it good for you too?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Marc responded. “It was a bit rough for my first time.”

  “Three more films to go,” she said. “Do you think you can endure it?”

  “I think I’m man enough for a witch’s movie marathon.”

  She wrapped her arms around his upper arm and leaned in close.

  “Good,” she whispered. Marc was starting to feel warm and fuzzy inside.

  Down front, one voice carried over the crowd and caught Marc’s attention.

  “Clean the screen!” a woman screamed.

  Others repeated the demand and soon it was a chant sweeping through the audience. Marc looked to Brenwyn for guidance, but she only shrugged and joined the chant herself.

  “Clean the screen. Clean the screen,” the entire audience chanted together. Some were clapping in time.

  “Clean The Screen! Clean The Screen!” Some were stomping in time, now. Marc, though he was doing his best to keep up, worried the manager might be lynched if something wasn’t done soon.

  A noise beneath the chant emerged, coming from nowhere and everywhere. It was a sound like wind through a door or whispers of angels. The witches burst into spontaneous applause and then the chanting continued.

  “CLEANTHESCREEN!

  CLEANTHESCREEN!

  CLEANTHESCREEN!”

  There was a new sound below the chant, like the tolling of an iron bell, almost below hearing. Marc felt it in his gut more than heard it.

  The plastic over the screen suddenly went taut as if it were grasped at the bottom by invisible hands. Then it snapped like a sheet. A wave rolled from the bottom to the top that threw off jujubes as it went.

  The witches seemed to go mad, laughing and snatching at jujubes as if they were gold coins. Brenwyn beside him was dancing in place. Marc was frozen in mid-clap. The heat of five hundred bodies and their noise fell on him all at once.

  Marc looked up at the clean screen and realized the absolute impossibility of what he has just seen. Brenwyn turned to him giggling. Her eyes had changed; they were silver now, with no sign of pupils, as if they were replaced with polished ball bearings. Every woman there had the same silver eyes.

  “Rat’s ass,” Marc muttered.

  He didn’t believe in magick or witches or grand conspiracies, but he knew for a certainty that there was a disease in his family’s blood. It had destroyed Allen and now it had come for him.

  Marc had to get out of the theater before he snapped and tried to fight his way out. For years as Allen’s protector and avenger, he had trained himself to break bones and crush throats. Fighting his way free of imaginary enemies here would be a blood bath.

  He saw there was no way he could make it past Brenwyn or the women to the other side. He climbed up onto the back of his seat and made his way back over the three rows to the aisle. One silver-eyed witch clawed at him as he passed. Restraining himself, Marc only twisted away from her and leaped to the last seat. He toppled off and landed badly in the aisle. His right leg exploded in pain and his head throbbed.

  As he pulled himself to standing in spite of the twisted knee, he saw Brenwyn trying to force her way up the row of seats. This sped Marc to the doors, pain or not.

  Marc pushed through the double doors and limped across the lobby. He put his full weight into the front door and burst out of the theater. The change from steam-bath heat to October cold slapped him in the face and made his stomach flip over.

  Marc staggered to the end of the building. At the gap between the theater and the health food store, his knees gave out on him. He knelt with his face leaning against the cold concrete as he willed his popcorn and jujubes to stay down.

  Something moved in the dark in front of him. It looked like a mound of hair about the size of his hand. There were two dark hollows in it that gave Marc the impression of eyes. It looked up at him for a moment and then slid across the pavement and through the wall. There was nothing there at all.

  The Qliphotics, they’re everywhere, Allen had told him long ago. They watch everything, and they can move through the walls.

  But Allen was a schizophrenic and the monsters were only in his head. Now, they had moved into Marc’s. He closed his eyes and tried to think of nothing at all.

  Marc felt hands on his back. He leapt to his feet, turning around and drawing back his fist at the same time. It was Brenwyn and she looked as shaken as he felt.

  “Oh God. Oh God, Marc,” murmured Brenwyn, “I am so sorry.”

  She leaned forward with her
arms out-stretched.

  “Get away from me,” Marc moaned.

  “You are safe,” she said. “There is nothing to be frightened of here.” She laid her hands gently on his shoulders.

  She doesn’t understand. I am the thing to be afraid of.

  “No,” he muttered. “Go away.”

  “There is no need to be afraid. We are all your friends.” She sounded like she was trying to soothe a child with nightmares.

  “No! Get your hands off me,” he shouted. “Get the FUCK away from me!”

  Brenwyn stepped back as if he’d punched her already.

  “No. You don’t understand,” he said. “When things start moving by themselves, when little animals start moving through the walls, I tell you that is the time to be afraid.”

  “It is not what you think—” she started.

  “Stay away from me! You don’t want to be near me now.” Marc stood and staggered away from her. “I don’t want to be near you.”

  Marc backed away from Brenwyn, his arms extended to fend her off.

  Brenwyn, for the first time, looked powerless. She started to cry as he kept backing away from.

  “Don’t follow me,” he said sharply. “I can make it to my car all by myself. Stay away from me!”

  Marc turned on his heel and stalked away. He used every bit of his will to look stable and calm, hoping to not give her any excuse to come after him. Behind him, he could hear the sound of Brenwyn weeping.

  Chapter 8

  Honeyed Words and Chainsaws

  THE LITTLE MONSTERS WERE WAITING for Marc when he woke at three a.m. He didn’t want to look out the trailer’s windows to see them staring back at him. Instead he dragged his tired ass out of bed and pulled his old shaving kit off the top shelf of the closet. That’s where he kept Allen’s old meds, including five-year-old anti-psychotics.

  He recalled a loading dose of Resperidone to be three pills, which went down easily enough with a glass of cold water. There were no more monsters when he went back to bed.

  Even with the drugs in his system, he couldn’t sleep. He instead laid in his bed, staring at the curved aluminum ceiling and trying to not think of Brenwyn. That lasted until about four a.m., when he finally blacked out.

  * * * * *

  As was becoming the habit at Camp Arcanum, Eleazar was roused from a dream of three young women of negotiable virtue by the sounds of engines and clanking metal. He rolled out of bed and into his clothes and boots. It looked to be just before dawn and even the songbirds were trying to sleep.

  As he slipped out of his trailer, he found Theodora idling in front of the barn. Her bucket was raised and held up like cupped hands. This sparked a moment of jealousy, her going out with another man without so much as a “by your leave”. Above her idling, Eleazar could hear the sound of falling equipment and muffled swearing coming from inside the barn.

  Marc came out of the barn and pitched a heavy logging chain into the bucket. The impact rang out like thunder. Marc winced at the sound, but then growled and shrugged it off. The circles under his eyes were dark and his mood was even darker. He glared at Eleazar and turned back to the barn. After Marc went inside, Eleazar heard more banging and grumbling coming from within.

  Though a wise man might have run back to his bed and hid beneath the covers, Eleazar padded over and leaned against Theodora. Marc returned with an ax, a pry bar, and a hank of rope.

  “You’re up rather early, milord,” Eleazar said.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Marc grunted. He tossed the tools into Theodora’s bucket, producing yet another sleep-murdering crash.

  “There seems to be an awful lot of that going around.” Eleazar tried not to sound accusatory.

  Marc said nothing, but he said nothing in a very churlish and hostile manner. He went back to the tool shed, no doubt to find the loudest possible tools to throw into the bucket. After all, Michael and a handful of squirrels were still asleep.

  “So, sirrah,” Eleazar called over to the barn, “what do you have planned for an hour where most everyone else would either be going to church—or sleeping?”

  Marc came back with the gas and oilcans for the chainsaw. He put them on the ground at Eleazar’s feet and turned back to the barn without a pause.

  “I’m going after some of your scary trees,” Marc muttered over his shoulder.

  Eleazar followed him as far as the door.

  “But it’s Sunday,” Eleazar complained.

  Marc emerged with his chainsaw and that tiresome safety equipment.

  “Then they won’t be expecting it, will they?”

  Eleazar shrugged as Marc trudged back to Theodora.

  “Do you want to give me a hand?” Marc didn’t turn towards Eleazar as he asked. His tone was flat and Eleazar presumed that his boss was either incredibly tired or recently bitten by a zombie.

  “Certainly,” Eleazar chirped, “if you but give me a chance to get a cup of coffee.”

  “Never mind.” Marc dismissed him out of hand and squatted down to prep the chainsaw. He went through the time needed for adjustments in silence. When he was finished, he put the gas cans and safety equipment into the bucket without a glance at Eleazar.

  “So,” said Eleazar, “don’t leave me hanging by my thumbs—metaphorically speaking. How was your date?”

  Marc started up the chainsaw and revved it as he glared dangerously at Eleazar.

  “That good?” Eleazar said. He was conflicted at that point. An absolute dating disaster might give him a passable shot at milady witch. Too bad his friend Marc would have to suffer for that opportunity.

  Marc killed the saw and set it gently into the bucket. With a pained grunt, he slid behind Theodora’s controls.

  “I’ll be back around noon,” Marc said. “If anyone comes looking for me, tell them I’m in Dayton.”

  He didn’t wait for a response, but gunned Theodora’s engine and guided her down the path into the woods.

  After Marc had absconded with Theodora, Eleazar strolled over to the Michael’s trailer. The artist, wearing naught but a white dressing robe, had been watching from the safety of his porch. Michael looked down the forest path and sighed wearily.

  “Aye,” Eleazar said in his best Scottish accent, “he is in a wee bit of a snit, this morning.”

  * * * * *

  “Tree!” Marc shouted. There shouldn’t be anyone within a half a mile to hear, but he felt like yelling something at somebody. He finished the back cut on the oak tree and dropped it into the clearing he’d made earlier. Setting his goggles back in position on his nose, he carefully made his way up the fallen trunk to trim off the limbs. With only an hour’s sleep and a healthy amount of Resperidone in his system, he felt like he was slogging through oatmeal.

  The tree was nothing more than a long, thick stick after fifteen minutes’ work. He trudged back down the trunk to the next marked tree where he could take out his mood on more innocent timber.

  “So you and your witch friends wanted to drive me crazy, Musetta,” Marc said to the tree. “Congratulations. But you’re not going to like me crazy.”

  * * * * *

  The clearing was three times its original size and most of it was filled with fallen tree trunks. Marc had lined them up next to each other close and parallel like an old-style corduroy road. The effect was nice, but nowhere near enough for him to call it a day. Besides, according to a quick glance at the sun, it was only about nine in the morning.

  Marc went back to a tree he’d already wedged. Marc had so far cut down Musetta and Brenwyn and every other Arcanum witch he could remember by name; he was now cutting down Brenwyn for the second time. He sighted down the trunk at one end of the row of fallen trees. After several moments of calculations, which from repeated execution no longer required Marc’s higher brain functions, he made the final cut.

  “Tree!” he shouted at no one in particular.

  The tree stood upright on its stump as if it couldn’t decide whether to cooperate
or not. There was no breeze to push it one way or another.

  Marc switched the running chainsaw to his off hand and nudged the tree in the desired direction with his right. With the sound of splintering wood, it began its slow-motion fall.

  The tree spun slightly due to its off-center limbs pulling it to one side. This was something Marc had taken into account. The tree landed, bouncing once and coming to rest within three feet of the others. Marc stood over the stump of his latest victim. He gunned the chainsaw as he surveyed the destruction.

  Something tapped him hard on the shoulder. Marc spun around quickly to see what it was. He saw a blur of bright colored fabric and brown hair, and Marc pulled up quickly. He felt a tug in his hands as the chainsaw connected with a solid object. A cloud of wood chips sprayed into his face.

  Brenwyn stood with a bemused expression on her face and a sawed-off branch in her hand.

  “It is impressive to see you work,” she said.

  “Rat’s ass!” Marc muttered. He let go of the kill switch on the saw. The engine sputtered and died. “Don’t come up on a man with a chainsaw like that. I nearly cut you in half.”

  “That is why I used the stick,” she said. “You could not hear me shouting at you.”

  He dropped his yellow plastic hearing protectors to hang around his neck.

  “I didn’t come up here for conversation,” he grunted.

  “I did,” Brenwyn said.

  “Too bad.”

  He didn’t look at her as he moved on to the next tree. He decided he would trim the fallen trees after she left.

  “I have only one question,” Brenwyn asked as he passed.

  “Shoot.” He braced himself for an interrogation about the night of the movie marathon.

  “Why do you always say ‘rat’s ass?’”