by A. L. Mengel
He saw Tramos once again.
He remembered when he was brought inwards to the blood life, he knows how he got where he was today. For in the blood life that he was given, there was a large gap between he was allotted and what actually partook of.
*~*~*
Janice Davidson pulled her car in front of her small townhouse in Perrine and cut the engine. She grabbed the groceries and dashed into the house. Leaving the bags on the kitchen counter, she ran into her study and flipped on her laptop. She had to research when the going was hot. Heading back to the kitchen, she grabbed herself a glass of red wine.
And she saw Antoine’s face again.
In her mind. She closed her eyes, going back to that night.
It was Saturday night, 1 in the morning. The club was packed, it was opening night. She was at the neon green bar that snaked the length of one wall, two of her friends were admiring the shirtless musclemen, but her attention was diverted when a tall, dark skinned man walked through the door.
She stopped and stared at him.
He was holding a satchel of some sort. She couldn’t tell exactly from the darkness in the club, but it looked like a bank bag. She followed him.
He was in front of her, a tall dark figure dressed in a long black coat, heading toward the back of the club. He disappeared in a throng of heavy, thick black drapes that reached far above to the expansive ceiling.
But she continued to follow.
She pulled apart the drapes, and there were more drapes…layer upon layer of drapes like that on a stage for an intricate production. She pulled them apart, as heavy as they were, and then found a door. It was a black door, a black door in black walls, and it was closed but not locked. She reached for the brass handle which stood out and gleamed in the florescent lights, and turned the handle.
It turned and the door opened.
There was no light that came through when the door opened. The door opened only to mystery and darkness. She stood for a moment behind the door, feeling the cold draft that emanated from the crack, blowing out like wind.
She was sure that Antoine went through that door. Now behind the curtains, she saw that the walls were black and the wall was expansive and there were no more doors. This was the only one.
The music thumped in the background, swelling and screaming. She looked behind her shoulder and saw throngs of dancers in layers of smoke and light grinding sweaty bodies together.
And then she turned around and proceeded.
She wanted to see Antoine. She wanted to touch him. She wanted to feel him. But even so, she didn’t quite know why she was following him. She knew his face, and she knew his walk when she saw him go through the club. But she couldn’t seem to draw herself away from him when he walked through the door.
She opened the door to darkness.
Very faint light ushered through as the door opened, revealing steps leading directly from the threshold of the door and revealing a wall about three feet in front of her. It appeared to be that of a landing.
She looked behind her shoulder one last time, one last time at the dancers through the drapes, the music beating and thumping in her head, the smoke permeating down on the black wooden floor below her, and then she turned around and stepped down on the first step. Whatever she was in, she was in something of that of the unknown. Where had Antoine gone? What was he doing going down these stairs leading to the unknown? And then she was standing several steps below, on the landing. And the door closed with a bass filled bang.
She looked up at the door with a gasp.
She was in total darkness.
She ran up the steps to the door and desperately tried the handle.
“Help!” she screamed, banging on the wooden door in the darkness. “Help! Is anyone there?!”
But no one heard her.
She fumbled in her jeans pockets for a pack of matches, or a lighter, or something that would light her way. But she found nothing. She saw nothing.
But she heard something.
“Antoine?” she called down the second set of stairs. Nothing.
But there it was. It wasn’t Antoine it was a deep rumble, coming from below. It shook the walls and the floor and she feel to her knees.
On the other side of the door, the music continued, but it was a muffled, methodic beat. It did not stop when the walls rumbled.
She screamed – cowering into the corner and shielding her eyes when the door broke and splintered in front of her, letting in the light of the club and then she could see. But she wasn’t drawn to the dark set of earthen stairs before her that Antoine had so recently descended – it was the cascading splinters of wood and giant gleaming silver axe in front of her.
“Come with me,” a deep male voice said, as a giant hand covered in steel plated armor reached down and grabbed her shoulder. It held tight and she cried out and winced in the sharp and sudden pain. “Get on your feet!” the voice commanded.
She obeyed with caution, still standing as far in the corner as she could be. She struggled to see who the mysterious invader was, but he was but a large and imposing silhouette, the bright white and colorful cascading lights of the nightclub moving behind him.
“Get out while you still can,” he commanded, again reaching for her and grabbing her, harder this time, and pulling her out to the back of the stage. In the light, Janice saw the beast before her – a giant man beast in shining silver armor, the chest plate bearing a red cross. “Get out quickly! There isn’t much time!” His mouth shot saliva at her through a thick closely cut beard, but she didn’t even wipe it away from her hair – she was too infatuated with the ropes of muscles underneath the armor; the bulging veins and tight and taught skin and hair that covered his limbs left her wondering what type of man beast this was.
He pushed her, so hard that she got tangled in the heavy black hanging drapes. It seemed as though she were lost in a sea of drapes, but the music came closer, louder, and soon she was parting the last set of curtains.
The club was still operating; the music was still thumping and drinks were being poured, but the ground was shaking in a methodic rhythm in tune to the music. The walls were shaking, and as she scanned the room, throughout the sea of scantily clad dancers, in the midst of the smoke and lights, were man beasts stationed throughout the large emporium, standing against the walls, behind the crowds, unbeknownst to all except for Janice.
And suddenly, the music stopped.
Each beast drew a sword, holding it high above their heads, and then the swords ignited in flame.
The crowd stopped dancing once the music cut, initially looking around and confused, but once the swords were drawn, they were mesmerized. They were all staring at the swords, the flames reflecting in their glassy, partied-out eyes, their eyes following the call of the flames.
*~*~*
Jeff Newman drove a rusted old Chevy pick-up, light blue and large, worn out tires. He drove it the same way each day to work, at Nan’s Auto Body just outside of town. The passenger side window was broken, covered with a trash bag duct taped to the sides, and the air conditioning stopped working years ago.
On the same day that he was driving that old beat up truck, on the way home from work, he stopped at a stop light just outside of Ascension Cemetery. He was waiting in the usual rush hour line of honking cars. He fished a Winston from his breast pocket with fingers stained black from auto grease and punched in the cigarette lighter. He sighed as he was waiting for the lighter to heat up, and turned his head to the right.
He could clearly see the markers through the willow branches, and he started thinking about his grandmother. But as he waited for the light to change, he stared at the gravestones, falling into a trance. Someone was there watching.
There was no clear silhouette against the filtered rays of sun through the blooms and the leaves, but he could sense someone was there.
The cigarette lighter emitted a light pop.
He broke his trance for a moment, lit his Win
ston, and returned his gaze to the cemetery.
Who was out there?
I am, Jeff.
His mouth dropped open and his cigarette fell into his lap. He cursed and jumped up in his seat, fishing the burning cigarette from his in between his legs and brushing off his faded, dirty jeans.
I already know you, Jeff.
He marshalled the car to the side of the road, placed it in park and cut the engine.
“Who the heck is talkin’?” His long drawl indicated his years in the South. He flung the door open with a loud creak, and jumped out onto the side of the road, his boots clicking on the pavement. The door closed with an equally loud creak He rubbed his mustache, took a drag on his cigarette, and walked around the back cab, running his hands through the sides of his long, dirty hair.
Come over to me Jeff. Come over and see me.
He stopped on the sidewalk, in front of a slightly rusted wrought iron fence, and listened.
“Who is callin’ me?”
He stubbed is cigarette out on the sidewalk, crushing it with the tip of his boot.
You’ve seen me before, Jeff. And now I stand here before you. I have come to you. I have seen you as a child, and have watched you transform into the man you have now become. Come and release me from my prison, and I will transform you in to the man you always wished you were.
And then Jeff felt a rush of wind across his face, drying the sweat that was dripping down the sides of his cheeks, and he started to remember.
He was just barely twenty when it happened.
He had just dropped out of college and had just started his job at Nan’s when he stumbled out of Ray’s, with at least 6 Millers inside him. The wooden door swung open with a bang, and he stumbled into the parking lot.
And before him stood a tall man with long, dark hair, dressed in a black suit.
Jeff stopped for a moment, and stumbled backwards, but caught his footing. The door to the bar closed and the parking lot was silent again.
“I have been watching you,” the man said, moving closer, his steps grinding into gravel. “I have been watching you for many years.”
Jeff sighed and laughed. “You’ve been watchin’ me eh? What are you, a faggot?”
The man smiled. “Let’s just say that I have seen how you have been living your life. And I want to give you a gift.”
“What type of gift?”
It was not normal for Jeff to be drawn to anything spiritually. He was as straight-laced as they come, an ultra-conservative redneck who always voted red.
*~*~*
Jeff walked down the side of First Avenue, his right hand cradling the bag of clanking tools close to the side of his chest; the left hand holding a lit Chesterfield between his index and middle fingers. He drew the cigarette up to his lips and inhaled deeply, relishing the hot smoke as it penetrated his lungs. When he exhaled, an exaggerated cloud of smoke exited his mouth, and even after the smoke was all blown away, he could still see his breath in a smoky puff in front of his face, moving to small, methodic clouds as he picked up his pace.
Miami was in a late January cold front.
It was the kind of cold front that only came two of three times a year, and even though it was a tropical city, tonight the temperature dipped into the high forties.
“That means the rest of the county’s in a deep freeze,” Jeff had said earlier that day between bites of an overstuffed Italian hoagie. He wiped some olive oil off his chin with a crumpled napkin and tossed it back on the wooden picnic table. His friend Jan had been there having lunch with him.
“So you are going tonight?” she asked, hooking her long blonde hair behind her right ear as she always seemed to do lately. “You are really going to do it?”
Jeff nodded. “It’s time.”
And then he was at the side of the wrought iron fence, and he stopped to catch his breath. He scanned the street and saw almost no activity save a lonely car far off in the distance. All of the shops that were once busy in the daytime were all shut tight and closed for the night. and he dropped the brown bag of tools to the sidewalk and they clanked at his feet. He saw that the iron gate fence was locked tight, as expected. He cursed himself for wearing jeans, but he knew that he would have to climb the fence.
He chose a spot that was the most centrally located between two streetlights – he had come earlier that day to scope out the best location and it worked in his favor: where he dropped the tools was precisely outside the realm of light from both streetlamps on either side of him.
But when he looked up and craned his neck to see over the wrought iron fence, and peered inside to the sea of stones and markers, he again wondered why he was wearing jeans and not sweatpants.
“Fuck.” The fence was high and looked dangerous. There were spikes every three inches or so – which looked like extreme pain if he were to lose his footing at the wrong moment. But he had to go through with it. Five beers said he had to, that’s for sure.
He discarded his cigarette butt, blew the last of the smoke out, and tossed the tools over. He heard them clank and bang into a headstone. And he could have sworn someone just called his name.
“Jeff!” a voice whispered – coming from inside the cemetery.
He looked inside and squinted, trying to see who had been calling him. All he could see was some movement deep inside, near some trees, but that is all.
“Who is there?” he called out quietly, not wanting to draw attention to himself.
No answer.
“Who is there?” he asked again, this time slightly louder and with more persistence. Still no answer.
“I am,” a woman said, several feet in front of him.
He stepped back, almost tripping over the tool bag.
Jeff peered through an opening in the fence, a small rectangular window in the cement wall that had a wrought iron cross embedded in it. He could make out a shadowy figure standing next to a stone spire. “Who are you?” he whispered. He snapped his head around towards a passing car in the street. He hoped that his dark clothes and the giant tree above concealed him.
The woman stepped closer, but remained in the shadows. “Don’t you want to come and finish what you started?”
“Of course I do.”
The mysterious woman continued. “And you know why you came here, right?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.” Jeff stepped closer to the iron fence. He peered into the graveyard, through the darkness, looking for the woman.
But never seeing her.
“So you remember what you came here for,” the woman said. “And you don’t you think it’s time you started?”
“Yes.”
“So get those shovels. Get the bag of tools. It is time. And Jeff...you sure you remember why are you here?”
Jeff paused as he tossed his bag of tools on the sidewalk. He looked over at the fence, up into the cemetery. “Yes! Yes I remember! We are digging up Stanley!”
*~*~*
PART FOUR
THE STORY OF GEORGE STANLEY
“The only thing they can get me for is running a funeral parlor without a license.”
- JOHN WAYNE GACY
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
There once was a house in the southernmost suburbs of Miami that got raided.
The neighbors all knew that something was up – they all would huddle in the streets near their mailboxes in the morning, when the house was always quiet, and look over at the windows that were shut tight and covered with blinds.
There was just something about that house.
It was a modest neighborhood; working class, there were no Beamers in the driveways – mostly Chevys and old, rusted pickup trucks. One of the neighbor’s teenage son, a few houses down, liked to work on rusted, beat up, old cars. And usually, there was one sitting on cinder blocks in the driveway with cardboard flats underneath.
But the neighborhood said nothing of the residents.
No, it was no Beverly Hills, and the residents worked hard, they wo
rked long hours.
It was a well-respected neighborhood.
And on the street, the owner of the house that got raided, S.W.A.T. team and all, was a Mr. George Stanley. George was one of the most respected residents on the street, so of course, the raid came as a shock. But the raid happed shortly after his wife Gaye died, and after she died, residents didn’t see much of George.
He came out every so often – he still tended to the yard, and every now and then he opened the garage. But it wasn’t the garage that was the main focus of the investigation. It wasn’t the living room, or the bedrooms, or the back porch.
*~*~*
There was a heavy feeling to the basement.
Water dripped from stone walls on which moss grew in patches; there was a small finger of light that felt its way in from a small, plexi-glass window covered with cardboard and duct tape, diagonally down the wall. But it offered no relief from the darkness, the dank cold, and the musty air.
Chains clanked against the silence.
And then the chains clanked again against the silence.
And a door creaked open at the top of a set of wooden stairs that reached upwards towards the floor above. Warm light shined against a smudged wall that was once white. “Shut up down there! I can hear you clankin’ everywhere!”
And then there was silence again.
But in the silence, in the midst of the darkness there were eyes.
A pair of blue eyes that were attached to a young man, and those eyes saw the same picture – the moss that grew on the walls, the cardboard that was attached to the window with the duct tape, and the diagonal triangle of light that found its way from the window, across the wall and to the floor.
But through those eyes, the scene was viewed through bars. Black bars that comprised a steel cage, which the boy was peering through, laying on his side with his cheek on the plastic flooring. His body was bruised and had cuts in various stages of healing; there was dried blood on the side of his torso, and his hair was matted against his scalp. He only wore a dirty pair of underwear.
