Not my words. Dad’s. Remember? Hollow planet, worlds beneath worlds, all that shit? A tellurian façade?
No. I don’t remember. And I don’t know why you feel the need to embarrass us in public. We’re going to bury our father tomorrow and this is no way to honor his memory.
Ian found it difficult to restrain an outburst with the accumulation of alcohol and anger in his belly. He almost brought up what their dad had done in the barn right then and there.
Thought better of it.
Not much was said on the long drive back to the house, though Lindsay stared out her window and remarked on how wan the setting sun looked and was that the moon up already?
Ian gripped the steering wheel, stared at the gnats swirling above the rutted road in the half-light.
Nothin’ but a goddamn tellurian façade, he mumbled through clenched teeth.
Desangrado. Enfermidad nueva. Cuatro head of cattle, Ambrose said.
Head of cattle. It sounded weird to Ian, like the cows were missing their heads, while their round clumsy bodies still roamed around in the pasture.
You said they’d bled out?
Si. El Hombre Verde visito.
Cascar. Their back legs are broken. Ian made a snapping gesture.
Ambrose nodded, waved away a fat greenbottle fly.
Reses muertas, bring wrong animales down.
Bobcats did this?
No bobcats with luces en la montaña.
Lights?
Ambrose nodded emphatically, his battered cowboy hat slipped over his eyes. Linterna.
Poachers with lanterns. Ian was only half-joking.
Demasiado pequeños.
Mind taking care of it? I mean like con fuego? Torch ‘em. Let the realtor and the next poor bastard worry about this shithole.
A horse whinnied long and loud. Ian helped Ambrose drag the cattle behind the barn. Flies swirled in the air, settled on the carcasses in black twitching blankets.
It was time to enter the barn’s second floor. Ian’s hands shook. He’d put it off too long. Couldn’t stop thinking about his dad, sweat streaming off his angry face.
Ian, Lindsay and Josh had been building hay forts when their father stomped up the barn stairs.
He’d grabbed Josh by the throat, lifted him off the floor, backhanded repeatedly with a free hand. The boy had dangled there at the end of his dad's arm, oddly calm during the whole ordeal. Walleyed and accepting as if everyone had a father who disciplined with his knuckles.
Kids done messed up my bales!
Punched Josh in the chest so hard he flopped around like a mobile above an epileptic baby’s crib.
Ian and Lindsay could only watch as their brother bawled, drool slick on a wet chin like a newborn calf.
Dad spun Josh to the wood floor, grabbed the belt loop on the back of his jeans. Pressed a knee into his son’s spine, one hand around his throat, other holding onto the denim slipping over the boy’s hips as Josh screamed for mom but they all knew she was in town grocery shopping and Ian could tell by his voice that this had happened so many times before and mom had never shown up then either.
Yanked the head back so he was staring directly at his brother and sister. All Ian could think of was how dad would put calves in a headlock and force feed them from a bottle.
He’d laughed at the sight of his brother sprawled there, jeans pulled down bare-ass for all to see, hay clinging to his snot sticky face like one of those magnetic toys with the iron filings beard.
This is funny? Their father’s voice sustained rage.
No sir, Ian and Lindsay had replied in unison.
They’d left Josh behind and ran into the forest to swordfight each other with broken broom handles.
Ancient history, Ian said quietly. Water under bridges. The walls seemed to absorb his words, spat them back. He grabbed a tape measure, shovel and gloves. Hurried downstairs to the barn floor.
He wandered outside and found himself in the corral, in the precise spot he’d held the dog’s legs down while his dad castrated it with nothing but a buck knife and rags soaked in hot water. He’d refused to allow Ian to name the animal; its sole purpose was to scare off whatever had been sneaking down from the mountain to steal chickens.
He’d mutilated the dog, left it to recuperate in the dirt, panting and whining in the muddy blood, testicles unceremoniously tossed nearby. The dog had survived the ordeal. Lived long enough to die years later when a spooked horse kicked him in the head.
Ian wasn’t sure what he would’ve called the dog.
He waved to Ambrose, asked if he needed any help. He waved back and shook his head in the negative. Josh and Lindsay were probably still asleep. Ian had time to waste.
He trekked up the hill. Ran dog names through his head until he found himself at his fort again. He extended the tape measure along the stone wall to find it had risen even more. He removed the gloves, slid his hand across the sleek surface, fingertips dipping into the petroglyphs’ grooves.
The bottom of the pit had fallen into a deep hole. The blackberry bushes were gone, presumably into the opening. He couldn’t see the bottom. Three more knee-high wall sections had pierced the ground, surrounding the maw like rising antigorite towers.
Maybe there was a whole village beneath his feet.
He threw some branches into the gaping entrance, but felt wary as if standing before the chasm made him vulnerable. Josh and Lindsay were probably awake by now and wondering where he’d gone off to. He needed a shower.
He headed back down the mountain. The shovel, tape measure and gloves were left behind.
Ambrose had started to burn the cattle. Ian walked towards the plume of smoke darkening the sky like an appeasement blotting out the heavens.
Ian imagined his father’s skin had been so weakened by age he could press his thumbprint into it. The funeral home’s deep avocado walls and tobacco stain yellow curtains accentuated the room’s dinginess. It seemed fitting—there was no romance to be found in death, nothing beautiful or profound. Death was as mundane as bad breath, as glamorous as clogged pores or greasy hair.
Josh and Lindsay spoke solemnly with yet another war vet he had yet to meet. Lindsay’s put upon expression let Ian know how she felt about him not participating in the conversation.
He didn’t care. His father had degenerated into inert particles that represented something torn down from a former glory, tarnished by what he’d become later in life. Fucking waste matter.
The veteran noticed Ian standing alone.
I’m Donald. 1st Infantry Division. What a great man we’ve lost.
Thanks for paying your respects.
Least I could do. A great man.
Yeah, a real warrior, Ian said.
Lindsay glanced across the funeral home in reaction to his sarcastic tone. Ian wondered if she resented anything, if she harbored the past’s poisons in a secret place. He looked away from his sister and watched Josh touch the casket as if to confirm its solidity.
Ian was impatient for the service to end, though he was dreading following through on their father’s request to bury the Vietnam Zippo in the forest where they’d dispersed their mother’s ashes. But it had been one of the few requests in the will. That and passing the ranch on to his daughter and sons. He was obligated.
He was all for selling the war memento online to a collector. When he’d mentioned this to Lindsay she’d accused him of being intentionally hurtful. He hadn’t told her she should be used to intentional harm.
Josh scooped a shallow grave in the soft dirt. Lindsay reverently placed the Zippo in the hole, pushed soil back over it, stamped it down.
She said a prayer.
Josh’s head nodded like a child doing their best to appear respectful as he wiped his muddy palms against his slacks. Ian kept glancing into the woods, wanting this all to end so he could get back to the house and the alcohol.
As they turned to head back he glimpsed a diminutive figure up on the hill moving its arms as if to catch his ey
e, or maybe warn him away. It was too blurry to make anything out at this distance, so he may have been waving back to a small shrub in the wind when his gaze shifted to movement in a copse of golden aspen their leaves blazing in the sunlight.
He looked back. There was no figure or foliage or anything there at all.
Ian poured Lindsay and Josh each a scotch. He was on his fifth. The dining room window gave a beautiful view of the pasture.
Went into the barn this morning, he said.
Everyone makes mistakes. Lindsay was infuriatingly calm.
Mom having kids with that sumbitch was a mistake.
Still our father, Josh said.
Ian was frustrated by his sister’s refusal to back him up, infuriated by Josh’s dim witted complacency. His temper flared.
Josh. He put you in the fucking hospital.
No business bein’ in the barn. Josh whispered as if afraid their father was listening behind one of the bedroom doors.
Did things to us. Not just talkin’ the barn here.
Still our father, Josh spoke lovingly, as if their agony had been of necessity.
That tone. That oblivious grin.
Ian loathed his brother more than anything at that moment. He was repulsed by Josh’s weakness.
Sickened by his degradation.
Still our father. Josh repeated.
Rage suffused Ian’s body, triggered him to react without thought. He swung at his big brother’s moronic face, fist landing on the left temple punch after punch.
The louder Josh shrieked the more Ian hoped that helpless child suffered terribly at the hands of their father. Thick ropes of phlegmy blood gushed across Josh’s cheeks.
Lindsay pulled Ian away.
His fury made everything grainy and momentarily sapped his memory. He stormed out of the house.
He found himself standing on the second floor of the barn.
Ian sat upright at the sensation of moist breath on his face. He’d fallen asleep on a pile of damp horse blankets. It’d only been a short time; there was still daylight.
He looked around, but the barn was empty.
He walked back to the house. Josh and Lindsay were gone. Ambrose must have given them a ride into town to book a hotel. The remains of a broken bottle of scotch on the kitchen floor suggested the drama had continued without him. Ian wondered why they’d left their luggage behind. Someone had tracked clumps of sopping moss all over the house.
He sat down at the table, looked out the dining room window at the pasture’s borders defined by clusters of dogwood trees truncated by a shallow crick just beginning to swell dangerously high as winter encroached, narrow one-lane blacktop road interrupted by a rickety bridge county taxes had long neglected, light and air performed their alchemy, transformed the creek water and bronzed the leaves and the driveway’s wet gravel into gleaming metals, the landscape coppery from a sun that was taking its sweet time to set.
He cried, sticky tears and mucous running down his chin. Just like Josh.
Jasper. My dog’s name is Jasper.
Solitude gave him free reign to continue drinking, so he did just that.
Ian woke beneath a green sky. He was on the forest floor next to the pit. The shovel and gloves and tape measure were near. He threw his empty bottle of scotch into the hole. It took far too long before it struck a surface. He was startled to hear a splash as it sank into deep waters.
His legs wouldn’t work.
Several malachite buildings now stood.
Monoliths risen from their graves, the original walls nearly attaining their former glory in witness to the birth pangs of an ancient city. This made so little sense to Ian he could only focus on what he assumed was a decayed stump that looked like a warrior crouching. The spear resting on the misshapen shoulder must have been an errant branch. A slab of moss covered bark peeling away gave it a cow-skull profile.
The moon was massive, the morning sun effete compared to its companion’s illumination. The lunar mass moved far too quickly, like a theatrical prop pushed over the crest, sailing into the sky, hovering, a giant’s idiot face projecting a magnificent verdigris glow over everything as it swelled to such a size it revealed the dark areas as mossy patches.
The moon’s surface was covered in petroglyphs.
Ian’s legs wouldn’t respond.
He pulled himself hand over fist across the ground’s crust as fragile as his dead father’s skin, over unseen realms connected by hidden arteries deep beneath. The weird moon’s light revealed stone stairs leading down into the pit, narrow and steep, chiseled for something much smaller than himself.
A bird called somewhere in that viridian-stone city. It sounded an awful lot like Josh screaming, then Lindsay, sometimes far away, sometimes close. Sometimes as if it were emanating from within the pit but the clatter of loose dirt falling into the opening was probably just an animal scrabbling down there. The hole groaned with the rumble of fast moving water.
I hurt my legs Lindsay! Please help me! I’m so sorry Josh! Ian shouted with no reason to think anyone was within earshot. Even so, he found the exhalation of profound silence far more disconcerting than if an ominous voice had responded.
His gaze was caught by a metallic gleam on the step, just above the point a rising tide of darkness swallowed the stairs.
He stretched his arm out to the shining object.
It was the only thing that mattered to him at that very moment. Memories of cenotes and ritual victims sacrificed to the planet’s dank seeping depths trickled through his brain. But this was his. He leaned in so close his head passed the edge of the hole.
Something way down deep was running up the stairs.
Ian extended his fingers as far as he could. The pounding footfalls grew louder.
This was all he had left, the only evidence he could hold that proved his father had once been worthy of his mother’s love.
He reached into the dark dribbling up his wrist until he could no longer see his hand just a hair’s breadth away from the glinting artifact.
Several more footsteps joined in. The ground quaked with a proliferation of activity.
Ian’s fingers closed over the cold surface of his father’s Zippo lighter just as the first shape detached itself from the darkness below.
FILM MAUDIT
“The art of film can only really exist through a highly organized betrayal of reality.”
-François Truffaut
Leslie had memorized the entirety of Human Wreckage’s stock, from the piles of dusty bootlegs and stacks of Eurosleaze exploitation, to the cinéma vérité haphazardly shelved. The store’s walls were papered with posters of rare or lost films. He was particularly fond of a ghastly yellow print depicting a smiling young woman holding a trephine drill poised just above her shaved scalp.
“You’re a horror guy, right?” Paula looked up from counting her till. She only engaged in conversation with Leslie due to their mutual interest in film. His incessant loitering around her business and refusal to purchase anything made her reluctant to open the store every morning.
Leslie nodded, continued reading the description on a Japanese VHS import of An Orgy of Entrails.
“Someone dropped these off this morning.” Paula held up a handful of black and white photocopies. They depicted a movie screen, a jumble of women’s heads and naked torsos stacked on the stage below. The film titles were printed in tiny cramped letters, difficult to read on the cheap reproduction. Leslie was only able to make out Lust of the Vampiress, Slit Slut, and something that may have been Doll Humiliation. The date and show times were listed just above the event’s name: ABATTOIRFEST.
“Film festival?”
“Looks like it. Mostly Euroschlock, giallo shit, buncha horror directors I haven’t even heard of. You know Aquino, McBride—” Paula snorted in amusement. “Van Riesen?”
Leslie had to reluctantly admit he didn’t. His gaze moved down the page, snagged on one title.
Film Maudit.
/> He knew as much as there was to be known about Film Maudit. Its writer, director, and producer were anonymous—rumor was it may have been a collective of filmmakers. Shot in Germany, or at least the unidentified actors spoke oddly accented German, and released in the summer of ‘74 for one weekend in just a handful of showings where it was swiftly condemned for its disturbing violence and sexual content. All known prints had long been misplaced or destroyed. Little else was known about the film’s production. The holy grail of lost films.
The mysterious producers had even gone so far as to hire extras to protest outside of showings, waving signs and chanting slogans condemning the film’s alleged use of actual snuff footage. This attempt to manipulate the viewing public had the desired effect; an obscure foreign horror flick became a newsworthy sensation for several days until Nixon’s resignation pushed the story aside.
“Lookit.” Paula tapped the page in Leslie’s hand. “They even dug up one of those Tingler machines.”
Leslie looked at the ad again. An asterisk hovered next to Film Maudit like a tiny puckered black star. His gaze lowered to the other dim star fallen to the bottom of the page. The precise, calligraphic print read: FeatuRing A RestoRed OSCILLATOR!
“It’s not the Tingler.” His heart raced. “Really? Swore I read ‘Tingler’.”
Human Wreckage was muggy inside, sweat dotted Leslie’s face. He ran a slick palm across his dreads.
“Kinda like the Tingler. Oscillator was more like, uh, like ‘Sensurround’. Sound system used for the disaster flick Earthquake. So loud it rattled the whole place.”
Paula raised a pierced eyebrow. “Films were something else back then. Who needs character development, mise-en-scène, narrative, camera placement.” She held her forefingers together, thumbs straight out to form a square, framing Leslie’s head in a shot.
He didn’t acknowledge Paula’s sarcasm. “Gimmicks ended around the time of Water’s Polyester. With those scratch ‘n’ sniff cards. Actually, now that I think about it, Gaspar Noe used something like the Oscillator. In Irreversible. Played a really low 28Hz frequency back- ground sound that was supposed to disorient the audience. You know, make them sick to the stomach. Dizzy and shit. Oscillator did something like that too, but more psychedelic, like those CIA programs blasting the public with high frequency sound waves. Incapacitate the central nervous system, make the enemy hallucinate, wig out.” Leslie wiggled his fingers in the air to emphasize his point.
Alectryomancer and Other Weird Tales Page 11
