Nightmare Ballad

by Benjamin Kane Ethridge

  Chapter 32

  Rapt, Allie peered down at the screen.

  “I don’t understand,” she murmured. “This wasn’t what I recorded that day in the classroom. Can I keep this?”

  Dara and Luke watched her for more of a reaction, but, rosy-cheeked that she was, the woman was fairly hypnotized.

  “Can I? Despite John’s explicit demand that I stay away from your family and go with him to his next rehearsal, I instead came here to return things I took, to come clean and ask forgiveness, even after you assaulted me. Where’s your good-faith effort?”

  “You can’t tell us what happened to Maribel? The video on the camera itself…we don’t trust it.”

  Allie grinned. “She offered herself and became Queen. That’s how it is. What is so difficult to understand?”

  Luke triple-inhaled, blew out a big sigh, and sat back on the couch.

  “You said you brought some of Maribel’s personal affects you stole.”

  Allie snapped to attention. “I’d like to exchange them for the camera.”

  “Go to hell, Allie.”

  “Well, can I keep this video file at least? Just in case there’s something encrypted or—”

  “Go to hell, Allie.”

  Allie reached into her oversized purse and brought out the diorama. “I took a liking to this because of how fond of it she was. A day barely passed that she didn’t mention him coming back, so she could be a mommy. But women like her can't be moms. With her values, Maribel should not be left around children.”

  “Coming back? Who?”

  “Beltran.”

  Luke leaped from the couch. “Beltran? When was he in Maribel’s class?”

  “The week before he left for Arizona. Don’t you remember?” Dara folded her arms and chewed her lip for a moment, looking back. “We were trying to convince Johnny to let him stay with us.”

  “I thought he only visited her class once.”

  “Everyday…that last week. You were busy, with the Los Angeles project just getting started. So this is Beltran’s diorama?”

  Allie brought out the Jolly Green Giant doll. “Yes. These were people objects. You had to draw a picture or choose an object that reminded you of a person in your family. He chose these, and I wrote your names for him—Beltran couldn’t write very well then. He didn’t want me to put ‘Dad’ for Johnny, so I wrote out his name instead. He gave this doll to Maribel because he couldn’t really think of anything to assign to her. He wanted the doll inside the diorama, too, but it was too big.” On the other side of the Jolly Green Giant doll was a strip of masking tape with the word MARIBEL on it.

  “That’s where I saw that little plastic bug,” said Dara, snapping her fingers. “I gave Beltran a quarter, and he got it out of a machine at Puppet Town.”

  Luke lit up. “I played a shooting game with him that day. Little red duckies went by on a conveyor, and the man gave us one that fell off. I forgot about that.”

  Johnny walked in and put a mini-cooler down. He swung his ponytail back over his shoulder and vented his t-shirt sleeves, one at a time, to cool off his armpits. “Sumbitch… when will winter get here? What are you assholes gawking about? Are we going after the Count or what? Daylight would be nicer.”

  “Come here, Johnny,” said Dara.

  Johnny did as he was told, though was reluctant when he saw the items on the couch. His dark eyes went to Allie. “What’s this junk doing here?”

  Allie rolled her eyes and turned away from him.

  Luke nodded to Johnny. “Do you remember going to Puppet Town with Beltran?”

  With an uncomfortable roll of his shoulders, Johnny considered this, then shrugged. “I suppose it was around the time he left.”

  Dara picked up the two-dollar bill. “Remember anything?”

  Johnny’s eyes widened. “Yeah…uh, Beltran wanted to spend some silver dollars and a two-dollar bill there. I wouldn’t let him because they were rare. He brought the two-dollar bill anyway. I got mad at first, but then I let him buy a cotton candy with it. The cotton candy lady gave it back to him, just being nice, I guess. Don’t know why I couldn’t remember that until now.”

  “I don’t think it wanted us to,” Luke answered quietly.

  Allie pulled out the picture of the horse. “This was part of Maribel’s little shrine too. Beltran sent this in the mail from Arizona. She had a funny discussion with him on the phone about ‘the Mare riding on the horse….’ She tried to explain that a mare is a horse, but he wouldn’t back down. The Mare will ride on the horse’s back.”

  “Maribel spoke to my kid?”

  Allie’s beady eyes turned to Johnny now. “Beltran called her a few times. She always said that everybody would come out to Arizona and visit some time. It’s been a long time though since they last spoke.”

  Johnny to Luke, “Did you know about this?”

  “I recall her mentioning talking to him once.”

  Dara nodded. “Yeah, it wasn’t often.”

  Silence fell in the room for a moment, then Luke tapped Allie’s shoulder. “Is there anything else?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then you can leave.”

  “But I’ve given this stuff—“

  “Get the hell out.”

  The woman didn’t seem to believe it, but after a moment, she collected her purse and stormed out the front door, slamming it behind her.

  Johnny looked terrified as Dara and Luke closed in on him. “You spoke to Beltran recently, right?”

  “Man, I’d already slammed three shots. I called his step-dad, Charles, but I hung up after a couple rings. Just couldn’t do it. Yeah, I’m almost sure of it.”

  “Christ,” said Dara. “That was the night the music stopped. You need to call Charles again, Johnny. Right now.”

  “I’m not getting Beltran involved in this shit.”

  “He might already be in danger....”

  Johnny ran his palms over his long black hair and gripped his pony tail. Slowly, he took out his cell phone and wandered into the den. He dialed a number and waited.

  The music swelled in Luke’s mind. He and Dara stood there, breathless.

  Shoulders dropping, Johnny must have heard someone pick up on the other end. “Beltran…it’s…it’s your dad. I was calling to see how you were, son. I, uh, I miss you.”

  The nightmare ballad halted in Luke’s head, sharp dark notes burning to dust.

  Johnny dropped the phone and backed up against the wall. His face pinched and terror overtook him. All the color drained from him.

  “It’s him, Luke. Oh my fucking God, he was singing the ballad! He’s the one who’s been singing to us this whole time. I can hear it in his voice. My baby boy! Why? Why is it him? Help me, please.”

  Dara and Luke stared, feeble, no words to offer, just madness, insanity. Johnny let out a primeval sound and tore at his hair.

  “What do I do? What does this mean?"

  Chorus:

  Charles Reinhardt was a man of science but had determined that God did make living things in his own image. The act of dreaming, for instance, was a restrained, simpler version of God’s power to create. We create on a neurological plane; so compelling are our imagined structures that we believe everything we’re dreaming. God creates on the plane of time and space, and He also believes the output of his dreams, luckily for us. Our acceptance was inherited from divine origins. God creates substance and proclaims it real, or “good,” as religion might explain.

  Things were no longer good, however. The evil that had once perverted our dreams had wiggled its way outside the network of human thought and into the universe. It now had access to the thoughts of God, or what we call reality.

  The result, simply put: God was having nightmares. Maybe for the first time ever.

  Charles knew how God felt. For a long time Charles had stared at the Foxglenn playground, all its colors, all its shapes, so merry and yet so frightening, all so human. It’d be impossible to miss suc
h an elaborate play-set in this park of lush grass and lovely white sand pits. A place like Flagstaff could change someone’s opinion of the desert state of Arizona—it had for Charles, certainly. Yet through a nightmare, anything could take your attention away, and it was easy to ignore the tableau, despite all its horrors.

  Beltran Cruz had transported the song out of our heads and into the world. Well, Charles supposed that was probably not a fair statement. The research and subsequent experimentation with the Nightmare Ballad had done that, and since Charles was head of the University’s project on the recovered document—more than one person should be blamed. The song was part of the human condition; everybody’s mind was married to every other’s, even if they didn’t realize it; and everybody shared the song between them; they heard it while they slept, but only through thought-amplification research did the contortions of the brain turn into the contortions of time and space. Just like with dreams, people accepted these perversions of reality, with the exception of those who gained the awful gift of lucidity.

  Charles paid that price now. He could see the awful and strange things happening out in the playground—the place he always brought Beltran to play because the clown head reminded him of Puppet Town back in California. Everything at this playground had mental tethers with places or people Beltran had loved at some point in his life. Some of the connections Charles recognized from stories Beltran had told him: the two-dollar bill his father had given him and the Jolly Green Giant doll that he gave to Maribel Rhodes.

  Which brought Charles to the rocking horse, Beltran’s connection to him. While having the bluest Christmas of his life—and thoroughly sick of hearing about Maribel Rhodes—Charles had called her a whore, and Beltran had immediately associated the two words. Images of a horse had already been recurring in Beltran’s dreams from the various experiments they’d processed thus far. Back then, Charles had no idea the Mare had chosen Beltran as its vehicle (or as the Russian translation of the song describes it, a horse). Back then, the Mare had been considered the fairy-tale counterpart to him and his colleagues at the school.

  Others items of connection, like the red ducky and the glowing plastic toy bug, Charles had no clue about, but figured they connected to the other Rhodes family members, since Beltran missed them just as much, if not more than, his own father. The Rhodeses were obviously his ideal of a good family.

  Looking closer at such things brought whispered pieces of the song into Charles’ mind, and he had to shut his eyes and turn his head away. The Mare was probably judging Charles for his fear, laughing at how unsurprisingly human he was.

  Charles had held on for God only knew how long (or did He even know?). Yes, most times Charles stared into the horror before him, hoping to learn anything to free himself from this place. He kept his ears open, kept still, kept his eyes peeled. With all his studying of the clown tunnel, it still felt new. How long ago had the clown opened its mouth and Beltran willingly crawled inside? The boy continued to sing the Kashmaar-Pyeasnya, the music becoming a poisonous ambience to the network of minds he had connections with, but suddenly the other sounds from the tunnel stopped, the maddening xylophone stopped as well.

  A cell phone vibrated like an enormous electric razor. Unlike the previous time this had happened, with this call, this time, he could hear Beltran answer, “Dad?—and that BROKE the song. Charles’ brain snapped free. There wasn’t any time to lose!

  As he fled the bench, he saw reality slowly repossess the playground. Beltran would begin singing again soon enough, though. This time, however, the sustained interference made it possible for Charles to shake his paralysis. He flinched at the thought of leaving his step-son behind. Having been mentally connected to the boy for so long, he wondered, if Beltran could hear his thoughts. The nightmares, while not as potent as in this playground, would undoubtedly follow Charles when the song reentered his mind and he would no longer have Beltran’s conscious mind so nearby to call for help.

  Charles would have to travel to unfamiliar places to keep the nightmare storm away from him.

  He touched the curtain with a trembling hand. How long had he been sitting on that bench? Weeks? Months? What if this was the last time he had a chance to say anything to Beltran? He’d failed his Lisa…how could he leave the only thing left of her exposed to this evil?

  “Can you hear me?” he asked, not daring to turn around. “I have to go now. Whenever you can, please keep talking to your father; it’s interfering with the song. Don’t lose my cell phone, whatever you do. We’ll call back again. Promise. I know it’s hard, but I’ll return. I’m not leaving you for good. I love you kid.

  “I’m so…. I shouldn’t have gotten you involved in this. It’ll be over soon. Just hang on. I’ll bring your dad here. Maybe his nice friends, the Rhodeses, too. We will all be with you. You won’t be alone. We’ll make sure, Beltran. Cross my heart, son.”

  Charles broke out in sobs as he pushed through the black curtain.

  “We’ll make sure you die.”

  Coming Soon

  Nightmare Serenade