Acquaro

by Trevor R. Fairbanks

  The little chupacabra fell lifeless to the floor like a pile of gore stained rags.

  Now Hector sat up in bed, staring at the chupacabra on the floor surrounded by three other neon green monsters. They were squat hideous things, huddled over Murphy’s carcass and looking up at him with wide sin filled eyes. He could read the message there. He was next.

  Slowly they oozed towards him, silently on claws sharp enough to cut diamond. Long smiles dripped blood.

  “Nnnn ...” Hector stammered and pushed backwards. Goblins, he knew. They were goblins who hunted and ate children like him. Goblins who kidnapped children like him in the night and took them to the Gray Lands far from here. Instinctively his hands reached out, searching for something to fight with.

  He found a high-hat stand with the twin cymbals still attached.

  A goblin crept along the lip of the bed, smiling at its next feast. Hector raised the high-hat over his head and brought it down hard, like a battle ax. The silver stand flashed in the dark and he felt the shock of the blow travel up his arm, the whistling of the cymbals silenced as they met yielding flesh. The creature fell, bleeding yellow gore, half of its face caved in and opened. Black brains flowed onto the shag carpet.

  The others hissed and scrambled away, then screamed as Hector jumped up and swung the stand in a wide arc, cracking another under the side of its head.

  Now they scattered, breaking their bones and flattening their skin to seep through the cracks in the broken windows that had let them in. He listened to them scamper off into the night, howling in their hunger.

  Hector scrambled out of bed and switched the lights on, only to see the body of Murphy on the floor. “No,” he whimpered, falling by the carcass that was once his pet. “No.” He stroked the poor desecrated skin with caring fingertips. It was cold. So cold.

  A light knock at the door made him look up. He opened it, only to find Lila there. Her face had gone pale, as if all the blood had been drained from her. And her eyes were full. She had been crying.

  “My father is dead,” she sobbed aloud and collapsed into his arms.

  ***

  “This whole park is infected,” Lila whispered as soon as she had stopped whimpering. “It doesn’t even feel like home anymore. All these fires and those weird pictures and now my father is gone.” The tears were still there, threatening to flow. Hector put his arm around her, feeling her body shudder against his. “Funny, I always thought of him and this place as home. I thought they would be here forever. I always figured that, no matter where I went, I always had some place to come back to. Now he’s gone, and this place doesn’t even seem real, much less home. This place terrifies me.”

  Hector nodded, holding the high-hat stand tight so that she would not be able to see his hands trembling. Soft sixties instrumental music played through the eight track, filling the van with its gentle sounds of reverb guitar and tribal-drums. Outside the sky turned from a dim purple to a violent gray. Behind it the sun was rising.

  “It’s me,” he finally said, casting the cymbals aside and listening to them rattle. “It was always me. They followed me from Gurkiel. Now this place is compromised with weird magic. I don’t know, it must have latched on somehow. And the Quicksilver Stallion ...” he took a deep breath. “This all started when I threw the horse away.”

  “What are we going to do?” Lila asked. “We have to do something.” They could both feel it. The decision they made this morning would affect the entire world.

  Hector shook his head. “This is bad magic. The Quicksilver Stallion warned me about it. Hell, even Murphy warned me. If it continues unchecked this magic could destroy the world.”

  “Don’t say that,” she whined, reaching out to grab him. “We need to do something!”

  “Only one thing to do,” he said, gripping the steering wheel tight. “There’s only one place in the world to go. Gurkiel.”

  “You don’t mean ...”

  He nodded. “I’m going to Gurkiel. If there’s some way to stop all this, I’ll find it there.”

  “Then we’re going to Gurkiel,” she said and reached for his hand. “Together.”

  Hector shook his head. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he said, looking at her. “I watched that place turn my entire family into weird monsters. I don’t want to see the same happen to you.”

  “But you’ll protect me, won’t you?” she asked with a sheepish grin, clinging to him, her only hope. “My knight in shining armor.”

  “Yeah,” Hector finally said. “Something like that.”

  He shoved the key into the van and gunned the engine so loud it shattered the gray dawn.

  ***

  “I need a fucking drink,” he murmured, more to himself than to Lila. They had spent the day driving, drifting down long roads into oblivion. And, although he would not admit it, Hector had lost the way. A part of him figured that the Quicksilver Stallion would lead him back into Gurkiel, just as it had lead him out. But the horse was no longer there. Now he was starting to admit that maybe throwing the horse away was wrong.

  A deeper part of him figured that Gurkiel would find them, not the other way around.

  They had been off the beaten path since the afternoon, which was a good sign for Gurkiel itself was far from any known human roads. But the van was running out of gas, and with the disappearance of the main highway so came the loss of any stations.

  The black top had thinned until now it was only a dust trail cutting through slim terrain filled with rocks and potholes and low hanging tree branches. Hector considered it a vast stroke of luck that they had yet to break an axle on this rough strip.

  “Look. There’s a bar,” Lila pointed, lowering the blue tinted sunglasses she had been wearing after finding them in the glove box.

  “And a place for gas,” Hector said, suddenly excited. “What luck. This is perfect.”

  The pavement returned, leading right into the parking lot. He hauled the van off the dirt road and pulled up to one of the pumps. Immediately a lanky redneck boy appeared, smelling a tip.

  “Fill it,” Hector told him as he climbed out. “We’ll be at the bar.”

  From the corner of his eye Hector caught him leer in Lila’s direction and instinctively slipped a possessive hand around her waist.

  “Yes, sir,” the redneck spoke with a weird drawl. “I fill her up good, sir.”

  “Thank you,” Lila said, giving him a kind smile as they walked away.

  “Fucking idiots,” Hector mumbled to her. “Nothing but white trash in these parts.”

  “I thought he was cute,” she whispered. “I’ve always kind of dug those hillbilly accents.”

  “That’s no accent. They only want you to think it is. They are, in reality, just plain stupid.”

  She giggled as he pushed open the door to the bar. The long room was filled with smoke which was odd. There were only four patrons inside. All four of them were smoking, including the bartender who held a lit cigar between two massive scarred lips. Closer inspection proved that those lips were burned near black.

  “What can I get you two?” he asked, teeth grit around the burning briar.

  “A beer, and maybe a couple of cheeseburgers.” Hector sat down. The beer came quick and it was nice and cold, sliding down his throat in chill waves to collect in his stomach like a pile of amber colored blood. It was a puddle of abuse.

  “Maybe someone around here can help us,” Lila whispered, casting furtive looks around the bar. “This place seems strange enough. Reminds me of a bad fairy tale.”

  “I don’t know,” Hector said, sweeping the last of the booze into his mouth, downing it quick before asking for another. Already he could feel himself starting to relax, his body shutting down. His psyche was easing into the idea of a magical land called Gurkiel. “Maybe. I don’t remember a bar.”

  The bartender smiled as he poured another beer from the tap. “Can you tell us how to get to the Land of Fairies?” Lila asked him, flashing her
sweetest smile, the one that showed off every white tooth.

  The bartender grinned back as he slipped the beer in front of Hector. “Sorry, dear. Never been to San Francisco.”

  They all laughed. Hector and Lila shut up and waited for their meal.

  “You are in search of Gurkiel?”

  They both turned only to see an old Indian seated quietly at the end of the bar in front of a half-spent bottle of tequila. His face had been ravaged by time and liquor, and his voice was low and hoarse from an age of nicotine abuse. He was no longer a man, but some weird sort of lost creature from a land of smog and dead brain cells. The drugs and the decay of the white man had done their damage here.

  “Yes,” Lila said happily. “Can you help us?”

  “Nah. You can’t find Gurkiel. Gurkiel will find you. Do not worry,” the Indian replied. “It is a world that has existed beside ours for millennia. Before I was born. Before you was born. Before all of this there was Gurkiel.”

  “Then you know what’s happening?”

  The old man nodded then reached out with trembling fingers. He lifted the bottle to his mouth and drank deep. Hector watched the worm dance in the liquid. “Lately I have sensed a great disturbance between the two nations. Somehow the balance has been lost. In my fever dreams I see the fairy folk and I see them conquer. I see blood wash the lands of the white man.”

  “We’re here to stop them,” Hector said. “But we don’t know where to begin.”

  “I ...” the old man stammered out a lament and looked at the bottle in front of him, reading signs in the booze. He could not stop himself and took another deep swig, filling his stomach with strong Mexican spirits. “Maybe you can. Maybe you can’t. Don’t matter no more,” he shrugged.

  “Can’t you tell us anything?” Lila begged.

  “There was a god, once. Acquaro. The bull who lives on Thorn Mountain. He could help, but he ain’t around no more. Acquaro hates magic. Hates gremlins and fairies and all that. Maybe he will help, but first you must convince him to come down from his mountain.”

  “Where is it?” Hector asked. “This mountain. We need to find it.”

  “It’s in Gurkiel,” the Indian said with a shrug. Hector groaned.

  “And how do we get there?” Lila pressed.

  “Like I said, it will find you.”

  “There has to be another way,” Hector said, lowering his voice until it was a threat. He was too sober to be dealing with drunks.

  “I guess there is another way,” the old man said and looked at them. Casually he smiled. “Yeah. There is still magic in these old bones. I got something that will help.” He took out the knife. It was not made of metal, but something else. A strange sort of crystal that seemed to glow faded blue in the dim light of the bar. “You both going?”

  They nodded.

  “You ready?”

  They nodded.

  “Blood magic,” he said. “Powerful stuff. Got to be careful.”

  The old man cut his hand open, right there at the bar. Blood flowed. Before Hector or Lila could move he had reached out and spread blood across their faces like war paint.

  “Like I said, it will find you. But the blood will help. They like blood. Remember the well?” he asked, looking at Hector. He nodded. “Lots of men died in that well. Lots of blood in that water.” His voice was softer now, and the hand would not stop bleeding. They watched it spill off the table onto the floor. His eyes seemed to go white in his face, burning like lost stars.

  “What the Hell?” Lila asked.

  But it was too late. The old man had already passed out. His head slumped forward, hitting the wood of the table with a loud thunk!

  “Don’t listen to him,” the bartender said, placing two plates of cheeseburgers in front of Hector and Lila. “That’s just Running Snake. Fucker’s been drinking fire water since the shit was invented.”

  Midnight on Thorn Mountain

  Once upon a time he dreamed of island life. It was every great writer’s fantasy. He dreamed of the easy life and the slow life. The blessed life that came after a long period of hard work.

  Leonard Samson once dreamed of the sun and sipping fruity drinks on the sand, brought to him by young boys without shirts. He dreamed of women in skimpy bikinis and the sound of surf and what it might feel like to read a book from start to finish without using a bookmark. But now that he was living it, Leonard Samson could see how boring it all was. And shallow.

  The island was destroyed because he had destroyed it. The villagers could not make him happy and all they did was annoy him. So, he did what any God would do. He obliterated them.

  Bones stuck up in the sand, hands reaching and grasping, some clasped in prayer. Skulls looked at him with empty eyes, begging for release. Bodies floated about in the surf, face down and pale. Straw huts were still smoldering with smoke and the remains of flame. The corpse of Dakuwaqa was starting to stink. Leonard looked at all of this, everything he had done.

  And he was still bored, so bored he could not stand it anymore. Bored of the seashore. Bored of the fruits the island had to offer. Bored of it all. He missed his home and the simple life of the trailer park. He missed his typewriter and even the din of cockfights next door. He missed Lila Torne Was it true? Can you never go home again?

  Then he remembered that he was a God and he could do anything he wanted. He could go home again whenever he liked. He thought about Lila Torne. She had yet to see him like this. She had yet to pay her respects to the Bull God. Home. He could go home. Which is exactly what he did.

  The bull snorted, looked at the ocean, and began to run. The waves did not stop him, they could not stop him. The sky did not stop him, it could not stop him. He was a God. Nothing could stop him. And he ran all the way back to the mainland. All the way back to Varmint Ranch, Arizona. Leonard Samson was going home again.

  ***

  Over The Copacabana Trailer Park dark clouds gathered and rolled. If one listened closely they could hear hooves pounding at the horizon like a low thunder. And, if one looked close enough, they could see a bull with horns that stretched across the continent.

  Leonard Samson had returned. Only he was no longer Leonard Samson, the pathetic writer. Now he was Acquaro, the Bull God who had conquered Dakuwaqa. The destroyer. The alpha and the omega. And he looked upon this place that was once his home.

  Changes had been made in his absence. Someone had burned down Joseph Opus’ trailer. And he could see the dead body of Mr. Torne laying underneath an ash tree. What had happened here? At least the Mexican’s were gone.

  For a long moment he considered moving back in. Only the trailer park was too small for one of his grandeur. There were too many bad memories in his old trailer. Besides, Lila Torne was nowhere to be found. There had to be something else for him. Something more. He snorted and looked up.

  That was when he noticed the mountain. It was in the distance, but close enough for him to touch. Nothing was out of the Bull God’s reach. Yes, a mountain. That would make for a fitting home. A mountain surrounded by thorns.

  The Bull God came down from the Heavens and entered his new abode. The Mountain of Thorns accepted him with wide open arms and he found it cold, but pleasant. There was plenty of room for a God of his stature. Here he would stay, and he would wait. He would watch. And, if he became bored, he would destroy.

  The Curse of the Elves

  Officer Molick walked slowly down the silent halls. The only sound was that of his hard-soled shoes slapping against the concrete floor. Once again, as he had done so many times this past week, he opened the door to the prison cell.

  The stench hit him first and it hit him hard. It smelled of urine and decay. It reeked of depravity and despair. How he hated that stench. With a sigh he looked inside. The prisoners were not human.

  Two trolls sat in the corner, picking through their hair like apes in a zoo, seeking food with their dirty fingers. A third, this one possibly a female, was off to the side. She was frantical
ly playing with her vagina, shoving her fingers in and out and giggling at the pleasure this disgusting act brought. She had been doing so for days, until the vaginal lips were drooling blood from numerous scabs.

  And the elves were here, too. They stood as far as they could from the iron bars, huddled against the concrete. They hated being in a cage with the trolls and complained often and loudly, but the police had nowhere else to put them.

  Varmint Ranch was a small town. The police station was equally small. There was only the one cell. The elves would just need to deal with it.