Night Shadows

by Greg Herren

  “This one will do,” he said as they emerged on the other side of the glass.

  Kerrie jerked out of Malda’s grasp.

  “Who are you?” she demanded. “I know a lot of good lawyers, and if you don’t let me go right now, you’ll regret it.”

  “Regret is all we have here,” he said. “Let me show you to your room.”

  Malda had a glimpse of the wallpaper, that horrid wallpaper, and then the door was shut on Kerrie’s outraged yelling.

  “You’ve done well,” he said. “Now you must do better.”

  “So soon?”

  “It’s your freedom. Her ladyship is already missing your company. One night is not enough time to play with whips and fire as she desires.”

  Malda shuddered. “So I must get another one?”

  “Yes, but not just anyone.”

  She felt the blow before it landed.

  “The pretty girl you met on the street,” he continued.

  “I met many pretty girls.”

  “You know the one I mean.” He shoved her back into the mirror.

  Malda couldn’t. She wouldn’t. She found a hotel on the outskirts of town, made no attempt to seek Isabella out. A day. A week. Time passed. Maybe they forgot about her. Maybe she could…

  “Malda!” Her name called as she shopped for groceries in the little run-down store near the hotel.

  A beautiful woman. Tall, Nordic. “Malda,” she called again, approaching, the same cruel smile Malda remembered.

  Her smile widened as she said, “Oh, don’t worry, I’m not here for you. No, I have a date with a pretty young woman tonight. I believe her name is Isabella.”

  “No, you stay away from her!”

  “Why? You don’t want her. If you did, you would have had her by now.” She laughed, a laugh as cold as the deepest grave.

  “No, she’s done nothing to deserve this.”

  “No one does anything to deserve this. The worst murderer doesn’t deserve this. It’s evil and we’re part of it.”

  Malda reached for the woman but she was gone. Isabella. Did it matter? It was only her guilt. It couldn’t be the same Ysabel that she had known. A new, younger version of her? Their paths had crossed in time in Spain. Mafalda had named her to those in power. That was the past; it could not be undone and it could not come back into this world.

  Malda hurried back to her small hotel room. The thoughts wouldn’t leave her. Even if she wanted to, how could she save Isabella? She had no idea how to find her, let alone warn her.

  Kerrie. That awful woman. She knew Isabella.

  Malda hesitated at the mirror. Maybe they would leave her to her freedom if she didn’t go back. But she saw that for the lie it was. The woman had easily found her. When they wanted her they would find her, too.

  She stepped through the mirror.

  “I thought you’d gone rogue on us,” he said, waiting for her in the hallway as if he knew she would be here.

  “Is that a possibility?”

  He shrugged.

  “You sent her to take Isabella,” she accused.

  “Her ladyship volunteered. They’re getting impatient. I just do my job.”

  “The woman I brought, I need to talk to her. She’ll know where Isabella is.”

  “Be my guest. She won’t be happy to see you.”

  Malda hesitated. “If I go in the room, can I get back out?”

  “That scares you? Being alone in the room with her for a very long time?”

  “I like my freedom.”

  “Then I’ll assume this time you’ll do whatever you can to keep it. Go in. You can come back out.”

  Kerrie flew at Malda as the door opened. Malda flung her back across the room.

  “Let me out!” Kerrie screamed. The time had not been kind to her. Her skin was coarse, her hair lank, madness oozing in.

  Fighting would take too long, Malda reasoned. This woman was doomed. Another lie or two couldn’t matter.

  “I can do that if you help me.”

  “You can? How?”

  “You must help me. I need to find the woman we spoke to that night in the French Quarter.”

  “Why? Why do you need to find her?”

  Another lie. “So she can be here instead of you.”

  “I…I don’t know her. We went out once.”

  But Malda could see the desperation in Kerrie’s eyes. She would do anything to get out. “You must remember. How did you contact her to go on that date?”

  “I wrote her number down. In my little book. But I don’t have it,” she said, despair rising in her voice.

  “Tell me where it is and I can get it.”

  “I’m not sure…”

  “You must remember; it’s the only way you can get free.”

  “In my house, it’ll be in the bag I had…that night,” she slowly remembered. “It’ll be in the hallway, either on the side table or hanging on the coat rack.”

  That was enough. “Good. Thank you,” Malda just remembered to say.

  “Wait! When do I get free?”

  “Soon.” The final lie. She closed the door behind her.

  Malda again stepped through the mirror, this time going to the one in the bedroom where she’d captured Kerrie. The urine-soaked mattress reeked and fingerprint dust was everywhere, but the police had long gone.

  Malda hurried down the stairs, relieved that the purse was hanging on the coat rack as Kerrie had said. It was a date purse, not her usual purse, and had been overlooked by the police investigating her disappearance. It held only a small wallet with a little bit of money, some lipstick, a cheap cell phone. And the black book.

  Malda flipped through it. Isabella. As if waiting for her all these centuries.

  Then Malda hesitated. As she had not been able to stop the Inquisition, she could not stop this. She had no power then, she had none now. What was she supposed to do? Dial the number and ask if Isabella remembered a previous life? It had seemed for a moment she could be a better person, but as before it wasn’t possible.

  Below the name and phone number was an address. It had a line through it. Kerrie had obviously marked her off the list.

  Again, a spark of hope. Malda could go there, maybe stop them. Maybe it was too late, but this time she had to try. Could she go from this mirror in the foyer to the mirror there, one she’d never seen? Malda was unsure of her powers.

  She looked at the mirror, at the hag she was. What did it matter where she went? It was a chance, and this time she would use it. “Take me there.”

  A bedroom. Dark. The soft moans of a woman’s pleasure. Malda wasn’t sure where she was. Her destination? Or some cruel joke. The moans stopped. Someone was aware of her.

  Then the scratch of a match and a candle flared. Two women. The tall, Nordic woman on top of Isabella, ravishing her.

  “You!” the beautiful monster screamed. “You will not stop me, not now!”

  “Who are you?” Isabella asked, her voice groggy with desire.

  “A friend. This time a friend. You must not trust this woman, she will harm you.”

  Isabella was naked, a trickle of sweat between her breasts, the nipples taut and her face flushed. Malda stared at her, the vision she’d never seen, never allowed herself to conjure until the hag forced her to do so. You should be that way for me, Malda thought, her eyes feasting on the delicate flesh.

  But her pause gave the monster the desperate opening she needed. She pounced on Malda, a strong arm around her neck, choking her hard. Malda’s hands scrabbled against the forearm against her throat, but her position was weak and she could do little more than scratch at skin too decayed to notice such small insults.

  As Malda struggled for breath, the monster grabbed Isabella by the hair, jerking her off the bed, dragging them both to the mirror.

  Malda still struggled, but the mirror was too close, they were through it and outside the hated ornate door. She had Malda shoved against one door post and Isabella against the other, her han
ds on their necks, tightening.

  The man was there. “Ah, good hunting, your ladyship,” he said. “Two when I expected only one.”

  “I get them both?” The monster licked her lips.

  “Welcome, dear Ysabel. United finally with Sister Mafalda,” he said.

  “Is this who you really are?” Isabella cried, kicking at the fiend, and watching in horror as she transformed into her true self. First the arms holding them turned to slack leather; the breasts sagged into empty, flaccid sacks. Malevolence burned from her shrunken eyes.

  “No,” the man said, “Sister Mafalda is the other one, your would-be rescuer.”

  “Mafalda…,” Isabella said. “Please. Can it be you? I never stopped loving you, never believed you were the one to betray me.” She stopped kicking, stopped struggling, her beseeching eyes on Malda.

  Malda could not answer, could not admit her sin.

  The monster tightened her hold. “I get them both?” she again demanded.

  “Perhaps,” the man said. “I’ll let Sister Mafalda choose. You and your precious Ysabel can be together forever. You can watch as her ladyship places her fine honed instruments in the delicate parts of Isabella’s tender body. You can listen to her screams of agony. Her only relief will be to listen to you as she screams in the same agony.”

  “No! I don’t choose that.”

  “Then you have two other choices. Her ladyship can have you. Or she can have Ysabel.”

  “No! No, please no,” Malda moaned. Hell for her or the hell of betrayal once again.

  “Those are your choices,” he said harshly. “Make it quickly.”

  “She can have me,” Isabella said. “Take me. Save yourself.”

  Malda hesitated. The words echoed in her head, the same words Ysabel had used when they questioned the two sisters. Malda had taken her at her word and saved herself.

  “Choose,” he demanded.

  Malda remembered the agony of the woman’s blackened fingers probing into her most secret places, the torture as orifices were forced open. The vileness growing in her as she took pleasure where none should be taken. One night had been a horror. She couldn’t go back.

  “I can’t…I can’t,” she choked out.

  “The choice is made,” he said. “Your ladyship can have Ysabel. Sister Mafalda has betrayed her once again.”

  The hag grinned an evil smile. She dropped Malda, letting her gasp on the floor as she turned her attention to Ysabel, her desiccated mouth fastening on a soft breast, the green teeth greedily taking a nipple.

  Ysabel’s screams echoed down the hallway as the creature took her through the door. Even closed, the heavy wood didn’t silence them completely.

  Malda hung her head, shame and guilt new again. A second chance and she was no stronger this time. “Now,” she said through the tears she was crying. “Now do I get my freedom?”

  He looked at her as if only remembering she existed. “They say that if people sacrifice themselves, they gain their freedom. It’s happened so rarely, I’m not sure if it’s true or not. So few are willing to pay the price.”

  “No! No!” It was a long, keening wail, piercing enough to drown out Ysabel’s scream.

  He gave her a bare minute to howl her grief, before prodding her with his foot. “Come, they are waiting. You must feed them. Unless you’d like to join her ladyship or go to your old room with a new roommate.”

  Malda wiped the tears away. Everyone was weak. Everyone deserved this. She had lost the one soul she had wanted to save—none would get mercy now. Her grief hardened to fury. She had not been strong enough, but no one was. She would hunt them, trap them as she had been trapped and prove them even weaker than she was. She walked to the mirror without his prodding.

  Matinee

  Vince A. Liaguno

  August

  Adam flinched when the ax split Marcy’s skull. He knew it was coming, knew the attractive brunette had violated the rules. Yet as many times as he had seen the ax rise and fall, knocking into the lone overhead light of the latrine as it fell, he still cowered slightly at the sight of Marcy slamming against the wall, her body sliding down its surface as the ax protruded incongruously from her head. Someone down in front of him let out a stifled burst of delighted repulsion.

  Amateurs, he thought with contempt. Some people just have no business.

  He squinted in the dark and could just make out the top of the head of the object of his disdain: a woman cuddled into the crook of the arm of a male companion. They were the worst kind—the ones with no real interest in the art itself, just in the prospect of portraying themselves as vulnerable to the opposite gender. They screamed for the sake of screaming. Adam hated bitches like that.

  Farther ahead of them, it was raining now. Heavy torrents of precipitation battered the flimsy cabin with forceful pellets. Brenda was standing in the open doorway, peering out. She had heard something. A scream, maybe? But Adam knew these dumb bitches never trusted their own instincts. And it always got them killed. Always.

  Brenda would meet her end right after the game of strip Monopoly—always a big no-no in situations like this. She was too sexually aggressive, flaunting herself in her bra and panties in front of Steve and Alice. Steve liked it, hoped he would get lucky. But Alice was uncomfortable and reluctant to go along with Brenda’s provocative suggestion. That indecisiveness spoke to a higher morality and would serve her well later.

  To Adam’s left, the sound of snoring intermingled with the rain and giggles over the ramifications of landing on Baltic Avenue. He glanced to his left and spied a bald guy asleep in his seat, his chubby hands folded neatly atop his rotund belly. The fluttering sound coming from the man’s open mouth was distracting. He hated such annoyances. How could any asshole sleep through a splatter film?

  Adam reached into his jumbo box of Goobers. Pinching one between his forefinger and thumb, he lobbed it at the sleeping asshole. The confection hit its mark; the man roused and glanced around with the halfhearted realization that someone had thrown something at him. Despite the fact that there were only a handful of patrons in the movie theater on this hot August afternoon, the man’s embarrassment quickly eclipsed his indignation and he settled back into his seat with a wary eye on alert for further candy-coated attacks.

  Brenda was now backing toward a huge mounted bull’s-eye in the rain. Stupid bitch left her cabin in a nightgown to go investigate a cry in the dark. Hadn’t she ever watched a film like this before? At least she had brought a flashlight. She squinted into the stormy night, backing slowly toward her mark. How stupid could she be—traipsing around the archery range like that? She deserved to die. Adam only wished he could witness the arrow tips piercing her flesh, Indian head points tearing through the cheesecloth nightgown and drawing blood in copious squirts. Yeah, Cunningham had missed the boat on the kill; Savini would have rocked doing the effects for that one. At least he had the hindsight to have Brenda make an appearance later in the film.

  Sleeping asshole was dozing again. This time Adam ignored him as poor Alice began discovering the bodies: Steve on a door…Marcy in the shower…Annie in the jeep. The final girl always found the bodies, and Adam knew from her screams why she passed her screen test. Adrienne had great lung capacity. Shame she never did more slashers. Adam heard once that she quit the film biz because her screams had invited a real-life stalker.

  By the time Pamela Voorhees arrived to seemingly comfort poor, distraught Alice, sleeping asshole was blowing trombones and the stupid bitch down front had surrendered her tongue to her boyfriend. Adam remained glued to the screen, intermittently popping Goobers as Alice came to realize that Pamela wasn’t her kindly rescuer after all. He felt his stomach muscles tighten in anticipation of the denouement, eyes widening as Alice swung the machete and Mrs. Voorhees lost her head in the most literal sense. His fingers opened and closed on his lap in slow-motion unison with Mrs. Voorhees as her headless torso took its last steps. He wondered if she could see her body still
standing from where her eyes blinked in dumbfounded amazement from the ground. Adam wondered about the sensation of being headless. He thought it would sometimes be cool to take the weight of your head off—the load of crap he carried around in there.

  That made him think of the guy he’d talked to on the chat line last night, the one who begged him to decapitate him. Adam stiffened in his pants when he recalled the man’s urgency in wanting his head lopped off, the frantic need in his voice over the phone line. He had climaxed and hung up on the guy, severing his long-distance pleas for cranial relief. Maybe he’d call back tonight and try to find the guy again.

  Maybe he’d get an address.

  Adam’s reverie was interrupted by a shriek from the stupid bitch. This time, the scream was pure, the kind that erupts spontaneously in response to an unexpected fright. Adam smiled to himself. Jason’s surprise entrance during the otherwise tranquil final frames got them every time.

  That Cunningham was a fucking genius—even if he’d missed the boat with Brenda.

  October

  Brittle leaves swirled at Adam’s feet as he waited in line for the matinee. The autumn sun hung low in the sky, beginning its seasonally dictated premature descent behind the buildings across the street from where the small crowd had gathered. Goddamned Halloween had to fall on a Saturday, bringing out all the idiots who thought the idea of seeing Michael Myers on the big screen again would be a fun way to spend the holiday. He silently cursed the line of people with whom he stood outside the old Liberty Theater for the casually nostalgic ruminations that brought them there. He felt an illogical ownership over the matinee showing, his reward for being one of the diehards.

  Adam indifferently glanced around, his eyes sweeping the moviegoers around him. They were like a herd of lapsed Catholics who only attended Mass on Christmas and Easter. Their pilgrimage here on the holiest of horror days was a sacrilege. Only the most faithful should be permitted entrance, not banal idiots in search of novelty.

  He’d underestimated the crowd, expecting the usual handful of people who sought refuge inside the theater from the everyday things they were hiding from—nagging wives, abusive boyfriends, and alcoholic mothers. He thought of his own mother, a sagging stick figure of a woman who chain-smoked Benson & Hedges and drank herself into irrational rages. He had first started coming to the Liberty and its glorious matinees in his early teens to escape her wrath, the darkness of the theater cloaking him in anonymity and serving as an oasis in the desert storm of his childhood. As the crowd inched closer toward the ticket booth, Adam recalled the slasherfest that was his own early life, riddled with physical and mental brutality at the hands of an abusive mother. He remembered one particular incident in which his mother had flown into a rage over the refrigerator door being left open. She had thrown him to the floor and stormed off down the hallway toward his bedroom, returning moments later with the familiar box that stored his beloved comic books. He watched, horrified, as his mother picked each issue up and tore it slowly down the middle. With demented glee, she had methodically torn each Justice League, Batman, X-Men, and Tales from the Crypt in half, then quarters.