Gil's All Fright Diner

by Alex Lee Martinez

Napoleon could have watched her for hours. Since dying, he'd become something of a people watcher. They were fascinating creatures, and he had yet to understand much of anything they did, except for eating, mating, and relieving themselves. And even the way they did that last thing was odd. But not understanding humans made them all the more interesting. Of course, there were other interesting things besides people. Slimy, green tentacles slithering from beneath refrigerators for example.

  The dog jumped to alert and bounded between the thing under the refrigerator and Loretta. He growled as the tentacles slipped forward. When that didn't work, he barked furiously in an effort to show he meant business and to alert her to the danger reaching for her ankles.

  She just ignored him.

  Finally, he snapped at the end of a tentacle. He didn't expect to actually bite it and was pleasantly surprised when his teeth connected.

  Dogs, even ghostly ones, understood very little of the true workings of the universe. Less than even human beings, if such a thing can be possible. Napoleon didn't know that the thing under the refrigerator existed in a cross-dimensional state, simultaneously dwelling across two dozen or so planes of existence. And that one of those planes happened to be the ectoplasmic sphere, thus allowing ghosts to interact with the thing. He only knew that he could bite this, and so he bit harder. He sank his teeth in the squishy flesh. It tasted horrible, but it'd been a long time since he'd tasted anything, so he relished it.

  The thing under the refrigerator squealed.

  Loretta turned to see a mass of tentacles whipping about in a twisting dance. It lashed violently from side to side. Napoleon's jaws slipped loose, and he was sent flying into a wall with enough force to crack the spine of a material terrier. Napoleon just kept going, passing out of the kitchen.

  The thing under the refrigerator rumbled. The rusty Frigidaire rocked to one side, nearly tipping over. Tentacles grayed and shimmered as if they might fade away. They probed the floor and felt along the counters. A limb snatched up a blender and tossed it away. It shattered against the floor.

  Something about the thing under the refrigerator scared Loretta, and she had never been easily scared. Regular battles with the walking dead had only made her more stubborn. The thing was unpleasant to look at, a slithering, slimy mass of unnatural horror, but she'd seen worse. It wasn't the form of the thing that bothered her. It was the almost psychic realization that this thing, whatever the hell it was, was completely alien. As far beyond mortal comprehension as anything could be.

  And just as she knew this without knowing, she knew that this was just a tiny piece of the thing. Its whole body would smother the Earth, and there was nothing the thing under the refrigerator wanted more than this.

  "Not in my kitchen, you heathen demon."

  Pushing away her terror, she grabbed a hanging cleaver and hacked at one of the writhing tendrils. The blade sliced through greenish, boneless flesh. The thing screeched. The bit of severed tentacle fell to the floor and burst into flame even as a new tip grew for its damaged limb.

  "Damnation."

  Something moved beneath the floor. The tile rose and fell in liquid waves. The cabinets opened all at once. More tentacles poked their way through the back of the cupboards that, by Loretta's reckoning, had become blackened portals to Hell. This was entirely wrong. Hell was a Candy Land compared to the dark void the thing hailed from. Eyes and tongues and bleeding orifices covered the tentacles in no particular pattern other than chaos. Boils grew and popped, dripping a thick, yellow syrup.

  Loretta made her way to the kitchen door, mere feet away. She ducked and wove between the misshapen limbs. One got too close for comfort until she backed it off with a strike of her cleaver. She didn't know what to expect on the other side of the door. She half-expected a giant eye or swirling vortex of nothingness.

  Instead, she found Duke. Napoleon stood by his side, though she didn't see the ghost.

  "What's wrong?" he asked.

  "It's in the kitchen."

  "What's in the kitchen?"

  She struggled to put it in words. There was only one description that came to mind. "Some thing."

  Napoleon hopped in front of the door, unleashing a hail of vicious barks. At least as vicious as a terrier was able to bark.

  Duke guided her aside with a gentle hand and pushed open the door.

  There was nothing there. Nothing but the kitchen, some open cupboards, a broken blender, and a slightly askew refrigerator.

  "It was here. Under there. In there. And there. In the floor. Everywhere."

  Duke and Loretta searched the room top to bottom. There wasn't a single tentacle or hell portal to be found.

  "I saw it," she said.

  "I believe you, but whatever it was, it's not here now."

  "But where could it have gotten to?"

  Duke shrugged. He had no answers.

  The storeroom door opened slowly, and Earl emerged, sleepy-eyed and sluggish. It was the middle of the day. He should have been sleeping. It took a hell of a lot to get the un-dead up before dusk.

  "We are in some serious shit, Duke."

  Earl collapsed, sprawling across a counter. Duke checked him, but he was asleep again.

  "Is he okay?" Loretta asked.

  Duke tossed the thin vampire over his shoulder and returned him to his trunk.

  "What did he mean?"

  "We'll have to wait till he wakes up again to ask," Duke replied. "But I can tell you one thing. It ain't gonna be good news."

  Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, Napoleon spotted a lingering tentacle behind the refrigerator. The swollen, purple eye on its tip and the dog engaged in a short staring contest. Napoleon snarled. The thing behind the refrigerator vanished into a shadow and back into the cosmic basement.

  With a virile yip, the terrier trotted back to Duke's side.

  When dusk rolled around, Earl climbed out of his trunk and poured himself a cup of coffee that he downed in two-point-four seconds.

  "It's evil."

  He poured another, which he gulped down in two-point-one.

  "Kinda figured that already, Earl," Duke said.

  Earl watched the swirling coffee in the pot. "You don't get it, Duke. I'm not talking about plain ol', nasty sort of evil. I'm talking 'bout evil with a capital 'E'. Something so foul and sinister that there aren't even words to really describe it."

  "Really, really evil," Duke suggested.

  Earl slammed his empty coffee mug against the counter. It cracked in two. "Damn it, you stupid son of a bitch! You aren't listenin' to me." He grabbed a new, unbroken mug and the coffeepot and sat at the table with Duke and Loretta. "She, at least, saw it. She knows what I'm talkin' about."

  Loretta nodded. "He's right."

  "Really, really pissed off, badass, evil," Duke said. "I got it."

  "No, you don't." Earl sighed. "You know how it works with me, Duke. When I'm sleepin', my mind shuts off with my body, but some part of it is still working." He turned to Loretta. "Sort'a like a supernatural radio. Now most things, even really bad things, don't have enough power to register. When something does, it's always pretty Goddamn serious."

  "Like what?" she asked.

  "Well, there was that earthquake in Mexico while back. Radiated enough psychic suffering that I woke up for about ten seconds or so. And then there was that time when the Nazis invaded Poland. I just knew that was going to be trouble." He did his coffee routine again. "And when they canceled The Green Hornet, I couldn't get back to sleep for half-an-hour. Man, I loved that show."

  "Kato kicked ass," Duke agreed.

  "Anyway, all that stuff is nuthin' compared to the vibe I picked up this afternoon when that thing appeared in the kitchen. If you put all that together with every psychic blip I've ever detected in my sleep of death, you still wouldn't equal the dark evil that thing shoved in my head." He shuddered at the recollection. "Lucky for me, my mind blocked out most of it. Otherwise, I'd be too crazy to talk right now. Maybe ever again."
r />   Duke nodded.

  Earl snorted. "Look, you dipshit. Most people think to be really evil you have to have a choice. That you can't be really bad unless you can be good. They're wrong. Real evil, true evil, not just that kill-everybody-you-don't-like or nuke-a-country-'cuz-you-don't-care-for-the-way-they-spell-its-name kind of evil, comes from not having any good in you. Ever.

  "People aren't made like that. Everybody's got some good in 'em. Or had some at some point. But this thing, it never has. It's absolute and eternal. ." He rubbed his temples, looking in vain for the right word.

  "I got it, Earl. It's evil. More evil than I can ever understand. So stop tryin' to get me to understand already."

  Earl emptied the last of the pot in his mug. "The point I'm really tryin' to make is that it's not alone. There's a lot more right behind it, just like it. Some even worse, I think."

  "Worse than absolute evil."

  "I told you, you can't understand."

  Duke cracked his knuckles. "Whatever you say."

  "What I'm gettin' to, Duke, if you'd stop interrupting me, is that I'm not stickin' around this place anymore. I'm taking off. With or without you."

  Duke drew in a deep breath. His broad chest inflated. His shirt collar popped a stitch. He fixed Earl with his typical stone-faced lack of expression. His eyes narrowed the tiniest fraction. His brow furrowed in barely noticeable lines.

  "You runnin' away then?"

  Earl turned away under the guise of returning the coffeepot to its place, but was really hiding his inability to look Duke in the eye.

  "Yeah."

  Duke rose from his chair very, very slowly.

  Earl swallowed a nervous twitch. The average vampire wasn't much of a match for the average werewolf in a knock-down-drag-out fight. The undead were mostly shadow and stealth, phantoms of flesh designed to prowl the night. Werewolves were built to kill, plain and simple. Earl had seen Duke slaughter five vampire punks in Little Rock. They'd gotten in a few good shots, but when it was all over, they'd tasted final death while Duke had only lost an arm.

  Each of those punks individually had been tougher than Earl. A lot tougher.

  He didn't think Duke would really kill him. Duke was particular about who he killed. But he could still kick the unliving shit out of Earl without much effort.

  Keys clattered on the counter beside him.

  "Take the truck."

  "Did you get my stuff?" Earl asked Duke.

  "In the storeroom. By your trunk."

  "Thanks." He stuffed the keys in his pocket. "Sorry, Loretta."

  She smiled softly. "That's alright. I understand. Hell, if I had a brain, I'd be leaving myself."

  Napoleon, who up to now had been occupied with the death throes of a cockroach, perked up his ears and turned to the walk-in freezer door. He loudly sniffed the metal door from one end to another and back again. Then he started growling.

  Duke and Earl watched the door suspiciously, but it didn't do anything. Napoleon's growling graduated to angry, staccato barking. Loretta couldn't see or hear him, but she could see the nervousness on Earl's face.

  "What? Did'ja hear somethin'?"

  Napoleon bent on his front legs. His tail fell flat. Cautiously, he stuck his head and half his immaterial body through the door. He barked once, quickly withdrew, and ran behind Duke with a whimper.

  Duke took a step forward, reaching for the handle.

  "Don't open it," Earl said.

  "Got to."

  "No, you don't. Just let whatever is in there be."

  "What?" Loretta asked. "What's in there?"

  "Something evil, I bet."

  "Only one way to find out." Duke lifted the handle, and soft, white frost slipped through the cracked door.

  Earl threw his thin frame against it, slamming it shut. "Damn it, Duke. Why do we have to find out at all? Who says we want to find out? I don't want to. How 'bout you, Loretta?"

  "Just give me a sec." She retrieved her shotgun and aimed at the door. "Alright, I'm ready."

  Earl threw up his arms. "Aw, shit. Fine. Open the Goddamn thing. But don't say I didn't warn you when some horrible, otherdimensional, squidoid fucking thing rips you a new asshole."

  He stepped aside, shaking his head.

  "Nobody ever listens to me."

  "On three," Duke said.

  Loretta cocked the hammers of her shotgun.

  Napoleon offered up halfhearted barks even as he backed away.

  "One."

  "Can't leave well enough alone," Earl mumbled. "Can't leave the unholy hellbeast in the freezer."

  "Two."

  "Oh no. God forbid. Much better to get our eyes eaten and our souls ripped out."

  "Three."

  Duke threw wide the door. The unnaturally thick mist spilled across the kitchen floor in an ankle-deep fog. The thing in the freezer took one clumsy step forward. The humanoid shape was nothing more than slimy skin draped over bones. Its eyes thrust forth from their sockets on long stalks that swept the room.

  Loretta lowered her shotgun a few inches. "Gil?"

  Gil Wilson's thin form opened its mouth as if to speak. A yellow paste dripped from its lips.

  "Shoot it!" Earl shouted.

  "But, it's Gil. I can't just. . "

  Gil groaned, extending his arms toward Duke. The werewolf backed away. If Earl didn't know better, he'd have thought Duke was afraid. But nothing scared Duke.

  "It's not Gil! It's just something in Gil's body!"

  "But. ."

  Gil literally twisted in Earl's direction. The body shifted and turned in ways that would have been impossible with joints and bones in the way. Its skin swelled, as if there were other entities lurking just below the surface, waiting to break free.

  "Shoot the fuckin' thing!"

  She fired both barrels into it. The body disintegrated. Most of it just disappeared like a popped bubble. The limbs and head fell to the floor. The fog rolled into the freezer, sucked into an invisible hole in the back. The bits and pieces started melting amidst agonized squeals.

  Duke, Earl, and Loretta warily gathered together at the door, watching what was left of Gil drip away into nonexistence.

  "What the hell happened to him?" she asked.

  Duke knelt down, though he didn't touch the pieces. "You sure that was Gil Wilson, Loretta?"

  She nodded. "Pretty sure. Kind'a hard to tell." The arms and legs were gone, but the fleshless skull remained. She prodded it with her shotgun. "This doesn't make any sense. I mean, I've been in and out of this freezer hundreds of times. He couldn't have been in there all that time. There's no place to hide. So where in the Lord's name has he been?"

  "Hell," Earl answered. "He's been in hell. 'Least, his body has. And something tried to ride it back out again."

  The eyes popped from the sockets again. Eight spider-like legs thrust from underneath the skull. The skull sprang up and over their heads, hit the tile, and scrambled toward the kitchen door.

  Napoleon stopped its flight. The ghost dog snapped and snarled, holding the skull at bay. They circled warily. The skull squirted a dark, red liquid from its nose. Napoleon whined.

  Duke brought down one immense sneaker on the abominable headbone. It shattered into a gooey mess. The skull let loose with one last ear-shattering shriek.

  Earl checked Napoleon. A chunk of the dog's shoulder was gone, bubbling and hissing. Ectoplasm was not flesh. It was a construction to house the bodiless soul. The stuff of spirits was mostly indestructible, but there were ways to kill a ghost. Real, physical ways if one had the means.

  Napoleon lay on the floor as more and more of his body dissolved.

  "Shit!" Earl carefully picked up the dog and cradled it in his arms. "Come on, little guy. Don't die on me now."

  The acid had eaten away a leg. It kept consuming, but it was slowing. Earl prayed it would stop. He didn't want to tell Cathy her dead dog was really dead.

  Napoleon raised his head with pained eyes he could barely keep ope
n. With one final whimper, his head dissolved. But the acid finally stopped eating away.

  "Yes."

  He clutched the headless, three-legged specter to his chest. Napoleon just needed time to recover now. Hopefully, he'd get back his missing parts, but even if he didn't, a ghost didn't technically need them. It'd take some getting used to, but, at least, he'd live. Sort of.

  Loretta saw only Earl cradling empty air. "Is he alright?" she asked Duke.

  Duke nodded. He didn't bother explaining.

  Earl put Napoleon in his trunk to rest. Then he grabbed his stuff and headed out the door, stopping just long enough to glance down at the slimy remains of brains and bones.

  "Go get her, Earl," Duke sighed, scraping the sludge from the soles of his sneaker with a spatula. "Sooner you free your girlfriend, sooner you can get goin'."

  Earl didn't know why he should feel bad about leaving. Duke was a grown man. If he didn't have enough sense to get away from Gil's All Night Diner while he still could, it wasn't Earl's fault. But he felt bad anyway. Duke had always been there for him. He'd slept a little easier every day knowing Duke was watching his back. And now, at the first sign of trouble, he was taking off.

  "Duke. . " He struggled with the words. "I just want you to know that I, uh, well. . "

  Duke stopped cleaning gunk off his shoes. They stared at each other amid the quiet splashing of Loretta mopping up extradimensional brain spider goo.

  "Damn it, why do you gotta go and make this so fuckin' hard?"

  Earl switched his sack from one hand to the other and back again.

  "I'm sorry. That's all I wanted to say."

  Duke's face remained as blank as ever.

  Earl turned to the doors. "You asshole."

  "See you around, Earl."

  Halfway out the kitchen, the vampire turned. Duke was back to salvaging his sneakers.

  "See you around, Duke."

  Most of Earl's self-loathing disappeared the moment he saw Cathy. She smiled, and he almost forgot about deserting Duke.

  "Hey, where's Napoleon?"

  "He's in the diner. Playing with Duke." He felt bad about lying to her, but he didn't want her to worry needlessly. He held up the paper bag. "I think I'm ready to cast the spell tonight."