by Ike Hamill
“Dad, it’s not really Mom,” his son said. “It’s something that looks like Mom.”
Vernon sped up. He was inclined to agree with his son. Either way, he was going to get George from her grip and then figure out what was what.
April yelled some senseless syllable. She was pointing towards the woods. Vernon followed the direction of her finger and saw it.
Of course it was the blood monster. Bigger than ever, the thing was striding. The edges of its red form seemed to dance against the green grass and trees. In contrast, the two colors didn’t make sense.
Vernon looked back to Mary. He had to get George free and then he could figure out what was up with her.
Vernon put the knife between his teeth and reached with both hands. George thrashed as Vernon tried to release Mary’s grip. Her fingers might as well have been made of metal. Her skin didn’t even seem pliable. With one glance at her glassy eyes, Vernon made a decision. He took the knife and laid it against the base of her thumb.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. He pressed the blade against her skin. When it didn’t cut, he worked it back and forth. There was no effect. Vernon slipped the blade between her thumb and George’s ankle, careful to keep the sharp side towards his wife. The back of the blade was hurting George more than the sharp side was affecting her. He relaxed his pressure when his son cried out.
The clock was ticking. The blood monster was closing fast.
Vernon gave up on releasing George. A horrible idea crossed his mind, but he rejected it. He couldn’t bear the thought of cutting off his own son’s foot. Instead, he tucked the knife into its sheath and put his arms around Mary’s waist. He crouched and lifted with his legs.
For one hopeful instant, Vernon began to rise. He realized with horror that Mary was still planted in the same spot. Only her clothes were rising. Her feet were still firmly stuck to the ground.
He expelled a frustrated breath and looked back to the blood monster. The thing stepped from the grass to the asphalt drive. Vernon thought he could feel the ground shake as the foot made of swirling blood landed. It crossed the circle in two big strides. Vernon put his back against his wife and son and put his arms out protectively.
“Ice and soap, Dad. Ice and soap,” George yelled. The boy was wrong. Ice and soap weren’t going to release Mary’s iron grip. Vernon held his breath as the thing stepped by Ricky. It was nearly twice as tall as Vernon’s oldest son. He couldn’t believe the size of it.
The blood monster stepped into the disgusting gel that filled the fountain. The stuff made a terrible slopping sound when its second foot touched down. Vernon held his ground. The giant blood monster sat down on the pedestal in the center of fountain and let out a sigh.
Vernon watched in silence as the monster reached one of its giant hands down into the yellow goop. It raised a greasy handful and began to rub the stuff on its leg. The thing let out a satisfied moan and turned its face up towards the sky. Vernon looked around the circle. Equally spaced around the monster, five people stood glassy-eyed. Each held one or two captives, whose struggles had temporarily quieted down as they watched the monster with horror.
Nobody was saying anything.
Vernon felt the need to speak.
“What do you want with us?” he demanded of the blood monster.
The thing took its time, spreading the yellow goo on its leg. Vernon was about to ask again when the thing looked down at him. At least he thought it was looking at him. It turned the black hollows of its eyes in his direction.
He saw the lips part to reveal the white teeth.
“Vernon Matthew Dunn,” the thing said. “What do you want of me?”
Chapter 50 : Dunn
[ Gift ]
TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE Monster
“Hi, Ricky,” Harold Yettin said. He opened the door. “Come on in.”
Ricky held up the styrofoam container of ice cream. “I brought this for Ms. Yettin, but she didn’t answer her door.”
“She’s out for a walk,” Harold said. He reached for the container. “I’ll put that in my freezer until she gets back if you want.”
“Sure,” Ricky said. “That would be great.” Harold started walking the container to his kitchen. Ricky followed slowly behind him. “How is she doing?”
Harold raised his voice to be heard from the kitchen. He spoke into the freezer as he stowed the ice cream. “She’s okay. She’s walking every day. They said it should be good for her.” He shut the freezer door and met Ricky in the kitchen doorway. “The combination of the exercise and visual whatever is supposed to be good for her, you know?”
“I hope she gets better soon,” Ricky said.
Harold replied with a sad smile.
Ricky knew what that meant—nobody really expected Ms. Yettin to get better.
Harold brightened and changed the subject. “How’s your act coming?”
Ricky looked away. “Okay. It’s okay, I guess.”
“You don’t sound convinced. Are you practicing?”
“It’s not the coordination. I’m pretty good on that move you showed me. I recorded myself doing it from every angle. You can’t see the ball at all unless you’re right behind me.”
Harold went to his bookcase and took the wooden box from the bottom shelf. He set it on the table and took out the red ball.
“Show me,” Harold said.
Ricky took the ball with a smile. He squeezed it to get a feel for it. Then, silently, he displayed the ball with each hand, tossed it from one to the other, and then the ball was gone. Ricky showed him both sides of both hands before he reached behind his own back. When he pulled his hands back out, the ball was resting on his right palm.
Harold clapped and smiled. “Wow. That was slick. You really have been practicing. I don’t think I could do it that well until I was twenty-five.”
“Thanks,” Ricky said. He looked away. He still wasn’t very good at taking a compliment.
“So what’s the problem?”
“I don’t have good patter. Like you said, patter is fifty percent. Nobody cares about my trick because half the time they look away.”
“You have to engage them with your words.”
Ricky nodded. “I just don’t know what to say. The books all say to develop my own style, but I don’t know where to start.”
Harold nodded and considered the problem.
“You know what the difference between talent and genius is?” Harold asked. While Ricky thought about an answer, Harold bent over with a grunt. He reached down to the bottom shelf of the bookcase, next to where he had pulled the box of magic props. When he straightened back up, he was holding an old book with a green and gold binding.
“I guess I don’t,” Ricky said.
“Talent borrows. Genius steals,” Harold said.
Ricky cocked his head and furrowed his brow. He wasn’t sure what Harold was referring to. Ricky respected Harold Yettin’s skills. The man was getting older and his hands were thick and looked clumsy. But he could still pull off some pretty great tricks with those hands. Ricky figured that he must have been really good when he was younger. His skills were good, but the things that Harold said were often puzzling.
Harold moved the book to the table and pulled out a chair. He sat down and waved Ricky to one of the other chairs.
“Yes, you have to work up your own act,” Harold said. “But don’t be afraid to pull from old sources. Use them and grow from them. You won’t be stealing—you’ll be incorporating. And if you go back to something really old, people won’t already know where you’re going, you see?”
“I’m not sure,” Ricky said, taking the other chair.
Harold flipped open the book.
“This is one of April’s old books. When she was studying for her master’s, April did a lot of research on ancient religions. This book talks about some of the old cults. I don’t know it very well, but I suspect you’ll find some good stuff in here.”
Harold flipped
through the pages until he found a section of illustrations. One drawing showed a dark figure in a long robe. He was floating above a gathering of people.
“The ancient wizard, Abil-Ili,” Harold said, reading from the caption. “Hear the way that name sounds? It instantly conveys a certain weight, doesn’t it?”
“Sure,” Ricky said. He was trying to read what was under Harold’s finger.
“Take this,” Harold said, sliding the book towards Ricky. “Maybe you can type some of these things into a computer or something and get even more information. You weave some of this into your patter and you’re going to sound like you know something. Maybe people will believe that you have access to dark secrets.”
“That’s a good idea,” Ricky whispered. He couldn’t take his eyes off the illustration. The wizard did seem like he knew dark secrets. “Thanks. I’ll bring it back.”
“No problem. Unfortunately, I don’t think April is going to miss this any time soon.”
Harold’s words hung in the air for a minute as they sat in silence. Ricky wanted to say something positive about his old teacher, but he didn’t want to see that sad smile again. Harold Yettin seemed like one of those people who didn’t like to pretend. Ricky’s mother was the same way. If the news was bad, she didn’t want anyone trying to soften it.
“She likes to walk?” Ricky asked.
“Yes,” Harold said. His smile was genuine. “Lately she’s been going across the bridge up to go feed carrots to Big Jack. They’ve been brushing him out every day, getting him ready for the parade. Renny Sutton told her to be careful, but Big Jack is as gentle as a lamb with her. She said that he whispers secrets in her ear.”
Ricky smiled back.
Harold pushed back his chair. “I’ll tell her you stopped by, and I’ll give her the ice cream. She loves you kids.”
Ricky nodded. He thanked Harold Yettin and tucked the heavy book under his arm.
[ Failure ]
Ten Months Before the Monster
“And… it’s back!” Ricky said. He held up the watch for everyone to see.
George clapped.
His father nodded.
His mother narrowed her eyes.
“What?” Ricky asked.
“The trick is really, really good,” his mother said. “For the life of me, I have no idea where that watch went to or how you got it back.”
Ricky handed the watch back to his father and took a seat.
“I wanted you to tell me how you liked the presentation,” Ricky said. He knew that the illusion was good. He had practiced it over and over. His hands were smooth. Nobody ever knew how he hid the watch.
“I thought it was darn good,” his father said. He was barely paying attention. His father kept looking at his phone—he was waiting on news from his boss.
Ricky looked at his mom. She was holding something back.
“Do you believe it, Ricky?”
“What?”
“All that mumbo jumbo about old wizards and stuff.”
“Of course not,” Ricky said. “That’s just the stuff I say to keep people looking at the trick.”
His mother shook her head. “You have to believe it.”
“It’s not really part of the illusion.”
“If you want people to pay attention to your trick, then you have to make your story interesting. Nobody is going to want to listen and pay attention if you don’t believe your own story.”
“But it’s made up,” Ricky said. He shook his head. “I know how the trick is done. I’m the one doing it. How am I supposed to believe in something that I made up?”
“You’ve heard of these people, I think they’re called actors?” she asked, raising her eyebrows. “You think they believe everything written on their scripts.”
Ricky took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He had read April’s book twice. It was a good book, filled with page after page of interesting nonsense. Later that night, flipping through for the third time, Ricky tried to understand what made the book so fascinating. He started to see some of the wisdom in what his mother had said. Regardless of how outlandish the story, the author had really invested themselves in the legend they were describing. It was almost like the author was saying, “I don’t know why, but here’s something that was once true.”
Ricky wondered if he could somehow find a way to hold his skepticism at bay and really believe in the story. Maybe then he could grab the audience.
Ricky read again about the Ceremony of the King’s Flame.
His father passed by his doorway.
“Hey, Dad?”
“Yeah?” his father asked. He stopped, but he was still staring at something on his phone.
“Where can I find a place with big windows that face west?” Ricky asked. He held his finger on the description of the Ceremony. He would need some candles, room for a ten-foot circle, and windows through which he could see the setting moon touch the horizon.
“Easy,” his father said. “Go out and earn a few million dollars and then buy one of those big houses on the right side of the lake. They have big windows.”
Ricky frowned as his father moved on down the hall.
[ Ceremony ]
Eight Months Before the Monster
It turned out to be easier than his father described. Ricky walked quickly across the lawn. They might get snow later that night. Everyone was talking about it. Ricky wanted to be out of the place before it began to fall. When he got to the door of the A-frame, he dug the key out of his pocket. Sarah’s brother, Jeff, had lent it to him. Jeff was responsible for lots of houses on the road. He visited each of them once a week in the winter to make sure everything was okay and do the occasional chore.
Ricky pulled out the key and the list of chores for that evening.
The house was dark inside.
He keyed in the code for the alarm system. It flashed green and the overhead lights came on. Ricky jumped.
The empty house was creepy as hell. It seemed like maybe there were people there but they were all asleep in the basement or something. Ricky imagined cold, dead eyes springing open at the sound of him walking to the steps.
He shook away the thought. Jeff came in here every single week. Nothing ever happened to him. Ricky walked down the big staircase to the living room. The room was lit up only by the moonlight coming through the windows. Ricky set his backpack down on the couch and found the door that led to the stairs. One flight down was bedrooms. That’s where he found the door to the basement. When he flicked on those lights, a lot of his fear was chased away with the shadows. The basement of the place was as clean as his own kitchen. The floor was painted shiny gray. The walls were bright white, like the whole thing had been coated with plastic. Ricky found the bucket next to the furnace and performed his first chore—he had to back-flush the heat exchanger.
For an hour, he moved around the house, doing Jeff’s chores for him while Jeff was at the concert. The money was good, but that’s not why Ricky had agreed to take over for the night. Ricky was still thinking about what his father had said. A house on the right side of the lake would be the perfect place to perform the Ceremony of the King’s Flame.
Back in the living room, Ricky glanced around to make sure there were no cameras. Satisfied, he moved the coffee table away from the couch. He took a vial of pure spring water from his bag and a small paintbrush. He had string cut to just the right length. With that, he would be able to draw a perfect circle on the floor. It was just water—it would dry up and nobody would be the wiser.
Ricky got to work.
It felt good setting up the pentagram for the Ceremony of the King’s Flame. It was just a stupid old ritual, connected to a long-dead religion, but he honored every step with the best intentions. His mother was right—to make people believe his story, he had to believe it himself. What better way than to actually commit the time and effort to reproduce the old ritual?
Ricky smiled and hummed as he worked.
With
the circle finished, he started on the lines of the pentagram. That part was more difficult. He had to use another piece of string to trace around the circumference and mark off the corners. Ricky glanced at the moon through the windows. He was running out of time. He had to finish before the moon dropped below the trees. Besides, he had a curfew.
He finished quickly and then set up the candles and the laptop. The book from Ms. Yettin’s collection hadn’t actually listed any of the incantations, but it gave Ricky enough clues that he was able to find them. He still didn’t believe in any of that stuff, of course. It was still a little creepy. The house seemed to crouch around him, watching what he would do next. Ricky waited to find out what strange feelings the Ceremony of the King’s Flame would invoke.
The writings of the great wizard Abil-Ili had been stolen from his sepulcher, fifty years after his death. Scholars at the time had tried to reproduce his great magic, but they had only managed to call forth horrible demons. Ricky needed to feel what they had felt. He needed to experience the fear and wonder of the Ceremony so he could tap those emotions during his own performance.
Ricky lit the candles and began to read the words.
The text wasn’t even translated. It was just written out phonetically. Ricky had no idea if he was pronouncing anything correctly, but he spoke with great respect to give the Ceremony the gravity that it demanded.
The candles flickered and Ricky’s laptop screen began to dim.
He reached forward to nudge the cursor before the laptop went to sleep.
Ricky jerked his finger back and smiled at himself. April’s book said that if he chained a goat inside the pentagon, the demon would come forward in the form of a goat. Performed around a tree, the Ceremony would raise a wicked abomination of evil branches and bark. The book warned against the practitioner entering the pentagon for any reason. To do so would be to invite the demon to take possession of a human form.
