by Khurt Khave
“You guys know Mayhem’s 'Funeral Fog?'”
Viktor hid an arched eyebrow. Unless this guy was just trying to be impressive, he was old school and not afraid of a challenge. Mayhem was some brutal shit and not easily pulled off. “Yeah, yeah we know it. Plug into that amp there.”
Derek proceeded to open his guitar case and pulled out one of the most beaten up Warlock guitars that Viktor had ever seen. “I'll take rhythm guitar,” Derek said quietly, plugging his guitar into the old amp.
“Works for me,” said Viktor, then he nodded to Hogg to do the count off.
Hogg tapped his sticks four times and then attacked his drum set. The band and Derek exploded into a controlled fury like they had been doing this for years. Bleak Cathedral knew their stuff. They'd been playing together for a year now and had played the standard black metal get-togethers; and as an opener once for other no name bands. It was just that the scene in the Bay Area was so saturated with the grim and kult bands that getting a decent gig was next to impossible. This, however, was something different. No band jamming with a guy just walking in off the streets should be this tight and crushing right off the bat. A wall of evil sound smashed through the room. They were all into it, really into it. Viktor looked around to his other two bandmates and saw they were equally thrilled with the dark, ruthless energy they were pulling off.
Then Derek opened his mouth and the shit proverbially broke off. Mayhem's vocalist Void was a throat to be reckoned with, but what this new guy was doing was raw evil. A cruel rasp crawled over the guitar and drum onslaught and filled out the sound to a high peak of unholiness. Derek brought a new evil to these lyrics that Viktor had heard a hundred times over. Viktor thought he was dreaming.
When the song was done the entire band looked like they had each drank a pot of coffee and wanted more. “Damn, man,” breathed Viktor, “that was...not fucking bad.” He was trying to be nonchalant and playing it off cool. Derek's grin let him know he was failing miserably at it.
“Same to you. I've been looking for a group with endurance. I'm glad I came here today.” Something in Derek's voice made Viktor suspect that he was auditioning them more than they were auditioning him, but he let it go.
“That was fucking awesome!” bellowed Hogg, not having any sort of poker face whatsoever. “Let's do another!”
Derek shrugged, “I'm up for it. Mind if we try something?”
The band looked at each other for a moment, then Viktor said, “Uh, sure. What do you want to do?”
Without a word, Derek walked over to his black bag and pulled out a violin case, dull black with age.
“Oh fuck,” thought Viktor with a barely concealed eye roll, “He's into Folk Metal. It's always fucking something.” The last vocalist they had loved that Hey Nonny Nonny folk crap that Viktor thought barely passed as metal and they ultimately kicked him out. Save that shit for Ren Faires was Viktor's opinion.
Derek noticed Viktor's contempt and smiled, “Let me show you what I can do. Pick one of your songs, any of them.” He proceeded to pull out an ancient fiddle and bow, both walnut brown and obviously well cared for.
“You've heard our stuff?” asked Viktor uncertainly. They had a demo out, but Viktor felt it unlikely that Derek had heard them.
Derek shook his head and positioned the violin under his chin, “Doesn't matter. Pick a song.”
Viktor shrugged and turned to the rest of the band, “The Plague of the Cross?” he suggested to the others. They gave the universal expression of “Sure, why not?” Hogg counted off and they launched into the song. Derek listened for about half a minute, then drew the bow across the strings.
“Holy shit,” thought Viktor, “Holy motherfucking shit.” What came out of that violin wasn't the folksy crap that Viktor feared but a razor sound of cascading doom. It was like a gypsy had listened to Gorgoroth and created an entirely new musical style out of it. Derek blended the wails and moans of his instrument masterfully with the song. It was like it had always been part of the song. The band as a whole could barely keep in time, so enthralled were they with Derek’s virtuosity. Hogg pummeled the final beat and Derek ended the performance on point.
The band looked at Derek in unconcealed awe. “You like?” he asked coolly.
“That was. . .insane.” Dez grinned as he caught his breath.
“No shit!” agreed Hogg.
Viktor did something rare and dropped the alpha male exterior, “Dude, that was fucking evil! How the hell did your other bands ever let you go?”
Derek quietly placed the violin and bow back into their case. “Oh, I wasn't playing the violin when I was with either of them. I picked it up while I was overseas.”
“Wait,” said Viktor, “You said you were only overseas for a couple years.”
“That's right.”
“You're shitting me. There's no way in hell you got that good in two years,” Viktor said incredulously.
“It was more like a year and a half, but yes. I had. . .the best teachers.”
Viktor thought he was getting snowed, but he didn't care. Derek was the kind of frontman that would make gig promoters step on the necks of a hundred bands to get to Bleak Cathedral. Who cares if the guy was a bit weird? He was a gold, or black, meal ticket.
“So am I in?” asked Derek.
“We practice on Wednesdays and Fridays. BYOB,” Viktor said happily, happier than he'd been in a while.
Band practice became the center of Viktor, Dez, and Hogg's life. They had taken Bleak Cathedral as seriously as they thought they could beforehand, but Derek's addition to the band just turned them up to eleven and broke the knob off. They were constantly amazed at what Derek's violin contributed to songs they had been playing forever, and even more so with the new songs they wrote together. Derek proved to be a scary as hell lyricist as well. All of his shit was about fallen gods returning, the imminent punishment of humanity for some untold arrogance, and the inevitable, miserable fate of the world. Viktor had minor pangs of jealousy whenever they played a song with the lyrics he had written after any time they played one of Derek's songs. Viktor's songs about the evils of religion and brutal violence just seemed so childish in comparison to Derek's chants of cosmic horror and nihilism. It was like going onstage to play the kazoo after an opera singer performed. These thoughts quickly left his head whenever they started playing, however; he was in bliss.
After their sixth or seventh practice session, Dez saw the other bow in Derek's case. This was vastly different from the old, brown bow that Derek had always played with. It was made of a pitch black wood, so black that it looked like it was made from pure darkness itself. Along the side of the bow, silver symbols that looked like cave paintings of serpents curled and crawled.
“Daaaaaaaamn,” exclaimed Dez, reaching for the bow. “How come you never play with this o. . .”
Derek slammed the lid of the case down, causing Dez to jump back in surprise. “Don't touch that!!!” Derek hissed, fury momentarily filled his eyes.
Dez, honestly shocked by this explosive reaction, put his hands up defensively, “Whoa! Hey man, what the fuck? I was only checking it out.”
The rage slowly left Derek's expression, Viktor and Hogg also wondering what his problem was, and he composed himself. “I. . .honestly apologize,” he said carefully, “That is a priceless family heirloom, and I trust no one with it but myself. Nothing personal.” Dez didn't stop looking at Derek like he was a madman. “Besides,” continued Derek, “That's not to be used until our first gig, which I've been meaning to talk to you guys about.”
“Oh?” said Viktor.
“Yeah, I talked with the owners at the Coven Bar. We have a headlining gig there the weekend after next if we want it.”
The band was floored. It had been months since their last performance, but headlining on top of that? It was a dream come true.
Viktor tried to play it cool. “The Coven Bar? That place is a dump. Their sound system is ass.”
“Hey,”
said Derek with his cruel grin, “It has to start somewhere, right?”
The days leading up to their gig had Bleak Cathedral in a whirlwind of activity. They practiced every waking moment they could spare, went over potential set lists, and talked incessantly about where it could all lead. Derek was the only one of them who was keeping a calm demeanor through it all, but Viktor could tell that he was as eager as the rest of them for the gig to occur, if not more. The energy and excitement he gave off could power a city block. And that trademark smile never left his face.
On the big day, Viktor was amazed at the number of people that were already there as they set up, and how many more showed up while the openers were playing. There had to be close to three hundred people as the final band was winding down. Derek suggested that they keep to the backstage until it was time to go on, just to preserve the mystery. Viktor and the guys liked the idea, as they had never really had the opportunity to take part in any of the theatrics of black metal before, and they all secretly loved it. They did the full corpse paint thing this time, covering their faces in pallid white makeup and making their eyes look like ragged pits of darkness. Derek had gone totally over the top, his face snow white with myriad black veins running all over it. He even had contact lenses in that made his eyes look like they had no irises or pupils. The guys drank, laughed, and talked about the show to come and how crazy popular they were going to be. Derek sat off to the side, looking over his violin and rosining that pitch black bow.
“So you're finally going to use it tonight?” asked Dez.
Derek turned away from the bow and stared at, almost through, Dez with his dead white eyes. “Oh yes. This is the time if there ever was one.”
Dez pulled an uncomfortable smile. “Well, I just wanted to say on behalf of the guys, thank you, we owe you big.”
Derek might've been smiling, his lips as pale as his skin, when he said, “I just might take you up on that.”
When Bleak Cathedral took to the stage, the huge crowd was in a state of virtual insanity. The openers Cauldron of Blood and Paladins of the Goat had whipped them up into peak excitement. They had both put on great sets, but Viktor knew that his band was going to absolutely crush. He and the others took silent positions as the main stage lights dimmed and red spotlights overhead illuminated them, casting each one as a crimson specter. Derek turned back to them with his eyes blood red in the light, smiled and nodded, then gave a withering screech into the microphone that sent the audience into further hysterics. Hogg tapped out four and the band launched into a new song, “And Time Cries Alone.”
Viktor was focused mostly on his guitar, but would peek towards the crowd to see their reaction from time to time. They were loving it. The band's sound had grown more scathing and diabolical since they brought Derek on, and it was obvious that the audience was eating it up. There were a couple half-hearted attempts at a mosh pit, but it would fall apart almost as quickly as it started. All eyes were on Bleak Cathedral.
Derek brandished the ebony violin bow like a weapon and drew an arc across the crowd with it, almost in condemnation. When he drew the bow across the strings a cold chill shot down Viktor's spine like someone had rammed a bar of ice in his back. Sure, Derek had made some evil shit come out of that violin before, but this was different. This sound was wrong. He imagined that this is what a dying world, or whatever killed it, would sound like. The audience howled in approval. The adulation pushed Viktor's thoughts to the back of his mind, and he continued with the blistering lead solo.
Derek made the move so fluidly that Viktor almost didn't believe his eyes, but there was no mistaking it. During Viktor's solo, Derek pulled the bow across his wrist and then held the bow under it as black blood in the red light dripped heavily onto it. Then Derek waved the bow quickly over the front row, splattering the men and women there with his blood. Derek then went back to playing a diabolical reel, the sound unencumbered by the blood on the bow. The crowd frantically tossed the horns at the band, screaming at the top of their lungs. Viktor looked over at Dez, who was equally stunned by their frontman's antics. Dez then saw Viktor looking at him, mouthed “fuck yeah” and then went back to pounding on his bass.
It was then that Viktor thought his monitor was going out. The club's sound system was starting to drown out his monitor to the point where he could barely hear himself through it. “Fuck fuck fuck!” he thought, “It couldn't go easy, could it? Sound guy must have his finger on the suck button again.” Viktor looked up towards the sound booth to signal the asshole to crank up the monitor, but then saw the crowd.
The people in the front row who had been splattered were the cause. They were standing stiff as boards, the music pouring out of their wide-opened mouths. The look of horror in their eyes was absolute. Viktor would’ve stopped playing when he saw this, but then realized he couldn't. His fingers sped over the fret board of his guitar with a mind of their own. Turning his head with more willpower than it should've taken, he saw that Dez and Hogg were in the same state, confusion and fear in their eyes as they looked at their instruments like they were alien monsters. His head snapped back towards the crowd and he saw the nightmare was growing even more horrible.
Blood started gushing out of the mouths of the afflicted audience, flowing down their faces and spraying others around them without the music changing at all. As the blood touched the rest of the crowd, they too were paralyzed with that howl of atrocity, joining their fellow doomed in the monstrous roar of malefic sound. Others towards the back realized something was horribly wrong and attempted to flee the club but the evil was virulent and fast. No one in the club escaped their fate.
Even when the audience was reduced to nothing more than pale, bloodless husks standing where they were afflicted, that damnable music continued to pour forth like aural sewage. Derek then casually turned to face the rest of the band, playing his violin with a look of the most beatific, vile joy on his face. It was then Viktor realized that the music was alive, alive in a way that only something from the foulest places in-between space and sanity could be, and it was playing them. It was going to play them forever.
Past the field of screaming eternal corpses the club had become, Viktor saw the front doors smash open and the collective blood of the audience go flowing forth in a tide like it had a mind of its own. He heard screams of horror come from the city streets, only to turn into the same horrible choir that was wailing in this newly-born hell.
Viktor's mind started to fracture as the otherworldly sound continued to get louder and louder, and his final sane thought before an eternity of damnation overtook him was Derek’s words “It has to start somewhere.”
Aaron Besson is a writer of horror and weird fiction from Seattle, Washington. His writing has been published in the Weird Fiction Review from Centipede Press, James Ward Kirk Publishing, and Spinetinglers.
Cosmic Cavity; or, the Mouth of Man Carl R. Jennings
I’ll admit there are many things that are frightening about going to the dentist. I wasn’t born with my degree and a pick in hand—I was scared going to the dentist as a child. I mastered my fear though. I remember the moment, too. It was when I saw what the average salary of a dentist was. I will also admit that one doesn’t expect to hear mortally terrified screams at their local tooth doctor’s office. That part is something unusual.
I had just walked through the front door when I saw a short young woman in blue scrubs running from one of the examination rooms, her brown hair flying behind her, and out the front door, nearly bowling me over in the process. Her face was twisted in one of absolute terror. Next the dentist came staggering out, a bald man with a shiny head in a white coat. He was foaming at the mouth and clutching at his eyes. They were bleeding heavily and staining the front of his coat. What could be seen of his face was a mouth wide open, painfully so, in a silent scream. He buckled at the knees and fell, face down, no longer able to stagger forward, near the entrance to the examination room. He gave a full-body shudder once and moved n
o more.
The remaining people, others in the waiting room who had come to have their teeth cleaned or some other procedure, stampeded out past me and into the parking lot. I walked to the receptionist counter and looked over the top of the desk. Hiding beneath it was the receptionist, a young chubby man of college age, with his thick glasses that magnified his eyes to the size of chicken eggs. He was folded in on himself in a fetal position.
“Thomas,” I said. He didn’t respond. “Thomas!” I repeated, a little louder. He looked up, his huge blue eyes swimming with tearful fears. “Let me guess,” I said, “Mr. Torrington back again?”
He nodded. I let out a low groan. That man would be the death of my business, I was sure of it.
“Alright, I’ll take care of it,” I said, “Clear the rest of the appointments for the day; we’re going to need some clean up here after the police come and go. That little place on the other side of town—you know the one, on Masters Street—did a good job last time and at a pretty good price. Give them a call later.” Thomas nodded again.
I looked at the corpse near the doorway, blood now spreading out and staining the cream colored carpet a dark maroon. “And get someone to scrape ‘Wise’ from off the door. This is going to be a solo practice again, at least for a while.” There was another nod from the curled up lump.
I looked down coldly at him. Horror or not, he was being paid from my pocket. “You know,” I said, “you should be writing this down so you don’t forget.” The boy’s head rose above the desk like a hesitant, blond sun. A trembling hand grasped a pen and, with many quick, frightful glances toward the door of the examination room, he wrote the notes down on a random spot on the desk calendar.
Right, better get to it then. I stepped over the corpse of my former colleague, making a mental note to send some nice flowers to his wife and kids. While my brain’s notepad was still out I jotted down a reminder to hire a new assistant; the one who had run past me didn’t appear as if putting my office on her resume concerned her anymore.
