It Was a Dark and Stormy Night...

by Kurtz, Matt; McKenzie, Shane; Strand, Jeff

  “Tonight, you will have the secrets of love revealed. All the questions will be answered.” He looked at her and smiled. “The cards say love will grow strong, and your life will change forever. That’s what the death card means.”

  “For the better or worse?” Marissa asked.

  “The devil would say for worse, but he is upside down, so probably for the better,” Jake said.

  Marissa bounced in her seat. She was happy to move away from the disturbing cards and let Simeon read her palm. She held out her right one. He shook his head and folded her fingers back to her palm. His touch felt cold as he pulled her left hand forward. She opened it.

  “I don’t want to do this,” he said.

  “Go on, everyone else has. It’s fun,” she said.

  He looked at his family, one at a time. Marissa did the same. Mrs. Wolfe nodded her head in approval, and Simeon licked his lips and stared down into Marissa’s palm.

  “I see that you will have a change tonight. You will never be quite the same.” His hand started to shake as he held hers. “I-I can’t go on.”

  “Please,” Marissa said.

  “Yes, son, it is ill luck not to finish a reading,” Jake said.

  “I can’t. Don’t make me.”

  “Go on, you wuss,” Reuben said.

  Simeon looked at his mother and then back at Marissa’s palm. His hand became clammy as it held hers.

  “I see the pentagram.”

  Everyone at the table gasped. Simeon let her hand fall to the hard wood surface. He pushed away from the table and stormed out. Reuben and Dinah followed him. Marissa looked around, first at Jake who looked thunderstruck, and then at Mrs. Wolfe who had sympathy in her eyes.

  “What is it?” she said. “I don’t understand. What’s happening?”

  Jake stood up. “There’s about fifteen minutes until moon up. I’m going to help the kids out. You know what to do, dear.”

  He left. Marissa wanted to jump up and grab Mrs. Wolfe, shake her until something made sense. Everything inside her seized with icy fear. Mrs. Wolfe hurried to the table and lifted Marissa up.

  “Wear this.” She took off a silver charm in the shape of the Confederate Battle Flag and handed it to her. “Keep it on from now until I tell you otherwise.”

  Marissa pulled the necklace over her head. “I don’t understand. Please, tell me what’s going on. I’m scared. Have I done something wrong?”

  “No.” Mrs. Wolfe started to pull her away from the table. “We’ve got to get you to your room, and whatever you do, don’t come out until tomorrow morning.”

  Marissa walked with her. “What if I need the bathroom?”

  “There’s a half bath in the bedroom.”

  “Why won’t you tell me what’s happening?”

  Mrs. Wolfe stopped and pulled Marissa to face her. The older woman’s eyes glowered with a heavy seriousness. “If you don’t do exactly what I’ve told you to, you won’t be around to worry about needing the bathroom.”

  ***

  Marissa tossed and turned under her covers. Too much light shined into her room for her to sleep. The moon seemed extra bright tonight. Perhaps it just shined brighter in the country, she thought, turning her back to the window.

  Two o’clock stared back at her from the digital clock on the bedside table. She’d lain down around midnight after reading the same out-dated Good Housekeeping three times. Two hours of listening to her thoughts seemed like an eternity.

  A loud slamming echoed up from the ground floor. Marissa sat up. Her red sleeping shirt looked pink in the sickly yellow moonlight. Another door downstairs slammed. The bed shook from the force.

  Marissa hurried out of bed. She scurried to the door and shook the handle. The door was locked, but something had to be going on. Was there a fire? She breathed in deeply, trying to detect smoke. The room smelled like eucalyptus and Comet.

  A loud yell rose from below her window. Marissa abandoned the door and ran across the room to the window. She pulled back the sheer curtain so that she could get a good look at the yard below. Several people ran toward the large barn at the back of the house. Marissa didn’t recognize them. They seemed hunched over and almost animal-like. One threw his head up toward the full moon and let out a howl.

  Marissa thought it looked like Simeon, but that wasn’t possible. He would never go out on a full moon night. His migraines wouldn’t let him. She opened the window, and cool night air blew into the room.

  “Simeon, is that you?” she yelled to the figure.

  The figure looked up at her, let loose another howl, and ran after the others. She caught a good look at his face. At that distance, she thought the howler was Simeon, although his features seemed…different.

  “Are you all right?” she yelled, but he kept running.

  She watched the runners until they disappeared into the shadow of the barn.

  What’s going on here?

  The lock on the door wouldn’t give, and no ramming her shoulder into it would break it free. The window was the only way out, so she put her shoes on and crawled out onto the sloping roof. The shingles were slick with age. She kept a hand on the wall of the second story to balance herself until she came to the corner. A latticework entwined with budding wisteria vines rose from the ground.

  The little nibs of wisteria stems poked into her hands and legs as Marissa climbed down from the roof. Some of the limbs tangled with her clothing and tore it in places.

  She started toward the barn. A choir of whoops and howls rose into the night. The smell of wood smoke wafted into the air. Her stomach started to knot. Everything seemed like some kind of bad horror movie. The full moon cast a jaundiced light over everything. Someone, or something, kept baying at the moon.

  Marissa’s head danced with fear as she passed through the open pasture gate. The stronger smell of wood smoke brought her back to her mission. An orange glow vanquished some of the shadows at the side of the barn. Music filled the air. The twang of a honky-tonk piano mingled with the whine of a steel guitar. Some nasally singer warbled about whisky and women. Another wolf-howl cried into the night.

  “What are you doing here?” Mrs. Wolfe asked from the shadows as Marissa passed the corner of the barn.

  Marissa yelled and grabbed her chest. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m making sure my family doesn’t lose control,” Mrs. Wolfe said. “It’s my duty as their mother and wife.”

  “Why would they lose control?”

  “They always run that risk during the full moon.” Mrs. Wolfe grabbed Marissa by the arm and pulled her away from the barn.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Where’s that necklace I gave you?” Mrs. Wolfe said. “I told you to wear it all the time.”

  “I don’t like Rebel flags. They’re, well, tacky.”

  Mrs. Wolfe shook her head. “You don’t understand. It was your protection. Get back to the house before Simeon knows you’re out here.”

  “Why should I care? He’s my boyfriend.”

  A whooping howl came from behind the barn. Marissa recognized Simeon’s voice. Mrs. Wolfe looked over her shoulder and started pushing Marissa back toward the house. The moonlight glinted off a silver Rebel flag charm hanging from a silver necklace around her neck.

  “You’ve got on one of those necklaces,” Marissa said.

  “It keeps me protected. Why do you think I’m not one of them? I’ve never taken it off since Jake’s mother gave it to me.”

  “Somethin’ smells good.” Simeon’s voice came crashing from around the barn. His accent sounded thicker than usual. “Momma, what am I smellin’?”

  “Nothing,” Mrs. Wolfe yelled back. “Just get back around there with your daddy and drink another beer.”

  Marissa saw Simeon’s outline at the edge of the shadows. It looked different, more slumped and primitive.

  “Naw, I smell a girl, and woo wee, she smells nice.”

  “What’s going on?” Marissa said,
almost crying.

  “Yee haw!”

  Before she knew what was happening, Simeon ran from the shadows. His yellow teeth bucked out, and his hair rested on his shoulders, but only in the back. The top was short, almost a crew cut. He wore a flannel shirt with the sleeves ripped off. His arms were white from just above his elbows to his shoulders. The lower part was a rust color. As he drew closer, she saw that he had a Fu Manchu moustache and a stubble beard. The sweet smell of cheap beer permeated from him like stench from a skunk.

  “Run,” Mrs. Wolfe said. “For goodness sake run.”

  Marissa did. She turned and dashed as quickly as she could back toward the house. Simeon whooped from behind her. She glanced over her shoulder to see him pursuing. Mrs. Wolfe yelled at them both, but Marissa couldn’t make out the words. Her blood pulsed through her ears, deafening her to everything except the song Simeon sang: Give me a Redneck Girl.

  Before she could run through the pasture gate, he pounced on her. Marissa crumbled under Simeon’s weight. She wriggled and tried to free herself, but it was no use. She felt his teeth against her neck and smelled his beer-laced breath. He bit down like he was giving her a hickey, and everything went black.

  ***

  Marissa woke up when something wet and icy touched her forehead. She grabbed it and pulled it away from her face. The blue and white label of a Pabst Blue Ribbon can glistened in the moonlight. A fire blazed a few feet from her. Simeon, still wearing his flannel shirt and his hair still in a glorious mullet, sat on a stump near the fire. He finished off a beer and slammed the can against his forehead, crushing it. Jake and Reuben sat near Simeon. Both had long mullets and drank beer. Dinah danced near a boom box. Her bangs stood up high and didn’t move as if set in place with the strongest hairspray known. She held a wine cooler in her hand. Conway Twitty serenaded the night.

  “Put that beer on your bite, sweetheart,” Mrs. Wolfe said. “It’ll help with the fever.”

  Marissa looked beside her. Mrs. Wolfe rolled an open beer can between her hands. She wore a downtrodden look of failure on her face. The silver flag pendant caught the light of the fire.

  “What happened?” Marissa said.

  “He got you, just like he warned,” Mrs. Wolfe said. “Now you’re one of them, like it or not.”

  “What are they?”

  “Were-necks,” Mrs. Wolfe said. “Every full moon, they turn into rednecks for a three-day cycle. A hickey from them during that time will turn whoever receives it into a redneck too.” Mrs. Wolf shook her head. “I tried to warn you.”

  Marissa only half-understood what Simeon’s momma had said. Her head itched. She scratched it and felt the stiff puff of bangs piled high on her head. A sudden craving for Pabst Blue Ribbon overtook her, and she’d be danged if Conway Twitty wasn’t the best singer in the whole wide world.

  Killer Interview

  by Chris Lewis Carter

  The intercom plays a tinny rendition of Chopin’s Funeral March, and my secretary’s voice fills the office.

  “Mr. Shax, your 4:30 has arrived.”

  “Just a moment, Cheryl.” I pop open the bottle of polish stashed in my briefcase and slather a handful over the onyx-black horns jutting out of my forehead.

  For the love of Lucifer, please let this be the last one.

  “All right, send him in.”

  My door opens, and the grizzled old man who steps inside is exactly what I’m looking for in an applicant. His assigned body appears to be in its fifties with a tangle of silver hair and a knotted beard that twists in all directions. He’s wearing a long black cloak that’s covered in dried bloodstains, and has a patch over his left eye.

  Promising, sure, but appearance can only take you so far. Yesterday, a candidate tried to impress me by wearing a suit jacket made of human skin, but he forgot my name twice during the interview. Twice!

  DemoniCorp wants me to hire a psychopath, not a moron.

  Still, I’ve got a good feeling about this one. After we shake hands, I offer him a seat across from my desk built entirely out of varnished skulls.

  “Thanks for seeing me,” he rasps, sounding like he just finished eating a carton of cigarettes. “I’m grateful for the opportunity.”

  Satan’s pitchfork, he even talks the part.

  “My pleasure. It’s nice to finally meet the man behind the résumé,” I boom, trying to sound even more baritone than usual. “Arson, robbery, homicide... Very impressive credentials, Mr. Miller.”

  “Call me Charles,” he says, tracing a finger across the ridges in his chair, which is made from thousands of children’s teeth. “And thank you. It’s always nice to hear your work is appreciated.”

  I nod, then click my blood-red pen and hover it above the questionnaire on my desk. “Right then. Down to business. Tell me, Charles, what do you know about the position you’re applying for?”

  He pauses for a moment, like he’s unsure if I’m testing him somehow, then says, “The ad said supernatural killer. Sounds pretty straightforward to me.”

  “Well, yes, but let me elaborate,” I say, scribbling a few notes on the paper. “For over five thousand years, DemoniCorp has been the Underworld’s largest exporter of ghouls, demons, and reincarnated serial killers. We send them back to Earth to terrorize unsuspecting teenagers and, in return, they help thin out some of the planet’s, shall we say, less intelligent occupants.”

  Charles reaches inside his cloak and pulls out a rusty machete, which he then uses to prune his gnarled fingernails. “Everyone wins.”

  We take a moment to admire the shower of molten rock outside my office window—one of the many advantages of working at the base of an active volcano.

  “Not anymore. Kids these days are becoming incredibly good at destroying our monsters. In fact, we’ve lost over a dozen of our employees in the past six months alone,” I say, as flakes of ash collect against the glass. “That’s why DemoniCorp is looking for an exceptionally evil soul to return to Earth and extract their unholy wrath upon our target demographic.”

  Charles rubs his hands together and flashes a grin full of yellow teeth. “Yes, I definitely feel this position matches my... skill set.”

  “That’s the spirit,” I say, tapping the questionnaire. “All you need to do is answer a few simple questions to see if you’re qualified for this particular line of work. We take reaching our quota of dead teenagers very seriously here.”

  “Good to know,” Charles says, tossing his machete onto the kitten-skin rug lying at his feet. “Fire away.”

  Sweet Beelzebub, please let this one work out. If he’s half the lunatic I think he is, that promotion is as good as mine.

  “Question one,” I say. “Did you die in a unique or brutal fashion, potentially causing others to fear your return in search of bloody vengeance?”

  “Oh, well, um...” Charles shifts awkwardly in the teeth-chair.

  Is the magma outside catching the light, or is he actually starting to blush?

  “It’s a pretty crazy story,” he says finally.

  My pen quivers in anticipation. “Do tell,” I say. “Struck by lightning on Halloween? Committed suicide on an ancient burial ground?” I shoot him a quick wink. “Did it involve a pagan ritual, by chance?”

  “Slipped in the driveway,” he says, suddenly becoming very interested in his shoes. “Hit my head on the mailbox.”

  I laugh politely, thinking this must be his idea of a joke, but his expression is unflinchingly grim.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yep.”

  “Oh.” I’m not even sure what box to check on the questionnaire.

  “Would you describe the mailbox as being malevolent?”

  “Not really,” he says. “It was shaped like a duck.”

  I sigh, then stroke my pointed beard for a moment. “Let’s mark you down as ‘Other.’”

  So what if his grand exit wasn’t that impressive. Not everyone gets to be impaled on a cursed Aztec spear. He’ll still work out.<
br />
  “Question two,” I continue. “With your final words, did you swear the bloody vengeance referred to in question one?”

  “You want to know my last words?”

  He’s squirming again. Sweet Sammael, he looks uncomfortable.

  “We’re out of mozzarella.”

  “Excuse me?” I say.

  “My last words.” Charles clucks his tongue for a few seconds. “I told my wife that we were out of mozzarella. I was on my way to the store, but...”

  “Mailbox attack?” I offer.

  “Yeah.”

  Two days ago, my co-worker, Gaap, interviewed a guy who was put to death by the electric chair. His last words were—and I quote—“Today I fry, but tomorrow you’ll die!”

  Seriously, how perfect is that? He would have got the job if he didn’t insist on not working holidays. Special occasions are our bread and butter. Just ask Ici-kill, he’s non-stop during Christmas.

  I check off, “Inaudible,” and move down the list.

  “Ah, here’s a good one,” I say. “Question three. Would you prefer to return in humanoid form, or are you comfortable with your soul being housed inside an inanimate object?”

  Charles grabs a hot coal from the candy dish on my desk and pops it in his mouth. “You mean, stuff my soul inside a toaster or something?” he says between chews.

  I hadn’t thought about it, but that’s not a bad idea. I’ll pitch it to R&D first thing tomorrow.

  “It’s entirely your decision,” I say. “Sure, there’s a certain level of comfort in a typical body, but never underestimate the element of surprise. Imagine how easy it’ll be to get the drop on a group of teenagers as a homicidal toilet seat.”

  When he narrows his good eye at me, I quickly add, “DemoniCorp loves to have employees who are team players.”

  “Humanoid, please,” he says.