Nasty Stories

by Brian McNaughton

  Others, he reflected as he lifted his tunic, might have minded the icy gravel that ground his face, the importunate cold that instantly froze the mucus in his drooping mustache, but to him these proved that Holy Hugo was powerless. The ghost had incarnated himself from the water of a river, from a deluge of rain, but how could he fashion a useful body from stiff ice? Heinrich guffawed as his hot stream pierced the snow.

  He had drunk deeply. Minutes passed as he hummed a tune, impressed his personal mark on the snow, stared up at the battering sleet, looked down to watch the steam rise....

  An instant before it happened, he knew that he had grossly tempted fate. He had challenged Hugo, who now rose before him as a yellow mist. He tried to stop, knowing that increased micturition only gave strength to the revenant, but he might as well have tried to stem the torrent of the Edelwesel by his will alone. Spraying urine that further solidified the apparition, he groped for the sword that he had left behind him in the great hall. Slimy hands gripped his throat.

  “Begone to hell, clock-seeking, Father-mocking son of a witching bassarid!” he cried, but those few who misheard their lord over the uproar of the feast assumed that he had barked his shin and was venting his fury in characteristic style.

  Hard blows were not new to Heinrich, and he knew how they tended to baffle. But to ignore that initial bafflement, to resist the temptation to explore the question, “What has happened to me?”: that way lay victory. He punched, he kicked, he bit, and the answer gradually came to him that he had been flung back on the ice of the courtyard, taking a fearful knock to his skull and spine. He spat in the yellow face of the demon, which only drew strength from the liquid addition.

  If a human foe had tried this absurd method of attack, Heinrich would simply have gripped his assailant’s wrists and torn them away, or burst them outward with his own strong wrists, but this could not be done. His hands fumbled vainly in the mist of the phantom forearms while the grip on his neck stayed hard as iron. The thing’s body was likewise insubstantial. He might as well have tried to bite fog or knee a moonbeam in the crotch.

  It seemed to the graf that his brain had so swelled that it might erupt through his ears and eyeballs. That agony faded as a calm crept into his soul. The demon’s face seemed far away, perceived down the length of a dark tunnel, and what did the struggle matter? Heinrich knew this tranquil phase for what it was, and the last, dim scrap of his spirit roused itself to die fighting. Still groping by reflex for his absent sword, his hand closed on the zinc flask he had stolen and kept by him all these weeks. What had he meant to do with it? He hardly knew, but he pulled the stopper and jammed the mouth between his attacker’s eyes.

  The grip vanished, and the ghost with it. He was drenched by a sudden flood, then hammered with freezing sleet. Coughing, retching, he braced his torso up on one trembling elbow before spewing his Christmas dinner. Through all this he kept the flask firmly plugged, although the captive soul rattled and raged and pricked his thumb cruelly. With infinite care, he replaced his thumb with the stopper and drove it home tight.

  No man living, and few dead or unborn, could match the high deeds of Heinrich von der Hiedlerheim. But now he had triumphed in the most desperate struggle of his life; and all that anyone ever said about it—most pointedly Hrotswilda, with cruel allusion to swinish debauchery and premature senility—was that he had made a stinking mess of himself.

  CONGRATULATIONS!

  “Hey, Mom, the witch is here!”

  “Don’t call her that, Mandy,” I whispered on my way to the door.

  “She says she is.”

  I would have to speak to Alison Strange about that, but ... she was strange. She floated through life with the beatific smile of a maniac.

  “Guess what?” she asked.

  Her face shone. She could have been a prematurely gray forty, or she could have been twice that age.

  She couldn’t wait. Breathlessly she announced, “I’ve won ten million dollars!”

  She waved an envelope blazoned with the grinning mug of Ted McGoohan, America’s foremost shill to credulous elders. What could I tell her?

  “That’s ... wonderful.”

  “The thing is, I have to take my nap, and I don’t want to miss the Prize Platoon if they come with my check. Would you watch for them and call me if I don’t answer my door?”

  “Of course, Alison, but—”

  “You’re such a dear! Just tap on this when you want to call.”

  She had left me with an empty oatmeal box. As she floated off, she unreeled the twine attached to it.

  “What’s that for, Mom?”

  “It’s like a toy telephone.”

  “Cool!”

  The last fight with George started when he insisted on reading those Oz books to Mandy. To maintain my standards, I should explain mental illness to her. And I ought to explain fraudulent advertising to Alison. I gave up and went back to grading papers.

  When I picked up the phone later, it kept ringing.

  “Mom? Should I answer the oatmeal box?”

  “No!”

  It was out of reach from her wheelchair, fortunately. I forced myself to pick it up.

  “Yes?”

  “Did you see the Prize Platoon?” Her voice was so clear I glanced around the living room. But it came from the box.

  “No, Alison, they didn’t come.”

  “That’s odd!”

  “Alison—” But she’d hung up, or whatever.

  “How does that work, Mom?”

  “It must be a mini-transmitter.” I turned the box over, finding nothing but stray flakes.

  “Magic!”

  “No, Mandy. There’s a natural explanation for everything.”

  When Alison came to the door, I explained what her letter really said: if she had the winning number....

  “You mean, it’s a lie?”

  I never thought I’d see her smile fade into a look that scared me. “I’m afraid so.”

  “And that nice Mr. McGoohan ... well, I’ll just have to fix his wagon!” The smile was back, but with a disquieting edge.

  When I came home from my afternoon class, I was outraged to find Agrippina watching Straight Dope with Mandy. I was about to snap it off and launch a stern, bilingual lecture when the trash-news program mentioned Ted McGoohan. He and the executives of Publishers’ Counting House had gone missing.

  “The bruja got them,” Mandy said. “Right, Agrippina?”

  “Is possib-lay.”

  I was resting my eyes and thinking about going on Prozac when the oatmeal box rang.

  “Can you come over, dear? I want to show you something.”

  On Alison’s antique television set, a giant console with a tiny black-and-white screen, McGoohan looked even worse with his clothes off than I would have imagined. He and some business-types were hanging upside down on hooks while imps did the sort of things to them that couldn’t be shown even on cable.

  Ted looked straight at me and mouthed, Help! The swift punishment for this was so unspeakably foul that I turned away.

  “I turned the sound off,” Alison said, “because they’re such crybabies. Shall I—?”

  “No!”

  “Where’s my ten million dollars, Teddy?” she screamed at the screen, and I took the chance to slip out.

  In the special announcement on all the networks, McGoohan looked ghastly, especially when his cheery smile degenerated into tics. His famous chuckle might have come from the grave when he tried to explain the error that necessitated a special award of ten million dollars to Alison Strange. I later saw him on Straight Dope, fleeing reporters at a brisk limp and weeping at questions about his health and recent whereabouts.

  “Why, what brings you here?” Alison asked, beaming as she opened her door. “Would you like some tea? Some money?”

  “No, neither. It’s about Mandy. The doctors say she’ll never walk.”

  “Those doctors! Come inside, I’ll get them on my television set—”r />
  “No! I meant, if you could ... cure her.”

  “Why, that’s easy! I never wanted to interfere, considering your peculiar beliefs.”

  “Oh, thank you! And my life—my career—”

  “There, there!” She gathered me in her arms. “I can fix anything, dear.”

  WHY WE FEAR THE DARK

  “Eep?” I repeated.

  “Ypres,” Dogman said, and spelled it. “The Brits called it Wipers in the First War. Most of them probably got killed then.”

  “The cats?”

  “No, the cultists. The people who.... You ever read Blackwood’s Ancient Sorceries?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” Keep the perp talking, first rule of police procedure.

  “It was based on the history of Ypres,” Dogman said. “In the Middle Ages, the people were accused of cat-worship, so one day a year they flung cats off the cathedral. Only it was probably still worship. Ritual sacrifice of a god.”

  Moog stood on the brake. I grabbed his arm before he could unclip the shotgun under the dashboard.

  “Give me a minute alone with this guy, sarge. Please.”

  “You and him and the shotgun?”

  “That’s the idea.” I never noticed what a nasty smile Trooper Moog had. Great. Alone at midnight in the pine barrens with two loonies.

  I said, “They were cats, trooper. It was nothing you wouldn’t see in a slaughterhouse. If we ate cats.”

  No. It was worse. Probably the most sadistic mess I’d ever walked into. But you had to keep your sense of perspective.

  “If he hadn’t taken a shot at us,” I said, “he would be looking at minor misdemeanors.”

  “He took a shot at me,” Moog said.

  “I missed,” Dogman said.

  “I won’t,” Moog said.

  “Drive, trooper.” On a sudden hunch I asked Dogman, “Why’d you shoot at Moog? You think he’s a cat-worshipper?”

  “The gun went off.”

  “You got any other cat-worshippers buried in your basement?”

  “They change,” Dogman said. “If you dig up my yard, you’ll only find cats.”

  Hoo boy. Mental note: dig up his yard. “That’s interesting. When they kill a werewolf in the movies, it changes to a person.”

  “That’s just superstition,” said Dogman, the supreme rationalist. “If there is a reason, it’s because a werewolf is supposedly a person to start with. Cat-people are the opposite.”

  “So ... all those cats in your house, they were people when you killed them?”

  “Sometimes it’s hard to tell. Did you know we all come from Africa?”

  “I’m Flemish,” Moog spat.

  “Way back, I mean. And in the same place where humans evolved, at the same time, a special sort of cat evolved. Scientists believe it developed the way it did to prey on us.”

  It was hard to keep a straight face while flashing on Sylvester Pussycat chasing Raquel Welch, cavegirl. I said, “A killer kitty-cat?”

  “I mean cat, generically. Big. And specialized, the ideal man-killer. It’s why we still fear the dark, when it could see. Being so specialized, it may have been able to read our minds, hypnotize us, control our thoughts, who knows?”

  “Yeah, but we won,” I said. “Where is it today?”

  “Where, indeed?”

  “So you believe—Moog!”

  He swerved, and I saw a bright light. No sound, no impact, just a red flash.

  I woke up hearing crickets. The burst radiator hissed. Noisy place, when all I wanted was to sleep.

  Two shotgun-blasts squelched that idea. I was alone in the car. I figured Dogman had just been shot while trying to escape.

  I squeezed out into the ditch and staggered up to the road. I was bleeding, and some parts would hurt like hell later.

  I was almost knocked down by the slipstream of a semi. When it passed, I saw a figure with a shotgun across the road.

  “Hey, trooper!” I shouted.

  “I don’t know where he is,” Dogman called back.

  “Oh, Jesus!” Before I had my automatic out, Dogman tossed the shotgun to the middle of the road.

  With my eyes on the suspect as I crossed, I stepped in something. The truck driver had seen the wreck and was backing up. By his lights I saw the fresh, flat remains of an animal. A large cat, maybe.

  “How did you fire the shotgun in handcuffs?” I asked Dogman.

  “Your friend shot at me. I just picked up the gun when it came flying my way.”

  “You mean, he got hit by the semi?” I called, “Moog!”

  Dogman clammed up after that. Since he hadn’t killed any people that we knew of, he was committed to a state hospital only briefly. He’s out now, probably pursuing his mission.

  We never did find Moog’s body, but the barrens are vast, full of bogs and quicksand. The case would puzzle me less if, beside the car, I hadn’t found his neatly-folded uniform.

  THE DISPOSAL OF UNCLE DAVE

  Aunt Helen was crazy. I wasn’t supposed to question her about Uncle Dave or the toad.

  This worked when I didn’t see her much, but when Mom went to the hospital to get my new sister, I stayed with Aunt Helen.

  “Do you like football, Aunt Helen?” I planned to work my way into suggesting that I would rather watch cartoons.

  “No, but your Uncle Dave does,” she called from the kitchen.

  Uncle Dave took off before I was born. The only one watching television was me. And the toad, sitting in a battered easy chair that didn’t match the other furniture.

  I switched to Porky Pig. The toad hopped off the chair and out to the kitchen.

  “You want another beer, Dave?” she asked, and she snapped a pop-top.

  I couldn’t resist going to look. The toad was drinking beer out of a bowl.

  “I changed the channel,” I said.

  “It wasn’t much of a game.”

  “Did he—” I cleared my throat “—tell you that?”

  “Of course not. You don’t suppose he can talk, do you?” She laughed merrily. “I heard the score.”

  I said, “Is the toad Uncle Dave?”

  “Hasn’t anybody told you?”

  “They just told me not to ask.”

  “That’s funny! As if it was something like sex, or....”

  Or like being a loony, I thought. She knelt to refill the bowl, which held only half a can.

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she said. “One evening we were eating dinner and I saw a bum trying to steal the hood ornament off our car. I forget what kind, it was like a torpedo going through a hoop?

  “I told Dave and he ran out and shoved the bum. They argued, and the bum went to grab the ornament again, so Dave hit him and knocked him down. And kicked him.” She swept up the toad and said, “You really had a temper in those days, sweetie!”

  The toad wriggled wildly, but it settled down when she set it back with its beer. It bothered me that she didn’t even wipe her hands on her apron. I would have scrubbed mine with steel wool.

  “So Dave came inside and told me the bum said he was a wizard who was feuding with another wizard, and this other wizard had stolen his rune-staff and kept disguising it as different things. Like our hood ornament. He was laughing fit to bust until I told him that the bum was back.

  “He was really mad this time. I followed him, but before I got to the door, I heard this awful wind, and it suddenly went pitch-black outside. It was like a tornado, but it was over in a second. When I went out, Dave was gone, and so was the bum. And so was the hood ornament.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “That’s exactly what I said! The police got nasty when they couldn’t find Dave or anyone who’d even seen the bum, and they thought I’d murdered him. Everybody knew he was a real SOB.”

  The toad stopped drinking and looked at her.

  “Well, you were. And you still would be, if you could.”

  “How did you find him?”

  “Every morn
ing I found these pebbles on the stoop, arranged to spell, ‘HELP,’ or something, but they got mostly scuffed away by the paperboy or the mailman. And the toad kept hanging around. I chased it with a broom a couple of times.

  “One morning I got up early on purpose, and there was this complete message, ‘YOU GOD DAMNED DUMBBELL, I AM THE TOAD!’ I couldn’t doubt it, that was Dave’s style.”

  “Does he still write with pebbles?”

  “Nowadays he just smashes the ketchup or mayonnaise and scribbles. But if you want him to put on a show, forget it. He enjoys embarrassing me, like he did with the police.”

  Some interesting questions struck me later, but I couldn’t ask them on Christmas cards, and they were our only contact after she married an Air Force guy and moved to Utah.

  Mom said, “Thank God, she didn’t take that toad with her!”

  We moved into Aunt Helen’s old house, so I was able to make a thorough search for the toad, but I never found it. Mom believed she had “come to her senses” and flushed it down the toilet.

  One way or another, I figure she got away with the perfect crime.

  Unless Uncle Dave hops out of the toilet one of these days.

  GETTING IT ALL BACK

  Thank God, it was over. Our stingy parents would sew mailbags for the rest of their lives while Joe and I at long last put their money to good use.

  They had brought it on themselves. “No” was the litany that stole our childhood. No to Joe’s comic books, no to my pajama parties, no to makeup and rock music, no to the twentieth century: for Christ’s sake.

  No, we couldn’t go away to college. If they footed the bill, we would have to attend the Bible college across town. But at least we would be out of the house most of the time, and we would meet people our own age.

  Getting them to pay was the main incentive. They had millions from Grandpa’s estate, but they only bought us things that came with a money-back guarantee to make our lives a boring hell.