All of you sit down and listen to me! I will be heard! Do you think I’m kidding? One press of this button and I’ll kill us all!
There. That’s better. Back in your seats. Get the camera back on me please.
All right then. Shhhhhh. Shhhhh.
Ahem.
My name is Ophelia and just because I am wearing a bomb to a town council meeting it does not mean I’m some kind of a lunatic.
I am here to voice my opposition to the referendum to fill in the sink hole on Garenne Street and replace it with a park.
It’s
not that I have anything against parks, they can be wonderful things,
but that place is hallowed ground. I should know I lived there most of
my life.
It’s part of my very first memory. I was just a nursling
and I tumbled out of a dream to find myself lying on what I would later
learn was a called a futon that sat in the center of what I would come
to know as the solarium. I felt cold and wet. I wanted to cry but then I
saw I wasn’t alone. Mendel Boggs was in the glass walled room with me,
playing his Fairlight CMI and scowling.
His expression changed
when he saw I was watching him his bearded face broke into a wide smile.
I didn’t know the words to describe how I felt but I loved him from the
very first. He was my Papa.
Do you understand now? That big old
house that had stood so long at the end of Garenne Street was my home.
The person you called ‘Old Man Boggs’ raised me there, in secret.
Because
of my condition it wasn’t safe for me to play with other children but I
was never bored. I had all kinds of toys; from dollhouses to teddy
bears to tin soldiers. Papa always made time for us to play games like
hide and seek, backgammon or The World of Synnibarr.
And I never
needed school because Papa’s library took up three floors. He taught me
the basics of reading and from there I went on to read at least one
book a day. One day it would be the Collected Works of Jane Austen and
another it would be the Physician's Desk Reference. The only thing I
wasn’t allowed to read was the books of poetry.
Don’t think I was
lonely, Papa was all the friend I needed but there were always visitors
to the house. None of you ever saw them arrive but they were there.
The
New York millionare Boris Fowler vacationed with us every spring, he
said our basement was the only place he could really relax. He always
came alone, leaving all of his servants and bodyguards waiting waiting
in a hotel on the outskirts of town. Boris Fowler always brought all his
financial records so he and Papa could get roaring drunk and do their
taxes. What I remember most about him is his bright red hair and how
every evening after supper he would smoke a cigar and tell stories about
his crimes and misdemeanors.
In the summer Dr. Helena Tarr would
come to visit, she had bright eyes, crooked teeth and long hair she
kept anchored beneath a brightly colored babushka. She was the only
doctor that ever gave me any kind of a checkup and she always found the
state of my humors very perplexing. The nights she was there were always
marked by an early supper of lamprey pie, then she and Papa would
retreat to his bedroom and not emerge until the afternoon of the next
day.
No one ever came to see us in the Fall, that was our time.
Papa would pick a project and spend the next three months working on it.
One year we built ships in bottles, another we taught ourselves the
accordion, my favorite though was the September to December we spent
making prank calls to the payphones at Alexandria University. By the
time the first snowflake fell we had engineered a blood feud between the
political science faculty and the first year culinary arts students.
Surama
came with the winter. Every November his superiors sent him on a
pilgrimage that mirrored the Appalachian trail. His masters kept him
busy at this time of the year, delivering precious godweb elixir to
heretics and scientists all along the coast. I was always a little
afraid of Surama, his leprous skin, his unblinking eyes, the way he was
always chuckling at some private joke. During his visits all he and Papa
talked about was where to find more gods to add to his collection.
That’s right, I said gods. Papa had dozens of them locked away in his study.
He
kept them in little bottles that he sealed tight with wire and red wax.
He kept them on a shelf above his desk, arranged like spices. Some were
full of squishy parts, some were just cloudy, and some were full of
what looked like little crumpled leaves. He could tell me the story of
how each was caught. Some stories were exciting, like the time he saw
‘Ygorthac the Mad’ gropingly pull its gelatinous green body through the
crack in the Earth. He told me that after vigintillions of years the
stars were right and it was ravening for delight. Luckily he was able to
catch it with his trusty butterfly net. Some were said, like the time
he found ‘Toggar Lord of Chaos’ drowned in a rain barrel.
Using
the information he received from Surama as a guide he would travel the
world in search of the divine. Once I asked Surama why the gods in
Papa’s study were tiny and frail. How could gods be put to death with
the same ease as a mouse?
There was a mischievous twinkle in old
leper’s eye when he explained that these gods seeped from world to world
to deliver their telepathic gospels to the beings they found there.
But
when they came to Earth they grew weak and found themselves trapped.
Powerless all they could do was hide and dream of a rapture that would
never come. That was the thought that made Surama so happy, no matter
how right the stars might be, the world would always be wrong.
Hey!
Don’t pay attention to those sirens. Listen to me! I’m not done yet!
This is too important. This is just how the house lived, you haven’t
heard how the house died.
Ahem.
I was twelve years old
when Papa left home for the last time. It was a warm fall evening and he
had just learned where where Dievini the Chaos Sultan had gone into
hiding. He couldn’t wait to find it. He’d almost caught Dievini once
before but it had escaped by crawling into gopher hole. He stood there
at the doorway with his two suitcases; one for his clothes and the other
for his bottles, tweezers and formaldehyde.
Papa always left me behind whenever he traveled but what choice did he have? I was not ready for the world. Maybe I’m still not.
But
I knew how to take care of myself and he trusted me with every room in
the house except for his study. That door he locked with the same key he
used to secure me in our home.
Once he was gone I went to the
kitchen to have a good cry. That was my favorite room for crying, I
think it was the acoustics. Then I made some lunch, took three sips of
my medicine and went to bed early. I could sleep for days if I wanted
and sometimes I did, it made the time alone go by faster.
It was
the third day after Papa left, my third day straight of sleeping that I
felt a hand run through my hair. I started awake but didn’t move or open
my eyes. I was too scared. This wasn’t Papa, I just knew that but how
had they gotten into the house? I couldn’t unlock the doors and Papa had
the only key.
“Oh my,” the voice that spoke was sweet and unfamiliar, “look how you’ve grown.”
Something about those words made me angry and anger gave me enough courage to sit up and look at the intruder.
No one was there, My room was empty.
I
key the two-shot derringer Papa had given me hidden in the oldest of my
doll houses. I retrieved it and spent the next hour searching the house
from top to bottom.
And it wasn’t until I reached the basement
that I found anything wrong. There was a crack in the floor, it
stretched along the space between the wine racks and the hunting
trophies. It was a foot wide and damp to the touch. I place an
overturned table over the hole and retreated to the library to read the
volumes on architecture.
Two weeks went by and I knew Papa would
be home soon. I had convinced myself that what I had experienced was a
dream. With my worries tucked away I made ready for Papa’s return; I
tided up my room and the library, I cleaned every nook and cranny of the
solarium. I baked his favorite kind of cookies and made fresh lemonade.
That done I decided to pass the time reading the Apocryphal Book of
Tobit.
Two more weeks went by and I started to grow afraid. This
was too long, he was never gone more than fifteen days, even if he never
caught anything.
Those kinds of trips always left him in an
glowering temper and I knew it was best to stay as far away from him as
the house would allow. He never hit me but he could lash out verbally if
got underfoot. He would shout at me, calling me strange names.
Papa
had been gone for six weeks when the electricity was shut off. I had
been expecting it and wasn’t concerned, I knew the house so well I could
navigate it with my eyes closed. Winter was growing closer, that did
concern me, so I spent my days in the solarium and my nights in my bed
under a pile of quilts and blankets. My dinners were cold canned
ravioli.
On the day of the first snowfall the house began to
shake, for ten seconds everything rattled and shuddered around me, books
fell off shelves, plates crashed from cabinets. The walls of the
solarium cracked in a dozen places but didn’t break.
So I spent
the rest of that day cleaning broken glass, righting furniture and
straightening pictures. When I got to the basement I found the hole had
widened and begun to collapse downwards, wine bottles and hunting
trophies had tumbled into it. The sight made me want to cry. I thought
to myself that this was what dying must feel like.
A pair of hands settled onto my shoulders. A voice said, “The doors were never locked.”
Just
like before I didn’t move, or speak, or look; I didn’t even use the gun
that I now carried with me at all times. I just stayed still and stared
at the hole until I was sure I was alone again.
From that point
on I rarely left my room for very long and I slept for days at a time.
One day in a fit of anger I read every poetry book in the house, all I
did was given myself nightmares and nosebleeds.
In January the
food ran out. A part of me was willing to starve, but doing that would
leave my body alone with the stranger that was hiding in the house. Soon
I came up with a better plan.
The library had a handful of books
related to locksmithing. I read each of them cover to cover before
going to the door of Papa’s office with a handful of hairpins. I was
going to pray to the gods arranged in alphabetical order there. I would
beg them to bring my Papa back home. I knew from my lessons that they
weren’t really dead just dreaming.
But the door wasn’t locked, it pushed right open.
Papa’s
office was a ruin, his desk was flipped over, the coatrack snapped in
two and everything was spread across the floor; the old books, the tubes
and wires and careful notes, even the gods.
The glass bottles
lay in a mound by the window, every one shattered, their contents had
been left to rot away in a confusion of tentacles, eyes, teeth and
wings. It was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.
The voice was behind me again, it smelled of formaldehyde and ashes, “Have you finished dreaming?”
All
around me the house began to shudder and shake, the basement roared,
the walls groaned. I shut my eyes and ran, passing through something
that fluttered like a curtain. I found my way to the front door easily
and just like the office it was unlocked.
It wasn’t until I was
far, far down Garenne Street that I turned back to look. My home was
sinking into the Earth, collapsing in around itself. All around me
strangers were gathering to watch, none of them noticed me, I was just a
girl in a black polonaise.
Do you see now? Those gods are still
down there, ugly and festering as one. That was what went wrong, there
were too many of them there in the study and their dreams reached the
Great Below.
That, I think, is why Papa left, he knew it was only a matter of time.
Every
cresent moon I go to appease those gods with prayers and red offerings
buried in the soil. It isn’t much but it’s enough but if you go through
this, if you pave over that sacred ground I won’t be able to reach them.
And I don’t know what will happen then.
Do you see now? Do you understand?
No. You don’t do you? You think my story is just that, a story.
The
following was culled from the interview notes of Cinema Hound Dog
reporter Gina Brannen magazine’s unfinished profile of director Willard
Katz.
****
…I
don’t much like the term ‘dream project’. I prefer to say this has been
a labor of love. The Beast Of September is the film I always wanted to
make. I was working on the script way back in 2002 when I was attending
Pratt University. My roommate read the early drafts and suggested I take
one of the scenes and make it into a short film.
Yeah, that was
Peter LaRoche. Damn, I miss that guy. He had so much potential and so
many connections. He somehow got my little movie in front of producer
Laura Saldivar and just like that, I found myself every spare hour
working as a gofer and occasionally extra for Olympus International
Cinema. I know they have a sleazy reputation, a well-deserved one
really, but I learned a lot there. I learned the three most important
rules of being a director; be prepared, be efficient and be ready to
improvise.
And that’s about the time I started reading Cinema
Hound Dog! I learned a lot from you guys too, used to read your article
about Michael Reeves every time I was feeling down in the dumps.
After
graduation, I moved from T&A movies to directing commercials. They
weren’t anything fancy, just thirty-second spots for deodorant and car
insurance but let me tell you, remembering that first time I stood
behind a camera and yelled “Action!” is still pretty sweet.
Not as sweet as my first kiss mind you.
Then
from commercials, I moved on to directing an episode of Law and Order,
which didn’t go as well as I would have liked, then a few episodes of
The Stopwatch Seven, and then, thanks to some truly dumb luck I got the
chance to direct my first film. The Grief Councilor didn’t get much of a
release but thanks to word of mouth at Cannes people sought it out. And
it took off on home video, twenty-five on me, I should have read my
contract a little more carefully.
What’s in my contract now? Oh. Oh, that. Wow, you did your research didn’t you?
It’s
just a silly little clause and I doubt if in 2022 it will amount to
much of anything after all how many drive-in movie theaters are even
left now? I read like three hundred or something but some folks were
saying that with the pandemic they might make a comeback so I wanted to
just get it in writing that this film will never be shown in one. You can
put them on the big screen, you can make them a streaming exclusive or
you can take every copy in existence and drop them into the middle of
the ocean, just no drive-ins.
Yes I know it sounds crazy, but the
guys at Eden Pictures were looking at me in exactly the same way you
are now. When they asked me why I told them it was my way or the
highway. Just the thought of this movie I’ve worked on for so long being
projected onto a dirty wall on the outskirts of some podunk town! The
very thought makes me sick to my stomach with fear and bad memories.
Sometimes
I think maybe we should… No. I’m sorry. It’s just… Look, I tell you
what. How about I tell you why I hate drive-ins? Off the record of
course.
Ok… ok… I’ve never told this story to anyone before. Not even my kids. Let’s go for it.
As
you know I grew up in Yottle’s Grove, North Carolina. It’s a little
town on the Eastern side of the New Brunswick River. Most of the town
had been employed by Tatro Glass Products but in 1967 the factory caught
fire and rather than rebuild the owners declared bankruptcy.
In
the ten years that followed the town went began to die, the businesses
closed down and any families that could afford to move out did. We were
not one of those families but we stayed anyway. My father and
grandfather owned a garage and the citizens of Yottle’s Grove were
desperate for someone to help them keep their vehicles running. The
family garage kept us in a nice house and we never wanted for anything.
In fact, we had it so good that on the Christmas of 1977 I got a brand
new Atari and my brother Jody got a brand new ford pickup truck.
Even
now, despite what happened, I have such great memories of that truck.
Jody would always take me for rides and we go speeding through the back
roads of Yottle’s road with the windows down and rock music blaring from
the 8-track. Sometimes I rode shotgun, sometimes I rode in the back,
hanging on for dear life and grinning like a fool. How we didn’t get
pulled over and arrested I’ll never know.
Jody was as cool a
brother as you could imagine. I was four years younger than him but he
always had my back. It didn’t matter that he was an ROTC jock and I was
pasty, skinny, and wore glasses with lenses so thick that my Dad would
joke they could see the future. Everyone in town- classmates and
teachers, family and friends of the family, all of them treated me like I
was the runt of the litter. Like I was barely worth noticing. Everyone
except for Jody. He always made time for me, played Atari with me, took
me out for burgers, and bought me comic books with his own money. He
even did stuff with me he shouldn’t have, like giving me my first beer
and letting me see my first Playboy.
The local drive-in was
called Planet Pictures and it stayed in business because it was pretty
much the only place left for the town’s teenagers to hang out. If it
wasn’t raining Jody was there every Friday. And whenever he went he took
his three buddies Carson, Bob, and Pisspot. Since Jody was nineteen and
I was just fifteen years old I never got invited along. I didn’t mind, I
spent those nights reading or working on my model kits. I was crazy for
model cars and spent just about every penny of my allowance on them. I
had so many stacked up around my room, more than I ever had time to
build. Back then Mom said that all I could think about was model cars.
And
that was true until I met Ally Jones. Then she was all I can think
about. Hell, I’m almost sixty years old and still think about her at
least once a day. Remembering her still hurts but it’s the sweetest hurt
you can imagine. Ally was a year older than me and a grade ahead. The
first time I saw her in the cafeteria I just gaped, I couldn’t speak, I
couldn’t breathe. I nearly fainted when she finally noticed me and said,
“If you are going to keep staring like that you might as well just come
over and talk to me.”
Yeah, she was like that.
We fell in
love right away, that kind of crazy love you only feel when you are a
kid. The problem was that everyone in town hated Ally’s family. Despite
her father being some kind of new-age hippie that had named his only
daughter Alchemy, he had a job working as a real estate specialist for a
company called Keeler Enterprise Management. He’d moved his family to
Yottle’s Grove in December and had spent the last few months buying up
every foreclosed home and abandoned storefront he could make an offer
on. Then he moved on to rental places and established businesses;
tenants were forced out, and stores lost their leases.
It also
didn’t help that the Jones family was black, as black as I was pale.
They were the only black folks in Yottle’s Grove since ever.
I
didn’t care, I was crazy about her but suddenly all the people that
never gave two shits about me before were paying attention. I was the
talk of the town and not in a good way. Used to be none of the school
knuckleheads ever bothered me on account of Jody but I started to get
jumped and pushed around every day. Teachers and townsfolk started
calling me awful names when I was within earshot. I won’t repeat them
here but I know you can imagine.
What really hurt was my parents.
They were good church-going folks, who always told me that God was love
and God loved everyone but now… now I was hearing a whole other story. I
got told race mixing was a sin and that I was a disgrace to the family.
I was grounded, they took my Atari and model kits away. My Mom started
trying to get Ally expelled from the school for any reason she could
think of and my Dad? Well, even my big brother didn’t know that some of
those bruises I got weren’t from my classmates.
And I didn’t tell
Jody because I think he would have killed Dad. You see he was the only
one that understood what I was feeling, in fact, he told me I was the
bravest kid in the whole town for not hiding the way I felt. Jody
understood but it wasn’t until he was long gone that I understood why he
understood so well.
In the summer that followed that hellish
school year, Jody started having me tag along to the drive-in with his
pals. My parents couldn’t be happier of course, they were sure that
quality time with their golden boy would straighten me out. We, and by
we I mean my brother, myself, and his three pals would arrive at Planet
Pictures just before dusk. He would park his truck facing away from the
screen so he, Carson, Bob, and Pisspot, could sit in the back drinking
beer and half-watching whatever movie was playing on the giant screen.
Meanwhile,
I grabbed a pair of lawn chairs and a big bag of homemade popcorn and
made my way to the back of the drive-in. To where Ally was waiting for
me.
Thankfully her parents, like Jody and his pals, were on our
side. Like I said they were pretty much a pair of hippies so they were
more than happy to take their daughter to the drive-in every Friday.
They were big believers in family time. The rule was that Ally had to
sit with them through the first half of the double feature but once the
dancing cartoon snacks started doing their thing she was free to make
her way to the back wall of the drive-in where I was waiting for her.
Like
most drive-ins, Planet Pictures was surrounded by an eight-foot-high
wall. It was bordered on one side by the county highway and the other by
a Legman’s Scrapyard. I always chose a spot near the junkyard side of
the drive-in. Nobody ever parked near there because of the faint smell
of motor oil, which made it quiet and private.
That last night at
the drive-in the double feature was Empire of the Ants followed by
Harvest Fiend. We sat together on our lawn chairs, far from where any
of the other patrons might see us.
Do you know what the first thing I always asked her when she sat down beside me? “Did anyone see you?”
I
should have said “Hello” or “I love you” or anything else but that’s
how bad the last few months had messed with my head. Years later I would
sit up at night worrying if I hurt her when I said that. Did she think I
was ashamed of her? Did she understand that these nights at Planet
Pictures were all we had left and I wanted to protect them from a town
full of bigots and snitches?
The sky that night, despite the
promises of the local weathermen, was dark and cloudy. I remember how
warm and small her hand felt in mine. I also remember the two trailers
from that night, one for a movie about a killer whale and the other
about a killer buffalo. We thought both were pretty hysterical looking.
When
the previews ended and the big screen darkened in anticipation of the
second feature I leaned over and kissed her. Ally was my first kiss and
considering that I’m your grandpa you know she wasn’t my last but she
was the one that set the bar for every girl that came after.
And she set the bar pretty high.
We
didn’t see the movie begin, We only heard the music that played over
the opening credits. It was a loud crash of brass instruments that might
have been jarring if we hadn’t been hearing it diluted through the four
hundred or so speakers stationed to the right of the drive-in’s every
parking spot. The discordant notes grew louder and louder, demanding our
attention. We looked away from each other just in time to see the title
fading from the screen, and it wasn’t Harvest Fiend at all. It read;
La Bestia Di Settembre
The
red gothic letters and ugly music gave way to the sounds of birds
chirping and the image of a desert. The sun was high in the sky, and the
wind rustled through the branches of the empty scrubland. Somewhere off
in the distance the sound of goats could be heard.
Then there
came two human figures—a man and a woman—walking slowly along on the
edge of a wooded area. They were dressed as if for a formal occasion, he
in dark breeches and a white shirt with frilled sleeves, her in a long
flowing dress with a large bow at the back. The man was plain featured,
the woman was beautiful with blonde hair and mismatched eyes. When they
spoke it was in a foreign language.
“Where are the subtitles?” Ally asked.
On
the screen, the couple had begun to argue and the sound of goats was
growing louder. “Must be some kind of a mistake,” I said before leaning
in to kiss her again.
“I love you,” Ally said.
“I love you
right back,” I replied, my hand settling on her thigh. She was wearing
shorts and her skin was soft and warm to the touch. A few pleasant
moments passed before the soundtrack of the film crashed again, the
shriek of a violin and the blare of trumpets giving way to a loud animal
huffing.
We both looked back to the screen and recoiled at the horned, animal-like face that filled it. It had too many eyes.
“What kind of goat is that?” I asked.
“That’s a man.” Ally breathed. I felt her skin prickle under my hand.
The
camera pulled back to reveal she was right, it was a man with the head
of a goat. He wore armor and rags and carried an ugly sword in his hand.
I tried to joke, “Maybe it’s the devil.”
“It’s too ugly to be the devil,” she said back.
The
goatman began walking toward the couple. As he walked he raised the
sword and screamed. The sound was horrible, like nails being dragged
across glass and it echoed strangely through the drive-in. At the sight
of him, the couple stopped in their tracks. The woman cried out and the
birds went silent.
The sound of other bleating-grumbling voices
could be heard. There were more goatmen now, coming in from both sides
of the screen. All wore sickening parodies of medieval clothing. One
even had a helmet shaped like a ram’s skull. They formed a ring around
the couple and began chanting as one. It was like no language I had ever
heard before.
The man started screaming his face was twisted
into a mask of horror. Then the woman fell to her knees her face buried
in her hands. The goat men drew closer, One of them reached down and
grabbed the man by the hair, and pulled his head back exposing his
throat. A sword flashed, and blood arced across the screen. Then the
goatmen began to claw at the woman. The soundtrack crashed again, the
symbols and horns drowning out her cries.
I chuckled nervously at
the gore and absurdity. Ally made a sound of disgust and got to her
feet. The lawn chair toppled over as she ran along the back wall of the
drive-in. I blinked in confusion and chased after her. It looked like
she was heading for the exit. I wondered what she was so upset about and
I worried that someone might see us together and tell my parents what I
had been up to. Finally, I realized she was making for the exit.
What is she going to do? I thought, Walk home?
The
first scene of the movie faded to black and lingered there. That
coupled with the thick low hanging clouds left me effectively blind.
Everything was shadows. “Ally!” I called after her, my voice a stage
whisper, “Ally!”
The big screen flashed with light and color,
resolving itself into the image of a stone fortress at night, knights
and soldiers stood at ready on the parapets. From their vantage point,
they could see the army of goatmen surrounding them. Beastial faces
moved in the torchlight cast in the shadows by their torchlight. Siege
weapons lay at the ready, a wooden cage had been constructed in the
center of their camp, in it, a red shape screamed and screamed.
The
camera’s view moved down from the parapets to the cage until the figure
was revealed to be the woman from the previous scene. Her mismatched
eyes stared out from a body that had been expertly flayed. My stomach
lurched.
Then bam! I ran straight into one of the speaker poles
and went down hard onto my side. It had knocked the wind out of me, I
was gasping for air. Suddenly Ally was at my side.
Then bam! I
ran straight into one of the speaker poles and went down hard onto my
side. It had knocked the wind out of me, I was gasping for air.
Immediately Ally was at my side.
“Are you all right?” Her voice was barely audible through my strangled breaths.
“Yes.” I nodded, “Hey. Why are you crying?”
“The way they surrounded that girl,” Ally pointed a thumb at the big screen, “bad memories.”
“I understand,” I said, but I didn’t understand. How could I? I was just a naive boy.
She
helped me to my feet. The nearest car was a couple of yards away but
when someone got out of it to head to the concession stand we retreated
back to our spot. Better safe than sorry. We sat down on our lawn chairs
and decided to ignore the movie. Small talk came easy to us and before
everything blew up we would stay after school every day, sitting behind
the bleachers and talking about our dreams until it was time for the
activities bus to take the students home.
It was my dream to work
in radio, to be a DJ, and have a talk show. It was hers to become a
police officer, but first, she wanted to tour around Europe. She would
do it, she said, on a yellow motorcycle. She even had the make and model
all picked out. When I playfully asked if I could come along she said
she could get a sidecar installed. Yeah, we were gonna have adventures.
“As soon as we graduate,” I said.
Allay grabbed my hand, “Why wait?”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s go now, let’s go somewhere else, anywhere else.” She said, “Let’s make it happen.”
“That’s crazy.”
The
movie now showed a scene set in a high-ceilinged stone room. The corpse
of a noblewoman lay on the floor and a king was impaled by a
long-bladed sword onto the wood. There was blood everywhere. A man with
long blonde hair knelt beside the woman, his features were gentle but he
wore elaborate makeup to give his face the appearance of a skull. His
tears streaked the black and white grease paint. Then there was another
man, older, bald. His expression was grim and deadly serious. The two
men spoke without looking at each other. Then the blonde-haired man
stood and drew his sword.
I felt a strange lurching, like that
feeling you get when you are just about to drop off the sleep and
suddenly get the sensation of falling. Ally and I blinked at each other
in confusion
And when had we started watching the movie again? I
couldn’t tell really but we could see the sky had darkened and the night
air had the heavy smell that always signaled the beginning of a
thunderstorm.
“What happened?” She asked me.
“Did we fall asleep?”
Her voice became waspish, “That doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s going to rain,” I said.
“Do you want to leave?”
“What’s wrong?” I reached for her only to have my hand swatted away.
“I asked you,” her eyes were bright with tears, “if you wanted to run away with me.”
“We…” Somewhere nearby a car started up, someone had had enough of the movie. I continued, “We can’t just run away.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re just kids!”
She sighed, “My parents were just kids when they got together. Dad was sixteen, Mom was eighteen. They made it work.”
Neither
of us noticed it had begun to rain. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw
that the image on the big screen now showed a cave set on the side of a
mountain. The sounds of the siege were faintly audible. but so was the
sound of the goat men half-chanting, half-singing "O friend and
companion of night, thou who rejoices in the baying of dogs and spilt
blood, who brings terror to human kin, oh Beast of September, oh Chosen
of Ezerhodden, look favorably on our sacrifices at walk among us!”
Something
growled from the depths of the cave making a sound like a great stone
door sliding open. The chanting grew louder and faster drowning out our
voices.
Why was that chant in English when everything else was in
Italian? I don't know, I'll probably never know but it is one of the
many things that I find myself thinking about when it’s late at night.
I’m
not surprised you’re never heard of Harvest Fiend otherwise known as
La Bestia Di Settembre. It’s a lost film there’s barely anything written
about it and barely anyone has seen it. It gets mentioned in Otterson’s
book Films That Witness Madness. According to him the movie was made in
1971 by a man named Mendell Boggs and filmed it in the town of Abalone,
Arizona. Somehow Boggs convinced the townsfolk to finance and take part
in all aspects of the production; they built the sets, they made the
costumes and they acted in it. Mendell himself was in the director,
creator of the special effects, and screenwriter.
Why did he make
a cast of inexperienced American actors perform their lines in Italian?
I don’t know. How did the citizens of a desert town manage to build a
faux fortress on the outskirts of their town only to tear it down when
filming wrapped?
I can’t tell you that. I can tell you that it
turned out that one of the materials used to build the majority of the
sets was laced with asbestos and by now most of the production team and
cast died of cancer. As for Mendell Boggs, he disappeared shortly before
his entire home was mysteriously swallowed up by a sinkhole.
Yes,
it is hard to believe, and speaking from a filmmaker’s standpoint it is
really hard to believe what happened next on the screen.
The
camera lingered for a long time on the entrance to the cave, slowly
zooming in until it filled the screen. The chanting of the goatmen had
become hypnotic, Ally and I couldn’t look away. A cold wind rose up to
join the rain, rain that was almost sleet. People were beginning to put
the tops of their cars up on their cars and roll up their windows.
Engines rasped to life as some prepared to call it a night.
A
giant hand reached out of the cave mouth. It was this grasping, clawing
six-fingered thing with flesh that was jagged like volcanic stone. A
second hand gripped the other side. Ally pulled me close. “My God.” She
said, “What is it?”
One of the cars preparing to leave turned on
its headlights. The yellow beam illuminated the screen revealing that
the great hands were gripping the edges of the screen itself, intruding
on our world. The growl became a roar. And with that roar, the power to
the drive-in died, and everything went black.
But the screen was still illuminated and something impossible and terrible was pulling itself free.
Then
the storm began, torrential rain beating down on us. Wave after wave of
it. Soaking us to the skin. Nearly driving us to our knees. We started
to run, Ally’s parent’s car was closer but we couldn’t see clearly. All
we could see was the day-for-night glow bleeding off the big screen as
the creature pulled a slender, bony head into view. Its tongue lapped
out testing the air. Then its second head came into view.
I was
so busy staring that I almost backed into the path of an oncoming car.
It was Ally that pulled me to safety. Panicked drivers were throwing
their cars into gear and racing towards the drive-in’s only exit.
Speakers were torn off their posts as vehicles clipped and crashed into
one another. Ally and I weren’t the only ones caught out on foot. We saw
one shadowy figure blunder out into the path of an oncoming truck. The
driver either didn’t see them or didn’t care.
By the time we had
reached the concession stand the Creature had pulled itself fully out of
the screen. It bayed with delight, the thick reverberation of its voice
causing all the glass in the concession stand to shatter, the windows,
the counters, the framed posters, everything. Ally and I weren’t the
only ones that had taken refuge there. A dozen of Yottle’s Grove’s
citizens were huddled there, parents, teenagers, and children. The storm
intensified. There chorus of car horns and grinding metal as more and
more vehicles bottlenecked at the exit to the drive-in.
Still
holding Ally’s hand I stepped closer to the crowd of terrified people.
Most of them were crying, praying, or both. More refugees made their way
inside, huddling on corners and sobbing over what they had seen.
Someone was shouting that the exit to the drive-in was blocked but none
of them could agree as to what the obstruction was. Some said fire, some
said thorns. Another man, I would later realize it had been my gym
teacher, said that there was something wrong with the sky, that the
clouds were moving like the waves of the ocean.
Looking back to
the lot I saw the Creature straddling a car. It reached down peeling
open the roof to pull a wriggling screaming shape free.
Then my
brother’s friend Carson came stumbling in, he was covered in blood but
wasn’t injured. “It ate him up,” he said, “It ate him up!”
I
thought of my brother and his other friends out there in the back of his
truck. Mom had always said he didn’t have the sense to come out of the
rain. It all settled in, I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t think. There
were tears in my eyes.
Ally tugged at my hand, “We have to go.”
“What?” I said.
“My parents. We have to find them.”
“No.” I said, “No. No. No. We can’t go back out there.”
“Please,” She was pleading but there were no tears in her eyes, “Come with me.”
"No,” I repeated, taking a step backward.
And
in that moment the way she looked at me, the way she had always looked
at me, changed. I wanted to take it back, but I couldn’t. I had been
brave enough to hold her hand in public, but this? I wasn’t brave enough
for this.
She let go of my hand and I just watched her go. I
watched her disappear into the storm. The Creature roared again, it was
so close. I could see the flesh of its leg, jagged and bark-like.
Beneath that its feet were thick like hooves and, caked with gore.
“It ate him up,” Carson said again.
“Please God, make it go away,” someone prayed.
“This can’t be happening,” another voice said. “This isn’t real.”
The concession stand shook and the ceiling split as the Creature brought its fists down again and again on the building.
I fell to my knees and buried my face in my hands. There was a crash like thunder and everything went black.
You’re
still listening. I’m flattered. I expected you to have made a run for
it by now. Do you believe me? It’s all right if you don’t. The official
story is that a freak tornado tore through Planet Pictures leaving four
hundred and twenty-two dead and one missing. My brother and his friends
were among the dead. I was one of the thirty survivors they pulled from
the rubble and the only one that came out raving about a monster. Of
course, there was no trace of that thing but I still don’t know why none
of the other survivors wouldn’t say what really happened. They all said
I was crazy. Everyone said I was crazy.
It’s probably a good
thing my injuries left me in a full-body cast, if not I am sure I would
have ended up in some asylum somewhere.
A fourth of the high
school senior class had been in the drive-in, and there had been plenty
of families with kids so as you can imagine the town was never the same
after that. By 1981 the place was practically a ghost town, nowadays
it’s even emptier and I doubt there is a single person living there
younger than forty. Keeler Enterprise Management set up a corporate
retreat on one side of Tatro’s Pond and a summer camp on the other,
business from those places is the only thing keeping the town going.
These
are all the things that were in my head when I wrote the script for The
Beast Of September. It’s about that night but it isn’t. There are no
goat men or giants but it is a story about the parallels between coming
of age and being under siege. If I got the story right, and if the
studio doesn’t cut the film to ribbons, then maybe, just maybe, some
young idiot out there will see it and realize that if you’re in love you
have to be brave because sometimes there are no second chances.
Pretty deep huh? Hope to see you at the premiere, you can tell me what you thought.
What
about Ally? Remember how I said four hundred and twenty-two dead and
one missing? She was the one missing. They figure the tornado picked her
up and either dropped her into the New Brunswick River or deep into the
forests of Mitchell’s Peak.
That’s what I pray for. Because
otherwise… otherwise that means she was dragged off into wherever
Creature came from. The ugly world that somehow La Bestia Di Settembre
allowed to bleed through to our own.
And that is why my movie will never play at a drive-in.
But
it will be playing at Sundance in three weeks. It’s just a test
screening but I can’t wait. I’ll get you a ticket if you want.
***
It
is a matter of record that The Beast Of September premiered at Sundance
on January 18th, 2014 at the Jade Pagoda Theater. Cinema Hounddog
reporter Gina Brannen as well as a dozen other critics handpicked by the
director were in attendance along with members of the cast and crew.
The roof of the Jade Pagoda collapsed forty minutes into the showing
much to the horror of onlookers on the street.
The incident left four hundred and forty-three dead and thirty-two wounded. The body of Willard Katz was never found.
All
rights to the film were obtained by Boggs International holding group
who have stated they have no plans to release The Beast Of September to
the general public anytime in the foreseeable future.
-from ‘Films That Witness Madness Volume 2’ by Christopher Otterson
Derek
looked through the front window of his home for a long, confused
moment, looked away, and then looked back again. There was a man dressed
as a bear standing on the street corner. He was wearing an old- style
children’s Halloween costume—just a vinyl smock and a plastic mask. On
the tall, bulky man, the smock was like an oversized bib, and the edges
of the wearer’s face oozed out from the edges of the crinkled, cheery
mask. He had a book tucked under one arm, something with a colorful,
shiny cover. It was a library book, Derek was sure of it. He could
almost read the title, and the near familiarity of it disturbed him.
The
morning sun was bright, the sky cloudless. It made the sight seem all
the more incongruous. Derek backed away from the front window and sat
down heavily in his recliner.
“My recliner," he said aloud, trying to take comfort in the words, “In my house.”
He
closed his eyes tightly, took several deep breaths, then opened them
again. Years ago, a coworker had suggested he join his class in
transcendental meditation. Derek had gone once for the sake of
appearances. Now he tried to use the breathing exercises and techniques
he had learned. If someone else had lived here, they might have thought
he was hyperventilating. But Derek lived alone. He always had.
Working
as a vendor representative for Gilitta Imports had left him no time for
familial and financial entanglements. To some, it might have seemed
lonely , but it was the kind of life Derek had always wanted. A life
with money, privacy, and pleasant distractions. One of those
distractions had been his late Saturday morning walk—six miles to the
edge of town and back —but there was no way he was going to step outside
with that costumed man standing on the corner.
Derek thought of
retreating to his spare bedroom, the place where he kept his stamp
collection. He could busy himself there, but that would throw his entire
Saturday schedule into disarray. He knew people were used to seeing him
out and about at this hour. It was important for a man living alone to
be seen regularly by his neighbors. That was why Derek always accepted
invitations to mixers and cookouts. If he kept completely to himself,
the gossip would begin. People would begin to wonder about him and ask
questions.
“What am I afraid of?” he asked himself and got back
to his feet with a renewed sense of purpose. He would take that walk. He
would stroll right past the odd stranger and make his way out of the
development, through downtown, and all the way to the sign that told him
he was approaching River City. Then he would turn back, perhaps pausing
for a while to linger at the shops of Pickman’s Grove or enjoy a light
meal at Karl’s Diner. Derek was grinning from ear to ear when he opened
the front door.
Now the man in the bear costume was on the
sidewalk directly in front of the house. His masked face was staring off
into the middle distance, but he turned slowly to observe Derek as he
stood there, sputtering. Derek slammed the door and retreated back to
the living room.
Fear began to claw at his gut. People in masks
had that effect on him. They always had. Despite him putting up a
neighborly front every year on Halloween, Derek hated the holiday. He
hated the possibilities those hidden faces and hidden motives stirred
up. They made him start to remember the most unpleasant things. Things
he preferred to put far out of his mind.
Derek turned on the TV
and switched to a sports channel. He didn’t care what the game was or
who was playing. After a moment's thought, he got back up again and went
to the bar for something smoky and sour.
Hours passed. He
didn't remember falling asleep, but he woke up on the recliner with a
sore back and a throbbing head. He stumbled to the bathroom and relieved
himself. Sunlight was streaming through the bathroom window. Late afternoon already? Derek ran the sink and splashed cold water on his face.
A
quick glance in the mirror revealed a man with a thin face, small eyes,
and a wide mouth. His blond hair was receding, and he had a
meticulously trimmed mustache. All familiar enough, but there was no
mistaking how pale he looked right now, and the dark circles that rimmed
his eyes.
Worry was doing its ugly work. Derek found a bottle
of Tylenol in the medicine cabinet and swallowed two tablets. A sudden
and unpleasant suspicion took hold. “It couldn’t be,” he said. “It’s
been hours.”
He made his way to the door and looked into the
peephole. The costumed man was on the porch now, feet planted firmly on
the welcome mat. Derek’s knees threatened to give out. Every crinkle in
the plastic mask drew into sharper focus as the costumed man leaned in
towards the peephole.
Derek grabbed for the phone.
Calling
the authorities was the last thing Derek had wanted to do. Police cars
in the driveway were the kind of thing that could get tongues wagging.
Not to mention the kind of chaos a court date could wreak on his
schedule.
But what choice did he have? He dialed 911 and
retreated to the kitchen to wait. Of all the rooms in the house, he
liked this one the best. There was just something about the way the
earthy-scented draft from the unfinished basement mixed with the warmth
of the kitchen that made him happy.
As he waited, Derek wondered
to himself where he had packed away the revolver his coworker Gordon
had given him all those years ago.
The police arrived with the
promptness he would expect from an affluent community like this. In
fact, it was two squad cars that showed up, not just one. When the knock
on the door came, he answered it calmly, praying that he would open the
door to see the costumed man off to one side in cuffs, but no. It was
just two uniformed officers. When they asked him what seemed to be the
problem, he calmly told them his story.
To their credit, they
took it all seriously; they didn’t crack a smile when they read back the
description of the trespasser. One of them even complimented him on the
framed Penny Black stamp hanging on the wall above the fireplace.
Neither of them mentioned the alcohol on his breath.
The
officers left about half an hour after they had arrived, leaving him
with a promise that they would keep a close watch on the neighborhood in
case there were further sightings or complaints. Derek closed and
locked the door. He peeked out each window, looking for some sign of the
costumed man, but all he saw were bland shadows and the neighbors’
houselights flickering on as the evening deepened.
Nighttime already. His entire Saturday had been ruined. Derek headed up to the spare bedroom where the latest issue of Modern International Stamp Collector Quarterly was waiting for him. The thought of settling down to read cheered him a little. Had they published his letter?
But before that, he decided to find that revolver.
It
was easier said than done. His bedroom closet was a chaos of clothes,
shoes, and the remnants of long-abandoned hobbies. Finally, he found it
under a pile of old linens. Derek picked the revolver up. It was lighter
than he remembered and coated with dust. He remembered Gordon, the
coworker that had given it to him. He had been a man living in
anticipation of the apocalypse and had collected a truckload of weapons
before finally succumbing to cancer. Derek could have told him it was a
mistake to worry about a world-shattering catastrophe. Not when over a
hundred thousand people were dying natural deaths every day. A hundred
thousand ordinary apocalypses.
Derek read the magazine cover to
cover, luxuriating in it. He even took a few notes for his next letter.
Over the years, he had seen the quality of the magazine’s writing
decline, the language used in the articles becoming almost
conversational in tone.
A clattering sound startled him. “No,” he whispered to himself.
More
sounds followed—footsteps, then the sound of a chair being moved.
Derek’s heart began to race. He considered barricading himself in the
room and wondered how long it would take to move the bureau in front of
the door and how long it would take the police to arrive.
Frowning,
he got to his feet. The revolver felt grimy in his hand. Derek waited,
paralyzed until he heard the sound of the teakettle whistling.
That
was too much; this was breaking and entering. This was an invasion. A
violation! He threw open the door to the guest bedroom. “Who’s there?”
he shouted. “I’m armed!”
There was no reply except for another gentle clinking.
Slowly, he walked down the stairs. The front door was closed and locked. How had the man gotten in?
The
TV was on, but nothing was playing. Blue light from the screen washed
over the empty living room. Derek’s framed stamp had fallen from its
spot above the fireplace and was lying face down on the floor. Derek
wanted to run, but he was sure that when he came back with help, they
would find nothing. Shooting the man dead wasn’t much of better option. A
dead body and an unlicensed revolver would bring scrutiny and
background checks. Things that would chip away at Derek’s carefully
crafted life.
He had to hope threats might be enough; if he could just scare the costumed man away. Make him find someone else to prey on.
Derek
stepped into the kitchen, where he found the intruder was waiting for
him. The costumed man’s posture was casual. He held a teacup in one
hand, and rivulets of chamomile tea dribbled from the mouth hole of the
plastic mask and pooled on the table. In his other hand, he held the
library book, which had a picture of a castle on the cover. The title
read, 'La Bête De Septembre.' He had set a place for Derek beside him.
“Who are you?” Derek raised the revolver.
The costumed man regarded him knowingly.
Tears prickled at the edges of Derek’s eyes. “I don’t deserve this! Why can’t you bother someone else?”
The
costumed man set down his teacup and book and slowly stood. When he
spoke, his voice was full of pity: “I know what you are.”
Then, he took off the plastic bear mask.
The
face beneath it was thin with small eyes and a wide mouth. His blond
hair was receding, and he had a meticulously trimmed mustache. His
expression was so very eager.
Derek pulled the trigger of the revolver.
There was nothing but a dull click. The costumed man took a step towards him. Derek pulled the trigger again.
The
weapon detonated in his hand. It had been too old, too neglected. Hot
splinters of metal raked his face. He gaped at the ruined stump where
his hand had been, which was jetting blood.
Shock weakened him.
He stared at the costumed man, at his unmasked face. Why was there
something so familiar about all this? Derek fell to his knees and then
smacked face first onto the floor. His last words were, “My stamps...”
His last breath sent a ripple through the pool of blood that haloed him.
The man crumpled the plastic mask and threw it into the kitchen
trash. He did the same with the costume. He bent down, grabbed hold of
the corpse’s legs, and dragged it across the kitchen floor. The body was
heavier than the man had expected, and he was starting to feel tired
from the long day. When this was over, he would treat himself to a hot
shower and a good stiff drink. Something sour and smoky.
The
cellar door opened with a nudge, and the earthy smell of the unfinished
basement filled the man’s nose. He made his way down the steps. The
corpse’s head lolling and smacking hollowly on each stair on the way
down. Then, the man dragged the body to the center of the basement, the
trail of gore making mud of the dirt floor.
The basement light was easy to find, and the shovel was right in the corner where he had expected to find it.
The
man took hold of it and paused thoughtfully before beginning to dig. It
took several times before he could really get started; there were so
many other bodies buried down here.
Derek looked through the front window of his home for a long, confused moment, looked away, and then looked back again. There was a man dressed as a bear standing on the street corner...
By the time anyone sees this, it will be too late, and I will be at peace.
I
am not the first person to find themselves tired of life, and I won't
be the first person to put an end to it all. Some people commit suicide
via handfuls of pills or with warm baths and cut wrists. That isn't for
me. That's too gentle, too clean. It doesn't show enough contempt for
what this world makes of you. I'm going to cut my own throat, left to
right, ear to ear, and I'm doing it in the morning. I would have liked
for there to have been a sunrise for my final moments, but the forecasts
are cloudy with a chance of rain.
One more disappointment.
The
blade is in my hand, a well-used boning knife with a serrated edge.
I've been preparing for almost half a year, studying medical journals
and tracing the path the knife must take. This isn't the kind of thing
you can practice easily, but I think I've developed a foolproof
technique. One clean cut will sever both my carotid arteries- just so
long as I don't lose my nerve or fumble the job. The last thing I want
to do is survive and have to explain what I have done.
I've
decided to do it in my home while wearing my best suit. I will be
standing in front of the window with my favorite album playing, Abbey Road, and I will make the cut in the pause between 'The End' and 'Her Majesty.'
A
gravesite has already been purchased, and a closed casket and a quiet
burial have been requested. My will specifies that my estate will be
liquidated and dispersed to whatever charities might be interested.
Don't
think I've chosen this path because of some kind of mental illness;
this may be the sanest decision I have ever made. Life has its joys, but
I think that if you really keep track, the tragedies always outweigh
the triumphs. We all try so hard, but in the end, what is it worth?
Everything dies, everything rots away; the evening news gets bleaker,
and the nights grow longer. The old sayings like "Better to have loved
and lost" or "If you first you don't succeed try, try again." are cruel
platitudes created by one generation to pass their misery on to the
next.
Some
philosopher said it was better to have never been born and I can't say I
disagree with him. Better never to have been born at all but in absence
of that better to die.
I'm
sure you're shaking your head at this, wishing you could have told me
how wrong I was. You probably think life is sweet, and you might wonder
why I didn't reach out to my friends and family. To someone that might
profess to care about me.
But that would be impossible because they're all dead already.
The old saying is, "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves," but
in the end, I only needed one. I have no regrets for my years spent
planning and executing my vengeance upon Creighton Tillingshaft Jr.
It
should never have come to this, and I like to think that if he had just
paid for his crimes, I would have tried to move on, but that man did
not take responsibility. There was no denying that my thirteen-year-old
son was dragged beneath Creighton Tillingshaft Jr's car for 180 yards;
there was no denying that Creighton Tillingshaft Jr had fled the scene
of the accident, leaving my boy to die by the side of the road like an
animal. The authorities thought he was driving under the influence, but
by the time they caught up to him, there was no way to prove it.
The
trial was a sham; the Tillingshaft fortune saw to it that his team of
doctors and psychiatrists spoke of 'dissociative episodes' and
addictions. His lawyers questioned my parenting, scolding me for
allowing my boy to be out delivering papers at five in the morning. In
the end, all my son's killer received was a hefty fine, community
service, and twelve years probation.
Was that all my boy was worth to them?
It
is a painful thing to outlive your offspring; my wife had died in
childbirth, and the thought that my son would not attend my grave as I
attended his mother's left me not entirely sane. I bought a gun and
tried to decide if I wanted him dead or if I wanted to die myself.
Eventually my perspective changed, I became colder. I let my love for my
son twist into a dream of vengeance. I vowed to never rest until I saw
my boy's killer on his knees.
Years
were spent watching and planning; I came to know his life better than I
had known my own. Finally, shortly after his fortieth birthday, I began
to move against Creighton Tillingshaft Jr. At first all I did was let
him know he was being watched by using the skills I'd spent years
honing. His family heard footsteps echo through the house at night. They
would investigate to find a door or window open. They started finding
newspapers delivered to their front step, though they never subscribed,
and their mansion was behind walls and a gate. Those papers were not
new; they were from the year my son died. He began to panic; he hired
security guards that never found anything amiss and bought guard dogs
that disappeared to be found dead weeks later.
Once
the Tillingshafts were good and rattled, I backed off; I waited a year;
I could afford to. Then they found Creighton Tillingshaft Sr. dead;
everyone said it was a simple heart attack, but I was responsible. The
old man wasn't even a week in the ground when I struck again.
Seventeen-year-old Creighton Tillingshaft III took a tumble down one of
the crowded stairways of his college. His injuries left him a
paraplegic; months later, an opportunistic infection took care of the
rest. That blow made my son's killer turn his back on the sobriety he
had embraced twenty-five years ago. That drove his wife away, leaving
him alone in that big mansion with just his servants, but I soon took
care of them. For all their professed loyalty to the Tillingshaft
family, a few well-planned accidents and some threats from the shadows
were all it took to send them running.
After
that, I waited again, knowing that eventually, despite his
near-constant drunken stupor, my son's killer would realize what I had
done. It was a cold February morning when he came to me. He screamed and
cursed until he collapsed into a sobbing heap.
Does Hell await me as punishment for what I've done? I don't know, and I don't care.
It was worth it to have the once great Creighton Tillingshaft Jr fall to his knees on my long untended grave.
