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.
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
Embark on a rollercoaster of agony, determination, and sweet, sweet triumph as our fearless narrator faces off against a kidney stone, emerging as the undefeated champion in this epic tale of urinary warfare!
'I Fought The Stone And The Stone Won' was written by Al Bruno III
My problems all began when I started peeing blood.
Now, that is one hell of an opening line, right?
I’ve
had kidney stones before, and for those of you who don’t know, it is
not a pleasant experience, but I know what to expect and how to react.
But blood? That was a new one.
I
left work early and called my General Practitioner. They were having an
early Christmas party, so they referred me to their urgent care center,
but they were having a Christmas party too. Since it was a Friday, I
took a lot of over-the-counter painkillers and went to bed early. In my
addled mind, I imagined the staff of my doctor’s office singing
ailment-specific Christmas carols to me.
Like this one;
“Oh kidney stone, oh kidney stone Will it break your urethra…”
The
pain and blood faded as I spent the weekend taking it easy and watching
television. Regular doses of MST3k and Doctor Who are always good for
what ails me, and by Monday, I was feeling fine, so I headed out for my
appointment with my therapist, Dr. Bernardo. It was the early days of
our therapeutic relationship but he was hard at work trying to
understand how I could have both a god complex and low self-esteem. That
day, he asked me if I had any unresolved childhood trauma. I jokingly
told him that sometimes I fantasize about digging up my long-dead
kindergarten teacher and punching her in the face.
Something
about Dr. Barnardo’s gentle squeak of horror made me realize I might
have gone a bit too far. It was in the middle of my apologizing for the
remark that a fresh bout of pain hit me in the kidney.
And this
was bad, folks; it felt like my loins were aflame- and not in a good
romance novel way. I cut the therapy session short and spent about half
an hour in the bathroom dealing with pain and nausea; when I could walk
again, I headed out to my car to my General practitioner’s office.
I
didn’t have an appointment, but my begging skills were top-shelf that
day, and they rushed me right in to see him. Or maybe it was just
because they wanted to get rid of the big bald idiot curled into a ball
and whimpering on the waiting room floor.
Preliminary tests
revealed that my urine was the color of Hawaiian Punch and my face was
the color of Mountain Dew. The general practitioner gave me a shot of a
painkiller and referred me to a urologist; the urologist saw me right
away.
More tests were performed, internal organs were scanned,
and co-pays were deferred. I was informed that I had a four-millimeter
kidney stone trying to make its way into my bladder via a 5ml vein,
leading to a situation much like the time I tried to fit into that pair
of corduroy slacks I refused to throw away.
The urologist gave me
two sets of pills and a funnel with a mesh at the end. One set of drugs
was a week’s worth of Vicodin. The other was to widen out my urological
tract and grease the gears, if you will; the wire mesh was so I could
strain my urine and catch the kidney stone. At first, I thought this
would be a great thing- I could give the kidney stone away to one of my
lucky readers as a prize!
The urologist put the kibosh on that; he needed to take kidney stones for tests. Oh well.
I
also got a note for a week off from work, but I wasn’t sure that would
save my job. It wasn’t that any of my six supervisors were bad people,
but when you work for an organization that considers Goldings’s Lord of
the Flies a training manual, you have to be a little worried.
Upon
arriving home, I barely said anything to my wife Gloria and my daughter
Hazel and went to bed early. When my wife finally turned in, I was
feeling a little better, and as my body is 98% hormones, I tried to put
the moves on her, and she put moves right back, but sadly, the day had
been too traumatic for my manhood. What should have been a gentle and
beautiful expression of our love became a frustrating taffy pull.
The
following day, I called in sick to work, but in retrospect, I should
have waited until after this was accomplished before I took a Vicodin.
For those of you who haven’t followed my work closely (That’s you,
Western Hemisphere.) I should inform you that in my 41 years, I had
never tried illegal drugs of any sort. This is because of my high
principles and intense cowardice.
The end result of this is that
as I was on hold waiting for a supervisor to give them the news of my
extended absence, the Vicodin hit me like a freight train and I told
them that I loved them. Then I called back and did it again. I might
have done it a third time if I hadn’t suddenly become enraptured with
the screen saver on my computer. I might not have survived if flying
toasters had still been a thing.
I spent the next seven days in a
stupor. Whenever I napped, my dreams were in color and the stuff of
fanfic, but they were poisoned by the constant ache in my bladder. If I
were the captain of a starship, I would find that a transporter accident
had caused there to be only one bathroom for the entire crew to use,
and that bathroom’s location was constantly changing. Many crew members
had already lost control of their bladders, but I, their captain, was
fighting to keep control. But it already seemed like a lost cause; no
one was at their station, and there were Klingons everywhere. As you can
imagine, it was a Yellow Alert.
Sometime during this long, hazy
week, I somehow insulted my 8-year-old daughter’s playmate. I know I
made her cry, but I’m not sure what I said. I mean, I have a vague idea
it had something to do with her preferring Joe as a host of Blues Clues
instead of Steve- AND WHAT KIND OF SOULESS HALFWIT WOULD DO SOMETHING
LIKE THAT?
Later on I staggered over to their house to make an
apology. It was sincere and heartfelt, and I think there was some
forgiveness in their eyes when they came out onto their porch to ask me
why I had been talking to their mailbox for twenty minutes.
Part Two
Did
I mention that my urologist, Dr. Wertighast, was bald? It was clearly a
fashion statement of the manliest kind, as opposed to my brand of
genetic baldness that had left me looking like Charlie Brown all grown
up. I stared at his shiny shorn pate in frustration and learned that the
kidney stone was having trouble passing. I had a similar problem with
the ninth grade.
I sighed, “So I spent a week straining my urine for nothing.”
“I understand your frustration.” He said.
Straining
your urine. Sounds kind of absurd, doesn’t it? Well, it looks pretty
damn absurd when you’re doing it- I can tell you that; a solid week of
standing at the toilet, one hand holding good old Thunder Lizard and the
other a plastic funnel with a fine mesh at the bottom.
And
please don’t forget that most of the time I was doing this, I was stoned
out of my mind on Vicodin. I hit my toes and my bathrobe, and in one
moment of combined brilliance and clumsiness, I even managed to ricochet
my urine stream off the lip of the plastic funnel back into my eye.
The line between medical science and a fetish video is a fine one indeed.
“So what happens now?” I asked.
He
explained, “Two days from now, you come down to the surgery center. We
put you under and get that stone out before it causes serious damage. It
looks like it should come out pretty easily. I don’t think cutting will
be necessary, but you will need a stent.”
I wasn’t sure what a
stent was, but if it was the alternative to having my Weiner cut open, I
was ready to take two and call him in the morning.
The drive
home from the urologist was a somber experience, to say the least. I had
always assumed that if I were going to pay someone to manhandle my
junk, it would have been a sprightly Korean woman with red hair,
masseuse training, and a willingness to wear a spangly catsuit similar
to the one Wendy Padbury wore in the 1968 Doctor Who serial The Mind
Robber.
When I told my family the news, my wife was the epitome
of love and concern. My daughter’s only comment was that she hoped it
didn’t ruin her plans for the school’s holiday party.
And THAT is why I never bought her a pony.
There
were a lot of butterflies in my stomach those next two days. Yes, I
knew I would be unconscious; yes, I knew this was a simple outpatient
procedure, but my imagination wouldn’t let those facts take hold. I
couldn’t believe the same wonderful imagination that had helped me run
years of role-playing games and write reams of stories about Booger
Monsters From Outer space was betraying me like this.
That night,
after we had put my daughter to bed, my wife tried to take my mind off
my troubles the way that wives normally always can. Things were going
great, but my imagination wasn’t through with me. I began to worry. What
if the nurses pointed and laughed? What if I contracted some
flesh-eating bacteria from a dirty scalpel, or perhaps there might be an
earthquake in the middle of the operation? What if I woke during the
procedure?
My God! What if my insurance decided they weren’t going to cover the bill?
Our romantic interlude ended disappointingly for the both of us and now I had a new worry.
Would the surgeon notice the slightly bluish tinge to my balls?
Part Three
The
day of my ureteroscopy came, and there was a lot to be thankful for. I
was thankful that my mother-in-law was able to drive me there and back
because my wife’s employer refused to give her time off. I was thankful
that checking in at the front desk went easily with no last-minute drama
from my medical insurance. I was thankful that the Nursing Supervisor
put me at ease with her gentle nature and no-nonsense demeanor. I was
especially thankful that the woman given the duty of shaving my groin
had a steady hand and a good sense of humor.
They gave me an IV,
and I watched them inject something into it. I thought to ask them how
long it would be before it took effect, but before the words could leave
my mouth, darkness had rolled over my mind like a dark wave. The last
time I was put under for an operation, I was six years old and there had
been such dreams! Dreams of surreal creatures that looked like crayon
drawings come to life, dancing against purple sunsets, and romantic
dates with Wendy from The Superfriends in a K-Mart that might have been a
spaceship.
You know, normal stuff.
My modern experiences
with sedation were very different things. The drugs they give now send
me into a thoughtless brief oblivion that seems to threaten to go on
forever.
Truth be told, the memory, or perhaps I should say
non-memory of it, haunts me. It's what I fear dying might be like. I
still can't imagine what's worse: no afterlife at all or an afterlife
that ends up being like an ethereal and inescapable family reunion. I
can almost see it now: dozens of Bruno souls voluntarily exiling
themselves to purgatory or reincarnating as tapeworms to avoid talking
to me.
I didn’t wake up smoothly after the procedure. I felt like
I was choking and struggling. Later, I found out that during
anesthesia, my breathing significantly slowed down, leading to the need
for intubation.
The anesthesiologist asked me why I hadn’t
mentioned this problem, and while I would have liked to have explained, I
had no idea; I was too busy coughing in the aftermath of having a
plastic tube down my throat. Before the conversation. Could go further I
realized I had to pee.
At first, I thought the nurse who helped
me down the hallway was lurching wildly. However, upon entering the
restroom, I realized it couldn't have been her because the bathroom was
lurching wildly, too. Once I was certain of my footing, I shifted aside
the fabric of my muumuu-like hospital gown.
The almost frantic
need to relieve myself was forgotten the moment I caught a glimpse of my
manhood. The doctor had left a pin-hole-sized incision at the base of
my urethral opening, and from that incision, there dangled a small
length of dark blue string.
My first reaction was to mumble, “How very festive.”
My second was a sound similar to the Wilhelm Scream.
The
nurse that responded to the sound assured me that, yes, that string was
supposed to be there; it was part and parcel with getting a stent.
As
I was led back to my room so I could get changed back into my street
clothes, I learned several things. I learned that it had actually taken
them three tries to intubate me due to an oddly shaped windpipe. I
learned that the kidney stone they removed from me was only 2
millimeters in diameter, shaped like the spaceship that had rocketed
Superman to Earth in the 1978 film and had pretty much hooked itself
into the flesh of my urethra.
I learned that I had three new
prescriptions to take for the next two weeks, one of which was Oxycodne.
I learned that the blue string meant that a stent had been run along
the length of my urethra so the damage done by the stone and surgery
could be repaired; it would remain in place for the next 11 days, and
during that time, I would experience painful urination that would have
blood as well as the occasional stone fragment or scab. I also learned
how many times I could say the word ‘urethra’ in a single story and
still keep my listeners.
The number is five, by the way.
Once
I was home, my wife and mother-in-law put me to bed. My daughter had a
Christmas pageant that night, but there was no way I was able to go, and
that made me really sad, at least until the Oxycodone kicked in; then I
spent the next few hours trying to explain Doctor Who’s UNIT dating
controversy to my dogs.
The 12 days of Christmas passed in a
pleasant haze; I watched TV, I played video games, I overate, but sadly,
I couldn't sleep comfortably unless I was sitting up on the couch. The
In-Laws came over for Christmas, and it was a great visit. I was too
woozy to put together my daughter's new two-story doll house, but her
grandpa picked up the slack quite nicely. While he did that, my daughter
baked me snacks with her new Easy Bake oven until she ran out of mix.
Just as well really, I was about to slip into diabetic shock.
Finally,
December 29th rolled around, and it was time to have the stent removed.
I was glad of it. I had been out of work for over twenty days by then,
and I was actually starting to miss the soul-crushing drudgery of
phone-based customer support and the challenge of stealing office
supplies.
Dr. Wertighast told me that everything was good and
that once the stent was removed, I would be able to relieve myself
without trauma or speaking in tongues. As I sat there with my pants low
and my hopes high, I asked him what kind of sedation would be used to
remove the stent. He told me not to worry about that as he pulled on his
rubber gloves and told me to stand over a waste basket.
So yeah, I was worried.
He
told me that I would feel some momentary discomfort. I asked him to
define discomfort, but instead, he just pulled the string.
Having
a tube pulled out of your schmeckle feels like you’re e whizzing out a
ten-foot stream of hot coffee on a cold winter day. I made the same
kinds of sounds that Curly from the Three Stooges made when he caught
his head in something.
“There,” he said to me. “That wasn't so bad, was it?”
What I should have said back was, “It wasn’t very fucking good.”
But
I was too stunned by one of my body parts becoming part of a variation
on the old magician's trick of pulling a mile of handkerchiefs out of
someone’s sleeve. Wide-eyed and confused, I walked to my car and drove
home. My family was waiting for me, and to celebrate the end of my
ordeal, my favorite dinner was waiting for me.
I stared at my
plate for a long time, but eventually, I tucked in. I watched a movie
with my daughter and then put her to bed. Afterward, I headed for the
bathroom, and all was well with the world. One flush of the toilet and
tooth brushing later, I got into bed with my wife. We made small talk,
we flirted, and then we embraced.
But I was worried. It had been
six weeks, six weeks of renal ravaging and genitourinary grief. Would I
still be able to do, humbly speaking, the only other thing I’m really
good at?
I am happy to report that the stone may have been gone but I rocked her world.
“You
don’t have to believe the stories on my blog, you can dismiss them as
good hallucinations or bad fiction if you want to but they’re all true.
The darkness was never empty, there are things that wait for the
innocent and unwary to turn their backs. What is it you think I’m
talking about here? Ghosts? Vampires? Ghouls? If only it were that
simple. The creatures of the night are still out there but they’re not
shadowing your every footstep. They just check your status updates from
the comfort of their tombs.
All
I ever wanted was to be a Do-It-Yourself style reporter but more often
than I like I find myself becoming part of my stories. It turns out gods
and monsters don’t like their secrets getting out any more than your
standard politician or celebrity. We all know how this is going to turn
out in the end; I’m already long overdue for jail, the looney bin or a
guest of honor spot at a monster buffet but until that fateful day I’m
not going to back down or give up.
My name is Brian Foster and some people call me The Night Blogger.
.."
Brian
and his friends delve deeper into the secrets of Gorgo, Luna, and the
Thousand-Faced Moon, only to realize they may need the help of a woman
who claims to be the Devil.
March 5: As malls go, Colonie Center wasn't all that bad, especially now that it had been re-renovated. The stores were 80% the same, but the design had shifted from 'generic' to ‘1970s rec room.'
Nearly a decade before that makeover, I had spent many afternoons there as a teenager—sometimes for legitimate reasons. Other times, my friends Eric and Georgie would sneak through the employee hallways and stairways to find a secluded spot to partake in the Devil's Lettuce.
Sara's sleepwalking incidents had faded away thanks to nightly burnings of sage and a necklace of black tourmaline, amethyst, and clear quartz crystals. I wasn't so naïve as to think she was entirely out of the supernatural woods, but it was still a reason to celebrate. Besides, she had just turned twenty-one a few weeks ago, and after grabbing some fast food and catching a movie, I wanted to buy her her first drink. We walked through the mall together—Sara in a long skirt and peasant blouse and me in my leather jacket, jeans, collared shirt, and lucky straw fedora.
###
First, we stopped by Friendly's for a bite to eat. As we made small talk, it was nice to learn about the everyday details of Sara's life. I discovered that her father owned a glass factory known for producing some of the cheapest wine bottles in America, and her brothers worked in management there. Her mother was involved in an organization dedicated to preserving historic buildings in Clifton Park.
Sara shared that her mother had become pregnant with her despite her father's vasectomy, which nearly led to a divorce. Her father was convinced her mother had been unfaithful, and it was only after Sara was born that a DNA test confirmed the vasectomy had failed.
This made Sara feel like the deck had been stacked against her from the very beginning. She grew up mostly in the care of stern nannies, a dismissive mother, and a father more inclined to shouting than hugging. As for her brothers? She considered it a victory when they made any eye contact with her.
In return, I shared that my grandmother had been a showgirl in Las Vegas. She left in 1972 after being labeled an "undesirable element." Arriving in Albany pregnant and penniless, she rebuilt her life and raised my mom. She never revealed who my grandfather was, and in a twist of irony, my mom never told us who my father was, though she was pretty sure I knew. I had gone to college in Loch Sheldrake to study journalism but dropped out when my grandmother reached the final stages of pancreatic cancer.
Unfortunately, it wasn't long after that I encountered my first monster... and the rest, as they say, is history.
After an awkward pause, we left the restaurant and headed to the Palace Cinemaplex. It was a tall, standalone building, a recent addition to Colonie Center. The theater was about fifteen feet away from the rest of the mall and connected to it by a single hallway leading to the south entrance. Every half hour or so, the theater became bustling with people arriving and departing for the latest film screenings.
What movie were we seeing? As it always was these days, the choices were superheroes, resurrected IPs, rom-coms, or horror movies. Considering everything Sara was dealing with, she opted for a superhero movie. I agreed—watching the good guys win was good for the soul.
Tuesday nights at the movies were always nice—no crowds, no kids talking and texting, or worse. In fact, it was just us and a few old-timers. We watched the commercials, the previews, and the requests to keep it quiet. The movie's first fifteen minutes were great fun, with a nice CGI-to-banter ratio.
A member of the audience sitting three rows ahead of us stood and turned around. He was pudgy and gray, his grin shining through the shadows that hid the rest of his face. "There they are," he said in a voice reminiscent of the guy from Mary Poppins who kept floating up to the ceiling, "the High Priestess and the Fool."
I didn't have to ask which one was me. I knew.
I stood up, and Sara cowered in her seat. "I don't know who you are, but we don't want any trouble."
"He says he doesn't want any trouble!" Laughter rippled through the theater. I could see other figures leaving their seats—more gray, monochrome clowns with smeared makeup and empty eyes. I knew they were called Athanatoi, or the Ashen Hearts, but they were Bozos to me.
Sara asked, "What are you?"
He chuckled. "What am I? What are you?"
"I'd like an answer," I said.
"I'm Mister Jack," he said proudly.
So, he was a Talker, not a Stalker. I decided to keep him talking. "Shouldn't you be at a birthday party? A rodeo, maybe?"
"You're better at secrets than jokes, Fool. How did your Grandma die? Did you tell her the story?" Mister Jack said as he climbed over the first row of seats separating us. His fellow Bozos were making their way toward us, crawling over their own seats or shuffling down the aisles.
"Sara, you've got to come with us now," Mister Jack breathed. "You've got places to be, things to do."
I pulled Sara to her feet. "When I say run…"
"You can feel it, can't you, girl? You've been empty all along."
We were surrounded. I wracked my brain for some kind of decent strategy and then said, "Fuck it," and pitched my big gulp drink right into Mister Jack's grinning face. He didn't shout or scream; he just giggled.
And then the screen went dark—no, everything went dark. Even the exit signs. The only thing we could see was a half-dozen toothy grins moving toward us through the black. They glowed like moonlight.
"Run!" I shouted, but Sara was already moving. We headed the other way down our row, away from Mister Jack.
One of his fellow clowns was coming up on us from the other direction. I threw a punch, a right cross, hitting him on the side of the head. The clown's skin felt cold and grimy against my knuckles.
That smile disappeared, but there were still more coming. Sara squealed in protest when I lifted her up in a fireman's carry. Filthy hands clawed at me as I ran. I dodged grins and tried to judge where the door out of this nightmare might be.
Finally, my eyes adjusted enough to the darkness for me to charge toward the door and find myself in the access corridor the employees used. The lights were on here. I leaned against the door, trying to catch my breath. Sara looked like she was on the verge of collapse. All I saw was a stairway leading up, most likely to the projection booths.
WHAM!
The Bozos began throwing themselves against the door. "Sara," I said, "Count to three, and we're going to run up those stairs, okay?"
She nodded. "Why did he say that about you?"
The door rattled in its frame, the heavy metal trembling as a dozen fists pounded on it. "I'll explain later. I promise."
Then I counted down. "One. Two. Three!"
We sprinted away, managing to reach the end of the corridor before the Bozos finished squeezing through the entrance.
"Get your knives out," Mister Jack said, mostly for my benefit. "I think a certain Fool is going to get the Full Pagliacci."
At the end of the stairs, we found ourselves in a narrow passage leading to the projection booths. At the end was a utility closet beside a ladder marked 'Authorized Personnel Only; Alarm Activated Upon Opening.'
And that was fine by me. I grabbed Sara's hand and ran for it.
We were stopped midway by a projectionist. "You're not supposed to be here! This is trespassing."
The Bozos blundered down the hallway, knocking into each other as if they were trying to escape a maze. Their faces were twisted with maniacal glee as they waved their knives in the air.
"Get out of here!" I yelled, but the usher pulled away.
"Is this some kind of prank?" he gawked at the oncoming figures.
"Don't look back!" I shouted to Sara. But I did look back and saw the poor guy being shoved around—not by hands, but by blades. The so-called Ashen Hearts were now splashed with red. So much red.
Sara reached the ladder first and started climbing. I was close behind, but soon enough, so were the Bozos. The ladder led to a hatch, and she struggled to open it. "It's stuck!" she yelled.
I kicked at the Bozos as they tried to climb up. I hit the one with the Larry Fine hairstyle, knocking him down, but another climbed over him and slashed at me with his knife, cutting through the bottom of my sneaker. I screamed.
After what felt like a dozen eternities, Sara got the hatch open, and we hauled ourselves through, pulling it shut behind us with a desperate heave. "What are we going to do?" Sara had to shout over the piercing alarm we'd just activated.
"We wait!" I held the hatch down with my full body weight.
"We wait?"
The hatch bucked beneath me. "The fire company and, most importantly, the police should be here soon! We just have to hold out!"
Sara looked at me with an expression of hopeless terror. I was about to say something encouraging when the hatch stopped shaking. Then, Mister Jack started singing. Despite the alarm, I heard him perfectly “Sara Bishop's not for you, doo-dah, doo-dah. There's not a thing that you can do, oh, doo-dah day."
"I've heard that song already!"
"But you can't hide from those monsters inside when the witch queen comes out to play."
"You better clear out! The cops are gonna be here soon!" I shouted. "And some of them are way scarier than you."
"Oh, the owls and the lizards and the big broke moon, doo-dah, doo-dah. The sacred moment's coming soon, oh, doo-dah day."
A sudden, searing pain shot through my back, leaving me disoriented. Feathery wings pummeled my head as I struggled to make out what was attacking me. The frantic flapping and scratching made it nearly impossible to focus. High-pitched cries pierced through my skull, intensifying the terror and confusion.
Then Sara—thank God for Sara—kicked the fluttering, clawing nightmare off me. The toe of her boot whooshed past my ear. The bird flew up in a high arc and clung to the side of a ventilation unit. As it settled, I saw that it had been an owl attacking me. Its body was much smaller than the pain it had inflicted.
And speaking of pain, warm blood trickled down the back of my neck. I instinctively reached up to touch the spot that was bleeding, only to feel my fingertip slip beneath a tear in my scalp. I started to feel faint, but then the hatch flew open, and the Bozos, led by Mister Jack, began to make their way onto the roof. "Did you like my bird calls, Fool?"
Now Sara took my hand and led me toward the edge of the roof. It was a fifteen-foot jump with a seven-foot drop, but she wasn't slowing down. "We can't," I panted.
"We have to," she said.
We picked up speed. We jumped over the ledge, and half flew, half fell onto the roof of the southern wing of Colonie Center. She tucked and rolled like a gymnast; I hit that gravelly roof with a sickening thud. We both lay there, painfully trying to catch our breath, still holding hands. We watched the Bozos gather at the ledge above us, notice the incoming emergency vehicles, and one by one, turn away until only Mister Jack was left.
He was wearing my bloodied lucky fedora. He tipped it at me and then was gone too.
"This was the worst date ever," I said.
Sara turned on her side. "This was a date?"
###
As I mentioned before, I spent many afternoons at Colonie Center with my pals, and one of our favorite spots to get high was, naturally, the roof. So, despite Sara being dazed with fear and exhaustion and me looking like I'd been juggling buzzsaws and produce, I managed to get us off the mall's roof in a fairly discreet manner.
By now, Mrs. Vincenzo is an expert at patching me up. She wanted me to go to urgent care for the wound on my scalp, but I couldn't risk someone like Detective Bradshaw putting two and two together and figuring out I was involved in this mess. Besides, Crazy Glue is almost as good as a couple of stitches.
Sara wanted to stay with me to make sure I was really okay. She didn't like the idea of leaving me alone with a head full of troubles and a large bottle of bourbon, but I insisted.
When the Police and Fire Department arrived at the Palace Cinemaplex and began to restore order, they found the following three things, in order of importance:
First, there were smears of theatrical makeup everywhere. It had trace amounts of lead and mercury—the kind that hadn't been sold in over forty years.
Second, a taxidermied barn owl was found on the roof of the Palace Cineplex. You read that right: taxidermied. And much like the grease paint, the taxidermy job was also over forty years old.
Third, they found the body of projectionist Nicky Worth. He was declared dead at the scene, and the cause of death was blood loss from thirty-one stab wounds. Unlike the bird and the grease paint, Nicky was most definitely not over forty years old. He was a sophomore at the SUNY Albany campus.
That was one of the many reasons I had to tell Sara to leave. She kept insisting it wasn't my fault, but my gut told me otherwise. Worse, my head was spinning with what-ifs.
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