#his bicep is literally the size of his head its almost absurd

[astronanda]

Bridges to Pax: Chapter One

Eugene Foster had Always thought he was a regular teenager, spite his schizophrenia. When he almost dies in an alleyway, attacked by a monster who definitely shouldn't exist, his life is put into perspective, and he finds out that he belongs to a family with a history of Pontum - people who connect the magical and the human worlds, the so-called "Bridges" - and now he must continue this family tradition. With the mysterious death of his uncle and the threat of a traitor looming over him, he doesn't know if he will be able to hold on. 

(ALSO ON TAPAS)

Eugene walked from one side to the other, diverting from plants here and there. The sunlight entered through the yellow stained glass, painting the greenhouse even more as if the colour of the plants and lowers still wasn't enough.

Lazuli still hadn't arrived, but lateness wasn't something rare for the Dracae. Eugene's nervousness wasn't linked to the training that would start as soon as Lazuli arrived. No, he was desperately anxious because of the piece of paper under the daisies near the door. The letter of a dead man.

The circumstances weren't great for Eugene, who had discovered his place in the universe two months ago when he as attacked by a monster in an alleyway, something that definitely shouldn't have happened. When he found out his schizophrenia wasn't real and that the world was more than it seemed. When his best friend had confessed to being a mere bodyguard and that he did not want to be in the place he occupied for seven years. When Eugene saw himself, for the first time, alone.

"Alone". There were people around him. Well, not actually people, but he wasn't in a position to complain. He asked himself if he could call them all friends, especially after receiving a desperate letter from his deceased uncle, the man who occupied his place before he passed away. Words written hastily in a notebook page asked him to not trust anyone.

The door opened, causing Eugene to stop his walk. He breathed in deeply, furrowing his brows and trying not to demonstrate his mistrust when he turned around and faced Lazuli's milky white eyes.

"Laz!" He smiled, putting his hands in his sweatshirt's pocket.

"Why are you nervous?" The Dracae asked, frowning.

"I'm not nervous." He said, staring at the ground. He let out a sigh. "It's just... a bad day, that's all."

It wasn't a lie. That had been an awful day, mainly because of the letter hidden in the greenhouse. He bit his lips, gazing at the daisies that now seemed strangely suspicious. Lazuli did not seem to notice the guilty yellow flowers, because when their eyes deviated from where Eugene looked, their face remained without expression.

(Probably not that positive, since Lazuli rarely had a facial expression)

Lazuli was the person responsible for supervising Eugene's training, physically, mentally and spiritually. Apparently, all of that was necessary for the magical people that inhabited that world to consider him a Pontum. Couldn't they be happy with a teenager risking his life? No, they wanted him to go through a boring hell known as school. Of course, it was a special school, but was it really that different? If Eugene had to be inside of a room while having classes, he decided that no, it wasn't.

Back to what we were talking about, Eugene did not know that much about Lazuli. They were the rarest kind of Dracae, they seemed to not feel any kind of emotion and had the bad habit of drip sarcasm whenever they met the Raziel brothers, which led them to a passive-aggressive that was as interesting as it was stressing. There was also that annoying habit of overestimating Eugene's abilities whenever they were in front of others as if it was a competition over who had the most powerful Pontum.

Eugene felt like a woman, being objectified like that.

"Today I'll take you to the armoury." They said, awaking Eugene from his thoughts.

"Bless you." He said, frowning. "Is that some kind of lost city, food or...?"

"Arsenal." They said, turning to the door. During the to months of training, Lazuli had got used to translate their exotic terms for Eugene, who had no kind of linguistic knowledge. He was just a painter, Dallon was the poet.

His heart ached as he remembered that name, that insisted in coming to his mind together with blue eyes and dark hair, with the rare smile that seemed to be able to end all of the world's wars. Eugene ran a hand through his blond hair, letting out a sigh, not even noticing the daises as he left the greenhouse, closing the door behind him.

He knew Dallon Jean Miguel Souto when he was nine, on the school's playground. It wasn't a very gracious moment for Eugene, who was bawling his eyes out because of a bruised knee. The other calmed him down and took him to the nurse's office. Eugene had always been an anxious child, and if Dallon hadn't taken him there, he would never have had the courage to do so.

The two became friends quickly. Dallon was a year older than Eugene, and they didn't share classes, but they always met each other during recess and played together. Dallon seemed to like pretending that he was an astronaut, and Eugene soon got used to playing the role of the alien. Well, aliens were cool, anyway.

Dallon was Eugene's first and best friend, and finding out their friendship grew because of an obligation of Dallon was absurd, and broke his heart. So many moments shared together now seemed implanted memories by a cruel magical society.

He followed Lazuli through the Pontum Sanctum's hallways without really paying attention to where he was. That place was huge, and if the two ended up in a door Eugene didn't recognize - Eugene, who kind of lived there now, considering how much time he spent there - he wouldn't be surprised.

He wasn't that excited to explore the place, not ever since he learned to do portals. He used to spend his time in the greenhouse, taking care of the plants or reading books Lazuli gave him, occupying moments that would be haunted by obscure thoughts if his imagination had too much freedom. As they say, an empty mind is devil's workshop.

Eugene sighed once again, something he did a lot, lately. He stared at the Dracae's back, covered by indigo fabric, adorned by golden details. The fashion there was certainly different from the human's, but it was interesting in its own way. Eugene noticed each one of the main five people that lived there had their own style. He didn't really know much about, you know, normal Dracae, civilians, but their style seemed... uh, ninja style.

The Dracae he knew weren't normal, by any means. They were killing machines that would give him nightmares if they weren't in the same team., Godric, his history and politics teacher was a skilled militarian trained to kill silently. Narcissa, the one responsible for his medical training, was the type of person to heal you and take care of your wounds just so that she could beat you up again. Dante was a mysterious guy, with biceps the size of Eugene's head, and if that wasn't' scary... Eugene did not know what "scary" was.

"Why are we going to the Arm... The arsenal?" He asked. "Are you going to give me a weapon?"

"People don't get weapons, Eugene, they deserve them."

"Ok... Do I deserve one?" He inquired. The Dracae stopped abruptly, causing Eugene to hit their back. He wondered if it hadn't been something he said, but Laz's hoarse voice calmed him.

"We'll find out later." They said, putting their hands in a steel door that seemed to not have a keyhole or a handle. Quite annoying, if you ask Eugene.

A blue light shone from Lazuli's fingertips, spreading through the metal just like heat. Magic was a weird sensation, to Eugene. Maybe it was for the fact that he literally learned some tricks a couple of weeks before, after a conversation in another plane of existence with his deceased grandpa. She knew her stuff.

It was a hot sensation, for Eugene. Heat running through his veins. When he used magic, he seemed to feel every and each cell of his body, which was quite uncomfortable. He was getting used to it, little by little.

"The armoury is a shared space. Other Representants or Pontum may be here." Lazuli said. Whenever there was a chance he could end up meeting Dallon, the Dracae made sure he would know it. He was grateful, but he also worried every time the Dracae said so, and wouldn't be able to concentrate on whatever they were doing.

The arsenal was huge. Different types of weapons hanged from the walls, from the ground to the ceiling, that seemed exaggeratedly far away. How did they take the weapons from the top? Maybe there were faeries there, that flew high up to bring them axes and lances? Weren't dwarves who made weapons? Maybe they kept them in the arsenal, too?

The place seemed to organize its weapons by type. There were different kinds of axes, with various sizes and weights grouped together; there were lances, bows and arrows, scythes, swords, rapiers, hammers, whips and etc.

So many questions popped up in Eugene's mind, he didn't notice that Lazuli had already abandoned him and was flipping through the yellowed pages of a gigantic book.

"You shouldn't stand in the middle of the way, noob." A feminine voice said. 

Surprised, he turned quickly to see who was behind him, but he lost his balance easily.

His body didn't hit the ground, though. A firm hand held him from his green shirt.

Two people stared at him, one of them still holding him. Eugene knew them from a reunion a couple of weeks before. Leilani, the Mage Pontum and Aeris, the Kitsune Pontum.

Leilani let him go, smiling at him. She was the youngest of all the Pontum, being just fifteen, but she had more muscles than Eugene, who was seventeen. He scratched the back of his head, smiling shyly to her, who laughed.

"Are you always like that, noob?" She asked. "You don't need to get all shy, we don't bite!"

Aeris laughed too. "How are you, Eugene?" She asked.

"I'm fine!" He said, a little too loud, trying to look anywhere but them. "Uh... Why are you here? Not that you shouldn't be, you are Pontum, after all. It's normal for you to be in places like this, uh..."

Aeris put her hands on his shoulders, smiling gently. "Breathe, Eugene." She said, trying to calm him down. He did as he was told, as Leilani answered his question:

"We came here to train." She said. "It is hard for us to go against each other, because of time zones and shit."

"Yes," Aeris said "honestly, I was getting tired of training against Dallon. You know how it is, right, Leilani?"

"Oh, yeah!" The younger one laughed, and Eugene just couldn't face them. "Always the same tricks and attacks."

"I think he just lets us win. Have you seen him fighting for real?" Aeris laughed.

Leilani nodded. "It sucks." She said, turning to Eugene. "Do you fight with him for real or he also things you are too fragile to face his manly strength?"

"We don't fight." He said, shrinking. "Actually, the last time I saw him was in that reunion, a couple of weeks ago."

Leilani and Aeris frowned. "Well, but... didn't you go to the same school?" Leilani asked.

Eugene shook his head. "He went back to Colombia." He said, avoiding Leilani's questioning dark eyes. "We don't talk anymore. He doesn't want to have anything to do with me."

Aeris opened her mouth, but Lazuli's distant voice interrupted their conversation.

"Eugene, come here." They said, and Eugene complied.

"What are you doing?" He asked.

"Trying to find some kind of weapon you can train with." They said, crossing their arms. The two girls approached them, curiously.

"Eugene looks like a swordsman" Leilani said. "What about a rapier?"

"Eugene is not confident enough to be a swordsman." Lazuli said. "Besides, he doesn't have the strength."

"I'm not even here." He mumbled.

"An arrow, then?" Aeris suggested. "It's good for building strength."

Lazuli flipped through the pages.

"It is possible. He needs to be useful, somehow."

Eugene frowned, trying to ignore that last part. It seemed that Lazuli had no sense of how to talk to people. He sighed.

"What kind of arms do you have?" He turned to the two girls.

Leilani grinned, her eyes glimmering. "I have an axe." She said. "Do ya wanna see it?"

Eugene nodded with enthusiasm. Leilani got up on some kind of arena in the middle of the arsenal, raising her hands up.

Her eyes were filled by a white light, the same that flickered around her fingers as if they were electricity waves. It didn't take long for a huge battle axe to occupy one of her hands, at the same time a loud bang filled the room, just like thunder.

Leilani smiled wide, and Eugene felt the urge to ask: "Does that happen every time you, like.... summon your weapon?"

"Let's just say Leilani likes drama." Aeris laughed. 

"Can I see yours too?" Eugene turned to her, and the woman nodded. She went to where Leilani stood and closed her eyes in concentration. With a quick flick of her wrists, two whips appeared in her hands. 

"They turn into swords." She mentioned. True to her word, with another flick the whips got hard and stood in a straight form, turning into two blades. 

"Can I get a cool weapon like that?" Eugene turned to Lazuli, who merely sighed:

"Those are short-range weapons. Maybe one day."

The smile vanished from Eugene's face, who felt like a kid who just asked something absurd to their parents. 

"Even when you get the weapon you want, Eugene, don't give up on the bow and arrow. Archers are super cool and it can save many lives. Ok?"

"Ok." He nodded, a bit disappointed but definitely hopeful with the promise.

Eugene felt pain in muscles he barely knew that existed. The boy practically dragged himself back to the greenhouse, his legs numb and screaming from the agony simultaneously, a distasteful paradox Eugene wanted to ignore, but couldn't.

He threw himself in the only chair available, resting his head on the table full of books in front of him, his sweaty back pressed against the wood of the seat.

Leilani and Aeris did not stay for long. They said it was better to leave Laz and Eugene alone, so they could work out and train shooting with the bow and arrow.

The Dracae was not, in any way, gentle with him. Laz first taught him how to stand up - something he never knew he did wrong -, the correct posture and how to shoot an arrow - all of that without a proper bow.

In the end, they gave him a green and metallic bow so he could practice and build up strength before actually getting his weapon.

The bow was indeed pretty, with blue runes colouring the green metal. Still, Eugene thought that was the last exciting weapon ever.

"Really? I don't really like rapiers, I think they're the worst." Lazuli had said.

He raised his head, taking a look at the daisies near the door. He thought that being part of a magical society was stressing enough, but apparently, he still had to deal with his uncle's mystery on top of it all.

He massaged his temples, feeling the anxiety looming in his mind. He had no psychological strength to deal with it all.

His cellphone vibrated on the table, calling for his attention. The notification that lit up the screen told him he had been added to a new group.

Pontum Chat, that was the name. He was greeted by numerous messages of Leilani and Aeris as he opened the app.

He smiled to himself. Those two were good people. He was worried the other Pontum would be cold, perhaps hostile, but he had been lucky.

There were other Pontum besides Leilani and Aeris. There was Tristan, a mysterious and quiet guy, who prefered to avoid attention to himself. Eugene understood the feeling. Tristan was the Werewolves' Pontum, and every time Eugene saw him, he was accompanied by the race's Representant, Nikolai Volkov.

Eugene had never talked to the man, but he felt like he knew him a little. Lazuli did not hold anything back when talking about their coworkers. The Dracae had said that everyone was a close, good friend of theirs. But not Arkiel. Arkiel could choke.

Arkiel was the unsympathetic Representant of the Ghouls, creatures that fed themselves with dead magical meat. That being said, they're not the most beloved guys around, but they have a stable government and a good source of food, so no one bothers with them.

A new message arrived. Tristan welcomed him, which brought a smile to Eugene's lips. At least he wouldn't have any trouble with his colleagues. Honestly, he wasn't mature enough to deal with intrapersonal problems on top of the new job and the death of his uncle Henry. The enigma of the letter was eating at him.

He sighed, rubbing his face. It was getting late and he needed to go back home.

He quickly got up and walked to the door with large steps, getting the letter from below the daisies rapidly and hiding it into his pants.

Even far from him, Dallon could still cause him headaches. If he could, Eugene would go back in time and refuse the fucking message, would tell his friend to go fuck off and ignore him for the rest of his life.

Goddamn it.

[forestwater87]

John Dies at the End -- David Wong

So okay this is literally the best book I’ve ever read, but there’s really no way to explain “drug that lets you see into other dimensions turns two assholes into the worst exorcists ever” that doesn’t make it sound a little lame, so fuck it. I’m typing up the entire goddamn prologue.

If you need something to read, just . . . try it. It’s amazing. Try the book that the author calls a “convoluted NyQuil fever dream of a horror story,” “a Class II biohazard,” “the unholy thing I was growing in my brain’s murky cloning vat,” a “gruesome hyperactive chain of absurd non sequiturs,” “a crash between two semi trucks hauling napalm and vibrators,” “400 pages of undiagnosed personality disorder,” a “150,000-word cry for help,” “a hallucinogenic cacophonous Mardi Gras of fart monsters,” and “a 400-page tour through my misfiring synapses.”

Seriously, everyone. A work of fucking genius.

Prologue

SOLVING THE FOLLOWING riddle will reveal the awful secret behind the universe, assuming you do not go utterly mad in the attempt. If you already happen to know the awful secret behind the universe, feel free to skip ahead.

Let’s say you have an ax. Just a cheap one, from Home Depot. On one bitter winter day, you use said ax to behead a man. Don’t worry, the man was already dead. Or maybe you should worry, because you’re the one who shot him.

He had been a big, twitchy guy with veiny skin stretched over swollen biceps, a tattoo of a swastika on his tongue. Teeth filed into razor-sharp fangs—you know the type. And you’re chopping off his head because, even with eight bullet holes in him, you’re pretty sure he’s about to spring back to his feet and eat the look of terror right off your face. On the follow-through of the last swing, though, the handle of the ax snaps in a spray of splinters. You now have a broken ax. So, after a long night of looking for a place to dump the man and his head, you take a trip into town with your ax. You go to the hardware store, explaining away the dark reddish stains on the broken handle as barbecue sauce. You walk out with a brand-new handle for your ax. The repaired ax sits undisturbed in your garage until the spring when, on one rainy morning, you find in your kitchen a creature that appears to be a foot-long slug with a bulging egg sac on its tail. Its jaws bite one of your forks in half with what seems like very little effort. You grab your trusty ax and chop the thing into several pieces. On the last blow, however, the ax strikes a metal leg of the overturned kitchen table and chips out a notch right in the middle of the blade. Of course, a chipped head means yet another trip to the hardware store. They sell you a brand-new head for your ax. As soon as you get home, you meet the reanimated body of the guy you beheaded earlier. He’s also got a new head, stitched on with what looks like plastic weed-trimmer line, and it’s wearing that unique expression of “you’re the man who killed me last winter” resentment that one so rarely encounters in everyday life. You brandish your ax. The guy takes a long look at the weapon with his squishy, rotting eyes and in a gargly voice he screams, “That’s the same ax that beheaded me!” IS HE RIGHT?

I WAS PONDERING that riddle as I reclined on my porch at 3:00 A.M., a chilled breeze numbing my cheeks and earlobes and flicking tickly hairs across my forehead. I had my feet up on the railing, leaning back in one of those cheap plastic lawn chairs, the kind that blow out onto the lawn during every thunderstorm. It would have been a good occasion to smoke a pipe had I owned one and had I been forty years older. It was one of those rare moments of mental peace I get these days, the kind you don’t appreciate until they’re ov— My cell phone screeched, the sound like a sonic bee sting. I dug the slim little phone from my jacket pocket, glanced at the number and felt a sickening little twinge of fear. I disconnected the call without answering. The world was silent again, save for the faint applause of trees rustling in the wind and crumbly dead leaves scraping lightly down the pavement. That, and the scuffle of a mentally challenged dog trying to climb onto the chair next to me. After two attempts to mount the thing, Molly managed to send the chair clattering onto its side. She stared at the toppled chair for several seconds and then started barking at it. The phone again. Molly growled at the chair. I closed my eyes, said an angry five-word prayer and answered the call. “Hello?” “Dave? This is John. Your pimp says bring the heroin shipment tonight, or he’ll be forced to stick you. Meet him where we buried the Korean whore. The one without the goatee.” That was code. It meant “Come to my place as soon as you can, it’s important.” Code, you know, in case the phone was bugged. “John, it’s three in the—” “Oh, and don’t forget, tomorrow is the day we kill the president.” Click. He was gone. That last part was code for, “Stop and pick me up some cigarettes on the way.” Actually, the phone probably was bugged, but I was confident the people doing it could just as easily do some kind of remote intercept of our brain waves if they wanted, so it was moot. Two minutes and one very long sigh later, I was humming through the night in my truck, waiting for the heater to blow warm air and trying not to think of Frank Campo. I clicked on the radio, hoping to keep the fear at bay via distraction. I got a local right-wing talk radio program. “I’m here to tell ya, immigration, it’s like rats on a ship. America is the ship and allllll these rats are comin’ on board, y’all. And you know what happens when a ship gets too many rats on board? It sinks. That’s what.” I wondered if a ship had ever really sunk that way. I wondered what was giving my truck that rotten-egg smell. I wondered if the gun was still under the driver’s seat. I wondered. Was there something moving back there, in the darkness? I glanced in my rearview mirror. No, a trick of the shadows. I thought of Frank Campo. Frank was an attorney, heading home from the office one evening in his black Lexus. The car’s wax job gleaming in the night like a shell of black ice, Frank feeling weightless and invincible behind the greenish glow of his dashboard lights. He senses a tingling on his legs. He flips on the dome light. Spiders. Thousands of them.

Each the size of a hand.

They’re spilling over his knees, pushing up inside his pant legs. The things look like they’re bred for war, jagged black bodies with yellow stripes, long spiny legs like needle points.

He freaks, cranks the wheel, flips down an embankment.

After they pried him out of the wreckage and after he stopped ranting, the cops assured him there wasn’t a sign of even one spider inside the car.

If it had ended there, you could write it off as a bad night, a trick of the eyes, one of Scrooge’s bad potatoes. But it didn’t end there. Frank kept seeing things—awful things—and over the months all the king’s doctors and all the king’s pills couldn’t make Frank’s waking nightmares go away.

And yet, other than that, the guy was fine. Lucid. As sane as a sunset. He’d write a brilliant legal brief on Wednesday, and on Thursday he’d swear he saw tentacles writhing under the judge’s robes.

So? Who do you go to in a situation like that?

I pulled up to John’s building, felt the old dread coming back, churning like a sour stomach. The brisk wind chased me to the door, carrying a faint sulfur smell blown from a plant outside town that brewed drain cleaner. That and the pair of hills in the distance gave the impression of living downwind from a sleeping, farty giant.

John opened the door to his third-floor apartment and immediately gestured toward a very cute and very frightened-looking woman on his sofa. “Dave, this is Shelly. She needs our help.”

Our help.

That dread, like a punch in the stomach. You see, people like Frank Campo, and this girl, they never came for “our help” when they needed a carburetor rebuilt.

We had a specialty.

Shelly was probably nineteen, with powder-blue eyes and the kind of crystal clear pale skin that gave her a china doll look, chestnut curls bundled behind her head in a ponytail. She wore a long, flowing skirt that her fingers kept messing with, an outfit that only emphasized how small she was. She had the kind of self-conscious, pleading helplessness some guys go crazy for. Girl in distress. Makes you want to rescue her, take her home, curl up with her, tell her everything is gonna be okay.

She had a white bandage on her temple.

John stepped into the corner of his tiny apartment that served as the kitchen and smoothly returned to place a cup of coffee in her hands. I struggled to keep my eyes from rolling; John’s almost therapist-like professionalism was ridiculous in a room dominated by a huge plasma-screen TV with four video game systems wired to it. John had his hair pulled back into a neat job-interview ponytail and was wearing a button-up shirt. He could look like a grown-up from time to time.

I was about to warn the girl about John’s coffee, which tasted like a cup of battery acid someone had pissed in and then cursed at for several hours, but John turned to her and in a lawyerly voice said, “Shelly, tell us your story.”

She raised timid eyes to me. “It’s my boyfriend. He . . . he won’t leave me alone. He’s been harassing me for about a week. My parents are gone, on vacation and I’m . . . I’m terrified to go home.”

She shook her head, apparently out of words. She sipped the coffee, then grimaced as if it had bit her.

“Miss—”

“Morris,” she said, barely audible.

“Ms. Morris, I strongly recommend a women’s shelter. They can help you get a restraining order, keep you safe, whatever. There are three in this city, and I’ll be happy to make the call—”

“He—my boyfriend, I mean—he’s been dead for two months.”

John cast a little gleeful glance my way, as if to say, “See how I deliver for you, Dave?” I hated that look. She went on.

“I—I didn’t know where else to go. I heard, you know, through a friend of mine that you handle, um, unusual problems.” She nudged aside a stack of DVD cases on an end table and sat the mug down, glancing at it distrustfully as if to remind herself not to accidentally drink from it again, lest it betray her anew. She turned back to me.

“They say you’re the best.”

I didn’t inform her that whoever called us “the best” had pretty low standards. I guess we were the best in town at this, but who would you brag to about that? It’s not like this shit has its own section of the phone book.

I walked over to a cushioned chair and scooped out its contents (four worn guitar magazines, a sketch pad, and a leather-bound King James Version of the Holy Bible). As I tried to settle in, a leg broke off and the whole chair slumped over at a thirty-degree angle. I leaned over nonchalantly, trying to look like that’s exactly what I had expected to happen.

“Okay. When he comes, you can see him?”

“Yes. I can hear him, too. And he, uh . . .”

She brushed the bandage on the side of her skull. I looked at her in bewilderment. Was she serious?

“He hits you?”

“Yes.”

“With his fist?”

“Yes.”

John looked up from his coffee indignantly. “Man, what a dick!”

I did roll my eyes this time and glared at John once they stopped. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a ghost, but I’m guessing that if you did, the thing didn’t run over and punch you in the face. I’m guessing that’s never happened to any of your friends, either.

“When it first happened,” Shelly said, “I thought I was going crazy. Up until now, I’ve never bel—”

“Believed in ghosts,” I finished. “Right.” That line was obligatory, everybody wanting to come off as the credible skeptic. “Look, Miss, I don’t want to—”

“I told her we would look into it tonight,” John said, heading me off before I accidentally introduced some rational thought into this thing. “He’s haunting her house, out in [town name removed for privacy]. I thought you and I could head over there, get out of the city for a night, show this bastard what’s what.”

I felt a burst of irritation, mostly because John knew the story was bullshit. But then it suddenly clicked in my mind that, yes, John knew, and he had called me because he was trying to set me up with this girl. Button-cute, dead boyfriend, chance to be her hero. As usual, I didn’t know whether to thank him or punch him in the balls.

Sixteen different objections rose up in my mind at once and somehow they all canceled each other out. Maybe if there had been an odd number. . . .

WE HEADED OUT, in my Bronco. We had told Shelly not to drive herself, in case she had a concussion, but the reality was that, whether or not her story was true, we still had vivid memories of Mr. Campo and his unusually spidery car. You see, Frank found out the hard way that the dark things lurking in the night don’t haunt old houses or abandoned ships. They haunt minds.

Shelly was in the passenger seat, hugging herself, looking blankly out the windshield. She said, “So, do you guys, like, do this a lot?”

“Off and on,” said John. “Been doing it for a few years.”

“How does somebody get into this?”

“There was an incident,” he said. “A series of incidents, I guess. A dead guy, another dead guy. Some drugs. It’s kind of a long story. Now we can see things. Sometimes. I have a dead cat that follows me around, wondering why I never feed it. Oh, and I had one hamburger that started mooing when I ate it.” He glanced at me. “You remember that?”

I grunted, said nothing.

It wasn’t mooing, John. It was screaming.

Shelly didn’t look like she was listening anymore.

“I call it Dante’s Syndrome,” John said. I had never heard him call it any such thing. “Meaning, I think Dave and I gained the ability to peer into Hell. Only it turns out Hell is right here, it’s all through us and around us and in us like the microbes that swarm through your lungs and guts and veins. Hey, look! An owl!”

We all looked. It was an owl, all right.

“Anyway,” I broke in, “we just did a couple of favors for people, eventually word got around.”

I felt like that was enough background and I wanted to stop John before he got to the part where he says he kept eating that screaming hamburger, down to the last bite.

I left the truck running as I jumped out at my place for supplies. I bypassed the house for the weatherworn toolshed in the backyard, opened the padlocked door and swept over the dark shelves with my flashlight:

A Winnie the Pooh toy with dried blood around its eyes;

A stuffed and mounted badgerconda (a cross between a badger and an anaconda);

A large Mason jar filled with cloudy formaldehyde, where inside floated a six-inch clump of cockroaches arranged roughly in the shape of a human hand.

I grabbed a medieval-style torch John had stolen from the wall of a theme restaurant. I picked up a clear squeeze bottle filled with a thick green liquid that immediately turned bloodred as soon as I touched it. I reconsidered, sat it back on the shelf and grabbed my vintage 1987 ghetto blaster instead.

I went into the house and called to Molly. I opened a small plastic tub in the kitchen cabinet filled with little pink, rubbery chunks, like erasers. I put a handful in my pocket and rushed back out the door, the dog following on my heels.

Shelly lived in a simple two-story farmhouse, black shutters on white siding. It sat on an island of turf in a sea of harvest-flattened cornfields. We walked past a mailbox shaped like a cow and saw a hand-painted sign on the front door that read THE MORRISON’S—ESTABLISHED 1962. John and I had a long debate at the door about whether or not that apostrophe belonged there.

I know, I know. If I had a brain, I would have walked away right then.

John stepped up, pushed open the front door and ducked aside. I dug in my pocket and pulled out one of the pink chunks. They were steak-shaped dog treats, complete with little brown grill lines. I realized at that moment that no dog would know what those grill lines were and that they were purely for my benefit.

“Molly!”

I shook the treat in front of her and then tossed it through the door. The dog ran in after it.

We waited for the sound of, say, dog flesh splattering across a wall, but heard only the padding of Molly’s paws. Eventually she came back to the door, grinning stupidly. We decided it was safe to go in.

Shelly opened her mouth as if to express some kind of disapproval, but apparently decided against it. We stepped into the dark living room. Shelly moved to flip on a light, but I stopped her with a hand motion.

Instead, John hefted the torch and touched his lighter to it. A foot-tall flame erupted from the head and we slowly crept through the house by its flickering light. I noticed John had brought along a thermos of his coffee, this “favor” already qualifying as an all-nighter. I admit, the horrific burning sensation really did keep you awake.

I asked, “Where do you see him, mostly?”

Shelly’s fingers started twisting at her skirt again. “The basement. And once I saw him in the bathroom. His hand, it, uh, came up through the toilet while I—”

“Okay. Show us the basement door.”

“It’s in the kitchen, but I—guys, I don’t wanna go down there.”

“It’s cool,” John said. “Stay here with the dog, we’ll go down and check it out.”

I glanced at John, figuring that should have been my line as her handsome new knightly protector. We clomped down the stairs, torchlight pooling down the stairwell. Shelly waited behind us, crouching next to Molly and stroking her back.

A nice, modern basement.

Washer and dryer.

A hot-water heater making a soft ticking sound.

One of those waist-deep floor freezers.

John said, “He’s not here.”

“Big surprise.”

John used the torch to light a cigarette.

“She seems like a nice girl, doesn’t she?” John said softly and with a kind of smarmy wink in his voice. “You know, she reminds me of Amber. Jennifer’s friend. When she came to my door, for a second I actually thought it was her. By the way, I wanna thank you for comin’ along, Dave, sort of being my wingman on this. I’m not saying I’m going to take advantage of her distress or anything, but . . .”

I had tuned John out. Something was off, I knew right then. Lingering in the back of my mind, like a kid in the last row of the classroom with his hand up. John was acting all detectivey now, leaning over a large sink with a bundle of white cloth draped over the side.

“Oh, yeah,” said John, pulling up a length of cloth. “Take a look at this shit.” The garment was white, a single piece with straps, like an apron. Well, it had been white. Once. Now it was mostly smudges of faded-blood pink at the center, like a kindergarten kid’s rendering of the Japanese flag.

I turned to the large floor freezer. That freaking dread again, cold and hard and heavy. I strode over and opened the lid.

“Oh, geez.”

It was a tongue. That’s the first thing I saw, rubbery and purplish and not quite human. It was longer, animal-like, twisted inside a ziplock bag and coated in frost. And it wasn’t alone; the freezer was filled with hunks of flesh, some in clear bags, some bigger chunks in pink-stained white paper.

Butcher paper. White apron.

“Well, I think it’s obvious,” said John. “Those stories of UFOs that go around mutilating cows? I think we just solved it, my friend.”

I sighed.

“It’s a deer, you jackass. Her dad hunts, apparently. They keep the meat.”

I nudged around and found a frozen turkey, some sausages. I closed the lid to the fridge, feeling stupid, though not for the reason I should have felt stupid. I wasn’t thinking. Too late at night, too little sleep.

John started poking around in cabinets. I glanced around for the boom box, realizing now that we hadn’t brought it down here. Why did that bother me? It was upstairs with Shelly, right?

“Hey, Dave. You remember that guy whose basement got flooded, then called us and swore he had a fifteen-foot great white shark swimmin’ down there?”

I did remember but didn’t answer, afraid of losing that thread of thought that kept floating just out of reach like a wayward balloon on a windy day. Besides, when we got there, it wasn’t a great white at all. Just a garden-variety eight-foot tiger shark. We told the guy to wait until the basement dried out and call us back. When the water left, so did the shark, as if it evaporated or seeped out the tiny cracks in the concrete.

Think. Damned attention span. Something is wrong here.

I tried to pull myself back from my tangent, thinking of the boom box again. John had found it at a garage sale. There’s a story in the Old Testament, a young David driving away an evil spirit by playing pretty music on his harp—

Wait a second.

“John, did I hear you say you thought she looked like Amber?”

“Yeah.”

“John, Amber’s almost as tall as me. Blond hair, kind of top-heavy, right?”

“Yeah, cute as hell. I mean—”

“And you think Shelly looks like her? The girl sitting upstairs?”

“Yeah.” John turned to face me, already getting it.

“John, Shelly is short. Short with dark hair. Blue eyes.”

—They haunt minds—

John sighed, plucked out his cigarette and flung it to the floor. “Fuck.”

We turned toward the stairs, took a step up, and froze. Shelly was there, sitting halfway up the stairs, one arm curled around Molly’s neck. Innocent, wary eyes. Playing the part.

I stepped slowly onto the third stair, said, “Tell me something, Miss, uh, I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your last name—”

“Shelly is fine.”

“Yeah, remind me anyway. I hate forgetting things.”

“Morris.”

I took another step toward her.

“That’s what I thought.”

Another step. I heard John step up behind me.

“So,” I said, “whose house is this?”

“What?”

“The sign out front says Morrison. Morris-son. Not Morris. Now would you describe your own appearance for me?”

“I don’t—”

“You see, because John and I have this thing where we’re both seeing completely different versions of you. Now, John has eyesight problems because of his constant masturbation, but I don’t think—”

She burst into snakes.

That’s right. Her body sort of spilled out of itself, falling into a dark, writhing puddle on the ground. It was a tangle of long, black serpents, rolling over each other and down the steps. We kicked at them as they slithered past, John warding them off with the torch.

Some, I saw, had patches of color on their scales, like flesh or the flowered pattern of Shelly’s dress. I caught a glimpse of one snake with a writhing human eyeball still embedded in its side, the iris powder blue.

Molly jumped back and barked—a little too late, I thought—and made a show of snapping at one of the snakes as it wound its way down the stairs. She bounded to the top of the stairs and disappeared through the doorway. We kicked through the slithering things and stomped up after the dog, just as the stairwell door banged shut on its own.

I reached for the knob. At the same moment it began to melt and transform, turning pink and finally taking the shape of a flaccid penis. It flopped softly against the door, like a man was cramming it through the knob hole from the other side.

I turned back to John and said, “That door cannot be opened.”

We stumbled back down the stairs, John jumping the last five, shoes smacking on the concrete. The snakes fled from the firelight and disappeared under shelves and between cardboard boxes.

That’s when the basement started filling with shit.

The brown sludge oozed up from the floor drain, an unmistakable stench rising above it. I looked around for a window we could crawl out of, found none. The sewage bloomed out from the center of the floor, swirling around the soles of my shoes.

John shouted, “There!”

I whipped my head in his direction, saw him grab a little plastic crate from a shelf and set it on the floor. He climbed up on it, then just stood there with the muck rising below. Finally he looked at me and said, “What are you doing? Go find us a way outta here!”

I was ankle-deep now in a pool that was disturbingly warm. I sloshed around, looking above me until I found the large, square duct feeding into the first floor from the furnace. The return air vent. I went to a pegboard on the wall and grabbed a foot-long screwdriver. I jabbed it into the crease between the metal of the duct and the floor, prying down the apparatus with a squeal of pulled nails.

I finally got a hold on the edge of the metal duct and felt it cut into my fingers. I pulled it down to reveal the dark living room above me, blocked by a metal grid. I jumped and knocked the grate aside with my hands. I leapt again and grabbed floor with both hands, feeling carpet under my fingers. With a series of frantic, awkward movements I managed to pull my limbs up until I could roll over on the floor of the living room.

I looked back at the square hole and saw a flicker of flame emerge, followed by the torch and then John’s hand. In a few seconds we were both standing in the living room, glancing around, breathing heavily.

Nothing.

A low, pulsing sound emerged from the air around us. A laugh. A dry, humorless cough of a noise, as if the house itself was expelling the air with giant lungs of wood and plaster.

John said, “Asshole.”

“John, I’m changing my cell number tomorrow. And I’m not giving you the new one. Now let’s get this over with.”

We both knew the drill. We had to draw the thing out somehow. John handed me his lighter.

“You light some candles. I’ll go stand in the shower naked.”

Molly followed me as I went back to where we left the boom box and the other supplies. I lit a few candles around the house—just enough to make it spooky. John showered, I found another bathroom and washed the sludge off my shoes and feet.

“Oh, no!” I heard John shout over the running water. “It’s dark in here and here I am in the shower! Alone! I’m so naked and vulnerable!”

Out of things to do, I walked around for a bit and eventually found a bedroom. I glanced at my watch, sighed, then lay down over the covers. It was almost four in the morning.

This could go on for hours, or days. Time. That’s all they have. I heard Molly plop down on the floor below. I reached down to pet her and she licked my hand the way dogs do. I wondered why in the world they felt the need to do that. I’ve often thought about trying it the next time somebody got their fingers close to my mouth, like at the dentist.

John came back twenty minutes later, wearing what must have been the smallest towel he could find. He lowered his voice. “I think I saw a hatch for an attic earlier. I’m gonna see if there’s room to crawl around up there, see if maybe there’s a big scary-looking footlocker it can pop out of or somethin’.”

I nodded. John raised his voice theatrically and said, “Oh, no. We are trapped here all alone. I will go see if I can find help.”

“Yes,” I answered, loudly. “Perhaps we should split up.”

John left the room. I tried to relax, hoping even to doze off. Ghosts love to sneak up on you when you’re sleeping. I scratched Molly’s head and—

SLEEP. LICKING. A soft splashing sound from another room. I dreamed I saw a shadow peel itself off the far wall and float toward me. Most of my dreams are like that, always based on something that really happened.

My eyes snapped open, my right arm still hanging over the edge of the mattress, the rough tongue still flapping away at my ring finger. How long had I been out? Thirty seconds? Two hours?

I sat up, trying to adjust to the darkness. A faint glow pulsed from the hall where the nearest candle burned away in the bathroom.

I quietly stepped off the foot of the bed and headed across the room into the hallway. Down the hall now, toward the sound and the light. I ran my hand along the textured plaster of the wall until I reached the bathroom, the source of the gentle splashing. Not splashing. Slurping. I peered in.

Molly, drinking from the toilet. She turned to look at me with an almost catlike “can I help you?” stare. I thought absently that she was drinking the poowater with the same mouth she used to lick my hand. . . .

If she’s in here, then that wasn’t her by the bed.

I picked the candle off the counter and headed back to the bedroom. I stepped in, the candle casting an uneven halo of light around me, rustling the shadows aside. I moved toward the bed and saw . . .

Meat. Dozens of the wrapped and now partially unwrapped hunks from the freezer, laying neatly on the floor next to the bed in an almost ceremonial fashion, the objects arranged in the rough shape of a man.

I moved the light toward the head area, where I found a frozen turkey still in the Butterball wrapper. Under it, wedged between turkey and torso, was the disembodied deer tongue, flapping around of its own accord.

Hmmmm. That was different.

I jumped back as the turkey, the tongue, and a slab of ribs levitated off the floor.

The man-shaped arrangement of meat rose up, as if functioning as one body. It pushed itself up on two arms made of game hens and country bacon, planting two hands with sausage-link fingers on the floor. The phrase “sodomized by a bratwurst poltergeist” suddenly flew through my mind. Finally it stood fully upright, looking like the mascot for a butcher shop whose profits went entirely to support the owner’s acid habit.

“John! We got, uh, something here.”

It was about seven feet tall, its turkey head swiveling side to side to survey the room, the tongue swaying uselessly below. It extended a sausage to me.

“You.”

It was an accusation. Had we dealt with this thing before? I didn’t remember it, but I was bad with faces.

“You have tormented me six times. Now prepare to meat your doom!”

I have no way of knowing that it actually said “meat” instead of “meet” but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. I ran.

“John! John! We got a Situation Fifty-three here!”

The thing gave chase, its shaved-ham feet slapping the floor behind me. My candle went out. I tossed it aside. I saw a closed door to my right, so I skidded to a stop, threw it open, and flung myself in.

Linen shelves smacked me in the face and I fell back out of the closet, dazed. The meat man wrapped its cold links around my neck and lifted me up. It pinned me against the wall.

“You disappoint me. All those times we have dueled. In the desert. In the city. You thought you had vanquished me in Venice, didn’t you?”

I was so impressed by this thing’s ability to articulate words using that flapping deer tongue and a frozen turkey that I almost lost track of what it was saying.

Venice? Did he say Venice? What?

Molly came by just then, trotting along like everything was just A-OK in Dogland.

Then she noticed some meat standing nearby and started happily chewing on a six-inch-wide tube of bologna serving as the thing’s ankle.

“AARRRRRGHHHH!!!!”

It dropped me to the floor. I scrambled to my feet and ran downstairs. The meat man followed.

At the foot of the stairs, John was waiting.

He was holding the stereo.

The monster stopped halfway down the staircase, its eyeless turkey head staring down the device in John’s hands, as if recognizing the danger.

Oh, how that Old Testament demon must have howled and shrieked at the sight of young David’s harp, seeing at work a form of ancient magic that can pierce any darkness. The walking meat horror knew what was coming, that the same power was about to be tapped.

John nodded, as if to say, “Checkmate.”

He pushed the “play” button.

Sound filled the room, a crystal melody that could lift any human heart and turn away any devil.

It was “Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake.

The monster grabbed the spots on the turkey where its ears would be and fell to its knees. John wielded the stereo before him like a holy talisman, stepping up the stairs, driving the sound closer to the beast. Every inch of its fat-marbled skin and gristle writhed in agony.

“Take it!” John screamed, suddenly emboldened. “It looks like you should have taken time to beef up your defenses!”

The beast grabbed its abdomen; in pain, I thought.

Instead it pried loose a canned ham and, before John could react, hurled it at the stereo, the can whizzing through the air like a Randy Johnson fastball.

Direct hit. Sparks and bits of plastic flew. The stereo tumbled out of John’s hands and fell heavily to the stairs.

Disarmed, John hopped down to the floor as the beast rose to its feet and pursued. It grabbed John by the neck. It snatched at me, but I dodged and grabbed the coffee thermos from the table. I ran back with the thermos, spun off the top and dashed the contents at the meaty arm that held John.

The meatstrocity screamed. The arm smoked and bubbled, then burst into flame. The limb then blackened and peeled off from the socket, falling to the hardwood below. John was free, falling to his knees and gasping for air.

The beast howled, collapsing to the floor meatily. With its only remaining arm, it pointed at me.

“You’ll never defeat me, Marconi! I have sealed this house with my powers. You cannot escape!”

I stopped, put my hands on my hips and strode up to it. “Marconi? As in, Doctor-slash-Father Albert Marconi? The guy who hosts Magical Mysteries on the Discovery Channel?”

John stepped over and glared at the wounded thing. “You dumbass. Marconi is fifty years old. He has white hair. Dave and I aren’t that old combined. Your nemesis is probably off giving some seminar, standing waist-deep in a pile of his own money.”

The thing turned its turkey at me.

“Tell ya what,” I offered. “If I can get you in touch with Marconi so you two can work out your little differences, will you release us?”

“You lie!”

“Well, I can’t get him down here, but surely a being as superhumanly powerful as you can destroy him at a distance, right? Here.”

It watched me as I fished out my cell phone and dialed. After talking to a secretary, a press agent, a bodyguard, an operator, the secretary again and finally a personal assistant, I got through.

“This is Marconi. My secretary says you have some kind of a meat monster there?”

“Yeah. Hold on.”

I offered the phone to Meaty. “Do we have a deal?”

The thing stood up, hesitated, then finally nodded its turkey up and down. I held out the phone, while giving John a dark look that I hoped conveyed the fact that Plan B involved me letting the monster beat the shit out of him while I tried to escape out of a window somewhere. Fucking girl and her “ghost boyfriend.” Marconi would have seen this shit coming a mile away.

A bundle of sausage fingers took the phone from my hand.

“So!” it boomed into the receiver. “We meat again, Marconi. You thought you had vanquished me but I—”

The beast spontaneously combusted into a ball of unholy blue light. With a shriek that pierced my ears, it left our world. The lifeless meat slapped to the floor piece by piece, the cell phone clattering next to the pile.

Silence.

“Damn, he’s good,” said John. I walked over and picked up the cell phone. I put it to my ear to ask the doctor what he had done, but it was the secretary again. I switched it off. The doctor hadn’t even hung around long enough to say hello.

John made a casual hand-dusting motion. “Well. That was pretty stupid.”

I tried the front door and it opened easily. Who knows, maybe it had never been sealed. We took time to straighten up the place, not finding any Morrisons restrained or dismembered and figuring that “Shelly” was at least telling the truth when she said the real family was on vacation. The shit had vanished from the basement, but I couldn’t fix the heating duct I had messed up earlier. We packed the meat back into the freezer as best we could, with one exception.

The sun was already dissolving the night sky by the time I got home. I opened up the toolshed and set the broken boom box inside. I found an empty jar, filled it from a square can of formaldehyde and dropped the deer tongue in. I placed it on the shelf next to a stuffed monkey paw, lying lifeless with two fingers extended. I locked up and went to bed.

—from the journal of David Wong