Night Of The Beast (5 page)

"Are you personally aware of the impact your lyrics have had on an entire subculture in America, Peter?"

"What?"

Turi leaned forward. His breath was terrible; it reeked of sushi. "Your work not only sold a great many records, making it an unqualified financial success, but it also inspired an enormous underground following, Mr. Rourke. Practitioners of the occult, the dark arts, death rock fans, Goths, you name it. Everyone with an interest in horror seems to have been drawn to this record like moths to a flame." Turi snickered at his own, lame anology. "Why, I've heard of Goth's getting married to 'Devil's Reign' in San Francisco."

Rourke blinked and sat back. "I'm not quite sure what to say to that." He had been promised the interview would only last five minutes. He checked the clock on the office wall. One minute to go.

Turi adjusted the small desk camera. He raised an eyebrow, clearly puzzled. He, too, had obviously made note of the time. He wanted to get something dramatic or die trying.

"You were honestly not aware of this, Peter? Your intent, was clear enough, but you have succeeded beyond your wildest dreams as to how far and wide you have spread your message."

"Message?"

Turi smiled again. Rourke suddenly thought of a barracuda. "The message of the End Times," Turi said, as if stating the fact of gravity. "You were trying to get the word out."

"Fuck off," Rourke said, rising to his feet.

Turi's grin slipped a bit. "I beg your pardon?"

"Trying to get
what
word out? Don't try to pin that bullshit on me. What I was trying to do was make a buck."

"But, I…."

"Your five minutes are up," Rourke said. He stormed out of the office and slammed the door behind him. He went back into the studio.

The bartender got all kinds. His video saloon on Selma Avenue in Hollywood drew skinny punks with body piercing, bizarre hair and thousand-yard stares; con men, pimps and gum-chewing young hookers. He got your bikers, faggots and undercover cops. All kinds. But there was something different about this dude. And it was something really fucking scary.

Dipshit. Kept playing that same freaky rock video, like he'd gotten married to it and his wife had just split. Sexy stuff, but pretty sick, with black magic symbols popping out of a girl's tits and some asshole carving her up with a knife. T&A with a little blood thrown in.

The bartender wiped some watermarks off the bar with a smelly orange rag. The handsome stranger listened to the music and soaked up the video. It had been like this for nearly an hour, now. Two men in different universes. The guy was so bizarre, when someone else wandered in they'd sit through a rotation or two and then leave again rather than ask him to knock it off, play something else for a change.

Weird taste, the burly bartender decided. Loves end-of-the-world songs.

A really good-looking Latino dude, though; movie star looks. He seemed totally hung up on that Sour Candy thing. The bartender found it depressing, himself. Pissed him off whenever his kids played the sucker at home. Nothing but noise. Junk food for the ears.

The dark man sipped some whiskey, his piercing brown eyes glued to those flickering neon tubes above the jukebox. He began to smile. Wickedly. The bartender flinched, reached below the bar and fingered the sawed-off baseball bat he kept handy for emergencies.

There she was again, that spooky broad with the big tits, Dee Jennings: The bartender had seen her on the other music videos his kids watched all the time. He had to admit she sang her ass off, and what an ass it was, too. The band was easier to watch than most, but Tip still hated this fucking tune. Now more than ever.

He wished somebody else would come in, another customer. The bartender was not a cowardly man. He'd whipped some drugged-up, drunken ass in his time. But this character was starting to get under his skin in a very big way.

Hey, Ricky Martin, he thought miserably, welcome to tinsel town. You're in L freaking A, man. Go take the Universal Tour. Check out how they make movies. Maybe spend some money on a blow-job down the street. Just beat feet the fuck out of here. Okay?

A nasty grin spread across the stranger's sculptured features. It looked like the snarl of a barracuda. The bartender felt perspiration dripping, forming icy saucers under his hairy armpits. Get lost, goddamn you. What is this, Halloween?

Almost over, thank God. The bartender quietly emptied the change from the cash drawer into one pocket of his stained apron. Decided: Sonofabitch asks for more change, he ain't gonna get it. Fingered the weapon and waited.

The handsome stranger stared at the credits as if memorizing the name of the producer, Peter Rourke, and the publishing and record companies who owned the master recording. He nodded to the empty air, but as if to someone sitting nearby. He went over to the pay phone and ripped through the telephone book. He looked something up and snickered. He searched his pockets for more coins, but came up empty.

The video monitor shut down, and the sudden silence was deafening. For one long beat the graceful stranger sat by the telephone, perfectly still, then slowly and silently he slowly rose to his feet, like a puppet on strings. He seemed to glide across the floor without moving his feet. The room grew cold. The bartender had a strange flash from childhood. He was small and helpless again, hiding in the closet while Daddy played monster:
Grrrr — Gonna getcha — Grrrrr.

The slim, dark man left in a hurry, as if he'd just remembered an important appointment. He left the door open and he didn't leave enough money to pay for his drinks.

The bartender didn't give a shit. He closed up shop and went home.

Less than six months after Karen's adoption, little Jason Smith was called into Sister Jane's austere office for a conversation with George and Betty Nelson. They had grim faces and red-rimmed eyes. A lump formed in his throat as he intuitively realized Karen was dead. Betty Nelson ah-hemmed and stuttered past her grief to form some words. "We'd like to take you home with us after all, Jason. To be our little boy. She asked us to."

"Betty…"

"But first, I'm afraid we have some bad news..."

"You killed her," Jason spat.

George Nelson, his puffy skin ashen, recoiled like a garden snake. The scar on the kid's forehead had turned beet purple all of a sudden. It hadn't looked that bad when he'd first walked into the room. "Now, you listen here."

Sister Jane, soothing. "That's not true, son. Karen was sick. It's nobody's fault. She had a very bad disease."

Jason, eyes brittle and flaring with suppressed rage, remained silent. His skull was throbbing. "Look at the boy," George Nelson mumbled to his wife. "The shrinks are right, he's fucking crazy."

"Did you touch her?" Jason snarled. "Did you?" Nelson cringed.

"She talked about you all the time." Mrs. Nelson was close to tears. "George and I, we thought maybe —"

"You killed Karen," the boy shrieked. "Well, now you'll die!"

Sister Jane slapped him. Jason flew backwards and reeled into a huge potted fern. He fell, head ringing, onto the glossy hardwood floor. His voice dropped to a low, throaty growl that terrified everyone in the room. He growled like an animal and got up on all fours. He sat up and barked like rabid dog. The adults were petrified. Suddenly Jason Smith laughed and got to his feet.

"You'll both die. That's a promise," he said, and then he tried to attack George Nelson. It took a number of people to subdue him.

His time in the hospital was a blur: Blood tests, MRI, EKG, tapping and thumping and head shrinkers galore. "Paranoid Schizophrenic," they said. "Amazingly young to be this severe, isn't he?" One called him a manic depressive instead, and prescribed a number of medications. Jason lost weeks to a pharmacological haze. Once released from care, he refused to take his meds and wound up at a state facility in a white canvas jacket. Finally he stabilized and returned to St. Augustine.

Sneaking out of bed. Listening at the door: "He seems to have what Otto Kernberg called a malignant narcissism," one fat shrink said. "He may be dangerous, even sociopathically violent someday. His grandiose personal visions are more appealing to him than the real world; his fanatasy relationships more signifigant than his connections to other humans." Fantasy? Real? What did those words mean? Karen was dead. If that is reality, then fuck it. And fuck
them.

Jason voiced the challenge: "You'll both die. That's a promise."

Even now, almost twenty years later, Jason Smith still relished the pallid, fearful look Sister Jane had given him when she heard about the accident. A head-on collision with a gasoline truck, only a few miles from Saint Augustine, had incinerated the Nelsons. No one had been able to reach them in the blazing wreckage. The shrinks said: "Obviously some kind of macabre cooincidence, but unfortunately it has now deepened the boy's delusions of granduer."

But word spread quickly, and as of that moment the local bullies left Jason alone. In fact everyone avoided him, even the staff. Cupped palms, glazed eyes, whispers of evil in the flesh.

In the chapel, late at night: Jason, overjoyed, slipped out of his pajamas and stood naked in the dark. He used a box of stolen matches to light two of the towering church candles. Flickering light, shadows dancing, ears ringing from far-away peals of laughter. Jason was not aware that he was humming and rocking…

"Thanks," the boy said softly. "Now I belong to you. Whatever you are. I guess that's okay, but when do I get to see you?"

You have
, said a deep bass voice. It was in his mind. It said:
You know me, Jason
.

"I do?"

"I have?"

"I…I guess so."

"Anything. Have I really seen you?"

Gooseflesh: The floor began to vibrate, the sky boomed thunder. It seemed impossible for everyone else at Saint Augustine to go right on sleeping, but they did. Am I really insane? The noise was earthshaking. Violent. But no one else heard. And Jason began to bleed, in an obscene parody of religious stigmata; first from the ears and then from his nose and mouth. Crimson droplets splattered the boy's trembling hands and bony knees.

He was very much afraid.
What are you willing to do, boy? Are you willing to die?
And he wanted to change his mind, but knew instinctively it was far too late for that…

"H-h-help me," Jason cried. His feeble whine was muffled by a low rumble as the building began to dance along its foundations. And yet he was still alone. No one had awakened. No one else had come to investigate.

Jason realized that his eyes were squeezed shut. He urinated and shook his head fiercely. He was too terrified.

Obey,
the creature demanded.

No. Please.

He looked.

It was huge. Long, yellow canines drooled strange milky fluids. A giant tongue lolled and lapped at him, unrolling like a red carpet from its cavernous mouth. Jason saw thick grey fur, mangy and ripped away in places, revealing scarred patches of rotting flesh. The eyes were flaring coals above a long, black snout and the wide, wet nostrils bubbled with foul-smelling mucus.

The evil being barked.
I am your saviour,
it said.

"Dog," Jason whispered, shaking like a leaf. "Geez, but you're dead!"

The boy nodded. The truth was he didn't understand, but he wasn't about to risk saying no. How could Dog still be alive, much less so big? But the proof was right in front of him. Barking. How could so much be happening without anyone else hearing a sound? Yet it was, and he was witness to it.

Jason turned away from those hypnotic eyes, his stomach churning with acid. He was now bleeding from every orifice. Amazingly, there was still no pain. Only the fear, terrible and paralyzing. He had made a terrible mistake. Dog reached for him. His massive paw seemed to stretch and get smaller at the same time; turn from a furry pipe into a hairy garden hose. Claws lightly raked the boy's face, smearing fresh blood across his hated disfigurement.