Hag Night, page 2
As Chamber of Horrors moved into its second season, it was programming gold. It was syndicated on twenty-three stations across New York, New England, and the Midwest. The month of October was always busy, Vultura and her crew showing up at costume stores and haunted houses and Halloween-themed parties. They made the horror con and comic book con circuit, always promoting, promoting, promoting. The cons were fun and fans lined up to see them. They all wanted their pictures taken with Vultura or Doc Blood or sandwiched in-between the Graveyard Girls. Wenda always had fun and played it to the hilt…the only fans that bothered her were the ones that panted on her and had sticky fingers, other than that it was a riot.
The format was set. Every episode started with Vultura stretched on the rack, writhing and screaming to a Goth metal soundtrack. Then came the Graveyard Girls, who were practically a soft-core lesbo act by that point. And finally, Doc Blood. Doc, formerly “Sawbones McCord”, was a stage magician whose credentials included weatherman, Shakespearean summer stock, college drama instructor, juggler, and a corny magic act straight out of the old midnight spookshows. But he had something and Morris saw it. Before long, Doc Blood was a popular part of the show as he regularly staked the Graveyard Girls (a lot of gasping and orgasmic cries during the obligatory penetration), sawed them in half, or took off his own hands with a meat cleaver, popped his eyeballs out, and yanked strings of bloody razor blades from his mouth. It was cheap stage horror, cheese sliced thick, that might have appeared ludicrous and cornball in color…but in black-and-white, it was oddly effective.
That was the show.
And that was why they were going to the ghost town of Cobton. They had a ski lodge in the Adirondacks lined up to sponsor a month’s worth of shows. They wanted some snow scenes. Next week it would be at the lodge, this week the ghost town. Morris had searched high and low for the latter. There were dozens up in the Catskills, but most were nothing but overgrown foundations, rusting mine works, or a still-standing chimney or two. Few had roads leading to them anymore and nearly all were impassable in the winter without snowshoes. Then he found Cobton: a fully restored village from the 18th century that was a tourist trap of sorts—and, unfortunately, one not much visited—during the summer. The family that owned it was more than happy to rent it out to Chamber of Horrors. They even supplied a pair of caretakers. Of course, it cost WKKX an arm and a leg to get the roads leading to it plowed open. They were all secondary roads closed in the winter. But it would be worth it because the ski lodge was picking up the tab.
“Maybe an hour’s work,” Morris had said. “A few exteriors, some interiors. We’ll splice it together back at the studio.”
Originally, they had tried to do it the cheap way, filming a few test shots at the studio with fake snow but the whole thing came off looking like an outtake from an Ed Wood movie, footage from Plan 9 from Outer Space that had hit the cutting room floor. Shit even old one-shot Eddie wouldn’t use.
Morris wasn’t about to try and sell that off to the ski lodge. They’d fucking laugh, he said. No, they had to do a location shoot and that’s all there was to it. Some good shots in the old town by night, lots of shadows, lots of atmosphere. Let Jekyll and Hyde—his pet names for Bailey and Megga—do their thing and get the testosterone rising while Doc Blood crept about with Vultura holding center stage, deadpan ghoul to the last, showing lots of skin while she discussed the merits—or lack of the same—concerning the movie, which would either be Snow Creature or Half-Human, both of them Grade-Z abominable snowmen flicks from the 1950’s (this keeping with the snow theme of the ski lodge itself, of course).
“Location, location, location,” Morris had said, finding himself amusing as always.
Wenda hadn’t been crazy about it from the start and that feeling worsened with the blizzard, but she was contracted and she had no choice. Dressed in her Vultura costume—more flesh than costume—she figured if she didn’t catch pneumonia or take out somebody’s eye with a stray nipple in the cold, it would be fairly easy.
And that’s what brought them to Cobton.
The ghost town in the hollow below that was pitch black in the night.
4
Burt opened the bus up gradually, picking up speed to meet the first of many snowdrifts that had blown across the road. Everyone gripped their seats and waited for it. The winding road that fed down into the hollow was maybe two city blocks in length, twisting and turning, the cemetery they had seen earlier clinging to a high hillside off to the right now. If they’d have been able to walk straight from there to Cobton, they would have been in the town fifteen minutes ago. It wasn’t far as the crow flies, but the road seemed to carry them farther away from the town before bringing them in closer.
Here it comes, Wenda thought, I can just about feel it.
The thing was, she was not sure what she was waiting for. She was tensed like a cat, her fingers gripping the seat like claws. Her heart was pounding hard but it didn’t seem to be in her chest but from somewhere much lower like it had dropped down into a well. She could hear it in her ears—distant, muffled—kind of like the heart of the old man in Poe’s story: the dull, quick sound of a watch enveloped in cotton. This was the way she felt before they shot Chamber of Horrors each week. Nervous, her heartbeat fluttery, her hands shaking just a bit. Threaded with an anxiety that was pure apprehension that only faded when she got into her Vultura get-up. Realistically, she knew, she should have been more panicky and self-conscious scantily clad as Vultura, but it was never that way. In character, she was calm, resolute, and confident, things she never was as herself. The reason being that she was no longer Wenda Keegan. No longer a walking basket of nervous tics and indecision and petty angst, she was someone else and that person—even if they happened to be a ghoul—was perfectly comfortable within their own skin.
“Some of these fucking drifts are heavy,” Burt said, ‘we’re going to have to punch through them. Hang on tight.”
“Christ, and here I thought we’d do this thing without a fatality,” Morris said.
“Such is the nature of existence,” Doc Blood mused.
Wenda tried to unwind, but she was as tense as a spring. She gripped the seat, trying to control her breathing. She felt like she was on the spiky edge of a panic attack. The bus jerked as it plowed through first one drift then veered slightly off to the right as it plowed through another. Snow enveloped the vehicle like sea fog, whirling and white, sounding like blowing sand against the windows.
“Take it easy,” Morris said.
Bailey was close to freaking out and once again, her voice got that shrill squeak to it that went right up Wenda’s spine like the tines of a fork. Megga was speaking quietly and soothingly to her, holding her hand. It was so out of character for Megga, who was not very different from the character she played on TV. She was just as morbid, just as cruel, just as twisted, maybe a little less horny, but that was about it. But Bailey and she had bonded. They were just as close off-screen as on. Geometric opposites in every way…but they were like sisters. Go figure. Megga had very little sympathy for anyone or anything, but she was more than sisterly with Bailey, almost motherly.
And maybe a little more than that, Wenda often thought.
The bus moved on down the road, which was greasy with the snow lying over sheets of blue ice. The tires were having trouble getting traction. Burt was swearing as he tried to get it under control, but the bus seemed to be moving of its own volition now—hydroplaning over the road and getting far too close to the encroaching snowbanks.
“Shit,” Morris said.
Bailey muttered, “Oh God, oh God.”
“YEAH!” Reg cried out. “POUR IT ON, MAN! WOO-HOO!”
Morris told him to shut the hell up. Doc Blood mused on the fragility of life on the earthly plane. Wenda gripped her seat like it was the bucket of a Ferris wheel coming over the big loop and careening earthward. The bus jerked and thumped, bursting through drifts and each one made it swerve uneasily while Burt fought to get it under control. Nobody was saying a thing as they punched through another drift and the windshield was covered in snow. The bus began to swerve again, Burt swearing as it started to go sideways into a spin and they all were thinking the same thing: we’re going to roll, we’re going to roll right over and be trapped in this goddamn iron coffin.
But, as before, Burt got it under control so they were moving in a straight line. The only problem being that the road was so slippery coming down the caning hillside that the brakes were pretty much useless to slow it down, its own weight pushing it forward and making it gather speed.
Then the road leveled out and the bus slowed incrementally and Burt sighed. “Jesus H. Christ, that was close,” he said.
Everyone took a deep breath, held it, let it out slowly, deciding that they might indeed live through this one. The town was maybe a half a block away now and they were honest-to-God going to make it. The tension bled off them like steam from a pressure cooker.
And then Burt cried out: “HOLY SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?”
No time for speculation: the bus hit it, whatever it was.
The bumper smashed into it and there rose up a manic, unearthly squealing of rage and agony as it was dragged beneath them, the tires thumping over it.
Bailey let out a short, sharp, economical sort of scream.
And Burt lost control of the bus.
Trying to pump the brakes and work the wheel at the same time, the bus swung to the left and right, bumped off one snow bank then the other, spinning around and throwing anyone not belted in. Cameras and equipment not packed away went airborne, clattering to the floor. People were shouting. The bus did a complete 360°, then blasted through a snow bank in an eruption of white, found a ditch, and came to a jarring rest.
“Is anyone hurt?” Morris said as he got out of his belt.
“No, just banged around,” Doc Blood said.
“We’re okay,” Megga announced, speaking for herself and Bailey.
“What a fucking rush, man!” Reg said.
Mole didn’t think it was much of a rush because his laptop had taken a good beating and it appeared as if its days of surfing were over. Burt was digging under the dashboard for the emergency kit, which was about the size of a suitcase. He got a flashlight out.
“What did we hit?” Wenda asked.
“Some kind of animal,” he said.
“Can we be more specific?” Doc put to him.
Burt just shook his head. “Don’t ask me. I grew up in fucking Brooklyn. What do I know of animals? I don’t know tit about nature.”
“It wasn’t an animal,” Megga said.
Everyone looked at her. In the dim overhead light her eyes were almond-shaped, wet and dark. “I saw it. It came running across the road. It was a woman.”
Bailey gasped.
“It weren’t no fucking woman,” Burt said. “It was running on all fours. It had a mane like a fucking wolf. That’s all I saw…before we hit it.”
“Then it could be manslaughter,” Mole said.
Reg whistled. “Whoa.”
Burt glared at him, but before he could say a thing, Morris intervened. “You shut the fuck up with that talk,” he warned Mole.
“It was a woman,” Megga maintained.
“It was a fucking animal,” Burt said, getting red in the face and ready to start swinging.
Morris stepped in front of him. “You just thought it was a woman.”
Megga shook her head. “No, it was a woman and she was running on all fours.”
5
Burt did not like where any of this was going and if they thought they were going to hang him for running down some fucking animal, then they had another thing coming. But he was scared. He was scared bone-deep. He was sure it had been an animal. He’d only seen it for a second or two, maybe less, but it had been an animal. It had hair like an animal and right before the bus hit it, he had seen its eyes flash up at him in the headlights, silver and feral. No, he had not hit any woman regardless of what that fucking hot-shit little whore said.
Yet, he was scared.
He was confused, mixed-up, doubting what he had seen and he could see the others were, too. And that scared him. Scared him because when he was nineteen he’d been involved in a hit-and-run and almost went to prison because of it. The guy he’d run down—some shit worthless drunk who staggered out into the street—had been all right. Leg broken but that was about it. The only thing that had gotten Burt in trouble was the fact that he’d panicked and drove off. Three hours later, he turned himself in. The bulls at the precinct had not gone real easy on him about it, telling him he’d be doing hard time and that was because Burt had half a dozen traffic violations on his record by that point.
But, hell, his driving record had been spotless since then.
He knew he had to calm down. He got funny when he was put up against the wall like this. He got pissed-off and irrational and his first instinct was to take a poke at somebody.
Just cool off, take it easy. That was no woman and you know it.
He slapped the flashlight against his leg. “Listen, Miss,” he said to Megga, keeping his voice modulated, his tone even. “I don’t know what you saw, but I saw an animal. People don’t run on all fours.”
“Normal people anyway,” Morris put it.
And Burt could see it in Megga’s eyes: Who said it was normal?
“Dude,” Reg said, “why the fuck are we debating this? Whatever it was, it ran out in front of us. It’s nobody’s fault. Just an accident.”
“Ah, the voice of reason,” Doc said.
Wenda nodded. “Let’s just go look for godsake. This is stupid.”
Morris opened his mouth to concur with that, but he never said a word because it was at that moment that a wailing rose up…eerie and unnatural, not the sound of an animal or a woman, but maybe—as incredulous as it sounded—the wailing of an animal imitating a woman. Whatever it was, it was in pain, shrieking out its death throes. The sound was hysterical and piercing, chilling. The last sort of thing anyone wanted to hear in the desolation of a blizzard now that night had come on.
Burt was shaking.
It was warm in the bus, but he was still shaking. The sound of that…that thing out there was getting down inside him and filling him with brittle white ice. His flesh was creeping from his belly to his throat and he figured the last thing he wanted to do was go out there and look at something that made sounds like that.
“C’mon,” Morris said, stepping towards the door. “Let’s go see. Whatever it is, it’s still alive.”
Everyone pushed towards the door with him and that keening cry rose up again, echoing off into the desertion of the storm.
6
“What the hell?”
Megga was staring at it, the thing they had not only hit, but dragged and stretched over the road. She had been at Morris’s side as they climbed up out of the snowy ditch and onto the icy pavement. She was one of the first to see it.
“Damn,” Reg said.
“Oh my God,” Bailey said, turning away, making gagging sounds like she might throw up.
The rest of them were not too far from that themselves.
They stood in a loose semi-circle, the wind moaning and blowing snow down the road and into their faces, biting and cold, bleaching the color from their cheeks. The road itself was like a long tunnel with the snowbanks rising up six feet or more to either side.
What the bus had hit was spread out an easy thirty feet. The snow was red with blood and it was easy to see the point of original impact where the animal had gotten struck, then caught under the bus, pulled apart, dragged, and finally released to die on the icy road. The blood patterns were very specific. Already, the falling snow was covering them, but there was a lot of it, plenty to raise the gorge of the staunchest stomachs.
What they had hit should have been dead.
But it did not appear to be as close to death as it should have been: in fact, despite the degree of mutilation, it was unpleasantly alive, filled with a shuddering diabolic vitality.
Bailey had to hang back as did Mole.
Morris and Megga, Doc and Wenda stepped forward with Burt right behind them. He was hesitant, as if he simultaneously wanted to see and he wanted anything but. Reg came pounding up behind them, brushing snow off himself. When he had caught sight of the thing he had jogged back to the bus for his HD camcorder. This, in his thinking, had to be captured for posterity.
As Wenda looked at the creature, bile coming up the back of her throat, she could only think: What in the fuck is that?
She saw the furry hindquarters of what looked to be a dog, a very large dog. Its legs were still kicking with reflexive action, tail slapping the snow with jerking motions. The fur was patchy and silver, almost threadbare in places and she could see skin beneath that…a smooth alabaster skin that looked very un-dog like. But what disturbed her most, made something in her head feel like it wanted to take wing and fly right out of her skull, were the hind paws. They didn’t look much like paws at all but feet, human feet…they were too long to be the paws of a dog and the black talons seemed to be sprouting from what could be nothing but human toes. Or something quite similar.
Morris swept the light up and they saw that the dog just ended above those hindquarters. It had been cut in half like someone had taken a scissors to it and snipped it neatly. There was an explosion of gore that had soaked into the snow and splattered in all directions, creating something like cherry ice. The flashlight beam revealed that the hindquarters, though sheared from the rest of the animal, were not disconnected. Slimy, bloody ropes of tissue and bowel connected them to the rest of the creature a good distance away. The snow was dyed red, bone and organ and assorted meat tossed about. Morris followed the train of tissue to the front quarters of the animal and it was even worse.
