Halloween Is For Lovers, page 15
"Could you tell her ..." Morton choked up. "Can you tell her I miss her."
Hugh gave a single nod and turned back, slowly shrinking down into the deep hollow of the cemetery.
Morton watched him dissolve, and listened to the rattle of chains fade into the fog. He wiped away a tear and took a long slug off his plastic bottle of peppermint schnapps.
There Was No Love
Hugh wandered in the dark fog alone. There was no walkway, no trail, no signpost. He could feel the hollow cold of the Kingdom's gate drawing him in. It was beyond his ability to imagine the rest of eternity suffering and dead. He hadn't given the chance of return a single thought. Wedded to Missy, buried with her and Ms. Swindon until the end of time. None of it mattered now, he was out of love, soon to be out of life, dead, all the way through.
Ahead, the gate clawed out of the murk, its iron bars creaking with ravenous hunger for Hugh's soul. The gatekeeper squinted into the sky looking for the sun. "I was starting to think you wouldn't make it." He put his hands on his hips and let out a fake pout. “Aww, things didn't work out, did they?"
Hugh stood a step away from the gate, feeling the last air of the living world fizz across his skin.
"Would you mind if I sang a piece from act four of Carmen? I think it fits the occasion perfectly." The gatekeeper opened the gate and gave Hugh a wide berth to cross over into the Kingdom.
Hugh took the final step, but suddenly the gatekeeper stopped him. "If you don't mind, a little stage direction. While I'm singing, you slowly walk through and then on the ‘my Carmen, my Carmen’ part I slam the gate shut with a thunderous clap of finality."
Hugh shrugged his shoulders. "Okay, I guess."
The gatekeeper got ready to sing but stopped himself once again. "Perhaps a brief explanation. In this scene José is begging Carmen to return his love and start a new life with him. Sound familiar?" The gatekeeper winked. "Carmen calmly replies that she loves him no longer and will not give way, free she was born and free she will die. Then José stabs her to death." He started to sing, "You can take me away, for I have killed my love."
Hugh, head bowed, played the events of the night over in his head. She rejected him three times. He said he was sorry, he said he loved her, he risked his own eternity to save her. Her refrain each time was no.
No, no, no. There was no love.
In that moment his sadness went a shade beyond black. His soul turned in on itself. From someplace at the deep dark bottom, a place he never thought he had, the seed of hate emerged with the force of a thousand gravities pulling all his emotions to its center, mauling and mutilating them.
The gatekeeper sang and motioned for Hugh to walk through the gate, "My Carmen, my Carmen! How I loved you."
Hugh looked up, the ignition of spite in his eyes. His body trembled. Revenge. He reached out and slammed the gate shut, sending the gatekeeper scuffling back in the dust. "Are you mad? Hurry, come through, there are only a few moments left."
Renewed with spiteful strength, Hugh held the gate shut, both his feet firmly planted in the Land of the Living.
"The vent, the horrible vent," the gatekeeper pleaded.
Hugh pulled back his tattered warm-up jacket and brushed the black handgun in his waistband. He turned his head to the side and spit. "I'm already down the horrible vent."
Revenge
Morton sat reclined against the gravestone closest to Ana's. The mist started to warm with the approach of the new day’s sun. He held his hand out and brushed the grass in front of her stone. "Good night, darling." He closed his eyes and nodded to sleep.
He didn't sleep long. The sound of gnashing chains and heavy steps woke him. Hugh emerged from the fog.
Morton sat up, “What are you doing?"
Hugh stopped and looked down at him. The ignited vengeance in his eyes shocked Morton fully awake and sober.
Hugh spoke in a low, sinister fume, "This night has opened my eyes to the true nature of love. Darkest hate wrapped in affection and romance."
Morton was speechless. His clumsy fool of a friend had been transformed into an evil monster.
"You should go, hurry, while you can still make it back," Morton fumbled.
"I ran away from her last time, look where it got me."
The sun crested the horizon and torched Hugh in a brazen glow. He hissed and raised his fists up, brandishing his chains and spitting with rancor, "I'm not running away."
At the center of the Kingdom’s soul clock there was a brief glimpse of the golden butterfly before a heavy iron door guillotined shut, entombing it in blackest darkness. Below the center, deep in the bowels of the animagraph, a craggy portal opened and onyx spikes of lightning birthed a crescent moon of cold steel. A low, hollow bell rang out.
The dead stopped their suffering for a moment to mark Samhain. Their malaise was supplanted ever so slightly by the shameful joy of knowing the Land of the Living was now dying.
Crain motioned to Jerry to raise a skeleton flag.
Above, in the cliffs, the reapers hefted saddles onto the backs of their steeds. Each pegasus bucked and roared as bridle bits were pushed past thirsty fangs.
Black Bolts of Lightning
Gilda trod the aisle of the small church, inspecting the flower arrangements. The florist followed several steps behind, wearing jeans and a tight sleeveless black shirt. Gilda glanced back at her, a bit envious. As soon as this wedding was over, she needed to get to the gym and pump herself a pair of those pipes. She stopped at the foot of the altar, which had been generously cascaded in white flowers.
She turned to the florist, her chin slightly up. "Well, we don't really have time to change anything. I'm just thankful it's not the flowers that make the marriage. Hopefully, Lily will somehow survive all these tacky little plants you dumped on her. It was supposed to be her special day, a shame. I guess it's just not going to be that special. Ordinary, just really ordinary." Gilda shook her head, disappointed, and walked away.
The florist slumped her shoulders, almost crying, and swore this would be the last wedding she ever did. She'd quit the flower business and follow her true passion, professional portrait photography of dogs.
Lily hadn't slept a wink. A professional makeup artist had to be called at the last minute to deal with the dark puffy circles under her eyes. She sat in a folding chair in the church basement, wearing nothing but a slip, as an effeminate fat man with a blue Mohawk held hemorrhoid pads to the circles under her eyes. "We just need to shrink some tissue, honey."
Lily stared at herself in the rented mirror. The basement smelled damp, with just a hint of cheap percolated coffee lingering in the air. She was awake now, exhausted but awake. The sun was nearly up on her wedding day and she wouldn't have to worry about coma dreams or nightmares or ghosts of fiancés past. She took a deep breath and reset her center of reality. It had taken more than three years, but she was right back where she started. It was the morning of her wedding. Hair, makeup, dress, more makeup, and then a full day of glad-handing and smiling, pretending everything was going to be okay. She did a breathing exercise, in through her nose, tiny pants out through her mouth. She counted, "...eight, nine, ten. Begin again." She took another deep breath.
Steve's waterskiing buddies had decorated a speedboat with white paper wedding bells and crepe paper. Off the stern, two dozen beer cans on strings trolled the pavement for good luck. Special arrangements had been made to have the boat trailer pulled by a Bentley, custom-painted aquamarine.
The poor guy who had to weld the trailer hitch to the three hundred eighty thousand–dollar car had almost suffered a nervous breakdown. This was the one tow package install that could make or break the shop handed down to him from his father. "Son of a Hitch" could wind up bankrupt on this one, he had thought, as his trembling torch kissed the gilded British steel.
Steve looked dashing, poised on the bow of the boat in his three-piece Givenchy tux. Wearing sunglasses and flip-flops, his accessories winked likable party dude. He wanted to show everyone that although he was amazing, he still knew how to have fun. He would have had the tux custom-made, but he was only going to wear it once. There would be no need for clothes of any kind once he reached the golden sphere of infinite wisdom.
His buddies pulled him slowly up the country road toward the church. Steve had timed it perfectly so most of the guests would see his funky, free-spirited arrival before he ducked into the back of the church and changed into more appropriate shoes. Bespoke John Lobb Woodcote oxfords, to be exact. Steve didn't have time to go to Paris for a fitting, so casts of his feet were made and delivered to the cobbler’s shop. Steve had some extra copies of the casts made, just in case the International Institute of Barefoot Waterskiing needed them for scientific study and the museum.
The best man had never driven a Bentley before, and the trailer was causing the front end to sway from side to side. He tried to speed up to smooth out the ride, when suddenly a tattered creature leapt from the bushes and stood in the center of the road.
The car came to a screeching halt and Steve almost lost his cheetah-like balance. Slipping out of his sandals and almost off the front of the boat, he piped, "Dude, do you not know how to drive a Bentley?" As he fished his flip-flops back on and re-created his Washington-crossing-the-Delaware pose, the creature raised the chains above his head and growled.
"Oh, man, who let you out?" Steve whined as his groomsmen exited the car and puffed up their waterskiing muscles. "Hurry up and grab him." Steve looked around. "We can throw him in the trunk until after the wedding."
Steve's buddies cautiously approached Hugh, who snapped and snarled. Before they could grab him, Hugh pulled the forty-four and squeezed out three thunderous rounds into the sunlit sky. "Run for your lives," he growled.
The groomsmen didn't hesitate. The tails of their tuxes flapped in the wind as they whisped a hasty retreat down the road.
“Dudes, where you going?" Steve threw his hands up in the air.
"We'll get help," one of them gasped while running away.
Hugh dragged his chains along the asphalt and steadied himself against the Bentley. Aiming the gun at Steve's ruggedly beautiful face, his finger trembled on the trigger.
"Okay, just be cool,” babbled Steve. I'm sure we can work this out. Irregardless of what went down in the basement ..."
"The word is regardless," Hugh hissed.
Steve crouched and slowly plodded a retreat toward the back of the boat. "I'm sure we can work something out, I mean, I can make room for you on the spaceship, you know, right up front. You could be my copilot."
"You don't even love her," Hugh hissed. "You don't even know what love is."
"That's not true," Steve pleaded. "She's very attractive."
Hugh filled the sights of the gun with Steve's face. A forty-four-caliber bullet at this range would take his head clean off. For a moment he thought about how awkward it would be, running into Steve back down in the Kingdom. That moment where you recognize each other from across the room, locking eyes for an instant and then looking away, pretending you were mistaken. On second thought, Hugh realized he didn't have to worry about socially awkward reunions in the Kingdom of the Dead. He'd be down the vent soon enough.
The thought of the suffering he faced made him want to inflict that same suffering on the trembling golden boy in front of him. He swallowed his acid spit and let the hate swell out of his chest, down his arm and toward the trembling finger wrapped around the trigger of the gun. There was no turning back. The demon was in control of Steve's life or death.
The reapers burst out of the stables, thrusting into the sky on the backs of their pegasus steeds. Stretching and straining their rough leather, they gathered and turned in a swarm toward the gate. The gatekeeper belted out a few bars from Wagner's Die Walküre, the “Ride of the Valkyries,” to be specific, then retreated to the safety of the rickety guard shack as the horrible black cloud bested the top of the spikes and charged into the red dawn of the living day.
Leroy kicked his spurs into Grisly's sides and she reared up. Her leather-plated wings lashed the morning air and thunderous bolts of black lightning arced from her tempered steel hooves. She let out a bloodcurdling whinny that trumpeted to the four corners of the Land of the Living.
Grisly's cry echoed through a small kitchen where the trick-or-treating boy, still in his Boba Fett costume, was eating a breakfast of fun-sized candy bars. The boy’s mother hurried across the kitchen in her pajamas, took the Mounds bar out of his mouth and hugged him tight, crushing his blow-molded Mandalorian battle helmet to her bosom. Under her breath she prayed a little prayer.
The evil spirit that was once Hugh had Steve trembling at the lethal end of one of the world’s most deadly handheld devices. With just a twitch of Hugh's trembling finger, a life, a life he so desperately wanted, would be blown away.
Steve was too scared to speak. He had never faced his own mortality. This couldn't be happening, he thought, a living, breathing God dethroned by a skinny sack of rags. Crucified by a small bullet traveling incredibly fast, too fast to heed his divine command. My God, he shuddered, maybe I am mortal. The thought was too much for the human natures of his body, and his bladder and bowels spontaneously evacuated into his vicuña wool trousers.
It's not that Hugh didn't have the courage to pull the trigger. The hate had given him a supernatural righteousness, and millions could be effortlessly slaughtered. But he hesitated. In that moment something snuck into his heart. A tiny mouse darting under a heavy iron door and startling the prisoner inside. In that moment he remembered something. A notion that he loved life, even Steve's flawed life, more than he hated his own death.
With a sigh he let the gun drop to his side. "I never should have come." He placed the gun on the trunk of the Bentley and shuffled his chains slowly down the road.
Steve couldn't believe it. Not only was he alive, he had faced death and won. Surely, only God could beat back the Grim Reaper. He jumped down from the boat and grabbed the gun. He aimed between Hugh's slumped shoulders, just below his broken neck and bobbled head. "Hey, freak show!"
Hugh turned and Steve unloaded the gun into Hugh's hollow chest, hot missiles piercing a dried-out empty gourd. Hugh bopped and jived as the lead whizzed through him, then he slumped to the ground, a pile of rags heaped onto the road.
Steve stood over Hugh's lifeless lump, threw the gun on top of it and spit. "Death? Is that all you got?" Steve suddenly remembered something and quickly frisked his tux pockets. Finding a small digital recorder, he clicked it on with a beep. "Chapter seven, verse twenty-three. And he faced the angel of death, felt his fiery dragon breath and he did not tremble. He did not lose mastership of his biological entities. The monster, forty feet tall with knives for hands, spoke to him and said, ‘Steve, I have come for your soul.’ Steve stood his ground, brilliant in his earthen form, and said, ‘I don't think so.’ And the monster ..."
Steve stopped his dictation when he saw the dirty rag pile shift. Perhaps rigor mortis was setting in. He continued, "And the monster summoned all the powers of evil to try and kill Steve but ..."
The pile of rags came back to life. Hugh reinflated to his hands and knees, gasping.
"Impossible!" Steve couldn't believe his eyes. He jumped behind the wheel of the Bentley, put it in gear and ran over Hugh with all three sets of tires. The trailer tires were dualies, double lethal, Steve thought. With a crunch and a squish, the car and trailer rocked side to side as they masticated Hugh's lump into the asphalt.
"That's it for you." Steve went back to dictating his bible. "Now where was I? Ah yes, the monster. The monster seventy feet high with laser-charged swords for hands bared down on him. Steve was not scared, irregardless of this devil monster’s ..." In the rearview mirror he saw Hugh struggling back to his hands and knees. "Come on!"
Steve threw the car in reverse and backed all three sets of wheels over Hugh again. Crunch and groan. With Hugh's tattered pile just beyond the hood ornament, Steve jammed the Bentley into drive and crushed Hugh one more time, this time leaving the trailer's dualies parked on top of Hugh's corpse.
At the church, the guests had started to trickle in. Lily had successfully transformed her facade into one worthy of the cover of Skinny Bride magazine. She sipped bottled water gathered from a well deep inside a Polynesian volcano and practiced lying to herself.
I can make this work. He's not crazy, he's eccentric. His dad didn't pinch my ass, he stumbled and grabbed it by accident ... twice. It's going to be cheerful wedded fantasy bliss.
She congratulated herself for almost believing it as she twisted the cap off another thirteen-dollar bottle of water.
The groomsmen stood around a cooler of beer behind the church. They had notified the police of Steve's emergency, but none of them had the guts to tell Gilda or Lily that the groom was being held at gunpoint by a pissed-off zombie ghost. They didn't even have the courage to tell Gilda that Steve might be a little late. They kicked around the idea of running back to help him, but they were more like buddies who hung out with Steve when it was fun, not throw-down-your-life buddies.
Jilted Again
George was making a last-ditch effort to secure the duty of walking Lily down the aisle. It was explained to him on several occasions that she wished to walk down the aisle by herself, out of respect to the memory of her dead father. Besides, the dress was so voluminous that anyone walking next to it would really have to reach to hold the arm of the bride. George wouldn't be reaching for her arm.
"But I'm paying for this wedding, and besides I want to be standing up there with the rest of them being looked at," George huffed. Giving up, he had a quick aside with one of the wedding photographers. "Make sure you get a shot of the mother of the bride sitting on my lap. And if she doesn't want to do it, tell her it's required. Tell her that you've never shot a wedding without that shot. That and the father-in-law spanking the bride over one knee, that's a classic. I know my son wants to take the garter off the bride. It's a tradition in my family that the father of the groom puts the garter on first. Get lots of shots of that. We're doing that, right?" The photographer shrugged. George looked around the church foyer for someone in charge. "Who's in charge of the placing of the garter tradition?"
