A SILENT NIGHT (FOR A DEMI-GHOUL): XV

by Vincent Daemon

Chapter XV

Of Song & Legend

  Joan was up on stage during Chorn, Julie, and John’s dramatic and panicked entrance. Immediately upon sight of John, Joan started in on him, storming off the stage and through the minuscule smattering of loaded holiday barfly loners, finger pointed and mouth bellowing hurtful obscenities foul enough to shock an ex-Marine trucker into full-on purple-faced blushing. Her sloppy coke-stripper tits jaggled like horrid, brown-nippled fried egg sacks about to spread yolk.

   The gaggle of drunken onlookers watched in their inebriated confusion, listening in stunned silence to every word this wretched woman had to say. 

  Funny part was, John no longer felt any reaction to this. He’d been so accustomed to this treatment from her, so numbed by it, that he found her behavior, and way-too-old-to-be-stripping gesticulations profoundly immature, inane, and attention-grabbing, as if jiggling her ass for coke money in this dive meant anything, and wasn’t just an attention grab for herself in particular, regardless.

  She stood there and her whiskey-stink spittle hit him square in the face as she spat personal intimacies of their life in heaving waves of grotesque accusation. John stood there without reaction, expressionless, and said nothing.

  But Julie had heard enough and grabbed the beastly bitch by the shoulders,  pushing her against the door, which was now beginning to bang in hard thrusts from the other side, a terrible growl emanating from just beyond the crackling, ancient oak panel. 

  “What the fuck, bitch!” Joan bellowed at Julie, who would not tolerate that. She pushed with a deceptive body strength, compared to her slight pixie frame, holding Joan hard against the door as the thing outside battered further in. Joan grabbed a handful of Julie’s strawberry blonde locks but to no avail. Julie merely said, “You’ll have to do better than that, you foul mouthed pig-slut!” 

  The wet-brain patrons, all ten of them, laughed and cheered drunkenly like a gaggle of fuck-faced frat boys while the lone female bartender watched in bewilderment, wanting to call the cops but herself too taken in by this most unexpected train-wreck of a cat-fight. 

  Even Chorn got a small chuckle, that is, until he and John had the well-timed sense to grab the back of Julie’s coat and shirt in just enough time to pull her away from the finally splintering door, just as a pair of immense inhuman and crimson clawed hands tore through the entrance, through Joan, and almost Julie (had it not been for the quick actions of John and the doctor). The seven-fingered claws clutched Joan’s spinal cord, audibly crushing the vertebrae in its grip. Joan let out a howl of agony.  All of this immediately put an end to the holiday cheers of the lonely drunkards, sending them into a panicked, clumsy mass of terrified man-children trying to seek whatever refuge they could  find.

  After her howl, Joan looked at Julie and mumbled out “Bitch,” just before being torn asunder as the beast spread its arms apart, exploding through the door and his hapless victim with a roar and puffed chest of such immense size that it blew the splintered shrapnel from the doorway along with Joan’s once intact skeletal frame including bits of skin, eyes, brains, limbs, intestines, digits, lungs, and those still-horrific sloppy fried-egg tit scraps inward, all this bloody detritus machine-gun bulleting throughout the bar, until one rib stabbed directly into the catatonic bartender’s withering face with enough force to send her body back against the shelf of cheap watered-down booze and the filthy mirror behind it. Every last bit of glass and mirror shattered, collapsing atop the bartender’s head and raining to the floor.

  Several of the patrons also caught a full on glimpse of this being—spread out and rasping, that had just ripped its way through a door and human body with the greatest of ease, looming and looking about in that blown-out space—and then went into the usual routines of withering madness that all who glimpsed upon it were subject to.

  “For fucks sake do not look at it!” Chorn bellowed as he heroically tried to keep Julie and John safe behind him. As the three were slowly forced back into a pink and green neon-lit corner spattered in bloody stripper bits, one of Joan’s breasts could be seen clung to the wall behind them like some weird pancake.

  Julie grabbed John tight, as he did her, and they exchanged glances, eye to eye, looking into and seeing nothing but each other as the soulmates they both knew they were. Chorn kept his eyes blocked, looking down upon the creature’s strange and webbed, almost amphibious feet. They too were purple-razor clawed like its hands, and just as strong.  This thing was most assuredly not of our messed-up corner of a shit-hole universe. It was backing them into that sex-crime scene of a corner so closely that they could feel and smell the noxious toxicity of its rank and raspy-humid breath. 

  John and Julie began to kiss with a deep soul love so unexpected, they held each other as tightly as possible to share their oncoming deaths together. They’d finally found each other on their own personal Doomsday Eve. 

  Doc Chorn both saw and felt this, was happy to be going out seeing love instead of all the hate that slithered through this world.  Hatred such as he had always secretly combated in various brilliant, incognito, and metaphysical ways.  Most people would never know of his positive deeds, and he would merely go down in history as a footnote, an “occultist loon,” which he most certainly was not. His name would remain forever tarnished by one slick and truly sick death-soul salesman named “Dr.” Joseph Cetero, during a series of increasingly vicious debates that had exploded out of control in the media. 

  Chorn knew this monstrosity wreaking havoc was just a scared and misplaced anomaly, with no place for it on this planet, nor in this universe. This was the living embodiment of all “God” mythos, from ape-men on mushrooms to this very day. This was the dark side of all belief systems come to light, nothing more than a cosmic biological wonder attempting to adapt to an environment that could not withstand it, nor which could it tolerate. The long buried word for this kind of beast was Demi-Ghoul: part god-being, part flesh-eating monster. 

  Still, Chorn had no desire to see himself, his new friends, or eventually the rest of the planet harmed by this maddening visage of pure cosmic hell.

  John raised his eyes as they widened in a rush of satori. “You, Julie. You’re the wish.”

  The creature unhinged its jaw, almost snake-like, getting ready to attempt a toothy decapitation trifecta. They all kept their eyes away from it while feeling the wind of its arm as it raised high overhead, ready to gut-swipe them all, when another sound came from behind the beast. A different kind of growl; a battle-cry in its own deafening manner. It was the roar of someone with a score to settle.

  Cyimir grabbed the living thing’s raised arm and snapped it back as far as it would go, the ghastly sounds of odd fractures permeating the complete dead-air silence. 

  The galactic terror distracted, the trapped three used the opportunity to get out of Dodge as best they could, and quietly holed up in the boss's small office. They huddled, and communicated through an understood, almost empathic link contact as they listened to the beast destroy the remainder of the HOMEFIELD A GO-GO.

  What they did not see was Cyimir being completely unaffected by the creature’s stare, and his unwavering confidence as he watched the creature struggle to fight back. The two beasts grappled, wrestling like goddamned UMA fighters in a lawless cage-match to the death. These two animals had nothing but sheer and unabashed hatred for one another. Not just from their first encounter, but from each other's very point of existence. They bit, clawed, and tore at one another with the malice of infinities untold. Perhaps, at one time, long ago, these species had encountered each other when all was different, in another place. Or perhaps it was just the multi-universal nature of apex supremacy turned against itself.

  The interstellar stranger’s animosity went into complete overdrive as it gasped, rasped, and swiped at Cyimir, flesh-wounding the bear a few times, but nothing as of yet life-threatening. The blood smeared on his fur made it look far worse than it was. 

  Cyimir’s stark white pelt was covered in enough blood to almost match the odd, scarlet torso of the Off-Worlder, who was now caught in Cyimir’s firm grasp from behind, the alien’s breathing suffering more by the second as the polar bear slowly choked it out, beating the monstrosity’s head repeatedly on the floor, tightening his grip around its neck with every crashing slam. 

  The creature, still in the grip of the bear who noticed its weakness, struggled as Cyimir pulled back hard on what little it had of a throat. The beast dropped to its knees in Cyimir’s rage-fueled grip, began to spasm, then finally just slumped over. Its seven-pupilled eye remained open, yet stopped in its awful glow as the life force faded away. 

  Just to make sure, Cyimir grabbed the beast’s face, looking dead into it with no issue at all. With his great paws he snapped the dead thing’s lower jaw, breaking it, slapping at it mockingly, the jaw waddling almost comically, limp as could be, to make sure this thing was in fact dead.

  Indeed, it was.  

  After an interminable silence, Chorn carefully opened the door, and saw a quite tired and slightly dazed, blood-soaked Cyimir sitting calmly by the corpse of the monstrosity, the polar bear himself seeming none the worse for wear. Chorn approached carefully, making sure not to make any contact with the face of the monster, treating it almost like the ancient Greeks would have a Gorgon, Medusa herself perhaps. The idea in fact already had Chorn’s mind churning new theories.

  He motioned to John and Julie, who were still completely entangled amongst each other.  They pulled apart once Chorn “ahemed” the enraptured new lovers, letting them know it was safe as he patted the bear’s head gently, and threw his coat over the face of the slain alien thing.

  Chorn, seeing a hacksaw hanging crookedly on the office wall, gave his partners the caveat as he took it down, and warned them they may not want to watch or listen. But desensitization had set in pretty hard by this point, and they just sat and continued to exchange soulful looks while Chorn quickly removed the space beast’s head, keeping it wrapped in his jacket as he cut through the strangely-textured flesh. It went easier and quicker, yet quite gooier than expected, as the fluid that poured out was of a thick and pungent, awful smelling, neon greenish purple swirl, with a used motor-oil coloration to it. 

  When finished, he carefully tied tight the removed head in the coat that he’d covered the face with. “I have a place for this,” he stated with confidence. “Gutaltaar, Demi-Ghoul, ancient beyond words, a deeply secret and sacred idea that in some way runs through every belief system there is, or isn’t, or ever has or has not been, and has been around since the first found cave paintings, to those strange mountains in the Antarctic no one seems able to get to, but someone appears to claim to find now and again. Those explorers usually go catatonic-crazy as well. Thankfully, we won’t. Julie, you may refer to me as Dr. Chorn in the article. I knew you were readin’ me, kid. Good skills. Smart, observant. You will write about this, and people will love it. Trust me. They will doubt it. However, the taking of the head…please, no mention of that. I’m sure the cavalry—heh—will be here shortly. I will not. I gotta get out of Dodge—and get this to a safe place. The only place I know of. 

  “Jonathan, you are a true gent and a scholar of the highest accord. You will also write about this, but in a different way. You will present it as fiction.” He smiled at both of them warmly.

  There were a million questions burning in both John and Julie’s minds. They understood, what exactly they weren’t sure, but they understood.

  “Oh, one final thing!” Chorn was excited as he fished the oddly etched comet piece he had kept from the woods out from the one exposed outer pocket of his balled-up coat, placed it on the table, and told Julie to get her notebook out and to write what he was about to attempt to recite from the carving within the comet-eggshell. 

  She did just that, with her big goofy pen, tipped with a vampire bat:

“Waves of empty crash so violent

           Upon jagged rocks

           Bodies vile strewn ashore

           Primordial creatures flop

           Complications of Mind and Soul

           The Will just won’t resign

           Lonely depths of Cosmos

           Vast reaches of Deep Time

           Dark matter and hydrogen

           Creating stillborn planets

           Atomic Chaos and Oxygen

           Silent still so Ancient

           Suicide suns burnt out

           Cave in on Themselves

           Entropy shifts and swallows

           There is no heaven and no hell.”

Chorn put the rock back in his pocket. “I’m sorry, it has to come with. You may see me again one day, hopefully under better circumstances. I keep a watch on my friends. Thank you, so very much. Rest your minds, enjoy each other, love each other. Johnny, light me up one of those joints I’ve been smelling all night.” 

 The three sat together, Chorn took a few puffs, then said, “Well kids, I must be on my way. I can’t be here when they get here, capiche?”

 Julie quickly queried, “Doc, what do we say happened to the head?”

 Chorn smirked. “The truth. The bear saved the day, sawed off the head, and ate it. Now go smoke, fuck like bunnies, have a great night and a better life, which I know you will.” With that he was in his car and gone, in seconds.

 John and Julie laid against Cyimir, all three comfy and warm, the adrenaline and terror leaving their system slowly. Within minutes, the cavalry, as Chorn had put it, showed up. Military, police, and men in suits with shiny badges. They were nice enough, however, bringing paramedics and food to the two star-crossed lovers, Cyimir, Paisley and Quacks.

 Statements were given and a million questions were asked, many by one icy Dr. Josef Cetero. And he did indeed, as one of his final questions, ask: “What happened to the head?”

 John and Julie looked at each other and kind of giggled.

 “What’s so funny?” asked the confused and humorless Cetero.

 John replied, “The bear sawed its head clean off.”

 “Then ate the fuck out of it,” Julie quickly added.

 Cetero seemed even more irritated. “You’re sure there was no one else with you? By the name of Chorn, perhaps? Claiming to be a doctor?” The man was flushed purple with rage.

 They shook their heads in unison. “Never heard of him,” John said. “Just us.” Julie and John returned their attentions to each other, as Walter Paisley signed the appropriate papers to get Cyimir to safety, as well as to retain ownership of Quacks.

 Outside, in the darkening shadows of night, as the chaos cleared, one silly silhouette could still be seen, stumbling around in the falling snow. It was that one, lousy, blind six-foot penguin.

The

END





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