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

by Vincent Daemon

Chapter V

Red Exposure

John had broken down and called Corman anyway, on the hospital phone, sending the unsympathetic bastard into a fit of profane, stressed rage of highly uncalled-for proportions, especially considering the situation. Jesus Christ it’s like I have Joan for a boss and Corman for a girlfriend John angrily thought as he left the hospital to return the truck, which according to Corman, the cost to fix was coming out of his pay. 

         
  Afterward, he waited in the cold, yet again, this time for a bus, to go back to the hospital and not only check on the woman he had helped, but to try to figure out just what they had seen.  

 While waiting for the bus his phone finally rang. It was Joan. Begrudgingly, he answered the call.  “I’m not going to deal with this anymore, John. Your shitty job, your shitty attitude, your shitty writing, your...” her tirade continued. He could tell she’d been smoking crack or something by the awful dry-muck smacking sounds of her dehydrated mouth as it raged its misappropriated venom in his direction. All he’d done was be there for her when she’d have her weekly psychotic breaks, or some drug dilemma, or any other number of idiocies having to deal with her dancer-drama lifestyle. He felt that his seemingly limitless patience had finally run its course. The fact that she also considered her own artwork some sort of brilliance, when it was barely more than smeary morbid crap, was also something he’d really had enough of. Her chronic small lies and omissions of truth, her incessant infidelity until it was finally declared (again, by her choosing) an “open relationship,” meaning in her language “I do what I want, you stay alone and deal with it yourself.”

 Standing there in the freezing cold, waiting for a bus that he may not have enough money to get on, and essentially just dealing with December 23rd’s general non-stop parade of strange and horrible happenings already, he’d reached his limit. “You know what, Joan? You can fuck off,” he said with the greatest of ease, a twisted smirk rising on his face, “I don’t need your problems, I don’t need your bullshit, and most all, I don’t need you.” The deadest of telephone silences he had ever heard from her strung itself out for a moment, before Joan replied. “Johnny, don’t be...”

 “No, Joan, fuck you. I know where you’re at, what you’re doing, and quite frankly, I can’t stand you anymore. Really, I just want you and your bad ju-ju gone, out of my life. I don’t need it anymore, any of it. I’m done. Goodbye.”

 He struck the hangup button on his phone with his finger hard enough to hear a faint crack, and couldn’t believe he just did what he did. But, for the sake of his own sanity, his own self-preservation which, until recently, was something he never gave a damn about, it was necessary. Still, knowing it shouldn’t have, it hurt. John knew he’d never really been anything but a novelty to Joan anyway, and just stood there alone in the cold, holding it in and accepting the situation for what it was. Paisley was right. He should have gotten rid of this grief-machine long ago.

 Now he had finally done just that, and it wasn’t really making him feel too much better. But not worse. Really, more confused than anything else.

 The bus finally pulled up, John flicked his cigarette to the ground before entering the bus and bumping straight into one of the cutest, most adorable-eyed strawberry blondes he’d ever seen. She wore thick glasses, intensifying the lightly hazel green eyes that shimmered in her temporary befuddlement of just being bumped into by this longish haired, leather jacketed stranger that reeked of petting zoo, cigarettes, and pot. Apparently, in their knocking into one another while both lost in their own thoughts and attempting to simply board the bus, John had accidentally knocked the cute blonde’s book to the ground, a typically klutzy move for him.

 He bent down and quickly retrieved it from the curb. Upon standing back up he bumped the back of his head right into her heavy and overfilled purse-satchel. “Oh dear, I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed with embarrassment. “I’m a bit of a clumsy arse, and new in town, please excuse me, I am so very sorry...”

 John, blush-red in the face as could be, and stricken with awe at the beauty that stood before him, managed to stammer out “No, apologies are all mine. I wasn’t paying attention, its been a long day, and I’m a clumsy ass anyway,” not really knowing where to go with it from there other than saying “after you” and offering her onto the bus first, accompanied with a not-entirely-comical chivalrous gesticulation of his arms. 

 They entered the bus, she first, and by default John found his face right at her backside as she paid the fair. He tried not to stare but it was almost impossible. She had the nicest little heart-shaped buttocks he’d noticed in quite some time, donned as they were in a tight and faded dark-blue denim stretch fabric that seemed painted on to shapely, strong legs, the denim disappearing at the knee into a pair of black faux-leather boots. 

 She took a seat all the way in the back, where it was empty, and John went to sit in the middle somewhere but she waved him back, calling out “Here, sit with me,” as she did so. Of course, he followed her suggestion and took a seat right beside her. “I’ve always preferred the backs of busses, personally,” she stated whilst rummaging aimlessly through her purse. 

 She stopped and looked over at him, from above the rim of her glasses, a look that instantly melted his heart. “I’m sorry. I’m Julie Adams,” and she smiled, her face lighting up like a million watt bulb, and extended her hand.

 “I’m John. John Agar,” he replied almost sheepishly, gently taking her soft and creamy-white hand, fingertips a shiny crimson polish, and accepting her gesture of a new found friendship. He was also a bit flummoxed that this adorable little thing he had just made a fool of himself in front of was so friendly and, well, seemed interested or–something his gut was telling him that he desperately tried to ignore.

 Not quite knowing what to say next, nor what to do, it occurred to him the book he had so clumsily knocked from her hands moments ago was none other than one of his own favorite novels, I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson. “Amazing book. My favorite actually.” She didn’t seem disinterested yet. “In fact I happen to be a fan of most of Matheson’s writing.”

 “You’ve got to be joking. This can’t possibly be your favorite book. This is my favorite book. We can’t have possibly both have the same favorite book, now can we?” In an abnormally comfortable silence they each slowly began to chuckle with the other. “I’m in town to cover some sort of goofy Holiday Carnival. Not the gig I wanted, but it’ll suffice,” she nonchalantly blurted out to John. “It’s money, I guess.”

 “You’re a journalist then?” John was hoping his nervousness was well under wraps, and that the redness in his cheeks looked like nothing more than slight wind-burn. He wondered if he should mention he was a writer as well.

 “Unfortunately,” she smiled sarcastically. “What do you do?”

 “I work at the infamous, one and only Corman’s Petting Zoo,” John replied with all the zest and zeal of stepping barefoot into a pile of warm dogshit. 

 “Oh, the place with Cyimir the Polar Bear! And Quacks, the nine-hundred-seventy-five pound duck!” she exclaimed, knowing intuitively that both not only was something horribly amiss with this uniquely odd petting zoo, but that shadily acquired polar bears and mutant ducks made better infotainment (how she loathed that ridiculous, meaningless term, used by her boss incessantly) headlines than a mere hundred year old small-town carnival. Plus, not only did this John Agar fellow actually work for Corman’s, he had great taste in books (meaning he was literate–a quality she justifiably found rather rare these days), seemed intelligent yet somewhat mysterious, and was incredibly cute to her eyes, as well. 

 They each seemed to feel a shy and mutual magnetic draw toward one another. “I write,” John suddenly blurted out himself, out of nowhere.

 Another unexpected intrigue with this fellow visibly registered on her face. “You do? What? I thought you worked for Corman’s?” 

 “Nothing I really get paid for, and I’ve only been published a couple times. It’s more that I just love to write. Always have. My brain is like a perpetual-motion engine, and that’s how I get it out, I guess.” Julie sat completely silent, enraptured with what he was telling her, which John noticed, so went on a little more. “It’s horror and sci-fi mostly, some verse. Nothing much. Pulp mostly, I guess, heh.”

 “I want to read some, and I highly doubt its ‘pulp’.” Her tone was gentle yet almost chiding. “Do not defamenate what you do. And yes, I said defamenate, my word.” Julie smiled a silly smile, then looked back down and began to nervously rummage through her mess of a purse again, chewing her lower lip on the left side, seemingly in a sudden state of thought. A moment later: “I think I’m going to tag along with you today, if you don’t mind. Or even if you do.”

 His heart almost jumped from his chest with an almost teenage-feeling of excitement. “Yeah, sure! I mean, if that’s really what you want to do. I don’t want to throw your little Dolton holiday history article off or...”

 “Oh fuck no, John, this is far more interesting, believe you me. And you seem like fun to hang with for the day or next couple, anyway.” The warmth of her smile seemed to radiate an angelic glow before him; he swore he could feel it like the heat from the searing comet he had seen just twelve hours prior. 

 Trying to keep his astonishment and quite sudden change of heart about the day very well contained, he gave her a caveat in case she suddenly opted on an out, as this seemed absolutely impossible to him. “Well, I have to go to the hospital first and check on someone, before I go back to Corman’s.” He thought for a second, looked into her eyes (which apparently had already most dreamily been staring at his) and decided to divulge what he thought perhaps he should not. But this chick was obviously already tapped-into the strange–something he could just tell–and he had an unusual instinctive trust. “I’m going to tell you why we are going to the hospital, the exact reason.” He figured, fuck it. “Something very strange happened last night, and it may have something to do with why this woman is in the hospital.”

 Her expression became one of both instantaneous excitement and seriousness, as well as complete attention, though her eyes still gazed right into his. “Do you mind if I record this, John Agar?” she spoke into a little old-school mini-cassette recorder she had pulled from the mess of her heavy black and skull-patched purse. 

 “No, not at all. In fact, I’d like every word of this documented, because, Julie, I feel like I’m losing my goddamned mind.”

 “You did mention it was a ‘long day.’ Do tell.” She was genuinely intrigued. 

 “Heh, long doesn’t even begin to cover it. Hope you have enough tape on that cassette, or a very good memory.”

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Chapter VI of
A SILENT NIGHT

(FOR A DEMI-GHOUL)
by Vincent Daemon

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by Keith Graham

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

by Vincent Daemon

Chapter IV

All That Remains

 The deer-killer sat high in the treetops. What passed for its lungs roughly adjusted to the new atmosphere of this alien world it had accidentally been thrust upon. Our functions were not its functions. Breathing, as such, was new. Inhalation hurt, and exhalation it barely understood. This was a strange place, nothing like what it (somewhat) remembered of its homeworld. This world seemed cold, too humid, nothing at all like the charred piece of dim red rock from whence it came. 

 It looked at this world and its strange colors (for we had colors that neither its eye nor mind had ever glimpsed) and all the life (i.e: food) that seemed to flood every last part of it. It sat hunched in the highest tree, trying to be as close to the slowly clouding over sun as possible, emanating low and unhappy growls of dismal displacement and discomfort.

 A hawk flew by, busily scouring the ground below for mice or a rabbit, maybe even a kitten. As it soared past the creature, it was swiped so quickly from the sky it didn’t even have a chance to realize that predator had just become prey, the large bird a morsel to the colossal maw of the beast. The hawk in its claw looked like a sparrow in a human hand, as it greedily shoved the struggling bird into its razor toothed mouth whole, crunching down hard on every bone and feather and bit of cartilage, until it began to bring the glop of fresh avian gore back up into its cupped claws, then proceeded to slurp up the mess of remains and bile once again, swallowing it back down with animal glee.

 All this did was serve to act as an appetizer, making the creature hungrier, crankier. It was both too bright and too cold out to sleep. At least there was a consistent and self generated source of the steady heat it required in the minuscule comet-shell it had been hibernating for aeons within. Indeed, this thing had been traveling within its capsule since long before the birth of even the planet Earth. Many times had it bounced off the edges of the ever-expanding and once young universe inadvertently consuming whatever even semi-biological thing it happened to bump into. Whether it be by sheer destructive force or its own eternal, infernal, telepathic ability to seep into and devour the minds of the more intelligent beings it came across over trillions of years, beings of which it could not get its claws physically upon–yet another odd quirk of its confounding evolutionary development, of its mere existence. 

 In its own way the beast pondered and dreamt, much as any other living  sentient being. It did indeed have vague recollections of things like the sudden appearance of the entity of time; of strange civilizations come and gone before its bleary ageless eye. It had countless memories of spiraling black holes and wormholes and the strange delights and horrors that lay on the opposite sides of each, every one of these loose knit memories taken in through its cosmic rocky womb-shell capsule by sheer psychological osmosis alone, as it traversed these galaxies eternally with one eye perpetually half-open; seeing everything, knowing all...understanding none of it. 

 And now it had been birthed into this strange new world which was in no way shape or form its own, nor meant for it to any capacity. It could barely even breathe, still not properly adjusting to the atmosphere, and its stomach still roiled with an insatiable craving for more fresh flesh. Having for perhaps the first time actually tasted blood, as opposed to merely draining life-forces through its cosmo-psychic abnormalities of osmatic consumption–it fiendishly craved more.

 It caught then a whiff of something in the air, iron-rich and fresh, coming from the ground. Something alive, made of the flesh, blood, bone, and gristle it so craved. As well as a mind. 

 It peered in silence down from the treetops in which it was creeping, and noticed an odd two-legged creature in strangely hued rags, apparently running for some reason. Excited, and being slowly driven by its bloodlust, the beast stilled in the treetops to gain a better visual perspective.

 Its eyes had been focused on Debra Hill, a forty-something homemaker out on her early morning jog. It watched as she quietly jogged along, lost in her own world of wanting to look better for her husband, tone herself up, what trashy grocery store book she was going to read next, how her new pastel-pink jogging suit looked, household grocery lists...so many thoughts that had absolutely nothing to do with the nearly indescribable terror that dropped down right in front of her as she jogged aloofly along. Debra’s mouth fell agape yet no sound came forward as this immense thing stared her down, making a low growling sound most comparable to that of a predacious tiger playing with its soon to be meal. 

 The beast lurched a good five feet or so over her, and that was while it hunched. Debra stood catatonic, little parts of her brain shutting down, neither a fight nor a flight response, she was truly paralyzed. She could not tear her eyes away from it as the beast gazed down at this new and strange looking being in astonishment. She smelt delectably good and was quite obviously incapable of any kind of self-defense against its tyrannical size; its mouth bigger than her head alone, and dripping copious amounts of viscous brown and rank smelling saliva.

 It watched her skin grow from its initial rosy jogger-pink to absolute death-white, her lips purpling, her once naturally dark brown hair (of which she’d always been so proud, with nary a gray hair to be found at the age of forty-seven) doing the same, as the beast used its eyes, locked onto hers, into hers, to begin its psychic drain, before maybe tearing her to pieces for physical consumption. To the creature, that would be a main course and some dessert as well. The drain being the dessert, of course, the drain from these particular beings having an almost narcotic effect on the creature that it immediately noticed, and was quite fond of.

 It decided it was time to just tear into her, and raised its left arm to slice her in two just as a very loud and unexpected sound startled the creature into immediate flight and it unfurled its massive wingspan and took off, leaping straight up into the sky.

 The sound was that of a horn from a fourteen foot U-Haul truck. It immediately stopped, the driver jumping out and rushing to check on the woman as she merely trembled and collapsed.

 She gibbered in strange incoherencies he could not understand, and knew the woman was in some kind of obvious shock: her hair was riddled now with streaks of a brilliant white; she had wet herself, leaving a giant dark stain on the front of her new pink sexy-soccer mom jogging suit; and her eyes were strange, looking almost seared, cataract over and glazed, no longer aware of this plane. Her face, its visual appearance, was now withered and grotesque looking, like some end-stage bag-lady atrocity only more unnatural. She looked as though she had aged fifty years.

 John Agar happened to be the driver of the truck, and he scooped Debra up and took her immediately to the hospital. He did try to use his cell phone to call an ambulance first, but it was still not working. His own trembling hands were having a difficult time fumbling with the micro-buttons as it was. Fucking government cell phones.

 Weaving the truck maniacally in and out of traffic, going back and forth between chaotically watching the road and checking on Debra simultaneously, he just couldn’t shake the form of what he thought he had just seen in the road suddenly disappear up into the sky. It very much resembled the hideous shadow form that he’d seen at 3 a.m, the same shape as the one that was blacker than black, when its silhouetted, darkened hell-form blackened out the luminous glow of the stars in the moonless sky as it swooped with eerie gracefulness through the silent night. 

 This deeply troubled John to no end. As he rushed the woman into the emergency room he had to give a statement to police (which he was not thrilled about, still having four reeking joints on him in his coat sleeve pocket), but was allowed out to have a cigarette first, after being thanked profusely by the staff for his quick and thoughtful act of bringing a suffering stranger into the hospital. They told him most would’ve just driven by, left her there, etc, but none too much of it really settled into his mind right. In fact, it barely registered at the time. There was no way he could erase what he’d seen, and this time he knew he saw it. 

 What the fuck was he possibly going to say to police? Should he even mention the catching a glimpse of the “suspect”? Plus, he was supposed to have the truck back to the U-Haul center, and Corman was furious. John didn’t even bother calling the cranky fuck back. Dealing with the poor, scared, improperly doped polar bear was enough. Fuck Corman. Prick.

John needed to stay and make sure the woman was going to be okay, and maybe find out just what the hell happened, what had she just witnessed that rendered her now seemingly devoid of mind and soul, a withered husk of nothing but rapidly, continually wasting madness. What had they both seen?

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Chapter V

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

by Vincent Daemon

Chapter Three

Greed

  “Late again, huh, Agar?” laughed the only other employee at Corman’s, Walter Paisley. He was an older, weathered man, had worked at the petting zoo since it had originally opened in 1954, hated Corman with a passion, and much preferred the establishment when it was run by founder Harold-Ray Hausen: he knew how to treat the animals, the employees, and the customers. Harold had been a generous and gregarious gentleman who just intuitively knew how to deal with any manner of personality, animal and human alike, with as little conflict or instigation as possible, should any kind of issue arise, which was an utter rarity. Plus, he wasn’t all about the money, or freakishly strange animals, or winning ridiculous holiday carnivals. Harold-Ray Hausen was the polar opposite of Corman. But Paisley genuinely loved the animals and stayed aboard, much like John. And, much like John, who was twenty-five years his junior, desperately needed the money. Over the years, John and Walter formed a unique friendship, and worked very well together. “You look cold, buddy. Car again?”

 
 “Yeah,” John sighed out with a thick white plume of cigarette smoke. “Fuckin’ spark plug–what else would it be? Dammit.”

“I told you to get ridda that car months ago, kid. It’s a grief-machine, much like that wacko death-stripper girlfriend of yours. She refused to help ya out again, I’m supposin’.”

“Yeah,” John sighed again, another plume of white smoke streaming out with the word. “Not sure if she ever was my girlfriend.”

“I told ya ta get ridda that grief-machine months ago too, remember? And no, she never was.” Walter indeed kept his own series of painful lifelong experiences. Being older and wiser, and a bit of a strange fellow himself, he’d had more than his share of ex-wives and relationship griefs over the years to know well and rightly of what he spoke. “She’s just gonna ruin your life, kid, like Corman did this zoo, an’ you got a good head on them there shoulders. Get that wacky stuff you write published, don’t end up here forever, like I did. A broad like that’ll do that to a man. Shit, ya shoulda called me, I’d'a grabbed ya, no problem.”

“I wasn’t going to bug you at three a.m. man, you’re old, you need that rest,” John chuckled smoke out at Walter.

“OLD! You little sonofabitch, I oughta...” and he came over and patted John on the back like a caring old uncle. “Hey Johnny, you got any reefer on ya? I’m nervous about this polar bear. Corman’s a fucknut, and this is just a plain bad idea. If I didn’t need the goddamn money so bad, and love these damned animals so much, I’d walk the hell out right now.” The look on Walter’s face was one of obvious, long-term stewing discontentment and genuine concern. “An’ ta tell ya tha truth, kid, I’m more concerned about Corman than that poor goddamned bear. He’d do something really stupid, like let a kid feed the bear.”

 John laughed aloud, “you’re killing me man,” as he pulled another joint from his pocket (that was how they both coped with the job and Corman himself–they took any number of “smoke breaks” a day–and John had a few extra on him this particular day) and handed it to Paisley. “Take it to the head, my friend. All yours, med grade. Go take this and kill it up before Corman gets here. I’m gonna suit up.” 

 Ten minutes later, a familiar bark came from the main office door, “It’s Polar Bear Day fellas! And he’s just about here!” There was a sickly joy of demonic holiday greed writhing within every word Corman spoke. And complete recklessness. “I’m thinking we should put him by those stupid, giant-ass blind penguins that keep bumping into each other like fools. It’ll probably rile-up the bear good! The kids are gonna love it!” The man just kept speaking as he approached John and the freshly stoned Paisley, his words disappearing into both their ears not unlike those strange, muted “grown-up” voices from the old Charlie Brown cartoons. To John and Walter, Corman’s words were merely guttural utterances and commands, typically crude and regularly mechanical, albeit much louder than necessary. 

 And, as always, his plan was terrible. “We’re just going to back the truck right up to the cage. That way we have the duck, those stupid penguins, and the polar bear all lined up together. The transfer should be easy, like I said, right from the back of the U-haul to his new cagey home. This bear fucker is getting door to door service, so this shit better pay off. It wasn’t cheap, y’know.” 

 Yeah, they knew. It reflected in their recent pay-cut. “An absolute necessity if we are going to have a profitable holiday, and I want that damned bear!” being Corman’s constant mutterings to them since before even September. 

 “Truck's here, let’s get to it guys, chop-chop!” commanded Corman in his muted-trumpet tone of quasi-authority, obnoxious double-handed clap included.

 John and Walter glared at Corman (he was shuffling papers, as always, counting numbers, didn’t even notice their death glances), then looked to each other in that way close friends do when needing to communicate without words: This is going to be one long, bad fucking day.

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Chapter IV

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

by Vincent Daemon

Chapter II

Angelfire

 A lone family of four deer (comprised of an immense eight-point buck, an exquisite doe, and two mid-sized fawns) had quite the short-lived startlement as the large glowing red rock came barreling through the trees and right onto their feeding ground. The deer scattered as the meteor struck piles of dried leaves and pine needles with a loud dull thud, leaving a noxious scent in its wake and a small but quickly burnt out brush-fire.

 The tight knit herd of Cervidae very slowly returned to inspect the sizzling rock as it began to cool, crackling as it did so. They gathered around, not only due to that innocent curiosity deer seem to have about new things introduced to their territory, but also to appreciate the heat rapidly fading away with the low and deep reddish glow of the three-foot diameter ball from the sky. 

 As the deer cautiously moved closer and closer in, the cooling spheroid continued to crackle, this time with a much louder ripping-of-rock sound, stopping the deer dead in their tracks again. As the rock split in two from the inside, a bright red light emanated from within. The light blinded all four deer into complete stillness, freezing them from acting upon their usual nervous nature, and they didn’t seem to notice the heaving, hunched form lurking from within that forceful red glow. 

 With nary a warning or sound the monstrous thing leapt up and out of the radiance from within the rock, and with a set of massive, purple razor-sharp claws it spun around counter-clockwise in an unexpected explosion of sheer bestial rage, tearing the throats of all four of the deer family haphazardly out in one fell swoop, their bodies falling to the ground and gibbering through breaths torn open with gurgling sounds of anguish. The creature who did this emitted a brutal roar of something most assuredly not from this earth. 

 The beast looked down at its still not quite dead, twitching, oblivious prey. It then hunched back down and began to feast upon its fresh kills like a greedy and starving homeless schizophrenic left alone in the shelter kitchen for too long. It stuffed itself sick, vomiting up the contents almost immediately, bone fragments and all, then re-stuffing them back down into its all too eager guts. The beast’s meal stayed down after it sucked up the vomitous remains, this apparently being a part of its eating process. The sloppy belches, regurgitation, and suckling broke the still of the night in two.  

 In fact, it had already broken the fabric of many a-thing. The beast surveyed its surroundings, its night vision in any circumstances being of the utmost perfection. It looked at the dark woods, at the pile of fresh and steaming remains it had just left of the easy prey, and inhaled the crisp December air deep into itself, exhaling out a second, different kind of sound, low and more like an extended raspy wheeze. It then examined the crystal clear, starry night and spread its immense arms wide, upon which a set of purplish-red, thick leathery wings splayed out, attached to its back. With a small bend of its hyena-like legs, the bizarre creature launched itself up into the sky, bashing through the thick tangle of dead leafless tree branches with all the ease of having kicked over a Lincoln-Log house. 

 As John wandered the dark road, mind already a-flutter with racing thoughts of his ever-mounting frustrations, he realized this was the thing he could have sworn he saw soaring, almost formless in the dark and starry moonless night. A silhouetted shape not of anything he’d ever borne witness to.  A monstrous thing larger than any human or the wingspan of some night bird. The thing’s silhouette blocked out the shimmering glow shed from all the dead stars that littered the empty blackness. 

 But this thing was blacker than any of those empty spaces. This thing felt to John like that blackness.  He spotted it, of course, immediately after two of the worst animalistic howls he’d ever heard. They were not the sounds of any standard creature in the Dolton area. John at first thought the sounds may be due to foxes in heat, but that is too recognizable, and this was the wrong time of year. These sounds came from no fox, no stray bear or mountain lion. He had no idea what they could have come from. But after seeing that ghastly form in the sky that blocked out the stars only moments after the blood-curdling screeches, he began to triple-time it to Corman’s. Visions of the first attack from An American Werewolf In London danced in his stressed-out head, sending shockwaves down his shivering spine, flowing like the primordial warnings they indeed were.

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Chapter III

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

by Vincent Daemon

Chapter I

Moon Glow

   The abrasive, twisted punk rock’n’roll of Cancerslug thrummed slowly to a stop in the background, as Jonathan Agar sat in the driver’s seat of his car, a frustrated exhaustion clogging every pore of his being. The very last thing he needed to deal with at this moment was yet another vehicular breakdown on the way to his loathsome job at the infamous Corman’s Petting Zoo. Especially in the 3 a.m. cold and black-as-pitch stillness of Middle-Of-Nowhere, Dolton, PA, where this night was indeed eerily silent and quite clear.

 He looked up above and seemingly every star could be seen, a strange and most exalted feeling of infinite isolation taking hold of his being, as the cloudless sky made him even more aware of his insignificance within these endless realms of ever-expanding universe. He pushed the thought from his head, as it only fueled his increasing, as-of-late near-consistent negativity.  

         
  John pulled on his smoke in a state of justified annoyance. It was most definitely the spark plug, and he was out of his stash of extra plugs (maybe out of spark plugs, but thankfully, for his own peace of mind, not good middies), as this was a regular issue with his shit-beater of a car. His only choice was to walk the frigid two miles to deal with this day’s oncoming nightmare scenario (he could just feel it), which included the drop-off of a shadily acquired and notoriously ill-behaved polar bear named Cyimir to the petting zoo.

 Yeah, it boggled John’s mind, but everything Corman did seemed to have that effect. It was to be for the annual Doltonwood (the nickname for the town center) Christmas Carnival, so that this year Corman could win the large monetary prize (that had eluded him for over a decade) that was supposed to be donated to a charity. Corman’s chosen charity? The Corman Petting Zoo and Preserve Protection Fund, of course. If he were to win. And Christ forbid Corman get the idea in his thick skull to let the kids pet or feed the damn bear at some point, which is something the cheap codger would do for an extra buck or two without a second thought. A polar bear for Christ’s sake? As if that damned nine-hundred-seventy-five pound duck weren’t enough. Or those creepy, giant blind penguins. Fuck, man, this is shit I shouldn't even have to worry about, let alone walking two miles in the sub-freezing cold in the dead of fucking night to get to this underpaid shitstain of a job John’s mind repeated as he began to bundle up for his dreaded walk.

          
 But, there may be another option to this whole walking thing, he figured. That option would be to call his essentially ex-girlfriend, Joan, which would definitely be pushing the limits of a tough boundary set of her choosing. The cold of the night seemed like the warmest, sweetest of days compared to Joan’s frigidity of personality. But that walk in this kind of bum-killing cold was ridiculous, and he figured she might pick him up, even though her track record of reliability, in any given situation–let alone an emergency–was virtually nil. This he knew from personal experience: she really couldn’t stand him, and openly admitted on more than one occasion that the only reason she kept him around was that he was “a good fuck” as she so graciously put it. He knew this, but options in Dolton were slight, and it fed his self-defamatory mindset anyway, so he just stuck with it. Besides, what else did he really expect from a dancer of her particular sketchy caliber? But the faulty ego-boost had long ago faded, the words “I Love You” meaning nothing more than “‘k, whatever” in her language.

 He made the call anyway.

         
 “What?” was the chilly answer. “What do you want.”

          
 “I was just on my way to work, and my last spark plug blew. I was kind of wondering if you were available to, I don’t know, maybe give me a lift to work, I’m still about two miles away, and it’s fucking dangerously cold out here.”

          
 “No,” was her quick and simple reply.

           
 “Joan, it’s fucking freezing out here, literally. Look, I’ll even pay you.”

         
 “No.” Not even a moment for her to contemplate a different answer.

          
 John could hear what sounded like several other females and males alike in the background. “Oh, I guess you’re busy right now...”

         
 “Yeah, in fact I am. Me’n some of the girls are hanging out at Laughton’s house. I’ll be here all night at least, so you can–” the more Joan hurdled her drug-rant stripper-insults directly into John’s ear (words he knew he’d eventually hear from her wanna-be bad-girl goth-dancer mouth of self-deluded unattainability)–the more his mind and heart seethed. John’s cell phone died, just then, in the middle of that horrendously hateful rant.  

 In fact, it all just suddenly stopped working. Everything–at some point he could never quite trace back to–just stopped working. His entire existence.

         
 John stood up out of his car and looked around into the clear, cold darkness, feeling truly alone, fighting back involuntary tears of burning frustration.  Looking up to mock a God he never knew if he ever believed in, John began to notice this darkness growing rather quickly into a blinding white-blue fiery light that emanated from a ball streaming through the sky, his teary gaze clearing finally as he looked up. This ball of flame was leaving behind it the most astonishing and beautiful tail of sparks and fizzling fiery pops and blasts, far beyond the faux-grandiosity he’d seen of so many staid and standard fireworks displays. Colors popped from it that he wasn’t sure he’d even seen before this moment. Odd glowing “reds” and “indigos”–really the best descriptions he could think of–though those were not the colors, just the closest proximity to which he could relate them.  

 There was a heat that projected from this quickly shrinking ball that faded with the size of the unexpected meteor, or comet, or whatever this would be considered. The heat was, for a moment, like standing next to a bonfire too close, but as it fizzled out it was the same feeling as that bonfire rapidly dying down, a quick cooling off back to the cold of this early winter night. A noxious, sulfurous and methane-tinged scent began to linger in the air after the fiery ball from another place had disappeared into the thick tangle of woods that extended from the sides of the road, the outskirts of Dolton, an ever dark and mysterious place known locally as The Diabolos Hills.

          
 “Holy shit!” John exclaimed aloud. “I should make a wish or something I guess, heh,” he chuckled to himself. And just that he did, knowing of course that such silliness was the fodder of childhood dreams and magickal thinking (certainly something not new to John). His wish was simple, but he dare not even think it a second time, let alone mumble it aloud. He felt silly enough even doing it just that once, the mere thought, almost like an atheist attending Christmas Midnight Mass. But if there was even the slightest possibility of its occurrence, of this wish ever coming true, so to speak, he didn’t want that clusterfucked in any way whatsoever.

          
 Down that long, dark, and frigid road John began his walk to this job he hated more than anything other than possibly Joan at that moment. But he was happy the strange meteor or whatever it was in the sky stopped that wretched conversation. That was the actual very last thing he needed to deal with at that moment. In fact, he was just happy to have seen whatever it was–it was beautiful and unexpected–a rare quirk of cosmic, extraterrestrial nature he had just witnessed. Something most never get to witness. Amidst his shit-storm of a life that internally ate away at him like an armpit full of chiggers, he felt grateful to have been possibly the lone viewer of this spectacular natural event.

          

 He pulled a nicely rolled joint from his coat pocket, lit up, then began his long trudge down the cold, quiet and lonely late night highway.  It felt like, looked like, and even sounded like the perfect metaphor for his life.

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Chapter II