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

 by Vincent Daemon

Chapter VI

These Days Are Not The '70s

 “That sonofabitch is fuckin’ me for the carnival. I’m tellin’ ya he’s doin’ it on purpose!” bellowed Corman at Walter Paisley, infuriated that John had stopped to take an injured person to the hospital. And poor Walt had merely been sitting there, peacefully eating his lunch, sitting next to Quacks, the nine-hundred and seventy-five pound duck, whom he’d developed quite the personal and deep bond with. Walter would share his lunch with the poor mutant fowl every day, often engaging in a kind of communication, talking to him. The duck always leaned his bill just outside the cage, right onto Walter’s left shoulder.

 “He’s a good kid, Corman, not some self-centered douche like you. What was he supposed to do, leave the broad lying there, sick or whatever the problem is, in the middle of the road, freezing?” Paisley said this calm as could be, taking a bite out of his sandwich, then letting Quacks have a nibble. “Would you really have left her there, Corman? For real?”

 “You’re goddamned right I would’a. The back of that truck smells like bear shit, which is gonna cost me extra, goddamnit. He’s gettin’ it back there late...more money. Fuck his pay, and his bonus, too.”

 “Calm down you cranky old shit. And you know as well as I do there ain’t no ‘bonus’.” Walter was one of the few who Corman allowed to speak to him in such a manner; they’d been working together some fifty-plus years. “The kid is being a good citizen, and it’s the Holidays, lighten the hell up. The bear is here, it’s calm-ish, but not happy, I can tell you that. Bad idea Corman. Bad idea.”  

 Corman glared from beneath his furrowed brow as Walter continued. “The Zoo is clean, the animals fed, cages washed. That kid is here seven days a week, then you don’t even know what he goes home to. You pay him just enough so that he is eligible for food stamps, yet he comes in every day and takes your annoying shit. Day in, day out. An’ he has for years. Be thankful you have the fucking kid, or you’d be screwed. You probably ain’t gonna have me much longer as it is. Hell, you been takin’ advantage of him, an’ me, for years, since Harold-Ray passed. Give him a fucking break, huh?”

 Corman looked annoyed. He knew Walter was right, though it literally sickened his Scrooge-like sensibilities. “You said everything is done, cleaned? They’re all fed, changed, whatever it is you guys do?” None of the animals liked Corman, his demeanor so offensive as to really upset them sometimes, and he knew it, so avoided virtually any and all dealings with them, as much as possible. He just knew how to acquire the strange ones.

 “Yeah, I told you it’s all finished. When Johnny comes back we’ll finish stringing the lights up, then we’re callin’ it a day. Ain’t nothin’ happening until the carnival tomorra anyways.” He handed the rest of his turkey and cheese sandwich to Quacks, whose bill continued to rest peacefully on Paisley’s shoulder, despite the projection of Corman’s obnoxious presence and behavior.

 “Well, I’m callin’ it a day now. See you tomorrow morning. And make sure he got that truck back, goddamnit.” Corman turned and headed towards his Hummer.

 “I’m sure the truck’s fine, ya rotten bastard,” Paisley grumbled under his breath. “Right Quacks? Everything is fine, buddy.” He gently rubbed between the ducks eyes and got up. He figured he should probably go and check on Cyimir the bear, knowing the poor creature’s over-tranquilization would soon be wearing off, and it may not be the happiest of animals to awake and find itself in an environment completely unsuited for its needs. At least it was cold.

 Cyimir was struggling himself to a disoriented wakefulness as Walter checked on him. “Poor guy, I just want you to know this had nothing to do with me. Blame that shit Corman. Hell, tear him to shreds for all I care. Poor bastard, ya.”

 The bear growled a low rumble of what seemed like agreement to Walter’s words and apologetic empathy. Cyimir struggled to his feet, still shaky from the tranquilizers. The at-first cautious but otherwise peaceful bear suddenly scowled angrily and made quite the threatening sound, though not toward his new caretaker friend. The look in the bear’s eyes turned from innocent and lost to borderline rage as he curled his maw into a ferocious snarl, giving Walter quite the start. He turned to see what had suddenly disturbed the bear to that state so suddenly. 

 He couldn’t quite make out what he was seeing, but it seemed to be something large and lurching, hunched and reeking of sulfur, assorted unknown toxins, and rotting flesh...and Walter could hear it moving around just behind the main office building, almost see the haunches of its shoulders over the rooftop.  

 This immediately sent the caretaker’s red flags up on high alert. Somethin’s not right stirred through his mind as he turned the corner slowly, carrying only a mop handle for self defense. “Goddamnit,” he mumbled something about this being the closest thing to a weapon he could find at that moment, shaking the mop in frustration.

 He turned the corner to see a most vile beast that had torn the cage of the six-foot blind penguins open, and was actively in there with them, knee deep in the leftover bits of torso, wing, and head that the thing had not crammed yet into its gullet, vomited up, and re-consumed. Two of the initial eight penguins were trying to waddle off, their blindness causing them nothing more than calamitous harm. One made it, bumping into every possible thing in its way, but still managed to get loose and disappear into the woods.

 The other was immediately seized by the immense claws of the beast. Its neck instantly snapped with a loud bone-crunching sound.

 Paisley charged the beast with the mop handle raised, prepared to bash its skull in, until it turned and roared at him with an ungodly-pitched, otherworldly sound, stopping the penguin’s attempted avenger dead in his tracks, mop handle dropped to the ground as all his limbs went numb with fear. 

 This thing dropped its fresh kill and began to charge at Paisley, who somehow snapped out of his immobility, avoided looking into its dreadfully asymmetrical and misshapen eyes, and ran back to the front of the office, to let Quacks free. It looked as if everything else was already dead. 

 The cosmic monstrosity followed with vigor, enjoying the hunt, while at the same time fighting for its own breath, almost having a gurgling asthma attack in its excitement. That didn’t slow it down any, however. It had a definitive mission.

 As Paisley nervously fumbled with the keys to the duck’s cage, the beast and the polar bear caught full glimpse of each other. A complete silence fell over this bizarre bestial war zone as large snowflakes began to fall from the slate-grey sky.

 Simultaneously both animals released their most ferocious battle cries, the creature from beyond Time charging the bear’s cage and tearing the thick stainless-steel bars asunder with nary a problem. There was almost something cartoonish about it as Paisley kept looking over his shoulder while battling with the huge ring of unmarked keys.

 The bear and the creature began to grapple with one another, throwing slashing punches and gnawing upon each other with their equally immense mouths. The bear howled in repeated agony as the creature grasped it by its throat and tried to stuff the bear’s head into its stinking, drooling maw.

 The creature howled in agony after being stabbed in the back by the fallen mop handle. Paisley had retrieved it, snapped it in two, and used the longer and pointier half to lance the thing from behind. The creature immediately let go of the bear’s throat, the bear falling to the ground with a loud thud and wheezing for air, much as the creature also seemed to be doing as it came for Paisley. Just then, from out of nowhere, the cosmic hell-spawn was knocked on its ass by the immense wing of the nine-hundred-and-seventy-five pound Quacks, defending his lunch-buddy to the hilt. 

 So confused was the ever existent comet-beast, and so gasping for something other than air, wheezing and coughing, that it just hopped off into the sky, much as it did after being startled before attempting to devour Debra Hill. 

 Paisley lay on the ground, trying to push himself up but unable to. He could only lay on his back in the cold ooze of muck beneath him, and for the first time, felt really old. He was trying to resist the shock he felt coming on, recognizable to him from his stint in the Vietnam War, but it was nowhere near the severity of Debra's. As complete exhaustion set in, he was glad he had never looked at the thing's face, directly into its eyes. He'd seen gruesome and ancient, desiccated statues of things that looked like that in the murkiest depths of those sweltering jungles, lost to the ages and impenetrable thickets of twisted vines by cultures long passed, not meant for the sight of man. And he'd seen those. He had no desire to see this.

  Quacks came over to him in its own slow waddle, and covered Paisley with its wing. 

 The bear let itself calm, cool down, then just wandered out of its broken cage and into the swiftly falling twilight.

 “Corman ain’t gonna like this,” Paisley stammered out with a chuckle before falling asleep under the warm safety of Quacks’ wing, covering him from the falling snow.

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Chapter VII

FINNY MOON

by Keith P. Graham

Illustration by S. M. Fletcher

   Cochrane laughed all of a sudden and it sounded more like a dog barking than an old man. He threw his cards down on the table and grabbed at the pile of cash. Enoch stopped him.

   “Let me see, let me see.” Enoch squinted at the cards with his good eye, moving them around with his fingers.

   Neville ran his fingers through what was left of his thin hair and then picked up the cold stub of a cigar he’d dropped on the table.

   “I don’t see it,” he said.

   “That, my friends, is a straight flush.”

   “What?”

   “See, the deuce is wild so the seven stretches to the jack.” Cochrane chuckled as he counted the pot.

   “Damn! That’s it for me, boys,” Neville said, taking a deep breath of the smoky air, “I’m tired of playing three handed tuna. We should change the name to Waiting for Dorsey.”

   Neville opened the door to the Franklin stove and poked at the embers. He threw in a billet of wet wood and slammed the door shut. He held his hands out to the small cast iron stove to warm them, but the heat could not cut through the damp night air.

   “He’s out in this weather this late at night,” Cochrane said, counting his winnings, “and he’s probably off running in circles. The full moon lights up the fog like a solid wall.”

   The distant foghorn sounded, answered by the screech of an air horn. The old men all turned their heads towards the lobster shack’s door, listening to the harbor sounds.

   “That could be Dorsey, now,” said Enoch, “That sounded like he just turned in at the breaker.”

   “It could be anyone,” Enoch said, “Dorsey ain’t the only one stupid enough to be out in this soup.”

   “The report said that this would clear up in the afternoon.” Neville lit his cigar, continuing his contribution to the thick smoke of the room.

   “Naw,” answered Enoch, “When it comes in thick like that in the morning, it never clears up - at least not this late in October.”

   There was another hoot from the air horn and the men nodded to each other. It might be Dorsey coming back up the coast. It sounded like he had rounded the seawall and he would tie up in a minute or two. They heard the putt-putt of his old lobster boat and then the thud as it hit the dock.

   “That’s him, said Cochrane.

   “And drunk, from the sound of it,” said Neville, “He hit pretty hard.”

   The staggered heavy thump of boots against the rotting planks of the old dock sounded through the thin walls of the shack. The yellow light from the kerosene lamp hanging from the ceiling cut through the smoky air when the door opened. Dorsey’s silhouette stretched back into the fog behind him lost in the creamy moonlit mists. He was leaning forward under the weight of a burlap bag on his shoulders.

   “Boys,” roared the big man, “I’ve got a surprise for you. Who’s got a drink?”

Enoch wiped the remains of a cigarette butt from a dirty glass and poured some bourbon into it.

   Dorsey grabbed the glass and drained it in one gulp.

   “Wait until your bastards see this,” he said.

   He leaned forward and dropped the burlap bag unto the table with a thud. Cards, ashtrays and empty glasses went flying. The bag held something big and the tail fins of what looked like a marlin stuck out the opening.

   “What did you catch this time?” asked Cochrane.

   “A marlin?” asked Enoch.

   “A monster mackerel?” asked Neville.

   The three old men leaned over the bag, inspecting the tail.

   “You can’t tell by the tail,” said Dorsey, “this ain’t like no fish I’ve ever seen.”

   He pulled up the bag from the fishy thing. He did it deliberately slow for dramatic effect. About half way up the pale blue scales changed to a smooth blue gray skin. Slowly Dorsey revealed the top half of the thing. It was like a human female.

   “A goddamned mermaid!” gasped Enoch.

   “Teats and all,” said Dorsey, “I fetched it up in my nets off of the east shore of Thacher Island not more than two hours ago.”

   “She dead?” asked Neville.

   “Damn near, I had to club her to keep her from struggling. She moaned a little on the way in, but she hasn’t moved lately.”

   “I don’t see her breathing,” Said Neville.

   “Them’s is gills,” said Enoch pointing to the blue lace at the mermaid’s neck, “maybe she doesn’t breathe.”

   “Naw, she breathes. She was cursing at me in some fishy language. I could tell it was blasphemy, even if I didn’t know the words. I had to club her.”

   Cochrane reached over and pinched one of her blue nipples, hard. There was no reaction. 

   “She’s dead, I guess.”

   “She could just be out from the knock on the head,” said Enoch, “Try giving her some liquor and see if she comes around.”

   “You don’t want to do that,” answered Dorsey, “She’s hell on wheels when she has her wits. She’s better off dead. Look at those claws.”

   He lifted up her hands, but the men could see that they were more like fins with webbing between the fingers. Instead of nails, the fingers ended in sharp barbs.

   “I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong end of these. Let her sleep, or let her die if she’s not yet dead.”

   “You should have thrown her back,” said Cochrane.

   “You should get her stuffed and mounted,” said Neville.

   “You should sell her to a circus,” said Enoch.

   The four men stared down at the creature, deciding her fate.

   “Well, if she’s dead I might get her mounted,” said Dorsey.

   “You can’t stuff a person, and she’s like half a girl, at least.”

   “Yeah,” answered Cochrane, “some bleeding heart will start talking about equal rights all mixed up with endangered species and then confuse it with some kind of Department of Fish and Game regulation you forgot about.”

   “There has to be about 30 pounds of good meat in the tail,” said Neville, “If she’s dead, you can sell that as part of your catch, although I don’t know what kind of fish you’ll call it.”

   “The tail’s fixed on kind of like a porpoise, only with pointy ends to the fins,” said Enoch, “it looks more like a marlin than anything else with fins out the sides instead of up and down.”

   “You could cut the tail fins off and use ‘em for bait.”

   “You guys are crazy,” said Dorsey, “She’s worth a fortune as a freak. What would I get? Maybe $20 for a marlin tail?”

   “If she’s dead,” pointed out Neville, “somebody’s going to say you killed her.”

   “I could say she died in the nets–drowned or hit her head when I hauled the net in.”

   “You’ll always be the guy who killed the great wonder of the world.”

   “You know,” said Cochrane, “There has to be more of these out there. She’s not a sport. She had to have had a Dad and Mom who are half fish, too.”

   “Maybe some lonely fisherman screwed a dolphin,” said Neville, “I hear they are horny.”

   “Who, dolphins or fishermen?”

   “No,” said Cochrane, “My Dad and my Grand Dad fished these waters going years back, and they say that there were always mermaids off of Thacher’s lee. It's bad luck to catch them up in the nets, and if you did, you have to throw them back.”

   “Why, what can they do?” asked Dorsey.

   “Nobody ever said much. Just that you don’t want to rile up the sea people.”

   “I’ve got to think about this.”

   “You could still sell her to a circus,” said Enoch.

   “Ed’s Lobster Pound has a 34 pound lobster on display in a big tank,” offered Neville, “Ed might buy her off you and put her in the tank. It’s big enough to hold her. She’s just a slip of a girl and not that much of her is tail.”

   “People would come around just to see her blue teats.”

   “If she’s alive.”

   There was silence for a moment as they pondered the mermaid.

   She coughed.

   “Call a doctor,” said Cochrane, “She might be dying.”

   “Throw her back,” said Enoch, “She needs to be back in the sea.”

   “Not in the harbor, she’ll strangle on the sewage. We have to take her back to Thacher Island.”

   “No,” said Dorsey, “I have to think about this.”

   A loud plopping splash sound came through the open door of the shack, and the men turned.

   “A sea bass?” asked Neville.

   “Sea bass don’t break water like that,” answered Enoch.

   “They do when they are running from a shark.”

   “Sea bass are bottom feeders, they don’t rise up if they don’t have to.”

   “It was bigger than a sea bass,” Cochrane pointed out.

   “Nothing that big comes past the sea wall,” said Dorsey, “the water is too shallow and it stinks of sewer and diesel.”

   There was another splash.

   “That’s a lot bigger than a sea bass.”

   There was another splash and then silence. The water in the harbor was still and quiet. There were groans as the ships moved against their moorings from the gentle tides. They could see about thirty feet of the dock and after that it was a wall of fog lit by the moon and the yellow of the kerosene lamp.

   The air coming through the shack’s open door was suddenly cold. Enoch stepped forward to close it. 

   There was thud as though something large had dropped on the dock’s rotting timbers.

   “What was that?”

   There was another thud, and then another.

   Behind them, the mermaid moaned, but they didn’t turn to look at her.

   “Do you see that?” asked Neville. There was a dark shape, like a shadow in the fog.

   “What is it?” There was another heavy thud–a footfall, perhaps, of a very large man. There was another heavy step, a pause and then another one. It was the gait of a creature not used to walking on land.

   “What the hell?” swore Neville, and he threw his cold cigar on the ground. He stepped forward to close the door. Enoch got there first and slammed it, lowering the bar.

   “Did you see it?” asked Cochrane.

   “It was something big.”

   “That t’weren’t no man.”

   “It was as big as a bear.”

   “Taller.”

   “Wider.”

   “Did you see its eyes?”

   “Big as saucers, but dead like a fish–cold like a mackerel.”

   There was a thud as something struck the door.

   The four men scrambled back into the room behind the poker table. The mermaid moaned again and tried to lift herself up. Dorsey grabbed a hammer from a pile of tools and lifted it over his head. Enoch got hold of a mop and held it in front of him. Neville and Cochrane squirmed against the wall trying to put Enoch and Dorsey between them and the thing at the door.

   The door burst open.

   It stepped into the light of the kerosene lamp.

   “My God,” gasped Cochrane as his legs slid out from under him and he fell seated on the floor.

   Enoch made pushing motions with the mop and Dorsey uttered a high pitch cry.

   The thing, standing over seven feet high, looked at them with large flat fish eyes. His mouth was wide without lips, like a fish, and from the neck under his chinless face roiled a beard of green-blue writhing tentacles. From his each shoulder sprang several curling tentacles with suckers like an octopus. From the waist up, he was covered with silvery scales, and from the waist down, he had the legs and the body of a man. His feet were huge and webbed. Instead of toenails he had talons.

   The mermaid pushed herself up on one arm and reached out to the creature with the other.

   The merman or man-mer stepped forward. Neville fainted and fell sideways.

   “You stand back now,” said Enoch, shaking his mop as though to say “I have a mop and I’m not afraid to use it.”

   Dorsey made small tentative motions with the hammer.

   The thing reached forward with its tentacle arms and picked up the mermaid. It glared at the men with its fishy eyes as though contemplating what to do with them. He turned and with slow deliberate steps walked out the door and into the fog. A moment later, there was a splash.

   Enoch slammed the door closed and wedged it with the mop handle.

   They finished the bourbon and opened another bottle that Enoch had hidden in the corner. At first, they didn’t say anything, and then they just said “God Damn” to each other. There was a long period of silence when Neville tried to get the stove to throw off some heat, but the bourbon warmed them more than the damp smoking wood.

   “There’s one thing, though,” said Dorsey, “There’s one thing that I can’t figure out.”

   “I can’t figure none of it,” said Cochrane.

   “No, of all the things that don’t make sense, this is the big one.”

   “You mean, how he found us?” asked Enoch.

   “Naw, I figure he had some kind of fishy sense of smell or something that led him to the boat, and then he just fell in on us.”

   “Why didn’t he kill us, then?”

   “Naw, he came for the girl, and there were four against one. He might not have wanted to tangle with us.”

   The old men nodded as though this made sense.

   “What I found odd is that from the waist down he was a man.”

   “That’s no stranger than being a girl from the waist up.”

   “Well, that’s where the problem is. He was a man, a BIG man, if you know what I mean.”

   Enoch nodded his head. “He were a big one, he was.”

   “With all the manly parts, the same as us,” Neville said, “Only bigger.”

   Dorsey frowned at Neville, “Yeah, but it makes no sense.”

   “What do you mean?” asked Neville.

   “What’s it good for if the girl is a fish from the waist down?”

   The men thought about it in silence.

   “Maybe it was there but we didn’t see it. Maybe she had a place where, you know.”

   “Nope,” said Dorsey, “I looked.”

   Cochrane grinned, “I bet that was the first thing you checked.”

   “No, I was just curious, you know, her being a fish and all, how she managed it, if at all, without legs to spread.”

   “There must have been,” said Neville, “since he had the plumbing for it. She must have a woman’s plumbing.”

   “Maybe she would grow into it,” offered Enoch, “and when she grows up she’ll be a fish on top and woman on the bottom.”

   “I still think you missed something, did you feel around everywhere?”

   Dorsey, not wanting to discuss this, said, “I didn’t do a detailed inspection of every square inch. I’m just saying that there was nothing obvious.”

   Cochrane poured another drink for himself, and after a long pause said, “Well, this is a dilemma.”

   The men drank more bourbon, played a little cards. They were still discussing it when the moon set and the sky started to turn pink. They then gave up for the moment and headed out, each on their separate ways.

   The problem was not settled that year or the next, and probably would never be settled.

   Cochrane concluded that it was a spiritual sign of things beyond the knowledge of men. Neville denied that it ever happened. Enoch went into town and bought himself a small pistol, and kept it in a bag that he carried with him. He decided that he would be prepared if he ever encountered the fish-man again.

   From time to time, Dorsey would take the long way in from the catch and spend an extra hour or two with his nets in the water on the lee side of Thacher Island. The fishing there was notoriously bad. He never caught anything, and often the nets came back with rips and tears as though they had caught on sharp rocks or something. When the fog was especially thick, he sometimes thought he heard the sound of voices coming from the shoals. He couldn’t make out the words, but he knew blasphemy when he heard it.

~ fin ~




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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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