THE NIGHT BLOGGER The Graveyard Game (and other cemetery plots) Episode Twenty 'On The Fritz'

 

By Al Bruno III

 

April 1st: Ah, Delaware. The First State, the Diamond State, the Whoops-I-Made-a-Wrong-Turn-and-Now-I’m-in-Maryland State. The home of the very haunted Pea Patch Island, the murder-soaked Lum’s Pond, and the mischievous cryptid known as the Pukwudgie.

It is also home to a sad but inexpensive row of roadside rooms called the Fosdick Motel. As it was April Fool’s Day, I assumed the complete lack of clean towels in our room was some kind of prank. But no. Sara had to go down to the front desk and ask for them.

The surly clerk manning the desk gave her one towel and one washcloth. When she asked for a second of each, he gave her a look like she’d asked him for a picture of his grandmother’s taint.

That’s my embellishment, not hers.

We tried to crash for a few hours, but our bodies were still shaking off the aftereffects of a long drive fueled by Jolt Cola, Skittles, and damp egg salad sandwiches. Our bodies were practically vibrating, so instead we spent the time vibrating in our own way, if you get what I mean.

And you probably did get what I mean if you’re not in grade school or Detective Bradshaw.

Yeah, yeah, I’m still salty that the man tried to turn my best girl—my only girl—against me. I’m even more salty that he revealed my middle name is Lyle.

After we’d exhausted ourselves, Sara and I lay in our rented short-term bed and made small talk as dawn broke. We knew that in a couple of hours we’d have to head to the local courthouse and try to bail out Cousin Roy. What would be more trouble? The local authorities or some collector of mystical tomes hiding in a local mobile home park?

To pass the time, I told Sara about my research into Bridgeville, Delaware. I told her about Patty Cannon, who in the early 1800s, along with her son-in-law, headed the Cannon-Johnson gang, which kidnapped free Black people and sold them into slavery in the Deep South. They were believed to have abducted hundreds of people, and their network stretched as far south as Alabama and Mississippi.

Cannon was eventually captured and imprisoned in Sussex County after authorities uncovered evidence of murders and multiple bodies. She died in her cell in May 1829 while awaiting trial for murder. It’s generally believed she poisoned herself, although the exact circumstances of her death remain a matter of historical controversy.

I like to think she did. And whatever poison she took, I hope it fucking hurt.

Then I told her about Pea Patch Island, a shoal that supposedly became an island after a ship carrying peas crashed there and the plants took root. It’s not really much of an island, maybe a kilometer across and mostly swamp, but in 1794 Pierre Charles L’Enfant decided it was exactly the sort of place where you ought to put a fort. It took the government a little longer to get around to it.

Fast-forward to 1862, and Fort Delaware was serving as a prison camp for Confederate soldiers. It didn’t take long for disease to start claiming prisoners. In an attempt to head off the growing mini-pandemic, they hired a civilian doctor named Dr. Charles L. F. Reynold.

According to the accounts I found, both the Union soldiers and the prisoners took an immediate dislike to him. Letters described him as emaciated, with what one writer called a “death-like visage.” Then he started treating patients with his cutting-edge medicines, and they started dying even faster.

It became something of a scandal. Reynold was dismissed within a few months. Some people wanted him charged with negligence, but apparently the man had some very high-level connections.

I was just about to start talking about the prickly-haired, lightly murderous cryptid called Pukwudgie when Sara asked, “I looked up Harker & Huld. They’re pretty pricey. Shady, too.”

“Well, they’re Albany’s only combination law firm and bail bondsmen,” I said. “They should add a dispensary and really clean up.”

She raised an eyebrow. “How do you afford them on a pawn-shop salary?”

“Madam,” I said, “I will have you know I am Internet famous and have a PayPal account.”

“Come on… there’s got to be a story.”

“You got me. I make erotic content on the side. The website is called Brian’s Filthy Feet, and it has a very dedicated and sticky fan base.”

“Oh, really? These feet here?”

Sara dove for my toes. I had a moment to think, Oh, what a heavenly view, and then she was tickling my feet and asking me which piggies were the most popular.

Then we were laughing and tickling, and it was all so mundane and wonderful. But the tickling didn’t stop until I told her how I’d earned free legal services for the rest of my life…

###

…what follows is a tale of things that happen in dark and private moments, a tale of emotional needs supplanted by physical desire. In other words, a tale of fucking.

It begins with Rosanne Gluckman, a woman unlucky in love but skilled in the field of law and a high-ranking attorney at the Harker & Huld Legal Group. That is not an easy feat to manage, by the way, because Harker & Huld has been mostly a family affair since 1983. But Rosanne was just that good. And her specialty? Divorce.

If you could afford her, it wasn’t a matter of whether or not she was going to rake your ex over the coals. It was a matter of how hot you wanted those coals to be.

My involvement began in the spring of 2011. Rosanne was 36 years old, and she had not been in a serious relationship for very nearly a decade. She hadn’t even had a one-night stand. Maybe it was her being too jaded from her day job, maybe she was looking for love in all the wrong places, or maybe it was her reputation. There are a lot of guys out there that would shy away from a woman who could destroy the most ironclad prenup with a single well-penned tort.

Surprised? Don’t be. Cranky guys living in their mom’s basements aren’t the only ones who can find themselves involuntarily celibate.

Since women have needs just like men, Rosanne found a workaround, an expensive and preternatural one, but a workaround nonetheless. She nicknamed him Fritz; he was high on maintenance and low on personality, but he got the job done, and he was always ready for more. He made her feel things she’d barely been able to imagine feeling before. Sure, she always felt a little guilty afterwards, but that wasn’t enough to make her send him away, not when she was in a relationship with so few rules or expectations.

2010 me used to think that every relationship came down to rules and expectations. Now? Now I think it’s all about hope and faith.

Speaking of expectations, one thing Rosanne knew she had to accept was Fritz’s complete silence; he would never ask questions, make complaints, or ask about her net worth. He was a blank slate she could overwrite with her every fantasy; he could be everything she ever wanted.

Then he started humming.

That faint, almost tuneless sound turned her warm post-coital sweat ice cold. She realized what she had done with a scream, a scream the shape beside her in the bed ignored.

She ran from the bedroom and locked herself in the bathroom. This was bad. She had broken the rule—THE rule. She had committed a sin far worse than breaking a roomful of mirrors or feeding a gremlin after midnight.

The hum became a voice, almost too faint for her to hear.

“Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby?”

It was four days after this turn of events that I was brought into the situation. Apparently Rosanne had brought up her situation to the senior partners of Harker & Huld Legal Group with a plea for extreme secrecy about this strange and disturbing matter. She did, of course, edit out the more salacious and supernatural details.

The secret lasted for about 24 hours, but then a strange man started calling in over and over again, singing the same song.

“Is you is or is you ain’t my baby?”

And then a low-level paralegal named Michelle Bittner spotted a strange man in a blue trench coat loitering near the parking garage at midnight. Two things about him disturbed her. First of all, he did not appear to be wearing anything under his trench coat. Second, his face was just too damn perfect and too damn stiff.

As a frequent watcher of creepy YouTube videos, she immediately tagged this individual as a skinwalker. And, as she had amazing taste and read my blog, she reached out to me.

It took some convincing from Ms. Bittner and me to get Rosanne Gluckman to speak with me. But eventually she did, and we had a frank and productive conversation. I told her that a sign-carrying panhandler known to stake out the Clifton Park exit of the Northway had been found strangled to death. The State Police listed the motive as robbery, but the only thing stolen was the blue trench coat he had been known to wear no matter the season.

Rosanne told me exactly what she had gotten herself into, and I got to work.

Two days of research later, I got a call from her begging me to come to her McMansion in Saratoga Springs.

If you only know Saratoga via that Carly Simon song, then let me explain that Saratoga is the closest thing upstate New York has to Beverly Hills. Except, of course, it has a near-complete lack of celebrities, glamour, and decent weather—but it has a nice racetrack, so it’s got that going for it.

I brought my laptop and improvised survival kit in a satchel. When I got there, she told me she got a call from Michelle Bittner that lasted just long enough for her to hear the woman’s terrified scream.

Erring on the side of caution, I barricaded us into her spacious study. Rosanne was loading the gargantuan revolver she’d just purchased. She’d said it made her feel safe.

That was one of us.

My MacBook was in the corner of the room. Atwater’s round and deeply expressive face, defined by its heavy jowls, broad nose, and hooded, penetrating eyes that had a default setting of condescension, was in the chat window.

He said, “Foster, this is without a doubt the most ludicrous situation you have ever involved yourself, and by proxy myself, in.”

“Oh, like you had anything to do,” I said as I struggled to move another one of her mahogany bookshelves in front of the door. Legal tomes dropped to the floor. “What do you have for me?”

Atwater held up a sheet of paper with Hebrew lettering on it to the camera.

“It is the word ‘truth’ in Hebrew,” Atwater explained. “Legends say the Maharal of Prague inscribed it on a man of clay to create a simulacrum of life.”

Rosanne looked at the screen. “So it’s not a skinwalker?”

“A skinwalker?” Atwater’s voice rang with exasperation. “Should we be on the lookout for leprechauns as well? I am talking about facts, my good woman, and the fact is that you, in your libidinous folly, have somehow managed to turn an anthropomorphic intimacy device into a golem.”

“A golem?” I scanned the room. The study entrance was blocked by shelves and chairs. There was a pitiful-looking log burning in the fireplace. The fireplace poker was beside it, the business end buried in the hot coals. “She turned her sex doll into a golem?”

“It is not a sex doll,” Rosanne said frostily. “It is a Macho Manikin Fully Articulated Love Companion.”

“Nevertheless,” Atwater’s voice said from the MacBook, “it’s a golem now.”

“It cost twelve thousand dollars!”

“Then it’s a twelve-thousand-dollar golem. Congratulations.” Atwater started shuffling through his notes. “The thing is, the word ‘Truth’ is supposed to be on the golem, not the golem’s owner.”

“That damned leper…” Rosanne held her forearm up for us to see. The Hebrew lettering was there. It wasn’t a tattoo or a birthmark, and it had started to appear the night the singing had begun. It had been growing darker and more pronounced by the hour. “Zurama did this to me.”

“Zurama,” I said. “I meant to ask about that. Atwater, where have I heard that name before?”

Atwater’s face reddened, which my MacBook’s screen showed in all its 4K glory.

“Foster! Have you suffered some catastrophic impairment of your neocortex? We discussed him in the pinned thread on the board about the veracity of reports of immortal beings!”

I stopped and stood there for a moment. “Oh yeah. The son of Iram, right?”

“Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. He is called the Favored One, the Son of Grootsland, the Old Man of Iram, the Repairer of Reputations…”

“Okay! Okay!” I waved my hands. “And why would he be helping Rosanne to… to do… to do the thing that she did?”

“He’s the Devil,” Rosanne said.

“I sincerely doubt that,” Atwater’s exasperated voice crackled from the MacBook screen. “And it’s not like you sold him your soul.”

“No. All he wanted was an antique.”

“An antique?” Atwater and I said in unison.

“It was a 1941 Keeler-built handheld orgone accumulator.”

I sighed; I had no idea what that meant, so I looked to Atwater.

“Orgone is a pseudoscientific concept. Supposedly it is a universal life force or vital energy which can be used to extend the lifespan, expand the mind…” He sighed, his sour expression deepening further. “And produce orgasms of preternatural intensity.”

I looked to Rosanne, and she shrugged, “It didn’t work.”

“Of course it didn’t!” Atwater sputtered, “It is pure hokum from the pre-war occult fringe…”

“Focus people!” I said, “So you traded him this accumulator so your ‘doll’ would come to life.”

“Jeoshphat! It’s like frying an egg with a rocket engine!”

“ATWATER!” I shouted.

Rosanne continued, “The deal was that Fritz would come to life and… take care of my needs until the day I found true love…” Her voice trailed off.

“And?” I gestured for her to continue.

She sighed, “And if I ever let a single teardrop fall onto Fritz, I would become his true love.”

There was a long pause. I looked from Rosanne to the MacBook; Atwater just stared out of the screen at both of us. Finally he cleared his throat, “This is the highest form of insanity…”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “She is not… Wait. You cried on him? On it?”

“Yes, I did,” Rosanne said, “but not on purpose. Do you think I wanted to end up spending my nights getting off with some kind of magic robot? That night I was so disgusted with myself that I started to cry.”

“I’m sorry.” What else could I say?

“I got a gal who’s always late,” a syrupy, Prince Charming voice interrupted us. It was making its way up Rosanne Gluckman’s driveway. “Anytime we have a date…”

“And here we go.” I closed the MacBook lid. Atwater had time for a single shout of protest.

Meanwhile, the serenade was continuing. “I’m gonna walk up to her gate, and see if I can get it straight…”

There was a crash that could only be the sound of the house’s front door being kicked in. The home security system started going berserk. A stern-sounding operator began issuing stern-sounding warnings from the intercoms, but all the while Fritz kept singing away.

“Cause I wants her, I’m gonna ask her—Is you is or is you ain’t my baby?”

I turned back to look at Rosanne. The paleness was spreading out from the word on her forearm. Something about it made her flesh take on an artificial tone.

She cried, “You said you had a plan!”

The singer was getting closer now. I could hear his footsteps on the landing.

“The way you’re actin’ lately makes me doubt…”

“I do have a plan,” I explained, “it just happens to be an awful one.”

The study door crashed open, and I got my first glimpse of Fritz.

Imagine, if you will, Zac Efron’s head perched atop the hairless body of a romance novel lothario. He wore only a torn blue trench coat, and it fit poorly, revealing the main selling point of a Macho Manikin Fully Articulated Love Companion.

It wasn’t so much a penis as it was an assault on all sense of proportion and sanity.

“You is still my baby, baby,” Fritz’s mouth opened and closed like a puppet’s. “Seems my flame in your heart’s done gone out…”

His doll eyes zeroed in on Rosanne. She made a small terrified sound.

I approached the thing. “All right now. Easy, big fella. Let’s talk about this.”

“A woman is a creature that has always been strange…” Fritz took another step forward. I moved forward again, quite literally cock blocking him. “Just when you’re sure of one you find she’s gone and made a change…”

“Listen to me!” I shouted. “I’m not sure what you are, but I know you’re not a monster. And I know you know what’s going to happen to Rosanne if you don’t stop this. And you can stop this, can’t you?”

Fritz paused.

I said, “If you really care about her, you won’t do this. Come on. Think. You’re not a monster. You’re a lover.”

The pause stretched on, measured in nervous breaths and heartbeats.

“Come on,” I said. “Is she is or is she ain’t your baby?”

Was Fritz listening to me? Was there an actual soul of some kind that could have understood what I was doing, or was he just a wish and a curse made manifest?

I’ll never know because that was when Rosanne decided to shoot him.

BLAM!

It was like a bolt of lightning crashed over my shoulder. A hot breeze blasted past my cheek. My right eye was flash-blinded. My right ear was deafened. The bullet hit Fritz dead center in his smarmy smile and lodged deep in one of the steel joints that held his PVC skull together.

There was a long pause. I think Rosanne said, “Sorry, Brian,” but the ringing in my head was so loud it sounded a lot like “Starry fryin’.”

Then Fritz started singing again from what was left of his mouth.

“ITH you iTH or iTH you ain’t my baby? Maybe baby’TH found THomebody new…”

He picked me up by the lapels of my leather jacket and threw me into the oak bookshelf we’d been using as a barricade. I hit it with enough force to send it pitching forward, pinning me. Sharp pain exploded in my torso. I would later learn I had broken two ribs and had a concussion.

Rosanne kept firing. Fritz kept singing.

BLAM!

“Or iTH my baby THtill my baby true?”

BLAM!

“ITH you or iTH you ain’t my baby, baby?”

BLAM! BLAM!

“The way you’re actin’ lately makeTH me doubt…”

BLAM!

“THee here, who’TH been cuttin’ me…”

Fighting through a fog of pain, I half-squirmed, half-crawled free of the bookshelf and staggered to my feet just as Rosanne threw the empty revolver at him. It bounced off his jaw, taking out a faux tooth before it hit the floor.

She was backing away. It might have been the concussion talking, but it looked like her movements were getting stiffer, her face losing the ability to hold its expression of terror.

What was it Rosanne had been told? If she ever let a teardrop fall onto his silicone flesh, she would become his true love. What would a Pinocchio with a priapism like Fritz want? Another living doll, of course.

There was no choice. Reason had failed, if it had ever had a chance. It was time to implement my awful plan.

I scrabbled across the study and grabbed the fireplace poker. It had been sitting in the fire for almost an hour, so it was good and hot.

“You’TH is THtill my baby, baby. Baby boy, it seemTH my flame in your heart’TH done…”

I charged, crashing past Fritz and bringing the red-hot metal down onto Rosanne’s forearm. She screamed. Skin sizzled. The ‘Truth’ marking and the surrounding flesh were reduced to a blackened ruin…

###

“…then what?” Sara asked. She was sitting on the far side of the bed. Her tickling had turned into a foot massage, and nothing dulls the pain of remembering the time you were nearly killed by a robot with a priapism like a nice foot massage.

“The Saratoga police burst into the room about thirty seconds after I’d given Rosanne her life-saving third-degree burn and ten seconds after Fritz had collapsed lifelessly to the floor,” I explained. “And I hold no grudges about the tasering and arrest.”

“Ah-ha.” Sara smiled as she pressed her thumb into the arch of my foot. “And that is why Harker & Huld Legal Group are your go-to guys.”

“Yeah. At first it was just that Rosanne Gluckman was going to not press charges, but a certain Albany defective detective pushed them into finding something to charge me with.”

“Bradshaw.”

I nodded. “Bradshaw. Once she saw I was looking at a little jail time, Rosanne begged one of her close friends in the firm to help me out. She told her everything.”

“And that was Lucy Harker.” She shifted position and plopped her piggies in my lap. “Do me now.”

So I did. “I’ll make an investigative blogger out of you yet.”

Sara laughed. “I think I’d rather run a meadery. Maybe even make our own honey.”

“Sign me up.” I pressed my fingers along her instep and watched her arch her back delightfully and coo.

“So whatever happened to Rosanne?”

“Ah, well, it turns out that the whole mess made her realize the person who really cared about her was right in front of her,” I explained. “She and Lucy have been living together for about a year now. They let me know about their engagement and explained why there was no way on Earth I could be invited to their wedding.”

“Awww,” Sara said. “I could have been your plus-one.”

“Of course Atwater made some snarky comment about her being driven into ‘the arms of Sappho’ by the trauma. He’s a jerk like that.”

“You think someone that smart would know we’re all basically bisexual.”

“You think so?”

She winked and wriggled her toes. “I know so.”

“Oh, really?” I tried not to objectify this revelation and get all hot and bothered by it. I failed.

She came back around to my end of the bed so she could kiss me. “You’re not the only one with stories. I’ve got plenty.”

I kissed her back. “Truly, you contain multitudes.”

“Brian Foster, you don’t know the half of it,” she kissed me again but for a moment before she went in for that kiss, and it was just a moment mind you, there was a flicker of something in her eyes. Something serious and sad. I understood it, at least I thought I did. She wasn’t tell me everything but that was fine after all I didn’t tell her that my sources told me that six months ago there was a break in at the evidence storage facility used by the Saratoga Police Department. The only item that went missing was one heavily damaged Macho Manikin Fully Articulated Love Companion.

And that was fine the story deserved a happy ending, we have to take them where and when we can in this world.

Sara  grabbed my straw pork pie hat off the nightstand and put it on her head, “So how much longer can we stay in bed?”

I smiled, “Well, we don’t have to be there first thing in the morning.”

And then we did exactactly what you think we did.

And she kept my hat on the entire time.

 

THE NIGHT BLOGGER The Graveyard Game (and other cemetery plots) Episode Nineteen 'When the PoPo Tries To Put The Kibosh On Your Old Lady'

By Al Bruno III

  

March 31st: It was a bright and pleasant morning. Sara and I were putting the finishing touches on our trip with the a distinctly post-coitus burst of energy. We were both packing up. Sara was filling a cooler with ice, sandwiches, and Jolt Cola. I would learn later that, knowing I'd object, Mrs. Vincenzo had slipped her an envelope containing an amount of cash normally reserved for bribing local politicians.

I loaded our single suitcase with our combined clothes and made sure my satchel was equipped as usual: a police-surplus flashlight, a collapsible shovel, a first-aid kit, baby wipes, notebooks and pens, a bottle of water, a bottle of holy water, Ziplock baggies, an EMF meter, a thermal scanner, and a package of Beef Whips salted snack meat. I might not need any of those things, but at least they made the satchel heavy enough to hit someone with.

With my Ford Escort loaded up we were ready to go. I made a call to check in with Cousin Roy but the call went right to the voicemail he hadn't set up. I tried not to let that worry me.

But when the unmarked police cruiser parked in front of us then I got worried.

I asked, “Did we get travel insurance on those reservations?”

"Brian... what's going on?" Sara asked back.

I watched the man climb out of the driver's seat. He had a youthful face despite being middle-aged. Not because he'd taken care of himself, but because I doubted he'd ever smiled enough to earn a wrinkle. He wore the sort of suit and tie that could only be bought with the salary of an honest man. He had a thin build that was surprisingly effective at wrestling bloggers to the ground.

“Sara,” I said. “Meet Detective Alvin Bradshaw.”

“Oh?” she said. Then it clicked. “Ohhhh.”

“Brian Lyle Foster,” he said with his usual contempt. Then he turned to Sara, his expression softening. “Miss Bishop.”

“Sorry we can't stay and chat.” I reached up to close the trunk. “We've got a busy day ahead of us.”

He stopped me.

“Do you know a man named Roy Foster Junior?”

I tried not to groan. I really tried. But damn it, how could my cousin screw up simple surveillance?

Or maybe the screw-up was asking him to do it in the first place. Feel free to discuss that in the comments section.

Sara spoke up. “Are we being detained?”

“Not you, ma'am,” Detective Bradshaw said. “But I'd think twice about the company you keep.”

“That’s not a very nice way to talk about my boyfriend.”

Boyfriend. Despite I was staring down an armed servant of the state that hated my guts I still felt warm and fuzzy for a moment. I tried to close the trunk again.

He stopped me, then opened the cooler and started rooting around in it. “Hey!” I shouted, “Fourth amendment.”

“Hey,” he deadpanned and held up a ziplock bag with an egg salad sandwich, “Probable cause.”

“What? That sandwich’s only crime is being delicous.”

“The bag Foster. drug paraphernalia.”

Sara said, "We're not on drugs!"

Then Bradshaw said, “Do you know your boyfriend’s cousin was just arrested in Delaware for cocaine possesion.”

“And?” I said trying to keep the panic I was feeling from reaching my vocal cords.

"Of course we know," Sara said, reaching into her pocket. She pulled out the thick envelope Mrs. Vincenzo had given her. "We're heading there to post his bail."

And faster than you could say asset forfeiture his eyes lit up…

###

The Interrogation Of Sara Bishop

...Sara Bishop here. Brian asked me to tell this part because, while he was sitting in a holding cell somewhere, I was in an interview room with Detective Alvin Bradshaw.

He'd brought in a female officer to make me feel more comfortable. Officer Kelton arrived in full uniform, her duty belt clinking softly every time she shifted her weight. I'm grateful for the effort, but she was not the kind of person meant to make anyone comfortable. Short-haired and hard-faced, she reminded me of the overnight orderlies on the psych ward. The ones who'd decided you were going to be a problem patient before you'd even opened your mouth.

Detective Bradshaw offered me a Pepsi. I asked if he had Coke. He said no, so I asked for a Dr Pepper instead. He left to get it, and I sat there trying not to make eye contact with Officer Kelton.

Then she spoke.

They were the only words we ever exchanged.

"You know Roy Foster, huh?"

"...Yeah."

And that was it.

When he came back with the can of Dr Pepper, I opened it and drank greedily. I know all the police shows say never to do that—that they'll use the can to put your DNA into a database—but I'm pretty sure I'm already in a dozen databases. We all are.

Besides, being nervous makes me thirsty.

My grandmother and I used to drink Dr Pepper together when I stayed with her over Christmas break. Whenever I taste it now, it tastes like melancholy.

"Your father told me a lot about you," Detective Bradshaw began.

I glanced at the one-way mirror behind him. Was Dad on the other side of it?

"What did he say?" I asked.

"He's worried about you," Detective Bradshaw said simply. "He says you're a troubled girl."

"I'm twenty-one, for God's sake."

He raised a hand. "Sorry. You're right."

"And maybe I am troubled," I said. "Is that a crime?"

"No."

He smiled. It was a small smile, but it was there.

"It's human."

Officer Kelton snorted.

The smile vanished. Detective Bradshaw turned toward her and gave her a look that was honestly a little frightening. He held it until she shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

I found myself wondering how many times Brian had been on the receiving end of that particular look.

"Did I ever tell you how I met Brian Foster?"

"He said he interfered in one of your investigations. There was a blog post about it, but you made him take it down."

"Our legal team made him take it down," Detective Bradshaw corrected. "He crossed the line between lunatic ramblings and slander."

I took another sip of my Dr Pepper.

"If you say so."

There was a long pause. The kind where you can almost hear someone arguing with themselves. Then he started to speak again.

"It was maybe three, three and a half years ago. Remember when all those people ended up sick or dead in downtown Albany?"

I remembered all right. It was the talk of my senior year of high school. That's a little embarrassing to think about, really.

"Everyone was freaking out. They thought it was some kind of biohazard, chemical attack, or pandemic. We had the FBI, Homeland Security, and the CDC crawling all over everything. And who got stuck dealing with them? Me."

"My dad says the only reward for hard work is more work," I said.

That brought his little smile back. Briefly.

He continued. "One day your 'boyfriend' showed up at my desk, and he already had a history. I think he told you what happened to his mother?"

"He explained," I said.

I wondered if he could tell I was lying. I had the strange feeling Officer Kelton could, but she stayed quiet.

Bradshaw continued. "Like I said, word was already out on him. But of course I had to listen to what he had to say. If I didn't, and it got back to the suits in D.C...."

"What did he think was going on?"

Detective Bradshaw shifted in his seat.

"He told me these deaths weren't the work of terrorists, or some isolated nutjob, or just a damn flu bug with ambition. He said it had something to do with the new exhibit at the Albany Museum of Art and History."

Honestly, I could picture Brian desperately trying to explain all of that to this man. I'm sure you can too.

The thing that gets me—the thing that makes me love Brian—is that he had to know no one was going to believe him.

But he still walked into that police station anyway.

I glanced over at Officer Kelton. Her stony expression had just the faintest hint of smugness to it. I realized then that she'd heard this story before... and that maybe Detective Bradshaw didn't enjoy telling it.

"The museum had just opened a new exhibit," he said. "A loan from the Uffizi Galleries. Some pottery they'd dug up over in Italy. Pre-Roman, I think. Ugly-ass cookie-jar-looking things with carved human heads for lids. Funeral urns or something. One of them was different, though. The lid wasn't another head. It was a smooth stone half-sphere, but when you lifted it over, there was a human face carved into the inside, staring up at you."

He shook his head.

"Then Foster tells me it contains the remains of something called a Candle Baron, which, according to him, was some kind of evil spirit from another world."

This is so Brian, I thought.

"Then he tells me we have to destroy the container to stop this evil spirit. Even if I'd believed him, that thing was a priceless artifact worth more than my pension."

He gave a little shrug.

"So, yes, it gave me a great deal of pleasure to throw him out of my office. I wasn't all that surprised when the museum alarm went off a couple of nights later. You do this job long enough, you develop a feel for which lunatics are just going to keep talking... and which ones are going to act out.”

Act out.

It struck me as an odd choice of words. Like he was talking about a toddler throwing a tantrum instead of a grown man trying to save the world.

"So I got to the museum shortly after the patrol officers. They were both lying on the sidewalk. One was dead. The other was puking his guts out. The front doors of the place were wide open."

“I didn't bother looking around. I went straight to the special exhibit.” He grimaced, "Sure enough, Brian Foster was there, but he wasn't alone. He was fighting with some homeless broad I'd seen hanging around a few of the crime scenes. We'd interviewed her as a witness, but she barely said a word. Just sat there playing with one of her cigarette lighters. She had dozens of them."

Officer Kelton shifted in her chair. There was an air of anticipation about her, like someone waiting for a joke to reach the punchline. A particularly mean joke.

"So there she was, chasing Brian Foster around one of the glass cases where they keep the mummies. She's got this huge knife in her hand, and she'd already cut him up pretty good. I don't know where she got the damn thing. She sure didn't have it when we brought her in for questioning."

I thought about earlier that morning, when Brian and I had been together. I'd traced my fingers over all his scars. He had more than a dozen of them now.

Which one was this?

"I also notice Foster's wearing one of those flu-germ mask things. I order them both onto the floor, but all that does is make the crazy lady even crazier. She forgets all about Foster and comes right at me, swinging that knife and screaming complete nonsense."

He looked down at the table.

"So I shot her. Almost point-blank."

He paused and shook his head ever so slightly.

"Thirteen years on the force, and that was the first time I ever shot somebody."

He looked back up.

"But you don't get to think about that in the moment. I yelled at Foster to get down again..."

He frowned.

"...and then he pointed behind me and screamed, 'Behind you!'"

Officer Kelton was really leaning forward now, Detective Bradshaw didn’t notice but I did. I wish he had.

Instead he continued, “I thought I saw something. I was spooked, my nerves, the adrenalin, the whole thing but I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I didn't think. It was just training. I spun around and fired. And hit one of the damn ugly-ass cookie jars. Of course it was the one with the inside-out face for a lid.”

And there it was. No wonder he hated Brian. 

“Stuff comes running out of it, at first I think it’s wine, then I think it’s blood but it wasn’t either. The CDC techs said it was wine mixed with some other substance they couldn’t identify.” He shook his head, “Of course I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about being demoted and never getting my detective's stripes back. I was thinking about who the hell  was going to pay for this.”

I didn't look at Officer Kelton. I kept my eyes on the man telling me the story.

Empathy. My mother always said it was one of my greatest character flaws. I couldn't help feeling for him. Not because of Brian, but because of unintended consequences. There are always unintended consequences.

"So what happened?"

He opened his mouth, then seemed to remember where he was.

"That's not important."

He leaned back in his chair.

"What's important is that Brian Foster thinks he's some kind of hero fighting monsters from beyond the grave. That's what makes him dangerous."

He started counting them off on his fingers.

"Ask him about Osric Langhorne. Ask him about Johnny Disco. Ask him what happened in Washington Park."

His voice hardened.

"Ask him why an escaped fugitive awaiting arraignment was found dead in the woods the very same night he was searching the Internet for help finding her."

He looked me square in the eye.

"Ask him. Don't read the version filtered through his sick brain."

I wanted to tell him then. I wanted to tell him what I'd seen with my own eyes. About the things that shouldn't exist. About the things I'd started worrying might exist inside me.

But Officer Kelton was still in the room. Every time I looked at her, something inside me stiffened. If I'm being honest, it was the part of me where the other Sara sometimes whispered.

And if I said any of that out loud, what would Detective Bradshaw hear? The truth? Or just another troubled girl with a sick brain?

If Dad was standing behind that mirror, I already knew what he'd hear.

So instead I defaulted to the one thing my older brother Richard had always told me to say to the police.

"Am I being detained?"

He'd always said to ask that—and then keep my mouth shut.

"No, you are not being detained," Detective Bradshaw said. He sounded almost disappointed. "Foster's getting a cavity search, so we had some time to kill. I thought we should talk. There are people who care about your well-being."

"Thank you for that," I said. And I meant it. "But this isn't what you think it is. It isn't even close."

And that was when the door to the interview room opened. A woman entered, escorted by an officer. She was smartly dressed, with a soft, round face, a sturdy build, and the kind of swagger that suggested she wasn't intimidated by anyone. She looked like the sort of woman who could stare down someone like Officer Kelton, and I found myself hoping she would. "Sara Bishop? Lucy Harker, Harker & Huld Legal Group. Brian Foster asked us to represent you."

This wasn't what I'd expected at all. Brian always talked about having Harker & Huld on speed dial, but I'd assumed any law firm with a personalized rap jingle had to be at least a little sleazy.

“Good afternoon, Lucy.” Detective Bradshaw said. Then he whispered in Kelton’s ear dismissing her.

“Ms. Harker please, Detective Bradshaw.” There was an iciness in the way she addressed him that made me suspect either years of courtroom battles or one spectacularly bad first date, "Sara, it's time to go. Brian's waiting in my car."

I stood up and said, “Thank you Detective Bradshaw.”

That surprised him. It surprised Ms. Harker, too.

Ms. Harker said, “I assume she is going to get her money back?”

"I'll make sure it's waiting for you at the front desk."

He reached into his jacket and handed me his card.

"If there are any problems, call me."

I hesitated.

"You're not safe," he said again.

It was Ms. Harker who acted. She gently pushed his hand away.

"Enough of that, please."

Then she hustled me out of the police station, asking what I'd told them the entire way and scolding me for being such a Chatty Kathy.

By the time we reached her car, Brian was already sitting in the back seat.

"What happened?" he asked the moment I climbed in.

I didn't answer right away.

I was too busy watching my mother burst out of the police station, waving her arms as she tried to get our attention.

Ms. Harker glanced in the rearview mirror, put the car in gear, and drove away.

We headed back toward the pawn shop, where our cooler full of melted ice and soggy egg salad sandwiches was still waiting for us.

###

…and I'm back. We didn't get on the road until sunset, so we aren't going to reach Bridgeville, Delaware, until after midnight. My amended plan is, God willing, to bail Cousin Roy out of jail, slap him a few times, then start our caper.

I've been driving for about two hours now, so it's around 9:20 p.m., and we're roughly thirty percent of the way there.

While I drove, Sara wrote up what happened with Bradshaw and read it back to me.

Lord, does that man frost my bunions. Using every cop trick in the book to convince Sara I'm some kind of Don Quixote with a blast radius.

Now she's got it in her head—just like Atwater—that Detective Bradshaw is simply misunderstood.

But to quote Cousin Roy: "Fuck the police."

Although, judging by what Officer Kelton said, he just might. Roy always did have a thing for women built like linebackers.

Oh, and just so you know, there totally was something behind him. The fact that the man can't aim for shit probably saved dozens of lives. Admittedly, one of them was mine.

Oh and something else - those were Etruscan artifacts. Etruscan! You would think Mr. Super Detective could read the signage in a museum.

Oh and also, did you notice he reads my blog. Reads every post I bet. Hey, Bradshaw, you in the comments section? You know how I know you read my blog. BECAUSE I CAN HEAR YOUR LIPS MOVING ALL THE WAY AT MY HOUSE!

Ever wonder how I can post all this crazy stuff to the public and never get arrested? Because to lock me up, the powers that be would first have to admit that—as Sara put it—the Darkness was never empty. There'd be interviews, depositions, and poorly spelled police reports to contend with. Better to let the lie go on. Better to let Brian Foster stumble around fighting killer clowns that open a task force to chase down the grease-painted goons.

Bradshaw you say Sara’s not safe?

Well you are part of the reason why.

Brian Foster out. I’ll check in with you all when we get to the First State.

The Night Blogger blogs on!

 

“You don’t have to believe the stories on my blog, you can dismiss them as good hallucinations or bad fiction if you want to but they’re all true. The darkness was never empty, there are things that wait for the innocent and unwary to turn their backs. What is it you think I’m talking about here? Ghosts? Vampires? Ghouls? If only it were that simple. The creatures of the night are still out there but they’re not shadowing your every footstep. They just check your status updates from the comfort of their tombs. 

All I ever wanted was to be a Do-It-Yourself style reporter but more often than I like I find myself becoming part of my stories. It turns out gods and monsters don’t like their secrets getting out any more than your standard politician or celebrity. We all know how this is going to turn out in the end; I’m already long overdue for jail, the looney bin or a guest of honor spot at a monster buffet but until that fateful day I’m not going to back down or give up. 

My name is Brian Foster and some people call me The Night Blogger. .."

 

 

Episode One 'The Graveyard Game'

Join The Night Blogger as he unravels the true story behind 'The Graveyard Game' in a spine-tingling tale of possession and the supernatural

 

Episode Two 'Whispers of the Red Night'

Unearthing the past could cost the Night Blogger more than his life as he uncovers the truth behind a string of gruesome murders.

 

Episode Three 'A Firesign Variation'

The Night Blogger investigates Albany's ghost bus, and it could be his final destination.

 

Episode Four 'Shadow Of The Zombie'

A bizarre case involving meth and fantasy video games leads the Night Blogger into the deadly reality of murder and magic.

 

Episode Five 'Digging In The Dirt'

The Night Blogger discovers the Graveyard Game isn't over, and a secret awaits Sara Bishop in Pinewood Cemetery.

 

Episode Six 'Direct Market Thing'

An undercover investigation into a multi-level marketing scheme uncovers chilling truths behind recent disappearances.

 

Episode Seven 'The Owls And The Lizards And The Big Broke Moon'

Unexpected visitors to Vincenzo’s pawnshop interrupt the Night Blogger's investigation and lead to a surprising declaration.

 

Episode Eight 'Dare To Grin'

The Night Blogger delves into the mind of a serial killer.

 

Episode Nine 'A Trace Of Arson'

The Night Blogger investigates a series of spontaneous human combustions.

 

Episode Ten 'The Crimson Chimes'

The Night Blogger and his friends delve deeper into the secrets of Gorgo, Luna, and the Thousand-Faced Moon, only to realize they may need the help of a woman who claims to be the Devil.

 

Episode Eleven 'Nuts And Bolts'

An encounter with a mysterious doctor leads to twisted experiments and a night of terror.

 

Episode Twelve 'The Old Man And The Siege'

The Night Blogger uncovers the chilling mystery of a Marine's encounters with the enigmatic Old Man in black sunglasses during the Vietnam War.

 

Episode Thirteen 'Back From The Shadows Again'

The Night Blogger date with Sara turns into a night of terror and confusion.

 

Episode Fourteen 'The Rally'

A quiet evening with Sara prompts the Night Blogger to recount the chilling supernatural event that set him on the path to becoming a hunter of monsters.

 

Episode Fifteen 'Run In With The Devil'

Hoping to save Sara, the Night Blogger turns to the one woman who claims to be the Devil—and discovers that some legends are more dangerous than monsters.

  

Episode Sixteen 'Demon In Lace'

The Night Blogger's search for the mysterious Eternal Codex leads him into a world of forbidden knowledge, ancient secrets, and a book that may not want to be found.

 

Episode Seventeen 'Brian Foster and the Curse of the Cartwrights'

The Night Blogger prepares for a dangerous road trip to Delaware while Sara's family turns against him, and a supernatural encounter reveals a terrifying connection between his dying grandmother and a mysterious red entity.

 

Episode Eighteen 'Muldwych After Dark'

An impossible radio broadcast recounts the Night Blogger’s encounter with a monstrous creature he never told anyone about, leaving Brian to wonder who—or what—is listening.

 

THE NIGHT BLOGGER The Graveyard Game (and other cemetery plots) Episode Eighteen 'Muldwych After Dark'

By Al Bruno III

 

March 28th: Just to bring you up to speed, Sara’s parents have stayed away from the pawn shop but continue to blow up her phone. Meanwhile I continue to plan our little Delaware caper. Caper might be a little dramatic but trust me, if I was going to do what I had to do, it was going to be a full-on Ocean's Eleven situation. Just with a lot fewer beautiful people.

And I'd be robbing a trailer park instead of a casino. Specifically, a trailer park where a guy calling himself Rhett Vane—which is about as fake a name as Nathaniel Blades on my fake ID—was keeping a mystical tome that occasionally regrew its own pages.

I'd already tasked Cousin Roy with performing a little reconnaissance of Bayard Estates in Bridgeville, Delaware. It should be noted that Manufactured Home Parks get a bad rap; many are carefully curated and managed and serve the many Americans aging into or out of home ownership.

Bayard Estates, unfortunately, was not one of those places. It had a bad reputation of being a nest of criminals and crazies which means that by tomorrow the residents will probably have made Cousin Roy their king.

As for Sara and me, things had gotten pretty intense. There had been, as Robert Plant once put it, "A Whole Lotta Love." We even took a day trip to Lake George, a place I hadn't visited since that awful day in 2009 with Osrick Langhorne and The House That Dripped Clichés.

But we're not going to talk about that.

We're going to talk about Sara and me playing classic arcade games (where we kissed), wandering through a wonderfully creepy wax museum built inside an actual old house (where we smooched), taking a horse-and-buggy ride (where we canoodled), and finishing the day aboard a steamboat cruise (where we were politely—but firmly—asked to knock it off).

And now? Right now? I'm doing some classic Night Blogger-style Internet research while Sara happily mans the cash register and takes calls. She told me she'd never been happier with a job. She loved the normalcy of it. The biggest emergency she'd handled all week was a customer trying to convince her that a chipped Elvis cookie jar was an antique.

Oh, and speaking of antiques... Mrs. Vincenzo.

No, I'm not saying she's an antique, so don't email her and tell her I said that. Anyway, Mrs. Vincenzo's off on another antiquing excursion. That's the deal: she gets a few days to go to Vermont, then I get a few days to go to Delaware.

And with any luck, we're both going to come home with something old and valuable.

But one thing happened today that I did not expect. An email from Bunny Joe.

Let me tell you about Bunny Joe. He used to be a member of the FEAR AND TRUTH message board, but he eventually got kicked out because no matter what conversation he joined, he always dragged it hopelessly off topic. We'd be discussing UFO sightings in the Hudson Valley and he'd suddenly start explaining how kaiju were race memories. We'd be talking about the Salem Witch Trials and before long he had everyone arguing that the popularity of the erotic thriller genre could be used to map the American recession. Then came the day he somehow managed to bring Holocaust denial into a discussion about Bigfoot skepticism.

And he was out.

When I got the email—with its attached WAV file—I deleted it on general principle. Then I immediately felt guilty and recovered it. Bunny Joe explained that he'd been researching a correlation between numbers stations and serial killers when he stumbled across the following transmission. He insisted it was imperative that I give it a listen.

The file was called ‘MLDWCH040210’.

So once again, he'd managed to drag me off topic.

The voice on the recording belonged to a woman. Smoky and deep, like a jazz singer coming into her prime, but flattened by the narrow bandwidth of an old AM radio. Static kept washing over her words until it sounded less like she was speaking into a microphone than trying to talk through a thunderstorm…

###

Transcript of audio file MLDWCH040210

...this is Sweet Jane and I will be talking to you from nightrise to dayfall, because this is Muldwych After Dark.

Tonight we will forgo our standard, never-ending, and slightly compulsive discussion of our little town's lost dreams and found nightmares. Tomorrow, I promise, we shall return to the notebook discovered in the scrapyard, and to the many possible reasons why our late Police Chief Clarence Marlow donated his entire body—save for his skull—to medical science. Those matters remain important. They will still be waiting for us in the morning.

But tonight we have a story.

A story about Him.

He does not live in our fair, five-sided town of Muldwych Corners, but I consider him both a kindred spirit and a lost soul. He is a stalker of mysteries, a martyr for the ordinary world, and a blogger of the night. The tales of His tragedies, His triumphs, and His complete misunderstanding of the linked cosmos-atoms that comprise the immediate super-cosmos of curves, angles, material organization, semi-material organization, and those electronic arrangements that politely decline to become either, make for good reading.

And this is, as I promised, a story about Him.

His story begins in New York's Hudson Valley, in the forests bordering the Croton Falls Reservoir. Strange lights are often reported there. In popular parlance they are called Unidentified Flying Objects. But if you cannot identify them, how can you be certain they are truly flying? Or that they are objects at all? Reality, and indeed spatial organization, are—as you already know—subjective.

It is a regular occurrence for UFO enthusiasts to prowl the forests around the Croton Falls Reservoir, but He is the only person there on this particular night. He has heard disturbing stories, far more disturbing than usual. There were reports of a loud yet curiously muffled whup-whup-whup sound, of a wind pressing down from above that pressed the trees earthward and sent the hitherto unseen local wildlife scattering. They say that even the Lesser Zoogs are left unsettled.

A lucky few left the forest with a handful of blurry photographs or a few minutes of jittery video. One particularly desperate soul emerged clutching a deeply unnerving keychain. Most, however, left with nothing more than the certainty that their most deeply held beliefs were true—and ran screaming because of it.

One UFO enthusiast never left the forest at all. At least not entirely. What they recovered of him fit into a fairly small bucket.

That is precisely the sort of mystery He could not resist. Such is the burden of being a self-appointed seeker of truth in a straw fedora.

But now let us pause in our story and go to the weather.

Tomorrow's forecast calls for a high of sixty degrees, possible rainfall, and probable spiders. Dress accordingly.

Now then... where were we?

Ah yes. Him.

The UFOs have been glimpsed at every hour of the day, but He enters the treeline at dusk. He has long been a creature of the sunset. He seeks them out because He carries one in His heart.

This is His fifth visit to the forest at the edge of the Croton Falls Reservoir. He wanders more than He searches, as we all do in our own way. He taps notes into His iPhone, describing the cool air and the glittering stars. He struggles to find something poetic to say and fails. Instead, He writes something wry and cynical. That always comes easily to Him.

He does not think aliens are the cause of all this. He does not believe in aliens at all. It remains uncertain whether the aliens believe in Him.

His suspicion is that things wished for with sufficient fervor become real. Some people call them tulpas. Others call them hallucinations. The wise avoid naming them altogether.

Somewhere nearby an owl hoots and a rodent squeals - another battle in the unending war. The sound makes His skin crawl, especially since He already feels like He is being watched from afar, like some other voice has begun narrating His life. Will He ever learn that the only author of our existence is soulless chaos? I like to think I will be the one to tell Him should He ever find his way to our pleasant little town.

As far as He is concerned, the only explanation for the mad wind, the bending trees, the scurrying wildlife, and the heavy whup-whup-whup sound is black helicopters. If you asked Him why He thought such a thing, He would show you a photograph of the dismembered UFO enthusiast and remark, "Why do you think they call them choppers?"

How quaint. Black helicopters are so 1990s. As we all learned on the recent PBS documentary Secret government conspiracies do not bother with aircraft anymore, not when they can get everything done with a stroke of a keyboard and a blast of microwaves.

And speaking of microwaves, today's installment of Muldwych After Dark is brought to you by Hubbard Brand Aluminum Foil. Settle for less and you might lose your mind!

Now back to our story about Him.

Clouds, those earliest adopters of recycling, have begun to creep in from the west and He is pacing. The urge to go home is strong but He is afraid He will miss something if He leaves now, but in the end we all miss something; every day we miss a million somethings, we glimpse people and places we will never fathom. We overhear conversations that were never meant for us. We walk away just before miracles or disasters begin. Here in Muldwych Corners we find that state of confusion to be a delightful thing. Something to be savored like raspberries on the tongue.

At three AM, that most desolate hour of the night, He hears a whup-whup-whup sound approaching from the east. He moves towards it, pushing against the sudden roaring wind. The trees bend, the leaves flutter and tear free of their branches. He hears a panicked Lesser Zoog hiss and scamper away. He does not see it. People rarely do. With each step closer His straw fedora threatens to go flying from his head and He has to use His free hand to keep it  in place. His free hand is almost always His left one. It spends a remarkable amount of time holding that fedora in place.

The louder and closer the whup-whup-whup sound gets the more He comes to understand that the sound is not really like a chopper at all. The wind that whips around him is thick like the breath of reptiles. The urge to run screams up from His hypothalamus but He ignores it, as He usually does. He and his hypothalamus have rarely aligned. 

He has to see.

He has to see.

He has to know. 

No matter the cost. And He knows better than most that the cost can be terrible.

We interrupt this story about Him to bring you this important announcement.

It has come to our attention that sources close to Muldwych Corners mayor Timothy Knight report that he will soon come to a decision about installing a display of the Ten Commandments at the county courthouse. While most of the residents of Muldwych Corners support the idea of a giant granite display of religious principles being erected in a municipal government building there has been a long and frequently violent debate about which religious principles it could be. No matter what the final decision is, local Atheists and adherents to the Code of Hammurabi plan to protest.

With that bit of business done we will return to the story about Him.

He is standing still now, frozen in place. Four lights wink into existence. They grow larger. Wider and wider. The whup-whup-whup has become a thick, droning buzz. He raises His iPhone, unsure if the fusion of first world technology and third world labor will be enough to capture the image of what He sees.

What does He see? The silhouette of an impossible wasp, larger than His car and smaller than the helicopter He had expected. The outline is dark and jagged. It hovers in place. The cold  phosphorescence of its quartet of eyes reveals a swollen, savagely hooked proboscis. 

Now He sees.

Now He knows.

And it, this creature that is not a chopper, this wasp that is too large to be a wasp, sees Him as well. An edge of hunger has crept into the droning of its wings. Those wings that move too fast to be seen but are undeniable in their force, the force that drives Him to His knees and sends His straw fedora fluttering away.

There is no doubt in His mind that He is doomed, that at any moment He will be swallowed up and all but His least desirable morsels spit back into the forest. 

All He wants is one picture, an image his smartphone will automatically upload to the Internet. He wants the residents of the ordinary world to see the truth as He sees it. It is the only legacy He has ever wanted.

He lets the lights get closer and closer still. 

The creature’s proboscis quivers in anticipation. 

He snaps the photograph.

The flash of his smartphone's LED lights up the forest at the edge of the Croton Falls Reservoir.

The wind stops, the quartet of eyes flicker and go out. The droning roar becomes a whup-whup-whup sound that grows further and further away until it is lost to a single, whispering splash.

It will take Him a few minutes to catch his breath and half an hour to find His hat. In an hour he will realize His picture never came out.

But in this moment He is overwhelmed with the ecstasy of insight.

Was it the flash of the smartphone that frightened the creature away?

Was it some electromagnetic pulse beyond the range of human hearing?

Was it irony?

Was it luck?

Or had the creature merely seen enough of Him?

This concludes our story about Him and tonight’s installment of Muldwych After Dark. As the dayfall begins we will close out the show with a rare bootleg recording of the Captain and Tennille covering Joy Division’s classic  tune ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’.

Good morning Muldwych, good morning…

###

...I had to sit back and think for a long time about what I'd just heard. Sara needed a price check and had to call my name three times before I even realized it. Still dazed, I wandered over, did the price check, and that's how some lucky schlub got a flat-screen TV for sixty bucks.

Sara didn't stop the sale because she was too busy watching me. After the customer left, she told me I looked pale. She thought I was getting sick. I shrugged it off and blamed it on working too hard.

Instead, Sara decided to close the shop early, leave the electronics downstairs, and take me upstairs.

The rest of the night was blissfully, stubbornly in the moment. A snapshot of something better—the kind of life I wanted for the rest of my days.

We slept in each other’s arms until I woke up at 3 a.m. It wasn't my bladder; it was that the itching in the back of my brain was back again. I thought of Sweet Jane’s voice;

“He has to see.

He has to see.

He has to know. 

No matter the cost.”

I stared at the ceiling for a little while longer before getting up to make this post.

I don't share every part of my life here. There are false leads that don't pan out, periods when I spent more time playing Madden NFL 12 than trying to figure out what the Hell a Zoog is.

So now I can tell you that yes, indeed, I was deep in the woods surrounding the Croton Falls Reservoir on the night of April 2, 2010. Back then, I would have told you I was there because I wanted to disprove all the online chatter about UFOs—chatter whipped into a frenzy by a death that had begun to reek of a cover-up.

Now, though, I sometimes wonder if I was really looking for a way to get myself killed. I wasn't in the best place back then. When you've lost your family and your dreams, Internet fame isn't worth a jug of warm spit.

I did write the whole strange story up, but I never posted it. I just deleted the file, afraid you, dear readers, might think I'd spent the night smoking weed and watching Ray Harryhausen movies.

Obviously our relationship is better now.

But here's the important thing: I was alone, and I never told anyone—before or afterward—where I was going. Not you. Not Mrs. Vincenzo. Not my new friends from the FEAR AND TRUTH message board. Not my parole officer. And certainly not some obscure radio personality from who knows where.

Item: The station that broadcasts Muldwych After Dark has no call sign, and there is no town named Muldwych Corners on any map. The program ordinarily covers local news and politics, traffic, weather, upcoming festivals, and community events. Broadcasts are frequently interrupted by philosophical digressions, sponsor messages, and ruminations on the unending chain of linked cosmos-atoms which makes up the immediate super-cosmos of curves, angles, and material and semi-material electronic organization. 

There. See? I can do it too.

But anyway, I guess Sweet Jane figured my adventures would be good for sweeps week.

Item: The recording ended before the music started to play and now the thought of Toni Tennile singing the lyric ‘…There’s a taste in my mouth as desperation takes hold’ is haunting my dreams.

Item: There have been no further sightings of that insect-like creature. I am pretty sure, or maybe just hope, it has retreated to wherever it was hiding beneath the reservoir.

I wish I had more answers. I wish I knew how Muldwych After Dark saw into my life, into my very thoughts. I almost wish I'd never pressed play.

Most of all, I wish I knew what was waiting for us once we got to Delaware.

But all I can say now is good night, Sweet Jane. Wherever you are... good night.

THE NIGHT BLOGGER The Graveyard Game (and other cemetery plots) Episode Seventeen 'Brian Foster and the Curse of the Cartwrights'

By Al Bruno III

 

March 28th: “WAAAAGH!” I said.

My face was on fire. Not literal fire but a chemically induced one. Sara's mother had emptied half a can of mace into my face, and now my nostrils burned with snot, my eyes swelled shut, and the combination of chili pepper extract and tear gas had worked its way into my throat, leaving me with the sensation of drowning in a too-hot Jacuzzi.

“WAAAAGH!” I said again.

“Oh my God!” Sara shouted. “Brian! Oh my God!”

“Serves him right!” Her Mom said, “Sick weirdo dragging you into the occult.”

“He didn’t drag me into anything!”

I was curled into a ball in front of the cash register while Sara knelt beside me, desperately trying to wipe the mace from my eyes. I wanted to tell her not to do that—that she was only going to contaminate herself—but all I could manage was, "WAAAAAGH!" Somewhere in there I'd also developed an almost cartoonish sputtering noise.

Then Sara’s father spoke, “You don’t know what you're talking about. We've done our homework on this guy…”

“WAAAAGH!” Not the blog readers I expected.

“…and I have it on good authority that he is a charlatan who preys on frightened people. He fills people’s heads with paranoia until they can't tell what's real anymore…”

“WAAAAAGH!” Even in my agony, that condemnation sounded awfully familiar.

“…we spoke to the police to a Detective Bradshaw, and he said that he’s either morally degenerate or mentally degenerate.”

“WAAAAGH!” There ya go. I knew it.

Sara yelled, “Mrs. Vincenzo! I need water! Lots of water!”

Sara’s mother said, “You need to come home right now! I won’t have you bringing further humiliation to this family.”

And her father added, “And working at a pawn shop for God’s sake. Do you know what pawn shops are? Taxes for stupid people.”

“WAAAAGH!”

Smash cut.

Hours later, my eyes were still puffy and weepy; I couldn’t stop sniffling, and my voice had been reduced to an ugly rasp. I sounded like Tom Waits after peeling onions. “You know you’re the first girl whose parents I ever met.”

“That was the worst ever.” Sara was staring into her glass of apple-flavored mead.

We were at Albany's only meadery, a little hole in the wall on the corner of Second Street. It was called The Ferment Tavern, and the mead was genuinely good while the décor looked like someone had given a Renaissance Faire a Spirit Halloween budget. It was close enough to the university to attract a steady stream of students, but just weird enough that it never got too crowded.

I liked the place because it was quiet on the weeknights and the owners were a pair of friendly ex-bikers who had taken one too many falls and were more interested in serving the customers than chatting them up.

One of Ferment Tavern's best libations was called ‘Superstition’; it was an absolutely delicious concoction of blackberry mead and burbon severed in a jelly jar because why not? I used my right hand to finish it and my left to request a refill. The co-owner Margret already had one ready.

Yeah, go on and tell me psychic phenomena isn’t real. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the emergency room?” Sara asked, “Your eyes are still really bloodshot.”

“It’ll pass; I’ll be about 90% by the morning,” I said, “I have it on good authority.”

“Whose authority?” Sara asked, then caught herself, “Cousin Roy.”

“Yup, apparently he got maced a lot back in the 90’s when he was a roadie for Severe Tire Damage.” 

She took another sip of her drink then said, “Again, I am so sorry, Brian.”

“I should have expected something like this. Maybe we should have told them you were staying at a friends or something.”

“I don’t have any friends.”

“Mrs. Vincenzo would be hurt.”

“You know what I mean.” She cracked a smile, “Girls my own age.”

“And guys who aren’t morally degenerate charlatans.”

“You’re no charlatan,” She had been holding her mug of apple-mead in both hands, she let go with her left and placed it over mine. It felt cool and frail, just like her smile, “And I’ve slept with you, you’re not even remotely degenerate.”

“What a traumatic compliment.”

Interest in the supernatural and sleepwalking  had been bad enough, but now she was running around with a crowd that cared more about cryptids than which fork was for salads. At best, her parents were going to interfere. At worst, they were going to convince every psychiatrist, family friend, and judge within fifty miles that she was having a psychotic break. This was not good. Not when we had a kind of plan - steal the Codex, use it to defile the temples of Gorgo, Mormo and Luna, retire or hand over my blog and investigations to someone else and find a way to live the happiest most boring life possible with Sara.

Wow. It seems so easy when you look at it in print.

“So what now?” Sara asked.

I took another sip of Superstition before answering. “Road trip. I’ve got a book to get.”

“You mean steal?”

“Most people don’t give up their mystical tomes to strangers in straw hats.”

Sara nodded, “So we’re going to Delaware…”

“We? Oh no no no. You’re going to stay here and watch the pawn shop.”

“I’m not allowed to go on my own rescue mission?” She frowned, “Am I just your little damsel in distress?”

I have to tell you that if in that moment her mother rushed up and maced me again I might now have been all that upset.

“No…” I squirmed both mentally and physically, “It’s just that I might bring Cousin Roy and he gets really gassy on car rides…”

A trio of loud college students, one of which was carrying a box of Dungeons and Dragons supplies walked in the door. I watched them for a few moments, they looked to be about our age but they were younger, inncoent. For them monsters and mages were the thinjgs of entertainment and metaphor.

But not so for people like Sara and myself.

I sighed, “I just want you to be safe.”

The look she gave me was part resigntion and part bravery, “I haven’t been safe since August, Hell maybe before that.”

“I know it’s just… it’s just…” I ran my hand over my face, “Look it’s like the TV show Bonanza.”

"Bonanza?"

"Trust me. This is going somewhere..."

###

…sometimes it seems to me that the world's methodologies for dealing with tragedy are far better developed than the ones we have for happiness. When two people fall in love, there is no instruction manual. No proper timetable for a first kiss, a first romantic interlude, an engagement, or a wedding. But when someone dies, an entire machine lurches into motion. EMTs. Coroners. Funeral homes. Grieving. Gatherings.

And for me, in that terrible April of 2009, it was all happening in stereo. Uncle Roy was dead. Burst blood vessel, they said, though nobody sounded entirely certain. My mom and Aunt Peg were working together with uncharacteristic harmony to make the arrangements to send Uncle Roy's remains to his home state of Florida. Which is good because Cousin Roy had pretty much collapsed. His bravado was broken.

Meanwhile Grandma Gail’s rally was going into overtime, she was happy, she was energetic watching TV and trying to keep Aunt Gail’s twin boys entertained, of course for her entertained was watching Bonanza reruns on TNN and making commentary on the events of the episode. It was things like;

“Wasn’t Michael Landon handsome?”

“I rode a horse just like that when I was a girl on your great aunt’s farm. His name was Snowball.”

“Oh no. Hoss is in love. That never ends well. Every time one of those Cartwright boys falls in love, she either dies or changes her mind. Mostly she dies. But that’s the thing about love, someone lives, someone dies. It’s part of world. You’ll learn.”

And every time the twins answered with a “Yes Miss Gail.” but each time they seemed a little more desperate to escape.

She showed no sign that two nights ago a half serpent half millipede ribbon of smoke had wormed its way into her mouth and she had reacted like a sleeping lover snuggling into an embrace.

There was no way Grandma Gail's never-ending rally and that thing she'd swallowed two nights earlier weren't connected.

You never forget your first monster. Most folks go into shock, or denial, or straight to church; I on the other hand went to the Internet.

My searches for “red mist” got me info about a movie, a mystery novel and a rumored snuff film involving Squidward from Spongebob Squarepants. That worried me almost as much as the monster itself. Whatever I'd seen appeared to be completely immune to Google.

So off I went to the local library. Much like confession, I hadn't been to the library in years and barely remembered the rituals. The card catalogs from my school days were gone, replaced with conveniently located computers; the once well-stocked periodical section was being crowded out by a DVD
section.

After three frustrating hours, all I carried out of the public library was a single word: Vorvolaka. I’d found it in an article about a rare supplemental volume of Sir George Frazer’s classic work The Golden Bough. The book came out in 1939 and was quickly recalled and suppressed. Why? The official blame was textual and formatting errors but if that was really the case why hadn’t
they reprinted a corrected edition?

After checking in with my mom (doing fine) and Cousin Roy (still a hot mess), I went back to digging. I was a little proud of how well my research was going, .it was almost like I was in college for journalism or something.

Although I hadn't even been away from college for a week, it felt like a lifetime ago. But that had to wait until tomorrow but that tomorrow ended up stretching for the better part of three days. The machinery of grief needed to be fed and it’s fuel was tears and bureaucracy. There had been some delays and confusion regarding the transportation of remains. Cousin Roy wanted his Dad cremated here as quickly as possible, he saw no value in funerals and wakes. Aunt Peg thought that cremation, much like organ donation and assisted suicide doomed the deceased to an eternity in the First Circle of Hell, which of you’ve read your Dante is kind of like an assited living facility for the slightly damned.

This disagreement got heated. And by "heated," I mean there was a scuffle in one of our otherwise very respectable funeral homes. I'm sure you can imagine the whole awful scene. Well, it was worse. By the end they were throwing display urns at each other.

I wasn't there for it. Later, though, Mom and I were sitting in Grandma Gail's room, chowing down on fast food when she told the whole horrifically slapstick story, concluding that somehow she and Tom Wynne got things under control. Grandma Gail went from being shocked at the drama to curious. “Thomas was with you?”

“For moral support,” Mom explained but then she turned to me. “He and I had a long conversation, he and his wife are getting a divorce. Irreconcilable differences.”

Grandma and I paused in mid-chew.

She continued, sounding equal parts giddy and embarrassed. “And he and I have decided to try and start dating.”

This my dear readers is what they call, ‘Burying the lead’.

I offered a heartfelt congratulations, but I found myself wondering how all this domestic drama could be unfolding while my grandmother remained at the center of a supernatural event.

And speaking of Grandma when my hug with my Mom broke I glanced at her. Her expression was not happy or scandalized, her expression was, for lack of a better word inscrutable.

By the time our little family had wrapped everything up, it was far too late to do any more of my planned investigating. So I sat up a little while longer with them. No more Bonanza reruns—just The Tonight Show. Then I went to bed.

Now don't think for a second I didn't barricade myself in my room. At least for a little while, anyway.

You see, one of my many errands that day had been a trip to Vincenzo's Pawn Shop, where I'd picked up a little digital camera that—with a bit of tinkering and some third-party software—could double as a surveillance camera. Somewhere between the opening monologue and Taylor Lautner, I slipped it into what I hoped would be a good hiding place to capture whatever nightmare I'd witnessed earlier.

Thankfully, this was an era when two-liter bottles of Jolt Cola were still commercially available. I found myself nursing one until 3:00 a.m.

Yes. Three a.m. The Witching Hour.

Grandma Gail sat up, the motion so sudden that I thought the camera feed had skipped.

Time to act. I shoved my dresser away from the door, snatched the old silver crucifix I'd received for my Confirmation, and bolted for Grandma's room. Sitting up or not Grandma Gail still looked to be fast asleep, eyes closed, softened features, steady breathing. Except, of course, for the thing. The red thing. The thing that was like a serpent and smoke all at once, worming its way out of her mouth.

What was it? I wondered. Was this a Vorvolaka?

And what did I do at that moment? I held up that silver cross and pulled out every horror movie quote I could think of, "I cast you out! Unclean spirit!"

No reaction. Just the thing, the Vorvolaka coiling out of her mouth like some magician’s handkerchief trick.

I stepped closer waving the cross in a way I hoped was somehow menacing, “The power of Jesus compels you!”

Finally it noticed me. Oh did it ever. It flowed upward until it reached the ceiling, it’s tail end still buried somewhere in my Grandmother’s gullet and regarded me. It had no eyes but oh yes it was sizing me up.

“I cast you out. I cast you out in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and… that the Virgin Mary too!” I winced inwardly, “So there!”

That was the part that unsettled me most. The Vorvolaka had already proven it could ooze through the screen without difficulty. Opening the window served no practical purpose. It was obeying some instinct—or some rule—I couldn't begin to understand.

It flowed outside, the last bit of it slipping from my Grandma’s lips. She made a choking sound and fell roughly back on the bed. Not breathing. Despite the darkened room and my growing panic I know for a fact she was not breathing.

For one awful moment I became convinced she'd been dead for days. That the thing wearing her had been sitting with us, accepting hugs, watching Bonanza reruns and smiling whenever someone brought her pudding.

And that pissed me off.

And what do you do when your pissed off? Something stupid of course.

I stepped forward and grabbed at the crimson smoke. It was an act of desperation and I expected my hand to pass right through the thing but it was tangible, and warm and had the consistency of a jellyfish.

And it didn’t like being grabbed.

The end of it that was still in the room. It curled in mid-air and attacked. It enveloped me. Everything went red, I fell to the floor of my grandmother’s room. Pain bloomed behind my eyes and suddenly I couldn’t move, suddenly I was entombed in my own body.

Then someone else's memories poured into me.

I was Stuart Shield, the in-home hospice nurse. My shift had ended hours ago, but I was still replaying Grandma Gail's miraculous rally as I endured the miserable ninety-minute drive back to Utica. Mohawk Valley Home Health had done it again—three hours behind the wheel for barely four hours of work. By the time I climbed the four flights of stairs to my apartment, all I wanted was silence.

I didn't bother turning on the lights. I dropped into my favorite chair, closed my eyes for just a moment...

...and beneath the apartment door something red seeped through the crack. It flowed across the floor without making a sound, climbed the back of the chair, and rested around my throat like a warm scarf. It waited. One heartbeat. Two. Three.

Then it forced itself into my mouth and eyes.

Terror. Suffocation. Darkness.

Then I was Brian Foster again, sprawled on Grandma Gail's bedroom floor. Someone was speaking to me and as they did the agony intensified, I expected my skull to burst at any moment. I almost wanted it to happen.

And I thought to myself - Is that what happened to Uncle Roy?

The pain started to pulse, keeping perfect time with my breaths; I imagined it shrinking down to a tiny spark buried deep in my brain that would suddenly blossom out  like an explosion of invisible knives. The agony was the color of blood, the color of the Vorvolaka. My field of vision began to diminish, red pressing in on all sides until I was blinded.

I wanted to live, but the red wouldn't let me. Not because I wanted another sunrise, or another shot at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. No. I wanted to live because I'd glimpsed the secret song of the universe. It was dark. It was ugly. But Goddamn, I wanted to know it. I wanted to understand it.

In the red I could hear the voice, “Don’t struggle oh my sweet. Dream. Dream in the emptiness. The emptiness is love.”

It made perfect sense. Why should I struggle? What was the point of this life? We all end up dead anyway. Why wait? What was I trying to accomplish? Sinking further and further away I had dwindled to a pinprick of consciousness. I barely saw the frail angry figure standing over me but I heard it yell.

“NO!”

The red faded and darkness took its place. I went from dying to dreaming but barely noticed the difference until I was stirred to wakefulness by the warmth early morning sunlight on my face. I was in my bed, tucked in with the covers up to my chin and for one sweet innocent moment I thought that it all must have been a terrible dream

Then I heard my mother's anguished wail, she had just received the news that Tom Wynne was dead.

###

"...Sara... I don't think I understood it back then. Every time you really learn something, something gets taken from you. Maybe it's innocence. Maybe it's certainty. Maybe it's someone you love. But nobody ever walks away from the truth without leaving something behind."

I looked down into my drink.

"Sara... I've left a lot behind."

She touched my face then, “You’re crying.”

Surprised I touched my face, sure enough my fingers came back wet. “Well its good for you right? Like therapy.” I wiped my face on my sleeve and accomplished nothing. Leather jackets and tears don’t mix.

“You think you’re the only one?” She made me look her in the eyes, “I’ve felt something pulling at me since I was a little kid. The darkness was a dare because I know, and you do too, that the darkness was never empty.”

“I’m totally stealing that.”

“Brian. Do you think I only went to Pinewood Cemetery because you said you were going with me?”

Before I could answer, the other owner Frank came over and asked if we wanted another round. We decided to be sensible and just order two waters so one of us would be able to drive home within an hour or so. Behind us, the D&D players' arguments for and against the creation of Picklestein were heating up, and Margret was very gently threatening to throw them out again.

I said, “I assumed we had kind of talked each other into it.”

“I was going to go no matter what. I had been obsessing about the Graveyard Game for months, ever since I read about it on 4Chan.” Our waters arrived. Sara waited for Frank to leave before she spoke again, “And then when I found about Sara Bishop and that she was so damn close… Is there even a word beyond obsessed?”

“Monomaniacal?” I suggested.

She waved it off, “It doesn’t matter. What you need to know is that what happened to me happened because of me. My stupid decision. Possibly the last in a long series.”

“Don’t even joke like that,” I took a sip of water.

“You think I’m like some guest star on Bonanza? That I’m going to die tragically in your arms?”

“...and yet I can't stop thinking it.”

“Maybe you’re the guest star in my show, the whacky neighbor who helps me in my time of need.”

“Whacky neighbor?”

“So I’m going with you, I’m helping you. The only question is what are you going to do about it?” She took a strangely flirtatious sip of her water, “Are you going to be a Millhouse or a Fonzie about it?”

What else could I do?

I gave her a big thumbs up.