Memory 708
Horror stories. They’ve fascinated Danny since he was a kid. His father told the best horror stories, and those stories always gave him what no other story could: a greater appreciation for his life. The vivid words. The creepy sounds. The perfectly designed dramatic pauses that made him suddenly conscious of the pounding heartbeat in his ears. Wanting the story to continue and stop at the same time. Uncomfortable. Unsettled. Yet, captivated. And then —
The climax!
And the rush of adrenaline that followed.
But the adrenaline wasn’t what he enjoyed the most. No. It was something else. It was… he wasn’t sure what it was… He didn’t want to save the world, or win the Olympics, or travel to a foreign country to see something new and exotic. He just wanted the horror to end. He wanted his life back.
The scarier the story the more he appreciated his life. And to know that his father’s stories were true doubled that feeling. Doubled the spell the story had on him. The truth of those stories made them far more potent than those dark fantasies that came from the imagination. His father’s stories were real and that made them scarier.
Much scarier.
His father wanted him to design stories just like he did. Follow his path. Hunt and murder human beings in the shadows.
And he did.
Just not in the way his father had intended.
And now Danny designs better stories. Much better stories. Better because of the setting. Because they could happen anywhere, unlike his father’s stories which took place in what experts called ‘abnormal circumstances’ where scary and gruesome stories were expected.
His settings made the horror all the more unique.
All the more unexpected.
And now, as Danny sits on his couch in his air-conditioned studio apartment, he feels the sudden need to design another story. And so he reaches for a yellow legal pad sitting on a coffee table and sifts through the contents searching for potential victims.
Memory 709
Danny goes through the legal pad searching for the perfect profile for his next design. What he’s looking for is the ordinary. The relatable. The perfect victim that will make his readers think and feel it could have been them. Someone who does everything by the book. Someone who doesn’t deserve to die. As if deserve had anything to do with it. He rips out pages, all the candidates with criminal records or those who are too loud in the community. He can’t have his readers confused with hate, revenge, jealously or gang violence. There can be no hiding place for the reader. They need to identify with the victim. They need to be able to see themselves in the story or it fails. It just doesn’t work. And as he searches for his one-size-fits-all profile, his fingers fumble over a name: John Michaels. A person with two first names. Fantastic. He glances over his surveillance notes. Nine-to-five. Award-winning teacher. Single. Townhouse with a white picket fence. Doesn’t really deserve to die. Perfect.
Memory 710
John Michaels. A perfect name for the next chapter in his book. Every John and Michael will consciously or unconsciously be drawn to the headline. The name itself will attract a sizeable audience. And the story will grip them in the talons of fear, only to release them at the very end. Horror heaped on horror until at the end they’re begging for release — begging for their lives back. He laughs to himself as he watches John exit the community college where he teaches anthropology. He took a class in anthropology once. And he remembers the heated debates with his teacher who tried to make him believe in this ridiculous theory of the homo sapiens — that humanity was intrinsically curious and intelligent species that evolved toward peace and prosperity with its many civilisations and achievements.
Danny argued the opposite. He argued humans were intrinsic killers—killers that evolved to enslave, acquire, destroy and eventually self-destruct. That the achievements and the civilizations were tools for blood. That the mask of civilization was a façade, a farce, an elaborate design to hide the true face of humanity—the bloody face of horror, as he often liked to call it. The bloody face of horror always found a way to break through the mask. Always. The more we contained and hid the truth, the stronger and more creative it got in breaking free. As if it had a life of its own. A need of its own.
They were fun debates. His teacher cited the golden age of prosperity at the turn of the century and Danny countered with World War One. His teacher talked about the advent of electricity, and Danny talked about the electric chair and the electrocution of an elephant at a festival. His teacher raved about tractors and the Green Revolution, and he raved about tanks and Agent Orange. His teacher pointed to the airplane and all the great opportunities flight brought humanity. And Danny pointed to the bombs. And that was the end of the argument.
All that curiosity and inventiveness paid for in blood and used to shed even more blood.
His teacher called these extreme situations. Abnormal situations. Misuse of human ingenuity. But Danny wasn’t convinced. Danny claimed there were more abnormal than normal situations in any given century including the twentieth century.
Especially the twentieth century.
The twentieth century saw great advances in knowledge and technology but not wisdom.
Never wisdom.
Wisdom always came last if it came at all.
Ten years of blood for every day of peace. That’s what his old man said almost every dawn when he’d drop a penny on his bed to check if it was made properly. Stern as steel. Hard as a rock. Crazy as a loon. But not wrong. Definitely, not wrong.
Memory 711
Danny wakes up in his black sedan covered in sweat. He dozed off and that’s not like him. It’s the broken air conditioner and humidity making him groggy. He opens his heavy eyelids and cranes his sticky neck to see John through the living room window getting his horror fix from the late-hour news. Mass fear stimulating the adrenaline glands and slowly becoming relief and appreciation for abnormal, day-to-day, civilised living. Ten horror stories for every one feel-good story. That was the media ratio, and the secret to growing an audience and running a successful news business with paying advertisers.
John suddenly jerks to his feet.
Danny figures he lost reception, again as he observes John approach the TV. He fiddles with two long antennas, smacks the side of the story-box, then sits back down and sips on a warm glass of milk as he takes in the horrors of the world in the safety and security of his home.
Danny makes a note on his yellow pad about the TV. He could probably use it in his final design along with the refrigerator. As he considers the possibilities of building tension, a bead of sweat drips off his nose and splats on the pen. He wipes his face with his arm wishing he had the money to repair his air conditioner. Then he realizes he’ll complete his design soon, and his story, and with his story a pay check. But the important thing is to not rush the design or miss out on the opportunities he knows time and patience will bring his dark imagination.
Memory 712
Danny knows John’s routine by heart now. Several days of reconnaissance and he’s an authority on the character and setting of his next design. He’ll start with the refrigerator door. The warning chime will sound in exactly three minutes to wake John up. He’ll slump down the stairs, close the door and quickly return to sleep, still thinking about the poor, unsuspecting bastard that was crushed to death by the escalator in the Roseville Mall. A perfect story to help John fall asleep, counting his lucky stars that it wasn’t him. That he’s still alive. And yet, completely oblivious to the fact that those are the last of his stars and that he will be tomorrow’s bedtime story.
Just as John tries to fall asleep Danny will open the refrigerator door, again. And again, John will return to the kitchen. He’ll close it. But this time he’ll wait a few minutes just to make absolutely sure it’s really, really closed. Then he’ll return to bed somewhat satisfied that he won’t be disturbed anymore.
Danny will let some time pass. Then he’ll open the door again, and when John returns to the kitchen, he’ll be in the living room to turn on the TV. This is precisely when John will wonder if there’s an intruder in his home. He may even suspect —
The Ghost of Roseville.
The Ghost Face.
The Legend.
John will rush to the phone only to discover a severed cord. At that precise moment, he’ll leap out of the shadows like a panther in the night and trigger the first and final scream of John Michaels —
The most upstanding citizen of Roseville and the most undeserving of such a grisly and unprovoked death.
It’s perfect.
In the hot and humid sedan Danny visualizes slipping the knife through John’s neck and severing the tongue mid-scream—freezing his face in wide, gaping terror. He knows if he visualizes the kill several times it will improve his odds at success. His father taught him that. Taught him to visualize every beat of the design. He assured him it was what made him a medal-winning hunter of human beings. The thing they don’t teach you in killing school.
Danny visualises the design once more. Then he opens his eyes and exits the car, moving through the shadows toward the back door of the picture-perfect house. He glides past the fence and scans the backyard for a moment. Then he lifts and fiddles with the glass door until he hears a click. Carefully, he slides the door open and enters the air-conditioned home.
He takes a moment to cool down in the narrow hallway. Then he moves toward the dark kitchen, slowly opening the refrigerator door and enjoying a nice cool waft of air in the process. A soft beam of warm, yellow light illuminates the floor and the small round breakfast table beside him.
Everything is going as planned. But then, as Danny turns, something in his peripheral catches his eye. Gives him pause. He tilts his head slightly, narrows his gaze and pulls off his mask to make sure he’s seeing what he thinks he’s seeing. As he takes in the horror spread across the table, his face freezes in a silent scream.
Memory 713
Danny closes his mouth and reaches out to a small, underground newspaper. He lifts the front page of ‘The Urban Farce’ and examines a caricature of his legend based on police descriptions taken from an intoxicated witness he had deliberately spared during his last design. He wants to slowly build an image in the imaginations of his readers and now…
…Now a bunch of idiots were making a complete joke of his creation with parody. With god damn parody! The worst genre that ever existed. A bloated parasite that fed off the creations of others!
How dare they make a joke of his life’s work!
Danny breathes hard and tries to compose himself. He realizes he can’t go through with tonight’s design. Too many emotions swirling around, undermining his focus. Anger. Hate. Humiliation. Disbelief. Everything feels hazy. Hazy and emotional like his first design.
Those were different circumstances. But his first design taught him how emotion can undermine even the best design. He quickly turns to close the refrigerator door, but he’s already too late and —
A piercing chime sounds through the small house.
Shit!
Danny quickly retreats into the darkness of the pantry leaving the door slightly ajar.
Within moments, John enters the kitchen yawning. He stands before the refrigerator scratching his head, confused. He yawns, again, and stares at leftovers, contemplating a little midnight snack. Then, mumbling something incoherent to himself, he closes the refrigerator door leaving them in the shadows.
He should leave now. Go back to bed. But —
John doesn’t leave.
He just stands there as though sensing something’s amiss.
Danny can see John’s silhouette through the slight opening. It seems like John is approaching him, but he can’t be sure. His heart pounds in his throat. His blood boils through his veins. He feels weak, light-headed, almost like he’s going to faint. This can’t be happening.
He doesn’t just kill.
He designs.
A dark shadow approaches the pantry.
Danny gathers himself and prepares to lunge with his knife. But he knows—
It’s all wrong! Raw and primal and about something else.
Please… don’t open that fuckin' door. Please…
Danny holds his breath and waits for the inevitable.
Memory 714
John Michaels must have had at least one more lucky star that night. Had John opened that pantry door Danny would have had no choice but to end his days as an awe-inspiring teacher. But he didn’t, and he gave Danny a chance to escape with The Urban Farce.
Now Danny stares through binoculars at the post office waiting for the editors or artists to show up. He needs to act fast and put a stop to this overt assault on his image. Parody. It had to be parody. God damn parody. The artist took a few vague statements about a ghost-like figure with a gaping mouth and turned those perfectly crafted statements into a joke. An absolute joke. Now, more than ever, he realizes that he’ll have to get a proper likeness of his terrifying mask out to the public before everything he’s worked toward is undone by a caricature.
And what if this parody is all that people remember?
Won’t happen. I’ve collected them all.
He turns to a massive stack of newspapers in the back seat of his car. He must have spent the entire night collecting every single copy of The Urban Farce from phone booths around the neighbourhood.
He scrunches his fist into a ball, sighs heavily and doesn’t understand the humour. There’s nothing funny about what he does. He provides a kind of misunderstood therapy for those suffering from the madness of suburban living. He makes the citizens of Roseville feel good about their monotonous lives. He gives them respite and relief. He protects the mask of civilization with his mask, and they’re laughing at that. Just like they laughed at his father when he returned.
He grinds his teeth.
Only trust fund idiots trying to be rebellious would publish this kind of shit.
A person enters the post office. Danny tracks him with the binoculars to box—
19.
Not the publisher.
He then follows another man to box —
7.
Him neither.
And yet another man accesses box —
15.
He lowers the binoculars and calms his humiliated heart. He regards the newspaper one more time. Letters to the editor. He scans the address and notes the PO Box. Then he looks up and suddenly spots a young man walking into the post office. He tracks his movement past the desk to box—
13.
Bingo!
Memory 715
10:03 PM. Danny sits in his car watching the three stooges lock up the Roseville Coliseum. That’s what he calls them stooges. All of them— Tom, Pete, and Bradley — college dropouts working for Tom’s dad at the Coliseum. They’ll sweep the floor, take inventory, hang out in the staff room and work on their garbage newspaper, using dad’s photocopier. Then they’ll finish the night with one or two beers and a quick round of laser tag. Spoiled little shits with nothing better to do with their lives than drink and debate movies and distract their peanut brains with arcades and laser tag. But still —
He’s grateful for their names.
Perfect names.
They’re the kind of names you’d expect in a blockbuster. A ridiculous story where Tom, Pete, and Bradley enter an ‘extreme situation’ to kill all the badies only to return home without a scratch.
Without a goddamn scratch.
Against technologically superior enemy.
Now that would be parody if it weren’t propaganda.
The kind of propaganda that convinces all the Toms and Petes and Brads to sign up to kill human beings. The kind of story his dad hated because of how much he respected the actual badies who hunted him for all those years. The true story is —
Pete and Bradley don’t come back home.
They die.
Horrible deaths.
And Tom has to return to a suburban town that no longer accepts him because he sees right through the mask and it just doesn’t fit him anymore. And because it doesn’t fit anymore, they’ll sweep him under the rug of civilisation and try to forget him because of the truth he represents. And Tom will stare at the perfectly manicured lawns and the white picket fences and know. And always know —
It’s all a façade.
Danny watches the laughing, intoxicated three stooges enter the staff room.
Go ahead, laugh. You’ll soon realize what happens when you cross lines that shouldn’t be crossed.
Danny feels acid rising up his throat. He tells himself he will soon have the last laugh. The challenge of this design is to overcome his bubbling rage. And he feels he’s almost ready. He just has to go through the Coliseum and search for the most ideal place for the perfect scream. For now, he’s leaning toward the staff room, but he knows that might change once he’s actually walked the space.
Memory 716
10:04 PM. Tom, Pete and Bradley lock up a minute later than usual. Danny stands in the shadows away from the bright street lights, observing them through a glass door. When they disappear into the staff room, he puts on his beloved, bone-white mask and prepares for his first walk through of the setting. He’ll walk through the Coliseum at least two more times before he finalizes the design, allowing his ideas to work themselves out.
Time to incubate is the secret to any great design.
And it’s the phase he knows not to rush. It’s the most important phase. Everything else is just execution.
Danny laughs at his pun as he glides through the darkness toward the exit door. How often did he have issues with his design only to be struck by inspiration in the middle of the night? He knows now that if he has any creative blocks he just has to sleep on it. There’s something about sleep that polishes every design.
Now Danny opens the exit door which he tinkered with earlier in the day. Stealthily, he enters the arcade, gliding past the small concessions booth toward the growing sound of a debate. He hides near the staff room where he hears the loud and obnoxious stooges argue over horror movies and killers.
Danny suddenly feels the blood rushing up his neck as they get everything wrong. Idiots poking fun at something they don’t understand, or, at best, think they understand. Idiots criticizing some of the greatest designs and spewing vitriol about how they could have done better. So much better. Tom even suggests that they should work together to create a design of their own. Give Roseville something to be really scared of.
Danny clenches a fist and wants to rush inside the staff room and rip their heads off. He takes a moment to calm himself. In a week or so he’ll have his moment with these arrogant idiots. The intellectual masturbation of those who shout from the side-lines and wonder what it’s like to actually step into the ring. They exist in every creative field. He knows that, and laughs at himself for actually letting them get in his head. He’d actually love to see the stooges attempt their own design. They would fumble and fuck up every beat up to the very climax. He almost wants to spare them just to see what they’d end up doing.
Almost.
Danny regards his watch. One minute more. He counts the seconds as they complain and spew hot air about the perfect design and how they alone could execute it. The boasting and bravado fades and is quickly replaced with rock-and-roll blasting on the Coliseum speakers.
With quick steps, Danny retreats behind a beeping arcade as the idiots spill out of the staff room and enter the laser tag arena for a quick fix of adrenaline. He quietly steps out of the shadows and counts ten paces to the staff room. He has exactly twenty-two minutes before their game ends.
He opens the door and enters the tiny room but unexpectedly gags when he’s hit with the foul stench of stale beer, rancid coffee, and twisted cigarette butts in dirty ashtrays. He turns to his side slightly, and his eyes suddenly go wide beneath the mask.
What the fuck!
His heart thunders in his ears as he stares at a yellowing wall covered with caricatures of his favourite killers throughout history. His face tenses. He grinds his molars and tries to suppress the thing beneath the mask. He needs to take a moment, compose himself, and walk away.
Don’t look at it. Just don’t look at it…
But he can’t help himself. You don’t laugh at legends…
He reaches out and touches a caricature of the one they called The Miner. You don’t laugh at legends… His mouth gapes open. His lips tremble. He hasn’t felt like this in years.
You don’t! Laugh! At legends!
He tries to turn away but his feet are blocks of cement. He feels prickles all over his body as blood courses violently through his veins and something contained begins to stir.
He closes his eyes and counts to ten. He hasn’t improvised since his first design and that didn’t go very well. He has to find his centre.
Walk away.
Just walk away.
For the design.
He stares up at the wall of parody and takes a deep breath. He closes his eyes and counts down from ten. Then he opens his eyes to see all the warped and ridiculous faces laughing at him.
He wants to ignore them. He wants to walk away. He has to walk away. But something won’t let him. And before he realizes what’s happening the thing contained breaks free. He clenches his fist and smashes it against the wall.
Fuck the design!
Memory 717
The last ten minutes are a blur. Everything happened in a flash of emotion. He remembers moments. Brief moments. Turning on the strobe lights. Cranking up the music. Activating the dry ice machine. Hunting the three stooges in slow motion through the cool, misty arena. And now he yanks the gleaming hunter knife out of a pulpy face rendered completely unrecognisable.
Shit. I must have stabbed him a hundred times in the head.
Danny narrows his gaze on the face but the strobe light plays tricks on him. Makes the face look like his past victims—the faces changing with every blink of light.
He shakes his head and stares hard at the face. This is Tom. No. Can’t be. Tom he stabbed in the legs. He’s still alive, groveling about like a worm somewhere.
What about Pete? No. Can’t be, Pete. He’s pretty sure he decapitated Pete. It’s not what he intended, but shit happens. He pushed the knife a little too hard. Cut a little too deep. A little too fiercely.
Well, if it isn’t Pete. And it isn’t Tom. It must be Bradley. Good’ol Bradley. He’s confronted with a sudden image of Bradley screaming as he silences him with a blade through the mouth. He nods and sighs. Yeah, it’s Bradley. Definitely, Bradley.
He stares at the mangled face for a long moment. It’s not as bad as he thought it would be. A little messy, but he can find a way to make this work.
The last time he improvised a design was with his dad. Bless his soul. He deserved a better design, a much better execution, but he hadn’t realised how much he had bottled up inside. All those training drills and unrealistic expectations to bring back stories and medals pushed him over the edge.
It just came pouring out one night while camping in a way he hadn’t expected. Happens all the time. Every day. To the best. He just didn’t think it could happen to him. And here it is happening again.
The music stops for a moment to reveal someone sobbing and screaming for help.
Tom.
Danny marches through flashing light and dark, following a trail of warm blood through the maze. Soon the blood leads him to a young man dragging himself across the cement ground, desperately inching toward an exit door.
Danny approaches him menacingly. He kneels before him and stares at him. Despite the air-conditioning he feels sweat drip down his face and drip into the gathering pool of blood. And as he watches the sweat drip off his face, he realises —
He isn’t wearing his mask. He touches his warm, bloody face and vaguely remembers removing the mask in the staff room after her ripped down every last caricature.
That’s because The Ghost Face has nothing to do with this. This is something else. There’s no way he’s crediting The Ghost Face with these clumsy yet incredibly satisfying kills.
Tom looks up at Danny.
Danny wipes the sweat and blood off his face. They lock eyes.
Not so funny now, is it?
Danny places his knife in Tom’s hand.
You know what a copycat is, don’t you? Well, that’s what you are. A failed copycat. A parody of a true killer.
Tom tries to attack Danny with the knife.
Easy there, Tom. You might hurt yourself…
Tom’s arm falls and splatters in blood, the knife dangling from the fingertips. He struggles to wrap his wet fingers around the hilt and attacks with the knife, hitting air over and over again.
Danny laughs. Politicians will use your story to campaign against beer, rock-and-roll and horror movies. That’s the current angle I’m considering. You like that angle, Tom?
Tom gasps and struggles to say something without success.
Danny inches closer. He lowers his voice to a cruel whisper and suggests a potential headline for his next article —
Ghost Copycat. Tragedy hits Roseville Coliseum. Employee stabs two of his colleagues to death before suffering a lethal injury.
Danny considers, then offers an alternative version —
Joke taken too far. Tragedy hits Roseville Coliseum. Three employees die in a prank gone horribly wrong after a night of drinking, rock-and-roll and horror movies.
Danny tilts his head slightly. He considers both versions of the story. The drinking, rock-and-roll and horror movies offer a comfortable scapegoat. It gives readers something to point to.
Something to blame.
A place to hide.
And he isn’t sure he wants to give his readers a place to hide with this one. He leans closer to Tom. What do you think? Copycat or bad joke?
Tom murmurs something incoherent.
Danny smiles. Sorry, I didn’t really get that. You’re gonna have to speak up, buddy. Take a deep breath… enunciate. Come on… you’re so full of fuckin' opinions… I’m sure you have an opinion on how you’d like to be remembered.
Tom writhes desperately and manages to issue one last, gasping scream before dying.
Danny sighs and closes his eyes against the blinking light. He still isn’t sure which angle to take, and it doesn’t really matter, anyway. Either version will do its job and scare the good citizens of Roseville into fastening the mask a little tighter before bed while they count their lucky stars and appreciate their ridiculously insane, suburban lives.
