Men and Monsters is the first chapter of a serialized novel that was begun, but never finished, in 2010. I've removed it from the blog it initially had been a part of and will be re-posting the older chapters to the Plotgap Publishing blog over the next few weeks. One chapter will come out every Sunday. Once that has been completed We'll expand into new material! I hope everyone enjoys the story.
-Josh Kemp
Men and Monsters
I was only twenty two the first time I witnessed real evil, when I learned that the monsters in the dark are real.
I was working at a small hole in the wall bar in Oregon called Spencer’s. Hardwood floors, a deafening sound system, cheap drinks and Karaoke three nights a week – Spencer’s had everything that every other cheap bar does, and not much to distinguish itself aside from the regulars. On the night in question there were maybe seven people at Spencer’s. Don and David, two burly construction workers that came in for drinks after work about twice a week, Jenny, a cute blond gal I liked that came in a bunch with a bunch of different guys but who I never worked up the nerve to talk to, her date, an older guy whose name I never learned, Craig the bartender with his generous smile and way of working tips out of women, and me, Chris Chance, dishwasher and fry cook extraordinaire.
There had been a slow parade of folks through there earlier, but they had cleared out by the time he arrived. Even in the back room I knew it when he showed up. It was, well, just a feeling more than anything else. Like… Goose bumps, the sort they say are caused by someone walking over your grave. Or that sense you get at night after you’ve watched a scary movie, the feeling that someone is watching you. Only about a thousand times more intense. All I know is that I went from bored, sweating and grilling up some burgers for Don and David to stark, abject panic in a half a heartbeat. One moment I’m standing there, the next my stomach is in my shoes and I’m eying the back door, which I leave open for ventilation, like it is my best and only escape route. I shook the feeling pretty quickly, I even sort of chuckled about it a minute afterwards. Damn foolish of me, and I’ve since learned not to ignore those sorts of impulses.
I finished cooking and turned the grill to low. The back of Spencers’ is usually muggy at best, and it got stifling when the kitchen was in full swing. That night, though, there was a chill to the breeze coming in through that cracked back door. Sharp enough to cut through the kitchen’s heat, cold enough to make me kick the door prop to the side as I made my way to the order window. I caught a glimpse of the stranger when I placed the burgers on the counter for Craig to serve up.
He was tall, with dark features, and I suppose handsome. Though describing him as tall dark and handsome doesn’t do the man justice. He was impressive. There was a presence to him that commanded the eye, a brooding power that thrummed in the air around him. As soon as I set my eyes upon him they were locked there, commanded to remain until he returned my gaze and I was able to jerk my eyes away awkwardly, faintly embarrassed to have been caught staring. Back in Black by ACDC had just come on the juke box.
I can’t really remember much about the hour or so that passed before the second stranger arrived. I guess that means there isn’t much worth remembering, huh? Just another slow night at Spencer’s? I know that sometime during that hour I ducked away on my break and toked up. I used to smoke pot all the time during my breaks at work, and when I came back I was lit, happy and expecting nothing more than a few more hours of boring inactivity. Maybe fifteen minutes later my assessment of the evening underwent a rapid revision. That was when the second stranger showed up.
That first man, well, he walked in and the only warning we had was that eerie feeling and shiver of cold that ran through the joint. There was no mistaking it when the second stranger, who I later came to know as Martin Corrish, came in. He slammed through the doors so hard I heard them hit the wall from the kitchen. A second later he was yelling out in his raspy voice. “Darius! Where are you, hell-spawn? The time has come to feed the maggots!”
I rushed up front when I heard this. Wouldn’t you? Martin was standing in the doorway of Spencer’s, looking especially crazed that evening. His iron grey beard thrust out from his face in tangles, his hair was the same color and hung to his shoulders, with a few braids scattered amongst the otherwise un-styled mop. His unkempt hair framed an oval face with bright red cheeks and pudgy features that might have appeared jolly on another man. On Martin these cherubic features only served to add to the impression of psychosis his previous statement and the clothing he was wearing already conveyed. Oh, right, his clothing. That evening Martin was dressed in his full regalia, with all the accoutrements of his trade. A long blue robe that had its length emblazoned with astral symbols, a sharply pointed conical blue hat, and a gnarled yew staff topped with a blue crystal. Dangling from these main pieces of Martin’s wardrobe or hung about his wrists, neck, belt, really basically everywhere and anywhere on his person, were maybe three dozen assorted charms and tokens that ranged from small pieces of crudely carven wood to diamond pendants that looked like they cost a small fortune.
If you had asked me at that point which of the two strangers was crazy, all my money would have been on the freak in the blue night gown. That is, until the first stranger, whose presence had vanished from my mind with jarring entrance of this apparent madman, stood and spoke. “Martin, you impudent whelp. You’ve dared to follow me after our last meeting?” His voice was like steel gliding over silk, soft with an aura of menace. As soon as he spoke the rest of the room fell silent. Literally, the jukebox even stopped playing, sputtering to a skipping stop. The same sense of cold that had accompanied his arrival was back, but this time it was palpable, even visible. A fine sheen of frost spread over the floor, out from the soles of the black clothed stranger’s expensive leather shoes, gliding over the ground to coat the stool, table and floor surrounding him and taking up perhaps a five foot radius. Then he smiled.
While his face had been handsome only moments before, somehow the smile changed it. His features twisted, writhing like a coiled mass of serpents to form something wholly different, wholly alien from the calm handsome features of moments before. When I saw his smile I swear to God my heart stopped. Seeing him smile was like waking up from a bad dream to find your nightmare silently staring at you from the foot of your bed. Very, very unsettling.
The smile broke the silence, too. Rather, I did when I stumbled backwards from my vantage point by the high counter that separated the kitchen from the bar area and yelped out “Holy shit!” At the top of my lungs. But, that definitely broke everyone’s trance, and as I was tripping onto my ass, I was hearing everything happening at once out in the bar.
Craig’s voice first, barking out a statement he would never finish. “What the hell is…” a wet crunch, like pounding an apple with a hammer terminated this statement and then Jenny was screaming. As I scrambled to my feet, desperate to get a look at what was going on outside the kitchen, every single hair on my body stood on end. A pressure seemed to build up in the room, like taking off in an airplane or going over a mountain pass, but it went past that point. By the time I got to my feet, maybe two seconds, I could feel the intensity of the pressure in my ears, my eyes, my nose, I could damn near feel it compressing my whole body.
Back on my feet I could see the strange conflict unfolding in the bar made even more surreal because of the pale blue light that emanated from Martin’s staff and washed the room in azure. The stranger, Darius as Martin had called him, stood in a thickening sheet of frost that was looking more like ice. One of his hands was thrust up towards the sky, the fingers clawed into a strange gesture; the other hand was pointed in the direction of Martin with pointer and index finger extended. With his second hand Darius was weaving some sort of pattern in the air, faint tracers of ethereal black followed his fingers intricate weaving. For his part, Martin seemed slightly less active, circling the bar through a clutter of tables and stools with his staff extended, blue crystal brightly aglow. The faces of both men were bent in snarls of concentration, and their eyes were locked.
I looked around the bar, trying to find what had become of the rest of the patrons. Don and David were easy to spot, but they just added to my already incredible confusion and fear. The two large men were standing slack jawed and vacant eyed behind Darius, completely motionless and without expression. Jenny was clutching at her man of the evening wildly, her mouth bobbing up and down like she was trying to work up a scream but had something lodged in her throat. Her date looked just as frightened to me, grabbing at Jenny just as desperately as she clutched at him. I didn’t see Craig until last.
He was laying face down on the ground, a pool of crimson blood growing rapidly beneath him. I’ll never forget that moment, it was the first time I saw a dead body. You know the first thing that went through my head? Who is going to clean all that blood up? I guess that was just shock, but at the time I felt cold, inhuman. Craig and I hadn’t been close, but he was a good guy, you know? We got along is what I’m trying to say. And there he was, dead feet away. Not in a casket all groomed and presentable, but face down in his own blood with the stench of piss and excrement starting to rise from his body, and all I could think was that I sure as hell wasn’t cleaning it up.
I got stuck on Craig, I couldn’t stop staring at his body. I remember there was a crackle and a huge wave of heat, like a bonfire had sprung into being in the middle of the bar, and pulse of green light that washed over me with a physical force, sending me stumbling back from the window. I was still staring at Craig’s corpse through all of this. I finally snapped out of it after about five seconds, trust me that is a lot longer than you would think in a touchy situation, and it was the pressure popping that sparked my return to reality.
That green light that had hit me was more a physical force than a light. As it fluctuated from dim to bright so did the pressure that seemed to accompany it. The light, which had been growing in intensity for about two seconds, reached its brightest point and with this the pressure on my body that it seemed to exude was beyond painful, it was crippling. Even so my mind pushed it aside, still struggling with the more tangible reality of Craig’s death. Everything else was too crazy to think about. The things going on simply were not possible. Yet, there they were in front of me, as large as life.
When I finally snapped off of Craig’s body and back to what was going on around me, Fred and Ed were stalking towards Martin, who backed away kicking stools and chairs in front of them to slow them down while he swung his staff in wide arcs. Bolts of blue lighting, like the sort you see inside the globes you can touch and make energy trails, shot from the tip of the staff into the air in a high arc that went over the two construction workers heads before darting down at Darius. Each was intercepted in turn by one of the black tracers he had conjured over his head. Each impact sent forth one of the painful waves of green light and pressure.
As Ed made a lunging grab for Martin’s staff, the arcs of energy stopped, and in that second two of the tendrils shot out and into the chests of Jenny and the date, both of whom fell to the floor flopping mindlessly like fish in a net.
Martin howled, and with an animalistic fury began bludgeoning Ed with one fist while yanking at his staff savagely, desperate to get it back. I remember my one thought of that moment very distinctly – Oh fuck this. Over and over again as I scooped up the tub of boiling grease and rushed out into the bar. I almost slipped on Craig’s blood, I still have the scars from slopping some of the grease onto my wrists in the rush. The dark stranger, Darius, never saw it coming. A gallon or so of boiling grease being dumped over Darius’ head like Gatorade on a victorious football coach was apparently a bit of a distraction for him. A little more sever of a distraction than having his staff grabbed was for Martin, and Darius dropped to the ground, unleashing a primal scream of agony that built in volume, pitch and intensity until I fell to my knees screaming along with him. My ears felt like someone had jammed an ice pick into each of them right up to the handle and then I fainted.
