“So do you remember your line?” Uncle Teddy cocked an eyebrow at me with the acerbic manner of a beleaguered stage director. “Do you?”
I grimaced at him as I scratched at my neck. “I do. It doesn’t make sense, both as a ‘line’ and in the context of what we are about to do, but yes.”
He squinted at me momentarily before letting out a sigh. “I keep hoping that you’re joking when you say things like that, but then I see you’re not and become sad. See that’s the problem with you kids today. It’s all farts and vaginas with you lot. No subtlety or style. And when it comes to chewing ass and kicking bubblegum? Why use planning or put a small effort into theatricality when you can just go in and shoot somebody?”
Shifting uncomfortably, I poked him in the arm. “Speaking of which, do you actually have a plan? Because all I’ve heard so far is a lot of vague lectures with seemingly no point aside from how awesome you are.”
Snorting, he looked back across the street to the Rajah theater. It was probably a charming little place when its big signs were lit up and twinkling, but in the darkness of more than an hour past midnight, it sat in its spot on the street like a sullen giant frog waiting to swallow up any flies that dared get too close. I knew we had to do this, but I didn’t know how we were going to do it. I mean that both from a “likelihood of success” standpoint and a “what’s the fucking plan” standpoint. Teddy’s silence did little to improve my estimation of the one or my understanding of the other.
“Can I at least take the devil coin off?”
He snapped his head around with a frown and look of concern. “Absolutely not. Just because we’re about to take these fuckers down is no reason to risk it. You can deal with a little rash. Besides, there might be multiple reasons for your wearing it.” His voice took on a mysterious tone and seemingly satisfied with my long-suffering eye roll, he turned back to watching the theater.
The “devil coin” was actually called a tumerin, and according to Teddy it had been the currency in Hell during Lucifer’s reign. He said that it was now mainly used by ousted demons, infernal loyalists, and some dark occultists as a kind of black market capital and as a quick way to prove one’s legitimacy in certain circles. Of course, that also meant that tumerin counterfeiting was rampant.
The way you could always tell a genuine coin of Hell was that it wouldn’t burn or melt, no matter how hot the flame, and they always were imbued with a bit of infernal magic. Less than thirty minutes after I woke up on the sidewalk outside of Marshall Abner’s apartment, Teddy was already stringing one of the coins around my neck. He said he couldn’t cure the film’s effects, but he could stop most of them temporarily—so long as I kept the coin on. When I asked why he hadn’t made us fancy devil necklaces before we went into the doomed boy’s apartment, he looked at me with disappointment, as though the answer was obvious.
“This isn’t mosquito spray, Cora. You don’t dabble with artifacts of Hell lightly. Or did you never see any of the Hellraiser movies?” When I had said I never had, he looked more horrified than…well, no, he literally looked more horrified than I’ve ever seen him. He held up his hand as he retrieved his phone and made a voice memo. Something along the lines of “Teach the girl about Pinhead”. After a glance at me he sulkily added, “Find cursed movie and destroy it first so she can properly enjoy Hellraiser.”
The two weeks between then and now had been somewhat miserable, but to Uncle Teddy’s credit, he had found where the movie was going to be shown this year with amazing speed. I know he spent a couple of nights in his workshop making new dolls, so I suspect I know what he traded for the information, and more recently he disappeared one night for several hours. But whatever his methods, we were definitely in the right spot, as we had watched the sinister-looking caretakers escort the film in promptly at midnight. Just a few minutes later, several dozen people appeared from the shadows, both singly and in groups, and entered the Rajah as well. Soon all the bad people and one unwitting victim were inside.
When we had set up across the street a few minutes before midnight, I had asked Teddy what was going to happen to the poor guy or girl that worked at the theater? Shouldn’t we try to warn them or save them? I knew the answer, of course, but it was still hard to swallow, and having him confirm it somehow made the burden easier to bear.
His voice was surprisingly soft when he spoke, though his face was stony in the dim light of the street. “You know we can’t. They’ll likely die or wind up like Marshall, but that can’t be helped.” He paused a moment before gripping my arm firmly with surprising strength. “You need to remember something in all this, Cora. We aren’t heroes. We aren’t trying to help the innocent. Our only two goals is to stop the bad things and stay alive. If some poor schmuck gets ground up as collateral damage, that’s a shame, but better them than us.”
I tried to tug my arm away and found I couldn’t. “I get it, but I don’t agree. We don’t have to be selfish assholes about it. I understand why we can’t warn anybody about this before it starts...I do. But if we can help someone once we’re in there, why shouldn’t we?” I yanked again and pulled my arm loose. “Why not try?”
Uncle Teddy gave a dry laugh. “You’ve been through a lot, and you’ve done really well. I wouldn’t have you involved in my new work if I didn’t think you were up to it. But you need to let go of the participation trophy, it’s the thought that counts, trying your best is good enough bullshit that you’ve been force-fed for most of your life. That’s feed for cattle. We are not cattle.”
He pointed across at where several black robed figures were getting out of a dark SUV. “Those demonic fucks are not a teacher or boss or the IRS or pick your mundane authority figure that cattle seek to placate so they can keep eating and shitting in moronic peace. These things will quite literally rip us apart if we don’t get this right, and that is far from the worse thing they can do to us.”
He turned back to me. “And to be clear, that’s not just for tonight. It’s this life. We will do the best we can, but we always prioritize ourselves and our goal before anything else. Because not to sound like a conceited shit, but it actually matters if one or both of us dies. If we get cut down trying to help out some goober whose skillset consists of trying to not pick his pimples while he’s refilling the popcorn popper, I don’t think he’s going to exactly pick up our mantle.”
I smirked at him. “I guess by that logic, it matters a lot more if you die than me then.”
He gave a look of surprise. “Well, yeah. Was that ever a question?”
When we left the car, I asked for the tenth time why we weren’t bringing the guards. Wouldn’t it be well-advised to have some muscle while we’re dealing with crazed devil worshippers and monster-type things? Teddy shook his head and kept walking.
“No, they need to stay in the car.”
In the days leading up to movie night, I had tried every way I could think of to get Teddy to tell me his plan. I knew he had one, and I knew he enjoyed torturing me with not knowing. It may be that he also had a legitimate reason for keeping me in the dark, but it didn’t make me like it any better.
When I had asked about bringing weapons, he said there was no need and no point. If it came down to us having to physically fight all these people, even waiting as we were until many were hopefully dead from the night’s partial viewing and ensuing chaos, we would lose. Which is when I brought up using guards again, which only earned me a small, smiling shake of the head.
So instead I walked into the movie theater with my cell phone in one pocket and the car keys in the other. Unless someone wanted to take a selfie with me, I was kind of screwed. I trusted Teddy, but I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t have felt better if Heckle and Jeckle…fuck, Perry and Max were with us.
The lobby of the theater was empty, but it was far from quiet. Even through the sound dampening walls you could hear the screams and howls coming from the theater behind the concession stand. Putting a finger to his lips like a cartoon villain, Teddy crept over to the first of two large double doors that led into what was no doubt a blood bath by this point. With the fanfare of a self-satisfied mime or stage magician, he pulled out four thick zip ties and secured two around the handles of both sets of doors. When he eased back closer to me, I leaned in and whispered to him.
“Do you honestly think that’s going to hold them?”
He gave me a knowing look. “Long enough, yeah.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What about the emergency exits, smarty?”
Uncle Teddy held a hand up to his mouth in mock horror. “Oh no. Not the emergency exits. I guess I should have had them welded shut last night…oh wait, I did. If you’re done embarrassing yourself, let’s get to the projectors.”
Grumbling into his back, I followed him around the corner and through a door marked “Staff Only”. We had just started up the narrow set of stairs to the projection room when I heard a girl screaming up there. When we opened the door at the top I saw why.
Three black robes lay puddled on the floor of the room near the door, and at first I thought their occupants were just gone. But then I saw the girl. It was hard to get my brain to reconcile what I was looking at, but she looked as though she was wrapped up in some kind of fleshy cocoon or meat anthill. Her body was wholly subsumed in a mass of rotten, writhing flesh that reminded me of what Marshall had looked like under his blanket. Except for her face, of course. Her face was held fast and pointed outward toward the images unfolding on the movie screen, and it was clear from her eyes that she was already well past the point of madness.
Teddy stepped forward, making a point of keeping me behind him. “Hello, fellow patrons of the arts. If you’ll kindly untangle from the girl, we have some business to discuss.”
I felt the urge to vomit as the things unspooled from around the young woman and let her collapse to the floor. Their movements reminded me of timelapses of growing mold as they slid apart and back into their robes. In a matter of seconds, there were three dark figures standing before us.
One of them stepped forward, the stench of decay wafting towards us at his approach. “So you still live. Interesting, but ultimately unimportant. Did you come here to watch the movie again, or simply to die?”
Teddy shook his head. “Neither one, Mr. Ringwraith. I came to find out who set us up. Who made that boy from last year into a booby trap for me. I would say it was one of my occultist frenemies, but that situation didn’t come up until recently, and I get the idea that poor Mr. Abner had been cooking a lot longer than that.”
Mr. Ringwraith let out a wet, mucousy laugh. “You know so little. I have no idea why they wanted to waste the effort on you. But no matter.” It turned to the other two. “Kill them so we can get back to enuring the girl.”
Teddy stepped back, in the process pushing me out of the doorway and into the small stairwell. “Hey, Mr. Ringwraith. You know who my favorite Tolkien character is? No, it’s not the creepy old dude that likes to hang out with the hobbits all the time. It’s Golem.”
After a moment he looked at me expectantly and gave a theatrical cough. Glaring at him, I said my line with as little enthusiasm as I could muster. “It’s pronounced Gollum.”
Tapping me on the nose, Uncle Teddy grinned and turned back to the three robed monsters that were pressed against some invisible barrier at the edge of the projection room. “Oh yeah. I must have been thinking about something else.”
There was a tremendous crash in the theater below, and the screams and wails took on a different quality that quickly dissolved into new hot, wet sounds. Mr. Ringwraith glanced out at the theater and then back at the invisible line he apparently couldn’t cross. When he spoke, his voice was so thick with hatred and anger I had to fight keep my ground.
“What have you done?”
Uncle Teddy’s smile had turned hard and nasty. “Which part? The part where I put a binding circle in the ceiling of this room so your dumb asses would be trapped in there or the part where my golems are mashing your little film club down there into a fine paste?”
“Impossible.” The other two hooded creatures were at the window, but they were no more able to escape that way than through the door. “You cannot hold us forever, and then you will suffer for all time.”
Teddy turned to me. “Shit, Cora. Did you hear that? We’re going to suffer for all time.” He took a step back. “Although he is right about one thing. That thing won’t hold them forever.”
My eyes widened. “Well then shouldn’t we be leaving? Setting fire to the film or something?” Just then I saw Heckle and Jeckle appear at the bottom of the steps. They were naked and had a few chunks missing, but they climbed the steps nimbly enough. As they got closer, I saw they were smooth as dolls between their…
“Wait. Did you make them?” I had to shout the question, as they had entered the projection room now and were in the process of ripping the three ringwraiths apart like they were cotton candy.
Teddy nodded. “Yep. A golem is really just another kind of doll, you know. It takes some different parts and know-how, but I figured it out eventually. The key is using a live bird as the core.” He gestured to an open place on Jeckle’s back. I could just make out the edge of an iron cage, and beyond the bars, the flutter of black wings. “I find that magpies work best. They really are mean bastards.”
He pointed to the tumerin necklace around my neck. “Which is the other reason for these. I have good control over these two, but with this much killing, they’re apt to get into a bloodlust.” He winced as Heckle started stomping the theater girl curled into a fetal position near the projector. “Ugh. Case in point. These coins are specially spelled so they can still distinguish the two of us while they’re in berserker mode. The movie won’t burn, but they can rip it up enough that it’ll be safe to carry until we can properly dispose of it.”
I was a bit amazed, but irritated as well. “You could have let me in on all this, you know. So I didn’t have to be terrified the whole night. I could have helped more than provide set-up for a lame punchline.”
Uncle Teddy snickered. “It was better this way. These people…often some of them are sensitive, even fully psychic. Until you have more experience and control, it can be a risk for you to know too much ahead of time. Plus, this is your first time doing this sort of thing by choice instead of necessity. Most people can't walk into this kind of horror knowingly, especially without feeling assured they'll come out of it okay. Now I know you can.” His smile soured as he began to look crestfallen. “And it wasn’t a lame punch…”
“The Blind Court.” Mr. Ringwraith’s voice was coming from between the fingers of Heckle’s massive hands as he prepared to crush the last bit of sentient hellflesh in the room.
Teddy’s face visibly paled as he quickly turned toward the voice. “You’re a fucking liar.”
A small laugh oozed out of the golem’s fist. “You should have let the movie have you. It would have been a mercy compared to what they will…” Its words were cut off as Heckle squeezed tighter, sending streams of black ichor out onto the floor.
I touched Teddy’s arm. “What is it? What was he talking about? What’s the Blind Court?”
He tried to smile but his eyes were far away. “Nothing, Cora. It was just a nasty hellthing wanting to worry us. It’s nothing.” He refocused on the golems in the room. “Rip the film to shreds and put it in the box we brought. Wash off and put your clothes back on before you come outside. No need to cause a scene. We’ll pick you up in an hour.” He glanced my way, but didn’t meet my eyes. “Let’s go, my sweet niece. They can finish up here with a nice fire while we go get pancakes. Don’t you want pancakes?”
He was already halfway down the stairs and I could hear the stress in his voice. The fear. We might be safe for the moment, but it didn’t feel that way. Rubbing my neck where the coin touched, I again found myself weighing how deeply I wanted to get involved in this world, this life. There was no question it was an ugly, terrifying place to be, but did I want to leave Teddy to face it alone?
He turned back as he reached the car, his eyes sad but knowing. He always could tell what I was thinking. “Or if you don’t want pancakes, you can just head out and I can get some on my own. You need to start spending your twenty million some time, after all.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I thought it was ten million.”
He shrugged. “Combat pay.”
Smiling, I gave him a quick hug as I reached the car. “Nah, I’m good where I am. And I really do want some pancakes.”
Uncle Teddy’s smile was genuine this time. A few minutes later we were in an all-night diner laughing and chowing down as we heard fire trucks rushing by. I knew he was keeping things from me, but I would give him some time before I pressed the issue. For the time being, being alive and in that diner with him was enough. There was nowhere I'd rather be.
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Credits
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