Night Movies Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  STRANGE HOW THE NIGHT MOVES An Introduction

  THE MIME

  NO SONGS FOR THE STARS

  SHADOW PUPPETS

  BABY TEETH

  THE LAST THINGS TO GO

  OKIKU

  THE FLOODGATES OF WILLOWHILL

  THE HUNDRED-YEARS’ SLEEP

  THE ANATHEMA CELL

  Acknowledgments

  NIGHT MOVES

  A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORES

  Mary SanGiovanni

  © 2017 Mary SanGiovanni

  Post Mortem Press

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  STRANGE HOW THE NIGHT MOVES An Introduction

  THE MIME

  NO SONGS FOR THE STARS

  SHADOW PUPPETS

  BABY TEETH

  THE LAST THINGS TO GO

  OKIKU

  THE FLOODGATES OF WILLOWHILL

  THE HUNDRED-YEARS’ SLEEP

  THE ANATHEMA CELL

  STRANGE HOW THE NIGHT MOVES AN INTRODUCTION

  

  MAYBE PEOPLE CAN SEIZE THE day, but no one can own the night. No one can hold onto it for long. You see, the night moves.

  There’s a belief held by some that darkness is as much an element as earth, air, fire, water or spirit. Some think the night is alive, or at least teeming with its own kind of life, just as other elements are. For reasons that would take more than a mere intro to articulate, I could absolutely get behind that belief. There are morning people, who believe the night is for sleeping, and there are night people, who believe the night is for dreaming – and creating. We know the night breathes. It’s vibrant with life. We know the night moves.

  I’m writing this in the middle of the night, in fact. I can see the moon and stars from my back window, the mother and brothers and sisters that ancient religions believed these celestial bodies to be, and I can see shadows wavering on the street below, darting between houses or floating down the street. It’s a powerful feeling to look out on the night world; in those silvery seconds one can believe she is queen of a silent, almost-empty world.

  It’s a dangerous illusion, though, to think that, because for one thing, no one can own the night, as I mentioned. That silence? It’s only a held breath. And the night is most definitely not empty.

  The song on which this collection’s title is based mentions how strange the night moves, particularly with autumn closing in. I always thought that was a rather profound thought in a song which, on the surface, is about a relationship built on the most superficial elements. Maybe that line strikes you differently when you reach a point where the summer segment of your life, the carefree time when you could make mistakes and still have time for do-overs, is slipping away. Or maybe there is something buried way down in the genetics of horror folks that fears autumn closing in; perhaps it’s human nature to be afraid of the way the darkness comes on more quickly and the wind turns a colder shoulder to people looking to embrace their own night moves. Ray Bradbury knew the sinister power of the Autumn People and the frightful landscape of the October Country. Many other writers from Dan Simmons to David Moody knew it. The night does indeed move differently in the sunset of things, where our control and our confidence and our strength become variables instead of constants. Now sure, there are some times when people move with the night, a part of it, without fear or inhibition. But the night can turn quickly, and there are moments when the way it moves seems strange, like the gliding of a silhouetted beast just under the surface of our lives. We’re keenly aware in those moments of just how alien we are to a world that could take us or leave us, and that will eventually pass us by.

  This collection is, in my mind, a sampling of my work which embraces that very notion, that just as the night can sweep us up in its moonlit, star-sprinkled embrace, it can just as easily slip away from us, leaving us alone in the dark with the unimaginable. I think there’s something fundamentally terrifying about finding oneself in the wake of the night’s moves, after its shift to the bizarre, the tragic, the horrifying, or the terrible. It happens in little pirouettes and big leaps. We get lost on the way home or find the last place we ought to be. We hear knocks and creaks in an old house, or see something through the window which will haunt our dreams. The night moves in dark alleys and brightly-lit clubs, in the familiar confines of our own cars and the seemingly limitless no-man’s-land of vast forests and empty buildings. There are many varied steps in the night’s repertoire, and as it moves, so too does the life within it. Passionately hostile or cruelly indifferent, that life has moves of its own which leave us baffled, scared, and lost, and sometimes, to our detriment, we can’t help stepping on its toes.

  So here we are, the night people, working on our night moves. There is thunder far off and memories closer than we may like and outside, the summer is turning to autumn all around us. But for a little while, the night is ours and (Ain’t it funny?) we can become one with the life within it, the heartbeat and hot breath of the dark.

  But only for a little while, because no one can own the night. No one can hold onto it forever.

  Strange, how the night moves....

  Mary SanGiovanni

  The Nightlands of New Jersey

  To faithful readers of my worlds in darkness:

  move with the night, not against it.

  THE MIME

  

  THE FIRST TIME SETH HEARD about his friend Carl’s problem with the mime was over beers at the Olde Mill Tavern. Seth hadn’t wanted to go; it was early February, when New Jersey hacked up the worst of its icy weather from the raw depths of its throat. In fact, it was the kind of weather that inspired guys like Seth to nothing more active than sweat pants and propped up feet in over-sized socks, X-box games and a six-pack of Coors. Carl had sounded desperate on the phone, though, rasping his insistence in terse whispers that they go somewhere, anywhere, as long as it wasn’t nearby, because Carl needed to talk to him. So Seth had acquiesced, putting aside free beers for $5 ones and sweat pants for a shower and jeans.

  Seth was just grabbing his keys and his wallet when Carl texted from the car to come down and meet him.

  “R U going 2 tell me what’s going on?” Seth texted back. It wasn’t like Carl to be so secretive, or to sound so...off. It had been nagging at Seth the entire time he’d been getting ready. Carl had a tendency to talk a lot when he was agitated, especially when it had to do with a girl or money, things which most often excited such a state in him. His phone call hadn’t been like that, though. He’d barely said more than a few words, and those he’d delivered in a quiet half-mumble. The more Seth thought about it, the more he believed Carl had sounded scared, like someone had been in the room with him and he had been carefully trying not to let his words be heard. And Seth couldn’t think of a single time Carl had ever sounded like that. He never seemed scared of anything.

  Carl’s response was curt: “Just come down. Hurry.”

  Seth met him down in the street, slipping into the car as his friend shifted quick, suspicious stares across the span of the dark street. He found himself peering into shadowed alleys and in-spaces as well, unsure what he was looking for. When he realized the futility of what he was doing, he frowned, brushing off the shivers that stippled his skin beneath his jacket. “So dude, you gonna tell me what’s going on or what?”

  “Not here,” Carl said, licking dry lips as he pulled away from the curb. He spoke little and answered even less. Carl drove them out of town, down miles of charcoal highway and miles more of wooded road. The tension in Carl’s hands as he gripped the wheel, in the muscles of his jaw and neck and shoulders, made Seth feel nettled. The darkness around them seemed to stretch ominously out and around the car, isolating them in its center, watching for a chance to
swoop in and suffocate. Seth felt uneasy and threatened and couldn’t help the shiver of annoyance that this was somehow Carl’s fault.

  Eventually, the car pulled off what supposedly passed for a main road and into a parking lot. Before them, a long wooden building supported a glowing neon sign which read OLDE MILL TAVERN. Seth shrugged; beer was beer, he supposed, and if Carl felt safer at some dive bar in the middle of nowhere that Seth had never heard of, that was fine with him. They got out and Carl strode ahead of him, his gaze darting like a hunted animal to various ink-black points in the surrounding woods. It wasn’t until they had settled onto worn wooden stools inside and each ordered a beer that Carl finally said, “I’m being followed.”

  “What? By who?”

  “I don’t know who it is.” Carl glanced over his shoulder toward the door.

  “Well, how do you know this is person is following you?”

  Their beers came, and Carl waited to answer until the bartender moved away.

  “Because...it knows where to find me, always. It knows where I live, where I work. It’s done things – to me, specifically to me. It...” Carl’s voice dropped to a whisper. “It wants to hurt me. I think it wants to kill me.”

  Seth hovered between outright laughter and concern. “You...oh come on, man. You’re kidding me, right? Is this like when Lucy was still following you around, leaving her thong in your mailbox and shit?” He tried to laugh, but it fell flat when it got no reaction from his friend. Worse, the way Carl looked at him, if Seth hadn’t known better, he would have thought his friend’s eyes were shining with tears. Seth couldn’t dispute the abject terror in them.

  So, not like Lucy, then.

  “Okay,” Seth said, absently picking at the label on his beer bottle, “what does this person look like?”

  Carl sighed. “It’s...hard to explain. Uh, white face,” he gestured at his own.

  “A white guy?”

  “No, like face paint. Black eyes and lips. Black and white striped clothes. White gloves.”

  “Like, what, a clown? A goth clown?”

  “Like a mime,” Carl said, exasperated, and took a sip of his beer.

  Seth considered this for a minute, that crazy conflicting urge to both laugh and shudder keeping any response he could think of in check. Stalked by a mime? Did Carl realize how that sounded? If he had dragged them out into the middle of nowhere on a night colder than a witch’s tit just to set up some dumb-ass joke....

  Except that it wasn’t, and Seth knew that. Carl could be funny, sure, but he lacked the creativity and the patience to execute a practical joke like that. And Carl wasn’t really smooth enough that he could fake that look in his eye, or that waver in his voice....

  Still unsure where this was going, Seth continued. “So, you think you’re being stalked.”

  Carl’s tongue darted out to lick his dry lips as he cast furtive glances around the bar. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s it.”

  “By some guy dressed up as a mime?”

  “No.” Carl looked pensive. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Seth shook his head. “You’re losing me, bro.”

  Carl grabbed his arm with surprising ferocity. “Look, it’s not just some guy. Regular people can’t – they can’t just show up and disappear like it does. They can’t make things happen out of thin air. They can’t...they don’t –”

  “Okay, dude, calm down. Slow down, okay? I’m trying to understand here.”

  Carl nodded, took a deep breath and gulped his beer. “Okay. Yeah, okay.” He took another gulp of beer. “It started about a month ago. At least, that’s when I first began to notice it. You know that old theater on Coughlin Boulevard? The one that’s all boarded up?”

  Seth nodded. “The Dionysus. Yeah.”

  The place had become something of local legend around where they lived. Seth had even done a high school history report on it. It had been built in the early 1800′s at the edge of town as a forum for the most eccentric of the wealthy elite, a revenue generator for a population financially excluded from its use. History told of minstrels, pantomimes and burlesques as well as the wildest avant guarde shows of the day being performed there in limited, semi-secret runs – plays like Athalie, Le Barbier de Seville, The Cry of the Star Children, A Doll’s House, The King in Yellow, and Spring Awakening.

  It was not a particularly well-loved place outside of its small, feverishly devoted circle of attendees. Townsfolk’s reactions to the theater ranged from quiet distaste to bone-deep abhorrence to superstitious fear, so no one was much surprised or concerned when, under mysterious circumstances, the place caught fire in 1916. It had sustained serious damage but strangely, only to its exterior. Still, it took about five years for fringe supporter groups to get the town to completely rebuild the theater. Afterward, it sat mostly unused, its novelty having faded with its years of inaccessibility and the short attention spans of the rich and easily bored, who had moved on to other scandalous entertainments. It enjoyed a second heyday in the 1940′s and ‘50s, when it became open to the general public; it inspired new plays, poetry slams, local author readings, and other experimental performances that were in keeping with the theater’s original purpose. Even a movie screen was added, the films, of course, being of the same rare and almost taboo quality of the plays that had preceded it. Ultimately, there was a scandal involving a teenage cult who had been using the theater as a church of sorts – there had been a murder/suicide pact amid a miasma of ugly rumors about the cult’s practices. The place closed down for good in 1982, and it had been abandoned ever since. However, since it was a historical landmark, it was kept up by the historical society; they had prevented it from being torn down and didn’t mind feeding the local legend about it being haunted if that generated public interest in future paid tours of the old place.

  Seth sipped at his beer and added, “I think the police found some dead vagrant in there a few weeks back. I saw something about it online.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s not surprising. That place....” Carl’s voice trailed off as he flagged down the bartender and ordered another beer. He seemed to be searching for words to fit the thoughts in his head. Finally, he said, “About a month ago, Lucy and I broke in.”

  “What? Wait, what? There are so many things wrong with that sentence right there – “

  Carl held up a hand. “I know, I know. It was a night of sheer stupidity from the moment I answered my phone, first for agreeing to see Lucy again, because she’s just as batshit crazy as she ever was, and also...you know, the breaking in thing. It was her idea. I just thought....”

  His voice trailed off, but he didn’t have to finish. Seth knew exactly what Carl had just been thinking. He knew Lucy, and her sex-hate-sex relationship with his friend. If she had suggested something crazy that would have gotten her hot, Carl wouldn’t have put up too much resistance.

  “Whatever. What does it have to do with the mime?”

  “Shhh!” Carl looked nervously around the bar. Satisfied that no one had heard, he took the beer the bartender brought him and leaned in confidentially toward Seth.

  “She was all excited by the old posters in the lobby, you know? The ladies that did the burlesque shows, the old vaudeville stuff. Me, I thought it was creepy. Something about those leering faces and wild costumes. All made up like...like dolls. And mimes. They suggest...things...in your head. And the old photos on the walls, all the celebrities and the owners of the place, all those serious dead people’s faces...I mean, they’d all be dead by now. But they didn’t look right even then, in the photos.” He shook his head and took another swig of beer before continuing. “Anyway, we fucked around in the lobby for awhile, checking out the posters and shit, and then we went through these big double doors into the theater itself. That was the mistake, I think – going into the gut of the place. It wasn’t just that stale smell, like dust. It was like there was something old and rotting under the dust. Maybe the fabric of the seats rotting, or the wood...I don’t know. And
the place was a wreck. Only half the seats were left standing, and the rest of the area had all this debris – old program books, broken wood and plastic, metal bars. Lucy described it as the rotting corpse of indie art. I know she’s crazy, but sometimes she has this sort of philosophical side. It comes and goes. Anyway, the stage was nothing like the rest of the place, and I dunno, it weirded me out. It was all polished and new-looking, like it was just built. The curtains around it were shot to hell – these big heavy maroon curtains with ragged, gaping holes and dark stains – but the stage was in perfect condition. And when you stand on it, you feel like, naked, sort of. On display. Like eyes are watching you from out there in the dark, where the audience would have been. Eyes without faces and clapping without hands.”

  Carl shivered then, as if trying to shake off some detail of the memory he had chosen not to disclose. “Anyway,” he continued, “we started making out on the stage, just like, light petting, you know? And I was into it enough that I’d just started to forget how wrong everything else felt when we heard a thud. We both jumped. Damn near pissed myself. Like I said, the place is creepy – and it’s not just in your head. It’s in the air, the dust – it’s, I don’t know, worn into the walls of the place. It’s hard to explain. I guess when you’re inside the theater, it feels like there’s some kind of poisonous gas, something you can’t quite smell or taste but is somehow in your nose and throat all the same. Like you’re being exposed to germs or radiation or something that’s crawling all over your skin and you don’t exactly know what it is but it makes you just a little itchy and worried anyway. I think...I think that’s why we started making out on the stage. The feeling was strongest there and well, you know Lucy – weird shit turns her on. And I went with it because truthfully, I was willing to do anything to get my mind off that feeling, anything that I could focus on so I wouldn’t have to think about it.”

  “Why didn’t you just leave?”