B-Movie Reels (21 page)

“What do you mean?”

“Do it, or it’s your ass!”

Stan did as he was instructed. Large assembly lines with rolling pins loomed in the far background with more boxes of ale, and the freezer they stopped at looked like a silver-painted cardboard box. Dry-ice fog poured into the room when the door opened—the door itself wobbled, not metal but paperboard—and the two dropped Willis inside. Mr. Piedmont then locked the freezer.
 

“Willis was on the job drunk with cocaine in his system,” Mr. Piedmont said. “He accidentally locked himself in the freezer. It’s set at 34 degrees, and he’ll certainly freeze in there. You won’t speak a word of this to anyone, Mr. Kudger. You have a future in the company, I’ll see to it. You keep your nose clean, I’ll promote you to shipping manager, and then you’ll slowly work your way up the ladder.” He laughed and patted Stan on the back. “Hey, accidents happen, right?”

“Okay, sir. I’ll turn the other way. Accidents happen, like you said…”

The two vacated the building, and then there was a wide-panning shot of the warehouse and then a lightning bolt in the distance. Then lightning struck the warehouse twice, the cartoon branch striking hard. A fire broke out in many sections of the warehouse. Sparks exploded and quickly fizzled into smoke. Mr. Piedmont and Stan Kudger bolted from the scene, but as they reached the parking lot, a figure walked from the building.
 

Willis Salter.
 

“W-w-what is this?” Mr. Piedmont stammered. “His hair’s snow white…and he’s so pale.”

“It cold all of a sudden,” Stan added, crossing his arms to warm up. “How did he get out?”

Willis extended both hands at them and icicles torpedoed out of his skin. The scene cut to Stan with icicles jutting out of both eyes, his mouth extended in a circle of agony. Mr. Piedmont’s chest was pegged with six of the icicles, his chest bloodied through the suit.
 

The man now known as the Freezer towered above the two dead bodies, speaking in a heavy voice. “Hey, accidents happen.”

3

Sheriff O’Malley parked beside the unoccupied patrol vehicle. The gas pumps were illuminated by the garage’s lights, and from his vantage point, the color of blood shone brilliantly against the concrete floor. The shop itself was empty.

Where were Deputy Stafford and Walter Smalls?
 

The station stank of foul play.
 

He aimed his Smith & Wesson .28 revolver at the shop. His plan: catch the criminal in the act by surprise. The dread of knowing his deputy was in danger, potentially dead, sent him into a short sprint toward the garage’s opening. That’s when a sharp cold breeze cut across his face. It wasn’t an evening gust. It was sub-artic and capable of inflicting frostbite. His face stung from the cold. The sides of the shop’s walls glistened with a layer of ice and the ceiling was jagged with icicles. The floor had cracked in forks from the bitter cold, and the puddles of blood on the floor crystallized.
 

He crept into the garage and turned his body to each corner, trained to take precautions. Nobody waited out in the open. The office windows were broken and more red spatters and trails slathered the walls. The freezing air raised painful gooseflesh along his arms. The gun in his hand wavered, shivering in the cold. He wondered if the criminal was watching him suffer in the extreme temperature. He couldn’t figure out the source of the climate change, and the car lifts, frozen over and coated with ice, offered no clues.
 

Two shadows lurked at the back of the room, grabbing his attention. “Freeze, both of you!”

“You said it,” one man growled with visible breath, the vibration of his voice shaking the ground, it was such a deep bellow, as if a lion was roaring. He stepped out of the dark, and the sheriff didn’t believe his eyes. The figure was average height and weight, but his skin and eyes were a baby blue. The man’s hair hung down to both shoulders in albino locks. The stranger was accompanied by a younger man wearing bell bottoms and a white-undershirt and brown muttonchops. It’d been years since the sheriff had seen muttonchops that thick—not since his days at Park Hill Police Academy in 1968.
 

The blue man had pinned his deputy’s body up against the wall. His face was mashed inward, the nose broken, the eyes forced from their sockets, and his front teeth shattered. His co-worker was obviously dead, but the man with blue eyes touched his hand, and in an instant, the deputy’s body was swallowed up in ice the shape of a casket.
 

The younger man reached behind him for a large mallet. That’s when the sheriff caught sight of another body behind the Chevy, trapped in an ice shell.

Walter Smalls.
 

“Hold it, boy!” he warned, this time steadying his gun. “Both of you stop what you’re doing. Don’t move!”

The albino stranger barked, “I think it’s you who won’t move!”
 

He extended both hand and ice shards rocketed out of the palms.
 

The sheriff ducked to his side, and the peg board of posters with bikini-clad woman splayed on vintage classic cars was impaled with icicles.
 

Muttonchops raised the mallet above his head and smashed it across the deputy’s midsection in a single swing. The deputy was frozen to the core, and his body exploded into hundreds of pieces. The sheriff swallowed hard and raced to his patrol vehicle, too afraid to take them on. The two pursued him into the street as he madly righted his steering wheel after backing up the car.
 

“You bastards!” He retrieved the CB radio and dialed in the dispatcher. “It’s O’Malley, call in back-up—all the cars you got! We’ve got a serious situation. Two are dead on the scene, and there are two suspects at large.”

He waited for an answer.

“Hello? Gloria, are you there? Put down your blueberry muffin and
Esquire
and listen up. Anybody listening, hey—THIS IS SERIOUS!”

He pounded the dashboard. “
Shit!
”

Panic raced through his veins as his blood pressure boiled. “This isn’t good. What the hell is—”

The tear of metal sounded above him, and three talon marks sliced the ceiling of his car.
 

A strange howl erupted from the sky, the darkness spitting out a winged figure soaring far above the tips of the trees, gargoyle-like, but slender and female. Its skin was black with scales, the red eyes glowing like taillights. The creature moved with insane speed, and without warning, the driver’s side door was smashed open and a set of claws tore into his shoulder and arm. The hideous elongated face opened its maw with incisors sharp as box cutters and licked the blood from its fingertips with a forked tongue.
 

The pain surging up his left side was blinding. The wheel was slick with his blood, and he lost control. The patrol car skidded, and he slammed the brakes. It rolled from the road, and he was sent crashing head-first into a pair of oak trees. The crunch of steel, the deafening crash of the windshield, the axle breaking from underneath him, and the jostle of his body as it was sent forward and ripped back by his seatbelt all occurred before he could anticipate the air bag engaging.
 

SAH-POW!

Whip-lash rocked his neck. Everything spun, and he failed to lock his eyes on any single object. He gagged on the powder that was shaken free from the airbag. He couldn’t remove the image of the red eyes and the woman’s mouth gaping with saber teeth.
 

He couldn’t lift himself with the airbag in his way. He popped open the compartment between the seats for a screwdriver—he kept it there after someone told him he could break the window if he should ever crash underwater—and tore the air bag with the appropriate end.
 

He unlocked the pump-action Jamison 12 gauge secured between the seats and rolled out of the car. He didn’t have any broken bones, but his neck ached in unison with his lower back. His wounds were still fresh and burning, but he the pain to scan the woods for signs of the flying creature.
 

“Where are you?” He used the back door as a crutch. The stink of burned rubber wafted in his direction. “You bitch, where did you go?”

He pumped the shotgun ready for a chase and aim game. He stopped when the last sound he expected to hear beckoned him from the smashed end of the vehicle.
 

“Help me,” the wincing voice begged. Blood glazed her chin and coughed out of her throat at each word. “I can’t move.
I…can’t…move
.”

The sheriff eased his stance. The front car lights revealed a woman caught between the steel bumper and a tree. Her eyes were wild in agony. Her bare chest was caved-in by the force of the bumper.
 

“Dear God,” he gasped. “I didn’t see you in the road.”

Now that he’d stared at her long enough, it registered that she was naked. Her raven-black hair was smooth and silky, and her face was soft. She had perfect full lips and brown eyes.
 

“I was walking home,” she managed to say. “And you came barreling out of nowhere. Save me. I’m in so much pain. You’ve got to back the car up, if you can.”

She shouldn’t be alive.
 

The woman wouldn’t be able to talk. She’d be in shock at the loss of blood.

And why’s she naked?

The woman continued her pleas. “Aren’t you going to help me?”

He couldn’t react.
 

That’s when the hood suddenly shot out a handful of sparks, and the vehicle was enveloped in flames. The woman’s body immediately blackened, caught in the fire. Her flesh hardened into scales, and the wild red eyes burned deeper than the flames that ate into her outer shell. The stench was horrendous, ten times as potent as burning tires.
 

“
Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggghhhhhhhh!
”

The sheriff raced from the burning woman, her teeth enlarging as she shrieked, burning to death.
 

He clutched the shotgun when new shadows from above the trees threatened him.
 

He had no choice but to keep moving.
 

Chapter Eleven

1

Ned sped home, picturing Pricilla’s face unraveling and spilling to the floor. The unnerving tone of her voice, the words that were spoken by his brother’s spirit through the woman’s lips… He couldn’t think of them without growing queasy. He tore into the fifth of gin in his top kitchen cabinet and hammered a mouthful. It stung his throat, and it did shit to clear his head.
 

The greasy feel of his skin made him want to bathe. He felt like a criminal with blood on his hands. He’d witnessed the old woman literally come apart. Pricilla knew of his brother’s death and the secrets he kept beyond the grave. It was a lot to believe, but he couldn’t deny what he witnessed. The demands from his brother were clear: destroy the film projector and the house.
 

Now he was worried about Andy.
 

He’s up in that house all alone.
 

If something happens to him, nobody will know.
 

“It’s nonsense,” he muttered to himself, falling back to the safe place called denial. He chugged another mouthful of gin, the sides of his mouth trickling with the liquor. “It can’t be true. But I, I have to be sure.”

He clenched his fists, closed his eyes and shook his head. Nothing that had happened tonight was simple to grasp. He debated whether to phone the police or not, but what would he tell them? It was magic and crystals talk, psychic babble, but flesh and blood didn’t lie, and the words that spouted from Pricilla’s mouth were from his brother—it even sounded like him!
 

Ned rushed into his backyard shed and gathered a metal container of gasoline and an axe. The idea of burning the house down was comforting—yes, it was arson, but long before the visit to Pricilla’s, he imagined torching the fucking thing down anyway. But clutching the axe strangely defeated his confidence. If Angie could see him now, her reasons for divorcing him would’ve been validated. It wasn’t completely about him, but she claimed he was obsessed with his brother. But Angie had no right to judge him or his brother. He refused to believe his brother was responsible for those deaths, and Angie disagreed, and the arguments drove a wedge between them. Their lives weren’t the same, and until Ned finished what James asked of him now, nothing would ever change.
 

I can’t deny the truth anymore. I always knew something deeper was behind James’s final performance, and now I know what it was.
 

Would an axe and a drum of gasoline be sufficient to battle the spirits? Ned loaded his truck with the supplies and, unable to answer his own question, he checked his pocket for a lighter. Then he returned to the house for the bottle of gin. Part of him wished the police would stumble upon the situation and help him through this. But he was alone, and he understood it had to remain that way.
 

He checked his wallet for Andy’s cell phone number. He called it from inside the house, and the phone kept ringing without an answer. Ned accepted that he had no choice but to return to Anderson Mills and destroy his brother’s house.