Something Pagan
The following piece previously appeared in the anthology Splatterpunk’s Basement of Horror, which is still available, and I encourage you to get it, as it features numerous luminaries of the genre, and all profits go to charity.
The limousine crossed Hewitt onto West Ninth. All the vibrant bar fronts and boutique shops lining East Ninth gave way to dark houses, lit only by silver streetlamps. The lights themselves were designed to look old-fashioned, ovals of luminescence on top of posts made of corrugated black metal. In the darkness between the haloes, everything was a shade of midnight blue.
To Pola, it looked like something out of a Gothic fantasy, the sort of black-and-white mood piece made famous by Val Lewton in the 1940s, colorized slightly and deliberately to keep the vibe.
Pola had seen Cat People at least two dozen times, had the menacing green claw of The Leopard Man tattooed on her left butt cheek, and knife-wielding Boris Karloff from Isle of the Dead featured prominently in a sleeve of Karloff characters inked up her right arm.
This was her first time out to West Ninth, though she’d glimpsed it across Hewitt on her first few weekends in the city. Back then—as she now thought of it, though only three weeks had passed—partying had been her sole priority.
And party, she had. Perhaps a little too hard. It didn’t take long at all for the money to dry up. Now her share of the rent was due, and she wasn’t about to ask for a loan. She had too much pride for that. Plus, she had plenty of assets she could leverage to come up with the money quick.
Back then, West Ninth held a strange allure, the sort she often felt when sighting dark streets that she never intended to visit, but already her narrative was reshaping itself, telling her she’d suspected she would eventually end up here from the moment she saw it from the opposite side of Hewitt. That she had felt it calling to her but simply hadn’t known it at the time. That its dense atmosphere was both exactly what she expected and something so much more. The former truth, that she had no expectations at all on those initial nights, soon became as dark as the spaces between the homes on West Ninth, spaces untouched by the streetlamp haloes or even the light of the moon.
The limousine pulled into a cobblestone driveway tucked away from the rest of the homes. The path wound up the side of a hill, between dense walls of oaks and pines. More of those old-fashioned lampposts were placed at intervals, hanging like ghostly eggs in the nighttime woods.
Pola had told no one where she was going tonight. That flew in the face of common wisdom when it came to women braving the night alone. Hundreds of think pieces and perhaps millions of social posts had been written about how women should let their friends and family know where they are at all times because men were dangerous. Worse still, they were everywhere and only after one thing.
This wasn’t entirely off the mark either; the inherent truth underlying this discourse was something Pola knew all too well. Unfortunately, that advice only applied to women who had friends and family to tell. Her roommates barely tolerated her.
Pola wasn’t afraid, though. At barely twenty-two, life had already managed to put her through the wringer. Whatever tonight had in store for her, she could handle it. And by the time it was over, she’d be ten-thousand dollars richer.
Or she’d be dead.
The car stopped between a massive marble fountain and an even more massive house. A statue of a woman stood at the fountain’s center with her arms outstretched as if preparing to embrace someone. Pola couldn’t make out much else from the back of the limo, so she turned toward the house. It was a Victorian, complete with huge windows and cupolas. The front door was Van Gogh yellow and lit in such a way as to accentuate the vivid cow piss color.
The driver cut the engine and the sudden absence gave her an empty feeling she didn’t expect. The back of the limousine became a liminal space filled with weighted silence. The moment could’ve been less than five seconds or several minutes. The unlatching click followed by a gentle groan as the driver opened the door fer her broke her daze.
Once outside, she got a better look at the fountain. The woman depicted as a statue was nude but for a wreath of flowers around her head. Her hair flowed over her shoulders, partly down her back and partly over the tops of her breasts. Water poured from each nipple and from her mouth and eyes. Pola stared and tried to make her mouth form words.
“That’s Fernalina,” the driver said in a tone that was either sad or simply the way he spoke. It was the first thing he’d said to her since picking her up, so she didn’t know what to make of it. “Do you know of her?” he asked.
Pola shook her head dumbly.
His lips pressed together. The expression wasn’t quite a smile. There was a sense he was adjusting himself somewhere behind his face, of struggling to keep everything together. Perhaps it wasn’t discomfort at all, but a means of holding back a laugh, though Pola couldn’t imagine what might be so funny.
“Come,” he said, gesturing toward the front of the house.
Pola gave the statue’s weeping eyes one last look before turning toward the yellow door. She followed the driver to it, assuming he would come in with her, but on the front stoop, he turned and held out a small white envelope.
“This is the key.”
“Oh…”
“You’ll be letting yourself in. I’ve other things to attend to, as you must imagine.”
“Okay…”
He placed the envelope in her hand.
“It was a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Pola. We’ll meet again, I’m sure.”
“Um…”
“Charmed,” he said and gave her a quick bow.
She watched him walk from the house back to the limo. He didn’t look her way again, not even to wave. Once he shut himself inside, she faced the house. She took out the key and examined it. It was brass and otherwise nondescript.
This is a mistake. Right?
Yes, this is too weird. I need to just leave this key on the stoop, walk away, and call someone for a ride.
And beg someone to front me the money for this month?
Yeah, fuck that.
She put the key in the door and turned it.
The inside cut a stark contrast to the exterior. Light from gaudy chandeliers brought everything into hyperfocus—everything from the brown shag carpet with fibers so long they nearly hid her booted feet to the two red velvet armchairs which looked like they’d been constructed for someone seven feet tall. A bookcase stood against the wall to her left. It was full of leatherbound volumes, all of them thick. She recognized none of the titles; some weren’t even in English.
At the center of the room stood a grand piano, constructed from wood so polished she could see her reflection in it from several paces back. On the wall opposite the bookcase hung an acrylic painting, its subject bore a striking resemblance to the woman in the fountain.
The silence of the chamber had physical weight, making the air feel dense. It was oddly chilly in the room, though it was warm outside and she neither heard nor felt any of the tell-tale signs of air conditioning. It was as if the cold from the previous winter had been contained here.
Or perhaps this house was the source of the cold.
That was an odd thought. Where could she have come up with that? A house that can control the weather? That was beyond odd, it was silly. The placid expression on Fernalina’s face suggested otherwise.
Pola set the key on an entry table and stepped further into the house. Her footsteps made whispers on the thick carpet. She called out, “Hello?” No one answered. She took two more steps, passing the piano. The fallboard was lifted, revealing all eighty-eight keys. The white ones reminded her of teeth.
She continued forward, her call still unanswered. When she reached the arched passage leading out of the foyer, a shape stepped out to intercept her.
She jumped back with a gasp, breath and heartbeat quickening in less than half a blink. The shape had emerged so suddenly, it could have only meant to ambush her. And you didn’t ambush someone unless you meant them harm.
Coming here was a terrible idea.
What was I thinking?
No amount of money is worth my life.
She staggered back, the shape before her not yet calibrated in her panicked vision. Her left ankle rolled, but she kept her feet. She meant to spin on her heel and make for the door, but a hand reached out and snatched her by the upper arm, right where knife-wielding Boris met the flat top of Frankenstein’s monster. She tried to jerk free, but the grip was too strong.
“Hey!” The yelp of protest died on her tongue. “Oh…”
The hand released her. The disparate fragments came together as Pola’s alarm receded. They formed a woman, a lithe brunette with a healthy glow to her skin and eyes like sunflowers. She wore a shimmering green dress.
As Pola studied her, a lilting delicate tune began to play on the piano. No one was sitting on the bench, yet the keys moved as if someone were playing them. Pola’s mouth fell open in tired shock.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” the woman said. Pola faced her again. Her crimson lips drew Pola’s attention. They were stoplight red, and Pola didn’t think they were painted on. They looked naturally vibrant, but that couldn’t be right.
“I’m Lisa,” the woman said and held out a hand in greeting.
Pola took it and shook. Her gaze wandered to the piano. The keys depressed and lifted like invisible fingers danced along them. The melody teetered between upbeat and melancholy. It made Pola think of toys left out in the rain.
“How are you doing that?”
Those intense lips smirked. “Just a parlor trick. Do you like the song?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I think we’ll get along well, Pola,” Lisa said with a humorless laugh.
“Are you the one who … hired me?”
“I am. I take it you were expecting a man?”
Pola looked down and to the side. “Maybe.”
“I hope that’s not a problem.”
“No, I just…” She fumbled for the right thing to say. Her gaze fell to where the woman had grabbed her. The skin was pink under the two Karloff characters. “I hope the tattoos are okay.”
The woman’s lips spread further, becoming a full smile. It should’ve been disarming, but it only unsettled Pola further. The teeth were as white as those piano keys and way too straight.
She took Pola by the wrist and looked up her arm at all the Karloff faces, at the black star above each collar bone, and the thorny vines etched up her left forearm.
“Every mark tells a story, especially the ones we give to ourselves. These suit you.” She let go of Pola’s wrist and gestured toward the archway. “Come.”
As big as the first room was, there was still a lot of the house left to see. Going through the arched threshold brought them into a hallway lit with uniform sconces designed to look like torches. They hung from the mouths of sculpted screaming faces that protruded from the wall.
As soon as Pola followed Lisa through, the music stopped. It was quiet enough for her to hear her pulse tapping between her ears.
Looking down each way gave Pola the feeling she got in hotel room hallways, a sense of endless chambers and no exit. Such passages always gave her the creeps. She thought it was something more primal than watching The Shining too many times; it was something older and innate.
This hallway didn’t have too many doors. It didn’t have a nearly flat carpet displaying a variety of abstract shapes. Instead, it had five doors total, two on one side and three on the other. The shag carpet of the previous room had been replaced by strong-looking hardwood that was dark in color, nearly black. Pola realized all the screaming faces on the wall belonged to women.
Across the hall was another archway, this one leading to a staircase that went both up and down. A basement. How many houses in this area had those? It made her think there was a purpose for it in this particular house.
“Which way?” Pola asked when she could no longer stand the silence.
Lisa led her to the room with the staircase. Dread coiled in Pola’s guts, threatening panic. If Lisa tried to take her to the basement, she’d run right out of here, no question.
A series of frightful scenarios crossed her mind. She imagined Lisa shoving her down the stairs to her death. She imagined an unfinished basement with dead naked women strapped to tables—women who, in life, had been like her, made reckless by a desperate situation. She imagined chained up beasts that were once human but now only knew feral hunger.
Thankfully, Lisa walked past the stairs, between two more doorways—one leading to a kitchen/dining room, the other to another sitting room—and toward a glass door. She slid the door open and ushered Pola onto a concrete patio.
The backyard was just as impressive as the rest of the house. It had a sprawling well-kept lawn that stretched to a wall of hedges standing twelve feet tall. Perfect for privacy. Thick trees stood on either end of the yard. There was a pool, a hot tub, a cabana, and a fancy-looking grill. All of it was lit low, giving the space a hazy, dreamlike feel.
Several other girls sat on the patio furniture. At least one looked like she might be underage. There were four in total.
A brunette sat on the chaise, her open posture was meant to exude confidence, but she had something fragile about her—a wariness and a weariness that Pola could only glimpse by looking directly into her eyes. Detecting Pola’s gaze, the brunette quickly looked away.
There were two blondes who looked like twins, fresh-faced and petite, both wearing pink skirts and tops striped pink and white. They had the look of college co-eds, rocking side ponytails pointed the opposite way to distinguish one from the other. Pola wondered if it was an act or just how the apparent sisters always dressed.
The youngest looking had jet-black hair. It looked natural, unlike Pola’s which was auburn whenever she let it grow out past the roots. Despite being the apparent youngest, she oozed a self-assuredness that was neither put on, like that of the brunette, or naïve like that of the twins. She gave off the impression that she didn’t yet trust Pola, as if there was some as-yet-unrevealed litmus test to pass before the girl fully welcomed her into … whatever this was.
“Is this an audition or something?” Pola asked.
The two blondes exchanged a glance. When they faced forward again, they were bright-eyed and smirking like they found her question funny. The brunette still hadn’t looked at her again. The black-haired girl hadn’t stopped looking at her. Lisa placed a gentle hand on Pola’s shoulder.
“No audition,” she said. “You’re here because I want you here.”
Pola gave each of the other girls another once over. She slipped out of Lisa’s hold, trying not to make a show of it but doing just that.
“Look, I don’t want to do anything…” she paused and glanced at the black-haired girl who now scowled at her. “…illegal.”
“You think you’re here for an orgy?” the black-haired girl said with a dry laugh.
The two blondes tittered. The brunette shifted, faced Pola for a blink, then looked away again.
“You’re not here for anything sexual,” Lisa said.
“But…” Pola started but Lisa held up a silencing hand.
“I’m well aware what was communicated, but I’m saying now that you’re here for something much more rewarding.”
Pola tried to read the enigmatic host’s eyes. “I’m not getting paid, am I?”
“Oh, you’ll be paid. In something far more valuable than money.”
“Yeah…” Pola scanned the other girls for some sign that this might be a joke. They all wore neutral expressions, even the brunette. Pola came back to Lisa. “That’s all well and good, but rent’s due and I don’t think my landlord takes payment in ‘enlightenment’ or whatever it is your selling.”
Lisa only smiled and gestured back the way they’d come. “You are, of course, under no obligation to stay.”
“Right.” Pola hesitated. She wanted to tell this smug bitch that she should pay her at least something for coming all the way out here, but at this point, she just wanted to be done with the whole ordeal. She wanted a bed and a shot of something strong to help put her out. She’d talk to her roommates about the rent in the morning. They’d figure something out. “Well, thanks for nothing.”
She turned but couldn’t take a single step toward the door. Someone was coming through.
The figure was pushing what looked like a gurney. And it wasn’t empty. She stared as the gurney clattered over the threshold and onto the patio. The man pushing it was the same individual who’d driven her to this strange house.
Another man was strapped to the gurney with a ball gag in his mouth. She recognized him immediately.
Pola didn’t one day simply decide to fall through the cracks. For those cracks to even form required a buildup of pressure such that a surface could no longer keep its shape. It took time for a crack to open wide enough for someone to slip through at all. Once that happened, one still needed to come to the edge, and either be pushed or take a willing leap.
The fracture into which Pola eventually plunged began its formation when she was still a child—though sometimes in the grip of an all-too-frequent sleepless night, she convinced herself it started even earlier than that, as if the product of a family curse or some cruel form of predestination. But her ultimate plunge over the edge came directly as a result of the man who now lay prone before her. He recognized her, too, and his eyes pulled wide with naked terror.
“I can see you two have met,” Lisa said. Her tone indicated that she already knew this.
“What is this?” Pola said, feeling like she’d been wondering the same thing all fucking night.
“This is Joel Hutchinson,” the black-haired girl said. “But you knew that. How could you not know the name of the asshole who ruined your life? Though, let’s face it: you were well on your way to ruin before he came around.”
“Where was it you knew him from?” one of the blondes asked.
“They were both exhibitors at a regional horror convention,” the other one said.
“Back home,” the black-haired girl sneered.
“Oh, right,” said the first blonde. “He made jewelry, and she sold used VHS tapes of forgotten horror movies. Is that about right?”
“How do you all know so much about me?” Pola asked.
The black-haired girl rolled her eyes. “Please.”
“Be nice, Rena,” Lisa said. “We don’t want to chase her away.”
“Well, then you are failing miserably,” Pola blurted, well-past giving a shit whether or not she got paid and reasonably sure she wouldn’t see a dime no matter what she said or did. “I don’t know what kind of sick shit—”
“Revenge,” Lisa said. “We’re into revenge, specifically helping people like you find closure through taking vengeance for wrongs visited upon them. Look at him.” Lisa put one arm around Pola’s shoulders and gestured toward Joel with the other. “Do you mean to tell me seeing him tied down like that doesn’t give you ideas?”
Joel squirmed as much as he could in his leather restraints and screamed against the ball gag.
“Scream all you want,” Rena said. “No one’s going to hear you.”
The brunette hadn’t spoken yet, but Pola caught her staring. She nodded toward the bound man, then looked away. Pola faced Joel again, and he whimpered. He whimpered just like she had, that time he’d followed her out to her car after a long weekend of exhibiting, pressed her against the driver’s side door, and kissed her without asking. Then, he’d done a lot worse than that—and she’d done a lot more than whimper. But in the dark parking lot of a mall that wasn’t quite dead but certainly on life support, no one had heard her.
When he finished, she slumped down to the pavement. He pulled his jeans back on and told her if she said a word about it to anyone he’d kill her.
As if she could tell anyone. He was a big deal at the popup market where they met—the nephew of the dude who put it all together. She was just some weird girl who barely talked to anybody. Even in the era of #MeToo, both those things would work against her as far as anyone in that circle taking her story seriously went.
The noises of discomfort Joel made brought memories of her own discomfort flooding back. But they also stirred something else within her.
“You want to see him suffer, don’t you?” Lisa asked. “You want to see him die for what he did.”
She heard his voice in her head now, as clear as she’d heard it that night in the parking lot with gravel digging into her knees and palms, as her entire body trembled with shame, fear, and primal rage: If you tell anyone about this, I’ll fucking kill you.
The other women were chanting something in unison, their tones hushed. Joel struggled against his restraints as the driver loomed over him, staring into his terror-stricken face.
“You have the chance now to make him pay,” Lisa said. “And to stop him from doing the same thing to someone else.”
A wave of intoxication overtook Pola. It was sudden and intense, the way she sometimes got if she smoked weed after she’d already been drinking, but with a stark sense of lucidity.
Her vision swam and her insides churned. She couldn’t imagine what could’ve possibly brought this sensation on. She’d been careful not to drink or take anything before heading out for the night. The notion occurred to her that the entire trip, from the drive into the dark part of Ninth to the eerie piano music in the parlor to the chanting of the other women, had brought on her current state. It was as if it had all served as a meticulously choreographed spell, designed to make her susceptible to the whims of Lisa and the others, and to the whims of her dark side, the shadow self that dwelled in her and demanded retribution, demanded blood.
She zeroed in on his throbbing jugular. Inside, pulsated the life force, the life force of an unrepentant sinner.
Lisa put her mouth up to Pola’s ear. “Don’t you want him to pay for what he’s done?”
“Yes,” Pola breathed.
Of course, she did. Fantasies of killing Joel Hutchinson in his sleep or luring him in with the promise of “wanting it again” only to stick a knitting needle into his urethra raced through her mind on a semiregular basis. Now that she had the chance to bring those revenge fantasies to life, she could only stand still while the man who raped her lay completely vulnerable, presented for her on a silver platter by Lisa and these other women.
“Have all of you done this?” she asked.
The brunette locked eyes with Pola. “All of us.”
Pola focused again on that throbbing vein in his neck. She licked her lips, knowing what Lisa and the others wanted her to do. There were no weapons anywhere nearby. She had only her hands and her mouth.
“You’re cannibals,” she said, without the revulsion she might have said it with on any other night.
“We only eat the ones who harm us,” Lisa said. “But you must take the first bite.”
The twins giggled while Joel renewed his muffled screams.
Pola felt like she was in a dream, as if she’d been in a dream all night. This sense that now consumed her made what the others expected of her seem less daunting and less repugnant. She was somewhere that didn’t have the same laws and consequences as the real world. This place operated under its own principles and fostered an abandonment of feeling bound to any other rules, including the apparent laws of nature.
“Eat your trauma and become ascended,” Lisa said.
Pola’s mouth watered, like a smoked brisket lay before her and not a living human being begging for mercy.
“He’s not human,” Rena said. “He gave that shit up when he raped you.”
Pola took a step forward. Joel squirmed against his restraints. The gag kept his cries from reaching beyond the yard. With every step, Pola felt each internal scar fade, her inner workings restored to their pre-trauma stage. But to keep them restored, she had to complete the ritual.
At the side of the gurney, she bent toward Joel’s neck. She kept her eyes open, not out of fear that she’d bite somewhere less delectable, but because she wanted to be fully present for this cathartic feast.
When her teeth closed around his skin, he sighed. When they penetrated the flesh, he squealed. She gnawed on the vein, shaking her head side-to-side like a shark with a seal. The blood sprayed her face and his, warm and sticky and oh so red. That was something missing from all those old movies she liked: blood, particularly its lurid color. But this was no film and no dream. This was the beginning of a new life. The beginning of liberation from abuse, trauma, and the cracks that once so characterized her existence.
She ripped a rag of flesh and gristle free and stood up straight, blood dribbling down her chin and pattering the front of her shirt. She swallowed the morsel of vengeance and went back to the convulsing body below for another taste. As she did, the other women joined her.
In her mind’s eye, she saw Fernalina in the fountain, the statue’s marble contours softening to flesh as the goddess returned to life.