“I’m just a pretty girl who will soon be forgotten.”
—Norma Jeane Baker
I
The fanatic didn’t know how he was going to do it, had no idea how it would all turn out, but he knew he had to try.
He couldn’t help himself.
He’d been planning since 1962, since the very day She had been found dead, to be precise. He remembered that day well—he had wept and prayed, then flown into a rage of agony. Finally, grieved and exhausted, he wept and prayed again until sleep overtook him. While he slept, he’d dreamed . . . and in that dream, desolate images showed him exactly what needed to be done. Thus, when he woke, a sort of twisted awareness had returned with him.
And accordingly, he had begun planning.
He surrounded himself with Her, with Her essence; portraits and movie posters, sculptures, collections of likenesses and momentoes, each a reflection of Her haunting beauty. He unhesitantly spent a small fortune in obtaining an assortment of more personal items which would be necessary; an autographed 8×10 glossy, the pair of fishnet stockings She had worn in the film Bus Stop, an earring and even a tortoiseshell hairbrush, the latter somehow still containing a few precious strands of silken gold.
Being also in the vanguard of occult and supernatural studies, this man possessed a high knowledge in many facets of the shadow-shrouded magical worlds. Now though, he delved into the blacker of these arts, into the malignancies. Necromancy, and ritual sacrifice, and ultraviolet incarnation. He held intercourse with the dead, toiling over ancient, little known scrolls by day while communicating with obscure spirits and demons at night. He began to lose himself, to lose what he had been, withdrawing further and further into his obsession.
His studies had been distracted, however.
That following year he learned of a rumor suggesting perhaps the cause of Her untimely death had not been suicide after all—that, just perhaps, She had been silenced. Murdered, due to Her alleged involvements with the Attorney General and the President of the United States.
Robert and John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Temporarily relinquishing all thoughts of his lost Goddess, he abandoned Her and Her plight in a mindless, impulsive need for vengeance. Merciless, yet justifiable vengeance. He waited for what he considered to be the right place in time and, when it arrived that autumn, he had gone into action.
First, he’d taken every possible precaution to insure that his vacated corporeal structure would not be taken over and inhabited by some wandering, malevolent soul (this accounting for most cases of ‘possession’) while he was to be absent from it. Then, in late November, he had astrally projected his seething, vindictive spirit into the body of a man in Dallas, Texas, by the name of Oswald, compelling this individual into using a rifle to blast away the head and the life of John Kennedy.
An eye for an eye.
A few years later he struck again in much the same manner, this time snuffing out the late president’s younger brother, Bobby. And once again after that, in 1969, astrally impressioning and thereby motivating a young blonde secretary to snatch the steering wheel suddenly away from Senator Edward Kennedy’s grip and send the Oldsmobile, in which they were both passengers, plunging off a narrow bridge on the Cape Cod island known as Chappaquiddick. The twenty-eight-year-old woman perished in the shallow, tide-swept water, but Ted Kennedy survived somehow by struggling free from the car’s wreckage. Even so, he was unable to struggle free from the wreckage of the incident itself, and any hopes for a presidential bid came crashing down around him like a house of cards.
Everything considered, the fanatic was more or less pleased.
He smiled shortly afterward when ex-ambassador Joseph Patrick Kennedy—having seen two sons fall in assassination and another fall in disgrace—closed his eyes forever. He cursed significantly afterward, upon the disappearance of James Hoffa off the face of the earth, for not thinking of it himself; hadn’t the Teamsters Union boss also drawn some suspicions of finagling in the ‘bugging’ of Her apartment and telephone? No matter, though, the who and why. The results were the same.
And the fanatic was weary.
In the end, retribution was retribution.
II
Possessing only the knowledge to transfer his spirit to any location at that particular moment, he was trapped in the space of his own physical time. Unable to course forward or backward, he could merely wait until that time passed and certain opportunities presented themselves to him.
This frustrated him greatly, and he began losing sleep, thinking of what could or could not be done, should or should not be done. Soon enough, fending off these and all other conflicting thoughts, the fanatic returned to the matter at hand, and proceeded with his work.
He began refurbishing the large coastal house where he and his family lived. Began to ready it for Her, transforming the dwelling into a mansion worthy of his Queen—a pedestal on which he would keep Her. He filled it with luxuries, treasures to make Her happy: Persian rugs and velvet tapestries, Tiffany lamps and crystal chandeliers, stained glass windows and gold framed mirrors, racks of exotic milk and honey bath oils and richly scented bubble baths, and Chanel No. 5 perfume, and Dom Perignon champagne.
Then he started to get serious.
He installed a personal combination film/literature/music library with every classic work imaginable from A to Z, a sunken black onyx bathtub complete with all solid gold fixtures, and a royal, polished marble ballroom dance floor. Next, he converted the huge guest bedroom into a private movie theater, so his Love might enjoy Her most memorable silver screen moments from the past as well as from the future. And then came the crowning jewel; he built a spiral staircase leading from the first floor all the way up to the third—a crystal spiral staircase, its white oaken banister inlaid with diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphires—for his Queen alone to tread.
He transformed his home into a shimmering palace for Her, spending a veritable fortune in the process. The entire inheritance his wealthy father had bequeathed him, to be exact.
His already estranged wife left him for good, taking their children with her. Fleeing in confusion and dismay, she thought him mad, but she did not understand. And no one, not even he, could guess at what he was becoming.
He couldn’t help himself.
Paying little heed, he made his final preparations. Readied himself for the culmination, the end result of the odyssey. The realization of his dream. He chose the proper season, night and planetary alignment and then he went ahead with it, faithful to a point which was frightening.
Alone in his empty house, the fanatic descended into the black, dank sub-cellar and began by building a fire. Around this he scrawled the necessary runes into the earthen floor. He burned coriander and hemlock and sulfur to set the stage. Also henbane: wicked, deadly henbane, which was known to cause convulsions and even insanity if inhaled in concentrated form. He lit them all in order to conjure those he needed. He summoned them and sang to them, and made his offering. Stripped and shivering, he knelt in the dirt and masturbated until he came, pouring sweat and semen into the sacred fire. Then he offered something more substantial of himself, hacking off the third and fourth fingers of his left hand and casting them into the blaze too. He chanted, calling upon powers best left uncalled. Soon he imagined shadows moving in the corners of the cobwebbed cellar, and he heard a chorus of voices whispering his name.
Taking the personal items he’d purchased for just this occasion, the fanatic now fed them one by one into the fire of ceremony—the signed photograph first, then Her fishnet stockings, errant earring and lastly, the brush containing golden strands of hair which had once graced Her angelic head—and the flames ate them greedily. They were consumed, yes, but not one thing was rendered. The swirling shadows dissipated and the fire died slowly away, yet it gave up nothing in return, produced not a trace of his Goddess, as it was supposed to have.
The fanatic remained alone, a solitary figure in the dim glow of the embers. He kept trying, desperate now. Struggled and strained to reach the entities which had eluded him, those who could retrieve Her from where She was and re-enter Her into the fleshy world. To no avail. His pleadings went unanswered. The fates had played a horrible joke on him, had trampled his miserable hopes and cast him aside, hollow, and defeated. Now they laughed in his face.
He languished in the sub-cellar, straight through night into the cold, cruel morning. He climbed dazedly to the awful light above, lamenting in his sorrow. Then he went berserk with a rage unbounded, tearing out his own hair in fistfuls. He cursed and abjured the so-called ‘divinities’, hurling obscenities to all heaven, hell and earth. He urinated onto the open pages of the family bible, fouling the engraved holy images there. He screamed and he ranted, damning himself thrice over before his anger subsided. Then, oblivious to all else, the fanatic began planning anew. He’d done something wrong the first time, he surmised, but it would not happen twice.
However, he again mysteriously commenced in losing sleep. Visions came and departed, clouding his mind, blurring his objective. These thoughts started to invade his dreams, complicating matters even more. Soon, disembodied ghosts haunted each night’s slumber, refusing to go away and leave him be. One time, one very bad time, he dreamt of a nun coming to him. This nun bore an uncanny resemblance to Rose Kennedy and she asked him why—why he had slaughtered the President. When the fanatic gave no answer, she led him somewhere shadowy and dark and showed him John F. Kennedy, naked and bloody, crucified upon a large wooden cross. Next to this abomination stood Robert, head down, grasping a crown of thorns. On the other side was Rosey Grier, on guard, watching everything. The Attorney General looked up and grinned hideously at him through the thorny ring. Then he was alone with the nun again. She wept, so he held her. She fondled and caressed him, arousing him, weeping and telling him Catholics didn’t do such terrible, dirty things. That all she ever wanted to do was love him. But she laughed and pulled away, clutching a rosary which dangled around her neck: a preserved rosary of tiny, aborted human fetuses. She held the grisly collection up for him to see, laughing, and told him that they were Hers, they were his Whore’s. And she laughed and laughed . . .
The fanatic awoke screaming then, stimulated and erect. He began to shun sleep altogether after that. Guilt-ridden and exhausted, he soon became so physically and mentally distraught that he didn’t know in which direction to move next. He once actually considered giving up, relinquishing his quest and putting it from his mind, After all, wasn’t the entire thing absolutely hopeless in every aspect? Wasn’t it?
He came to his senses while dismantling the staircase, sitting amid scattered jewels and rectangular sections of crystal, and he promptly took the appropriate measures against ever having such selfish, unforgivable thoughts again.
Through the ancient and painstaking art of salve surgery he carefully removed his eyelids after that, henceforth assuring that sleep and nightmares would hinder him no longer. In his wearisome state of mind, however (or out of a subconscious need for self-punishment perhaps), the fanatic bungled the delicate operation and inadvertently daubed the magical, highly corrosive ointment where he had not intended it to go. Therefore he not only removed both eyelids during the arcane procedure but his lips, cheeks, and most of his lower jaw as well. He disfigured himself, transforming his once strong and intelligent face into a mutilated mask of horror.
All this was of no importance. The fanatic set about his work, returning to the sole purpose for his living, his breathing. He got ready to bring back his dead Goddess, and he vowed to do it correctly this time.
Or die trying.
III
The setting sun looked like hellfire seeping through the cracked western sky.
The fanatic lightly, lovingly brushed his fingertips over Her name on the bronze plaque, then felt a chill as he touched what was below it: 1926 – 1962. The feeling of finality made him gasp. He stared about him; there was no one in sight.
He’d driven six hours down the coastline to get here—the Westwood Village Memorial Park—and had entered the small cemetery beneath a shifting cloak of invisibility. To be truthful, he was not so much invisible as he was highly unobtrusive, psychologically rather than physically blending in with his grim surroundings. He was undetectable by any average human vision unless specifically being searched for.
Now he stood at his Love’s crypt in the last dying rays of light, and he trembled. A night breeze had begun to stir and the air had become chilly and uncomfortable. A young couple appeared without warning, walking silently among the mounds across the way. They paused a moment at some grave, arm in arm, before moving on. The girl caught a brief glimpse of what might’ve been a shadow out of the corner of her eye, but paid no attention after she looked again and saw emptiness this time, nothing there to even cast such a dimness. The fanatic held his breath as he drew his cloak tighter around him, and around his shadow. Soon the couple had wandered off, vanishing down the darkened path.
Sure that he was alone now, he took out a large canvas bag and unfolded it, placing it upon the ground. Then he removed the short-handled pick from beneath his long overcoat. Knocking aside baskets of fresh flowers along with wilted ones, he braced himself, feet spread far apart, and he swung the pick. The impact jolted him.
The steel spike-end cracked the lipstick-stained door of the elevated vault in which She was waiting.
He recovered and swung once more, chipping away the marble. Again, more vehemently, crushing, obliterating it. The portal shattered into broken shards, and standing amidst those shards, the fanatic grasped the end of Her coffin and savagely pulled—there was no time for neatness or delicacy at this stage—sliding it out from the waist-high tomb and dumping it unceremoniously to the ground. He cringed at this blasphemy, but not for long.
Taking up his fallen pick he swung it again, aiming for the casket lock this time. When it finally surrendered, the fanatic jerked open the lid with a triumphant cry and at last laid his monotonous gaze upon Her remains. He choked back a sob then, his soul shrieking at the perversity of it. He wished he could blink away the sudden tears, but he couldn’t.
His goddamn eyelids weren’t there anymore.
He wasn’t sure how long he stood transfixed, riveted to the spot; a mere second or two, three at the most. But in his shock, somewhere in that numbing stupor, the fanatic allowed his magical cloak to slip down for one heartbeat, and that was all it took. There was a sound at his back, movement behind him, and then a voice calling out and asking what in God’s name he was doing. He whirled in surprise and disbelief, this time allowing the scarf that covered his face to slip and fall away as well. He found himself staring into two stricken faces, the couple who’d passed by earlier—frozen, astounded faces, gaping back at his own hideous countenance. All at once their young, bewildered features seemed to swim before him, to change right in front of his goggle eyes. The young man became Jack Ruby, brandishing his infamous revolver, and the girl at his side was suddenly Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.
Ruby waved the pistol at him, shouting, telling him that he already got Oswald, got that fucker good, and that now he was going to get the real killer. Jackie remained statuesque, as always, purse over her arm and head upheld high.
The fanatic hesitated, wavering slightly, but the weight of the pick dangling in his grip stirred him, brought him back, and he promptly drove it through Mr. Ruby’s skull. Buried the steel pick deep in his head, directly through his open, working mouth actually, without missing a beat. He watched the man’s skull come apart, much easier in fact than his Queen’s sarcophagus had only moments before.
Jacqueline was screaming now, her face dotted with blood and bits of brain. She screamed (the fanatic fancied he’d witnessed this all somewhere before), holding both hands up in front of her. He grabbed the girl, silencing her. She pleaded, but he held her fast. Next, he made her stoop, gibbering and sobbing, and reach into the coffin. She recoiled, choking in horror, vomit erupting. He shook her hard and forced her back down, telling her calmly to retrieve what was there and place it inside the canvas bag. She did as she was told.
Jackie Kennedy lifted his Love’s sad remains with little effort; the fanatic caught sight of Her green burial gown against the champagne cushions of the casket before he averted his gaze, chewing pitifully at a lower lip which was no longer there. Then the girl cried out in dismay and revulsion as the corpse disintegrated and fell apart in her clutches. The fanatic shrieked, eyeballs rolling in their sockets. He regained composure somehow, instructing her to gather it all up, carefully, and to be quick; he kicked her in the ribs to emphasize this. When she had it all safely into the bag, every last putrescent chunk and particle, the fanatic yanked her up by the hair to her feet. He told her to walk ahead and carry the bag to where he ordered her. They began moving then, leaving behind an empty vault, an empty coffin, and an already chilled Jack Ruby with a large orifice yawning in the center of his empty face.
They exited the cemetery and made their way to the fanatic’s automobile waiting out on Glendon Avenue. Only then did he release the pick and let it drop to the street. He forced the girl into the car with their grisly prize and got them moving swiftly away from that lonesome place of the hopeless dead. He got them, instead, moving towards a place of life. Sweet, incarnate life.
The glaring headlamps of the passing vehicles agonized him, made him want to scream—unable to close his eyes or even squint, he was going blind. He wore sunglasses, for all the good it did. Jacqueline tried to escape once during the trip home, but the fanatic easily thwarted her attempt at flight. He swore that he would take care of her when they got back.
He kept his promise.
When he was finished she huddled in one corner of the old house, hogtied, mumbling to herself, lost within some madness. Vomit flecked her quivering lips. The fanatic was busily making his last minute preparations. Every so often he would pause and kneel and speak, whispering a name which was not hers into her hair, but he’d become irritated by her senseless babblings.
So he cut off Jackie Kennedy’s moist, pink tongue.
On impulse, he considered wrapping it up in brown package paper, addressing it to that bastard Ari Onassis and popping it into the mailbox out front, but ultimately thought better of this.
He took the vacant-eyed mute girl down to the sub-cellar and bound her to wooden stakes in the earthen floor. All around her naked body he began sketching his magic circle for a second time. He drew the runes and built the fire. He invoked the powers and made the pact. After that, he offered his consecrated sacrifice by ritually slitting the girl’s throat. Drank her bubbling blood. Then he cut out her still pulsing heart and held it above him, singing and chanting. Next he sprinkled his Queen’s poor, sad ruins within the divine circle, mingling her lifeless remains with the warm body and blood. The heart he threw into the fire. Finally, as angry thunder rolled and shook the unhallowed house in its throes, the fanatic completed the deed and dismissed the entities which were present, releasing them to fulfill their part of the bargain.
When he came up from the dripping walls of the diabolical cellar, he found himself in the middle of a tempest. His home was rocked in the savage storm’s grip, its structure creaking and groaning as never before. And just before all electricity went out for miles around, the fanatic glimpsed his own unmistakable likeness—a police artist’s conception from an eyewitness account—staring dully back at him from the late night news on the television screen. Then everything went black, and the fanatic howled in the darkness.
Someone had seen him. Yes. Spotted him leaving the scene of the slaying and abduction, and by now they would be looking for him. They would be searching, trying to find him. Coming for him at this very moment . . .
No, no, no, his blasted mind spoke up. Not now. Not when I’m so close. No! Nononononononono—
He screamed in his gloom-shrouded living room, going berserk with the realization of what was happening; he was almost at the end of his long, bitter journey, almost within reach of Her, and now they sought to stop him, imprison him. Take him and control him and close him off from existence. Lightning flashed, dazzling his dim vision. He decided he must go then. He could not stay here any longer, or all would be lost. But he would be back. He’d return when it was safe again and he and his Beloved would be together. Because nothing, nothing could keep him from Her. This was just the way that it had to be. For the time being.
He abandoned his home and ran blindly out into the witch’s brew of the storm, torrents of rain slashing his wide, unblinking eyes. The fanatic fled, forgetting in his haste the ceremonial fire which he’d left burning. The flames meanwhile, left unattended, slowly began to rise, engulfing, consuming the large mansion.
The fanatic continued to run aimlessly. Somebody spied him bounding through the downpour, whimpering, completely lost now. The proper authorities were somehow alerted and they took to the chase, quickly closing in.
As the pedestal he created for Her blazed like a beacon in the black night-storm, the fanatic groped along, sightless and forsaken, eventually coming upon that point where the land ended and the sea began. So it was that he walked into the ocean, making his way surely, unerringly, the tides catching him, dragging him out. The pounding inside his skull crescendoed and then diminished as breath fled, until a calming inner sense of peace enfolded him, and the sea became his sepulchre.
Observers who saw him last describe a walking monstrosity—a glassy-eyed travesty of what had once been a human being, face grotesquely deformed, flesh and scalp pulled impossibly back into a glaring, skeletal gape-mouthed expression—sobbing miserably, lurching farther and farther out into the deep, all the while calling a woman’s name over and over.
Those who knew him and of him believe that he was not a murderer of his own accord, rather that he was driven to commit the atrocities he did. That he had no other alternative in his twisted mania. This, however, is neither an excuse nor a pardon, merely a belief.
He couldn’t help himself.
There are also those who believe that he remains out there still in the dark, soundless waters. Lingering somewhere. Silently awaiting Her glorious, inevitable return.
IV
The old coastal house remained standing for some time; the pouring rain had helped to douse the fire, slowing and eventually halting its progress. Yet even so, nothing was left except a wrecked, wasted frame. A burnt-out gutted shell of a home, deserted and uninviting. The corpse of the girl and what little other evidence that could be found had been salvaged and removed from the ash and rubble. Now the place lay quiet, somber.
The evening after the terrible storm, while the rank and file pondered the significance and severity of the heinous events of the night before, something stirred inside the remnants of the dark mansion. The structure was barren, utterly desolate. Yet something moved there, trembled within the ruins. Soon after, a light came flickering into life in one of the glassless windows: a candle, its flame dancing with the breeze. Next echoed a mournful sigh.
Then She began to weep, the melancholy sound touching and clinging to the stillness. She listened and wept and began feeding on Herself, tragically, alone once again.
[bctt tweet=”OCTOBER TERROR 2018 Short Story Award – Entry #45 ‘MANIA’ by William Gorman – Enjoy all this terrific, disturbing material you have in your hands, lots of horror stories at your disposal for your dark delight and vote!” username=”theboldmom”]
On October 23rd we’ll close submissions and open a poll for the readers to choose their favourite one! You’ll have a week to make your choice and on October 31st we’ll announce the winner!!!
