It's difficult to make out, but if one squints they can see the form of a man beneath the flames. The man does not scream. The fire rages on. He is consumed. Of course he is dead, and “Good riddance”, we surmise the crowd is thinking from the looks on their faces. But then the oddest thing happens. A swarm of bats, like the embodiment of the rising smoke, emerge from it screeching and flying into the night sky.
* * * * *
There is a man in a suit carrying a highlighter-pink-sticky-note labeled manila envelope. He is rapping at large arched mahogany double-doors. His name is Benjamin. He is angry because his boss forgot to take the production schedule home and since the old man refuses to use email, Benjamin found himself here on a Friday evening.
The rapping proved insufficient. He thought of leaving the envelope on the patio, but the sky threatened a storm. He grabbed the heavy wrought-iron knocker and let two large thuds sound out into the Victorian-era home.
There was the sound of creaking and distant footsteps slowly lumbering towards the doors. Then, there was a clink as a clammy hand grasped the handle, followed by a moment of hesitation before the heavy doors opened, revealing the dimly lit antechamber: dying embers in the fireplace, a spilled wineglass by the stairs, and Benjamin's boss, disheveled and still wearing his thick stage makeup.
“Oh Benjamin,” he said, rubbing the fatigue out of his face. “I didn't ask you here, did I?”
“Gregory.” he nodded a polite greeting. “Sorry to bother you in the evening. I just came to drop this off.” He held out his hand with the envelope. Gregory took a moment before looking at the envelope, then eyed it with a confused expression as if he didn't know what it was. This annoyed Benjamin greatly for it wasn't the first time he had to do this. Benjamin thought Gregory must be on a wild bender. He wasn't the type, but it wasn't Benjamin's concern.
“Ah, right.” Gregory languorously accepted the production schedule and moved to close the doors.
Then, just as Benjamin was turning to leave, just as Gregory was beginning to shut the doors, just as the embers in the fireplace let out their final dying crackle, the coruscating light fading and obscuring the features of Gregory's face, there came a scream from far back in the house, muffled as though coming through a closed door. The shrill scream enveloped one desperate word: “help.”
Benjamin swung back.
“Oh bother.” Gregory sighed. Benjamin could not do anything but merely accept the swift strike to his face, followed by the older man sliding around behind him, getting his right arm beneath his chin, and choking him out.
Benjamin was regaining consciousness on a wooden chair, where he sat slumping, prevented from falling over by the nylon rope tied around his body. He had a headache. His nose and mouth were coated in dry blood. The events that had transpired were returning to him. He heard Gregory pacing and prattling and thought it best to feign continued unconsciousness.
“Sedate the singers and tie them up. Sedate the singers and tie them up. Three singers tied up, but two sedated. How?” Benjamin had heard Gregory muttering to himself before his show went live many times in the past. He kept expecting his boss to abruptly put on his host face and voice and exclaim “We're live.”
Benjamin discreetly peered through one eye and saw that there were three others, unconscious and tied up. He recognized them. “Christ Gregory, the singers? I know their set tanked, but really?”
Gregory made no answer, only looking back at him. Benjamin looked away in discomfort. There was something wrong with his boss's face, something he missed in dimly lit foyer. The man was gaunt as though he had lost forty pounds and his skin looked papery and drained.
Benjamin smiled as he did when uncomfortable. “Come on Gregory what's going on here?”
“'What's going on' cannot be explained. So I will show you”. Despite his physical diminution and bedraggled state, he managed, for a moment, to compose himself and give his voice its regular self-assured gravitas. Gregory leaned over one of the unconscious singers, pushing his long glistening hair back and biting into the man's neck.
Benjamin tried to plead for him to stop, but words never came. He looked away initially but then found himself transfixed with terrible awe. Gregory's bite seemed too strong, like a wolf with a death lock. The singer's face spoke of peaceful rest, but his body turned rigid, fingers curling followed by everything else crumpling in on itself. The vessels on the singer's neck bulged and there was a horrible slurping sound. Gregory wasn't just biting the man, he was drinking him up. Ah but it was only the singer that added in the occasional “Doo Bee Doo”, oh well not such a loss.
Gregory stood up taller, shrugged his shoulders and tilted his head back, inhaling deeply as the singer's blood ran down his neck. He was larger than before and Benjamin could swear he saw parts of his body morph in and out of a smoky waving darkness. Now, color and vitality had returned Gregory's sallow skin.
“And they call you the Devil of Late Night. If only they knew.”
“The Devil, Benjamin? Please.”
“Then what? For you are no man.”
“I'm the vessel of a powerful force. I'm far older than you believe me to be, and this is how I sustain myself,” he pointed to the corpse of the singer.
“You gave that up easily.”
“You don't know me to be coy.”
“I also don't know you to be sloppy. Guests from tonight's set? And in your own home?”
Finally, Gregory spoke. “After the set I was—ravenous.”
“And is this my fate as well? A midnight snack for my hungry boss?”
“Perhaps, Benjamin.”
“Did killing always come so easy?”
“I have accepted it. Do not think me such a petty villain as to kill to extend my life. I wield my power for purpose. You have seen it yourself, and yet you have merely seen the outline, the periphery. The politicians, the celebrities, business people all in the palm of my hand, all working towards a greater plan. My plan. One spanning far more time than you would dare guess. I do not relish it, but it is the price that must be paid.”
“You don't have the right to weigh those scales.”
“If not I than who? To me man is cattle. It is they that have no rights over my designs.” He darkened.
“There must have been a first. Was it so easy to justify it then, before you built your god complex?”
“The first?” He scratched his head. “The first. That must have been”—he tapped his fingers against the back of the dead singer's chair with increasing speed and began murmuring to himself—“no it had to be before that.” He looked up at Benjamin with deranged eyes. “The First? What kind of question is that Benjamin.”
“I only wanted to understand—“
“Are you doing this on purpose Benjamin?”
“Doing what?”
He let out an anguished sound, almost a hiss. “I knew one wouldn't be enough.” and he consumed the harmonizing vocalist.
This time there was no mistaking the shadowed morphing. Parts of him became bats and then turned back to flesh. When he was done draining the man, he looked up at Benjamin, breathing heavily and staring at him with an intensity.
“Perhaps I shouldn't have asked.”
“It is less than nothing. I do not remember the first nor do I care to. What is the cost of a single life against the greatness I have achieved?”
“You need to check your math there. You're already on two lives and that's just tonight.”
He let out a mirthful laugh, “Your dour wit won't save you now.”
“Fine, then kill us and be done with it.”
“Don't give up so easily Benjamin. You might live, if you can help me.”
“How?”
“You were right; I was sloppy. The hunger used come every few years. Now it's hastened and become sporadic. I was working out a plan to reverse it but I rushed things when these three fell into my lap. It's the oddest thing but in all the tumult I've forgotten exactly what I had planned.” He was becoming flustered. “Help me remember and perhaps we can find a way to let you go.”
“You write it down?”
“No. Perhaps it involved a summoning or a new covenant.”
“A new covenant? Is that like taking new debt to pay old debt?”
Gregory glowered.
“You sure you don't have some scribbles in your pocket?”
“Benjamin.”
“Tell anyone else?”
“No.”
“Well. I think you're out of luck.”
“We're out of luck.”
“It tends to be in short supply when you look for it. So how many have you killed?”
“Of all things, do you think I would remember such a trifle.”
“You can't seem to remember much of anything.”
“Perhaps this will help.” He pulled back the head of the lead singer.
“You aren't as guilt-free as you profess. You know I can't help you remember, you just don't want to kill me.”
Gregory looked up, pulling away from the singer's neck. “You don't want to test that theory.”
“Let us live. Find somewhere quiet to live out your final days without hurting anyone else.”
“Dying is for mortals, fool!” His anger flared.
“Do I really need to say it? You aren't immortal.”
“So long as I don't make any mistakes I am.”
“You're spiraling.”
“Careful Benjamin, an animal is most dangerous when backed into a corner.”
“I thought we were the animals.”
Gregory expressed his disapproval with a sharp exhale. “There's a way out. I know it. It's somewhere in here,” he said, pressing into his temple, “if only I could remember.” He sunk his teeth into the last singer.
Gregory shuddered. Again he grew. His skin was translucent and it appeared overripe, tightly wrapped over tumescent muscles. Darkness swam beneath the surface.
Gregory let go of the lead vocalist, body falling limp against the ropes. He was crying.
“I felt guilt, once.”
“You're crying now.”
“The first time I killed, I was just remembering that. How can that be so clear while the past hours remain shrouded?”
Benjamin realized it had been raining. He must have missed whenever it had started. “It could be there's nothing to remember.”
Something changed in Gregory's face. A ray of madness shining through muddled fog. He let out a small laugh that turned to mad cackling. He puffed into a swarm of bats that screeched and careened around the room, before reforming behind Benjamin's chair. Fingers caressing his neck.
Ah but there, in the distance, it's the sound of a car pulling up. And there, the sounds of feet pattering against the pavement. Could it be the police, come here to save poor Benjamin? Are they getting closer? And was that a knock at the door? Alas, no, it was only the rain. I'm sorry if you felt that to be underhanded, but the mind has a way of playing tricks on the desperate and hopeful.
Now, where were we?
Peanut Gallery