Acquired Taste E-Book

Clay Chapman

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 436

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

A startling, witty and downright terrifying collection of 25 short stories from the "21st century's Richard Matheson" (Richard Chizmar, Chasing the Boogeyman.) Perfect for fans of Paul Tremblay, Rachel Harrison and Eric LaRocca. They're feeding on you too. A father returns from serving in Vietnam with a strange and terrifying addiction; a man removes something horrifying from his fireplace, and becomes desperate to return it; and a right-wing news channel has its hooks in people in more ways than one. From department store Santas to ghost boyfriends and salamander-worshipping nuns; from the claustrophobia of the Covid-19 pandemic to small-town Chesapeake USA, Clay McLeod Chapman takes universal fears of parenthood, addiction and political divisions and makes them uniquely his own. Packed full of humanity, humour and above all, relentless creeping dread, Acquired Taste is a timely descent into the mind of one of modern horror's finest authors.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Praise for Clay McLeod Chapman

Also by Clay McLeod Chapman and available from Titan Books

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

the fireplace

cyan, magenta, yellow, and key

who brings a baby?

the spew of news

stowaway

baby carrots

fairy ring

room with a boo

pump and dump

keep it civil

battlefield séances

pick of the litter

sisterhood of the salamander

knockoffs

debridement

psychic santa

posterboard

our summer in the pit

sweetmeat

nail on the head

the nocturnal gardener

hermit

all ears

stay on the line

nathan ballingrud’s haunting horror recs

Acknowledgments

About the author

Publication credits

Praise for

CLAY McLEOD CHAPMAN

“Clay McLeod Chapman has taken all that’s troubling our nation in the current day and, somehow, makes it all more frightening.”

Victor LaValle, author of Lone Women

“Few writers are as dependably, delightfully depraved…

With stories like these, it’d be impossible to say no!”

Nat Cassidy, author of When the Wolf Comes Home and Mary

“Clay McLeod Chapman is one of my favorite horror storytellers working today.”

Jordan Peele

“Daring and dread-inducing, creepy and clever,

Clay McLeod Chapman defines contemporary horror.”

Rachel Harrison, USA Today bestselling author of So Thirsty and Black Sheep

“A master storyteller.”

Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“Chapman has an absolute gift for the unforgettably, mind-saturatingly horrific.”

Ally Wilkes, Bram Stoker award®-nominated author of All the White Spaces and Where the Dead Wait

“Clay McLeod Chapman is a true master of horror.”

CJ Leede, author of Maeve Fly and American Rapture

ACQUIREDTASTE

Also by Clay McLeod Chapman and available from Titan Books

WHAT KIND OF MOTHER

WAKE UP AND OPEN YOUR EYES

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Acquired Taste

Hardback edition ISBN: 9781835410783

Signed Hardback edition ISBN: 9781835416587

E-book edition ISBN: 9781835410806

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: September 2025

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© Clay McLeod Chapman 2025

Clay McLeod Chapman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

EU RP (for authorities only)

eucomply OÜ, Pärnu mnt. 139b-14, 11317 Tallinn, Estonia

[email protected], [phone]

Set in Adobe Caslon Pro by Richard Mason.

to R. Brooke Priddy

AHL forever

the fireplace

The thought of tossing our baby in the fireplace first popped into my head a month or so ago. Around September, I’d say. Autumn was on its way, so—one lazy weekend, I figured I’d go ahead and get a leg up on winter and finally clean out that chimney. Get the flue all prepped for our first fire in our new house.

We were still only five months deep into our domestic bliss back then—no crisp nights curled up around the fire just yet. But before we even bought this place, all the way back when Chrissy and me first took a tour of the house—before it was ours, or anyone’s really, lingering within that liminal space between seller and buyer, with all those hopeful families wandering about its rooms like ghosts; inspecting every nook and cranny in some spectral attempt to decide whether or not this is the house we would want to haunt—I remember waltzing into the living room for the very first time and locking eyes onto that inglenook. Its thick brick. The oak beam reaching across the top. Its swan-necked ironworks looked like the blackened ribcage of some prehistoric beast burned to its bones, the charred chest cavity the only remnant of its primitive existence left behind. Whatever it had been.

Check out the fireplace, I said. Bet we’ll save a fortune on our heating bill with that thing.

Was that an offer I just heard? Chrissy whispered, hoping not to alert any of the other prospective homeowners that we were interested. ’Cause if it was, I can go find the realtor…

Down, Simba… Take it easy.

I hadn’t banked on the owners accepting our bid, to be honest. We were well beneath the listed asking price. I did it for Chrissy—but I knew there was no way in hell we’d ever get a house like this. Not on our annual income.

I mean—come on. An 1855 Victorian? With five bedrooms? Hardwood floors? There’s no way we could call this place home. Not with that fireplace beckoning. We’re talking the original chimney here. Nearly two hundred years old. The oldest part of the house at this point, I bet. The rest may have been remodeled over the years, but its brick bones remained, a spinal column of red clay holding this home upright.

We were crazy to’ve come to the open house in the first place. But Chrissy had begged to check it out. Outright begged. She’s always had real estate lust, spending her Sundays sifting through every last email alert agents send her way.

It felt wrong, being here. Playing house like this. Getting her hopes up. Watching her eyes widen the deeper into the house we went, deciding which room would be whose—this one’s ours, this one will be the baby’s—I knew, I just knew we were cruising toward heartbreak. She kept rubbing her belly like there was a genie in there, ready to grant her wish.

Don’t do this to yourself, hon, I warned her. Don’t get yourself all worked up.

But the owners saw something in us, I guess. Our family-to-be.

Me, Chrissy.

And Colin. Nothing but a bump in his mama’s tummy back then. He still had a few months in the oven to go before—Ding! Baby’s served…

* * *

I’d never cleaned a fireplace before.

Never had an actual fireplace to clean—so there you go. First time for everything, I guess… I am a man who now owns a fireplace, therefore I have become a man who must scrub it.

Chrissy had been feeding Colin in bed, so I had the inglenook all to myself. Gave us a chance to get to know each other a little bit better.

It had a molded shelf embedded into the rear wall with a hinged spit-rack. A grand ol’ rack. Had to date back to when this house was originally built, all those years ago. Turn of the turn of whatever century. They must’ve roasted enormous joints of meat back then. Could’ve fed a whole coven with what they cooked on there, I bet.

Kneeling before the hearth, I pulled the fire dogs out to scrub the floor. The grate weighed a ton. Took both hands just to tug that iron giant’s ribcage out. Broke a sweat before I’d even started scrubbing, taking this metal-bristled brush and scraping at the interior walls. Swiping the soot away.

I was inside the fireplace now, on my hands and knees. Working on the rear wall. Tight, circular motions. Wax on, wax off… The grime never seemed to go away, though. Ten minutes of brandishing that brush over brick and it looked like I was just sweeping circles in the soot. This nibbling-on-tin sensation settled into my teeth. I could feel the steel bristles all the way up in my jaw, like chewing aluminum foil. Skrchskrchskrch. Throbbing right through me. My bones.

An exhale spread over my spine. I swear I felt somebody’s breath drop down my neck.

I turned around.

No one was behind me. The living room was completely empty.

Then I felt again. This time on my temples.

Glancing up, I felt a stray draft creep across my cheeks.

The chimney flue had been left open, that’s all. Just the wind, as they say.

Then something shifted.

Up there.

I couldn’t see very far up, couldn’t see much of anything—but my eyes tightened in on a pale shape centered within the brick funnel. A gray nimbus hovering in the darkness.

A baby.

I saw a baby. Trapped in the shadows. Its fetal form was curled into itself, crammed in the sooty womb of the flue. Its pale skin was covered in a layer of ash.

I reached up to touch it.

That’s what people do in these situations, yes? If you see something that shouldn’t be there—you poke it. Who cares about common sense? I’m staring at a baby stuck in my chimney, for Christ’s sake. Of course I’m going to touch it.

The pressure from my pointer was enough to dislodge the infant from its floating position and fall onto my face with a hefty exhale of soot. I turned away from the plummeting bundle just as it dropped, so impact was actually on the back of my neck. I felt the softest thud, punctuated with a puff of ash, before it tumbled onto the bricks below.

I was breathing in way too much soot, coughing uncontrollably now. There was a solid three seconds of blurred vision. That cloud of ash slowly dissipated, clearing away to reveal—

A possum.

It must have been trapped in the chimney. Must’ve crawled down months ago and got itself stuck, starving itself to death up there. Its body was petrified, all its fur having fallen away, leaving behind its withered skin, covered in soot. Nothing but a mummified thing now.

Just a possum.

I figured it was best to get our little squatter out of the house before Chrissy saw it. She was not a fan of our furry four-legged neighbors, so I escorted the crispy critter by its shoestring tail, giving him a proper burial in our trash can among all the dirty diapers and coffee filters.

When I came back in, I could smell dinner cooking.

Buttery pork belly.

The halls were filled with it. My mouth was watering by the time I found Chrissy in the living room, bouncing Colin on her knee like a bucking baby bronco.

What’s cooking, good-looking?

Nothing as far as I know… Had my hands a little full here.

What’s up with the smell? I’m starving.

Chrissy gave me a look that would be put into constant rotation soon enough, hereunto categorized as—What the fuck are you talking about?

Sure enough, the oven wasn’t on. Our kitchen was still a work in progress. Most of our appliances hadn’t found a cupboard yet, still living within their moving boxes. A dozen cardboard nested dolls claimed any and every inch of free space. All our cutlery and dishes remained stacked in quick-pickable piles along the countertop for easy take-out meals.

Not that the smell was coming from the kitchen, anyhow.

It was in the living room. From the fireplace.

Bacon fat frying in the pan.

You practicing for Santa or something? Chrissy asked. You’re all covered in soot.

I was cleaning the fireplace, I said. More to myself, but Chrissy answered anyway—Hate to break to it you, hon, but… I think the chimney won.

* * *

The house feels cold now.

Has for months. I’ve futzed with the thermostat and nothing seems to lift the chill. Every room I walk into, it feels as if I’m plunging into the tundra. My breath spreads out above me when I’m lying in bed. I’ve had to bundle up like it’s the middle of winter, two or three layers thick, pulling out the parkas from their moving box, just to keep from freezing. In August. It’s actually warmer outside than in. Chrissy looks at me like I’m nuts, which is the new norm now.

I could really use your help here, she muttered. Can you take Colin? Just for a minute?

What do we know about the house?

It’s old. She shrugged, irked at me for not spotting the immediate problem at hand. I know that much… Could you just take him? Please? I’ve got to start thinking about dinner. What’re you hungry for?

Colin was nothing but baby fat. Gripping him, I felt my hands sink into his sides. That plump swell of his pudgy tummy filling in around my fingers, like cement sealing us together.

Squishy brick and mortar.

When Colin was first cleared to come home from the hospital, I had given him the grand tour. This is your room, I whispered. Most were still overwhelmed with moving boxes back then, the walls eclipsed in cardboard. Our plans for unpacking before Colin was born were quickly hijacked the moment Chrissy’s water broke. Not that we minded. We had our nest now. We had all the time in the world to settle in. Make this place feel like home. This is where your mommy and daddy sleep… or where we’re gonna try to sleep, as long as you let us. And this…

This was the living room.

Her hearth had a thick cast-iron plate, surrounded by a brick enclosure. The entire house would embrace a fire, the heat circulating through the halls and swelling up within each room like the chambers of a heart filling up with blood. And on the spit-rack, roasting on the iron, a sizzling victual. Its delectable aroma filled the house. Grease dripping off the shank. Hits the hearth in this thin dribble. Each drip sizzles against the iron plate, bubbling over—hsss.

Hsssss…

Hsssss…

Chrissy’s noticed I’ve been avoiding the living room. I turn in early now. Wrap myself up in a duvet and call it a night.

What gives? She asked. You avoiding us?

She asked if I wanted to light a fire. As if that would solve all our problems. Just tossed it out there last night, completely casual, like it’d popped into her mind—Hey. How about a fire?

The fuck did you just say?

Jesus… Don’t snap at me.

What did you say?

A fire, she fumed. All I asked was if you wanted to light a fire.

Chrissy’s breath smelled like peat. Decayed plant matter in her mouth. I could even see bits of turf in between her teeth. Tongue covered in earth. People used to harvest the peat from the bogs, carving out thick, sodden bricks, leaving them out to dry under the sun before bringing them inside and stacking them up in the inglenook. Those bricks burned slowly. The softest kind of kindling. Smokeless. Endless. It would warm the house for days and never die out. Warm its halls with dead vegetables and decrepit sedges, the pocosins and moss, compressed within the muck and mire of a thousand years, the bones of beasts long forgotten, lost to the bogs, the boreal peatlands slowing down their decomposition beneath our feet, now a fire, methane flames blooming in a beautiful blue, dancing about the hearth like will-o’-wisps. The aurora borealis in our living room.

Forget it, she muttered. You’re the one who’s always complaining about how cold it is.

I went to bed instead. Curled up into a cocoon of my duvet and tried to hide.

* * *

The house is only growing colder. Colder. Winter is nearly here. We’re going to have to light a fire before long.

But I’m afraid what’ll happen when we do.

What kind of kindling she’ll need.

Colin woke us up last night, crying. It was late. Had to be three or four in the morning. I could hear him wailing, his voice drifting down the hall. Chrissy rolled over and mumbled for me to check on him. I pretended to be asleep, but that didn’t fly.

Your turn, she mumbled, nudging me with her elbow. It’s your turn…

A jolt of cold shot right up my legs the second my bare feet touched the hardwood floor. My ribs seized, locking on to my lungs, like an iron grate gripping at the air in my chest.

Colin wasn’t in his room. Nothing but moving boxes everywhere. I could hear the soft pads of his fingertips grazing against the cardboard of one—so I opened it. Only I found a shriveled possum curled inside. Its withered pink tail looked more like an umbilical cord to me. The crying’s coming from elsewhere. A different room in the house.

The living room.

I feel warmer the further down the hall I wander. A gentle breath brushes against my skin, drawing me in.

Warmer…

Warmer…

The fire’s blazing. Our first fire in the house.

It’s so warm in here.

There’s a woman standing by the hearth. Her back is to me. For a moment, I think it’s Chrissy—but no. This woman is much older. I see leaves tangled up in her gray hair. She turns just enough for her chin to reach over her shoulder. Her face is a dried riverbed of wrinkles. The one eye I see is fogged over. It’s all milky to me.

She’s smiling as she stirs.

There’s a pot on the fireplace’s hook. It’s simmering. I can’t see what she’s cooking, but the pot boils over. Each drip sizzles against the iron plate along her hearth.

Hsss…

Hsss…

Hsss…

The woman holds out a wooden spoon to me, offering me a sip.

The broth is salty. And sweet. Like nothing I’ve ever tasted before.

Butter on my tongue.

So I ask for more.

cyan, magenta, yellow, and key

The brave boys from Bear Scout Troop 237 were Pastor Nat’s crusaders against corruption. His defenders of decency. His righteous knights of the highest order. These scrupulous scouts had exceeded the highest of the pastor’s expectations, gathering around a thousand comic books, all told, for their purification drive. Each uniformed boy shuffled up with a Radio Flyer filled to its hilt with comics confiscated from around town, dumping the smut into a heaping pile for all to see.

These boys had purged the pharmacies of their indecencies.

They had eradicated the newsstands of their filth.

Here was the cancer that had crept into their small town, insinuating its sinfulness within the minds of the youngest, most innocent citizens, stacked six feet high and rising.

Mount Pornography.

Their flimsy pages flittered in the wind as the heap kept growing. Swelling. Toppling over in an avalanche of sex and violence. Wanton lust. Repugnant busts. Nothing but pages upon pages of illustrated licentiousness.

Keep ’em coming, boys, Pastor Nat called out. Toss ’em all in! Everylast comic… I want our pyre to reach as high as the heavens!

L’il Lonnie Wilder couldn’t even reach the peak anymore. When it was his turn to contribute his comics to the pile, that poor pudgy boy had to drag his feet up to the fire and lift himself up onto his tippy-toes, holding his shoe box over his head and shake them all out, each filthy issue showering down.

Tales of Terror.

Killer Comics.

Crime Pays and You’re Buying.

L’il Lonnie didn’t realize that Nat was well aware of the fact that this was his own personal stash. The pastor knew he was a peruser of these prurient pamphlets. All through Sunday school, he’d find L’il Lonnie flipping through the pages of one of his so-called horror comics. He’d confiscate it faster than you can say sodomite—but just like the head on a hydra, the very next Sunday, out sprouted another copy. The pastor had a whole file cabinet crammed full of comics commandeered from none other than L’il Lonnie. His poor saint of a mother had high hopes that the Bear Scouts would pull him out of his lecherous shell. Build up some character in him. Add a dash of moral fiber to flush out his objectionable habits once and for all.

Well, you better believe the pastor put in a personal call to Mrs. Wilder first thing after kick-starting his comic campaign, suggesting she might look under L’il Lonnie’s bed mattress to see if he might be squandering a copy or two that she might wish to contribute to their crusade.

And me oh my, what a treasure trove of atrocities did Mrs. Wilder find waiting for her…

Bare-Knuckle Bulletin.

Fearsome Funnies.

Sci-Fi Sarcophagus.

Poor L’il Lonnie had tears in his eyes. He’d been at the back of the line for quite some time, letting every other troop member step ahead of him. Seemed to Nat that the kid was stalling, as if he thought Nat would decide at the last minute they had enough kindling and L’il Lonnie could keep his comics.

What’ve we got here, scout? The pastor pinched Lonnie’s copy of Petrified Pages from the back of his belt loop, as if he couldn’t see it poking out from the boy’s pants. As if he’d actually spare it. Were you hiding this from me, Lonnie?

No, sir…

Don’t mumble now. Speak up.

Yes, Pastor Nat, sir.

Pastor Nat flipped through, glancing over all the decapitations and half-dressed harlots running from lumbering corpses. An endless parade of four-color fornication.

His eyes halted upon a particular story—if you could call it a story—some pornographic paean to a cloven-hoofed demon of some sort. Lord only knows what kind of debauchee comes up with this stuff. He was only half-reading it, to be honest, impatiently perusing the pictures as if to prove a point to our L’il Lonnie here that he would not tolerate harboring smut such as this.

Frankly, Nat wasn’t sure what exactly he was looking at. Some necrotic abomination. It had the blackest skin. Red eyes sunk deep into its sockets. And if he wasn’t mistaken, there, between its legs, dangled what he could only presume was a grinning python. His fingers just so happened to rub over the image. Its black-as-pitch visage smudged, cheap ink smearing across his skin. It burned.

Do you find these types of stories entertaining, young man? Pastor Nat held the foulness up to L’il Lonnie’s face, practically pressing the page against the boy’s perspiring cheek. Do you enjoy the objectification of the female form? The reverie of rape and murder? Do you, Lonnie?

No, Pastor Nat, sir…

Look at me when I’m speaking to you. Do you know what you’re doing to your poor mother, reading this rubbish? Do you know what you’re doing to yourself? To your own mind? I imagine it must look like Swiss cheese by now. Cramming it full of stories of this… deca—

Decarabrian. He hissed its name with such venom. Lonnie snapped his head up at Nat, pinching his eyes into the thinnest slits, each crabapple cheek turning a deep purple.

There was defiance in those beady eyes.

Pastor Nat saw rage.

It’s indecent is what it is, young man, and it has no place in our homes. He rolled up the copy of Petrified Pages into a tight tube, as tight as he could, a four-colored fagot for their comic-book conflagration. Which is why I want you to have the honor of lighting the fire, Lonnie…

Click! The flash of a camera briefly blinded Pastor Nat, flaring up before him. It took a few blinks to bat the spots away. He had put in a call to the local newspaper to cover today’s event. He’d given them the exact time and place—noon on Saturday in our church’s parking lot. He even waited an additional twenty minutes after their designated start time just to be sure the photographer had arrived.

Showtime, folks…

We have gathered here today to take a stand against the insidious rise of comic books within our community, Pastor Nat announced to his prepubescent audience. There had to be over three dozen boys circled around the mound by now. Their doe-eyed future. It is our firm belief that this type of literature poses a morally objectionable threat to the mental and physical well-being of our children—which is why, today, before the watchful eyes of our lord and savior, and our parents, we pledge to commit these desecrations on the page to whence they came.

It was utterly unnecessary, Pastor Nat knew, but he went ahead and soused the pile with a hefty dose of lighter fluid, like dousing a dollop of holy water on the damned. They’d have themselves one heck of a finale here. He wanted the fire to be seen as far as two counties over. Let everyone know their town would not stand for this type of pictorial pederasty.

Gather round, children, he called out. Don’t be afraid. Circle in, nice and tight…

Pastor Nat lit L’il Lonnie’s comic with a match, letting the flames chew through that dirty devil Decarabrian and his dark ding-a-ling before handing it back to him.

Do you, boys and girls, consider comic books to be the ruin of many a youthful mind?

We do, the cheerful crowd chanted back.

Do you pledge to take a stand against this type of corruption from this day forward?

We do!

Then let us purify our minds and bodies once and for all.

Pastor Nat nodded to Lonnie. The boy only stared back with his bovine eyes.

Nat gave a gentle cough. Lonnie.

They all watched him toss his comic. Watched its flames coil in a comet’s tail.

Watched it land on top of the pile.

An incendiary hiss filled the air. Smoke rose up from the smoldering heap, roasting for just a moment before combusting altogether. It all went up. And what a glorious fireball it was! Such diminutive kindling. The pages hastened a retreat, wilting within the intense heat before the inevitable singe swept over, the Power and the Glory, punctuated in a sizzle and pop.

The flames towered over their heads.

Such wondrous colors.

Cyan. Magenta. Yellow. And key—black, black key. The four inks used in the color printing process were pirouetting throughout the blaze.

Dots. Nat realized the flames were made of… dots. Hundreds upon thousands upon millions of tiny half-toned spots clustered together to compose a single continuous image.

Of fire.

He had to look away. His eyes were watering. Too much smoke. Nat rubbed them with his knuckles, then glanced back to see Troop 237 capering around the flames. They clutched each other’s hands and spun about the fire, lascivious hips, gyrating in obscene circles. Voices lifting. Singing something. They had talked about belting out “The Star-Spangled Banner” once the fire was up and burning, but this—this didn’t sound patriotic to him. Or English, for that matter.

Pastor Nat couldn’t make out the words. Couldn’t understand what they were singing. They all buzzed in some larval harmony, prancing and chanting as the flames reached higher.

Higher.

One boy began ripping the merit badges from his uniform. Just tore them off, one after the other, eating them. Why was he eating them? When that hadn’t sated him, he kept clawing. Tearing through his uniform. His undershirt. His skin. He dug as deep as his fingernails would allow, clawing up chunks of his own flesh. Eating his skin by the handful.

Pastor Nat watched on as another boy plucked his eyes out from his own sockets. He perched them in the palm of his hand so the pastor could see. The reflection of the conflagration lit up in his eyes, burning with an intensity that dared not subside. He popped one in his mouth. Swallowed it with a smile. Then gulped the other.

Another boy forced his hand into the mouth of his friend, snapping back a few baby teeth in the process. His fingers disappeared. His whole fist. Lips wrapped around his wrist. When he yanked that glistening fist back out, painted red, he brought his fellow scout’s uprooted tongue with him—and ate it.

They were eating each other. The whole troop. Pastor Nat’s Bear Scouts had their own intestines dangling in their hands, garlands weaving about the fire, as they continued to dance and sing.

An eternal ring. A snake devouring its own tail. Infinite. Boundless.

You unleashed him, Pastor Nat… The voice had piped up from behind him. Nat wasn’t sure if he’d even heard it at first, or if he’d just imagined it—but when he spun around, he found Lonnie, L’il Lonnie Wilder, staring back with empty eyes, blood dribbling out from his hollow sockets and running down his pudgy cheeks.

Decarabrian, he said, rather matter-of-factly. The sixty-ninth spirit. The darkest star on the pentacle. He’s been imprisoned for years. Now he’s free. You set him free, Pastor Nat.

Lonnie kept talking, but truth told, the rest of what he said was a bit garbled to Nat’s ear, considering he was now chewing on his tongue. He couldn’t help tsk-tsking the boy for talking with his mouth full, but this wasn’t the time nor the place for a lesson in politeness.

A breeze blew through, whisking off with a few comic panels. The embers were so thin—the cinders instantly disintegrated as soon as they cooled, dissolving altogether in the afternoon air.

Sulfur lingered in the church parking lot, scorched and organic. An unavoidable smell which crept into Nat’s nostrils. The odor of calcinated tissue wafting along.

Flesh. Pastor Nat smelled flesh on fire.

Their fire. His victory against idolatry.

Nat glanced at his arms and discovered they were covered in colors. Colors that shouldn’t be. Cyan, magenta, yellow, and key—the four inks of the apocalypse.

A countless amount of the tiniest dots came together along his flesh to form images.

Panels. Actual panels scabbing his skin.

So he flipped through his leprous flesh. Each page revealing another image. Another layer on this endless comic. Down, down, all the way down to the bone.

One more sermon from me, Pastor Nat thought, and then I’m done: As a boy, I had always been obsessed with the saints. During church services, I would stare up at the stained-glass window of St. Giles. I would lose myself counting the scabs scaling his face. The sun would seep through his cheeks, lighting up his leprosy, the colors casting themselves across the aisle—and I would place my hand underneath the beam. The redness of his sores soaked into my skin. I’d make believe I had been afflicted with whatever sickness this saint had. And at my most prideful, I would imagine what it would be like to have my own stained-glass window. What it would take to have myown image soldered along with all the other apostles. Boys and girls for years to come would look upon my window and pray unto me.

St. Nathaniel—Patron Saint of the Pure. The Innocent. Protector against pornography. Crusader against comics…

Saints make sacrifices of themselves.

So Pastor Nat stepped across the scorched asphalt, through the ash pockmarking the pavement, over the burned Bear Scouts, the heap of their blackened bodies, into the purifying fire.

who brings a baby?

What kind of pissant for a parent brings their baby to a horror movie? A nine o’clock screening on a Monday night, no less… If you can’t afford a sitter, then sorry, you shouldn’t shell out fifteen bucks for a flick. Put that money aside for this kid’s therapy bills, which will no doubt be coming, thanks to mom and dad dragging their child’s diapered ass to some slasher rehash and ruining the movie for the rest of us.

Remember when theaters used to be a sacred space? Holy temples for celluloid? The point is to immerse yourself in the filmgoing experience. The world outside the cineplex simply melts away as soon as the lights go down and you can get lost in that tenebrous cosmos. Your very soul elevating itself out of your body, drifting along with everyone else in the audience and entering that vast expanse of the silver screen, as if the pearly gates just opened up to us all.

We go for that cinematic rapture.

But now we have cell phones to contend with. Texting and blooping and bleeping all through the movie, for Christ’s sake. Once I was forced to listen to some preteen drama queen prattle on with her acne-saddled gal pal from the seat behind me, gossiping over the phone rather than watch the movie we all paid to see—that I paid to see. Why piss over the film for the rest of us? I shouted over my shoulder so that everyone in the theater could hear. Why not just stay at home, young lady? Netflix and chill out somewhere else? Do something—anything—other than step into my temple and blather on about whose boyfriend is cuter than whose during my cinematic sermon.

Guess who received their own round of applause from the audience after sending that wailing banshee out of the auditorium? That girl probably cried all the way home to her mommy.

Good riddance.

Someone needs to protect this hallowed space from unruly customers. Someone needs to hold the line. The very integrity of the filmgoing experience is at stake and if you won’t risk your life to defend it, then what in God’s name is the point of going to the movies anymore?

But nothing—I mean nothing—desecrates a film quite like listening to the four-alarm fire of some wailing baby overtake an entire auditorium. Sound carries differently in a theater. It doesn’t matter where you sit: if your kid is bawling in the back row, we’re all going to hear it.

Case in point: tonight, less than ten minutes into the film, I sense this sniveling infant from somewhere deep in the darkness. I can’t pinpoint the exact location. The whimpering is coming from somewhere in the rear of the theater. It begins with a chainsaw sputter, just a few tugs from this kid’s lungs, like yanking back on the pull-cord of a power tool. But once that wet engine gets revving, I know in my bones this little bastard is going to roar all through the movie.

Where is the little shit? I peer over my shoulder to try and pinpoint this family. All I see are the silhouettes of heads. The theater is practically empty, save for a few scattered shadows. No bouncing baby bopping along in the darkness, even if I can hear it. Am I the only one bothered by its staccato sobbing? It’s only growing in volume now, gaining momentum with every clenched breath. At a certain point, just as a courtesy, you’d think mom or dad might heft their newborn foghorn into the lobby. Just don’t, you know, stay. Don’t sit in your seat and act like nothing’s happening, nothing wrong here at all, as your kid shrieks and shrieks and shrieks.

Who’s even following the storyline anymore? I certainly can’t. Is anyone paying attention to the movie? I could alert the manager and complain, but that pimple-faced excuse for a spine won’t do more than stutter through some scripted excuse for a scolding. They never do a thing.

No, I’ll take matters into my own hands. I’ll answer that baby with my own battle cry:

Sssh! I hiss over my shoulder. That should do it. Loud and clear. I’m completely anonymous here. Mom and dad will never know it was me, sitting in the third row, second from the aisle, but they’ll know that we the people of this movie theater have collectively spoken.

But this baby…

It won’t stop bawling. Jesus, how big are this kid’s lungs? The sound of its crying expands and contracts, eclipsing everything onscreen. What the fuck is wrong with this child? Is it malnourished? Did it just take a cataclysmic shit in its diapers? We’ve now entered a new phase of wailing—short, glottal retorts that pepper the theater with auditory depth charges. If this were a war movie, I’d imagine the crying was just another sound effect. But no—these sonic hand grenades are coming from behind me, blasting at my ears. Total surround sound.

So, I do what any rational-minded moviegoer would do. I simply turn to the back of the theater and shout: Some of us are trying to watch the movie! That’ll shut it up. Take that, tyke!

But this baby…

Now the crying is closer. Where the hell are they? It’s as if the family has moved forward a few rows, just to mess with me. Toy with me. The blackened space compresses itself, so it now sounds like that caterwauling kid is sitting in the row right behind me, bawling just at my back.

Over my shoulder.

At my neck.

Something nicks my left ear. Just the slightest slice over the lobe. It stings, my shoulder springing up in a defensive reflex. There’s a warm trickle dribbling down the length of my neck.

I’m bleeding. How am I bleeding?

This baby…

Now the crying creeps into my right ear. There’s a thin wriggle against the lobe and I can’t help but imagine a worm burrowing its way through the canal. I turn in time to catch a passing glance at a pale, pudgy pinkie finger reeling back into the blackness behind me.

Now the crying comes from up front. In the aisle. The baby just won’t stay still. I can’t nail down the sound anymore. It’s everywhere and nowhere all at once, circling around me.

Closing in.

Something brushes against my right ankle, slicing through my sock. Both my legs pitch upwards as I scream, sending popcorn into the air.

Sssh! Other audience members hiss back, as if I’m the problem. But there’s something strange about the timbre to it. It doesn’t sound like a pissed-off patron. They’re mocking me.

Somebody help, I shout. But no one answers. Searching the theater, I notice none of the silhouettes I’d spotted before are there anymore. Where did everyone go?

A very cold thought enters my mind: What if those shadows weren’t actually people? What if I’ve got the whole theater to myself?

I plunge into the row of folding seats. Old soda seeps through my pants. Or maybe it’s blood. I’ve got a good view of the floor now, among the candy wrappers and shriveled popcorn.

I’m going to wait for that baby. This time, I’ll see it coming. This time, I’ll be ready.

Where is it where is it where is it where… I hear the soft pads of its paws peeling off the sticky floor, all covered in coagulated cola, but I can’t see it. Where is it where is it where…

The vaguest shape slips past me. An albino flash. Was that a rat? Are there mice in the movie theater? It’s not too late to escape. I can just crawl into the aisle and run for the exit.

Where is it where…

There! A pair of eyes glint in the dark, as gleaming as the silver screen. It’s a baby alright, crawling on its hands and knees, but not like any newborn I’ve ever laid eyes on before. I don’t think this child has ever seen the sun in its entire life. Its skin is practically translucent, mottled in multicolored tumors. The cysts shimmer in the dim glow cast from the movie projector.

Wait—those aren’t tumors. Those are Jujubes. That gelatinous candy that always gets caught in your molars. Teens toss them at the screen to see if they’ll stick, but this pustulating infant is covered in them. A rainbow-hued leper. There’s a speckling of stale popcorn flecking its limbs, nodules of kernels clustered across its shoulders, like lopsided vertebrae all over its back.

The baby’s blistered lips—Do I still think this is a baby?—are dusted in white nonpareils—those are Sno-Caps—and I can’t help but think its erupting in abscesses.

Something slashes the back side of my hand. I cry out in pain and the crowd hisses, Sssh! But it’s not coming from the audience. There is no audience. This is an imitation of a shush, a cruel mimicry of my own hiss getting echoed back at me… and it’s coming from all around. Sssh!

There’s another baby in the aisle now.

And another.

Their eyes are silver, as blinding as the screen itself. I count three of them—no, make that four—five—each scabbed in candy from the concession stand, Swedish Fish and Mike & Ikes and Junior Mints and Raisinets and Goobers and Skittles and Gobstoppers and M&M’s…

There was never just one.

They’re closing in on me now, slowly crawling across the floor on their hands and knees, each inch forward punctuated with the tacky peeling of their skin.

They’re not crying anymore.

Oh God, they’re giggling.

Sssh… Sssh… Sssh…

This theater was never my temple… It’s their hunting ground.

the spew of news

Fax News took my mom and dad away from me.

You know their stupid slogan: Just the Fax—cheekily misspelled in some outdated Reagan-era wisecrack. But it was true: some right-wing propaganda machine masquerading as a twenty-four-hour news network reprogrammed my parents.

I hadn’t spoken to either of them in weeks. Maybe a month by then. Our phone calls had faded due to my “hectic schedule”. Which was a lie. I swore up and down that I wasn’t purposefully giving them the silent treatment, and my wife and I certainly weren’t holding their grandkids hostage, denying them their weekly FaceTime chat with Thomas and Benjie, even though I’m pretty positive that’s precisely what Mom and Dad were thinking. Too late—the delusion had taken root in their heads and now there was no yanking it out. We were being blamed for brainwashing our boys with our own liberal agenda, turning our sons against them.

This was more than some silly ideological divide between generations. This wasn’t just about the election. Who’s voting for who. As much as Candice and I tried to convince them of picking the better candidate—Christ, any other candidate than that one—we’d accepted the fact that their minds were made up and now there was no changing them. We moved on.

No—this had everything to do with the news. Who they were getting their facts—sorry, fax—from. How their very channel of choice was changing my mother and father from the inside out. Altering them, somehow. I barely recognized them anymore.

What they were becoming.

I know how easy it is to slip into hyperbole when you start talking about politics, but whenever I spoke to Mom on the phone, the things she said—about the president, climate change, our healthcare system—none of it sounded like her. It was her voice, sure, but the words weren’t hers. They sounded like somebody else’s. She sounded like someone else.

Everybody knows the virus isn’t as bad as the media is making it out to be…

Everybody knows all that climate stuff is just a hoax…

Everybody knows the kids in cages is just more fake news…

Who the hell was this person and what had she done with my mother? Where had that sharpened edge in her voice come from? The spite? Why was my mom so angry all the time?

You have to understand, my mother wasn’t one of those people. She never had a political bone in her body. Our family always had the uncanny knack of repressing their politics. Growing up, I never even knew what my parents’ political affiliations were because we never talked about them. Who you voted for was something you kept private. It wasn’t for polite conversation. No ruffling feathers at our dinner table during the holidays and that was that.

Then something changed.

The channel changed them.

* * *

It started with Dad. He was such an easy target once he retired. Most days he simply sprawled himself out in front of the television for hours on end, barely getting up from his cozy recliner. Cable news was his default, imbibing a steady stream of world events filtered through Fax. I was already out from under my parents’ roof by then, living in an elite east coast city with my own family. Our time together tended to follow the familiar pattern of holiday visits, which is just to say I wasn’t around anymore. I wasn’t there to witness the gradual decline of my father’s political prehension in real time. I wasn’t there to try and stop it before it was too late.

The shift started subtly enough. At first, he’d lob these odd, off hand comments into conversation. Casual remarks just left of the Kaiser, such as—Well, has anyone actually seen his birth certificate?

That quickly escalated to—A vote for her is just another step closer toward socialism.

Only to finally land at—Who’s to say Sandy Hook actually happened, anyhow?

Our conversations became untenable, to be honest. I didn’t want to talk to him anymore—my own father—because the dialogue always sounded the same. Poorly written conspiracy theory fanfic. Just hearing Dad spout out these outright lies was like listening to him read lines off Hitler’s teleprompter. I could even hear the echo-effect of his opinions, regurgitating the viewpoints of someone else rather than doing the actual thinking behind them.

It was simple to discredit Dad’s crackpot talk. He was just getting older. Crankier. Candice and I poked fun at him, opining the fate of every white man entering the twilight of his years.

That’ll be you one day, she teased. Just wait.

Shoot me now, I begged. If I ever become some raving lunatic, please, you have my full permission to put me out of my misery…

Then Mom started to sound just like Dad.

Mom, who gave birth to me.

Mom, who raised me to be a thinking man, as she always put it.

Who cut the crusts off my peanut butter sandwiches.

Who always teared up during commercials about auto insurance.

That mom.

On our last phone conversation together, she said—actually said—Everybody knows there’s a secret Democrat pedophile ring in DC.

I couldn’t breathe. I felt as if my ribs had just gripped my lungs and kept on squeezing. I had to take a moment to simply process the words that had just oozed out from the receiver.

Jesus, Mom—do you even hear what you’re saying?

It’s true. Look it up. There was something different about her voice. She sounded congested. There was a gravelly drag to her breath, every word raked over wet rocks. It could’ve been a cold, but this sounded thicker. Phlegmier. Even over the phone, I heard the fluid filling up within her lungs, sloshing around as she talked. They’re hiding it from us.

You honestly don’t believe that—do you, Mom?

That’s what they said on the news…

News. You mean Fax?

Just the Fax, she echoed.

That’s not news, Mom. That’s right-wing BS getting pumped straight into your head…

You just don’t understand, son. There was the slightest edge of belittlement in her voice, which frustrated me to no end. I’m forty-three. I’m married and have two children of my own. And here’s my mother—some faded facsimile of her, at least—treating me like I was a child. You don’t see it yet, like we do. But you will. One day, when you’re older, you’ll understand…

I know it’s absurd to blame the news. But it’s true. I genuinely believe my parents had been brainwashed by Fax News. The empty rhetoric had infected my father first and now somehow the sickness had spread to my mother, contaminating her with the same vitriol.

I couldn’t listen to it anymore. Couldn’t talk to them. It just wasn’t worth wasting oxygen over, I thought. The older they got, the more entrenched in these opinions they’d become. But these weren’t even their opinions! That’s what was killing me! They were being spoon-fed this poisonous punditry, night after night with these rancorous newscasts, listening to Stepford hosts spout out their harmful bombast and then rehashing it as if it were their own.

Fax News was taking my parents away from me. Fax News was driving this wedge between my mom and dad and the rest of the family—from reality—sealing the two of them in this suffocating bubble of bile and racism and I just couldn’t put up with it anymore.

So I refused to listen.

I refused to engage.

I refused to let our children anywhere near them as soon as they hopped on to their acrimonious discourse high horse.

Our visits over the summer were compressed. We were in and out over the holidays. It was obvious what was happening, even if nobody said anything about it. Not out loud. Certainly not to each other. I mouthed off about it to my wife any chance I got, when it was just the two of us, safely out of everyone else’s earshot. Now even she was getting sick of me complaining.

How long are you gonna do this? Candice asked. Why not just say something?

Don’t you think I’ve tried? There’s no reaching them anymore…

I don’t know, hon… Your family has always been pretty conflict-averse.

So you’re saying this is my fault?

What I’m saying is you’re choosing to look the other way…

So, what should I do, huh? Stage an intervention? Try deprogramming them?

Talk to them, she offered. Tell them you love them. You still love them, don’t you?

Yeah, but… Not the way they are now. Not what they’ve become.

Maybe it’s not too late.

They’re not changing their minds… That much is obvious.

Then just listen to them. Hear what they have to say. Try to understand where they’re coming from… Who knows? Maybe they’re still in there, somewhere. You just have to find them.

* * *

Then they stopped answering their phone. Mom’s cell went straight to voicemail whenever I called. No ring or anything, simply sending me straight to her mailbox. Dad had a cell phone, but he never used it. Calling him was pointless. But they should’ve at least picked up the landline. I called when I knew they’d be at home—should’ve been at home—but it simply rang and rang.

I thought about asking the neighbors to check in, but then I realized I didn’t even know who their neighbors were. I thought about calling the police but that seemed to be taking this to an awkward extreme that I’d never be forgiven for if it all turned out to be one big misunderstanding. That was still a possibility, wasn’t it? That they were OK? That I was simply overreacting? Who’s to say they just didn’t want to talk to me? Maybe this was their silent treatment. Maybe they were giving me a little bit of my own self-righteous medicine here. Two can play at that game, they were thinking. Giggling to themselves every time my name popped up on the caller ID.

I had to go down there. I had to hop in the car and drive the two hours—three, if there’s traffic on I-95—all the way to their house and see them for myself.

Jesus, I had to confront my parents.