Friday, April 28, 2017

Satan's Touch (1984), by John Goodell



One of the sets of arc words recurring throughout Satan's Touch is that "poker is a game of deception." Well, so is filmmaking. You take a bunch of images of real things and make them into things that are untrue. But Satan's Touch plays the deception game better than all others: the title alone, in addition to the box art and the first few minutes, will lead you to believe that this is a horror film. But oh, no. Satan's Touch is much more special than that. Satan's Touch is better than anything you could ever win in a Vegas casino. As the movie's recurring song keeps singing...take it from me, take it from me, we've hit the jackpot.

The film tells the story of Jim Parrish, a middle-aged grocery store owner from Crocus Hills, Iowa who is one day made the target of Satan himself. Satan looks like the Gem Fusion of Bob Ross and Kenny Loggins, and occasionally enters the film to answer his car phone and make quips like, "Earthquakes? Of course we do earthquakes. No, no...acts of God is just an expression." He decides to give Jim the horrible, horrible curse of winning every single gambling game he plays. He also sets Jim up with a set of raffle tickets for he and his wife to go to Las Vegas! Jim soon obtains a small fortune, but of course this does not go unnoticed by the casino's owner, who appears to be Stan Lee. He and his staff spend most of the movie trying to figure out Jim's system, which you'd think would make them want to kill him. Instead, the threat to Jim's life comes when it's exposed that one of Boss Lee's minions is trimming pennies out of the casino's computer, causing him to go rogue and try to kill the casino's cybersecurity lady--Jim essentially just gets in the way, and earns a tranq dart for his trouble. When Jim decides to end it all by folding four aces, Satan ditches his "victim" and Jim is able to prove that he can lose. This is enough for the casino to let him go, and Jim is freed from Satan's unexpected kindness forevermore.

Yes, this is a gambling thriller-cum-anti-gambling melodrama marketed as a horror film. As you might expect, everything is all the over the place. The movie starts out almost like an anachronistic '80s PureFlix movie, with Jim using a Christian argument to try to dissuade one of his customers, an old lady, from being a kleptomaniac. And both Jim and his wife believe that gambling is sinful. This is backed up by the fact that the gambling is facilitated by Satan himself. But again, Satan never brings Jim to any actual harm, and Jim's method of escaping his unbeknownst demonic pact is to stop playing, which would be a problem if it wasn't for the fact that he never displayed any signs of self-abuse through his gambling. All throughout the film he makes only small bets and remains entirely innocent and humble in his winnings. He doesn't even come close to corruption, and the violence in the film comes from circumstances entirely independent from him and Satan. Gambling is a positive force in this universe, even when it is powered by the devil.

Consider: the heads and employees of the casino are shown to be good people. While the boss is unfriendly towards Jim for taking a lot of his money, he never threatens to kill him--he just makes a blackmail tape, which is of questionable value anyway, since Jim's answers to propositions of extramarital affairs amount to roughly, "nah, but thanks anyway." When the conflict shifts to the shady bastard who skimming their dough, it is clear who the film favors. Sure, they cheat people, but they do so in a friendly way. There's an incredibly strange sequence at the start of the film, which just keeps going just when you think it's stopped. A severely inebriated man complains to a bouncer that he can't win at the slot machines. The bouncer offers to introduce him to a machine which "always pays out," which turns out to be the snack machine. After that, he offers to take him to a phone so he can call a cab, but this turns out to be a broken pay phone which eats even more of his money. Finally, another bouncer takes him to a change machine, where he's overjoyed to find a machine that at last pays out, even if it's just turning his bills into coins. It is one of the most bizarre sequences I've seen set to film, and it presents the staff of this casino as jolly jokers. Oh, those lovable scamps...stripping people of everything they're worth.

But on a more serious note, this movie seems at times to be a documentary on casinos, and that probably ties in with the protagonistic portrayal of powers that be at the casino. It's worth noting John Goodell's only other credit was on the 1974 cinema verite documentary Always a New Beginning, about the education of brain-damaged children, which was nominated for a fucking Oscar. So it's no wonder that there are a lot of shots of cards, chips, and bills being spread about, alongside lengthy Vegas-streets peoplewatching segments, and pseudo-interviews about the fine points of cybersecurity in the gambling business. It's pretty incredible.

There's always just a lot of weird shit that happens, even outside of the Satan stuff. This is a movie whose idea of realistic dialogue is, "I haven't enjoyed an all-night poker game like that in a long time!" Similarly, at the start of the movie, we have shots superimposed over larger shots of the exterior of Jim's grocery store, and a spinning roulette wheel. I will always appreciate pointlessly artsy composition like that. Finally, in the last scene, someone shuffles a deck using magic tricks, complete with Casio stings that sync up to his hand gestures. With these mixed in with everything else, Satan's Touch is an ineffably fun movie that only slightly drags, unworthy of the hate it's received in its scanty reviews over the years. Horror fans may want to take a rain check, however, unless you can keep your mind open.

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Monday, April 24, 2017

The Dead Talk Back (1957), by Merle S. Gould



In a twist which I'm sure will shock you, I'm a big fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000. And I have been ever since I discovered it by way of Manos: The Hands of Fate. Yep--I saw Manos before I saw the MST3K of Manos. Like a lot of shows that I'm a fan of, I haven't seen every episode of MST3K, and now for the first time in eighteen years, the episode roster is expanding (and the new series is wonderful). I'm sure I'll be fully caught up someday, given that I made it through all 800-odd episodes of Doctor Who even though both shows have had plenty of moments of DEEP HURTING. Let's face it, MST3K hasn't always featured the most...interesting movies in its long run. Every show has its filler episodes--not everything can be a Pod People or a Teenagers from Outer Space or a Pumaman; nor, for that matter, can every episode be a Red Zone Cuba, a The Starfighters, or a Monster a Go-Go. It's not the episode weren't funny, it's that the movies were cardboard; too bland to be either good or bad. MST3K had a strange thing going where it propped up some of the movies it featured, even if it just needed some of them to fill out the schedule. Since it discovered so many films, I feel like there's something special to its roster, even when it comes to these movies which could never justify their existences to me. Space Travelers, Racket Girls, The Human Duplicators, Superdome, The Projected Man, San Francisco International, 12 to the Moon--these movies were notable only in how un-notable they were. Hell, I could even find a place in the world for The Deadly Bees. It was based off a novel which was a thinly-veiled Sherlock Holmes pastiche, and was originally meant to be a Christopher Lee/Boris Karloff vehicle, meaning that technically one of those two could have ended up playing Holmes, which is kind of a fun prospect. But these others were so flat, so shallow in their meaning, that it was remarkable to think of them existing. Where I could find purpose and popular awareness, as in Space Travelers, which won an Academy Award and had Gregory Peck and Gene Hackman, the movie was usually so boring that this didn't matter.

And for a while, The Dead Talk Back was one of these "purposeless" movies. I could never stay awake during that episode, knowing only the bittersweet mercy of its not being violently, hatefully dull, like The Starfighters or Castle of Fu Manchu. I don't know why I rewatched it except for the fact that I've tried to return to the purposeless films with the hope of proving my theory that there's meaning in everything. It brings me a little comfort, y'know? Even if it's not typically relevant to anything in particular. In any case, I did a little research on The Dead Talk Back and was compelled by its story, more than I was for any of the other films I was looking into. The Dead Talk Back was made in 1957 but didn't see release until 1993, when it was rescued by Sinister Cinema (who also brought us Drums O' Voodoo). But if it weren't for the MST3K episode a year later the movie would be as forgotten as 1963's House of Dreams, another Sinister acquisition.

At first glance, it seems no big loss that The Dead Talk Back is forgotten, and to be frank...it isn't. It's something you can share with friends, sure, but it's not like it will go on to enter your friend groups' bad movie in-joke canon. There aren't many overly impressive lines or moments--it's an atmospheric thing, an ongoing, overhanging, continuous thing. The Dead Talk Back likes to play games with you, and if you get into its rhythm the games can be fun. For example, sometimes it lets you think it's a good movie until there is a horrible line-read or a monstrous cut and it exposes itself again as cheap shit. Don't expect too much of it, or it will blow a gasket. But curtail ye now your skepticism, for we are about to enter the Spirit World...

We have an opening scene which one would think would set up the events of the mystery about to unfold--if it does, we'll never know, because it's too dark to see anything, and I don't think the people we see are the characters we meet later. In any case, we swiftly move on to the laboratory of Dr. Henry Krasker, a criminologist who may not be a Mad Scientist but is at least a Ham Scientist. He tells us various tidbits about ghosts, past lives, and the Fourth Dimension, but his greatest achievement is a crystal radio that can talk to the dead. After establishing Krasker as our narrator, we meet another narrator, police lieutenant Lewis, who tells us that the film is a police recreation of the crossbow murder of model Renee Caldwell. Renee stayed at the same boarding-house as Krasker, and we meet the various other dwellers of the house, for all it will turn out to matter: Mrs. Coleman, the landlady, and her daughter Mrs. Stohl, who has two kids of her own; Raymond Milburn, a smart rich kid worried about losing his inheritance; Christy Mattling, a wild-eyed religious fanatic who misuses Bible quotes and is easily the most entertaining character in the movie; Harold Younger, a quiet, apparently mentally ill young man; Fritz Krueger, whose entire personality is that he is a pervert; and Hope Byington, Renee's friend. Each of the characters are interviewed and we learn that at least some of them could have done it: Milburn dated Renee and was worried about his family disowning him for it, Mattling of course thought Renee was a non-Christian whore, Younger's last two marriages broke up due to his chronic fits of rage, and Krueger (father of Freddy?), is implied to be a child molester capable of anything (he "battered" a "very, very young" girl). The proto-giallo despicability of the central cast means anyone can be the killer. Along the way the police scoop up a shady photographer named Patini, but he turns out to be a false lead when he confesses that he found Renee's body but was not the killer...explaining why we spent so much watching him try to escape arrest, right? It is decided, as they've discussed the whole film, to let Krasker intervene, and use his machine to ask the victim himself was happened. He explains that his mechanism works on the principle of mind-over-matter, also known as "telekenis." Soon all the suspects gather together to speak to the dead...but do The Dead Talk Back?

I believe that The Dead Talk Back was born of the same trend visited by three other bits of MST3K fodder, all made in 1956 or '57: namely, The Undead, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, and The She Creature, which were all riffed in close proximity to each other. All three movies are concerned with the theme of hypnotic regression, either to a past life, a primitive state, or both. In The Undead, a woman is sent back in time to a former incarnation from the medieval age (which leads into a confusing and stupid history-alteration plot); in the other two films, hypnotic therapy and/or showmanship turns someone into a monster, either a werewolf or some sort of weird fish-lady. These films were likely inspired by the then-current revival of spiritualism brought on by the case of "Bridey Murphy," in which housewife Virginia Tighe claimed to remember a past life as a 19th Century Irish woman. Seance culture always looks for a chance to become relevant again and so the grand tradition of the past life regression came back, along with other attempts to probe into the world beyond. It didn't last very long, but interest in occultism has existed in all eras, even conservative ones like the 1950s. But The Dead Talk Back branches in another direction--the opening scenes, and indeed a lot of the scenes where Krasker does his thing, precedes the paranormal-slideshow documentaries of the '70s, serving up Bigfoot, aliens, Illuminati, and psychic stuff over the course of 30 to 120 minutes. And indeed, by referencing communion with the dead, reincarnation, living burials, and "telekenis," The Dead Talk Back is trying to push the buttons of all the self-proclaimed experts of the unknown, while also trying to make a compelling plot.

The plot is, admittedly, more nuanced than I first suspected. There is a sort of crapsack world dimension to this movie as there was in Criminally Insane, in that a lot of people turn out to be awful. Indeed, basically every man but Lewis and Krasker turns out to be scum in some capacity, while the female characters, save for Renee, an implied alcoholic who slept around in her relationships, are almost immediately portrayed as innocents. Even the good guys rage a little too hard: one of the cops exclaims, "Whoever did this should go down without a trial!" People have such little control over their passions in this universe. On top of this is a strange sexploitative angle the movie decides to don for itself. Renee isn't a bad looking woman, and before she dies we sure get a lot of scenes of her rolling around in bed in tight-fitting clothes. Not like she's about to be gruesomely murdered with a crossbow or anything. Similarly, we get a female character who wears a long fur coat, but slowly removes it while talking to the cops to reveal something skinnier and tighter. It's like it wants to go a bit into Ed Wood territory but the water's too cold. C'mon! You could do sexploitation in the late '50s! This stuff is so tame, but there is some darker stuff for its era, like when it reveals that Renee was pregnant when she died, because I guess that wasn't a cheap shock trope at that point. Rest assured, I doubt a reference to the wasting of a fetal soul was enough to stop this movie's release, even with the risque curves, religious mocking, and invocation of the dead. This is no Daughter of Horror here: no one was going to be shocked by this, much less chilled.

I want to talk about the ending--consider that your spoiler warning--but I wanted to talk about the acting in this first. The acting is horrrrrrible. This is possibly the worst acting I've ever seen in a '50s movie--a slurred degenerate version of the type of stuff Ghost of Hanley House held high. The sloppy editing is the second most obvious fault but the acting eclipses it by far. And it is hilarious. Extras who are clearly the cousins and grandparents of people from the cast stagger over their lines so badly that you instantly realize they had no time or budget to reshoot takes. I've already mentioned Krasker's butchering of "telekinesis," but he speaks it with such confidence that it can't be a flub. The actor just never heard anyone speaks the word before, not even the director. Though there are long moments of nothing, pay attention when someone starts talking. It will knock thine socks off.

Speaking of this movie's director: he seems to have made two other movies, both spiritualism documentaries. His first, 1957's The Body is a Shell, seems to have a narrative, but I can't find it anywhere. There is a tie-in book to it available on Amazon which advertises being related to the movie, and if I can afford it, maybe I'll pick it up someday. If you want me to review it, you can:

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com



(Just gotta do that every now and then. And hey, thanks!)

So, the ending--spoiler alert. This is why a lot of people who saw it through MST3K hate it (aside from the fact that it's boring). The Dead do not Talk Back. It is all a trick. Though Krasker does sincerely believe he will one day find a way to communicate with the dead, for now, his machinery is all for the purpose of manufacturing hauntings to help the police get confessions. Here's the problem: in both circumstances, the method of extracting a confession wouldn't hold up in court. If Krasker did have the ability to talk to ghosts, the judge wouldn't believe him, and his machine seems to be such crap that he wouldn't be able to demonstrate it in the actual court itself. If he can't talk to the dead, then the use of his machine seems a little coercion-y to me, but admittedly all the participants are there of their own free will, so if they crack under pressure it's their own damn fault. Well...except Patini. He says he's there against his will, and even if he's really not, it'd make hell in court if he told that story to his lawyer. It sure is good Patini doesn't turn out to be the killer. But then, the justice system of this movie is a little dumb: one of the cops threatens to use the third degree on someone, which a lot of cops have been threatening in a lot of the movies I've watched recently. In these films everything turns out fine as long we get to jail, fine, or kill someone. So this is all for moot. It's a crime movie: you catch the criminal, and if you want to be all legalese about things you watch a court procedural.

This movie strikes me as an infinitely more entertaining variation on another movie I watched purely for curiosity purposes, Scared to Death from 1947. I checked it out because it was the only color film Bela Lugosi starred in. It was another crime thriller that tried to play a supernatural angle to hook in a couple of other markets on the side. In this case, the movie was presented to us by the ghost of the victim at the beginning of the film. This was probably meant to make us think Bela Lugosi was going to get up to spooky shenanigans as well. In the end, it was just boring and fraudulent. The difference is that Scared to Death was too professionally edited, too well-acted, to be anything but mediocre. The Dead Talk Back has much more silliness and shoddiness, so it feels "authentic." While also being strange and different. As a curiosity, and as a trash film, The Dead Talk Back has been neglected for too long. I say it's worth another look.

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

The Monogram Monograph: Part IX

Moloch revealed himself as the full Son of Tzaa, in all his glory. Mr. Marvel looked notably small beside him.

Evidently he was holding something back, as Kessler could look at him directly without wincing. Even then, he was a painful sight. He was still humanoid, but only just—the only indication of a face on his face was a pair of glowing blue orbs that could have been eyes. All the rest of him was just a tangle of ruddy red thorns, which occasionally shifted with low groaning sounds over each other. From the top of his head was a literal crown of thorns which nearly made it seem like he had hair.

Kessler had to accept that this was the creature that had probably dreamed his life into existence. He had accepted far worse things already, and Moloch was maligned anyway by the efforts of his brother El, who was the borderline-evil God of the Old Testament. Marvel, or Agthrunsthaaa, was even worse than that. Agthrunsthaaa had, with a similar casualness, stated that he intended to take Kessler's body for his own.

“So this is the form I'll take, once the transfer is complete,” Agthrunsthaaa said, keeping his voice sounding at least a little human. “Mr. Kessler, it does pain me to have to restore to body theft. That was the tool my Enemy used, after all.”

Kessler spoke up: “Your Enemy?”

“Yes...though in some sense, he's everyone's Enemy. He's the man who took both my spouse and my life away from me. His name is Edward Tamaron—I doubt that will mean anything to you. For many centuries now, I've labored only to get revenge on him, and you two are just pieces in part of that. I was a beautiful bird once, let's say, and one day I intend to regain my feathers. Once that's done, I will never harm anyone again...”10

“I've heard that talk before,” Moloch said. “If you need to take over a new body, that means it will be easy to dispatch you. Body-vampires are weak things.”

“I thought that once,” replied Agthrunsthaaa. “But like the body-thief I knew, I know great magic. And unlike him, I have power from both Sides of the Multiverse.”

And he began to whisper a curse that Moloch knew; though he knew both Sides as well, being originally from the A-Side before his self-imposed exile, he recognized it as being the Incantation of Synkaiju—a verse from the Nommo of Beezing-land, a B-Side Kingdom of the Second Renaissance. He even managed to seal the spell with the Nameless Tone, and with a flash of gloomy blue light, he began to change. His skin darkened, becoming solid black, darker than the darkest humans. His eyes grew green-hot as their pupils thinned to lines, and his nails became claws, his teeth fangs, his hair horns. For a moment, Moloch was once more Dr. Melcher, and Karl Kessler was Colomb, both squaring off against a suddenly very real Black Dragon. No more was he a propagandized Japanese crime lord stapled clumsily onto the back of a collection of horror scenes; he was a European serpent in humanoid shape, a were-wyrm.11

Without a moment of hesitation, he let out a loud shriek and sprinted towards Moloch. The two grappled like wrestlers, or more properly like classical statues. Their poses were heroic, exaggerated. To Kessler it seemed natural, as both of them in their own way were gods. Here, it seemed like space and circumstance deformed around them.

“Here” was the Lost Stream, the boundary zone between two mutual exclusives. Here everything and nothing happened, in every universe, forever—beyond any score, record, or canon. To the Multiverse at large this struggle was a non-event, an anti-happening; it could have no consequences. But Agthrunsthaaa seemed so sure that usurping the power of a god would let him transcend the continuity of the Multiverse. It was likely he'd already tapped some of its power, to be able to transform his body like Proteus. Kessler was no academe as it was, but from what he knew about that idea from what his teachers had babbled to him he felt like there were some mighty implications in the general ability to “transcend canon.” Or maybe not. After all, again, everything that happened here was negated.

As soon as Kessler realized that, Moloch knew it too. They were the same dreamer, in the end. If Moloch had a mouth he would have grinned. He spread his arms, opening himself up, and look a long step forward. Agthrunsthaaa thrust his arm out and the sharp claws made his arm into a spear—Moloch's body fractured like the bundle of twigs it was, with blue light leaking out from the back.

Kessler thought he remembered Moloch mentioning being mortal—a higher being, but still one who could be killed. That should have killed him. But technically, in its own way, it never happened. From Moloch's wrist came a wooden construct, a long spear. With a single smooth gesture he impaled his scaly enemy through the heart.

Agthrunsthaaa snarled with pain, and for a moment faintly hissed the word “No.” It seemed like he accepted his fate, to come this far to be outmaneuvered in canon. But he wasn't outdone in canon—he was beaten in non-canon. “Two can play that game, Moloch,” he said quietly.

The spear vanished. It had never existed. Gods, it seemed, could still exert a little power here—they could make waves in whatever waters the Stream was made of. Local events, at least, they could remove from existence. Which meant they could also bring events that never happened into existence.

And so it made sense that Moloch was against the wall—pinned, in fact, by green force—and had always been like that. That was how the “fight” had opened, for the fight as Kessler had seen it was now non-canon. That left Kessler helpless as Agthrunsthaaa strode across the room that was only sometimes there, bouncing back and forth between the dragon and the man. He grinned at first but consistently, the grin faded as he walked. It was true what he'd said earlier: he regretted what he was about to do. To take control of one's mind was an agonizing process, but maybe it would spare him a little if he gave him hope.

“Maybe I'll find a way for you to keep living, even if I take your body,” he whispered. “After all, I'm only here because the Angels found a way to bring me back from the dead when my body was stolen. I hope there's a way. Maybe you can even still live in the body, even if I'll have to be the one controlling it.”

Kessler had no reply, but somehow the whisper reached Moloch. “Do you think that altering the canon of the worlds outside the Stream will fix anything?” the Canaanite asked. “Do you think you can just erase Tamaron and undo everything whatever it is he did, with no consequences? Erasing even a historically minor person could unfold the fabric of the Multiverse.”

“Then let it be unfolded. When it's done, I'll fix up whatever is left.”

“That was what my brother El said, before he made millions of families drown screaming under the rains.”

“It doesn't sound, however, like El had a family to return to once he completed his acts of vengeance. He didn't have happiness to find again.”

And then Marvel grinned again. For once, it wasn't a hateful, mocking grin—it was a look of some distant contentment, as if he was recalling a memory he hadn't felt in a long time. The mocking came later, only a hair of a moment before he lunged for Kessler.

The Lost Stream faded from him, and in his place was a dark room. He'd stood in this room before. When he had been in Moloch's apartment, when Moloch had only been Dr. Melcher, with no intimations of the being within, Kessler had allowed himself some sleep. But he slept within his own Dreamland and that meant that Agthrunsthaaa had made this room for him. It was their private space to spend time together. He was already waiting.

In fact, the long strings of fibrous cords that made up the shrieking mass before him were already looped around his throat. These were who they were in their minds; Kessler still resembled himself, having done little to change the course of his soul, but Agthrunsthaaa, truly, was a flayed and mutilated thing. If Kessler wasn't already insane, he was now. The essence that was crawling into his flesh, like spiders eating into muscle, was a howling tumor of blood and arms. The screams it made were primitive, like an animal, and adolescent, like a human baby...something hard snapped within Kessler. It did so suddenly, and he let out a small gasp when it happened—he felt cold, as Moloch had when he felt Agthrunsthaaa usurp him in the timeline in their long journey here. He began to slip away from this world, but not before there was one last flash. One last glimpse of her. And he cringed away, because he realized he did not know her.12

But Moloch didn't give up. Arrogance was his weapon here—as his soul left his body, Agthrunsthaaa was immobile. His tiny green hands which held Moloch's thorny bulk to the castle wall vanished, and he dove forward. There was only one thing left to do. It was the final defense against possession, universal across all the mythologies he lived through: sacrifice. Moloch had known sacrifice. And he was dead already.

It was nearly over. The flesh of the bloody cancer was like a thick, warm pudding, pulling most of Karl's body inside. He kept screaming even though it did him no good. The voice in his ear and mind was louder than any scream he could let out.

“Don't fight. Don't fight. I am Karl Colomb Kessler, I am, it's me. I am you. I AM you. You are me, you are nothing without me. You are me! Damn you, you are ME!

“No.” It was Karl's voice, but Karl couldn't speak. It broke both sets of screams.

“You are me.” Stiff hands jerked the shredded figure back, pulling it off of Karl. “And I am nothing but the seed of Tzaa, a god of plants, destined to become a tree. Inert, frozen, and unthinking. In blissful suspension, forever.”

Karl's mind was still melting, from where he'd been broken. It was like his psychic self had been wounded, and he was leaking some sort of astral blood. The wound would close in time; but he would be lost. To replace the lost blood, his spiritual body would absorb the matter of the Dreamlands, and this body slowly would become little more than a dream itself. He fought against this. This had all been for Virginia, and even though he couldn't remember who exactly she was or why he loved her, he needed to live, if nothing else than for her.

But also, for someone else. His head cleared a little, and he saw what was happening. “Moloch, no, please,” he begged. “Th-this will kill you...”

“Yes,” Moloch said. Agthrunsthaaa whined like a coyote against his grip. “Agthrunsthaaa may even survive the process—but destroying my consciousness will release sufficient force to seal him in my body, and throw that body into a random location in time and space, somewhere and somewhen in the Multiverse. He'll be trapped in the tree and unable to move, like the wizards Merlin and Sincodemius.”

“I know that I'm far from the first person to say this, and I know that every time it's said it comes across as pathetic,” Kessler said, “but I'm not worth it. My life is meaningless. If you let him take me, you can use your power to kill him—!”

“No, Karl, you need to understand that your life is worth it.”

I'm going to die too. I can't explain it, but my mind is bleeding...”

“You will become something strange in the Lost Stream, it's true. Its waters are entering you, perhaps making you into something to balance out my loss...”

Karl started to guess at what that could mean, but his thoughts couldn't catch up.

“Even if there is some continuum out there where I am worth it, and I'm not just a lunatic, I can't let someone like you die. I feel that you were once part of a great story, an important story.

“All stories must end, Karl. But I will try to make yours end happily.” He paused. “In any case, I can't let him take you. He would have my power and his own. And if he becomes me, time will be satisfied...if it can get satisfaction, that is. Agh will be the ThrΓΌn of Tzaa, just as your book said. And I will still exist. He didn't supplant me in time, even if we are the same...”

Karl accepted it—he accepted all of it. He accepted Moloch and in doing so accepted himself.

Goodbye, Melcher. Thank you for not being a Nazi.”

Thank you for not being a strangle-murderer.”

They laughed. And the blue eyes of Moloch vanished.

The soul of a god broke, and with a pulse of invisible force, Karl, Agthrunsthaaa, and the inert tree that was once Moloch were pulled from the Lost Stream back into canon-space. Karl felt no pity when he realized that Agthrunsthaaa hadn't even gotten a chance to scream.

Down he went, spiraling back to the material realms, crossing through Dreamlands and never-weres like they were clouds. As he felt the essence of Melcher and Brenner and all the rest fade away, Karl lost track of where he was headed. He wondered for a moment if he would ever know. Mentally he was ages away from anything of his old life, from before this very long quest. He would become strange, he knew, as Moloch said. He reviewed the last of what he was, before it changed forever. For a long time, he had made Virginia synonymous with his soul, and so for what was the first time, he looked into her, rather than merely at her.

And he was filled with horror upon realizing that he had taken away her soul. Ideas were beautiful but they came from people. People were always more important than concepts, abstractions, or anything else. Even if Virginia had never existed anywhere on the face of the Multiverse, on either Side of it, it wasn't right for him to deprive her of identity, of agency and self, even in theory if not in practice. He wanted her to be free. Her smile should be hers—her love should be hers. He had been wrong this whole time...

But she did give him one last smile. He couldn't read what it meant, but it left him with a final feeling of peace. Like the rest a wick gets when the candlelight is snuffed out. He began to slip away, this time permanently...maybe he'd return, now and again. He wanted to tell his story...that was his last worldly desire, and it carried no weight for him. There was no weight at all, and as she stepped into the world to live a life of her own as she deserved he was spreading his wings.13

<< Part VIII                                           Return to the Beginning
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10. In Oaxacan mythology, bats once begged the birds to share some of their feathers, so that they could keep their unprotected bodies warm. With divine blessing the birds shared feathers and for a time bats were more beautiful than birds; master of rainbows, bringing them to both the day and night. But in this they became conceited, and demanded dominions over the skies. The birds worked with divinity to strip the bats of their feathers, and in their shame and ugliness they decided to hide themselves in the warm, dark caves.

I assure you, in what I did, I did only for the same reasons as Marvel, with his mysterious Mr. Tamaron—I wanted revenge. Days have gone by haven't bathed. And in that, I've understood that that desire for revenge will never leave me. I miss my wife, I

Did I tell you what happened to her? She had a much better fate. I drugged her. It was a humane thing; she did not suffer as the chemicals erased her memory and turned her genius into drunken idiocy. I know exactly where she ended up, for I saw her in afternoons when I was done with Mr. Kessler. His Virginia, my Virginia, Vivian Gina. I spent those afternoons with her, even though both I and whatever's left of her know that she will never, ever recover.

But before I did that to her, I did something even worse. I killed Oliver, and that was not enough. I stared into her eyes as I did it, as I cut his throat.

I lay this out to you scientifically—as merely a natural fact. You must have imagined my doing it anyway.

And as much as she condemned me in the moment, the burden I've laid upon myself surely has to be far worse. I hope it is.

11. The appearance of draconic foes at the conclusion of a conflict-laden dream-cycle is not uncommon. The idea of a serpent as an adversary is a popular concept in many Western nations, due to the Serpent of Biblical lore, and its connotation with the Devil. I already know, of course, that the Devil is not a Serpent, not unless Serpents can grow fur and wings. The “prefix” were- of course suggests werewolves, relating back to the Jekyll-Hyde duality of Dexter/Brewster and their ape-form. Thinking of such a thing reminds me: when I was consulting Zabor's notes after his rampage, I came across the thing which finally explained it all to me. Vivian had been on his hit-list, because Zabor hated infidelity—perhaps the loathed Van Housen had seduced Mrs. Zabor, or one of his parents had had an affair and it had disillusioned him while young. In any case he was my friend, or thought himself to be, and when he learned about the affair from one or both of them being clumsy he blamed Vivian and knew his gorilla would have to take revenge on her. Alas, Zabor, would that you

It has been more days since Footnote 10 (or indeed since I left hanging the last of that paragraph). I consider these footnotes now to be a countdown, but to what I can't imagine. I do not care I have begun raiding Viv's old collections of liquor. I will drink toasts to her till my mind and soul and notes are in oblivion. But I should be careful! For my old professors once told me that sometimes the spirits in a bottle can turn out to be genies...

12. my darling my dear I did not know you I did not try to know you for I can know no one but myself and my world is filled with no one but myself repeated endlessly like the different shapes we take in dreams like the splinters of the vast caverns of our spirits and I have dreamed myself in both roles of the hospital as both doctor and patient victor and victim and all outside and in between

the countdown is nearly finished and my question to you my dear Oliver is if when I killed you I made you into a sacrifice

13. I hear the rustle of a different set of wings. The wings of birds and Angels and Faeries and all that are much different from those of Bats.

You've already known that I've gone too far—now I've stepped past midnight. Thirteen notes; a bad omen. But it is time to end this.

Now, at the end, all the layers mesh, or seem to. I have made my own acceptance, and I know that it was on an altar to a god that Oliver Dran's blood was spilled. I knew it because I wanted it. Deep down, what we want is not love, or justice, or even revenge. We want punishment. Some believe suffering is worth it. Do I...?

Someone does. Some version of me does.

But I'm more confusing than I thought I was. That's why it's coming for me. That's why I can see the bark, in my mind, many centuries and stories later, finally yielding to the spirit within. Finally setting it free from its warm cave.

They tried, those dreamers, to seal him or us up in that tree. They did it with a dream; a dream that they could win. But no dream can last forever.

The thirteenth hour chimes, and time-lost Agthrunsthaaa becomes me at last.

Monday, April 17, 2017

Book Club of Desolation #14: The Ant with the Human Soul (1932)/Night of the Trolls (1963), by Bob Olsen and Keith Laumer



There was no way I was passing up a book with a cover like that.

I don't read as much straight sci-fi as I should outside of comic books, and I've meant to change that all my life. Fortunately, the Book Club of Desolation may be my chance to get on the right track. I recognized in my childhood that I always leaned towards the softer side of the Sci-Fi Hardness Scale, and a lot of the big names in classic sci-fi--Asimov, Anderson, Heinlein, Hubbard He Who Shall Not Be Named--had the bulk of their work on the harder side of things. Because they seemed to comprise so much of the iceberg, I dodged the genre except when it was scientifically "easy." I have other reasons for not enjoying these authors, which I won't bother to go into here, but I'm an older person and frankly, I'm becoming bored with the limits of my comfort zone. So maybe it's time to delve back into the things I didn't like as a kid and see what surprises await me.

But this really is all just incidental. I really did buy The Ant with the Human Soul exclusively for that cover.

Bob Olsen's '30s pulp adventure tells the story of Kenneth Williams, who is suicidal after his college experiences have made him doubt his Christianity. He is rescued from a drowning attempt by the sinister-seeming scientist Dr. De Villa, who suggests that perhaps an uncommon experience will help remind Williams of the beauty of life. And by "uncommon experience," he means "having his brain transferred into the body of an ant." How, you ask? Why, for that matter? Well, De Villa has perfected a ray which can cause ants to grow to the size of people. From there, it's simplicity itself to splice Kenneth's "memory center" into the ant's brain, while Kenneth's body is kept in suspended animation. The ant containing his brain-chunk will then be shrunk back down and returned to its colony, and Kenneth will record all of the ant's experiences as his own, all for the purpose of solving the secrets of ant colony behavior.

Kenneth ends up undertaking more than one lesson in ant-hropology, though one has to wonder how many times a single person can have their brain chopped up and transplanted in a week. In his first expedition, he is sent to a colony of common garden ants, where he sees that ant society is uncannily similar to that of humans, albeit with ant-like twists. Sure, it's a rigid caste society where automaton-like drones constantly search for and carry food to and around the colony, there are also bars, dances, and funerals. Next, he is sent to a more violent type of ant, one which spends a lot of its time drinking liquor and holding wrestling matches. Finally, he is sent to a colony of farmer ants, where he learns the joys and hardships of raising bug "cattle." And, following this adventure, the book decides to stop, so he gets a happy ending with his girlfriend.

The Ant with the Human Soul starts really strong and slowly declines. As the frontispiece for the book states, Bob Olsen was noted in his prime for his lighthearted approach to sci-fi prose. That shows itself quickly, because even in the face of depression and suicide, there's a pluckiness to the book, where everyone, even the mad scientist, behaves in a sort of golly-gee-gosh manner. This helps the audience forgive the stunning weakness of the book's attempts at hard science explanations, which admittedly may have been something Olsen intended. Olsen is skilled enough at using this tone that when the book's theme starts emerging it doesn't seem to come out of nowhere. Unfortunately, the themes of Ant are where the book kinda shits the bed. After the second ant encounter, it becomes clear that the different species of ants are supposed to represent different social circles of humans. The first ants represent an example of the middle class's conception of a stable society, while the second represents the criminal element. But then, when Dr. De Villa starts describing the farmer ants in the setup for the third incident, Olsen makes it overwhelmingly clear that it's not morality he's meaning to examine, it's race. He says that the criminal ants of the second incident are basically ant black people, while presumably the first group of well-behaved ants are the white ones. Meanwhile, this third group represents the "semi-primitive nomadic races." Bleccchhhh. The fact that the ending tries to claim this whole thing was about the evils of atheism makes it even lamer. While there's plenty of great stuff in the beginning with the improbable science, and the suggestion that Dr. De Villa is, y'know, Satan, it's all discarded in the end in favor of something that makes it all feel like a waste of time.

There's also something that really started bugging me, but in that way that makes me laugh. Dr. De Villa puts a lot of stock into how his exposure of ant behavior will secure him his place in history, but the man already has inter-species brain transplants and a growth and shrink ray. How, in any way, could discovering the secrets of ant social structures add to the scale and possibility implied by inventing things like those? The neurological medicine that could be derived from De Villa's understanding of the brain, to say nothing of how space-altering rays would affect the struggle for resources, is way, way more important than figuring out if ants put their dead in caskets or not. Again, this annoyed me, but the more I thought about it, the more hilarious it became. I guess I don't get it because I'm not a scientist. Anyway: this probably won't be the last ant-related book I feature on here, because I also own a copy of Spiridon, a French philosophical novel about a human-intelligence'd ant, and something called The Ants of Timothy Thummel, which appears to be the Bible, but with ants. Huh.


Armchair Fiction was also kind enough to include a second story in their publication of The Ant with the Human Soul. Keith Laumer's Night of the Trolls is the first novella of his Bolo series, which centered around a series of super-scientific tanks. An astronaut named Jackson awakes from suspended animation to find the world destroyed in a holocaust. He learns of his wife's death, and believes that his son and astronaut unit have also perished. He learns that some of those folk are still alive: one of his fellow astronauts, Toby Mallon, has set himself up as "the Baron," the mysterious dictator of the land that was once Jackson's home city. Mallon has ruled the land so ruthlessly that people have fallen back into superstitions, believing the colossal Bolo tanks he controls are Trolls. (This also lands Mallon the title of "the Trollmaster," which is pretty fucking cool.) It will take all of Jackson's wit to get his hands on one of the Bolos and stop the Baron before he can conquer what's left of civilization.

This was a good one, and not simply good for trash purposes. Night of the Trolls has a punchy and quick pace that's so efficient and effective that it makes one realize how stodgy Ant with the Human Soul really was. In about 70 pages, Laumer is able to bringing an engaging and straightforward plot that actually has some good character scenes. The Bolos themselves, and how they fit into the world Jackson left behind, are interesting enough to merit the sequels the story got. I don't know if I'd feature any other Bolo books on the site, but I will almost certainly be reading them.

Hey, look, you can tell it's good because the review is short and relatively free of spoilers. A lot of the trash material I talk about I talk about rather freely because, well, if this blog is meant to chronicle the unique feelings that stuff gives me, skimping on details is counter-productive. I give spoilers because I'm a bad person. The only out I've given myself on that is that a lot of these are absurdly hard to track down, and so if people want to know what actually fucking happens in them, they can know for themselves. While I'm fine with spoiling some details of The Ant with the Human Soul because I don't really if it's worth your time, I will leave the read of Night of the Trolls to your own discretion. It's not a deep or complex work of fiction, but...check it out. Tackle Ant if you consider yourself a trash-lit master.

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Image Source: Armchair Fiction

Thursday, April 13, 2017

The Monogram Monogram: Part VIII

The white light that surrounded Karl Kessler was not comforting, nor was it angelic. It was noise, screaming, endless audio-visual noise. It burned through even his hands and eyelids, and he was sure that even if he jammed pencils in his ears he would still hear the flesh-shearing shriek that burned all around him. He didn't know how long he hung there—not long enough to forget that there was something beyond all this. He couldn't change the fact that minutes seemed like hours.

After a time, he was no longer alone. The fuzzy fingers of static that crawled all over him were displaced and replaced with warm hands made of flesh. He nearly screamed until he remembered that a scream was also a name, but there was no reason to be afraid. The person who had confronted him in the vast white void was Dr. Melcher.

“How did you...?”

“I was going to reveal my origins to you, Charles. I just didn't have time. My own ego got in the way—I should have been looking at you and realizing you had fallen asleep. It's no surprise that Marvel was able to track us. There were bound to be negative consequences for dreaming in the world that serves as one's Dreamland.”

“O-of course. Um. Now how did you...?” He cut himself off. There was a more important question, though once more he was irritated at being reduced to asking questions. “Where is this place, and how did you get to it?”

“This is the Lost Stream. I told you about it, remember?”

“I remember, even though I was asleep.”

“Oh, come now, Charles—I know you were tired but you couldn't have fallen into too deep a...”

“Why do you keep calling me Charles?”

“Why do you keep calling me Dr. Melcher?”

“That's your name. I learned it in...”

“...in a dream, Charles. Sorry, Karl—for Karl Wagner, correct, one of your or our selves from...Bowery at Midnight?”

“You call it that too? With Wagner and Brenner, their dual role?”

I'm relieved, Karl, that we share that commonality. Even here, in the Lost Stream, where even memory can be removed from existence, we can't hang onto the past. That's what Bowery at Midnight is about, isn't it?”

“What?”

In our dream, Brenner was so desperate to fight against death that he became the most ruthless of criminals, to squeeze out blood-money from every tap he could find in his city. You remember his gang-leader face, so much wiser and bitterer than the officious Nazi Nardo. With his pilfered funds he created zombies, wanting to turn over every grave. Take away every loss. Beneath every villain there's a reason. Brenner must have lost someone, and that's when he stopped having your 'goodness.' In my dreams, he hated you for being naive—you were evil, a blockage in his quest to get back at whoever that nameless person of his past was. That dream was supposed to be about how death is death, and you must accept your mortality.”

“And, what...then...are the other dreams about?” Karl had to ask. He would do anything to avoid staring into the Lost Stream, where again, all the colors from all the things happening within in ran together into that crackling white.

Melcher sighed. “Well, you already know what Ape Man and Return of the Ape Man are about, even if you maybe don't remember those ones enough to have titled them. Black Dragons is about how people are usually not how they seem and trust is flimsy. And Invisible Ghost...”

“Social isolation? Dependent relationships?”

“Probably.”

Kessler bit his lip. “So you're not actually called Dr. Melcher, then.”

“No...no, not really. That name was a signal, I think—Marvel hid in the Divide, and all the alterations we induced in each other formed the first base of his power. That power gave him the strength to build a human body. I...was hesitant to tell you my true name before.”

“And now?”

“Now...I am still hesitant.”

Karl frowned. “How...bad can it be?”

“Melcher is a name related to Malcolm, which means 'king.' In the Bible, one can see the root of this name: Melek. Melek was the name of an ancient God that the ancient monotheists distorted into something evil—a rival and enemy of El, their One True God. You'd better know Melek, I think, by the name...”

A flash of machinery, priests working aimlessly and endlessly at its knobs and switches. Nude slaves pouring into a rabid and bestial mouth. Steam flashing from Hell and metal.

“Moloch.” Karl took in a deep breath, after he spoke the word. “Your name is Moloch.”

“I am Moloch. Or Melek. Once upon a time, I was the twin brother to the creature history names as El. We weren't Gods, at least I don't think so. We were the sons of an abstract being comprised of a slurry of energy and matter. El was...unbalanced. Once the local worshipers of Shamash turned from their God to worship Him, it began affecting His mind. Feeding His ego. The cult of Shamash died off, but it was echoed later in time when people found Yahweh or Allah instead. Echoed...mind you...”

“Where are you going with this?”

“El began to turn his followers against me, creating rituals that simulated my murder. He claimed that I induced people to throw their children into ovens which sat beneath an idol of myself.”

“Did you? Do you?”

Karl spoke the question haltingly, but they both laughed. They understood the Divide now.

When Moloch stopped laughing, he said: “So much for Black Dragons. You're trusting me now.”

“That one's a racist piece of trash, anyway.”

“No, I never killed children, or demanded sacrifice. Not like Belphegor, another local 'king,' and not like...El Himself. The war against me eventually became overwhelming. Too many of my followers were murdered or persuaded to the join the El cult. I was forced to locate a piece of ancient machinery from the dread city of Wal-Un-Porga, and by modifying it I was able to alter its appearance and its targeting system. Though it would burn out after a single use, I had built what Dr. Dexter would construct later, a Gateway. It crossed through the Lost Stream into the B-Side. I made it look like one of the blazing ovens they accused my followers of using to murder their own spawn, full of roaring flames, and I allowed them to perform their ritual on me in reality. El underestimated me. I'm mortal, somewhat, but his ritual was too crude to inflict real damage on me—I don't care how ceremonial a dagger is, it still can't inflict anything I'll just shrug off.

“In any case, I seemed to perish screaming in a sudden burst of flames. I'm sure my twin called it an act of divine providence, and from their perspective, never again did I return to their continuum. El was victorious. He would be butchered, in his own time, by blood transfusions from Sol Invictus and Odin and others, who diluted him with paganism. It was inevitable, really, and the only sin of it is a refusal to acknowledge it. Now I'm diluted as well, but that's simply because I choose to abstain from Godhood. I'm human, with human dreams. But I don't know if I assumed that role to fit your dreams, or if I, being a former God, once dreamed you, and you are merely a shard of me...of the ThrΓΌn of Tzaa.”

Karl was disarmed twice over. “The ThrΓΌn of Tzaa.” Like a clockwork mechanism, like a nearly-lit strand of thread on a great, interconnected spider-web, he thought back to the library. Had Marvel arranged that somehow...his reading of the weirdly-pulpy grimoire that the library just so happened to have? The book seemed distant from him now, and he realized at once that it was simply a thing in a dream. The convenience of his finding it was like a thing in a dream...

Moloch felt Karl think this over, without intruding on his thoughts. Something was wrong. If there was a book on Earth-20181-A that depicted the ThrΓΌn of Tzaa, it should show El or himself. As one entity (granting consent silently and naturally), they mulled over the memory of the book, with Karl feeling Moloch's sudden apprehension.

The book recorded a different name for the ThrΓΌn, the Son. Instead of the demigod Melekthrunsthaaa there was the vast and complicated Agthrunsthaaa.

A bloom of pulp erupted in their shared mind, and both of them cried out, desperately trying to avoid the first syllable of that long name. From Karl, Moloch knew Lovecraft. The name seemed to stand out now as one of those strings of unpronounceable syllables the pulp writer was fond of. Somehow, a name like that had power—a name belonging to no language except for the babbling of lunatics. “Agh” was anxiety's scream, but “Agthrunsthaaa” was anxiety cracking the mind wide open and scrambling the contents.

That was what they faced now. Moloch grew cold.

We shouldn't have thought that,” he said. “In the Lost Stream, things become strange, like I said. We can exist here in a material sense, but we shouldn't. In the same way that one shouldn't read old grimoires.”

I-I don't understand what's going on, Moloch. Are you going to be alright?”

I don't know. History on Earth-20181-A now records that Marvel is the son of Tzaa, with access to all of my progenitor's abilities. And yet Marvel's origin was as one of the humans resurrected or imprisoned on the Gaudium object.”

Who is Tzaa? What does he have to do with any of this?”

Hopefully nothing. His name isn't like that other name, Agthrunsthaaa, but you can use your imagination when you understand him to be the father of two Biblical deities. He is a virus-god, an idea that Lovecraft might have liked. His realm is in the disgust of the fecundity of growing things...a perversion of life, life as a thing to be hated.”

This is all pretty, uh, metaphysical, doctor.”

I'm not really a doctor. And yes, it is, but we are in a metaphysical realm. We must begin traveling. Remember that Marvel brought you here. I suspect that he is here also, and we have to journey to him.” He pulled that tight black thing even tighter about himself. “Hurry. I'm getting colder.”

They began to walk, and it was like there was a path beneath their feet. But at the same time, with every step, Karl felt like he was going to fall down into an open sky. He had always imagined, he realized, that that was what it was like to try to walk in Hell.9

“Where are we going, exactly?” Karl asked.

Moloch coughed. “Dreams are stories, and as we wander through our dreams we are bound to a narrative...Marvel will have a castle waiting for us at our story's conclusion. The Tower of Babel, as it were—that Tower led to the confusion of language, and we're going into a snowstorm that confuses minds.”

Karl sighed. Moloch clearly had it in his head that he was dying. As a result he was choosing to talk in bullshit rather than straight answers. In any case, he generally got it. There was a guaranteed “final confrontation” that had to satisfy some urge somewhere. Just like in dreams.

As they walked, there was nothing to do but talk. Looking to their left and right, they saw flashes of things that could have been; lives they could have dreamed into being. Moloch saw a demented elderly butler named Casimir, who wandered in dark passages attending to the needs of a cruel doctor; otherwise he was Paul Renault, who lived on the Caribbean island of St. Sebastian, bringing the dead back to life as monsters just as Frederick Brenner did. (Names were tangible in the Lost Stream and they would stick in your head and crowd out names of real people you once knew.) Karl could have been Frank Chandler, an occult expert who used magic for the forces of good. He was also kindly Dr. Werdegast, gentle and relaxed but tortured and vengeful, and hateful of cats.

Moloch didn't want to forget himself—if he did so, the same would follow with Karl, and vice versa. He knew he would have to talk, but once more he couldn't resist speaking like he was on his deathbed. “I think what has happened thus far, Karl, has been my fault.”

Karl didn't ask.

“Your alternate selves appeared on Earth-20181-A because I attempted a magic spell that I learned in my studies. The Cantrip of Altosagha. Altosagha being the root-word for 'alter ego.' Ego, as you can surmise, is the '-agha' part of that word. At some point in history, Marvel must have created the Cantrip. It is Marvel's power that allowed me to accomplish my goal, the creation of independent doppelgangers who were nonetheless subservient to my will; the things the spell calls 'alter egos,' differentiated from simple doubles or doppelgangers. I needed to see if it could be done...I was a younger man. I did this when we were about seventeen, in human terms, anyway. I had to reteach myself everything once I crossed over to the B-Side, and became a humanoid. It was easier to learn the second time around.”

Kessler recalled himself at seventeen and smiled thinly.

“The Cantrip of Altosagha pulls one's dream-selves out of the Dreamlands and makes them into real people...except they have a bond to the conjurer, being from the conjurer's imagination. By using it without the proper spiritual training I attracted Agthrunsthaaa, for he is the master of the Cantrip...it's tied to the influence and grip he's had on the layers of the Dreamlands.”

“My only response is,” Kessler said then, “that I am intrigued by the prospect of Marvel's other name being at the root of 'ego.' It does have to mean something more than a monosyllabic scream, right?”

“All is possible in the Dreamlands. Some beings similar to myself can travel in time. Maybe that syllable was implanted in the minds of ancient humans in some universes. Ego is simply the pronoun 'I,' ultimately. Freud chose it as a stand-in for 'I' when describing the second layer of the mind. The common colloquial references to ego, as in excess pride, perhaps more properly apply to the Freudian id, the...selfish baby aspect of the mind.” And he laughed then. “Etymological genesis by way of time-travel—I have told you the B-Side was strange, stranger than your world in ways I can't succinctly say, but I am still a madman among my people for thinking of such things.”

“Is it still considered common to reach into a literal, tangible dream-dimension to casually remove the identities one takes in dreams and fashion them into literal, tangible people?”

“...I am not sure. We are recluses, aren't we, you and I?”

“Yeah. Yeah, we are.” Karl stuck his hands in his pockets. His feet were raw under him; he wanted to stop traveling, to stop wandering deeper into madness. He thought he remembered a desire to become mentally ill as a child. He didn't want to dismiss the idea that there was misunderstood knowledge, wisdom, and, yes, even stability in what was commonly called insanity by the general public. He assumed that the mind contained fantasy kingdoms full of ideas worth writing about, or trying to pitch in Hollywood. That was probably what Marvel had latched onto, when he had claimed to be a West Coast screenwriter.

Of course, he was aware of the fact that that desire to plumb the depths of “madness” could have been a false memory. He walked faster, hoping to reach their destination sooner, trying not to think about how it's more advantageous to walk than run in the rain. Yet he would rather be distorted than forced to endure a long nothingness. Nothingness was a slack tongue that had forgotten flavor—puffed up lips, meaningless hand movements. A lack of objective, forever.

But before they knew it, it was upon them. It was easy now to reconsider the possibility that Agh, or Agha, invented Ego. The thing was huge, made of rigid stone—straight, angular, ruined, and pristine. It was hard to look at, and had a different appearance every time they blinked. But always, always colossal, and giving the impression of being...Carpathian.

“How do we even enter such a thing?”

Moloch said it at the same time as Kessler. They looked at each other, and nodded. They had to just keep walking. That was all there was to it.

They may have crossed a drawbridge over a moat that might have had a horde of crocodiles within it—under an archway which may have had a portcullis. The brickwork around them was mossy and spoiled; regal and proper. The halls were abandoned and crowded with servants...it went on, and after a time Kessler was walking with his eyes closed. Moloch's steady hand touched his shoulder when they finally reached a stable space. A bubble of solid events, maintained doubtlessly by Marvel's will.

It was a corridor, which appeared to be on a high floor. Kessler couldn't recall climbing any stairs, even when his eyes had been closed. In any case, the torches mounted on the walls illuminated a series of ten portraits, which Kessler silently took as “family portraits.” Somehow, these ten men were significant to Marvel. From an arbitrary sequence he observed: an Asian man wearing a uniform that belonged to a cheesy science fiction film; a bald monkish white man with a sinister old face; a stern bearded man who seemed to be clad in the outfit of a Nazi; a handsome man, dressed for political office, with a nearly-theatrical grin; an obese teenager who was so fat as to be androgynous; a bony, hulking thing that had to be a special effect, looking like an agile, prone Frankenstein's monster; an out-of-focus figure in a poorly-rendered photograph, whose gender, race, and demeanor were hidden; a priest, wearing thick spectacles and sporting a cruelly conservative hairstyle; a pudgy white suburbanite, perhaps a schoolteacher, dressed casually; and finally, a loathsome fleshy thing that looked a bald human without eyes, whose skin was pale and teeth were long.

“Ignore it,” Moloch said. “It's part of Marvel's dream.”

“Shouldn't we study his dream, so that we can be prepared to confront him?”

Moloch did not reply. He was looking hungrily at the torches, craving their heat. His timeline was becoming thin because of what Agthrunsthaaa had done to him. But with a slight struggle he ignored the light. “We have to keep moving. We'll face him soon enough.”

There was a winding staircase ahead that had to be from an old movie seen in one of their childhoods. They walked long and far up this staircase, again completely unaware of the true dimensions of this castle. Soon they were in a surprisingly small room, and present was Agthrunsthaaa.

There was no drama to him. He kept the same form he always did, wearing the stylish but plain suit, tie, and slacks. His shined shoes glistened along with his round glasses and polished teeth.

“Thank you for coming all this way, gentlemen. Rest assured, you had little choice in the matter, but it is still meaningful to me.”

“We've assembled what you are, Marvel, and if you meant for us to come here, why don't you just kill us already?” asked Kessler.

“You don't know the full extent of what I am. You will both die, assuredly—one in mind, the other in body...and history, and existence, admittedly. Kessler, it seems you are lucky. I hold nothing against you because you are a helpless mortal. I will ensure that the destruction of your mind is as painless as possible.”

Kessler made a small noise, a noise that shuddered. “I just wanted to find my wife.”

“She was never real, boy,” said Agthrunsthaaa, with a nearly hucksterish voice. “She was the light on the lure of the angler fish. I made her.” And he grinned then.

“Show him kindness. He's suffered,” Moloch said. His voice was so gentle now—murderous Dr. Melcher was so far behind now.

“So have I, more than you can ever know. Better to lose a wife who never lived than a real family whom one could never replace. In any case, Moloch, Kessler is just a thing—a puppet, a shell. A cast-off. And if Kessler is just a cast-off, a piece of fallout from you,” Agthrunsthaaa mused, “then I can make him into a new Moloch, or a reasonable facsimile. I was born in the fires of the Lost Stream, and I will not fade away as you will. Your fading-away will be my first examination of the weaponization potential of the Lost Stream. The Stream permeates throughout the entire Multiverse, you know. Using my own power, plus powers of the ThrΓΌn of Tzaa, I can enter any universe I wish. Or render any event non-canon as I wish. I will have dominion over reality.”

Why would you want that?” Moloch's voice nearly creaked now.

You invoked me and mingled with me when you spoke my Cantrip. I saw your lineage, and I saw Tzaa, and as the master of the Dreamlands I knew his power would be the way to my success. Dreams are strong but also soft...they're not a sure route to the power of revenge. You used the Cantrip to see if you could, and from there I found the key to my revenge—”

Who do you want vengeance on?” Moloch asked.

Don't interrupt. By changing cause and effect with the Lost Stream I can remove you from existence, and thus guarantee that I will always have your power, and the power to remove you. To control canon is to overcome the two barriers of existence, entropy and paradox. Do you get it? In fact, it was toying with canon's power to allow 'clean passage' over paradoxes that led to my creation. My family and I were given peace after our torture in the construct of the Gauds...but that doesn't matter now. That construct was gone long before I destroyed it, when it got too small for me, even if it was the first thing that helped me realize my potential. I've clearly already succeeded, Melekthrunsthaaa. Kessler's book, and many others like it throughout the universe, already record the name Agthrunsthaaa instead. There's no point in fighting me, even if you had to come here. I made it so you had to come here, so I could use the Lost Stream to erase and replace you.

The name Agthrunsthaaa doesn't have any meaning, save for the fact that it's part of Multiversal history now. A being of my power is bound to get lost in time; becoming ancient by interacting with the myth-makers of antiquity. I am an external context. I was able to graft my own context onto the Multiverse...doesn't that make me more worthy of being the son of a virus-god to you?”

I'm scarcely a virus, it's true,” the Son of Tzaa said.

What say you, Kessler?” Agthrunsthaaa asked. “I hope the idea has not become too screwy.”

I feel nauseous,” Kessler said. But I'm beginning to understand, and I understand that you should not have the power you want to take.

You both speak bravely, openly—I suppose it figures, as you are the same man.”

Moloch stepped forward. “He's brave because I'm brave. I'm brave because I'm not a man, with a man's weaknesses.” And he paused. “That ought to include pride. I can't assume that he didn't dream my courage first.”

Agthrunsthaaa started laughing, and it was a laugh that hurt Kessler as bad as the whine of the Lost Stream—it was that whine, but crossed with the sound of air rushing through a wet corpse. Moloch didn't care; this laughter was nothing to him.

To me, Agthrunsthaaa, you are still young. You didn't even stand on the sands of Canaan,” Moloch said. “I've dealt with upstarts like you before.”

<< Part VII                                                                                                                          Part IX >>
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9. Hell is not merely a term that is relevant to psychology (consider the psychology of guilt, shame, sin, crime, and punishment). Hell is a certifiably real place.

When I woke up from the blow Vivian dealt me I found myself in a dank sea cave—you could smell the salt on the air and hear the rush of the waves. I was shirtless and tied to a chair. Oliver stood over me, with Vivian behind him.

She plead for me. I will give her that. She did not try hard, but she begged him to spare me. It didn't matter—the fact that it was happening at all was a sign of how deep the betrayal was. If anything, she was putting on a facade I was meant to see through. I don't need to describe what I was feeling in my heart. But I have to write now about how it felt on my body.

Oliver evidently had studied the methods of the Inquisition. In the background, I saw something burn red and release smoke. Before I could focus on it, Oliver struck me across the face with a wooden rod. After I cried out he wiped this rod off, and looked at me keenly. “Across the Atlantic, in whatever equivalence to Old Spooky they have in England, canings would be curricula regulars.” Then he hit me again; the bruise howled as it crawled across my cheek. For about fifteen minutes, he struck me again and again, at his leisure. It was impossible to predict the blows' rhythm. It was like Chinese water torture, but instead of water droplets to the face it was blows from a mahogany rod.

Once that was done he retreated the embers that I'd since forgotten. A long rod, thinner than the wooden one he'd just used, emerged from the steaming coals. It ended with a flat, circular brand, roughly the size and shape of a hockey-puck. I flailed back, my bruised lips uttering resistance, but just above my heart his weapon flicked out. The circle irrevocably tattooed itself onto my chest, eating inches into the skin until I feared my lungs would burst into flames—from both the screams and the dark scars that ate down into my flesh.

He let me rest after that, but only barely. When my eyes opened once more, and my screams echoing in my ears finally left me, I saw something white and plastic in his hand. He let me take a good look before he slammed it down into my kneecap. It had been a syringe—filled with what, I have no idea. I tried to ask him what it was, but he spoke first: “It's short term. Only a half hour. Only.” And a moment after that—well. I have still never known what it's like to have fire-ants crawl under one's skin; but I have felt a simulacrum of such.

It may have been hours, it may have been days. I remember thirst and starvation. Oliver slapped me awake, indicating that I'd lost consciousness. When I was fully aware he spat in my eye.

She's mine,” he snarled then. “She's mine, and she'll be mine forever.”

Why, Oliver?” I asked.

Because I didn't come all this way in my life to come up second. That which I've received I've deserved; and what I haven't gotten has been taken from me.”

As soon as I heard those words, a shift came over my eyes. Paradoxically, I was almost numb from pain, and it may have been simple pain that made his shadow dance. In the cave, briefly, it seemed like he had wings, and long horns, or something akin to such.

Once more he took out the long knife. I was still bleeding from where he'd gotten me before, and now parallel to the first cut he made, a shallow slice down my chest from the shoulder, he cut again. This time deeper, relishing the pain. I screamed endlessly but it did nothing. I felt the tickle of the knife's very tip against the outer layer of my muscle. Warm fluid trickled down my chest as I lost yet more blood.

Now I looked to Vivian, but once more, her fearful face paralyzed me. I knew it was false, but she was so convincing.

And there it ended. That was when I parted company from them, and from her. Vivian Gina was lost in the world, wandering, merely a shade at the corner of my eye. As I write that, I begin to understand—the locks begin to open, and I see Mr. Kessler's room empty. But I have to go on. Go on remembering; go on living. These last weeks, I have lived. Writing has made me live, because it has let me bask in the scent of my Virginia again...

That was the day that the Devil Bat began to visit me. Having written it down I understand that it was the flash of shadows in the cave as Oliver danced his murderous war-dance before me; but that won't make it go away. Every night it's come, for years now, grinding on through time like it's nothing while that same time grinds me down in a cruel old man. Once I was so kindly. But by the scars I bear on my body, I also bear on my mind the scars of the Bat's talons.

Yes, that is what happened—I assure you. Oliver Dran stole my wife from me. Then, with no warning, he capped off the theft by strapping me to a chair in a cave and torturing me within an inch of my life.

There is merely one string of details, however, that I've altered.

The start of this string begins with the fact that it wasn't I in that chair, but they.

Do you understand, now, as I do?

A single event can cause a cascade of further incidents, and so it was the rational end of the string that I cut Oliver's throat. Now it makes sense why I trembled when Kessler told me who his first psychiatrist was. But I see a sort of sense in it. I see a sense in everything now. This Monograph has given me a sort of peace...

There must be an ending. I will finish Mr. Kessler's story so that I can publish his case, and obtain the glory I've earned.