Fossil Lake: An Anthology of the Aberrant (19 page)

He gestured to some bloated black flies lying dead in Bart’s neck stump. “Nabbed a few flies for you, too. I’ll have a sandwich. Got any bread?”

“You fucking frog!”

“We had a deal. I got you the head, and now you owe me. You have to help me.”

Raging red, Lana struggled to think things through. Bart’s head in her sink, and his blood on her window, would certainly not be good when the cops showed up. And they would show up, if her neighbors heard Lucky’s shriek.

“How am I supposed to help you?” she cried. “If you haven’t noticed, you brought me quite a mess to clean up!”

“Doesn’t matter,” Lucky said, nonchalant. “We’re not sticking around. Let’s go.”

Lana crossed her arms. “Where are we going?”

“You kiss me, I’ll turn into a prince, and we’ll go get married,” Lucky said.

“Just like the story?”

“God, you can’t fucking tell when I’m joking. Life’s not a fairytale, princess. Let’s go. You have to drive. My legs aren’t long enough. And don’t forget that sandwich.”

Lana hesitated, but realized he was right. They had to move. Her, Lucky and Bart’s head had to get gone.

She grabbed her keys and followed Lucky to her car. He hopped as fast as she could walk. As soon as she opened the door, he hopped into the passenger seat. Lana got in and put Bart’s head on the seat beside the frog.

“Where to?” she asked

“Back to the swamp, dummy,” Lucky ordered, then cleared his throat.

“I hate you,” Lana said and put the hastily-slapped-together fly sandwich on the seat in front of him.

“Thanks, bitch,” Lucky said, his crooked, pointed teeth twitching. He smacked his lips, munching and moaning in gluttonous pleasure. “Not bad, not bad at all. So…” He croaked, paused, burped, then added, “what’d these suckers do that pissed you off anyway? Call you fat? Try to rape you?”

Lana sighed. She’d been trying to contemplate her options while he ate, but he’d finished the sandwich in three bites.

“Truth told, I see the fat thing,” he went on. “I really do, and you make a hell of a sandwich, you really do, and looks like you enjoy your own food. Rape thing though? I don’t really get that.” He eyed her up and down, then stopped, fixed on her boobs. “Well, maybe, but probably not sober.”

Lana sighed again, “I only weigh…”

Then she stopped. Even though she wasn’t that heavy, logic would never work on Lucky. She just wanted him to go away. So she tried to explain how the guys had used her. How she knew their intentions. How the murder, the decapitation, became her crusade –

She was interrupted by Lucky’s coarse, maniacal laughter.

“You bitches,” he gasped, trying to catch his breath. “You bitches really want a fairytale, don’t you?”

Lana huffed, angry. Blinked tears. Her flushed cheeks only provoked the frog further.

“Poor Lana,” Lucky mocked. “All the guys just want to fuck you. OF COURSE THEY DO, even with that little weight problem, THEY’RE STILL MEN.” He laughed again. “If you don’t want to be used for sex then don’t fuck them! Or be a crack snacker. Guys can’t use you if you don’t let them. A bad murdering bitch like you? They don’t have a chance anyway. What, you’re waiting for a frog to turn into a prince and save you? C’mon, baby. Gimme a smooch!”

He hopped onto her lap and she swerved, shoving him back into his seat.

“Asshole!” she screamed, easing the car back into her lane.

“Yeah, I’m the asshole? Because I killed guys who acted like … guys? Good one princess.”

She eased the car back into her lane. Then she took a hard turn that lead them to the pebble road heading to Fossil Lake. Her headlights illuminated the dark water.

“What are we doing here?” Lana asked, slamming the brakes at the edge of the trees surrounding the swamp. She hit them so hard Bart’s head rolled to the floor boards, making a wet plop as it landed.

“We had a deal, and you’re out of luck. Help me and I’ll help you.” Lucky made a kiss face with his disfigured lips. More of that pus colored drool trickled from the corner of his mouth. Then he bounded from the car and darted toward the water.

Lana snagged Bart by the hair and chased after Lucky. “What do I have to do? How can you help me?”

“I told you, kiss me and I’ll turn into a prince and save you. I’ll get you out of this!”

She started to roll her eyes, but heard sirens in the distance.

“What the hell! Did you call the cops?”

“Yeah, on my cell phone; it’s a Cricket.” Lucky uttered a sarcastic croak.

If they tracked her out here, where there was nothing except Lana, a talking frog, and whole bunch of human heads … She took a quick survey of her surroundings. The secret place with the heads was sort of tucked away, but nothing a few dogs wouldn’t be able to sniff out. There was still a small trail of blood from the path, too, where she’d carried Bart’s head earlier. Beer cans and cigarette butts, littered with her DNA, were all over the area.

And the cops were coming. The sirens were closer, and louder.

“Then what are we doing here?” she demanded. “Did you bring me here to get busted?”

“I told you. Kissing me is your only way out of this mess.”

Lana inhaled deep and fast, air hissing through her teeth. The lights from the police cars flashed blue and red through the trees, but what the hell could this frog do to save her?

There was only one way to find out.

She picked up Lucky. He was fat and heavy, and weighed about as much as Bart’s head, hanging in her other hand. Lana shuddered at the comparison. She felt Lucky’s lumpy frog dick growing harder against her palm and fought down a dry heave.

She coughed, looked away. She looked at the lake, the woods pitch dark, but flickering with the lights of approaching trouble. Then she looked down at Lucky in all his disgusting horny glory, wondering how he could possibly help her, but inexplicably believing him. He blinked, and in that moment she thought that while he may not be cute, he might have something to offer.

Lana closed her eyes and leaned in. She could smell him. He smelled disgusting, like decay and flies and stagnant water. Instead of warmth, she sensed a wet coldness as their lips approached … then touched for a second.

It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but, just as she was about to pull away, Lucky shot his tongue into her mouth. The sticky part grabbed and pulled at her tongue while his lips moved against hers. She tried to break away, but she couldn’t.

Finally, moaning, the frog unlatched his tongue from hers. His eyes rolled back in his head for a split second, then came back. He winked at her before leaping from her hand and landing softly in the grass, his ugly face grinning. 

Lana stared, horrified, spitting, trying to get that taste out of her mouth. She realized that Lucky has also left her hand full of goo.

That moan, that wink, that hard, lumpy dick!

She tried to scream and vomit at the same time, wiping her hand on her pajamas. She fell to her knees, retching, and saw Bart’s dead eyes still looking up at her.

Lucky laughed like a mental patient.

“I wish I really did have a Cricket to record this on, bitch. This is the best of the best.”

She couldn’t answer, she just kept dry heaving.

“And you know what the best part is?”

No answer.

“I didn’t need any stupid fucking froggy cell phone. You saw that blood I splashed on your window? You really think that’s all I can do?” Lucky flicked his tongue. “You dumb bitch.”

Lana vomited, sick to her stomach at being tricked yet again.

“I wrote ‘Fossil Lake’ on the side of your house before I ever even started on your window. Bart had a lot of blood left in his neck. I can’t believe you didn’t see it. But you bitches never see it coming do you?”

She gagged.

“And just in case somehow you do see freedom again, here’s your lesson: Frogs, men, princes, we’re never who we say we are. And you bitches, well, it’s all your fault.”

Lana looked all around her. At Lucky, at the lake, at her vomit on the ground, at Bart’s severed head. Just beyond Bart, she saw a pile of wet, mildewy, flesh-picked skulls. No doubt Lucky put them all there before he’d come to knock on her window.

For a second, she wondered just how bad Bart had been. How bad had any of them really been? Maybe they weren’t such utter shits? Maybe they didn’t deserve to get destroyed? Maybe she’d read the whole thing wrong, read them all wrong? Lana still didn’t think so, but there was always … maybe.

The blue and red lights flashed across Fossil Lake. Lana heard the sirens and the screeching of tires. She heard a car door open. She heard footsteps on stones and knew that there was no way out. 

A spotlight lit her up from behind.

“Thanks for the sandwich and the kiss, bitch,” Lucky said hopping toward the lake. “Oh and thanks for letting me come in your hand. That was awesome. So soft. Do you use lotion? Never had a bitch let me do that before. Anyway, hope you learned something.”

Lana looked at the rings that rippled from Lucky’s splash and she hated him. Hated herself. Felt sick.

“Ma’am,” came a voice from a bullhorn behind the open door of the police car.

She turned, shuffling awkwardly around on her knees, and looked into the light. She blinked as it blinded her. She started to raise her hands.

“On the ground, ma’am. Face down, hands behind your head. We know who you are and we suspect you of murder. Our orders are to proceed with extreme caution.” 

Lana stared, empty hands raised.

“On the ground, ma’am.” Sterner now.

As she began to comply, she heard a fat, croaky voice chortling from the middle of the lake.

“You think this is bad, bitch? Wait until they see that pile of heads.”

GOTHICISM ON TRIAL

G. Preacher

“But not even the capture of The Eternal City could persuade Honorius to grant him legitimacy. Undeterred, Alaric marched south, intending to sail to North Africa, at that time the breadbasket of the entire Italian Peninsula. By controlling those grain reserves, he could starve not only Rome but the entire West. If that wouldn’t get Honorius to proclaim him
Magister Militum
, nothing would.”

Professor Maximillian Hastings risked a glance up from his notes. Some blank looks gazed back, from those of his students not distracted by something else. Half the classroom seemed to be focused on laptops, no doubt playing games or chatting with friends rather than taking notes. Others stared intently at the clock, as if that would somehow make the time go by faster.

His heart sank. A familiar anger kindled in his belly. Marketing, he’d been told. It was all about marketing, about selling history to the kids these days, making it exciting.

If this was what marketing got him, he’d rather lecture to an empty room.

There was a preponderance among them of pale faces, black lips and eyeliner, and attire to match. They wanted Goths, and that was what they were getting. But look at them. Just look at them.

And look at that other one, sitting in the back in the closest seat to the door. Him with his unwashed hair and torn black leather jacket over a rancid death-metal T-shirt. Him with his entitled, fuck-you attitude forever pasted on his sneering mouth. Why was
he
here? He wasn’t in this class. He wasn’t even enrolled.

“His plans were thwarted by a vicious storm that destroyed his fleet,” the professor continued. “Alaric himself survived, only to die a short while later, near the end of the year 410, probably from disease. His successor, his brother-in-law, Ataulf or Ataulphus, took over leadership of the Gothic Confederacy, and led them north, into Gaul, where Honorius eventually granted them land and allowed them to settle as
feoderati
.”

Nothing. He’d just thrown out
feoderati
for the first time and not a one of them batted an eye. They weren’t listening. They weren’t caring.

He raised his voice in an attempt to pull them back, to force them to listen. “The Roman response to being beaten by the Visigoths was immediate and long-lasting, and it is what we’ll be examining in Monday’s lecture. Which, if you’ve been paying attention to the syllabus, will be on St. Augustine’s Concerning The City of God Against the Pagans,
De Civitate Dei Contra Paganos,
one of the ten most influential books in western civilization.”

Still nothing. The dirty intruder at the back of the room smirked.

“The abridged version, assigned on the first day of class, is, of course,
required
reading. If you haven’t started yet, you’ve got a long weekend ahead of you. Monday’s class will start with a quiz on the text. Failure on the quiz equals failure of this class.”

Now some of them looked worried through their masks of makeup and piercings. Others looked overconfident and smug, as if he’d just issued them a challenge.

Had
any
of them done the reading?

Why did he even bother to wonder?

Idiots. He always got stuck with the idiots. Screw the teacher-student contract. Screw them all.

“Are there any questions?” Hastings asked as the clock ticked closer to the hour.

There were none, only a general rustling of eagerness to leave. He dismissed them, then made his own quick retreat from the lecture hall.

Gothic Culture and Its Relevance Today. God, what an awful title.

“Marketing, my foot,” he muttered. See what it had gotten him?

He detoured by way of the restroom and the faculty lounge, hoping – probably against hope – that if any of his students tried to seek him out at his office, they would give up and go away when he didn’t arrive immediately.

Questions during class? No, never. A parade of excuses, whining pleas for extensions, and sob-stories about how unfairly overworked they were? Always.

His hopes proved only partially validated. He found two people waiting in the hall outside his door. One was a pale, slightly overweight girl of that indiscriminate college-age anywhere between seventeen and twenty-two. Her dyed-black hair was cropped in an unappealing, boyish cut. Her clothes were also black – gauzy skirt, leggings, a stretch-velvet top – except for an ill-fitting burgundy-colored corset.

The other was …
him
.

As Hastings approached, he heard the girl say, “–your father? Really?” His heart, already low, sank further.

“Yeah,” said the other. “I’m the successful one of the family. Author, editor, publisher. That’s me. Not some butt-licking burger-flipper. I do it all myself.”

“Wow! So what do you write?”

“It’s probably too dark for you.” His eyes widened and his speech quickened. “It’s too dark, transgressive and in-your-face for most people. April Derleth called me Lovecraft’s heir. And Brian Keene, that hack, he just wishes –”

“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” Hastings said, interrupting before he had to hear Niccolò recite his self-aggrandized resume yet again.

The girl turned toward him. “Oh, no worries, Professor. I was just talking to Nick, here. You must be so proud to have such a creative son!”

“You have no idea,” he said, hiding the irony he couldn’t mask by opening the office door.  “What can I do for you ... Jasmine, wasn’t it?”
             

“Yes, sir.” Now she went a bit sheepish. “I, um, see, I’m going away for the weekend . . .”

Here it was.

He raised a hand to cut her off as she launched into something about a Wiccan retreat in the mountains and how she therefore wouldn’t have any time to read and couldn’t she please –

“You’ve had the assignment for the last three weeks,” he said. “Perhaps you shouldn’t have left it until the last minute.”

“Just an extra couple of days?” Jasmine looked tearful.

“The quiz is on Monday. For everyone.”

“This is the only retreat all semester!”

“Then you have a decision to make. The spiritual advice of St. Augustine, or the Wiccans.”

“But that’s not fair!”

Hastings folded his hands tight atop his desk to keep them from curling into fists. Had she honestly just said that? That it wasn’t fair? Not fair that the work was clearly outlined in the syllabus? Not fair that he’d stated on numerous occasions there would be no exceptions given? How was any of that unfair?

What was unfair was that he had to sit here being whined at, as if her problems were his fault. What was unfair was that he was stuck here, unable to secure his grant money, instead of in Italy! Where the river,
the
river, was at its lowest level in decades!

“Fuck, Dad,” Niccolò said from the doorway. “Don’t be such a shit-slinging prick about it. It’s just a stupid history book.”

What was also unfair was being stuck with this insane excuse for a child, who sounded like a twelve-year-old reprobate when he swore.

Doing his best to ignore that for now, he bit back his bile and frustration to concentrate on trying to help Jasmine find a solution to her ‘unfair’ situation. Once she’d agreed that she should be able to find at least
some
time for reading in and around her ridiculous weekend plans, she slunk timidly from the office.

Hastings, exhausted, desperately wanted a nap. But there stood his son, glaring at him with greasy petulance.

“Nice fucking work, Dad! She was into me! I was about to score, but then you had to walk up treating her like some pus-filled blister you have to lance off your ass. How the fuck am I supposed to get a girlfriend with you sabotaging me?”

“Nicco –”

“Don’t fucking call me Nicco! Nobody calls me fucking Nicco, all my friends know not to call me out of name!”

“It is your name. I was there. I named you. Niccolò, after Machia –”

“My name is Nicolaus! Or Nick! Not Niccolò, that’s a fag’s name, do you want me to be some sort of butt-probed fag?”

Max sighed. “What do you want? Or are you just here to try and pick up girls from my class?”

“Thanks a fucking lot; I came to tell you my great news and you don’t have to go and take a ripe shit on it.”

“What news is that?” He did not dare to let himself dream it might be a real job, for once.

“I got a reading! For my new book,
Fossil Lake
. Those fuckstains won’t know what hit them. They’ll see. You’ll see, too. I told you how you should give me a fucking chance to have my career.”

Hastings began explaining, with as much diplomacy as he could muster, that he would be busy all weekend with analyzing and deciphering the latest images that would be transmitted during the satellite flyover of the site in –

He needn’t have bothered with diplomacy.

“Fine! Don’t come. Why would I want an old fuck like you there anyway? Be the asshole that I always knew you were ... that Mom always says you are!”

With that, the storm that was Niccolò Hastings blew off as quickly as it had blown in.

Nicco’s departure, however, did not signal the end of the day’s troubles. Hastings was beset with ever more annoyances and inconveniences, from scheduling mix-ups to the department chair wanting to throw his weight around. It culminated with being called a selfish, domineering bastard by his own grad student.

That last stung most. He and Rob had always gotten on so well!

It wasn’t as if they hadn’t discussed the plan, gone over it in exacting detail more than once. Rob
knew
he’d need to get everything configured before the uplink. He knew about the time zone differences that had to be taken into account.

He also knew how much Hastings depended on him. Rob was the one who understood the programs, the software, the technical aspects of this stage of the project. Rob knew how important this was.

Why, therefore, was Hastings to blame for expecting Rob to put duty before pleasure? So he had a hot date, good for him, but a chance to ‘get lucky’ hardly meant ducking out on his other responsibilities.

Just as he’d told Jasmine she needed to choose between Augustine and the Wiccans, he presented a similar choice to Rob. His girl, or his thesis. He could get lucky any time, after all. An opportunity like this, like they were about to undertake, was not to be missed.

Finally, the disgruntled Rob nonetheless saw the light. Hastings was able to go home for an unsatisfying dinner of overcooked take-out and perhaps too much wine, and fall into a fitful sleep.

*     *     *

Gaius Maximius Herenus stood on the hill overlooking the works. The riverbed, dry now except for patches of mud and mire, spread out before his ever-watchful eye. The tomb itself lay in an excavated depression.

Hundreds of slaves scurried about, carrying the bricks and mortar needed to build the north and west walls of the structure. The carpenters worked in a large camp to the north, above the river bed, crafting the traditional grave offerings as well as a spectacular four-wheeled chariot that would be used to transport the body.

Or something like that, Maximius wasn’t entirely sure. Upstream, his second-engineer kept the dam that diverted the Buscento under constant supervision and frequent repair. The last thing anyone needed was for the dam to break and drown everything, and everyone. That would surely mean Maximius’ head. Ataulphus was not an understanding king.

“
Maximius!” The call came from his scribe, Lucius.

He raised his hand in greeting.

“The king has called for you. He has bid me tell you that he wants to know when the tomb will be complete, and for you to know that he is prepared to give you great honors if you can finish in three more days.”

“
It can be done my friend, just barely I think. Take me to him then, and we shall see what he says.”

*     *     *

His cell phone gradually woke him, the strains of
O Fortuna
rousing him from his slumber.

Fragments of the dream flashed through his waking mind and he grasped at them, desperately trying to remember as many details as he could.

In his youth, similar dreams had come to him often. Nightly, sometimes. The dreams had inspired him, given him direction for his studies, kept him going during difficult times. They’d led him to the area where he believed the remains of the tomb must be found, despite those who’d been unconvinced by his theories.

It was the wrong place, they’d said. The tomb must have been near Cosenza, not further upstream, away from the coast.

Hastings knew better, knew with every ounce of his being. He had
been
there. In person, yes … walking the valley of the Buscento all those years ago … the best times of his life … his young exuberance, his wonder at the world and its history, his passion, the best days of his life … he’d been there in the flesh as well as in his dreams. His recurrent dreams of being Gaius Maximius Herenus, engineer of Alaric’s tomb.