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Poor Skip. Everyone knew thirteen guys like him. Not ugly, but couldn't get a date, nor at least keep a girlfriend. Lonely. Clueless. You know, Skip.
He knew all the standard holidays. Everybody loved New Year's. St. Paddy's day was amateur day everywhere you went. But no matter what, even if you stayed home avoiding the gunfire on New Years and the bumper car derby with SUV's on St. Patrick's, everybody had fun on Halloween.
Well fuck that.
He wasn't unattractive, he didn't think...the red hair was kinda a problem, but in this part of the world the Scotch-Irish were so much of the gene pool he hardly stood out. He was just shy he guessed, and yeah he really hated that term. But it was true, he couldn't really just go up to some chick and say "Hey darlin', love the Morticia Addams look." So he always seemed to end up stuck.
Last Halloween he'd had a date. She'd left with somebody dressed like Tyler Durden from Fight Club. Wow. How very trendoid. The year before the party he'd been invited to had been all Styrofoam tombstones and orange cupcakes. He'd been vaguely aware there'd been more going on when he'd opened the bathroom door to see some guy in a black hood on his knees to another guy dressed like Jesus, but fuck, nobody'd invited him to join in.
And in a City (ah hell with that, glorified town) like this, it wasn't like a street fair was real likely. So he was walking around. Just walking, maybe some girl would be drunk off her ass and make him an offer she couldn't refuse.
He was on some little ratty alley of a street he'd never seen before when he thought he heard the very beginning of a song he hadn't heard since he'd been maybe twelve. He kinda noticed that it sounded just the way it had then, but not really like a recording at all.
"Are you ready, Steve?
Uh-huh.
Andy?
Yeah!
Mick?
OK.
Alright, fellas, let's gooooOOO!"
There were a lot of people for such a small street. At leat this wasn't a Nixon mask neighborhood. They had worked hard on their costumes. One pretty girl had what looked like permanently-wet blonde hair and pale but lovely green skin. The ribbon 'round her throat looked rather too tight but very lovely; her gown was diaphanous and clinging to her damp, lovely, slim body.
He checked the place the music was coming from. There was a sickly neon sign above the door saying "Sam's Place". Or sometimes "Sm's Place." It looked about as ratty as the alley. There was a hand-lettered sign on the blacked-out window saying:
It was written all red and drippy, like blood. Probably Karo and red food coloring.
Still, it wasn't uninteresting, Skip was kinda intrigued.
The guy out front smoking a cigarette didn't really thrill him, though, he seemed to have this whole line. Sounded pat to Skip.
"...Nasty evenin' out, ain't it?"
Skip looked up at a perfectly round orange moon, felt the chill through his leather jacket and tried to come up with an appropriate answer. "Yeah, guess so, seasonal, though. It is October."
"Hell of a night to be out wanderin' the streets, pal. Hell of a night."
Skip laughed. "Is there a good night to be out wanderin' the streets?"
The guy didn't say much. Skip could see the coal on his ciggie.
Skip took up the gap. "I guess Halloween is as good a night as any, y'know?"
The guy snorted something that might have been a laugh. It might have been derision too. "Well, you can come in if you want to..."
Skip stood kinda quiet for a minute. Was that an invite? The sign on the window coulda been a warning. Or a come-on. "Not sure, you know? I'm looking for something kinda particular. Hell of it is, I don't know what it is."
This time the guy laughed outright. He was wearing some kinda felt hat, sort of an Indiana Jones thing. Odd thing is, under the brim his eyes seemed to glow. Must be the light. Yeah. Neon green was under no circumstances normal, it was the light.
But Goddammit there wasn't much light. Ah fuck, forget about that. The guy was still talking. He seemed chatty. "Yeah, I know what you mean. You might find it here I guess, if you're pretty adventurous. I guess you'd have to be real adventurous tonight, son. Everybody's coming home tonight, and it might get a bit intense. But if you don't wanna be here, you can keep right on walking, you can look for something else. Hell, it's still a free country."
Man. Skip was a real peaceable guy, more ganja-and-boogie than anything else, but that fucking sounded like a challenge. "Yeah, I suppose we're all pretending it's a free country, but I guess that ain't the issue friend...is this a free street?"
That hat brim came up. It came up a little fucking far. That wasn't light, that was some sorta special effect, looked like a werewolf movie. Something in the back of his head told him that was wrong...not were wolf...the guy's voice was a purr, wind that had flowed over some mountain for thousands of years.
Skip took a couple steps back, ran into a big, blocky guy whose eyes looked even fucking scarier. The black fur makeup he'd put on his face was really something. His companions were a tall androgynous almost priestly serene person in a chocolate velvet medieval gown and some rather pretty redheaded girl wearing black pants and high-necked black shirt covered a tunic the color of old blood. But then the bar guy talked and Skip listened.
"I gotta tell you, pal... You look a little young to me. You gotta be eighteen to get in here, kid. Yeah, well, I ain't gonna take your word for it... You got some kinda ID on you?"
Another girl walked into the club. She was in midnight blue, with a blue ribbon around her neck, and something, something from his childhood came to him, "I tooooold youuuuuu not to undooooo the ribbon...." He was starting to wonder if he'd come out at all or if he'd fallen asleep on his couch instead.
"Well, what're you just standing there for? Lemme see it, kid." Skip came to looking into those swamp-green eyes with barely the wit to say "See what?"
The grin was way too toothy. And sharp. "The ID, boy. Got one? Not got one? C'mon, kick down..."
Skip fished it out of his pants. Absurdly he was running through what he thought he was asked for...his heart, his blood, his soul? Fuck Halloween. It put thoughts like this in your head (although it never had before nagged like this, it was something he ignored...at least since he was six or so, in the woods around Durham...)
Someone or someones rushed past, white and blowy and moving much too fast. It scared the fuck out of Skip but he bit back the fear for the sake of this old guy.
"Well, well, what a surprise, you are old enough, after all. Now, I gotta ask you if you come from any place where the cops say you can't come into a joint like this. Hey, I know... but, runnin' a joint like this, I gotta keep my nose clean... So. What's it gonna be?"
Skip shook his head as if he'd misplaced a brain cell or two. "Joint like what? A bar? Fuck, I know it's North Carolina, but still, that's legal, right?" The door behind the guy opened and a slim and lithe lovely appeared. She was wearing leather, short shirt and leather bracelets and necklets, but her top covered different from he'd expect, a lot of the area under her lovely, thin arms and over her perfect breasts rather than her tanned and trim stomach.
She wrapped those sinuous arms around the leather jacket of the guy he was dealing with. "Problems, Sam? The, um, clientele want you inside..."
The man kissed her with more passion than Skip thought he'd ever seen. "No, Cheryl, darlin', just a customer here..."
She flashed eyes at him that glowed like her mate but in no color he could name. Hazel? Grey? Blue-green? "Well why don't you join us, babe? It's a special night after all..."
Sam smiled too. "I guess we got everything settled. If you wanna come in, come on in. This is your last chance, though. You need a pretty strong stomach for what's inside, pal. Your choice..."
That last pissed Skip off, like whatever went on, he couldn't fucking handle it.
Skip nodded in what he hoped was a macho way and brushed past the two (rather closer past Cheryl than Sam. She was cold, but that was understandable given the air temperature...and the electrical thrill she gave him more than made up for the temperature).
As Sam followed him past into the dark bar, which smelled oddly of incense, copal or something odd like Nag Champa, he heard Sam mutter, "Out of all the joints on all the streets in all of the world, you pick this one to wander into. Ah, well. Come over here to the bar, sit down."
He did so, but as he did he noticed the redhead with her own table in the corner, her companions hovering but heading towards their own interests. She was laughing rather loudly, drinking something red and yelling out for Nine Inch Nails.
Cheryl stayed at the bar near Sam, and there were a number of other girls in the dark, intriguingly decorated bar. They were all lovely, and he tried to place the similarity about them...it seemed their costumes all were a color very near dried blood, or they hid rather than revealed some well-formed areas of their lovely forms.
"You want something to drink? There's Maker's Mark, Aztec Gold Tequila, Dos Equis... there's some Irish whiskey here someplace, too...and Verity insists on the Porfidio Anejo..."
Skip shook his head in perplexity. "You got Bushmill's?"
Sam smiled a wide smile and glanced toward the redhead. "Oh, yeah. You might want to talk to Miss Verity, she could buy you one if you asked nice..."
Just then the band, on a stand near the staircase, picked up their song.
"It's been getting so hard
living with the things you do to me
My dreams are getting so strange
I'd like to tell you everything I see"
The band was shadowy in the smoke, longhaired and almost out-of-this-time, but they sang with feeling. Near them was a very very dark table, with a shadowy figure sitting there. Skip only took a glance. If whomever was there was more frightening than the rest of this crew, maybe better ignore the fucker?
Sam interrupted the band, though. "Whatever you say. Where the band is, that's the stage, sometimes we have some shows here... even if there isn't a show going on, somebody can tell you about some they've seen." Sam paused. His face seemed so expressive even if was terribly hard to see. "Of course tonight the past participants are mostly here...if you really want to know what's happened before you can find out. Just be sure you really want to know, boy. There are a lot of...people...here tonight that aren't here any other night at all."
All of a sudden Skip felt he really didn't want to look at this man at all. He wasn't sure he wanted to look at much of anything, unless it was one of those girls he'd noticed. There was a lot he'd noticed...a girl lying on the pool table, a man bent over her and what looked far too much like a knife playing up and down her body. A young girl, transparent, silvery dress and ice-blue eyes, walking down the stairs and moving into the arms of the terrifying redhead. A smile from the leather-dressed-babe that came from a dead-white but so lovely face that he very nearly walked to her no matter the results. But the man behind the bar, serving the whiskey, suddenly laughed and his eyes weren't green anymore. Skip wished to fuck they were.
"Oh, I see a man at the back
As a matter of fact his eyes are red as the sun
And a girl in the corner let no one ignore her
'Cause she thinks she's the passionate one"
Skip turned for the front door but somehow he ended up turned towards the table in the corner. There was the redhead, her companions gone except for the little girl, and he could tell it wasn't the dress that was transparent and suddenly seemingly without his feet moving he was there, at her table.
Amazingly he was glad to be there rather than behind her, where the shadow sat with the red eyes. It wasn't a man. No way to describe that. It just had red...eyes, or something vaguely resembling that. At least this, um, girl could be seen top to bottom.
The redhead leaned to the little silver girl. "I told you, if you want something tonight, you'd best stay in Sam's office. Understand?"
The answer was like ice-chill silvery bells through that too-white smile as the ice-blue eyes devoured him. "I understand...I hope he comes and sees me soon, I do..."
The redhead laughed. "Someone will, Chiya, you know. This party is a treat for you, now go upstairs..." And the girl was gone. Not walking upstairs. Just fucking gone.
Around them, the dancing began, and he wasn't sure whether the dancing or the motionlessness was worse.
"Oh, yeah, it was like lightning, everybody was frightening
And the music was soothing, and they all started grooving"
The redhead leaned her head very close to his. Her scent was odd, rosemary maybe, or something more chemical, but attractive nonetheless. He thought of old graveyards somehow, "Rosemary is for remembrance"...and then he quickly tried to forget as she spoke with a smoky, low voice. "Well, darlin', you know what you're into or you just wander in, huh?"
He really couldn't answer right then, the brown eyes were too large and too odd. "Well, you picked a nice drink. I could use a drink, too. Those brown eyes had a red flash to them, probably from the neon. So very much, maybe you'd give me one, huh?" At that he was enough of a Southern Gentleman to nod.
"Well I appreciate that Darlin', you can't know. But there's a lot goin' on here tonight, you might not want to stay..."
Again the band attracted his attention.
"Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah
And the man at the back said
Everyone attack and it turned into a ballroom blitz"
Suddenly he realized what he thought was dancing involved a lot of knives, claws and fangs. He didn't try to pretend they weren't real any-fucking-more. They were. Were-wolves or -cats, vampires. Maybe the undead, ghosts, psychopaths, everyone was here tonight. They all seemed to be enjoying themselves but fuck what was he doing here and how the hell was he going to get out?
"And the girl in the corner said
Boy, I wanna warn ya, it'll turn into a ballroom blitz
Ballroom blitz, ballroom blitz, ballroom blitz
Ballroom blitz"
The sinuous leathergirl joined the voluptuous redhead. "Verity, c'mon, this boy-"
"Oh Cheryl I know, I'm trying, but it isn't like this is someplace with an emergency exit." The two of them were on either side of them. Cheryl didn't disagree but she didn't seem to agree with Verity either.
The funny fucking thing was he wasn't sure that made him feel safe. Instead he felt very, very cold indeed, as if these girls were covered in ice, or ice inside perhaps. Now the dance, or fight, or whatever, was part something bloody and scary and partly something vaporous and even more scary.
He realized his IQ must be lower than most because he finally figured out that everyone there was dead. His redhead seemed to have lost some blood somehow. The lovely and longhaired leatherqueen had lost some internal organs near those perfect breasts. There was the drowned girl, and the beheaded girl, and the happy and swirling ghosts. The black thing probably just was death, he didn't want to know. The man behind the bar was in charge but God (or Gods it came to him) knew how; it just was.
"I'm reaching out for something
Touching nothing's all I ever do
Oh, I softly call you over
When you appear there's nothing left of you, aha"
Something about Verity and Cheryl seemed very very real and very very gone as well. As if their death had been so strong, so important that that they'd always exist, but that didn't make them any less dead. The dead were still fucking pulseless, whether they had embolisms or car accidents or suicides or were torn apart by their lovers.
He was suddenly sure that most of this crew tended towards the latter.
All of a sudden the black shape at the table behind raised up and everything very nearly stopped. Somehow Skip knew it was midnight. That didn't make him feel any fucking better. The redhead grinned, rubbed against him with a cold but fucking sexy body, like a snake, and watched. He could tell without looking that Sam was watching/Sam was at the table behind him. He didn't understand the paradox. He didn't really care. He wanted to live.
"Now the man in the back
Is ready to crack as he raises his hands to the sky
And the girl in the corner is ev'ryone's mourner
She could kill you with a wink of her eye"
He turned his face and squinted his eyes. If there was a wink there he didn't want to know it.
"Oh yeah, it was electric, so frightfully hectic
And the band started leaving, 'cause they all stopped breathing"
He didn't know if this place was here tonight or always here. He didn't know how it got this way. He did know it didn't really matter, it was time to go.
He remembered something about a way out near the stairs (oh yeah, the stairs the little baby ghost had come down) and he headed that way. He felt something, claws from the redhead or the leatherbeauty on his neck but he didn't give a fuck, he just ran like fuck.
"Oh yeah, it was like lightning, everybody was frightening
And the music was soothing, and they all started grooving"
He made it to the alley. The only thing he could see there was some fucking spooky house across the way, but he figured no one there would hurt him. Then he heard the almost-whisper behind him.
She had the silver-blue baby with her. The pretty thing looked hungry. So did the redhead. "You promised me a drink," she said. And licked those lips.
"It's it's a ballroom blitz, it's it's a ballroom blitz
It's a ballroom blitz, yeah; it's a ballroom blitz"