The Lankville Daily News

By Ric Royer

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“And Mama was saying just last night,” said Myrna while filing her nails, “that she didn’t think this office was a proper place for a young girl wearing sweaters to work.  What with these undesirable people coming and going all day and you swearing at me all the time.”

“Shut up,” I said, thoughtlessly.

“No, sir.  She just didn’t think this was suitable at all.”  She put down the emery board.

“Shut up,” I said again.

She stared at me.

“Shut up,” I repeated.  I went into my office but came back out shortly thereafter and told her to shut up again even though she wasn’t talking.

Moments later, a man wearing a tiny tie burst in.  I had been pouring water on my typewriter for reasons unclear to me.

“You’ve got to help me Mr. Roysticks!  A man in a green mask just broke into my apartment and made off with an exceedingly valuable but very small statue of a lion.”

In unison, we huffed it down the three flights of stairs to the street.  Within moments, we pulled up outside the building.  It was a curious structure of indeterminate age.  Several of the lower floor windows had been boarded over with oddly-stained wood.  Yet, there was a doorman.  He held the elevator for us.

“I was just lying in bed reading the latest Dean T. Pibbs* novel, when suddenly I heard a loud clatter in the kitchen,” explained the little man, as the lift began its ascent.  “At first, I thought it might be the island maid who comes in every once in awhile.  But then the green-masked man appeared.  I screamed, I admit, in a girlish way but the man ignored me and made a beeline for the bureau where I keep the very small lion statue.  I can’t impart to you its value Mr. Roysticks, it’s priceless really.”

“We’ll settle it all out,” I assured him.  I knew we wouldn’t though.  I could feel it.  Plus, I had no idea what the hell was going on.

He opened the apartment door.  It was a comfortable but ascetic little place, three rooms painted in pale yellow with orange molding.  There was a framed poster of a cat on one wall.

“Well, perhaps you can find some clues, Mr. Roysters.”

I nosed around a bit and the little man didn’t follow me.  In the kitchen, I found a tin of saltines and began eating noisily.  When I thought enough time had passed, I came back out into the living room.  The little man was straightening the cat poster for reasons unclear.

“Nope.  Nothing.”  He looked disappointed.  “No question, this was a professional job.”

He began crying.  I was worried I might have to smack him around a bit but he got a handle on it.

“Well, OK,” he said.

“Oh, OK.”

“So, the little lion is…”

“It’s gone, right.  Forever.”

“OK.”

I left by the back stairs.

*Editor’s Note: Popular Lankville author of terrorist attack novels.

By Ric Royer

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For weeks, I had been receiving mysterious unsigned letters demanding exorbitant sums of money.  I paid no attention to them and continued eating daily at the mall food court.  Finally, however, the writer indicated that unless $10,000 were left in a lonely graveyard on a certain night, I would be murdered.  That’s when I did it.

I notified the L-Men.

The L-Men instructed me to do as directed, using a fake package (diapers) as a decoy.  I was then to conceal myself behind one of the gravestones.

That night, I dressed in an oversized white suit and a pink hat.  I made my way slowly to the desolate cemetery, pausing once to purchase an enormous economy pack of paper towels for no reason whatsoever.  Upon my arrival, I placed the decoy (diapers) by a stone that rested eerily upon a fog-enshrouded hill.  Then, I waited.

Shortly before midnight a car approached and stopped near the gates.  A sinister figure emerged from within and disappeared among the shadows of trees and shrubbery.  Suddenly the silence was broken by the booming voice of one of the hidden L-Men.  “STOP IT!  C’MON!” he shouted.  It was not commanding.  The figure continued its course towards the decoy.  Then: “C’MON.  JUST…STOP.”

The answer to this limp challenge was a barrage of shots from an automatic pistol followed by the crash of the L-Man’s service Colt.  Then silence again.

Considerable time seemed to pass.  They had taken the decoy, that was no doubt.  I followed the crushed, wet grass until I discovered the L-Men.  They were all dead.

“This is just ridiculous,” I said aloud.  The sun was coming up over the horizon.  I could see that the car was gone.

I made my way home.  Another letter was waiting for me.

By Ric Royer

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“I’m contemplating an expedition to the South Lankville Pole,” I said.  “I need a man like you along.”

I stared across the desk at Turps.  He blew a gigantic cloud of cigarette smoke at me.  The late afternoon sun made its way in thin shafts through the blinds.  I could hear the sounds of a beheading faintly in the distance and the murmur of automobile traffic.  There was a quality of lethargy in the air.

“You may have the Pole in your loins,” Turps finally commented, “but your loins are not in the Pole.”  He blew another gigantic smoke cloud my way.

“I aim to undertake this, with or without you.  You are well aware that I have mastered technique forty-four just as the Handbook says.”  I slammed a piece of paper down on the desk and turned away.  He stood up.

“Let’s go get the physicals.”  I knew I had him then.

Two hours later, a small man in a white lab coat was delicately fingering my testicles.  “Your gonads will need to be taped,” he kept saying.  I had no idea what he meant.  He stood up and began making notes on a clipboard as I hoisted my trousers.  “No, no,” he admonished.  “I need to paw at your testicles a little more.”  The process lasted hours.  When I emerged from the examining room, Turps was waiting for me.  He looked annoyed.

“What the hell took so long?  My physical lasted fifteen minutes”.

We walked outside.  A gray jeep whipped around a corner, slammed on its brakes and skidded to a stop before us.  “This is Carthill,” noted Turps.  “He’ll drive us to get hot dogs and then to the boats.”

We stopped at a nearby stand.

“Going to the Pole, huh?” said Carthill.  He was a good-looking blonde kid with a square jaw.

“What do you know about it?” I threatened.

“I know that there have only been two tries at it,” he responded, his mouth full of half-masticated hog.  “The first was in eighteen forty-something.  An utter failure.”

“That was the Little Anton Expedition,” Turps noted.

“Right, Little Anton.  What, nine-thousand dead, something like that?”

“I believe the count was 39,” Turps corrected.

“Yeah, right.  They never did find the ship.  Then they tried it again in the twenties with that islander explorer, what was it, Batts?”

“No, his name was Himmelthorn,” said Turps.

“Right,” said the kid.  He paused to throw up crisply into a box of little lamps.  “Himmelthorn got stuck in the ice about twenty miles offshore.  Never did even see land.  Not that there’s much land to see.  Nothing but fucking ice.  Himmelthorn, a-number one fuckhead if you ask me.”

“Yeah, well, no one’s asking you”.  Turps had to hold me back.  The kid had a smirk that I wanted to smack off his face or perhaps crease with an ax.  “Easy boy,” Turps added.

An hour later we were on our way to what I thought would be the South Pole.  But really, it was a long, long journey to a place beyond human ken.

To be continued.

By Ric Royer

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Time was passing quickly when I selected my donkey.  The sky, where it had been crimson only moments ago, had turned a dull slate grey and was moving quickly.  Momentarily, I stared at the perplexing mountains beyond.  There was something derelict about them.

It became suddenly yellow.  “What’s that donkey?  Why?” I asked, pointing into the hay-strewn mud shed.  The native, an ancient figure, began to count out currency.

“Are you going to sell me that donkey?  And what about the swords?”  But it was useless.  The figure continued his deliberate counting.  I ambled over to a machine that dispensed hats.

I came back.

“What about the donkey and the swords?”  He pointed to a barrel, covered in muslin.  It became slate grey again.  I selected two swords.  One had a delicately-engraved scabbard.

“Give me a little booklet on the Ardth Hordes.  Throw that in there.  Put it on the counter, old man.”  I was becoming pushy– it was impossible to tell whether night was coming.  I eyed again the monstrous, grotesque mountains.

He had interest only in the coins.  He took two sacks and immediately drained them.

The donkey was led out by a small boy.

That’s when I lit out for the Ardth Hordes and came upon the tongueless horror.

By The Great President of Hell (formerly Ric Royer)

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I had been sitting around the overheated, unfinished attic all morning before it finally hit me.

“Fuck it,” I said aloud. “I’ll go sit down by the water lillies.”

So, I packed up a jar of pickles, a baking sheet, some sticker albums and a transistor radio and headed down there in the loud, ancient pickup. The dust swirled all around me and the corn swayed listlessly in the heat. I passed only a strange, ragged hitchhiker near a crossroads and a cornfed woman, pitching dung into a rusty roadside barrel. I slammed on the brakes.

“I’m going to sit by the water lillies,” I announced.
She pulled off her straw hat. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. You better god damn believe it.” I tried to sound assured of my place in the world but inwardly I was crumbling.
She got in. We drove in silence.

We had to walk across a hilly field. “Where are the lillies? she asked.
I started sobbing. I could see it coming.

It was a vast, grey miasma, somehow ghoulish in appearance and it had enveloped the ridge beyond and was lurking slowly and eerily towards us. I screamed and dropped the burden but then reached down and saved the sticker books. I pushed the girl over into a basin and started running.

Hours later, I was safe inside a trailer. The interior was paneled in pleasing ersatz wood tones and the furniture was upholstered in a delightful gingham pattern. The glow of the overhead light was warm and safe. I removed the crumpled sticker books from my bag.

“You gonna work on those?” asked the drunken hayseed that had given me refuge.
“Yes. I want to so bad.”
“Well…I’ve got some TV trays. That might work.”
“Please. It’s so…I want them.”

The hayseed seemed to understand. He stumbled towards a closet and emerged with a battered TV tray. He unfolded the legs and crushed them into the carpet before me.

I set up the books.
“Gonna’ be a hell of a ride,” he said, still looking over me.

I nodded.  Then I removed a sticker from a virgin sheet and turned to the first page.

By The Great President of Hell (formerly Ric Royer)

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By The Great President of Hell (formerly Ric Royer)

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It was a lovely morning in Outer Lankville.

By The Great President of Hell (formerly Ric Royer)

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The last town was the birthplace of a famous Lankville politician– there was a little log cabin with an historical marker out front. I parked along the side and found a tour guide.

“What the fuck’s up?” I asked, threateningly. “What the fuck’s this shit all about?”

He wouldn’t answer me so I pushed him aside and took a free fold-up map.

You passed out of town and then up a steep incline that led into the province game area– I could hear errant gunshots all around me and there were hunters in orange hats dead all along the road. I passed by quickly. When I finally got to the summit, the car died– there was a sudden explosion and the hood blew clean off. It was growing dark.

“Better find a barn to sleep in,” I thought. In the near-darkness, I finally located an abandoned structure on the opposite end of a dead meadow. I made my way towards it.

The doors were thrown open in a frank way and the roof was nearly gone. The entire shelter leaned heavily to the left. Someone had spray-painted THE END IS NEAR (YES!) on the side.

I fell asleep in some hay. I had a strange sequence of dreams in which ordinary, everyday objects were presented to me in a highly ceremonial manner. When I woke up, I was clear on the other side of the barn and I had thrashed my pants off.

It was dawn. A heavy storm was overhead– thick, black clouds enveloped the mountain and a strong wind blew through the thick cavities in the decaying structure. And then, coming through the meadow, I saw them. Mountain zombies. The worst sort of zombie.

I ran around back. Someone had left a pile of large, flat baking sheets with a long, explanatory sign. “These baking sheets are too large for a conventional oven,” it read. “They are of little use to me or anyone else in this area. Therefore, we are leaving them here near this barn because that’s what it says to do with them in the long, instructional manual. To leave them near a barn. I don’t know why it says…” I stopped reading– it was insensate. But I knew the sheets would make useful sleds.

And that’s how I got off Zombie Mountain.

By Ric Royer

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Before I can even begin to tell you about the Demon Night, I need to take you back to 1981.

It was in that year, some time around Thanksgiving, that I was placed in a leather fringed onesie and taken to see Dentist Spangles.  There was an interminable wait in a darkened, windowless room– the only entertainment made available were several tattered copies of Jocular Sentences for Children and these I took up greedily.  My father sat staring at his knees as was his habit and after some time he disappeared behind a frosted glass door and spoke testily with a receptionist.

An intercom clicked on and general announcements were made.  My father had returned by then and I saw him quickly place a printed index card into his jacket pocket.  I saw clearly that it said “DEMON NIGHT”.  This I never forgot.

Finally, Dentist Spangles appeared.   “Come back Mr. Royspacks,” he said in an accent that was vaguely foreign.  “It’s Royer,” my father corrected.  “I have this card.  I was supposed to present it to you.”  Dentist Spangles took the card and I noticed that his eyebrows suddenly rose with alarm.  “This case,” he sputtered.  “This case is beyond me.  I’m sorry Mr. Roypacks.”

My father dropped his head, deflated.  And that was it.  We left the building quietly and we never returned.

Two nights ago, I was in an industrial arts class at the Home, fucking around with a pneumatic temperature-controlled glue gun and some concrete bonding agent when I suddenly noticed him. He was sitting alone behind a drill press, fingering a senseless electronic device of his own creation.  It was Dentist Spangles.

He had aged terribly and had deep, dark circles beneath both eyes.  It was also apparent that, at some point, he had been struck by an axe– a long scar was now visible.  “Stay here,” I said to the glue gun and surreptitiously made my way across the vast, ill-lit room.

He saw me coming. And although he did not look up, he addressed me as soon as I was within earshot.

“You will have the Demon Night. I know you have not yet had it. It’s coming. Stay away from me.”

I decided to play it cool. “I don’t know what you’re talking about asshole but I see that you’re new here and I hate all new things. Let’s go fight in a distant room full of large containers of cooking materials, knocking over several shelving units as we do so.”

“I will not,” he responded after a long period of tense silence. “You must stay away from me. I cannot abide by the Demon Night.”

I hassled him for awhile longer, calling him all sorts of foul names but nothing gave. Finally, I left him alone and returned to my cell.

The Demon Night came shortly after I fell into slumber. It began with an expeditious shriek from very close by and then a sudden invasion. My few possessions were taken up in the fury and I was lifted from my bed. There were a diabolical series of lights and then the commencement of a rhythmic wail that seemed to come from all directions and yet from no direction. And this continued unabated throughout the night; there was nothing to do but succumb to it.

And when I awoke it was morning. My chair had been mangled– what remained had been placed directly against my thin mattress– just inches from my face. A card had been placed on its contorted surface. It, like the chair, was bruised and battered but its message could still be plainly discerned. And it read “DEMON NIGHT”.

I never saw Dentist Spangles again.