The Lankville Daily News

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.