The Con Season: A Novel of Survival Horror Page 10

  Can you believe he’s really here? he imagined he could read their thoughts.

  No, he really couldn’t believe it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was high noon above the stage at the center of camp and the audience looked…moist.

  Actually, it was maybe twenty minutes after noon. The presentation had to be delayed to allow some campers to sign in and find a seat, but still the audience was damp.

  There weren’t many of them, forty, fifty at the most, but still the audience was a sea of white masks, oily hair, and pink forearms. The palest among them were already starting to redden up in the sun. Clarissa very much doubted any of these basement dwellers had the foresight to pack sun block.

  There were no seats, but most of the audience was sitting anyway, crossing their legs and creating rows through sheer herd instinct. Those toward the back of the gathering chose to stand, towering above the groundlings. The ones standing with crossed arms were the most “alpha” looking of the attendees, the horror fans who were also weekend MMA competitors. Yes, there were in-shape nerds, if back alley crossfit and protein powder could be called fit.

  “And finally, a woman who truly needs no introduction, but I’m going to give one anyway, Clarissa Lee, star of Death Birth, The Rememberer, Nebula Journey, and, my favorite: Flag Day!”

  There was no curtain to walk through, so Clarissa stood by the side of the stage and waited for the fanfare to begin.

  Having the event take place outdoors combined with the smaller size of the crowd meant that the applause was muted, at best. There were no hoots, only clammy hands colliding against one another.

  Looking out at the masked faces, it was hard for Clarissa to tell if they were unenthusiastic or merely on the verge of heatstroke. She gave a slight bow before taking the fourth seat on the stage. There were two folding tables pushed together so the panelists had somewhere to lean and three microphones in small table stands. The remainder of the six seats had been grouped three and two to give the illusion that the fourth seat was the center of the panel.

  Teeks was holding his own microphone. He’d already called the rest of her co-stars onto the stage and they’d taken up their places behind their cardboard nametags, each tag listing two credits, with Clarissa getting a whopping three. For someone who’d guaranteed them a unique convention experience, the first official event of Blood Camp Con was feeling awfully familiar. Clarissa had sat on hundreds of similar panels, over the years.

  “Now, I know what you’re thinking: you’ve seen this stuff before,” Teeks said to the audience, miraculously guessing exactly what Clarissa had been thinking. “Or stuff like it. And while this is a fantastic lineup, it’s not like you haven’t met some of these people before, gotten their autographs even. This isn’t our first rodeo, horrorhounds, am I right?” He paused for some kind of audience callback or laughter, but either they were stroking out or were still beholden to the no talking rule.

  Teeks looked troubled, then snapped his fingers into the microphone and pointed to his temple to indicate that he’d just had an epiphany.

  “I should clarify something: you can cheer and laugh and clap now. Even if you’ve got the mask on. This is a safe zone,” he said, thinking of something. “And those front two rows?” Teeks said with a motivational speaker’s conspiratorial chutzpah: “That is the splash zone. So are you ready for this weekend campers?”

  There was a halfhearted cheer. With nothing specific to cheer at, that was to be expected, but Clarissa did see a few attendees lifting their masks, mopping their sweaty chins off on their black T-shirts.

  “Hell yeah, Blood Camp Con!” Kimberly shouted, standing up toward the back of the mostly seated crowd, clapping. That did nothing to get them excited. If anything it had a dampening effect.

  From Clarissa’s vantage, so far this was a disaster.

  Clarissa didn’t have kids, but she’d been to enough dinner parties and barbecues to be familiar with the phenomenon of children wanting to “put on a show” for the adult guests. It was at times cute, but mostly Clarissa found the practice tiresome. Maybe it made her a bitter divorcée, but she didn’t want to have to be polite and watch kids dance around, attempt a skit, and have none of their material land. The Blood Camp Con opening ceremonies were in the ballpark of that squirmy feeling, although Michael Teeks was a forty-plus-year-old man who’d spent tens of thousands of dollars to ‘put on’ his ‘show.’

  Everything about this presentation felt a little Neverland Ranch, and the embarrassment centers of Clarissa’s brain twitched accordingly. She didn’t particularly like the man, but she couldn’t help but pity him.

  “Now you’ve all signed off on your releases. And I see a lot of black T-shirts out there, which makes me think that you’ve read the rules completely, are in compliance of them, and are ready to have a fun weekend. So we don’t need to get bogged down with going back over any of that, but the thing is,” Teeks paused, standing at one corner of the stage, almost at the lip, and looking down the line of panelists.

  Tamara Reyes was closest to him, then Butinelli, then Dame Margery, then Clarissa herself, then Marcus Lang, with Gina Bright providing the cap on the end. Gina checked her phone and looked confused at something she was reading onscreen. Her expression told everyone that she couldn’t be bothered to listen to Teeks while something so puzzling was happening on her phone. A drunk game of Candy Crush? Clarissa thought.

  As she looked back over the guests, it didn’t escape Clarissa that the arrangement was boy-girl. Nice one, Teeks. Very symmetrical.

  “Our guests haven’t been told the whole story.” He laughed to himself, his affectation suddenly more southern gentleman, an amiable lay preacher. Clarissa felt her ears perk up at the mention of another surprise. “They’ve been told that they’re going to have to do some acting this weekend. But they also need to know that there’s going to be some cardio involved, too.”

  The crowd gave a gentle laugh in response. The laugh was low but more genuine than any of their feedback had been up to this point.

  “When you arrived you were asked to fill out an elimination ballot,” Teeks said, continuing to address his campers, “and I hope you turned that in to the lovely Kimberly when you were asked, because after this presentation is finished we will not be accepting them.”

  Teeks waved to Kimberly and she gave him a thumbs-up. Elimination ballot?

  Clarissa was beginning to sweat, and not just from the heat, but at the mere mention of physical activity. Maybe she hadn’t been that far off with her assessment of a field day. She tried to imagine what the splatterpunk version of a potato sack race would look like. But more importantly she began thinking of the most gracious way she could bow out before having to participate. What were they going to do? Demand that she gave her advance back? She was here and that should have been enough.

  “And the guests of honor also don’t know that there is one more special someone joining the camp this weekend,” there was a hush over the crowd that was different from the silence that preceded it, and even Clarissa found herself hanging on Teeks’ speech. “We promised you something unique, something revolutionary when we took your hard-earned money. And, friends: we intend to deliver.”

  Clarissa scanned the crowd again, wondering why the actors even had mics in front of them if this guy was just going to keep talking. But a curious shift had happened with the audience, the ones cross-legged on the grass and dirt were leaning forward and the ones standing had begun a subtle push in, the press of an outside concert crowd wanting to get closer to the music.

  “We are creating a new icon here. A new legend of terror,” Teeks said.

  One audience member couldn’t help himself, he didn’t speak, per se, but he let out an “ohhhhh” and pointed to the stage, his finger just a hair away from pointing at Tamara Reyes, indicating the area above her.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you’ve placed your bets, because The Fallen One has arrived at the first annual
Blood Camp Con!”

  Clarissa was able trace the line back from the audience member’s finger and lean over the table just in time to see the large gloved hand close over Tamara Reyes’ chin and pull her face up to the sky.

  Someone had snuck onto the stage without them noticing, and that someone was now attacking the talent.

  The girl let out a scream, a perfect scream. Jeez, maybe there was a basis for her precocious cult of fans. Some TV guest spots and only one feature film under her belt but still Reyes had pipes and could summon it cold, with no rehearsal. Clarissa was impressed, one scream queen to another.

  Above Tammy stood “The Fallen One,” and Clarissa’s first reaction to him was:

  Well, that’s more like it. That looks professional.

  The big man’s costume was retro but fresh. Although the more she looked at it, the more she thought it was expensive-looking but maybe too ludicrous to “read” as menacing in the real world and in the harsh noontime sun. The character would look great on film, though. The right director and editor could make any monster look good. On screen, you could hide it a bit more, control the points of focus, layer a character behind shadows.

  Design-wise, The Fallen One was a heavy metal Jason Voorhees. He was a Cenobite by way of a Marvel superhero. The costume featured a weathered leather jacket that had dark, bony protrusions tearing through it at the elbows and shoulders. The big man wore a stylized demon-head mask that left a space for the actor’s mouth and chin. It was a window of exposed skin that, while reminiscent of Batman’s cowl, told the audience: yes, The Fallen One is supposed to be wearing a mask, not an actual demon.

  The action figures would sell themselves.

  And before Clarissa could even register that The Fallen One was brandishing a large chrome knife, he’d begun to run it across Tamara’s waiting throat.

  “What the fuck?” Ivan Butinelli asked no one in particular, leaning forward and blocking Clarissa’s view of most of what was going on between Tamara and The Fallen One.

  But that was fine, because Clarissa’s eyes had followed the first trickle of blood as it became a foot-pumped geyser and sprayed out into the waiting crowd.

  Oh. He’d been serious about the splash zone thing...

  The first row of upturned faces transformed from white to red as the first pump hit them and then to pink as the splatter began to run off the slick plastic of the masks.

  Everyone at the table pushed back their seats and lifted their arms away from the tabletop as the blood began to pool, the contours of the plastic tablecloth forming rivers and tributaries, but nobody stood up or tried to interfere with The Fallen One.

  Maybe because they were all actors and had been around this kind of thing time and again: they knew that red food coloring left a terrible stain and that CKaro Syrup quickly became sticky in the sun.

  Or maybe it was because Tamara Reyes was better at screaming than she was at acting.

  The girl kept her struggling and screaming going way too long after she should have quit and played dead. Theoretically, her vocal cords would have been severed, if the knife had gone as deep as it looked like it’d gone.

  The Fallen One migrated his hand from Tammy’s chin to the back of her neck and was pressing her face down onto the table while he continued to saw at her throat.

  It was an odd memory to have at the moment, but Clarissa couldn’t help but think of the game “Heads Down, Seven Up”. Did elementary school kids still play that? The game was played by having a classroom of kids shutting their eyes and putting their heads down on their desks. Seven other students circulated throughout the room and selected their prey by pushing down the raised thumbs. The object of the game was to guess who chose you, if you were chosen.

  It was an easy game to cheat at, of course. You needed to wrap your arms around your face but keep your eyes open to stare at the floor. When you got picked, you knew what kind of shoes your attacker was wearing.

  Even with her head down, Tamara Reyes wasn’t fooling anyone. If she had played “Heads Up, Seven Up” in school then she had probably been a cheater. And not a particularly subtle one. She was laughing as the tubing affixed to the latex prosthetic covering her neck started to sputter and run on empty. The mechanism shot out a mist of pink air in a dry whoopie cushion sound once its blood reserves were depleted.

  Maybe Teeks saw or heard the actress’ laughter, maybe he didn’t, but he did speak up.

  “Honored guests? Do you remember what I said about cardio?” He looked to the crowd. Most of them were standing at this point, their cheers much more authentic, then turned his attention back to the panel: “You all should be running right now. Or you’ll be next.”

  Clarissa looked to Marcus Lang who then looked to Gina Bright. At least the other woman’s phone was stowed away now, but she needed to stand up and get off the end of the stage if they were going to be able to flee The Fallen One the way that management wanted them too.

  “Oh, okay,” Bright said, nearly tripping over her own folding chair, but getting it together enough to run down the stairs. Clarissa hadn’t seen her take a drink during the panel, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been sneaky about the liquor she was keeping on her person. Or she’d snuck enough into her juice this morning.

  It took the craziness surrounding them for Clarissa to pinpoint the exact reason she was uncomfortable palling around with Gina Bright. The (slightly) younger woman wasn’t merely a “Clarissa Lee knock-off” as she wanted to think. No, Gina Bright was her. Bright was an alternate universe, through the looking glass, version of Clarissa Lee.

  What if her divorce to Boyd Haight had come at a slightly different time in her life? Or what if Toby hadn’t constantly been at her side at parties, asking how much she’d had to drink every time she returned to the bar?

  Clarissa could have been Gina. And she could still be Margery, if she let herself get bitter enough. This wasn’t a panel of experts, it was a gathering of Charles Dickens ghosts meant to scare Clarissa straight.

  Gina climbed down the steps at the end of the stage and the rest of them followed. Margery was the only one of them who made no attempt to emote fear.

  Teeks continued: “That’s it, get out of here. I have no control over what The Fallen One does. Who would have thought that the young Ms. Reyes wouldn’t have been our final girl?”

  Clarissa and the rest of the group jogged to the path leading up to the cabins and stopped.

  “What do we do now?” she asked her fellow guests.

  “They could have given us a little direction,” Butinelli said, frowning down at his shirt. “And a little warning. This is silk fer Christsake. Fucking ruined.”

  On stage, The Fallen One took his hands off Tammy and the actor playing him let out a roar and beat his empty hand against his chest, using the other to hold the knife aloft in a movie poster pose: Star Wars, Conan the Barbarian, take your pick of any poster featuring a magic sword and raised hands.

  “The Fallen One, everybody. He’ll be your slasher for the weekend,” Teeks, said, applauding against the base of the microphone, causing noisy bursts of feedback.

  There was a brief ovation and then Tamara Reyes also stood up and took a bow.

  “Well, you’re dead Ms. Reyes, but okay,” Teeks said, his voice blurring the line between pretend annoyance and real annoyance. “And Tamara Reyes, folks. Ms. Reyes will be taking photos in the mess hall after we’re through here. The same goes for all the guests who make it onto the elimination ballot.”

  The organizer of Blood Camp Con looked over to where Clarissa and the rest of the group were standing, then into the audience. “Kimberly, take care of them, please.” He pointed to the clump of out-of-work actors.

  Kimberly pushed through the crowd of standing fans. Before she was clear, she nearly tripped over backpack guy’s pack, which he still hadn’t stashed in his cabin, but was instead using as a seat. Kimberly jogged over to them while the action on stage waited, then resumed.


  “Now,” Teeks continued talking to the crowd, “before we get to the grub, let’s do a quick rundown of what the rest of the weekend will look like…”

  “I know this is a surprise,” Kimberly said in a hushed voice, slightly out of breath from her cheering and running, but even more chipper than she’d been thus far. Which didn’t seem possible. “But you are being paid to act. Try to think of the weekend like a big game of hide and seek or capture the flag. I’m not supposed to tell you where to go, but you do need to leave this area,” she waited a beat and then added: “Please.”

  Clarissa looked to the rest of the group, Butinelli had been the one closest to Tamara when her “death” had come and he looked it. He’d tried to rub away the mist of fake blood on the side of his face, but his efforts had only succeeded in turning half his face rouge.

  Marcus Lang was smiling, either a genuine smile or he was polite enough and a good enough actor to pull off sincerity.

  Kimberly used both hands to shoo them away and they went, running to the safety of their cabins.

  Meanwhile, on stage, Teeks kept talking.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Teeks’ microphone was the only one of the four hooked into the loudspeakers.

  Keith watched on the monitor as the man ran through a list of bogus events and rules. Even on the small, low-resolution screen, he could see Teeks’ expression change as he looked off stage. He was making all of this up, killing time until something happened off screen.

  Once the celebs had been chased away, Teeks dropped his mic. Keith could hear him talk through the computer speakers. The table mics ended up being more than sensitive enough to pick up his unamplified voice.

  “Okay, they’re gone. That’s good. Now for a real show!”

  There was a spattering of laughter, some of it uneasy and some of it striking Keith as too easy.

  With that cue, Rory, as The Fallen One, latched onto Tamara Reyes. He caught the girl where the base of her skull met her spine and lifted the actress off her feet. It was amazing to watch an act of physical strength like that, knowing that there was no wire team on the other side of the stage helping augment the move. There were no special effects here.