The Con Season: A Novel of Survival Horror Read online

  “Very funny guys, but I’m not new to this you realize? I can’t really be scared by this stuff, ya know?”

  “It’s, we’re…” the kid carrying the pack started to say, his shoulders slumping. As he spoke one of the others shushed him, holding up a single finger to his angled plastic lips.

  “Come on, guys. It hasn’t even started yet,” the kid with the backpack said to the other two. His voice was slightly muffled by the mask but he still spoke with an anxious teenager’s rasp. He turned his attention back to Clarissa. “We’re not supposed to talk to the celebrities. They gave us a whole lecture about it.”

  He made a frustrated groan and hooked a thumb under the bottom of his mask, stretching out the elastic string and giving his chin room to move. “Actually, we’re not supposed to talk at all when we’re wearing the masks,” he said. “They said it’s supposed to help with the immersion.”

  One of the other two men, still silent, crossed his arms and the other put his fists to his hips. They were staring daggers at the boy who’d spoken.

  “Oh, okay. Makes, uh,” she said, fighting to sound convincing, “some kind of sense.”

  She walked down the dock to shore, watching as the two closest to her alternated between watching her getting closer and continuing their angry stare-down at the kid with the backpack. The backpack and no willpower, apparently.

  When one of them turned she could see that he had a paper number pinned to the back of his shirt, the kind runners in a marathon get. So they could be identified by the con’s organizers? Having your attendees be completely anonymous sounded like a recipe for disaster to Clarissa. Or were the numbers for when the field day games began? She was still unclear what exactly was going to go on this weekend. Would there be three-legged races and balancing eggs on spoons?

  In addition to the number, all three wore the same mask, a set of colored plastic dog tags that must have been their lanyards for the con, and were identically dressed in jeans and plain black T-shirts.

  It may have been October, but today was too warm to be in jeans. The ensemble may have been a uniform, but even if it wasn’t, outside of camouflage cargo shorts the wardrobe of most con-goers was limited. That the T-shirts were plain, unadorned by gory images or reproduced poster art made Clarissa think that when attendees signed up for Blood Camp Con they were sent some kind of dress code. Business casual, no open-toed shoes, a loaner serial killer mask can be provided upon request.

  The masks, the dance-troupe-esque uniforms for the audience, it reminded Clarissa of a show she’d seen on a trip to New York.

  Sleep No More was as much a scene for Manhattan’s hot young things as it was an off-Broadway show. An in-name-only “retelling” of Macbeth, the show was housed in a multi-level set designed to look like a 1920s hotel. The audience wore masks and were free to roam around the hotel grounds, following certain actors and storylines as the performers engaged in wordless dance/acting.

  The show had been impressive, slick and sexy with just the right amount of pretentiousness to justify the ticket price. But even hiding her face behind a plastic Eyes Wide Shut mask, Clarissa had felt out of place among the drunken kids. The twenty and thirty somethings who comprised the audience were all marketing experts or “social media gurus” blowing off steam after a long not-really-work week.

  Or maybe Clarissa would have had more fun if Toby hadn’t insisted on coming along, wheezing into his mask after realizing that following the play’s action required climbing a lot of stairs.

  “Well, as you were then. Don’t let me get you in trouble,” Clarissa said to the kid with the backpack who’d helped her out by speaking up.

  He just bowed his head to her as she passed, getting back into character by silently reaffixing his mask.

  The Three John Carpenter Amigos looked a bit silly in the broad daylight of late morning.

  All of them left the beach when she did, following along as she joined the path back to camp and her cabin. She could hear their footfalls on the dirt and gravel behind her.

  Okay. Maybe she was a professional at being stalked, but also maybe it was a bit unnerving, daylight or no.

  Clarissa was used to conventions and overzealous fans that toed the line between enthusiast and stalker, but at those other cons there had always been plenty of witnesses and teams of security. At some of the bigger cons, promoters even had gone so far as assigning Clarissa a bodyguard detail of volunteers to walk her to and from her table and hotel room.

  Here, out in the woods, she had none of that. The only thing she could rely on was that the expense of the event and seemingly strict rule set would keep her safe and keep the attendees well-behaved. Who knows how much they paid per ticket? Nobody was going to want to get thrown out on the first day. It would need to be Sunday that she worried about.

  There was a slight mechanical whir somewhere above her and Clarissa scanned the tree line, spotting the tinted glass globe of a security camera. And there was that to keep her safe: she was being watched over by…someone. She’d only met Kimberly and Michael Teeks so far, but surely there were some more staff members she hadn’t yet met working behind the scenes.

  Her posse of observers grew as she passed through the center of camp, a few masked attendees who’d been milling around realizing that: yo, that’s Clarissa Lee.

  Antithetical as it seemed, it became easier to ignore them the more followers she gained and she stopped worrying entirely when the number of men trailing behind her topped out at seven.

  In the distance, at the end of the packed-dirt turnaround that they’d driven in on, Kimberly had a card table set up under the camp’s sign. Atop the table were stacks of white masks, piles of brochures, and a few boxes of ephemera.

  At the side of the road, walking into camp, was a spotty procession of new attendees. All of them were wearing their jeans and plain black shirts, but none of them possessing a white mask yet. There were two girls in this group walking in, but outside of adding some gender diversity, their attire was identical to the males.

  It wasn’t even a full derisive joke, just the thesis that wormed its way into Clarissa’s mind: something about how the two girls proved that being a horror fan was a learned trait, not an inherited one, because how could they make more with so few females? Eh, not her best.

  Clarissa hadn’t been paying close attention as Kimberly drove them in, but she couldn’t remember seeing a parking lot further down that road, and it didn’t seem plausible that Blood Camp Con was requiring its attendees to walk what had to be miles back from the main road.

  As Clarissa watched, a school bus appeared at the end of the drive. It was a short bus, not one of the L.A. behemoths where every single kid seemed to be standing and yelling out the window when you passed them on the road. Probably couldn’t hold more than twenty kids.

  A couple dozen attendees filed off the bus and formed a line behind Kimberly’s card table to get their goodies. Some of them looked in Clarissa’s direction and pointed, but mostly they were fixated on signing in and receiving their masks, which they quickly donned.

  Before Kimberly handed any of these materials over, she used a popsicle stick to poke around in everyone’s overnight bags. It was the way some concert venues will check purses and backpacks under the auspices of security, but what they’re really doing is making sure you aren’t smuggling in your own bottle of water or package of Peanut M&Ms. Clarissa thought of the kid with the comically large backpack and how much Kimberly must have loved checking through that for any banned items.

  Digging into her shorts pocket caused the fabric to agitate her skin and Clarissa realized she may have acquired a sunburn in October. There was nothing to be done about it now, she thought, and followed through with taking out her phone to check the time.

  The opening ceremonies were scheduled to begin in fifteen minutes.

  Not enough time to shower and barely enough time to throw on a new shirt and do her makeup.

  While she had her phone
out, she didn’t notice that her reception had disappeared.

  *

  It was only a slight rules violation. But Keith had to report it.

  Definitely he had to report it. For sure. It could be a test. Somehow they would know if he didn’t report it.

  There was a clipboard to his right with a ballpoint pen attached to it by a bank chain. He checked the monitor and zoomed in with the trackball to make sure he had the camper’s number correct. The guy had pinned his paper number to the canvas of his large backpack. Carrying the bag around seemed like a waste of energy when he could have just dropped it off at his bunk first. Who knows, if he’d stopped at his bunk first he probably wouldn’t have made the violation in the first place.

  There was no accounting for the decisions of an excitable young obsessive. As lame as it sounded: back in high school, Keith had never once visited his locker. It wasn’t that he couldn’t remember the combination or anything. He just liked keeping all of his books and assignments with him, in his Jansport. The extra strain on his lower back was a small price to pay for feeling as though he was ready for anything.

  Oh well.

  Keith copied down the kid’s number, wincing against the raised flesh of the welt on his hand. The effort of messing up his face in response to his hand caused his nose to throb, a pain that radiated back to the rest of his skull, making the flesh of his ears feel hot. It was time to take more Advil.

  Keith wrote: “Talking to CL” in the column next to the camper’s number and returned the pen to its holster at the top of the metal clip.

  “You got one already,” Teeks said from behind him.

  Either Michael Teeks was getting better at entering rooms or Keith’s scabs had again covered his ear holes completely.

  “Yes, I wrote down the number and type of infraction just like you asked,” Keith said, finding his voice to talk to Teeks easier than he did with Rory, but not by much.

  “Alright, thank you. Everything else good? Sound on the table mics is coming through clear?”

  “Yes, Kimberly tested them earlier, the levels should be fine.”

  “Perfect! All you’ve got to do is keep everything in frame and hit Rory on the walkie when you get my signal. Everything else should be set it and forget it.”

  “I…um,” Keith started, wanting to make a request but unsure how to address Teeks for maximum servility. Sir? Mr. Teeks?

  He didn’t get to finish the thought.

  “And, before we go any further, let me just say, Lumbra: you are doing excellent work so far. I know that Rory may... well I know that he may have an odd way of showing it, sometimes, but we’re so happy to have you as part of the team.”

  This encouragement felt suspicious, but Keith wasn’t sure quite why. He had done a good job in citing his first infraction. And Teeks was never the disciplinarian. The kind words emboldened him and he decided to spit it out: “Um, thank you. Mr. Teeks. But could I ask—”

  “Ask away,” Teeks said, not letting Keith finish. The ease of Teeks’ manner made Keith almost certain that his boss knew what he was going to request and had decided to deny it ahead of the question being posed.

  “Can I have some more Advil? My hand,” Keith said, holding up where Rory had lashed him with the cable last night. It wasn’t really his hand that hurt the worst, but Teeks needed Keith’s hands to work the keyboard and mouse. “It’s hard to, uh,” he moved his finger in a clicking motion and made a show of wincing against the pain.

  “Oh sure,” Teeks said in a voice that said: well duhhhh, I’m so forgetful. He tapped his shirt pocket and the jingle of the pills inside their bottle hit Keith’s blocked up ears like a cooling rain on a hot day.

  Teeks squeezed open the child safety cap and rolled a single pill out into Keith’s waiting, injured, hand.

  The beige pill—small and round, the store’s generic ibuprofen—looked like nothing in his palm.

  “Can I maybe have two?” Keith asked, and felt the next words escape without thinking: “They’re a very small dosage.”

  “Oh. Our first aid’s not good enough for you, Mr. Goldman?” Teeks asked, then made to reach out for the lonely pill.

  Keith closed his hand and scooped it into his mouth before even this tiniest of reliefs could be taken away from him.

  “No no, it’s enough,” he said, trying to swallow the pill at the same time and almost coughing it back up.

  When he was finished, Teeks spoke. “The pain keeps you sharp, Keith. Use it to do your job, do it well, and then we’ll talk about whether or not you get any more of these.” Teeks shook the bottle before returning it to his pocket. “Doesn’t sound like there’s many left, does it?”

  Keith shook his head, unwilling to imagine how bad things would get if and when they did run out.

  “Anyway. I’ve got to get out there. Good luck.”

  Keith swallowed again and still felt the pill. Without water it was stuck halfway down his throat.

  “Oh and we should switch this on before we forget,” Teeks said, leaning over Keith and turning the knob on the long box with the police antenna. It was a small motion on Teeks’ part, but the man was demonstrating that he knew exactly what button presses would make the complicated console do what he needed it to do. Teeks didn’t want to, but he could get along just fine without Keith Lumbra.

  And that switch meant that any cell phone signal on campus should now be jammed.

  Hopefully.

  If Keith did his job right.

  *

  “Look, yeah, we all love the movie, but I can’t take a day out of my schedule to talk about it, on camera, for free,” Marcus said into his phone. “This is my living we’re talking about here.”

  This was beginning to feel like a waste. They were negotiating themselves around in circles.

  The DVD market had been dying for years and, no matter what the nerd in your life told you: Blu-Ray was never going to take off in the same culture-shifting way. This meant that the major studios weren’t dropping money on producing DVD extra features, commentaries, documentaries, like they used to, if at all. But in the last few years, several smaller distributors had moved in to take up the mantle and put out boutique re-issues of older titles. How these companies operated was to license limited home video rights from studios who could care less about a movie like Town of Darkness, which wasn’t worth the effort of packaging and trying to sell to cable or streaming companies.

  The distributors putting out these discs were small, so, while they would love to get as much of the film’s still-living talent to talk about their experiences on camera (spouting bullshit like: “You wouldn’t believe how much fun set was!”, “He’s a visionary!”, and “Yes, we all still keep in touch!”), these small companies weren’t normally willing or able to pay for it.

  But, in Marcus’ experience, they always offered participants some kind of honorarium for taking the time. That was, they offered the money eventually, if you kept stonewalling them and happened to be the star of the movie.

  “And I understand your position,” Marcus said, the heat of the sun on the tar-shingled roof of the cabin beginning to take its toll inside the small room. His tongue was drying up in his mouth and he kept looking at his watch. He could go for more of that grapefruit juice.

  This phone call had taken longer than he’d anticipated and he was going to be expected at the opening ceremonies soon. “Believe me, I do feel for you, Cheryl, but I at least need to get beer money out of this. Don’t say yes or no yet, just tell your team that’s the way it’s going to have to be for me.”

  There was a quiet on the other end of the line that was more absolute than the silent treatment.

  “Hello? Cheryl?” Marcus asked into the phone.

  There was no response. Did he just get hung up on by someone who had started out their conversation by asking him a huge favor?

  He took the phone from his ear, stared at the screen, and tried redialing. Instead of a ringtone, he received an er
ror message. Not low signal strength, but no signal at all.

  Pacing between the bunks, going from Butinelli’s side of the cabin to his own, Marcus caught a glimmer of movement at the window over the door.

  “Can I help you?” he asked the masked figure that had his hand cupped over the glass. The man was peering in, using his hand to shield against glare like Marcus was some kind of peepshow performer.

  The masked man didn’t answer.

  “Nobody wants to talk to me,” Marcus grumbled to himself, returning the phone to his pocket and realizing that, come to think of it, the broken connection could work in his favor. Maybe by the time Cheryl from Graveside Productions was able to get back in touch, she’d be offering him a nice participation bonus in the Town of Darkness Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition Blu-Ray.

  With the phone in his pocket and breakfast in his stomach, he was feeling good. Good enough that he wasn’t going to take any shit from a creepy fan. It may have been twenty-five years since he was Sheriff Powers, but he was able to turn on his demon-killing Walking Tall shtick when he needed to.

  “You don’t want to talk, that’s fine,” he said to the man at the window and strode to the door. He stepped harder than he needed to and the heat-expanded boards of the cabin creaked under his feet.

  As expected, the peeper retreated from his post.

  Marcus opened the door, aiding his elbow with the end of his shoe, causing it to swing wide and slam against the frame.

  The guy hadn’t been alone. There were five more lookie-loos outside the cabin, only the one had been brave enough to climb up and watch at the window. They flinched as a group when the door slammed, but, with an unspoken “safety in numbers” mentality they stood their ground.

  Eh, what did it matter if they’d made it hard for him to concentrate on business. He was on their time now, technically, and felt ready to head to the opening ceremonies.

  Only two more days of this shit, Marcus told himself. He shook his head at the gaggle of silent nerds watching him, one of them poking one of the others in the ribs and gesticulating.