Creak, creak, creak
The repetitive sound echoes in an expansive, empty space illuminated by recessed lighting. In the ambient glow, The Showman steps into view from the left, pulling a rusted Radio Flyer wagon behind him. Inside the wagon are some of the dolls he collected a few weeks back, Annabelle prominent in her sealed cabinet.
He veers to his right, reaches into the darkness to grasp something, then flexes upward. A sharp, satisfying, metallic crack echoes around the indeterminable space, and a buzz emanates as a caged bulb comes to life above him. Curiously, it only illuminates an area about three feet wide, revealing a shelf. Monty begins to unload the wagon onto the shelf carefully as he speaks.
Everyone should have a bucket list. This is mine.
With the Raggedy Ann as the centerpiece, he arranges La Muneca to the left, and Robert to the right.
Your average list will include traveling to fantastic destinations, participating in thrilling adventures, or reaching benchmarks in a career or relationship.
Satisfied with their arrangement, the Doctor-Professor toggles the lever to kill the overhead light once more, then turns to amble deeper into the shadows of the unknown void.
Creak, creak, creak
My bucket list is a collection. I felt a spark when I got my hands on the Heart of Damballa, but I found myself burning for more after I’d gathered these dolls for the interview.
Once again he extends his arm to lift a toggle, and the same archaic electric activation leads to a column of illumination from a different bulb. This time, the shelf is adorned with three laminated, four-by-eight cards bearing images of multi-faceted gemstones.
Scattered across this world are relics which most would rather leave lost and forgotten. Objets d'art, unloved toys, mechanical wonders that have outstretched their original intent. They resist being… possessed, and owning them exacts a great cost.
Montague flashes an engaging and mischievous grin.
I must have them all.
A deliberately wistful sigh is uttered as he considers the stones in the photos.
Alas, the collection is only just started, and collecting them all will be an endless endeavor. Each time I’m researching one, three more find their way into my scope. Take these for instance.
Tapping each in turn, Montague names them.
The Hope Diamond, originally plucked from the eye of a Hindu Goddess; Koh-I-Noor, which has kept England without a male monarch for the last seventy years; and Delhi Purple, the sapphire which will return again and again to punish its owner on matter how many times they cast it away.
Curiously, as he names them, his finger passes absently past letters inked onto the cards below each one: CP, TD, PV.
It’s highly unlikely I’ll ever boast these expertly-crafted, deadly baubles, and that’s probably for the best. The value of gemstones is largely manufactured and regulated. There’s no intrinsic worth outside of parading them around to show how affluent and influential their keeper is. Ultimately they would wind up being the least of my collection, as far as I’m concerned.
With a half-hearted, dismissive flourish, he snaps the switch down to kill the light over the photos. Though they are forgotten in the darkness behind him, once he turns Montague lights up once more.
But there are others which won’t be so unobtainable.
Creak, creak, creak
Another pop, sparks flying this time from a bad connection, and the bulb flickers above a shelf. Three cards again, placeholders for future assets. These are as different as the last set were similar, and below them are written single letters instead of pairs.
He lifts the photo of the tawny 1964 Dodge 330 tucked into a thicket like a predator about to pounce. It’s marked with a T.
The Golden Eagle was once a Maine police cruiser, a symbol of protection. However, no less than three officers who had requisitioned it wound up taking their own families out in violent murder-suicides. Since then, the car has embraced its darker calling as a macabre showpiece, and it continues to build its body count.
The Showman swaps it for the next card: this one features a photograph of a crouching devil statue carved from wood. It peers left and downard, stroking its goatee with an expression like a forgotten punchline suddenly occurred to it. Below the image is another T.
Old Nick was placed on top of a brewery to leer down at St. Mary’s Church in Swansea. The brewery’s architect had been rejected for designing the church, and this was his way of thumbing his nose at the house of worship. In 1941, Nick watched with glee as the church ws bombed to a smoldering pile by air raids. The brewery itself was not destroyed.
He sets the card back next to the one of the car, and chuckles.
Someone should really be watching the watchers.
Finally, he admires the third card, marked with a B, which features a picture of a wooden mask painted with whirling, parallel lines and a protruding tongue.
I should wait until Spring is over before adding the Maori mask to my collection. A season celebrating new life should be represented by the usual trappings of fertility; eggs and budding flowers and the sickly yellow pallor of pollen covering everything. This mask is like an arcane Plan B to expectant mothers, and it wouldn’t do to have dead bunnies lying about everywhere.
Monty smirks and places the card back on the shelf. Without switching the flickering light off, he turns right to move away.
Creak creak creak
The next time a light snaps on, Montague gives a hearty belly laugh. It’s three more cards with photographs, of course, but he immediately reaches for the one with a set of children’s bunk beds. They’re constructed from rough-hewn, unpainted two-by-six planks. Below the image it reads DD.
The story of the Tallman bunks is one of my favorites. This poor family was so caught off guard by their second-hand furniture purchase that the patriarch, in a fit of righteous rage, actually tried to threaten them. No one was harmed at all, only plagued by hollow threats of death and destruction while illusions of fire danced around their home. This artifact is possibly the least evil item on the wishlist.
He reaches next for a photo of two stately, richly upholstered, high back chairs arranged in front of an ornate marble hearth. The cream-colored fabric covering the seat and back is richly colored with pastoral settings, and they look comfortable and luxurious. The letters marked here are EB.
Tempting seats, this design was used to store blocks of salt in when that was a richly traded commodity. Even getting near them, though, will turn your reality inside out. Your body fills with the same nervous energy that precedes a lightning strike, and a sense of foreboding turns your stomach sour. If you’re able to overcome the surreal sensations and proceed to take a load off, it won’t be long before you find yourself tumbled on your back across the room.
The Doctor-Professor returns the card with a look of bemused appreciation, then lifts the third. This one features a slightly out of focus snapshot of a painting. It’s a portrait of an eighteenth century Spanish general. The device C8 is scrawled at the bottom. Montague squints, trying to clear the image up.
It’s a shame this one didn’t turn out better, but once I have the real thing it won’t matter. I’ve never seen a photograph of Bernado de Galvez’ painting come out. It’s as if it has some sort of frenetic energy that makes it seem like it’s always moving, even when it appears to be holding perfectly still. And those eyes! You would swear they’re rolling wildly in their sockets even now, as if the subject had inhaled a prodigious volume of cocaine just before sitting for this portrait. The painter must have been very skilled to capture that quality.
Placing the card back to complete the set again, Monty rolls onward.
Creak, creak, creak
Clack, pop, bzzzt
The Doctor-Professor beams at a desiccated, brown corpse. The upper lip has cracked and peeled back over the stained teeth, while both of its arms are stretched unnaturally to the body’s right. Underneath: KR.
The Iceman, Otzi. This ancient, Copper Age warrior never saw it coming, and neither did those who discovered him in 1991. While Otzi was struck multiple times from behind with arrows and clubbing blows, at least seven of the people involved with his discovery have died of accidental calamity. When Otzi died, he was preserved perfectly because a glacier quickly covered his remains, but over the last three decades, his curse continues to put others on ice.
The next item The Showman examines has the letters JH inscribed below. The black and white photograph on this card is of an expertly crafted silver container designed to resemble a blooming flower.
“I wouldn’t be caught dead with that,” is a pretty ubiquitous phrase. If you’re holding the Basano vase, though, this just might be your fate. Since the 1400s, a string of murders have taken place in the homes of the owners. While each of those murders are different, the one common thread is that each of the victims was found clutching vessel in a literal death grip. Imagine having the power to cause the destruction of literally everyone touching you.
Anyone who has seen a fertility idol from before the common era would at the very least be able to identify that in the third photograph. The weathered stone only barely suggests the human figure, with the breasts and hips exaggerated of course so that you understand it’s supposed to be feminine. Below the image are the letters GM.
This one’s especially dangerous; it’s ripped more families apart than social media. The Women from Lemb has decorated curio cabinets and mantle pieces in homes where the lineage was then wiped out in only a few years. Needless to say, wherever it settles, it isn’t likely to remain for long.
Creak, creak, creak
Montague considers the three cards now arranged before him, the mirth he was showing up until now evaporated. Reaching out, he picks up the first card that depicts a nineteenth century wedding dress, hanging limp, wrinkled, and sorrowfully from a thick wooden hanger. The two letter combination way down below is LW.
Poor Anna Baker. This is the dress she would never wear, thanks to her father. Just when she thought she had found true love, her fiancé was snatched away, never to be seen again. Elias Baker paraded suitor after suitor, but she refused them all. Eventually Anna locked herself away in her room, never again leaving until she died an old maid. The dress itself rarely stays in the closet where it is meant to be displayed, and those who have seen it moving about the estate claim they can see the happily married Anna that was never to be filling it out.
Compared to the car in the photo earlier, this one has seen better days. Montague picks up a card featuring a rusted, smashed up Vauxhall Astra with the driver side door hanging open. LIke the others, this one has letters on it: RM.
Apparently time is funny in Surrey, England. Officially this accident happened once, in July of 2002, killing the driver. Unofficially, according to police records, the accident has happened many times, and continues to happen. Drivers on the A3 regularly call in to report seeing a car fitting the description swerve off the highway and crash into the underbrush, but no other vehicle is ever found. As a matter of fact, that’s how officials found the original wreckage and the skeletal remains to begin with. Cars and time travel, amirite?
Between those two cards, instead of a photograph, the inside title page of a book has been laminated. The letters ND written below the author and above the publisher.
Goethe’s tragedy, “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” lamented over by young, well to do readers throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries. Later largely lambasted as being overly critical of the working and poverty classes of the era, it became harder and harder to empathize with the protagonist as literacy became commonplace amongst the plebians. In its time, though, the “hero” was beloved by the lovelorn eligible bachelors of means; so much so that the book was eventually banned after so many youths followed his lead and took their own lives when their objects of affection didn’t return the attention. The poor little rich boys even spent their final days dressing like Werther and affecting his mannerisms.
Montague rolls his eyes and replaces the page on the shelf. He steps into the darkness again, quietly whistling a tune to lift his spirits once more.
Creak, creak, creak.
Why is he still dragging that wagon? No time to think about it; the Doctor-Professor is already perusing the next trio. For the first time, we have an object, a book, and not just a card representing it. Anyone who has been a teenager knows the book, even if their copy didn’t have the letters ZS marked on the cover in black sharpie.
“The Catcher in the Rye.” Angst-driven, first-person perspective into the mind of adolescence. Every angry teenager loves this book, and man-children love it more. Incels and drifters mostly, the ones who fail to complete the mental and emotional journey from puberty into adulthood. For the truly unstable, this novel exerts an influence that has led them to exterminate politicians, actresses, and musicians. I can’t wait to find a first edition!
Back to the photo cards, this time another painting. There’s nothing funny about this one; it looks for all the world like a featureless creature screaming in agony. DR is the insignia here.
The paint used to create “The Anguished Man” was mixed in a unique way; the artist blended his own blood into each color. When the work was complete, he killed himself. But that’s not the end of his story. He’s not gone, by the way, the creator. Anyone who purchases this art and hangs it in their home is inviting his spirit to roam their halls, loudly bemoaning his incompleteness.
At first, the next item seems to be a mistake. The photo features an empty, faded gild frame with an empty, black square within. Below, the letters PD are given.
Black mirrors are a far more common scrying device than the Hollywood-driven crystal ball. This one, dubbed “The Dark Mirror” by its current owner–no points for creativity–has been rejected by every medium who sought to use it. Why? Because instead of useful answers, the gazer only sees their own future. Their distant future. Before their eyes, their image ages, withers, and rots. The coward parading it around the country at the moment keeps a black veil over it, afraid to see his own demons. I wouldn’t disrespect it that way.
Placing the card back, Montague heaves a heavy sigh.
Having been given quite a bit of time off this month to prepare for the rigors of the Outlast tournament, I didn’t spend all of my time researching and laminating. I was actually able to acquire five of the items on my wishlist! Let’s go have a look!
With that, the Showman kicks the noisy wagon over on its side and strides into the darkness.
—
The World Champion is lazily reclined in an armchair, right leg dangling over one of the armrests, left hand spinning his cane in irregular whirls. Behind his tilted top hat, the UGWC World Championship is partially visible, draped carelessly as if barely remembered.
He suddenly slams the cane on the floor, and a small explosive erupts beneath it. A light to his far right comes on, and one of the nameless Creeps steps forward. He looks… familiar, but with the facepaint, who can be sure?
The Creep walks forward, the light following him, and he is dragging a chair behind him.
Thomas Busby was a helluva man. Hateful murderer who jealously guarded everything that belonged to him, even if it was imagined. When he was finally apprehended, he stood up from his favorite chair at the local pub and wished death on anyone who should sit in his chair. So many people died shortly after sitting in that chair that they eventually nailed it five feet off the floor to prevent any further malady. Everyone hated Busby, but no one knew to be scared of him until after he was executed and began dragging souls to hell with him for violating his final declaration.
The Creep sets the chair up and walks away into the darkness. Montague slams the cane again, and another small charge goes off. A light to his far right comes on, and another Creep appears. He… looks familiar, but with the facepaint, who can be sure?
The Creep carries a small model boat, carved in the style of an Egyptian pleasure barge.
One of the artifacts recovered from King Tut’s tomb. The young pharaoh carries perhaps the most accomplished and successful curses of all time, one handed down by the pharaohs of old. Fifty eight victims related to the desecration of his tomb have fallen, and many more will fall before he’s finished.
Setting the boat on the floor, the Creep slips away before Monty can slam his cane again, cueing a third light. Another creep appears, this one carrying an armload of battered notebooks. He looks familiar, but… with the facepaint, who can be sure?
Carefully, the Creep spreads the books out for display.
The Untitled Grimoires. The author who penned over six hundred spells within their pages has promised that, for those who dabble casually in the craft, reading the pages within will bring horror and death.
Warming up, The Showman doesn’t even wait for this Creep to fade away before slamming his cane again, and another one dutifully steps into the latest light to come on. The Creep wit the Grimoires sets them down and hurries away.
This Creep looks familiar, but with the facepaint… who can be sure? He carries a photo-realistic painting of a small boy in tears.
Bragolin’s “Crying Children” series was an indictment of the horrors of war. Thousands of copies were printed and distributed around the world. Wherever the paintings go, so goes the fire. Every home the “Crying Children” have graced has burned to the ground. Incredibly, only the paintings seem to escape the blaze unscathed.
Montague forces himself to catch his breath, he’s nearly salivating over the relics. When he slams his cane again, the light is delayed. Instead, a low growl begins to emanate from behind the throne. Slowly, a Porche 550 Spider rolls into the light already being cast, driven by another Creep. He looks familiar… but with the facepaint, who can be sure?
The fully restored ‘Little Bastard,’ the original Icon’s own ride. Alec Guinness told him he’d die in a week in that thing, and he certainly did. So did everyone else who took a piece of it.
Before he can slam the cane again, a slender hand reaches out and grasps it, then its partner reaches out to honk the Doctor-Professor’s nose. Jacky giggles and leaps into the light, brandishing two katanas.
And finally, Murasama’s swords. Said to be so bloodthirsty that if the wielder can’t find a target, they’ll drive him to use them on himself.
Jacky freezes, then looks down at the swords and drops them, wiping her hands on her dress as she fixes Monty with a haughty look before walking out of view.
Montague smiles down at his menagerie with pride, not looking up at the camera at first as he speaks.
“If you’re not here to win the big title, what are you even doing here?”
Montague snorts.
Do you know how many times over the past several weeks I’ve heard some iteration of this phrase spoken with faux wisdom out of the mouths of people in this tournament? The lot of you only ever want one thing out of your time here, and that’s to be the one desperately clinging to the tiny perilous peak at the top of the mountain. It’s dull.
Reaching over his shoulder, Monty yanks the belt down, holding it up but not even giving it the attention of turning the faceplate toward the camera.
For this?
Montague tosses it aside, off camera.
The only joy I can find in the damned thing is keeping you dogs from laying your pawing hands on it. It coils white hot in your stomachs watching an AstroCreep carry your beloved crown. Months ago I was the sideshow, now I’m the marquee. For over a year you wanted to shut me out, but now I have the Key. I’ll poison your holy grail before I’m through, and by next week my keys will number two.
The Doctor-Professor leans back, his lip curling with disgust.
Of all the great things to aspire to, all the treasures in the world you could seek, a fleeting badge is your white whale. How very unimaginative. Come and take your prize then, if you can. See how you fair with a Scorpion at your heels and a Spider hanging over your head. I curse the belt.
He forks the fingers of his left hand and spits between them in the direction where he threw the title.
Take it if you dare.
##their hands##