Spoopy Writing Challenge — Day 4

Hear that? The writing bell tolls!

It tolls for thee and me!

That’s right, dearest reader, today marks day 4 of my writing challenge. I’m not sure about you, but I am pretty excited for Halloween! I am hoping I can wake up early enough to check out a local pumpkin farm, maybe snag some pumpkins and goodies, then head on home. I might rewatch Alien to celebrate, or maybe rent something new like Black Phone or Nope, which I haven’t seen yet. I still have to decorate, I’m always late with that!

But are you really here for my Halloween plans? No, you’re here for some spookiness. Today’s prompt comes from Timaeus Bloom:

A daytime talk show whose host(s) get visited by an otherworldly guest

So for my fourth story of my seven day spooky challenge, I bring you…

Lights, Camera, Haunt! 

“And that was Kimberly Hale on the dangers of exposing your children to genre fiction!” Pastor Landry said, his voice booming across the studio. 

The cameraman glanced down at his watch. Tim Bloom was a young graduate and, in his pursuit of trying to fund his dream project of travelling and documenting various haunted locations across the world, had taken freelance work at Christ’s Christian Channel studios. He wasn’t particularly religious and, honestly, he found most of the topics Pastor Landry focussed on to be completely bonkers, but it paid well. Real well. CCC Studios had a huge turnover rate – from cameramen to assistants, caterers to cleaners. No one could stand Landry for long. On set, he was overbearing and loud, off set he was worse. Condescending to all the guys, super creepy to all the ladies.

But no one would say anything. Tim definitely had no plans to. He collected his pay cheques and saved. In a few more months, he would have enough. Barely enough, but he’d make it work. He always did. 

Snapping back to attention, Tim made sure his camera was centered correctly and resumed watching the sound stage with minimal interest.

Landry was an intimidating figure at six and a half feet tall, dressed all in black, his porridge face often blotched red with emotion, his hawk-sharp nose spiderwebbed with broken veins. His gray hair was thinning, his face clean shaven, his lips glistening with spit. 

His guest, an older woman with mousy brown hair that had been captured in stiff curls by too much hair spray, scurried away with a tight smile and short wave to the canned applause of the overhead speakers. 

Pastor Landry spun and lumbered to the corner of the stage, where his organ awaited. He sat, the bench protesting under his weight with a frightful squeak. Raising his hands to the ceiling, fingers curled into sausage claws, the man yelled “Praise the Lord!” before crashing his hands down on the keys and banging out a discordant tune. 

Landry called this horrible playing his version of speaking with tongues, of communing with the Lord at a primal level. To Tim, it was just grating to hear. 

Behind him, the live studio audience began to call and scream and clap. They ate Landry’s shit up every time. 

After what felt like an eternity, Landry stopped playing and stood again, striding back to his seat – more like a throne, Tim thought, focussing his camera on the man as he let himself fall into the heavy oak chair with ornate carvings and towering back rest. 

“And now, our next guest,” the priest intoned. “Now this brings me no joy. No, none at all, to bring this to your attention. But we have yet another missing girl.”

The audience gasped and cried out on cue. Tim wondered, not for the first time, if they were all paid actors. 

“Let’s bring out Mr. Jebediah Cotton.” Landry stood again, straightening his shoulders. 

A cold chill crept down Tim’s spine. Cotton? It couldn’t be. The guest walked out onto the stage, a washed out looking man, sorrowful and hunched over. He took Landry’s offered hand, shaking it weakly, before practically collapsing in the armchair behind him. 

Pastor Landry stayed standing, addressing his audience and Tim’s camera. “This is a sad tale, my children, but a common tale. A tale of a girl led astray, straight into the wolf’s teeth.”

Landry sighed theatrically, loudly, before settling into his own chair and resting his head against a fist. Jebediah stared at his hands, limp in his lap, his forehead spotted with sweat. After an awkwardly long pause, Landry finally straightened up and settled his own hands on his chair’s armrests. 

“Now, Mr. Cotton. Tell us how your daughter, Cordelia, strayed from God.”

Tim’s world shrunk to a terrible pinpoint as another chill rolled down his spine. He knew her. Cordelia Cotton. He’d gone to grad school with her and she was the one who’d gotten him the job at CCC Studios, they had sometimes hung out after filming, and he’d had no idea she was missing.

He struggled to remember the last time he’d seen her, talked to her – it had to have been last week, Friday. He remembered that she’d seemed upset. But he hadn’t thought to press her about it, he hadn’t thought to check up on her. Now guilt – something Pastor Landry talked about a lot – weighed down on him like spectral chains. 

“My Cordy, she didn’t come home on Friday,” Jebediah said, his voice hitching a bit. “The police found her shoes in an alley near the mall, but nothing else.”

Pastor Landry nodded, steepling his fingers beneath his chin. “And you mentioned thinking she was meeting someone. A man perhaps. A lover.”

“I don’t know,” Jebediah said. “I think so. She was texting more often, seemed distant.”

Tim gritted his teeth. Cordelia didn’t have a boyfriend. She didn't even seem interested in dating at all as far as he could tell. Cordelia was just too busy working, hanging out with friends, and building up her following on her make-up channel. It was something he found amazing about her - her drive, her passion, her dedication. She was the one who had encouraged him to save up and set off on his own rather than wait for a sponsor or backer.

He knew that she had been planning on leaving eventually once she felt her brand was strong enough, moving to L.A., something she hadn’t told her ultra-conservative family yet.  

“And this daughter of yours.” Landry stood again. “She fornicated outside of marriage. She tainted her value and purity!” 

The audience gasped on cue and Tim clenched his hands into fists, staring at the priest through the filter of his camera. 

“This daughter of yours strayed from God!” Landry shouted.

Jebediah cried out and fell from his chair to his knees, clutching his head. “She wasn’t right, Pastor Landry! But I tried to guide her! I tried to keep her pure!”

The priest placed a fat hand on the man’s head. “You failed as her father, Jebediah Cotton. You will need to repent for that, by God’s will. But your daughter was tainted. All girls carry Eve’s sin, her weakness towards the serpent.”

Tim wanted to rage, to shout and storm the set, but he froze when movement on the right side of the stage, by Landry’s organ, caught his eye. It was a pale ethereal wisp of movement, like the barest breath of smoke. 

“Your daughter opened her legs, she opened her soul to Satan!” 

“God have mercy on her soul!” replied Jebediah. 

Behind Tim, the crowd roared with ‘amen’s and ‘god have mercy’s, but Tim was transfixed. Through his camera monitor, he watched the wisp shimmer and sway. It swirled further onto the stage, growing thicker, growing clearer. 

His heart was a frantic drumbeat in his ears, pounding his ribs, threatening mutiny. Tim leaned to the right and looked past his camera but saw nothing at all on the stage. When he looked back at the camera monitor again, it was there. 

Past the camera, the stage was empty. 

Looking at the screen, there it was. 

Whatever it was, it couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. 

But it was there. Something was there. Tim could feel it just as clearly as one knows when they are being watched or when someone has entered the same room. The feeling of something else – of someone else. 

“She was a sinner and fell to temptation!” Landry cried out.

Overhead the stage lights flickered, buzzed. Someone in the crowd screamed – from the lights or the frenzy Landry was whipping up, Tim couldn’t tell.

“We must pray for her soul!” Jebediah wailed.

The light directly above the two men crackled, snapped, a spray of sparks showered the stage, and the lights went out. The audience screamed in unison and Tim’s breath caught in his throat as he realized they were all alone in the dark with whatever was creeping on the stage. He could still see it, a brilliant white and gold aurora dancing towards him, towards center stage. 

“Someone fix the goddamn lights!” Landry yelled. 

Stage crew scrambled, the audience whispered and chattered, laughing nervously in the quiet. 

Tim watched the wisp approach. It became more defined, took shape. A human shape. She faced him, trailing the faintest of mist in her wake. 

“Cordelia,” Tim whispered. 

Her face was deadly still, looking more like a death mask than how he knew her. He could faintly see that she was wearing the same clothes in this form as she had the last time he’d seen her, though now they were ripped and stained. Her eyes were blank, mirror-like sparks. Missing life, missing what made her Cordelia. 

Tim’s breath rose in small clouds as the temperature plummeted. His teeth chattered, his fingers went numb. Again, as if to reassure himself that this was all really happening, he looked past the view screen. Nothing. Just Pastor Landry shouting at the scurrying crew and Jebediah Cotton cowering on the floor in the darkness. Nothing else, nothing strange.

And yet, looking through the camera, Tim could see her. She floated in front of the equipment and stared directly at him, through the lens. 

The lights flickered, sending sparks across the stage again. Cordelia reached towards the lens and traced a symbol that lingered for a brief moment in a bright echo.

“Give me power.” Her voice, cold, pleading, as if from miles away, yet intimately near, in his ear. 

Another explosion of sparks sprayed down, dancing through Cordelia’s translucent body. Her mouth never moved, her eyes never blinked. “Help me. Tim. Help me now.”

The lights blinked on again, flooding the sound stage with brilliance. The audience cried out in relief, Pastor Landry shooed the crew away and snapped his fingers in Tim’s direction. “Keep filming, child. The show must go on!”

Out of habit, Tim repositioned the camera, but he wasn’t looking through the lens, he was still looking at it, remembering the symbol. Cordelia was gone but not. He could still sense her. Close, waiting. 

“Now where were we?” Landry forced a jolly laugh and the audience, his sheep, laughed with him. 

His belly roiling, threatening revolt, Tim stumbled back from his post and pressed the back of his left hand to his mouth. He knew. It was clear. Cordelia wasn't missing. She was dead. She was dead and wanting something from him. 

Tim bit down on his thumb, just a little, then remembering the symbol, a lot. Hard, then harder still, grinding his teeth back and forth until he drew blood. 

On the stage, Pastor Landry was standing over Jebediah, one hand on the man’s head and the other raised to the ceiling. “Praise God for his judgment! Praise his servants for exacting his will!” 

Switching his camera off, Tim slipped around the side and stood in front of it. Then he pressed his bleeding thumb against the lens. The symbol blazed in his mind as clear as day and he recreated it on the glass in his blood. Returning to his place behind the camera, Tim turned it back on. 

As the camera whirred to life, Tim spotted Cordelia again – though obscured by the symbol in blood on the lens – standing on set, just behind Pastor Landry. The symbol began to glow, from crimson to gold to white, before disappearing in a sizzle. 

“He has answered our prayers!” screamed someone in the audience. 

“She has been delivered!” cried another. 

Tim clutched his bleeding hand against his chest, right above his racing heart. Landry turned with a frown, angry at being interrupted when his sheep should be enraptured. His mouth gaped, his eyes bulged, he continued to turn and spotted her, the spectral Cordelia. 

With a squeal, the priest stumbled back, stumbling over the kneeling Jebediah. 

Tim looked up. He didn’t need the camera to see her anymore after all. 

She drifted, following the priest as he fumbled along the stage. Raising one ghastly hand, Cordelia pointed at him and opened her mouth in a silent scream. 

Right behind his ear, he heard her whisper grow to a shout to a wail, “He did it. He did this. He hurt me. He broke me. Killer, killer, killer!” 

His ears ringing, Tim fell to his knees, clutching his head in pain, as Cordelia’s shriek slowly faded. Looking up, he saw the audience in a similar state, blood leaking through their fingers as they wept from the pain in their ears. 

Jebediah stared up at his daughter in horror, his bloody hands raised defensively. She ignored him, didn’t even seem to see him, as she floated after Pastor Landry, who had reached the edge of the stage. 

Cordelia’s form began to flicker, weaken, as she followed him to the edge. Her whole being shuddered and slowed. 

“That’s right, demoness!” Landry screamed triumphantly, finally standing and holding out his crucifix. “Be gone, tainted whore!”

Tim got to his feet, wavering, sick to his stomach, and happened to glance at the camera. Landry had gone out of frame and Cordelia was at the very edge, fading. 

Tim didn’t hesitate. He’d gone to school for this after all, he’d dreamed of filming, making movies, catching the action. He wasn’t able to let this moment escape, he wasn’t about to let Cordelia’s moment fall flat. 

He turned the camera on Landry, capturing him in the lens’ eye. Cordelia blazed to furious pearlescent life again. Reaching to her shirt, she ripped it open, revealing gruesome slashes and puncture wounds cast in obsidian stains across her bare chest. She dipped her hands into these wounds, pulling out globs of iridescent ichor. 

“Back, you bitch!” Landry screamed, waving his crucifix back and forth, his face as red as a tomato and looking fit to burst. “I’ll kill you again, I swear!”

Cordelia swooped at him, hands outstretched, passing through his defensive crucifix, and she smeared the black goo over his face. He choked on it as she jammed it into his mouth, stifling his screams. 

Flailing, he fell onto his back and Tim made sure to keep the camera centered on the convulsing priest. All the while, Cordelia continued to scoop the dripping slime from her wounds and jam it into the priest’s mouth, his nose, even stabbing it into his eyes. 

The audience swarmed, mindless, mad. They fell on Pastor Landry, trying to help or hinder, Tim didn’t know. Whatever their intent, they ended up trampling Landry beneath their feet and Tim filmed it all. 

He zoomed in, capturing every snap of bone and spray of arterial blood. In moments, the priest was reduced to a puddle of holy muck on the sound stage floor. 

Then the spell was broken, the audience dispersed, staring down at their blood-stained hands as if mesmerized. Jebediah Cotton got up, staring where his daughter wavered in the harsh studio lighting. She grew dim, fading from sight. 

“Cordy!” her father cried but she never looked at him. 

Instead, she turned and looked at Tim through the lens of his camera. Her face was still, cold, expressionless, but as she disappeared from view he heard her voice, a whisper just behind his ear.

“Thank you.”

Oooh, that was a haunting tale, wasn’t it? (bahdumtsh!)

See you tomorrow!

x PLM