Curse of the reaper, p.1
Curse of the Reaper, page 1
Copyright © 2022 by Brian McAuley
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.
Cover design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt
Cover photo credit: Jacket photography © Sean Gladwell/Getty Images (background), Thomas Winz/Getty Images (scythe), and Renphoto/Getty Images (smudges)
Print ISBN: 978-1-945863-80-6
Ebook ISBN 978-1-945863-82-0
Printed in the United States of America
For the Halloween People
Table of Contents
PART I: RESIGNATION
1
2
3
4
5
PART II: RESURRECTION
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
PART III: REPULSION
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
PART IV: REFLECTION
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
PART V: REPRISAL
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
PART VI: REVELATION
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
PART VII: RESTRICTION
55
56
57
58
59
60
PART VIII: RECKONING
61
62
PART IX: REQUIEM
63
Acknowledgments
Night of the Reaper (1980)
Script Pages Courtesy of Pinnacle Studios
EXT. CAMPFIRE - ASHLAND SUMMER CAMP - NIGHT
Camp director TIM sits in front of the campfire, surrounded by a ring of TEENAGED COUNSELORS.
TIM
You guys know the legend, right?
Nerdy SHEILA pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose.
SHEILA
What legend?
TIM
The legend of why Ashland quit farming in the fifties. Why they turned the cornfields into campgrounds. The land is cursed. The curse … of the Reaper!
Tough guy AXEL flips out his switchblade, carving a stick to roast marshmallows.
AXEL
What the hell’s a Reaper?
TIM
Not what. Who?
Tim leans toward the crackling flames.
TIM
His name was Lester Jensen. And his bloodline dated all the way back to this town’s Danish founders. But Lester grew up an orphaned outcast. A mute who lived alone in an old, abandoned barn and never spoke a word to anyone. Some people feared the man, but others hired him as their farmhand because he worked hard and never complained. Then one year, a blight struck every crop. The corn didn’t sprout and the leaves just wilted and died on the stalk. Nobody knew why, but it didn’t take long for the rumors to start swirling in town.
A gust of wind HOWLS through the circle as the counselors shiver and the fire flickers.
TIM
They said that Lester the mute was practicing animal sacrifice out in that barn of his. That he brought on the blight by worshipping the Devil. Folks worked themselves into a frenzy until that fateful harvest moon, when they all decided … Lester Jensen had to pay.
SHEILA
What’d they do to him?
TIM
This God-fearing community went medieval. And the punishment for heresy meant getting dragged behind a horse into the village square to be dismembered in front of a cheering crowd. So Farmer Joe and his sons drove out to Lester’s barn to bring him to justice. They tied a rusty chain to the back of their truck and dragged the accused heretic straight through the rotting cornfields toward town. Lester may have been a mute, but that night, everyone in Ashland could hear his cries, echoing across the land.
Axel twirls a blackening marshmallow on the end of his stick.
AXEL
So did they chop him up or what?
TIM
Never got a chance to. Because at some point, that chain came loose.
Farmer Joe and his sons, they spent all night searching the field for his body, but Lester Jensen was gone. And so was the rusty chain.
SHEILA
You mean … Lester survived?
TIM
Some say he did. Some say he didn’t. Either way, Lester came back … for revenge. The next day, the town awakened to a stream of blood flowing down Main Street. They found three gruesome scarecrows hanging in the town square. It was Farmer Joe and his sons. They’d been hacked limb from limb and nailed back together in mismatched pieces. Served up as a grisly message to the people of Ashland. A warning from the monster they now called … the Reaper.
A shudder ripples through the circle of teens.
TIM
And every harvest moon, just like tonight, they say he’s out here.
Roaming in the dark where the cornfields used to be. Hunting down trespassers and harvesting their souls. They say if you listen closely, if it’s veeery quiet … you can hear the distant clanking … of his rusty chain.
Silence falls upon the group, listening for any sound they can hear over the SNAPS and POPS of logs between them.
AXEL
Boo!
Axel jumps to his feet, scaring the other counselors as he laughs in their faces.
SHEILA
That’s not funny, Axel!
AXEL
Oh, come on. Are you really scared that some freak farmhand is gonna--
CLANK! A rusty chain whips out of the darkness, snapping around Axel’s neck. He grasps at the metal links, eyes bulging until—CRACK!—Axel’s neck snaps and his rag doll body is yanked back into the shadows.
The counselors are paralyzed in terror as …
THE REAPER steps into the firelight! His shredded face oozes blood as ribbons of flesh hang above ragged overalls. He growls through shattered teeth, voice hoarse with gravel.
THE REAPER
Children of Ashland … it’s time to reap what you’ve sown.
The teens SCREAM and scatter as the monster swings his rusty chain, CACKLING into the night as the blood harvest begins.
PART I:
RESIGNATION
1
“What was your favorite kill?”
Howard had been asked the question countless times over the years. With so many guttings and bludgeonings and dismemberments to choose from, he used to enjoy indulging his fans with a colorful selection from his résumé of mayhem. But today, fifteen years since his last lethal outing, he could no longer hide his weariness as he leaned on a rote response.
“My favorite kill is at the end of Part IV: The Final Reaping, when the Reaper himself is finally slain and burned to ashes.”
The balding fan on the other side of the table frowned, cracking the foundation of his homemade zombie makeup. “Yeah, but … you came back.” Zombie Man pointed over Howard’s shoulder, where posters for all eight Night of the Reaper films hung on display in the cramped convention booth. “The Reaper always rises again.”
Howard felt the weight of every flimsy poster like another millstone around the neck of his sunken career as he forced a nod. “Indeed he does.”
Zombie Man grinned at the woman beside him, who blushed in her bloodstained prom dress. “My wife, she’s too scared to ask,” he explained, holding up a digital camera. “But do you think she could get a photo with you?”
“Of course,” Howard replied, accustomed to the request. “That’ll be twenty dollars.” The exchange always felt a bit tacky, but he’d decided long ago that it was a matter of artistic principle to reinforce the worth of a professional actor’s labor.
The woman handed Howard a red-tinged bill as he stood beside her now, careful not to bump his freshly pressed slacks against her sticky dress. At six-foot three, he was used to dwarfing most people with his slender frame as he hunched his head above her shoulder, adjusting his parted silver hair before giving a gentle smile for the camera.
Zombie Man frowned again, lowering his lens. “Sorry, it’s just … Could you …”
“Be the Reaper,” Howard blushed. He sometimes forgo
He wrapped his hands around the eager woman’s neck for a faux choke, snarling the monster’s rage toward the camera until Zombie Man finally snapped his photo with a gleeful giggle. The flash lingered in Howard’s blurry vision as he released his death grip and the once-silent wife leapt off her feet to plant a kiss on his freshly shaven cheek.
“You’re my favorite,” she breathily confessed. “Freddy and Jason are scrubs. I know the Reaper could take them in a heartbeat.”
Howard offered a gracious, “Thank you,” as he backed away from her starry eyes and returned safely behind the fold-up table. He knew not to engage with the die-hard fans too deeply, lest he find himself with a stalker.
“Have a lovely weekend, you two,” Howard dismissed Zombie Man and his bloody bride. As they skipped away together, hand in hand, he lowered himself back into the folding chair, arthritic knees creaking. His gaze fell now to the glossy publicity stills on the table, where his alter ego cast a mocking grin up at him, swinging the iconic rusty chain with eternal exuberance. Howard had signed thousands of these grotesque glamour shots over the years, so many that his right hand was now permanently cramped from gripping the black Sharpie as he scrawled:
Dear So-and-So, Happy Harvest! XX The Reaper.
It used to be that he hardly had time for a bathroom break as his devotees flocked to conference centers all over the globe, lining up for hours just to meet their beloved monster. But there was no line now as Howard looked up at the scattered attendees, moseying among a few dozen pop-up booths for other cult horror films. This happened to be a local event, which meant returning to the comfort of his own bed rather than suffering the night beneath a scratchy hotel bedspread. The thought of a warm bath beckoned as he decided to call it an early day, packing his tote bag along with the conspicuously light envelope of twenty-dollar bills.
As he lumbered toward the hotel conference room exit, a cleaning crew was already pushing their vacuums along the carpets. The stale smell of sweat seemed permanently soaked into these places, and Howard was desperate to breathe fresh air that hadn’t been recycled through mouths that munched on microwaved snack-bar pizza.
A banner thanked him for attending Dead World Weekend 2005 as he stepped through the automatic doors of the airport Radisson into the warm Los Angeles spring. Peeling off the sweater he wore to combat the frigid air-conditioning, he traversed the near-empty parking lot to his brown Cadillac DeVille. He tossed his tote bag in the trunk before easing behind the wheel and turning the ignition, only to be met with a resistant gurgle.
“Come on, old gal,” he begged as the hot sun beat through the windshield. “Not today.” The car he’d proudly bought after the success of the first film was pushing over 200,000 miles now, but Howard wasn’t ready to give up on her yet. Sure, the paint had faded from its original walnut shine into a dull rust tint, but he’d be damned if he ever traded her in for one of those shiny new electric monstrosities. Howard was all for saving the planet, but he resented a throwaway culture that discarded things before they’d lived out their full terms of purpose, always seeking some newer, sleeker model.
After a few more persistent grinds, the engine finally grumbled to life. He exhaled with relief, reaching for the gear stick only to find a Post-it Note there with a reminder spelled out in his own careful cursive: Cat Food.
Every time he came across one of these notes, he was reminded anew of Dr. Cho’s recent diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Howard resented her suggestion that he was already going senile and in need of such degrading mental assistance, but he couldn’t deny that he’d been relying on these little yellow squares more and more of late.
It seemed that warm bath would have to wait as he plucked the Post-it from the shifter, steeling himself for the two-hour odyssey of creeping crosstown traffic toward his neighborhood grocery store. As he rolled out of the lot, a departing plane roared overhead, sending a sweeping shadow over the asphalt like the specter of death itself, passing him by.
By the time Howard arrived home, a purple dusk was settling over the old Victorian house at the end of the cul-de-sac. Nestled in the Altadena foothills, his home was just far enough from the madness of Hollywood to make it feel like living in the real world, which is exactly why he and Emma had chosen it. Ascending the porch steps now, he eyed the pair of Adirondack chairs where they used to share their morning tea. Flecks of white paint peeled from the sunbaked wood as the chairs had long since fallen into disuse, but he just couldn’t bring himself to throw them away. He half expected to open the front door now and find Emma waiting in the parlor, swaying to a Joni Mitchell record with a smile on her face. But as he entered the silent house, the only one coming to greet him in the foyer was Stanley.
“Hello, my little brute.” Howard bent down to scratch his feline companion behind the ears. “You must be famished.” He cracked the off-brand can of Frisky Whiskers, releasing a pungent odor into the air as he placed the tin on the hardwood floor. The black cat sniffed at the globby mixture and recoiled.
“They were fresh out of Fancy Feast,” Howard explained. “Don’t be difficult, Stanley.”
The animal conceded, pecking at his subpar meal with a domestic displeasure befitting his namesake. Stanley Kowalski had been Howard’s first starring role back at the conservatory when A Streetcar Named Desire was chosen for their graduate showcase. The violent character served as a formative challenge then for the bookish young actor. “Stage drama is not real life,” his professor had told him. “It’s more real than real life.”
The cordless phone rang to life on the end table as Howard shot across the hall to answer it. “This is Howard Browning.”
“Howie!” squawked the voice on the other end.
There was only one person in the world who called Howard “Howie,” against consistent requests to the contrary. All Hollywood agents were trained to be schmoozy, but twenty-five-year-old Jake Friedman was a bit too overzealous for someone who’d never landed his client an acting job. As soon as public appearances became Howard’s primary occupation, the powers that be at Universal Talent Incorporated began shuffling him from one fledgling representative to another.
“How’s my favorite client?” asked this current incarnation of false enthusiasm.
“Fine, Jacob.” Howard twisted his vertebrae back into alignment. “Nice of you to return my call, two weeks later.”
“Sorry, buddy, it’s been crazy. Pilot season and all that.”
“That so?” There was a time when Howard wouldn’t dream of stooping to the level of televised dramas, but he couldn’t help perking up now at the thought of all those new series with dozens of roles, fresh for the casting. “Anything you’re sending me out for?”
“Unless you can play a ‘twentysomething girl, as smart as she is sexy,’” Jake said, “this may not be your season. But hey, if you’re itching to act, I could give Lunatic Pictures a call back. See if they still want you for the mad scientist role in that zombie movie.”
“No, no,” Howard swatted away the suggestion. After being permanently typecast as a genre villain, the only offers that ever came down the pipeline were slight cameos in direct-to-video horror fare, and even those were few and far between. He’d made the mistake of taking such a job once about ten years ago, still optimistic and eager to practice his craft again in earnest. Instead, he found himself trapped on a shoestring amateur production in rural Bulgaria, where he spent most of his days curled up on the outhouse floor with a crippling stomach bug.
“I’m not that desperate,” Howard said.
“Damn straight,” Jake responded. “That’s because I’ve been busy booking your ass up and down the coast. How was Death Fest?”
“Dead World,” Howard corrected, carrying his tote bag down the hall.
“What?”
