LOOKING FOR FRANK

I recall thinking: Christ, it must be serious.

The room was hot, my mouth completely dry, and it was another hour or so before a nurse came in to check on me.

After getting a fresh jug of water, I was able to swill out my mouth and clearly ask her, ‘What happened to me?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied, making a note on the chart at the end of the bed. ‘I only came on six hours ago.’

‘How long have I been here?’

‘Two days according to your chart.’

‘I’ve been unconscious that whole time?’

‘Oh no, you’ve been awake several times, but nothing you’ve said has made any sense until now. Don’t worry, the doctor will be ‘round soon to explain.’

As she left the nurse pulled the door not completely to, letting the light and noise of the corridor in for some company. I then closed my eyes and tried to remember what had happened, slowly piecing the nightmare back together…
 



Frank had been missing for a month. I wouldn’t say he was my best friend, or even really a good friend, because at some points we had well and truly hated each other—but he was a friend nonetheless, and, having disappeared without a trace, the nights were getting lonely without him.

In asking around, I circled out from our usual spots until I began to get a clue here or there from a pub or club of where he might’ve gone. After days of commuting back and forth, I hit upon a bar in the far south of the city where some old lag had told me I might find him.

It was a strange place, established in an old bank, square and pink, with the bank’s name, cut into the limestone of the second floor, still visible in foot high letters: CONAND BANK.

The bar itself was called The Aeron, advertised on a wooden sign that hung above the entrance out into the street. The glass of its windows was wired and unwashed, blocking the view of on lookers.

Going in, I was surprised to find it was well lit and mostly full, about twenty big tables set before the bar, a pool table in the centre, a dozen smaller tables against the walls, and populated by a mixture of people: tramps, labourers, business types, geriatrics, students, hipsters, punks… a damn societal cross section. On the far left from the door there was a short stage, empty except for a lone amplifier with its make scratched off. The walls were mirrored, but were so greasy it had the effect of turning them into something you’d see in a funhouse.

I looked around, trying to see if Frank was about, but had no such luck. Some matched my glances passively, while most just carried on with their conversations and games.

I made my way to the bar, and after waiting a moment was served by the barmaid, a young woman with green eyes and long brown hair in a loose, floral dress that showed off her pale, ample breasts and left her tattooed arms exposed for all to see.

As I ordered a pint of the brewer’s own IPA, I tried giving her the patented smirk, and for a rare chance it appeared to work, getting some warmth in return. I chatted to her, explaining about Frank, and although she said she didn’t know anything about him, she would ask about. All the while, I studied her arms.

The tattoo sleeve on her right arm pulling my pint seemed conventional enough, a field of flowers and assorted pastoral greenery matching her dress, but the sleeve on her left arm was bizarre, done entirely in a deep lime green, ordered in strange geometric patterns organised seemingly at random. However, both sleeves exited at the shoulder in the same parallel image: creatures looking half dragon, half eagle, inked across her collarbone, and screaming at each other.

She gave me my drink and it was pleasingly cool. I walked around for a while, and everything seemed normal, even inviting, in spite of the muted atmosphere. I exchanged a few looks, but no words, until I came upon an old man whom I could tell immediately was what you might call a ‘professional’, a sure haunter of every establishment in the neighbourhood and beyond, dressed in shorts, a flat cap, and an antique anorak.
I asked if I could join him and he obliged, but before I could ask about Frank, he started telling me the entire life story.

‘I’m a care worker, you know,’ he rambled out in between sips of his pint, twinned with a tall whiskey and soda on the side.

‘Right, I see,’ I said, trying to find an angle to move things to my preferred topic.

‘You don’t half meet some rum ‘uns in my place…’

‘Yeah, I guess so…’

He went on for a few minutes before I was able to shoehorn in a request for any information about Frank. The old man said he might’ve seen a guy matching Frank’s description, but couldn’t be sure. Just before he could drag me back into more drivel, I managed to make my excuses and get away.

I went around the front of the bar, to the left of the door, searching for what I considered the ‘right type’ to ask, but found no one who looked the part.

Having finished my pint, I started to make my way back to the bar, intending to return my glass and steal another look at the barmaid, but I hadn’t realised that I’d been followed.

‘I know you,’ said the stalker. Stood in front of me, he was about forty, but looked far older. His face was perpetually scrunched up, and his oily hair was held back by a ragged blue bandana. He wore a long tan coat which ended just above his dirty untied trainers, and held a pint of stout that was half empty.

‘I don’t think so, mate,’ I said and tried to get around him, but he wasn’t going to let me pass.

‘Yeah, I know you,’ he said, putting his pint glass on the pool table’s edge in clear violation of the sign next to the coin slot. ‘You owe me money.’

‘Sorry, mate,’ I said, still trying to edge around him to no avail.

By now we had a growing audience. We were breaking up the mundanity.

‘I’ve never met you,’ I continued, but he was having none of it.

‘You owe me twenty pounds, you bastard,’ he said, and picked up a pool cue off the table green. ‘I’m gonna get it one way or t’other…’

Figuring that peaceful disengagement was no longer an option, I wrenched the cue out of his hands and hit him with it straight down the middle of his forehead. While he was stunned, I grabbed his right arm and twisted it around his back. I marched him over to the bar as he squealed, and, grabbing his hair, smashed his head about five times into the bar top, until his legs buckled and he dropped to the floor. No one interfered with me while I enacted my brutal self defence, but when it was over, my pint glass miraculously not shattered in my hand, I found myself in receipt of a round of applause as a bouncer appeared from nowhere and dragged the drunkard out, neither of them to be seen again. My left wrist was a little strained, but I covered up the pain.

I placed both mine and the drunk’s glasses on the bar, and was greeted by the tattooed barmaid and her novice, a young black girl with braids.

‘Thank the gods for that,’ the head barmaid said to me, taking my hand. ‘He’s been a pain in the arse for months, the souse… he’s been pissing everyone off for a long time.’

‘I’m sorry about the mess,’ I said, gesturing to the drops of blood on the bar top.

‘Never mind,’ she said, and gave me a drink on the house.

After that, my time in the bar was a dream.

People gathered about me to just to indulge in how much they had hated that little shit, and how he had been a continuous annoyance to the extent that the patrons had appealed to the unseen management to try to rid themselves of him. They bought me drink after drink, and although I tried to ask after Frank—still getting nowhere—my original mission blurred in my mind, and I got lost in a realm of dirty jokes, unbelievable anecdotes, and games of pool without clear winners.

By the tenth pint, deep down I knew I was in trouble, but I no longer cared. I had reached that event horizon of drunkenness where all that mattered was further movement towards oblivion. The pints gave way to spirits, and the spirits gave way to a warm numbness, within which there were a thousand voices slurring excitedly, mine amongst them, and somewhere along the way Emmylou Harris singing ‘Evangeline’ joined us.

At some point the bar closed, and those who remained carried on drinking and drinking until consciousness departed, for me at least.
 


My headache woke me from a sweaty slumber, crunching my frontal lobes, and the world before me was a dull glow. There was movement, limbs and bodies shifting, and I found myself upright in a chair. I tried to move my arms, but they were bound behind me.

‘What is this shit?’ I mumbled.

Oh god, I’m still drunk, I thought. This is not good.

My eyes began to adjust to the level of light, and I soon became aware of how fucked up things had grown in my mental absence.

Before me stood the tattooed barmaid, utterly naked, but believe me, any possible eroticism was absent, given that the rest of the remaining patrons, some two dozen of them, including the younger barmaid, were stood about her, similarly stripped. All of them were painted in the lime green patterns of her left arm, their eye sockets smeared black. Some other people lay about the floor, comatose, stoned, or stunned, their faces turned away from me. The front windows were covered with black sheets, chairs and tables were stacked in front of the doorway. What light there existed was given by a few candles set on high holders at the walls, reflected about by the mirrors.

I looked down, and found myself likewise naked and painted.

The barmaid stepped forward, grasping an old, cheap, orange paperback book. In fact, as she opened it and began to read, I realised that many of the nude patrons were grasping the same book, and that some had had copies on them when I had first walked into the place.

As she read aloud, I could hardly make out what she said, the words seeming alien even though they were in English. The verses were along the lines of: ‘…and the dance of flesh will come, to join the followers of the Magistri together as one force, immortal for a time…’ or something like that.

When she closed the book, I saw the title: Niger Verba.

I nearly cried out: the Niger Verba! The Book of Black Words! The tome of satanic murderers, madmen, and suicide cults!

Was I doomed? I had to find a way out…

‘Now baby…’ I said as she mounted me across my lap, thrusting her labia onto my shrivelled cock and balls. ‘I’m into you too, but I don’t think this is the way to go about things… maybe we should slow it down a bit.’
Ignoring me, she manoeuvred herself about until she found a comfortable position, but she didn’t try to screw me. Her taut, pierced abdomen rubbed against my protruding paunch, for which I felt a little bodily shame.

‘Rape is illegal y’know,’ I said, turning my head away from her, ‘even if it is woman on man.’

She then raised her arms in the air, started snapping her fingers, and said something loudly in what must have been Latin. She rocked back and forth, smearing her paint across my thighs, her breasts rubbing against my chest, before coming to a complete stop.

As she held that Vishnu-esque shape on my violated frame, a breeze came through the bar and extinguished the candles. This didn’t leave us in darkness, however, as, to my horror, she and the rest of the cultists glowed, and not just their body paint, but their unmarked skin too. I looked down and found that even I was glowing.

‘What the fuck is this?’ I asked for any hope of an answer.

That’s when the real nastiness started.

The barmaid stared into my eyes before leaning her head back. She quivered and the… things began to emerge. To this day I have no idea if they were some parasitic lifeforms, or some kind of growth out of otherwise human bodies, but they were real, I felt them.

The first one arose out of her left tear duct. It was the colour of skin, a spine, ribbed and very thin, with pair after pair of tiny brown ‘legs’ like a centipede. It lifted out of her with ease and without blood, upwards into the air.

It was so disgusting that I had to look away, just to see spines being pushed out of the tear ducts of the other cultists, some straight up like the barmaid’s, others across the room, growing by the foot, beginning to tangle into each other, their legs locking. A low hum echoed around the room as everyone standing remained still.
I was stunned into silence, not even giving a whimper. I tried to close my eyes, only to realise that I had my own spines growing out of my tear ducts, slower than the others, but still rising up.

Soon spines grew out from underneath fingernails, out of mouths and ears and nipples and genitals, from out of the middles of thighs and biceps and cheeks. They formed into webs, filling the gaps between the cultists and her and me, pouring into empty spaces. It was pointless to resist. I was tied in not just by my restraints, but by my own corrupted flesh. I was along for the ride.

Mine and the barmaid’s spines formed a netting between us. I could feel her heartbeat, a steady, casual pulse. She was not sweating, but I was, so severely that it must have only been the spines holding her in place on my lap.

‘Feel,’ she whispered to me. In spite of my tethers, I managed to shake my head.

‘Feel,’ she repeated, and leaned in closer, the spines pulling us tighter. She then reared back, and a great sickness flooded through me. I groaned and she tilted back into me.

‘Feel us,’ she said. I could then feel every heartbeat in the room, along with every breath, every shudder, every set of lips licked, teeth sucked, bowel gurgling, eye blinking.

‘I feel you all,’ I said involuntarily, and with that the other cultists began to rive about, moaning in perverse pleasure. Spines pulled tight, pulled loose; the odd one even snapped before re-growing.

All the people in the room became as one organism, a great pile of flesh, blood and adrenalin flowing from body to body, shudders moving like waves through the mass, the moaning getting louder and louder, individual voices mutating into a singular awful sound.

Through our netting I could the see the barmaid’s face contort, moving between ecstasy and agony, hideous with either. Her eyes changed colour, flowing from green to black to a steely blue.

I managed to move my head to the left and look through the webbing. I then shifted my view to the right, but no sight was superior to the other. I closed my eyes as tight as I could against the spines, but I could still sense every little thing, forming a complete mental image of the glowing throng against my will.

Reopening my eyes, my sight re-adjusted to the weird light, and then, through the trembling bodies to my left, a face unmarked by spines began to materialise, far in the back behind the riving mass, a face I knew from somewhere, and smiling at me.

I struggled to lean towards it, trying to get a better look, and the face began to laugh a familiar laugh.

‘Frank!’ I cried out, and the cultist moan turned into a deafening howl.

I tried to call Frank’s name again over the din, before blacking out.

 

The doctor came in and said that I had been found miles away from where the bar was, unconscious in a ditch just by the city’s edge. I had been peppered with tiny cuts and was severely dehydrated. They had thought at first I was just a drunk who had gotten himself into a complete blitz, until they gave me a blood test and found no traces of alcohol in my system, as well as dangerously low levels of vitamin D (at a level he said was previously unknown to him), which the drips were meant to replace. My entire system had come close to shutting down.

Four days later they let me go, and, after a quick stop off at my flat for a change of clothes—its contents mercifully left alone by my perpetually suspicious landlord—I made my way like a fool back to The Aeron.
The bar was somehow the same, but also completely different—I recognised none of the clientele, the two barmaids were new, and even the mirrored walls seemed cleaner than those in the place I had known.

The manager was available, and rather than ask of anything that had transpired on my last visit, merely inquired about Frank. Yet again there was nothing to be said of him.

As I left, swinging the heavy door open, I stopped on the pavement outside and lit a cigarette, my first since originally entering The Aeron. Adjusting my coat, I happened to look down to my right and catch my shadow, mutilated by the dark slither of a spine exiting one of my eyes. I nearly blinded myself with the fag as I slapped my face, but found no spine invading it.

I turned around and checked my reflection in the door window, to find Frank’s face staring back at me with the same smile he had had at the orgy. I saw it only for a brief moment, but it was just enough for me to see the true sadness within its expression.

‘They have you completely, don’t they?’ I asked him, surprising myself.

The face of Frank came forward and back, signalling a nod, and then disappeared forever. I didn’t dare go back into that fucking place again. I’d been lucky twice by then, and you shouldn’t tempt the gods.

I’ve since left the city, finding half decent work in the Outer Isles, where a man can drink peacefully in his own time. I’ve told nobody anything of the incident, and honestly my only true regret from it—for Frank was surely doomed regardless of what I could hope to do—relates to the drunkard I had to take out. In reflection, I do believe I did know him, and I probably did owe him some money. A bloody shame, but what can you do?