What Tristan Saw, February 2012
Norris Eppes
Norris Eppes
© 2012 Norris Eppes
Published at Smashwords
He is cold, very cold, standing outside duPont and there is this little worm crawling across the rocks towards the doors. Its going towards the doors because it wants to get inside and be warm, of course! There it is again, that green man. Man, yea, I guess so, it has a green face HE’S got a green face and hair like snakes that dangle curl twine in green down from his thick broad skull.
He grabs Tristan by the shirt. Tristan wears a rugby shirt that he received that last Christmas, as a present, when he came home from Scotland. God, such a jerk. And then the green man vomits all over Tristan’s face. Green, chunks of what the hell are those? The Green Man’s tongue is long and black as he breathes close to Tristan’s face, spewing vomit down his rugby shirt. And Tristan drinks green tea.
So yea, last night. How bout that? Tristan was at the theatre, working, and of course the projection machine kept shutting off. Had to tell all those people they could get a refund if they wanted. Freaks him out, man. It had started to rain then, and had not stopped since.
And she was there. The ghost of the SUT! She is about four feet tall, and skinny with a body like a skeleton, bent and crooked. Grey flesh barely clings to her body (or whats left of it) and blood oozes out of her mouth. Eyeballs hang loosely from sticky sockets in her skull. She has wisps of hair that seem to strangle her throat, and long creepy jointed fingers that pop and crack as she cackles at Tristan. All this while Tristan was selling popcorn.
Okay, so Tristan. He was working at the SUT, and the creepy ghost lady walked down the main hallway towards him. And the other guys were there too, the ones wearing long tattered black cloaks with red eyes. Creepy theatre that place, especially alone at night. He unlocked the door, and of course she was at the door, smashing her face against the glass and glaring at him with those crazy half-hanging-out-of-her-face-eyeballs. Blood stuck to the door as she scratched her nails down along the glass.
‘I’ll have ta clean the blood off that door, ya know. Did one of your eyes just pop out of your face?’ Tristan asked her. She smeared more blood against the glass.
‘Hah! You’d like to know! Why are you talking to me anyways?’ she cackled, a raspy voice that sounded like the voices of all his evil old neighbours put together into one creepy fleshless bleeding lady. His neighbour’s scared him as a kid.
So he unlocked the door and had to push her off of it as she leached onto his body, trying to gnaw at his legs as he walked down the hallway to turn on the lamp. He shoved her off of him, and flicked on the light. Ah, light. Nice! And now, to work. He sat in the concession stand and was at peace, didn’t hear anything, didn’t see anything but what he figured was normal.
‘Oh we’ll be back!’ she screeched at him, running off. The noise of her voice echoed along the halls. The first trace of that other voice began to take effect on Tristan’s mind.
‘Not him again…’ Tristan sputtered.
The little lady had left blood on the counter.
‘Course,’ he muttered, getting paper towels to wipe the slime off of the concession stand counter. ‘Gotta sell popcorn over this soon, wouldn’t look good if it were covered in blood and eyeball juice!’ The liquid danced across the table away from his paper towel as he attempted to wipe it up. The eyeball liquid slime mixed with the blood as he finally corralled the liquid and threw it into the trash can.
And everything was fine for a while. Tristan did some of his homework - Shakespeare, ya - and then 30 minutes before the movie ended they reappeared again. He was cleaning the popcorn maker, and glanced up towards where people usually stood to buy their junk food.
‘Aha!’ They laughed at him, and he jumped back, wielding the popcorn scoop as a weapon. It was the cloaked guy, this time. Cloaked in all black, with red red eyes and a skeletal jawline, just staring at Tristan from behind the counter. The hallway was black, the room was empty except for Tristan. And THIS guy, who didn’t have a name. Yet. Do they all get names eventually? Well he guesses so - there’s Alice and Albert, and Jack, I guess. (But he has not seen him in a long time… wonder what he is doing).
So the movie finally ended, and Tristan cleaned up the theatre. Sweep, vacuum oh wait the vacuum’s broken, clean the concession stand, and then what? Well, off to Fiji I guess. No wait, he drove someone home. Damn, forgot about that.
And the rest of the night turned out interestingly. The voices came back, voices he hadn’t heard in a long time. They whispered first, then yelled at him. Always there, somewhere behind his ears, just shouting at him and laughing. Lots of laughing! Tristan laughed in the car as he drove over to the house, trying to blast music as loud as he could to make the voices go away. At least they hadn’t gotten to the point of figuring out what he thought. Yet! That happened before, not fun.
‘This is ridiculous, man, hahahahahaha.’ And so the voices continued while he was at the house. Stumbled around, he talked to some people and their EYES man, eyes. What’s with that? Stare stare stare.
‘Water, ya, drinking water. No alkehol for me tonight.’
Then bed, eventually, after something happened, he couldn’t really remember what. Did you remember to take your meds last night? Gah.
Next day. Scream scream scream, and it was okay during the game but then AFTER when he started feeling strange. Was it too much coffee? Gosh he dunno.
‘You just look German to me! Are you German? Oh mah gawddd I can’t believe you ARENT GERMAN?’ [Drunk Girl #1].
‘Dad, its okay, they have locks on EVERYTHING at the ski lodge!’ [Drunk Girl #2 On Phone].
‘Oh my gawhhhdddd I HATE FOG.’ [Drunk Girl #3, walking around in Sewanee Fog].
Raining today, standing outside duPont. Lots of stuff, fun fun fun. Hmm lets see. First there was the river that emerged in front of the building, a HUGE torrent, with a sea monster swimming through its waves. What the heck was it doing? Tristan didn’t know. It kinda leapt out of the water and splashed around. It was raining, did that have anything to do with the hallucinations?
‘Really should be reading Shakespeare right now,’ Tristan told himself.
‘You work yourself too hard!’
‘No, never.’
Or maybe! Anyway, he wasn’t working now. He was standing outside of duPont staring at a sea monster that was BLUE (Albert’s cousin or something maybe?). Albert is Tristan’s pet dragon - he’s an orange dragon and he is incredibly nice. One of the two nice things that Tristan sees repeatedly. So, there’s Albert, and then there’s also Alice. Alice walked up to Tristan when he was in Denmark, at a time when for the past two days he had eaten only eaten a piece of brown bread, smeared with some sort of fish paste. She introduced herself nicely.
‘Hello, Tristan! I’m Alice!’ They shook hands, and chatted for a while, sitting on a bench beside the North Sea.
‘So you speak English well, you’re not Danish? No accent…’ Tristan muttered, smiling.
‘Well Tristan,’ she laughed, looking towards her shoes. It was raining on that day also.
‘Im actually your aborted older sister.’
And that’s how Tristan and Alice became friends. She has blonde hair, and high cheekbones and a strong jawline.
‘Pretty sure I’ve seen you before…’ Tristan had talked to her.
YES then he remembered it!
The first time he had ever seen ANYTHING was when he was sitting in that blue chair, and seen her face. Strange.
‘And then again, not the first time Ive seen anything,’ he said apologetically to her, ‘there were the wolves when I was little.’ He shivered.
‘Yes Tristan, I know,’ she laughed, patting him on the back and giving him a hug. That was a long time ago, and for some reason she hadn’t gone away (which Tristan didn’t mind). Her and Albert, man.
So anyway, there they were, outside of duPont, staring at him. There was the sea monster and the black hooded figures again. They NEVER seemed to leave him alone. Creepy, those ones, with flaming red eyes. Grey skeleton for a jaw, that protruded nastily from under the hoods they wore.
OH and last night the SUT had burned down. He had forgotten about that as well. While Tristan was inside of the building. He had grabbed the burning trash can and flung it across the room, and everything was covered in blood and fire. He had been scorched, and his skin crumbled at his touch, revealing white pale bone.
But somehow he is still here, today, and now he stares at Sewanee in flames. Spencer begins to crumble as fire tears it apart, and Guerry disintegrates into rubble. Breslin tower is swathed in red-blue flame as black cloaked soldiers dart towards Tristan. They laugh, and the voices return, screaming at Tristan.
‘Hah, yall can’t cross the river!’ he shouts at them. He laughs again. There is the sea monster and the river in front of duPont, protecting him. But he thinks too fast.
‘Daw hell,’ he mutters, as one of the soldiers pulls out a rifle. It is a long black rifle. Tristan tries to turn and run back into the library as the enemy soldier raises his gun, but is too late. Tristan stares into the soldier’s red eyes as the enemy pulls the trigger. He sees the bullet fly through the air, over the head of the sea monster. The grey lead bullet tears through Tristan’s chest, ripping him apart and emerging on the other side to bounce harmlessly against the library wall. Blood starts gushing down Tristan’s stomach as bits of rib stick from his body, like little white thorns. He grabs at his chest, and tries to stem the flow of blood. The sea monster retreats into his river, now, and blood begins to cover the stone walk in front of the library.
Tristan hears a noise from behind him. An old bearded townie and his wife walk out the library doors, and full of embarrassment Tristan puts his clean hands back in his pockets. He closes his eyes, but he sees the green man vomiting. Nasty chunks of green vomit.