Roland's Basilisk
Posted to the PARANORMALPRICKHEADS Forums by user "Aegis--Agency."
An extraordinarily long and well written story about a shifty ad agency employee attempting to spread the curse of a basilisk. We specifically asked in the thread that we did not want any stories that were too clearly based on existing articles, but this was so good we had to let it slide.
Sometimes I get this feeling like I'm barrelling down a stretch of highway, or maybe I'm perfectly still and the world is just whizzing past me somehow. The only sign of travel is how the sections of light and dark alternate, back and forth between those lit by the evenly spaced street lamps and those lost to the night, forever and always, stretching on and on toward God knows what, some mysterious and unobtainable destination that I fear is too far away to ever reach within my lifetime. Peace, maybe.
Recently, though, I've started to feel a mounting lethargy. It's like the road beneath me turned to hot tar at some point. I know momentum will only take me so much further. I'm slowing and sinking and stuck in a long stretch of dark between those warm golden lights and every time I can find the strength to muster any coherent thoughts they all just melt into that scorching black and I don't know what to do. Each sentence fragment takes days to write. I'm scared.
That enough of a hook for you fucking creeps?
So I used to work at this local sandwich joint. It was the winter of '82 and the owner was losing his goddamn mind over getting our name out there before the upcoming Super Bowl. It was all he would talk about, and since I was the only one dumb enough to pretend to care about the job, I was often the chosen audience for his ramblings. He took such a liking to me just because I always smiled and nodded that, one day, he decided I was going to help him get some television commercials made for the place. It only took a little pushback for him to offer me some extra cash for the effort, which worked just fine for me.
Turned out that "help me make commercials" translated to "figure it out yourself", so I spent that weekend combing through ads and phone books, asking everyone I knew, poking around electronics stores, anything I could think of. A woman at one of those stores was, shockingly, able to get me in touch with a guy who did camera work for CBXT and had the equipment and connections to make things work. His name was Roland Saunders. Sometimes I wish I never met him, but maybe it's better that I did.
When I first met Roland at our joint that next week, he was fine. Straight forward, polite, sociable. Bit older than me. I distinctly remember him wearing this tan puffy jacket over an obnoxiously orange button up shirt, vertically bookended by dark hair and dark pants. We spent some time talking about work and bosses, former and current, which was partially a way for me to gauge whether or not he actually knew his stuff. I guess I was worried about us getting scammed, I don't know, it's not like I would've been able to tell if he was bullshitting either way. I only cared because I didn't want the boss to come after me about it. But once I was satisfied, I went to hunt down the big man himself so the two could talk business and found him doing lines off the bathroom sink. I asked him if he wanted to speak with the commercial guy and he just told me to handle it, so I returned to Roland and asked how much it would all cost. He gave me a number, I went back to the boss with a slightly higher number, and he forked over the cash to me right then and there. The man came from oil money, he could part ways with a couple extra dollars and live.
We decided to film the commercial that same day on a whim. It didn't take long, maybe a couple hours between us tossing some ideas around, winging a "script", and actually filming the thing, and we got way more footage than we needed. After that was all said and done, Roland told me he would put the commercial together and have it back to us for review by the next week.
I may have not been able to care less about that job, but I still couldn't wait to see the finished commercial. That week flowed like syrup. When Roland finally walked into the shop on Monday holding the tape up like it were some masterful work of art and grinning from ear to ear, I couldn't help but do the same. We scurried back into the owner's office and the three of us huddled together to watch it on his television.
It was magical.
I mean, it was honestly mediocre, but at the time it was magical. You kids wouldn't get it. The haze of the dull film, the vibrancy of the text, the crackle of what more liberal tongues might dare to call faint "music"... It felt special. I saw my naive self in action on that little boxy screen and it was the first time I felt real. Maybe if I get another go at life when this is all over, I could be a proper actress or news anchor or something. Oh well.
Would you believe me if I said it was even better when all my coworkers crowded around that very same television set another week later to see it air live to the public? It was just some shitty local ad for a trashy sandwich shop where ants were all but guaranteed with every meal and children way too young to officially work were paid in soda to wash dishes, but I felt like a star! Everything was equal parts awkward and exhilarating and I wanted more. After a long tract of darkness, I was finally back under the light.
I stayed in touch with Roland because of this. He was getting his taste for filming and editing back and I was hungry to be involved. Things moved quickly from there.
This was apparently the first time Roland had done something like this and it must've opened his third, fourth, and fifth eyes because suddenly he was ecstatic about the idea of creating more small-scale commercials for local places, doubly so when it proved effective at boosting my boss's business. I offered to help and he was quick to start showing me the basics of filming and editing. The guy was set up in this isolated little cabin, real cozy. I remember the white blur of reflected snow-light pouring through the windows, the smell of dust and the furnace and burning cigarettes, all accompanied by the relaxing feeling of petting his dog while watching him work.
I left town for two weeks to visit my family for Christmas and New Year's, but not before quitting my job at the sandwich place. I practically skipped out of the building. Good riddance.
When I visited Roland next, it was strange. Even from the outside I noticed that all of his cabin's windows had been covered. Blinds and curtains drawn, sheets and blankets hung up on the other side of the glass, I think even a shelf was moved to block one of the windows. When he answered the door, he barely opened it. Just quickly ushered me in and shut the world out again. I made some nervous joke about him being a vampire and I vividly remember the look he gave me in the dark. It was exhausted, almost desperate. Fearful. It was as if, for just a moment, it sunk in for him just how crazy he already seemed. But the look passed and he dismissed me by saying that he'd just been having a bad headache and the blinding light reflected by the snow outside was making it worse. So, obvious solution.
We sat together in the quiet gloom of his living room. I knew well before I saw the ashtray overflowing with the remains of cigarettes that Roland had been chain smoking, the place reeked of it. The dull orange glow at the end of his currently burning stick repeatedly flared up and softened with the breathing of the room, each drifting tendril of smoke adding to the growing miasma. My eyes burned a little. My throat tightened. I asked him if he was alright. He said the headache would pass and then got straight to talking business.
Roland began dishing out what places had reached out to us about filming commercials, what we would do, and what we would charge them. He had names of people and places written down, addresses catalogued, numbers circled and copied from phone books, scrawled pages of rough scripts cluttered with annotations, even a map of the city marked up. He had clearly been doing some thinking while I was gone. Despite this, I could tell that his heart wasn't really in it. That eager light wasn't in his eyes. That barely controlled smile had vanished. This project had become a forced obsession. A distraction.
My concern would have led me to try prying deeper but, at some point in his rundown, I realized that his dog was missing. I decided not to ask. That was all the explanation I thought I needed at the time.
The following months were, perhaps surprisingly, pretty good. We got a solid reputation built up around town, I got to act in a few of the ads, and Roland seemed to be getting better. He was still slightly off at times, sure. A bit irritable, occasionally despondent, not quite as well maintained, but he never seemed as utterly hollow as he did back in January. He actually began to get enthusiastic about our work again, especially when we got the offer to be brought into a proper ad agency so we could work with them.
I remember the first time we were brought back into their archive. Shelf after towering shelf of those little labeled rectangles and reels looming over us, organized so very neatly underneath the buzzing rows of pale lights. I felt so small. Somehow even smaller after they added some of our own creations to the collection.
That room has been the ever-present subject of my nightmares for years now, those warm memories long gone twisted like the filthy pages of some decades old novel curling up at the corners. Dead spiders and monkey paws. Every time I imagine it, my eyes immediately zone in on the same place. The same section of shelving. The little inconspicuous nook in the world where that fucking tape would be nestled so cozily, festering in the soulless fluorescent glow.
Its absence from that spot is often what turns those lonely dreams into nightmares.
Roland's enthusiasm quickly transformed into a deeper obsession. I rarely saw him leave the office and, on top of that, he became uncharacteristically possessive of his work– particularly a project he seemed increasingly proud of. He insisted on working alone most of the time. Occasionally I would catch glimpses of him slipping in and out of the archives, cutting up and splicing tapes, filming himself work, and talking to himself, though sometimes it seemed more like he was having conversations with someone I couldn't see or hear. I never picked up on much. He always noticed when I was around and always took his tapes all the way home for viewings.
For some reason, I distinctly remember being upset by the potential notion that he didn't need or want me anymore, even though he was very clearly deteriorating. I was concerned, sure, but… I don't know. I guess I'm just selfish. Whenever I tried confronting him about it or offering support, I was shut down anyway, which didn't exactly help. I started to feel like an outsider locked up on the inside of a strange place with a bunch of unfamiliar people. I started to regret quitting my job to chase a high that was barely being fulfilled and that pool of sadness and regret quickly welled up into waves of mounting frustration. He was in a rough patch, fine, but what the hell could he possibly be obsessing over so religiously? These were fucking commercials, not cinematographic masterpieces.
One day Roland was called away to help move some equipment inside and, out of sudden impulse, I started digging through his work area. It was stupid, but it didn't take long. I found a nest of mutilated magnetic tape, cracked plastic, and screws cradling an unlabeled VHS like the cherished egg of some audio/visual golden goose. The casing was unsecured. A quick inspection made it clear that, whatever this was, it was the VHS equivalent of Frankenstein's monster, just with countless snippets of tape spliced together rather than mismatched stitched body parts. In a series of rabid and mindless decisions, I screwed the case back together, rushed off to a secluded television, shut the door, and put the tape in. It was already rewound to the beginning.
You know the whole trope of disturbing letters and ransom notes being made out of collages of text cut and pasted from magazines and newspapers and all that? This tape felt like the visual equivalent of one of those. It was unsettling in its almost mundane insanity. It was just a mess of seemingly random clips, most of which I assumed to be taken from various tapes in the archives, but there were some other additions. Scenes that were either filmed by Roland himself or otherwise stolen from outside sources.
Some were relatively fine. Other inclusions don't need descriptions. I'm not sure I even can describe some of what I saw, other than that it got increasingly horrifying as it went. Words can't do it justice. It wasn't just film and sound. There was something else in there, something that caused the tape to stick with me in more ways than one. A complete assault on the senses. I swear I felt my eardrums burn, smelled a steady flow of spinal fluid, heard my skull crack like some horrible idea within was trying to hatch and breathe fresh air. It didn't get out. It's still in there.
At some point, I hit the floor. Every shift of disgusting color on the screen was like the whirl of power drills tearing through my eyes. I think I threw up.
Then, with a click, it stopped. Roland ejected the tape, stepped over the shivering mess I had become, and left. I don't know how long I was lying there, but when I was finally able to get up I found myself stumbling out of the room and into the archives before I could even think about it. I needed to get rid of that tape. I don't know why I wasted time thinking he would have put it there.
Most of what happened after I watched that abomination is an indistinct blur of pain and emotion, but I know I made a mess of the archives. I remember hearing tapes collide with the floor as I searched. I remember being shouted at as I hurried out of the building. I remember Roland's car being gone. I remember making the stupid decision of getting in mine and driving out to his cabin. I didn't know what else to do. I was suddenly driving in the dark again.
I made several embarrassing attempts to break in before actually succeeding. He wasn't there and neither was his camera or any of his tapes. Believe me, I looked. I did, however, find his journal. It's rough.
Maybe I'll upload parts of that one of these days when looking at the thing doesn't make me sick.
Snippets I had picked up from Roland's solo conversations had been sinking into the pit in my stomach. All his mentions of "airing it" were rattling in my head like, I don't know, some drunk tauntingly jingling the keys to their car as they walked away, leaving me to anticipate the worst. Something was wrong with him and now it was wrong with me and, for some god awful reason, he wanted to spread it. I knew he had to come back to the studio to do that.
I drove back and parked where I could see the place. I didn't dare get too close for fear of the consequences of the mess I had made earlier. I just had to wait and hope that Roland hadn't already come and gone while I was away. I figured he wouldn't take the tape to any other agency for airing because they'd check what it was first, but he was trusted enough here that he could pass the tape off as an expected airing and have it slide right through. Plus, if he had gone elsewhere, there was no way in hell I'd find out where before it was too late. I just had to wait.
The dizzying thunder of pain in my head and the swirling clouds of tainted imagery got worse as the distraction of an active hunt went away, making it near impossible to focus on the simple task of keeping an eye on the building. It felt like hours passed. Half asleep, I almost failed to notice Roland's return, but the second I saw him carrying that box toward the doors I was wide awake. I nearly screamed.
Within moments, I had hurled myself out of my car and was sprinting across the street toward him, narrowly avoiding getting run over. It was too late for him to run by the time he saw me coming. I tried and failed to tackle him to the ground, instead finding myself on my knees, desperately clinging to the edge of the cardboard box he was carrying, crying as I tried to use it to pull myself up at him. The wall of the box tore and a collection of tapes clattered to the floor, as did I.
I stopped and stared at them. Every last one was labeled, all the unassuming titles of ads I knew were legitimate projects, but I knew, I KNEW that one of them was that fucking virus. I tried to gather them up, Roland tried to stop me, I fought back.
Some people tore us apart. I instantly shifted gears to trying to explain that he was trying to hurt people, that one of those innocent tapes had unspeakable things on it, that it could never be allowed to air to the public. I have no idea how much of that came out as coherent. I don't think anyone would have taken me seriously either way. I must've seemed crazy. In a last ditch effort at reason, I told them to check Roland's workspace, since there was at least evidence of him destroying various recordings from the archives. It was quiet. Roland made no effort to excuse himself, just stared at the VHS tapes on the ground. One of the editors gathered them back into the remains of the box and carefully brought them into the building as he went to investigate my claims. I begged him to not keep those things, to destroy them, and I even tried to break free from the person restraining me so I could stop him but I couldn't. I tried so hard but I couldn't.
They came to the conclusion that Roland and I were both responsible for property damage, unstable, no longer employed, and very unwelcome on the premises from now on. They didn't want to get the cops involved. Every day I regret having not forced their hands, but in that moment I had no fight left in me. I gave up and it taunts me for it.
My eyes were glued to that place and the television, but none of the commercials Roland brought in that box ever aired. I don't know if anyone else saw the tape. Maybe they destroyed it. I hope they did, but I doubt it considering the attitude of the thing in my head. I considered breaking in and destroying the tape or just burning the whole place to the ground more times than I can count, but I could never muster up the will or courage to do much of anything. I still can't. I haven't even tried to keep tabs on Roland. If he makes another attempt at this, I know I can't stop him.
A couple of years ago, the ad agency we worked for got bought out by a larger company and the building got completely renovated, including the archive room. The tapes stored within were probably relocated to God knows where, it's beyond me, I stopped paying attention to that place, the television broadcasts, and really the whole world after that point. This is the first time in a long time that I've made any sort of effort to reach out about any of this.
I've run out of momentum and I fear all I've managed to do is delay the inevitable.
As agonizing as it was to get this down, I think a part of me has finally been laid to rest in the process. I'm no longer afraid of slowing to a stop. Maybe that's what peace is.
I'm old now. I did what I could. Maybe you fucking creeps can keep things from getting worse.
Good luck.
(C) 2002-2008
