TRUE STORY: I Recently Unearthed an Old Tome

On a hike through the Hudson Valley, I recently unearthed an old tome. I was in one of the coldest, darkest forest valleys I've ever seen. The ground was dark black, a fuzzy brown mold covered any exposed wood, and I couldn't see any animals or hear any birds, but I'll be damned if I didn't hear small creatures darting through leaves and dodging behind trees.

At one point of my hike through this dark valley I was resting, reaching into my pack to get a bottle of water. I had packed everything tight, so when I finally fished out the slippery bottle, it tumbled out of my hands and into a pile of rocks. I hadn't noticed the rock pile before, and upon further examination I realized someone must have put the pile there. I kicked at it a bit and revealed this book. Somehow it wasn't wet or moldy at all. In fact, with the exception of browned pages from age, it looked like it had been preserved perfectly.

As I drank my water and rested, I flipped through the book, reading several passages out loud. The story itself shook me with terror. The more I read, the more I noticed the sounds of chattering animals growing louder. Not wanting to endanger myself, I shoved the book into my pack and hiked the hell out of there. The hair on the back of my neck didn't rest until I got home, though I continued to shiver throughout the night.

Here, for your reading pleasure, I present the passages of the book that most frightened me:

CHAPTER ONE: Hitchcock Introduction

"Good evening, fellow necromaniacs. I'm glad so many of you could come. I should explain that the word has nothing to do with necking. I'm awfully sorry. I don't have time to explain it now. You'll just have to look it up in the dictionary. As you know, we are not allowed to present out play unless we have a quorum. Tonight we are concerned with those three little words: WHO DONE IT? When our story opens, the more sordid details are safely out of the way, for the hero of tonight's Grand Guignol is already quite dead."

CHAPTER TWO: THE SLEEPER

Bank guard Cassius Johnson settles into his desk for the night. He kicks his feet up, settles back in his office chair, looks at the family picture he keeps on his desk, and watches the monitors to make sure nothing happens to the area he's employed to protect. The walls of his small office are decorated with pictures of his family, memorabilia from his vacations, and awards presented to him for the achievements he's reached throughout his career. Awards for his time on the police force, for his command of the post at the prison as head guard, and now at this position as a bank guard.

But for the first time in his career, he's been battling sleep this week. And no matter how much coffee he has been drinking, he's still struggling to stop yawning. On this night, kicked back in his chair, eyes rubbed to the point of the being bloodshot, he rests his head back, and for the first time in his career, he falls asleep on the job.

Enter the criminals. As Cassius Johnson slumbers, three hooded villains are seen scrambling through the back entrance to the bank. As they approach the guards office, one of the figures unscrews a heating vent revealing a small machine that has been emitting a gas into Cassius' office. They tie the guard to his chair, never waking him. The villains then proceed to the bank vault.

epilogue to chapter two:

In a dark lair in what appears to be a cavern, a hideous creature is seen sitting in a throne built of entrails, writing in a journal. All that can be seen of this creature are its red eyes, reflecting the flames of a fire burning hot in the middle of this cavern. The creature grunts and wheezes, breathing heavily and writing ferociously. Interrupted by a clatter of noise at the entrance of his cavern, the creature looks up to see a humanoid creature slowly crawling towards his throne. The lesser creature offers a tribute to the royal creature before beginning his prayer:

"I am here oh great and mighty Tyrannus. What is your will?"

Tyrannus looks up from his book, snarling at the interruption, and responds. "I have used my power to infect the bats with a thirst for blood and destruction. Release them against the humans!"

CHAPTER THREE: MONSTER

Tyrannus' evil bats are released through a system of cavernous tunnels. As they shriek and search for the nearest exit they form an underground cloud of unified terror. Suddenly, one of the beasts unleashes a scream louder than the rest, seemingly guiding them. It has found light. The cloud explodes in the direction of this sliver of light.

With the bank guard tied up, the three masked villains are in the bank vault, arguing amongst each other about who will get what fraction of "the haul." They bicker and insult each other as they work, pulling drawer after drawer, stack after stack of dollar bills out. In the back left corner of the vault is an old chest that seems to be grounded to the floor, anchored somehow. The villain that had secured the gas-emitting device in the guard's office appears to be something of a mechanical genius. He limps back to his tool box and produces a high-tech saw that he uses to free the the chest from its restraints.

As the trio pulls the chest back to examine its prize, they fail to notice that a piece of the vault's floor has been ripped up. The group does notice, however, that the vault begins to shake. Then they notice the lights beginning to flicker and an audible buzz coming from what appears to be all around them. Then darkness. They reach out in the darkness, grabbing onto each other for security, whispering doubts. When the lights come back on they are relieved to feel the shaking and buzzing has stopped. They pause and look around until finally they're content to resume stealing from the bank. Just as they return to work, huge, lumbering bats begin crawling through the hole in the back of the vault. Each member of the gang tries to run but is overpowered by a bat.

Later, at a hospital, each robber is handcuffed to a bed, hooked up to numerous monitors, unconscious . They have been separated into different quarantined rooms. Masks removed, the gang is revealed. One is a tan-skinned woman. One is an older man with thick glasses. The other is a man with no hair, no eyebrows, and no eyelashes.

The monitors which had been reading steady patterns begin to spike. The machines begin to shake and spark. Simultaneously across all three rooms, the monitors explode. The gang each wakes up in their separate rooms. Panicking and realizing that their heist has been foiled, they feel desperate and angry. Apart from each other, each begins to suspect that another had betrayed them. As their anger intensifies, strange things begin to happen. Each villain begins to change.

What appears to be circuits and wires begin to grow out of the older man, the mechanical genius. Slowly the electrical components and wires overtake the man's flesh. He has become completely hardwired, taking the shape of a crab-like humanoid. Steam and mist are expelled from the new robo-man until the room is too foggy to see through. When the smoke clears, the man has disappeared. His laughter can be heard coming from sporadic intercoms scattered throughout the hospital.

The hairless man's eyes open wide, panicked. His begins to cry, but the tears thicken and go from clear to black, oily. His eyes then become black. His jaw appears to dislocate and open wider than any human's should. He screams and slowly fades from view, dissipating like a bad television signal. Before he fades completely, his visage is distorted and stretched.

The woman smiles, realizes something has changed, and snaps free of her restraints. She sits up and rips free of the handcuffs. She finds the clothes she was brought in with, changes, and puts her ski mask back on. She opens the door to her room and begins brutally slaughtering the guards assigned to watch her room. Next she systematically hides, darting in and out of hospital rooms, killing bystanders, until she is out of the hospital. With each murder she appears to grow in stature. She witnesses her growth after killing her sixth victim, a bad driver. Her legs extend and she has to move the driver's seat back as she drives off in her new vehicle. She reaches back and feels something odd on the back of her head. She pulls her hand back to expose clumps of hair she's shed. She feels the back of her head and feels cold metal. She drives off laughing maniacally.

The world has just witnessed the birth of three monsters: Master Crack, Phantasm, and Queen Kong.

CHAPTER FOUR: GO TO SLEEP

The Phantasm monster rematerializes somewhere he doesn't recognize. Its cold. He doesn't know what is happening. He is angry and confused. The woman he had loved was the planner, the schemer. She got him into this mess. With each swing of his unstable emotions his body becomes more and more distorted. Phantasm remembers being an up-and-coming sleep psychiatrist, married and successful, expecting a child with his wife.

That is until one of his patients claimed he had hypnotized and raped her. He lost all of his clients during the trials. His wife lost her child. His colleagues explained that she lost the baby due to stress incurred from the accusations about her husband. She divorced him without ever giving him the chance to explain himself.

He met the woman in line at the unemployment office. She flirted with him aggressively, seemingly attracted to his knowledge of big words. They had an affair. He began sleeping on the couch at her apartment. When she came to him with a plot to rob a bank, he weighed his options and decided he had nothing left to lose. He developed a sleep gas that would be used to negate any guards at the bank. And he doesn't remember what happened after they pulled the chest out of the corner of the bank's vault.

Now, with some unexplained powers, Phantasm rocks back and forth on the floor of this cold place, sobbing. He tries to sleep, but something strange happens every time he closes his eyes. He can't sleep. He's inside other people's dreams. He realizes the potential to change his plot in life by manipulating people's dreams with this new power. The possibilities seem endless. As he searches through people's dreams he looks for his wife. He manipulates lawyers and judges, his former colleagues and friends, desperate to change his life. When he meets conflicts, he manipulates people's sleep patterns, causing them to fall asleep in their cars and have fatal accidents, or in some cases cause them to be so sleep deprived that they're more susceptible to his dream suggestions.

CHAPTER FIVE: LOOKIN FOR YA

As Phantasm travels through the dreams of the public, he stumbles across Hardwire. Revealing himself and his powers to Master Crack, the two agree to hunt for Queen Kong, reforming their gang. Master Crack appears humanoid, though he retains the claws that come with his new crab-like appearance. Still, he has the ability to become a fluid entity of wires and circuitry, able to squeeze under doors and through wall outlets. It appears he can also manipulate electronics and computers. With Master Crack's ability to access any and all electronic information and Phantasm's ability to float from dream to dream, the two are on the hunt for their third monster teammate. Along the way they cause an unstoppable path of death and misery. They can't explain their urge to find Queen Kong. It feels innate. Something is pulling them.

epilogue to chapter five:

Queen Kong abandoned the stolen taxi weeks ago and has been following her instincts to travel underground, isolated from the public. She stalks subways, sewers, and ditches on her way out West. She feels pulled in an in explicable direction, to a destination she's never been. Whenever she is discovered, she is quick to murder any witnesses. From her small form she has grown to almost six feet tall. She feels her form getting bulkier and the metal that she had felt at the base of her skull has grown in patches along her spine as well.

CHAPTER SIX: CRABBUCKIT

Master Crack and Phantasm, working in tandem, have infiltrated high levels of the government. They have stumbled upon a trail of carnage that can only be Queen Kong. To find her and isolate her they have manipulated several platoons of soldiers, but to gain such access they have destroyed the minds of many high-ranking military officials. No matter how many squads of armed men they send to Queen Kong they cannot reach through to her, nor can they access her mind. Before any of their emissaries can talk to her she shreds them. Convinced that trying to reach her through the manipulation of others will not work, they decide to send one more swarm of soldiers and vehicles to stop her so they can talk to her.

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE OPPOSITE OF ADULTS

Unknown to her, Queen Kong has been battling the forces her two former partners have sent after her to slow her down to reunite with them. She can't explain why these men continue to pursue her, but it doesn't matter, because she cannot be killed. Her metallic hide can't be punctured, and the rest of her heals quickly from any other injury she incurs.

Clumsy and inattentive to their surroundings, the team of Master Crack and Phantasm send an aggressive military force into a small town community to round up Queen Kong. Unbeknownst to Master Crack and Phantasm, one of their military generals is an overly-aggressive man, intent on bringing in Queen Kong by any means necessary. The general tracks Queen Kong to a tunnel running underneath a playground busy with children. Desperate to stop her, the general tries to flood the tunnel with nuclear waste, convinced that if bullets and explosions won't stop her, perhaps a soft-nuclear option will work.

Counting down from five, the general plans on sending in a wave of the waste. For good luck, he drops a live grenade in with the waste. Unfortunately, the general is swept up in the wave of nuclear waste, exploding directly underneath the playground. Queen Kong wipes the waste from her person and flees, unscathed. The general and the children stand, trying to escape the sledge. However, the swell of waste begins to pull in on itself, dragging the general and the children together in a solid form of toxic sledge.

Pulling itself upright, this new terrifying entity screams, dripping waste wherever it crawls. It towers over homes. The conscious of each child is shared by the new monster, and each child wants to go home. The general's mind is in this new monster as well. It screams again, not knowing where home is, but aware that it must follow Queen Kong. It heads west, following the trail Queen Kong leaves. Along the way, the police and the military try to stop the Heap. Anyone that crosses its path is absorbed and eventually dissolved into the toxic creature. With each addition to its cluster, the Heap grows, crying louder and louder. No one knows if its cries are of pain or of anger. All anyone knows is that it cannot be stopped.

Realizing that they've gotten themselves into more of a mess than they would like to handle, Master Crack and Phantasm leave the military, killing anyone they had inhabited to cover their tracks. They sneak into a passing semi-truck and ride West, again pulled by some unknown force.

CHAPTER EIGHT: REMEMBER HIS NAME

Witnessing the events of the disasters in the Midwest from their underground lair in California, the hip-hop group Jurassic 5 monitors the westward progress of the monsters. They also discover something the media and the police have missed, a trail of murders following but unrelated to the monsters. They don't know it, but they've discovered Master Crack and Phantasm.

DJ Nu-Mark, the scientist, collaborates with his lab partner, Cut Chemist to analyze some of the sledge left behind by the Heap. They recognize its nuclear-genetic patterns and create an enzyme that will allow them to control the beast. But before they use the enzyme, they decide to study the woman monster the Heap is following as well as the path of murders that follow the two.

Before the creation of the Heap, they notice that the mysterious path of sleepless military officials and scrambled electronics seemingly two steps behind the underground murders committed by Queen Kong. Since the creation of the Heap, no military or government departments have reported these experiences, but there are loads of police reports of accidents among truck drivers, most of the truckers reporting lack of sleep or scrambled equipment inside their trucks.

Using all of the resources at their disposal, and relying on the combined strength each individual's unique abilities, Jurassic 5 concludes that it is time to confront the monstrosities. After extensive research, they have put together a plan. Akil, the pilot, flies the J5 helicopter in front of the creature they have named Queen Kong. Zaakir, the daredevil dives out of the helicopter and, using his infra-red-monster-radar locates Queen Kong. Upon finding her, he uses his agility to scramble to avoid her punches and claws, and he straps a jetpack to her. Remotely, DJ Nu-Mark, the scientist of the team, detonates the jet pack, and Queen Kong is launched into space.

Unable to follow Queen Kong any further, the Heap lurches to the last location she had touched earth. Having tracked her as far as it could go, the Heap stops and begins wailing, crying into the air. Everything is going according to the plan Jurassic 5 had put together. Chali 2na, the strong and slow-witted member of Jurassic 5 dons his mystic Power Glove. The force of the Power Glove relieves him of his mind but gives him incredible size and strength. As his eyes go blood red he grows to match the size of the Heap and punches him with the Power Glove, unfazed by the Heap's toxic presence. With each punch, the Heap is slowly dissolved into smaller pieces until the monster is scattered into hundreds of small clumps of nuclear sludge.

Jurassic 5 is directed by Cut Chemist and DJ Nu-Mark to collect each clump in individual lead-lined containers, saving the planet.

first epilogue of chapter eight:
Cassius Johnson, the bank guard, is in a hospital, still unconscious from the original bank robbery/mutant bat fiasco. His wife is sitting by his side, holding his hand. She sits, night after night, waiting for Cassius to wake from whatever ailment he’s suffering from. The doctors say he’s not in a coma, but they can’t explain why he isn’t moving or responding to tests. Occasionally his eyes flutter, but they don’t open. His fists clench, but they never touch.


second epilogue to chapter eight:
As the lead-lined containers are stored in J5's underground bunker, a pallet of containers is diverted to a waiting truck, driven by two shadowy figures. Cut Chemist signs off on the truck’s manifest and watches it leave J5’s compound. As the truck exits, Cut Chemist is seen shaking his head and yawning.

The truck’s occupants are actually Master Crack and Phantasm. Master Crack had infiltrated J5’s inventory system and Phantasm had hypnotized Cut Chemist. The two drive off with a pallet of Heap pieces.

Later in the night, DJ Nu-Mark notices Cut Chemist's change in behavior and realizes what has happened. The two entities of destruction that had followed Queen Kong and the Heap are not only still out there, but they infiltrated Jurassic 5's compound. "Master Crack and Phantasm will be back!"

CHAPTER NINE: THE TERROR (intermission)

CHAPTER TEN: DON'T TURN THE LIGHTS ON

With pieces of Heap, Master Crack and Phantasm reverse their westward trajectory and go back east. On the way, they are unknowingly affected by exposure to Heap. They don't notice the fact that they aren't stopping for food or drink as often. They don't notice that days and nights begin to shrink shorter and shorter. They don't notice that they're starting to develop secondary mutations. Phantasm is stretched and distorted even further. He begins to slip in and out of people's dreams unintentionally, and he has a difficult time distinguishing between dream and reality. Master Crack outgrows his skin and begins building "shells" out of metallic debris. He also develops a thirst for blood. The pair begin to resemble the monsters they are, losing their humanoid appearance.

They travel in the back of tractor trailers in the dark. Once they return to their city, close to the scene of the crime, a truck driver discovers them and screams in terror. They snap back to reality, realizing their mutated appearance. Using their combined powers, they discorporate the driver, spraying his remains on the walls of the trailer they had been riding in. Disgusted with their new appearance, they hide in the dark, waiting for their opportunity to either cure themselves or mutate the rest of the world into similarly disfigured creatures like themselves.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: DEMON WOMAN

Desperate to change their fates, Master Crack and Phantasm renew their criminal ways, systematically infiltrating government science centers. Phantasm re-enters members of the Jurassic 5 to learn what has happened to Queen Kong. When they learn that Queen Kong is still flying through space on one of Jurassic 5's jetpacks, Master Crack focuses his powers to the International Space Station. Once his conscience is transmitted on board, he begins to systematically focus his entity on building a space craft out of spare parts to harness Queen Kong's trajectory. Phantasm enters the dreams of the astronauts on board the ISS and manipulates their actions to assist in tracking Queen Kong.

CHAPTER TWELVE: BRAIN STEW

Combining their powers, Master Crack and Phantasm search the International Space Station to salvage anything they can to reach out to Queen Kong. They discover a special space reconnaissance experiment on board the space station testing the effects of human cloning in zero gravity. Reaching upon Master Crack's superior mechanical engineering ability, they create a colony on Mars to act as an incubator for the cloning of potential new bodies for themselves. The new colony will also act as a half-way point between Queen Kong's expected trajectory and Earth.

They conspire to send one unmanned space craft to retrieve Queen Kong and bring her to the colony to study how to return to their original bodies. Simultaneously they will begin cloning a squad of multiple bodies to use as hosts if they cannot revert their physical changes. If all goes to plan, Queen Kong will be back and in their laboratory and the pair of monsters will have a large supply of potential host bodies. Expending great power to achieve their goals, the two exhaust themselves both physically and mentally.

Meanwhile, on earth, Phantasm's power is stretched so thin that he accidentally makes a momentary psychic link with Cassius Johnson, killing him. Somehow Johnson's essence doesn't die, though. It is on a plane of existence within Phantasm's dream reality. Retaining all of his memories on earth, Johnson begins to live within Phantasm's dreams, systematically torturing the already-tortured monster. Johnson recognizes the monsters' plans, and he will exert as much of his will as he can to foil their schemes.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN - SUPER DOME

Despite his best efforts, Cassius Johnson can't alter the course of the actions already in motion. Queen Kong is successfully snagged and returned the monsters' new colony. The clones are multiplying rapidly in the zero gravity incubation chambers. Master Crack and Phantasm are slowly depleting the life force out of the crew of the International Space Station. And the remnants of the Heap, recently brought to the space colony are slowly gaining sentience.

None of the schemers involved anticipated what was to happen next. Due to a freak accident caused by the dream-deprived and increasingly unstable Phantasm, Queen Kong's consciousness and mutation was spread to a newly-awakened squad of clones. Master Crack and Queen Kong fled back to earth, leaving an army of foul-mouthed clones on the space colony. Phantasm cannot handle the combination of abandonment by Queen Kong and Master Crack and the constant exposure to cannibalistic obscenities espoused by the Queen Kong clones. Each clone has a metal scalp, each one behaving lewdly, each one learning and growing from the technology left behind by Master Crack and Phantasm. The clones conspire to return to Earth to take vengeance upon those that created them.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE BEST

Back on earth, Cassius Johnson's steadfast wife buries him. She holds her chin high through the ceremonies, holding hope that the memories of her best friend and husband are enough for her to carry on. Little does she know that her husband's essence lives on. And he will be a savior in the coming days...

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: AIN'T NO GRAVE

He had been piggy-backing inside of Phantasm's dream world, and when the squad of Queen Kong clones was awakened he was given access to their collective consciousness as well. His presence is augmented with the addition of access to the clones' dreamworlds. He is able to travel the galaxy and land in his wife's dreamworld. He inspires her but simultaneously distracts her. He realizes the conundrum and transfers his conscience back and forth between his wife and the clones on Mars.

Meanwhile, the clones are organizing and begin using the leftover technology to rein in passing asteroids, boarding them, and guiding them towards earth.

Realizing the danger, Cassius Johnson taps into Phantasm's dreamworld and using his inherent power, transfers Johnson's essence into the body that had been buried. What Johnson's wife and doctors hadn't realized was that, though his body was still and non-responsive, he was still half-alive. With his conscience back home, Cassius Johnson was awake, and he began clawing and pulling at the coffin he had been buried in. He was convinced that he would be able to be with his wife again.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: TOO MUCH

As the Queen Kong clones board asteroids and make their ways towards earth, Cassius Johnson recognizes the danger heading towards his home. He is able to induce a sleep state with the help of his wife. In this sleep state he can enter the minds of the clones and force them to decomission their own asteroid spacecraft, committing kamikaze into the earth's atmosphere. But there are so many. Can Cassius Johnson destroy them all?

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: HEADS WILL ROLL

Cassius Johnson tries his hardest to destruct each of the incoming clones asteroids, but it proves too large a task. He channels the powers given to him by Phantasm and reaches out for help. He gets Master Crack and Queen Kong to commit their powers to stopping the invading clones. He reaches out to Jurassic 5 and gets promises of their assistance, as well. Things look to be up for heroes.

Unfortunately, some asteroids DO reach the earth. As they crash into the ground, the contingency of heroes fights valiantly, finishing most of the clones before they are able to crawl out of their individual craters. Some of the unarmed clones, shrieking foul-mouthed obscenities, escape their craters and begin attacking the heroes, most of them falling to the heroes. As asteroids crash into earth, in some places the asteroids strike the earth and break through the ground, exposing huge channels and caverns.

Queen Kong didn't realize it, but as she traveled underground across the country, in some cases she was passing through tunnels that were not man made, rather they had been dug by the same mutant bats that had erupted from the same bank vault tunnel that caused the manifestation of her powers. As the asteroids burn through the atmosphere and crash into the ground, tunnels and caverns are exposed, and thousands of these blood-thirsty bats join the battle. The bats and clones fight against the heroes, incapacitating many of them, decapitating several.

The battle ensues into the night where the bats have an obvious advantage.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: SOO TALL

As the battle rages on, Cut Chemist and DJ Nu-Mark of Jurassic 5 collaborate with Phantasm and Master Crack to isolate the issue before it spills throughout the entire world. They create a machine that will transport the heroes, the bats, and the clones back to the Mars colony. Once teleported, they will set off an EMP which will prohibit anyone from ever leaving the colony. It will be a costly sacrifice, but this ensures that the rest of the world will be spared from the evil of the bats and clones.

The detonation of the transportation bombs work seamlessly and everyone is transported where the fighting continues. In the midst of the fight, Chali 2na and Queen Kong detonate the EMP, locking all of the combatants on Mars. Nobody knows of the outcome. The International Space Station cannot reach the colony.

CHAPTER NINETEEN: NEW YORK STATE OF MIND

Back in New York, the population begins to rebound after the battles fought near the city. The tunnels are capped to prevent anything from ever escaping them again. The battlegrounds are scrubbed and sterilized to prevent any remains of the mutants, clones, or bats from spreading or growing or contaminating the surroundings.

Unbeknownst to the cleanup crew, however, the lead-lined containers housing the remains of the Heap are left in the back of one of the trucks Phantasm and Master Crack had been hiding in. The truck driver that had been exploded by the villains were never cleaned off the containers, and they begin to bubble and leak. It appears that the Heap will be back, growing from small parts of the viscera sprayed throughout the truck's bed.

Without anything to direct them, no Queen Kong to follow, the Heap Children absorb the intentions of the truck driver that they are growing from. They head in the direction of the truck's original destination, New York City.

CHAPTER TWENTY: CAROL ANNE'S THEME (from Poltergeist)

It appears that without the intervention of any heroes, New York City is slated to be destroyed by the killer babies, the Heap Children. However, before they get to New York, they must pass through New Jersey. And it looks like there might be a new hero undergoing a transformation in New Jersey right now...

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: HITCHCOCK OUTRO

Well that was a touching ending. Of course none of the story really happened. It was all made up. Just a tissue of lies out of some writer's head. You know, truth may be stranger than fiction after all. But tune in again next week when we have a real whopper of a tale to tell you. Good night.