Facial (2 page)

It’s entirely possible that you’re wondering why, exactly, I needed a freshly killed corpse. I’ll let my brother explain.

2

Carlton

I didn’t go down into my basement often, so I don’t know how long the dead lion had been there. A week, maybe? You could see a lot of bone, but it was still clearly a lion, so a week sounded about right. I’m not really familiar with decomposition rates.

The scent was appalling. It reeked like rotten meat, which I suppose is logical. I wish I could say that I was surprised that I hadn’t smelled it from upstairs, but truthfully, the standard aroma of my home was not roses and lavender. Self-respect was not a major component in my life at the time.

I made five or six gagging noises, and then I stumbled forward in a state of disbelief. A lion! How the hell did a lion get into my basement? I didn’t live in Africa—I lived in North Carolina! In the suburbs!

We didn’t have lions just wandering around the neighborhood, and if one had escaped from the zoo, wouldn’t that have been newsworthy? I watched a shitload of TV and hadn’t heard anything about it.

My basement had windows, but none of them were large enough to admit a lion. The wooden stairs weren’t all scratched up like you’d expect from a thrashing clawed predator, and no police had shown up to investigate suspicious roaring, so the lion had presumably already been dead when it was brought down here.

Who would do that kind of thing?

This was completely baffling.

I could see plenty of writhing maggots. Though I’d never before spent money on cleaning services, I was going to have to bite the bullet this time.

I turned around and started walking up the stairs, trying to decide if I should call the police or animal control.

“
Stop
!”

I didn’t recognize the voice. It definitely wasn’t the lion. It was a low, masculine voice. Very loud and booming yet also muffled.

I stopped and turned around.

“Come back here!” said the voice. It was a demand, not a request.

“Who is that?” I asked. The more specific question on my mind was, “Are you currently pointing a gun at me?” but I didn’t ask that one yet.

“Come back here or die a ghastly death!”

There was a ton of junk in my basement. Lots of places for a gun-wielding maniac to hide. I walked back down to the cement floor. “Please don’t kill me,” I said. I didn’t say it in a shameful pleading manner, but I also didn’t cop an attitude.

“If you do as I say, you will live.”

I tried to figure out where the voice was coming from. It sounded like it was coming from the lion, which was impossible, since it was both dead and a lion.

And the lion wasn’t moving. Presumably a magical dead lion would move when it spoke.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Move this infernal creature off me.”

“Excuse me?”

“I am not one to repeat myself.”

“Repeat yourself just this once.”

“Move this infernal creature off me.”

I hope I have painted a detailed enough visual picture that you understand that somebody underneath the lion would have to be squished flat or
extremely
tiny. I don’t mean tiny like a little person. I mean tiny like an action figure.

No, my reaction was not, “Oh my God! An action figure is talking to me!” My reaction was, “Okay, okay, some prankster put a cell phone under a dead lion.”

And it all became clear: somebody was making a hilarious video. The focal point was a rotting carcass, so this probably wasn’t for network television, but it could definitely be cable or YouTube.

I wished I’d washed my hair more recently. I only showered every three or four days (see: aforementioned self-respect issues) and brushed my teeth with the same frequency. I shaved every day, because my facial hair was completely gray now, and my forty-eight-year-old self was not equipped to look at that in the mirror. I didn’t mind living in filth, but I couldn’t handle being old.

“Screw you,” I said, turning back around. Even if there
was
a tiny person trapped under the lion, I knew he didn’t have a gun pointed at me.

“Your death will be slow and painful!” the voice shouted. “You cannot imagine the suffering you will endure! Your shrieks of misery will rattle the walls! Drops of your blood will stain the grass for miles and miles!”

“Bullshit.”

“Do not make the fatal mistake of believing that I am bluffing! Shards of your bones will be splinters in the feet of countless young children! Your intestines will—”

“Okay, fine,” I said. I faced the lion again. “What do you want from me?”

“I have said it twice already: move this beast.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“It
will
happen.”

“Nope.”

“Then you will feel my rage.”

“I’m not touching lion guts. Look how gross they are.” I pointed to something I couldn’t identify. “Especially that one. Disgusting. You want me to catch a disease? Ick. Yuck. Ick.”

“It is unwise to ridicule me.”

“Whatever. Joke’s over.”

“The joke will end with the punch line of your veins being yanked out through your eyeball sockets!”

“I’ve heard worse. What do you call a dead baby in a microwave?”

“Your family will die as well.”

“I’ll let my brother know.”

The voice let out a muffled sigh. “Move this goddamn thing, all right? For fuck’s sake, are you not even curious? I am speaking to you from underneath a lion corpse! Do you not want this mystery to be solved?”

“Of course I do,” I said. “I just don’t want to be played like a fool.”

“Nobody is going to play you like a fool. In fact, I can promise you untold rewards. Treasures beyond your wildest dreams.”

“I think you’re just making stuff up.”

“
Please
…”

There was something about the way he said it, something genuine. It was not the kind of emotion you’d expect to get from some obnoxious guy hosting a hidden camera show. I suddenly felt kind of sorry for the voice. I supposed that if I were trapped under a dead lion, it would be a very traumatic experience, and I’d be extremely frustrated with somebody who refused to help.

What was the worst that could happen? I’d be embarrassed on a reality show? I’d have to sign release forms before they could use the footage, right? Especially when it was illegally filmed in my home. They couldn’t humiliate me without my permission.

Screw it. I’d do it. My existing plans for today were: watch television, eat stale graham crackers with stale marshmallows, and cry a little…so why not? It was a break from the norm. I could quit at any time. I’d make it clear to the possible viewing audience that I was in on the joke.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

“Thank you. You and your family will not die tonight.”

I walked over to the lion, recoiling at the smell. “How do I do this?”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t move a whole lion by myself.”

“Am I really going to have to talk you through every step of the process? Get a wheelbarrow. Or move it in pieces. All you have to do is scoot it two feet away from where it is right now. This is not rocket science, a warlock spell, or brain surgery.”

“I don’t have a wheelbarrow.”

“Then select the other option.”

“The one about moving it in pieces?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know…”

“Never mind. I do not care. I cannot deal with you anymore. Just allow me to die under here.”

“Fine, fine,” I said. “I’ll move it in pieces.”

No matter how bad you think it might be to cut apart a rotting lion corpse, I assure you that the reality is worse. (If you’ve done it, you know what I’m talking about.) It was terrible even though I didn’t just reach into the muck with my bare hands; I put on rubber gloves, wrapped a towel around the lower half of my face, and got a saw from the garage. Then I went to work.

I simply cannot do justice to the sheer awfulness of this experience. There is literally not a single positive thing I can say about it. So I’m going to do an H.P. Lovecraft and write that it was so horrible that it cannot be described, and leave it at that.

As I dragged away a particularly large, moist, and sticky chunk of the lion, I saw what was underneath it, and I did a lot of screaming.

3

More From Carlton

There was a bloody face on my basement floor.

The blood itself presumably came from the lion, leaving me with the still-disturbing fact that there was a face on my basement floor.

I don’t mean that somebody’s face had been skinned off, Leatherface-style, and left on the floor. I mean that there was a face actually imbedded in the floor. So maybe it’s more accurate to write “there was a bloody face
in
my basement floor,” though it protruded above the floor, as if somebody had tilted their head all the way back and then been buried in cement up just past their ears.

The bits of the face that didn’t have blood on them had the color of Caucasian flesh. It was larger than a regular human face, but not significantly so. Just enough that you would think, wow, that guy has a pretty big head. Not that I could see the whole head—just the face.

One eye (the blue one) was larger than the other (the green one). Its nose was small and flat. Its mouth was wider than a normal human mouth, and the ends curved down too far. There was no visible hair or ears.

“Stop screaming,” said the face.

“You…you’re…you’re a…you’re a…you…you’re…you’re a…you…”

“Correct.”

If you weren’t there, I suppose you could come up with some theories about what I was seeing. A puppet, for example. Smear some blood on it to hide the imperfections, install a remote control system, and make Carlton The Wacky Nitwit think there was a face in his basement floor.

This was no puppet.

I wasn’t dreaming. I wasn’t on drugs. No government agency had slipped anything into the water supply. This was totally real, and standing around saying “This can’t be real!” wasn’t going to accomplish anything.

I decided that, until I was given reason to believe otherwise, I was going to assume that I was not in danger, and conduct this conversation without fear.

“What are you?” I asked.

“A traveler.”

“Are you human?”

“Technically.”

“Why was there a dead lion on top of you?”

The face smiled. Its teeth were very small but there were a hell of a lot of them. “A traveler must prove himself worthy. Do you know of a more noble creature than the lion?”

“Nope.”

“I successfully slew the lion, but this kind of travel is an imperfect art to say the least, and I ended up here. I am quite unhappy about it.”

“So…is your whole body stuck in there? Or just your face?”

“It is a complex issue.”

“Is there anyone I can call for you?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to wipe off some of that blood?”

A slimy white tongue protruded from the mouth and licked the blood off its lips. “That would be much appreciated.”

I removed the towel from around his face and patted at the blood, making sure not to get my fingers too close to its mouth in case it was a biter. I didn’t do a very good job, but it wasn’t as if the face could see itself.

Or could it? How had it seen me from underneath the lion?

“How did you see me from underneath the lion?” I asked, thinking that it was a question that should have occurred to me sooner.

“I see all.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I see much. These eyes are blind, but I see.”

“Okay. Well, I’ll be honest with you. I feel like I should call the police.”

“Do not do that.”

“Wouldn’t you, if you were me?”

“I would not. Great power awaits you. What is your name?”

“Carlton. Yours?”

“You have no need to address me by a name. I am unlikely to be confused with others you know.”

“All right.”

“Carlton, is it fair to say that your perception of the world has changed?”

“Very fair.”

“I have brought a lion into your realm. I can bring other things. Women, riches…”

“Wouldn’t the women freak out?”

“Perhaps. You would have to restrain them.”