The Year's Best Horror Stories 21

The Green Claw was very popular, as were a number of other releases— Spine-Eaters, Flytrap Hell and Liquifier III: The Bubbling Death. There were many more, but those four were our top renters. The store’s computer inventory did not list any prequels to Liquifier III, and I have not been able to find this series in any catalog.

Mr. Pash brought Liquifier III to the store on a rainy My afternoon. It was a very hot day, and the rain made the air steamy. I remember worrying that so much moisture in the air had to be bad for the tapes.

“This should rent well,” Mr. Pash said; his voice was low and purring. “I watched it last night. Very exciting—I think you will agree. Let me know how it does.” He wandered the store for a minute or so, biting his nails (not out of nervousness, I’m sure: perhaps out of hunger or mild ennui). Then he left, smiling so warmly that I thought for a moment of my mother, who also had a large nose.

I watched the movie on the store monitor. The Liquifier of the title was a giant demon from outer space—a spiderish humanoid over sixty feet tall, with three-fingered hands and milky eyes. The Liquifier spun its victims into cocoons and injected them with acid venom, turning them into large slopping bags of dinner. I did not feel uncomfortable about running such a graphic feature; children rarely visited the store.

I was not Mr. Pash’s only employee. A frail old man named Bernard was also on duty. Bernard had unusually tight skin—so tight that it gleamed. I doubt if facelifts had been performed; he didn’t make that sort of money. “How can you watch that garbage?” he said, pointing at the screen with his cigarette. “All that death and screaming and whatnot. A movie didn’t used to have blood spilling all over the place to be scary. It’s not right. Don’t tell me it is.”

“Variety is very important these days,” I said. “What’s life without variety? Even sex would get pretty boring if that was all you ever did.”

“That’s for damn sure.” Bernard blew a cloud of smoke in my face. “You never met my Mrs. Spoon…” Bernard prefaced every anecdote about his deceased wife with this remark. “The woman was an animal. Whittled me down to a pencil, she did. Sometimes I’d catch her giving that look of hers to some man on the street. A nice-looking guy like you—she’d have sized you up. How did I ever get mixed up with a woman like that? She fixed a decent meal, though—I’ll give her that.”

A customer came in and Bernard went to wait on him. Bernard’s stories about his dead wife always included some reference to her voracious sexual appetites. The week before, he had shown me a yellowed photograph of Mrs. Spoon, taken on their honeymoon. The woman had been quite handsome in a cruel sort of way, with short blonde hair, sharp features, and snarling, oddly inviting lips.

The next day, I asked Mr. Pash if he had ever met Mrs. Spoon.

“The sex monster? She passed away just before Bernard came to work for me. Has he told you about the farm incident yet?” He didn’t wait for my answer. Instead, he moved to the New Releases shelf. “Good—someone has rented Liquifier. Is Spine-Eaters in? I haven’t seen that for a while.”

Whenever Mr. Pash borrowed a movie, he paid full rental price. Bernard and I were allowed to take movies home for free. Mr. Pash was a wonderfully generous man.

Bernard popped his head around the corner of a large display. “I heard you two badmouthing my Mrs. Spoon. The woman may have had her faults, but I won’t have you slandering my dear departed wife. If I want to talk about her, that’s my business.” He came closer, scowling. “You two. I don’t know about you two. Why do I even stay here?” He shook his head. “You two. At least Mrs. Spoon knew her way around a kitchen. I mix a drop of Holy Water with her ashes every Sunday so she won’t have to stay in hell too long. As for you two—I just don’t know.”

Mr. Pash raised an eyebrow as Bernard shuffled off. “Spine-Eaters please, Roger. And The Green Claw. I never tire of the scenes in the temple of Uranus.”

Business improved as the summer temperatures rose. Obviously, our gentlemen were spending more time indoors. For my birthday, Mr. Pash gave me a box of monogrammed handkerchiefs. He also brought a box of pastries to the store. Bernard ate most of them.

I had never especially favored The Green Claw, not being a fan of fantasy epics, but at Mr. Pash’s gentle insistence I watched it again with a critical eye.

The story, set in ancient Atlantis, concerned an amplebreasted, sexually active princess who needed to find a way to protect her people from a swarm of giant winged goats. The Green Claw was a rather avant garde production. The princess often spoke directly to the camera, and her breastplates were made of fluorescent plastic.

Upon my initial viewing, I had considered the film to be nothing more than a frothy morsel of soft porn. During one of his visits, Mr. Pash assured me that this work was fraught with inner meaning. “Think of the attack on the city,” he said. “Was not Aleister Crowley incessantly mocked by horned beasts?”

“I’m not entirely familiar with Crowley’s career,” I said. I knew that the man was some sort of grim mystic, but that was all, really. “No doubt the movie’s sexual aspects overshadowed the symbolism.”

“Yes and no, Roger. All activity is sexual, as are all symbols. Sex is all that is left after one dispenses with the extraneous. What were your impressions of the Atlantean temple to Uranus?”

“Wasn’t Uranus a Greek god? Still, the Atlanteans could have worshiped him, too.” I was talking like a fool, but words continued to issue from my mouth. “Needless to say, the ancient world didn’t have fluorescent plastic. It was a very confusing movie.”

“Uranus was the Heavens and Gaea was the Earth; they were the first parents, and their children were Titans.” Mr. Pash’s eyes glowed with pleasure. “Think on this, Roger. The world’s first act of love spawned giants.”

When Mr. Pash left, Bernard took it upon himself to inform me of Mr. Pash’s shortcomings. “That Mr. Pash has his nasty side. I once spilled some coffee on a cassette and he threw a fit. The coffee landed on the label and I wiped it right off. The tape was perfectly fine.”

“What was the movie?” I had never seen Mr. Pash in a foul mood and I found this news most distressing.

“One of his favorites—Spine-Eaters. New copies haven’t been available for years.”

“Then why does he even rent it out?”

Bernard shrugged. “Who knows? I told him he ought to make his own copy, but he won’t. He just rents the store tape along with everyone else.”

In Spine-Eaters, a family of cannibals was exposed to nuclear radiation in a bizarre military operation. They became as tall as trees and all the more hungry for their favorite delicacy—human spinal cords.

The summer grew even hotter and steamier. Our air-conditioning system did little to ease the swelter. The heat reminded me of the infernal jungle dimension of Flytrap Hell, where oversized meat-eating plants held sway. Bernard developed a rasping cough. Mr. Pash and I suggested that he stop smoking, but like many older people set in their ways, he refused to take advice.

Mr. Pash, ever concerned, set up a cot in the back room so that Bernard could rest if the heat made his day too taxing.

“You never met my Mrs. Spoon,” Bernard said to me one afternoon, “but that woman couldn’t pass a flat surface without looking around for a man. Still, she fried up chicken to die for. A devil and a half she was, but I treated her like a queen. I even gave her one of those fancy cocktail rings. Now it’s dangling on a string in my bedroom window. It catches the light.”

The gentlemen rented their movies in even greater quantities. Many asked why we stocked only one copy of each of our most popular selections. In turn, I asked Mr. Pash.

His reply was rather confusing. “These movies are special, Roger. There is a concentrated energy in this specialness that should not be diluted.”

I wondered what Mr. Pash would do if someone stole one of our movies, or lost it. My curiosity was satisfied by the matter of one Mr. Trisk, who would not respond to our correspondence regarding his failure to return Liquifier III.

The news shows made much of the explosion in Mr. Trisk’s home; there was even talk of spontaneous