Free Gateways to Abomination by Matthew Bartlett

to rhapsodize about nature's violent beauty and I listened raptly--it sounded like a monologue one might hear on WXXT. We ate in a clearing. I was ravenous. My sandwich and crackers gone, I wet my fingers and pulled up crumbs from the cooler. "Try these, they're OK," Janet said, plucking a few violet, bulbous berries from a string of black vines. The vines wound abundantly around the base of a fat-trunked conifer, appearing to squeeze the tree into an almost feminine shape. I ate the berries and they burst soft and bitter in my throat. They tasted finer than the finest wine I'd ever drunk.
    I stood to survey the area--and I saw the man at the far edge of the clearing. He was standing on a flat rock, like a boatman on a raft on a still river. He was tall, very tall, thin. The wind kicked up the dead leaves around him but his herringbone ulster hung lifeless. From a distance his eyes were black circles without pupil or sclera. His mouth was hidden in a slack grey beard. He raised his long arms and I heard that familiar rising drone. Janet had put on the radio.
    The man's fingers were long and many-jointed. They bent this way and that, forming staircases and many sided shapes and lightning bolts. They danced, and the leaves danced. The wind ululated in time and the clouds thickened and metastasized and wheeled, wheeled, wheeled like eddies in brackish water.
     
    I am Willard Vincent Winklepleck of the Warwick Winkleplecks.
     
    More men emerged from the trees, grey men in grey coats with grey faces.
     
    I am Janet Combs-Tonkin of the Prescott Tonkins.
     
    The man shed his clothing and the other men followed and they were cobwebbed and cadaverous and carrion-curdled.
     
    I am Benjamin Scratch Stockton of the Swift River Stocktons.
     
    The cat from the path meandered among the men, rubbing his tooth on their grey knees, and the men began to chant.
     
    I am Jebediah Blackstye of the Enfield Blackstyes.
     
    We walked towards the men, across the windswept clearing, shedding our clothes.
     
    Of course, we weren't called WXXT in those days.
     
    As we approached, we saw that the grass was wet with blood.
     
    We were a ragtag band of miscreants, dopers, murderers, witches, bitches, baristas, smugglers, thieves, bandits, veterinarians, panty-sniffers, harlots, Jews, pederasts, dim-wits, and sneaky-Petes.
     
    It ran in rivulets between our toes.
     
    Obliquely worded news-paper advertisements led us into the woods on that September day, written by no-one knows who but designed to draw precisely the crowd it drew.
     
    I spoke words in a language I did not know.
     
    Over 100 years later, well beyond our bodies' meager lives, we broadcast the Word from the woods of Leeds.
     
    I slipped in blood and fell onto a discarded topcoat that wriggled and hissed, alive with fat pink worms.
     
    I am Guy Stanton of the Shutesbury Stantons.
     
    Then six black vans motored out of the woods, their engines roaring over the deafening drone of the radio. The windows were tinted. Three of the men hoisted me from the ground. They lifted me over their heads, these deranged, dead-eyed pallbearers, and propelled me toward the nearest van. I tilted my head back, upside-down, and saw Janet. She was standing on the flat rock, the grey man behind her, his hands on her shoulders. They were both grinning, their eyes aflame. The family resemblance was unmistakable.
    Then I was in the van's pitch interior. It smelled of pungent sweat. I sat in one of the seats. It was damp against my bare skin...not damp, waterlogged. A young man was seated beside me, stunned and wall-eyed, more young men behind me in the darkness. The driver, clad only in huge mirrored sunglasses, turned and grinned a toothless grin. I saw my face and other faces, angled and elongated in the reflection. He said, "Anyone mind if I put on the radio?"
    You are listening to WXXT, Wormtown's Winningest Wadio Station. Join us after the break for the Silvery Sounds of Silverfish Slinkard and his