“They are, Ernie. We can only kill its physical form, and then the spirit will be banished back to where it came from.”

  “So where did the goat come from?” Kent asked.

  “Do you guys remember the banner the goat was wearing when Sianis brought it to Wrigley?” Fred paused for an answer.

  “Yeah, it said, ‘We got Detroit’s goat,’” Ernie said with a grin of success for recalling Cubs trivia.

  “You are correct, sir. Someone get this man a beer.” Fred patted Ernest on the shoulder.

  “Okay, but how do you summon a demon?” Kent said.

  Fred reached inside of his jacket a pulled out a small leather-bound book. “With this. Al sold me a copy.”

  “Hmm.” Kent took the small black book and examined it. “This is the Necronomicon? I thought it’d be bigger than this.” He turned the book over and looked at the small face pulled tight over the cover.

  “I got it for half price,” Fred said. “That’s the children’s edition.”

  ***

  When the game finally ended, the Cubs won 4-0 over the Rockies. Everyone laughed and celebrated by having Fred pay for pounds of deep dish pizzas and gallons of beer. Fred got obnoxiously hammered and apologized for making a big stupid ass out of himself. Everyone forgave him—which is a better way of saying they got drunk, forgot about the Black Goat, and laughed it all away.

  ***

  Fred snaps back to the present moment as a jet leaving O’Hare International Airport soars overhead. It was a great Autumn night for a ballgame, one where the wind favored the batter and tested a pitcher’s skill, but the season was over. It was an even better night to have a few drinks with some friends—but they were all dead.

  No Chicago champions this year. No more friends. Ernest K. Aspingwall was killed in a hit and run accident walking home from the bar. Kenton J. Stanfield’s daughter got cancer and died. His wife left soon after, and he ate all the pills in the medicine cabinet. James Dalton suffered a fate worse than death—he moved to St. Louis and became a Cardinals fan.

  Fred turns away from the view of the city and looks to the rising stadium tiers full of nothing but vacant bleachers. This was more than just some ball park, more than just some game. He came here often with his heart full of hope, and win or lose, there was always something gained.

  For Fred, this was a cathedral. Baseball was his religion. This is where he came to worship, where he went to pray. He was baptized in the rain, scorched by the burning Summer sun. Heaven was home plate, the bleachers were pews, the pitcher’s mound a pulpit. Overpriced beer and jalapeño nachos were substitutes for the body and blood of Christ. The National Anthem was his Lord’s Prayer. This was a place for celebration, and in more dire circumstance, sacrifice.

  Fred wondered how Ronald Wilson Reagan felt after broadcasting for the Cubs. Maybe ol’ Ronnie caught wind of the curse and bailed on the team, ditching the radio broadcasting gig for a bigger and brighter future in Hollywood, and further on towards the White House. Many players left the Cubs franchise to go on and become World Series Champions elsewhere. Many fans gave up on the team and heckled their former heroes, or went turncoat and quit the game entirely; but they were all cocksuckers and pussies. Fred rolls the idea around in his head of where life might have taken him if he would have turned his back on the Cubs and joined the droves of cocksucking pussies, but he pushed that thought away.

  No. There was this and nothing else. There was only one city, and that was Chicago. There was only one game and that was baseball. One team and that was the Cubs.

  He lets his eyes focus on home plate, visualizes the ball speeding straight across it, and if a baseball bat were to intercept, let it be dashed to a thousand splinters.

  Fred cups the baseball between the palms of his hand, breathing life into it. He sighs and expels the air from his lungs. He breathes deep and fills his chest. Fred winds up for the pitch and slings the ball towards home plate.

  The ball curves to the left and crosses over the batter’s box, striking the goat in the side of the ribs. The surprise attack startles the animal. It kicks out and bucks wildly, pulling against the leash staked through home plate. It wasn’t part of the ceremony, but somehow it felt necessary. The goat’s agitation subsides, but it keeps its head cocked, eyeing Fred for signs of further aggression.

  After years of intense research, Fred learned and translated the text for the summoning ritual. It required one Book of the Dead, one blood sacrifice, one appropriate vessel for manifestation, and four participants to read aloud the incantation. Unfortunately for Fred, his friends were dead, and convincing some strangers on the street to join him in a less-than-legal endeavor was out of the question; but Fred found a loop hole. It was called a 4-Track recorder and an old boom box radio.

  Fred made a mix tape with all of the individual segments of the ceremony prerecorded, except for one, which he would perform live. He wasn’t quite sure if his Milli Vanilli idea would work, but he was running out of time and options.

  As for an appropriate vessel to hold the spirit of Shub Niggurath, Fred located a farmer who was suspicious of his intentions but was willing to sell the shaggy old ruminant for cheap, as long as Fred promised not to mutilate it for any Satanic rituals. The problem was that from all indications, Shub Niggurath was female, and Fred’s goat certainly was not—but he didn’t think it would make a difference. He made the promise and paid the man.

  The blood sacrifice and the Necronomicon were easy enough to come by. He’d already purchased the Book, and Fred is full of blood.

  Fred unsheathes the machete and runs his palm down the sharpened edge of the blade. He smears his blood across the mouth of the Necronomicon. The Book immediately changes colors from rotten banana to freezer-burned beef. A salted slug of a tongue pushes out of the Book’s mouth, licking up Fred’s blood.

  Fred pries the Book open and the smell of rotting meat and sulfur fills his nostrils. He turns the pages to the rite of summoning and presses the play button on the boom box. A choir of his own voice drifts out of the boom box, chanting in arcane tongues. Fred clears his throat and adds his voice to the mantra.

  “Ia! Shub Niggurath! Tuku! Mashsham! Mashti! Barash! Akushu Baalduru! Dworc Ehtot! Tuoem Ekat! Emagllab! Ehtot! Tuoem Ekat!”

  A black void descends upon the stadium and swallows the Chicago skyline. The dying light of the city slips into blackness as the unified voices echo throughout the empty ballpark. The stadium lights flicker with electrical pops and sizzles before bursting in a shower of sparks.

  A foreign sky slowly emerges out of the pitch black above the stadium in a swirl of faintly shimmering green stars and unrecognizable constellations. The glow of unseen candles illuminates the bleachers and wilts the grass in the expanding glow.

  The twisting snap of bone and the crunch of plastic and metal crackles throughout the stadium. The boom box falls silent and Fred reaches out to check the tape. His hand touches something cold and porous. The ethereal glow from unknown stars above highlights Fred’s fingers touching a large black stone. A furry trunk grows out of the top of the black stone, and Fred looks at the shaft that has sprung up in the middle of the field with curiosity. He moves his hand up the hairy stalk until his fingers make contact with a furry set of billiard balls. Fred stops as the new and foreign moons above him sway, and then blink.

  The silvery haze emitted from the moons casts a faint light around the distorted facial features, and the otherworldly stars highlight the bushy pelvis from which the fuzzy testicles hang (and Fred’s hand which is holding the testicles). Something scurries off of the scrotum, up Fred’s arm, and attaches itself to the side of his face. Fred surmises it was some kind of tick.

  Fred fills his boxers with excrement at the sight of the colossal abomination staring down at him. The creature stands upright on cast iron cloven hoofs, amber colored sweat rolling down between its hairy spherical breasts. It clenches its newly-formed hands around Fred’s boom box and begins chomping away on the radio.

  The goat creature stops chewing and tilts its head to the side, horns grown to bull-moose dimensions, and rapidly blinks multiple sets of silvery-grey moons for eyes that gauge Fred’s stupefied paralysis with winks of amusement. The goat curls its lips up, revealing large square teeth with bits of the boom box stuck in its foaming gums.

  Fred does a double take from the abomination in front of him, to the home plate, and back to the abomination. The torn leash dangling from around the beast’s neck is identical to the one he’d tied around the goat’s neck earlier, and an exhilarating sense of accomplishment struck Fred. It worked! he thought.

  Oh, shit! It worked! came the dreaded realization that he was now face to face with the Black Goat of the Woods, Shub Niggurath.

  The mutant goat kicks out with a cloven hoof and sends Fred tumbling across the field. With a strangled choking gasp, Fred lifts himself to his knees, desperately searching for the Book and the blade. Something feels broken in his chest and he gargles up blood. He crawls away from Shub in a three-legged dog stance with one hand clasped to his chest and a stubby brown tail poking out the back of his jeans.

  Shub stomps up behind Fred and tears the seat of his pants open with its teeth, denim and shit flying everywhere. Fred lashes out with a backhand to Shub’s eyes, rupturing one in a spray of mercury. Shub recoils with a bleating scream, and Fred lurches back towards the pitcher’s mound, searching for the blade.

  Fred recovers the machete just as Shub’s hoof lands on his spine and plows Fred’s face into the dirt. Shub grabs Fred from behind and clamps down on his hips, ramming a thick, spongy tube into Fred’s instinctively-clenched butt cheeks, but the clenching is no use. The hardening tip of the sponge begins to grind against his posterior, grating his anus in a Memphis-style dry rub porking with extra jock itch.

  A deformed, half-formed hand with thick padded fingers strokes Fred’s sweaty hair back. Fred looks up at the hideous face that looms over him, exhaling putrid steam and raining down flakes of animal dander on his upturned face. Fred struggles to postpone the moment of penetration, but Shub yanks Fred backwards and impales him.

  What passes for the demon’s penis—a fleshy millipede without an exoskeleton wearing golf cleats—waltzes into Fred’s rectum, tap-tap-tapping against his prostate in a race to the finish line.

  “Oh my God!” Fred belches out the words after having the first three feet of his small intestine filled with what could only be described as frosty pond scum garnished with frog eggs and served with swamp gas.

  The bubbling swamp gas creeps through his bowels, into his esophagus, and exits his mouth with a series of sulfuric, rotten egg burps. Soapy yellow bubbles float out of Fred’s mouth and hover in front of his eyes before popping and burning his face with a splash of acid. The stench is overwhelming, and all he can do is vomit. Fred’s gag reflex triggers and his digestive tract reverses itself at full speed. Hot puke streams out from between his clenched teeth as icy foam fills his defiled rectum.

  The demon shutters with orgasmic release, and the vibration travels outward through its penis with a seismic buzzing, shaking Fred to the very core of his spiritual being. The demon grunts and ejaculates one last splash of ice cold ooze that glazes Fred’s innards.

  “Good boy, Freddy. That’s a good boy. Every drop,” a drowsy inhuman voice half-speaks, half-bleats in Fred’s ear. Shub pulls Fred’s head back and spits snotty yellow froth into his face.

  A thought occurs to him as partially digested pepperonis and soggy wads of pizza dough resurface from his stomach, and that was of the frog eggs, which were currently metamorphosing into tadpoles within his bowels. The tadpoles swam in all directions, testing the confines of their new womb, pressing against the sides of his guts.

  A second thought rises from the depths of his bowels, and he wonders how the tadpoles survived while incubating in such frigid temperatures. The ooze in which they arrived was jacket weather worthy, at the very least. A healthy human sperm needs somewhere between 95° - 97° F, and since this is the United States and Fred attended public school as a child, he calculates the ooze was at least a late January morning after it rained the previous night.

  That being said, it was far too cold for a human sperm—let alone a tadpole—to fair in such temperatures; and that was because what now lurked in Freddy’s bowels was neither human nor amphibian. It was a demon, and demon spunk is cold—but they don’t teach that in community college.

  Fred felt the “tadpoles” transform into fur-lined trout, swimming upstream towards the back of his throat, and Shub pushing its demon spunk onward and upward as it began to swivel its pelvis, preparing for a second inning of sexual intercourse.

  Fred bursts into an outright fit of weeping, worsened only by the demon goat’s mocking imitation of Fred’s shameful tears. Shub bleats and laughs, pretending to sob and sniffle, then chuckles louder at its own wickedness. Shub slaps Fred on the ass and brings the world back into focus with exquisite pain.

  It was the ass slap that spoke volumes without saying a word. In Fred’s mind, it was the consolation prize, the second place souvenir, the runners-up’s gift, the ‘close, but no cigar’ slap on the ass given to every batter returning to the dugout after three strikes. It was that same slap laid upon the Cubs’ asses for years—but this one was different. This one was the last. It was the one that drove a Cubs fan into a corner with nowhere else to go but straight to Hell.

  Rage pumps through Fred with every thrust of Shub’s cock and turns the tide of his tears into an ocean of burning hatred. Fred reclaims the machete and points the tip of the blade down between his legs to where the demon goat’s melon-sized scrotum dangles. Fred jabs the blade into the scaly sack. The instant the machete punctures the skin, searing agony pinches Fred’s insides as the tip of Shub’s cock grabs a mouthful of his colon. Shub’s cock muscles retract into hooks and attempt to disembowel Fred on departure.

  The sensation of being turned inside out forces Fred’s hand. He buries the blade into his own stomach to prevent the demon’s cock from ripping his asshole out. The machete enters just above his bellybutton and cuts into the demon’s dick. Shub screams and jerks, causing them both excruciating pain. Fred stabs himself in the guts again, wrenching the blade back and forth, and severs the demon’s dick.

  Shub pushes Fred forward and pulls a stub of a penis from Fred’s ass. The demon steps back, putting a tourniquet grip around the remaining nub of its boneless, pulpy flesh tube, sputtering a watery drizzle of unearthly semen from the open wound that farted smelly little cum bubbles with each beat of its coal-black demon heart.

  Fred holds his hand over the gash in his stomach and pushes, shitting out a dozen or so tentacle-faced, winged monk fish. With one more push, out comes Shub’s chattering, mandible-faced dick with a chunk of organ in its pinchers, leaving Fred’s backdoor ajar and the crisp Fall air wafting over his shredded bladder.

  Fred reaches between his legs and shakes hands with the slick, doughy texture of the prolapsed meat muffin hanging out of his ass. He fists a good majority of his guts back inside of himself, and his hand comes away shellacked with blood, shit, and demon seed.

  Fred brings his hand out from between his legs and examines the squirming maggot clinging to his fingertip, accompanied by the odor of rotten tuna and yeast infection. The fury and adrenaline push Fred out of the dirt and to his feet. He circles around the shrieking castrated demon, the machete in one hand, his guts held in with the other. Fred hacks away at the demon and lobs off an enormous goat titty.

  “Fuck the White Sox! Fuck the Tigers! Fuck the Athletics! Fuck the Red Sox! Fuck the Yankees. Fuck the Cardinals!” Fred screams and stumbles behind the beast, slashing through the its thick hide. He grips the machete with both hands and lets his organs uncoil.

  “Fuck you, Shub Niggurath!” Fred bellows.

  The hands of time come rushing to a halt as reality stops to take notice. The flashbulbs of Heaven spark, each glaring star blinding with white light, leaving only the players and their actions on the field visible. All of the heavens in every dimension stand at attention with their breath held and hands clasped to their mouths. Fred feels their eyes move about him; not only from the heavens above, but as well from the Hells below.

  Fred steps in and swings the flat side of the machete with all of his strength at the sliced scrotum hanging between the beast’s legs. With a great swatting sound and a metallic pa-ting!, the scrotum bursts in a spray of bloody lice and ruby-red pulp, with fat deer ticks clinging to flaps of skin. The infested scrotal sleeve of scaled flesh and matted hair splits, and its precious cargo of pale-pink orbs threaded with crimson veins goes spiraling up, up, and away over centerfield, soars over the ivy-covered walls, and strikes the scoreboard.

  The balls erupt into a blinding supernova that tosses Fred to the ground. He curls himself into the fetal position as the world vanishes in a blizzard of pure white light and a deafening whirlwind of sound. A roaring cheer comes from all directions in a symphony of triumphant jubilation. They were beautifully divine voices, and they were singing Fred’s name.

  ***

  Fred opens his eyes and stares out at the Chicago skyline. A breeze flows over his skin and brings with it an exposed, vulnerable feeling he is not familiar with. He tries to lift himself, but only manages to raise his head and look down at himself. What he sees he does not like, and he lays back down in the early morning dew.

  The stadium was still standing and the city was just beginning to wake, which is reassuring. He rolls his head from side to side, but he did not see the demon, or the goat, or the Book of the Dead.

  He did see the police, though, and they did not look happy to see Fred. They were reluctant to touch him, but kind enough to have Fred airlifted to a nearby hospital.

  As the helicopter rises above Wrigley stadium, the sun begins to crest over Lake Michigan. The darkness recedes and the shadows retreat. For Fred, it is not the best view of the city, but it is damn good, and getting better every second. Above the roar of the engines and the chopping blades of the helicopter, Fred hears the crowd cheering his name. Before the helicopter lands, he slips into a coma, where he stays until Spring arrives.