Beatles Horror Story

By Hoshi Nagaiki

A/N: Happy day before Halloween, everyone! This is my Halloween treat to you. No tricks please! I was inspired by two quotes from the Remembering George Harrison: 10 years Later issue of Life magazine; both of which will be seen throughout the story. The title was "cleverly" stolen from the new show, American Horror Story. Does anyone else watch that? The guy in the S&M suit scares me. . . .Also, I've been meaning to let you guys know that my laptop which had all my stories on it died. I'm still writing my stories and all; it's just all my research was on there too so it's a bit more difficult because I have to re-research everything. ):

Rating: There's foul language. There's naked people and some sexual scenes but it's not described much so I figured it'd be okay for teens. Plus, I don't even think it's too scary.

Part One

"Being a Beatle was a nightmare, a horror story. I don't even like to think about it."-George Harrison

Sometimes, we would just sit in the bathroom of our suite. If anyone approached, John would make hyperbolic grunting noises until they went away. And, while we all tried not to giggle, and Paul moaned to complement John, and Ringo mastered his armpit fart technique, I would lie in the bathtub and turn the showerhead on full blast. At first, there would be the pain of every nerve reacting, but eventually the numb would come.

Brian always yelled whenever he saw my soaked clothes, but I could care less how expensive the suit. It was all just fabric no matter what the paper hanging off of it said, wasn't it?

Sometimes, the other Beatles would join me in the tub if they were feeling especially petulant or curious, but usually, Paul was too much of a perfectionist to "ruin" anything about himself and Ringo always said that he was afraid his rings would rust but I always thought he just didn't want to blatantly disobey Brian. He thought I was being disrespectful or something, but I never asked. I didn't care enough.

Unlike Ringo, John liked to see Brian shouting and red-faced. He would often sit on my chest until I couldn't breathe and then choose the place next to or across from me. He would sing the whole time we were in there, about soggy cornflakes and flowering ducks and colorful submarines and the lands they lived in. It was quite nice. I would sing harmonies if I wasn't too out of breath from John's fat butt crushing my lungs, or sometimes, I would just add a bit of dialogue which John always said made the song "unforgettable".

Ringo would tap out a beat and, somehow, make it seem as if the tuneless water was pattering right against our skin and the linoleum in perfect rhythm. Paul would just whistle a tune, or sometimes, if he were feeling daring, he would bring in an acoustic guitar, but John loved to smash them when everyone was too engrossed in his song to notice. This was a two-for-one to him: he got to aggravate both Brian and Paul.

Lots of people will say our greatest shows were in Hamburg or the Cavern Club or wherever but I think those impromptu bathroom performances were the best. We were just goofing off, not trying to entertain a crowd or impress girls or anything else, just goofing off to goof off.

In 1966, I couldn't sleep. I was too scared to. Touring was frightening that year. I don't know if the others lost sleep over it like I did. Ringo never seemed to know what I was talking about when I asked, and Paul just said not to scare John. I didn't know what he meant until one night when I saw John pop a shitload of pills when he thought no one was watching. It had been the night after we had received a whole bunch of magazine-letter notes, most of them talking about our trip to the airport tomorrow and all of them causing us to jump slightly at every noise.

I was afraid to walk around our hotel suite because I knew people were always in it. There was always stuff missing that had been there the night before, and there was this never-ending rustling in the dark main room. We knew it was just girls or raccoons or both, but still every noise was a gunshot or something leading to it.

One night I decided to walk around the suite because John was fucking some girl and yelling out lewd words for female sex organs in a pattern that was obviously supposed to annoy someone. Or everyone.

I was surprised that no one was in the bathroom waiting for me. Not Paul or Ringo or a reporter or a maid or Sneaky Fan Girl 272. So, I took off my clothes and shut the door. I turned the water on, but the hot was out because Paul had been washing his hair earlier, so I soaked in the cold and enjoyed the goose pimples that rose on my skin when the ice water pummeled it. Relief.

I think I fell asleep because I can't remember anything except suddenly feeling panicked. There was a window near the ceiling that was small and artistically clouded over so no one could see in or out, but somehow, when I looked up, it was open, and I sneezed. I shut the water off and realized I was shivering. I got out of the tub and searched for my clothes, but they had disappeared from the floor. The bathroom was strangely void of towels too, even the hand-drying one, so I just walked into the main room, completely exposed.

The first thing I noticed was that something on the couch was moving. I approached only because I had to walk passed the couch to get into my room anyways. My heart beat faster than the pounds of my footsteps and I wished I knew where the light switches were in this damn place. Only the light from the bathroom pierced the expanse of the dark room, and it failed to illuminate whatever was moving on the couch.

As I got closer, I identified the object as a body, twisting uncomfortably. Just as I was about to peer over, a yell startled me, "Boo!"

I stared into the face of John Lennon who looked up at me from the couch. He wore only his underwear, and I wondered what happened to the girl.

He laughed at me, I guess I had made an odd face, and he said she had kicked him out of his hotel room. "Using me for a bed and some sex: how could she?" John puffed out his chest, pretending to look nobly indignant, but the look didn't suit him. "I was thinking of sneaking into Paul's bed. It'll scare him good. He's been all wound up lately. I think with the tour and all that crap Jane's been pulling lately. . . ."

I nodded as John rambled on, still standing where I had been before.

Finally, John said, as if he had just noticed, "What happened to your clothes, Georgie?"

"Dunno."

"Those fuckin' girls again, eh?"

"Probably."

John handed me a ciggie and lit it for me. "Have a seat then, sonny. Mind the girls."

I sat down in an armchair across from him and puffed away on my cigarette, wishing that night could be peaceful like it was meant to be.

"I always imagined that our room became like this huge hangout for fan girls while we were sleeping. I imagined them lying in here, smoking and just relaxing, but it's just us, I guess." John glanced around as he said this as if expecting some girl to jump and ask him for a light, but nothing happened so John continued. "It feels wrong."

I agreed. Something did feel off, and both our sets of eyes kept wandering around the room searching for whatever was giving it this tense, alerting feeling.

Nothing.

Then, the sound of glass shattering raised the hair on my arms, and exchanging looks with John, we both hurried into Paul's room, where the noise had seemingly originated. Paul was lying on his bed, eyes closed and body tucked under a blanket, but the window was blowing the curtains and glass shimmered underneath as the moon shone on it.

"What the fuck's wrong with this guy?" John was tickling Paul's ear and twisting his arm so it looked like he was picking his nose.

I didn't pay much attention. "I thought Paul was always kind of a light sleeper."

"He is," replied John. Just as he began to draw on Paul's face with a conveniently placed marker, it dawned on him: "Oh fuck."

John slapped Paul's face. The crack resonated around the room for seconds afterwards, but Paul didn't even stir.

"Is he breathing?" I asked, now strolling around the room, looking for something that might give me an answer.

"I-I dunno," John pressed his ear into Paul's chest. The lines of his face had scrunched together in concentration, and his edginess was polluting the air. "Put on some fucking clothes already, will you!" he shouted as I passed in front of him.

Walking out of the room, I realized how much I didn't want to be alone. The draft from the window had seemingly settled all over the suite, and I couldn't control my urge to tiptoe as I crossed the expanse of the main room to my bedroom. I tried not to overreact, but I couldn't help jumping a bit in my skin at the slightest creak and the slow howl of a dog.

My room was just the way I left it, except for a scrap of paper lying on top of my dresser. "You should be naked more often," it read in a curved scrawl. I tossed it aside, trying to ignore the increase of palpitation in my heart and my sudden need to look everywhere in the room. My body was beginning to feel clammy and stretched, and my thoughts wouldn't stop telling me that I wasn't really alone.

I opened my drawers, but they were all empty, devoid of clothes. I pulled my suitcase out from the closet and searched through that as well, but all my clothes had disappeared. I rummaged through everything again, frantically and with less real feeling. My eyes seemed blurred and my hands intangible as I peeled everything away. Rage warmed my cooled skin, and as I threw the remnants of my possessions down and walked to John's room to steal some of his clothes or to see if he had stolen mine in some horrible, Lennon-esque prank, I almost felt alive again.

On John's bed lay a naked girl. Probably, the one he had been fucking earlier. She was sitting up against the pillow and stared at me as I walked in. I found some of John's clothes, lying on the ground and began to dress when she spoke, startling me. Her voice, sultry and frank, cut through the room. "Do you want to fuck me?"

"No." I didn't look at her as I zipped up John's pants. From the corner of my eye, I could see that she was fingering herself.

"You're lying," she moaned suddenly, and when on reflex I looked at her, she smiled and began to crawl on the bed towards me. Her hair, dark and messy, hung in front of her breasts as she inched closer.

I turned away from her and made sure to slam the door behind me. She screamed, but I just walked straight back to Paul's room.

John was next to Paul on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. His chest rose and fell in heavy breaths, something Paul's lacked.

"I shook him until my arms were limp. I rattled his body around until every nerve stung, and I rolled him across the bed so many times I thought for a second my arms had actually fallen off from overuse." He sat up and met my eyes. "It's safe to say he eats too much."

I narrowed my eyes and kneeled next to Paul. "Is he breathing?"

"I couldn't tell."

"Maybe you should check on Ringo," I said, grabbing Paul's wrist with one hand and placing my other on the side of his neck.

John hurried off without a word, and I waited for a beat of any kind.

A few seconds later, John had returned. "Snoring the night away. That lad could sleep through a fucking invasion." John was silent for a moment before asking, "Are those my pants?"

"Yeah, all mine have gone." I looked away from Paul, and back to John who was inspecting the objects atop Paul's dresser. "I can't tell either. Sometimes, I think I feel a beat, but it might just be my imagining things."

"Have you checked his wrist?" John was standing at Paul's bedside table, picking everything up and setting it down at an increasingly quick pace.

"'Course I have."

"Is he wearing his bracelet?"

"That engraved one?" I picked up both Paul's arms and searched for the bracelet on both of them.

"Yeah," John said. He had stopped, observing the contents of the table and was now crouched over me to see Paul's wrists. "It's not on the table or on his dresser and those are the only two places he would put it."

"It's not here," I concluded, repositioning his arms.

John pulled me up and whispered in my ear, "That's not the real Paul."

"Are you insane?" I retorted, ruder than I had intended.

John's eyes were shifting around the room nervously as he whispered again, "Paul always has his bracelet on, and if he doesn't it would be on his dresser or end table."

"It was stolen then."

"No, no one can touch it but Paul."

John had officially gone insane.

When I just rolled my eyes, he protested with a shouted whisper, "You don't believe me, George? I've tried, you know. So has Ringo. It's fuckin' impossible to hold it; your fingers just slide through. Only Paul can do it."

My skin had warmed again from my boiling blood, and my brain was pounding in its skull. "That's not physically possible, John," I said succumbing to John's angry whispering. "How could that happen? And, besides, if that's not the real Paul, then who is that, and what happened to Paul?"

John shook his head, arms crossed and a haughty, superior look on his face. "Listen, Harrison"—he spat my last name as if we were enemies—"it's not important how it happened though I suspect Jane and her witch-y ways put some kind of enchantment on it. What's important is what you said: who's this guy, why's he here, and where's our Paulie?"

I groaned. "Jane's not a witch, John."

"I'm not saying that. All I'm saying is she gave him that bracelet, and it's got some kind of voodoo on it or something."

When I continued to groan, John grabbed my arm and said, "C'mon on, Georgie. We're gonna go see what Ringo has to say about this."

We left Paul's door open which, in retrospect, was probably a bad idea.

Ringo wasn't in his room, and as John kicked the wall and shouted a few expletives, I found myself on the ground, looking at an odd piece of fabric. It resembled jean cloth and was almost perfectly square with a little red dot in the center. I ran it between my fingers a few times, feeling the dampness of the red circle.

"He was fuckin' here," John gritted his teeth, and even though his words were distraught, he sounded more angry than anything else. "What the fuck is this?"

I ignored John who continued to yell about injustice and turned the jean square over to see the lighter side of the fabric and when I looked closely, I saw words, scribbled in pencil, "George Harrison."

"Do you think that girl is still here?" I asked, interrupting John's tirade.

"What girl?" his voice was still growling.

I gestured to his room. "The one you were fucking earlier."

He shrugged, and we walked over to his room. As we passed through the main area, the tension of it still not settled, I noticed the time: a quarter 'til 5.

John entered the room first, and when he said nothing, I knew something had happened.

The first thing you saw upon entering the room was a sentence painted onto the wall in what was assumed to be blood: "John Lennon is mine." The girl was not present, but balls of her messy, brown hair lay scattered on the floor along with red stains and more pieces of fabric. John's hawkish nose was crinkled when he looked at me and said, "Fuck."

Next, we searched for a phone. Nothing before had seemed real, and neither of us had even thought of calling anybody because of the illusory quality of it all. It had all seemed like some horrid nightmare, and that feeling only intensified when we realized, that there were no phones.

We both had used the telephone earlier. I had called Pattie, and John said he had called his auntie, but now all the phones in our suite had vanished. We checked every room, and each was absent of a phone.

As I looked through my room again, John yelled for me, and I followed his voice into Paul's room. Paul was still lying motionless in his bed, same as we had left him, except now he had this creepy element to him. Even though I didn't believe John about him not being the real Paul, I couldn't help but get the feeling that he was an intruder, that he would jump out of bed at any time and shoot us both.

I found myself not letting my eyes wander away from Paul's body as I walked to the broken window where John stood, beckoning me. He told me to look down, and I did. About five telephones, the same number as in our suite, lay broken and mangled directly below, illuminated by a streetlamp.

"Why would they break the window?" John asked. He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, staring at me. "They could've easily just opened it and thrown the stuff out, but no, they decided to break it. I think, they want us to know that they're here."

I frowned at John. "That's not important right now. Let's just go try to wake someone up and get them over here."

We rushed to the front door, but when we tried to open it, it didn't budge. For about ten minutes, we slammed our bodies against the door trying to get it to open.

"This is impossible." I said, hands on knees, heaving oxygen to my lungs. "How can it be locked from the outside?"

"It's probably barricaded," John said, rubbing his right arm.

"But shouldn't it open towards us?"

John shrugged, and we sat down on the floor together, backs against the door. We tried banging and screaming for a while, but nothing came of it. Eventually, we just ended up sitting there, exhausted and wondering what was wrong with Paul and if that girl was really dead and where Ringo could be. We had already searched all over the suite when we had been looking for a telephone and hadn't seen any hair of Ringo.

"Do you think he left before this all happened?" I asked John as our words became slower and our response time lengthened considerably because it took a great deal to fight our eyelids open.

"No," he said, stifling a yawn "couldn't be. I had just checked on him."

I nodded, not sure if what he was saying even made any sense, and we both drifted to sleep shortly afterwards.

The sun didn't rise the next morning.

A/N: So, what do you think is going to happen next? Where's Ringo? Who stole all of George's clothes? What happened to that girl? Is that the real Paul, or is it Faul? (Yes, I was inspired by the Paul is Dead conspiracy.) Oh, and did you notice the mention to a popular fifties song by Bill Haley and the Comets? If you did, you get extra points! Review please and tell me what you think. (: