Horror Show (19 page)

Leave. Get out now. Run. Don't look back
.

No. Devila still had an ounce of humanity left inside her; that, and a jigger of curiosity.

It sounded as if he was dying in there. She couldn't leave him just yet.

I'll just peek in and call an ambulance
, she thought,
then get the hell out. It's the least I can do for him, poor soul. He needs some kind of help
.

She mounted the stairs and walked carefully to his door, the tuning forks still in her arms.

As her line of vision swept into room, she saw the outline of his legs, still and tightly defined against the white cotton sheets. Her eyes traveled up his torso and saw that he appeared to be sitting up.

She considered putting the forks down but decided against it until she could ascertain whether he was asleep or not. It was hard enough picking those awful things up once. She might not be able to force her hands to do it a second time. If she needed to, she could always put them against the wall by the door, out of sight.

Holding them back, away from him, she slid into the room sideways, her face first.

“Albert?” she said softly. “Albert, are you awake?”

Farther into the room, now, and very tense, she came. She saw an arm move. Was he awake?

“Albert?” Her voice came up in volume slightly. “Albert? Are you awake, dear?”

She stepped around the corner of the door and looked directly at him.

Her scream rang out through the empty house like the sound of breaking glass. Albert's head was gone. In its place was the snake's sinuous gray neck, tapered head, and blunt snout, from which the ropish tongue flicked.

The demon's flat eyes followed her movement ominously. She stepped back, her mouth open, the sounds of shock coming from her throat. Her legs tangled up in themselves, and she stumbled backward.

The neck snapped and the jaws opened. It happened so fast that Devila didn't have time to react. A baseball-sized globule shot from the snake's mouth and whizzed by Devila's head.

It landed with a splat on the wall behind her.

What
?

There was a fleck of wetness on the back of her hand.

It's spitting at me. It's spitting, and it would have hit me if I hadn't stumbled just then
.

The thing was deadly accurate … a spitting viper.

She fell into the hall and scrambled to her feet. Her hand was beginning to throb, and the thought occurred to her that the spittle was acid. A few seconds later it was burning like hell.

She wiped it frantically on her shirt, but the tingling only worsened. She ran down the stairs, paying close attention to her feet so she wouldn't fall, and found the kitchen sink. The cold water helped a little, but she began to feel a numbness around the fiery spot on her hand. Then she couldn't feel the water. Ironically, she still cradled the tuning forks like a baby in her arms even though her hand was throbbing.

Tears erupted from her eyes and streamed down her face. She began to tremble.
Was it the fear or the poison
?

God help me
, she thought,
the thing spit at me, and it's poison. If I hadn't stumbled, I'd be dead. Get out of the house now
, she told herself.
Get out and don't look back
.

13

The rehearsals were excellent. Jonathon Luboff crawled out of his shell and delivered his usual professional character study. His eyes broadcast pain that was almost unbearable to watch. Landis knew that it was those eyes that would sell the role he was playing; so dark and strangely compelling.

Tad Kingston gave Neil's inspired script a one-dimensional reading. He looked good in his makeup, hit all his marks, and kept his hair from upstaging him—a serviceable performance by Tad's standards.

The interior shots, now being done at Landis's house, were easy to block, and Buzzy worked as they went along. He'd enlisted the aid of two of his beatnik friends to play cadavers, promising them both a screen credit and a few reefers. They agreed readily. It was a kick to dress up and scare people, they told him. “Tell me something I don't already know,” he had said in reply.

The day flew by. Landis directed the action, and everything seemed orderly and dignified. No wild party today. When Landis worked, he was a man possessed. There was too much work to do for anyone to be falling behind the pace. Landis planned on completing twenty to thirty shots a day, an unheard-of pace, even among the B-movie miracle men. It allowed for precious few second takes, so Landis liked to have his actors well rehearsed and prepared to jump into any scene at any time.

Landis let most mistakes go; he was too cheap to repair the damage. Why fix something that most people would miss anyway? Luboff's accent washed everything he said in a general European mishmash that most American teenagers just took as additional shtick. Horror movies didn't have to make sense—they just had to scare you.

Jonathon Luboff was beyond caring. The demons inside him were all too real, the pain in his soul far deeper than mere acting. Jonathon shrugged it all off. He was emoting with his essence, portraying pure pain that transcended the role he played.

His own life was a horror show; what was role-playing to others was truth to him. He was the reflection of his own misery.

When it came time to deliver, Luboff was flawless. Under the watchful eye of Landis, he kept his drug use controlled and memorized his lines. A lifetime of experience carried him through difficult times that would have destroyed lesser men. Jonathon Luboff was made of steel in some regards. Landis marveled at his tenacity to keep working, to keep surviving personal travails, and bend but never break under the massive weight of his sorrow.

Landis always hired the same cameraman. Chet Bronski was another Woodley special, blackballed from the rest of the filmmaking community by his left-wing politics—he was a zealous socialist in an era where that sort of thing could ruin your career. Brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he told them all to go straight to hell. Consequently, he stopped being hired by every production unit in a Hollywood driven to extremes by paranoia. Landis Woodley liked Chet Bronski and hired him to shoot all his films, although lately he'd talked him into working under an assumed name, Chet Lens.

Chet mapped out the camera angles and made notes on the lighting for each scene. Landis was over his shoulder every inch of the way, shouting and directing the movement of people and props.

He smiled when, near the end of the afternoon, he realized that
Cadaver
was ready to shoot.

What remained of Albert
Beaumond stood on the stairs, looking down at the open door. Devila had been here, he knew. Even though possessed at the time, he still retained the image of her through the serpent's eyes.

He saw her screaming and watched her flee.

He had no knowledge other than that. His legs were weak, and his head throbbed. He could barely focus his eyes. Every time the serpent possessed him, it seemed to tense every muscle in his body to the point of snapping.

Albert wept. He knew that the possession had taken place
without
the tuning forks this time. That meant that the demon had complete access to reach into him, and, even more terrifying than that, it could come forward at any time. Albert's mind resisted the only thought, the only plan that made sense.

He had to save Thora from this fate.

He had to save the world.

He staggered down the steps and across the living room.

The tuning forks must be destroyed
.

When he found that they were missing he became confused and even more afraid. Had the demon taken them? Had he, Albert, already hidden them and couldn't remember? Had Thora gotten rid of them?

He ruled out the Thora possibility, realizing that she had no knowledge of them or their terrible power.

Then he remembered—

—Devila!

She could have taken them! She knew their power, and she knew where they were. The thought screamed through his brain like a rocket. No! Not Devila! Albert pulled at his hair and paced the room frantically.

He had to warn her.

But the weight of derangement hung heavy across Albert's shoulders. He knew it was only a matter of time before the demon returned. He had to act now.

He stumbled to the phone and dialed Devila's number. His hands shook so violently that it took several attempts before he was successful. It rang incessantly, and Albert banged the heavy black receiver against the table in frustration.

When it became evident that Devila wasn't home, Albert staggered toward the door, consumed with thoughts of a final solution.

He walked through the open portal into the dark, swirling air, intent on distancing himself as far from his home as possible.

He walked through the streets, into the arid hills behind the houses, and disappeared into the scrub brush. Trudging along like a zombie, he tried to squeeze as much energy from his aching body before
It
came back and found him. It didn't matter where he wound up, just as long as it was far away from his house and Thora.

Landis was ready to
begin filming. The cameras were in position, the lights set, the sets arranged. His house had become a dream factory now. He sat in the living room, before the massive fireplace, and closed his eyes.

Tomorrow at the crack of dawn it would begin. From all the disparate elements Landis would form a cohesive piece. The idea he envisioned, the script he nurtured along with Neil, the actors he hired, the sets he improvised from his own furniture, the monster corpses that Buzzy fashioned, the morgue, the money for the film stock, it all waited to come together. And it would, under Landis Woodley's direction.

Now, after all the planning, the moment of truth was at hand.

He rubbed his eyes and yawned. He was alone in the great, silent house. But that silence deceived, for in the darkened quiet of those rooms a thousand fears scuttled. Landis Woodley was an insecure and lonely man.

He dozed until the telephone rang. It jarred him back from the sweet release of his fatigue.

“Hello?”

A husky female voice said, “Landis? This is Devila. I have the objects.”

Landis shook off the layers of sluggishness that had draped his body while he slept. He looked at the clock. It was after two. He'd been sleeping for hours.

“Devila? It's a little late for this. I start shooting tomorrow at first light,” he rasped.

“I'm sorry, Landis,” she said. “I hate to bother you, but this is really,
really
important. I got those objects I told you about … I can't keep them long. We need to film them right away.”

Landis sat forward and took a few deep breaths to bring the oxygen level in his blood back up to an alert status.

“But—”

“Listen to me. I know this is an inopportune time, and I apologize for that, but the situation presented itself to me today and I seized it. Now, I can't keep these … these objects, I can only have them for a short while. I could get into big trouble if I'm found out. Look, I know this is nuts, but we have to film this right now,
tonight!
Otherwise, we lose out.”

Landis rolled his eyes. “Aw shit, Devila, I can't do it now. I got a million things to do. I'm tryin' to get some rest before—”

“Then forget it,” she snapped.

“Hold on,” he said, his throat scratched and dry. “Let me think about this.”

The lights were set and the cameras were loaded. If he wanted to do it, there would never be a better time. If he just wasn't so damn tired.

Landis sighed, longing for a glass of water. He said, “You sound a little distraught. Are you all right?”

“No, I'm not all right, I've just been through something that sacred the shit out of—” She paused, caught her breath, then evened her voice like a rope snapped taut, and continued—“Why am I telling you this? I called you first because I thought you might be interested. Common courtesy. I can always go somewhere else with it.”

Landis heard the strain in her voice and knew instinctively that the woman was scared. He could smell fear like a wolf. “Okay, cool it. I got the message. Did you see the … the thing?”

Devila sucked air between her teeth. “I don't want to talk about it now,” she said, biting off her words.

“It's got to be tonight?”

“Yes. Look, I can be there in fifteen minutes,” she said breathlessly. Landis heard a truck drive by in the background, over the phone. It rumbled through the line with a blast of white noise, drowning out everything for a few seconds.

“Where the hell are you?” he asked.

“At a phone booth,” she shouted over the roar of the truck. “I can't go home.”

Landis was about to ask why not when he thought better of it. He could read the situation from the information he'd already gleaned. She'd stolen the objects, and now she had to use them right away, before she got caught. It didn't take a Rhodes scholar to figure that one out.

The more his mind cleared, the more he realized that he couldn't let this opportunity pass him by. If what she said was true, it could be a piece of film that might ultimately be worth more than the whole production of
Cadaver
. He wrestled with the decision.

Devila waited. Landis heard another truck rumble by.

“Okay,” he said finally, “I have some cameras up here at the house. I guess I could do it … are you sure we can't do this in a day or two?”

“Absolutely not. It's now or never; otherwise, I go somewhere else with it,” she said, her voice quivering. The road noises crept back as soon as she stopped talking. Her voice changed again, softening. “Landis?”

“Yeah?”

“I want you to do this. You're the only one who can do it justice.”

Chet Bronski was asleep
. He liked to get a good ten hours in before he had to work, especially with Landis Woodley. Landis usually planned twenty to thirty shots a day. Twenty to thirty! Most feature-length movie productions thought anything over three shots a day was incredible.