Neil Gaiman & Caitlin R. Kiernan & Laird Barron (16 page)

I left feeling dejected. There was nothing to write about. Ten minutes of some porno, probably imported from Italy. And even that it had been disappointing. You could hardly see much of anything in that scene they’d chosen; bare breasts, yes, but nothing more.

What a waste.

∇

I returned the following Thursday because I kept thinking there had to be something more. Maybe the previous show had been a bust, but this one might be better.

Sebastian let me in after I shared my cigarettes and I sat down in the balcony. People arrived, took their seats, Enrique Zozoya in his yellow outfit said a few words and the projection began. It was the same deal, only this time the group was larger. Maybe a hundred people.

I was disappointed to see the film was the one we had watched last time. Not the same section, but it was obviously the same movie. This time, the sequence took place in a Roman circus where aristocrats had gathered to watch a chariot race. There was more nudity and the erotic content had been amped a bit, with a stony-looking emperor sitting with two naked girls in his lap—one of them the dark-haired woman from the previous sequence—fondling their breasts. Unfortunately, he seemed more interested in the race than the women.

The music was loud and of poor quality. There was no dialogue. There hadn’t been any dialogue in the previous scene either, which struck me as a bit odd, since you’d expect a few jokes or poor attempts at breathless sexiness at this point.

The emperor mouthed a few words and I realized the audio track must have been removed. The music playing was probably layered onto the film to replace the original soundtrack and had nothing to do with the film. Someone had taken the added effort of inserting moans and sighs into the audio track, but the dialogue track had been clearly lost. Not that it would be much of a loss for this type of flick.     

The emperor mouthed something else and again I noticed a flash frame—a few seconds long—of a woman in a yellow dress. She was sitting in a throne room, held a fan against her face, and her blond hair was laced with jewels.

The film was cut off shortly afterwards and the audience left.

I drummed my fingers against my steno pad. What I had was nothing but some European exploitation movie, probably filmed in the late ’70s by the looks of it, which for some odd reason attracted a group of about a hundred people to its weekly screening. And it wasn’t even screened completely, just a few minutes of it.

Why?

∇

I visited the Cineteca Nacional on Monday, which was the place to find information about movies. I had very little to go by, and looking through newspaper clips and data sheets proved fruitless. I asked one of the employees at the cineteca’s Documentation and Information centre for assistance, and she said she’d phone me if she found something.

I decided to move in a different direction, expanding my knowledge of Zozoya. He’d been a film student before turning to astrology, even shooting a couple of shorts. Aside from that, which might explain how he got hold of this bit of film, there was nothing new.

Tuesday I pounded some copy for the arts and culture magazine, ready to give up on El Tabu.

Wednesday I had a nightmare.

I was laying in bed when a woman crawled up, onto me. She was naked, but wore a golden headpiece with a veil. Her skin was a sickly yellow, as though she were jaundiced.

She pressed her breasts against my chest and began rubbing herself against me. I touched her hips, but withdrew my hand, quickly. There was something unpleasant about the texture of her skin.

I lifted a hand, pulling at her veil.

But she had no face. It was only a yellow blur.

When I woke up, it was nearly nine and I was late for my meeting with the editor of the arts and culture magazine. I turned in my copy and left quickly. I didn’t feel well. I went home, laid down, and spent most of the day dozing in front of the television set. I looked at my steno pad and the lined, yellow pages reminded me of leprous skin. I didn’t do much writing that afternoon.

Thursday evening I returned to El Tabu.

Journalists know when they’ve caught the scent of a good story. It’s a sixth sense, learning to distinguish the golden nuggets amongst the pebbles. I knew I had a nugget. I just couldn’t see it yet.

This time the sequence took place in a banquet hall, with all the guests wearing masks and sitting naked. Several of the actors were unsuitable for such a scene, with obvious physical flaws, including scars. A few of them looked filthy, as though they had not bathed in several weeks. The emperor and the dark-haired woman next to him were the only ones not wearing masks. They both stared rigidly ahead, as the guests began to copulate on the floor.

The woman whispered something to the emperor. He nodded.

This time it was not a flash frame. We were treated to a full minute of footage showing the woman in the yellow dress, the fan held in front of her face, yellow curtains billowing behind her and allowing us a glimpse of a long hallway full of pillars. The woman crooked a finger towards the audience, as if calling for us.

The film switched back to the banquet scene where the young woman sitting next to the emperor had collapsed. Slaves were trying to revive her, but her tongue poked out of her mouth grotesquely. The soundtrack, with its moans and sighs, was completely unsuited for this scene.

The lights went on. I listened carefully, trying to catch what Zozoya said. It sounded like he was chanting. The congregation chanted with him. I noticed it was a larger group. Perhaps two hundred people, singing.

I grabbed my jacket and stepped out.

Life was too short to waste it on exploitation flicks and weirdos.

∇

Three days later, I had another nightmare.

Light, gentle fingertips fell on my temples, then trickled down my face, neck and chest. Nails raked my arms. I woke to see the woman with the yellow veil. She was on her knees.

She showed me her vulva, spreading it open with her fingers. Yellow, like her skin. An awful, sickly yellow. She pressed her hands, which seemed oily to the touch, against my chest.

I woke up, rushed to the bathroom and vomited.

∇

In the morning, I cracked a couple of eggs. I stared at the bright yellow yolks, then tossed them down the drain.

I spent most of the morning sitting in the living room, shuffling papers and going over my notes for an arts and culture article. Every once in a while I glanced at the manila folder containing my research on El Tabu. The beige envelope seemed positively yellow. I tossed the whole thing down the garbage chute.

∇

Wednesday I dreamt about her again. When I woke up, I could barely button my shirt. I was supposed to go pick up a check for my arts and culture story, but when I reached a busy intersection I caught sight of all the yellow taxis rolling down the street. They resembled lithe scarabs.

A stall had sunflowers for sale. I turned around and rushed back to my apartment.

I sat in front of the television set, shivering.

I’m not sure at what time I fell asleep, but in my dream she was gnawing my chest. I woke up at once, screaming.

I shuffled through the apartment, desperately looking for my cigarettes. I grabbed my bag pack, all its contents stumbling onto the floor. My tape recorder bounced against the couch. The play button went on.

I grabbed a cigarette, heard the whirring of the recorder and then a sound.

It was the movie’s soundtrack. It must have been recording the last time I was there.

I was about to switch it off when I heard something.

The cigarette fell from my mouth.

∇

Sneaking into El Tabu was not hard. Bums planning on spending the night there did it all the time. I sat in the balcony, my hands on my bag pack.

Below me, I counted some three hundred viewers.

The movie began to play. The emperor rode in an open litter. He was headed to a funeral. The funeral of the black-haired woman. It was a procession. Men held torches to light the way. One could glimpse men and women copulating in the background, behind the rows of slaves with the torches. If you looked carefully, you might see that some of the people writhing on the floor were not making love to anything human.

The emperor rode in his litter and did not see any of this. The camera pulled back to show he was not alone. There was a woman with him. She wore a yellow gown. She began taking off her gown, lifting her veil. It was yellow; the shade of a bright flame.

He looked away from her.

As did I.

I lit a match.

∇

I woke up late the next day, to the insistent ringing of the phone.

I picked it up and rested my back against the wall.

It was the lady from the Cineteca Nacional. She said she had that information about that Italian film I had been looking for. It was called
Nero’s Last Days
. They had a print in the vault.

∇

On March 24, 1982, a great fire destroyed 99 percent of the film archives of the Cineteca Nacional. One of the vaults alone kept 2,000 prints made out of nitrocellulose. It took the firemen sixteen hours to put the whole thing out.

As for El Tabu, I already told you about it: they made the site into condos after twenty years of the empty, charred lot sitting there.

∇

You are wondering why. I’ll tell you why. It was the sound recording. The tape had caught what my ears could not hear: the real audio track of the movie. The voice track.

It’s hard to describe.

The sound was yellow. A bright, noxious yellow.

Festering yellow. The sound of withered teeth scraping against flesh. Of pustules bursting open. Diseased. Hungry.

The voice, yellow, speaking to the audience. Telling it things. Asking for things. Yellow limbs and yellow lips, and the yellow maw, the voracious voice that should never have spoken at all. 

The things it asked for.

Insatiable. Yellow.

Warning signs are yellow.

I paid attention to the warning.

∇

I did get that job at the arts and culture magazine. I’ve been associate editor for five years now, but some things never change. I carry my bag pack everywhere, never been a briefcase man. I still smoke a pack a day. Same brand. Still use matches.

Anyway, I’ve got a very important screening. The Cineteca Nacional is doing a retrospective of 1970s cinema. They have some great Mexican movies. Also some obscure European flicks. There’s a rare print that was just discovered a few months ago; part of the film collection of Enrique Zozoya’s widow, who was an avid collector of European movies. It was thought lost years ago.

It’s called
Nero’s Last Days
.

Since 1982, the Cineteca Nacional has gotten more high-tech, with neat features like its temperature controlled vaults. But since 1982 I’ve learned a thing or two about chemistry.

It’ll take the firemen more than sixteen hours to put it out.

∇

Some Buried Memory

W. H. Pugmire

C
harlotte Hund stood before the full-length mirror in its great gilded frame and examined herself. In the palsied yellow light of the enormous room she could not see her reflection clearly; she could just make out the rough texture of her large face, the verdant eyes, the uneven tusks of xanthic ivory behind the bloated lips. Raising a hand, she smoothed the nest of hairs that sprouted from one corner of her mouth, then scratched her face with thick nails. “Is it not true, sir, that I am the ugliest woman in this city?”

“Au monde, madame, au monde,
” Sebastian Melmoth assured her, to which she smiled.

“I often think that it was for this ugliness that I was shunned in Boston and not my criminal reputation.”

Her host sucked on his opium-tainted cigarette. When he exhaled, he fancied that the smoke formed itself suggestively before his face. “You must tell me of your crime, Miss Hund,” he told her as he admired the scarab ring on one fat finger. “You are certainly criminally grotesque; but ugliness is a crime of nature, not a felon of choice. Tell me the tale of your trespass, and drench your telling it with such rich description that I may fully imagine it.” He sucked once more at his bit of nacotia and closed his eyes.

Charlotte stepped away from the mirror and moved to one of the room’s small stained-glass windows. “To speak of my sin would mean to reveal my life, and there isn’t much to tell. I do not know my parentage, for I was found.”

“Found?”

She shrugged. “So I was eventually told, by my grandmother, who raised me. She would call me her ‘fond foundling,’ which I liked. Grandmother was an eccentric Boston witch. She taught me divination, and together we discovered my talent for finding long-buried treasure.” Turning away from the window, Charlotte walked to a table and examined the beautifully crafted miniature sphinx that sat upon it. “It’s amazing, the things one finds buried beneath the ground. I could sniff these things, and these nails were fashioned for digging. I especially loved the old burying grounds of New England. I remember one curious early morning, when grandmother hinted that she knew more about my background than she was wont to let on; for as we burrowed beside one venerable tree, she whispered that my kinfolk dwelt beneath that chilly sod.”

“How esoteric.”

“We found quite a treasure that morning. Together, over time, we collected quite a pile of buried treasure. She taught me how to weave spells, and together we would dance naked beneath the autumn moon. As I grew older, my ugliness increased, and society taught me that its heart is cruel. I began to shun humanity, to exist in the hours when most were asleep. My own slumber was haunted by curious dreams of dark figures in black spaces. I would awaken, at times, in curious places, with booty in my embrace but no memory of where I had been or with what I had occupied my time. I cannot clearly recall the morning I was found, with mud on my hands and an amazing taste in my mouth. Whatever I had done, it earned me a new home in a state hospital. I was lunatic at first, screaming to be with my grandmother. Over the years I grew more settled. I studied the sane and began to ape their ways. I discovered a great fondness for literature, and my grandmother would bring me wonderful books. The news of her death was a cruel blow, but I endured, and eventually won my release. Among my belongings was a key to grandmother’s house, now mine; it was at the house that I found her letter, from which I learned of the wealth that she had left me, and that told me of this city of Gershom, where I would find exile.”