The Best New Horror 2 (45 page)

“Her?”

“Yeah, some woman on the third floor caused a ruckus then offed herself. Stabbed herself to death with some kind of long pin, can you imagine? A neighbor said it was the woman’s fortieth birthday. Happy birthday, huh?”

We watched them wheel out the gurney with the body bag strapped across it; I didn’t need to see the dead woman. I knew her face. I just wanted to go to the studio and try to dance away the empty feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I dumped my gear and walked through the dark Detroit nightstreets toward the studio. A light sprinkling of snow drifted down from the swirling black sky and glittered like diamonds in the harsh glow of street lamps.

I stood out in front of the old warehouse housing the dance studio watching the snow obliterate the grey ugliness of the city, trying to remember how little Carmelita’s hand had felt against my face. But I couldn’t get it back. The dream was gone.

Sighing, I turned and unlocked the warehouse door and flicked on the lights. The stairs to the dance studio seemed unusually steep as I trudged up to the dressing room. Released from the confinement of my uniform, I pulled three pairs of legwarmers over my tights to protect my ankles and calves against the unheated chill of the building. There was a dull ache in my chest as I laced the pink ribbons of my toeshoes and tested the firmness of the pointes.

When I went to close my locker, I noticed a black velvet case resting on the top shelf. Picking it up, I found a plain white note card concealed beneath it. The note read:

Remember the heart.

Your fond admirer,
D. Chase

Inside the case lay a silver hatpin topped with a huge black pearl.

Technique, line, proportion, balance: it is clear to me now that these things apply in all areas of life. I dance feverishly, spinning and leaping, thinking of my bleak rented room, my bleak heart.

Enough. Dripping perspiration, I cool myself down with a series of slow barre exercises. Mopping my neck with a towel as I leave the studio, I stop in the wardrobe room and inspect my costume for tonight’s performance of Stravinsky’s
Firebird
. It is exquisite; leotard and headpiece ablaze with flashing orange and red sequins and streaming yellow feathers.

Dancing the principal role this evening, I will feel like Pavlova. It makes no difference that this performance will take place in a elementary school auditorium. It’s the dance that matters, not the stage. Zaluta and his family will be in the first row and, instead of dancing for myself, tonight I am going to dance for them.

And when the dance is finished, I will sleep. I will not wake up afraid in the night. There is nothing left to fear. Tomorrow I will remind myself that life is more than a series of choreographed movements. I must learn to open my heart. It will be difficult, I know, but I have always enjoyed a challenge.

Concentration is the thing.

D
AVID
J. S
CHOW
is probably getting bored with being described as the man who coined the term “splatterpunk”—his own fiction far outstrips the “guts and gore” mentality foistered on readers by some members of that would-be movement.

Schow won the
Twilight Zone Magazine’s
readers poll for his short story, “Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You”, and recent anthology appearances include
The Year’s Best Horror Stories, Book of the Dead, Pulphouse 7, Fantasy Tales, Dark Voices 3
and
The Mammoth Book of Terror
.

Besides a string of TV novelizations written under a pseudonym, his books include the novels
The Kill Riff
and
The Shaft
and the collections
Seeing Red
and
Lost Angels
. He has edited the anthology
Silver Scream
and co-authored the non-fiction study,
The Outer Limits: The Official Companion
.

David Schow also scripted the movies
Leatherface The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III
and
Critters 3
and
4
. With his insider’s knowledge of Hollywood, the story that follows just could be more than fiction . . .

J
ONATHAN
B
RILL WAS THINKING
:
The last time I saw Haskell Hammer, he was dead set on becoming a famous writer of screenplays in Hollywood
.

The siren song of Southern California has always been the Big Break—a litany everyone babbles and no one truly believes. The Big Break. According to myth, you stumble across it by accident . . . or it mows you down on purpose. The thing in which people believe is the tease, the promise of the litany.

Rain droplets crawled down the windowpanes and blurred the view from the den. Jonathan permitted his gaze to defocus. Across his west lawn was his cul-de-sac; in it was parked his Mercedes. Sensible businessman’s gray had been his choice of car color. The driveway beyond meandered down Carla Ridge and insulated him from the old Trousdale Estates branch of Beverly Hills.

Among his home’s fourteen rooms, Jonathan Brill’s favorite was his den. He inventoried it in terms of matériel: wood, glass, paper, fiber, canvas, metal.

Teak was for the paneling, mahogany for the sprawling three-quarter administrator’s desk, thick oak planks for the pegged library shelving that dominated half the wall space. The narrow tinted windows through which he watched the rain were Nadia Charas commission work featuring her characteristic lozenge-shaped leaded panes. Floor to ceiling, in ordered ranks, stood the books. Behind the desk was a long, low buffet groaning with reference and overpriced showoff volumes; near the windows was a sideboard with sliding glass doors entombing a matched complement of leatherbound first editions. The carpet was a lush pile in a sober dark brown, directionally combed. Jonathan had been dramatic about arranging the few paintings he liked beneath pinlight spots. The originals included a Picasso ink wash and a Franz von Stuck from the turn of the century—one of the German Symbolist’s terrifically popular
Sin
series, mostly forgotten now. It depicted a voluptuary encoiled by a giant, malevolent snake, the sort of thing Freud would have a field day with. As with the Bruckner aluminum sculpture brooding down from its special nook, to Jonathan the acquisition held meaning beyond art. When admirers mentioned
worth
, he thought
price
, and had long ago chosen to make the best of this unfortunate incapacity. The edition of
Moby Dick
he held cradled to his chest as he stood by the windows had cost one thousand dollars in 1979. It was a miracle of thoughtful book-bindery. It was a
thousand-dollar book
, an investment, more stable than the messier forms of human transaction that had left Jonathan with his fourteen-room home all to himself this year. Any journeyman shrink could point his or her pipe at Jonathan’s overdone den and quack “compensatory surrogate,” and they’d be right, but Jonathan found
he relished the feeling of control he got from rattling around his house all by himself after the hired help had come and gone. He already knew most of the punchlines that his colleagues would apply to his life—his
new
life—and dismissed them. They were just envious. His divorce from Janice was history, and now he was free of her forever.

And the last time Haskell Hammer saw me, I was going to grow up to be a successful analyst
. He held his thousand-dollar book in one hand and a slug of Grand Marnier in the other, holding his contemplative pose by the rainspattered windows.
Shrink to the brats of the stars, he had kidded me. Elbow to the ribs. Ha-ha, sho’ nuff
.

The pleasant music of his door chimes soured when cycled over and over. The help had clocked out for the day; Jonathan had finally answered the door himself, prepared to dispense with some lunatic Jehovah’s Witness or door-to-door Scientologist. Instead he found his old buddy Haskell Hammer crutched against the glowing button, looking as though a bus had mistakenly dropped him off in hell and he had hoofed it through miles of brimstone just to get back to Hollywood.

Haskell’s opening dialogue had seemed depressingly melodramatic.
This was the only place I could come
. . .
you’re the only person who’ll understand
. . .
they’ve choked off my escape avenues
. . .
they’re
after
me
. . . .

After a beat of honest shock, Jonathan’s professional face slid into position. The personal, the emotional, the reactionary aspects of his anima retreated behind the shield of persona. Ego beats id. Diploma wraps stone.

Haskell had nearly swooned into his arms. Then followed, like a bad movie cliché, the restorative pop of cognac and the sudden clearing of Haskell’s eyes that denoted a return to the universe of the rational. He would, of course, have a story to tell. This narrative was to be revealed as soon as he emerged from the shower in Jonathan’s guest bathroom, where he had been holed up for nearly half an hour.

Far to the south, lightning belabored Century City. A shudder of thunder freed speckles of water to roll earthward along the panes. Jonathan considered his own reflection, the professional at ease, a still life of sober erudition with his leatherbound tome and balloon glass full of overpriced joy juice. All day the sky had retained the ominous hue of old newsprint; now it was as black and dense as the leaded ornamentation sectioning the glass panes.

He added half an inch to his snifter and slipped the special Arion edition of
Moby Dick
into its precise vacancy on the oak bookshelf. Melville was just the sort of intimidating bulwark of literature—pronounced
lich-ri-cha
—that no person of style or means would ever browse idly. The public schools had propagandized against
Melville, poor bastard. Even Jonathan would only pick up the book to hold his grand in his hand. It would remain undisturbed on the shelf.

Lightning tines, closer this time, colored the sky again. In the window Jonathan saw the reflection of a silhouette filling the den doorway, behind him. Haskell’s hair was slicked blackly back in a wet pompadour and the smell of a fresh cleansing radiated from him. Jonathan dashed a few fingers of cognac into a new glass.

“Can we close the curtains?”

The talk barrier had been broken. Good. Jonathan already knew the window was not visible from the road, but kept it to himself. He drew a thin cord and the burgundy drapes swished grandly together, compressing the den, making it a bit more claustrophobic. This was to be a backstage interview.

“Not paranoia, Jon, I swear,” he said. Yet his movements seemed nervous and furtive. He accepted the brandy snifter, then jumped away like a suspicious dog; when he moved to the cluster of sofa and chairs near the window, he immediately selected a corner seat that kept his back to the bookshelves and left him in a position to keep a jumpy watch on both the windows and the entrance to the den. “Not paranoia. I’m not crazy, either. Just cautious.”

Jonathan stopped down a wince of disappointment.
Oh, christ
, I
NVASION OF THE
B
ODY
S
NATCHERS
,
gimme a break!

Sensing this, Haskell perked up. “God, don’t I know what
that
sounds like. When people babble under stress, their dialog would offend the worst B-movie hack. Ever wonder if you were a mouthpiece for some keyboard-basher’s rotten cosmic screenplay? You work in Hollywood long enough, you realize that what life needs is pacing, better camera angles, less exposition, and a crack editor to re-order the whole mess into something interesting. And dénouements.”

“Stay in my neighborhood long enough,” said Jonathan, “And you begin analyzing reflex conversation, plumbing the sordid, crazed, anal-retentive depths of
have a nice day.”
He felt a flush of guilt. Haskell had been his friend. After a rush of years he had come to him for help out of the night, obviously as a barrel-bottom last resort. If Jonathan could not fix things, what in hell was his purpose on the planet? “Don’t start at the beginning,” he said. “Start with whatever is of the most importance.”

“Simplicity,” said Haskell, uttering a harsh little laugh. “The Conclave.”

“Which is?”

“A phalanx of men and women you’ve never read about in
Variety
. Consummate business folk. A tiny, elite federation. Compressed, efficient. Mother, are they ever efficient. . . .”

“Movers and shakers. What are they into?”

“Movies, what else?” said Haskell as though it was obvious to a child. “They ‘make’ movies, by helping movies make money. They make reputations. They deal in success, not excess. It’s the only game in this town.”

“You mean they’re a production group?”

“No.” Haskell struggled against a vast and insubstantial void, realizing the futility of wrestling with a ghost. He used up dead time by looking from the curtains to the door to Jonathan. He sipped his cognac. With a sigh of frustration—the sound of a drowning man who sees that rescuers do not notice him—he fought to find a way to encapsulate the ideas in his head and push them out into the light for examination. Jonathan could see the ideas were massy and unwieldy, involving an obvious danger that was easily overlooked, like a hostile gray bull elephant lurking against a gray building. When Jonathan considered that simile, he noticed that Haskell himself had grayed quite a lot in the years since they’d last talked. The black hair was interrupted by frequent striations of dead marble whiteness, where composure had seemingly been bleached away. Where Haskell’s hip self-confidence had been bartered away in some devil’s pact that left ashes in the soul and a red rime of fear crusting the eyes.

“Jon,” he said finally. “Did you ever notice those white vans all over Los Angeles, the ones with the microwave dishes on the roof, and the highbeam transmitters that look like someone made a science fiction prop out of two oversized shotgun microphones? Sometimes you see them on residential streets, just sitting there, or parked next to the newspaper machines outside a restaurant. Ever wonder what they’re for?”