“But … but … stomping Yokato is ingorrig … is iconic. Tokyo is iconic to the genre.”
A little smoke leaked from Zillagon’s nostrils.
“Eeeep!” Montrose squeaked.
“At the moment you are the only director with a real dragon for his movies. I can easily sign with someone else. Get more realistic scripts, Monty baby.”
Montrose paled. Zillagon licked his lips.
“Okay, okay. But can you at least fly over Beijing and drop some heavy rocks? Make the Chinese think it’s asteroids and God’s judgment?”
Zillagon thought that over for a moment. Thinking that might be a good idea.
Then he thought again, and loosed his grip on Montrose. “Next film. I need to lose some weight in order to fly.”
Montrose slipped within Zillagon’s grip.
“Zilly … Zillagon, don’t drop me. We’re partners. You have to work with me!”
Zillagon held up Montrose once again and asked quietly, politely, through gritted fangs, “What’s my motivation?”
Irene Radford has been writing stories ever since she figured out what a pencil was for. Editing, under the name Phyllis Irene Radford, grew out of her love of the craft of writing. History has been a part of her life from her earliest childhood and led to her BA from Lewis and Clark College.
Mostly she writes fantasy and historical fantasy including the bestselling Dragon Nimbus series and the masterwork Merlin’s Descendants series. She writes historical tales as Rachel Atwood. In other lifetimes she writes urban fantasy as P.R. Frost or Phyllis Ames, and space opera as C.F. Bentley. Lately she ventured into steampunk as Julia Verne St. John. Ireneradford.net.
Tunnel Visions
James A. Hearn
Tunnel Visions
“[T]he only thing we have to fear is … fear itself.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt, first inaugural address
“When the water’s rising and the bombs are falling, it’s sure as hell not fear you’re afraid of.”
—Anonymous survivor of the USS Arizona, Pearl Harbor
August 3, 1933: Somewhere in the Italian Alps
Rachel Knox popped the blue pills into her mouth and chased them down with champagne. She didn’t know what the blue pills were called—like most everything in her life, Frank J. Sloan had handed them to her and expected his biggest star to swallow them down without question. The owner of Sloan Film Studios was born to give directions, and it seemed to Rachel it was her fate to take them.
Memorize these lines, my dear. Take these pills. Stand over here, chin up. Kiss your co-star, he just saved your life. And always, always, smile for the camera. Frank was producer, director, and pharmacist all rolled into one overweight, licentious package.
Rachel refreshed her flute glass and sat down on the bed of the sleeping compartment she shared with Frank. Outside the window, a blue sky blazed above forested mountains as the Adriatic Express Train barreled through the Italian Alps, bound for Greece.
A smile touched Rachel’s lips, but her blue eyes were as vacant as a painted porcelain doll. If only her father could see how far his only child had come up in life. A movie star, traveling the world. Parties that lasted for days. The late Lukas Knox had expected his daughter to stay on the family’s rice farm in the bayous of Louisiana, a farm that always teetered on the edge of bankruptcy.
On her eighteenth birthday—just days before the stock market crash of 1929—she’d escaped the farm’s drudgery by hitching west to California. The world was plunging into an economic depression, but young Rachel had hardly noticed. She was poor but free, and Los Angeles seemed full of possibilities.
After six months of working in chorus lines, she was “discovered” by Sloan Film Studios. The discovery was made by Frank Sloan himself, the self-proclaimed Christopher Columbus to a slew of silent film starlets. Rachel thought of him more as a Cortés than a Columbus, as Frank had a ruthless penchant for despoiling virginal resources, especially girls with golden hair.
In her more lucid moments, in those days when she couldn’t find her pills, Rachel reflected that she’d escaped the rice farm only to exchange one form of servitude for another. But surely the life of an actress was preferable to working her fingers to the bone on a farm she’d never own?
The train gave a lurch in its otherwise smooth ride, jolting her back to the present. The sleeping compartment was supposed to be the largest and most luxurious on the Adriatic Express, but she still felt like the walls were closing in on her. She fixed her eyes on the jagged mountains passing outside of her window, silent sentinels at the northern edge of Mussolini’s Italy.
“Did you take your pills, my dear?” Frank Sloan asked as he slid open the compartment door. He sat heavily into the seat opposite her own, his girth swallowing the cushion.
“Yes, Frank.”
“Good. They should keep your claustrophobia in check. Let me know if you need more.” He patted the pocket of his suit vest with a fleshy hand, pills rattling in an unseen bottle.
Not to mention my nyctophobia, she said to herself. And my depression, anxiety, and whatever else Frank’s doctor said I had. “When do we reach Athens? I’m ready to get off this blasted train.”
Frank assured her they were right on schedule. “Just picture it: Rachel Knox amid the splendors of ancient Greece, as Queen Helen.” He took her chin in his fingers, turning it in the light as if she were a prized mare from his stables. “You certainly have a face that could launch a thousand ships. That blond hair is so lovely.”
Rachel allowed herself a brief smile. The hair color Frank was so captivated by came in a bottle. Did everything that made life bearable come in one bottle or another?
Frank had taken her sardonic smirk for encouragement and was droning on about all they would see while filming his Trojan War epic. Rachel was playing Helen, the mythical beauty Paris had spirited away to Troy. She wondered again why it was necessary to film on location in Athens, when the “splendors” Frank spoke of were in ruins. She suspected the protracted trip to Europe was all a ploy to break down her defenses and get her to finally set a date for their wedding.
Why not get it over with? After all, she was contractually bound to Frank’s studio for another six years. But the thought of possibly bringing a child into the world that was one-half of Frank Sloan chilled her to the marrow. Frank was sliding a hand up her strapless black dress when a gentle knock sounded at the door.
“Come in,” Rachel said hurriedly.
The door slid open to reveal a tall man dressed in an immaculate gray suit. Her male co-star and best friend, Douglas McGregor, had a rugged face, with a thin mustache resting above an ever-present grin.
“How are you feeling, Rachel?” Douglas asked.
“Much better, thank you.”
“Well, well,” Frank said with a nasty frown, “if it isn’t Paris himself paying a call to Helen? I warn you, I can be as jealous as Menelaus.” He kissed Rachel’s ear.
“Lay off, Frank,” Douglas said, lighting a cigarette. “I’ve been sitting alone in that cramped second-class sleeping compartment for hours. Shall we go up to the dining car for a bite?”
Rachel almost smiled over Frank’s jealousy. If only he knew Douglas as she did, the studio owner would know he had nothing to fear from his biggest male star, at least in that quarter.
“Why don’t you go ahead of us?” Frank said, his eyes feasting on Rachel’s milk white shoulders. “I think Rachel wants to … rest for a few minutes.”
Douglas glanced at his pocket watch. “Oh, she does, eh? Shall I expect you in, say, four minutes?”
Frank’s face contorted in cold fury. “You go too far, Douglas. I made you, and I can break you just as easily.”
“That’s three times you’ve threatened to fire me on this trip alone,” said Douglas, laughing. “What are you going to do, Frank? Tell the world that my real name is David Weiner? That your all-American cowboy from Arizona is actually a Jew from Brooklyn?”
/> “Keep your voice down,” Frank said.
“Well, go ahead and tell them. I’m under contract for five more pictures, remember?”
Rachel’s voice cut through the air like a knife. “Where did the mountains go?”
“Beg pardon?” Douglas asked.
“The mountains!” Rachel hissed, pointing to the window and rising from her seat. The Italian Alps were gone. In their place was a dark rectangle, devoid of all light.
Frank laughed derisively. “We’re in a tunnel, my dear. Nothing more. These trains pass through many such tunnels as they traverse the mountains.”
Rachel sank back into her seat, holding her forehead. Tunnels! She hated any enclosed space, ever since her father had locked her in the storm cellar when she was twelve. It was punishment for her first attempt to run away.
Rachel had gotten as far as the bus station in Lafayette before Lukas Knox had found her. A strange man in a straw hat was sitting next to her on a bench, asking questions. Where was she going? Was she hungry? The man’s hand was on her knee when her father drove up. He’d beaten the stranger’s face to a bloody ruin, then hauled her back to the farm and shut her into the storm cellar. Night had fallen by then, and her father had taken out the lanterns before locking her in.
Rachel had flung herself against the door, beating on it with her fists, but it wouldn’t budge. In the darkness, rats scurried on clawed feet, their agitated squeals like mad laughter in her ears.
During the longest night of her life, sleep never came, though she occasionally slipped into a kind of paralysis, like a catatonic dread. Beyond the pounding of her heart in her ears and her fists on the door, Rachel thought she could hear something in the back of the cellar.
Something breathing. As the night stretched out, as her terror grew, the breathing seemed to get closer. Stronger.
Frank’s psychiatrist, while exploring the subject with her years later, had told Rachel there was nothing in the cellar, and the breathing she sometimes heard in the dark of night was all in her mind. If anything, she was only hearing the sound of her own heartbeat and respiration in her ears, like the narrator in Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
In the cold light of day, Rachel had agreed with Dr. Gothame. But when the sun went down, when the shadows deepened into darkness, the good doctor’s rational words lost their power, and Rachel found herself more often than not sleeping with the lights on. She didn’t hear the strange breathing when the lights were on.
As Douglas and Frank exchanged barbs, Rachel rubbed her eyes to banish her childhood memories. She was Rachel Knox, international film star, not some scared little girl.
When her eyes opened, she screamed to find the sleeping compartment was pitch black, save for the glowing tip of Douglas’ cigarette.
A few moments later, the lights came back on. Frank was reaching for the pills in his pocket, while Douglas was eyeing her with genuine concern.
“What happened?” Rachel gasped. “Why did the lights go out?”
“How the hell should I know?” Frank said as he handed her two pills.
Douglas swore softly. “I thought you were going off those, Rachel. They cloud your judgment.” He looked meaningfully at Frank.
Frank snorted in derision. “What’re you, a doctor? Her pills are prescribed by a medical professional.”
“One in your employ, no doubt.”
Rachel held up a hand for peace. “I’ll put them in my purse, in case I need them later.”
“Excuse me,” Douglas said to a passing porter. “Is there any trouble we need to be worried about?”
“Trouble, sir?”
Rachel caught sight of Douglas’ surreptitious wink at the porter as her friend nodded in her direction. “About the lights and the tunnel, I mean?”
The porter seemed to take the hint. “There’s no trouble, sir. We lost power for a few moments.”
“So everything’s under control, right Marco?” Douglas asked, glancing at the porter’s nametag.
“I believe so,” Marco answered. “The luggage car’s still blacked-out and the radio’s down while we’re in the tunnel, but that’s all.”
“Is there power in the dining car?” Rachel asked.
“Yes. Only the last railcar is still blacked-out. The second- and first-class sleeping cars, the dining car, and the locomotive have power.” The porter held up an electric torch. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to check the luggage car. The porter on duty there isn’t answering our pages.”
“Might be hard to do, in the dark,” Douglas observed.
“When will we be out of the tunnel?” Rachel asked.
The boyish porter consulted his pocket watch. “The schedule says eighteen minutes, but some of these tunnels seem to last an eternity. I have never timed it, I’m afraid. Excuse me.” He disappeared down the aisle.
“My invitation still stands for the dining car,” Douglas said.
Rachel got up and took her friend’s arm. “I’m famished,” she lied. The blue pills she’d taken earlier had made her nauseated, and she didn’t want to be alone with Frank if the lights went out again. “Coming, Frank?”
The movie producer trailed behind them, his expression sullen.
“I tell you, there’s nothing to fear from this Herr Hitler,” said Frank, as he stabbed a slice of prime rib with his fork. “Mark my words: there’ll be no war in Europe.”
Rachel, Douglas, and Frank were seated at a table in the dining car. Rachel found that she much preferred its openness to the close quarters of the sleeping compartment. She felt like she could breathe here … as long as she kept her eyes off the rows of black windows.
Outside, the darkness of the tunnel seemed to drink the train’s electric lights. On occasion, light from the dining car would glint off some jagged edge along the tunnel wall. It caught Rachel’s eye by instinct, like the movement of shadowy predators beyond the protective light of a nighttime campfire.
“No war,” said Frank again. “Mark my words.”
Some diners had stopped their meals at Frank’s intrusive voice, including a boy and a girl dressed in uniforms. The boy was wearing black shorts and a tan shirt, while the girl wore a brown jacket, white blouse, and a dark blue skirt. Both had black neckerchiefs tucked under their collars. They had ceased conversing in German and were openly staring at Frank and Douglas.
“Then what are the Germans re-arming for?” asked Douglas to Frank. “Why are they burning books?”
Rachel sat quietly, wishing they would talk about something else. She looked away from their table, shivering when her eyes caught yet another flash of reflected light from the tunnel walls.
The lights in the dining car flickered off, then came back on. Rachel bit back her scream. The blue pills in her purse were calling to her, but she forced herself to take a comforting sip of coffee instead.
“Don’t be obtuse, Douglas,” Frank said. He paid no attention whatever to the fact that the lights had gone off, however briefly. “Wouldn’t you be arming yourself if you had Stalin on your doorstep? They deserve to defend themselves, just like we do. And what’s the harm if they burn a few books, eh? More people will go to the cinema and see my pictures.”
Rachel caught the attention of a porter. “Excuse me. What’s going on with the lights?”
The porter swallowed nervously. “We’re having some, uh, electrical problems with the rearward railcars. The lights are going out.”
“Is that normal?” she asked.
“Your party should stay in the dining car until the situation is resolved. You’ll be safer here.”
“Safer? Safer from what?”
The porter muttered a goodbye and strode quickly to an exit.
“He didn’t answer my question,” Rachel said, watching the porter go. “Frank, did you notice that?” The movie producer ignored her as he continued his debate with Douglas on European politics.
In the meantime, one of the uniformed German youths had approached their table. “Ents
chuldigung,” said the boy politely. “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation. May I make some observations?”
The boy standing at Rachel’s elbow was perhaps fifteen, with short-cropped blond hair and friendly blue eyes. His companion glowered at them from the other table, agitation written on her face.
“What’s your name?” Rachel asked him, momentarily forgetting about the porter’s strange behavior.
“Rolf Switzer. And you are the famous film star, Rachel Knox.”
“Looks like you have a fan,” Douglas said. He introduced himself and the members of his party to Rolf and invited the boy to join them. Rolf took the empty seat beside Rachel and accepted a small glass of wine from Douglas.
The girl got up from the other table, said something strident in German to Rolf, and left the dining car in a huff.
“Pay no mind to Johanna,” Rolf said sheepishly. “My older sister mistrusts all Ausländer. Beg pardon, I mean non-Germans.”
“No offense taken,” Douglas said. “We cannot hold ourselves responsible for the behavior of our fellow countrymen.” He said this while staring daggers at Frank.
“You said you had something to contribute to our conversation?” Frank asked, unaware of the cutting remark.
Rolf sipped his wine. “We Germans have no wish for war. At least, I don’t. In fact, I’ve never been in a fight in my entire life.”
“You’re still young,” Douglas said. “That might change in the near future.”
“Rolf, no sane person wishes for war,” Rachel said. “What do your new leaders want then?”
“The same thing every other nation wants: security.”
“See what I was telling you?” Frank said. “War’s bad for business.”
Monsters, Movies & Mayhem Page 28