Douglas rolled his eyes at Frank’s last remark, but let it pass unchallenged. “Rolf, no one is begrudging your nation’s right to defend itself. But what’s happening is going beyond mere security. Why is your leadership organizing boycotts of Jewish businesses, or burning books, or putting political opponents into that prison in Dachau? It’s the politics of fear.”
Fear. Rachel closed her eyes, suddenly wishing she hadn’t come on this trip. Douglas was right: this entire continent was roiling in fear. Who knew when it might coalesce into a tangible form and explode into open warfare?
Off to one side, she caught the sounds of a heated exchange between two train employees. Her Italian was rusty, but the men were obviously agitated.
“Marco è morto,” whispered one to the other. He made slashing gestures across his body.
His companion made a shushing sound, but the man continued right over him. Despite his rapid speech, she picked out the words “darkness” and “blood.”
Marco. Rachel remembered that was the young porter’s name, the one with the electric torch who was going to check the blacked-out luggage car. And she was fairly certain that “morto” meant “dead.” She set down her coffee. Had someone died … or been killed?
“I think something’s happening on this train,” Rachel said. “Something bad they’re not telling us about.”
“You’re right, my dear,” Frank said. “The waiter hasn’t been by in ages.” He snapped his fingers in the air.
The train employees moved off, still whispering to each other. Rachel looked around. Other passengers in the dining car were eating and laughing. One young woman was bouncing a toddler on her knee. Everything seemed as it should as their train sped through the dark tunnel. Maybe the pills had made her jumpy?
“I don’t know much about what happens in the cities,” Rolf was saying, his back stiffening in response to something Douglas had said. “My parents are cheesemakers in a small village in Bavaria. My father says the Party is fulfilling its promise to restore Germany to its former greatness. And for the books, I would say books are like people: some are good and some are bad. Those without merit should be burned.”
“Which should be burned up?” Douglas asked. “Bad books or bad people?”
“Books!” Rolf said, aghast. “And if people are being put into prison, I suppose they must have done something to deserve it.”
“Like disagree with your leaders,” Douglas muttered.
“Oh, who the hell cares what happens to a bunch of communists and malcontents?” Frank said. “The main thing is that no one wants to start another war. It’s bad for business.”
“I suppose, Frank,” Rachel said, turning her attention back to her companions, “that would depend on the business. If you were selling bullets and bombs, war might be very good for your bottom line.”
Frank sighed in exasperation. “My dear, ever since the advent of the talking picture, you’ve been very free to speak your opinion. Believe me, no one pays the price of admission to hear what you have to say. You’re on screen to be admired, nothing more.”
Rachel’s right palm itched to feel the sting of slapping Frank’s pudgy face. She reminded herself that she was a lady, and ladies didn’t strike men for making pig-headed, chauvinistic comments. Douglas, however, had started to rise from his seat, but when Rachel laid a calming hand on his arm, he seemed to recollect himself. Frank continued devouring his prime rib, oblivious of the tension in his companions.
“I respectfully disagree, Herr Sloan,” Rolf said. “I would buy a ticket to see and hear a beautiful and intelligent woman.”
“Well said!” Douglas exclaimed.
Rachel kissed the boy’s cheek, and Rolf blushed furiously.
Frank’s retort was cut short when the dining car was plunged into darkness. Rachel gripped the armrests of her chair as confused and angry voices shouted out, Frank foremost among them. She heard the dining car’s door slide open, and then something heavy slammed into their table. Dishes crashed to the floor.
When the lights returned after some moments, Rolf’s sister was lying face down on the table, bloodied and moaning. Douglas and Rolf helped Johanna to a chair while Frank backed away from the girl’s red-stained uniform. Other people ran into the dining car, shouting about a thing in the darkness.
Rachel’s heartbeat pounded in her ears, and she cried out when a man in a conductor’s uniform brushed past her. The man took a key from his belt, locked the railcar’s door, and then ran toward the engine room. Outside the train’s windows, the darkness of the tunnel seemed to press against the glass, searching for a way in.
Rolf gripped his sister’s hand. “Wer hat dich verletzt?”
Johanna began rambling in German. Rachel took her other hand and said, “In English, please? From the beginning?”
“Auf Englisch, bitte,” Rolf said.
“Is that door locked?” Johanna asked, still gasping.
Douglas gave it a firm tug. “Yes.”
“Danke Gott.” The girl sipped the water Rachel gave her, then spoke in a strained whisper. “I’d gone back to the second-class car, to my sleeping compartment. I’d drawn the curtain closed when the lights went off.”
“The lights went off here, too,” Douglas said. “But they came back on.”
“The lights never came back on for me,” Johanna said. “Then people in the car started screaming.”
“Of course they screamed,” Frank said with a nervous laugh. “The lights were off, and they were scared.”
Other passengers were gathering around their table to listen. Douglas bade them be quiet, and the babble of voices ceased for the most part.
“Nein,” Johanna said. “They were screaming at the—the thing—in the darkness.”
“What thing?” Rolf asked.
“I don’t know, brother. I pressed myself against the wall of the compartment, not daring to move. I heard a sound outside the curtain, a low whistling sound.”
“Like something breathing?” Rachel asked, her voice filled with dread.
“Ja,” Johanna answered. “Like a bear, or a tiger. Heavy footsteps passed by, claws clicking on the floor. Then the shrieks of passengers were silenced, one by one. I knew it would find me if I didn’t get out. I threw the curtain aside and ran this way. I stepped on people, on bodies. Near the exit, I brushed against something cold, revolting. It slashed at me, tearing my clothes, but I got away. I ran into the first-class sleeping car, shouting for everyone to get out. Then the lights went off in there too, and some of us ran in here.”
Rachel fell back into her chair, fear bubbling inside her like acid. This couldn’t be real! Had Dr. Gothame been wrong about the storm cellar, and the sounds she sometimes heard in the darkness of her bedroom? Like an animal, breathing, waiting to kill her.
“What glorious fiction!” Frank said. “Young woman, you should come to work in my studio. But enough is enough. You’re scaring my fiancée with your runaway imagination.”
“This girl’s blood isn’t make-up,” Douglas said.
“I’m not your fiancée,” Rachel declared. She was scared out of her mind, but it felt good to say that.
In the meantime, the conductor returned and had been listening to Johanna’s tale. Upon seeing him, Frank accosted the man about the quality of his railroad, and how the Adriatic Express had lost a very valuable customer. Douglas pulled Frank roughly away.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the conductor said, raising his hands for quiet. “My name’s Petra Kanelos. I don’t pretend to know exactly what’s going on in the rearward railcars.”
“I have a daughter back there!” the woman with the small child yelled. Others shouted angrily, speaking over one another.
“Quiet everyone, please!” Kanelos yelled. “Ever since we entered the tunnel, something has come aboard our train. Whether man or beast, I cannot say. Something … evil, just like the young woman over here said.” The passengers grew silent. “It began in the luggage compartment
and is making its way forward, to here, killing in the darkness.”
“What about my daughter?” the woman asked again.
“My brother is back there!” another said.
“I’ve lost three porters, good boys all,” Kanelos said, voice rising above the others. “I sent them to their deaths, it seems. Do you want your other little girl to die, madam?” He pointed to the woman holding the child, and she fell silent. “Now then, I need two men to help me de-couple the train before the same thing happens to us.”
“But we’ll be out of the tunnel soon, won’t we?” Rachel asked.
“We should have been out a long time ago, but I don’t trust my watch. Two minutes, maybe? Who knows?” Kanelos answered. “But that thing is still on the train.”
Douglas stepped forward. “I’ll go.”
Rachel grabbed his arm. “Don’t go out there, in the darkness. Don’t leave me.”
“I’ll stay with you,” Frank said, voice quavering.
Rachel cursed the name of Frank Sloan. She felt revolted with both him and herself that she’d ever allowed him to control her life or touch her body. It was so unfair. Why did good men like Douglas have to risk their lives, while the Franks of the world hid in the corner, or made money off of war?
“Fraulein Knox, will you watch over Johanna?” Rolf asked. “I’d like to help the conductor.”
The boy’s bravery warmed Rachel’s heart, banishing thoughts of Frank. “Of course, Rolf.”
“Good men,” Kanelos said to his two volunteers. As he unlocked the door and swung it open, the dining car was thrown into darkness once again. People scattered in confusion, screaming. Cold air rushed in from outside, followed by an even colder presence.
Rachel could sense, rather than see, the creature standing just inside the doorway, not six feet from her. Johanna collapsed in her arms like a dead weight. Rachel set her charge down on the floor, then fumbled on the dining table for something she might use as a weapon. Her groping fingers found the cutting edge of a steak knife. She held it in shaking hands, ignoring the gash that had opened across her right palm.
As Rachel stood alone against the darkness, the memories of her twelve-year-old self came gibbering out. She was back in the underground storm cellar, pounding on an unyielding door with bloody hands, crying to her father that she’d learned her lesson.
She heard the creature take a step toward her, claws clicking on the hardwood floor. In her mind’s eye, it was her father, back from the grave. No, it was the solicitous stranger in the straw hat, the one who’d whispered in her ear of things she hadn’t understood. No, it was Frank Sloan, offering her the bondage of money and blue pills. It was all of them and none of them, and every fear she’d ever known.
Johanna moaned at her feet, recalling Rachel to her senses.
“I’m not afraid of you.” Some part of Rachel knew that was an utterly ridiculous thing to say. She held the knife at the ready.
The answering growl was a guttural, predatory sound that should have sent her chittering away like a frightened animal. But she stood firmly over the girl that had been placed in her care. “You may kill me. You may kill us all. But I’m not going to be afraid of you!”
There was a roar from the creature’s mouth that sounded partly like a snarl and partly like laughter. Claws brushed against her cheek, ever so gently moving down to the jugular notch of her throat, the caress of a cat stroking the prey held between its paws. Warm breath, rank as death, filled her face.
Rachel thrust the knife upward with all of her strength, aiming just below the creature’s mouth. The blade slid home, all the way to the handle, and a warmth gushed over her hands as an unholy scream split the air.
She’d found its throat, she knew. Powerful arms throttled Rachel’s sides, but she didn’t release her grip on the knife. She stepped closer and stabbed upward again, thrusting the blade higher until it hit bone.
At that moment, the train shot out of the side of the mountain, bursting into a bright, sunlit valley. Rachel blinked at the sudden light, temporarily blinded, and stumbled to the floor.
When Rachel regained her senses, she found Douglas and Rolf kneeling beside her. Nearby, she caught a glimpse of Frank’s posterior sticking out from under a tablecloth. Some passengers, overcome with grief, were sobbing while a few others hugged and kissed their loved ones.
“Where’s Johanna?”
“The girl is safe,” said a familiar voice. Rachel looked up to see the conductor. “We all are, thanks to you. I’ve searched the train from top to bottom, and there’s no sign of our killer.”
“How many died?” Rachel asked.
“Eight dead, and three with minor injuries. It could’ve been much worse. Thank you again.” He moved away to see to other passengers.
Rachel sat up abruptly. “Where did it go? The creature?”
“Creature?” Douglas said. “I didn’t see anything. But something knocked the three of us aside when the door opened. Here, let me clean your hands.” He took a napkin, dipped it in a pitcher of water, and began washing Rachel’s hands. The blood caked on them was dark as midnight.
Rolf had removed his neckerchief and was binding a wound on Johanna’s arm. “I saw something, Fraulein Knox. For just an instant. When the sunlight returned, there was a hulking blackness standing right in front of you.”
“What did it look like?”
The boy shook his head. “I do not have the words for it, even in German. A blurry thing, indistinct around the edges. Clawed hands, like a predator. A few seconds before the train came out of the darkness, it screamed. Then the sunlight came through the windows, and the air around it turned, curved in on itself. And it was gone.”
“Gone,” she echoed. Somehow, on some instinctual level she didn’t understand, Rachel knew the danger had passed. She got to her feet.
“You were very brave,” Douglas said. “I heard what you said about not being afraid. When the lights went out, the only thing I could think to do was get away. But you stood your ground.”
Rachel smiled weakly at his praise. “Thank you, Douglas.”
“I want you to call me David from now on.” She stared at him in disbelief. “That could’ve been the final curtain. I’ve decided that whenever I go, I’d like to go out as my real self. Or as close as I can get.”
Rolf looked up in surprise. “I thought you were Douglas McGregor, the cowboy?”
“Stage name. My given name is David Aaron Weiner. I’m not really a cowboy from Arizona, either. I was born into a poor Jewish family from Brooklyn.”
Rachel loved her friend more than ever at that moment. Douglas—no, David, she corrected herself—was incapable of reciprocating that love, at least not in the way she wanted. But it was enough.
She turned to the two German youths. “Are you okay, Johanna?”
“Yes.” She looked at David, her eyes wet. “You were willing to face the darkness, mein Herr, and what did I do but faint dead away? And you were bravest of all, Fraulein Knox.”
“You did better than most,” Rachel said. “You tried to warn people of the danger.” She threw a disgusted look at Frank. The movie producer had crawled out from under his table and was clutching a bottle of whiskey, far removed from his companions. She took Frank’s blue pills out of her purse and threw them to the floor.
“It’s hard to imagine,” David said, “that there could be such evil in the world. Whatever it was.”
Rachel glanced at the insignia on Rolf’s red armband. “Not really, David. The evil is always there, waiting for the lights to go off.”
The train rolled onward through the forested valley. In the distance, the Adriatic Sea churned below scudding dark clouds.
James A. Hearn is an attorney and author who writes in a variety of genres, including crime, science fiction, fantasy, and horror. He and his wife reside in Georgetown, Texas with a boisterous Labrador retriever. An amateur astronomer, James believes everything is better under a starry sky—a good b
ook, time with friends, or Mexican martinis.
His crime fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, The Eyes of Texas: Private Eyes from the Panhandle to the Piney Woods, Guns + Tacos, Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, and Mickey Finn 2: 21st Century Noir. James is a two-time finalist in the Writers of the Future Contest. jamesahearn.com.
Our Lady of Celluloid
Ryan F. Healey
Our Lady of Celluloid
Ben Mackey sat at a table the size of a swimming pool and tried not to look down at the dark wood, polished to a mirror. He didn’t want to catch his own eye and lose all his nerve. He also didn’t want to look out the window over Los Angeles, from hundreds of feet in the air. It was easy to believe this room didn’t actually exist, and that didn’t bode well for his attempts to feel like he belonged there.
The man sitting next to him, whose name and title he’d forgotten the moment they were spoken, wasn’t helping. Instead, he was feeding Ben a constant stream of hot air about how, after this movie was released and broke all the box office records, everyone was going to know his name. But the man kept calling him Ted.
Very old and very young men filed into the room, laughing and pointing at each other, jockeying for seats and trading barbs. Gradually they began to quiet and turned their attention to the man sitting next to Ben. The man smiled with all of his teeth, put his hand on Ben’s shoulder and took a deep breath.
“Before we start,” Ben cut in, “I just wanted to say thank you for taking a chance on my script. I truly believe that there haven’t been many action films with this level of heart or humor, and I’ve poured everything I have into it. I mean, just the fact that you’re investing in a story where the two leads have a platonic and respectful relationship through to the end shows a level of integrity that I don’t think most studios would even—”
The man next to him held up a hand and smiled apologetically to the rest of the room. “First off, Ted, I must inform you that the character of Barbara is now a dog. We think the emotional connection will play better with the audience than if she’s a woman.” He picked up the thick folder in front of him and waved it as if it held evidence that the decision was a winner. “So … before we start … any other questions?”
Monsters, Movies & Mayhem Page 29