Red Dreams

by Dennis Etchison

  He nodded uncertainly.

  "So. Why don't you run down the week for me?" said another actor, the one with his hair over his collar. "I guess I've lost track, since that Dr. Whosit character put Jan into the hospital. You know." Fingers snapping. "The one they brought out from New York."

  "Crispin, I think he was called," said the tall actor.

  "Listen, there's some fresh fruit in the dining room," said the actress in her throaty voice, the one she used when she talked on the telephone at night, when the tall actor or Daddy, whichever one it was, was asleep. "And some of those good croissants, and your orange marmalade." She studied Willum absently. "I could ask Monica to make up another omelet with cream cheese. Would that please you, darling?"

  "Leona, for God's sake," said the tall actor.

  "All right!" She pretended to spit the words, making her eyelids flutter the way they did on The Late Show. "My G-o-d." She rose, still stooped, and kissed him dryly on his lips. "Take care, baby," she said. "Mother's just going to be a while longer. You can play downstairs, if you like, or—"

  "Well," said the tall actor, "let's see. They finally got me divorced Friday. Just a minute. Leona!"

  "…So the way it went was this,” said the third actor matter-of-factly. "Mm, what-was-her-name?"

  "Jan."

  "Right. Jan miscarried right after the rape. For a while it looked like they'd have her go back East to stay with her mother. But someone decided they should send this Crispin out from New York. And then it worked out that Jordan met up with his old flame again and filed for divorce. Naturally. These things never make sense. You're right, she used to be married to his brother-in-law, but you know how those things go. Sometimes it takes years. What do you expect? Just like a soap opera, right?"

  "What I don't understand," said the younger actress, "was that part about the drug dealer, what did they call him?"

  "Shorty something. Bernstein, I think."

  "How was she supposed to carry on during all that, with this Bernstein trying to involve her in the trial, not to mention the custody fight? It was all so unbelievable…"

  "…Of course you could handle it," the actor with hair over his collar was saying on the other side of the room. "Self-assurance is something a person is born with—and you certainly have it, Leona. How many pictures was it you made over there?"

  "Twenty-two," supplied the tall actor, before she could answer.

  "You see?"

  "But," she said, "I've always had a role to hide behind, don't you see? Every word—"

  "We have scripts, too," said the tall actor. "Don't we, Kurt?" He had to laugh. "Such as they are."

  "There," she said. "That's just it. You've told me yourself that you hardly have time for anything more than the most rudimentary blocking and run-through." Her chair creaked, straining. "So you must fall back on what you are. Don't you see? In other words, you're not provided with an adequate mask." Pause. "I'd be petrified if I had to work your soap. How do you do it?"

  "With your self-assur—"

  "Of course, self-assurance, my God! But what about confidence? That's something one must learn. And I've never had to do that kind of acting before. Why, over there—"

  "Then you simply play the surface," said the other actor, as though explaining to a child. "The line."

  "Don't you think I know about playing the line?" she said. "My God, how do you think I survived all those shitty films?"

  "A lot of actors play the line."

  "What do you think episodic television is all about?" said the tall actor.

  "I know," said the actress. "You could even say that Larry Olivier falls back on pure technique when he's not given enough to work with. But when one is concerned about playing the meaning—"

  "Sure. The spine. Zohra, for example, plays the meaning. Did you catch her on that Kojak rerun the other night? But when her material is thin, that's all she plays, the meaning. At the expense of the line."

  "But," said the actress, "what if one strives to play the meaning and the line simultaneously? My God. Do you know that I worked on one with Corman years ago that he shot in four days? Some funny little man was busy in the trailer typing out the next scene directly on stencils!"

  "…I suppose that was why she had to do it," continued the third actor, across the room. "Morton wouldn't accept the separation. And then when he broke in—"

  "I watched the whole thing," said the younger actress. "It was unreal. Like they had some third-rate writer."

  "Then you know. That was all she wrote…"

  I can hear the dark, thought Willum, on the floor in the hall.

  If I listen hard…

  "I tell you, I've never felt that way before," said the tall actor, walking in from the patio.

  "Oh, you were just high on shock," said the other actor, following. "You know. Hey listen, though, I'm glad we can talk—that's why I came by."

  "If I could only relax, if it would just let up. Some time to myself. You have no idea. The schedule—"

  "So why don't we just kick back now, while everybody's outside? And you can tell me all about real life."

  The tall actor measured another Scotch. "The daily routine? What makes you think it's worth the telling?"

  "Might do you good."

  "You could run it down as well as I could, you know. All right, all right, what do you want me to say? First breakfast. Then an argument. Then somebody or other comes over for a visit. Or we go over there. Then work. And the crazy, irrational phone calls. Is someone up there writing this tripe, do you think? And the meetings. And the drinking. And the dinners, always at Tallboy's or the, whadayou call it? the Copper Kettle. Hey, Kurt, can you tell me why? Can you tell me how everything got to be so God damned repetitious? Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday… Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night wondering how I ever got caught in this stupid imitation of a life."

  "Come on, man."

  "That's all it seems to me anymore. Just like we're all trapped in some broken, cheesy videotape loop." He added abruptly, "Sometimes I think I could walk. You know? No matter what's about to come down."

  The other actor said ironically, "Do you have a contract?"

  "Yeah, you old son of a bitch," answered the tall actor mildly. "And you know as well as I do that there are some things we don't exactly sign a contract for. They're the things that are the most binding."

  Hiding in the garden…

  Willum padded to the end of the hall. He gazed around him in the half-light. Doors. To the bedroom, to the kitchen, to the bathroom, to the dining room. The stairway. To his room, where the tutor met with him five afternoons a week. The tutor would keep coming, his mother said, until he got better and could start school, even though he felt well enough to start right now. He had always felt better. And he knew Daddy would understand, and help him to start. Soon. Daddy always helped, when he was here.

  He noticed the telephone. Maybe it would tell him something. It helped his mother lots of times. He touched his face to the cool, black receiver. If it didn't talk back to him with words he couldn't understand, the way it had when he tried before. And if it didn't make him cry, the way it made her cry sometimes.

  From the living room came the voice of his mother, magnified by the walls of the corridor.

  "I just wish Willum could be free of all this, oh, free to wander naked through the gardens of the universe!"

  If wishes were camels, he thought, eyes would have needles….

  "Precisely," said the younger actress. "You have a career, and now you must use that to provide—"

  "An access," said the actress, "is not an avenue."

  "But it is a living, isn't it, Leona?"

  "What you get is a living,” said the actress. "If you're lucky. What you give is a life."

  The tall actor sat her on the couch and tried to speak so that no one else would hear, though the others were waiting outside on the patio.

  "It’s going to be all right," he told her.


  In the hall, Willum began trying doors. He was sure that someone had taken from him something irreplaceably valuable; but he couldn't remember who had done it, or even what it was. And no one would admit it.

  "But they all know!" said the actress.

  "That's right, and they're our friends—your friends, honey. They'll stand beside you. As I will. You know that."

  The doors were locked, or did not lead to anything that didn't show. He could see that. The empty kitchen. The sweet-smelling bedroom with mirrors, her bedroom. The dining room, with the big table legs. And the stairway to his own room. (He knew where each of his toys was hidden, even if she did not.) He looked around again. There were the pictures of her lining the hallway, scary old posters showing the way she was on The Late Show or Chiller:

  TERROR FILLS THE NIGHT AS SHE STALKS HER PREY!

  "I had to do it," she said. "What else could I do? He was going to take Willum away, in defiance of the court order. And do God knows what to me, if I got in the way."

  "Self-defense," the tall actor said. "If you were going to be indicted and tried for it, which you aren't. Look, Morton broke in, trying to find him. The others were just arriving for dinner. Monica was out with the boy, of course—that part is true. You attempted to stop him. When he got to Willum's room he grabbed you, pushed you down. I came to your rescue, you ran for the gun, he took it from you, struggled with me, it went off. There. They'll all say they saw that, even the ones who didn't see anything—they'll claim they were already here, right? They stayed and talked to you, tried to calm you. You took a sedative. I called the police. Do you want to go over it again?"

  "But why didn't we call a doctor? They’ll think—"

  "Kurt is a doctor, will you remember that? He'd practically finished his internship when he got his first part."

  She sighed and made a small, strangled weeping in her throat. There was the sound of her pill box snapping open.

  "Do you suppose he still loves me?"

  Willum hesitated at the foot of the stairs, staring up into the blackness.

  "Who?"

  "Oh, Jordan, have I done such a terrible thing to my boy? Have I?"

  The tall actor opened another bottle. "Jesus. You know something? I hate that damned show, but—"

  "Then let's leave. Everything. Now. I'll get Willum and—"

  "—But right now I wish to God life could be as simple as that stupid serial. A nine-to-fiver, with breakfasts, arguments, visits, phone calls, dinners, hassles, but little hassles, ones I could handle with my eyes closed. You know, God help me, I can't help thinking you'd be better off if you'd never come back from Rome with Morton, if we hadn't started up again, maybe if Jan—if we'd just—"

  She made another, more desperate sound.

  "I don’t know why I said that. I didn't mean it. Forgive me, Leona. Shh, now. Shh."

  Willum put his fingers on the railing and started up.

  He felt it in the house, something missing, something gone away forever and never coming back, ever since he had come back from the park with Monica. And now he felt it inside himself. He paused at the first landing, peering back at the dimly-lighted hall and the last of the posters below.

  THE HIGH PRIESTESS OF EVIL

  He shivered and, for reasons he could not yet understand, a shudder passed along his spine. He thought: A possum just ran over my grave. That was what Daddy always said. But this time he would be brave.

  He tried humming to himself under his breath, closing his eyes tight as he climbed the rest of the way.

  "Where's Willum?" said the tall actor suddenly.

  "He-he's fine. He's playing. He likes to play by himself. He's such a good, good little boy. Isn't he? Don't you think he is?"

  "But where—?"

  "Don't worry," said the actress. "He can't go upstairs alone. He's afraid of the dark. He always has been. I used to be, too, when I was his age."

  "I'd better call the police now," said the tall actor.

  "Yes," said the actress.

  "And I'll tell Jack to be ready. In case we need a lawyer. You haven't touched the body since, have you? He's still up there, where he fell?"

  She began to cry.

  Willum came to the top. Soon he would be safe in his own room. Eyes still squeezed tight, he thought of the things he must do. He would go through his toys one by one, to be sure they were there. Then he would open the closet and feel around inside. And the bed, he would have to look under the bed. And maybe he would find it. And then. Everything. Would be. All right.

  He went on singing his little song. Now he put the words to it again, or he heard them in his mind, he didn't know which, words from a movie on Chiller late one night:

  I can hear the dark

  If I listen hard

  Hiding in the garden

  Climbing up the stairs…

  He got ready. He would open his eyes. Soon.

  Then, with a curious, almost expectant smile on his lips, he reached out and felt the cold doorknob. And made it turn in his hand, turn and begin to open.

  THE GRAVEYARD BLUES

  He sat amid tall grass, shivering in the sun, waiting for a dream to come. But it was no use. He stretched onto one side and squinted through the comber of chickweed, running his fingers over the nearest blade; it was rough when you rubbed it one way, smooth the other. Patches of grass bent to the ground where he had trampled it coming, and all of it was davened slightly by a wind that had come and gone silently before him. The tops of the markers paved a solid granite band in the air above the grass line, and as he followed the slate-gray row with his eyes then he saw them, the dark, misshapen figures hunched one against the other, making their way down the hillock at the far side of the cemetery.

  There were two of them and they were wrapped around in bolts of a stiff cloth that cast saw-toothed shadows over the untended ground. They came to the stones and the larger one felt a way for the other, the ratchet edge of her skirt jerking ahead unsteadily around heavy, unseen shoes.

  He stood above the warp of the grass, staring blankly at their progress as the wind came up again and a bird, conspicuous by its absence, quieted somewhere in the papery trees.

  He could not take his eyes from them as they felt around the graves, tapping spasmodically, feeling, feeling. He heard the rough swishing sound of their garments; once he thought they had found it—they spread their hands in a crooked circle in the air over a headstone, only to break the circle as soon as their bodies closed to the plot—but it was not the one and they pressed restlessly on.

  When they found the site they fell upon it, but slowly, twisted leaves settling to earth. He saw knotted hands buckle and extend like unnatural insects on the face of the granite. He saw the hands become smooth and sleek as praying mantises then, sentient hands, quick, delicate tendrils, antennae, to measure inscriptions with caliper precision, scanning with eye stalk fingers, gesturing faster, seeking to tap wrists, tug clothing, bend together in sightless discovery.

  And, suddenly, the memory of another Saturday: six years old and wakened by a smell, the Cream of Wheat he never liked, filtering under the door to his room and a dream fresh as a new bruise inside his head. No one asked, of course, not yet, not Mama or Daddy and not Vin when he crooned Could Mars-ton come out to play today? at the back screen. But he asked himself about it, over and over during breakfast and the tentative beginnings of play by the black walnut trees in the lot, answers that were indistinguishable from questions fading in and fading out on the dim backdrop of his inexperience like the unreadable words of advice that floated up on the underside of his Magic 8-Ball when he shook it and waited for the cloudy ink to clear. The dream: he had stolen a Radio Flyer wagon from Vin's double garage, had compounded the sin by hiding it under twiggy mulch at the edge of the graveyard where he was forbidden to play. Noon came and Vin was called home for lunch, untold. Then, scuffling over unearthed roots, a stripped bamboo stick for a sword in his jeans loop, about to be called in for soup and s
andwich himself, Marston felt a need to run after Vin, tell him, apologize for the transgression. But how stupid Vin would think him, and Vin's mother and sister Nancy; they would courteously ignore him as always, reaching over his head to stack dishes or retrieve the wash from the service porch sink. How were you supposed to apologize for a dream? Mama talked with Uncle Ralph and Uncle Harold after supper sometimes about something like that, he knew, and he heard them in the driveway, through the kitchen window, and Daddy had had to meet over the dining room table with a man he was sure Daddy had never seen before about something like that, and silly Aunt Frances still brooded with Mama in the hall about Eddie Who Had Been In The War and when was he going to come over and make up for the way he had cursed her at Dentoni's? and Mama had told her Hush, it was only a dream, and Aunt Frances had said What do you mean, only a dream? You know what's right and wrong, Mabel, and Mama had said You know better than that, Fran, in that righteous way of hers, You know it doesn't work both ways, it never has and Marston had known that that had something to do with it, too. So that when Mama finally called for him out the back door, and he did not answer because he couldn't yet, because he had not told Vin, which he couldn't do, he ran—not to the back door and not across the street to Vin's but away from both, lighting out across town in what turned out to be the direction of the Plunge; and then the rest of it. And he felt something close to that now, here at the edge of the graveyard: he wanted to leave, to go back, something was not right and what he saw upset him, and yet he could not go, not yet, fascinated as he was by the sight of the two mysterious figures hugging a tombstone, something he had not seen or ever even dreamed of before.

  And so he ran away from both choices, not toward home and not across the cemetery. He headed off across town in a direction he did not want to have to think about.