A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult

by Chet Williamson

  Aki continued to smile at him. They watched the crew swarm over the mocked-up portion of the top of the Golden Gate Bridge, working their antlike tasks and preparing for a second take of the climactic shootout scene. Stannard’s contract specified that his scenes were to be completed first. He was no longer capable of doing the rock ‘n’ roll stage acrobatics himself. Gymnasts would be used for long shots in the concert scenes, to be filmed later. Two physical doubles had been hired, and good makeup rendered them into acceptable matches. All Stannard got were the close-ups. From the waist up he could still fake being formidable.

  Stannard sighed and tried a stab at honesty. “Aki —fucking this director at this particular time is not going to advance your career one degree. You’re already doing well; why keep adding stuff? You’ll overload.”

  “So?” Clearly she was another one who thought she could handle too much.

  “So… we need a little discretion, love. I can’t have the crew laughing at me behind my back.”

  At last, in her eyes, he saw the flash of flame he wanted to see. “Are you telling me who I can and cannot sleep with?” She held the sweet bogus smile firmly in place. She had learned to be extremely camera conscious. She could hold that smile even if a flaming arrow thunked into the back of her head. She possessed a skill, if not a talent.

  In that moment he knew Horus would have to be instructed to audition a new girl, a new arm doily for the public Gabriel Stannard. Aki was not going to work out. If she was simply cashiered, she might shoot off to anyone who would listen, to the film crew, to the magazines. No good. Perhaps she could be cornered into signing some sort of document.

  Documents, he thought. Coverage. Endless contingencies, ceaseless paranoia. A suffocation of clauses and conditions. This was not Gabriel Stannard’s way of doing things. His anger and frustration slammed into high heat, a bubbling pot of rage finally boiling over. The cobra kill sheen settled into his gaze, and he returned her so-sweet smile sweetly.

  “Aki, my dear…” he said. Then he whacked her as hard as he could in the temple with the butt of his cane.

  With a cry more of surprise than pain, she flailed backward and swept clean a metal tray of coffee and doughnuts, landing on her taut butt with a wet smack.

  Her hand clutched at her forehead, and when she saw blood she began to howl. The stage fell silent, and after a shock lull workers jumped to assist her. She made small squeaking noises as she imagined the damage to her photogenic features. Then she started shrieking. The cameramen and munchkins crawling around the bridge set continued their work with smiles of indulgence. Hollywood could be so weird.

  In an hour, her eye would be satisfyingly hollow and black. Let the makeup guys try to conceal that little brand, Stannard thought.

  “You son of a bitch!” she wailed, struggling ungracefully to stand up, wobbling and crying when she did. “Fucking eunuch!” Her tiny fist hauled back to paste the singer, and a huge, dark hand enclosed it fully and arrested its swing.

  “That’s enough,” Horus said in a tone low enough to silence her. It was a guarantee of no bullshit.

  “Escort her out,” said Stannard. “Explain some fiscal realities to her.”

  Horus nodded and complied, his eyes half closing in his usual subtle and dignified way. The problem would be resolved. Aki had to be made aware that in this age of drug testing for employees, her lucrative Levi’s deal could be made to evaporate with one strategic mention of her childlike propensity for controlled substances.

  “Christ on a hose, Gabe, gimme a fucking break.” McCabe appeared at his shoulder, watching without interest as Aki was led outside. “You two kids have a tiff? This sorta shit ain’t good for crew morale, man, especially when we’re behind the shooting schedule. It’s too early in the film to have personality problems.”

  “Yeah. Right.” Stannard nodded civilly, swigging his thick tea. “Logan? One item, between you and me as friends and buddies; director to actor. Jam your wick in some other hidey-hole, or I’ll have my black Fury rip it off and hand it back to you in a hot-dog bun with extra onions.”

  Whatever instruction was headed out of McCabe’s mouth dissolved into an incoherent mush noise. Hhwwaaahh. His complexion went the color of mozzarella cheese, and he cleared his throat without needing to.

  Don’t alienate McCabe, too, Stannard’s new imp of conscience cautioned. “Logan—people in the throes of passion can be dangerously free with embarrassing information.”

  “Uh.” He pulled the visor of his Dr. Pepper ballcap low over his eyes. “Uh, yeah, absolutely. Uh… we’ll, er, be ready for you in five. Jake needs to wire up your blood squib again.” To be honest, McCabe recovered admirably. Stannard sensed that he might. Aki would be dismissed from the director’s cognizance since she no longer had anything to do with getting footage into the can this afternoon.

  The blood squib was tucked beneath a flap of flesh-colored foam on Stannard’s shoulder blade. There was a square pad against his skin that protected him from a possible burn. The little capsule, like a fat tick, was installed tantalizingly close to where he had caught a real live bullet. The anchors and foam were not fancy. The camera angle would not see the setup taped to his back, so special makeup to blend it in was not required. It was electronically detonated. When Stannard felt the paff and slight impact, he was supposed to react as though shot. That, he knew how to do from painful experience.

  The deal with the studio for Shakedown had gone smoothly. What Stannard craved now, more than the work, was the visibility. The film would insist that he was still a driving force in the universe of rock. His fans would see that he was okay, that he still had all of his limbs, that he was still a functioning maximal badass. If your audience thought you were a cripple, they would abandon you.

  The money was good but not necessary. His stock portfolio insured that his mansion of many televisions would endure. There was enough cash flow to purchase a whole stable of Aki Blairs, so he did not mourn her loss. He had but to snap his fingers and call, “Next.”

  Sertha Valich had gone. Dumped him. To hell with her. He could no longer do his thing in concert. But if this film could be efficiently faked, then so could a new video. He still had his voice.

  Jake Morrison finished wiring in the fresh squib. Alligator-clamped leads dangled down Stannard’s back. McCabe gave him the high sign from aboard the big Panavision dolly. The stage was growing unbearably dense with the stinking fog. If they all could keep breathing, it would look terrific in dailies.

  Stannard rode the cherry picker back up to his perch on the bridge, and the picker pilot reminded him with a shout to be sure to attach his safety line snap ring to the U-bolt secured out of camera range. A twenty-foot drop to the stage could break a shitload of bones.

  From up here, the picker pilot and most of the crew were invisible, smothering in phony fog. He heard Louis, the assistant director, hollering for quiet on the set, please, then McCabe’s voice, softer and leaking none of the agitation of a moment earlier, telling everyone to please settle.

  He told himself over and over that he still had his voice. He wondered just how far that talent would take him.

  Below, McCabe called for action, and the shooting started all over again.

  WIRE MESH MOTHERS

  By Elizabeth Massie

  "I must be the mother and father for whom I formerly searched…"

  -Carl J. Nelson, 1961

  1

  The orphaned cotton bits, blown loose from the butchered fields of December, scattered themselves across the chipped blacktop of the county roads outside the small town of Pippins, Virginia. They danced their ice dance, dodging automobile tires, winding up for the most part dead along the roadsides and wrapped like suicidal ghosts about the bases of splintery mailbox posts. Sometimes kids played in the harvested fields, picking the remnant fiber, stuffing it down the fronts of their shirts to make big boobs like Miss Carole, the Sunday School teacher down at the Riverside Church of Christ of Nazareth,
or making light-weight snowmen by rolling the pieces together into big balls and then pinning the pieces together with thistle thorns. It didn't snow much in Pippins, and real snowmen were hard to come by in the winter.

  Usually, though, the kids found other places to play because the plant stubble was so thick and so harsh sneakers couldn't keep out the pain. And so the cotton bits were alone to explore their small world on their own, disguising themselves as things they weren't, playing dress-up, playing make-believe.

  Looking like snow. Or turkey down.

  Or thick white ashes from a distant crematorium.

  2

  Mistie Dawn Henderson wore her nightgown to school. It was a light weight pink acetate nightie, with torn lace at the sleeves and neck. Mistie liked the gown; it was pretty and it felt good on her skin. So when she woke up December tenth and found her father snoring face down on the carpet and her mother leaning over her ashtray on a stool in the kitchen, one hand clutching the Winston, the other shading her face from the light that crept through the thin window shades, Mistie had slipped on socks and shoes and her winter coat, then gone out to wait for the bus down at the entrance to the trailer park.

  Mrs. Colvin, who lived in the trailer next door to Mistie, saw her trudging past. She'd slammed up her storm window and called out, "Mistie Dawn, you tell your daddy I'm sick and tired of his music late at night. I didn't get one speck of sleep and now what am I supposed to do? My windows was shut and even then I felt like I was rocking on the damn sea. I got nerves! He knows it! What am I supposed to do, answer me that? You hear me, Mistie Dawn? Say something!" Her voice cracked and went up a few notes. Mistie stuck her hands into her coat pockets, tucked her head, and kept walking, down the graveled road between the mobile homes. To either side she could see painted plaster and concrete lawn ornaments, staring at her with their pupil-less eyes. Tiny gardens were dead and brown; it was winter, after all. Bits of cotton from nearby fields had snagged themselves on rose branches and azalea twigs. The few trees between the lots were as naked as those women in the movies Daddy rented on weekends. There weren't any other kids out of their trailers yet; it was still early.

  "I'll have the law on him quick as a dog, and we'll see how much music he can play behind bars?" Mrs. Colvin shouted. "You want your daddy behind bars? What you think of that, huh?"

  Mistie didn't think much of that. People were always threatening to call the cops on her daddy or her mama for one reason on other, but most of them didn't do it because, as Daddy said, two could play that game and most neighbors had something under their sticky ole carpet if he decided to do a little digging. On the few occasions police did pay visits on the Hendersons, Daddy was polite and agreeable and the cops would say, "Well, okay, then, don't let it happen again." Whatever the "it" was at the time. Cops were rubber-dicks, Mistie's daddy would laugh. It was the social services that stuck in Daddy's craw. Social services had chased Mistie's family across a few state borders in the past two years when they got the idea that the Hendersons didn’t take good care of Mistie. Mistie didn’t really know what being taken care of was exactly, except that in each place they’d lived, ladies in skirts and heels had eventually come around to their trailer or their apartment or their rental house to talk to Mistie about her Daddy and what he was up to. But the Hendersons would pack up and leave once those ladies started sniffing about. At least social services gave up easily, Daddy said with a smile. Not enough workers, Mama would laugh. But, damn, they sure were a bother.

  When Valerie died back in Kentucky, Daddy had taken her way away from their apartment and buried her somewhere. He said nobody best find her because he said if the cops and social services got into it, they'd make it seem like Valerie being dead was the family's fault and then everybody would go to jail, even Mistie. If anybody asked, Valerie’d had a bad liver, Daddy'd said. Wasn't his fault she had a bad liver but somebody would try to make it his fault like they did everything else. Mistie had promised never to talk about Valerie so the family wouldn't have to go to jail.

  Mistie had been five when Valerie had died; since then they’d lived nine months in Tennessee, a half-year in North Carolina, and then Virginia. Most of Mistie's memories of her sister had disappeared with the body; all she had now was a coloring book Valerie had colored in, one with Teletubies in it. Sometimes, Mistie dreamed of her sister playing with a little cloud of black flies in the summer sun, but she never saw Valerie's face in those dreams.

  When the Hendersons got themselves settled in MeadowView Trailer Park in Pippins, Virginia, Daddy had gotten a job working on a cotton farm in the summer and spring and fall. He stayed home at the trailer in the winter. Mama started selling sweet-smelling soap and shampoos from a catalog. Mistie liked the soap and shampoo but Mama never let her buy any and then after a month she threw the catalog in the trash and said nobody wanted that junk anyway. Just a few weeks after that the baby Mama was going to have came out too early. Mama showed it to Mistie as it floated in the toilet, a red blob with a tiny head-like thing and stringy stuff hanging off it, swirling in the water as Mama let Mistie push the lever to flush it away.

  Mistie sat on the bank beside the road. She pulled up a dead weed and wrapped the stem around the base of the spiky seedpod.

  “Mama had a baby and its head popped off,” she said to herself. She pulled the bent stem forward, and the little pod popped off and up into the air. Mistie smiled. She picked another weed and popped off the seedpod.

  A few minutes later, other trailer park children began to gather by the road. They threw gravel back and forth at each other. Mistie got hit on the head and arms a couple times, but she didn't throw any back. It didn't really hurt. She stopped playing with the weeds and sat with one fist inside the other.

  A high school boy in t-shirt and no coat in spite of the freezing temperature took out a pack of cigarettes and lit two, one for himself, and one for his seventh grade girlfriend. He leaned on the gray split rail fencing separating the mobile park from the grassy bank by the road and sucked on the cigarette. The morning sun caught the smoke and strummed it like a silent guitar.

  "Hey, girl," he said.

  Mistie said nothing.

  "Hey." He held the cigarette in his teeth, picked up a bit of gravel and tossed it at Mistie. It bounced off her chest. "I said hey, girl. You look nasty. Don't your mama care nothing about brushing your hair?"

  Mistie said nothing.

  "You all's white trash, don't you know? My grandmama says you Hendersons as white-trashy as they come. Says why don’t you go back to Tennessee or Mexico or wherever the hell you come from."

  Mistie said nothing.

  "Leave her alone," said the seventh grade girlfriend.

  "Where your books, girl? You never take books to school. You lose 'em or what? Don't you want to learn nothing?" The boy laughed, nudged his girlfriend who popped a large bubble of gum, and shook his head. "What's that bruise on your neck? How'd you get a bruise on your neck?"

  Mistie touched her neck but felt nothing. Did she have a bruise? Maybe. She fell asleep watching T.V. last night and rolled off the couch. Maybe she got a bruise when she hit the floor.

  "You screwed up, you know that?" the boy continued. "Fucked up in the head. It's from your daddy playing that loud music at night. Mrs. Colvin's gonna get you all kicked out of the court. She told us. We gonna have us a party when you gone."

  Mistie looked down the paved road to where she couldn't see anymore because of the curve in the road and the trees clustered by the road. She listened for the rumbling of the school bus, but couldn't hear it over the shouting and fighting of the kids around her.

  "Fucked up in the head," the boy was saying beside her. "Really fucked up, your whole family is fucked up and they ought to be taken out back someday…."

  It trailed. The voices of the other kids closed in on themselves; faded. The road and trees narrowed and vanished, the light swallowed up in grayness. Comfortable, cottony nothingness cushioned her; a familiar hummin
g pulse played behind her eyes. She rocked in its arms.

  Something heavy slammed her in the back. Sights raced in like water over the rim of a flooded bathtub. Sunlight stabbed her; noises jammed their picks into her ears.

  "Bus is here, you retard," said the high school boy. Mistie blinked and looked at him. He'd already finished his cigarette and was stubbing it out on the gravel with the toe of his cowboy boot. The girl friend was tugging on his arm and tossing Mistie a look of tempered tolerance. Other kids were pushing around Mistie, swinging book bags and purses, climbing up the steel steps and into the big yellow vehicle.

  Mistie took the handrail and pulled herself up the steps. The bus smelled of mildew and cleanser and stinky feet. The bus driver, a man whose name she didn’t know but who was always the bus driver, gave her a scowl. Then he said to the high school boy behind her, "Lose the cigarettes, Ricky, or you’re off the bus for the next two weeks."

  Ricky planted the heel of his hand between Mistie's shoulder blades and shoved her around the bar and into the aisle. Her breath went out with a whoosh, but she choked and caught it back, saying nothing.