Haunts

by Stephen Jones

  He reached the boulder choke and stared at the foot of it, where the tiny opening was like a pupil in a dead eye. He imagined great acres of untouched white crystal beyond it, like a field of virgin snow before the children have wakened, like Heaven.

  “Julie?” he called out, but his voice was unable to best the roar. It hurt too much to try again. He felt his chest fail, and lifted his hands as if he might prevent himself from tipping out on the cold, wet path. What was there in his chest cut his hand. Blood sped from him, slicking his fingers. It was difficult now, to find purchase on the slippery curve of the glass in him.

  He saw movement at the lip of the aperture. Julie? But of course it wasn’t. What could he have hoped from this? Julie was cold and dead as the piece of glass within him.

  Long, white nails attached to long white fingers. The skin of something eternally damp, of something that had never known sunlight. It skittered out, all elbows and fish-thin ribs pulsing beneath translucency. A sore-looking jaw, red-rimmed, loaded with icy needles that glittered like hoarfrost, shreds of the missing packed between them. It made a sound that was almost beyond a frequency audible to him. It sounded like metal scraped across glass. It turned an eye to him that was as pale as moonstones.

  Don turned to run, but his foot slid in his own filth. The chunk in his chest shifted. As he gripped it and pulled, closing his eyes to the terrible suck as the glass came free, the lights went out and the thing fell on him, all too keen to lend its assistance.

  <>

  *

  City of Dreams

  RICHARD CHRISTIAN MATHESON

  RICHARD CHRISTIAN MATHESON is a novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter/producer. He is also the president of Matheson Entertainment—a production company he formed with his father, Richard Matheson—which is currently involved with multiple film and television projects.

  His credits include Sole Survivor, a four-hour Fox television miniseries based on Dean Koontz’s best-selling novel; Delusion, an original horror suspense film for VH1; Demons, an original dark suspense film for Showtime, and the adaptation of Roger Zelazny’s The Chronicles of Amber as a four-hour miniseries for the Syfy Channel.

  Matheson also created and wrote Majestic, a one-hour paranormal series for TNT based on the work of Whitley Strieber, and he is currently in development with director Bryan Singer on the six-hour miniseries Dragons. The author also recently created Splatter, a web-based horror project with Roger Corman, directed by Joe Dante.

  Some of Matheson’s seventy-five short stories are collected in Scars and Other Distinguishing Marks, with an Introduction by Stephen King, and Dystopia. His debut novel, Created By, was a Bram Stoker Award nominee, and his new, dark novella about Hollywood, The Ritual of Illusion, is available from PS Publishing.

  Matheson has described the inspiration behind “City of Dreams”: “On my parents’ backyard deck, it’s possible to hear snippets of conversation, like bits of an escaped séance, from the nearest neighbor’s home.

  “The spectral effect of these half-murmurs and incomplete stirrings, as if a Rorschach for the ear, tends to invite interpretation and, though high pines and moody breezes divide the acre-plus properties and mask detail, theories arise, as mimosas are sipped, as to what the hell is going on over there.

  “Several years ago, the house next door sold rather suddenly and a new owner moved in: identity unknown. Moving men filled the empty house with unmarked boxes, and security cameras were installed at key perimeter zones. It seemed something big and embroiled was up over there. On the deck, speculations brimmed.

  “Was it Nixon, in shattered exile? Dylan? Johnny Carson, drained by decades of feigned interest? Joe Namath, tending to his aching dimples? Garbo? Brian Wilson, hanging-ten off his melting psyche? John Gotti gone to the mattresses? Gore Vidal grinning carnivorously, dodging burdens of ennui?

  “We entertained all icons, fallen or exalted, from every venue of fame, and had a full story to go with why they’d ended up next door. Whether by tragedy, glory, intended crime, sick passion, or alibi, as in all persuasive narrative, twisted motive was central to our theories of their residence. We never got to the bottom of any of them, but an addictive pastime was born.

  “Years later, I wrote a story that considered the fixations of a screenwriter who overhears a secretive, unseen neighbor, of imagined prestige, who has just moved in next door. I bruised its comic tones with some heartache and added an overly sensitive pajjot. It’s one of my favorite pieces.

  “As it turned out, a celebrity did move in beside my parents, all those years ago. They have never yet been seen on the property. Mimosas continue to pour.”

  IT WAS JUNE WHEN the Royal moved in.

  I knew because high, metal fences started going up, perimeter shrubbery doubled, and two sullen Dobermans began patrolling. Then, overnight, an intercom, numerical keypad, and security camera were mysteriously installed at the bottom of the Royal’s driveway, which ran alongside mine. Whenever I drove by, the lens would zoom to inspect me, staring with curt inquisition.

  The Royal was obviously concerned who visited.

  Had the Royal been hurt? Was future hurt likely? Were death threats being phoned in hourly? It seemed anything, however dire, was possible. I was already feeling bad for the Royal.

  I didn’t know if the Royal was a him or her. Rock diva? Zillionaire cyber tot? Mob boss? Pro-leaguer? My mind wandered in lush possibility.

  But all I ever saw was a moody limo that purred through the gate and crunched up the long driveway. By the time it got to the big house, the forest landscaping hid it—a leafy moat. I found it all rather troubling. In my experience, concealment is meaningful; trees can be trimmed, the fears which lurk behind them are a different story. Ultimately, one cannot hide, only camouflage. Orson Welles certainly understood this; in Citizen Kane, tragic privilege never seemed so rapturous, nor incarcerated.

  As days passed, I tried not to listen to what went on next door. I’d play jazz CDs, sip morning espresso, scan the entertainment section for reviews to distract my attentions. But my community is exclusive and quiet, and birds’ wings, as they groom, are noticeable. It made it hard to miss the Royal’s limo as it sighed up the driveway, obscured by the half million dollars of premeditated forest. Once parked, doors would open and close, and I’d hear footsteps, sometimes cheerless murmurs; the limo driver speaking to the Royal, I assumed. Russian? Indo-Chinese? Impossible to tell. Then, the front door to the house would slam with imperial finality.

  It went on like that for two weeks.

  I began to think, perhaps, I should be a better neighbor, make the Royal feel more welcome; a part of the local family. Which is somewhat misleading considering the neighborhood is an aloof haven and I barely know anyone. I’m like that; keep to myself, make friends slowly. I’m what they call an observer. Some dive, I float with mask and snorkel. But the instinct seemed warm, welcoming.

  I was also getting very curious.

  I was up late writing one night, and decided to mix up a batch of chocolate chip cookies. My new screenplay was coming along well, if slowly, and I thought about love scenes and action scenes as I peered into the oven, watching the huge cookies rise like primitive islands forming. They were plump, engorged with cubes of chocolate the size of small dice; worthy of a Royal, I decided.

  I let them cool, ate three, wrapped the remaining dozen in tinfoil. Crumpled the foil to make it resemble something snappy and Audubon, the way they make crinkly swans in nice places to shroud leftovers. I wrapped a bow around the neck, placed the tinfoil bird into a pretty box I’d saved from Christmas, ribboned it, found a greeting card with no message. The photo on the front was a natural cloud formation that looked a bit like George Lucas.

  I used my silver-ink pen that flows upside down, like something a doomed astronaut might use to write a final entry, and wrote: Some supplies to keep you happy and safe. Researchers say chocolate brings on the exact sensation of love; an effect of phenylethyl
amine. (Just showing off.) Welcome to this part of the world.

  My P.S. was a phone number, at the house, in case the Royal ever needed anything. I also included a VHS of Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night, a film I especially love for its tipsy discernment.

  I debated whether to include any exclamation marks, thought it excess, opted for periods. Clean, emotionally stable. Friendly but not cloying. Being in the film business, I knew first impressions counted.

  It’s one reason I’m sought after to do scripts, albeit for lesser films with sinking talents. But I’m well paid and it allows me to live in this secured community near L.A., complete with gate guard, acre parcels, and compulsory privacy. I’m an anonymous somebody; primarily rumor. I wish I could’ve been Faulkner, but there you are. I’m a faceless credit on a screen; my scant reply to a world’s indifference.

  I left the cookies and card in the Royal’s mailbox, at the bottom of the driveway, and spoke tense baby talk to the Dobermans as I made the deposit, like one of those pocked thugs in The French Connection. The package fit nicely, looked cheerful in there. Too much so? I considered it. Every detail determines outcome; it’s the essence of subtext, as Frank Capra once observed. And certainly, if the Royal were truly an international sort, I wanted there to be room for some kind of friendship. I could learn things. Get gossip that mattered; the chic lowdown.

  I waited two days. A week.

  Nothing.

  I’d sit by my pool every morning, read the paper, scan box-office numbers, sip espresso. But I wasn’t paying full attention. I was watching my Submariner tick.

  At 10:30 sharp, the heavy tires would crunch up the driveway and the door ritual would begin. I couldn’t make out a word and tried to remember if I’d left my phone number in the P.S. Even if not, there was always my mailbox. Concern was devouring me by ounces and I disliked seeing it happen.

  In self-protection, I began to lose interest in the Royal; the inky sleigh, the seeming apathy, the whole damn thing.

  At least that’s what I tried to tell myself.

  Sergio Leone says the important thing about filmmaking is to make a world that is “not now.” A real world, a genuine world, but one that allows myth its vital seepage. Sergio contends that myth is everything. I suppose one could take that too far.

  Two weeks passed quickly and I’d heard nothing. I felt deflated, yet oddly exhilarated to be snubbed by someone so important; it bordered on eerie intoxicant, even hinted at voodoo. Despite efforts otherwise, the truth was I continued to wonder what the Royal thought about me, though it hardly constituted preoccupation.

  I’m a bit sensitive on the topic because my ex-wife often said I paid unnatural attention to those I considered remarkable, though I found nothing strange in such focus. The way I see it, we all need heroes: dreams of something better, perhaps even transcendent. A key piece of miscellany: she ran off with a famous hockey player from Ketchikan, Alaska, a slab of idiocy named Stu. Time and Newsweek covered their nuptials. Color photos, confetti, the whole bit. A featured quote from her gushed: “I’ve never been happier!”

  Real pain. Like I’d been shot.

  I feel it places things, as regards my outlook, in perspective. She certainly never could. Strangely enough, I’ve been thinking about her lately; how she drove me into psychotherapy after she left and took our African Grey, Norman, with her and never contacted me again, saying I’d made them both miserable. Over time, I heard from mutual friends that she was claiming, among other toxic side effects of our marriage, that I’d caused Norman to stop talking, and that once they’d set up house elsewhere, he became a chatterbox. I took it personally; couldn’t sleep for weeks.

  More haunting facts of my teetering world.

  The fate of the cookies preyed on my mind for days, affecting work and sleep, a predicament rife with what my ex-shrink, Larry, used to term “emotional viscosity,” a condition I suspect he made up, hoping it would catch on and bring him, and his unnerving beard, acclaim. Still, I wrote halfheartedly and my stomach churned the kind of butter that really clogs you up.

  Another few days went by and I made no move. Any choice seemed wrong; quietude the only wisdom. I was feeling foolish; mocked. My heartfelt efforts had been more irrelevant than I’d feared. I continued to work on my screenplay, and joked emptily with my agent, who seemed an especially drab series of noises compared to the person I knew the Royal must be.

  It’s true, I had no real evidence. The Royal might be an overwhelming bore. Some rich cadaver in an iron lung, staring bitterly into a tiny mirror.

  But I didn’t think so.

  In fact, I was beginning to think anyone who went to such trouble to avoid a friendly overture had something precious to protect. On a purely personal level, if cookies, a card, and a badly executed foil swan could scare a person, their levels of sensitivity had to be finely calibrated. Perhaps the Royal had been wounded; given up on humanity. I’ve been there. I wish somebody like me tried to crack the safe; get me the hell out.

  But when’s the last time life had a heart? Let’s face it, unsoothed by human kindness, souls recede. It’s in all the great movies: pain, sacrifice, hopes in dissolution.

  It’s how people like me and the Royal got the way we are. We flee emotionally, too riddled by personal travail to venture human connection. Sort of like Norman. We’re just recovering believers, choking on the soot of an angry world.

  I understood the Royal. Yet I had to move on; get over it.

  But it was hard. Maybe I was simply in some futile trance, succumbed to loneliness and curiosity. I admit I’m easily infected by my enthusiasms. You read about people like me; the ones who do something crazy in the name of human decency only to find themselves stuffed, hung on a wall; poached by life.

  So, despite rejection, I found myself listening each morning, over breakfast, to the Royal’s property, gripped by speculation. Awaiting the door ritual, sensing the Royal over there, alone, needing a friend. It was sad and nearly called out for a melancholic soundtrack; something with strings; that haunted Bernard Herrmann ambivalence.

  It made me recall a line I once heard in a bleak Fassbinder movie; this Munich prostitute whispered to her lover that a person’s fate “always escorts the bitter truth.” She blew Gitane smoke, pouting with succulent blankness and, to my embarrassment, it just spoke to me. I don’t know why. It got me thinking, I suppose, the ways movies can; even the sorry, transparent ones.

  It was the first time I began to consciously wish I could do a second draft of me, start things over; find my life a more worthy plot, tweak the main character. Maybe even find a theme. A man without one has nowhere to hide.

  Ingmar Bergman based a career on it.

  *

  Two days later, the note came.

  In my mailbox, dozing in an expensive, rag-cloth envelope. It was handwritten, the letters a sensual perfection.

  We must meet. How about

  drinks tonight over here.

  Around sunset?

  I must have read it a hundred times, weighing each word, the phrasing and inclusion of the word “must.” It seemed not without meaning.

  I debated outfits Formal? Casual? I was able to make a case for either; chose slacks, a sweater. I looked nice; thought it important. Before heading over, I considered a gift. Cheese? An unopened compact disc? Mahler? Coltrane? But it strained of effort and I wanted to seem offhand, worth knowing. The way Jimmy Stewart always was: presuming nothing, evincing worlds.

  I used the forgotten path between the two driveways, dodging the Dobermans, who seemed to expect me, tilting heads with professional interest, beady eyes ashimmer.

  I walked to the front door. Knocked. Waited two minutes, listened for footsteps, and was about to knock again, when the door opened.

  She was exquisite.

  Maybe twenty. Eyes and dress mystic blue, dark hair, medium length. Skin, countess-pale. She wore a platinum locket, and gauged me for a moment.

  “Hello,” she said, in the bes
t voice I’ve ever heard, up till then, or since.

  We spent an hour talking about everything, though I learned little about her. At some point, she said her name was Aubrey and I’m sure I responded, though I was lost in her smile, her attentions colorizing my world.

  It seemed she told me less about herself with each passing minute, which I liked; she was obviously the real thing. Genuine modesty looks best on the genuinely important.

  She asked me about my work and carefully listened as I spoke about why I loved the music of words and the fantasy of movies; of creating perfect impossibilities. Her rare features silhouetted on mimosa sunset, and she said she’d always loved films, especially romantic ones, and when her smile took my heart at gunpoint, I felt swept into a costly special effect, a trick of film and moment, as if part of a movie in which I’d been terribly miscast; my presence too common to properly elevate the material.

  She took my hand, and when we walked outside and watched stars daisy the big pool, I thought I must be falling in love. I still think I was, despite everything soon to befall me.

  After a slow walk around her fountained garden, she said she was tired and needed her rest, that she’d come a very long way. I wish I’d thought to ask for details of that journey; an oversight which torments me to this second.

  Aubrey slowly slipped her delicate hands around my waist and it almost seemed like loss had found us; a moment nearly cinematic in composition.

  She said she had a gift for me, and led me to a wrapped package that rested on a chaise, near the pool.

  “I made it,” she said.

  “A painting?” I guessed, reaching to open it, until she gently stopped me.

  “Tomorrow,” she suggested. “When you’re alone.”

  It seemed she was being dramatic. I wish it had been anywhere near that simple.

  “Good night.” Her full lips uncaged the word, as she looked up into my eyes, vulnerably.

  I protested, wanting to know more about her, but she placed her mouth to my ear.