Terror Incognita

by Jeffrey Thomas

  “Molly please...”

  “Go away,” she whispered.

  He chuckled sadly. “It was a mistake, Molly. I made a zoo. The cage is too small. They want to be free...they’re wild things—you know? How could I have thought they’d want to live in me?”

  He grunted abruptly, then groaned, causing Molly to flinch. “Please, Nat,” she said to the phone across the room.

  “Once a zookeeper, always a zookeeper, huh?” he said.

  He needed help. She couldn’t just sit here. But who to call? Who would care, who was prepared to help him? Did she have a right to make a move like that? Shouldn’t she just ignore him until he went away?

  A scream came from the answering machine. Shrill, piercing. A shriek of the damned. A shriek from her dream...

  The phone beeped. The tape rewound.

  Molly slid out of bed—through the invisible wall.

  * * *

  The police had already arrived when she got there. And there was an ambulance. People standing about, some in bathrobes.

  Molly came up beside a young woman in a nightshirt, a baby in her arms. “Excuse me...I know him. What happened?”

  “Ohh...are you a friend?”

  “Yes. Is he okay?”

  “Oh, man...I’m sorry...really. You aren’t his girlfriend?”

  “No. He isn’t...dead?”

  “I’m sorry, really. Yeah...he is, honey.”

  Molly looked up at the house. In the bright upper windows shadows of policemen passed across the shades. “How did it happen?”

  “Somebody said it looked like a heart attack, but he was only in his thirties, wasn’t he? Was he into coke or anything?”

  “I don’t know. No...”

  “I really am sorry...”

  Molly sighed. She wasn’t crying, wasn’t even going to. Not tonight. But there was a great emptiness that opened inside her, as if the floor of her soul had fallen away, leaving her to hang above a void. It was a horrible, helpless sense of loss too immense for her to comprehend.

  The young woman removed one damp arm from under the weary infant to touch Molly’s arm. “You okay? Maybe you should talk to the police...”

  Molly saw that windows were broken, curtains snagged in the shards. She faced the woman. “Did you hear anything?”

  “Christ...yeah. I’m sorry, but that’s why I asked you about drugs. He had a real fit up there. Throwing things...screaming. When I came out I saw him jumping around up there. It was pretty scary. At first I thought he was being murdered.”

  “Why?” Molly asked wanly.

  “Well.” The woman glanced at the upper windows, visibly shivered. “You know how lights can throw a lot of shadows from one person...but it looked like a whole bunch of people were throwing a fit up there. I saw shadows like leaping up and down in more window than one...you know? Like, in all of them...”

  Molly didn’t say anything when the woman waited for her reaction, so she continued.

  “And it sounded like...lots of voices. Lots of people screaming. I guess...maybe it was just echoes. And then suddenly they all just faded away.”

  Molly nodded. Turned to gaze up at the house.

  “Are you gonna talk to the police?”

  “Thanks,” Molly told her, and walked back to her car...

  * * *

  Again and again Molly played the tape from her answering machine, listening to the end of that scream, so many times that it no longer caused her to tremble. Listened and listened...as if on the next listening...this next one...she would finally hear, before it was cut off, the one scream split into many.

  She sat cross-legged in the middle of her bed, safe away from its edges, but feeling guilty for her safety. And listened.

  DISFIGURED

  Mrs. Kingston’s new forehead was high and broad, culminating in a plateau over-hung with a close fringe of bangs. Just under the fringe were a few metal clasps, and a long scar ran down her forehead from one of them. Her eyelids were weighed heavily three-quarters shut. Another long scar ran under her jaw, passing over one of the two steel bolts protruding from the sides of her slim throat.

  She still lay on the table. Mr. Roy swiveled a monitor screen down to her so she wouldn’t yet have to raise the alien weight of her head.

  “Oh,” she croaked, still drowsy, a small smile emerging. “Beautiful.”

  Roy smiled humbly, nodded, touched buttons that gave her different angles and magnifications. She hadn’t wanted green skin, as he had suggested. She wanted to be partly recognizable. He agreed that that was desirable. Normally he didn’t consult with the clients, but some wanted to work along with him, and he had to tolerate such individuals. Normally his clients delighted in his surprising them, and he preferred that artistic license.

  For Mrs. Kingston they had consulted a book on old, old horror films. He had steered her easily from her first attraction to the Bride. “Just hair,” he told her. “That isn’t enough...that won’t catch the eye.” She had agreed on the Monster. Jack Pierce’s design. Roy liked that name. He had briefly considered changing his professional name to Roy Pierce but decided that was too phony. He despised phoniness.

  Mrs. Kingston had been inspired to seek out Mr. Roy when she saw his masterful transformation of her friend Mrs. Violet into Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera, accomplished by shaving her hair back, bulging her eyes, drawing back her lips and making her nose skull-like. Normally Roy preferred not to work so closely from an existing model, another man’s art, but it was nice for an occasional change, and he had become intrigued with Lon Chaney. To play a hunchback, Chaney had strapped a huge heavy appliance onto his back with a harness which prevented him from straightening. For the Phantom, he had pulled at the skin around his eyes and lips and nose with a variety of painful means, as in some self-inflicted torture. Roy admired that sense of commitment, but his creations were surgical, were painless, and were not performed on himself.

  * * *

  May couldn’t help but steal glances over the top of her magazine at the man across from her. Sometimes she saw only his eyes over the top of his magazine. He was reading a glossy-covered copy of Disfigured!, the soft porn magazine which appealed so to both men and women. It also contained articles, reviews, fashion layouts, but was most famous for its glamorous photo spreads of clothed and unclothed men and women, surgically deformed, maimed, transfigured.

  There was still enough to see, however. The man’s head was a mushroom cloud of flesh, a bulbous mass hung with lank scatterings of hair. At one point when the man traded one magazine for another May saw how his mouth was twisted into an uneven sneer, and the man caught her gawking. She began to look away, but he spoke to her.

  “The Elephant Man,” he said. “John Merrick. I was lucky to get rights—others have inquired since. Normally Mr. Roy doesn’t do work based on unoriginal sources but he says he’s always been intrigued by John Merrick. He’s sworn to make me an exact duplicate. I have only a few sessions to go. How about you?” The man eyed her up and down. May’s face was smooth and untouched but maybe there was some amazing work evolving under her clothing which Mr. Roy had yet to complete. Huge warts? A network of distended purple veins? Dozens of moving, blinking human eyes scattered across her body?

  “I’m not sure. I guess I want to be surprised.”

  “Oh, I’m sure that’s fun, too,” said the man, though not too enthusiastically—not wanting to seem unhappy with his choice.

  “May?”

  May looked up at the smiling hostess, who in leaning over her gave May a good look at the deep ragged fissure which ran down the center of her face from hairline to chin. “Mr. Roy is ready for you.”

  * * *

  Roy sent Armand Pittman out of his office to the front desk to make his next appointment; the bat wings which had sprouted from the sides of his head could flap, fold and retract, controlled by a chip implanted at the base of the skull, but he wanted next to have the webs of the wings tattooed with Egyptian hieroglyp
hics. At his desk in his office, Roy had a few moments to scan the application of May Azul for the first time on his monitor. There was a long waiting line to this, one of the most renowned offices in the city.

  College student. Wealthy parents. There was a photograph.

  A knock, and the hostess Iris opened the door to let in May Azul. Roy stood to extend his hand. Iris left May to advance with a shy smile.

  His eyes ate up her face like a horde of ants swarming over it, scurrying in and out of hollows, nostrils, through the forest of eyebrows, all at once. He was filled with a dismay he had felt surfacing the moment his screen unveiled her photograph.

  She had shoulder-length auburn hair, with an almost brassy undertone, and green-gray eyes, drowsily lidded, though not in the manner of Mrs. Kingston’s new eyelids. Her face was not “perfect”...her nose was a bit boyishly unrefined and her “bee-stung” lips (he loved that term) were asymmetrical, this more pronounced with her lopsided bashful smile. But she was immediately striking. Her skin was white and silken, her neck long and thin, her body encased in a tight black sweater falling just to her upper thighs and banded at the waist with a realistic plastic snake (another college fad). Her legs were long in their black nylon sheaths. All this black only further heightened the snowy smooth perfection of her exposed flesh.

  “Pleased to meet you.” Her hand was small, soft, a little damp in the hollow palm. “Please make yourself comfortable.” They both sat. Roy’s smile was professional, didn’t reveal his discomfort...he was as adept at smiling as at his art. He took in May’s profile as she scanned photographs on the walls and his framed credentials in art and medicine. Why should she be so striking? At this time, medicine being what it was, there were nearly no natural deformities. After a fire or accident there was no need to remain scarred. There was no need to go bald, become obese, and shrivel up with age so quickly. Roy had seen perfection for most of his life. That was why people came to him and his kind, in fact. For something different. To stand out, make a statement, express their individuality. Almost everyone who could afford it wanted some kind of embellishment, ornamentation, or full transformation—young or old, male or female. Business was booming.

  She shouldn’t stand out to him, but she did. She wasn’t perfect. That was it. She was beautiful, but she had a singular kind of look—that is, he would recognize her again in a crowd. She had features he had seen before but in a fresh arrangement. She already looked individual.

  “Do you have any idea what you want, May?” Her application showed three question marks on the line below a similar question.

  “Well,” her attention came fully upon him, “not really. I like the idea of being surprised with an original creation...I’m sure you could think of better things to do with my face than I could. You’re the artist. The only trouble is, my parents are a little tight with their money and a little old-fashinoned and they told me they wouldn’t pay for it again if I don’t like what I get.”

  That was the risk with the surprise approach, but Roy had very few dissatisfied customers come back (or go elsewhere) to have his work undone or converted to something else. As May had just said, he was the artist, he knew best, his clients trusted his decisions, no matter how wild or surprising. And sometimes he really got elaborate—inspired. He would sweat over one work for eight hours straight, then. The work could be undone, converted (for a heavy extra charge), but usually this was only done for those who came back every year or even sooner than that for a fresh new look.

  “Maybe, ah, you should think about it a while longer,” Roy told her. “The fads change so quickly, too...I think the more involved procedures will die back down to minor touches soon. If you can’t afford to have your look adjusted or returned to normal I’d advise you to think twice about undergoing a major make-over which may become obsolete and which you’ll be stuck with until you have the money to change it.”

  That appealing lopsided smile. “I’ve never met a doctor before who tried to get me to spend less money...I know doctors who’d prescribe me a brain transplant for a headache.”

  “I’m not a doctor—I’m an artist. I’m an artist for the artistic gratification first...the money second. I have a compulsion to be an artist. I’m not a doctor, or a mechanic, May.”

  “I’m sorry.” She looked embarrassed.

  “Don’t apologize—please. I’m not offended, I’m just making a distinction. Really. So...I’m really not sure what to suggest, either, May...if you’re sure you want to do this.”

  “Oh yeah, I want something.”

  “What have you seen that you like?”

  “Well, like I said, I want you to decide, but my friend Stacee had her head shaved bald with a ring of like glassy balls implanted around it that change color with her moods. A friend of mine, Jhonn, had one arm removed and a tentacle put in its place with a mouth at the end and a tongue.” May smiled bashfully at the implications. “Zelda had her ears pointed and face made a lot like a cat, even with whiskers. I like them all but they’re all different.” She threw up her hands.” I like old art. I was thinking maybe something Picassoy. You must know Picasso?”

  He did. “Picasso. That sounds extreme, May.”

  “Well, I don’t know...”

  “I suggest something subtle. The fad will change soon, as I see it.”

  “Well I can always get the money to change it in the future.”

  Roy sighed. He stared at the monitor on his desk, wondering if he should have her take a look at his photo file of previous customers. Her photo on the monitor gazed back at him. Striking. Lovely. He didn’t suggest the file.

  “I’ll think of something,” he said. “In the price range you’ve listed your work will be done within two to three hours. Are you ready?”

  “Yes. Are you ready?”

  She sensed his reluctance. “Yes...of course.” He rose.

  “What about the man in the waiting room, if he has to wait three hours? Do you have an associate?”

  “No. Rhik just likes to come early, read, hang around. He likes it here.” Roy could almost keep the bitter edge out of his words. “This way, please.”

  Picasso. He hated Picasso.

  * * *

  Roy made a big mistake in having had May Azul undressed and laid starkly, whitely naked like a corpse on his slab. A corpse without bullet-hole, wound, mark of violence. It only heightened his confusion. But still, her face remained his focus. He was a portraitist, primarily. A face man.

  For a full half hour he paced around the table, coffee in hand, studying her. She was a tree. He was a chainsaw. And she wanted to become a chainsaw sculpture from the tree.

  It wasn’t easier to do a Mrs. Kingston or Mrs. Violet simply because they were less beautiful than this young woman. Of course that reaction was natural. But his reluctance had grown beyond his dismay at the application photograph—grown upon talking with her. She was shy...cute...sweet, he thought. It was easy to despise the college types—they sought the most outlandish expression of his aristic contempt. But she was naive, he told himself, simply giving in to peer pressure. She couldn’t really want to look like one of Picasso’s excuses for beauty...

  Slowly, uncertainly, he set about preparing his pallet, eyes never straying long from that bare canvas.

  * * *

  Still in his lab smock, taking a break from his work on Rhik, Roy went into the recovery room to see how May Azul was doing. Roy had sent Iris in a few minutes ago to revive her, and when he entered May had already swung her bare legs off the side of the bed. She wore a plastic smock. She was already viewing herself in a display of wall screens. Iris stepped aside. Roy’s stomach was clenched in a fist of dread.

  “Hello, May.” Professional smile. “So what do you think?” Light tone.

  “Well.” She fingered it timidly. His sculpture. Her face. “It’s a little subtle. I thought we’d agreed to do a little more.” She had checked the time...it hadn’t been any three hours. He’d better not charge her for
the three-hour range.

  “I thought you trusted my artistic instincts.”

  “I do. But...well.” A small red jewel, glowing with a light inside it, was implanted in her forehead. From the corners of her eyes, two implanted, thin, rounded black plastic strips extended to her temples, then curved down under the line of her jaw to connect under her chin. That was all. “I still look kind of boring.”

  Boring. With those bee-stung lips. “Did you see this?” He picked up a small device. Touched a key. The forehead jewel turned sapphire. Another key. The black plastic half-frame around her face became white. Pink. Metallic gold. The gem became an emerald.

  “Yes,” May murmured, only half looking into the screens. “I just...I like it, but I could probably buy jewelry like this and glue it on. I thought from the friends I described, and from the price range we agreed on, you’d do something more distinctive. I trust your artistic instincts, but this is me ...I’m the one who has to be artistically gratified. Right?”

  Maybe she could be bashful and sweet, but she could be cold and bitter also, he observed. “This is what I saw for you,” he said emotionlessly. Iris looked uncomfortable. “I’m sorry you don’t like it.”

  “I’d like a little more, if I have the money left over.”

  “You do. But I really don’t know what else I might do for you.”

  “I’ve seen your photographs on the walls, Mr. Roy! I saw that guy Rhik in the waiting room! What do you mean you don’t know what else you can do?”

  “Iris, will you tend the front?” She nodded, split-faced, left. Roy moved to a coffee maker and got himself a cup. May declined. His back to May, the artist said, “Why does such a lovely woman want to look like an axe murderer attacked her and a drunken doctor patched her back together?”

  “Why are you saying this? Lovely? Nobody looks at me! I don’t stand out! I want to make a statement!”

  “Those aren’t their statements. They’re mine. They aren’t individuals. They’re all the same. Can’t you see how beautiful you are? You want me to ruin that? I don’t like Picasso, May...I like Renoir.” He faced her.