Angel of the Abyss

by Ed Kurtz

  “I don’t know any of this, Detective.”

  “Well, Junior’s gone to his reward, too, but he married a young woman who appears to still be kicking around, though she’s older than dirt now if she is. Name of Cora. But it looks like you wouldn’t know about her, either.”

  I swallowed hard. “Holy shit.”

  “Something coming to mind?”

  “The old woman…”

  “Mrs. Tilitson said something about an old woman. She’s pretty out of it, though. What was she talking about?”

  “Jesus—the guy who shot Louise, the one Barbara killed—he came with another guy and an old woman. And Barbara knew her. She called her Mrs. Parson.”

  Detective Shea cocked his head to one side and said, “And Bingo was his name-o.”

  PART THREE: GRAHAM

  26

  Hollywood, 1926

  Saul Veritek’s heart attack happened on a Sunday. The press reported he was home alone at the time, preparing for bed, when the attack struck. People in the know were well aware that he was in the company of a pair of aspiring actresses, without whom he would never have survived. All of this information came to Grace’s ears that Monday morning, when she arrived at the lot for the day’s shooting. Someone suggested a moment of silent prayer for Saul’s full recovery, and though few likely prayed in earnest, everyone remained quiet for a few minutes before Jack took up his bullhorn to address the company.

  “We will continue our work,” he told the sullen group of two dozen cast and crew. “Saul would have another heart attack if he thought we were wasting time here. There are only about twenty-five pages left to film, and I think we can do it before the end of the week. In fact, I know we can, and we will. That’s all. Let’s get to work.”

  He set the bullhorn on his chair and ran his fingers through his hair. Grace approached, script in hand. He smiled awkwardly, and she wondered if it was her imagination or if he looked a little jittery.

  “I’d like to tell you I’m sorry for that mess at March’s,” he said, sounding genuine. “You know I hadn’t any horse in that race, I just wanted to help facilitate your next step.”

  “No Frank, no deal,” she said with a half-hearted shrug. “That’s no kind of picture I want to work on, anyhow. All it amounts to is a wasted afternoon.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve heard from the old Red himself?”

  “No, and I’d tell you if I had. After March’s driver took me home, my car was waiting right there in front, just like Frank said it would be. My guess is he finally skipped town. That Joe Sommer seems to have it out for him and bad.”

  “Joe’s a bit of a bulldog, all right. Used to be a Pinkerton man, way I hear it. Helped the major studios get their footing out here, away from all that labor craziness back east.”

  “Well, I won’t be used—not by Joe, Frank, or anybody else. I’ll make the pictures I want to make, the right kind, and not so some Red chaser can make a point to people I don’t even know.”

  “That’s fair enough, Grace,” said Jack.

  She maintained a hard face, a face designed to express her general distaste for liars and conmen, despite the hurt Frank had caused her. In all the time Grace had spent in Los Angeles she had yet to find a single person she could honestly call a friend. Not a colleague, not someone who could help propel her career or who wanted her to lift up theirs, but a sincere human connection. For a time she thought Frank was going to be that person. Now that she knew different, the sting of disappointment was difficult to mask.

  “Say, Jack,” she said, eager to get off the subject of Frank Faehnrich. “Before we get started, a question about your little speech a moment ago.”

  “What’s that?”

  She flipped through the dog-eared script in her hands, knitting her brow at the dull blue mimeographed pages. “You said we’ve got twenty-five more pages to shoot. By my count there are only nineteen.”

  “That’s because I mean to do a little reshooting. Not much, just a few scenes I wasn’t happy with when we were looking them over in March’s projection room.”

  “Oh? Which scenes?”

  Jack laughed softly and tussled her hair. “Don’t worry, we’ll get around to it. Keep your mind on Billy Goat Gruff over there for now, will you?”

  He stabbed his thumb at the graveyard set, where Bob Scaife was being fitted with a grotesque goat’s head. Grace gritted her teeth.

  * * *

  Living death, for Clara, does not come cheap. She may roam the earth, and she may seek her vengeance, but not for free. The same entity to whom she was sacrificed demands recompense for her second iteration, the New Clara, and for this she must now return to the scene of her death, and the scene of her resurrection.

  And there, among the moldering tombstones and iron fence posts encrusted with verdigris, he waits—a towering figure with arms outspread from the billowing sleeves of his cloak and massive horns coiled atop its shaggy head. She draws nearer to him, her bare legs swept with lazy mist, and the moonlight reveals the beast’s awful face, the face of a goat with grinning teeth and soulless black slits for pupils.

  Intertitle: “Two more!”

  The goatman beckons to the sepulchral bed, to consummate their unholy union, and Clara, sneering, slips free from her burial gown and complies…

  * * *

  Much of the cast and crew—Rob Scaife, the goatman, included—planned to descend en masse upon Saul in his hospital room after the day’s filming. Grace needed no time to decide upon a round of drinks at the nearest blind pig instead. She waved off her driver in the lot, hitched the strap of her bag over her shoulder, and walked the quarter mile to Anthony’s, which was reputed to be run by a Chicago syndicate man snaking his fingers into Los Angeles. But the booze was no bathtub moonshine to give anyone seizures and the place never got raided, so who was Grace to complain?

  She found a nice dark table in the back and ordered a waitress to set them up—a glass of beer, a shot of whiskey, and a cup of hot black coffee to keep the motor running. The round came back in good time, and Grace dumped the whiskey down with the sharp image of Jack Parson’s leering look as she writhed beneath the Satanic figure of his goatman.

  “Hold on a minute,” she gasped at the waitress with her first post-hooch breath. “Another one of those.”

  The girl nodded and went back for the bar. Grace started in on her beer and closed her eyes, trying in vain to think of anything apart from the awkward humiliation of that dreadful scene. She’d known it was coming, she’d read the pages weeks ago. But she’d also dreaded it all those weeks, and now that it was done she wondered how Jack would ever get it past the censors, what theaters would dare book a picture like that. And worse still, what studio would stoop to hire the girl who fucked the devil in Angel of the Abyss.

  “Thanks,” she said to the waitress upon delivery of another whiskey. It went down as quickly as the first one and the girl vanished before Grace could request yet a third. It didn’t matter. She was feeling it, the burn in her breast and the slowly approaching fog in her brain. She nursed the beer and the coffee in equal measure, bought a package of Chesterfields from the cigarette girl, and watched a mixed-race band starting to set up on a stage barely big enough to hold them and their instruments. By the time the waitress finally returned, she pointed to each empty vessel and said, “And how about a pencil and something to write on, huh?”

  27

  L.A., 2013

  “An individual’s chances of surviving a thing like this depends upon a number of variables,” the doctor said, his voice even and without much inflection. “It depends on where in the brain the point of impact is, which part of the brain is affected. Also the velocity of the bullet is key, as is whether or not the bullet then exits the brain or stays inside, even in fragments. You lucked out on all counts, Mr. Woodard.”

  “Except for the part where he got shot in the head,” Jake said. He was sitting on an unoccupied hospital bed beside me, listening intently
. I was surprised he was still in Los Angeles, much less there in the hospital. But I didn’t yet know how long I’d been out.

  It was only a couple of days. I’d been awake for most of a third.

  One of my eyes was still swollen and my vision was hazy, like I was drunk. Equally impaired were my motor skills and speech. Inside my brain everything seemed fine, but my body and mouth were slow to get the message.

  “In your case,” the doctor continued, “your recovery is going to rely much more on physical therapy than the surgery. Your speech is slurred, and your right side appears mildly impaired.”

  Almost instinctively I tried to make a fist with my right hand. All I managed to do was smash my fingers together in a weak lobster claw imitation.

  “Now whether you feel up to speaking with the police is your decision, Mr. Woodard. I’ve given it my okay, provided that it’s brief and not too stressful. But if you feel the need for more time—more rest, really—then that is what I’ll tell him.”

  “Shea?” I asked. It sounded like Thay.

  “That’s the detective, yes.”

  Jake leaned forward. “He wants to see if the guys who shot you are the same ones who came after us.”

  “Us?” I wondered aloud.

  “Long story, but I’ll fill you in.”

  I blinked my good eye and swallowed, or tried to. My throat felt like it was coated with wax paper.

  “I’ll talk to him,” I said.

  “You’re sure?”

  I nodded. The doctor left and Jake stood up, patted me gently on the shoulder. He said, “This is going to be the best drinking story you ever had.”

  “I get all the best breaks,” I said.

  “Listen,” he said, “I’m just glad you’re going to be all right.”

  Shea came in then, tugging at his lower lip. His shirt was untucked and he hadn’t shaved in a day or two. All things considered, I didn’t feel too sorry for him.

  “How are you feeling, Graham?”

  I gave a thumbs-up. I was being sarcastic, but he didn’t seem to catch on.

  “Mind if I talk to you for a few minutes?”

  “No,” I said.

  He sat down where Jake had been. Jake remained standing beside me as though he was my defense attorney or something. His protectiveness was more than a little baffling to me, but I tried to keep my focus on the cop.

  “I’ll try to make this as quick as I can,” he began. “How many individuals attacked you?”

  “Three.”

  “All men? Were any of them women?”

  “Men,” I said.

  “No Mrs. Parson,” Jake cut in. Shea shot him a look.

  “Mr. Maitland…”

  “Sorry.”

  To me, Shea asked, “Can you describe these men?”

  I took in a slow breath, thinking it over. “Ordinary,” I said. “White guys. Thirties, maybe early forties. Dressed sort of casual preppy. Polo shirts, suit jackets.”

  “Any names?”

  “No.”

  “David doesn’t ring a bell?”

  “No.”

  “Ever heard of Cora Parson?”

  “No, who’s that?”

  “I’ll get to it. What else about these guys? Identifying marks—scars or tattoos?”

  “Don’t think so. One of them cut Florence Sommer’s throat.” I groaned, remembering it. All that blood. “Right in front of me.”

  “What did they say to you?”

  “Not much. They were ready to do it. Just kill us, her and me both.”

  “Well, they can’t get to you in here. You’re perfectly safe now, don’t worry about that.”

  I said, “Thank you.”

  A nurse floated in silent as a ghost and got to futzing with the wires stuck to me and the machine they led to. I mostly ignored her. She did us the same favor.

  “Now Mr. Maitland describes his assailant as a man named David, about five foot ten, with a stocky build and short, salt-and-pepper hair.”

  Jake nodded, said, “Also a big fucking hole in his skull, but he wouldn’t have had that if you saw him.”

  I tried to make a face, but all I really did was drool a little. The nurse wiped my chin.

  “Could be,” I said. “Yeah, one of ‘em.”

  “The one who shot you?”

  I thought about it, though I really didn’t want to. I was only conscious for a few seconds after the bullet struck, it all happened lightning fast—but in those seconds I knew for a fact that I was about to die. I saw the guy’s face all right, a stoic expression to put Harold Lloyd to shame, but the moment he fired his gun all I was concerned with was the tiny projectile ending my life right then and there. It’s a mind-fuck, dying like that and coming back when you never expected to.

  “I think so,” I told Shea. The shooter was the stocky one, all right. And neither of the other guys had salt-and-pepper hair. David. Such an innocuous name for a cold-blooded murderer.

  Shea made some notes on his little pad and said, “Okay. All right. Thank you, Graham. I’m sorry to bust your chops at a time like this.”

  He then stood and turned to face Jake.

  “As for you, Mr. Maitland—no more Junior Detective bullshit, you hear me? I appreciate your willingness to help your buddy and I’m sure he does, too, but there’s a reason for police departments.”

  At that moment Jake’s normally smug face sank into a deep, sorrowful frown. I’d never seen him like that and it startled me a little. The detective slapped him lightly on the arm and started for the door. Jake followed him out, and in the hallway muttered something I couldn’t clearly hear, though I was certain I heard my ex-wife’s name. He returned to the room after that, and I kept my one seeing eye on him as he rounded my bed.

  “The hell was that about?” I slurred.

  The nurse straightened up and told Jake he was going to have to let me get some rest.

  “Just a minute,” Jake pleaded. “Please.”

  She sighed and left us alone for the moment. Jake sat down on the side of my bed and put his hand on my knee.

  And he caught me up.

  * * *

  Sleep was temperamental that night, and when it did come, it was fraught with nightmares. Nightmares about this David bastard, about being shot over and over. Nightmares about a girl I never met named Louise, who didn’t fare as well as me. And nightmares about Helen, appearing in my hospital room in the night, telling me she’d never see me again in the same words I once said to her, but with a terribly different meaning—and consequence. At one point my heart rate spiked and a crew of technicians rushed into the room to check on me. For my trouble I was given a sedative and a juice box. Apple. My least favorite of the fruit juice family.

  When I was alone again, I remained awake for a long while. Footsteps and muted voices filled the hall outside my shut door. I stared at the soft white glow of the curtained window and thought about everything Jake told me, about four dead women and almost a million dollars and an old woman with a direct, living connection to Grace Baron’s movie.

  As for the movie, or what was left of it, Jake said the police intended to impound the reels we found for evidence. I wished I could watch them again, watch more closely for anything I might have missed. And I was seriously nervous about how a bunch of unskilled people were going to handle the nitrate stock, which I’d never had the opportunity to digitize, much less restore. Moreover, it nagged at my brain—you know, the one a bullet passed through?—that Florence Sommer’s father had most, but not all, of the film’s reels. It seemed to me the rest had to be somewhere. And if the late Mr. Sommer was less careful with how he stored some than others, perhaps the ones still missing would offer some insight into what this horror show was really all about.

  If only I had the slightest clue as to where they might be.

  28

  Hollywood, 1926

  Grace slept with no dreams at all.

  When in the morning the telephone jangled, she came awake wit
h a start and grumbled, “Damn it, Saul.” Her skull felt too small for its contents and the sunlight spilling through the slats of the blinds stung her eyes.

  She ignored the telephone as she always did, but as the hard hooch-induced sleep melted agonizingly away, she recalled that Saul was in the hospital still. Reaching for the watch on the nightstand she checked the time and saw that she was terribly late for the day’s work.

  Then the sunlight disappeared all at once and darkness was restored to the bungalow. She blinked and wondered had she misread the time? Or had her watch stopped? She’d thought it read two o’clock.

  The telephone fell silent and the horn of an automobile sounded outside. Grace sat up and squinted at the window when the glaring white light reappeared, forcing her to squeeze her eyes shut and look away. It hadn’t been sunlight at all. It was the headlamps of the automobile with the blaring horn.

  It was two o’clock in the morning.

  She pulled the sheet up to her chin and waited, listening to her own breath.

  The engine rumbled, and the headlights swept the bungalow before vanishing altogether. The automobile sputtered away, its chugging noise diminishing to silence.

  Grace sat still for half an hour, her knees pressed against her breasts. And she stayed awake until her driver arrived to take her to work.

  29

  L.A., 2013

  My second day post-resurrection Jake returned to visit me. He told me he was heading back to Boston first thing in the morning. I didn’t blame him, and I told him as much.

  “I never invited you out here in the first place,” I said, only half-joking.

  “I’m not sure if I’m glad I came or not,” he said. He’d been uncharacteristically sad and introspective since my return to the land of the living. I couldn’t blame him for that either, considering what had happened. We had both watched helplessly as women were murdered before our eyes. Well, me more helpless than him—Jake and Barbara took the bastard down. All I did was catch a bullet with my head.