"You'll be okay, Simon. You don't even need to speak. Just sit there."
And that was the way I found myself at the front of the room behind a microphone, wondering when the air had suddenly become so very warm.
The Art of Horror. You would think, wouldn't you, that it was to be a panel about those who do the artwork that grace so many books? Perhaps a discussion of Harry O. Morris, or J. K. Potter? Maybe going so far as Hieronymus Bosch or Joel-Peter Witkin? And, for a few minutes at least, I believed that was the direction in which we were going. While Munny spoke, I started working on something about Blake's Red Dragon paintings and their influence, but all I could think about under those many stares were muddy and disfigured faces. By the time I stopped panicking and started listening, I realized the conversation had taken a turn I hadn't expected, but was not at all surprised by.
"Writing good Horror is like art," Munny said. "The way we put words into order to induce our own fears in others. Alfred Hitchcock said it was all about tension. Everybody knows the story about the bomb under the bench, right? I think if Hitchcock were alive today, he would love what computers could do to help that bomb explosion look real, and look really frightening."
The room clapped, so I joined in out of courtesy. True to Munny's word, I was left out of the conversation between the panelists, which suited me. Just as the topic quickly shifted from illustrators and painters to writers, it quickly shifted again to filmmakers, and I was at a loss as to what to say. When eventually I was pressed to speak, I recall hearing only crickets on the mention of the films of Tourneur or of Wise's The Haunting. Still, I like to think someone in the crowd took a note. Someone somewhere must have. Mustn't they?
The last fifteen minutes were a bit more animated. Munny had run out of steam, I think, so he opened up the panel for audience questions. I squirmed in my seat. My beard began to itch tremendously, a sure sign I was out of my depth. Perhaps Munny sensed it subconsciously and decided to punish me for it. Why else did he pick that familiar young girl to ask the first question?
"Mr. Hearst, when you talked about those films, you said that what made them good was the underlying themes. Gahan McKaye said something the same today. Why do you think Horror can't just be fun?"
Sweat crept down my neck. I looked down at the table, incapable of speaking to the crowd while watching them. Secretly, I cursed McKaye for disappearing.
"I think you misunderstand me. I've never suggested good work cannot be 'fun'. In fact, I think it's necessary. But I really think good films -- and good books and probably good paintings -- need to have a proper balance of entertainment to art. In the past, when I wrote, I did my best to keep the stories exciting and adventurous, but also endowed them with a bit more thematic 'meat' than many of my peers were doing. I've read books that are only plot and excitement, but I've never found them anything but boring and trite. But, by that same token, I've read fiction by writers who wanted to write the 'next great Horror novel', filled with symbols and themes, and I found that work boring as well. Extremes are always like that; they are always boring. Balance is the key."
I looked up at the crowd, hoping I'd won them over, but instead their faces told me that all I'd managed to do was turn them against me. The young questioner looked absolutely disgusted with me. I supposed she wouldn't want any gift I might recommend to her any longer. Munny smiled at me charitably, and asked for another question.
As soon as I could I stepped away from the discussions and the drinking that normally marks the evening hours of a convention and made my plans for escape. The day had taken its toll on me, and I wanted little more than to go out to some nice quiet restaurant and indulge in something to eat. At that point, L'Hotel du Marcel was still in business, just along Front Street, and the chef there made a Roulade de volaille with Emmenthal and proscuitto that one could really sink one's teeth into. The place is gone now, alas, taken by the changing economy, but to this day I don't think I've ever found its equal.
But as I said it was no doubt still there then, yet I disliked the idea of visiting it alone after my failed panel. I hoped Gahan had returned to his room so I might commiserate with him about the three-ring circus atmosphere of WeirdCon, and the two of us could pretend that the current year wasn't the exact same as all the years that had preceded it. When I knocked on Gahan's door, however, there was no response. I thought perhaps I heard a strange gurgle, but it did not last very long and no other sound followed. I shrugged my shoulders and took the elevator back down and walked the two blocks to L'Hotel du Marcel without incident. Contrary to my fears, I had an absolutely pleasant time alone, and by the time I returned to the hotel I was in no condition to do anything more than stumble into bed in a wine-induced stupor.
I woke early the next morning from an uneasy sleep no doubt caused by the ache of a vice tightened around my head. After I'd showered and dressed, I felt marginally better, so I descended to Azure, the Intercontinental’s restaurant, to order some coffee. There were no other guests there save for an elderly couple whom I took to be tourists passing through the city. I didn't know where they came from, but their accents were European, no doubt from one of the old-world Slavic countries. They looked over at me occasionally while I drank my black coffee, the gentleman's eyes narrow and his whispering harsh. I paid them no mind. The world has all sorts of strange customs and rituals, and it wouldn’t be the first time they rubbed together the wrong way. I'd learned long ago that what I took as an offence was rarely anything more than a misunderstanding. Thus, I endeavored to give the couple the benefit of the doubt, even when, on passing me on their way out, the old man hissed.
But that wasn't the strangest thing that happened to me over breakfast. Indeed, that occurred not a few minutes later, when through the restaurant doors I noticed in the lobby the small pale man from the previous day's panel. I still could not see his face clearly -- my vantage point would not allow it -- but he seemed different. Invigorated, no doubt from a good night's sleep. I could tell he was smiling even from that distance -- his teeth positively gleamed -- and he did not carry himself in the same sickly manner I'd noticed the day before. Even his limp had lessened, and I wondered if perhaps he was not quite as ill in the mornings. I still found his movements slightly odd, and the soft shape of his hairless skull more than a bit disconcerting, but as long as he stayed in the foyer of the hotel and out of my way I was happy to repay him the same courtesy.
"Do you mind if I sit down?"
I turned to see my friend, Gahan McKaye, standing beside me. He looked as though he were on his last legs.
"Of course, of course! Have some breakfast?" He shook his head vigorously at the idea. "So," I continued. "What happened to you? You look terrible. Worse than I feel, if that's possible."
But it was. The dark bags under his eyes had not been there the day before -- I was sure of it -- yet there they were as though he'd been born with them. He was wan, bleary-eyed, and sweating profusely while shivering. Around his neck he wore a scarf to keep himself warm, but it was tied so tightly the skin above it had turned pale white, and the web of veins in his neck stood out darkly from beneath the material. He asked me in a hoarse whisper to put my hand on his forehead to feel for fever. I obliged, and afterward surreptitiously wiped my fingers when his attention was diverted.
"You seem cool to me," I said.
"I feel awful. I woke up with this sore throat and I'm still not one-hundred-percent on my feet. I must be coming down with a virus. My whole body aches; and my hands --" he held them out and carefully flexed them, turning them over as he did so to reveal pruned fingertips. "I really should be in bed, but I'm scheduled for some panels today."
"You are? I didn't see any on the schedule. I thought you only had duties yesterday."
"Yesterday? How could I have been on panels before the convention even started?"
I was nearly dumbstruck.
"But, you do know it's Saturday today, don't you?"
It was then his turn to be
dumbstruck. He opened his mouth but there were no words, just the veins throbbing above his scarf. I waited for his illness-dulled mind to catch up.
"Maybe I ought to leave early. Go see a doctor."
"I think that might be wisest. Will you let me know what they say?"
"Of course I will. I'll give you a call when I get back."
But he did neither. Gahan was nowhere to be found for the rest of the convention, and despite the numerous messages I sent to his room, when Sunday afternoon arrived and the closing ceremonies were complete, I still had no idea where he was. I left the convention shortly thereafter, my trip home both long ago and non-refundably booked.
As I said earlier, I had little contact with the genre world -- or my friends within it -- away from the convention. There were other things to occupy my time, other travels to take and volumes to read. All of it of course to grease the gears of my creative engine, my muse, whose noise was so loud it drowned out all other distractions. I spent a month in Italy, in a small village just outside Napoli where I was waited on by a lovely old nonna who spoke no English and her young bambini who desperately wanted to. I toured the hidden parts of Warsaw and met a pale youth on the street whom I thought for a while had recognized me from the back cover of "The Howling Faces" but instead turned out to have confused me with another tall gangly fellow. I ate and laughed and scrutinized the landscapes and local histories, all in an attempt to feed my "muse engine.” So far away from the insular world of the genre I was happy to leave behind, I hoped somehow my solitude would translate into inspiration, and when I finally placed my pen upon the page words would flow freely from it. Instead, all that flowed were the ideas from my mind, and I ended up with far more discarded drafts than I did words devoted to any of them.
Perhaps, had I stayed home, I would have inevitably heard talk about Gahan McKaye. After all, I can't imagine it was considered anything but news. As it was, I missed the drama over the intervening year, and when things took their turn there was no way for me to know it and no one who spoke English enough to tell me. Or, if they had, I'd been too preoccupied by my own thoughts to listen.
I didn't find out anything until I returned to WeirdCon the following year, and when I arrived I could feel something in the air ... though for the life of me I didn't know what. Everyone seemed quieter, talking amongst themselves in hushed tones, and had I been a less secure man I would have seriously questioned why the rooms quieted the closer I came to them. I saw McKaye's small circle of cohorts in the crowd at one point and as I approached them they looked as though they would have run had they not been cornered. I asked whether McKaye had arrived yet, and the look they passed to each other, then to me, was dire to say the least.
"Did he --?" I didn't want to speak the words, afraid of the answer. "Is he ... dead?" Instantly, I wondered why that had been my first guess. His group of friends didn't seem as surprised.
"It's a lot worse than that," I was told after some thought. I asked what that meant and received shaking heads in response. "You're going to have to see for yourself."
I don't recall what I expected then, but I remember a keen sense of unease trailing me through the small crowds as I investigated that year's convention, waiting with nervous energy for the late morning "What is Horror?" panel at which Gahan McKaye was scheduled to appear. Walking the rooms I recognized many of the same faces in the crowd that I'd seen in the past, and I found it pleasing that not all of them were of the same age as I. The field needed to attract more young blood, I felt, if it was ever going to retain its hold on the dwindling marketplace of readers. There was a time when WeirdCon would have required a hotel twice the size of the Intercontinental to hold all its visitors, but those days ran out many years ago, and even now we're working hard to woo those readers back.
I found the familiar Simcoe room in time to get a good seat at the front, yet there was still a panelist missing, and as the minutes dwindled I spent an increasing amount of time checking the clock, then the door, for Gahan's arrival. I could feel the audience behind me doing the same -- the longer the chair on the panel was unoccupied, the quieter the crowd became, until the moderator, Dr. Simmer (the self-described "Professor of the Macabre") stood amid the barest whispers. I couldn't even hear the room's air conditioners running, but I knew they were considering how cold the place had become.
"Welcome to --" was all the good doctor spoke before the doors flew open and Gahan McKaye appeared. Not that I recognized him at first. He wore large sunglasses, his cropped hair tousled as though he'd just come from bed, and around his unshaven throat was a tightly tied cravat, the ends tucked into a faded amber shirt. Were he tanned, I would have thought him fresh off a boat from the Mediterranean; all he needed was a mouth full of olives and a hand-rolled cigarette. A few steps behind him trailed an overweight and pasty old man I mistook for a misshapen child. He walked with a pronounced limp, his face hung so low he might have been staring at his feet, perhaps so he might concentrate on not falling. The sight revolted me, though intellectually I could see no reason for it -- certainly it wasn't based on any bigotry on my part. I'd known all sorts of odd shapes in my day, but nothing as psychologically off-putting. There was a foul aura around him -- I can think of no other word for it -- and I didn't know how Gahan could stand to be near him, let alone able to stoop down and whisper into that oddly-pointed ear. The man turned his head to respond and Gahan slowly nodded, and then went to his seat behind the podium. The small man then turned his face to the crowd and for the first time I got a look at his pale stretched features and his overlarge bottom lip, cleft in the middle as though formed from two pieces of flesh fused inexpertly together. His eyes were tiny dots, wide apart, and when I realized he saw me from the front of the room those black orbs fixed on my own and I saw nothing behind them. The shiver that ran down my spine reminded me where I'd seen the little man before. He jittered, and then seemed to regain control and limped to an empty chair in the front row. Like me, the rest of the audience and panel were spellbound by the entrance, and it wasn't until the odd man took his seat that Dr. Simmer found his voice again.
"Er-- as I was saying: Welcome to 'What is Horror?'"
As he continued, I saw Gahan lean back. Beside him once again sat television "star" Martin Stemmel, but sharing the panel with them was a young man I'd never met before but who had started his own line of books earlier in the year. He was very polite, and I really ought to remember his name, but it's been some time and, frankly, I never saw him again. I think I heard he lost a lot of money trying to make a go of things and it ruined him, but frankly I've heard that same story so many times over the years I may be misattributing it. Regardless, he was quiet and timid and little more than prey for the rest of the panel. One almost felt sorry for the foal. Also at the table was the critic Atticus Bloom, a man so pompous I doubted his name was real. (I always suspected he was hiding from creditors.) He looked to me more like a bloated "Ralph" than an "Atticus,” and the way Gahan smirked at him I suspected I'd see some fireworks. And I did, though not the kind I was expecting.
"What does the term 'Horror' mean to you?" Simmer asked each panelist, and as he went down the row those of us in attendance heard the same definitions we'd heard before. As I've said: conventions are awash with repetition. There are so few new things to discuss that the same facts are simply repeated ad nauseam. But when Simmer reached McKaye, I don't think anybody expected to hear, "Frankly, it means very little to me. I don't much care for Horror to be honest." I heard the room gasp, though it was possible it was I alone who did so. "Most of it's a jerk-fest. I stopped reading it a while ago. What's the point?" Even Simmer seemed knocked off-kilter by McKaye's comments. My scruffy friend did little to help him back onto his figurative feet.
"That's surprising to hear. Didn't you write a series of articles about the genre and its importance?"
He coughed and laughed. Or vice versa.
"The 'genre'? The genre is comprised of a bunch of adolescent post
uring and faux angst. Look at them," he said, pointing to the sea of darkly clothed youths in the audience. "They aren't readers, they're consumers, and it doesn't matter what I say because the bulk of them won't understand or care, and you know what? That's fine. They don't read Horror for anything other than escape, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that."
"And you're fine with that? Escapist fiction?" Martin Stemmel looked surprised, though it could have been his enormous glasses that lent him that bug-eyed appearance. McKaye smiled, and I saw him casually look at the bald little man in the front row. Some inscrutable look passed between them.
"Why not? Listen, I wasted years trying to write 'Art' when nobody really cared for it. I'd get critics like Bloom here talking about the use of metaphor and allegories, but more often than not those reviews translated into lost sales. No one ever became famous writing well; they became famous for writing what the airport market loves. That's where most books are bought nowadays. It's much smarter -- and lucrative -- to concentrate on writing something fun rather than challenging. That's what most readers want, right?"
He paused and looked out at the crowd, as though daring them to stand and cheer. At first, nothing happened, but after a few moments someone in a far corner began to applaud. Then others followed, until the ballroom was full of uproarious clapping. I looked around and saw only a few of my older peers shaking their heads, relaying part of my own feelings on the subject. I didn't know what had changed in my friend Gahan, but as he lapped up the adulations of the crowd I made plans to find out what had happened to him during his absence.
I found Gahan outside the Simcoe room afterward, surrounded by a throng of young girls with piercings and boys with tattoos. It amazed me that they stood in awe of a man who had launched a derisive attack on them not less than thirty minutes earlier. I was a towering presence, of course, but I was quiet, and I waited patiently until they'd had their time with him. I spotted a familiar face among the crowd -- the young woman I'd sat beside the previous year -- and I suspect she recognized me as well ... at least, judging by the contemptuous glance she gave me as I stood there. Among the crowd stood the small bald man, his flat-face and glazed round eyes lending him the ghoulish illusion that he could not stop smiling. His pudgy fingers were interwoven but he could not hide their clawishness, nor could he hide the oily sheen of his skin. I shivered discreetly. Gahan eventually saw me there; first glancing, and then looking for longer periods as though my face were coming slowly toward him from a great distance. Perhaps it was my beard and hair -- they had turned slightly greyer in the intervening year, and no doubt my features were travelling southward. Nevertheless, I soon saw the old spark of recognition in his eyes from within the crowd -- though I think I saw something else in those eyes of his misshapen companion.
Nightingale Songs Page 17