Dream Factories and Radio Pictures

by Howard Waldrop

  Up the stairs he ran. He could now hear the pounding feet of the living dead man ahead, unlike the silence before the wreck. A flickering murky hallway was before him, and he saw the door at the far end close.

  William S. smashed into it, rolled. He heard the scrape of teeth behind him, and saw the rat-like face snap shut inches away. He came up, his pistols leveled at the vampire.

  The bald-headed thing grabbed the open door, pulled it before him.

  William S. stood, feet braced, a foot from the door and began to fire into it. His colt .36 inches in front of his face, he fired again and again into the wooden door, watching chunks and splinters shear away. He heard the vampire squeal, like a rat trapped behind a trashcan, but still he fired until both pistols clicked dry.

  The door swung slowly awry, pieces of it hanging.

  The nosferatu grinned, and carefully pushed the door closed. It hissed and crouched.

  William S. reached up for his hat.

  And remembered that the driver had knocked it off his head before the collision.

  The thing leaped.

  One of his pistols was knocked over the parapet.

  Then he was fighting for his life.

  * * *

  The five Germans, yelling to each other, slammed into the doorway at the end of the hall. From beyond, they heard the sounds of scuffling, labored breathing, the rip and tear of cloth.

  Bronco Billy charged up behind them.

  “The door! It’s jammed,” said one.

  “His hat!” yelled Bronco Billy. “He lost his hat!”

  “Hat?” asked the one called Joseph, in English. “Why his hat?” The others shouldered against the gaped door. Through it, they saw flashes of movement and the flickering night sky.

  “Crosses!” yelled Bronco Billy. “Like this!” he pointed to his hatband.

  “Ah!” said Joseph. “Crosses.”

  He pulled something from the one called Adolf, who hung back a little, threw it through the hole in the door.

  “Cruzen!” yelled Joseph.

  “The cross!” screamed Bronco Billy. “William S. The cross!”

  The sound of scuffling stopped.

  Joseph tossed his pistol through the opening.

  They continued to bang on the door.

  * * *

  The thing had its talons on his throat when the yelling began. The vampire was strangling him. Little circles were swimming in his sight. He was down beneath the monster. It smelled of old dirt, raw meat, of death. Its rat eyes were bright with hate.

  Then he heard the yell, “A cross!” and something fluttered at the edge of his vision. He let go one hand from the vampire and grabbed it up.

  It felt like cloth. He shoved it at the thing’s face.

  Hands let go.

  William S. held the cloth before him as breath came back in a rush. He staggered up, and the nosferatu put its hands over its face. He pushed toward it.

  Then the Browning automatic pistol landed beside his foot, and he heard noises at the door behind him.

  Holding the cloth, he picked up the pistol.

  The vampire hissed like a radiator.

  William S. aimed and fired. The pistol was fully automatic.

  The wooden bullets opened the vampire like a zipper coming off.

  The door crashed outward, the five Germans and Bronco Billy rushed through.

  William S. held to the doorframe and caught his breath. A crowd was gathering below, at the site of the wrecked hearse and the dead horses. Torchlights wobbled their reflection on the houses across the road. It looked like something from Dante.

  Helioglabulus came onto the roof, took one look at the vampire and ran his alpenstock, handle first, into its ruined chest.

  “Just to make sure,” he said.

  Bronco Billy was clapping William S. on the back. “Shore thought you’d gone to the last roundup,” he said.

  The five Germans were busy with the vampire’s corpse.

  William S. looked at the piece of cloth still clenched tightly in his own hand. He opened it. It was an armband.

  On its red cloth was a white circle with a twisted black cross.

  Like the decorations Indians used on their blankets, only in reverse.

  He looked at the Germans. Four of them wore the armbands; the fifth, wearing an old corporal’s uniform, had a torn sleeve.

  They were slipping a yellow armband over the arm of the vampire’s coat. When they finished, they picked the thing up and carried it to the roof edge. It looked like a spitted pig.

  The yellow armband had two interlocking triangles, like the device on the chest of the costumes William S. had worn when he played Ben-Hur on Broadway. The Star of David.

  The crowd below screamed as the corpse fell toward them.

  There were shouts, then.

  The unemployed, the war-wounded, the young, the bitter, the disillusioned. Then the shouting stopped . . . and they began to chant.

  The five Germans stood on the parapet, looking down at the milling people. They talked among themselves.

  Bronco Billy held William S. until he caught his breath.

  They heard the crowds disperse, fill in again, break, drift off, reform, reassemble, grow larger.

  “Well, pard,” said Bronco Billy. “Let’s mosey over to a hotel and get some shut-eye.”

  “That would be nice,” said William S.

  Helioglabulus joined them.

  “We should go by the back way,” he said.

  “I don’t like the way this crowd is actin’,” said Bronco Billy.

  William S. walked to the parapet, looked out over the city.

  Under the dark flickering sky, there were other lights. Here and there, synagogues began to flicker.

  And then to burn.

  Introduction: Save a Place in the Lifeboat for Me

  AGAIN THE QUESTION: Is this about rock and roll? Is this about funny people of the movies? You tell me.

  This is the second-earliest story in the collection. It was written in September and October of 1974, a heady personal time for me; a fairly disastrous one for my career. I’d been living for six months in Bryan, Texas, in the Monkey House, what would have been called in earlier days a Slan Shack; a house full of SF fans. I wrote and wrote and wrote while I lived there. Absolutely nothing I wrote in those six months while living there sold. I moved to Austin in late October 1974. Everything I owned, plus a medium-sized dog, fit in a friend’s VW Beetle.

  I hadn’t been in Austin a week before all that stuff I’d written in Bryan started to sell, and it all sold in the next few months. Why? I don’t know. I don’t give a damn! Third Base!

  * * *

  Comedians. Everybody loves them; nobody, as Dangerfield says, gives them any respect. When people make a list of the greatest actors—male and female—of all time in the movies—hey! Where’s the funny folks?

  From the silents to right now, the comedians are there; they’re appreciated, loved; they’re in the feel-good movie of the year; everybody knows them and goes to see them. But to get any respect, they’ve got to go against type, get serious, deal with a heavy subject in a heavy way.

  Chaplin knocked the blocks out from under his career that way. Langdon, as Capra said, never knew what hit him after he started directing himself, instead of listening to people who knew exactly what he could and couldn’t do (like Capra) and could tell him how to do it, and roll the audiences in the aisles.

  Did Tom Hanks win an Academy Award for Joe vs. The Volcano? No, it was for Philadelphia, after he’d been knocking himself out for ten years doing some of the best acting ever seen. In comedies . . .

  So then, a story about 1959, but with characters from the history of film scattered all through it, in parts they couldn’t have gotten in life, and true to their art.

  This being an early story, I hear you ask: Would you like to rewrite this now, knowing what you do? Of course, but as someone said once, that would be confusing literature with journalism, w
ouldn’t it? Would I do it differently? You bet, but you can say that about almost anything, once you see it in print. I could rewrite this: better construction, some tightening, places to be more subtle, places not to. I know how to do all that stuff now, twenty-six years later.

  But if I did, I don’t think it would be as good a story. I was writing then to show how much I liked all those people, and how many guts they’d made me bust over the years, and I think that comes through, and that’s what I wanted to say. So there.

  Save a Place in the Lifeboat for Me

  THE HILL WAS HIGH AND COLD when they appeared there, and the first thing they did was to look around.

  It had snowed the night before, and the ground was covered about a foot deep.

  Arthur looked at Leonard and Leonard looked at Arthur.

  “Whatsa matter you? You wearin’ funny clothes again!” said Leonard.

  Arthur listened, his mouth open. He reached down to the bulbhorn tucked in his belt.

  Honk Honk went Arthur.

  “Whatsa matter us?” asked Leonard. “Look ata us! We back inna vaudeville?”

  Leonard was dressed in pants two sizes too small, and a jacket which didn’t match. He wore a tiny pointed felt hat which stood on his head like a roof on a silo.

  Arthur was dressed in a huge coat which dragged the ground, balloon pants, big shoes, and above his moppy red hair was a silk top hat, its crown broken out.

  “It’s a fine-a mess he’s gots us in disa time!”

  Arthur nodded agreement.

  “Quackenbush, he’s-a gonna hear about this!” said Leonard.

  Honk Honk went Arthur.

  * * *

  The truck backed into the parking lot and ran into the car parked just inside the entrance. The glass panels which were being carried on the truck fell and shattered into thousands of slivers in the snowy street. Cars slushing down the early morning swerved to avoid the pieces.

  “Ohh, Bud, Bud!” said the short baby-faced man behind the wheel. He was trying to back the truck over the glass and get it out of the way of the dodging cars.

  A tall thin man with a rat’s mustache ran from the glass company office and yelled at the driver.

  “Look what you’ve done. Now you’ll make me lose this job, too! Mr. Crabapple will . . .” He paused, looked at the little fat man, swallowed a few times.

  “Uh . . . hello, Lou,” he said, a tear running into his eye and brimming down his face. He turned away, pulled a handkerchief from his coveralls and wiped his eyes.

  “Hello, Bud,” said the little man, brightly. “I don’ . . . don’ . . . understand it either, Bud. But the man said we got something to do, and I came here to get you.” He looked around him at the littered glass. “Bud, I been a baaad boy!”

  “It doesn’t matter, Lou,” said Bud, climbing around to the passenger side of the truck. “Let’s get going before somebody gets us arrested.”

  “Oh, Bud?” asked Lou, as they drove through the town. “Did you ever get out of your contract?”

  “Yeah, Lou. Watch where you’re going! Do I have to drive myself?”

  They pulled out of Peoria at eight in the morning.

  * * *

  The two men beside the road were dressed in black suits and derby hats. They stood; one fat, the other thin. The rotund one put on a most pleasant face and smiled at the passing traffic. He lifted his thumb politely, as would a gentleman, and held it as each vehicle roared past.

  When a car whizzed by, he politely tipped his hat.

  The thin man looked distraught. He tried at first to strike the same pose as the larger man, but soon became flustered. He couldn’t hold his thumb right, or let his arm droop too far.

  “No, no, no, Stanley,” said the larger, mustached man, as if he were talking to a child. “Let me show you the way a man of gentle breeding asks for a ride. Politely. Gently. Thus.”

  He struck the same pose he had before.

  A car bore down on them doing eighty miles an hour. There was no chance in the world it would stop.

  Stanley tried to strike the same pose. He checked himself against the larger man’s attitude. He found himself lacking. He rubbed his ears and looked as if he would cry.

  The car roared past, whipping their hats off.

  They bent to pick them up and bumped heads. They straightened, each signaling that the other should go ahead. They simultaneously bent and bumped heads again.

  The large man stood stock still and did a slow burn. Stanley looked flustered. Their eyes were off each other. Then they both leaped for the hats and bumped heads once more.

  They grabbed up the hats and jumped to their feet.

  They had the wrong hats on. Stanley’s derby made the larger man look like a tulip bulb. The large derby covered Stanley down to his chin. He looked like a thumbtack.

  The large man grabbed the hat away and threw Stanley’s derby to the ground.

  “MMMMMM-MMMMMM-MMMMM!” said the large man.

  Stanley retrieved his hat. “But Ollie . . .” he said, then began whimpering. His hat was broken.

  Suddenly Stanley pulled Ollie’s hat off and stomped it. Ollie did another slow burn, then turned and ripped off Stanley’s tie.

  Stanley kicked Ollie in the shin. The large man jumped around and punched Stanley in the kneecap.

  A car stopped, and the driver jumped out to see what the trouble was.

  Ollie kicked him in the shin. He ripped off Stanley’s coat.

  Twenty minutes later, Stanley and Ollie were looking down from a hill. A thousand people were milling around on the turnpike below, tearing each other’s cars to pieces. Parts of trucks and motorcycles littered the roadway. The two watched a policeman pull up. He jumped out and yelled through a bullhorn to the people, too far away for the two men to hear what he said.

  As one, the crowd jumped him, and pieces of police car began to bounce off the blacktop.

  Ollie dusted off his clothing as meticulously as possible. His and Stanley’s clothes consisted of torn underwear and crushed derby hats.

  “That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us in, Stanley,” he said. He looked north.

  “And it looks like it shall soon snow. Mmmm-mmmm-mmmm!”

  They went over the hill as the wail of sirens began to fill the air.

  * * *

  “Hello, a-Central, givva me Heaven. ETcumspiri 220.”

  The switchboard hummed and crackled. Sparks leaped off the receiver of the public phone booth in the roadside park. Arthur did a back flip and jumped behind a trashcan.

  The sun was out, though snow was still on the ground. It was a cold February day, and they were the only people in the park.

  The noise died down at the other end and Leonard said:

  “Hallo, Boss! Hey, Boss! We doin’-a like you tell us, but you no send us to the right place. You no send us to Iowa. You send us to Idaho, where they grow the patooties.”

  Arthur came up beside his brother and listened. He honked his horn.

  On the other end of the line, Rufus T. Quackenbush spoke:

  “Is that a goose with you, or do you have a cold?”

  “Oh, no, Boss. You funnin’-a me. That’s-a Bagatelle.”

  “Then who are you?” asked Quackenbush.

  “Oh, you know who this is. I gives you three guesses.”

  “Three guesses, huh? Hmmmm, let’s see . . . you’re not Babe Ruth, are you?”

  “Hah, Boss. Babe Ruth, that’s-a chocolate bar.”

  “Hmmm. You’re not Demosthenes, are you?”

  “Nah, Boss. Demosthenes can do is bend in the middle of your leg.”

  “I should have known,” said Quackenbush. “This is Rampolini, isn’t it?”

  “You got it, Boss.”

  Arthur whistled and clapped his hands in the background.

  “Is that a hamster with you, Rampolini?”

  “Do-a hamsters whistle, Boss?”

  “Only when brought to a boil,” said Quackenbush.

/>   “Ahh, you too good-a for me, Boss!”

  “I know. And if I weren’t too good for you, I wouldn’t be good enough for anybody. Which is more than I can say for you.”

  “Did-a we wake you up, Boss?”

  “No, to be perfectly honest, I had to get up to answer the phone anyway. What do you want?”

  “Like I said, Boss Man, you put us inna wrong place. We no inna Iowa. We inna Idaho.”

  “That’s out of the Bronx, isn’t it? What should I do about it?”

  “Well-a, we don’t know. Even if-a we did, we know we can’t-a do it anyway, because we ain’t there. An if-a we was, we couldn’t get it done no ways.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Did-a you ever see one of our pictures, Boss?”

  There was a pause. “I see what you mean,” said Quackenbush.

  “Why for you send-a us, anyway? We was-a sleep, an then we inna Idaho!”

  “I looked at my calendar this morning. One of the dates was circled. And it didn’t have pits, either. Anyway, I just remembered that something very important shouldn’t take place today.”

  “What’s-a that got to do with us two?”

  “Well . . . I know it’s a little late, but I really would appreciate it if you two could manage to stop it.”

  “What’s-a gonna happen if we don’t?”

  “Uh, ha ha. Oh, small thing, really. The Universe’ll come to an end several million years too soon. A nice boy like you wouldn’t want that, would you? Of course not!”

  “What for I care the Universe’ll come to an end? We-a work for Paramount.”

  “No, no. Not the studio. The big one!”

  “M-a GM?”

  “No. The Universe. All that stuff out there. Look around you.”

  “You mean-a Idaho?”

  “No, no, Rampolini. Everything will end soon, too soon. You may not be concerned. A couple of million years is nothing to somebody like you. But what about me? I’m leasing this office, you know?”

  “Why-a us?”

  “I should have sent someone earlier, but I’ve . . . I’ve been so terrible busy. I was having a pedicure, you see, and the time just flew by.”

  “What-a do the two of us do to-a stop this?”

  “Oh, I just know you’ll think of something. And you’ll both be happy to know I’m sending you lots of help.”