Mason looked at him. He missed Victor Wallace dreadfully, and to rub it in this new guy had been shit. Hurt was piling up on hurt. ‘I’ve been busy,’ he said.
He grabbed Mason by the arm and led him away from the desk. ‘They’re dropping you from the movie,’ he said. ‘I found out half an hour ago.’
‘That’s impossible!’ he said ‘It’s my goddamn movie!’
‘They’ve done it. Nothing you can do, Rick.’
He clutched the man’s shirt and put his face close to his. The agent’s eyes balled up in fear. ‘You weak, little man!’ he said. ‘You let them do it! Victor would have fought for me!’
‘Well I ain’t Victor!’ he said. ‘And there’s nothing you can do about it. Any of it. You’ve only yourself to blame!’
Mason pushed him away. A strong urge to punch the man in the face rose like a geyser inside him and he struggled to put a heavy lid on the building pressure. ‘Nothing I can do? Well we’ll see about that!’
He dashed away across the highly-polished wooden floor, burst into Jefferson’s office, the secretary behind the desk rising on seeing him.
‘Mr Mason…’ she said uncertainly.
‘I want to see that swine Jefferson!’ he roared, stomping to the door of his office.
‘He’s not in. I can make an appointment for you.’
‘Fuck an appointment.’ He tried the handle on Jefferson’s glass-fronted office door. It was locked. ‘I know you’re in there, you two-faced, lying bastard!’ He rattled the door.
‘He’s out, Mr Mason,’ the secretary said, picking up the phone.
Mason ignored her, put his shoulder against the door, threw his weight upon it. The door frame splintered and the door flew open, the glass splintering. The woman shrieked at the noise. But the office was empty. Mason spun on his heel to see Hal Bremner telling the secretary to calm down.
‘You’re behind this!’ Mason cried, a black rage boiling up, flushing his cheeks.
‘Are you drunk?’ Bremner said. ‘Get the hell out of here, Mason, or I’ll get someone to throw you out.’
In an instant, Mason threw himself on Bremner, bowling the man to the ground with the impact. The secretary screamed as the two men rolled kicking and punching on the floor.
‘I’ll fucking kill him!’ Mason roared. ‘I’ll kill the two of you!’
Two uniformed security guards piled into the office, dragged Mason off Hal Bremner, who put a hand to his bloodied mouth. ‘You’re finished, Mason!’ he said. ‘Get the fucker out of my sight!’
Mason resisted, thrashing madly, but the guards had him pinned down real good. They hauled him out of the office.
* * * *
33
A Creature of the Night
They said they weren’t going to press charges for assault and criminal damage, because they knew they had him where they wanted him. He’d made it all the easier for them to dump him.
Rick mason didn’t know how it had happened. One minute he remembered being interviewed by the police officer, then a vague idea that he’d spoken to the woman behind the desk at reception. The next he was being sat on by security guards in Conrad Jefferson’s office. He’d suffered a blackout again. But his bruised knuckles, his painful shoulder, told him he’d done something drastic. When he was fully briefed on his actions he was both dumbfounded and alarmed. It had happened again. The rage had built up, had taken over him, swamped his very being and smothered his normal self.
Normal self? What was that? He didn’t know who he was anymore, what he was becoming. He was fast losing control, and something else was gaining the upper hand. He feared that he would relinquish control fully.
Eventually he was driven home. A bristling wall of newspaper reporters was standing in front of his mansion gates, clamouring for a comment, pointing cameras. He cowered away from their attention, wanting to seek solace in the darkest corners of the vehicle.
He was relieved to get inside and close the doors on the madness outside. Madness outside? He grimaced; he wasn’t so sure he could escape the madness. It was everywhere.
He went to the bedroom, opened the drawer and looked at the clothing again. He left the cigar box closed; he couldn’t bring himself to lift the lid. What was the point? The finger would still be there, pointing to his screaming guilt. He’d murdered Bunny Foster and he’d go to the electric chair because of it. Or maybe he’d get off because they’d think him mad, his only defence being he was possessed by the evil spirit of his dead father, the results of a pact with the devil. Then he’d spend the rest of his days locked away in some lunatic asylum, with all the horrors that brought. Or he ended this right now. Take a pistol, put it to his head. Blow his fucked-up brains out…
He closed the drawer on the gruesome reminders and padded along the landing to Betsy’s room. Strange how he now called it that, the room they used to share not so long ago. He looked down on her sleeping form.
His eyes were drawn to a small medicine bottle on the bedside table. He lifted the brown bottle; liquid sloshed inside. He didn’t recognise the bottle or its label, had never seen it before.
‘Betsy,’ he said quietly. She didn’t respond. He touched her shoulder, shoved her gently. She appeared to be so deep in sleep it was almost as if she really was drugged.
The thought stuck like a thorn in his mind. He looked closely at the medicine bottle again, unscrewed the cap and sniffed the contents. A bitter smell. He pocketed it and went to the bathroom.
‘What are you doing to me, you sick bastard?’ he said to his reflection in the mirror over the basin. ‘You’re dead. Leave me and my family alone…’
‘Mr Mason! Mr Mason!’ The maid was calling upstairs. ‘There’s a blacksmith here to see you.’
He came to lean over the banister. ‘What do you mean a blacksmith?’
‘That’s what he said he was, sir. He says he’s got a parcel to deliver to you directly, not to anyone else. He won’t leave it with me.’
‘I haven’t ordered anything from any blacksmith,’ Mason said, descending the stairs. But a man was standing impatiently at the door, a wooden box in his hands. ‘What do you want?’ he asked; he noticed a truck parked outside with the name Benny Fortune, Blacksmith painted in faded yellow letters on its side.
‘It’s what you ordered,’ said the man. ‘We made it for you.’
‘I didn’t order anything to be made. What is it?’
The man took a sheet of paper. ‘You sure did, sir,’ he said, waving the paper. ‘This is yours. I was told to hand it to nobody but you.’ He pushed the box at Mason and he took it. The man planted the piece of paper on top. ‘Sign here, please, Mr Mason.’
He did so. ‘How much do I owe you?’ he said mechanically.
‘You already paid in full.’ He fingered his cap in mock salute and went to his truck.
Mason carried the box inside. It was weighty, rattled with something metal. He prised off the lid.
Packed out with straw he saw a length of chain. Bemused, he lifted it out. He dropped it back inside when he realised what it was.
A leg-iron and chain. Like the one Franz Horvat had described that had been used to keep Dorottya a prisoner in her room in Castle Dragutin.
‘She won’t wake, doc,’ said Mason.
‘How many have you had?’ said Doctor Lombard, nodding at the glass of spirits in Mason’s hand. It was dark outside, and Mason was sitting all alone without a single lamp burning. Lombard went round flicking on switches, lighting the place up.
‘Not nearly enough,’ he replied. ‘It’s Betsy – I can’t wake her up.’
‘I’ll check on her.’
‘Doc, what is this you’ve been giving her?’ He held up the brown medicine bottle.
Lombard came closer, peered at it. ‘That’s not one of mine,’ he said. ‘I don’t recognise it at all. Where did you get it?’
‘I found it by Betsy’s bed. You didn’t prescribe this?’
He shook his head firmly. ‘Not at all.’
‘It would take time, but I can, if you wish. Why?’
‘I think it’s some kind of sleeping drug.’
‘A drug?’
‘I think it’s being used to keep Betsy ill. That’s why she can’t walk. That’s why she’s not been herself.’
The doctor’s expression grew serious. He used his handkerchief to take the bottle from him, uncapped it and took a sniff. ‘Why would anyone want to drug Betsy?’
Mason raised his glass. ‘Now there’s a question!’ Then his face fell sombre. ‘I’m not myself, doc.’
‘You haven’t been yourself for some time, Mr Mason.’
‘No, you don’t get it; I’m not myself!’ He laughed hysterically and found he couldn’t stop. Then he began to sob. ‘What kind of a man orders leg-irons to be made for his wife?’
‘You’re drunk, Mr Mason,’ he said, taking the glass off him. ‘And you are far from well. Come, let me take you to your room so you can lie down.’
Meekly, he let Lombard lead him upstairs. Outside the bedroom door Mason bade him check on Betsy. ‘I love her, you know, doc,’ he said. ‘I don’t care about all this…’ He waved loosely at the ceiling. ‘Money, fame, it all counts for nothing in the end. I’d do anything to go back to when I first met her, before I ever heard of Baron Dragutin.’
‘Take a tablet, lie down,’ he insisted.
‘Sure, doc. You’ve been good to us.’ He paused in closing the door on the doctor. ‘I miss Victor Wallace,’ he said. ‘He was like a father to me. A real father, not like…’
‘You’re upset and the drink is doing the talking for you. Rest up.’
‘Yeah, sure,’ he said. ‘Everything will be fine in the morning. All back to normal. People that are dead will be alive again and people who should be dead will be dead.’
‘Sounds fascinating,’ said Lombard, smiling, closing the door on Mason. He went across the landing to Betsy’s room, taking the medicine bottle out of his pocket and checking it over.
For a long while it seemed he existed in a place between wakefulness and sleep, where shadowy creatures crept from the far recesses of his mind to gnaw at him; where he swam in a thick sea of warm blood that he swallowed, breathed up his nose and made him choke; where the land turned to a carpet of severed, writhing, shivering, crawling, slug-like fingers.
Something dragged him from his torment. Something that pricked his exhausted mind awake. He lay there on the pillow in the pitch-black room. Staring up to where the ceiling should be, the ghosts of his nightmares playing out on it briefly before being torn to shreds as consciousness swept the remains of those grotesque images into the far reaches of his brain.
But then Rick Mason’s nightmares came vividly to life again.
A shapeless black shadow launched itself out of the dark and his breath was knocked suddenly from him as something heavy landed on his chest. He raised his hands to fight off the creature of the night, opened his mouth to scream out in alarm, but something soft was stuffed over his mouth, pressed hard against his nose. He struggled wildly, thrashed his arms and legs as the cotton wadding threatened to smother him.
Then his world began to smudge like fingers being dragged over a charcoal sketch. He grew tired, weak, his thoughts a ragged mess of frayed beginnings and loose ends that didn’t make any sense.
The face that was close to his was lost in the darkness, but he could smell cigarette smoke on its breath.
He lost feeling in his fingers that gripped the arm which pinned him down. His hand slipped away as his world crumbled into dust and was blown away into the furthest reaches of a cold, empty universe.
* * * *
34
Never to Move Again
He fought to prise his eyes open, his lids so damn heavy, his thoughts refusing to come together into anything meaningful. The first sensation was that he felt he couldn’t breathe, something stuffed deep into his mouth that threatened to choke him; and everything was hellishly black.
Rick Mason sought to spit out whatever it was filled his mouth, needing to shout, to scream, but his lips were unable to move. Neither could he move his hands.
Was he dead?
He tried to regain control of his breathing, to stem the sheer terror that threatened to engulf him.
No, he wasn’t dead. But he was in a heap of trouble, that much was for sure. His mouth had been gagged, and a hood of some sort had been thrust over his head. His hands had been tied above his head to something solid that didn’t want to budge, so that he hung there like a pig from a spit. The weight of his body caused pain in both outstretched arms. It became apparent that his legs had been tied securely too. What the hell was going on, he thought?
Then the hood was ripped off his head, causing him to start. He blinked, hardly believing what he was seeing.
He was in a dimly-lit stone-walled room, the walls glistening wet and slimy-green in places. A tiny slit of a window was embedded into one of the walls, beside this a series of rusted chains fastened by iron hoops to the wall. When he looked up, however, he discovered there was no ceiling; high above him was a dark void, barely visible rafters criss-crossing through it. It soon began to dawn on him exactly where he was.
Incredibly, he was being kept a prisoner in one of the newly constructed movie sets for The Devil Rises. It was Baron Dragutin’s dungeon.
A scuffling sound from his right made him look round. He saw a man, his fat upper torso naked, arms also tied above his head, which was covered by a hood, crudely made out of coarse sacking. His feet were bare and bloodied, his trousers muddied and torn.
Both men were strapped to a frame made from metal scaffolding poles. The man by Mason’s side was tugging at his bonds, tiredly, as if he’d been at it some time and his strength was flagging; his white, sweat-drenched flesh rippled with the sharp movements.
Mason became aware of someone else standing behind him. The sound of metal against metal, metal against stone. He tried to turn his head round to see who it was, but he couldn’t twist far enough.
The man at his side was groaning pitifully. Almost whimpering.
What is happening to me, Mason thought? His anxiety rose hot again. This doesn’t make sense. None of this is real.
He fought against his bindings. The scaffolding rattled but his bonds remained secure.
‘Easy there, Mason,’ said a man’s voice behind him.
Mason froze. He recognised it at once.
Warren Sykes stepped round to Mason’s front, bent down between him and the other stricken man. He placed a long knife on the stone floor, and next to it two pairs of pliers. Satisfied, he looked up, regarded Mason with moon-cold, dispassionate eyes, then he took a pistol from his coat pocket, checked it over, put it back. Mason thought it looked ex-army issue.
He pulled desperately at his fastenings again.
‘Don’t do that,’ warned Sykes. ‘It’s not going to get you anywhere.’ He went over to the half-naked man. ‘Want to see who you’ve got for company, Mason?’ He ripped the hood off.
It was Conrad Jefferson.
The man’s eyes were billiard-ball-wide, panic-stricken. He flinched when the hood was removed, as if he’d been burnt, his chest ballooning in and out.
This just wasn’t real, Mason thought. It was as if he were still caught up in a dreadful nightmare from which it was impossible to wake.
Sykes came back to stand directly in front of Mason, staring unflinchingly deep into his eyes.
‘I’m going to take this gag off you,’ he said. ‘But don’t even think of shouting out for help. In the first instance this entire stage has been soundproofed. Personally, I don’t think talkies will take off, but they sure did me a favour. Hell, a bomb could go off in here and I’ll bet no one would hear it. Secondly, you so much as make a murmur and I’ll send my fist so deep into your stomach that it’ll snap your backbone. You got
all that?’ Mason nodded dumbly. Sykes untied the cloth that held the wadding in his mouth. Next he pinched out the wadding and dropped it to the floor.
Mason coughed, gasped for air, and screamed out for help.
Sykes landed a balled fist into Mason’s unprotected stomach and he crumpled in pain. He vomited and struggled to draw breath.
‘What did I tell you?’ said Sykes. ‘Why is it actors find it so difficult to take direction?’ He gave a grunt of a chuckle at his own little joke.
Mason, his eyes watering, shook his head, as if trying to shake away the madness. ‘Sykes, what’s going on?’
Sykes went over to the knife on the floor, bent slowly down and picked it up; its blade appeared cold and icy-blue in the dim light. Sykes twirled it before his eyes. ‘You know, Mason, I gotta admire your father.’
‘My father? You’re crazy, Sykes. He was a monster. In God’s name, what are you doing with that knife?’
He saw Jefferson’s gaze was transfixed by the cruel blade, his flabby body glossy like a large white seal. He glanced over at Mason. There were tears in his uncomprehending eyes.
Sykes ran a thumb down the sharp edge of the knife. ‘Some people find pleasure in sex, some in food, some in fine wines. Some find it in pain and in death. Ever seen a man die, Mason?’
He shook his head. ‘Let me go. Set us both free.’
‘I’ve seen a hundred different days to die,’ he continued. ‘Bullet, bomb blast, bayonet, grenade, knife, strangulation, drowning. Ever think it strange that there is only one way to enter life and a hundred ways to leave it?’ The blade drew blood and Sykes studied the bubble of red sitting on the end of his thumb. He put his thumb into his mouth to suck off the blood.
‘You’re my head of security!’ he said. ‘What the fuck is going on?’
‘Ironic, eh?’ he said. He sized Jefferson up.
‘Are you after money, is that it?’
‘Got my money, thanks.’ Sykes prodded Jefferson’s exposed stomach and the man shuddered. ‘People don’t realise how tough the human skin is, or how thick. It can quickly blunt a knife, which is why you have to make sure it’s good and sharp to start with.’ He placed the back of the knife on Jefferson’s stomach. ‘I’m going to skin you alive,’ he said. ‘First I’ll make a long incision across here…’ He drew the blade across his flesh. ‘…all around you. I’ll warn you now that the pain will be almost unbearable. Perhaps you will faint. That will be a good thing for you, because I will then take these pliers and I will peel the skin upwards, as if I was taking a vest off you. A thick, fatty, white vest. If you are lucky you will stay unconscious. If you are doubly lucky you might have a heart attack and die. And when I have stripped the skin from you and have let you suffer for a while I will take my gun and I will put a bullet through your head.’ He turned to Mason. ‘You see, your father is such an inspiration to me!’
SILENT (a psychological thriller, combining mystery, crime and suspense) Page 21