The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2003, Volume 14

by Stephen Jones

  “So what do you want?” Harry asked. “You want passes?”

  Alec shook his head.

  “Refund, then.”

  “No.”

  Harry froze with his hand on his wallet, flashed Alec a surprised, hostile look. “What do you want then?”

  “How about a job? You need someone to sell popcorn. I promise not to wear my paste-on nails to work.”

  Harry stared at him for a long moment without any reply, then slowly removed his hand from his back pocket.

  “Can you work weekends?” he asked.

  In October, Alec hears that Steven Greenberg is back in New Hampshire, shooting exteriors for his new movie on the grounds of Phillips Exeter Academy – something with Tom Hanks and Haley Joel Osment, a misunderstood teacher inspiring troubled kid-geniuses. Alec doesn’t need to know any more than that to know it smells like Steven might be on his way to winning another Oscar. Alec, though, preferred the earlier work, Steven’s fantasies and suspense thrillers.

  He considers driving down to have a look, wonders if he could talk his way onto the set – Oh yes, I knew Steven when he was a boy – wonders if he might even be allowed to speak with Steven himself. But he soon dismisses the idea. There must be hundreds of people in this part of New England who could claim to have known Steven back in those days, and it isn’t as if they were ever close. They only really had that one conversation, the day Steven saw her. Nothing before; nothing much after.

  So it is a surprise when one Friday afternoon close to the end of the month Alec takes a call from Steven’s personal assistant, a cheerful, efficient-sounding woman named Marcia. She wants Alec to know that Steven was hoping to see him, and if he can drop in – is Sunday morning all right? – there will be a set pass waiting for him at Main Building, on the grounds of the Academy. They’ll expect to see him around 10:00 a.m., she says in her bright chirp of a voice, before ringing off. It is not until well after the conversation has ended that Alec realizes he has received not an invitation but a summons.

  A goateed PA meets Alec at Main and walks him out to where they’re filming. Alec stands with thirty or so others and watches from a distance while Hanks and Osment stroll together across a green quad littered with fallen leaves, Hanks nodding pensively while Osment talks and gestures. In front of them is a dolly, with two men and their camera equipment sitting on it and two men pulling it. Steven and a small group of others stand off to the side, Steven observing the shot on a video monitor. Alec has never been on a movie set before, and he watches the work of professional make-believe with great pleasure.

  After Steven has what he wants, and has talked with Hanks for a few minutes about the shot, he starts over towards the crowd where Alec is standing. There is a shy, searching look on his face. Then he sees Alec and opens his mouth in a gap-toothed grin, lifts one hand in a wave, looks for a moment very much the lanky boy again. He asks Alec if he wants to walk to craft services with him, for a chili dog and a soda.

  On the walk Steven seems anxious, jiggling the change in his pockets and shooting sideways looks at Alec. Alec knows he wants to talk about Imogene, but can’t figure how to broach the subject. When at last he begins to talk, it’s about his memories of The Rosebud. He talks about how he loved the place, talks about all the great pictures he saw for the first time there. Alec smiles and nods, but is secretly a little astounded at the depths of Steven’s self-deception. Steven never went back after The Birds. He didn’t see any of the movies he says he saw there.

  At last, Steven stammers, What’s going to happen to the place after you retire? Not that you should retire! I just mean – do you think you’ll run the place much longer?

  Not much longer, Alec replies – it’s the truth – but says no more. He is concerned not to degrade himself asking for a handout – although the thought is in him that this is in fact why he came. That ever since receiving Steven’s invitation to visit the set he had been fantasizing that they would talk about the Rosebud, and that Steven, who is so wealthy, and who loves movies so much, might be persuaded to throw Alec a life preserver.

  The old movie houses are national treasures, Steven says. I own a couple, believe it or not. I run them as revival joints. I’d love to do something like that with the Rosebud someday. That’s a dream of mine you know.

  Here is his chance, the opportunity, that Alec was not willing to admit he was hoping for. But instead of telling him that the Rosebud is in desperate straits, sure to close, Alec changes the subject . . . ultimately lacks the stomach to do what must be done.

  What’s your next project? Alec asks.

  After this? I was considering a remake, Steven says, and gives him another of those shifty sideways looks from the corners of his eyes. You’d never guess what. Then, suddenly, he reaches out, touches Alec’s arm. Being back in New Hampshire has really stirred some things up for me. I had a dream about our old friend, would you believe it?

  Our old— Alec starts, then realizes who he means.

  I had a dream the place was closed. There was a chain on the front doors, and boards in the windows. I dreamed I heard a girl crying inside, Steven says, and grins nervously. Isn’t that the funniest thing?

  Alec drives home with a cool sweat on his face, ill at ease. He doesn’t know why he didn’t say anything, why he couldn’t say anything; Greenberg was practically begging to give him some money. Alec thinks bitterly that he has become a very foolish and useless old man.

  At the theater there are nine messages on Alec’s machine. The first is from Lois Weisel, who Alec has not heard from in years. Her voice is brittle. She says, Hi Alec, Lois Weisel at B.U. As if he could have forgotten her. Lois saw Imogene in Midnight Cowboy. Now she teaches documentary film-making to graduate students. Alec knows these two things are not unconnected, just as it is no accident that Steven Greenberg became what he became. Will you give me a call? I wanted to talk to you about – I just – will you call me? Then she laughs, a strange, frightened kind of laugh, and says, This is crazy. She exhales heavily. I just wanted to find out if something was happening to the Rosebud. Something bad. So – call me.

  The next message is from Dana Lewellyn who saw her in The Wild Bunch. The message after that is from Shane Leonard, who saw Imogene in American Graffiti. Darren Campbell, who saw her in Reservoir Dogs. Some of them talk about the dream, a dream identical to the one that Steven Greenberg described, boarded over windows, chain on the door, girl crying. Some only say they want to talk. By the time the answering-machine tape has played its way to the end, Alec is sitting on the floor of his office, his hands balled into fists – an old man weeping helplessly.

  Perhaps twenty people have seen Imogene in the last twenty-five years, and nearly half of them have left messages for Alec to call. The other half will get in touch with him over the next few days, to ask about the Rosebud, to talk about their dream. Alec will speak with almost everyone living who has ever seen her, all of those whom Imogene felt compelled to speak to: a drama professor, the manager of a video rental store, a retired financier who in his youth wrote angry, comical film reviews for The Lansdowne Record, and others. A whole congregation of people who flocked to the Rosebud instead of to church on Sundays, those whose prayers were written by Paddy Chayefsky and whose hymnals were composed by John Williams and whose intensity of faith is a call that Imogene is helpless to resist. Alec himself.

  Steven’s accountant handles the fine details of the fund-raiser to save the Rosebud. The place is closed for three weeks to refurbish. New seats, state-of-the-art sound. A dozen artisans put up scaffolding and work with little paintbrushes to restore the crumbling plaster molding on the ceiling. Steven adds personnel to run the day-to-day operations. He has bought a controlling interest, and the place is really his now, although Alec has agreed to stay on to manage things for a little while.

  Lois Weisel drives up three times a week to film a documentary about the renovation, using her grad students in various capacities, as electricians, sound people,
grunts. Steven wants a gala reopening to celebrate the Rosebud’s past. When Alec hears what he wants to show first – a double feature of The Wizard of Oz and The Birds – his forearms prickle with goose-flesh; but he makes no argument.

  On reopening night, the place is crowded like it hasn’t been since Titanic. The local news is there to film people walking inside in their best suits. Of course, Steven is there, which is why all the excitement . . . although Alec thinks he would have a sell-out even without Steven, that people would have come just to see the results of the renovation. Alec and Steven pose for photographs, the two of them standing under the marquee in their tuxedoes, shaking hands. Steven’s tuxedo is Armani, bought for the occasion. Alec got married in his.

  Steven leans into him, pressing a shoulder against his chest. What are you going to do with yourself?

  Before Steven’s money, Alec would have sat behind the counter handing out tickets, and then gone up himself to start the projector. But Steven hired someone to sell tickets and run the projector. Alec says, Guess I’m going to sit and watch the movie.

  Save me a seat, Steven says. I might not get in until The Birds, though. I have some more press to do out here.

  Lois Weisel has a camera set up at the front of the theater, turned to point at the audience, and loaded with high speed film for shooting in the dark. She films the crowd at different times, recording their reactions to The Wizard of Oz. This was to be the conclusion of her documentary – a packed house enjoying a twentieth-century classic in this lovingly restored old movie palace – but her movie wasn’t going to end like she thought it would.

  In the first shots on Lois’s reel it is possible to see Alec sitting in the back left of the theater, his face turned up towards the screen, his glasses flashing blue in the darkness. The seat to the left of him, on the aisle, is empty, the only empty seat in the house. Sometimes he can be seen eating popcorn. Other times he is just sitting there watching, his mouth open slightly, an almost worshipful look on his face.

  Then in one shot he has turned sideways to face the seat to his left. He has been joined by a woman in blue. He is leaning over her. They are unmistakably kissing. No one around them pays them any mind. The Wizard of Oz is ending. We know this because we can hear Judy Garland, reciting the same five words over and over in a soft, yearning voice, saying – well, you know what she is saying. They are only the loveliest five words ever said in all of film.

  In the shot immediately following this one, the house lights are up, and there is a crowd of people gathered around Alec’s body, slumped heavily in his seat. Steven Greenberg is in the aisle, yelping hysterically for someone to bring a doctor. A child is crying. The rest of the crowd generates a low rustling buzz of excited conversation. But never mind this shot. The footage that came just before it is much more interesting.

  It is only a few seconds long, this shot of Alec and his unidentified companion – a few hundred frames of film – but it is the shot that will make Lois Weisel’s reputation, not to mention a large sum of money. It will appear on television shows about unexplained phenomena, it will be watched and rewatched at gatherings of those fascinated with the supernatural. It will be studied, written about, debunked, confirmed, and celebrated. Let’s see it again.

  He leans over her. She turns her face up to his, and closes her eyes and she is very young and she is giving herself to him completely. Alec has removed his glasses. He is touching her lightly at the waist. This is the way people dream of being kissed, a movie-star kiss. Watching them, one almost wishes the moment would never end. And over all this, Dorothy’s small, brave voice fills the darkened theater. She is saying something about home. She is saying something everyone knows.

  KIM NEWMAN

  Egyptian Avenue

  KIM NEWMAN HAS WON the Bram Stoker Award, the British Fantasy Award, the British Science Fiction Award, the Children of the Night Award, the Fiction Award of the Lord Ruthven Assembly and the International Horror Critics Guild Award.

  His novels include The Night Mayor, Bad Dreams, Jago, The Quorum, Back in the USSA (with Eugene Byrne), Life’s Lottery and the acclaimed Anno Dracula sequence – comprising the title novel, plus The Bloody Red Baron, Judgment of Tears (aka Dracula Cha Cha Cha) and Johnny Alucard. An English Ghost Story is currently being developed as a movie from a script by the author, while The Matter of Britain is another collaboration with Byrne.

  Newman’s short fiction has been collected in The Original Dr Shade and Other Stories, Famous Monsters, Seven Stars, Unforgivable Stories and Where the Bodies Are Buried, while his story “Week Woman” was adapted for the Canadian TV series The Hunger. In 2001, the author directed a 100-second short film, Missing Girl, for cable TV channel The Studio.

  “This is an entry in a series of 1970s-set occult/SF/mystery stories I’ve been working at on and off since ‘The End of the Pier Show’,” explains Newman. “Richard Jeperson has also appeared in ‘You Don’t Have to Be Mad . . .’, ‘Seven Stars: The Biafran Bank Manager’ and ‘Tomorrow Town’. For my entry in the revived Night Visions series, I’ve written ‘Swellhead’, a novella that brings Jeperson’s story up to the present day, though I’ve still not solved all the ongoing mysteries.

  “ ‘Egyptian Avenue’ was written for Embracing the Mutation, a collection in which writers were given their pick of pre-existing J.K. Potter illustrations and asked to write something inspired by one of them. I assume from the picture I chose that J.K. once took the tour of Highgate Cemetery – the old one, not the one where Karl Marx is buried – that I did.

  “Incidentally, William Schafer and Bill Sheehan had a system whereby they sent the first author on the list a big batch of illustrations; he or she took his out and sent on a diminished batch to the next author, who did the same. I’ve no idea where I came in the list, but I got the pictures from Graham Joyce and had to send them on to Michael Marshall Smith. Knowing that Mike is rarely at his sharpest first thing in the morning when he’d be opening the post, I took William and Bill’s covering letter and sent it to him with some illustrations of my own done in the style of my then eight-year-old nephew, signed ‘JKP’ in crayon – a haunted house with a kat sat in front of it and smoke curling from the chimney, a white-sheet ghost going ‘boo!’, a ‘scary monster’ with fangs. I sent the real Potters a day or so later, honest.”

  “THIS TOMB’S LEAKING SAND,” said Fred Regent. “And beetles.”

  Fine white stuff – hourglass quality, not bucket-and-spade material – seeped from a vertical crack, fanning out around and between clumps of lush, long green grass. Black bugs glittered in morning sunlight, hornlike protrusions rooting through the overgrowth, sand-specks stuck to their carapaces. Fred looked up at the face of the tomb, which was framed by faux-Egyptian columns. The name BUNNING was cut deep into the stone, hemmed around by weather-beaten hieroglyphs.

  It was the summer of 197–. Fred Regent, late of the Metropolitan Constabulary, was again adventuring with the supernatural. As before, his guide off life’s beaten track was Richard Jeperson, the most resourceful agent of the Diogenes Club, which remained the least-known branch of Britain’s intelligence and police services. All the anomalies came down to Jeperson. Last month, it had been glam-rock ghouls gutting groupies at the Glastonbury Festival and an obeah curse on Prime Minister Edward Heath hatched somewhere inside his own cabinet; this morning, it was ghosts in Kingstead Cemetery.

  Jeperson, something of an anomaly himself, scooped up a handful of sand and looked down his hawk nose at a couple of fat bugs.

  “Were we on the banks of the great river Nile rather than on a pleasant hill overlooking the greater city of London,” said Jeperson, “I shouldn’t be surprised to come across these little fellows. As it is, I’m flummoxed. These, Fred, are scarabus beetles.”

  “I saw Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb at the Rialto, Richard. I know what a scarab is.”

  Jeperson laughed, deepening creases in his tanned forehead and cheeks. His smile lifted black moustaches and
showed sharp teeth-points. The Man From the Diogenes Club sounded as English as James Mason, but when suntanned he looked more like an Arab, or a Romany disguised as Charles II. His mass of black ringlets was not a wig, though. And no gypsy would dress as gaudily as Richard Jeperson.

  “Of course you do, Fred. I elucidate for the benefit of exposition. Thinking out loud. That is Sahara sand and these are North African beasties.”

  “Absolutely, Guv’nor. And that bloody big dead one there is a scorpion.”

  Jeperson looked down with amused distaste. The scorpion twitched, scuttled and was squashed under Jeperson’s foot.

  “Not so dead, Fred.”

  “Is now.”

  “Let us hope so.”

  Jeperson considered his sole, then scraped the evil crushed thing off on a chunk of old headstone.

  For this expedition to darkest N6, he wore a generously bloused leopard-pattern safari jacket and tight white high-waisted britches tucked into sturdy fell-walker’s boots. His ensemble included a turquoise Sam Browne belt (with pouches full of useful implements and substances), a tiger’s-fang amulet that was supposed to protect against evil, and an Australian bush hat with three corks dangling from the rim. Champagne corks, each marked with a date in felt-tip pen.

  “The term for a thing so out of place is, as we all know, an ‘apport’,” said Jeperson. “Unless some peculiar person has for reasons unknown placed sand, scarabs and scorps in our path for the purpose of puzzlement, we must conclude that they have materialized for some supernatural reason. Mr Lillywhite, this is your belief, is it not? This is yet another manifestation of the spookery you have reported?”

  Lillywhite nodded. He was a milk-skinned, fair-haired middle-aged man with burning red cheeks and a peacock’s-tail-pattern smock. His complaint had been passed from the police to the Diogenes Club, and then fielded to Jeperson.

  “What is all this doing here?” asked Vanessa, Jeperson’s other assistant – the one everyone noticed before realizing that Fred was in the room. The tall, model-beautiful redhead wore huge sunglasses with swirly mint-and-yellow patterns on the lenses and frames, a sari-like arrangement of silk scarves that exposed a ruby winking in her navel, and stack-heeled cream leather go-go boots. Beside the other two, Fred felt a bit underdressed in his Fred Perry and Doc Martens.