by Clive Barker
Two steps, two cautious steps, and he found only air. But on the third – well, well, what have we here? – his hand touched a cold tile surface.
"Whoe-ee!" he said. It was the urinal: and touching it was like finding gold in a pan of trash. Wasn't that the sickly smell of disinfectant wafting up from the gutter? It was, oh boy, it was.
Still whooping, he unzipped and started to relieve the ache in his bladder, splashing his feet in his haste. What the hell: he had this illusion beat. If he turned round now he'd find the fantasy dispersed, surely. The saloon, the dead boy, the storm, all would be gone. It was some chemical throw-back, bad dope lingering in his system and playing dumb-ass games with his imagination. As he shook the last drops on to his blue suedes, he heard the hero of this movie speak.
"What you doin' pissin' in mah street, boy?"
It was John Wayne's voice, accurate to the last slurred syllable, and it was just behind him. Ricky couldn't even contemplate turning round. The guy would blow off his head for sure. It was in the voice, that threatful ease that warned: I'm ready to draw, so do your worst. The cowboy was armed, and all Ricky had in his hand was his dick, which was no match for a gun even if he'd been better hung.
Very cautiously he tucked his weapon away and zipped himself up, then raised his hands. In front of him the wavering image of the toilet wall had disappeared again. The storm howled: his ear bled down his neck.
"OK boy, I want you to take off that gunbelt and drop it to the ground. You hear me?" said Wayne.
"Yes."
"Take it nice and slow, and keep those hands where I can see them."
Boy, this guy was really into it.
Nice and slow, like the man said, Ricky unbuckled his belt, pulled it through the loops in his jeans and dropped it to the-floor. The keys should have jangled as they hit the tiles, he hoped to God they would. No such luck. There was a clinking thud that was the sound of metal on sand.
"OK," said Wayne. "Now you're beginning to behave. What have you got to say for yourself?"
"I'm sorry?" said Ricky lamely.
"Sorry?"
"For pissing in the street."
"I don't reckon sorry is sufficient penitence," said Wayne.
"But really I am. It was all a mistake."
"We've had about enough of you strangers around these parts. Found that kid with his trousers round his ankles takin' a dump in the middle of the saloon. Well I call that uncouth! Where's you sons of bitches been educated anyhow? It that what they're teaching you in them fancy schools out East?"
"I can't apologise enough."
"Damn right you can't' Wayne drawled. "You with the kid?"
"In a manner of speaking."
"What kind of fancy-talk is that?" he jabbed his gun in Rick's back: it felt very real indeed. "Are you with him or not?"
"I just meant -”
"You don't mean nothing in this territory, mister, you take that from me."
He cocked the gun, audibly.
"Why don't you turn round, son and lets us see what you're made of?"Ricky had seen this routine before. The man turns, he goes for a concealed gun, and Wayne shoots him. No debate, no time to discuss the ethics of it, a bullet would do the job better than words.
Turn round I said."
Very slowly, Ricky turned to face the survivor of a thousand shootouts, and there was the man himself, or rather a brilliant impersonation of him. A middle period Wayne, before he'd grown fat and sick-looking. A Rio Grande Wayne, dusty from the long trail and squinting from a lifetime of looking at the horizon. Ricky had never had a taste for Westerns. He hated all the forced machismo, the glorification of dirt and cheap heroism. His generation had put flowers in rifle-barrels, and he'd thought that was a nice thing to do at the time; still did, in fact.
This face, so mock-manly, so uncompromising, personified a handful of lethal lies – about the glory of America's frontier origins, the morality of swift justice, the tenderness in the heart of brutes. Ricky hated the face. His hands just itched to hit it.
Fuck it, if the actor, whoever he was, was going to shoot him anyway, what was to be lost by putting his fist in the bastard's face? The thought became the act: Ricky made a fist, swung and his knuckles connected with Wayne's chin. The actor was slower than his screen image. He failed to dodge the blow, and Ricky took the opportunity to knock the gun out of Wayne's hand. He then followed through with a barrage of punches to the body, just as he'd seen in the movies. It was a spectacular display.
The bigger man reeled backwards under the blows, and tripped, his spur catching in the dead boy's hair. He lost his balance and fell in the dust, bested.
The bastard was down! Ricky felt a thrill he'd never tasted before; the exhilaration of physical triumph. My God! He'd brought down the greatest cowboy in the world. His critical faculties were overwhelmed by the victory.
The dust-storm suddenly thickened. Wayne was still on the floor, splattered with blood from a smashed nose and a broken lip. The sand was already obscuring him, a curtain drawn across the shame of his defeat.
"Get up," Ricky demanded, trying to capitalise on the situation before the opportunity was lost entirely.
Wayne seemed to grin as the storm covered him.
"Well boy," he leered, rubbing his chin, “we'll make a man of you yet…"Then his body was eroded by the driving dust, and momentarily something else was there in its place, a form Ricky could make no real sense of. A shape that was and was not Wayne, which deteriorated rapidly towards inhumanity.
The dust was already a furious bombardment, filling ears and eyes. Ricky stumbled away from the scene of the fight, choking, and miraculously he found a wall, a door, and before he could make sense of where he was the roaring storm had spat him out into the silence of the Movie Palace.
There, though he'd promised himself to butch it up since he'd grown a moustache, he gave a small cry that would not have shamed Fay Wray, and collapsed.
In the foyer Lindi Lee was telling Birdy why she didn't like films very much.
"I mean, Dean likes cowboy movies. I don't really like any of that stuff. I guess I shouldn't say that to you -”
"No, that's OK."
" – But I mean you must really love movies, I guess. "Cause you work here."
"I like some movies. Not everything."
"Oh." She seemed surprised. A lot of things seemed to surprise her. "I like wild-life movies, you know."
"Yes…"
"You know? Animals… and stuff."
"Yes…" Birdy remembered her guess about Lindi Lee, that she wasn't much of a conversationalist. Got it in one.
"I wonder what's keeping them?" said Lindi.
The lifetime Ricky had been living in the dust-storm had lasted no more than two minutes in real time. But then in the movies time was elastic.
I'll go look," Birdy ventured.
"He's probably left without me," Lindi said again.
"We'll find out."
Thanks."
"Don't fret," said Birdy, lightly putting her hand on the girl's thin arm as she passed. "I'm sure everything's OK."
She disappeared through the swing doors into the cinema, leaving Lindi Lee alone in the foyer. Lindi sighed. Dean wasn't the first boy who'd run out on her, just because she wouldn't produce the goods. Lindi had her own ideas about when and how she'd go all the way with a boy; this wasn't the time and Dean wasn't the boy. He was too slick, too shifty, and his hair smelt of diesel oil. If he had run out on her, she wasn't going to weep buckets over the loss. As her mother always said, there were plenty more fish in the sea.
She was staring at the poster for next week's attraction when she heard a thump behind her, and there was a pie-bald rabbit, a fat, dozy sweetheart of a thing, sitting in the middle of the foyer staring up at her.
"Hello," she said to the rabbit.
The rabbit licked itself adorably.
Lindi Lee loved animals; she loved True Life Adventure Movies in which creatures were filmed in their
native habitat to tunes from Rossini, and scorpions did square-dances while mating, and every bear-cub was lovingly called a little scamp. She lapped up that stuff. But most of all she loved rabbits.
The rabbit took a couple of hops towards her. She knelt to stroke it. It was warm and its eyes were round and pink. It hopped past her up the stairs.
"Oh I don't think you should go up there," she said.
For one thing it was dark at the top of the stairs. For another there was a sign that read "Private. Staff only' on the wall. But the rabbit seemed determined, and the clever mite kept well ahead of her as she followed it up the stairs.
At the top it was pitch black, and the rabbit had gone.
Something else was sitting there in the rabbit's place, its eyes burning bright.
With Lindi Lee illusions could be simple. No need to seduce her into a complete fiction like the boy, this one was already dreaming. Easy meat.
"Hello," Lindi Lee said, scared a little by the presence ahead of her. She looked into the dark, trying to sort out some outline, a hint of a face. But there was none. Not even a breath.
She took one step back down the stairs but it reached for her suddenly, and caught her before she toppled, silencing her quickly, intimately.
This one might not have much passion to steal, but it sensed another use here. The tender body was still budding: the orifices unused to invasions. It took Lindi up the few remaining stairs and sealed her away for future investigation.
"Ricky? Oh God, Ricky!"
Birdy knelt beside Ricky's body and shook him. At least he was still breathing, that was something, and though at first sight there seemed to be a great deal of blood, in fact the wound was merely a nick in his ear.
She shook him again, more roughly, but there was no response. After a frantic search she found his pulse: it was strong and regular. Obviously he'd been attacked by somebody, possibly Lindi Lee's absent boyfriend. In which case, where was he? Still in the John perhaps, armed and dangerous. There was no way she was going to be damn fool enough to step in there and have a look, she'd seen that routine too many times. Woman in Peril: standard stuff. The darkened room, the stalking beast. Well, instead of walking bang into that clichй she was going to do what she silently exhorted heroines to do time and again: defy her curiosity and call the cops.
Leaving Ricky where he lay, she walked up the aisle, and back into the foyer.
It was empty. Lindi Lee had either given up on her boyfriend altogether, or found somebody else on the street outside to take her home. Whichever, she'd closed the front door behind her as she left, leaving only a hint of Johnson's Baby Powder on the air behind her. OK, that certainly made things easier, Birdy thought, as she stepped into the Ticket Office to dial the cops. She was rather pleased to think that the girl had found the commonsense to give up on her lousy date.
She picked up the receiver, and immediately somebody spoke.
"Hello there," said the voice, nasal and ingratiating, “it's a little late at night to be using the phone, isn't it?"
It wasn't the operator, she was sure. She hadn't even punched a number.
Besides, it sounded like Peter Loire.
"Who is this?"
"Don't you recognise me?"
"I want to speak to the police."
"I'd like to oblige, really I would."
"Get off the line, will you? This is an emergency! I need the police."
"I heard you first time," the whine went on.
"Who are you?"
"You already played that line."' There's somebody hurt in here. Will you please -”
"Poor Rick."
He knew the name. Poor Rick, he said, as though he was a loving friend.
She felt the sweat begin in her brow: felt it sprout out of her pores. He knew Ricky's name.
"Poor, poor Rick," the voice said again. "Still I'm sure we'll have a happy ending. Aren't you?"
"This is a matter of life and death," Birdy insisted, impressed by how controlled she felt sure she was sounding.
"I know," said Lorre. "Isn't it exciting?"
"Damn you! Get off this phone! Or so help me -”
"So help you what? What can a fat girl like you hope to do in a situation like this, except blubber?"
"You fucking creep."
"My pleasure."
"Do I know you?"
"Yes and no," the tone of the voice was wavering.
"You're a friend of Ricky's, is that it?" One of the dope-fiends he used to hang out with. Kind of idiot-game they'd get up'to. All right, you've had your stupid little joke," she said, “now get off the line before you do some serious harm."
"You're harassed," the voice said, softening. "I understand…" it was changing magically, sliding up an octave, “you're trying to help the man you love…"its tone was feminine now, the accent altering, the slime becoming a purr. And suddenly it was Garbo.
"Poor Richard," she said to Birdy. "He's tried so hard, hasn't he?" She was gentle as a lamb.
Birdy was speechless: the impersonation was as faultless as that of Lorre, as female as the first had been male.
"All right, I'm impressed," said Birdy, "now let me speak to the cops."
"Wouldn't this be a fine and lovely night to go out walking, Birdy? Just we two girls together."
"You know my name."
"Of course I know your name. I'm very close to you."
"What do you mean, close to me?"
The reply was throaty laughter, Garbo's lovely laughter.
Birdy couldn't take it anymore. The trick was too clever; she could feel herself succumbing to the impersonation, as though she were speaking to the star herself. "No," she said down the phone, “you don't convince me, you hear?" Then her temper snapped. She yelled: "You're a fake!" into the mouthpiece of the phone so loudly she felt the receiver tremble, and then slammed it down. She opened the Office and went to the outer door. Lindi Lee had not simply slammed the door behind her. It was locked and bolted from the inside.
"Shit," Birdy said quietly.
Suddenly the foyer seemed smaller than she'd previously thought it, and so did her reserve of cool. She mentally slapped herself across the face, the standard response for a heroine verging on hysteria. Think this through, she instructed herself. One: the door was locked. Lindi Lee hadn't done it, Ricky couldn't have done it, she certainly hadn't done it. Which implied Two: There was a weirdo in here. Maybe the same he, she or it that was on the phone. Which implied Three: He, she or it must have access to another line, somewhere in the building. The only one she knew of was upstairs, in the storeroom. But there was no way she was going up there. For reasons see Heroine in Peril. Which implied Four: She had to open this door with Ricky's keys.
Right, there was the imperative: get the keys from Ricky.
She stepped back into the cinema. For some reason the house-lights were jumpy, or was that just panic in her optic nerve? No, they were flickering slightly; the whole interior seemed to be fluctuating, as though it were breathing.
Ignore it: fetch the keys.
She raced down the aisle, aware, as she always was when she ran, that her breasts were doing a jig, her buttocks too. A right sight I look, she thought for anyone with the eyes to see. Ricky, was moaning in his faint. Birdy looked for the keys, but his belt had disappeared.
"Ricky…"she said close to his face. The moans multiplied.
"Ricky, can you hear me? It's Birdy, Rick. Birdy."
"Birdy?"
"We're locked in, Ricky. Where are the keys?"
"… keys?"
"You're not wearing your belt, Ricky," she spoke slowly, as if to an idiot, “where-are-your-keys?"
The jigsaw Ricky was doing in his aching head was suddenly solved, and he sat up. "Boy!" he said.
"What boy?"
"In the John. Dead in the John."
"Dead? Oh Christ. Dead? Are you sure?"
Ricky was in some sort of trance, it seemed. He didn't look at her, he just stared into middle-d
istance, seeing something she couldn't.
"Where are the keys?" she asked again. "Ricky. It's important. Concentrate."
"Keys?"
She wanted to slap him now, but his face was already bloody and it seemed sadistic.
"On the floor," he said after a time.
"In the John? On the floor in the John?"
Ricky nodded. The movement of his head seemed to dislodge some terrible thoughts: suddenly he looked as though he was going to cry.
"It's all going to be all right," said Birdy.
Ricky's hands had found his face, and he was feeling his features, a ritual of reassurance.
"Am I here?" he inquired quietly. Birdy didn't hear him, she was steeling herself for the John. She had to go in there, no doubt about that, body or no body. Get in, fetch the keys, get out again. Do it now.
She stepped through the door. It occurred to her as she did so that she'd never been in a men's toilet before, and she sincerely hoped this would be the first and only occasion.
The toilet was almost in darkness. The light was flickering in the same fitful way as the lights in the cinema, but at a lower level. She stood at the door, letting her eyes accommodate the gloom, and scanned the place.
The toilet was empty. There was no boy on the floor, dead or alive.
The keys were there though. Ricky's belt was lying in the gutter of the urinal. She fished it out, the oppressive smell of the disinfectant block making her sinuses ache. Disengaging the keys from their ring she stepped out of the toilet into the comparative freshness of the cinema. And it was all over, simple as that.
Ricky had hoisted himself on to one of the seats, and was slumped in it, looking sicker and sorrier for himself than ever. He looked up as he heard Birdy emerge. "I've got the keys," she said.
He grunted: God, he looked ill, she thought. Some of her sympathy had evaporated however. He was obviously having hallucinations, and they probably had chemical 'origins. It was his own damn fault.
"There's no boy in there, Ricky."
"What?"
There's no body in the John; nobody at all. What are you on anyhow?"