Helen’s crucifix.
Opening the thin gold chain into a circle he put it around the boy’s neck and tucked the cross behind his scarf and inside his open-topped shirt. The boy did not move as the man did it, and did not move afterwards, imagining some necessity for respect or obedience in the matter, or recognizing some similarity to the procedure of his mum straightening his tie, in addition daunted perhaps by the peculiarity of the tiny coldness of the crucifix against the warmth of his hairless chest.
“I want you to remember what I’m going to say to you. The love of the Lord is quite, quite infinite. In your darkest despair, though you may not think it, He is still looking over you. Never, ever forget that.”
The boy thought a moment.
“Is he looking over you?”
Cushing had not expected that question, and found himself answering, as something of a surprise:
“Yes. Yes, I believe he is.”
Then the boy appeared to remember something, something important, and dug into the pocket of his anorak. He produced a rolledup magazine, unfurled it and thrust it in front of the man, who had to recoil slightly in order to focus his increasingly ancient eyes on it.
Claude Rains in his masked role as The Phantom of the Opera stared back at him. Garish lettering further promised the riches within: films featuring black cats, Ghidorah the three-headed monster, and Horror of Dracula – the US title of the first Hammer in the series. What he held in his hands was a lurid American film magazine called, in case of any doubt whatsoever in its remit, Famous Monsters of Filmland.
The boy reached over and flicked through until he found a double-page spread of black-and-white stills. He flattened it open and jabbed with his finger.
“Look. It’s you.”
Indeed it was.
Christopher Lee as the predatory Count, descending upon Melissa Stribling’s Mina. Baring his fangs in a mouth covered with blood. Van Helsing – himself – alongside it, dressed in a homburg hat and fur-collared coat.
“I can’t read very well,” the boy said. “But I like the pictures. The pictures are great. Who’s Peter Cushing?”
Cushing looked at the younger man in the image before him.
“He’s a person I pretend to be sometimes.” He thumbed through the pages, touched immeasurably by the gift. “Is this for me?”
“What? No. I want it back. But I want you to sign it, because you’re famous.”
“Ah. Silly me.”
Cushing thought of the close-ups they’d filmed of him so many years before, reacting to the disintegration of the vampire whilst nothing was there in front of him. He thought of Phil Leakey and Syd Pearson, make-up and special effects, labouring away on the last day of shooting to achieve the purifying effect of the dawning sun. He thought of the sun, and of the perpetual darkness he had lived in since Helen had died.
He lay the Famous Monsters magazine on the sea wall between them, took out his fountain pen from his inside pocket, shook it, and wrote Van Helsing in large sweeping letters across the page, blowing on the blue ink till it was dry.
“Brilliant.” The boy held it by his fingertips like a precious parchment and blew on it himself for good measure. “Now I’ll be able to show people I met you. When I’m an old man with children of my own.” He stood up and held out his hand.
Cushing shook it with a formality the boy clearly desired.
“Enjoy stories, Carl. Enjoy books and films. Enjoy your work. Enjoy life. Find someone to love. Cherish her …”
The boy nodded, but looked again at the signed picture in Famous Monsters as if he hadn’t quite believed it the first time. The evidence confirmed, he pressed it to his chest, zipped it up securely inside his anorak, pulled up the hood and unchained his bike.
“Carl?” Cushing said. “Sometimes you can hide the hurt and pain, but there’ll be a day you can talk about it with someone and be free. Perhaps a day when you’ll forget what it was you were frightened of, and then you’ll have conquered it, forever.”
The young face looked back, half-in, half-out of the anorak hood, and nodded. Then he took the antler-sized handlebars and walked his Chopper back in the direction of the road and shops, another imperative on his mind, another game, idea, story, journey, in that way of boys, and of life.
As he tapped another talismanic cigarette against the packet, thinking of his own journey and footsteps filling with water as the tide came in, Cushing heard the tick-ticktick stop, as if the boy had stopped, and he had. And he heard the cawing of seagulls, his nasty neighbours – The Ubiquitous, he called them – and heard a voice, the boy’s voice, for the last time, behind him.
“Will you keep fighting monsters?”
His eyes fixed far off, where the sea met the sky, Peter Cushing had no difficulty saying: “Always.”
He sat in the forest dressed in black buckled shoes, crosslegged, a wide-brimmed black hat resting in his lap and the white, starched collar of a Puritan a stark contrast to the abiding blackness of his cape. Over in the clearing the bonfire was being constructed for the burning of the witch. The stake was being erected by Cockney men with sizeable beer bellies wearing jeans and Tshirts. The focus-puller ran his tape measure from the camera lens. Art directors scattered handfuls of ash from buckets to give the surroundings a monochrome, “blasted heath” quality. And so they were all at work, all doing their jobs, a well-oiled machine, while he waited, contemplating the density of the trees and smelling the pine needles. It was March now, and soon shoots of new growth would show in the layer of mulch and dead leaves and the cycle of life would continue.
Work was the only thing left now that made life pass in a faintly bearable fashion. As good old Sherlock Holmes said to Watson in The Sign of Four: “Work is the best antidote to sorrow”, and the only antidote he himself saw to the devastation of losing Helen was to launch himself back into a gruelling schedule of films. It was the one thing he knew he could do, after all. As she kept reminding him. It’s your gift, my darling. Use it. And the distraction of immersing oneself in other characters was an imperative, he now saw: a welcome refuge from reality.
The third assistant director brought a cup of tea, an apple and a plate of cheese from the catering truck to the chair with Peter Cushing’s name on the back.
“Bless you.”
Occasionally, very occasionally, that’s what he did feel.
Blessed.
It was a blessing, mainly, to be back working with so many familiar faces. Yes, there were new ones, young and fresh, and of course that was good and healthy too. The young ones, who hadn’t met him in person before, possibly didn’t notice or remark that he had become sombre, withdrawn, fragile behind his unerring politeness and professionalism – it was the older ones who saw that, all too well. In the make-up mirror he had never looked so terribly gaunt and perhaps they imagined, charitably, it was part of his characterization as the cold, zealous Puritan, Gustav Weil. But it was nothing to do with the dark tone of the film, everything to do with the dark pall cast over his life.
Those who knew him, really knew him, acknowledged that a part of him had died two months ago.
Yet the un-dead lived on.
Here he was at Pinewood and Black Park in the company of vampire twins and a young, dynamic Count Karnstein so seethingly bestial-looking in the shape of Damien Thomas he might well snatch the reins from Christopher Lee and become the Dracula for a new generation. The third in the trilogy, this excursion was being trumpeted loudly by the company as Peter Cushing’s return to the Hammer fold. Once more written by Tudor Gates, heavily influenced by Vincent Price’s Witchfinder General, it was the tale of a vampire-hunting posse with Peter Cushing at its head. And with top-billing.
He remembered clearly the lunch a month earlier with his agent, John Redway, and the leather-jacketed young director John Hough at L’Aperitif restaurant in Brown’s Hotel, Mayfair.
“You’re returning to combat evil, Peter,” the director had said. But he wanted a darker
tone. He didn’t want it to be a fairy tale like other Hammers. He wanted to reinvent the horror genre.
Cushing had said nothing as he listened, but thought the genre didn’t need reinventing. The genre was doing very well as it was, thank you very much. He did think the idea was original, however, and the director had convinced him over three courses and wine of his intention to make it as a bleak morality play, manipulating the audience’s expectation of good and evil by having them side with the vampires against the pious austerity of Gustav Weil, the twisted, God-fearing witch-hunter, uncle to the vampire twins, Frieda and Maria, played by the pretty Collinson sisters – Maltese girls whose claim to fame was being the first identical twin centrefold for Playboy, in the title role. Twins of Evil – or was it called Twins of Dracula now, the American distributor’s illogical and factually incorrect alternative?
“You see, Peter, real evil is not so easy to spot in real life,” the director had said. “In real life, evil people look like you and me. We pass them in the street.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And that’s what I want to capture with this film. The nature of true evil.”
Whether it would be a success or not Cushing couldn’t know. He would do his best. He always did. He had an inkling how this sort of film worked after all these years and that’s what he would bring to the proceedings. That’s what they were paying for. That and, of course, his name.
His name.
He remembered the conversation in the dark of the Oxford cinema.
According to the Fount of All Knowledge, Carl’s mother moved to Salisbury shortly after Gledhill died, to live with her sister and set up a shop together. He hoped for once the gossip contained some semblance of accuracy. If she sought to rebuild her life afresh, that could only be a good thing. For her, and the boy.
For himself, there were other films on the horizon. He’d told John Redway to turn nothing down. He’d read the script of Dracula: Chelsea and it was rather good. He was looking forward to playing not only Lorrimer Van Helsing in the present day, but also his grandfather, in a startling opening flashback, fighting Christopher Lee on the back of a hurtling, out of control stagecoach before impaling him with a broken cartwheel. And if that was a success there were plans for other Draculas. Another treatment by Jimmy Sangster had been commissioned that he knew of, which boded well, and he hoped Michael Carreras would grasp the reins and take Hammer into a new era.
One of the more imminent offers was a role from Milton in his latest portmanteau movie Tales from the Crypt, but he didn’t care for the part, a variation of “The Monkey’s Paw”. Instead he’d asked if he could play the lonely, widowed old man, Grimsdyke, who returns from the grave to exact poetic justice on his persecutor. A crucial scene would require Grimsdyke to be talking to his beloved dead wife, and he planned to ask Milton if he’d mind if he used a photograph of Helen on the set. Then he could say, as he’d wished for many a long year, that they’d finally made a film together.
As it was, her photograph was never far away. He kept one above his writing desk at home, and another beside his mirror in his dressing room or make-up truck. At home he always set a place for her at the dinner table, and not a day went by when he didn’t talk to her.
Hopefully there’d be other movies in the pipeline. They’d keep the wolf from the door and the dark thoughts at bay – ironic, given their subject matter. Not that he could see his grief becoming any less all-consuming with the passage of time. Time, as far as he could imagine, could do nothing to diminish the pain. The lines by Samuel Beckett often came to mind: “I can’t go on, I must go on, I will go on,” and he knew that the third AD would be back before too long, to say they were ready for him.
But for the next few minutes, until that happened, he would rest and try to clear his mind as he always did before a take, and picked up his Boots cassette recorder from between his feet, put on the small earphones and closed his eyes. He pressed PLAY. The beauty of Elgar’s Sospiri gave way to Noel Coward singing “If Love Were All”.
One of Helen’s favourites, and his own.
He had lost the one thing that made living real and joyful, the person who was his whole life, and without her there was no meaning or point any more. But what had others lost? Yet, they survived.
He pictured the boy on his bicycle riding away, the rolledup magazine in his pocket. Whilst he was living, he knew, time would move inexorably onward and the attending loneliness would be beyond description, but the one thing that would keep him going was the absolute knowledge that he would be united with Helen again one day.
The spokes of the bicycle wheel turned, gathering speed, blurring.
Life must go on, yes, but in the end – after the end – life was not important, just pictures on a screen, absorbing for as long as they lasted, causing us to weep and laugh, perhaps, but when the images are gone we step out blinking into the light.
Until then he was called upon to be the champion of the forces of good. He would spear reanimated mummies through the chest. He would stare into the eyes of the Abominable Snowman. He would seek out the Gorgon. Fire silver bullets at werewolves. He would burn evil at the stake. He would brand them with crucifixes. He would halt windmills from turning. He would bring down a hammer and force a stake through their hearts and watch them disintegrate. He would hold them up by the hair and decapitate them with a single swipe.
He would be a monster hunter.
He would be Van Helsing for all who needed him, and all who loved him.
STEPHEN JONES & KIM NEWMAN
Necrology: 2013
2013 WAS A truly terrible year. We lost far too many people – from several genre giants to numerous individuals who were far too young and should have had many more creative years ahead of them. (To make matters worse, a lot of names on this year’s list were personal friends and colleagues.) So, with heavy hearts, we once again mark the passing of those writers, artists, performers and technicians who, during their lifetimes, made significant contributions to the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres …
AUTHORS/ARTISTS/COMPOSERS
British radio producer and scriptwriter Charles [Frederick William] Chilton MBE died of pneumonia on January 2, aged ninety-five. In 1953 he created the BBC SF radio serial Journey Into Space, which was reworked as Space Force (1984–85). Chilton wrote three tie-in novels, Journey Into Space (1954), The Red Planet (1956) and The World in Peril (1960), and he later created the anti-war stage musical Oh! What a Lovely War.
British film and TV author and researcher Tise Vahimagi was found dead at his flat on January 8, aged sixty-one. He had been undergoing treatment for cancer and suffering from a debilitating virus. His reference books include the BFI’s Illustrated Guide to British Television, American Vein: Directors and Directions in Television (with Christopher Wicking) and The “Untouchables”. Vahimagi wrote for Monster Mag and House of Hammer, and also contributed the “TV Zone” column to Starburst magazine for many years.
Keith Armstrong-Bridges, the first elected Chairman of the Tolkien Society (1970–73), died after a long illness on January 11.
American SF writer Steven [D.] Utley died of cancer on January 12, aged sixty-four. A couple of weeks earlier he had announced that he had been diagnosed with Type 4 cancer in his intestines, liver and lungs, along with a lesion on his brain. Utley, who had infamously posed nude for Tom Reamy’s semi-prozine Trumpet in the 1970s, wrote a number of acclaimed short stories, including the Nebula Award-nominated “Custer’s Last Jump” and “Black as the Pit, from Pole to Pole”, both in collaboration with Howard Waldrop. Utley’s short fiction has been collected in Ghost Seas, The Beasts of Love, Where and When, The 400-Year-Itch and Invidible Kingdoms, and he co-edited the anthologies Lone Star Universe: Speculative Fiction from Texas (with George W. Proctor) and Passing for Human (with Michael Bishop). He also published poetry under the name “S. Dale”.
Italian SF writer and translator Riccardo [Enzo Luigi] Valla died of a heart at
tack on January 14, aged seventy. He worked with publishers Editrice Nord and Arnoldo Mondadori, and translated The Da Vinci Code in Italy.
Horror movie collector Gary D. (Dean) Dorst, who wrote for Gore Creatures and Photon magazines, died the same day, aged sixty-five.
French editor and author Jacques Sadoul, who was editorial director the successful paperback Science-Fiction J’ai Lu imprint for many years, died on January 18, aged seventy-eight. He edited the “Les Meilleurs Récits” anthology series, and his own novels include La Passion selon Satan, Le Jardin de la licorn and Le Miroir de Drusilla. Sadoul also compiled the art book 2000 A.D.: Illustrations from the Golden Age of Science Fiction Pulps and the SF study Histoire de la science-fiction moderne. He helped found the Prix Apollo Award, given from 1972–99 for the year’s best SF novel published in France.
Wargame and role-playing game designer Lynn Willis, who worked on the development of such games as Call of Cthulhu, Ghostbusters, Elric!, Worlds of Wonder, Ringworld and RuneQuest at Chaosium Inc., died of Parkinson’s disease the same day.
Mexican author and playwright Carlos Emilio Olvera Avelar, who wrote the influential SF novel Mejicanos en la espacio (Mexicans in Space, 1968) as by “Carlos Olvera”, died of pneumonia on January 28, aged seventy-two.
Italian SF translator and critic Antonio Caronia died after a long illness on January 30, aged sixty-nine. He wrote and edited a number of books about science fiction, including Il Cyborg (1985), along with an encyclopedia about Philip K. Dick. He was also J. G. Ballard’s translator.
American folklorist and children’s author Diane Wolkstein died on January 31, aged seventy. She served as New York’s official storyteller from 1968–71.
American writer, editor, poet and reviewer Anne Jordan (Anne Devereaux Wilson Jordan Crouse), the former managing editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1979–89, died of lung cancer on February 2, aged sixty-nine. A teacher for much of her career, she wrote a number of books and edited the anthologies The Best Horror Stories from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (with Edward L. Ferman) and Fires of the Past: Thirteen Contemporary Fantasies About Hometowns. Jordan founded the Children’s Literature Association in 1973, who named an award after her for outstanding contributions in that field.
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