Horror Show

by Greg Kihn

  “Aren’t you overreacting to what Mary said?”

  Janice took another deep drag off the unfiltered Chesterfield, leaving a crimson lipstick ring, and crossed the room. “Mary should know, she works at the commissary. She said he drinks every day, flirts with all the girls, and gambles.”

  Roberta stopped doing her eyes again and turned to face Janice. The smoke from her cigarette curled seductively around her head, looking suddenly like a crown of thorns.

  “Will you calm down? God, it’s like you’re my mother or something. If anything happens, anything, I’ll grab a cab back home in a flash,” Roberta explained evenly.

  “Well—” Janice stubbed out her cigarette and exhaled sharply in her best Bette Davis impersonation.

  “Come on, Jan. It’s okay. Buzzy Haller is a very nice man. He’s taking me to a party where there will be lots of other people. What could possibly happen?” Roberta finished off her sentence with a sobering look, designed to assuage her friend’s fears.

  “A lot,” Janice replied, unconvinced.

  “Like what?”

  “He could get fresh with you, lure you into one of the bedrooms, get you drunk, and slip you his pepperoni.”

  “His what?” They burst into a torrent of giggles.

  Tad Kingston had no talent, at least that’s what everybody said behind his back. To his face they were more diplomatic. “Lots of potential,” the agents would say, or, “the right looks.” Never, “He’s a great actor.” And it was the truth. Thadeus Willinger, AKA Tad Kingston, couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag, but he did not aspire to be a great actor. What Tad Kingston wanted was to be a movie star.

  In Hollywood, that was a much more realistic goal.

  Tad did have the looks. He’d toyed with being a rock ’n’ roll singer, but his inability to carry a tune turned off the record companies. So, Tad embarked on a career as a matinee idol. He found an agent who liked his face, had some pictures printed, and waited by the phone. It never rang.

  He ran into Landis Woodley at a party, and the brash filmmaker took him under his wing. He wound up with the lead teenager part in Hot Rod Monster, Blood Ghouls of Malibu, and Attack of the Haunted Saucer.

  The kids loved him. Overlooking his massive shortcomings as an actor, they focused on his hair. He had what Landis Woodley referred to as “star quality hair.”

  It was blond, longish for its day, swept back, and greasy. It flared with intricate patterns back from his forehead. His pompadour cascaded in front like a frozen waterfall, then swept back severely on the sides and ended up in a classic “DA.” He spent hours working it with a comb. If he’d spent as much time learning his lines, he might have gotten more work.

  His credits with Woodley probably helped him lose more jobs than gain them around Hollywood.

  Tad was wolfing down a ham sandwich his mother had made him when the phone rang.

  The telephone in the hallway of his mother’s house was black and heavy. It sat on a tiny table next to the most uncomfortable chair his mother owned. That was by design, of course. Tad knew her reasoning: that he would spend less time talking on the telephone, and thereby reduce the amount of her monthly phone bill. Coupled with the postage-stamp-size table, it was as severe an environment as she could muster for conversation.

  None of it mattered to Tad. He didn’t give two shits for comfort, and he talked as long as he liked, whenever he liked, regardless.

  She kept the ringer at its loudest setting and it reverberated off the flowered wallpaper with eardrum-rattling intensity.

  Tad picked up the weighty receiver. “Hello? Tad Kingston speaking.”

  Landis Woodley sounded pissed off. “Hey, Kingston, I heard you’re not bringing Lana Wills to the party tonight, and I thought I’d call you and find out for myself.”

  “Mr. Woodley—I …”

  “I know you wouldn’t screw me like that, would you? I went out of my way to line this up for you. Lana Wills is hot now.”

  Tad stammered. He decided to be forthright and just tell the truth, an ill-advised strategy when dealing with Landis Woodley.

  His voice quivered slightly as he said, “Ah, Mr. Woodley, actually I was going to take Becky Sears.”

  Landis snapped back without dropping a beat, “Becky Sears? Are you crazy? She’s just a script girl, a nobody. Lana Wills is a star!”

  Tad sat in the uncomfortable chair and put his elbow on the tiny tabletop. He could sense his mother upstairs listening. The old lady really loved to eavesdrop. It was the only way she ever got any information on her son.

  “But I like Becky Sears,” Tad whined.

  “Tough shit. You’re taking Lana Wills and that’s that. I’m sending a limo over to pick you up, and you better be ready.”

  Tad could hear his mother wheezing on the landing above him; the cramped house and narrow staircase carried sounds like a hollow tube. “Jeez, Mr. Woodley, what am I gonna tell Becky?”

  Landis laughed. “I don’t care. Hell, tell her the truth; that you have no say in this, that you’re a piece of shit, and that I made you do it.”

  “But she’s such a sweet girl, it’s gonna break her heart.”

  Landis sighed. “Kid, you’re hopeless, you know that? Have you seen Lana Wills? She’s built like a brick shithouse. Jesus, Tad, every other guy in America wants a piece of that. The boys over at RKM insist that she go with you. She’s in Son Of Tarzan, and they want her name out there for everybody to see.”

  “I just can’t tell Becky … it’s gonna break her heart. She’ll cry.”

  Landis sighed again, this time deeper and with more resignation than usual. “Okay, I’ll tell her. What’s her number?”

  “Would you? Jeez, that would be great! Mr. Woodley, you know I’d do anything for you.”

  “Cut the crap, kid. I’ll do your dirty work, but don’t think you can get away with this shit forever.

  “Here’s the deal. I can only afford one limo, so it’s gonna be for both of my stars. Get this, you’re double-dating with Luboff. The grand master of horror and the young apprentice, going off to the party of the year together. He’s taking some bimbo from Paramount, and you’re with Wills. I’m gonna send a photographer over to get some shots of you getting ready, you know, combing your hair, stuff like that. ‘Star gets ready for fright night bash!’ Brilliant, huh?”

  Tad blanched. The thought of sharing a vehicle with the dirty old man made him queasy. “Luboff? Aw man, do I have to? Shit, the old man’s always getting loaded and putting his hand on my knee. Plus he smokes those disgusting cheap cigars.”

  Landis cut in. “I bought him some good ones for the party. Can’t have the star smoking garbage in public.”

  Tad stopped. He knew he had no choice. “All right.” He sighed. “What time is the limo coming?”

  “Eight. Be ready. I’ll tell Luboff to keep his hand out of your lap.”

  “You’ll call Becky?”

  “Sure.”

  Tad heard the phone click. Landis never said good-bye—he just ended a conversation like he was picking up a phonograph needle. Tad had grown used to it. He owed Landis Woodley his professional life and didn’t complain about the hundreds of antisocial, crude, and humiliating things he did all the time.

  Would Landis call Becky? Tad hoped so. He really liked Becky, but was too spineless to call her himself. He eased the receiver back into its cradle and stood up. His mother called from upstairs, “Thadeus? Are you going out somewhere?”

  Tad shouted up the stairs, a darkness creeping into the voice that he saved exclusively for her. “Yes, Mother.”

  Landis Woodley smiled wickedly. All seemed in readiness. Tonight’s party was going to be his best yet. He would really give these people something to remember. The king of low-budget horror was going to deliver the goods.

  He looked down at his list of calls. The numbers blurred. He ran his finger down the list and stopped at only the most important names. Damn, he thought, I need a secretary for all t
his shit. It’s too much work.

  He had already forgotten about calling Becky Sears. Tad Kingston and his pimply adolescent problems didn’t rate very high on his list. The kid would just have to learn to take care of his own butt.

  Buzzy Haller entered the room and gave him the thumbs-up sign.

  “Ready to go, boss,” he said.

  “Beautiful,” Woodley said through his teeth.

  “How about a drink before we change?”

  They drifted into the living room, where a full wet bar waited for customers. Landis automatically prepared two vodka martinis, very dry, no olives. He handed one to Buzzy.

  “I gotta tell ya, Woody,” Buzzy said honestly, “there’s nothing like an icy see-through.”

  Landis held his glass up and said, “Here’s to old H.P Lovecraft.”

  “Who?”

  Landis smiled. “Just a guy.”

  Buzzy took a sip and made a smacking sound with his lips. “Ahh, perfect. You always get just the right ratio of vodka to vermouth.”

  They drank as Buzzy scanned the guest list. He tapped the paper and said, “We’re gonna scare the livin’ shit out of these people tonight.”

  Landis nodded. “You think we’ll get into trouble? I mean, this is some pretty heavy stuff.”

  Buzzy raised his glass and winked. “Aw, who cares? It’s worth it to shake these assholes up a little.”

  4

  Albert Beaumond was haunted. He didn’t know how, but he did know why. As the world’s leading Satanist and leader of the First Satanic Church of America, he’d been doing research on the nature of the devil in different cultures when something unexpected happened. He overturned one rock too many.

  He stood on the sidewalk in front of the fledgling Los Angeles International Airport and squinted into the hazy sunshine.

  Albert was a tall, distinguished man in his late forties, always well dressed, with a European flair. He wore a neatly trimmed goatee and kept his silver-streaked brown hair combed straight back. He cut a handsome, striking figure.

  His daughter was late. She was always late. For a college student at UCLA she didn’t seem to have much of a mind for punctuality. Didn’t they require her to go to her classes on time?

  He smiled when he thought about the way her mother had been when they first met in San Francisco twenty-two years ago. Albert studied anthropology with a minor in botany at the University of California in Berkeley. Thora’s mother was a botany student as well. Now that woman had been a stickler about being on time. She chided him endlessly about being late on their first date. He learned his lesson and was seldom late after that. When she died ten years later, he was late for the funeral.

  Thora took after Albert.

  Over the years he’d adjusted to the point where he expected it, even planned for it.

  Except today it was a nuisance. His plane had arrived a few minutes early, he’d cleared customs in record time, and now he was anxious to get home.

  In his suitcase were artifacts that could change the way western civilization thought about God forever. He shifted it from one hand to another, not wanting to put it down even for a second for fear that something might happen to it.

  He need not have worried. The battered brown leather bag looked sufficiently scruffy not to attract the least attention from the usual airport thieves. Even if it were stolen, the artifacts he prized above all else were nothing anyone would know the value of—anyone but a trained anthropologist, that is.

  To Albert, it was a miracle. The two twenty-inch silver alloy pieces, hand-polished and odd in appearance, had amazing powers. They were tucked away in his bag, wrapped in towels and tied with a piece of rawhide. The customs inspector didn’t even bother opening them. He just waved Albert through the turnstile with a yawn and a look of bored indifference.

  Albert fished a cigarette out of his breast pocket and lit it with a flick from his monogrammed Zippo lighter. It always worked on the first try. He trusted that lighter like he trusted nothing else in this godless world.

  Godless? Well, maybe not, thought Albert. Now that he’d seen it with his own eyes, he couldn’t say for sure what omnipotent beings ruled our festering universe. He knew about one for sure. The devil was real.

  Every culture has a religion, and every religion has a devil, or so it seemed to Albert when he began his scholarly quest to catalog and investigate every reference.

  It turned into an enormous job that kept him busy for years, but Albert had a mission. He wanted to establish the face of Satan around the world. He wanted to compare and understand what characteristics stayed the same from culture to culture. Maybe, among those statistics a pattern would emerge, a common thread of belief in the Prince of Darkness that Albert could use to conjure him up.

  So far his best efforts seemed to fall on deaf ears. Like the monk who prayed for years in vain and never saw the slightest sign that his lifetime of prayers had been answered, or even heard by an indifferent God, Albert had been trying to raise the devil without success. He reasoned that a universal approach might work. After all, there was really no such thing as good and evil, just man’s interpretation of it.

  A scientific approach was called for.

  It was the modern way, and in 1957, modern was the name of the game.

  People everywhere were searching for new ways to do things. Albert saw himself as a pioneer. He was, after all, the first person to establish the only openly Satanic church in America, a bold move in any era.

  In his research, he’d found no fewer than 1,665 references to Satan, spanning hundreds of cultures.

  There were many similarities, too. Belief in Hell, eternal damnation, demons, demonic possession, sin, and evil incarnate seemed to be universal concepts.

  For Albert Beaumond, it was vindication. He felt a breakthrough was just around the corner. His ultimate goal, of course, was to conjure the Prince of Darkness, to be the first in modern times to commune with him. His search went on for years.

  “Do what thou wilt shall be the extent of the law,” he said, muttering his favorite Aleister Crowley quotation.

  In South America, in the high country of Peru, on the misty plains beyond Machu Picchu, he found something truly staggering, truly magical. There, cut off from the outside world, lived a tribe of Indians who worshipped a demon they could summon whenever they wanted through the use of an ingenious device.

  His liaison to the local scientific community, a smarmy little man named Carlos from the Anthropology Department at the University of Lima, had mentioned it to him in his hotel room in Ecuador. He had arrived there en route to Peru to study some quaint local human sacrificial customs among the native population. The Ecuadorians were less than enthusiastic when he approached them to photograph their rituals.

  He then prepared to travel to Peru and explore the mountainous regions there. In addition to his anthropological pursuits, Albert planned to study the native flora, taking specimens of the numerous unknown and uncatalogued species along the way. Albert’s encyclopedic knowledge of flowering plants, especially the narcotic and hallucinogenic varieties, had proved valuable. In the past, he’d sold the rights to several of his discoveries to pharmacological companies, offsetting the cost of his expeditions.

  Albert’s hotel room sweltered in the oppressive tropical heat. Humidity so intense that it made the wallpaper peel debilitated him. He was reduced to sitting on the rattan chair beneath the ceiling fan and drinking whatever chilled beverages he could procure. Today it was beer, tepid and barely cooler than room temperature. He offered one to Carlos, who greedily accepted and paced the room as he drank.

  The ceiling fan turned agonizingly slowly, stirring only the faintest breeze, imperceptible but for the slight cooling of the sweat on his brow.

  “It is a Stone Age tribe, Dr. Beaumond,” Carlos said hopefully. Albert had passed himself off as a doctor of anthropology from USC, referring to himself as “Doctor” Beaumond. No one asked to see any verification, and so far no on
e had bothered to check his background.

  Albert Beaumond certainly looked like a professor. His goatee, close-cropped to fetishistic proportions, gave him an intellectual, and slightly evil, persona. The overall effect was convincing. And then there was Albert’s natural intelligence and upper-class background. Carlos had no reason to doubt his authenticity.

  Albert had loosened his tie and removed his lightweight summer jacket. His white suit was wrinkled and moist, soiled here and there by the general dirtiness of the country.

  White, though reflective of heat, was an impractical color for clothes here. His shirt stuck to his back, defined in geographic detail by the sweat-stained suspenders that hung from his shoulders. As he leaned forward, the pattern of rattan was branded lightly on his back. Albert had been uncomfortable every minute he’d been here. How could these people live like this?

  Carlos didn’t seem to mind the heat. He swigged down the warm beer and talked excitedly. Albert could smell Carlos’s body scent; it lathered the air with an odor of oniony sweat. He wondered why these people didn’t use colognes.

  The air barely stirred. Albert mopped at his brow with a dirty white handkerchief. He watched the research assistant pace.

  For his part, Albert thought Carlos boorish and common. The little man seemed only interested in the payment that Albert had mentioned for reliable information that might add to his research.

  “A tribe so ancient that no one knows how long they have been there. The ruins near their village date back to pre-Inca times.”

  Albert seemed mildly interested until he learned of their methodology, then he was intrigued. He would spend much money and many days searching for the tribe to see with his own eyes if Carlos had reported the truth.

  This tribe believed that all things, all emotions, and all spirits were born of vibrations. They worshiped the vibrations and had kept a detailed account of every spirit they had conjured over the centuries and what vibration contacted it.

  It was the combination of vibrations that did the trick.

  They did it through the use of long metallic vibrating devices that resembled tuning forks.