by Greg Kihn
“Well, I don’t know how to say this, but … I’ve got something I want to discuss with you. A movie project.”
“I’m always up for a film project,” he said, “except that, right now, I’m going into production on Cadaver in a few days, and I’m afraid I’ll be busy for a while.”
Devila’s voice softened. “Could we get together this afternoon?”
“I’m pretty busy,” Landis said truthfully.
“It’ll only take a few minutes,” she cooed. “This is something big. Huge. I can’t talk about it over the phone. All I can tell you is, this is the most incredible thing you’ve ever seen. If you can get it on film, you’ll be a legend.”
Landis pondered the offer. “Hmm. It sounds interesting. You can’t tell me anything more?”
“Not over the phone.”
“I see. Well, Devila, I really would love to work with you, but I’m swamped right now.”
“Mr. Woodley?” Devila said.
“Call me Landis.”
“Okay, Landis. This is really big. I’ve seen something truly incredible, something that defies logic—a supernatural entity. It’s real, and it’s scary as hell. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Are you interested?”
Landis coughed. “Well … I can’t really get into anything right now.”
“How about if I make it worth your while? I can be very persuasive.” Devila’s voice had changed, it was softer, sexier.
That’s all Landis needed to hear. He smiled at the phone and said, “Okay, how about we meet at Barny’s at, say, two?”
Devila’s voice toughened slightly. “I’ll be there, but please come alone,” she said. Her vocal range was amazing, and Landis had always wanted to use her in a movie. She was a natural and already famous, at least in LA.
“Barny’s, alone,” he repeated.
“Good. I’m looking forward to this,” she said. “See you there.”
Barny’s was dark, as usual. Devila was not in her costume, but she still drew stares from the handful of men at the bar. Without the witchy makeup, Devila was a very attractive woman.
She found Landis at a booth in the back.
“I’ve never seen you out of character,” Landis said with a smile. “You look great.”
Devila returned his smile with one of her own. She sat across from him and ordered a glass of white wine. They made flirtatious small talk until her wine arrived, then she got down to business.
“I’ve seen something,” she cryptically repeated her earlier claim.
Landis looked into her eyes and waited for her to complete the thought. When she didn’t, he asked the obvious question. “Okay, I’ll bite. What did you see?”
Devila leaned forward. Landis could smell the sweet wine on her breath. It mingled with the French perfume she favored, applied liberally.
“This has to remain between us, not to leave this table,” she said.
Landis inhaled her scent. “Are you swearing me to secrecy?”
Devila nodded. “No bullshit, now. I’m serious. What I am about to tell you must never leave this table. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Landis answered, his curiosity aroused.
Devila’s voice dropped. “I’ve seen something amazing, something that scared the shit out of me. The thing was—it was real. At least, as far as I know, it was real. I checked. It would have been a bitch to fake.”
Landis sipped his beer. “So, what did you see?”
“I can’t tell you any details,” she said. “So don’t ask. But, to make a long story short, I’ve managed to get my hands on something truly supernatural.”
Landis chuckled and shook his head.
Devila looked surprised. “I thought you were into the occult.”
Landis shook his head. “Just because I make horror movies doesn’t mean I’m into every cockamamie, hocus-pocus load of shit people try to sell me. I’m a realist. I’m into money.”
“Good, then we understand each other,” she said.
Landis narrowed his eyes, letting his voice fall an octave. “Let me get something straight right now. You don’t believe in this shit, do you?”
“You mean the supernatural?” she asked wineglass in hand.
Landis smiled as his head bobbed slowly up and down. “Yeah, right, the supernatural, the occult, whatever you want to call it.”
“What do you take me for, an idiot? I don’t believe in anything, but just hear me out. It makes what I have to tell you all the more incredible.”
Landis signaled for another round of drinks. Devila began her story. “I saw a real demon,” she finally said. “It materialized out of thin air.”
Landis smiled. “What have you been smoking?”
Devila’s face changed. Her mouth bent downward at the corners, and she pushed away from the table. “Don’t mock me. I don’t have to take this shit.”
“Okay, okay, relax. It’s just that, well, it’s hard to believe, you know?”
“I know it is. I know you must think I’m crazy, but I swear it’s true.”
“You say you actually saw this thing? And you want me to film it?”
She nodded.
“What’s it look like?”
Devila looked around the room. She leaned forward and whispered, “It looks like a giant snake.”
“A giant snake?” he whispered back.
“A serpent. A demon serpent.”
Landis looked into her eyes, searching for signs that she was lying or crazy, and found none. Devila lit a cigarette in a long silver holder and blew smoke across the table.
She believes what she’s saying, he thought. She believes it one hundred percent.
Landis decided to be diplomatic and humor her for the time being. “You know, I’ve always said that if anyone brought me a genuine ghost, a haunted house, a flying saucer, whatever, and I could film it and verify it, that film would be worth a million dollars. Now you tell me that you can produce this phenomenon for my cameras?”
Devila nodded. “Guaranteed.”
“What do you want out of it?” Landis asked.
“I want you to make a movie about it, starring me,” she said firmly.
Landis’s face remained immobile; he had a great poker face when he wanted to use it. “I see,” he said. “Documentary or drama?”
“I don’t care,” she answered. “As long as I’m the star, and I get a share of the profits. A big share.”
“How much?”
“Sixty-forty split. I get the sixty, you get the forty.”
Landis laughed. “I don’t make deals like that. If I did, I would have gone out of business a long time ago.”
Devila was not laughing. Her eyes bore down on him like bad weather. “Take it or leave it,” she said coolly.
He wondered if she was serious. It’s too far out, he thought. A demon? Nah. I’d be a sucker to believe that.
“I think I’ll leave it,” he said.
“Suit yourself. I’ll go to National with it, I’m sure somebody there will listen.” She started to rise and swilled down the last of her wine. “Thanks for seeing me. Too bad we couldn’t do business.”
She stepped away from the table. The men at the bar watched to see what she would do. As she took her first few paces toward the door, Landis stood and went after her. The men craned their necks to follow the action.
Landis grabbed her arm. “Hold it,” he said. “Let’s talk about this a minute.”
Devila gave him a look of utter determination, saying, in a glance, that she was not to be trifled with. She let him gently lead her back to the table.
“Do you realize that I don’t even know your real name?” he asked in a friendly voice, one as nonthreatening as he could muster.
“I know that,” she replied. “No one knows my real name. I don’t give it out.”
“If you want to do business with me, I’ll have to know. It shows trust, good faith,” he said.
Devila snapped a smile at him, just a short, unfriendly baring of teeth, but i
t made him relax.
“Trust? I don’t trust anybody,” she said.
“You’re gonna have to trust me,” he said, his voice thick and sweet.
“Why?”
“Because … because I think you might have something here. I don’t know why, but I don’t think you’re lying about this. It’s completely insane, but that’s what I like about it. It might be worth a chance, anyway.”
Now it was Devila’s turn to be smug. She looked over at the bar. The men who had been staring at her all looked away quickly.
She looked back at Landis. “My name is Julie.”
“Julie what?”
“Julie Greenly,” she replied.
“Come on, Julie Greenly, let’s go over to my office and talk about this some more.”
Thora Beaummd cared for her father, wiping his fevered brow and spoon-feeding him chicken broth. She’d called Dr. Segwick, but he’d not been able to find anything physically wrong with Albert.
Dr. Segwick suggested she consult a psychiatrist. He suggested that whatever was wrong with her father was born of mental problems. Many of the people who had contact with the Beaumond family held the opinion that Albert Beaumond was quite insane and had been since the death of his beloved wife.
Albert had turned to the occult in his grief, they opined. In a vain attempt to reach out to her from the grave, Albert had dabbled in many of the darker, esoteric arts. His Catholic upbringing laid the groundwork for his beliefs, giving him delusions of heaven and hell, Satan and other diabolical beguilements.
Dr. Segwick believed Albert mad.
Apart from sedating Albert and prescribing rest, there was little else he could do.
“Your father is a very disturbed man,” he told Thora in the hall. “He needs help that I can’t give him, professional help.”
“Is my father insane?” she asked.
“He’s suffering from some form of mental collapse. I don’t know enough about such matters to give you an opinion. That question is best answered by a trained analyst.”
He reached into his pocket and withdrew a card, which he handed to Thora. “This is a colleague of mine, Dr. Winnet. He’s a top man in his field. If anyone can help, he can. Call him, Thora. Call him first thing tomorrow.”
She looked at the card and then at Segwick’s aged, responsible face. Her unblinking eyes registered, but failed to reflect, all the numbing information she’d had to absorb.
“Yes, I’ll call …”
Dr. Segwick left. His heavy footsteps receded from the house, across the wooden porch and beyond. Thora was left staring out through the screen at him. She wondered what to do.
Thora stayed up with her father, wiping the sweat from his face, assuring him that there was no demon in the room with them, and trying to calm him down.
It was the longest night of her life. When the moon rose outside his window, her father howled.
12
The morgue was a wonderful place. Buzzy and Landis loved it from the first moment they walked in.
“Isn’t this cool!” Buzzy whispered to Landis as the coroner lead them through the rooms.
“It’s perfect, absolutely perfect,” Landis whispered back. “I love it. Look at those metal tables, and the walls. Jesus, look at the white tile walls. It’s like a fuckin’ slaughterhouse. I couldn’t have designed a better set.”
At last Dr. Meune paused and turned to face them. He had a sly smile on his face that Landis found difficult to read. “Would you like to see some of our customers?”
Buzzy and Landis exchanged looks. “Customers? Yeah,” Landis answered. “Why not?”
“You have a strong stomach?” the doctor asked.
“I guess so,” Landis replied.
“How about you, Mr. Haller?”
“I can handle it,” he said without hesitation.
“Okay, follow me.”
Dr. Meune, the aging coroner for LA County, led them into the abattoir. It was cold, and the smell was extraordinary, a weird combination of death and Lysol. He walked up to one of the drawers that were built into the wall, pressed a release on the handle, and slid it open.
The stench was horrible, like bad meat, and Landis fought his gag reflex. The faint scent of the deodorizing agent, which Landis now noticed was coming from the air vents, did little to offset the pungent smell of the corpse. Their hot breath in the chilly room made fog clouds that hung for a moment before dissipating. In that moment Landis was reminded that the tiny clouds were a sign of life, and that no such mist issued from the customers here.
The stainless steel drawer slid out noiselessly; it was well-made and terribly efficient. Landis noticed the intense look on Buzzy’s face. His keen interest in the business of dead bodies was beyond what he needed to research the movie. That thought gave Landis pause. A chill shivered through him.
The body bag was dark brown and zippered. The coroner gave them a last glance and pulled it down. The whine of the zipper cut the frigid air like a dentist’s drill. “Here’s one of our recent patients.”
“Patients,” Landis said. That’s fanny, he thought.
“As you can see, this man was the victim of a rather nasty automobile accident. I haven’t examined him yet, but I suspect that he died from that massive head trauma.”
He pointed to the side of the man’s skull. It was caved in, as if somebody had smashed him with a baseball bat. Just above the left eye mere was an indentation the size of a grapefruit. White bone peeked through the mass of blood and gray matter. His eyes were open. Landis saw that they looked dry and flat. A slight dry film had formed over them, and they stared up at the ceiling blankly.
Nobody said anything. They just stared at the corpse for a few minutes, then the coroner zipped the bag back up and slid it into the wall.
“You know, I did some acting back in high school,” the coroner said. The fact that they were in the presence of death many times over did nothing to lessen this man’s dedication to the theatrical arts. The possibility of being in a movie had so titillated him that he spoke of nothing else from that point on.
“I could see that, from the self-assured manner in which you carried yourself,” said Landis in a parody of thespian diplomacy.
Buzzy raised an eyebrow. He was interested to see how Landis would handle the coroner’s dreams of stardom.
“I would like to hear you read, if you don’t mind,” Landis said, feigning interest.
“Of course, of course,” came the reply.
Landis walked out of the room, leaving Buzzy and the coroner alone. The doctor looked at Buzzy and smiled uncomfortably. “This place is neat,” Buzzy said. “I really liked that dead body you showed us.”
The coroner nodded, glanced at the door through which Landis had disappeared, and coughed. Realizing that Landis would not return immediately, he decided to engage in conversation with Buzzy. “What do you do?” he asked.
“I make monsters.” Buzzy grinned.
The coroner attempted another smile, this one even weaker than the last. “Oh, I see.”
“For the movies,” Buzzy added. “I do the special effects.”
“Oh!” the coroner exclaimed, finally understanding.
“You didn’t think I made real monsters, did you?”
“Of course not,” he replied nervously. “Where did Mr. Woodley go?”
Buzzy shrugged. “He goes wherever he wants.”
The room was still.
“Could I see another body?” Buzzy asked, his eyes twinkling like fireflies.
The coroner gave Buzzy a look of consternation; part irritation, part curiosity. Showing them the first body had been a scare tactic, designed to impress the filmmakers. It was something that the coroner did with visitors, a little reminder that they were in his world, the world of corpses. Now, the monster maker wanted to see more. It was not normal.
“There’s a girl, she just came in this morning. Nice lookin’, too.”
Buzzy began to nod vigorously.
“Well, since you’re with the movie and all, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt. It ain’t like she’s gonna complain.”
They both laughed nervously. The cold air bristled with electricity, Buzzy obviously as excited as Dr. Meune. The coroner looked around and said, “She’s in twenty-two. Come on, I’ll let you have a little peek.”
They walked toward the locker, ten strides from where they were, and Meune put his hand on the handle.
“I should tell you. Sometimes, we get some interesting cases. Young girls, murder victims usually, their bodies are in real good shape. We get a lot of prostitutes here.”
He twisted the handle and jerked the drawer open.
“This one’s in excellent condition, no outward signs of trauma.”
He let the drawer slide almost into Buzzy’s groin. In a peculiar motion he flipped the sheet down, revealing her naked body.
“No bag?” Buzzy asked.
The coroner looked up. “She’s fresh, just came in. We don’t bag ’em till they’re ripe.”
Buzzy whistled. “Jeez, she’s, like, I don’t know, like dead.”
“Yes,” the doctor sighed. “So young and beautiful, too. Cause of death? I’ll find out soon. I can tell you from experience, they can’t hide from me. I see it all, inside and out.” He paused and looked into Buzzy’s eyes. “If you know what I mean.”
Buzzy swallowed, his throat dry. “Yeah,” he whispered. “I can only imagine. It must be pretty intense.”
“It is,” Meune agreed. “This one’s, I don’t know, kind of nice, actually.”
“Yeah, she’s real nice,” Buzzy replied. “Better than that other guy we saw. Shit, if I had my choice of which one I had to work on … well, no contest.”
Meune smiled. “That’s why I love being the boss.”
They turned back to the girl, her pale skin nearly the same color as the sheet. “Nice figure, too,” Meune whispered. “Too bad she’s dead.”
Buzzy’s hand reached out toward the girl’s naked torso, hovering inches above her chest. “May I?” he asked. Meune nodded, admiring the man’s nerve. He understood the compulsion.
Buzzy lightly touched her breast; the cold, dead skin excited him.
The doctor was about to comment when Landis reentered the room carrying a script. He handed it to a surprised Dr. Meune.