Horror Show

by Greg Kihn

  They got out and made their way to the door. The sound of Charles’s snoring echoed up the hall like machinery. The distinctive nasal snort that identified his particular snore rattled and hummed, bouncing off the walls in happy, irresponsible chaos.

  “Guard!” Garth shouted. The snoring changed meter, modulated upward, then dropped back into the predictable pattern. “Hey! Wake up!” Garth shouted again.

  “Huh?” Charles’s head came up, his face lined by the folds on his sleeve. He squinted at them. “What? Who are you?”

  Garth had his badge out and in Charles’s face in less time than it took Charles to realize that his ass was grass. “Lieutenant Garth Prease, LAPD. The coroner is on his way down here right now. We came to look at a body.”

  Charles was up like a slow shot. “Yes, sir! Right this way, sir!” He motioned for them to walk farther down the hall, in the direction of the main room. Charles realized, with a sinking feeling, that the empty bottle of wine was sitting on his desk, a branding iron. He was busted, plain and simple.

  He decided to take it like a man, and deny everything.

  “That your wine, fellah?”

  “No, sir!”

  “Were you asleep?”

  “No, sir!”

  “What were you doing when we came in?”

  “Resting my eyes, sir,” Charles said quickly, as if speed of response would get him back any of the points that he had lost.

  Prease was already in his face. Charles knew the gig was up.

  Just then, Dr. Milburn, the assistant coroner, walked in. Charles picked up the bottle and placed it on the floor next to his chair. Milburn saw it anyway.

  When they discovered that the body in drawer number sixty-six was missing, along with the gurney, Charles was relieved of duty.

  Buzzy Holler got drunk with his new best friend that night. They spent a jolly time knocking back shots of tequila and smoking reefers. Sometime around midnight, Buzzy got the bright idea that he wanted to shoot some publicity photos of his new superstar, Johnny D.

  Being a decent photographer with professional equipment, he took several rolls of 35 mm film in color and black and white. Johnny was a real sport as far as Buzzy was concerned. He posed him this way and that, even reproduced the famous “eyeball full of worms” shot.

  Garth Prease took Thora Beaumond home. He stayed in touch with her and whenever a possible clue manifested itself, he was quick to draw it to her attention. Nothing, however, seemed to bring Albert Beaumond back into the picture, and soon, even Thora would begin to doubt that he was still alive.

  23

  When the processed film came back from the lab, Landis dived into the editing, working furiously around the clock. He spent the next several days hunched over his old Movieola Editing Machine, hand-splicing his masterpiece, until a rough cut of Cadaver was ready.

  That Friday night he’d arranged for a wrap party at his house. It was a tradition and a good-luck charm. He intended to show the film at the party.

  Roberta Bookman didn’t usually answer the door in her curlers; but, then again, the doorbell didn’t usually ring after eleven o’clock at night. She swung the door open, expecting an emergency, maybe a cop standing there saying, “Your dog’s been hit by a car, miss.” Except she didn’t have a dog. Or, “Do you know this person? They’ve just been arrested for armed robbery.” And one of her friends would be standing there looking guilty.

  Her jaw dropped when she saw Landis Woodley.

  “You!” she gasped, and began to close the door. Landis reached out and held it open.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” he started to say.

  She cut him off. “You’ve got a lot of nerve coming around here. After what you did at that party—oh, you make me sick!”

  “Hold on a second!”

  “Let go of my door!”

  “I just want to talk to you.”

  “Send me a letter.”

  She pushed on the door with renewed vigor. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” he asked with a smile.

  “No!” she snapped. “Now, go away.”

  “I just wanted to say I’m sorry about what happened.”

  Roberta shook her head. “I don’t believe you. Look, we’ve been all through this already. I don’t especially want to see you, hear from you, know you, or listen to your apologies.”

  Landis kept smiling, even though his hand, wedged in the door, was beginning to hurt. He decided it was time to play his trump card. “I’ve got pickles,” he said, holding up a white deli bag with his other hand.

  She kept pushing. “So?”

  “Not just any old pickles.”

  Landis had heard from Buzzy that Roberta loved homemade deli pickles. Everyone knew that the best pickles in LA were from Canter’s Delicatessen on Fairfax Avenue.

  “From Canter’s,” he said.

  Roberta’s face changed; the scowl went out of it. She relaxed her pressure on the door. “Canter’s?”

  “They’re for you.”

  Roberta snorted. “Oh, you are so slick. You think you can bribe your way in here with those? How did you know I liked pickles?”

  “Research. I’ve been workin’ on this for a while.”

  “I still hate you.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “You’re still mule puke.”

  “Okay.”

  “But let me see the pickles.”

  She let Landis inch the door open until he could hand her the pickles. He stepped inside with the exchange.

  “I can’t believe I let you in here,” Roberta said. “I must be out of my mind.” She sighed. “You can only stay a minute, understand?”

  “Sure, a minute’s fine.”

  “Say what you gotta say and leave.”

  “I’m sorry you got scared. Those stunts were part of the party. Buzzy took a lot of time planning them. They were for publicity.”

  “We’ve been all through this.”

  “You know, I’m in production on a new movie right now. It’s called Cadaver.”

  Roberta made a sour face. “Your movies are sick.”

  “People watch ’em anyway, just like they slow down to look at a car wreck on the side of the road.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “My point is—scaring people is my job. I’m sorry you got in the way. I never meant to hurt you.”

  Roberta looked at Landis suspiciously. Her soft, honest eyes bored into his cheesy smile. He melted a little.

  “You’re pathetic, you know that?” she said. “You can stay for one cup of coffee. Just one. Then you leave.”

  Neil Bugmier strung crepe paper across the room, looping it over the top of the ten-foot movie screen in the projection room in Landis Woodley’s basement. He was wearing a simple turquoise housedress and had his shoes off. It was difficult to stand on a chair and hang decorations in high heels.

  The acrid smoke from Landis Woodley’s cigarette drifted in his face, spicing the air and making him want to light up a Chesterfield himself.

  Landis was hunched over his film-editing machine, checking the footage from Cadaver. From the grunting sounds he made as he squinted through the eyepiece, Neil deduced that Landis was pleased with what he saw. Landis jealously guarded that eyepiece, and refused to let anybody see even one frame of film until he deemed it ready. Landis was funny like that.

  He’d promised that he’d have a rough cut of the film ready for viewing tonight at the cast party. It would be the centerpiece of the celebration.

  Everyone from Luboff to Kingston would have an opinion, Landis knew, and he would ignore them all. Landis didn’t need anyone to tell him when something was good or bad. He knew from experience.

  At any rate, the rough cut he would show tonight would be stunning, if he did say so himself.

  “It’s fuckin’ beautiful,” he told Neil. “The corpse is scary, Luboff is completely believable, and the sets look great. I gotta tell ya, this is the best one yet.”<
br />
  “My script?”

  “It smells like a rose.”

  Was that a compliment or a put-down? Neil screwed up his face behind his makeup and climbed down off the ladder. He surveyed his work and was pleased enough to put the ladder away.

  “You didn’t have to do all that, Neil. Nobody cares,” Landis remarked.

  “I care,” Neil said. It was becoming his standard answer. “It makes it more festive.”

  “Well, this old place always did need a woman’s touch,” Landis said, baiting the trap.

  “Thank you,” Neil replied, taking it. “I hear you dropped in on Roberta Bachman.”

  “Who told you that?”

  Neil fished a cigarette out of his pocketbook and lit it from a book of matches from Frederick’s of Hollywood.

  “I know Roberta. We worked together over at National.”

  Landis looked up from his eyepiece. “I didn’t know that,” he said slowly.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know, Landis Woodley,” Neil exhaled loudly. “You’re in your own little world working on these pictures. I’m not some shut-in who only comes out to work for you. I got a life, you know.”

  “Are you spying on me?”

  “Why on earth would I do that?”

  Landis grunted. “Well, to answer your question, yeah, I did see her. I brought her some pickles from Canter’s a few days ago.”

  “You know, she was very upset after your party. Apparently, Buzzy and you really made a great impression. God knows, you two guys can alienate anybody. But why go after Roberta? She’s a sweet innocent thing.”

  Landis clicked off the light in the film splicer to avoid heat damage to the celluloid. He rubbed his eyes. Editing was tiresome work, but he insisted on doing it all himself. No one else could touch his film. If he could, he would also do the processing, but that was impossible.

  He sighed. “That’s the whole point, Neil. You see, everyone around here, everyone I work with, all the people we know … are all freaks. She’s the one person I know who is totally normal, who I can talk to and get a real opinion once in a while. I think she’s just about the sweetest, nicest, most honest person I know. And that’s no jive. I like her a lot.”

  Neil sat next to Landis. His bizarre combination of colognes and perfumes assailed Landis’s nose. It mingled with the cigar and cigarette smoke to form a dense toxic jungle of aromas. They both coughed.

  “Let’s go out on the porch,” Landis said.

  “Okay. I could go for some coffee.”

  “Fuck coffee. I want a beer.”

  “Done.”

  Three minutes later they were looking out at the brownish LA sky and relaxing in a pair of cheap lawn chairs.

  “Roberta is vulnerable. I wouldn’t want you to hurt her,” Neil said.

  “I won’t hurt her, for God’s sake. I like her. Hell, maybe she’s the woman I’ll marry someday.”

  Neil snapped his head around. “Am I hearing this straight? Did you say the word ‘marry’?”

  Landis smiled sheepishly. “Well, not—no. I mean, not for a long time. And she doesn’t really feel the same way about me.”

  “I thought she hated you,” Neil said.

  “She kinda does. I’ve only been to see her twice, and I don’t think she enjoyed my company all that much. I think she was just being nice. She heard me out, though, and it helped to have a person like that to talk to,” Landis concluded.

  “What did you—oh no, you didn’t tell her about—”

  Neil didn’t finish his question. Landis’s face remained granite.

  “Landis! You didn’t! That shit could ruin you! It could ruin us all!”

  Landis looked out at the smog and said nothing.

  “Jesus Christ! I don’t believe it! You told this girl you hardly know, about … about that?” He hooked his thumb back toward the house, indicating the movie Landis was editing.

  “I didn’t say that!” Landis replied defensively.

  “Well, what did you say?”

  Landis leaned back in his chair and said nothing.

  Neil grabbed his arm. “Don’t hurt Roberta and don’t tell her things that she’ll never understand. Damning things, ruinous things. She’s just a child, for Christ sake.”

  “I didn’t say that I told her anything,” Landis answered.

  “Well, did you?”

  The sliding door opened and Buzzy Haller stepped through. “Where’s the beer?” he asked.

  Neil kept his eyes locked on Landis, waiting for an answer. He asked again.

  “Did you?”

  “Fuck off, Neil,” Landis replied without venom. “You’re not my mother. I don’t have to tell you shit. You work for me, remember?”

  The party was sedate compared to the Halloween bash. There were substantially fewer people in the house, only the cast and crew. Buzzy Haller didn’t get stinking drunk until after ten o’clock, a record by most people’s recollections. Landis ran the film at midnight.

  They all gathered in the projection room and he got up to address the crowd before switching off the lights.

  “I would just like to thank everyone here for doing their part in making this movie possible. I thought we did a pretty damn good job.”

  There was polite applause.

  Landis continued. “I did a very rough edit today, just so we could have something to look at tonight. The real edit will take a week or two, so just keep that in mind. I think you’re, going to like what you see. The acting is excellent. Jonathon, as usual, you were brilliant.”

  Luboff, the consummate ham, stood and took a bow. “Thank you, my friends,” he said, his pupils as constricted as pinpoints.

  Landis smiled. “And a fine job was also done by our costar, Tad.” Addressing Tad directly, he said, “You were very convincing. Although I don’t know how much of it was acting and how much was real fear. Either way, you did your best work yet.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Woodley,” Tad said from his seat.

  “And Chet, you were magnificent. The camera work was, how can I say it, beyond anything we’ve ever done before. The morgue stuff is absolutely the scariest stuff I’ve ever seen, and the lighting was atmospheric and spooky as hell. In short, a masterful job.”

  Chet waved his hand and chugged a beer. He was a man of few words and fewer emotions. “Thanks,” he muttered.

  “Okay, that’s it. Before we roll film I just want to say one more thing. This film is scary. Not just a little scary, a lot scary. It’s a good film with decent production values. The overall feeling is very disturbing; I think you’ll be pleased. We have created a masterpiece of horror, folks, and I am very proud. Let’s roll film!”

  The lights clicked off and Buzzy started the projector. The film credits had yet to be included, so the action jumped right into the first scene. Everyone watched with rapacious intensity.

  Buzzy periodically swigged from a silver flask. Others politely sipped beer or wine at their seats. No one dared to move while the movie was showing.

  The grainy, black-and-white texture of the film gave it a dark, atmospheric dimension.

  Luboff’s manic eyes filled the screen. In the first shot he was digging up a grave. It was night, in a graveyard, and he labored over the freshly dug earth. The camera started with his eyes, then panned back and away to encompass the scene as he looked around frantically. Then, assured that he was alone, he went back to digging.

  Chet had made brilliant use of the zoom lens and subject framing. Luboff’s eyes struck the right chord of insanity and terror from the very first second of film. It was the kind of beginning—an extreme close-up of the eyes—that would jar the audience right into the mood of the thing.

  There was scattered applause for the opening scene. Landis and Chet smiled. As the movie wore on, Landis watched the reactions of the people around him. They gasped at all the right moments, and, at the climax of the morgue scene, they screamed. All of them. Even the hardened veterans like Luboff and Beatnik Fred. It
was the terrible shot of Johnny D.’s eyes. It was the maggots.

  Landis waited until the lights came up and congratulated his cast and crew. They were all impressed. This time he had really done it. He had really done what he set out to do, scare the hell out of everybody. God, it felt good.

  Landis had himself a few drinks and enjoyed the moment.

  Buzzy, in the meantime, had gotten more inebriated with every passing hour.

  Why did Buzzy get like this? Landis wondered about his friend. It seemed like he had to get thoroughly smashed every time there was a party. Was it the social aspect? Did he feel uncomfortable around people? That might have been the excuse for Halloween, but not here. These were people he worked with every day.

  Buzzy was out of control, and Landis thought that maybe it was time for his good buddy to dry out.

  The movie had been shown, the guests were happy, the drinks were flowing, it was getting late. Then Buzzy Haller staggered to his feet.

  “Can I have yer attenshun?” he shouted drunkenly.

  Heads turned. Landis thought, Oh shit, here he goes. He’s chewed through the leash again.

  “Attenshun! Please!”

  Someone, almost as drunk as Buzzy, kept talking.

  “Hey!” Buzzy shouted in an ugly explosion. “Shut the fuck up!”

  The room went quiet. All eyes went to Buzzy’s face, which was now twisted in an evil, maniacal smile. His red-rimmed eyes sparkled like demonic sapphires. Warning lights were going off in Landis’s head. He instinctively moved closer to Buzzy, in case he had to restrain him physically. He signaled to Neil to do the same. Together they inched nearer the drunken monster maker.

  “You people … you people are fulla shit! You wanna know why? Huh? Ya wanna know? I tell ya!”

  Buzzy stumbled backward a half step. Landis moved another few feet closer. Buzzy’s eyes locked on him and glared. “Get back, Woody! I’ll be good, I promise! I jush wanna say one thing, okay?”

  Landis held up a hand. “You’re drunk, Buzz. Come on, let’s just cool out now.”

  “Fuck you! I’ll show you cool. You wanna see cool?”

  Neil moved in next to Landis.

  “Oh, look at this,” Buzzy slurred, pointing to Neil. “It’s Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. He’s gonna help Woody restrain the drunken party guest. Well, stay the fuck back! I swear it, I’ll deck the next guy who tries to make a move on me!”