Best New Horror 29

by Stephen Jones

  Only the second drawing room remained untouched—except for Ty’s clever desk and chair addition—because, as Carl said for all of us, “It’s just perfect, exactly the way it is.”

  Since I was never in there, I didn’t care. It was Ash’s hideaway just as “Concrete and Spruce” was my own—although mine was located at the top of the stairs, opposite the elevator, and so a much more public room. The difference reflected our two personalities, really. Ash always looked pretty and mysterious in the background at our business meetings. She really only came in at the end, “for the kill,” as she put it, after I’d done most of the talking.

  Which might explain why it took a good eight months for me to realise…well, to realise that anything at all was going on with the room—and the little garden. Maybe even more so with the garden.

  Four of our producers were also married: Laisa and Gideon Steinkerque, even if we preferred the other couple of our producers, Jimmie Bruri and Scott Grizzi. It was Laisa who cottoned onto the second drawing room. They were all in the house for a celebratory dinner, the day after the first season’s “wrap” party, and Laisa disappeared into the powder-room, until it was noticeable and Gideon went to get her. Ash made “get ’em” eyes at me and so I went too. At night, the big house with lots of halls and doors could be a little confusing to navigate.

  We found her inside the second drawing room. “Laisa, we’re over there!” Gideon pointed in the opposite direction.

  “Oh, I know. I was headed back, but I thought I heard people this way. I thought some of you had moved in here.”

  “We didn’t. We’re still in the dining room,” I said.

  “The dining room—over there!” Gideon, who was a little stunada repeated and pointed.

  I pointed him in the direction of his own hand, ordering: “Go!”

  I took Laisa by the elbow and said, “Madam!”

  “It’s a perfectly lovely little room,” she said, apologetically. “You guys are so lucky. Our house doesn’t have anything close to this.”

  “I heard that!” Gideon said.

  “Well, does it?” she asked.

  She explained again at the dinner table, and I would have forgotten it except that when Laisa was in the kitchen with the au pair later on that night, I heard the latter ask in her distinctive Caribbean accent, “What kind of voices, Miz Steinkerque?” And Laisa asked back, “Why? Have you heard anything there?” To which the au pair replied hastily, “Oh, I never go in that room at all. Be duppies in there.”

  Skip a few months and I’m on the phone in a conference-call with the Bahamas, where we’re thinking of shooting an entire three sequences, discussing locations with a woman named Esmeralda Sligh, who has the same accent as the au pair—whom we’d replaced by the way. So, I asked her what the word duppy meant.

  “Haints. Them that cannot rest in this life or the next.”

  “Spirits?”

  “You might say. Haints.”

  Esmeralda said she had just the place for us to use—it was big, it was new-ish, it was barely ten minutes outside of Georgetown.

  I went to my trusty OED and found the word “Haints” equals “Haunts”. To which I said aloud, “That’s crazy!”

  It was Laisa who convinced Ashleigh into using the second drawing room as a cocktail party area

  The night before, Ash was upset over the preparations for the dinner party the next day and I couldn’t figure out why.

  “You can do this kind of gathering sleep-walking Ash! You know that as well as I do. What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the second drawing room.”

  “It’s your private room. I get it. You don’t want it invaded. So why can’t we have cocktails outside in the garden? Move all the chairs and even, I don’t know, the bed halfway out there with lots of throw pillows?”

  “That won’t help,” she said. “It’s even worse out there.”

  I stared at her. Worse? Why worse? “Ash! Tell me, what’s worse?”

  “You’re going to say it’s stupid.”

  “We’ve suddenly got secrets from each other? What did our marriage vows say? Remember? No secrets ever.”

  She sighed and said, “No secrets ever. Here goes. Laisa’s not the only one who has heard voices.”

  “The duppies?”

  “Well, I don’t know what they are. They’re just kind of whispers. Of course the twins noticed right away. Their hearing must be super-sharp at that age, so I never bring them in there anymore.”

  This was a secret indeed. “Go on! Tell me about the whispers?”

  “Well, there are two of them: a man and a woman. They’re both very cultivated. East Coast, old-time cultivated, if you know what I mean.”

  “Like in black and white movies cultivated?”

  “Exactly. With that kind of…” she raised her nose high in the air, “accent. And they’re…I don’t know how to put it. They’re…gossiping about other people. There’s a François, and a Nila, and a Gottfried that they talk about.”

  My lips started forming a smile. So I covered them up.

  “Also some American or British names. Anthony. Everson. Damita, Bell something or other.”

  “Bellamy?” I tried. “Wasn’t that the old gal’s name? A relative?”

  That startled Ashleigh. “You may be right. Bell as in Bellamy! As a rule I don’t hear them except, you know, if I come in here later on. I never hear them during the day at all. They don’t ever bother me when I’m working.” She suddenly changed subject. “Jimmie and Gideon liked the changes to the new arc, right?”

  “Yes, I already told you. I like them. Gid and Jimmie and Laissa and Scott all like them. Even the leads are going to like them. In short, everyone likes the new changes. You’re brilliant, as usual.”

  “Well, I’m not there, part of the day like you are,” she said. “So, I’m never sure what people say.”

  “People love the changes. People love you. I heard a rumour that there’s even a groundswell afloat to have you canonised.”

  She hit me with that and I hit her back, and we ended up on the floor.

  “After dinner, out of nowhere she brought it up again: “You know that wonderful Guatemalan guy your brother uses in his shop? What is he? A carpenter? A wood-finisher? Looks like an Aztec statue come to life?”

  “Andres?”

  “Andres! When he and Carl came in, and were setting-up my desk, it was like, the sun was setting, which was partly visible from in here, and it was so lovely and the air was soft, and I remember that Andres looked around and I’m sure he too heard the whispers, while Carl didn’t. Maybe even more clearly even than I did, and he stuck around fussing until Carl left. I know that because he said, “It’s okay, Missus. They are activos but not, I don’t think, malo.”

  “He meant ‘active but not bad’?” I tried with my high-school Spanish.

  “That’s what I guessed too.”

  “Okay. That’s the secret, and now it’s out. See. Was that so terrible?’

  Of course, I could say that because I was already prepped about the duppies.

  “So here’s my idea: it’s your office. Your garden. It’s totally your call whether we have the cocktail party in here or not. Totally!”

  “No. It’s stupid. It’s our house. We pay the mortgage. We should be able to use every inch of space here any time we wish. I will not be denied,” she declared with a rising fist.

  I bent down and worshipped at her feet until she knocked me over and we fell onto the floor, laughing.

  So, right from the beginning I was a believer. That was never the issue. The problem was that I thought, well, it’s an old place, almost expected to have them…duppies. Ashleigh is the only one in the room. She’d even kept the children out. So what harm can the duppies do?

  The cocktail party in the second drawing room garden was a complete success. A suces fou as the French say. There were maybe eighteen of us altogether, mostly from the series; a few friendly
network people, and even an inside/outside wife/critic/promoter of one of them who oddly enough got along with all of us, even though she was twice our age. The women all liked the décor of the room, and the garden. The men appreciated the wet-bar, and even more the bed half-in, half-out of doors, where they could flop, and according to the catering folk, the room and the garden too were in use throughout the night by people.

  For the next two weeks everyone who’d been there had something good to say about the party, and so I felt I had to tell Ashleigh that that it was all awesome and her fears were totally unjustified.

  She was pleased—what home-maker, party-giver wouldn’t be. Then she said something I’ll never forget: “The only thing is that Jimmie and Scott are separating.”

  Dealing with them almost daily, a lot more than she was, and I’d heard absolutely zilch. So I asked, “How do you know this? Did Jimmie tell you?”

  She shook her head. “They were alone in the garden and had words. Apparently, it had been building. This wasn’t the first time they’d fought over her former husband and kid. Scott put his foot down, and she said absolutely no.”

  “What about them?”

  “It’s complicated, but not that important, Noah. What is important is that if they split they endanger the show.”

  “They’re not going to split, and if they do they’re professional enough not to back out of the show.”

  “She didn’t want to do it in the first place. And she’s got the money, Noah. You know that. It was her dad who was the producer of those hit shows in the ’70s and ’80s. Not his.”

  I thought she heard about it from friends. From the caterers. From the girl who cut her hair, and the women in her Pilates class: the usual unimpeachable sources. That’s how sure she was. So when she brought it up again the next night, she added, “I’ve been thinking, Noah. You know our other series?”

  She meant our dream series. “Yeah. What about it?”

  “Why don’t we shop it to Jimmie and her dad?”

  “Cutting out Scott and Gideon and Laissa?”

  “We can bring in the Steinkerques later. Scott won’t want to have anything to do with it once they’re apart. You know how he gets—all black and white. No greys!”

  We’d worked that to our advantage in the past.

  I said I’d think about it. Four days later, Ash arranged for us to take the kids and hang out at Jimmie’s dad’s beach place in Malibu for the day. This was a delicious treat, and she knew I loved going there in the past, since I’d known Jimmie and Scott a lot longer. It was August, and hot and perfect for the beach, and so of course I said yes.

  Towards the end of that day, with the twins snoring away, and Jimmie and her sister Reena and Ash all making dinner and drinking too much Pinot inside, Hamilton Bruri came out to the deck with what he called “a refill”.

  “This is a Noir I picked up the last night it was open one season at the Crater Lake Hotel,” he began. I’d known Ham since I was eighteen, and above all things about him I loved his stories. I mean, he’d made a billion with his stories on series, right? So I laughed as he poured this almost black wine for me.

  “I’m needed the next day at a promotional in Portland and then in Seattle the day after, before shooting in Vancouver,” he says. “So I drove down to Medford, where I did my first directing at the Shakespeare Festival. Hung out with a few folks, for old times’ sake. Then drove up the mountain to the lake. It’s like early October. It was eighty-five degrees in Medford. When I reach the hotel it’s thirty-one and snow and ice are on the ground.

  “I’m the last guest to check in for the season. Everyone is leaving by 2:00 p.m. the next day, and it’s closing down for the winter, like the place in that Kubrick movie. I enter this pine lodge-pole wonderment from the 1920s—a dining room two stories tall, fireplace yeah big, and I’m the last diner of the season. They put me at a table for one, aside a little, and I’m sure every damn person there asked who I was. I order a half-bottle of this highly recommended Pinot and salmon and whatever that’s easy, and when I go to pay, the waiter hands me the bottle and says take it: they’re closing for the winter. I like it so much, I buy six bottles the next day down in the Willamette Valley, right at the winery. This is the last one of those.

  “By the way, the lake was black, the night clear, and as it’s 7,800 feet up, there were a million stars reflected in the water. I stayed on the room’s balcony looking at it and polishing off the bottle, and I fell asleep out there with fur blankets.”

  “It’s a wonderful story—and wine.” I tasted and declared, “Black cherries and blackberries! Which I guess all grow in the Willamette Valley.”

  “Now you tell me a story,” Ham said

  “Sure. What story?”

  “You know what story, Noah. Yours and Ash’s new series story!”

  That story was Oratorio in Black and well, its history now, isn’t it?

  Scott pulled out of season three of the other series, once he and Jimmie separated, as Ashleigh had predicted. They entered a long, messy, vituperative divorce. He was unhappy to hear about our new series. With Ham on board, we took it to HBO and got premium treatment there—as it deserved. When we later pulled in Gideon and Laisa for their expertise and connections, they of course approached Scott with our blessing, but he blew up in their faces: why hadn’t I come to him first?

  Ash asked what the outcome of that was. “You mean the outcome of breaking-off totally with my friend from the eighth grade who I’d shared all my dreams with?” She never asked again.

  What I didn’t tell her was what happened in the men’s room at the Emmys two years later, once season one of Oratorio had aired and had gotten a skillion nominations, including a writing one for us, and then the award. I was off stage and had to urinate, and I was washing my hands when Scott came out of a stall and our eyes locked in the mirror above me. We’d not seen each other in maybe two years, and I didn’t know what to say. He was pretty drunk, of course, which partly explained why he suddenly undid his pants, turned around, bent over and mooned me. I thought it was funny and pure Scott from middle school, but as more people were coming in, I got embarrassed. “Very nice. Even better muscled than when you were on the gym team. Now put your pants back on.”

  He didn’t though, and so they were treated to the sight of him, bare-assed, bumping into my front and drunkenly saying, “Why, Noah? Why hide it? Since everyone already knows that you screwed me royally once, and I’m guessing you’re raring’ to do it again!”

  I fled, and so did they. A few minutes later, someone came over to our table and whispered to Gideon, who left to help Scott out of the men’s room and into a limo.

  There we were, with two series going great, and Ash decided she wanted a sister for the boys. So she didn’t come back into production with me part of a day, but instead stayed home working on her own projects. Which, later on, I could understand was because while I wanted to be where the action was, she wanted to be more in the know. And evidently daughter number one and daughter number two didn’t have as sharp hearing as their brothers, and so she could keep them with her in her office during the day.

  Explaining the next piece of information that came my way following another one of our cocktail parties and buffets, this time for the staff and cast of Oratorio, and so the place was full, every downstairs room in use. It was a big, joyous, noisy event. And the HBO exec was friendly as hell and said, “C’mon now, Noah. Don’t be coy. What else do you guys have up your sleeves?”

  It was totally true that we were working on another series, and I was ready to bring it to Ham and Jimmie, but Ash had twice said it wasn’t ready. So I played coy and promised he’d have something in a few weeks.

  I didn’t spend a lot of time with either of the Bruris that night, but evidently Ashleigh did because the next day at dinner she said, “Let’s call a meeting with that HBO exec? What’s his name, Alton something?”

  “Shouldn’t we have a meet with Ham first?” I a
sked. I mean, it was a given at this point: Ham. Jimmie. Then the Steinkerques. Then the exec.

  Ashleigh said, “Ham won’t live to see it into production.”

  The classic wine-all-over-the-dinner was my response.

  She turned icy. “If he’s got six months, it’s a lot. It’s a poly. It’s already metastasised into his lungs and brain.”

  “What are you talking about, Ashleigh?”

  “Cancer, Noah. The big C. Ham’s big C.”

  “We’re having the meeting with him, Ash. I mean, even if you are right, we have to do it! Out of respect.”

  We did, at the beach house in Malibu a week later. Hamilton was obviously sick, which I’d never seen at the party or before, and where Jimmie was nowhere in sight. Ash helped the full-time nurse with the dinner preparation, and it was wonderful, and when it was done, they were cleaning up and we were out on the deck. I told the series story to Ham, and he reacted wonderfully: “Pure gold!”

  “We knew you’d love it.”

  “I love it, Noah. But it’s too rich for me. The only gold I need now is what they’re shooting into the back of my neck every week to stabilise the radiation.”

  “What about Jim—?”

  “Don’t bother her with it, either. She’s going through her own things. You know Scott showed up again, and they’re on and off. And she’s having a hell of a hard time with me, being a Daddy’s girl and all. I’ll tell her you wanted to include her. I’m sure she’ll take a pass. But it’s pure gold, kid…” He paused. “You know, I always thought they would be my heirs in the Biz: Scott and Jimmie. But they’re not. They’re too easily distracted. It’s you guys. You’re the rock-solid ones.”

  Ash came out onto the deck.

  “Just in time,” Ham said. “I want you to hear this too, hon. The girls will get plenty from me. Houses all over the west, vacation condos from here to Bora Bora, a loft in Manhattan. Why don’t I let you two have this place? I know how much you love it since you were a teenager.”