Best New Horror 29

by Stephen Jones

  We said, no, no, no. Ham died three months later. And a few months after that I received the title to the beach house in his will.

  To my surprise, the HBO exec hadn’t expected nor, for that matter, even needed the Bruris in our meeting about the new series. “You four have legs enough.”

  He liked the story and our casting ideas, and we went for a celebratory dinner right afterwards, Ash and me and the Steinkerques.

  I was gazing out my office window when this ginormous Rolls-Royce pulled up along the front of our house; I mean, so big it took up one and three-quarter parking spaces, and was one of the subtle battleship-grey and slate-blue two-tone “saloons”, with white wall tyres four-feet high.

  This driver with—I swear—a cap and uniform, exits, comes around and opens the back door, and helps out this tall, elderly woman: the kind of woman you would expect to see come out of such a wagon, and she begins walking up to our door.

  The twins are at pre-school, and Ash is out somewhere doing something, but the au pair and the infant girls are napping. I don’t want them to wake for at least another hour, or I’ll get no work done at all. I shut their door, rush downstairs, and catch the front door, just as she’s about to ring the bell.

  She’s surprised, but asks if I’m Noah, and then says she’s someone or other and has something to tell me, can she come in?

  She comes into the big foyer and looks around.

  “Little girls upstairs napping,” I stage whisper, pointing upstairs.

  “How about the library then,” she says, and walks right in like she owns the place. I follow and close the library door, and she looks around and sits herself down in one of the two wing-tip chairs we left there.

  “Um? Coffee? Tea? Ice-water?”

  “My generation drinks, dear. Why don’t you get me a sherry.”

  She nods in the direction of the half-bar hidden as a book cabinet, and I go get it for her, and a tonic water for me. I perch, and she sips, and then puts it down and says: “I spoke to your wife by phone, but it did no good.”

  All I could think was—what a great opening line for an episode!

  “Again my name is,” she adds, and it turns out to be Alexandra Laws Pfaff, said as though I should know it.

  “I found you and your wife through several other people. I happened to be with an old friend from back east in ________”, naming the best consignment house in Rancho Mirage, “and saw the big aspen wood console for sale. A mark on the side confirmed that it was from this house, from the front parlour in particular.”

  “Yes, we re-did most of the rooms down here.”

  “But not the second drawing room with the garden.”

  “No. Not much work in there.” Now I was intrigued.

  “Seeing the console for sale, I knew that Fran was gone and the house was sold. I used a bit of leverage with the middle-men and I obtained your names.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “As I said, I spoke to Ashleigh—that’s her name, isn’t it?—a few days ago, and she paid no attention to me. So, I’m trying again, with you.”

  “What about?”

  “About the second drawing room and garden.”

  She let that hang there a half-minute.

  “You mean about the duppies. Uh, the whispers?”

  “Well, you at least admit it. She wouldn’t.”

  “I admit it. But what about them?”

  She looked startled at that. “What about them? They’re dangerous, young man. That room should be locked up and the door sealed.”

  “Because…?”

  “Because it ruined a great many lives once, and will do so again.”

  Now she had my complete interest.

  “You know who the whispers come from, don’t you?” she asked.

  “I’m guessing Frances whatever-her-name and someone else.”

  That surprised her. “Oh! There are two now!”

  “Before there was only one?” I asked.

  “Yes. Always just the one. But one was bad enough.”

  “And that one was?”

  “Ben Allingham. Benedict Allingham. Fran’s closest friend. In life and in death. He came out here in ’38, I believe, to be in the movies, and did several in supporting roles over a period, but somehow that didn’t work out. I think it’s because film doesn’t lie, and it picked up the real Ben Allingham, and no one wanted to see that. Especially not as a leading man.”

  I settled back in my chair and gestured for her to continue.

  “He got involved in promotion for pictures. It was the absolute heyday of the movie studios and he made a great front man, did that awfully well. So well, that when the war came, they managed to keep him out of it for two years, and when he went in it was with a film-crew to the Pacific. He saw no action closer than a mile away, and that through a lens. He returned here in ’46 and took up his old position. But he had disappointments. A woman of means he’d assiduously courted married someone else. Another potential wife had gone east, and then Fran—who was well into being of marriageable age by then—decided not to marry at all, but to be ‘Aunt Fran’ to her many nephews and nieces. Ben’s work changed as the studios did, and then as they lost ground to television. He wasn’t really needed…No one knew if the auto accident he died in was intentional or not. A large truck was involved, and its driver escaped with minor injuries. So it was only Fran.”

  “By then I was already on the scene here. I’m younger than Fran by a decade, and I came here with friends for a party. She and I got along wonderfully well, and of course I comforted her when the news about Ben came. She was devastated. She retreated and totally closed down. This house used to be so filled with people, with parties, with events of all kinds—some studio-related, some not—but every room downstairs here would be filled with people. I don’t know how to describe how marvellous that was.”

  “We’re in the Business and have parties here too. We know how great the house is for entertaining.”

  “I’ve heard. That’s exactly why it’s especially dangerous for the both of you. Had Persian jewellers bought the place, I mightn’t be here.”

  “But it’s just gossip, my wife told me.”

  “It was always ‘just gossip’!”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “How do I say this? A year or so after Ben died, Fran was suddenly radiant. I thought, Oh good, she has a new friend. It wasn’t true. What was true was that Ben had returned here, to the second drawing room, where they always used to be, before and after the parties they used to throw. She admitted it to me over time, and then let me witness it. It was Ben, all right. And he wasn’t one of those—I don’t know what they call them—repetitive spirits, those who repeat an action over and over, unaware of their surroundings. No, he was still, somehow, gossiping.”

  “He’s an activo,” I said, and explained. “That’s what a Latin gentlemen told Ash.”

  “Very active. As you’ve noticed, haven’t you?”

  “Only second-hand. Ash notices. We use the room and garden for cocktail parties for our TV series. Afterwards, Ash knows things about people she shouldn’t know.”

  “Bad things?”

  “This couple is breaking up. That man is dying of cancer.”

  “And like Ben and Fran, you somehow profit from this knowledge.”

  I should have kicked Alexandra Laws Pfaff out then. If I had faked outrage and gotten her out, none of the rest would have happened. Or so I sometimes tell myself. Instead I replied, “Have we profited by the gossip she heard? I’ll say we have!”

  “That’s why it’s so dangerous, young man.”

  “But Frances lived to ninety-seven. It didn’t harm her.”

  “Didn’t it? I was her very last friend, and I stepped away for good twenty-five years ago. She remained alone here with servants she didn’t like or trust, who’d turn over almost annually. She stayed with no friends but…” Alexandra Laws Pfaff nodded in the direction of the second drawing room, “�
��that monstrosity.”

  “But…I don’t get it. How…”

  “He developed a sort of tic, Ben did. I think I was the first one to notice it. He’d be going along all witty and urbane, and just as he was about to say something really cruel or devious about someone, something that would cause them great harm, his upper lip curled slightly. It happened time after time. Maybe that was what the camera picked up, that kept him out of films—that tiny sneer, that sign of his sense of entitlement and of his superiority, and especially of his contempt.”

  “Within a year or so after his whispering began, Fran developed that same tic. The first time I noticed it, I wasn’t sure. So I asked the man I was dating, whom I married, if he’d be a dear and watch her closely when I brought up a certain person’s name. I did. He did. That confirmed it.”

  “A tic?”

  “Like this…” Her upper lip curled a bit above her eyetooth. It was a tiny thing, and I could see why she’d need it confirmed. But it was awful.

  “Yes. I see it now.”

  “Good!” She finished her sherry in another long sip, and sighed and put on her lace gloves. “Well, I’ve said what I had to. You’ve been courteous and listened. There’s no more I can do.”

  She stood up and left. In the foyer, she hesitated and turned. Unbidden, I asked, “Do you want to see it? The second drawing room?”

  For the first time since I’d met her, a look of unease came onto the old lady’s face and her pale blue eyes darted.

  “C’mon,” I said. “A peek can’t harm you.”

  I drew her through the corridor. The door was ajar as it usually was during the day. She stood on the lintel and peered in, then quickly turned.

  “It looks the same,” she said, relieved or scared, I couldn’t tell which.

  “Except for my wife’s new desk and chair.”

  “Yes. But even those are in the style of…the room. He’d approve. I’m sure they both approve.”

  Alexandra Laws Pfaff marched out of the house and into the huge Rolls. But not out of my mind.

  I wouldn’t have said a word about Alexandra’s visit, but it was such a weird visit, and the back-story so damn interesting and Old-Hollywood-ish, that I simply had to tell someone. Who better than my best friend, who happened to be my wife? After dinner. That night.

  Terrible idea. Her response was ice cold: “So she got to you?”

  “What do you mean ‘got to me’?”

  “She tried to get to me, and when it didn’t work she got to you.”

  I let my first reaction pass, drew down a big gulp of Chardonnay and then asked, “So you don’t think it’s an interesting story?”

  “If it’s true!”

  “If it’s not, why do you think she even bothered to get to either of us?”

  “She’s an old dame. All her friends are probably dead. She wants to be important for a few moments. She’s just like those old ladies you see at the CVS check-out line, doing anything they can to keep the cashier or anyone at all taking to them, since they have no one else to talk to at home, while we wait and wait for them to finish.”

  That was a pretty cold thing to say, and not like Ash at all. I didn’t think Alexandra Laws Pfaff was a bit like those old ladies at CVS. After all, she had her chauffeur and probably other staff to keep her company. The rich usually do. What did Robert Frost call it? Boughten friendship at her side.

  I let it drop.

  Five minutes later we’re in some other conversation altogether, and the oddest thing happened: we’d been talking about a new intern in Laisa Steinkerques’ office, a new production assistant. He was young, and good-looking, and obviously went to the gym, and Ashleigh said, “What she likes about him is how tight he wears those black denims of his. I mean, the other day I met her for lunch at her office, and he was sitting on the edge of the desk talking to her, and she was sitting in her office chair and his junk was right there, in her face.”

  I tried saying, “I’m told some women like guys who display.”

  “Put Mrs. Steinkerque number one on that list. But then he certainly wouldn’t be the first of her personal assistants to display.” And then just before she smiled, Ashleigh’s upper lip curled into a tiny sneer. She laughed and changed the subject.

  Admittedly we’d almost had a full bottle of oak cask-fermented thirty-dollar wine between us, so I wasn’t totally sober, but I sobered up instantly because I swear, the hair went up on the back of my neck.

  “Poor Gideon. He doesn’t suspect a thing,” Ash added.

  I got myself out of there somehow and up to my desk, and that’s when I wrote down all these notes and what we said during Alexandra’s visit.

  After that, something almost had to happen.

  It did. Right after that season’s wrap party at our place, naturally, for season two of Oratorio in Black.

  It was in the SUV with the twins all muddy and fatigued and sleepy after some pre-organised and, thankfully, disorganised after pre-school soccer game. Ash had been there with another mother an hour and I’d arrived later, but the boys were delighted anyway. Their tiny tots “team” more-or-less won, and so I said I’d take them out and treat all of us to Wienerschnitzel, ten miles away, which they’d seen advertised on TV and which they were just old enough to love saying a hundred and twenty times in different ways and with different accents—well, their five-year old ideas of accents. It was one of those moments when I was just utterly happy with them, with us, with Ash and with my entire life.

  Coming back, somewhere on Sunset Blvd., Ashleigh said out of nowhere, “You know, we’re going to have to think about re-casting for Jed soon. I mean seriously, Noah.”

  “Jed” being the second lead of Oratorio.

  Everything in my body went on full red-alert at that, since this was how these conversations based on the whispers always began. But I decided to keep it cool, and I said, “Why’s that, Ash?”

  “Well, I’m hearing Tony’s involved with that Romanian model. What’s her name? Rudii? And that she wants him in London. He’s so whipped, he’ll do whatever she asks.”

  “I’ll talk to him, tomorrow.”

  “God! Don’t do that!”

  “How else will we know for sure?”

  “We already know for sure.”

  She said it with the same certainty that she’d told me of Ham Bruri’s cancer and Scott and Jimmie’s break-up, and I said, “Tell you what, I’ll be friendly and diplomatic and completely sympathetic with him. And I’ll ask.”

  “We can grab Nick ________” and she named a real comer from another series who we both knew, and knew from early scripts would be written out of it in a few episodes. “We’ll kill off Jed,” Ashleigh continued, “and write-in someone new for Nick. Say a younger brother, bent on revenge.”

  I said nothing further, and she didn’t push it. We carried the still-sleeping boys up to bed, undressed them, and checked in on the girls and the au pair, all snoring away; and after that, I went into my office and closed the door.

  The following day I made a point of going onto the set and chatting-up Tony to ask what he thought “Jed” should take on next season. He was full of ideas and totally enthusiastic. So, I asked, “Well, what about your squeeze? She’s in London, no?”

  “Yeah, but she can get work here. I’m not going anywhere Noah, if you’re expanding my part.” We talked a bit more, and he confirmed what he’d first said two more times.

  That came up with Ashleigh and Laisa at our next production meeting—with the body-builder taking up a lot of room at the conference table while taking notes—and of course Gideon too busy looking at his iPhone.

  As we summed up our final two shoots, I said as off-handedly as possible, “So me and Tony had this impromptu long talk. He wants a contract up-front for next season, and he wants his arc expanded from four to seven episodes. I told him we’d discuss it.”

  Gideon said, “Did you see his reviews on ________’s site?”, mentioning a strangely powerful
Twitter critic. “You guys should write Tony an arc for a dozen episodes.” Laisa agreed. Only Ash said nothing…

  …until we left for dinner out with the Steinkerques afterwards, then she said: “Why did you cut me off at the knees, Noah? I had Nick ________ sewed up.”

  “Your information was wrong, Ash. Tony was going nowhere near London. I asked, and he said: ‘Rudii can move here, if she wants to. If not, tough-titty. Plenty of models in the sea’.” To placate Ashleigh, I added, “And since you have Nick sewed up, let’s write a role for him and have them both in the series. It’s big enough to handle two young machos.”

  But I’d crossed her, and she fumed. I mean, the heat radiated off her head—like a convertible’s hood on an August day on a two-lane road in West Texas. But she said nothing.

  Not then. Even so, right after that, the subtle changes occurred between us, and those soon became unmistakable.

  Since it seems to be my destiny to lose just when I am winning something—viz Ham and Scott, not to mention others—the night we received the Best Series Emmy for Oratorio season two was the night Ash and I had our first and last real argument.

  She moved downstairs, I remained upstairs, and we only spoke through lawyers.

  Cut to two years later. I was at one of those West Hollywood places that change like clockwork every three years that people in the business flock to for lunches, this one with an indoor-outdoor central area. My guest had left, and I’m paying when I notice Ashleigh at a centre-table. Of course, we’d spoken and seen each other as we exchanged kids from what was now her house to my Malibu place. It was polite. Unlike Jimmie and Scott, our divorce was easy, respectful, unemotional, forever.

  The light was soft, falling angled through a skylight onto her. At first glance she looks wonderful and my heart broke a little all over again, just as it had almost every day of our separation, breaking anew over all that we’d built and then lost.

  She’s having a one-on-one with a younger man who has “writer” written all over him. Probably from back East. I knew for a fact she was involved producing shows, although not with me, nor with any of our former collab- orators.