Ron left the bags on the floor. Ten minutes wasted.
According to his map, all that remained was the Crossroad. It took a half-hour of backtracking across the gulch’s east side before he found a faint trail that led to a gap around a rock wall.
He spotted the lock on the door on the other side of the stone arena as soon as he rounded the corner, a brand-new brass padlock, like the row of them on top of Sims’s dresser. He ran without thinking about it. Old metal door, not park-service. Ron ripped off his backpack, fumbled for the bolt-cutter, gripped the handles and squeezed. The lock snapped.
Was now the moment when he would know? Ron had dreamed of finding Levi in a thousand ways. Bad dreams, in some, where Levi was dead. Either dead over a month, or, even worse, dead a few days. He’d be starved or dead from thirst or exposure. In some dreams he was alive but sick, damaged from exposure or the time alone. In one dream Levi didn’t know him, his mind gone. What could be worse than an eight-year-old driven insane by abuse and fear? In that dream, Ron loved his son back to sanity. No evil could be so bad that love could not change it to something good.
Ron tore the lock from the hasp, jammed his fingertips into the gap between the door and the frame. Pulled.
In the good dreams, Levi waited. ‘Daddy!’ he would cry. He always called Ron ‘Daddy’, like it was a blessing.
The door swung open.
Charles didn’t even try to get to sleep. Sitting at the table in his cabin, the tiny slice of moon providing the only light again, he thought about the locked gate and the boy behind it. His intention was to never return.
He thought, what’s the greater evil? Every time he closed his eyes, he saw dead children, a fingerprint on their foreheads; he also saw the boy at the Crossroad, staring at a candle, maybe, or sleeping. What kind of dreams would a bringer of death like him have? But Charles was evil too. The boy, no matter what else he was, was his son. A father should take care of his own. One time when Charles was young he locked a storage shed on his father’s farm. A week later his father sent him to fetch some tools. The storage shed stank, a solid wall of putridness rolling out when Charles opened the door. A cat had been locked in, its mouth gaping open, dry as dust; die stomach burst. If he had known, wouldn’t it have been merciful to have killed the cat a week earlier?
Charles looked through the darkness to his own bed. He couldn’t imagine sleeping again. The boy behind the gate moved in his mind. The room was so black, Charles could almost see the boy without closing his eyes. Like the cat, the boy was locked in. But the cat wasn’t the devil. No, not by a long shot. Maybe a creature like the boy thrived on the black air behind the gate. Could such a thing be killed by an act as simple as being shut into a mine? What if it could do some magic to save itself?
In a sudden vision, Charles saw himself as an older man walking down a street. A beautiful carriage clattered by, the horses’ hooves loud on the bricks. In the vision, Charles glanced up. Sitting in the carriage was his son, grown now, and the look he gave from the carriage was full of hate.
Charles made a fist on the table, alone in his cabin in the midst of the night, and moaned. The boy was behind the gate. ‘I’m cursed,’ Charles said to the four walls. Already he felt the guilt like a blood-soaked blanket settling over his head, suffocating him.
He’s a boy dying slowly, my son, Charles thought. He’s a monster who can save himself in some evil way.
Like the New Baltimore, the Crossroad was wet. Footprints showed clearly in the mud. Little prints. A child’s shoes.
‘Levi!’ Ron’s eyes strained to see into the mine, pulse throbbing huge in his chest. ‘Are you there, son?’
He took a few steps down the tunnel. Where was Levi? Ron turned on his flashlight. The powerful beam cut into the air showing the path curving away before him. His feet slipped on the muddy floor as slick as polished marble and suddenly he felt scared, as scared as he’d ever been in his life. His breath puffed out in a plume before him. Every instinct told him to run. The mine didn’t feel right. The air clung to his arms like icy cockleburs, and he had to brace himself with a hand against the wall. Then the floor shook, but it wasn’t just the floor; everything jolted or quivered. Every cell in his body flinched. He wasn’t sure if he had turned around and was heading out. He thought, the world has shifted.
He stepped forward again. Where am I? Where am I going?
A voice came from the tunnel before him, a little boy’s voice.
‘Papa?’ it called.
Ron rushed forward, his fear forgotten. He would greet him with love like he’d never known.
‘Papa?’
His son was coming home.
Charles stood at the Crossroad gate. He’d pulled it open, but he wouldn’t step inside. No, he was too frightened for that. He couldn’t see the boy, or all would be lost. He had one chance to make it right, and only one.
‘Boy?’ he yelled into the mine.
For a long time there was no sound, then Charles felt a peculiar twitch, like the mountain had shrugged. The air itself contracted, and his ears popped.
He shook his head. Whatever else was going on, he could not be swayed.
‘Boy?’ he shouted again.
A voice came from far back in the mine. ‘Daddy?’ it cried. ‘Is that you, Daddy?’
Small feet splashed through the mud, growing louder.
‘I knew you’d come, Daddy,’ the voice exclaimed, very close now.
Charles stood by the door out of sight, his hammer raised high, paused above him. When the boy stepped out, he would bring it down. Oh, yes he would. He would end it here.
And all would be right.
James Van Pelt lives in western Colorado with his wife and three sons. One of the 1999 finalists for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, he teaches high school and college English. His fiction has appeared in, amongst others, Dark Terrors 5, Asimov’s, Analog, Realms of Fantasy, Talebones, The Third Alternative, Weird Tales and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. His first collection of stories, Strangers and Beggars, was published in 2002. ‘The genesis of “The Boy behind the Gate” occurred long before I became a father,’ recalls the author. ‘During the summers, I often explored the old mills and ghost towns in the mountains west of Denver. Every once in a while there would come a report of a body found at the bottom of a deep shaft, and, of course, kids always turned up missing. It didn’t take much imagination to picture a child locked in the mines. But Mark Twain and Injun Joe went there first. For the longest time the story was entitled “Two Dads”, and I still think of the story with that emphasis. Those two poor, tortured dads. Is the one’s love strong enough to overcome evil? Will the other pause just long enough before he strikes to change his mind? As a dad, I hope so.’
<
A Hollywood Ending
MICK GARRIS
Lady Hollywood is such a tease.
Every time I have given her up for a lack of interest, she tells me how beautiful and talented I am, kisses me with a playful lick of the ear, and rests her perfectly lipsticked head in my lap, her chestnut hair spilling over my thighs. But when I reach for a little handful of tit, she pulls away with a laugh.
It’s always been frustrating, but it used to be cute. It was cute when I was an Artist, and fought to slay dragons with my Art. It was cute when I bounced through one after another of her silicone-implanted minions in my quest for her throne, each time climbing another Everest to be the Everlast. I wore tights and a cape back then, if only in my mind. I was invincible.
But I’ve since been vinced.
A steady diet of the Lady’s fare led me to believe in the world of Happy Endings. Everything will always work out, she told me. And I believed her. We share the misfortune of those who suffer around us, but we are certain that their grief can never grip us personally in its thrall. Irreversibly bad things happen to other people. When my little sister crashed through the sliding glass door and her face bloomed in a welling red roadmap,
I knew we could rush her to the hospital, stitch her up, and she’d be good as new in a couple of weeks. I knew that when my brother contracted AIDS, a cure would be found as he nobly fought off the spectre of death, and I would have him back to go laugh at the latest preposterous piece of crank-’em-out crap at the Chinese with me. There was no doubt that the experimental drugs my father took in the medical tests would save his life from the ravages of four decades of smoking that attacked his heart like Apaches around the wagon train. When my dog disappeared after the side gate was left open by the gardener, I knew he’d show up shivering on the porch late that night. And without question, when I got the opportunity to write and direct a Major Hollywood Studio Feature Film, Lady Hollywood herself would swoon in delight and beg me to make her mine. I might say yes, but I might play independent and hard to get.
We fear the worst, but expect the best. We have learned to expect the Happy Ending.
But Daria died in a pool of her own blood, staring up at me with wide, confused, Keane-painting eyes. Jerry wasted away horribly, angry and bitter and in pain, and died without a trace of the noble grace of Tom Hanks in Philadelphia. Dad responded wonderfully to the wonder drug, but when the tests were done, they would no longer supply it to him and he shuffled quietly off the mortal coil. I found Chewbacca in the back yard brush a week after his little heart gave out struggling to untangle himself from the fence. And when the Big Screen curled its mighty index finger my way, I answered the beckon with a masterpiece that crashed and burned mightily, and tossed me into a world of indifference. I was the crumpled Kleenex dropped into the toilet after being used to wipe away the secretions.
And yet, until now, I continued to believe in Happy Endings. I was the puppy who’d had its face rubbed into its own shit until it learned to poop outside, the beaten wife who kept coming back for more, because the pummelling blows showed I was loved; I was Sybil, filled with water and chained to the piano by a mad mother’s crazy act of devotion; the Child of God who was robbed of those I loved and who loved me by a God who chose strange ways to display his love for me. And I continued to kneel in prayer.
After climbing and falling repeatedly in the morass of Lady Hollywood’s theme park of tough love, I soon felt only pain or nothing. At USC I burned with excitement and the thrill of discovery. I pondered the profound, was brave and inventive; creativity sparked from my fingertips. All of my waking hours - and many of my sleeping - were spent exploring, inventing, creating. Or hustling hook-ups, but that’s another story.
Of course, I had no idea that my knowledge and my insights were puddle-deep; it didn’t matter. It was all about expression, even if what was expressed was bullshit. And, admittedly, a lot of it was.
When did I stop caring?
I remember passion. It was passion that brought me into this unforgiving, fickle land of pick-me!-pick-me! It was passion that fuelled the twenty-hour days on the student films and the first feature. But when the feature tanked, I was scorned by Lady Hollywood, and not for the last time. It took time and a baby - a mutant, mewling beast I’d discovered on a downtown LA street corner - to get another date. Oh, she kissed me deep during production, but when the project fell off its rails and went down in flames, she sought out newer, more virile playmates.
I went inert, creatively and physically impotent, flushed of drive and thrown off my game. I went looking for work, not inspiration. Dragged through the dregs of series TV and even pornography, being behind a camera was all about pay cheques, not passion.
There was rediscovery, however. Through a tryst with a late movie star - a story I really hope I never have to tell again - I discovered that Lady Hollywood had a glorious past, one that shimmered and sparkled and breathed heavy. There were images that lit the screen in a way the Modern Masters of CGI never imagined. It’s funny to think that my discoveries with her, with the fickle bitch of the silver screen, actually deepened me. Well, maybe it just seemed like it. But for a while, anyway, I held space warps and DTS explosions and computer-generated mummies and sequels that were really remakes and music-video film-making in disdain. I went on a quest for peace, a monk seeking salvation, a hermit drenched in the balm of celluloid archaeology.
I wished the world were viewed in black and white.
But a guy has to eat or be eaten, especially at Lady Hollywood’s table.
It was time again to be reborn, to burst out of the placental sac and shower myself clean of the corruption of my cinematic sins, which were many. Time to void myself of the love of the old Hollywood made flesh turned repulsive, leaving in its wake a cyclopean corpse ready to submit to her next debased customer. I had to leave behind the world of mutant babies and Jean Harlow. I had to dust myself anew with baby powder, spread my Phoenix wings in resurrection, and learn from a past of my own, if you’ll allow me to mix the occasional metaphor. It was time to live a life rather than watch one.
It was time to work.
The writing had again opened the door a crack. Charlie Band offered me a ten-day shoot at his studio in Romania. Canada isn’t cheap enough for Full Moon, oh, no. Australia? Sure, that’s even cheaper, but come on. New Zealand? Cheaper still, but still too stiff. How about Mexico? Nice and close, even if English is the second language. Really cheap there. Nah. Have you seen the exchange rate in Romania lately? You could buy a castle for the price of a Double Double with Cheese there. Just think how far you could stretch a production budget. Okay, so nobody speaks English, there are no film facilities or experienced workers, and they’re only now discovering the joys of electricity. That’s perfect for Full Moon. We rolled it, it rolled us, and the Puppet Freaks III DVD came out in the fall, complete with my first commentary track, as well as an exclusive behind-the-scenes documentary. Rent it, don’t buy it.
PFIII didn’t open any doors, but it did pay a couple of bills. The good news is that nobody notices a film like that except for the very youngest of Fangoria subscribers. I did a couple of convention appearances to promote it and sat at the back of the hall, ostensibly to sign autographs. The only takers were a handful of seventeen-year-olds who wanted me to read their scripts.
Through Band, I did meet some financing guys, the characters with Cannes tans, Italian cars, English suits, Israeli accents and Swiss bank accounts. And I managed to talk them into putting up a couple of hundred grand for my can’t-miss digital video masterpiece. Believe it or not, Edible actually got picked up by Lions Gate and, fuelled by a really go-for-the-throat website, got a pretty credible limited theatrical release. It became a bit of a cult classic and a cause celebre amongst the midnight movie crowd. I didn’t know they even existed any more, frankly. Never underestimate the touching tale of lesbian cannibals living and dining in die Seattle underground.
Though my status on the Fangoria convention circuit was elevated, the Lady I most loved just wouldn’t love me back. What could I do to get her to notice me? Just what did I have to do? Couldn’t I put the lessons I had learned to work? Couldn’t I create a masterpiece of wit, intelligence, sophistication, originality, surprise and suspense, dig deep into my psyche and explore the very heart of man? Was I up to the task, not only of self-exploration, but also of telling a tale that could enrich, enlighten and entertain? If not me, who? If not now, when?
So I wrote and discarded and wrote and wrote and discarded and wrote and wrote and wrote and discarded, and finally wrote some more. And one summer day, I emerged from my condo at the Marina, the bright mauve sunlight digging its fingers into my CRT-glazed eyeballs, and took a deep breath of the air that smelled as brown as it looked. I had completed a new script, and I knew it was my masterpiece. A little long, perhaps, at 146 pages, Happy Endings was everything I’d learned about life, love and relationships in all my twenty-six years. It was funny, it was tender, it was shocking, it was surprising. It even had a happy ending. I slid it into an envelope and called Metzler at Immaculate Artists to have it picked up. Metzler was delighted to have a spec script to sling, and I was energised. It was a
box of Valentine chocolates, offered up to the Goddess of Love.
To celebrate, I decided to take myself out to a movie. Let’s see, what’ll it be? Which masterwork would I choose? Planet of the Apes? America’s Sweethearts? Final Fantasy} Swordfish? Rush Hour 2? American Pie 2? Dr Dolittle 2? Jurassic Park III? Osmosis Jones? Original Sin? Cats and Dogs? Ghosts of Mars?
I knew one thing with dead certainty as I perused the listings in the LA Times Calendar, nobody was going to buy Happy Endings.
So when Metzler called me back in a couple of weeks, it had nothing to do with my masterwork. But it was an offer. An offer!
‘UPN has an MOW about a cheerleader whose botched breast enhancement surgery left her disfigured and suffering from lupus and a virulent case of lawyeritis. It’s a true story, shoots on an eighteen-day schedule in Manitoba, they got one of the girls from Lucky Charms, two directors have already left the project, the nineteen-year-old UPN VP is a lifelong Fangoria subscriber who loves your work and it starts shooting Monday. Can you get on a plane today?’
Not only could I and would I … I was glad to get it!
How far the mighty have fallen.
Being on a set energised me. I was making decisions, calling the shots, and charming Miss Lucky Charms in her trailer. I’d heard she was a bitch, but not to me. Maybe it was because she was from series and I was from features. We coupled mightily and profoundly between setups. I’d thought my experience with the monster baby and Jean Harlow and the porn work would have forever deadened my drive, but the bodily investigations we undertook in her Winnie were frequent and creative, as you might expect from artists such as ourselves. Princess Charming claimed not to have been entered since before her rehab stay, and was primed and juicy, igniting sleeping fires within my deprived male flesh. When she unsheathed, revealing creamy and alarmingly realistically augmented breasts, graced with swollen, extended nipples with silver skull piercings that dangled in grinning, shining tinkles from their proud pink hostesses, my heart swelled and every part of me stood up to salute their glory.
Dark Terrors 6 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology] Page 60