American supernatural tales

by S. T. Joshi

  Blank Frank conducts the Count to three highback Victorian chairs he has dragged in from the lounge and positioned around a cocktail table. The grouping is directly beneath a pinlight spot, intentionally theatrical.

  “Impressive.” The Count’s gaze flickers toward the bar. Blank Frank is way ahead of him.

  The Count sits, continuing: “I once knew a woman who was beleaguered by a devastating allergy to cats. And this was a person who felt some deep emotional communion with that species. Then one day, poof! She no longer sneezed; her eyes no longer watered. She could stop taking medications that made her drowsy. She had forced herself to be around cats so much that her body chemistry adapted. The allergy receded.” He fingers the silver cross hanging from his ear, a double threat, once upon a time. “I wear this as a reminder of how the body can triumph. Better living through chemistry.”

  “It was the same with me and fire.” Blank Frank hands over a very potent mixed drink called a Gangbang. The Count sips, then presses his eyelids contentedly shut. Like a cat. The drink must be industrial strength. Controlled substances are the Count’s lifeblood.

  Blank Frank watches as the Count sucks out another long, deep, soul-drowning draught. “You know Larry’s going to ask again, whether you’re still doing . . . what you’re doing.”

  “I brook no apologia or excuses.” Nevertheless, Blank Frank sees him straighten in his chair, almost defensively. “I could say that you provide the same service in this place.” With an outswept hand, he indicts the bar. If nothing else remains recognizable, the Count’s gesticulations remain grandiose; physical exclamation points.

  “It’s legal. Food. Drink. Some smoke.”

  “Oh, yes, there’s the rub.” The Count pinches the bridge of his nose. He consumes commercial decongestants ceaselessly. Blank Frank expects him to pop a few pills, but instead the Count lays out a scoop of toot inside his mandarin pinky fingernail, which is lacquered ebony, elongated, a talon. Capacious. Blank Frank knows from experience that the hair and nails continue growing long after death. The Count inhales the equivalent of a pretty good dinner at Spago. Cappucino included.

  “There is no place in the world I have not lived,” says the Count. “Even the Arctic. The Australian outback. The Kenyan sedge. Siberia. I walk unharmed through fire-fight zones, through sectors of strife. You learn so much when you observe people at war. I’ve survived holocausts, conflagration, even a low-yield one-megaton test, once, just to see if I could do it. Sue me; I was high. But wherever I venture, whatever phylum of human beings I encounter, they all have one thing in common.”

  “The red stuff.” Blank Frank half-jests; he dislikes it when the mood grows too grim.

  “No. It is their need to be narcotized.” The Count will not be swerved. “With television. Sex. Coffee. Power. Fast cars and sado-games. Emotional encumbrances. More than anything else, with chemicals. All drugs are like instant coffee. The fast purchase of a feeling. You buy the feeling, instead of earning it. You want to relax, go up or go down, get strong or get stupid? You simply swallow or snort or inject, and the world changes because of you. The most lucrative commercial enterprises are those with the most undeniable core simplicity; just look at prostitution. Blood, bodies, armaments, position—all commodities. Human beings want so much out of life.”

  The Count smiles, sips. He knows that the end of life is only the beginning. Today is the first day of the rest of your death.

  “I do apologize, my old friend, for coming on so aggressively. I’ve rationalized my calling, you see, to the point where it is a speech of lists; I make my case with demographics. Rarely do I find anyone who cares to suffer the speech.”

  “You’ve been rehearsing.” Blank Frank recognizes the bold streak the Count gets in his voice when declaiming. Blank Frank has himself been jammed with so many hypos in the past few centuries that he has run out of free veins. He has sampled the Count’s root canal quality coke; it made him irritable and sneezy. The only drugs that still seem to work on him unfailingly are extremely powerful sedatives in large, near-toxic dosages. And those never last long. “Tell me. The drugs. Do they have any effect on you?”

  He sees the Count pondering how much honesty is too much. Then the tiny, knowing smile flits past again, a wraith between old comrades.

  “I employ various palliatives. I’ll tell you the absolute truth: Mostly it is an affectation, something to occupy my hands. Human habits—vices, for that matter—go a long way toward putting my customers at ease when I am closing negotiations.”

  “Now you’re thinking like a merchant,” says Blank Frank. “No royalty left in you?”

  “A figurehead gig.” The Count frowns. “Over whom, my good friend, would I hold illimitable dominion? Rock stars. Thrill junkies. Corporate monsters. No percentage in flaunting your lineage there. No. I occupy my time much as a fashion designer does. I concentrate on next season’s line. I brought cocaine out of its Vin Mariani limbo and helped repopularize it in the Eighties. Then crank, then crack, then ice. Designer dope. You’ve heard of Ecstasy. You haven’t heard of Chrome yet. Or Amp. But you will.”

  Suddenly a loud booming rattles the big main door, as though the entire DEA is hazarding a spot raid. Blank Frank and the Count are both twisted around in surprise. Blank Frank catches a glimpse of the enormous Browning Hi-Power holstered in the Count’s left armpit.

  It’s probably just for the image, Blank Frank reminds himself.

  The commotion sounds as though some absolute lunatic is kicking the door and baying at the moon. Blank Frank hurries over, his pulse relaxing as his pace quickens.

  It has to be Larry.

  “Gah-DAMN it’s peachy to see ya, ya big dead dimwit!” Larry is a foot shorter than Blank Frank. Nonetheless, he bounds in, pounces, and suffocates his amigo is a big wolfy bear hug.

  Larry is almost too much to take in with a single pair of eyes.

  His skintight red Spandex tights are festooned with spangles and fringe that snake, at knee level, into golden cowboy boots. Glittering spurs on the boots. An embossed belt buckle the size of the grille on a Rolls. Larry is into ornaments, including a feathered earring with a skull of sterling, about a hundred metalzoid bracelets, and a three-finger rap ring of slush-cast 24K that spells out AWOO. His massive, pumped chest fairly bursts from a bright silver Daytona racing jacket, snapped at the waist but not zippered, so the world can see his collarless muscle tee in neon scarlet, featuring his caricature in yellow. Fiery letters on the shirt scream about THE REAL WOLF MAN. Larry is wearing his Ray-Bans at night and jingles a lot whenever he walks.

  “Where’s old Bat Man? Yo! I see you skulking in the dark!” Larry whacks Blank Frank on the bicep, then lopes to catch the Count. With the Count, it is always a normal handshake—dry, firm, businesslike. “Off thy bunnage, fang-dude; the party has arriiiived!!”

  “Nothing like having a real celebrity in our midst,” says Blank Frank. “But jeez—what the hell is this ‘Real’ Wolf Man crap?”

  Larry grimaces as if from a gas pain, showing teeth. “A slight little ole matter of copyrights, trademarks, eminent domain . . . and some fuckstick who registered himself with the World Wrestling Federation as ‘The Wolfman.’ Turns out to be a guy I bit, my ownself, a couple of decades ago. So I have to be ‘The Real.’ We did a tag-team thing, last Wrestlemania. But we can’t think of a good team name.”

  “Runts of the Litter,” opines the Count. Droll.

  “Hellpups,” says Blank Frank.

  “Fuck ya both extremely much.” Larry grins his trademark grin. Still showing teeth. He snaps off his shades and scans Un/Dead. “What’s to quaff in this pit? Hell, what town is this, anywho?”

  “On tour?” Blank Frank plays host.

  “Yep. Gotta kick Jake the Snake’s ass in Atlanta next Friday. Gonna strangle him with Damien, if the python’ll put up with it. Wouldn’t want to hurt him for real but might have old Jake pissing blood for a day, if you know what I mean.”

  Blank Frank
grins; he knows what Larry means. He makes a fist with his left hand, then squeezes his left wrist tightly with his right hand. “Vise Grip him.”

  Larry is the inventor of the Vise Grip, second only to the Sleeper Hold in wrestling infamy. The Vise Grip has done Blank Frank a few favors with rowdies in the past. Larry owns the move, and is entitled to wax proud.

  “I mean pissing pure blood!” Larry enthuses.

  “Ecch,” says the Count. “Please.”

  “Sorry, oh cloakless one. Hey! Remember that brewery, made about three commercials with the Beer Wolf before that campaign croaked and ate dirt? That was me!”

  Blank Frank hoists his Blind Hermit. “Here’s to the Beer Wolf, then. Long may he howl.”

  “Prost,” says the Count.

  “Fuckin A.” Larry downs his entire mugful of draft in one slam-dunk. He belches, wipes foam from his mouth and lets go with a lupine yee-hah.

  The Count dabs his lips with a cocktail napkin.

  Blank Frank watches Larry do his thing and a stiff chaser of memory quenches his brain. That snout, the bicuspids, and those beady, ball-bearing eyes will always give Larry away. His eyebrows run together; that was supposed to be a classic clue in the good old days. Otherwise Larry is not so hirsute. In human form, at least. The hair on his forearms is very fine tan down. Pumping iron and beating up people for a living has bulked out his shoulders. He usually wears his shirts open-necked. T-shirts, he tears the throats out. He is all piston-muscles and zero flab. He is able to squeeze a full beer can in one fist and pop the top with a gunshot bang. His hands are callused and wily. The pentagram on his right palm is barely visible. It has faded, like Blank Frank’s tattoo.

  “Cool,” Larry says of the Count’s crucifix.

  “Aren’t you wearing a touch as well?” The Count points at Larry’s skull earring. “Or is it the light?”

  Larry’s fingers touch the silver. “Yeah. Guilty. Guess we haven’t had to fret that movieland spunk for quite apiece, now.”

  “I had fun.” Blank Frank exhibits his tat. “It was good.”

  “Goood,” Larry and the Count say together, funning their friend.

  All three envision the tiny plane in growly flight, circling a black and white world, forever.

  “How long have you had that?” Larry is already on his second mug, foaming at the mouth.

  Blank Frank’s pupils widen, filling with his skin illustration. He does not remember.

  “At least forty years ago,” says the Count. “They’d changed the logo by the time he’d committed to getting the tattoo.”

  “Maybe that was why I did it.” Blank Frank is still a bit lost. He touches the tattoo as though it will lead to a swirl dissolve and an expository flashback.

  “Hey, we saved that fuckin studio from bankruptcy.” Larry bristles. “Us and A&C.”

  “They were shown the door, too.” To this day, the Count is understandably piqued about the copyright snafu involving the use of his image. He sees his face everywhere, and does not rate compensation. This abrades his business instinct for the jugular. He understands too well why there must be a Real Wolf Man. “Bud and Lou and you and me and the big guy all went out with the dishwater of the Second World War.”

  “I was at Lou’s funeral,” says Larry. “You were lurking the Carpathians.” He turned to Blank Frank. “And you didn’t even know about it.”

  “I loved Lou,” says Blank Frank. “Did I ever tell you the story of how I popped him by accident on the set of—”

  “Yes.” The Count and Larry speak in unison. This breaks the tension of remembrance tainted by the unfeeling court intrigue of studios. Recall the people, not the things.

  Blank Frank tries to remember some of the others. He returns to the bar to rinse his glass. The plasma globe zizzes and snaps calmly, a man-made tempest inside clear glass.

  “I heard ole Ace got himself a job at the Museum of Natural History.” Larry refers to Ace Bandage; he has nicknames like this for everybody.

  “The Prince,” the Count corrects, “still guards the Princess. She’s on display in the Egyptology section. The Prince cut a deal with museum security. He prowls the graveyard shift; guards the bone rooms. They’ve got him on a diet of synthetic tana leaves. It calmed him down. Like methadone.”

  “A night watchman gig,” says Larry, obviously thinking of the low pay scale. But what in hell would the Prince need human coin for, anyway? “Hard to picture.”

  “Try looking in a mirror, yourself,” says the Count.

  Larry blows a raspberry. “Jealous.”

  It is very easy for Blank Frank to visualize the Prince, gliding through the silent, cavernous corridors in the wee hours. The museum is, after all, just one giant tomb.

  Larry is fairly certain ole Fish Face—another nickname—escaped from a mad scientist in San Francisco and butterfly-stroked south, probably to wind up in bayou country. He and Larry had shared a solid mammal-to-amphibian simpatico. He and Larry had been the most physically violent of the old crew. Larry still entertains the notion of talking his scaly pal into doing a bout for pay-per-view. He has never been able to work out the logistics of a steel fishtank match, however.

  “Griffin?” says the Count.

  “Who can say?” Blank Frank shrugs. “He could be standing right here and we wouldn’t know it unless he started singing ‘Nuts in May.’ ”

  “He was a misanthrope,” says Larry. “His crazy kid, too. That’s what using drugs will get you.”

  This last is a veiled stab at the Count’s calling. The Count expects this from Larry, and stays venomless. The last thing he wants this evening is a conflict over the morality of substance use.

  “I dream, sometimes, of those days,” says Blank Frank. “Then I see the films again. The dreams are literalized. It’s scary.”

  “Before this century,” says the Count, “I never had to worry that anyone would stockpile my past.” Of the three, he is the most paranoid where personal privacy is concerned.

  “You’re a romantic.” Larry will only toss an accusation like this in special company. “It was important to a lot of people that we be monsters. You can’t deny what’s nailed down there in black and white. There was a time when the world needed monsters like that.”

  They each considered their current occupations, and found that they did indeed still fit into the world.

  “Nobody’s gonna pester you now,” Larry presses on. “Don’t bother to revise your past—today, your past is public record, and waiting to contradict you. We did our jobs. How many people become mythologically legendary for just doing their jobs?”

  “Mythologically legendary?” mimics the Count. “You’ll grow hair on your hands from using all those big words.”

  “Bite this.” Larry offers the unilateral peace symbol.

  “No, thank you; I’ve already dined. But I have brought something for you. For both of you.”

  Blank Frank and Larry both notice the Count is now speaking as though a big Mitchell camera is grinding away, somewhere just beyond the grasp of sight. He produces a small pair of wrapped gifts, and hands them over.

  Larry wastes no time ripping into his. “Weighs a ton.”

  Nestled in styro popcorn is a wolf’s head—savage, streamlined, smiling. The gracile canine neck is socketed.

  “It’s from the walking stick,” says the Count. “All that was left.”

  “No kidding.” Larry’s voice grows small for the first time that evening. The wolf’s head seems to gain weight in his grasp. Two beats of his powerful heart later, his eyes seem a bit wet.

  Blank Frank’s gift is much smaller and lighter.

  “You were a conundrum,” says the Count. He enjoys playing emcee. “So many choices, yet never easy to buy for. Some soil from Transylvania? Water from Loch Ness? A chunk of some appropriate ruined castle?”

  What Blank Frank unwraps is a ring. Old gold, worn smooth of its subtler filigree. A small ruby set in the grip of a talon. He holds it to the light
.

  “As nearly as I could discover, that ring once belonged to a man named Ernst Volmer Klumpf.”

  “Whoa,” says Larry. Weird name.

  Blank Frank puzzles it. He holds it toward the Count, like a lens.

  “Klumpf died a long time ago,” says the Count. “Died and was buried. Then he was disinterred. Then a few of his choicer parts were recycled by a skillful surgeon of our mutual acquaintance.”

  Blank Frank stops looking so blank.

  “In fact, part of Ernst Volmer Klumpf is still walking around today . . . tending bar for his friends, among other things.”

  The new expression on Blank Frank’s pleases the Count. The ring just barely squeezes onto the big guy’s left pinky—his smallest finger.

  Larry, to avoid choking up, decides to make noise. Showing off, he vaults the bartop and draws his own refill. “This calls for a toast.” He hoists his beer high, slopping the head. “To dead friends. Meaning us.”

  The Count pops several capsules from an ornate tin and washes them down with the last of his Gangbang. Blank Frank murders his Blind Hermit.

  “Don’t even think of the bill,” says Blank Frank, who knows of the Count’s habit of paying for everything. The Count smiles and nods graciously. In his mind, the critical thing is to keep the tab straight. Blank Frank pats the Count on the shoulder, hale and brotherly, since Larry is out of reach. The Count dislikes physical contact but permits this because it is, after all, Blank Frank.

  “Shit man, we could make our own comeback sequel, with all the talent in this room,” Larry says. “Maybe hook up with some of those new guys. Do a monster rally.”

  It could happen. They all look significantly at each other. A brief stink of guilt, of culpability, like a sneaky fart in a dimly lit chamber.

  Make that dimly-lit torture dungeon, thinks Blank Frank, who never forgets the importance of staying in character.