Cthulhu Fhtagn!

by Laird Barron

  “Which Andy?”

  “Keir?” says Peter, blinking his already bloodshot eyes. “You know, your ‘father’?”

  “Right right right,” says Ingrid. “You were saying?”

  “I was?”

  “The first time they filmed the picture?”

  “Oh, I was! Yes, the first go ’round they supposedly let the actors read the full script and they all went mad from it.” Peter rolls his eyes. “More likely they just up and quit. I never read fruiter lines.”

  “Maybe they’re doing some last-minute rewrites.”

  Peter nods. “That seems likely. I’ve heard the studio’s in some rather dire straits…perhaps one of the bigwigs decided this must be the film that saves them from bankruptcy, God help him. So they need it to be actually good.”

  “Fat chance.” Ingrid leans forward to refill her teacup. She notes how Peter tactfully directs his refined eyes to the mildewed ceiling. Such a gentleman.

  “For my part, though, I’d much prefer a script that really would drive us all mad if we read it in one go,” he says. “As it stands, the only danger seems to be driving us to the nearest lavatory.”

  “Why the hesitation, then?” Ingrid asks, leaning back in the chair that simply reads STAR on the canvas backing. “When I asked if this was the most ridiculous production you’d worked on, I mean.”

  “Hmmm?” Peter stalls, looking sheepish. He seems uncomfortable.

  “Out with it, man.”

  “Queer is the word, really.” Peter’s eyes won’t quite focus on Ingrid as she stares at him, waiting to hear what he’ll say. “Not worst, not by a country mile, and maybe not even most ridiculous. But queer…yes.”

  “Peter…”

  “All right, all right.” Peter leans in, looking to both the right and left before committing to sharing his suspicions. “Vincent Price,” he whispers.

  “What about him?”

  “The make-up artist,” says Peter. At first, she doesn’t think he’s being serious, but something about his tone gives her pause. “It’s Vincent in his old Phibes wig and sideburns.”

  “Oh, Peter,” Ingrid frowns as she throws the joint into an overflowing ashtray, “don’t tell me this is the first time you’ve smoked.”

  “It’s him!” Peter croaks, then collapses into a giggling fit. When he’s regained his composure, he grins at his concerned co-star. “I’m not tripping out, my dear. It’s Vincent. Believe you me, after all the work we’ve done together…well, one ham can smell the other.”

  “But Vincent’s not in this picture.”

  “Not officially.” Peter giggles again. “But then again, we haven’t seen the whole script. Perhaps he’s got a cameo and it’s meant to be a surprise when he shows up.”

  “Quite the shocker,” she murmurs. Peter’s bizarre allegation bothers her more than she’d expect.

  “Well, why else would he be here?” Peter asks. “We have quite the history, Vincent and I. That’s he’s here at all is odd, but that he hasn’t approached me once, well…it’s a rum business, even by Vincent’s standards.”

  “Maybe he’s researching for another film. Method acting, or some such?”

  “Or maybe he was cast in the first attempt and since it failed, he’s sabotaging this production for revenge.”

  This time they both dissolve into giggles, but they sober quickly. For some reason, the idea of sabotage casts a pall over the camper. After what happened to that script girl, it’s not something they should joke about. Neither eats much of their curry when it comes.

  ***

  It is indeed Vincent Price. It has to be. When she looks carefully, Ingrid can see him beneath the silly wig and chin prosthesis. At first, she chides herself for being so unobservant, but really, it isn’t so surprising. It’s a damn good job he’s done, camouflaging himself.

  But the question remains—why?

  She doesn’t want to ask. That would acknowledge she’s aware of his presence, and clearly, he has some reason for maintaining his disguise. But the oddness of it eats away at her as they wrap up filming at the London locations and begin the process of moving to Berkshire, where they will shoot the rest of the film.

  It couldn’t be Vincent sabotaging the production…could it? She asks herself this yet again when a bookshelf nearly falls on poor Ferdy during the scene where Dr. Armitage is giving Father Carter the NECROMNOMICON.

  But the accidents continue, and still the make-up artist does not reveal his true identity.

  ***

  “Ingrid?”

  “Hmm?” She looks over to Pippa as she drives them through pristine countryside. It is a cloudy day, cool with the promise of rain, but they’ve taken down the top on Pippa’s black MGB anyways.

  Pippa sighs, exasperated. “Will you take a look at the map, then? We just crossed the river, and I’m not sure where the turnoff is.”

  “Sorry,” says Ingrid. She fumbles with the map, opening it up and scanning it. “I was elsewhere.”

  “No kidding.” Pippa holds out a fag for Ingrid to light. She nearly loses the map to the wind, fumbling with the lighter, but eventually she gets it. Pippa puffs away happily. “You’ve been elsewhere for weeks.”

  “Just weeks? Sometimes it feels like my whole life.” Ingrid grins at Pippa, a bit guiltily. She had been thinking about the mystery of Vincent Price again. The make-up artist, “Lazarus Brimble,” as he’s calling himself, was coming with to their next location, apparently some manor house in Earley that belongs to the screenwriter’s uncle. The crew had been claiming the dilapidated London studio they’d rented was to blame for all the accidents—she, however, remained unconvinced. They’d just have to wait and see…

  “Ah, but I’ve known you long enough to see a change,” says Pippa. “It’s something. A friend always knows.”

  “There!” Ingrid points, relieved to spy the sign for Elm Hill, their destination. Pippa turns quickly, and the beauty of the private drive, and then the views of the stately Georgian manor distract them both from their conversation. Ingrid is relieved. She hasn’t discussed Vincent’s presence on-set with anyone but Peter, who still believes—or claims he believes—the man is ‘just having a bit of a lark, is all.’

  As they crunch up the gravel drive, Ingrid whistles.

  “Nice pile,” she says, gazing up at the dizzying array of windows and elaborate dentilwork cornices. “Here I thought the Whatleys were supposed to have fallen on hard times.”

  “What?

  “It’s in the story. I read it, trying to get a feel for Mary as they’re being so dodgy about the script. Turns out, she doesn’t exist. Wilbur Whatley hasn’t got a sister.”

  “No? That’s a shame. It’s nice, you being the sort of, you know, virginal maiden, with Sandor playing up Wilbur as some sort of…is he supposed to be a demon, or possessed, d’you think?”

  “Something.” Ingrid looks slyly at her friend. “You know, you don’t exist either, my dear Jane.”

  “Priests always have corruptible young daughters!”

  “Yes, but Randolph Carter isn’t in the story, either. He’s in another, by the same author, but he’s not a priest, he’s a, whatsit, antiquarian.” Ingrid shrugs. “Ah, well—it was a fun read anyways.”

  “Ingrid! Pippa!” They’ve arrived, and so, apparently, has Freddie. He’s waving at them from the front door. “You’re here! Good, good, welcome to ‘Dunwich Manor!’ It’s no Moor Park or Down Place, but the price was right,” he says. “Come in, come in, I want you to meet someone! He’s awfully excited to meet you.”

  “Here it comes,” Ingrid says as she clambers out of the car and stretches in the drive. “Hopefully.”

  “What’s that?” asks Pippa, heels slipping on the gravel as she comes around.

  “A special appearance by an eccentric guest star,” says Ingrid with a wink, taking her friend’s hand as they make their way up the stairs. “Come on, I’ve been waiting weeks for this!”

  Except Freddie doesn�
�t introduce them to Vincent Price. Instead, Ingrid shakes the clammy hand of one of the studio’s backers. Mr. Leng is a leering old gent who claims to be from Warsaw, too, but his heavy accent certainly isn’t Polish. He is apparently the chief financial interest in this project. But mostly, he seems interested in dredging up unhappy memories of Ingrid’s childhood. When the creep presses her on which camp she and her family were taken to Pippa intervenes, insisting the ladies are exhausted from their drive and are in dire need of a lie-down.

  On the stairway up to her room in the musty manse, Freddie is wildly apologetic, Pippa is irate, but Ingrid is simply in need of a hot shower and a smoke.

  When she comes down for cocktails in the once-stately dining room of Elm Hill, everyone in the cast and crew wants to talk about the investor who has already headed back to London. Everyone but Ingrid, anyway. The old codger left a sour taste in her mouth that the flat tonic water does little to dispel.

  Pippa is nowhere to be found among the chatty throng, but Peter arrives midway through. As Ingrid hugs him tightly she catches a glimpse of the make-up artist watching them from the doorway of the bustling hall. He raises a glass in her direction and vanishes into the interior of the house. Having had just about enough of all this, Ingrid grabs Peter’s hand to follow hot on his heels. Peter protests, but after grabbing a cucumber sandwich from a tray, he’s willing enough to toddle along after her into the dank heart of what they’re all calling Dunwich Manor.

  Away from the brightly lit party the hallways take on a spectral grandeur, especially when Ingrid catches sight of a sinister figure double-timing it up the cotton-cobweb-strewn central stair. The make-up artist swirls a cape, for God’s sake, as he reaches the landing and darts down another shadowy corridor. Ingrid is halfway up the flight after him, Peter huffing behind her, when her eye is drawn to something hovering above her, something that slams her stock still as though she careened into an invisible barrier. She gasps, Peter bumps into her back, and then he gasps, too.

  Suspended on the wall of the landing, just above the portico, is a human body. She seems affixed there by some noxious black resin, the tarry stuff stinking of rotten marine life and bleach, and her shredded dress reveals a bulge in her belly. Worst of all, beneath the crown of seaweed on her brow, her eyes have been torn out and mouth has been stopped with the sodden pages of some blasphemous book. Her exposed breasts, however, are pristine and untouched.

  It is Pippa.

  Peter lets out a sob and buries his face in Ingrid’s bosom, but she does not avert her gaze from her murdered friend. From down the black corridor beneath Pippa’s dripping feet comes a gurgling chuckle, and Ingrid puts her arm protectively around Peter as an enormous squelching shape fills the hallway and—

  “Cut!” Freddie bleats. “Beautiful! Perfect!”

  “What?” Ingrid’s head swims, and she looks to Peter for support. His face is grim as he squeezes her arm and then steps back, both of them blinking as they take in the hovering crew, the mid-morning sun drifting in through the grimy windows.

  “Is that a wrap?” Pippa calls from her perch. “Was that okay?” And Ingrid’s panicked confusion melts into relief at seeing her friend shift from foot to foot on her platform above the door. In the light of day the girl’s costume is so shoddy Ingrid wonders how she ever mistook it for…whatever she mistook it for. But glancing down at herself, she sees she is wearing Mary Whatley’s shift. She doesn’t remember changing into it…

  “More than okay!” says Freddie. “I like what you two did there, having Peter turn to you. Good show.”

  “Show?” Peter looks as peaked as Ingrid feels, the white of his face offset by his black cassock. Had he been wearing that at the party? She can’t remember. “We…what?”

  “I’ll tell you this much,” says Freddie, putting an arm around each of his two stars. “If we can nail every scene in one take, it’ll more than make up for all the time we lost in London! Now let’s head downstairs and see if we can’t get the ritual murder in the kitchen banged out before lunch.”

  Too much to drink at the party the night before. A hurried breakfast in bed. A sleepy session with costuming. It’s all fragmented, but Ingrid can picture them so well they must be memories. They must be.

  As the make-up artist’s assistant brings a ladder to get Pippa down, Ingrid sees a grinning face watching them from down the hallway. It’s not the make-up artist, though, it’s August. The screenwriter puts a finger to his lips, and a migraine ambushes Ingrid so quickly she nearly swoons.

  ***

  Quick as it came, the headache is gone…but after the shock Ingrid keeps to her room for the rest of the day, lying on the bed with the curtains drawn, watching dust-motes drift in the lone beam of darkening sunshine as she smokes cigarette after joint and drinks Glenfiddich with fusty tap water. It’s only been a day but she misses Steffanie terribly, already regretting her decision to have her daughter stay with friends in London rather than accompany her to Elm Hill.

  Then again, perhaps it’s for the best Steffanie isn’t here, considering how queer things have become: Ingrid cannot reconcile her memories with her feeling of certainty that she’d been at the cocktail party mere moments before.

  Freddie comes to check on her as evening falls, bearing a bottle of ‘something old and red, courtesy of Dunwich Manor’s cellar.’ He looks worried as he pours them each a glass, even if he insists that her absence on-set hasn’t caused any major delays. They filmed a lot of good stuff that doesn’t feature her, and all’s well that ends well, eh? And she’ll be right as rain tomorrow, he hopes?

  She sips her wine, lounging crossways on the creaky, uncomfortable armchair, and glances to where he’s sitting on her bed, hands clasped.

  “You know,” she says, “your teeth look like gravestones. They’re all rounded and crooked. And grey.”

  “Yes, well,” says Freddie, looking none too pleased by this description of his person, “be that as it may—Ingrid, have you been listening to me at all?”

  “Big scene tomorrow, yes,” she says. Freddie insisted on opening the curtains, and the hustle and bustle out on the back lawn keeps distracting her. In the gloaming the crew appears to be hauling hay-bales and pitchforks and all sorts of things to a distant bungalow. “What’s going on down there?”

  Freddie peers out the window. “Oh. They’re making the summer-house into a barn.”

  “I thought you said this dump had a barn?”

  “It does.” Freddie massages his temples with his knuckles. “I forgot, you wouldn’t know. Your little spell wasn’t the only incident on-set today…”

  “No?” Ingrid’s heart thumps and she leans forward. “Is everyone alright?”

  “What? Oh yes, of course, everyone’s fine, it’s just the barn, is all. Apparently, the ruddy thing isn’t to be touched. It’s some sort of…historic barn. I forget what August said about it, but we went down today with all and sundry to find the place locked up tight. Sassy tried to jimmy the lock but just as he’d gotten it August rushed up, screaming bloody murder about permits and regulations and his uncle and I don’t even know what. It’s not such a disaster, we filmed the exterior shots but we couldn’t shoot Wilbur’s big love scene with Jane. That’ll have to be tomorrow, along with a juicy bit where you walk in on them in the barn, in flagrante delicto.” Freddie rubs his hairy hands together.

  “Oh?” This is news to Ingrid, of course.

  “Right, of course…you haven’t read that far ahead yet,” says Freddie.

  “I really would like to have the full script, you know,” Ingrid says for the umpteenth time.

  “So would I,” says Freddie with a trace of annoyance. “Between you and me, August is barely giving me more of a lead on the action than he’s offering you lot. But,” Freddie brightens, “tomorrow’s scene is going to be something special, I can tell you that much. Sandor’s been really chewing the scenery to pieces, and I know it’ll bring down the house when we shoot the ménage a trois. He�
�s got this line…how does it go? To sin with one’s own sister…surely this will please my Lord Kootulu, Great Hierophant of Satan!”

  “His own sister…” says Ingrid, breathless. “Wilbur would never! I mean, I don’t think he would…then again, he has been so strange ever since he came home from University…”

  “What’s that?”

  She looks up into the concerned eyes of her friend. “Oh, Jane,” she says, leaning her head on her friend’s shoulder. They are sitting in her bedroom. Jane is wearing the loveliest frock, low-cut and luridly purple, but Mary is still in just her shift. “Don’t listen to me. You know how silly I can get… overprotective. But after Mother died, it was just Wilbur and I looking out for one another, with Papa being away so often in the South Seas. I don’t judge him, of course—he wanted to be able to send Wilbur away to study, just like he always wanted…but it’s changed him…I think.”

  “Changed, Mary?” Jane puts a concerned hand on her friend’s cheek.

  Mary shakes her head. “There I go, being silly again.” She stands and walks over to her vanity, where a yellow party dress has been laid out. “I’m ever so glad you two got engaged. My best friend and my little brother… you’ll settle close by, of course, and we’ll be together always, just like when we were young.”

  “Well, not just like when we were young.” Jane blushes modestly. “Wilbur’s a man now. I hardly knew him when he came home, the way he was dressed, how he acted…how he looked at me…” her expression becomes uneasy, “and you.”

  “What do you mean?” Mary nervously licks her lips. She doesn’t like hearing her concerns echoed by her most trusted confidante. “Wilbur’s… just affectionate—always has been.” She turns around, deliberately makes her voice cheery. “Now, won’t you help me into my dress? We should be going. It’s your engagement party, after all—you can’t be late!”

  When they get to the Crown and Devil, it seems as though the whole village is there, drinking, eating, smoking. It is a merry scene, and Mary’s rakish brother is lord of the pub, standing on the table, making toasts in an outlandish bottle-green swallow-tail coat and bright blue cravat. For some reason he is wearing a hat indoors. He cries out joyfully when Jane and Mary enter and jumps down to embrace them both. He kisses Jane on the lips and Mary on the cheek, which makes them both flush and exchange a happy glance—though Father Carter, Jane’s father, looks a bit sour. But then again, he usually does. All is right with the world.