The deep, authoritative voice obviously belonged to someone of importance and John tried to make some sense of it. But he kept drifting in and out of consciousness, and although he heard the words, they never quite came together. In a few seconds he was too far gone again to even care.
*******
“Hi Jonesy,” Andy called, as he entered John’s room at Santa Barbara General Hospital. “They told me ya were finally awake. I thought ya were goin’ for some kind a’ record.”
John sat propped up by a stack of pillows. Although he still looked less than his normal self, he’d obviously healed a lot since Andy found him unconscious and barely alive in his apartment. “They tell me y’probably saved me life,” John said, then he smiled. “I’ve been layin’ here tryin’ ta figure out a way to get around it, but this time I think I’m stumped. So, thanks.”
“Jesus, mate. It was no biggie. The thought of havin’ to break in another singer was all the motivation I needed to keep ya tickin”
They both knew this was just their Australian way of getting around an awkward moment and they both smiled.
“Really, though, mate,” Andy asked. “What were ya tryin’ t’ do?”
John frowned, not happy with himself. “Ahhh. I was tryin’ ta finish writin’ that book I’ve been tellin’ you guys about, so we could get back ta recording. But I guess I fucked that up.”
Andy was confused. “Wait a bit. This is the same book you started work on? After ya got back from England, right?”
“Yeah. So?!” John was abruptly defensiveness.
“No offense, mate.” Andy shrugged … and smiled. The doctor had given instructions that John wasn’t to get excited, or upset; so he was doing his best on both counts. “But yer’d been working on it for quite a while. I thought’ yer had it almost finished when I left for Oz?”
“Yeah, I thought so, too. But it took a little longer than I figured”
“Jesus, mate,” Andy frowned. “I been gone fer over four months.”
“What?” John was genuinely surprised. “Come on! Y’kiddin’ me, here.”
“I kid you not, Ocker. It was four months and four days after I left that I found ya in your place. That was almost a month ago, by the by.”
“No shit!” John frowned in disbelief.
Andy went on, staring out the small window at the far end of the room and chewing on his bottom lip, deep in thought. “Damn good thing ya gave me a key the last time I brought back yer sound system. It might ‘ave bin days before I decided to kick in the door and check on ya.” He was only half-joking this time and his face gave him away “The other guys in the group decided to come home for a holiday, since I was already there and you were working on the book. We tried to call a bunch a’ times ...” He let his words trail off.
John was disgusted with himself. “And I didn’t even get the bloody thing finished after all that –”
Andy cut him off. “Hey, it looked finished to me.”
John glared at him. “What are y’talkin’ about?”
“The book. There was a copy sittin’ on the desk next to the typewriter.” Andy dug into the top pocket of his shirt as he went on. “I had a cleaning crew work over yer apartment.” He hesitated, crossing his eyes and pulling a crazy face. “They earned every penny I paid ‘em, let me tell ya.” He pulled a crumpled receipt from his pocket and straightened it out. “They found this under a stack of crap in the living room.” He handed the paper to John. “It’s a waybill for a manuscript you sent to a publishing house in New York.”
John stared at the receipt, openly confused. “I signed this?”
“Yep!”
John scratched his eyebrow, at a loss. “I sure as shit don’t remember doin’ it. Anyway, it was probably crap.”
“Your publisher didn’t think so,” Andy said. “It sounded like he thought it was pretty good.”
John figured he was pullin’ his leg. “What are y’talking about, y’crazy bastard? Are y’takin’ the piss outta me?”
“I checked yer answering machine, since you weren’t in any shape to do it yourself,” Andy shrugged. “Besides a dozen calls from us, in Sydney, there was one from a dude who said he was yer editor.”
Up until now the pair had been mostly joking about; but now John became serious. “Shit, Andy. I must ‘ave been in worse shape than I thought. How in blazes could I lose so much time, and not remember any of it?”
Andy could see that the extent of his sickness and the near brush with death were finally starting to register with his mate, so he decided not to let things get too maudlin. “I’ve seen some a’ yer attempts at writin’, mate. Who knows … maybe now yer’ll have a chance for a best seller.”
He grinned like a Cheshire cat, and John couldn’t help but smile in return.
*******
“This is the last call for JAL flight 172, non-stop to Tokyo, Japan. All remaining passengers should board immediately.”
The loudspeaker in the overseas departure carousel of Los Angeles International Airport boomed loudly. As usual, it was so distorted that it was hard to make out exactly what it was saying.
John knew his flight to Sydney wouldn’t be ready to board for at least another thirty minutes, so he paid it no attention. He was checking out the book section of the airport store, sipping on a bottle of water he’d just grabbed from the freezer case and planned to pay for when he left.
He was feeling pretty much back to normal after his bout with pneumonia, but it had been a strange few months since then. It turned out Andy was right; he had finished the manuscript and sent it to New York, though he still couldn’t remember doing it. He remembered some of what must have happened, and bits of what definitely did. Still, much of it was a hazy blur and a lot of the stuff he remembered vividly he’d rather forget.
It had started out with him working with a short-hand typist, taking down his words. She would transcribe her notes into typewritten form and he would correct them. John would send them to his good friend Brad, an expert editor and published author himself, who lived a couple of miles away. Brad would make suggestions for revisions and fix the punctuation, and John would make a last pass before he considered a section finished. When Andy and the rest of the guys in their rock group left for Australia, the process was going well; John was pushing himself hard to meet a delivery date set by the publisher and his agent, and he wasn’t getting much sleep, but, all in all it was going along smoothly.
Then John started having nightmares. And not just any nightmares; these were the worst he’d had since the whole Amityville thing started. Most of the small amount of time he would try to sleep was interrupted, constantly, by images of bizarre episodes as crazy as the one on his flight back from London. Some were even worse.
John became tired. Then he got more than tired. He drank more and more coffee, driven to finish the manuscript and get it over with. He remembered thinking that if there was a way he could have taken the coffee intravenously he would have set up a drip and just let it pour into him non-stop.
And somewhere in that period of time John changed. It was like someone, or some thing had taken him over. He started getting his food delivered. He didn’t want to get up from the typewriter for a second. At times, when he looked up and spotted his image in the small mirror above his electric piano, he thought he saw a twisted, hellish figure sitting at the typewriter. Not him – someone else entirely. In retrospect, he chalked it up to the fact that he must have already been delirious – hallucinating. What else could he think?
Anyway, the publisher in New York had accepted the manuscript, as Andy said.
“We’ve already sent it to press,” were the head editor’s exact words. “Next time you’re in the Big Apple, call and I’ll buy you lunch.”
When John was back to full health, he decided he’d take this trip to Australia immediately, before the book was released. He wanted to see his mother, and sooner was far better than later.
He stared around the stor
e at the latest hardcover and paperback releases and smiled. Damn! he thought. In a few weeks, my book will probably be here. He still couldn’t quite get his head around it, but it felt good. He looked down at his T-shirt – black, of course. But this one had a large copy of the book cover stenciled on it in full color. The book company had sent it to him along with the proofs of the manuscript, and since the book wasn’t released yet, John figured it would be fun to wear it out to Oz.
Show Mumsy.
He couldn’t find anything else he wanted or needed, so he paid for the water and headed for the exit. Just as he reached it, he turned back for one last look and stopped, shocked. A lady walking behind him bumped into him and grumbled loudly, then hurried off; but John didn’t even notice. He was trying to understand how it could be, and how he could have walked right by it and not noticed.
At the exact center of the main wall of new releases was a block of books six wide, stretching from the top of the rack down ten rows to the bottom. His book: Amityville Horror II.
But it ain’t s’pposed to be out for another five or six weeks, he thought.
Then he slowly walked back into the store and stood for a few minutes just looking at the display. Damn cool, was all he could think. Damn cool!
A short time later he remembered the T-shirt. Embarrassed, he quickly pulled the sides of his jacket together to cover it and hurried out of the store. Still, he couldn’t help but smile as he went. After all, it was pretty damned cool.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“We’re back live in a minute or so, to finish it up, mate,” Dave Lawson said to John. Then he turned and motioned to a hovering make-up lady. She scurried over and touched up Dave’s shiny forehead, concentrating her attention on an area that while it was still fairly unnoticeable, was obviously the beginning of a receding hairline. He returned his attention to John. The pair were sitting in matching armchairs on the main set in Studio A of TV Station Channel 9, in Sydney, Australia. The entire wall-sized backdrop was a logo that included a stylized painting of Dave’s sharply featured face – his shiny black hair, short but cool – surrounded by oversized print that read:
DAYTIME DAVE’S LIVE MIDDAY BASH
AUSTRALIA’S NUMBER ONE TV TALK SHOW
John wore his usual black leather jacket, black T, black slacks and boots. His face was a sun-tanned orange from make-up.
“Really glad your publisher’s rushing the book out over here,” he said to John, the picture of smooth charm. “Gave me a chance to get the drop on the competition.” Dave spoke softly, so their conversation would have at least a modicum of privacy.
“My pleasure, Dave. Hell! It’s great to be doing this here at home.” John smiled. “And it won’t hurt the book sales either, mate.”
“Maybe we can do another show before you leave,” Dave suggested. “You know … how did you find things back here in Oz now you’re a big-time author. That sort of thing.”
“No worries, mate. I’d love it.” John meant it. He’d done a lot of television music shows before; but this was his first as an author.
Dave waved the make-up lady away as the floor manager, poised behind the main camera, began counting down from ten on his fingers. As the red warning light on top of the huge camera lit up, a practiced smile leapt onto Dave’s face, his voice rose to double the volume and his enthusiasm level went off the scale. He smoothly managed to speak to the audience, the camera and John, all at the same time.
“John! It’s fab to have you back in Australia ... and we’re glad you could spare the time for this interview. It must feel great to have a New York Times bestselling book in its first week of release. And I’m sure our audience, here and at home, have been fascinated by the story of how you, an Australian, became involved in what’s become maybe the most famous haunting in modern history. But many of the calls coming in from our home audience ask the same question. Do you think the things the Lutz family told you ... the crazy haunting stuff, really happened. Or was it all somehow just in their mind?”
“You know, Dave. I’ve been asked that question, a lot.”
This was an easy one for John. He must’ve been asked it almost a hundred times already, just by the small number of people who knew him and knew about the book. He took a calculated breath, timing it like a break in one of his songs, and then gave the answer that he’d already become comfortable with.
“And my answer is pretty much always the same: What’s the difference?” He looked squarely at the huge lens on the camera, which meant he was also looking toward the large live audience. “Have y’ever had a dream ... a nightmare, let’s say, that was so real that when ya first woke up y’weren’t really sure which was nightmare and which was real?” Now he made eye-contact with a number of people in the studio audience, noting the heads nodding in agreement. “I know I have. And while it’s easy for us to sit back and say, Sounds like a lotta hot air ta me, most of us will never have to face the kind of experiences the Lutz family have. Things so terrifying their lives were shattered. So, even if it all took place, like you said, in their minds, I’m sure it felt just as real to them as anything we might think of as ‘normal.’”
Dave grinned. He loved it when his guests understood how to work the audience. “Good one, mate,” he said with genuine enthusiasm. “Come see us again soon.”
Now Dave included the studio audience as he motioned to John. “John G. Jones, everybody.”
The audience applause was loud and continuous. John acknowledged this response with a wave as Dave wrapped up the show.
“That’s our bash for the day. As always we hope you’ll come join us again tomorrow.” He looked squarely into the camera now and added: “Be good to each other … and be especially good to yourself. ‘Bye Australia.”
The show’s music theme began to play. The red light went out on the main camera and a second camera swept the audience as the credits rolled. Nobody moved until the floor manager signaled all clear and called out, “That’s a wrap, everyone” Suddenly the stage area was full of people taking care of business.
“Do you have time for a quick drink, mate?” Dave asked John. “I’d love to catch up, and you can fill me in on all the juicy bits.”
“Can I take a rain check, Dave?” John answered, as an elderly woman in a plaid skirt hurried towards them. “I have to get back to my hotel room for a bunch of live radio interviews. By the look on Elsa’s face, I’d say we’re already late.”
The make-up lady was back, asking John if he’d like her to remove his make-up, but Elsa insisted he do it back at his hotel. So John and Dave shook hands and promised to get together again in a couple of days. And Elsa hurried John out of the studio and through the main offices of the station to a waiting limousine.
*******
For the next two weeks John barely had a minute to himself. Elsa Repelin, the author liaison for the Australian publishing company, was handling his book exactly as she’d promised when they first met: she’d gotten him spots on live and pre-recorded TV shows, radio interviews, lots of newsprint, book signings and even a film shoot that – with a special interview – would be a double-page middle-of-the-mag spread in one of the most popular weekly magazines in the country. This meant traveling from Sydney to Brisbane, then Adelaide, Melbourne and back to Sydney before it was over.
Elsa was British, out in Australia for a short time to help the company there while they trained a new person for the job. John thought she looked a lot like a school mistress, with her large eyes accentuated by thick-rimmed glasses, hair usually up in a bun, and a series of blouse and plaid skirt ensembles that were all business and all out of style. Still, she was perhaps the most efficient person John had ever met. Her microscopic attention to details made the busy work almost pleasurable – that, and her dedication to making sure he was treated the way she thought a successful author deserved to be treated.
But most of all – best of all – John had not had a single nightmare during his entire stay. He was dog-tired
every night, and every morning he woke bright-eyed and refreshed after a restful, peaceful sleep. In a way he was sad when the mini-tour ended, back in Sydney, where he was born and raised … even though he still had few free days to spend before he had to fly back to America.
He spent most of that free time with Mumsy. They did the things they had each time he came home to visit: a ferry ride across Sydney Harbor to Manly; dinner at her favorite Chinese restaurant; and a car trip up the coast to visit with his brother. She lived out in the Western Suburbs and John would normally stay there, in his old room. But Elsa had set up a couple of short, last-minute interviews in Sydney the day before he was scheduled to leave, so he stayed in a hotel down by Circular Quay for the last two days.
John always enjoyed being in Sydney. From the moment the Qantas flight circled over the harbor, above the Opera House that looked like white frozen waves and the Sydney Harbor Bridge, he felt he was home. Even though these days he spent more time in America than here.
He enjoyed just walking around, looking at the stores and remembering times he used to spend here when he was a kid. It had become almost a ritual. He would start at Circular Quay, checking out the green and yellow ferries heading out to places all around the harbor. Then he’d walk up the hill on Philips and Macquarie Streets to Hyde Park; stop for a short break to watch the fountain in Sandringham Sunken Gardens; walk across Liverpool Street to Town Hall – it was both an impressive looking building and an underground railway station – and end by walking back down George Street to the quay. A quick cup of coffee there and he’d catch a train out to the suburbs. Today he’d end his walk at the hotel, just short of the quay, and start packing his bags for the trip.
Amityville Horror Now Page 14
