Hell, it was a party.
Tenderly, he took the dead crab out of her hair.
It wasn't until she had him on the bed, pants down around his ankles, that he looked up and spotted the Vampire hovering at the window.
Ray tried getting up from the chair, but James Dean whacked him real good with a steering wheel.
The Vampire laughed.
Ray glared at James Dean. What a sick fuck. He wore pigskin racing gloves and his long, bony fingers were wrapped around a twisted steering wheel that belonged in a junkyard. His blond hair spiked up from his skull, which was cracked on the right side, revealing a runny gob of brain matter that stained the collar of his red windbreaker. The rest of his face was like a weird jigsaw puzzle—torn, bloody, and missing a piece or two.
And the bastard seemed to enjoy his work. Ray started for him and got whacked again.
Steering Wheel Fu. Shit. Ray eased back in the chair.
"Ready to listen now?" the Vampire wanted to know.
Nodding, Ray looked at the producer's dead-white vampire face. Red lipstick had been applied to the man's generous lips with feminine care. He was gaunt in an androgynous kind of way, but the blue steel .45 that he held in his right hand went a long way toward defining his masculinity.
He stood before a wall that was cluttered with movie memorabilia; autographed stills, lobby cards, a pair of manacles hanging from a peg above a poster for Murders in the Rue Morgue. A mahogany armoire stood on the wall to his left. Masks and expensive Japanese monster models were housed in glass cases that lined a wall-length bookcase to his right. Ray saw that one of the cases contained a rubber bat, old and mostly rotted. In another case was a wooden stake, along with a brass plaque that read DRACULA 1931.
The producer undid the string that was tied around the hatbox.
Ray remembered his last shift as a gravedigger. Dark. Quiet. The kind of dark quiet that only comes at four o'clock in the morning.
The producer lifted the lid.
Ray heard the creaking sound the casket had made when he'd opened it, remembered placing the shovel blade against the neck of the dead actor resting inside. Remembered Cardell's words; "If things go wrong, you'll be the one taking the heat." Remembered feeling sick and ashamed, but excited too, thrilled by the prospect of a steady television job.
He remembered thinking about five hundred grand.
He remembered the pink slip.
He remembered his booted foot stomping down on the shovel.
The producer lifted the head of Hollywood's most famous blood-sucker out of the hatbox. He raked his fingers through the dead man's hair. "Thank you, Mr. Meleski," he said. "My collection is all the richer for your assistance."
"Great," Ray said. "Now if we can just take care of the remuneration end of things, I'll be on my way."
The producer grinned, a perfect imitation of the mirthless expression that had sent shivers up the spines of so many moviegoers. He raised the severed head to eye level and stared at the sunken eye-sockets. "There was a stake in his heart, wasn't there?"
Ray almost laughed.
The producer's eyes widened. "Dear Christ, you mean to say there wasn't a stake?" He tipped the Vampire's head back and glanced at the ruined neck. "And there's no garlic stuffed in the neck cavity!" He ran a finger between leathery lips, over the Vampire's yellow teeth. "Why, if the legends are true, he might just open his mouth and..."
"BITE!" The producer jerked his finger away from the Vampire's mouth and laughed hysterically. He pointed at James Dean, who had retreated to the door. "I had you going. Admit it, I had you going!"
James Dean lowered his battered head in shame.
The producer placed the severed head on a mahogany desk that matched the armoire in style and color. "So," he said, "we'd be in real good shape if not for one little thing."
Ray asked what that was.
"You chopped my beef, you little asshole!"
The producer nodded at James Dean.
The rim of the steering wheel smashed Ray's nose.
"No two-bit actor chops my beef and gets away with it!"
Ray's head lolled dizzily. He wanted to say that he'd only done what the producer wanted him to do. He'd chopped the dead guy's head off. That was all. But then he realized that the producer was talking about Natalie, and the funny thing was that he hadn't even chopped her, because she'd had his pants down around his ankles and her plum-colored lips around his...
Again, the producer nodded.
"I didn't know she was your girl," Ray began. "I thought it was just a party, y'know? Open season..."
James Dean hesitated.
The producer waved his .45. "By Christ, you'd better do it if you want to get paid!"
The steering wheel spun forward and split Ray's lower lip. Then the manacles came off the wall.
Ray cursed The Beach Boys. Such fucking liars. The California surf was nothing but cold. Miserable cold and advancing quickly, and there wasn't a resourceful surfer girl in sight.
Ray's mouth was full of blood. His feet were numb and his calves were cramping. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't straighten up. A wave threw him off balance and he butted the piling that stood before him. He swallowed hard and coughed against the gag jammed in his mouth.
Between waves, he could see the source of his predicament through the glassy, green-tinged water. There was a heavy eyebolt set in the base of the piling, and the chain that connected the manacles was looped through it. Ray could sit down, in which case the water rose to his Adam's apple when the waves washed in, or he could stand, hunched over, straining the muscles of his shoulders and lower back as he fought against the chain.
He settled on the latter. His head was clearing now, though his ears still rang from the beating he'd taken, and he used all his strength to pull at the eyebolt. But his feet sank into the sand, and the manacles cut his wrists, and the eyebolt didn't budge.
He could hear the party above. Music. Laughter. Dead Elvis, singing his special version of "My Way."
Another wave hit Ray, and a rope of seaweed lassoed his waist.
Stupid stupid stupid. Five hundred thousand bucks. There for the taking. Just like the fucking head was ripe for the plucking.
And he'd felt so bad about stealing it. Like a little baby. Jesus. What was his taking it next to what that sick fuck in the big house above was going to do with it? What was his momentary indiscretion next to the years of warped fun that that crazy shit was going to enjoy?
The producer made his own rules. That's how he'd got to where he was. Big house. Big deals. Ordering people around. He didn't give a shit about what anyone thought of him. He lived on his own terms.
Not like me, Ray thought. Not like a guy who gets laid off once, laid off twice, all the while scraping by like a bug because he doesn't have the guts to make the world give him what he wants. Doesn't have the stones to fuck people over, doesn't have the brains to realize that the absence of same is not an admirable trait in a town like Hollywood.
Maybe in Sioux City, but not here.
The tide washed forward. Even standing, straining for height, the waves were up to Ray's nipples.
Upstairs, someone turned off the music and Ray heard the distant breakers rolling in. Loud, pounding things. The party sounds waned and died. The light that broke through the slatted pier evaporated as the floodlights above were extinguished.
Now the waves were shoulder level. A good splash and Ray would get a mouthful of saltwater. And with the gag nearly jammed down his gullet, he'd be unable to spit out the water.
He could drown standing up.
Ray imagined he heard Natalie Wood's ghost laughing in the surf.
He strained against the manacles.
If I get out of this, I'll change. If I get out of this, I won't be a loser ever again.
A yellow circle bobbed between two pilings set high on the beach. A flashlight. Someone sloshed into the water and disappeared under a wave.
A jack handle scraped Ray's thigh.
The eyebolt was pried loose.
Ray raised his arms.
A ruined face appeared next to his own. "Man, your pecker really fucked us up this time, didn't it?"
The woman who answered the door screamed.
Ray stumbled forward, his eyes wild, seaweed coiled around his arms and waist. He grabbed Natalie by the hair and spun her against the wall, hard, but not so hard as to knock the expensive movie posters off their hooks.
She looked at him, her right eye bright and blue, her left eye swelled shut.
"I'm giving you a chance," he said. "Get gone."
He didn't have to tell her twice.
The producer was asleep in his bed. Without his vampire makeup, he looked much older, withered.
Like the severed head that lay on the pillow next to him.
Ray grabbed the collar of the man's silk pajamas and jerked him to a sitting position. The producer's heavy eyelids fluttered open, but not before Ray had wrapped the manacle chain around the bastard's scrawny neck.
"Christ, no! You're dead! You're drowned!"
Ray grinned. "You should have pounded a stake through my heart. Should have stuffed my mouth with garlic."
Ray tightened the chain. He nodded.
James Dean came forward.
The twisted steering wheel came down hard. Again, and again.
They were in the trophy room, filling pillowcases and boxes with memorabilia.
Cardell had peeled off his James Dean mask and his black gloves.
"Ray, man, I can't say how sorry I am. I hated to hit you like that, but the way things came down I would have earned a bullet if I hadn't done what he said."
"It's okay." Ray lowered the glass-encased rubber bat into a box. "We're going to make it worth our while. I bet we'll clear half a mil on this stuff, easy." He set the box aside and opened a pillowcase. "I only wish I'd have known it was you behind that makeup. Dressing like a honky teen idol—I'd have guessed that was against your general principles."
Cardell shook his head and flipped through a neat stack of hundred dollar bills. "I wanted to let you know it was me. I wanted to meet you downstairs when you came in, but the sick bastard wouldn't have any of it. I think he wanted to split us up, divide and conquer, save himself some money. So he jerked me around up here, showing off his private collection."
"Private collection?"
Cardell smiled. He stepped to the mahogany armoire, twisted two brass handles, and opened its doors.
The severed heads peered out at them.
Hers. Jaw crumbled. But hair still platinum blond.
His. Eyeless. But the moustache still black, still pencil thin.
Hers. Cracked. Broken and battered in a car crash. But still, hers.
His. The twisted lips. The bushy sideburns.
Thinking of money, Ray smiled.
A winner's smile.
’59 FRANKENSTEIN
ALL HE WANTED —the one and only thing he wanted, in fact—was to borrow the keys to the car.
But the doctor refused in that cool, condescending way of his, pointing out the error in his creation's logic as he packed the bowl of his pipe with cherry tobacco. "Now, my boy," he began as he always did, "I installed a perfectly serviceable brain in your cranium, and you're not using it. We both know it's not just a simple matter of your borrowing the car keys. That is only the surface question. Below that seemingly innocuous query lurk troubling subtexts. If you were to borrow the keys, I would be forced to assume that you'd like to go somewhere in the car. And if you were to go somewhere, people would, quite naturally, observe your movements. I'm sure you recall the unpleasantness during your previous excursion into the outside world. Certainly, I don't have to remind you of that. Do I, my boy?"
"That was your idea," the boy said, ashamed of the pitiful little voice that rose from his great chest. "I had to kill that kid. I had to have his face. I couldn't stand it anymore, being so..." His big hands wiped clean trails through the tobacco-stained air, groping for words.
The doctor chuckled, shaking his head, sucking on his vile pipe. "I do wish you'd develop your vocabulary, my boy. Any number of words will do— ugly, grotesque, hideous, repulsive." Again, the too-pleased-with-himself chuckle. "Monstrous, perhaps?"
"I'm not that way anymore." The young man smiled, touching the face that had been his for two years now, a handsome face that he had memorized in the small mirror the doctor had given him. "The things I did were ugly things... I did them because I was ugly. People were afraid of me. But that was before—they won't be afraid anymore. Now I look like everyone else. I'm different than I used to be."
"Yes, my boy. You're different. You wear a different face, a face that once belonged to someone else. Another boy. A boy who lived in this town, in fact. A boy with friends, teachers, family... a boy with a young sweetheart." The doctor sighed, a sure sign that the conversation was about to come to an abrupt end. "No, I'm afraid that you'd be recognized were you to venture forth from our comfortable abode, and that would bring questions, difficult questions. The time for answers has not yet arrived. We have more work to do. Our experiment has not yet concluded. Yes, we are finished with your face, and your arms and torso are certainly in fine shape, but that left leg of yours... that slightest of limps... and that unfortunate tattoo on your right hand... not to mention your eyes, my boy." The doctor shook his head. "I demand perfection before I reveal you to the world. And I assure you, my boy, when we arrive at perfection you will most assuredly long for the privacy of evenings such as these, when your world consisted of no more than a few rooms. But, I promise you this, I now and forever will be your protector. I only have your best interests at— "
Doctor Frankenstein didn't see it coming. His creation had moved behind him—ever so slowly, head down—as if he were accepting the inevitability of the doctor's arguments, and then the room went dark. Frankenstein was thinking that he should check the fuse box, but quite suddenly he realized that was an absurd idea because he was flat on his back, out of the comfortable recliner and on the rug in front of the fireplace, his pipe lying there on the floor, a smear of red smoldering tobacco charring the carpet.
His creation loomed over him, a smile on its face, a fireplace poker in its grip. The poker came down. Slashing. Crushing the doctor's cheek, but speeding on, completing its deadly arc.
Then starting back.
This time taking the doctor's right eye.
Frankenstein thought that he should scream. He knew exactly what was required to produce the desired result—synapses firing in his brain, muscles responding, the requisite amount of air expelled from his lungs, flowing over his vocal chords, and —
The poker came down again and speared his cheek, shattering teeth beneath. The hook buried itself between molars and wisdom teeth. The creature twisted the weapon, trying to free it, but it held firm. He yanked it sharply and it came loose quite suddenly, the hook pulling teeth and tearing flesh, ripping through cheek until it reached the startled curve of lip, shredding that too, creating a wet red wound that resembled the twisted smile of a clown.
Now the doctor did scream. He screamed as the monster took hold of his ankle and dragged him over the smoldering tobacco, across the living room, through the kitchen, and down the staircase that led to the basement laboratory. He screamed as his head slammed the first step, the second, the third... the fifth... the seventh... and then he was done screaming. Momentarily unconscious, his remaining eye rolled back in his head—eggshell white cracked with brilliant red veins beneath a fluttering pink lid. The right lid mimicked the action, smacking wetly as it fluttered over the empty scarlet socket.
A sharp exhalation puffed the doctor's torn mouth. Conscious once more, he reached out as the monster dragged him across the lab, made a desperate grab for the leg of the operating table. Missed badly. And then the room was behind him.
The monster pulled him into a narrow corridor, advancing at a pace most delib
erate. Not too fast. Not too slow. A pace that would allow a wounded man time enough to contemplate what lay ahead of him, for the door at the end of the corridor opened onto a creaking plywood staircase cobbled together by the doctor himself (and while Doctor Frankenstein was many things, a carpenter he was not).
The stairway led to a single chamber. A pit where Frankenstein disposed of excess body parts in a most ingenious manner, erasing even the tiniest shred of evidence.
As the monster opened the door to the alligator pit, Doctor Frankenstein thought that he certainly had better do something—something now, something drastic—but then he was tumbling down the rickety staircase—plywood creaking, nails groaning—splashing finally into a shallow pool.
Something clattered down the stairway after him. Then Frankenstein heard his creation's footfalls on the floorboards above. Crossing the laboratory, then climbing the staircase that led to the kitchen, the living room. The doctor did not hear the front door open, only heard it slam closed...
Then there was silence, black as the water which pooled on the concrete floor of the pit... silence soon broken by the sound of a gator moving through shallow water.
The young man's heavy foot mashed the gas pedal and the Chevy roared backward, veering sharply as his big, mismatched hands twisted the steering wheel too far one way, then too far the other. The car jumped the curb of the brick driveway and trenched a wild brodie on the front lawn, finally launching the mailbox skyward as the rear bumper smacked the post that held it. The post itself was transformed into a hail of flying splinters as the car powered backward onto the two-lane country road.
Sweat beaded on the young man's forehead, but there was really no need to worry. The house was far from town, and there wasn't another soul on the road at this hour.
The boy raced into the night. First gear. Clutch in. Second gear. Clutch out. The big car stuttered and died, and Frankenstein's creation swore under his breath.
Bad Intentions Page 7
