Movie Stars

by Jack Pendarvis

  “As I was saying before we were interrupted, you find yourself in the most haunted area of the United States, as far as such things can be measured. Much of the evidence is anecdotal, inevitably.”

  “That’s so interesting, listen, I’m going to be going,” said O’Brien as she rose.

  “Oh, my dear,” said Dr. Cherubino. He grabbed his walking stick, which was leaned against the table, and hoisted himself up an inch or two—out of politeness, maybe.

  The bartender came through the front door, through which he had supposedly gone for a smoke, and strode toward the table with alarming speed, an unlit cigarette behind his ear.

  “This is it,” O’Brien said out loud. Her legs shook.

  “I’m sorry,” the bartender said when he reached the table. “I’ve just got to try that, if you don’t mind.”

  “Uh, sure,” said O’Brien.

  He downed her bitters and soda, over half the glass, and grinned with his pretty, crooked teeth. It really made him happy.

  “I’m sorry, darling. I couldn’t get my mind off of it. It just looked so doggone tasty. I’m going to put it on the menu. I’m going to name it after you. I’ll make you another one. I’ll make you another O’Brien.”

  “That was bizarrely presumptuous,” she said, but she was smiling. “No, I’m okay, I think.”

  The bartender flopped into the empty chair between O’Brien and Dr. Cherubino with some force.

  “Yeah, it’s dead in this dump,” he said. “Let’s move this party somewhere happening.”

  “The young lady and I have business,” said Dr. Cherubino.

  “What kind of business?”

  “Business that is none of yours.”

  “Ouch,” said the bartender.

  O’Brien laughed. “I think he wants to put me in his book,” she said.

  “See, now, that’s an honor,” said the bartender. “I’m not in your book. Am I? Why am I not in your book? I’ve been around a lot longer than she has. I have a cousin who’s done all kinds of stuff. She threw up a demon. Hey, I should get some credit. I’m the one who told her about your book.”

  “It is emphatically not your place to publicize the personal interests or avocations of your customers.”

  “You’re probably right,” said the bartender. “But you do carry a pretty damn big book everywhere you go. Not like it’s a secret.”

  “We should continue our interview at my home, away from prying ears and eyes,” said Dr. Cherubino to O’Brien. “The rain seems to have stopped, and the walk will be pleasant in its aftermath. You can see the book resting on its special podium. I’ll take a few notes, nothing obtrusive, it will be much the same as passing the time in genial conversation. I have some excellent imported cheese of peculiar quality you might be interested in sampling for your pleasure.”

  “I don’t know about wandering off. I don’t know my way around very well, not just yet.”

  “But I’ll guide you, my dear. A leisurely walking tour. There are several haunted spots of some note betwixt here and there. I’d adore to gauge your elemental reaction.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I’d like to walk home alone past, um…”

  “Revenants?” said Dr. Cherubino.

  “Sure,” said O’Brien.

  “I’ll take you over there,” said the bartender, “and get you home safe, too. Where did you say you’re staying?”

  “I didn’t,” said O’Brien.

  “Have you ever been to my home, young man?” Dr. Cherubino asked the bartender. “I do not think you have ever been invited. In fact, I should be alarmed to discover that such was the case.”

  “I know where it is. People point to it when they drive by. It’s an area of local interest.”

  “I don’t suppose it is you who tosses his losing lottery tickets into my bushes,” said Dr. Cherubino.

  “Boys, boys, there’s no need to fight over little old me,” O’Brien said. She laughed. Dr. Cherubino and the bartender looked genuinely puzzled. She frowned at them.

  “I do understand the desire for a chaperone,” said Dr. Cherubino. “In fact, I commend it.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said the bartender. “Me and her? We’re old buddies. I’m like her big brother basically. Right, sis?”

  He reached over to put his hand on her shoulder and O’Brien jerked it away. The bartender laughed. He stood up and yelled at the old men rolling dice on the bar. “Gentlemen, I hate to break it to you but gambling is illegal!”

  This got an appreciative reaction from the old-timers. The stouter of the two, the one who wore overalls, scooped up most of the pile of dollar bills, leaving some of them behind for the bartender. His unhappy, sallow friend wore a shiny old suit. With a shaky hand he plucked his fedora from the bar and put it on. His friend in overalls helped him off the stool.

  “Guess that does it,” the bartender said when the old men finally made it out the door. “It’s deader than hell tonight. What do you say let’s shut this sucker down? Won’t take me two seconds. I got it down to a science.”

  “What about that couple in the back? Their glasses were already empty when I got here.”

  “What couple in the back?” said the bartender.

  There was no couple in the back.

  While the bartender was closing up, O’Brien walked out front. The summer storm was over. She called her boyfriend. He didn’t answer. He was at the Hialeah racetrack in Florida, shooting an ironic serial killer movie. He never answered. So she texted him that she was going to an unknown location with two strange men.

  AVENGE ME, she texted.

  When the bartender emerged, he took the tarpaulin off of his motorcycle and sidecar. He felt the seat of the sidecar to make sure it was dry for O’Brien. He gave her a helmet, much too large.

  It didn’t take long to get to the doctor’s house, and O’Brien was disappointed because she enjoyed the ride, pushing the big helmet around on her head to watch the stars come out where the sky had cleared, smelling grass and ozone, noticing the black leaves of the trees wetly sparkling.

  As remote as the town was, though, it was a town. There were occasional sidewalks. It wasn’t the way she and her boyfriend had imagined. The doctor’s neighborhood could have been any quiet neighborhood—say a Polish neighborhood in Toronto.

  They stopped in front of the doctor’s cozy-looking little house.

  The bartender disembarked. He removed his helmet, retrieved his funny hat from the compartment where he kept it, and put it on very carefully. Only then did he help O’Brien out of the sidecar.

  “That was a blast,” she said.

  “Don’t take much to make you happy,” he said.

  His hand remained on her arm.

  “I’m having an adventure,” she said.

  “House is dark. Did he say he was walking?” He left her in the yard, sprinted up the walkway, and rang the doorbell. He cupped his hands next to his eyes and tried to look in. “I think I hear somebody bumping around in there.”

  “Here he comes,” said O’Brien.

  Streetlights were few, but the gaunt bird took the middle of the empty street, wings of his cloak fluttering behind him.

  “We can’t get in the front way,” he said. “My apologies. The screen door is permanently stuck.”

  He took them around the house, up the back steps, and through a small screened-in porch, perfectly square and cluttered. He let them into a tidy kitchen which had the faint but unpleasant scent of vinegar, possibly used as a cleaning agent.

  The doctor placed his cane in an umbrella stand and hung his cape over it so that it resembled a dingy ghost.

  He said, “I promised you cheese.”

  They watched as he removed a pale wedge from his refrigerator, watched as he shuffled with it to the counter, where he carefully removed each of his rings and lined them up in a particular order before choosing a utensil from a wooden knife block.

  He got out a sheet of wax paper, smoothed it on the counter
, unwrapped the cheese, and set to work cutting it, wincing once as the tip of the knife entered his thumb.

  He held a blood-speckled cube of whitish cheese to the light and frowned.

  “Bad augury,” he said.

  “Uh-oh,” said the bartender.

  Dr. Cherubino put his thumb in his mouth and sucked thoughtfully.

  Once he had cheese and crackers lying on a plate, Dr. Cherubino returned his rings to his fingers and had O’Brien and the bartender follow him down a dark hallway toward the front room.

  The narrow hall was made narrower by bookcases on each side. The bookcases were full. Books were piled on top of many of them, and stacks of books sat on the floor against the wall wherever there was space. Above the bookcases there appeared to be old prints or etchings, though it was too dark to tell what they were. The air was thick with the sweet rot of paper. O’Brien sneezed three times, rapidly.

  “Bless you, bless you, bless you,” said Dr. Cherubino.

  They came into a large, scantly furnished room with an expensive-looking rug on the wooden floor and a podium set up as if for an audience of two, for it faced a loveseat, the room’s only place to sit. Hanging on the walls in bulky, chipped frames were torn old photographs of wildly bearded men with glittering expressions and sternly coiffed women who seemed to have peach pits where their eyes should have been.

  At a distance behind the podium were two closed French doors with blue velvet drapes hanging inside them and hiding the next room from view.

  “The haunted sewing room,” Dr. Cherubino said, gesturing at the closed doors. “I do not own a coffee table. If you don’t mind, we’ll place your refreshments on the ottoman.”

  O’Brien and the bartender sat on the mahogany loveseat, which was cushioned in stripes of purple velvet—dark and lighter purple alternately. They were close by necessity, facing Dr. Cherubino’s maple podium, carved on which was the motto IN ARENA AEDIFICAS. Another large room behind the guests—an open dining room, unlighted—made the hair on the backs of their necks stand up. They could feel it behind them, and both were compelled to turn their heads and look into the dark for a moment. It contained a table and chairs, a Victrola, and as far as they could tell, nothing else.

  Purplish beams from a streetlight striped the room. Dr. Cherubino lit several large black candles—on the mantel, a small table, and the windowsills—to help.

  O’Brien and the bartender stared at him with some anticipation as he solemnly took his place behind the podium and opened the ponderous book with a creak and a great thud.

  “Herein I have recorded, largely from eyewitness accounts, tales of untimely visitations from the phantom realms and other unusual occurrences. Amnesia, holy smells, stigmata, somnambulism—”

  “Holy smells?” said O’Brien.

  “Intimates of the Catholic saint Padre Pio could smell him when he wasn’t there. The false messiah Sabattai Sevi was said to exude a marvelous aroma, so much so that the peasants began to gossip that he was using perfume. Naturally, neither of these fascinating mystics falls under the scope of my humble study. I bring them up merely as notable examples from human history. Locally, I have an interesting case involving hand lotion. But I think that to laymen such as yourselves, even a gifted one such as Miss O’Brien, an old-fashioned ghost story would be most pleasurable, most free of dry and pedantic speculations. There are several from which to choose.”

  “What’s the scariest one you’ve got?” said the bartender.

  “I would say without hesitation that the most chilling example I have collected to date is the story I call ‘The Black Parasol.’”

  “Tell us that one, then.”

  “I cannot. It is too chilling.”

  “I think I can handle it,” said O’Brien. “Does the spirit of ‘Silky’ Dick Smythe haunt the abandoned doll hospital?”

  Dr. Cherubino looked displeased. “Why would you ask such a thing?”

  “I don’t know, this seemed like the time and place,” said O’Brien.

  “Unknowingly, you have touched upon a sore subject. My late wife had a firm belief that she was the reincarnation of one of the victims of the notorious Teardrop Killer.”

  O’Brien sat up straight. “Ooh! Is that what they called him?”

  “My dear wife always felt, based on the content of her nightmares—if that is what we wish to call them—that the wrong man was blamed for those murders. She would say no more. It was a point of contention between us, her stubborn secrecy as to her personal revelations on the matter. Naturally, we do not like to be reminded of our petty squabbles with cherished ones who have departed. So you will forgive, I trust, this one lapse in my otherwise exhaustive catalog.” Dr. Cherubino licked his long finger and flipped a few pages. “Here, for example, we find a series of incidents said to have occurred in this very house.”

  “Exciting,” said O’Brien. She crossed her arms and rubbed them.

  “Perhaps you would not think it so exciting were you Mr. Byron Welch, the previous owner of the property. He had no trouble for the first seven years he was living here, but then one summer night when the air conditioner was broken and he tossed and turned in his damp and sweltering bed, he heard a sound with which he was unfamiliar. Part of it was like a horse on cobblestones. Well, these were modern times, of course, and there were no horses to speak of in town, and certainly no cobblestones, and in any case the sound seemed to be coming from within the house. Beneath the clip-clop was a low whir or hum, almost a rumble. Taking the tenor part, if you will, came a high tacka tacka tacka, tacka tacka tacka. Mr. Welch was not a gambling man, but he did enjoy movies featuring high adventure in lavish settings, and to him this latter noise was reminiscent of a spinning roulette wheel with the bright little ball clattering among the grooves. Tacka tacka tacka, tacka tacka tacka. Was it the broken mechanism of the air conditioner, struggling to gain purchase? Byron Welch rose from the tangled counterpane and approached his bedroom window, outside of which the central cooling unit stood ruined and most silent. And still, from somewhere down the hall—from the room directly behind me this very instant, it so turned out, but more of that anon—came the unrelenting sound: tacka tacka tacka. Tacka tacka tacka.

  “It so happened that some time prior to this occurrence, Mr. Welch had chanced upon a set of perfectly good golf clubs, it seemed to him, protruding somewhat obscenely from a trashcan on the street—his street, this street. One may conjecture about the amusing circumstances leading one of Mr. Welch’s neighbors—or let us presume the wife of one of Mr. Welch’s neighbors—to discard a set of golf clubs in such a fashion. But that is a story for another time, and for a decidedly more lighthearted anthology of domestic humor.

  “Mr. Welch was not a golfer, but it seemed to him almost absurd not to avail himself of this peculiar and gratis merchandise. If he was not a golfer, nor was he a greedy man. He chose one club, one that appealed to him, an iron of pleasing heft and balance in his hands. He placed it by his bed, propped in the corner, and forgot about it. Only on the night in question did it occur to him that in its place and with its functional qualities the golf club might prove a protective instrument.

  “The sound went on. Tacka tacka tacka. Tacka tacka tacka. Down the passageway stole Byron Welch, creeping stealthily, his trusty golf club raised as if to strike. When he put a toe on the threshold of this very room, the sound abruptly stopped. You may be sure Mr. Byron Welch assumed his cautious posture for several frozen minutes. But, for that night at least, the sound never returned. In spite of the swelter, Welch swore that a cold breeze passed over him, raising the goose flesh on his arms and legs.

  “On Sundays, it was Mr. Welch’s custom to perform the charitable act of driving a group of elderly women to the Baptist church, and afterward for a luncheon at Shoney’s buffet restaurant in the neighboring town. It so happened that the incident in question had occurred on a Saturday night, so it was fresh in Welch’s mind. He could hardly help chewing it over aloud to the sweet old w
omen in his charge. They clucked and said, ‘My, my,’ but really didn’t seem to pay it much mind, and eventually it passed from even his mind.

  “After lunch he dropped off his ladies at their homes, one by one. At last there was just one passenger remaining, a Miss Grace Duncan, never married, who piped up from the back in her sweet voice, ‘I know what you heard.’

  “By this time, Byron Welch had nearly forgotten about the matter. ‘What I heard?’ he inquired. Miss Grace reminded him by making the sound: ‘Tacka tacka tacka. Tacka tacka tacka,’ and somehow or another, a chill went up his spine. She just laughed, a tinkling, gay little laugh.

  “‘Why, dear,’ she said. ‘That’s the sound of the treadle working on an old-fashioned sewing machine.’”

  “Ooh, that gave me a shiver for some reason,” said O’Brien.

  Dr. Cherubino smiled with his long teeth. “Now, you may choose to believe that the old woman’s passing comment acted as some sort of autosuggestion, coloring what happened next.”

  “May I interrupt you?” said O’Brien.

  “I believe you have just taken that liberty,” said Dr. Cherubino.

  “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer. I’ve been hit by an inspiration, and I don’t want to let the moment go by. That’s where the trouble always comes in for me: letting the moment go by. We really need to talk. This is lovely. I think I could get you some money for this, for your…work.”

  “Money?” said Dr. Cherubino. With a bang he shut the book.

  “Yes, I happen to be looking for this kind of material right now. Well, not this specifically. I never would have dreamed of it. But now that I hear it, I completely see how I could use it.”

  “Use it?” Dr. Cherubino placed his palms on the cover of his black book. He placed them there with care, in the spirit of protection.

  “I mean, you’d be cut in all the way, don’t get me wrong. Let me explain.” She jumped up and came toward him. By instinct, Dr. Cherubino hunched over his book, guarding it with his upper body. O’Brien backed off a little and Dr. Cherubino rose from his position almost sheepishly.