Dark Terrors 5 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  Jean said ‘I’m here’ to nobody and nothing in particular, and the giant, wizard doors opened up to Oz.

  The hallway was of impressive length and faded grandeur, lit by the dull Cocteau glow of faux lantern sconces. It was a soft, warm, but dim light...and in it, Harlow II was even more ravishing. She led me down the length of the hallway, and as we reached its end, the dark wood double doors opened up to us, revealing the Man Behind the Curtain.

  The man was tiny, certainly not over five feet, with a venerable, dried-apple countenance tightly sheltered with a thick, pomaded landing strip of artificially boot-blacked hair. A ghost of cataract and eyelids that drooped like sagging breasts almost hid the sparkle of his rheumy grey eyes, and his osteoporosis curled him into a tiny question mark. He looked up at Jean, apparently unwilling to make eye contact with me until getting her approval.

  ‘He’s good,’ she told him, and the little lawn gnome finally looked up at me, manufacturing a smile that revealed perfectly straight white teeth that were way too big for his crepe-paper mouth. He reached out his right hand - which was missing the thumb - and I shook it. I don’t know if you’ve ever shaken hands with a guy without a thumb, but it just doesn’t feel right. His other hand was tucked out of sight in his pocket, and I wondered if the little gremlin was born without opposable thumbs at all.

  After I shook his hand, he kept it reaching out at me. I thought he was stuck on pause or something until I realised that he was waiting for me to hand over the shoulder bag with the cash in it.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked, and he looked back up at Jean, who turned to me with a smile.

  ‘No names.’

  That made the little homunculus grin, and his smile, even in the dim light, was blinding. I handed over the bag to PeeWee, who zipped it open and started carefully counting the bills. This was going to take a while. Jean leaned in to stick a kiss on my cheek.

  ‘Have a great night.’ And she turned back down that long, lonesome hallway.

  ‘Wait.’ She turned back with an expectant look. ‘Can this guy even talk?’

  That made the withered little manikin testy. I thought he was going to bite my kneecap. ‘Of course I can talk! Oh, shit, I’ve lost count!’ And he started over. From one.

  With a ‘Nighty-bye,’ Harlow II was down the hall and out the door, leaving me with my own private Dr Loveless. I waited in the doorway while he counted it all out: one hundred thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills.

  Eventually satisfied that I wasn’t a piker, Mr Subspecies turned and led me down the newly revealed corridor. I had to move slowly to keep from overtaking his baby steps.

  We took another turn and he reached up on tippy-toes to flip a light switch, revealing a long, antiquated chamber that opened out onto several apartments. Each of them had a large picture window that looked into the central chamber, and each window was draped with ornate wine velvet curtains on the inside. Most of the curtains were closed, but not all of them. As I followed in my Munchkin’s eensy steps, I was able to see into a drape that lolled lazily open. Inside was an ornate bedroom, decorated as if by Menzies: heavy wood pieces, a high moulded ceiling, and a vast silk-sheeted bed against the wall. The only light was cast by the dim chamber sconce, but even in the shadows I could see that the bed was unmade.

  Just as we passed the window to the clip-clop of teeny feet echoing through the otherwise silent chamber, a face suddenly appeared like a spotlight in the opening of the curtains. I jumped, I admit it, startled by its abrupt appearance, and the golden halo that surrounded her familiar face in the struggling, limp light reflected off her bottle blondness. But most unnerving of all was how her eyes were locked on mine, just a foot or so away from me. This was most definitely not Jean.

  The face was enormous, a round, fleshy visage under a marigold mane, exquisitely painted in white-hot Helena Rubinstein beauty. The eyes, though - they were huge and liquid pale, drilling right into my own. But the spark was out behind them; they were gorgeous but empty, lifeless, shining husks of eyes. I wasn’t sure she could even see me through them.

  But boy, could I see her.

  Striking in her red satin wrapper, she was an uncaged housefire. That huge moon of a face rose over an alarmingly ample décolletage and a waspy little waist I could circle in two hands. This was a woman you could only see in colour: the red of her lips, the electric gold of her hair, the flamingo pink of her tongue, and - even though bound behind the thin red wrapper - the evident, nursed-dark muddy brown howdies of her vast, reaching nipples.

  The Little Man gripped my hand in his gnarly, four-fingered tug, trying to pull me down the hall, but I couldn’t move, not now that I recognised her. This incendiary explosion of boobs and blondness had been immortalised most spectacularly by Frank Tashlin in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, but that’s not how I recognised her.

  No. The little relentlessly yipping dog at her feet was a clue, but what finally led me to put it all together were the tiny, nearly invisible tell-tale sutures that circled her neck.

  I was eyelocked with Jayne Mansfield.

  Obviously, some assembly had been required, since she was decapitated in a car wreck in 1967. But that was Jayne. The real deal. Alive. Breathing. Her impressive water wings heaving with each breath. I could barely even blink as I riveted into her glassy, vacant orbs. She didn’t blink at all, not once. It was unsettling, at the very least. I’d only seen eyes like that once before, and I didn’t want to remember it, but now she made me.

  When I was five years old, my dad was teaching me how to ride a bike without training wheels for the first time. He’d just taken them off without even telling me, and I was roaring down the street, oblivious to my new mastery of two-wheeled travel, when he shouted out for me to look that I was riding without training wheels. I looked down, saw that it was true, and panicked. The handlebars shimmied and I lost control. Dad came running to help me, just as an ancient, wheezing Impala roared around the corner on a tail of grey exhaust, and slammed him into the phone pole. I skinned my knee through my jeans as I fell off the bike and ran to see my father, who was shattered and pinned between the empty grin of the Impala’s grille and the cracked Phone Pole Tower of Pisa. Our eyes were cinched as his life beat away with his slowing heart, leaving the flesh husk and the glazed, sightless eyes reflecting my own. I could see, even then, when his life had left him and his eyes gone blind.

  And now Jayne gave me the same vacancy sign before pulling the curtain shut.

  ‘Come on,’ the tugging little gnome croaked as I allowed him to pull me from the blockaded showroom. ‘She’s not for you.’

  ‘Was that Jayne Mansfield?’ I asked him.

  ‘No, it was Jane Pauley. What the fuck do you think?’

  ‘You’re a cranky old asshole, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m actually very sweet once you get to know me.’

  I didn’t believe him. But I followed him down the seemingly endless chamber anyway.

  He stopped me at the very last room.

  ‘You didn’t bring flowers, did you,’ he said in a judgmental sneer. ‘She likes flowers.’

  ‘Nobody told me.’

  ‘It’s breeding, common decency to bring a woman flowers. Now...you know the rules.’

  I looked at him. How should I know the rules? ‘Not really.’

  ‘Just be gentle. Thoughtful. And no rough-housing.’

  And then he was off, no doubt back to his place behind the curtain. His walk took him forever.

  I gently rapped on the ornate door and waited, my heart trying to climb up my throat. I kept waiting, the mystery and marvel and anticipation shrivelling my nerve as well as my manhood. I felt like a turtle pulled back in its shell. When it became evident that no one was coming to answer my knock, I reached out and gripped the doorknob. It was greasy with palm-sweat, but wasn’t locked. It opened, and I entered in quiet, tiny steps.

  The room was hushed and dark, but so were my desires, I guess. But the dim light from the
candle guttering on the nightstand couldn’t extinguish the glow that Jean Harlow - the real Jean Harlow, alive and in full living breathing colour - cast. She sat on the edge of the peach satin bed, draped in shadow and a fine silk chemise. She turned to face me, but the curtain of shadow blacked out her features. I was frozen in place, my mouth gawping; I hadn’t the strength to take a breath. The hairs at the nape of my neck curdled and a shimmer of gooseflesh traversed my body. Jean. Jean. Roses are red. And all of my guts have gone green.

  After a big slice of eternity, I made the next move, taking a step towards her and the bed. Jean glided back a few inches on the satin quilt, lifting her face into the warm, gentle caress of the candlelight. It was at that moment that it became obvious that Harlow II looked nothing like my Jean, the real Jean. The faux Harlow had been sandblasted by modernity, corrupted by the modern age, while Jean - milky, creamy, elegant Jean - was above all that passage-of-time nonsense. I don’t know how she was here sitting on this bed in this room with me after dying in 1937, but she was. This was no imposter. Somehow, she had been rescued from the ravages of death, had earned a station in eternity, and for a hundred thousand dollars I had bought a share of that station. A night with my forever Jean. A taste of eternity. Whatever science or magic made it possible, I was its slave.

  And Jean’s.

  Unlocking the invisible shackles that bolted me to the floor, I moved to the bed and looked down at her longingly. She looked up into my eyes and gently patted the space on the bed next to her with her palm, once, silently inviting me to sit. Her eyes, though pure and startlingly blue, were ringed in black mascara, and as vacant and unblinking as Jayne’s, though larger and more inviting. Her mouth was painted in a rose red so dark it was almost black, and it shone in the pale candlelight. Her lips eased open, just a sticky little fraction of an inch, releasing the softest, curious sound from within. She was purring a constant, sensual little rumble, her own internal combustion engine.

  ‘Jean?’

  Without blinking or moving her eyes from me, she nodded. I sat next to her and took her pale ice cream hand in mine. The hand was cool and soft, limp, barely motivated, and I drew it to my face. I touched the back of her hand with my lips, I couldn’t help it, and she let me. Her skin tasted like vanilla and fresh hand soap. She watched me kiss her hand through barren, staring eyes, and I laid my hand on her cheek and turned her face towards me. Her eyes turned sluggishly to mine, and we were face to face. Her purr was more distinct now, though no less sensuous. I could feel her breath stroke my face in cool even waves. Its scent was a bit pungent, but no more than it might be after a plate, of penne arrabiatta. But it sure didn’t smell like vanilla.

  She neither resisted nor encouraged me, so I bent in and kissed her. She kissed me back, and my eyes closed in exultation. Her full, soft lips parted, and her chilly pink tongue sought mine. She sucked it into her mouth and began to nurse off of it, and there’s no way I was going to stop her. I sneaked a peek as she milked my tongue, and her eyes were wide open, still unblinking, her mouth sucking mechanically, almost painfully, on my tongue.

  I pulled away to look at her, and she looked back, gorgeous but empty. No resistance, no encouragement.

  ‘What would you like?’ I asked her. She just looked back at me. No words. Never any words. I knew the lights were out, but it didn’t keep my libido from raging. My fear was that, presented with a dream, my physiognomy might recede and that junior might chicken out, but au contraire, mon ami, au contraire. The passive, alabaster icon on the bed with me ignited my hormones and overcame my stupefaction. The ample voluptuousness of one of Hollywood’s greatest stars awaited me; the dream of a lifetime was at my fingertips, and if it wouldn’t come to life to a symphony of Preston Sturges dialogue, if it would instead be my own personal silent epic, well, shit, so be it.

  I reached out and gently lifted the strap of her chemise from her shoulder and let it drop, revealing the delicate sundae of her breast to me. Her eyes locked shamelessly on mine, and I reached over to cup it in my palm. As her feline engine accelerated, I bent down and took her breast in my mouth. It yielded, its cool marshmallow vanilla a creamy treat. The nipple stayed relaxed, unresponsive, never flexing to attention. Her arms curled about me and limply came to rest on my shoulders. I looked up from her breast and she watched me nursing on her with those clear blue unblinking eyes. It stopped me. I raised my face to hers, tried to see beyond the pupils, but was blocked by absence.

  She moved, in, eyes still wide open, and kissed my mouth. The hum from within was soothing and welcoming. I let her kiss me, closed my eyes, and ran my fingers through the tight marcels of her platinum hair. Her hair felt like weaves of satin, glossy and slippery, and my fingers got lost in it. My thumb tangled in one of her waves, and I gently tugged it free.

  Her breath caught in a gasp and I opened my eyes, afraid I had hurt her. Her eyes were even wider now as I lifted my hand from her hair... pulling a patch of it away with my thumb! There was a clot of greyish reddish brownish skin at the base of the tangle of spun gold wrapped around my thumb, and she reached for it, unable to take it in her own sleeping fingers.

  ’Oh, God, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry!’ I tried to calm her, but she just kept quietly and unsuccessfully reaching for her curls. There was a dark brown square on her scalp where the patch had pulled free, and a few drops of a dark fluid that could only have been blood wept to the surface.

  ’Are you okay?’ She didn’t answer me, of course. She had given up trying to retrieve her hair and was suddenly reaching for my groin with curious, less-than-dexterous fingers. I couldn’t help it; the boy had a mind of his own. As she fumbled to release me, I helped her with the zipper, quickly forgetting about our little experience with the hair. The same mouth that had locked so successfully to my tongue now found succor in the netherworld.

  The suction was remarkable considering the fragility of her other movements. I had never felt anything like the cool, muscular, rhythmic suction her mouth incurred. I couldn’t help but grip her hair in my hands as I approached a bucking, uncontrollable orgasm that jolted through my body, emptying me of weeks of celibacy.

  I jerked violently in fulfilment, and her head bobbed off and back onto my convulsing tissue. It was irresistible impulse; I didn’t mean to pull away the handfuls of flaxen hair and grey, preserved flesh. And when she screamed - the first vocalising she’d released since I entered her room - I looked down to see that one of those fragile, ice blue, vacuous eyes had been punctured, and wept a clear tide of thick tears.

  Her inhuman screech echoed through the silence and in moments the little gnome was charging into the room in hunched-over horror. ’Jeeeeeaaaaaammnnnnn!’ he howled. It was the longest single-syllable word I’d ever heard. He yanked me away from her in an incredibly powerful four-fingered grip, and in a cloak of guilt I climbed back into my khakis.

  The little professor tended Jean with incredible gentleness, his own eyes going glassy as he dabbed her leaking eye socket with his hanky. ‘I said no rough-housing!’ he told me as he soothed her delicate body. ’You’d better get out of here.’

  I agreed. As I made my way to the door, I heard his plaintive, melancholy words evaporate into the velvet night: ‘Daddy fix, Baby. Daddy fix again.’ My hundred-thousand-dollar half-hour was over.

  I’ve tried several times to return to the House of Harlow, but it is long gone, and without a trace. I’ve called and called Pseudo-Jean, but that number is no longer in service, and there is no new number. Now all I have to remember Jean are her movies. I’ve seen them so often that I know them all by heart, but it isn’t just the movies themselves that so entrance me. It’s the time long past, the dream long remembered. And I had a piece of that before I put its eye out.

  Mick Garris lives in California’s Studio City. Best known as the director of such movies and TV mini-series as Disney’s Fuzzbucket, Critters 2, Psycho IV, Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers, The StandandThe Shining,King and Clive Barker’s Quicks
ilver Highway and Peter James’ Virtual Obsession,he has also directed several episodes (including the pilot) and served as the supervising producer on the Steven Spielberg series The Others. As a scriptwriter, his credits include Coming Soon! (with John Landis),*Batteries Not Included, The Fly II (with Frank Darabont and Jim and Ken Wheat), Disney’sHocus Pocus(with Neil Cuthbert), ten episodes of Spielberg’s Amazing Stories, an episode each ofNew York UndercoverandTales from the Crypt, and with Tom McLoughlin he created the series She-Wolf of London.His short stories have appeared in anthologies and magazines including Hot Blood, Silver Scream, Splatterpunks, Midnight Graffiti and Carpe Noctem, while Gauntlet Press recently published his collection A Life in the Cinema: Eight Stories and a Screenplay,which includes a foreword by Stephen King and cover art by Clive Barker. As Garris explains: ‘ “Starfucker” is the sequel to a short story called “A Life in the Cinema”, which achieved some degree of notoriety when it was first published in David Schow’s anthology, Silver Scream. With that story, I wanted to see if I could remove the choke collar of self-censorship that never seemed to fetter favourite authors of mine like King and Barker. Well, I guess it was a success in that matter, for it has embarrassed friends and family members for several years. I’d always wanted to revisit this character (who was inspired by, if not based on, a real Hollywood hotshot right out of film school, but I’m not telling who), and this story, which came well over a decade later, is it.’