Yet wasn’t he, in a way? He was about to reveal to these people that the world still held magic, and mystery. And if by that revelation, some of the mystery was lost, that was the price of showmanship, the cost of discovery.
“And now I’m going to show you the greatest thing your eyes have ever beheld. He was a king in the world he knew but he comes to you now…a captive!”
Denham lifted his arms. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World!”
The band began to play, music filling the theater.
Ann arrived in the wings. The stage manager turned toward her, face alight with anticipation.
Jack stood at the back of the balcony, looking out over the darkened theater. The music swelled. He watched Carl give a dramatic flourish of his hands and the curtain slowly rose to reveal Kong sitting slumped and unresponsive, his wrists manacled to a steel scaffold. Other manacles and chains secured his ankles, neck and waist. There came a collective gasp from the audience. Jack couldn’t blame them. Kong’s sheer size was overwhelming.
His own response to the sight of the beast was something else, something he hadn’t expected. Pity. And Kong did look pitiful there, so different from the majestic thing he had been on Skull Island.
But Jack did not allow himself to be fooled. The sadness of the creature did not diminish the brutality of which he was capable.
A look of utter euphoria crossed Carl’s features as the reactions of two thousand people washed over him.
Kong’s head lolled as if he was barely aware of his surroundings.
“Don’t be alarmed, ladies and gentlemen,” Carl said, ever the gallant host. “It is perfectly safe. These chains are made of chrome steel!”
After the moment it had taken the audience to recover from the sight of the beast, they erupted in sudden, wild applause.
As though he were a college professor—a particularly patronizing instructor—he reached out and put his hand on Kong’s leg, demonstrating the current harmlessness of his captive.
“Observe if you will, I am touching the beast. I am actually laying my hand on the twenty-five-foot gorilla.”
Kong’s foot twitched slightly, causing Denham to jump back in fright. It ought to have been funny, even a bit ridiculous, but Jack was not amused. Denham signaled to the stage hands in the wings. Offstage, one of them began to crank a winch. The chains at Kong’s wrists tightened, drawing him up to his full height.
The audience gasped again.
Jack started forward, quietly made his way down the shadowed aisle, even as Carl turned to face the audience again.
“And now we have in the auditorium tonight a surprise guest. The real life hero of this story. The man who hunted down the mighty Kong!”
Jack felt a sick twist in his gut as he watched the spectacle unfold, his mind full of images, memories, he wished he could forget.
“The man who risked all to win the freedom of a helpless female!” Denham went on. “A big hand for…Mister Bruce Baxter!”
Jack smiled thinly.
Bruce strode on stage dressed as the great white hunter. The costume was ridiculous, but the audience exploded with applause and whistles. Carl shook Bruce’s hand, clapping him on the back as if they were old friends. Bruce turned to acknowledge the adulation of the audience.
A pulsating drum beat began to fill the auditorium.
Carl raised a hand to quiet the audience. They were eating out of his hand, now, and he lowered his voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, imagine if you will an uncharted island. A forgotten fragment from another time. And clinging to life in this savage place, imagine a people untutored in the ways of the civilized world. A people who have dwelt all their lives in the shadow of fear. In the shadow of…Kong!”
A line of dancers dressed as absurd native costumes right out of the very sort of back lot safari films Carl despised appeared from either side of the stage. They danced to the beat, playing to Kong, who stared impassively at them.
In the balcony, Jack stared transfixed at the stage.
From behind him came a quiet voice. “He was right.”
Jack turned to find Preston standing beside him.
“About there still being some mystery left in the world,” the younger man went on softly. Preston stared down at Denham on the stage. “And we can all have a piece of it. For the price of an admission ticket.”
Jack stared at Preston, at the scar that ran down his cheek.
“That’s the thing you come to learn about Carl,” he said. “His unfailing ability to destroy the things he loves.”
Once upon a time, Carl Denham had been one of his closest friends. It was unlike Jack to say such things aloud, even after all Carl had put him through. But Preston had been equally close to the man, and had come to the same, unpleasant conclusions.
Down at the front of the theater, Denham strode to the front of the stage.
“Please remain calm, ladies and gentlemen, for we now come to the climax of this savage ritual. The sacrifice of a beautiful young girl!”
The crowd erupted into wild cheers, and Jack had the idea that their applause would have been no less enthusiastic—perhaps even more so—had they been about to witness an actual blood sacrifice.
The lights dimmed, the drum beat increased, and the native dancers fell to their knees in worship as a platform rose from beneath the stage.
“Behold her terror as she is offered up to the mighty Kong! A big hand folks for the bravest girl I ever met! Miss Ann Darrow!”
Jack wanted desperately to turn away. After all she’d been through, he was sickened by the thought of Ann being up on that stage. The entire voyage home she had barely spoken to him, to anyone, and he could not imagine how lost she must have felt. But to agree to this? He would never have believed it if he wasn’t seeing it with his own eyes.
The platform rose, and upon it, a dramatic silhouette of a woman dressed in a white silk gown. She was tied to a wooden altar, her back to the audience.
Kong roused just a bit, a sudden flicker of hope in his eyes. The tiny figure tethered to the altar looked up into the face of the giant gorilla. Kong grunted, flinched back, and though he was not human, there was a look that could only have been confusion on his features.
Jack didn’t understand.
Until he focused on Ann.
And realized that it wasn’t Ann at all, but a woman in a blond wig, dressed to look like her.
Kong roared, no longer simply hanging in his chains. His eyes were alight with fury. Jack stared at him, dread certainty forming in his chest.
Fake Ann thrashed around, screaming unconvincingly. “No! No! Help me, no!”
Kong stared at her with mounting confusion and anger.
Jack turned to Preston.
“Where is she?”
25
THE TINY VAUDEVILLE THEATER filled with slow, dreamy music. The line of chorus girls danced across the stage, all identically dressed in dove white, each of them holding a feathered fan in front of her face.
The main act was Charlie Almond, one of the best tap dancers she had ever seen. The audience was wild for him, cheering, barely noticing the chorus line. But that was the point of the chorus, to be a beautiful moving background for the main act.
Ann held her fan like a mask, and when the choreography of the number required her to sweep it aside, revealing her face to the audience, she did her best not to see them, not to see the theater at all. When she had returned from her seaward journey, she had thought that a return to the stage would heal her, that it was all she needed. But she had been wrong. The lights and the crowd and the smells and the music all served to remind her of the life and vaudeville family she’d had before she ever met Carl Denham, and the naïve girl she’d been in those days when she dreamed of being in one of Jack Driscoll’s plays.
That time was lost to her. She wasn’t even that girl anymore. For just a moment, in the midst of the catastrophic events on Skull Island, she had imagined th
at all would be well if she and Jack could just have found peace and solace in one another’s arms. Ann knew she could have escaped into Jack…if only he had been able to escape into her, as well.
But he couldn’t love her enough to truly let his guard down.
And now she was here, doing the only thing she knew how to do. But being a chorus girl was different from vaudeville. It was a competition to these girls, and the competition was brutal. There was no family camaraderie here.
The audience clapped as Charlie Almond danced, and the chorus girls moved behind him, shaking their feathered fans, merely window dressing now.
It made no difference. The crowd’s disregard could not touch Ann’s heart, for it was not really here, but somewhere far away.
Jack glared at Preston, who turned away, shifting uncomfortably. Several people in the balcony urged them in hushed whispers to sit down.
“Where’s Ann?”
“I’ve no idea,” Preston said. “I heard he offered her all kinds of money and she turned him down flat. I guess, in the end, he didn’t need her.”
The words were cold, but it was clear Preston did not mean them that way. There was regret in his eyes.
On the stage, photographers pushed forward, flash bulbs popping. They called out to the false Ann, trying to get her attention. The strobing lights from the cameras agitated Kong further. The massive gorilla flinched, and then thrust his head and upper body forward, a roar erupting from his jaws.
“Come on, Denham!” shouted a reporter. “How about one with you and the big monkey?”
Jack looked on as Denham signaled to Bruce to join him. Behind them, the fake Ann continued to feign terror. She was one of the worst actresses Jack had ever seen.
“Here’s your story, boys,” Carl announced. “ ‘Beauty and the man who saved her from the beast.’ ”
One of the reporters turned the focus on Bruce. “How did you feel, Mr. Baxter, when you were on the island?”
“Well to be honest with you, I had some anxious moments…” Bruce began, and the gathered members of the press hung on his every word, grim-faced and eager. Then Bruce grinned. “For a while there it looked like I wasn’t going to get paid.”
That got a laugh.
“But as it turned out,” Bruce continued, “Mister Denham here has been more than generous and—”
Kong threw himself against his bonds, the chains shaking, metal grinding upon metal. Again he roared, the bellow echoing through the theater. Jack could feel it in his chest like the thundercrack of fireworks exploding.
He glanced at Preston and saw that the other man was just as unnerved as he was.
Down on the stage, Carl was unaffected.
“Let him roar!” the director called. “It makes a swell picture!”
From the balcony Jack stared at Kong, who was breathing hard through his nostrils. He could feel Kong’s mounting anger, could practically see it building inside the beast with volcanic pressure.
A terrible certainty filled him and he turned to Preston. “We have to get these people out of here.”
Preston stared at him, brows knitted together. He shot a glance down at the stage, and Kong let out another bellow and began to throw himself forward, tugging his arms, straining his bonds. Jack thought Preston might have cursed under his breath, but then he turned toward the people seated around them in the balcony.
“Sir, excuse me, sir…you have to leave.” He grabbed the arm of a fortyish, well-dressed man.
“Everyone has to leave,” Jack added, raising his voice and looking around, spreading his arms so they would notice him. “Head to the exits.”
The man angrily shook off Preston’s hand. “Are you kidding me? Do you know how much I paid for these tickets?”
From a couple of rows back, another man called to Jack. “Get your own seat, buddy. You ain’t having mine.”
Over Kong’s roars and the shouts of reporters, a scream split the air like a gunshot. Jack and Preston both turned. The fake Ann was no longer acting. Her screams were quite real. Kong had broken free of one of the manacles on his wrists; one of his hands was free.
And the audience, most of them anyway, thought it was just part of the show. Confused, maybe a little nervous, they started to applaud.
“Get out of here now!” Jack screamed to them. “Go!”
He and Preston were grabbing at people. Some of them began to rise from their seats at last, finally realizing something might actually be wrong, that they could be in danger.
Then there came another deafening roar. Jack glanced down from the balcony just in time to see the expression on Carl’s face as he looked up and understood what he had done. Yet there was no fear or regret on Denham’s face. Only awe. Only a childlike wonder.
Emboldened by having freed the one hand, Kong redoubled his efforts. In seconds he had torn free of the rest of his bonds, chains snapping, metal tearing, bolts lifting from the floor. Journalists and photographers started backing away, snapping pictures as they retreated. Flashbulbs popped, and for a moment Kong cowered back, shielding his eyes.
Roaring in defiance.
They were only infuriating him further.
But at last the audience realized this was not part of the show and any comfort they’d taken from Carl’s reassurances evaporated. Screams echoed through the auditorium and as one, a wave of humanity rose up from their seats and began to scramble and shove and stampede for the exits.
On the stage, Kong tore off the restraints around his waist, and was completely free. The panic in the theater rose to a terrified crescendo. Yet as Jack tried to hurry people up the steps toward the balcony exit, he glanced back and saw Carl standing in the middle of the theater, still mesmerized by the spectacle of Kong’s unleashed power.
The fake Ann tethered to the altar shrieked again for help. Kong leaped across the stage and picked her up, and for a moment Jack thought he might only hold her. But it was his fury at the deception, at the dashed hopes he’d had of seeing the real Ann, that had set him off to begin with. With an agonized scream, he hurled the poor woman and the altar across the wide auditorium, into the crowd.
“Go, go, go! Move!” Jack shouted as he and Preston herded people toward the doors.
And only now did he feel fear for himself. His skin prickled with the awareness of death’s proximity. His throat was dry and his pulse hammered at his temples.
Kong swung from the stage into the front-row seats, stomping and crushing the slower moving patrons as he moved through the theater, trying to find his way out. Just below the edge of the balcony he stopped, as though sensing something, or catching a scent, and he looked up.
For a fleeting moment, Jack locked eyes with Kong.
It was time for him to get out of there now, to get as far away from Kong as possible. But the gorilla had other intentions. Kong grabbed hold of the boxes on the side walls of the theater and swung himself upward, scaling them easily. From the upper boxes, he leaped to the balcony.
Where he landed, a portion of the balcony gave way, crumbling under his weight. Dozens of people plummeted to the floor below, screaming as they fell, the cries ceasing abruptly upon impact.
As Kong struggled to rise, Jack turned and raced for the door, pushing through the stragglers. At the exit, he turned and looked back, filled with a mixture of dread and awe.
Kong roared and hurled a plaster cornice across the length of the theater, up into the remains of the balcony, straight at Jack. At the last second, Jack ducked through the door as the cornice smashed into the wall, shattering on impact.
He joined the stampede going down the stairs, having lost track of Preston but assuming the other man was in the midst of the exodus as well. Halfway down, Jack spotted an open space on the stairs below and leaped over the banister, dropping to the steps. There were screams all around him. Women were being half-carried by their male escorts. A heavyset man had sat down on the stairs, unable to go on, and people flowed around him.
Then Jack was in the lobby. The whole building shook with Kong’s roars and the pounding of his mighty fists.
He emerged from the theater amidst a rush of panicked people who fled in terror. Horns blared. Cars screeched and shuddered to a halt, or collided with a crumpling of metal. Jack started across the street, into the center of Times Square, and he glanced back just in time to see the façade of the Alhambra Theatre explode onto the street, showering pedestrians and cars with bricks and steel.
Kong seemed to burst from the guts of the theater and landed in the road. Jack stared up in horror. Eyes ablaze with ferocity, Kong headed straight for him.
And Jack understood that he was going to die.
With an anguished roar, the huge gorilla stumbled past him into the bright lights of Times Square. Jack was astonished to still be alive—Kong had not seen him.
The beast spun around, throwing up his arms, growling a challenge to the world, fighting the terror and confusion that must have filled him as he faced the strangeness of the city, of cars and trucks and trams, of bright lights and thousands of screaming people.
Again and again, Kong spun around, and Jack could see the fear and anger and frustration in him. It was as though he was searching for something in the streets, in the crowds.
Then, with terrifying speed, Kong reached out and snatched a blond woman from the crowd. Even as the woman’s screams lifted above all others, Jack understood.
“Oh, Jesus,” he said under his breath.
He’s searching for Ann.
Kong had no idea the size of the city, the number of people. He could not have understood that finding Ann here would be like locating the proverbial needle in a haystack. But what chilled Jack to the bone was his certainty that Kong would keep looking, and that people would keep dying, until the beast found her.
Ann emerged from the shabby old theater.
She had just committed one of the most unprofessional acts of her life—walking off stage in the middle of her performance—but somehow it didn’t really faze her.
King Kong Page 26
