There was nowhere for Lanford to run. Nowhere for him to hide. Nothing to do but look Fornier straight in the eye as if he had nothing to hide and nod a greeting to the Great Man. “Good evening, Mr. Fornier,” he said, forcing calmness into his voice. “I’m surprised to see you here.”
“As am I, Mr. Lanford,” Fornier replied, running his eyes up and down Lanford’s seedy outfit, urbanity fairly dripping off the man. That was a very bad sign. “I gather your, ah, illness has passed?”
“For the moment, anyway,” Lanford said cautiously.
“Yes.” Fornier’s eyes flicked around the room. “And yet, fresh from stomach trouble, you go out to dine? You don’t stay home with tea and a simple broth?”
“I was asked to meet someone,” Lanford said, improvising desperately. “This was the place he specified.”
Fornier’s eyebrows lifted fractionally. “What a coincidence,” he said. “I, too, was invited.”
“Yes, I suppose you were,” Lanford said under his breath. Damn Browser, anyway.
“I shall expect to see you on set promptly at six tomorrow morning,” Fornier continued calmly. “If not, you’re off the picture.” His eyes bored into Lanford’s with sudden intensity. “Do I make myself clear, Mr. Lanford?”
“Yes, sir,” Lanford said with a sinking feeling.
“Excellent,” Fornier said. “Until tomorrow, then.” With a polite nod, he turned and left.
Slowly, Lanford turned around, a sudden white-hot rage burning inside him. Browser was sitting at the bar, swiveled around on his stool to face Lanford, a satisfied smirk plastered across his face. He caught Lanford’s eye and lifted his glass in mocking salute.
And suddenly, Lanford had had enough.
He started across the bar, oblivious to the other patrons and the curious eyes now following him. He could kill Browser, he knew. He could kill the man right here, right now.
Sure, there were witnesses. But who cared? He’d been in enough crime dramas to know that witnesses were vague and contradictory and the next best thing to utterly useless. What mattered these days were security cameras and cell phone photos.
And Lanford was invisible to all of them.
He was halfway to Browser now, and he could see the other’s smirk starting to slip a little. Maybe he was belatedly realizing that he’d pushed Lanford too far. Realized that death was coming for him.
None of the witnesses would even really focus on his face, Lanford knew. They would all rely on their precious cameras, or else count on everyone else to remember the details. He could kill Browser right here in front of them all and walk right out and never be caught. And maybe after he killed the little swine he would rip open his throat and suck his blood out, draining him like the ghoul he was—
Lanford stopped short, his anger evaporating into sudden horror, his own blood running icy cold.
Suck his blood out?
For a long moment he just stood there, all of it rushing back through his mind. Invisible to cameras. Eating an extra-rare steak, though he invariably ordered medium-well. Murder and mutilation on his mind.
He ran his tongue over his upper teeth. Had his canines always been that sharp?
What the hell was happening to him?
He focused on Browser again. The paparazzo’s face had gone gray, his earlier smirk completely gone.
And the bar had suddenly gone very quiet. Slowly, his muscles trembling with emotions Lanford couldn’t even begin to identify, he backed away through the tables, his eyes darting back and forth between the patrons now staring openly at him. If someone tried to stop him . . .
No one did. He reached the door, took one final look at Browser, and escaped.
Winsley was waiting on his doorstep when he finally arrived home. “There you are,” he said reproachfully as Lanford opened the door for him. “I don’t suppose it occurred to you—”
He broke off with a choked gasp as Lanford grabbed him by the shirt and roughly pulled him close. “What the hell is happening to me?” he demanded, his face inches from Winsley’s.
Winsley’s face settled into something set in granite as he reached up and effortlessly pried Lanford’s fingers off his shirt. “Don’t ever do that again,” he said quietly.
Lanford swallowed hard. “Sorry.”
Winsley nodded, a simple acknowledgment. “I have your antidote,” he said. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out another of his small white bottles, this one with a bright yellow ring around the cap. “One pill. You can take it now.”
Grabbing the bottle, Lanford crossed to the bar and poured half a glass of water. The pill was also bright yellow, he noted as he washed it down. “How soon before it takes effect?” he asked, heading for the guest bathroom and the big mirror there.
Winsley hesitated. “About three weeks.”
Lanford braked to an abrupt halt. “Three weeks?”
“That’s the best I can do,” Winsley said. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no, no,” Lanford bit out. “You don’t understand. I have a job. I have to be at that job tomorrow morning.”
“So you’ll get bounced off a film,” Winsley said, a touch of impatience in his voice. “So what? Actors get bounced all the time.”
“I don’t,” Lanford ground out. “Ever. Especially not by Kendall Fornier.”
“Well, I guess there’s a first time for everything,” Winsley said, stepping over to the door and taking hold of the knob. “Maybe you can talk him into doing a remake of The Invisible Man. Then you can be as invisible on-camera as you want.”
Lanford took a deep breath, forcing down the red haze of fury shimmering across his vision. Browser would have been easy to kill. He wasn’t so sure about Winsley. “Get out,” he said darkly. “And never come back.”
“As you wish,” Winsley said stiffly. “Oh, and that last blue pill you still have? Keep it. With my compliments.”
Pulling open the door, he strode out into the night, closing the door gently behind him.
“Damn,” Lanford muttered, sinking down onto the couch and pressing his palms against his throbbing temples. No, Winsley didn’t understand. How could he? It wasn’t just the work, or the hit his reputation would take if Fornier kicked him off the film.
He needed the money, dammit. His houses, his cars, his wine cellar, his girlfriends—none of it came cheap. If he didn’t work—if that money didn’t come rolling in from somewhere—he was going to be in trouble. Serious trouble. Probably within two weeks.
Only there wasn’t going to be any such windfall. The next project after Fornier’s wasn’t even scheduled to start shooting for another ten weeks. If it was on time, which it probably wouldn’t be.
What could he do? Take out a loan? Sell off one of his cars? Or two, or even three of them? He winced at the thought. The only thing that got the tabloids salivating more than a new girlfriend was the suggestion that someone was having financial problems. No, he would simply have to find some other way to make a quick couple of bucks.
He stared at the water glass sitting on the bar, the glass that wasn’t reflecting his image, an odd thought nagging at the back of his mind.
Why not just steal the money?
It would be simple, even simpler than murdering Browser in front of a bar full of witnesses. Every security system in the world relied on cameras, none of which would register him. Even laser systems might not work—he was invisible to mirrors, after all. He could go through the jewelry stores of Beverly Hills like a ghost.
Or just go into Fornier’s office and grab some of the piles of cash the old neurotic always kept on hand.
He sighed. And while he was dodging cameras and lasers, some off-duty cop would probably stumble across him and shoot him dead. Wouldn’t the tabloids have a field day with that one? Lying there in a satin-lined casket, unable even to speak up in his own defense.
To speak in his own defense . . .
Abruptly, he snatched out his phone and punched in his agent’s number. “Do
n, this is Rusty,” he said. “Sorry to call you at home.”
“No problem,” Don assured him. “What’s up?”
“You remember that e-mail you sent me a couple of weeks ago from Frank Reynes at FlickerCell Productions? He had that upcoming animated film he wanted me for?”
“And I told him you were booked solid for the rest of the century,” Don said. “Why?”
Lanford gripped the phone tightly. “Actually, it looks like I’m going to have a sudden opening in my schedule.”
“Oh, no,” Don groaned. “You haven’t honked off Kendall Fornier, have you?”
“Never mind who I may or may not have honked off,” Lanford snapped. “Just set it up, will you?”
The phone hissed a sigh. “Whatever you say, buddy. I’ll do it first thing tomorrow. Talk to you later.”
Lanford closed the phone. An animated film. Voice work only. No cameras, no film, no paparazzi.
No problem.
“See?” he said aloud to the room around him in his Return from the Sierra baritone. “There’s always a way. You just have to be smart enough to find it.”
Frank Reynes hung up the phone, smiling harder than he’d smiled in weeks. “You, my friend, are a miracle worker,” he said to the man sitting across the desk from him. “How in the world did you ever convince Rusty Lanford to sign on? And not just one film, either, but the next one, too.” He lifted a hand. “No—never mind. I really don’t care how you did it.”
“I’m glad I could be of service,” his visitor said. “You have my check?”
“Right here,” Reynes said, pulling the cashier’s check from his top drawer and handing it across the desk. “Tell me, would you be interested in another job?”
“At the same price? Of course.”
“Here’s the thing.” Reynes leaned conspiratorially across the desk. “Dame Edith Hartwell would be absolutely perfect to do the three cats in the next film. I’ve been trying to get her on the phone for weeks, but she’s so busy with the ramp-up to Eden’s Fall—not to mention that new boy-toy of hers, too—that I can’t get her to sit still long enough to even listen to my pitch. You think there’s anything you can do?”
“Could be,” Janick Winsley said, smiling a secret sort of smile. “I’ll get back to you.”
Lady Fame has always smiled on Rusty Lanford. Now, for a brief moment, she has winked.
It has been said that everyone will someday have their fifteen minutes of fame. When your time comes, bask in the lady’s smile if you wish. But beware of her golden chains, for those chains are not easily broken.
And they stretch all the way to the Twilight Zone.
Life is a gamble. To win or lose at it depends on what hand Fate deals. But when love was in the cards, Sophie Swensen, a real-life queen of hearts, bluffed death itself. She proved it’s never too late to take a chance on romance in the Twilight Zone.
His presence haunts this room to-night,
A form of mingled mist and light
From that far coast.
Welcome beneath this roof of mine!
Welcome! This vacant chair is thine,
Dear guest and ghost!
—HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
T
he postal truck turned off the highway and headed for an adobe ranch house set amid a tumble of boulders. The truck bounced and shimmied down a quarter mile of unpaved driveway barely distinguishable from the high Nevada desert stretching to the mountains around it. The postman rapped twice with the horseshoe hanging from a hook on the battered oak door. When Sophie opened it, he tipped his nongovernment-issue Stetson. He handed her a long cardboard box in which a window shade once had been shipped from the factory. Now it contained a shade of a very different sort.
Sophie carried the package into her parlor. The walking stick inside included instructions for the care of the ghost who came with it, but Sophie didn’t notice them in the brown envelope under the shredded paper packing material. She probably wouldn’t have opened the envelope if she had. She already knew the cane’s story from the auction posting on eBay. An old man living in his daughter’s house had recently died at home. Now the daughter’s young son was terrified that his grandfather’s ghost still lurked in every room.
The boy’s mother decided that if she sold the ghost she could convince the child the old man was truly gone. She offered to send his cane along as something tangible. She also asked that the highest bidder write to her son and tell him that his grandfather was happy in his new home.
The description on eBay had said the ghost’s name was Gabe, short for Gabriel. It included a grainy, thumbnail-size picture of him as a young man wearing an army uniform from the Truman era. It also featured a photo of the hand-carved cane, but details were impossible to make out.
The real thing was more exotic-looking than Sophie had expected, and certainly worth the seventy-three dollars charged to her credit card. The artist had incised MADE IN HAITI into it, but neglected to add his own name. He had carved the ebony wood into a sinuous snake so realistic it might have frightened someone of less hardy pioneer stock than Sophie. Only on closer inspection did she notice the delicate tracery of wings folded against the creature’s back. It was a dragon, not a snake.
Its saw-toothed tail curled up along the length of its belly, with the tip dangling from its mouth. Its eyes were claret-red glass marbles. The sleek head served as the handle. It had been rubbed smooth by the ghost’s hand in the years before death made him but a memory of his former self. When Sophie picked up the cane, it warmed to her touch. The curve of the dragon’s head seemed to settle into her palm like a weary kestrel coming home to the nest.
Seventy-five years of hard work and harsh weather could have a withering effect on inhabitants of moister climes. In Nevada it turned ranch women like Sophie into living examples of how a human being is supposed to age—erect, strong, fit, tanned, and topped off with horse sense and a generous dollop of kindness.
She knew that the woman’s story about her frightened son might be bogus, but it touched her. Besides, an old mule-inflicted knee injury had just now gotten around to bothering her. She could use the cane. More than that, it would make a good yarn to entertain her poker pals.
Sophie’s eyes were the crystalline blue of arctic glaciers, courtesy of her Viking ancestors. The beauty she once had been was still evident in the abundant waves of her silvery hair and the strong lines of her jaw and cheekbones. Men had proposed to her—dusty cowboys, laconic ranchers, and even a few hairy prospectors in the old days. She had gracefully declined. She said no man could abide her ornery ways. Truth to tell, she hadn’t met a man who seemed worth the effort of explaining herself, not even a little bit.
Sophie remembered that the name of the ghost’s six-year-old grandson was Cody. With the side of her hand she swiped a clear surface in the windrow of unopened mail, work gloves, small tools, books, and keys on the kitchen table. In large block letters, with a felt-tip pen, she wrote a letter to Cody, as requested. She printed the boy’s return address—a post office box on Deer Isle, Maine—then threw the empty cardboard box into a utility closet.
Before she went to bed that night she leaned the cane against the entryway wall by the front door. The next morning she found it in her recliner. It stood upright on the seat with the dragon’s head resting on the chair’s back and facing out into the room.
Sophie paced the perimeter of the house, checking every window to make sure all were still locked. No one had broken in last night. She stared at the cane, waiting for it to twitch the tip of its tail or blink its red glass eyes. It remained motionless and noncommital.
She was puzzled, but not alarmed. She had grown up in Paiute country. Most of her childhood friends were Indians. She had heard their grandparents tell stories about shape-shifters. Still, a shape-shifter in a campfire yarn was not the same as one staking a claim to her furniture.
She considered driving the cane into town and lobbing it into a Dumpster, but she
wondered if she had the courage to risk its reaction to rejection. Besides, the situation was beginning to intrigue her. She reached out to move it, paused, and pulled back. What if the cane decided to spit out its tail and chomp down on her hand?
Sophie believed that when all else failed, she could fall back on reason. Feeling six kinds of foolish, she stood in front of the chair with her feet planted and her fists on her hips. She made eye contact with the cane, but she spoke to Gabe, the spirit she was beginning to believe inhabited it or at least hung around with it.
“You’re a guest in this house, sir. I assume you have the breeding to act like one.” She didn’t expect a reply, but she paused a few beats while she thought of what to say next.
“I will set you by the fireplace. From there you can see the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen. If that spot doesn’t suit you, take over the couch or find a window with a good view. But this chair is mine.”
She took a deep breath and picked up the cane. She stood, holding it at arm’s length, waiting for it to do something. It stayed as still as a stick of wood should, but when Sophie crossed the room, she felt a chill around her ankles, as if a draft had blown in under the front door.
The next morning the cane was standing next to the recliner, leaning against the arm. While Sophie worked around the house, she kept a wary eye on it. In the evening, she approached the chair as cautiously as she would a horse with a reputation as a biter.
She settled into it, clicked on the television, and absentmindedly laid a hand on the cane. She was astonished by the rush of affection and gratitude that shot like electricity up her arm. It tingled in her fingers. It spread through her chest in a warm wave. She watched her prime-time shows with her palm resting on the smooth curve of its handle.
At bedtime she left it by the chair, but walking away she felt as if she were wading through a cold puddle. She turned around and faced it.
“You can come with me,” she said. “But no hanky-pank.”
Twilight Zone Anthology Page 17
