Horror Show

by Greg Kihn

  Landis did what he could. But Luboff did the suffering.

  Sometimes it seemed like the old fucker didn’t want to be saved.

  In Landis’s petition to the Screen Actors Guild for financial and medical assistance for the aging actor, he’d pointed out that Luboff had once been a major star, a proven box office winner who generated millions of dollars. They acknowledged that when they turned him down.

  Hollywood traditionally turned its back on has-beens, casting them out like old shoes. Like shoes, faded stars washed up somewhere, no longer worth the money it cost to repair them.

  Luboff had been all that and more—a classic crash and burn story with a bitter twist.

  Tad Kingston, with leading lady Deborah DeLux in tow, found Landis and Neil standing over Luboff.

  “How’re we gonna get him home?” Tad asked.

  “He can stay here,” Landis replied. “Christ, I’m running a halfway house for these loaders. I got Buzzy on the couch and Luboff on the stairs.”

  “I wonder where he got the junk?” Deborah asked.

  “Good question. If I knew, I’d kill the guy. Shit, can’t they see what it’s doing to him? He’s a mess. I thought tonight we could drum up a little publicity for him, you know, jazz up the next movie, but he spent most of the time upstairs getting whacked.” Landis sighed. He tilted up the old actor’s chin with a hand so that Luboff’s faraway eyes were looking up. “What am I going to do with you, Jonathon?”

  The glazed windows to Jonathon’s soul looked past Landis, off into the distance. Landis let the head drop.

  “I hope he can keep it together for the next picture,” Neil said.

  Deborah put her hand on Landis’s shoulder and whispered in his ear. “Come on, there’s nothing you can do. We’ll carry him up later. Let’s have some coffee.”

  They entered a basement room that passed for a den, and talk soon turned to the next movie. Everyone was anxious to hear the plans. “Come on, Mr. Woodley, tell us about the new one,” Tad asked.

  Tad and Deborah were particularly excited because this time they would receive star billing along with Luboff and Hoyt Lovejoy.

  They had paid their dues, and in Landis Woodley’s world when you worked hard and played team ball, you got rewarded. You got to keep playing. Money was slim, but Landis kept you working. That was the important thing.

  Everyone in the room made some sort of living off Woodley Productions.

  “You really want to hear about it?” Landis smiled.

  “We all do,” Deborah answered.

  The others nodded. Outside, the sun was coming up, but down in the basement of Landis Woodley’s house, midnight hung eternal.

  His voice, racked by a night of too much booze and too many cigarettes, unwrapped the story of Cadaver.

  “It’s a beauty. Neil here came up with a pretty decent script. You know, I’ve always wanted to shoot in the LA County Morgue. It’s cheap, and it looks great on film. I had Buzz go down and check it out today, and it’s all set. The challenge was building a script around the morgue. That’s why Neil was such an important part.”

  Neil stood up and took a bow. “It was really nothing,” he crowed.

  “Of course, it was my idea,” finished Landis. Neil shut up immediately.

  Landis took a sip of coffee and shook a Pall Mall out of a maroon soft-pack. He lit it with a wooden match and exhaled slowly.

  The smoke hung in the air like a motionless hurricane. He coughed and said, “I wanted to use a set over at RKM. They had just finished with Vampire’s Kiss, and they had this gorgeous set—a lab, a castle, interiors up the kazoo.”

  Neil giggled, “Interiors up the kazoo,” struck him as funny. With Landis, everything was, “up the kazoo.”

  “It must have cost a fortune,” Landis continued. “It was absolutely incredible. Well, you know me with finished sets. I just naturally started working on an idea.

  “To me, it was like saving two-thirds of the production cost. I mean, the set is the movie … pretty much. I couldn’t let it go to waste. I heard they were gonna do a Spanish production on it a few weeks later.

  “All I needed was a script, so I called Neil and told him my idea. Then, for some reason which I’ll never understand, RKM pulled the set out from under me, said I couldn’t use it. They tore it down.”

  Hoyt looked confused. “They tore it down? What kind of an asshole thing is that to do?”

  Landis shrugged.

  Hoyt cracked open a beer and whistled. “No wonder they’re losing money. That was like a free movie, and they wasted it.”

  “They didn’t want me to have it,” Landis replied. “There are people over there who hate me, and they’d rather eat the set than let me use it. It’s because of the kinds of movies I make. They think it’s beneath them.”

  “Beneath them?” Hoyt asked incredulously. “That’s a joke.”

  “Until the money comes in,” Landis finished.

  Hoyt belched quietly, his voice smooth and resonant, befitting a leading man. “Have you seen the shit they’re putting out this fall? Christ, Brazen Teenage Hussy and Carnival Girls ain’t exactly Gone with the Wind, if you know what I mean.”

  Landis smiled. “Don’t blame them. They’re just doing what the stockholders tell them to do.”

  “Making trash?”

  Landis nodded.

  “Well, hell, we can make better trash than that,” Hoyt said.

  “It’s true,” Landis replied. “I don’t deny it. But someday …”

  “Someday they’ll kiss your ass!” Neil exclaimed.

  “Damn right,” Landis said. “Someday, they’ll let me do what I really want. Give me a nice big budget, some decent distribution, a professional set, and I’ll show those fuckers what I can do!”

  Neil clapped. “Bravo!”

  Landis raised his hands. “When that day comes I’m gonna stick it right back to ’em, where the sun don’t shine. Our job is to survive in the meantime. We’re all just paying our dues here. Eventually we’ll get the shot.

  “I’m gonna earn respect at the only place they recognize, the box office. I’ll make the greedy fuckers notice me. You see, working down here, at the bottom of the food chain, is a wonderful opportunity. I can really get creative and show some smarts.

  “That’s what this town is built on, people who make it up the ladder the hard way. I don’t mind. When they make it harder for me, it just makes me tougher. So … fuck RKM! I’m making the movie anyway, on my own. That’s when I got the idea to use the morgue.”

  “What about the interiors?” Deborah asked.

  “My house,” Landis said slowly. “I’ll use my house.”

  When Albert Beaumond kissed Devila, she tasted like brandy and cigarettes, sweet and bitter.

  She accepted his advance without hesitation. She opened her lips and let his tongue explore.

  Albert was consumed with the urge to excite her. After all, they were the most diabolical couple in Hollywood. He considered the anticipated publicity. Dating Devila would be the best move he’d ever made and being linked publicly with her would be instant media credibility.

  His church would soon be on the map. After he filmed and demonstrated the conjuring of Satan, he’d be front-page news. With her by his side, he was sure to get more than his share of press.

  They were deliciously glamorous.

  She broke off the kiss and pushed him away, stirring his feelings more than she knew. He looked into her eyes, knowing what she would ask for before she opened her wine-colored lips.

  “Show me,” she whispered. “Show me now.”

  “Sure.” He smiled. “No problem at all. Here, help me light these candles. I need enough to make a circle.”

  They lit the candles together, placing them in holders a few inches apart to form a large circle, filling the room. In the center were the altar, the tuning forks, the sleeping cat, and Albert.

  He used his belt to tie the complacent cat to a hook embedded i
n the altar. He’d designed the slab to accommodate the ritual sacrifice of small animals.

  He then marked the cat’s head with ashes.

  Without preamble, he struck the tuning forks so that the hard, cloven hoof made contact with the tubular shanks. First one, letting it ring for a moment, then the other.

  They resonated together strangely, vibrating the inside of Devila’s head as if she was standing inside a huge church bell. The two tones oscillated, ringing wildly. Albert watched the air around him. The candles flickered and the forks began to blur. Devila stood dead still.

  The cat jumped at the sound and began to struggle against the bonds.

  The air in front of the tuning forks began to waver like heat rays radiating off a desert highway. The shimmering waves distorted the light passing through them. At the center of that distortion, a shape began to take form.

  Albert let the forks resonate, resisting the urge to strike them a second time. The shape became more distinct.

  It looked like a serpent, or rather, an apparition of a serpent, huge, with powerful-looking ghostly coils and a massive head. As they watched, the figure became more distinct.

  Roberta Bachman drank coffee. She sat in her Hollywood kitchen, the sun streaming through gauze curtains, and read the papers. Sputnik orbited overhead and the world was no longer safe for democracy. The reds were everywhere. Same old shit.

  She got up from the peach-colored Formica tabletop and walked over to the percolator to pour another cup.

  Through her windows, LA looked bright and new, the smog had yet to settle across the basin, and traffic was still manageable.

  She knew all that would change soon. She switched on the radio.

  The disc jockey talked fast and bubbly, typical of the genre. He hawked his products and touted the radio station. He was one of the good guys in the white hats, and he said so every few minutes.

  Roberta let the coffee swirl in her cup, a rich brown/black liquid with aromatic steam coming off the top. She spooned in some Half & Half and stirred absently while she listened.

  “And it looks like rain is on the way!” chirped the radioman. “Eighty percent chance of showers this weekend! So take your umbrellas, kids! Didja ever notice that when you take your umbrellas it never rains, and when you don’t take ’em, it pours? Well, on Saturday, I want all the good-guy listeners to take their umbrellas with them everywhere they go. We’ll chase those old rain clouds away, right gang?”

  “Right,” Roberta said in a sarcastic monotone.

  “And now, here’s Ozzie and Harriet’s famous son, the irrepressible Ricky Nelson!”

  “I’m Walkin’” came on the radio, and Roberta hummed along. She knew the Fats Domino version, unlike most other white listeners, and was mildly amused by Ricky’s performance. Still, it had a nice groove, and it beat the hell out of Pat Boone.

  The phone rang.

  Roberta looked at the wall clock. Seven-thirty. Who would call at that time? Janice was still asleep, and being the day after Halloween, neither one of them was going to work even though it was only Friday.

  She turned the radio down and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Roberta Bachman?”

  “Yes, who is it?”

  The voice on the other end of the line was familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it. She sat back down, her coffee in front of her.

  “This is Landis Woodley,” the voice said.

  Roberta’s muscles stiffened at the sound of that name.

  Her voice took on a frigid flatness. “Yes?”

  There was a slight pause, then, “I’m calling to apologize for last night …”

  “Apologize? Listen, buster, that was a sick joke you pulled on us! You’ve got a lot of nerve calling me up this morning. I never want to hear from you again!”

  “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “We didn’t mean any harm, and I think Buzzy got carried away.”

  “That’s right, put the blame on him. You guys are all the same.”

  Landis laughed. “What? Hey listen, lady, I just called to say I was sorry, don’t lump me in with Buzzy or anybody else. It’s just that … I saw your face, and I know how upset you were, and I just wanted to see if you were okay.”

  Roberta took a sip of coffee and snorted. “Hmmph! And where is your asshole friend this morning? How come you’re calling and not him?”

  Landis let his voice drop smoothly, “Because I like you, and I didn’t want to see you get hurt. Sometimes Buzzy gets a little overzealous. Last night he was drinking a bit much, and I was a little worried that he might—”

  “Might what? Try to rape me? Well, let me tell you, he never got a chance … and he never will. I think both of you are animals. You can tell Mr. Haller, when he wakes up, that I never want to see his ugly face again.”

  Landis let a moment slip away, then said, “What about me?”

  Roberta was confused. “What about you?”

  “Well, would you ever see my ugly face again?”

  Roberta stopped. She hadn’t expected Landis to say anything remotely like that. “I … I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I mean, if I asked you out, like for dinner, would you go?”

  Roberta was flattered and at the same time disgusted. “No. Probably not,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  Roberta’s voice toughened. “I don’t know you. And what little I do know about you, I don’t like. You and Buzzy are like two peas in a pod. I don’t think I’d ever want to go out with either one of you.”

  Landis sighed.

  “Is that a no?”

  “Yes, that’s a no. You’re unbelievable, you know that?”

  She hung up before he could answer.

  Devila gasped at the image of a huge snake Albert had conjured before her eyes.

  It wavered and thickened, then became more solid. There could be no doubt about it. What she was seeing was incredible, impossible. It frightened her.

  She took a step backward. The image began to move, its coils flexing and undulating. It hovered in the air above the cat, but its evil black eyes were fixed on Albert. Devila became aware that Albert was not moving. He seemed paralyzed. The snake floated toward him, relaxing its massive torso as it went.

  Devila screamed.

  The serpent slid around Albert.

  Devila backed up farther, knocking over several of the candles.

  Albert disappeared beneath the ghostly coils of the Serpent Demon. It wrapped around him until only the head of Albert Beaumond showed. Then, with a snap and a shifting of realities, Albert’s head was gone. In its place, the head of the snake.

  Devila screamed again.

  The scales around the thing’s mouth parted, and an evil grin seemed to grow. Its malicious eyes flashed at her, raping her. She stood transfixed as the two inhuman slits seemed to look right through her, into her soul, devouring it. She shuddered and shrank back.

  The scaly nonlips opened and a black, whiplike tongue darted out. Devila screamed again. The tongue shot out so quickly, so unexpectedly, that the burst of adrenaline she felt nearly shocked her into unconsciousness.

  It touched her face, the moist, black tentacles of the forked tip caressing her pale skin. As lovers do.

  She needed to scream but didn’t want to Open her mouth, lest the probing, quivering feeler find its way inside her. Instead she made a piteous, high-pitched moaning sound.

  The black tongue darted in and out of the serpent’s mouth sharply, as fast as lightning, emerging a split second later wet with stinking saliva.

  It played with Devila, toying with her inability to scream and run. The tongue ran over her, leaving a snail’s trail of iridescent slime wherever it touched.

  A few moments later she was lathered from head to toe, her hair slick with the foul-smelling spit. She kept her mouth clamped shut tightly. The tears and reptile saliva burned her eyes. Fear exploded in her heart.

  At last the demon tongue wit
hdrew and the Snake God pivoted its head to survey the room. Devila stayed absolutely still, afraid to move yet shivering with revulsion.

  Albert, or what used to be Albert, dropped to his knees and began to crawl to the wall of candles. It stopped and extended a finger.

  The flame licked the tip, burning the flesh.

  The Snake God withdrew the finger, now black and smoking, and looked at it quizzically.

  Its eyes fell back on Devila, then something popped.

  She found herself looking at Albert Beaumond again.

  It happened in the blink of an eye. The Snake Demon disappeared. The flames on the tips of the candles fluttered, as if the air had been disturbed, but Devila felt no breeze.

  Albert’s eyes were glazed. He shuddered and felt his face with the palms of his hands. He looked at Devila, confusion in his features, and began to cry.

  9

  “Jesus Christ, what a hangover!”

  Landis looked at Buzzy with thinly veiled disgust. They sat drinking coffee on the deck overlooking Beachwood Canyon. From behind a pair of dark glasses, Buzzy groaned again. “The sun is killing me!”

  Landis snapped open the newspaper and ignored his friend’s suffering. “You’re a fuckin’ vampire,” he said.

  “Ohhh, I think I must have pushed the old panic button a little too hard last night. My eyes hurt.”

  “You deserve to suffer. You know, it serves you right. You were an asshole last night. Hoyt Lovejoy punched you out, don’t you remember?”

  Buzzy’s hand came up to his face, felt the swelling under his eye and around his nose, then returned to the coffee mug. The sunglasses could not hide the damage. “Is that how I got this?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Buzzy smiled, as if suddenly remembering something funny. “That guillotine trick was a knockout, huh?”

  Landis nodded, his eyes scanning the paper. He said nothing. He was searching the LA Times for any mention of his Halloween party. So far, to his dismay, he’d found none. Ignoring Buzzy was easy to do. He could hear the man’s labored breathing behind the wall of newsprint. Landis’s mood continued to sour.