A Touch of the Creature

by Charles Beaumont

  So he got the call, after a few days, and phoned me. “The Fortune Cleaners. Third Street. Six-thirty a.m. And don’t ask me anything else . . .”

  I rubbed the smog out of my eyes and walked to the back of the pack. Nobody knew me. At 6:30 on the button, a bus rolled up. It looked like one of the regular city jobs, only painted plain gray. The driver opened the door and got out.

  “All right, over here,” he said. “Let’s do this quick as we can. Have your contracts ready.”

  We lined up. When I got to the entrance, he took Sandy’s papers. “McLaughlin?”

  “Yes.” Sandy never palled around with the regular extras too much. A snob, thank God.

  In three minutes we were on the road.

  When we pulled into San Felipe, it was nearly midnight. Outside, it looked like day: big moon, lots of stars. I could see twenty or more buses parked on the shoulder by a little cemetery, with about three hundred people milling around. Beyond them, the town itself—a fistful of clay shacks—and beyond that, the black water of the Gulf.

  “Follow me,” the driver said.

  We walked over to the crowd, waited for a couple more buses, then filed down the dusty path through town to the beach.

  Three forty-passenger lifeboats were waiting. They filled up fast and glided off, got swallowed by the darkness. Then they came back.

  I got on number three, toward the bow.

  The oars were quiet as we slid out to sea. Another ten minutes and I saw our destination—The Gander, Grushkin’s own private yacht. It wasn’t as large as Onassis’s, but it was large enough. Over a million had gone into it.

  The lifeboats came in fifteen times; then The Gander upped anchor and we headed due south, into the blackness.

  It got cold about then, so I stopped one of the crew, a hefty Mexican. “Any particular cabin?”

  He shook his head. Either he hadn’t understood or the answer was no.

  I found a door and opened it. Inside, four-by-nothing, one bunk, occupied. It was a dame but her back was toward me. “Mind if I use the floor?” I said.

  No answer. I rolled my jacket into a pillow and slept like a TV repairman. When the bells started clanging hours later, I woke up and discovered two interesting things. The first was outside the porthole: Resurrection Island half a mile away.

  The second was standing over me: one of the most beautiful girls I’d ever seen!

  Some women are dumped off the assembly line and other women are hand-built. This one was hand-built, from the ground up. They’d taken special care above the waist.

  “Who are you?” she said.

  “Sandy McLaughlin.”

  “That’s a lie. I’ve worked with Sandy.”

  I gave her the story, then; she shrugged and lit a cigarette. “Maybe you’ll write something about me someday, Mr. Wilde.”

  Her name was Gloria Martin; from Nowhereville, Idaho. Came to Hollywood to be a star, kicked around the offices, landed a few TV jobs, not many, not enough. The usual. Central Casting was inevitable.

  “Maybe I will,” I said. “You’re pretty enough. Got talent?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But only for acting. And I understand that’s only step number one . . .”

  “Sometimes. Mostly it’s the breaks. I know a lot of dolls with sore behinds who never made it and never will; I know a few of the other kind who are doing okay. Don’t get the couch complex.”

  She looked mad for a second, then she smiled. “I like you, Mr. Wilde,” she said. “I don’t know exactly why—you’re not very good-looking, and you’re a little old. But I like you.”

  “Everybody does,” I told her, “for the first five minutes.”

  We did the silent scene; then somebody knocked on the door and shouted, “On deck!” and that broke it.

  “Afterwards?” I said.

  She said, “Afterwards.”

  We joined the gang and got a real look at Resurrection Island.

  Alcatraz never seemed grimmer.

  The wall was at least fifty feet high, made out of solid concrete blocks. It edged around the whole island, which I figured to be about three miles square. The top was a mess of camouflage—painted canvas, twigs, brush, leaves. People had tried to get in when the news was hot, but no one had ever made it. It was Private Property.

  A small guy with a big limp led us up the steps (which had been carved from the boulders) and then he held his hand in the air. Most of the extras were feeling all right, talking softly, giggling, as if they’d each had a couple of whiskies.

  Big Limp went over to a huge door and lifted a knocker; it fell with a deep crash.

  Next to me, Gloria was shivering a little. There was the sound of logs scraping and hinges groaning; and then, slowly, slowly, the giant door began to open.

  Somebody said, “Goddamn.” He was right.

  Inside the walls there was a set. But it was different from any set I’d ever seen. You kick around the studios long enough, you finally get to tell plaster from brick. There wasn’t any plaster here.

  Big Limp took us through a smooth field of dust and crushed rock, through a valley of hills and boulders and immense trees; past an amphitheatre that was a ringer for the Roman Colosseum, and finally past the gate of a stone fortress to a clutch of green quonsets.

  “You will find your own rooms,” he said. “Costumes will be fitted at eleven-fifteen.”

  Gloria put her hand on my arm. “Would you mind the floor again?” she said. “For some reason, Artie, I’d like to have you around . . .”

  We cut out for one of the huts. Inside of an hour we were getting along fine. She talked a lot: I learned all about her family, her dreams, her ambitions, her defenses.

  At eleven-fifteen a fat woman asked our sizes.

  At twelve she came back with two bundles.

  Mine contained a helmet, a shield, a breastplate, and all the other paraphernalia the Roman soldiers were supposed to have worn.

  Gloria’s was simpler: a gauzy, flowing white dress.

  And that pinned it down. Grushkin was going out for the Quo Vadis routine. But why all this hanky-panky? Why the cloak-and-dagger methods?

  We’d been told to dress right away, so we did. I was given instructions by the girl to turn my head, and damned if I didn’t. When she said okay, I turned again and almost dropped my shield.

  “You,” I said, “are beautiful.” I was about to expand on the subject, but I was interrupted by bugles. Then a loudspeaker blared, telling us to assemble in the square within the hour.

  “Afterwards,” I said again.

  Gloria came forward and kissed me on the forehead, very gently. Then on the mouth, not so gently. It told me what I wanted to know.

  We followed the others to a square directly beneath the south wall of the stone fortress. The men were in battle uniforms, the women in white dresses. Breakfast was passed out—toast and champagne—and we shuffled around for a while.

  Then a single sharp word cut through the air. “Gentlemen!” Every head arced skyward. “Ladies!”

  A man had appeared on the topmost battlement of the fortress. He was lean and hawk-like, tall in spite of his slouch. Tan jodhpurs and dark leather boots coated his legs; a black shirt, open at the neck, stuck to his bony torso. And over his shoulders was draped a heavy black coat.

  “For the benefit of those who do not know me,” he said, into the mike, “my name is Carl Grushkin. I am your employer. I am your landlord. I am your captain. You all have questions, I’m quite sure. And they shall be answered. But not now, not today. Today we must work. Today, my friends, we begin on the most important motion picture ever conceived!”

  He did it all in that soft, husky voice I remembered. It had a hypnotic effect. The Legions rumbled, beginning to fall.

  Grushkin struck another pose. “It isn’t necessary,” he said, “for you to have scripts. That is the old fashioned way—” He went on, sonorously, to explain that the greater portion of the film had been completed. All that remai
ned was the key battle scene; and that he would personally direct. Spontaneity, that was what he wanted. Spontaneity. We were to forget we were actors, forget scripts, forget movies.

  “. . . I am paying you for a job. Your only concern therefore is with the job. I will, however, tell you a few things here and now, quickly. This place is called Resurrection Island. Does anyone know why it is called that?” Dead quiet. “Because, my good friends, what I have accomplished in the past months here will resurrect the lifeless corpse of Hollywood! With the release of this film, people throughout the world will stampede to the theatres—for it will be something no one has ever seen before. A spectacle? The word is puny. All of the adjectives are puny. They will have to make up new ones for us! I give you my word!”

  The rumbling grew louder.

  “That,” Grushkin said, “is our duty. And it is our honor. To restore to the world its most precious possession—entertainment. Are you with me?”

  A couple of obvious plants yelled, “Yes! Yes!” and the sheep joined in. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  A pass from the maestro. Silence. “Then, work with me! Help me! Do as you are told and ask no questions—not for a while. Do you have faith in motion pictures—motion pictures on the large scale, pictures that throb and pulse with life?”

  “Yes!”

  “Then have faith in Carl Grushkin!”

  He turned the excitement up and down as if he were controlling it with a dial. His father had been one of the finest actors on the American stage, and “The Creature” had learned plenty. Even Gloria got lost in the magnetism of the man’s personality; and she was a sharp little kid.

  “He’s delivered that cornball speech before every picture he’s ever made,” I said.

  She didn’t hear me.

  Now Grushkin was explaining the day’s shooting. We were first rank Roman fighters, we men; and the women—

  “—will be taken to another section of the set for additional footage.”

  Pause while the women were separated from us by a crew of flunkies. Gloria squeezed my hand. “I’ll see you tonight,” she said. “That’s afterwards enough. Besides, that floor looks awful hard . . .” For some reason I hung onto her.

  “Go on back to the hut now,” I said.

  She looked at me as though I’d turned purple. “And miss the fun? What’s the matter with you, Artie?”

  I was about to answer when she pulled away. I watched her and the other women, looking like flocks of white gulls, move off from the square. In moments they were gone.

  “Men, you’re led by Julius Caesar himself!” cried Grushkin­. “Waiting on the field of crushed rock, by the banks of the Sambre, are fifteen hundred crack Nervii warriors. You’re to engage them in battle and conquer them!” His voice got tight. “These Nervii are villains!” It got ripe with emotion. “They have worked treachery upon Caesar, whom you love. They are of poor blood. You despise them! And you know, you know that they must be thrust back!”

  On and on he went, wrapping everyone up in his tale of the battle; then he gave us some technical stuff, where the cameras would be, how to use the weapons, how we should follow every­thing he said—to the letter.

  “And now, my fine Romans, into the breech!”

  Big Limp led off the yell, and guided us back to the field. The other crew of extras was there. They were dressed differently, but had the same half-wild, half-confused expression. The champagne for breakfast had helped.

  A couple of trucks pulled up, then, and some workers started unloading.

  The weapons.

  Each of us got three items: a broadsword, a club with a flanged metal head, and an ax. And that’s when the answers came—not that I was jolted with surprise. The contract, the secrecy, the big routine, the island—everything.

  These weapons weren’t made out of hard rubber; they weren’t plywood or plastic or crystal-candy.

  They were real.

  I started to move when, suddenly, the air got full of music. Bright yellow martial music, in fast tempo. And a loudspeaker, screeching: “Men, listen! Listen to me! You all have your weapons. You know that they’re genuine. The swords will cut and the axes will split and the maces will take a man’s head off. And that’s my secret. This battle scene will not be faked. There will be blood, but it will be real blood. There will be death, but it will be real death. And it will be the most revolutionary thing that ever hit the screen!”

  I looked around, trying to find Grushkin. Cameras everywhere, from every angle, but no sign of the director. His voice came from nowhere, from everywhere, over the marching music.

  “Men, you have a choice now,” he said. “You can call the idea ridiculous, lay down your weapons and refuse to cooperate: that is your right. I can’t force you into it, not even with a contract. But if you do this cowardly thing, if you pull out now, what will you do? Go to work in offices? In shipyards? Will you dig ditches for a living? Because the motion picture industry doesn’t need you. It doesn’t want ‘atmosphere’ any more—it wants actors. And you’re not actors, you’re extras. Extras! A vanishing breed!”

  The voice stopped, but the silence held every man in the field. Only the music roared, above the silence, under it.

  Then Grushkin’s voice snaked huskily out again. “It’s a risk you’d be taking, but I’ll pay. To each brave man who survives, whether wounded or whole, I offer a bonus of one thousand dollars plus a contract without options for two years!”

  The extras screamed. They yelled and hollered and lifted up their weapons. It was fantastic: the music swelling, wild and maniacal now, urging them forward; and these poor guys falling for it!

  Someone from the other camp—one of Grushkin’s goons—picked up a heavy rock and hurled it. It struck one of our boys in the chest. He in turn picked up a heavier rock. The goon dodged.

  The battle was on.

  A little music, a phony pep-talk from Grushkin, and thirty-five hundred men were ready to sacrifice their lives!

  Then I thought of Gloria, and a chill went down my spine. I got a few steps. Guards at the river; the north and south exits blocked—no choice except to wade through the brawling pack, straight through, and head for the direction they’d taken the women.

  It was chaos already; they were bellowing and cursing, and there was the sound of steel against steel. The loudspeaker cried, “Kill! Kill!” over and over. And they started to kill. A guy with a beard in front of me lifted his arm and brought the tip of his ax down on another guy’s shoulder. A sword flashed down silver, came up red. I pushed forward. An old man of seventy, at least, turned. His helmet was on crooked and he was grinning through dirty teeth. “You a Roman?” he yelled, brandishing his mace. I told him yes, but he didn’t believe me. Instead he raised the mace.

  There wasn’t anything else for me to do. I rammed the flat of my broadsword against his throat, hard. He gagged and fell over.

  It was a goddamn nightmare. These weren’t extras any more; they were Romans and Nervii, out for blood.

  I kept pushing forward, thinking of Gloria, of my skin, Grush­kin, Welch—and I was lucky. Something sharp bit into my arm, but I pulled away in time.

  Somehow, out of all this carnage, I managed to reach the square below the fortress.

  But I wasn’t alone. Two Nervii stood there, grinning, giggling. There was fever in their eyes.

  “Let me through,” I said. “I don’t want to fight.”

  “Kill!” cried the loudspeaker. “Kill! Kill!”

  The first warrior, a familiar face in old Westerns, snorted, “What are ya, yella bastard?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I don’t feel so good.”

  “You gonna feel worse, doll. Come on, Barney!”

  They charged and all of a sudden I didn’t feel so heroic. I looked back, but that was impossible: I’d have to join the battling throng. I tried a sprint to the left, but the boys had separated. The one called Barney advanced, ax in hand. I let him get closer, then I shut my eyes and swung the broads
word at his legs. The sharp edge went halfway through the bones. Barney squealed and toppled, freeing the sword. The other guy let out a string of curses and came loping. I turned and pelted in the direction of the Colosseum.

  He caught me at the entrance, tried to grab, only his fingers slipped on the blood that was seeping from my wound. It wasn’t much of a wound, but it saved me. I got my other arm around his throat, tightened, and pulled out the ax.

  He just fell and lay still.

  I dropped the ax, crept though the entrance and stopped until my heart began to beat anything like normally. Then, because I didn’t want to fight again, because I was tired and sick, I went inside the stone bowl.

  It was trading one nightmare for another.

  I’d wondered where the women were. Now I knew. They were here, in front of me, in the big clay arena.

  What was left of them, anyway. The lions had gotten the rest . . .

  It took a while, but eventually I found Gloria. The white dress was mostly red now, and torn to shreds, as her flesh was. A wide-open scar ran down the side of her face.

  She was dead.

  I hadn’t been in love with her or anything. She’d been just a nice girl, and I’d wanted to help her, sure, and sleep with her, too; nothing more. But something happened to me then, looking at the clawed-up mess of dead meat. Something big, and new.

  Up to that moment the only person I’d ever really hated was a weak son of a bitch named Wilde. Now I hated somebody else. Now I had a chance to do one good thing . . .

  I touched Gloria’s hair, once, turned and ran out of the arena, out into the field. And I hoped somebody would get in my way.

  No one did. By now the battle was going full-tilt; it had moved from the field of crushed rock to the square. The Nervii were being driven back, their ranks decimated by the Romans.

  I spotted him, after a while. Standing tall against the turrets, his lean body—now in Roman garb—angled over, his eyes gleaming, watching, telling the whole story. Grushkin wasn’t interested in making a movie. He was simply playing God. God and Caesar and Napoleon and Alexander and all the great and powerful men who ever lived.