‘Why, Jack! You know better than to ask that! Nobody ever asks where a skin comes from!’ Wilson’s protests were a parody of indignation; his blue eyes were bright with mockery. ‘These things aren’t easy to come by. I dare say some of them are illegal. And all of them have secrets.’
‘No secret about mine,’ said Jack. ‘I got it from my uncle. He was in vaudeville. I used to love watching him when I was a kid, and he left it to me when he died.’ Jack killed his drink. ‘The only thing anybody ever gave me. So I took it and made a living from it. But it’s like going around the world, I guess. You see some stuff you don’t like.’
‘And you might not like knowing about your skin, if that’s all you’ve bothered to find out. Have another drink. What do you think it’s made of?’
‘Leather and hair, mostly.’
‘But where did the leather and hair come from, Jack? What died so you could be in show business? Is it pig skin and yak hair, like Van Horn’s? I think he made it himself, but there’s something strange about that, too, if you stop and think about it. Don’t you know who made yours? Don’t you care? I think you’ve got a real skin there, Jack, know what I mean?’
Wilson’s grin was maniacal, but Jack just sat and stared. He’d never really thought about stuff like this for long, even though he couldn’t always stop the dreams.
‘The audience never worries about it, do they, Jack? They probably think all the skins are real. Like that Boris Karloff picture, The Ape. You know, you just take a dead monkey and spoon out the stuffing, and then you climb inside. They don’t know it’s more like a mummy, do they? A dried-out old corpse you wrap around yourself till nothing shows of you except your eyes. And the worst thing is you wanted to do it. You wanted to be it. Like something called out to you from a hundred thousand years ago. It’s bred in the bone, Jack, and that scares even a big cowboy like Ray Corrigan. Doesn’t it scare you?’
Wilson paced across the room, his whiskey glass waving in the air, his hip lurching weirdly. He tapped the wall beside a neatly framed eight by ten. ‘And the women love it, too. It’s in the blood. It’s some kind of magic. Without the skin, I’m just an old merchant seaman who walks funny. With it, somehow, I’m somebody. Do you think I’d ever have met any of these pin-ups if I didn’t have the skin? It’s all any of us have, Jack. Take away the suit and there’s not a Barrymore in the bunch.’
Jack was getting nervous, but he was still too interested and too angry to get up and leave. Maybe he was earning himself some leverage here. ‘You’ve got the best monkey suit I’ve ever seen,’ he said.
Wilson stopped moving and stared at a wall as if he could see something on the other side. ‘It was just about the same as murder,’ he said. ‘And they made me do it, too. Wouldn’t just sell it to me. They made me earn it, Jack. Something sacred, they said. A sacrifice. Like it was their god, but still they wanted to get rid of it. And maybe they were right. I feel like I’ve been working for the damned thing ever since, trying to please it, but it’s never been enough. I should have left it alone. I wish to God I had.’
‘What kind of an animal did you say it was?’ asked Jack.
Wilson sat down again. He poured another drink and downed it in one continuous motion. ‘Funny about that, you know? People don’t care. Gorilla, ape, orang-utan, they don’t give damn, as long as it’s big and strong and hairy. Some of these suits don’t look like anything that ever walked the earth. Ever see Charlie Gemora with Lugosi in Murders in the Rue Morgue? No? Well, it was years ago. Charlie had his suit on, whatever it’s supposed to be, and the goddam director kept cutting back and forth between Charlie and some close-ups of a live monkey half his size. And nobody even noticed!’
‘But what about…?’
‘You know, Charlie’s not the only one who worked with Bela Lugosi. And did you hear Van Horn carrying on this afternoon? Well, I worked with Lugosi too, you know. Say what you like, he can really control the camera, the poor old bastard. He really fills the screen. Let me tell you a story. No, really. You’ll like this. I was with old Bela on a picture for PRC. The worst. They made Monogram look like MGM. Bela used to hide in his dressing room when we weren’t shooting, so nobody got to talk with him much. But we had one day on location - Bronson Caverns, natch - and there was nowhere for him to go, so I got next to him when we broke for chow. It was just a lousy box-lunch, an orange that cost a nickel and a dried-up old sandwich. So he picked that up and looked at it, gave it the eye, you know how he was. And then he said to me, “Vot’s dis?” So I took a big bite out of mine, looked straight back at him, and said “Baloney”. And Bela looked at me, and he looked at the sandwich, and he pulled back the bread and looked inside, and then he said what he said. You know what he said? He said: “Baloney? Perhaps not.”‘
Wilson threw back his head and laughed like a hyena. His face swelled up and fumed red, his eyes were wet, and he pounded on the redwood table till the bourbon bottle jumped and rattled against the silver Ronson table lighter, but Jack just sat and stared.
‘I don’t get it,’ said Jack.
‘What? You never saw that show? The Black Cat?’
‘The one you made with Lugosi?’
‘No, Jack. The one Lugosi made with Karloff. He had that line in there, you know. Great, great line. “Supernatural, perhaps. Baloney, perhaps not.”‘
‘I never saw it,’ said Jack, suddenly realising that Wilson was dead drunk, then noticing that he wasn’t much better off himself. Wilson had stopped laughing, as if someone had turned off a phonograph. ‘I gotta go to the can,’ said Jack.
‘Upstairs,’ Wilson advised him. ‘You’ll see it. And when you come back, we’ll talk about The Gorilla Gang. After all, that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Top of the stairs. And you never saw that movie? You’re a funny guy, Jack.’
His stomach sinking as he pulled himself upright, Jack took in the words that sealed his fate. ‘Funny,’ he mumbled. He staggered towards the stairs. ‘What kind of skin did you say that was again?’
‘You know,’ said Wilson, opening up a silver cigarette box to reach for a cork-tipped Herbert Tareyton. ‘The best kind. No kind. Not a monkey, not a man. The kind of skin that scares a guy like Corrigan. The kind that says there might not be a God, Jack. You know. The missing one. Just call him Mr In-Between.’
Swaying at the top of the steps, Jack looked down at Wilson, who was bent over the table so that his blond hair fell across his face. His shoulders were shaking, but Jack wasn’t sure why. Smoke shot out of Wilson’s mouth and formed clouds around his head.
Jack turned away and into Wilson’s bedroom. It was big and almost empty, containing next to nothing but a bed and the bamboo chest at its foot. There were more African masks and Hollywood photos on the dimly lit walls, but Jack didn’t care about those now. He knew as if he had X-ray eyes what was hidden at the foot of the bed, and he tiptoed towards it across straw mats, desperate to go unheard by the man below. He held his breath as if he thought that might help, and was emboldened by a fusillade of coughing from below. He reached for the chest with trembling fingers, convinced that the hinges would betray him with some ungodly squeal, but the lid opened as smoothly as a banana skin.
Still not breathing, Jack reached inside and pulled out Bill Wilson’s skin. It was as smooth as smoke, as heavy as the night. Jack took a breath as he embraced it, and when his lungs were full to bursting he exhaled, then drew in the scent of the skin almost against his will. For a second he missed the stench he had expected, but then he was overwhelmed by the aromas of sunshine and tall grass, of cool pools and shadows, of ripe fruit and flowers hanging in the trees. It was a primitive perfume, and Jack was dizzy inhaling it for a moment, but then he remembered where he was. He stuffed the skin back where it belonged, barely remembering to hurry into the bathroom and flush the toilet before he headed back downstairs.
‘Find everything okay?’ asked Wilson. ‘Have a smoke.’
‘Okay,’ said Jack. He sat down opposite hi
s host.
‘So you read the script. Great. You know, you’re the first guy to get back to me. You’d think they’d be more interested.’
‘Maybe they don’t read so fast,’ muttered Jack.
‘You think you’re joking? Half the people in this town don’t read. Even the big producers. Their wives or secretaries read the scripts, then tell these self-styled masterminds what they’re all about.’
Jack grunted.
‘Well?’ asked Wilson. ‘You wanted to talk. What did you think?’
‘Never mind what I thought.’ Jack reached for a cigarette and tapped it on the silver box. ‘Just tell me about the casting.’
Wilson actually gave him a light, hefting the big silver Ronson while he looked Jack square in the eye. ‘You must have liked it,’ Wilson said, ‘or you wouldn’t be worried about your part.’ He poured two more drinks out of the half-empty bottle. ‘Don’t worry, Jack. You’ve got the plum. Stuck in your thumb and pulled out a plum, Jack. You’ve got laughs, tears, everything. It’s a star-maker.’
‘I knew it,’ said Jack. ‘You want me to play Koko.’
‘That’s right, Jack, Koko. You’re Koko.’ Wilson rubbed his hands together in a simulacrum of glee.
‘You son of a bitch,’ snarled Jack. ‘You go to hell.’ He took an angry drag on his Herbert Tareyton, then snuffed it out on the silver ashtray.
‘But Jack! What’s wrong? You’ve got the best part!’
‘Except for yours. Aw, I expected that. But you’re making me the guy that gets killed. You get all the monkey men in Hollywood together, then you shoot me, and you cut me out of the sequels. Out of the money. Me. Why me?’
‘Jesus, Jack, you didn’t believe all that crap about the sequels, did you? That was just to get the boys worked up. We’ve got one chance in a hundred of getting a sequel. I don’t even have financing for the first one yet, probably won’t unless everyone gets on board. But it could be a payday, Jack, and if it happens you’ve got the scene-stealer. Believe me.’
Jack thought it over for as long as it took to swallow another ounce of bourbon. ‘I won’t be the one who dies,’ he said.
‘Don’t be like that, Jack. Look, if we get lucky we can always finagle it. You know, we’ll bring Koko back as a vampire or something. No, I’ve got it. Gorilla Zombie! That’s it! Can’t you just see it? Gorilla Zombie! Wilson swept his hand in an arc in front of his face, envisioning a title fourteen feet high. Jack grabbed that hand and smashed it down on the table so that the bourbon bottle and the silver box and the silver lighter and the silver ashtray all jumped and rattled and dropped down on the redwood table once again. The bottle fell on its side and Old Crow leaked onto the floor. ‘Are you shitting me?’ demanded Jack.
Jack clutched the collar of Wilson’s Hawaiian shirt and pulled their faces close together. ‘Why don’t you give that part to Corrigan? He’s trying to sell his suit anyway, get out of the monkey business…’
‘The cowboy?’ said Wilson, not even bothering to pull his head away. ‘You heard him today. No sense of humour.’
‘Get Gemora to do it.’
‘He’s no comedian, Jack. I don’t even know if he can read lines.’
‘Look, just because I worked with the Stooges doesn’t mean I can’t be scary too. You should have seen me at Corregidor. I killed three men, you know, two of them with my hands. And I didn’t fight my way back here to be treated like some kind of clown!’
Wilson finally pushed Jack away, then pulled himself upright and swayed over the table. He spoke slowly and deliberately. ‘If you don’t want the part, you don’t have to take it. I can get somebody else if I have to. I thought you’d be grateful.’
‘Grateful for a hand out, you mean?’ screamed Jack. ‘Grateful to be standing at the end of the line again?’ He picked up the bourbon bottle, looked at it for a moment, then brought it down on Wilson’s head in an explosion of glittering glass and purple blood.
Wilson sat down clumsily. ‘Jack,’ he said. He’d been saying it all night long. Jack hit him with the jagged stub of the broken bottle and it did something bad to his right ear. ‘You stupid, ugly, fucking…’ muttered Wilson, but before he got the last word out, Jack cut him off with a wild swing that opened Wilson’s throat like a ripe watermelon. Wilson didn’t even seem to care about it; he just slumped down and died. Right away, there was lots of his blood on the table.
Jack had gone ape. What had possessed him? He stood in the middle of the room with dripping hands and wondered what he’d done. He wanted Wilson to sit up again and pretend everything was still all right, but knew without even looking that that would never happen. Then he realised with a shiver that he really didn’t want anything of the kind. He wanted all the dead things in the world to stay dead, especially the one sprawled on the table in front of him. Instead, it slithered down to the floor with a sound like a load of wet laundry. Jack jumped; he couldn’t help it. Then he swore.
Every primitive instinct in the back of his brain told Jack to run and run like hell. There wasn’t going to be any movie, and there wasn’t going to be any sequel, but there could still be some sort of life for him if he didn’t get caught. It wasn’t his fault. A man could take only so much, and Jack had taken enough. Now he had to save himself, and that meant he couldn’t hit the road before he covered his trail. He had to think fast: the longer his car stayed parked outside, the bigger the chance that someone would spot it. But what had he left inside that might lead back to him? He was trying to figure out how to get rid of his whiskey glass (wash it? break it? take it home?) when he realised what was on it. Fingerprints.
Jack was dead. How many things had he touched in this damned house? Come to think of it, was there anything he hadn’t touched? The doors, the walls, the pictures, the bookcases, the stairs, the chest, the toilet, the bottle, the cigarette case, the ashtray, the lighter. The skin. Bill Wilson. There was no way he could ever wipe it all clean in time to make his getaway. Shit! He kicked the table and that fancy silver lighter clattered to the floor. Jack just looked at it for a moment, and then he grinned. The lighter. If he couldn’t get his fingerprints off everything in the house, he would just have to get rid of the house instead.
He fumbled with the big silver lighter, got it open, and spilled a few ounces of fluid on the lump of wet wash that been Bill Wilson. It didn’t seem like quite enough fuel. He went into the kitchen to rinse his hands, noted the gas stove with some satisfaction, and actually whooped with glee when an angel led him to a drawer which contained a flat blue and yellow can of lighter fuel. Like an animal marking its territory, he squirted the stuff all over the straw matting, the walls, the furniture, the bookcases, the pictures of the women he would never meet.
Jack backed towards the exit, pulled a book of drugstore matches out of his pocket and set them aflame in a deft, one-handed motion. He turned the doorknob and pulled, making sure there was open air behind him before he tossed the burning square of cardboard into the room. No sense in being a damned fool. When the flame hit the fluid, the house belched like a Titan eating tacos, and a blast of hot air pushed Jack out the door, just where he wanted to be. He stood suspended in time for an instant, ready to keep moving towards his car, then turned and walked back into Bill Wilson’s burning house.
He had to have that skin. He wasn’t sure why - he could hardly use it on the job, and it was evidence against him - but suddenly that beautiful red-gold monkey suit cried out to him to be rescued. He felt like he would be saving a baby and robbing a safe in the same gesture, but he knew the way he knew his own name that he had to get that skin if he ever hoped to live with the memory of what he’d done. It could make everything worthwhile. He was moving faster than he was thinking, but there was no doubt in his mind that he had time to get in and out before the fire caught him. He needed only a few seconds, and the stairs weren’t even burning yet. And that skin was some sort of miracle. He could almost hear it calling to him. Yet at the same time he saw the red and yell
ow flowers of flame blossoming from-floor to ceiling, and acknowledged that he was living out the conflagration cliche of every cheap monster movie ever made. Scrambling up the steps on all fours, he ran towards the chest at the foot of Bill Wilson’s bed. He heaved open the lid.
The wonderful skin leaped out and wrapped itself around Jack’s head. In a heartbeat he was blind and deaf, his mouth full of hair and the scent of dead animals in his nostrils. He was hot and he couldn’t breathe. Jack fell to the floor as he scrambled and clawed at the thing that tormented him, his brain a molten ball of panic, and then suddenly he pulled himself free. Had he gone crazy? No matter. Screw the skin, it was time to leave. He rushed for the stairs, now full of billowing smoke and flickering light.
Something stood at the top step. Dead black against the orange glow behind it, the empty skin tottered between Jack and freedom, waving its arms like an angry ape. He saw to his horror how hollow it was, then it was upon him once again. He knew why it had called him back into the house when it wrestled him around and sent him tumbling down the stairway head over heels, each step striking him like a baseball bat in the hands of some simian slugger.
Jack landed on his back, looking up at the bedroom. He could see the skin capering above him, then watched as it danced away and threw itself through an upstairs window to the safety of the lawn below. Jack had broken something, maybe a lot of things. He couldn’t raise his head. He couldn’t move. He was beginning to realise now why so many horror films ended in fire: it hurt like hell. But why was he being punished? Was it really all his fault? Why were his eyeballs boiling in their sockets? Why was his skin sizzling in his fat and falling from his face? Why, when he was finally found, would he look like nobody at all?
IV
From Variety, October 27, 1947.
Dark Terrors 6 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology] Page 33
