Fade to Black

by Ron Renauld

  He was gone.

  She slowed down, panting heavily from her exertion, still staring around her at the silent darkness, paranoid.

  She was walking along a bank of garages facing a back alley, having circled around the last block, hoping to make her way back to the vicinity of the restaurant.

  Hearing a rustling overhead, she looked up. Eric leapt down from the garage roof, landing in front of her and then springing upward with his arms extended in a Lugosi pose.

  The girl raced beneath the outstretched arms and resumed her flight with renewed fear and vigor. Eric chased after her, making no effort to catch her. He planned to give her a few more minutes of terror, then leave her alone after asking her why she was so afraid of him if he was just a worm.

  The alley was dark, and the girl didn’t see the toy truck on the asphalt until she ran into it. Tripping forward, her scream never made it out of her mouth. Carried by her momentum, she fell onto a white picket fence bordering the backyard she was running past.

  By the time Eric came up behind her, the girl lay dead on the toy-strewn lawn. A jagged tip from the section of fence she had impaled herself on still projected from the side of her neck, surrounded by the ruptured flesh and blood trailing from the punctured jugular.

  “I . . . I’m sorry,” Eric stammered, frightened out of his role. “I . . . I didn’t mean for it to . . .”

  He crouched beside the woman, continuing to apologize until it registered in his mind that she was dead.

  Dead.

  Just like Aunt Stella.

  The neighborhood remained quiet. Cars drove by several blocks away, and overhead air traffic jockeyed-for landing positions at L.A. International, but in the backyard it was silent. No lights went on in the house.

  Eric stayed beside the corpse, staring with a numbed fascination at the wound on her neck.

  It looked so strange, almost as if he really were a vampire and had imbedded his fangs into her.

  Slowly, uncertainly, Eric extended his finger toward the wound.

  He touched it, then withdrew his hand and stared at the blood on his fingertip.

  Red. Wet. Sustenance for his kind.

  He stuck his tongue out and gently licked the blood.

  It was warm, salty.

  He looked back at the body, his mind racing as he ran the tip of his tongue along the roof of his mouth.

  Leaning over, he lowered his mouth over the wound, sucking at the blood, then pulled his face away and felt it run down his throat, spill over his black lips and down his chin, smearing the makeup.

  CHAPTER • 18

  Mr. Berger had given Eric time off to tend to his aunt’s funeral, so he didn’t go back to work until two days after the death of the prostitute.

  He’d thought the people he worked with would treat him better, at least out of sympathy for his aunt’s death, but it wasn’t the case.

  As he got off the bus and came toward the rear gate, Horace looked at him strangely.

  “What you doing here, Binny m’boy?” he asked, blocking Eric from coming in. “Huh, what’s the big deal!”

  “Look, Horace,” Eric said impatiently, “I’m not in the mood for your games today and I don’t want to be late, so—”

  “Late? Late?” Horace laughed, “Oh, Binny, you are such a crackup!”

  “Knock it off,” Eric said flatly. “Let me through, damn it!”

  Horace stopped laughing and looked at Eric stonily.

  “Well, now I can’t rightly do that, Binford, seein’ as this entrance here is for employees only.”

  Eric’s jaw sagged.

  “You mean, I’m—”

  “Yeah, boy. After a week here without you, Mr. Berger figured out things went so smoothly that—”

  “But he can’t fire me!” Eric said.

  “I don’t see why not,” Horace said.

  “Binford!” Mr. Berger shouted. He was standing on the loading dock, arms akimbo, a foul expression on his face. “What the hell are you doing out there gabbing?”

  “But, Mr. Berger—”

  “But nothing! I’ve got a load of spots due at KEIS in forty minutes. Now you punch your ass in and get on that Vespa, pronto! Vacation’s over!”

  “Yessir, Mr. Berger,” Eric said, glaring at Horace on his way through the gate.

  Horace smiled back and stifled another round of laughter.

  Eric made the delivery to KEIS with minutes to spare, then returned to the building and his cubicle, which was crammed with a backlog of work. Sighing, he sat down and began sorting through it all.

  Richie and Bart came up on him from behind. Bart had the morning paper in his hand.

  “Hey, Binford,” Bart said, flashing the paper. “Take a look at this!”

  The front headlines touted VENICE VAMPIRE STRIKES!

  “So what,” Eric said, turning his back to them, trying not to panic.

  Richie circled around him, pointing at the article accusingly.

  “Paper says there were a hundred Draculas at that marathon that night. Where were you, huh?”

  “Where were you, Binford?” Bart repeated, rubbing it in.

  Richie took up a length of used film off the floor and playfully wrapped it around Eric’s neck like a strangler.

  “Hmmm,” he taunted once more.

  “Cut it out!” Eric cried out, jerking the film away from his neck and hurling it away from him. He jumped down from his stool and walked away from his tormentors.

  “What are you going to do, you little baby?” Richie sneered. “You little shithead!”

  Eric turned around and stared at Richie.

  “Keep on riding me,” he said, borrowing Elisha Cook, Jr.’s idle threat from The Maltese Falcon.

  During his lunch break, Eric remained back in his studio while the others left to eat.

  He took the morning paper and read over the front page story carefully. It was a strange sensation. They were talking about him, guessing as to what had happened with the murdered girl. They had it all wrong. They were playing him up to be another Jack the Ripper, only with a new twist. They said he had lured the prostitute, identified as a runaway from a reform school in Kansas, down the back alley and then pushed her forcibly onto the fence, probably during a struggle. They had used bold print when describing how black lipstick had been smeared around the neck wound, as if the murderer had been seeking blood. There were related stories in the back pages, one giving a brief history of the Dracula legend, another bringing up a similar murder reported in Chicago the previous week and speculating as to a link between the two, and a third announcing a raid on a satanist cult in Hollywood by officers reacting to a tip called in in the wake of the killing. In another section, an article covering the annual meeting of Coyote quoted a spokesperson citing the Venice killing as another example of why prostitution should be legalized.

  Eric tried to imagine all of the manpower that had gone into putting together the stories. So many people working on it, coming up with nothing but footnotes instead of leads. It had been an accident, totally unplanned, but even when they had mistaken it for murder, they hadn’t been able to implicate him. There wasn’t even any mention of the police car almost spotting him down near the beach. They probably didn’t want to own up to the fact that he had slipped through their hands, Eric thought.

  But how did they know it was someone in a Dracula costume that had done it? Someone must have seen him chasing her. That had to be it, he figured.

  Or was it Marilyn? What if she had called the police, saying he had tried to kill her, too? No, that couldn’t be the case. They’d have come for him by now. She hadn’t recognized him. How could she have? It happened so fast.

  Eric was punching out his time card to go home just as Sam, the night watchman, came inside to punch in. He was in his mid-fifties, a watery-eyed closet alcoholic with a patronizing personality. Everybody’s buddy.

  “Hi ya, Eric,” he called out.

  “Oh, hi, Sam,” Eric replied dul
ly.

  Sam stopped before Eric and placed a gnarled hand on his shoulder. “Still sad about losing your aunt, aren’t you,” he said consolingly. “I know how it feels, Eric. Been more than a year and a half since my Ellie passed on, and I still miss her powerfully.”

  “I’ll be all right,” Eric said. “Thanks for thinking of me, though.”

  “Always think of your friends, that’s my motto,” Sam said.

  “I’m glad you have a lot of friends to think about,” Eric said.

  Sam looked at Eric thoughtfully.

  “Say,” he said. “If’n you want to, you can sneak back here tonight and we can play some checkers. Would you like that?”

  Eric smiled but shook his head.

  “Another time, Sam.”

  “Whatever you say, Eric, whatever you say,” Sam said. “Look, I got to go talk to Mr. Berger before I go on, so you take care, ya hear?”

  “I will, Sam,” Eric said. “Thanks.”

  Sam walked off and Eric continued outside.

  Bart had his dune buggy revved up just past the gate, waiting for Richie, who was strolling down the loading ramp.

  “Come on, man, let’s make it!” Bart called out over the roar of his engine. “We’re late.”

  Richie picked up his pace. Eric bounded down the loading ramp after them.

  “Hey, you guys!” he called out. “You owe me forty bucks.”

  Richie stopped next to the dune buggy and looked back at Eric.

  “For what?” he asked with feigned naïveté.

  “The Casablanca bet, remember?” Eric jogged Richie’s memory. “Rick’s last name?”

  Richie and Bart exchanged glances.

  “Uh, no, Eric,” Richie told him. “We still have time for that.”

  “ ’Til tomorrow,” Bart put in, grinning.

  “Tomorrow was last week!” Eric complained. “I want my money.”

  “Eric, forget it,” Richie said, starting to get into the car again. When Eric stood his ground, glaring at them, Richie turned and came back at him.

  “What are you looking at?” Richie shoved Eric. “What are you looking at, ya creep?”

  Eric backpedaled with the shove, but didn’t take his eyes off Richie.

  Richie pointed a warning finger at him.

  “Eric, you keep messing with me and I’m going to kick your ass!”

  Eric worked his lower jaw, trying to come up with a retort. Richie went back to the buggy and hopped in.

  Bart shouted at Eric, “Besides, Binford, anything you know ain’t worth the price of admission.”

  Eric, seething with contempt, watched the car speed off. To hell with Dracula. He wished he was Hopalong Cassidy. Hoppy would know how to deal with guys like these . . . throw them over the bar, one at a time, into the mirrored wall. Maybe fill them full of lead. Anything but stand there and take it.

  They were out of hearing range by the time Eric went after them with more trivia.

  “I bet you didn’t know what Adolph Hitler’s favorite movie was . . . Broadway Melody . . . I bet you didn’t know that! And what about Cry of Battle and War Is Hell? . . . Where were they playing, huh? . . . At the Texas theatre where they caught Oswald the day he shot Kennedy! I bet you didn’t know that . . . you . . . it was a double bill!”

  He spat the words out like blasts from a six-shooter, but without the effect.

  The dune buggy turned the corner, leaving Eric behind, standing beaten humiliated.

  And Angry.

  CHAPTER • 19

  The Pacific pitched foaming swells against the weathered uprights of Santa Monica Pier, which reached out into the bay like a road bound for Catalina until the money ran out.

  It was night. Illuminated by strung lights and mounted lamps, the strip carried on in defiance of its passed prime as a must-see for tourists and residents. A long portion of the pier was lined on either side by attractions hard-pressed to match the megabuck thrills of the big-name theme parks elsewhere in the county.

  Inside the old hall where Robert Redford first encountered Paul Newman in The Sting, children squealed in the saddles of hand-carved horses on a merry-go-round, accompanied by the redundant playing of a coin-fed calliope. Near the doorway to the hall, other youngsters squirmed in line before a photo booth, palms sweating around the quarters they would exchange for a chance to make four separate faces at an unseen camera.

  Lovers walked past shopfronts closed for the night, staring whimsically through display windows at seashell sculptures, sharktooth necklaces, and other souvenirs. Some paid to ride the bumper cars they had seen in the opening credits to “Three’s Company.”

  Further out, old and young fishermen fingered at their baits before casting them out into the bay and settling back to wait for a telling bend in their poles.

  Richie and Bart walked past the games arcade to the clapboard booths where carnies tried to wheedle passersby into risking a few bits for a chance at a stuffed animal.

  Richie heaved a volley of tennis balls at a pyramid of plastic milk bottles, knocking them all down. The carny, his brown teeth clamped around an unlit cigar, smiled and walked over to the rack of prizes.

  “You win a piggie!” he announced proudly, handing Richie an orange swine the size of a football.

  At the next booth, Bart went to one side and called over the hawker, a girl his age.

  “How much is this one?” he asked her.

  “Two balls for fifty cents,” she told him.

  While Bart had her attention, Richie went to the other end of the booth and quickly leaned over, helping himself to a large panda on the winner’s rack. He hid the bear behind his back as he walked away.

  “Two balls for fifty cents,” Bart said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “All right, sure,” she said, turning her attention to another potential patron while Bart rejoined Richie and their new addition.

  “Smooth, huh?” Bart said, taking the panda. “Look at all this stuff. Man, this is great!”

  “Man, I don’t want to play these games all night,” Richie complained. “Don’t you wanna get laid?”

  “Uh, sure.”

  “I know a place that’s crawling with cooze,” Richie said. “Let’s check it out.”

  “That’s what you said about this place, ya know?” Bart whined.

  “You gonna bust my chops all night long?” Richie asked him irritably.

  “I’m not gonna bust your chops, but, I mean, that’s what you said,” Bart put in. “The night is young. Let’s do it.”

  “All right!”

  They started back down the pier toward the city, carrying their plunder.

  The only stray women on the pier were either too young or too old for them, and Richie got impatient just looking at them.

  “Give me that thing, willya?” he said, grabbing the piggie and pitching it over the side of the pier. “We ain’t gonna pick nothing up with all this shit.”

  “We won it,” Bart said. “What’d you do that for?”

  Richie laughed. “That’s what I’d like to do to Binford,” he said. “The guy really bothers me.”

  A shriveled transient made his way shakily toward the two youths, his black hair lacquered back with a coat or two of Wildroot.

  “Hey, Jack,” Richie asked him. “Where you hiding all the pussy, man?”

  The bum looked at them, grinning idiotically.

  “Las Vegas,” he babbled. “I lived there for four years.”

  “Las Vegas,” Richie scoffed. “We ain’t going to Las Vegas.”

  Once past the old hall with the carousel, they climbed down the steps leading away from the pier and started down the back alley along the beach to where they’d parked the car.

  “I feel like a moron carrying this teddy bear around,” Bart finally admitted.

  Richie grinned at him. “Come on, man, the broads eat that kind of shit up.”

  “If they eat this kind of shit up, then why don’t you carry it for awhile,” Bart
retorted. “I mean, I notice you already got rid of the one you were carrying.”

  “Hey, hey. Ease off, my man,” Richie told him. “We got to stick together if we plan on getting our dipsticks checked tonight, right?”

  They cut through a littered corridor bathed in a surreal light that shone brightly on the fog that rolled across the pavement. The glistening wet flagstones and oddly angled shacks lining the alley heightened the ghostly atmosphere.

  “Get a load of this layout, would you?” Richie marveled. “Looks like something out of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.”

  “Don’t it, though,” Bart said. “Hey, what’s that noise anyway?”

  It was coming toward them from the other end of the alley. Footsteps. Steady and measured, echoing loudly in the alley. A figure slowly materialized out of the fogbank, striding bowlegged and purposefully toward them. Against the heavy backlighting, the figure appeared in silhouette, wearing a cowboy hat with his arms bent out at his sides so that the fingers dangled over the pistols resting in his holster. He stood blocking Richie and Bart’s way to their car.

  “Oh, my gosh,” Bart laughed. “Looks like someone’s celebrating Halloween a little early this year, eh?”

  The figure’s face was hidden behind a mask, but Richie could finally make out the likeness as well as the outfit.

  “Hey, no, man,” he said. “That’s William Boyd.”

  “Friends of yours?” Bart asked.

  “No, that’s Hopalong Cassidy, right?” Richie explained, looking to the figure for confirmation.

  The cowboy stared at Richie but remained silent.

  “I think he’s calling you out,” Bart said jokingly.

  Hopalong slowly squatted down, withdrawing one of the six-shooters and sliding it across the pavement toward Richie.

  “Oh, look at this,” Richie said, bending down to pick up the gun. “You want to play games, huh? This is some toy you got here, Hoppy.”

  The figure drawled, his voice muffled by the mask, “Make your move, hombre.” He dropped his hand to his other pistol.