Only the Dead Know Burbank

by Bradford Tatum

  Was it too much to hope for?

  “You’re sure about the theme?”

  “Sure. Some crazy professor makes a man out of spare parts. Ain’t that your picture?”

  “They have a script?”

  “Do they ever have a script?”

  “So what do I do next?”

  “I’ll tell you what you don’t do. You don’t go breaking through doors demanding your shot. That leads to one of two things. First, they’ll see you’re desperate and pay you a pittance to compromise yourself into the gutter. The second thing they’ll do is reject you out of hand as too stupid and green to not know when you should keep your cards to your chest. Your best option is to write a vital treatment, if only to let them know what they’d be missing. Then you wait. Just remember, everyone loses who really plays in this game, kid.”

  Maybe that was true for Browning. Slightly less so for Chaney. But not for me. I had the insight. I had the pedigree. I had the inside track even if Junior was unaware that I was in the race. This was what I had been waiting for. This was my desire patiently cultivated now bearing luscious bloodred fruit. But such a tree has thorns.

  I decided I needed to “Americanize” my concept. Write an updated treatment with the themes of The Toymaker and forget that the film, in one form, already existed. Realizing the necessity of such a document was far different than actually producing it. At least for me, whose payment for her best creative insights always involved the rhythmic ministration of some long and blunt instrument. It was one thing to field ideas with Chaney, but I had never gotten to write that treatment. This was new. I was alone. The prospect of writing it, what I would have to endure to achieve it, was terrifying.

  I found my perch in box five and curled into my nest of yellowed racing sheets and the damp charnel-house reek the rats left behind. I burrowed deep in the pungent filth, erasing all question of light, prying open the thick black void that was what passed for my mind. I did not have to wait long to imagine I heard him. His amused tenor would have been indistinct from my own had I the ears to hear it. But this was not possession. This was an anchor of habit that brought me down to these cold and instructive depths. He was as memory would have painted him, his face a blur that flickered in the fickleness of recalled horrors. A single eye with teeth that sprouted indelicate fingers.

  Your creature needs to have once been human, he began. Not those quaint clockworks from your original. He is repurposed, without his approval. A victim of an existential rape. Perhaps you know a little something about that. Americanize it? Why, there’s a brute and simple sodomy. Make it bigger, faster, louder, with an impassioned hate for anything that has come before it and you have made it American. Put your monster in a man’s modern suit, age it, ill-fit it and you will have what these cheeseburger eaters call modernity. But we need something more than that, don’t we? You can’t sense it. You have brined too long beyond pain, beyond death. Beyond fear. You’ve grown soft in your rictus, yes? What we need is the blade between the skin and muscle, to excite the nerves while the patient still kicks. But not here. We must go back. Back to when death was still undiscovered. When loss still crouched, distant, in its hard black egg.

  I was suddenly on a dim treeless street. The air itself seemed to rain dread. I could smell the stink of charring bodies as dark motes of diseased flesh swirled in a dry gray snow. The plague fires burned greenly. Vienna. The street was familiar now. I stood before the abandoned house of my artist. The windows were boarded. The front door gaped.

  Inside.

  The walls were ravaged. But there was no passion here. Only the thin whispers of panic, the artifacts of terror that still dripped and swung and fluttered. The stairs broke the silence in small tortured concussions as I mounted them. And there was the room where we had worked, where I had lived, the floorboards curled from rain. And there was the low bed where the artist had taken his wife one last time before she died. Before he died.

  And there they lie.

  The bones of his back so sharp in life, honed further by the skin that had tightened in rot. And she beneath him, stiff in a final bliss that was clear even without the amplifiers of her eyes. She was a dry creek beneath his skeletal truss. And where they joined, only the maggots danced. Do you wonder how the dead feel pain?

  They dream it.

  For what was that now on the floor? So small and shivering and frail? It was me. But from an angle I had not witnessed. Why were its fingers bound, its toes tied tightly in dull webbing? Fear doesn’t throb for the dead the way it does for the living. It does not stab or alert. It echoes. Slowly. An ache pierced through the belly by hooks, shambling, through the dust, lost. There was a shadow above me with limbs as gnarled as dead branches, a needle in its leafless fingers.

  Where does the needle go, Maddy? it whispered.

  Where does the needle go?

  My lips had already been stitched shut, so my scream was muted as it imploded in muffled terror in the confines of my throat.

  In the eyes.

  The needle went into my eyes.

  Above me was Lucky. But not as I remembered him. Neglect had shorn the lips from his face, the charm of his crooked teeth now ghastly without their fleshy veil. Murmurs of movement where his eyes had been. And the needle. Plunging over and over into the ripe and swollen freshness of my eyes.

  I don’t want to remind you of anyone, Maddy.

  And the reek of the grave blistered forth from his lagging jaw as he moved his skull upon my lips. I pulled away with a shudder of revulsion.

  Not like that, Maddy, he mocked as his fingers burrowed blindly into my scalp, forcing what was once his face to mine. His tongue was a tangle of worms that gnawed greedily through the stitches. They fell, cold, in a thousand disparate tangles of appetite, chewing my living gums and cheeks. Wet bodies frothing the rising blood. Writhing and filling. Filling and writhing. Hot tears. God, I could still shed them.

  The terror would not ebb.

  Then shoes. His immaculate shoes that could belong to no other.

  Do you remember now, child? Is your attention duly primed? Shall we begin?

  WHEN THE TREATMENT WAS FINISHED I SENT IT TO THE FRONT OFFICE and waited. When word came, I went to the studio laundry and stole several clean sheets and a cake of harsh laundry soap. In the dead of night, the night before my meeting, I opened one of the wall spigots behind the stage and doused my naked body with icy water. I lathered the soap hard, in my hair, my open eyes, inside my mouth. I washed the grave off me. All memory and thought of anything decayed and neglected and reeking. I swept my box of its filth, then flooded it with chill water and scrubbed the graying boards with the claws of my hands, breaking like tubes of chalk the tips of my fingers. When it was clean, I lined my box with the sheets, folding the corners precisely to the peripheries. Never would I exist in rot again. Never would I dream like that again.

  CHAPTER 33

  My walk to the front of the lot was purposeful. The first time it had been so. My treatment was good. A little florid perhaps, but solid in its conviction. I was aware of the irony of my trajectory, how I was headed to where I had begun. But a beginning was what I needed to make. To finally make. My creator was a woman. And she had made her monster from a man. Not a spare body. Not a nameless corpse from an unmarked grave. A man she had known. A man she had loved. A man she had murdered. Because he had hurt her. Had tried to break her. And in such an attempt had broken himself. Now he was fixed. Remade to love her, to fill her loneliness with cold caresses, her hollows with the rictus of rot. To never stray, to never leave her. To love her the way he had first loved her when he had brought her back from the dead. True, it never would have played the Rialto in Van Nuys. But that wasn’t the point. I had proven I could do it. On my own. Such passion, such vision, such resolve could not be denied.

  Junior’s secretary showed me into his office immediately upon my arrival. The studio may have faltered, but Junior’s surroundings had definitely flourished. Gone was
the practical tiger oak, replaced by well-fed deco curves in pearl-colored Bakelite and milky plaster, a desk supported by stylized palm leaves that spoke more of female thighs than tree-lawn fauna. Sconces like overturned breasts seemed like organic ripples in the plasterwork. In a chair that at once seemed forbidding and ridiculous, a frond-backed thing that resembled an albino peacock’s tail, sat Junior.

  “Miss Ulm,” he greeted me as if I were a shareholder, a lit cigar between his teeth. He was not alone.

  The man in the chair opposite Junior’s did not stand to greet me. He blew the smoke he held in his mouth through a distracted downturn of his lips and smiled ingratiatingly, looking to Junior as if acknowledging me was not in his contract.

  “Charmed,” the man said with a clipped high London accent. He was blond, pale, immaculate in a demeanor that was only tarnished by the mocking grin that never seemed to leave his lips. A man so reposed in his own intelligence, arrogance, and cream-colored linen that conversation with others seemed more a concession than a pleasure.

  “Jimmy here’s just come off a big hit for us, Waterloo Bridge,” Junior said, motioning to the man, “and has been given his choice of properties—”

  “I’m going to stop you there, Junior.”

  Jimmy turned his lithe body toward me.

  “You see, Miss Ulm, this studio has such an appalling lack of amusing ideas that choice seems hardly to have entered into it. I need something different. Something other than the war, you see. And you seem to have done rather well, financially at least, with that vampire dross.”

  “The rumor is Browning never would have attempted Dracula if it wasn’t for our little Maddy here,” Junior quipped hopefully.

  “So it’s you the cinematic pantheon has to thank for that hysterical mess. I didn’t know whether to laugh or weep,” he said to me with a vague smile. What the hell was this? Here I had come to plead my case to Junior, to field his praise and assuage his doubts in private. And suddenly I was on display; Junior with that cloying used-car-salesman grin and this supercilious bastard all but kicking my tires.

  “What Jimmy here is trying to say . . . ,” Junior began.

  “What Jimmy is trying to say is perfectly relatable by Jimmy himself,” he breezed. “I chose Frankenstein as my next project, Miss Ulm, because I thought it might prove a bit of fun. However, it seems the management is slow to believe that I will treat the subject with the proper gravitas.”

  “What’s a fright picture without the fright?” Junior interjected. Frankenstein? It was the first I had heard of it.

  “It was felt that you, who is rumored to have an insight into the genre, might be able to assist me in attaining this lamentable bathos. I told Junior I do not collaborate. That my success, as well as my failures, are only of interest if they are my own. He insisted we meet, however. Which quite obviously we have.” Jimmy stubbed out his cigar and, standing, pulled smartly on the tails of his waistcoat.

  “Jimmy, wait,” Junior said, pulling the soggy wreck of his cigar from his mouth. “Maddy here has a real track record with this kind of thing. She was great with Chaney, and I think she might be good for you too. Give her a chance. That’s all I’m asking.”

  “A chance to what, Junior? I’ve seen these pictures to which you refer, and frankly, I have no interest in emulating any of them. Your success in this genre can quite simply be relegated to the shock of the new. You only procured the rights to Dracula because Metro lost interest after Mr. Chaney’s demise, yes? From here on out you will have to do something truly spectacular or watch your precious horror franchise be usurped by studios with better budgets and, frankly, better taste.”

  Jimmy turned to me with a smile.

  “Now I’m sure you are a perfectly charming child, but simply put, you are a child. I mean no offense other than what stating the obvious could inflict.”

  “You’re making a mistake, Jimmy, this kid—”

  I raised my hand for silence.

  “He’s quite right, Mr. Laemmle,” I said. “I know what I appear to be, Mr. . . . ?”

  “Whale.”

  “Just as I am sure you know what you appear to be. How stagnant would our careers be if our mere appearances proved the truth? All rumor aside, unless you have seen the two pictures I directed for UFA, you know nothing of my work. To judge me on what has been religiously denied me could only be construed as the height of idiocy.”

  I turned to Junior. “Mr. Laemmle, Junior, I want to direct. I’ve wanted to direct since I arrived here. And you said produce. So I produced something. My treatment.”

  “What treatment?”

  “The one I presumed about which you called me here.”

  “The lady-doctor thing?”

  “Did you read it?”

  “I looked at the coverage.”

  “And?”

  “What? This isn’t Krautville, kid. You can’t do that stuff. The creature schtupping the dame and the dead flesh and the pins in the eyes. C’mon.” Junior grinned at Jimmy, but Whale stared at me shrewdly. Had he read my treatment too? “But in the broad strokes it’s very similar to Frankenstein, you gotta admit. That’s why . . .”

  I had no idea then just how similar they would make it.

  “What is this Frankenstein you keep referring to?” I insisted.

  “Jimmy’s next picture. The man-made-monster thing.” So that was it. A decision had already been made, my role in the endeavor already cast.

  “I see.” I was sick inside. Shattered. But I refused to let it show. “So my being summoned is just an attempt to get me to hold the hand of yet another self-important neophyte who doesn’t have the first clue about the genre.”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way.”

  “Why not me?” I blurted. Why is it always so horrible asking for what you want?

  “Why not you what?”

  “Why not let me direct this Frankenstein. You said yourself I’m the best qualified.” Whale could barely contain the amused smirk that tap-danced across his face.

  “I never said that,” Junior said, raising his hands defensively. “Come on, kid. You know how this is going to play out. I’m not sayin’ you don’t have something.”

  “So why not give me the chance?” My voice broke in its passion. “I’ve done everything this studio has asked of me. And more. Can you honestly imagine this picture without the spark I could give it?” I was suddenly aware of my child’s stature, my narrow shoulders, the glut of knee that held my fragile weight. I could have just as easily been negotiating to stay up past my bedtime.

  “I’ll answer that one, Junior,” Whale said. “Because, my dreary little doll, he owns you either way.”

  And there it was, the truth of my indentureship served up with a sweet-smelling smirk from a snarky fruit in ecru-colored linen. Junior looked to the immaculate nap of his carpet.

  “Then I have my answer, Mr. Laemmle, and you have my notice. Good luck with your picture, Mr. Whale. I’m sure you’ll tiptoe around our hysterical messes and find a spectacular solution to your script. By the way, modern dress is the key. But I imagine you read that in my treatment. Good day.”

  And for that moment, as I passed from their sight, through the office door, I was unemployed, falling faster than a stone, nauseous, terrified, yet somehow somber in my resolve. I had just principled myself into a breadline (metaphorically speaking). I would give Mutter my regards and . . . but even I couldn’t buy my own bullshit. Should I slink back? Beg for any position? Make coffee? Run scripts? What the hell had I done? Did it matter? Yes, goddamn it, it mattered. I was worth what I wanted and it was clear I would never achieve that at this studio. I would always be a dark talisman, a gothic good-luck charm, worthy of affiliation but not the helm. How far was it to Paramount? Could I dodge the love songs of the weeds and gravel long enough to make it over the hill to Metro?

  I did not have long to ponder this. Just outside the studio gate, a white limo idled. The door opened at my approach.

&nbs
p; “Get in,” Whale whispered from its cool, flower-scented interior.

  Partnership? Not really. More like a lifeline, I suppose. I leaped at it.

  “I’ve always loved a strong exit,” Whale said, nodding to his chauffeur to drive. “And yours would have made Barrymore shit his knickers green. We’ll probably end up hating each other. But I have a suspicion what we do together might outlive us both.”

  He was only half right, of course.

  CHAPTER 34

  These would be the parents of the creature: a sallow, ageless, chronically underappreciated German-born adolescent and an arrogant, self-important but still frustratingly brilliant queen. Whale didn’t bother to tell me why he changed his mind. I supposed he found me amusing. And amusement held a premium for Mr. Whale.

  “It’s a frightfully poor story, really,” he exhaled in the interior of his limo as we drove to the heights of Hollywood. “The only amusing element is the brash doctor’s presumption at getting that poor lump off the slab. That and the fun one could have with the creature itself. That was the title of the original stage production you know, Presumption. It was the age of Kean, so you can imagine the floodlights doused with passionate spittle from the wildly pontificating actors, the creature spouting in rhymed couplet.”

  “He should be mute,” I said, watching the residences out my window flash like schizophrenics from Moorish to Mediterranean to Tudor.

  “Pardon?” he asked, turning to me.

  “The creature. He should say nothing.”

  “An infant of pure ethos?” he said, lighting a cigar and smiling.

  “Pathos. We should feel sorry for him.”

  “That lumpy, sutured mess?”

  Who said anything about sutures? The bastard must have seen my German original.

  “Children should love him,” I said. “Only those who betray him should fear him.”