Dark Screams, Volume 5 Read online

  My hosts were most generous, but I wondered where the other celebrities were. Here I was, including myself as a celebrity. Only to the Fangoria crowd, and even among those, only of a certain age.

  The convention’s organizer, Freddie Mazur, thirtyish and actually dressed in a suit, though he looked barely teenaged and ready for his bar mitzvah with his pink cheeks and squeaky voice, proposed a toast to me, thanked me for making my way to Indy to honor them with my presence on this important anniversary of a work of dark cinematic art. Apparently, the dozen eaters assembled at this quiet table in the back of the room were the MonsterThon hierarchy, and this special, quiet get-together was a preamble to the soiree that would include all of the other guests at a club downtown at midnight. Which was about an hour from now.

  How time flies when people tell you you’re brilliant.

  So the plan was made to meet in the lobby in an hour, and we’d all caravan to the Vogue, a former movie palace–turned–Indianapolis boîte, where we would get our party shoes shined. Hands were shaken all around, and I was already feeling a bit beery after the hearty Indiana meat and potatoes and wine. I was so stuffed I felt ready to be speared and roasted with an apple in my mouth.

  Back to the elevator to the Executive Level back into the Presidential Suite (Jesus, I could get used to this if I didn’t know it would never happen again) and into the shower. As I lathered up, I realized that I hadn’t been outside in days. I’d gone from my apartment to the garage to my car to the airport garage to the terminal to the plane to the airport to the garage to the Ford Fiesta to the hotel garage to the room to the restaurant and back to the room. Despite the grand, roomy shower, claustrophobia began to give me an unwanted massage.

  I felt uncomfortably full and queasy, starting to feel a bit dizzy and nauseated. I turned off the hot water and sat down on the tile seat at the edge of the Grecian bath, and my stomach settled as the steam dissipated. That stomach: How and when did it grow like this? It was like some kind of flesh luggage. When I looked down, I couldn’t even see my dick. I disgusted myself. I vowed to do something about this when I got back.

  But I started to regain my equilibrium and finished my shower, washed my hair, shaved, and stepped into my Levi’s, Nikes, and a black jacket and tie.

  The night was young. Well, not so young for me, as I was normally asleep by eleven. But with the time change, it was still early. That’s what I kept telling myself.

  Let them fête you, I told myself. How often is this going to happen?

  Okay, it’s not Cannes or Hollywood or even Toronto. But it’s a party and you’re the guest of honor. And tomorrow night is a sold-out screening of your magnum opus! Put on your dancing shoes and your party face and enjoy it. This might be your last hurrah!

  I combed my thinning hair, checked out my full-body reflection in the mirror, and decided I didn’t look as bad as I felt. And as the guest of honor, surely there were attractive midwestern horror fanettes eager to lock elbows with me. We’d see if it went any further than that. If, indeed, there was such a thing as an attractive female horror fan in Indianapolis.

  —

  The crowd in the lobby was bustling and thrumming, excitement in the air as fans and guests lapped up against one another in ebbing and flowing waves. I was at sea when Terry came rushing through the crowd to grab my arm.

  “Come on, the van is waiting for you!” Waiting for me! Li’l ol’ me.

  Terry was in his formalwear, a seemingly newly minted black Gigantic T-shirt. I had one just like it being eaten by moths somewhere in a box at home. It must be the only other one to survive into the Millennium.

  “Where did you get that?” I asked, and he actually puffed out his chest in pride, bloating the silkscreened monster on the shirt.

  “eBay. These go for a lot!”

  “Because they’re so rare,” I offered.

  “And because they’re so cool,” he countered. “I love Gigantic! A greatly underrated masterpiece of radiation mutation monsters.”

  “Thanks,” I said, though even I could not agree.

  “Come on, we’ve got the priority van waiting for you.”

  He took my elbow and guided me through the Midwest monster minions, who cleared a respectful path for me as I made my way through them.

  The black van was waiting, exhaling steam and pollutants into the brisk night air. My thin blood immediately gave resistance to the frigid winter temperature before I was pulled up by an extended hand into the overheated vehicle. Terry clambered in and yanked the door shut, and we were on our way into town.

  The proffered hand that had helped me into the van was still holding mine. It was skeletal and liver-spotted, with long, gaily painted nails and bold, exaggerated veins pulsing on the back, practically a talon, with a grip like a wrestler’s. I looked up to see the gleaming rictus of a surgically stretched face grinning wildly at me. This creature was obviously female, as she had enormous round breasts climbing out of a scanty silk-and-sequin peekaboo gown that revealed more than anyone would ever want to see of her. Her arms crinkled like crepe-paper gift wrap when they bent, at odds with the smooth, immobile skin of her face and breasts. Her poultry neck was crinkly, and her hairline ended about an inch higher than ear level. She was quite monstrously sexualized in her presentation, but as desirable as a camel in a skirt.

  “Well,” she croaked, her breath a cloud of tobacco, garlic, and dead child, “I know who you are!” She paused, frozen, obviously waiting for me to say the same thing to her. I think she winked, but I couldn’t tell, because her eyes never completely closed. I had no idea who this creature might be.

  “You’re the homecoming king tonight, aren’t you, darling?” I wanted her to let go of my hand. “I guess that makes me your queen!” And she laughed with a sudden violence that made me want my mommy. In a panic, I looked over at Terry for rescue.

  “Jack Tarrington, you know Mathilda Michaelson, don’t you? The very first green alien woman on Star Trek!” Terry enthused. Oh, it was that kind of a convention.

  “Among other things,” the Dragon Lady rumbled as she leaned in to be kissed on the cheek. Trapped, I obliged with a quick peck, and pulled away, perhaps too quickly. I could imagine her unguent-coated cheek sticking to me and tearing away like tracing paper.

  “I love your work,” she told me. “Do you have a new picture coming up?”

  I squirmed. “Well, I’m always in development.”

  “Well, think about me!” she said, the grin still playing in full. Unfortunately, I would think of her, but not in the way she hoped. I would fight to keep her out of my nightmares. I doubted if her mouth could ever be at rest. “I hope we’ll get to know each other better over the weekend.” And with that, she—whoops!—dropped her clutch purse, which just happened to fall between my thighs. She drew it back against my nether parts, and gave the boys a squeeze on the way back home. Attempting a sly smile on her forever-frozen visage, there was another failed attempt at a wink, her eye rolling up to its full white as the lids refused to meet, and I shuddered, playing dumb…something I’ve found that I excel at.

  I pulled my hand away when she relaxed hers, but I don’t think she noticed.

  There were other bodies crowding the van: some bearded filmmaker-looking types, some obvious, forgettably cute “Last Girl” actress types who littered the recent horror remakes that fouled the Cineplexes of America. I was in the celebrity van, I guess, and I felt more comfortable with and deserving of my special-guest treatment.

  Terry made the rest of the introductions to the director-brothers of Ripped Apart III: Rest in Pieces; the third female lead of Sharkzilla; the graying, humble Chinese director-star of a string of eighties kung-fu opuses called Nuclear Alligator Man, Nuclear Alligator Woman, and Nuclear Alligator Baby. He didn’t speak English, but kept clearing his throat, rolling down the window, and spitting out giant wads of phlegm.

  Look at me, Ma, I’m a celebrity!

  —

  At long last we
arrived at the Vogue, and the van regurgitated us and, once evacuated, disappeared into the night. We were paraded to the special entrance, where we were name-checked by a giant Fijian with beer breath and an attitude.

  “Got your badge?” the giant asked me.

  “What badge?” I answered.

  Terry was horrified. “Didn’t you get your necklace badge in your welcome envelope?” he asked.

  “Welcome envelope?” I answered.

  “He’s with the con,” Terry told Big Chief Wanna Poo Poo. “He’s the guest of honor!”

  “I’m the guest of honor,” I said. “We don’t need no steenking badges!”

  “I need to see a badge,” the bouncer said, obviously missing the cinema reference.

  “I’m with the convention,” Terry wheedled. “Mr. Tarrington is the guest of honor. He directed Taxed!”

  I flushed crimson. Yeah, I directed Taxed. Don’t hit me.

  “You made Taxed?” the bouncer said, his eyes lighting up. He lifted his shirt to show me the tattoo of Emily Boyd, the girl who gets raped and eaten in the film, stretched across his man-boobs. You remember her. The blonde. “Fuckin’ awesome movie, dude!”

  A patron of the arts. Who’da thunk it?

  “Thank you, sir.”

  He lifted the velvet rope and waved me through, sans badge and everything. “When’s the sequel?”

  “We’re working on it,” I lied, as I passed into the nightclub.

  “Have a wonderful night,” he said, and we were swallowed up by the evening’s festivities.

  —

  The music was loud and feverish, excusing me from conversations that justified my presence. The club was packed, mostly with the big-spending fans who’d paid quite a premium to attend the grand festivities with the “stars” of the convention, but with an overflow of befuddled proto-clubbing regulars. The room was littered with the decidedly unhip, the great unwashed, and about ten percent of them were in costume, oozing stage blood and reeking of latex. Fortunately, the convention crowd mostly mingled, the majority of them wisely resisting the thumping pulse of the music that would otherwise induce Dancing Feet. Arrhythmic and socially awkward, they stared from a distance at Us, the objects of their attention.

  This was not fun.

  I ducked behind a giant speaker that was booming house music when I caught Mathilda Michaelson shooting a look my way, missing the laser dagger of her Medusa stare by less than a second. Frozen in place, I watched her scan the room for prey before she headed into the ladies’ room, until I was sure she wasn’t faking me out.

  I walked around the room, taking it all in as it filled to its capacity within half an hour or so. Terry followed me around like a wounded puppy, constantly asking me if there was anything I wanted. I sent him off to fetch me a Dewar’s on the rocks, and when he offered it up to me, I set him free.

  “I’m okay, Terry. You go ahead and have a good time,” I told him.

  “I am having a good time,” he told me.

  “Maybe find a female to have a good time with,” I said.

  He blanched. I have a lot of experience with fear, and that’s what it looked like to me.

  “Go ahead, Terry. I’m okay on my own. Have a good time. You are hereby released!”

  Unyoked, he had no idea what to do. But I left him not doing it and wandered into the maelstrom.

  The first fan to approach me was diminutive but gelid, practically quaking with either excitement or fear; I didn’t want to experience either from him.

  “M-m-m-mister T-t-t-tarringt-t-t-ton…” he stuttered.

  “Jack. What’s your name?” I wanted to put him at ease. He was making me nervous.

  “I’m Jerry, Jerry. I just wanted to tell you how much I like your work. I mean, it’s pulpy and exploitive and all, but I mean that in a good way, you know? And I like the Shakespeare references.”

  It was actually rather sweet. I thanked him and shook his hand.

  He pulled out a VHS copy of Taxed. “Would you sign this for me?”

  “Sure.” So I did. And then he pulled out a DVD of Gigantic.

  “I didn’t like Gigantic as much as Taxed, but it wasn’t terrible. Could you please sign that, too?”

  Um…okay. “The signature might not be as good as the last one.” My smile was fading.

  “That’s okay.” Over his head. Then he pulled out an old Fangoria magazine with Gigantic on the cover, and asked me to autograph that. I did. Then out came the full set of Taxed lobby cards, and I finally had to put up my hand and say no.

  “Look, I’m sorry, but I can’t sign all of this stuff. I’ll be at the tables over the weekend for that.”

  He stopped, his mouth agape, breathing like a simpleminded chimpanzee. He glared, and started to back away from me. I could see red lines forming in his eyes as his face grew pink in anger and scorn.

  A pudgy young woman with a necklace around her throat like the ones the cannibals wore approached me with a sweet midwestern smile and a soft, dairy farmer’s daughter’s décolletage beneath the rattling bones and teeth that circled her neck. But before she reached me, Jerry called out, pulling her away from me.

  “Don’t bother! The guy’s a Hollywood dick!”

  Jerry disappeared in a cloud of his anger, and the zaftig girl in the ripped and revealing The Hills Have Eyes T-shirt stared at me with wide eyes.

  “I’m really not a dick,” I told her, probably too loudly, over the music.

  She didn’t know what to say. I saw that she was holding a Taxed one-sheet.

  “Did you want me to sign that?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Do you have a pen?”

  She handed me a silver Sharpie, and I swirled an embellished signature, and she rolled it up and disappeared.

  Jerry didn’t stop the train of Taxed fans from bombarding me with questions and requests; once that door had been opened, its maw was wide. Horror fans, ninety-five percent of them male and in their thirties, were happy to meet me, loved my films (well, I knew they loved Taxed and probably merely endured Gigantic to be polite), and were eager to talk to me about my movies, my thoughts about other movies, and just bask in my presence. At home, there are days that go by when I don’t say a word, where I have no contact with the outside world whatsoever. But on this night, at this event, mine was the voice they sought out, that captivated, that charmed and engaged. I knew that this was a very tiny little slice of America, but at least within the confines of horror fandom, I felt, well—dare I say it?—important!

  I joked, they laughed, I proclaimed, they appreciated. They grew close to me to hear my voice over the pounding beat that never varied…and they wanted more.

  I was not dead. Not here. Not at that time. They had brought me back to life.

  Alive…alive!

  There was a bit of a hubbub on the other side of the club, near the entrance to the restrooms. A bit of a crowd was swarming and I stood up on my toes to get a better look. Mathilda had just emerged from the ladies’ room, where she had applied her trademark green Star Trek makeup to all of her exposed skin, and, regrettably, there was plenty of it, from the nexus of her frozen brow to the tips of her coconut-thick toenails. Inflated green watermelon breasts looked ready to burst out of the diaphanous glittering gown she almost wore, her long, bare, skinny legs growing out of her withered bottom, a G-string tightly strapped over her obviously-even-from-out-here debilitated pudendum, and all else revealed, from the frowning little pouch of a tummy that made her navel look grumpy to the rouged nipples that peeked out over the sparkling bralet that holstered them in and kept them off the floor.

  Thirtysomething virginal Trekkies, if that was what they still chose to be called, surrounded her in awe. One of them wore Spock ears and the Star Trek command shirt, complete with phaser, and he kneeled at her feet. She placed her white patent-leather open-toed stiletto boot on his back, and he literally groveled at her feet. These Trek types seemed really out of place here, and the rest of the h
eavy metal horror crowd gave them wide berth. They were fascinated by what was happening, but I’m guessing the bulk of this crowd, which probably was born after The Next Generation was on the air, had no idea who this creepy grandma with the weather balloon tits and the grenade-pin G-string was or what she represented. But the half-dozen Trek fans that courted her autograph could probably all have gotten lucky with her that night. If lucky is the right word.

  After gaping in wonder at this beehive-coiffed chartreuse train wreck, I went to the bar and eased my load onto a stool with a grunt. Jesus, I was just about to turn fifty, and I was grunting as I sat down. Did I do that when I bent over to tie my shoes, as well? Old age was sneaking into me. I glared at my reflection in the giant mirror behind the bar. I looked old, tired, my sell-by date long elapsed. Young music throbbed around me, youth partied behind me, and I just felt tired. I noticed I was wheezing, for fuck’s sake.

  In the mirror I saw myself being approached from behind, but didn’t bother to turn around. I was feeling sorry for myself, for daring not to live my life but to hand it off to Fate to take care of it for me. But Fate didn’t get the memo, and turned a blind eye to me, letting me flounder and virtually disappear. Passivity had claimed another soul; I didn’t live, I existed. I didn’t create, I just ate.

  There was a tap on my shoulder. I looked into the mirror and could see it was a woman, but she was backlit by the xenon strobe lights, and I could not see beyond the silhouette. My heart raced, fearing that the Green Goddess of the Enterprise had found me and was intent on my capture and torture.

  Slowly I turned.

  The woman I faced was not Mathilda Michaelson, thank God. This was someone altogether different. She was actually quite lovely, with almond-shaped, electric-green eyes highlighted with Egyptian fishtail mascara. Her lips were full and smooth, but obviously not surgically plumped, and stroked with a dark brown, maybe even black, lipstick that gleamed in the flashing colored lights. It was hard to tell the exact color of her skin, but it seemed to glow, an even olive coffee tone that was a skillful Benetton combination of flesh palettes. Her multiracial ethnicity was mysterious and fascinating. Her hair was dyed a playful cherry red, but it was long and shining and reached down to the middle of her back. She had little wooden sticks piercing her earlobes, and her short, black, form-fitting dress was torn and safety-pinned together in all the dangerous places. There was a cobra tattooed on her left arm that snaked all around her limb, its toothy head delicately inked on the back of her hand. I did not see a pantyline; sue me for looking. Her face was not symmetrical, and some would see that as a flaw. There was a bump in her nose and her smile was kind of crooked, tilting to favor the left side over the right. But it made her unique, and I would take unique over an interchangeable TV paper doll any day. She was beautiful, and not just Indianapolis beautiful, at least to me. She’d have turned my head in L.A. or London. But she was standing here before me in a bar in Indianapolis filled with horror nerds and sci-fi geeks. She had approached me and tapped me on the shoulder, and smiled her crooked grin at me. I faced her and held my breath, wondering what this lovely woman—who could have been twenty or thirty, I couldn’t tell, but definitely decades younger than me—could possibly want from me.