Dark Screams, Volume 8 Read online

  What is this shit? rattled the Selectric.

  “Lean ground beef! What’s wrong with it?”

  Overcooked, man, overcooked!

  “You kidding me? That was rare!”

  Raw! It has to be raw! You don’t cook a demon’s meat!

  “I don’t?”

  Jerk. Ever read King? Ellison? Poe? Ever watch Night Gallery when you were a kid?

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  They ever show somebody cooking a demon’s hamburgers?

  “Well, no—”

  Bingo.

  Though Howard thought the demon’s argument just a tad spurious, he got the remaining pound and a half of uncooked hamburger from the kitchen and fed it to his IBM Selectric. The typewriter belched brimstone when it was done, and the smell drove Howard back a step.

  “Jesus. Do demons use Scope?”

  Funny man. Spread out, you’re cramping my style.

  “Huh?”

  I got work to do. Drift. Take a hike.

  The Selectric went back to work, first erasing its conversation with Howard using the self-correct button, then pressing ahead with the novel. A full day went by before it got hungry again. This time hamburger wasn’t good enough. This time it wanted a porterhouse steak, lean cut. Raw, of course.

  And that was the beginning of it.

  —

  The day Howard muscled past Iggy Feinwold’s secretary was the day that Iggy’s life changed forever. Actually, Howard tackled her, knocking her on her ass. Iggy had given her strict instructions never to let that hack bastard Walpuski get anywhere near him, ever again, so she was just doing her job. Her breasts bounced up and down as she hit the ground, and Howard sailed past her into Iggy’s office, slamming and locking the door behind him.

  “What the fuck?” blurted Iggy, his attention startled from the paperwork on his desk. “Look, Walpuski, if I told you once I told you a thousand times, I don’t wanna see your face! I don’t handle you anymore, scumbag! Understand?”

  Howard silenced Iggy by pulling a huge government model Colt .45 and aiming it between his eyes. The weapon had belonged to Howard’s father, who’d served as a tank commander under Patton. The firing pin had been removed at the shrill insistence of Howard’s mother when Howard was only four years old, rendering the gun useless. Howard, of course, had no intention of informing Iggy of this fact.

  The secretary was pounding at the door, screaming something about a SWAT team.

  “Tell her to piss off,” whispered Howard.

  Never one to argue policy with an automatic pistol, especially a big one, Iggy pressed the button on his desk intercom and said in his sweetest voice, “It’s okay, Caroline, Walpuski and I got something to discuss. I must’a forgot to mention it.”

  The pounding stopped.

  “Very good, Iggy.”

  “Listen, Walpuski, you’ll never get away with it.”

  “Get away with what?”

  “Killing me. They’ll catch up with you sooner or later.”

  “Don’t be an asshole, Iggy. I’m not here to kill you, although it’s a tempting thought, now that you mention it.”

  “Forget I brought it up. What can I do for you?”

  Howard tossed an armload of white butcher paper rolls on the desk. Iggy regarded them dubiously. “Wallpaper samples? Finally took my advice and gave up writing to sell door-to-door?”

  Howard leaned across the desk and pressed the barrel of the gun to Iggy’s forehead. Iggy went cross-eyed staring at Howard’s finger on the trigger. “You’ve got two choices. Read my work or I blow your brains out.”

  Iggy carefully weighed these options. “Tough choice. Gimme a minute.”

  Howard thumbed the hammer back with a soft click that made Iggy flinch.

  “All right, you talked me into it. You want a cup of coffee or an Evian or something?”

  Howard shook his head.

  Iggy began to read.

  A chapter into it, he knew he was onto something good.

  Two chapters into it, he felt a funny tingling in his chest, spreading down to his arms. At first he thought he was having a heart attack (it’d be just his luck to croak now), but then he realized that the pressure in his chest was not a coronary. It was love.

  Love for Howard Walpuski.

  At that moment he loved Walpuski more than his wife, his mistress, his kids, or even his sweet old blue-haired mother. For what Walpuski had dumped on his desk this day was not just any old armload of white butcher paper rolls, it was the Godfather of horror novels. From now on it would no longer be Iggy, it would be Mr. Feinwold, driving a Rolls Corniche convertible (with a matching one for his shrew wife) and dripping in gold chains. A Century City office, ten big-breasted bimbos in the reception area, and no more hacks or derelicts for clients. From now on, only people like King, Clancy, Turow, Harris…oh, and Walpuski, of course.

  Iggy hit the intercom button and asked Caroline if she would please cancel the rest of his appointments and run out and buy a bottle of the best champagne she could find.

  Much later, during the Mike Wallace interview, Iggy would sit in his Century City office, light a Cuban cigar with the platinum lighter he’d bought on Rodeo Drive, and say, “Soon as I finished reading those cockamamie rolls of butcher paper, I looked up at Howie and said, ‘Kid, get yourself a good accountant. You’re gonna need one.’ ”

  Howard did indeed need one. Paperback rights alone brought in $1.9 million, the result of a bidding war between two major publishing firms. As was normal, Mr. Feinwold’s ten percent commission came off the top. But what truly puzzled the accountant was the additional ten percent of the gross that was written out as a cashier’s check to God-knows-who. When he questioned Mr. Walpuski as to the identity of the person or persons receiving ten percent of every dollar earned, Howard just shrugged and said, “My typewriter repairman.”

  The accountant, a man with no sense of humor where financial matters were concerned, didn’t so much as crack a smile.

  —

  The book shot to the top of the New York Times Best Sellers list and became a fixture, a literary Maginot Line. Paramount paid a fortune for the rights, and there was talk of De Palma doing the film. Howard’s phone started ringing off the hook. The callers were mostly people he didn’t know, offering congratulations and, more often than not, suspicious-sounding financial schemes. (There’s this condo thing in Brazil, you’d be CRAZY not to get in on this!) Literary agents called, wanting to discuss his future representation. Stock management specialists called, wanting to discuss his future in stocks. Commodities consultants called. Salesmen called. Insurance people called. Real estate brokers called. Shysters called. A woman he’d never heard of called from Waukegan, accusing him of fathering her children and demanding child support. (How could you do this to me? HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO THE CHILDREN?) Even his asshole brother called. (Yeah, I just got the check…Best five-hundred-dollar investment I ever made…Always knew you could do it…Too bad Mom and Dad aren’t alive to see this…Dinner next time I’m in town, someplace expensive, you’ll buy, har, har, har!)

  Howard got an unlisted number.

  Fame and fortune came very quickly to Howard Walpuski, but it seemed the more attention he got, the more reclusive he became. Of course, he was merely trying like hell to be left alone, but his shyness managed to accomplish only the opposite: It sent the curiosity of the media and the public toward a fever pitch. Why was the man Newsweek dubbed “the Poe of the Post-Nuclear Age” hiding from the world? Why did the writer blurbed by Stephen King as “the Full-Tilt Boogie-Man of Horror” refuse to grant interviews? Why was it that whenever the paparazzi jumped out of the bushes and cameras started to flash, Walpuski would turn up his coat collar, shield his haunted eyes, and run away as if something dreadful were at his heels? Why did this man insist on being such an enigma?

  Well, it was the goddamn typewriter, of course, but nobody could have known. The tastes of its resident demon were becoming more ec
lectic as the second novel took shape. No longer would mere steak do, now it was priceless portions of beef loin or prime rib. Once, Lucius actually demanded kangaroo meat. After a terrible argument with his typewriter, Howard spent an hour on the phone, calling around. Much to his surprise (surprise, hell, he was flabbergasted), he discovered a store in Woodland Hills that stocked kangaroo meat, not to mention lion meat, snake meat, weasel meat, antelope meat, moose meat, and the flesh of every bizarre creature he could think of, and some he couldn’t. After spending two hours fighting rush-hour traffic on the Ventura Freeway, Howard brought the kangaroo meat home and fed his Selectric. He also picked up a few pounds of zebra as a surprise, but Lucius hated zebra and refused to touch the stuff. Howard fed it down the garbage disposal, trying not to feel rebuffed.

  It wasn’t the cost, of course. Howard could now afford to buy tons of expensive meat, from now till the sun turned blue. But the fact was, he’d become a slave in his own home. He couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without being back in time to feed Lucius in the early evenings. It was like having a baby with a feeding schedule, and a finicky baby at that. Work or no work, the demon had to eat. This was made clear to Howard in no uncertain terms.

  Howard had always wanted to be a writer, wanted it with every fiber of his soul since he could remember.

  —

  What he wound up being instead was a caterer.

  He sat at his desk, watching the machine chug and hum and crank out line after brilliant line. Lucius was finishing up the last chapter of Howard’s second book, a greatly anticipated event in the literary world. Some unkind souls were predicting he’d be a one-shot fluke and never turn out anything good again, but those people were definitely going to eat crow. His second novel was, if anything, better than the first.

  He let out a weary sigh. His second novel. What a joke.

  The machine stopped. Howard eyed it balefully.

  “Let me guess. Hungry, are we?”

  Time for dinny-winny num-nums! the machine wrote.

  Howard thought he detected a certain gleeful condescension in its words but let it pass. He got up and dutifully retrieved a magnificent beef brisket from the kitchen. He lowered it into the carriage housing with a long-handled barbecue fork, but this time the machine did not chew. Instead, it reflected for a moment, then spat Howard’s $52.37 roast across the room. It bounced off the headboard and did a triple-gainer into the pillows.

  “Hey, what the hell is that all about?”

  Sorry, pal, not good enough.

  “Not good enough! That was fifty bucks’ worth of gourmet meat you just barfed across the room! Don’t you know there are starving typewriters in China?”

  Lemme ’splain something at ’cha. Ever see that dog-food commercial about a puppy and a dog being two totally different animals, each with their own specific dietary needs?

  Howard glared dubiously but nodded. “Go on.”

  Well, think of me as that puppy whose dietary needs change as he gets older.

  “You marking a birthday or something? You want a cake? I’ll run out and get a nice devil’s food.”

  Don’t be an idiot. I stopped counting birthdays before the Crucifixion. The point is, the more work I produce, the more the quality escalates, the more my dietary needs change. Like that puppy, get it?

  “Okay, I get it. So what do you want for dinner?”

  Meat.

  “What the hell do you think that was?” demanded Howard, gesturing wildly at the roast sitting on his bed.

  Unacceptable, is what. See, if I’m gonna continue working, I need something…fresher.

  “You can’t get fresher! That was taken off the cow this morning…” His words trailed into numb silence as the typewriter’s meaning finally sank in.

  I think you’re catching on. By fresh I mean alive.

  Howard tried to speak, tried to say You can’t possibly be serious, but no words came out.

  How about your landlady’s Pomeranian? Toby’s a nasty little fucker, but I bet he’s tasty. Mmm, yum. I can feel the drool start just thinking about him. He’d hold me till I finish the last chapter of this book.

  Howard backed away as the typewriter wrote its message, and by the time it finished he was pressed tight against the wall, the whites of his eyes showing all around. What the machine was demanding was incredible, unspeakable! Totally, monstrously insane! He whirled to the bed, grabbed the roast with both hands, and was forcing it down the fiend’s gullet before it had a chance to type another hideous word.

  “YOU MISERABLE BASTARD! YOU’RE GONNA EAT YOUR DINNER IF I HAVE TO JAM IT ALL THE WAY TO HELL DOWN YOUR FUCKING THROAT, UNDERSTAND? AND THEN YOU’RE GONNA FINISH THIS BOOK!”

  The Selectric rumbled with rage and belched a gaseous ball of flame that knocked Howard across the room and slammed him against the closet door with a bone-jarring THUMP! Then the machine stretched and contracted like an old man about to squirt a stream of tobacco juice into a spittoon, and spat the roast at Howard’s face with the velocity of a cannonball.

  He ducked. It missed him by inches and punched a gaping, ragged hole in the closet door, then burst through the wall into the living room in a huge powdery explosion of plaster.

  Howard rose slowly and gazed through the holes in the door and wall, realizing with a dry, ponderous sort of terror that the roast had damn near removed his head. He could see it now in his living room, nestled in the wreckage of his brand new Mitsubishi forty-five-inch rear-projection TV. It had gone right through the screen.

  If a typewriter could be said to snarl as it wrote, then Walpuski’s typewriter snarled: Get this through your thick skull, fart-brains. Cyril Pratt imprisoned me in here until I knock out three novels, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been enslaved, you dig what I’m saying? I’m not here to do your bidding. I’m here to do a job. That means I work by my rules and you don’t dictate policy!

  The machine paused, as if taking a deep breath.

  Now get out of here and bring me something to eat, or the world will never see Howard Walpuski’s next brilliant novel!

  “I’ll finish it myself!”

  Fuck you, you’re a hack! You’ll never be anything but! Besides, there’s only one ending that’ll work, and you have no idea what it is!

  “Then Walpuski’s great novel will never see print!” spat Howard. He stormed from the room and slammed the door.

  —

  Howard sat facing his ruined TV set, nursing his singed hands. The burns were only superficial; a couple squirts of Bactine and some cotton bandage did the job just fine. As for his eyebrows and lashes…well, they’d grow back eventually.

  He brooded into the night. He could never complete the book by himself, that much was true. The demon had called him a hack, and he saw no sense in denying it. But if finishing his book meant feeding a live animal to his typewriter, even an obnoxious little shit like Naomi Fassbinder’s dog, then the world would never see another word from this writer, no, sir. The planet could do without another scary book; it would still go on spinning. Howard had made enough money off the first novel to live in reasonable comfort for the rest of his life, assuming he invested wisely. So what if they’d call him a one-shot fluke till the day he died? At least he’d go to his grave knowing he’d never fed live animals to an IBM Selectric.

  He grimaced at a new thought. He had finally given in to Iggy’s pleas (Howie, sweetheart, baby, think of the EXPOSURE!) and consented to do a talk show. He had fought it tooth and nail, but Iggy finally wore him down. He was due to appear next week on David Letterman.

  He could see it now. Letterman would grin like a baboon and say something intelligent like, “Gosh, Howie, you horror writers sure are a weird bunch. Tell me, where do you get your ideas?”

  Howard would clear his throat modestly. “Well, Dave, I don’t actually have to worry about that like other writers. You see, I have a little visitor from Hell trapped in my IBM Selectric, and he comes up with all the ideas.”

  �
�Ha, ha, ha!” Letterman would laugh. “You horror writers really are something, you know? Tell me, what sort of work habits do you keep? Are you a writer who needs to discipline himself?”

  “Why, no, Dave, not at all. I don’t actually do the writing. I just feed live chipmunks and bunny rabbits to my typewriter—still kicking and squirming, mind you—and it does all the work for me.”

  “Ha, ha, ha! You darn horror writers!”

  Howard groaned, cradling his face in his bandaged hands. He’d call Iggy first thing in the morning and tell him to cancel that damn appearance. He knew he was in for a hell of an argument—Iggy would bitch and moan and yell, and when that failed, he’d whine and plead and try to guilt him into it—but Howard would just have to stand firm. Walpuski, King of the One-Shot Writers, was not about to go on any talk show. Uh-uh, no way, no how.

  —

  As Howard sat contemplating matters in the living room, the overpowering aroma of tuna fish was emanating from his open bedroom window into the warm summer air. A huge cat was strolling by, minding its own business, and couldn’t help catching a whiff. The animal was a neighborhood tom, a gregarious beast who made his living roaming lazily from door to door, doling out love and purrs in return for the inevitable handout. Not a bad gig. As it so happened, this particular cat had hit up Howard on numerous occasions and never come away empty-handed. And if his good buddy Howard had been careless enough to leave some perfectly good tuna lying about, surely there could be no harm in investigating, yes?

  The cat made his approach through the azalea bed, jumped up onto the sill, and slunk in through the open window onto Howard’s desk. Oh, yeah, this was very promising. The smell of it was making him crazy, but damned if he could pinpoint the source. He started corkscrewing in tight circles, convinced the tuna was hovering behind him, playing cruel games.

  He realized the scent was coming from inside the typewriter. Now, that was odd. He didn’t know what typewriters were for, exactly, but he certainly knew they never had food in them; at least, he had never come across such a thing.

  Well, this must obviously be an exception, no? His pink nose quivered, caressing the aroma, tracking it like radar. He stretched his neck delicately forward and stuck his head into the carriage housing.