Читать книгу Shallow Graves - Rev. Goat Carson - Страница 4

IT WAS A DARK DRIVE into the Hollywood Hills and the late October night was already playing trick or treat with my mind. I was on my way to see Burns Sawyer, the legendary horror film director, at his request, which made me uneasy. The combination of Paps’ note and Sawyer’s habit of having only one friend at a time was a bad omen. I had been that one friend for several years when, as he put it, his “butt hole was snapping just inches above the pavement.” Sawyer had just about invented the “splatter flick” back in the early sixties. He rode the wave of notoriety from Texas to Hollywood then lost it all in the shallows of low-budget independents with producers who were determined to explode the myth of his genius. He had also lost a lot of money trying to make a starlet out of his girlfriend. “The rubber tits and pug nose were just the tip of the iceberg,” he would lament during those pre-dawn talk sessions that he called “story conferences.” Sawyer, you see, did not trust the night and could never relax until the sun came up. This town is full of witches just waiting for me to close my eyes so they can, varuuuup, suck my soul straight to hell!” Old Dad, as I called him, was a big believer in evil forces. He was known as a horror film director; movie society took for granted that he was a dedicated Satanist. At parties the darker element of this society gravitated to him, offering him admittance to their covens, hinting how much he’d enjoy their rituals. All of this scared the shit out of Old Dad. He fancied himself a great comedic talent who had only done that famous horror flick as a way to get quick bucks and instant recognition. It had worked; he had gotten both, but was still paying for it.

My headlights lit up the eyes of the Sawyer family cat as I pulled into the driveway. At first the cat didn’t move then suddenly he hissed and ran crazily toward the house. The cat looked like it was on acid as it zig- zagged its way to the front door, dodging the night phantoms. It missed the door and went scratching off the porch, down into the bushes below. I rang the bell. Old Dad’s son, Stony, answered the door.

“Have you seen my cat?” He asked, as we walked into the living room. Stony was about fifteen now, tall for his age, with long brown hair and a freckled face that hadn’t changed much in the five years I’d known him.

“Yeah I saw your cat; he looked freaked out to me. You haven’t been experimenting on that poor cat again, have you?”

Stony blushed. “Naw,” he grinned, “he’s been in ‘Nam; Captain Cat’s just having flashbacks of the Tet Offensive. You should see the great war movie I made with him on my 8mm.”

Walking into Old Dad’s house was like stepping into somebody’s nightmare. Props from his movies lined the walls, dismembered ugly things mounted like trophies.

“I’ll tell Dad you’re here.”

Stony bolted up the stairs to Sawyer’s bedroom, which we’d always called “the sanctuary.”

“Dad says come on up.”

Stony passed me on the stairs as I headed up.

“See if you can talk him into watching a movie with me later.”

The sanctuary had always had a unique odor. It was fainter now that he could afford a maid, but it was still there: the smell of decay.

“Come on in here, man.”

Dad was sitting on his bed, as usual, surrounded by used tissues and empty pop bottles. He was a dark heavy man, black eyes, thick beard, but with a strange air of jolliness about him: Satan’s Santa Claus.

“Come over here and have a seat, man, I was just filling up the pipe. Listen, Katey,” he turned to the thin young “actress” seated at his feet, “give the Professor and I a little slack time here, would ya?”

Katey rubbed her nose a little then stood up and stalked out of the room, leaving a trail of expensive perfume to do battle with the smell of death. Burns called me the Professor because during our working partnership I had always done such detailed research on all the grisly topics covered in the screenplays. From Jim Jones and John Wayne Gacy to Voodoo and Vampires, I had a talent for digging up unusual tidbits. Sawyer’s nickname, “Old Dad” had come from my Jim Jones research: it had been one of Jim’s favorite handles.

“What’d you want to see me about?”

“Oh, nothing in particular, I just wanted to see how you were getting along. Say, did you know I was starting another movie real soon?”

“Yeah?”

“Righto man, big, big budget too. Biggest yet.”

“So, now you can pay me that thirty-five grand you owe me!”

“Heh-heh, well not just yet man, I inked the deal today but I won’t see any real money till we start production—next year. I could give ya’ maybe fifty, sixty bucks here if you’re running tight.”

He rolled over a little on one hip to give his hand enough room to reach into his pocket and pulled out a small wad of crumpled bills. He twisted his stocky frame to hide the amount of his pocket money from me and selected a bill from the wad. He tugged hard at the bill, wrestling it from the others in his hand. It was a gesture I had seen many times before, one hand wanted to keep the money so badly that the other hand had to actually struggle to pry it loose.

“Here go, man.”

He handed me a fifty and quickly shoved the wad back in his pocket. The money returned to his pocket a lot easier than it had come out.

“Listen man, you remember that witchcraft thing you were looking into for me a few years back?”

“The one about that actress with that coven up here in the hills that you still owe me for?”

“Heh-heh. Righto, well, it’s a lot bigger than we discovered and it ain’t just candles and chanting.”

Old Dad’s eyes narrowed; there was a taste of fear in them—just behind the twinkle.

“And by big I mean big names, powerful people, dark, dark goingson.”

He paused, nodding his head. He put a pinch of grass into his small brass pipe and lifted it to his lips.

“Dark things,” he repeated, then fired up the bowl and took a long deep pull. He handed me the pipe which now contained nothing but pale gray ashes.

“Here take a hit,” he muttered, holding in his toke.

You didn’t get high smoking with Old Dad, but that was okay because usually you didn’t want to be high and hear what he had to say and tonight was definitely no exception.

“Hollywood is a decadent, old whore,” he philosophized, “and there’s only one way to make it in this town and that’s you gotta kiss the old whore’s ass! Yep, kiss it right, dead square in the middle. I told you that years ago but you didn’t listen. Now I’m directing my third feature and you’re still waiting to get paid. Do you know why? ‘Cause you ain’t got down on your knees and puckered up.”

This was Old Dad’s version of a pep talk. If I let him, he would drag on for hours.

“I hate to interrupt you but I’ve heard this speech before and unless you got something you’re building up to …”

“Damn right I’m building up to something! Witchcraft! The Oracula Malefactorum! Right here in the Hollywood Hills!”

The Oracula Malefactorum was the ancient ceremony that sealed the witch’s pact with the devil. It involved kissing the devil’s asshole. The significance of the ritual came from the medieval concept that man was the image of God. Satan, therefore, was God’s excrement, hell was God’s bowels, so the gate of hell – God’s asshole. Hence, the witch’s fascination with the excretory system and its products. Aleister Crowley lived for many months in Mexico on the dung of diseased prostitutes in order to gain the Serpent’s Kiss—a bite so toxic he could cause sickness just by breaking the skin with his sharpened canines. In his letter, Paps had mentioned the children’s peculiar attitude towards feces.

I was adding these things up in my mind while Old Dad, who had stood for his declaration of witchcraft, settled back down to his bed and his pipe. He took another deep pull and handed me the burned out bowl.

“Do you know what evil is?”

He spoke to himself more than to me.

“Evil is a wind, it’s like the jet stream in the atmosphere, the atmost- fear. The human spirit is like a wing set in that stream of power and the tilt of the wing determines its physical manifestation, do you follow me?”

He didn’t wait for an answer.

“You remember that fat kid down in Miama, now that’s a good example, you see, his wing was tipped up, like this,”

Old Dad held his hand at a forty-five degree angle.

“ …into the stream causing the power to swirl around and around and create this big, fat ball of greed at the lowest possible level of eating and shitting.”

“This IS leading somewhere, right?”

Old Dad chuckled to himself then slowly turned and stared that dead stare of his right into my eyes, as if he were looking for the back of my head.

“I’m about to enter a very powerful part of that jet stream of evil, man, I’ve been invited by people I cannot refuse.”

His lips trembled as he spoke now.

“I want you to go with me. Your wing is set straight, like this.”

He held his hand level.

“Evil flows over and past you, for some reason, like it doesn’t know you’re there. I need you with me, to hold me level.” He turned back to his pipe, “The stream is powerful enough, where we’re going, to flip me over and suck me right down.”

“And where are WE going?”

Old Dad smiled to himself, took another pull and passed me the empty bowl.

“There’s a coven up here in the hills—big time, heavy names, people who run this town—and I’ve been invited to a landmark meeting: THE FEAST OF THE BEAST. Only happens every twenty-eight years. I can’t imagine what it’s gonna be like but I do know that at their regular weekly meetings they have a human sacrifice.”

I knew I didn’t want to be stoned when I heard what he had to say.

“Wait a minute, you’re telling me wealthy, intelligent, highly-placed people, in the show business community, are involved in some crazy Mansonesque rituals up here in the hills?”

“Manson was small potatoes. I told you, this ain’t candles and chanting. This is not a test. I been INVITED.” Old Dad looked at me, slowly smiling that demented Santa Claus smile of his. “Well, can I count on you?”

“What’d they invite you to do—bring the victim?”

Old Dad laughed like a bowl full of jelly, “Nooooo…No…man… They get drifters for that—pretty little teenage runaways, milk carton kids, unwanted babies, nameless, faceless.” He scooted over on the bed and put his arm around my shoulders. “You hurt me by saying that; why you’re family, you damn near raised Stony.” His touch was not comforting. “No—I need an anchor here, that’s all. Here, let me fill that bowl up for ya’ with some of this good-good Highwayman, four-hundred smackers an ounce smoke.” He is planning to kill me, I thought.

“You want a little tootski?”

I wanted a little outski. I began planning a graceful exit as Old Dad produced a mirror, from under the bed, with rows of white powder on it. He did a couple of quick snorts and offered me the mirror.

“Listen man, research Satanic rituals for me and give me some background on this stuff; I can’t afford to look stupid here. Watta’ ya’ say?”

“Not for love or money.”

Old Dad solemnly withdrew the mirror; my answer had offended him. I stood up just as Katey returned—rubbing the radar in her nose that had told her the lines were out again.

“Am I interrupting something?” She purred as she settled down at Old Dad’s feet.

“No, I was just leaving.”

“Do that research for me, man, I’ll pay ya’ good money.”

“Right.”

I kept moving toward the door.

“That party’s coming up real soon.” I turned back to Old Dad, Katey had her nose buried in the white stuff; Old Dad was patting her head gently. He looked up at me and smiled, “Call me.”

The ride back down the hill seemed darker than the ride up. Maybe it should have. I kept hearing moans and wails coming from the black hills, sounds that told me it was time to get out of Dodge. I felt like a magi leaving Herod’s palace with the screams of the slaughtered innocents ringing in his psychic ears, hoping to find another way home.