New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird Part 40

"Water?" she asked, splashing.

He shrugged. "On occasion."

Her slit mouth opened in a smile, showing rows of needle-sharp teeth.

"You're a hit, man," said Charlie. "You're in the Family."

Leech raised his hand. "That's an honor, Charles," he said, "but I can't accept. I provide services, for a fee to be negotiated, but I don't take permanent positions."

Charlie was puzzled for a moment, brows narrowed. Then he smiled. "If that's your scene, it's cool. But are you The One Who Will Open the Earth? Can you help us find the Subterranean Sea?"

Leech considered, and shook his head, "No. That's too deep for me."

Charlie made fists, bared teeth, instantly angry.

"But I know who can," soothed Leech.

The movie people were losing the light. As the sun sank, long shadows stretched on reddish scrub, rock-shapes twisted into ogres. The cinematographer shot furiously, gabbling in semi-Hungarian about "magic hour," while Sam and Al worried vocally that nothing would come out on the film.

Leech sat in a canvas folding chair and watched.

Three young actresses, dressed like red Indians, were pushing Junior around, tormenting him by withholding a bottle of firewater. Meanwhile, the movie moon-a shining fabric disc-was rising full, just like the real moon up above the frame-line.

The actresses weren't very good. Beside Sadie and Squeaky and Ouisch and the others, the Acid Squaws of the Family, they lacked authentic dropout savagery. They were Vegas refugees, tottering on high heels, checking their make-up in every reflective surface.

Junior wasn't acting any more.

"Go for the bottle," urged Al.

Junior made a bear-lunge, missed a girl who pulled a face as his sweat-smell cloud enveloped her, and fell to his knees. He looked up like a puppy with progeria, eager to be patted for his trick.

There was water in Junior's eyes. Full moons shone in them.

Leech looked up. Even he felt the tidal tug.

"I don't freakin' believe this," stage-whispered Charlie, in Leech's ear. "That cat's gone."

Leech pointed again at Junior.

"You've tried human methods, Charles. Logic and maps. You need to try other means. Animals always find water. The moon pulls at the sea. That man has surrendered to his animal. He knows the call of the moon. Even a man who is pure in heart . . . "

"That was just in the movies."

"Nothing was ever just in the movies. Understand this. Celluloid writes itself into the unconscious, of its makers as much as its consumers. Your revelations may come in music. His came in the cheap seats."

The Wolf Man howled happily, bottle in his hug. He took a swig and shook his greasy hair like a pelt.

The actresses edged away from him.

"Far out, man," said Charlie, doubtfully.

"Far out and deep down, Charles."

"That's a wrap for today," called Al.

"I could shoot twenty more minutes with this light," said the cameraman.

"You're nuts. This ain't art school in Budapest. Here in America, we shoot with light, not dark."

"I make it fantastic."

"We don't want fantastic. We want it on film so you can see it."

"Make a change from your last picture, then," sneered the cinematographer. He flung up his hands and walked away.

Al looked about as if he'd missed something.

"Who are you, mister?" he asked Leech. "Who are you really?"

"A student of human nature."

"Another weirdo, then."

He had a flash of the director's body, much older and s.h.a.ggier, bent in half and shoved into a whirlpool bath, wet concrete sloshing over his face.

"Might I give you some free advice?" Leech asked. "Long-term advice. Be very careful when you're hiring odd-job men."

"Yup, a weird weirdo. The worst kind."

The director stalked off. Leech still felt eyes on him.

Sam, the producer, had stuck around the set. He did the negotiating. He also had a demented enthusiasm for the kind of pictures they made. Al would rather have been shooting on the studio lot with Barbra Streisand or William Holden. Sam liked anything that gave him a chance to hire forgotten names from the matinees he had loved as a kid.

"You're not with them? Charlie's Family?"

Leech said nothing.

"They're fruit-loops. Harmless, but a pain the keister. The hours we've lost putting up with these kids. You're not like that. Why are you here?"

"As they say in the Westerns, 'just pa.s.sing through.' "

"You like Westerns? n.o.body does much anymore, unless they're made in Spain by Italians. What's wrong with this picture? We'd love to be able to shoot only Westerns. Cowboys are a h.e.l.l of a lot easier to deal with than h.e.l.ls' Angels. Horses don't break down like bikes."

"Would you be interested in coming to an arrangement? The problems you've been having with the Family could be ended."

"What are you, their agent?"

"This isn't Danegeld, or a protection racket. This is a fair exchange of services."

"I pay you and your hippies don't fudge up any more scenes? I could just get a sheriff out here and run the whole crowd off, then we'd be back on schedule. I've come close to it more'n once."

"I'm not interested in money, for the moment. I would like to take an option on a day and a night of time from one of your contractees."

"Those girls are actresses, buddy, not whatever you might think they are. Each and every one of 'em is SAG."

"Not one of the actresses."

"Sheesh, I know you longhairs are into everything, but . . . "

"It's your werewolf I wish to subcontract."

"My what? Oh, Junior. He's finished on this picture."

"But he owes you two days."

"How the h.e.l.l did you know that? He does. I was going to have Al shoot stuff with him we could use in something else. There's this Blood picture we need to finish. Blood of Whatever. It's had so many t.i.tles, I can't keep them in my head. Ghastly Horror . . . Dracula Meets Frankenstein . . . Fiend with the Psychotropic Brain . . . Blood a-Go-Go. . . . At the moment, it's mostly home movies shot at a dolphinarium. It could use monster scenes."

"I would like to pick up the time. As I said, a day and a night."

"Have you ever done any acting? I ask because our vampire is gone. He's an accountant and it's tax season. In long shot, you could pa.s.s for him. We could give you a horror star name, get you on the cover of Famous Monsters. How about 'Zoltan Lukoff?' 'Mongo Carnadyne?' 'Dexter DuCaine?' "

"I don't think I have screen presence."

"But you can call off the bimbos in the buggies? Damp down all activities so we can finish our flick and head home?"

"That can be arranged."

"And Junior isn't going to get hurt? This isn't some Satanic sacrifice deal? Say, that's a great t.i.tle. Satan's Sacrifice. Must register it. Maybe Satan's b.l.o.o.d.y Sacrifice. Anything with blood in the t.i.tle will gross an extra twenty percent. That's free advice you can take to the bank and cash."

"I simply want help in finding something. Your man can do that."

"Pal, Junior can't find his own pants in the morning even if he's slept in them. He's still got it on film, but half the time he doesn't know what year it is. And, frankly, he's better off that way. He still thinks he's in Of Mice and Men."

"If you remade that, would you call it Of Mice and b.l.o.o.d.y Men?"

Sam laughed. "Of Naked Mice and b.l.o.o.d.y Men."

"Do we have a deal?"

"I'll talk to Junior."

"Thank you."

After dark, the two camps were pitched. Charlie's Family were around the ranch house, cl.u.s.tering on the porch for a meal prepared and served by the girls, which was not received enthusiastically. Constant formulated elaborate sentences of polite and constructive culinary criticism which made head chef Lynette Alice, a.k.a. Squeaky, glare as if she wanted to drown him in soup.

Leech had another future moment, seeing between the seconds. Drowned bodies hung, arms out like B-movie monsters, faces pale and shriveled. Underwater zombies dragged weighted boots across the ocean floor, clothes flapping like torn flags. Finned priests called the faithful to prayer from the steps of sunken temples to Dagon and Cthulhu and the Fisherman Jesus.

Unnoticed, he spat out a stream of seawater which sank into the sand.

The Family scavenged their food, mostly by random shoplifting in markets, and were banned from all the places within an easy reach. Now they made do with whatever canned goods they had left over and, in some cases, food parcels picked up from the Chatsworth post office sent by suburban parents they despised but tapped all the time. Mom and Dad were a resource, Charlie said, like a seam of mineral in a rock, to be mined until it played out.

The situation was exacerbated by cooking smells wafting up from the film camp, down by the bunkhouse. The movie folk had a catering budget. Junior presided over a cauldron full of chili, his secret family recipe doled out to the cast and crew on all his movies. Leech gathered that some of Charlie's girls had exchanged b.l.o.w.j.o.bs for bowls of that chili, which they then dutifully turned over to their lord and master in the hope that he'd let them lick out the crockery afterwards.

Everything was a matter of striking a deal. Service for payment.

Not hungry, he sat between the camps, considering the situation. He knew what Janice Marsh wanted, what Charlie wanted, what Al wanted, and what Sam wanted. He saw arrangements that might satisfy them all.

But he had his own interests to consider.

The more concrete the coming flood was in his mind, the less congenial an apocalypse it seemed. It was unsubtle, an upheaval that epitomized the saw about throwing out the baby with the bathwater. He envisioned more intriguing pathways through the future. He had already made an investment in this world, in the ways that it worked and played, and he was reluctant to abandon his own long-range plans to hop aboard a Technicolor spectacular starring a cast of thousands, scripted by Lovecraft, directed by DeMille, and produced by Mad Eyes Charlie and the Freakin' Family Band.

His favored apocalypse was a tide of Mc.l.i.tter, a thousand channels of television noise, a complete scrambling of politics and entertainment, proud-to-be-a-breadhead b.u.t.tons, bright packaging around tasteless and nutrition-free product, audiovisual media devoid of anything approaching meaning, bellies swelling and IQs atrophying. In his preferred world, as in the songs, people bowed and prayed to the neon G.o.d they made, worked for Matthew and Son, were dedicated followers of fashion, and did what Simon said.

He was in a tricky position. It was a limitation on his business that he could rarely set his own goals. In one way, he was like Sam's vampire: He couldn't go anywhere without an invitation. Somehow, he must further his own cause, while living up to the letter of his agreements.

Fair enough.

On his porch, Charlie unslung a guitar and began to sing, pouring revelations over a twelve-bar blues. Adoring faces looked up at him, red-fringed by the firelight.

From the movie camp came an answering wail.

Not coyotes, but stuntmen-led by the raucous Riff, whose singing had been dubbed in West Side Story-howling at the moon, whistling over emptied Jack Daniel's bottles, clanging tin plates together.

Charlie's girls joined in his chorus.

The film folk fired off blank rounds, and sang songs from the Westerns they'd been in. "Get Along Home, Cindy, Cindy." "Gunfight at O.K. Corral." "The Code of the West."

Charlie dropped his acoustic, and plugged in an electric. The chords sounded the same, but the ampage somehow got into his reedy voice, which came across louder.

He sang sea shanties.

That put the film folk off for a while.

Charlie sang about mermaids and sunken treasures and the rising, rising waters.

He wasn't worse than many acts Leech had signed to his record label. If it weren't for this apocalypse jazz, he might have tried to make a deal with Charlie for his music. He'd kept back the fact that he had pull in the industry. Apart from other considerations, it'd have made Charlie suspicious. The man was naive about many things, but he had a canny s...o...b..z streak. He scorned all the trappings of a doomed civilisation, but bought Daily Variety and Billboard on the sly. You don't find Phil Spector wandering in the desert eating horse-t.u.r.ds. At least, not so far.

As Charlie sang, Leech looked up at the moon.

A shadow fell over him, and he smelled the Wolf Man.

"Is your name George?" asked the big man, eyes eager.

"If you need it to be."

"I only ask because it seems to me you could be a George. You got that Georgey look, if you know what I mean."

"Sit down, my friend. We should talk."