Horror Show (34 page)

It took another step, fully visible now, and the shock that shuddered through Landis Woodley's frame would have killed a lesser man.

“Buzzy?” Landis croaked.

“You rang?” Buzzy had always been a big Maynard G. Krebs fan.

“It can't be you,” Landis said. “You're dead! I went to your funeral.”

Buzzy stepped closer. Landis could now see that his flesh was as pale as a fish's belly, discolored here and there with spots of purple decay. His lips were drawn back into an imitation smile, but the flesh surrounding them had deteriorated to the point where a true smile was impossible.

“Quite right,” Buzzy said with a snakelike hiss. Landis supposed that the tissue in his throat and mouth that supported speech had undergone a similar decomposition. The man sounded as if he had advanced cancer of the throat. Landis trembled as though he had stumbled into a walk-in freezer. “But you know, there's dead, and then there's
dead.
”

It hobbled forward, drawing close enough for Landis to see that he was dressed in costume as one of the zombies in
Cadaver
.

“Hey,” Buzzy's voice sizzled, “too bad you don't have a camera rollin'. You could get some killer footage. Better than the stuff we put out, huh?”

Landis swallowed. He didn't know what to say. He was trying to decide if this thing that stood before him was real or not. Could too much alcohol or a strained and swollen heart have possibly produced a hallucination like this? Was it a delusion? Do you talk back to delusions when they ask you questions?

“What do you want?” Landis managed to ask through clenched teeth, deciding to play along with the dream.

“Tonight's the night.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Tonight, Woody. Tonight is D-Day.”

Landis rubbed his eyes. “I need a drink,” he said.

“Yeah, me too. Whatcha got?”

“
You're dead! The dead can't drink!
”

Buzzy laughed. It was the same laugh he had in life, only more phlegmy. Landis's heart began to calm down, and the chest pains began to subside. He could take deeper breaths now.

Buzzy noticed the change and took another step toward him. The heart attack was passing.

“Sure we can, Woody. Haven't you ever heard of dead drunk? You just can't taste it, that's all,” he said. “Taste buds are shot.”

Buzzy stepped closer, leaning in to look at Landis. “You look like shit, you know that?”

“You ain't no matinee idol yourself.”

“I came here to warn you,” Buzzy said, suddenly serious. “Old Johnny D.'s gonna be payin' you a visit, man. I know because he dropped by my pad last year about this time.”

Landis shook his head. “Johnny D.?”

“Yeah, he ain't right. He's pissed, Woody, and he's already killed everybody else on the movie.”

Landis shambled toward a chair and sat down hard. He exhaled sharply as his butt hit the cushion, relieved to be off his feet. Color was returning to his face. “Why?” he asked, swallowing hard. His mouth was as dry as a strip of sandpaper.

“Don't play dumb with me, man. You can't bullshit a bullshitter, you know that.”

Landis felt in his pocket for a cigar, a foolish thing to do right after chest pains. He came up empty. He looked at Buzzy as if he were the manifestation of all his guilt.

“It was your idea, Buzz.”

“Yeah, but it was your movie, and you made the money. He made you famous with that close-up, remember? Legions of horror fans cut their teeth on that scene.”

Landis pointed at Buzzy. “I don't believe you're real. I think you're just a dream.”
Guilt. This is a guilt thing
, he thought.

“Don't change the subject, Daddy-O. He's been savin' you for last. You're the only one left. It's your turn.”

Landis wagged his finger at Buzzy. “You were the one who manipulated him, you were the one who stole him and brought him to the party, you sick fuck! Now you tell me that
I'm
gonna die for something
you
did?”

Buzzy chuckled. “Listen, we were friends. I just thought I'd do a little Jacob Marley impression and warn you about Johnny D. It ain't pleasant, Woody, it really ain't. When he gets you he makes you pay. I personally preferred to blow my brains out, like Devila.”

Landis threw a glance up into Buzzy's rotten face. A flicker of recognition passed over his face. Devila—he hadn't thought of her in years.

Buzzy continued talking, his putrid breath blowing across the room as he spoke. Landis smelled it and turned away.

“It's your choice,” Buzzy hissed. “You can do it yourself and avoid the unpleasantness of having that fucker's bony fingers down your throat.”

“Jesus,” Landis muttered.

“Either way you cut the cake, tonight you're dead meat. Judging by the condition of your heart, you might not even make it that far, which would be a blessing, believe me. He's moaning, Woody, and he don't stop moanin' 'til he gets what he wants.”

Landis thought about the dreadful moans he'd been hearing for the past several days. He blinked at Buzzy and rubbed his eyes.

“You're still tryin' to figure out if I'm real, aren't you?” Buzzy said. “You might be dreamin', you never know. You might be hallucinating. You might even be dead yourself, and on your way to hell. Those chest pains can be a bitch, Woody. You should have that checked out. But consider this. Real or not, it doesn't matter. The warning is true.”

Buzzy shifted. His worm-eaten clothes were hanging off of him like dead skin. He cocked his head and attempted another smile. Landis could see the brown gums receding from his root-baring teeth.

The thing spoke again.

“Hey, look, I'm wasting my time here. Two things, okay? One—there's no escape from this thing. Johnny D.'s not human, Woody. He's like a demon or something. He's got a fuckin' snake head. Can you believe that? The thing has no soul. It can't exist in either world.

“When I stole him from the morgue, he was already cursed. He can't die. No matter how decayed his body becomes, and believe me, it's just about beef jerky now, he still rises up from the grave. I made a big mistake when I chose him for the scene, didn't I?”

Landis nodded slowly. He was numb and afraid.

Buzzy continued, “Two—and I know you're gonna shit when you hear this one.” Buzzy paused. “He's buried in your basement.”

Landis looked back, a rage crossed his brow like a flaming arrow. “What?”

“Remember when you told me to get rid of him after the cast party? Well, I figured the quickest way was to bury him under the house, down in the crawl space.”

“You what?” Landis stood up, forgetting all about his heart attack. “You asshole! I wish I could kill you some more,” he shouted, stepping toward Buzzy menacingly. His hands were fisted and he had blood in his eye.

“You're an amazing person, Woody. A dead man comes to warn you that you're gonna die, and you try to kill him even more than he already is. You're a real piece of work!”

“You buried him under my house? Jesus Christ, after all the things I did for you! How could you? That's it! You're outa here!” he shouted in a rage. “But first I'm gonna kick your ass!”

Landis lumbered toward Buzzy, his hands out and ready to grab. The thing that was Buzzy Haller whispered, “Fuck you. Go to hell,” and faded into thin air. Landis walked right through him.

When he realized that Buzzy was gone he bellowed at the top of his lungs, “
Asshole!
”

27

Clint Stockbern put fresh batteries in his cassette tape recorder, threw a few spare tapes on the seat, and cranked the Volkswagen engine. It started reluctantly, protesting in a constricted, metallic, German voice. A little Hitler, it was trained against its will to haul his pimply American ass around town. Friction warmed the metal and the motor relaxed into a predictable pattern.

The “Shit Happens” bumper sticker had been partially peeled off by the weather and now it simply read, “—it Happens.” That was all one could read as the billow of blue smoke farted out the tailpipe and he pulled out into traffic.

He was going back. This time he had his camera, an inexpensive autoflash that he sometimes used to immortalize his friends. He wanted some pictures of Woodley.

The excitement was hard to control. For him, it was the culmination of all his work. He was nervous and more than a little afraid.

The prospect of going back into the creepy old basement and watching those grainy black-and-white films of real corpses, while something moaned and groaned under his feet, made him sweat. But it was more than that. It was the scare factor.

The old man scared him. The house scared him. The movies scared him. The moaning scared him. Hell, the whole situation scared him, and that was part of the thrill. He had the same feeling that he got when he was going to see a really great horror movie that he knew was going to blow him away. Anticipation. It always drove him nuts.

The goose bumps he felt when he visualized sitting down in the projection room were delicious. He had been waiting all day for this and now it was time. The research he'd done primed him, sharpened his curiosity to a razor's edge.

This time he found the house without any trouble and parked on the tree-lined street without incident.

The sun had gone down and the few stars visible above LA twinkled fiercely through the thermal induction layer. He descended the steps casually, confident that this time he'd not be turned away.

He rang the doorbell six times, knocked twice, and was about to step back when the viewing grate opened and the haunted eyes of Landis Woodley peered through.

“You again,” he said. Not a question, not a statement, not anything, just his number being called.

“Yes, Mr. Woodley.”

The door swung inward, the hinges as dry as sawdust. They sang a long melancholy note that ended in a grunt. Clint stepped through the portal and back into the nightmare. His senses tingled wonderfully.

The smell of bats. The scent of cigar.

Landis looked different. The man was as pale and drawn as a ghost. He looked ill. The circles beneath his eyes were darker and even more sunken than before and his walk was less steady.

“Are you okay?”

Without answering, Landis led the way through the house to the basement stairs, and put his hand on the doorknob. Since his chest-constricting panic attack that afternoon, Landis had not left the kitchen except to check the floor to see if the burning paper plates had been a dream. Twice he checked and twice he saw the ashes. Then the pattern repeated; some whiskey, a cigar, another catnap, back again. The color had yet to return to his face, and his hands still shook.

The basement door opened and allowed the musty, foul-smelling air to billow into the hall. Clint's nostrils flared as the aroma of decay assailed him. The basement smelled bad; worse, he thought, than before. A light switch clicked, and an inadequate bulb illuminated somewhere below.

Landis went first, Clint following behind, watching the stooped back and dry skin of the old man's elbows as he descended. The passageway was narrow. Huge dust balls hugged the base of each step. Clint looked down, studying the angle. He didn't want to stumble here.

They passed through the owls' room, the smell of their fecal matter pungent, and Clint realized that that was a primary source of the odor he smelled when the door was open. But there was something else, something worse.

The second door opened, a light switch was thrown, and the projection room came to life before him. It stood like a torture chamber. In the back of Clint's mind he realized that this was the room
with the fear in it
.

“I got some stuff out,” Landis said. “Unbelievable stuff. You'll see. Take a seat in the front row there, and I'll get the show started.”

Clint settled into the hard wooden theater seat and waited. He put his tape recorder in his lap and turned it on, wanting to get any descriptive dialogue the old man might utter. A minute later, the lights went down and the screen glowed smoky silver.

The flicker of film started and a numbers sequence counted down to the first outtake. Clint recognized the
Cadaver
set. There was the great Luboff, hunched over a table, Tad Kingston behind him. The corpse on the table was real, Clint knew. It was the same dead body that appeared in most of the morgue scenes, the one from the famous close-up. The first scene showed Buzzy behind the corpse, obviously manipulating it. The second scene was Luboff and Buzzy playing around with the corpse. Luboff appeared to be—and Clint had to look twice to confirm his suspicion—
dancing with it
.

What kind of sicko was this guy? Clint thought. Behind him, backlit by the projector, Landis read his mind and made a comment to that effect. “Old Jonathon had a strange sense of humor.”

Clint saw the window of opportunity open and launched his first question like a scud missile, hoping it would acquire a decent target. “Whose corpse was that? Did you ever check?”

Landis moved closer to the projector, his face lit from below now as the powerful bulb inside the big machine glowed savagely. It did frightening things to his face. He looked like a still from one of his own movies. Clint was enthralled.

“Whose corpse?” The light, shining up through Landis's eyebrows, made weird patterns in his forehead. “Why do you ask?”

Suddenly they were both on guard.

Landis, naturally suspicious, narrowed his eyes and stared at Clint. “Huh?” he demanded.

Clint moved defensively. “I don't know, it just occurred to me, that's all. It's a hell of a thing to be a movie star after you're dead. I thought maybe you kept track of the name.” He tried to sound as cheerful and upbeat as he could.

“It was unmarked. A John Doe. Buzzy called him Johnny D.”