Seeds Of Fear (3 page)

The girl smiled. "No, but I'm her daughter, Lori," she said. She stared at him for a moment, waiting. "Uh, can I do something for you?"

"My name's Ted Culman," he said, still stunned by how much she looked like Fawn. "I'm a big fan of your mother. I wonder if I could talk to her for a minute, if it wouldn't be too much trouble?"

The smile faltered on Lori's face and she looked a little sad. "I'm sorry, but that's impossible."

"Please," said Ted, sensing that something was wrong. "Just a couple minutes and I won't bother her again."

"You don't understand," said Lori Hale. She hesitated for a moment, her eyes full of pain. "My mother ... she's dead. She passed away about a year ago."

Ted felt as if someone had sucker-punched him in the gut. "Oh, no," he muttered. "But. . . how?"

"Cancer," she told him.

Ted took a step back, his face pale. For a moment he felt as if he might pass out.

He heard the girl unhook the screen door and open it. "Are you all right?" she asked, concerned.

"I... I don't know," he said truthfully. Even though Fawn Hale had died in practically every movie she had been featured in, Ted had a difficult time accepting the fact that she was actually dead in real life. "Could I sit down somewhere for a minute?"

"Sure," said Lori Hale. "Come on inside."

Ted accepted her invitation and was soon sitting on a threadbare couch in a dusty parlor. The room was decorated with antique furniture, and the walls alternated between old family photographs and glossy eight-by-ten stills of Fawn in her prime, most of them showing off more of her teeth and tonsils than anything else.

When some of the color had returned to Ted's face, the young woman seemed to relax a little. "Are you sure you're okay?" she asked again.

"Yeah," replied Ted. "I was just surprised, that's all."

"And disappointed, too," said Lori. "I see it in your face. Just how far did you come to see my mother?"

"San Diego," he said.

"California? No wonder you're so upset." She started toward an adjoining hallway. "I'll go to the kitchen and fetch us something to drink. I just fixed a pitcher of iced tea. How does that sound?"

Ted's throat felt parched. "Great," he replied.

A minute later, Lori returned with a tall glass of iced tea in each hand. When she entered the room, Ted couldn't help but admire the girl's figure, clad only in a halter top and a pair of denim cutoffs. She possessed practically the same body that her mother had in her youth: perfectly formed breasts, graceful hips, and long, muscular legs.

Lori seemed to sense his attention, but didn't seem to mind. She sat down next to Ted and slipped a cold glass in his hand. "There you go," she said. She watched as he gulped several swallows of tea. "So you were a fan of Mama's?"

"Yes," said Ted. The tea was a little strong for his taste, but it seemed to calm him down. "I have about every film she ever made on video."

"Really?" asked Lori, impressed. "Even
Demon Conquerors from Mars?"

Ted laughed. He knew the film she was talking about. It was a dreadful science-fiction flick made on a shoestring budget of two thousand dollars and featured some really horrendous special effects, such as a sinister robot constructed from an oil drum, and a magnified iguana attacking a shoddy model of a small town. If there was one shining point about the movie, it was the appearance of Fawn as an unsuspecting diner waitress who falls victim to the Martian robots and their oversized lizard.

"I do have that one," he said.

"That was one of my favorites," said Lori. She smiled. "You know, I do appreciate you coming. Mama would've appreciated it, too."

"I'm just sorry I couldn't have met her," he said. Ted thought of the way he had exploited the actress in his own sleazy fantasies and suddenly felt ashamed.

"She would've enjoyed talking to you," Lori told him. "She liked talking about her career." A strange expression surfaced in the woman's eyes. "Well, most of it, that is."

Ted drank his tea, a question suddenly coming to mind. He wondered whether he should ask it or not, then figured it was safe to do so. "Exactly why did your mother retire, Lori? I've read about everything I could dig up on her, but I've never been able to find out the reason."

Lori avoided his gaze at first. "There was a scandal."

"Scandal?"

"Yes," she went on. "It happened during her last picture,
Night of the Jungle Zombies.
They had finished up a day's shooting on location near Los Padres National Park. It was after dark and Mama was walking through the forest back to her trailer. Before she got there, someone jumped out of the shadows and attacked her." Lori paused for a moment. "She was raped."

Ted couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Did she know who it was?"

"Yes, although she never told anyone," said Lori. "It was a bit player in the picture. A guy by the name of Trevor Hall."

"Trevor Hall," repeated Ted. The name sounded familiar, but Ted had difficulty matching it with a face. There had been hundreds of bit players in the industry back then, some only lasting a picture or two.

Lori stared at Ted for a long moment, watchful. Then she continued. "After the attack, Mama found out that she was pregnant," said Lori. "She decided to leave Hollywood and come home, to this house that once belonged to my grandparents. She had dreams of going back to California and taking up where she left off, but she never did. I was born and that was the end of it."

"Oh, I see," said Ted. He raised the tea glass to his lips, but it seemed strangely heavy in his hand. "You know, it wasn't your fault," he assured her. "It was that Hall jerk who screwed it up for her."

Anger suddenly flared in Lori's eyes. "My father was never as bad as folks made out," she snapped. "He was just. . . misunderstood."

Ted was surprised. He couldn't understand the outburst, especially considering what the man had done to her mother. Ted couldn't figure out why he was beginning to feel so exhausted, either. He guessed the long drive was catching up to him.

Almost as quickly as her anger had surfaced, it was gone. She smiled, eyeing him in that odd, attentive way of hers. "You haven't told me about yourself, Ted," she said. "What do you do for a living?"

Ted's head began to swim. His eyelids felt heavier than lead, as if they could hardly stay open. "Uh, what did you say?" he asked.

"I asked what you do for a living," she repeated. Her smile was fixed, unwavering.

Ted had to think for a moment before he could answer. "Nothing yet," he said. His words seemed to flow as slowly as molasses. "I'm still in college." He looked over at Lori. Two of her wavered before his eyes. "What do you do?" he asked softly.

"I make movies," she said.

Before he knew it, Ted could no longer sit up. He slumped forward and rolled off the sofa, onto the parlor's hardwood floor. He looked up at Lori, expecting to see a look of alarm on her pretty face. But it wasn't there. Instead there was a peculiar look of satisfaction.

"I make movies," she repeated, as if making sure that he had heard. "Just like my mother." Her smile broadened a little, curling wickedly. "And my father."

Then her face turned into a blur and faded to black.

Ted was in the midst of a dream. One of the dreams that starred Fawn Hale.

He was on a big round bed that seemed to take up the entire room. He was naked, except for his glasses. Even then, his vision was a little hazy, like a camera fitted with a soft-focus filter.

The mattress sagged a little as someone joined him. It was Fawn Hale, also naked, her platinum hair gleaming in the harsh glare of a klieg light. She wore the sunglasses she had worn in
Curse of the Swamp Monster,
the ones with the white frames. The lenses were pitch black, impenetrable.

Without a word, she crept across the bed toward him with the predatory grace of a cat. He moaned when she reached him and her flesh touched his. A tiny grin crossed her lips as she moved over his midsection and mounted his hips. Ted stared up at those wondrous breasts. They stared back at him, transfixing him, like the eyes of a Svengali. Fawn purred down deep in her throat, then lowered herself. Ted groaned. They joined effortlessly.

The platinum-haired beauty seemed to ride him forever, her head thrown back, her huge breasts bouncing in time to the rhythm. Ted found himself to be powerless. He simply lay there and let the actress have her way with him.

Eventually Fawn could contain herself no longer. Her thighs tightened around his waist and her pace began to quicken. Ted felt himself begin to climax, too. The mounting pleasure in his groin seemed to clear his head a little and the sluggish, weighty feeling began to lift.

That was when he saw the black object at the far end of the bed. It was a video camera on a tripod. Aimed straight at him and Fawn.

Ted remembered something Lori had told him. I
make movies.

Suddenly he knew that he wasn't dreaming.

And there was something else. Something that he had failed to recall before. Trevor Hall. He knew who he was now. Hall had not been a bit player, but a stuntman. A hulking stuntman big enough to play a convincing monster. And he had played them, too: werewolves, robots, swamp monsters. But that was not all that Ted remembered about Hall.

The stuntman had been a serial killer. In the early seventies he had been convicted of brutally raping and murdering several dozen women over the span of two decades. The evidence had been what had bought him a seat in the electric chair: an entire library of sixteen-millimeter reels Hall had filmed himself. Snuff films of those he had violated and slaughtered.

Ted stared up at the woman on top of him. He reached
up slowly, his arms as heavy as concrete. He removed the white-framed shades. Lori's eyes sparkled down at him. They looked as crazy as the photos Ted had seen of her father. Gleaming with a fiendish satisfaction that was a mixture of ecstasy and blood-lust.

He reached out for the platinum wig, but it was beyond his grasp. Lori leaned in closer, smiling. Her shoulder flexed as she brought her right hand from behind her back.

"Scream for me," she whispered.

Ted felt the coldness of steel against his throat. He opened his mouth, perhaps to reason with her. But just staring into those lovely eyes and seeing the legacy of darkness that danced beyond them, Ted knew that any attempt would be futile.

As the edge of the knife stung his flesh, he braced himself and, regretfully, gave her what she wanted.

The images on the screen were color. Sharply defined, perfectly lit. The sound was minimal. The creaking of bed springs and the low murmurs of passion. There was no music. No sound track was necessary.

Lori Hale lay on the round bed, naked, her eyes glued to the television at the far side of the room. She watched as the image of a platinum-haired beauty straddled the hips of an overweight boy with brown hair and glasses.

She watched the scene unfold, slowly snaking her hand past the flat of her stomach to the cleft just beyond. Soon her fingers were at work, stroking.

The video—one of many—continued at a leisurely pace; finely orchestrated and leading toward a familiar finale. Lori watched as the woman reached beneath the edge of the circular mattress and withdrew a long-bladed butcher knife.

As the scene reached its climax, Lori found herself reaching her own. Her fingers worked furiously as she awaited the command she had given more times than she could remember.

Waves of ecstasy gripped Lori, washing through her, giving way to abandonment. Gritting her teeth, she clutched the bedcovers and felt the stiffness of dried blood in the fabric of the sheets.

Then she closed her eyes tightly and listened for the sound of the scream . . .

At
the entrance into the restaurant area, a girl dressed in skinny black jeans and matching black tank top waited for Bastine Rendeaux to open the door. She smiled, lips full and new as red smoky moons. He smiled back. "Eating alone?" he asked, feeling especially horny and turned on by how her breasts rounded the material of her shirt and how her hips swelled the jeans. "Want company?"

"Sure." She fell into place at his side as he went for a back booth.

She didn't say much. For a Lot Lizard, she sure didn't fit the stereotype. She was much too pretty, for one thing. All the curves were in the right places, her clothes were of good quality, and she wasn't too heavily made-up. She didn't look like any Lot Lizards he'd met before.
This
girl didn't need to waste herself on truck drivers.

"What's your name?" he asked, lighting her cigarette, fantasizing about taking it slowly from her sensuous lips and taking a puff, one puff, then placing it back in her lips.

"Shaw."

"Oh. Nice name. How'd you get a handle like that or is it a professional secret?"

"You could call it a secret if you want to."

She was intriguing, the type who liked to play games with him. All the dark sweaty games.

"You free tonight, Shaw? Want to keep a lonely trucker company?"

"I wouldn't mind spending some time with you." She blew out a cloud of blue smoke that he leaned over and inhaled as if it were exotic perfume. He closed his eyes as he did this, and when he opened them again, she displayed a mysterious smile playing around her satiny lips. "You like it different, don't you?" she asked.

"Not so much," he said. Blood thudded in his temples so hard, his vision blurred. To think he hadn't wanted to take this load of chemicals to Tallulah, Louisiana, for his dispatcher. What if he'd missed this opportunity? It made him sickly faint to consider it.

God. He had to get her outside
now.
He had to have her
immediately.
He'd explode if he didn't. He said in a voice gruff with lust, "Come with me."

Shaw shrugged and let him move her along to the glass exit door. Outside in the neon night of the truck parking lot she crooned his name. "Bastine. Bastine. Don't hurry so. We have all night, Bastine."

This only served to make him hustle her faster across the macadam to his idling truck. Diesel fumes filled the air. Noise from the dozens of truck engines created a thumping roar that echoed in his head. "I have to hurry," he said, unlocking the driver's door. "I'm so nuts for you, I can't wait."

Her laugh tinkled around his head like silver dimes falling onto a metal counter. Bastine climbed down again and lifted Shaw onto the first step to the open cab. "C'mon, baby, I'm serious now. You can't keep a guy like me waiting. I might get dangerous."

By the time Bastine entered the cab with her, he saw she had pulled the tank top over her head, the sunglasses tumbling behind her. He caught his breath. She was fleecy white as a sheet washed until it is see-through-thin, even her nipples hardly discernible because they were soft pink and small. She wasn't scared, she wasn't the least bit anxious.

"How you want to do it?" she asked.

"Any old way is fine with me, girl. Just anything at all." He fumbled, unbuckling his belt and stripping off the faded Lee jeans into a heap that he had to fight off his feet. His organ tapped at his belly when he leaned way over to push the clothes into the front of the cab. He almost laughed, giddy with excitement.

"Whatever
you
want, sweetcakes. I've been waiting a long time for it, Bastine. I won't give you any trouble."

Bastine mulled over her confession and found it tasted of the truth. "Want to tell me what this is gonna cost me?"

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing."

But Bastine didn't believe that. He knew the lay of the land, and in that land nothing came free, not life or pretty women either. He'd settle with her later. If she squawked on her pay, that was her own damn fault for not getting the matter over with in the beginning.

All thought of money fled once he was completely nude and had climbed into the sleeper with her. It smelled like old socks and dirty sheets and nights of unfulfilled passion back there, but he didn't want to think about that. The one small reading light above and to the left of them inset into the cab gleamed down onto her marble flesh. She looked as bright to him as a sunny beach resort billboard caught in the glare of headlights.

He kneeled between her upraised knees. His hands clenched and unclenched. To mold and manipulate that perfect skin. That's what drove through his mind. To make her want him as much as he wanted her. To make her cry out and plead with him never to stop, never to release her.

. "Go ahead," she whispered. "Don't hold back. Don't think about it. Make love to me, I want it, Bastine, I've saved myself for it, I really have."

He didn't know what she meant. She was not a "saved" kind of woman. Not a virgin by any means. Not inexperienced.

Suddenly he lowered himself and the warmth of her thighs embraced his hips like clamps and then fury came, possessing him, robbing him of all sense. She wept silently in climax, and then again, her tears rolling past tightly closed black lashes. She begged, but not for him to stop. She prayed for more,
More, Bastine,
until exhausted, he fell across her sweat-drenched body. She cursed and said, "You're not done, I'm not finished, I require this just once more, you can try. Once more."

"I'm sorry," he said, panting and trying to still his breath.

"Use your hand," she whispered into his ear. "You must do it. With. Your. Hand."

Bastine roused himself throughout the night to take her brutally and then fell dead each time into mindless sleep, something akin to unconsciousness. Each time he woke to her proddings and began again until morning came when they both collapsed into sleep as still as corpses in the dark coffin of the sleeper.

The next morning Bastine, more fatigued than ever before in his life, eyes gritty as ground glass, body weak and bruised-feeling, wanted only to be rid of Shaw. She might protest. She had been special, they both knew that, but this was the part he truly loved the most, his leaving. He planned to unhitch his load and drive into Tallulah for a movie.

"Shaw, baby, what do I owe you?" He was dressed and had his wallet out. Shaw still lay in the bunk, naked, glowing, sleepy-eyed.

"I told you. Nothing. My treat."

Man, she must have
really liked
it. "Fine. Then how 'bout I buy you breakfast before you go."

"Hmmmmm." She stretched and sat up, her breasts bobbing like frosted apples. There were blue marks that tracked her arms where he'd held her down. He was sorry about that. "Where am I going?"

Bastine turned slowly in the truck seat. "Well. . . uh . .. wherever you go to, I guess. Home. On down the road. Wherever."

"I'm not going anywhere." She gave him the smile, the one that had so fascinated him when they first met.

"But you have to."

"Why?"

"Well, I sure as hell can't take you with me. I drive all the time. I don't even have a house! I live in this truck. I can't take you with me." She had him repeating himself. It wasn't like she was stupid. What was wrong with her thinking he'd want her along
permanently?
That wasn't in the game plan. He hated explaining these things
to
women. She didn't seem bothered that he wanted her gone because she wasn't going. This wasn't how it was played.

"I'm yours now, Bastine. I belong to you. The thing is, it's always been meant for us to be together."

"Hey, wait a minute, wait one goddamn minute. What kind of horseshit is this? I don't own nobody. I don't want to own nobody. You don't belong to me, okay? I'm perfectly willing to give you a couple hundred to help you out, but no way do you go with me. I don't have meaningful relationships and all that silly yuppie shit. This was just a one-night stand, you understand? Shaw?"

She was dressing, pretending to ignore him.

"Shaw? Did you hear what I said?
You can't go."

"I can't go, you can't go," she said conversationally. She pulled on black suede slippers and crawled into the passenger seat. She looked at him and there wasn't a trace of humor on her face now. "I'm yours, Bastine. I'm yours forever."

Bastine mumbled, "I can't talk to the bitch," and flung open the cab door. He jumped down to the pavement and stalked to the cafe for breakfast. He'd deal with her later when he had a full stomach and four aspirin for the headache she'd caused to bloom over his temples. Crazy woman. Forever? Nothing was forever, and if she was old enough, she'd know that. His sexual unions—for that is what they were— never turned out this way. They cried sometimes and they begged, but they never acted so cool and in control this way.

When he came back after eating and brushing his teeth in the men's room, he found Shaw sitting right where he'd left her in the passenger seat of his truck. He took a deep breath and got into the driver's seat. "This ain't gonna work," he warned. "I don't want you along, you got that? I didn't sign up for a lifetime of crap from some woman. I didn't put a ring on your finger and waltz you to the church. Now, you're gonna have to get out of my truck or I'll call the cops. You know how long they stuff you in jail for prostitution in a truck stop? You got any fucking idea how much trouble you're gonna be in?"

"You do that and I'll have to hurt you, Bastine."

He laughed and it wasn't even funny. He lowered his voice. "You don't want to threaten me, kid. I'm a mean son of a bitch when I want to be. You oughta know that already. Look at your arms! Look what I already done to you."

Shaw lifted a small handgun from her lap and pointed it at him. "I go with you or you don't go."

"Jesus H. Harrowing Christ. What do you think you're gonna do with that peashooter? Don't make me laugh." Though he talked tough, Bastine felt his insides quaking and his breakfast wanted up and out. If she shot him, he might live through the gunshot wound, but he'd die on the spot of a heart attack. Guns scared hell out of him. He had a brief crazy urge to leap through the truck window.

Shaw leaned over the console and pressed the barrel end of the gun against his thigh. "Bastine? You believe me, don't you? I don't want to hurt you, but I will, I swear I will."

Bastine sucked air over his teeth and let it out slowly. "Okay, okay. I'm laid up here the weekend. I dump this load Monday in Tallulah. We'll talk this over until then."

"Good," she said, removing the pistol and slipping it into a small black purse. "Now, how would you like to go inside the truck stop with me so I can eat
my
breakfast."

Bastine nodded. The whole bizarre incident was clicking fast into place in his mind. The girl who called herself Shaw was a psychopath, unlike himself, who he considered, in contemplative moods, as nothing more than a little warped out of the normal pattern. Shaw was the real thing. She was the walking, talking embodiment of Loony Tunes.

She slept most of the day while he read a Louis L'Amour western. They ate a spare dinner, he picking at his food, she nibbling at a chicken salad sandwich.

"Why are you so quiet, Bastine? Don't you like me anymore? I don't want this silence between us."

"Tell me, Shaw, what this is all about, can you? I mean, I'm not a prize or anything. I make lousy money. I live on the road. Why me?"

Shaw leaned her head to the side to study him. "I'll tell you later. As a surprise. It'll be lovely."

"Is it the sex? I mean, hell, lots of guys will give it to you rough, if that's it. You'd be surprised how many guys will do what you want. You're a
damn
pretty girl." Maybe a little flattery would get him off the hook.

She simply smiled her mysterious smile and returned to her sandwich.

Bastine hung his head, thoughts black, the anger coming from nowhere to press against the tight, hot band of his skull. "Let's go to bed," he said, standing with the meal ticket, taking out his wallet to pay the bill.

Shaw slipped on the sunglasses. She took his arm and he let her, though he felt like breaking her fingers one at a time.

Hours later, orgasms later, Bastine hovered above Shaw's sweat-slathered body. "You know I don't want you," he said. "You know you can't stay with me."

She moaned and pulled him down onto her breasts, holding him tightly in her arms. She moved her hips until his limp organ swirled inside her, then began to harden. Again.

"Oh, Bastine, you're like a wild beast. I always knew you were. I saw it in you even when you were young. .."

Her words turned Bastine to granite. He felt a shock travel down through his arms into his frozen hands. "What are you talking about? Who are you? What's your name?" With each question his voice rose until he was shouting.
"Who are you?"

Shaw rolled from beneath him and drew the crumpled sheet between her breasts. She gnawed on the tip of the sheet, her eyes like coals in the dark. "I should tell you the secret now, yes, Bastine, it's time."

"What the hell is this all about? Where did you come from?"