Theater Macabre (20 page)

The house is quiet.

Shadows stretch and waken and crawl towards the house from the bottom of the garden. Alec sips his coffee. It scalds his tongue. He winces. It will be a lingering hurt for the rest of the day. Much like thoughts of Maury. He touches his tongue, feels it recoil.

He will be okay. Has to be. On a team with only one player, spirits must remain high. Peristalsis forces away the bile-like taste of betrayal and he shivers off the chill he imagines has snuck unseen around the spaces in the front door. He turns away from the display of nature and pauses, the coffee cup frozen inches from his scalded mouth. The belated image registers of something moving in the garden, something low, pale and slender emerging quickly from the trees at the bottom of the garden. Like a deer, if deer were limbless and crawled.

Slowly, already chiding his penchant for melodrama and more than certain he is subconsciously seeking distractions to keep himself sheltered from the towering weight of anguish, he turns.

A worm-like appendage whacks against the glass, rattling it in its frame as the pale thing flashes past the door mere inches away from his face.
Jesus!

The coffee sloshes over the rim of the cup and instinctively he holds it at arms length; looks down to see if his suit is ruined.

Something thumps against the house and he looks in that direction. Silly, of course. The pine cabinets there reveal nothing. The noise has come from outside and the crippled deer driven mad with pain, for surely it can’t be anything else.

I should take a look
, he thinks with a mind braver than his body. The
something
, whatever it was, whatever it
is
has summoned unwanted images torn from pulp magazines he used to curl up with as a child – monstrous things borne of fetid caverns yawning from the earth…Back then he used to wonder at the patience of the illustrator to cross-hatch and shade such intricate abominations. Never did he imagine something akin to those drooling, albino, skinless horrors would be skittering around outside the door to his home, searching for a way in.

He swallows, carefully sets his cup on the counter top and dares to lean forward, his face inches from the door, widening his field of vision so that now the old barn sidles into view. It is crumbling, has been for decades. His parents’ barn. Before that, his grandparents’ barn. Martin’s only dealings with the building have been to sell the wood from it to local crafts makers seeking aged material for their candleholders and whatnot.

He almost smiles. The white loping thing slams against the door, knocking the glass against Martin’s forehead and he yelps in horror instead, sent pin-wheeling backward by shock and the force of the door. Through the fright, he is vaguely aware of a lipless mouth, ringed with many teeth and leaving viscous, transparent drool on the door. It smiles at him as he steadies himself against the far wall, regulates his breathing and reaches for the phone with a trembling hand.

“Doctor Lords, please,” he breathes into the mouthpiece once the stuttering chirp of speed-dial has ended and a connection is made.

The deep timbre which swells the line is soothing. “Martin?”

“Doctor Lords. Thank God.”

“Has he come back?”

“Yes. And I’m scared. He’s frightening me. I think, on purpose.”

“Now Martin,” the doctor chides, “I did warn you he might escape. You should be relieved he’s come back. He wasn’t engineered to be that loyal. I would think of his reappearance as miraculous, and significant of the bond between you two, wouldn’t you say?”

Martin ponders this. Looks toward the door. The creature has moved away, leaving an orb-shaped ring of slime on the glass. The porch boards creak under its weight as it circles outside. “Why did he leave?” he says, his fingers tightening on the phone. “Why did he go in the first place?”

The doctor sighs. “Did you two argue?”

Silence.

“Martin?”

“Yes we did. It was silly. It was about the children. I didn’t want to keep feeding them to him. I was starting to feel bad. I wanted to stop. He told me I had no choice but to feed him or he’d find them himself and did I think he wouldn’t be noticed wandering around the neighborhood. So he broke the basement window somehow and crawled out. I was glad at first. Relieved. I thought it would be much easier without him. Without having to look after him.”

“But it wasn’t, was it?” the doctor asked.

“No. I missed him.” A shaky sigh. “Still do.”

There is a smile in Doctor Lords’ voice. “Then let him in, Martin. You were meant to be together. Don’t deny your feelings and don’t let silly little arguments get in the way of your happiness.”

Martin nods and hangs up. A scratch at the door. He turns and cataract-clouded eyes beseech him through the glass. A tentacle squeaks against the panes. Martin’s eyes fill with tears. He notices a pink ribbon, with blotches of red, trails from the corner of the thing’s mouth but it matters little.

He rushes to the door and throws it wide.

White eyes look up in adoration.

“I missed you, Maury,” Martin says as his lover slides into the kitchen.

Eight Minutes

“It’s a running joke,” Cavanaugh says with a wry smile.

Despite the makeup designed specifically to prevent it, he can feel the sweat gathering in his pores, hovering in those tiny hollows, waiting to pour down his face, waiting to mark his face in a signature of nervousness. The lights are of course, the real reason for his discomfort.

They hover above him and behind the audience, rendering them faceless shadows with coronas for hair, silent and somber except when the man with the earphones and cardboard sign tells them to be otherwise. And beneath them all, a rectangular gun posing as a camera shoots Cavanaugh’s likeness into thousands of living rooms across the country. The red light above the dark lens blinks, then dies, a restless firefly picked up by the other camera to his right, in front of Jeffrey Stills, the host of
Write Time
.

The light over the host flatters his deep-set jaw and thick black brows, chasing shadows away from where nature put them. In contrast, Cavanaugh feels the makeup congealing on his face, the wrinkles around his eyes straining through the paste, his lips cracked and dry despite the frequent hovering of his tongue between them. He is being baked alive beneath the merciless glare of the studio lights. An electric pulse in his limbs turns his veins to live wires.

“A running joke?” Stills prompts when the silence between them begins to stretch, filled only with the expected muffled coughs from the audience.

Cavanaugh straightens and tugs the lapels of his tweed jacket closer together, though what he really wants is to remove it and roll up his shirtsleeves like a politician getting to the meat of a debate. He clears his throat. The glass of water on the small cream coffee table between them is empty; he silently wills whoever is responsible for keeping the guests of
Write Time
from getting parched to shake a goddamn leg before he chokes on the heat.

“Yes,” he croaks with an apologetic smile. He gestures with a finger at the glass but Stills doesn’t follow it. Instead, the host leans closer, his legs crossed, intent on Cavanaugh’s response.

“It’s the question writers hate most and find themselves asked most often. After a while, you find yourself coming up with all manner of lies to keep the curious sated.”

Stills nods, his bronzed chin creased in a wide smile that does not quite reach his glittering green eyes. “Can you sate the curious now?” he asks and a small rumble of laughter sweeps through the crowd. Cavanaugh notices they didn’t even twitch as the ripple of mirth ran through them and finds the absence of such a trivial thing curiously unsettling. Had the lights come on just then, he wouldn’t have been altogether surprised to find the forty-something seats filled with dummies, their blank faces fixed on him.

He shudders and notices Stills craned over like a vulture with carrion, as if trying to suck the answer from Cavanaugh’s lungs. “Yes, of course,” he replies. “I guess I write because I’m not much good at anything else. That’s the simplest answer I have. It’s also the closest to the truth. If you asked a baker why he bakes or a mechanic why he mechanics—” A flutter of laughter from the audience. “—I’d be willing to bet you’d get the same reply. ‘Because it’s what I’m best at.’”

“That’s a fair enough answer I suppose,” Stills says and sits back, his scarlet tie cinched so tight against his neck it leaves red burns against the skin bunched over it. Cavanaugh winces and feels whatever meager moisture he has retained in his own throat sizzle into hot breath that plumes against the roof of his mouth. He looks over his shoulder at the area beyond the upraised wooden platform where the interview is taking place, hoping to see someone hovering who can refill his water glass, but the recesses are shrouded in darkness. If anyone is standing there, he can’t see them.

To his left, Camera 3’s sole eye blazes crimson.

“I find that fascinating,” Stills says in a tone that suggests he doesn’t find it interesting in the least and reaches down to pick up his own glass of water. A glass that has appeared, it seems, while Cavanaugh was looking over his shoulder. It’s full to the brim, a few drops plopping to the table as the host brings it to his lips and drinks deeply. Then he smacks his lips, stifles a belch and re-crosses his legs, a clipboard balanced against his upraised knee.

That wasn’t there a second ago
, Cavanaugh realizes and tries to crane his neck to peer over the other man’s shoulder. It is no use. The lights are so bright he may as well be looking into the sun.

Paranoia manifests itself as a buzzing twinge in the base of his neck but he quickly dismisses it. The water was there all along. Of course it was, he just missed it that’s all, his thirst making him fixate on his own empty glass and nothing else. But the twinge returns with the realization that now
his
glass, the empty glass . . . is no longer there.

“You’re last few works,” Stills is saying, as he peers down at his clipboard—which Cavanaugh noticed as they sat down was blank—“most notably:
Lockdown, Dead Cells
and
The Incarceration of Manuel Fuinego
have all taken place in prisons, and all seem to focus on the homosexual relationships between the prisoners and sometimes, between the prisoners and the guards. Is there a singular reason why this aspect of the prison system and indeed the human condition fascinates you so much?”

Cavanaugh is prepared for the question, as always. “I think, Jeffrey, if you had actually read all three books from start to finish, you’d know there is a lot more to them than that. As a matter of fact, the homosexual aspect is a minor element in
Lockdown
and
Manuel
and does not even
appear
in the second book. I take offense at having my work labeled ‘homosexual fiction’ or ‘gay porn,’ when in fact my books are concerned more with the brutality and inhumanity that takes place within the walls of our prisons. Anyone who has taken the time to study these books would
know
that.”

Stills smiles, the knot of his tie bobbing with his Adam’s apple. The lights have grown closer. Cavanaugh squints at them and then down to the coffee table. He feels penned in, the makeup slick against his skin, like a mask that has melted and is slowly slipping off.

“But you’re readership is comprised of mostly gay men.”

Cavanaugh’s scoff turns into a brittle cough and he raises his hand to his mouth, clears his throat again and continues. “I can’t control who reads my books, now can I?”

“But you deny you write for them specifically?”

“Of course. That’s akin to saying a painter paints a picture armed with the knowledge of who ultimately is going to be viewing it. I write for whoever wants to read it. I can’t say the homosexual scenes in my work won’t appeal to homosexual men any more than I can say heterosexual scenes won’t titillate heterosexual men and women. It’s a moot point.”

The silence seems thicker now and Cavanaugh glances out past the vapid eyes of the cameras. The nimbus of backlit hair is the only indication he and Stills are not alone. Even the cameramen seem immune to the harsh glow of the overhead lights.

Cavanaugh is sweating freely and he glances back at Stills, who appears to be mulling over his next question. From the host, he looks down at the table. Both glasses have been removed. He frowns, sniffs and looks back to Stills. “Would it be possible to get a glass of water?”

“You revealed to the world, after the release of your second book,
In Any Language
,” Stills continues, ignoring him, “that you were indeed, homosexual yourself. What impact did this have on your family?”

Cavanaugh says nothing for a moment as he massages his throat and stares at the bare table. He is dreadfully thirsty. So thirsty in fact, he is almost prompted to get up and fetch a drink himself. But that would be unprofessional and he strives to seem professional at all times, even if he doesn’t feel it.

“Well, it surprised them as you can imagine,” he tells the host, then pushes away his thirst and looks directly into the other man’s eyes in an effort to compose himself. “I had always maintained the pretense of heterosexuality, even going so far as getting engaged to a girl who worked in a local theater back in my hometown.”

“Madeleine Kay?” Stills asks.

“Yes. Back then, announcing you were gay was a good way to get yourself shunned in a small town like Harperville. So I went to great pains to avoid being discovered.”

“How far did you take this pretense?”

Cavanaugh frowns. “What do you mean? Sexually?”

“However you choose to take it.”

“Well, we kissed but we never—”

“Made love?”

“Yes. I mean, no. We never made love. This really isn’t what I came here to talk about.”

“What did you come here to talk about?”