Jeff Gelb: Seeds of Fear

The woman on the screen made her way up the lonesome pathway, her hips swaying like a pendulum, her delicate jaw working on a gob of Wrigley's spear mint gum. Ted's hand quickened as a muffled roar sounded from offscreen and caused the woman to whirl in her tracks. An atrocious-looking swamp monster — all dangling latex and bulbous tennis-ball eyes — leapt down clumsily from a neighboring boulder, its thick arms extended in menace.

That was when Ted closed his eyes, and let his imagination take over. As his hand went on autopilot, Ted imagined himself to be the shuffling creature. But there was no menace in his monstrous eyes, only desire; a desire shared by the woman he confronted. In a matter of seconds, his claws had torn past her blouse and bra, tossing tatters of cloth and elastic away until her breasts were exposed. The nipples stood out, pink and hard. She reached out for him, and soon they were on the sandy earth. His claws went to work again, hooking past tight cloth, rending it easily. She lay beneath him, completely nude now. They embraced hungrily, a melding of human and alien flesh. Ted felt his bestial member jut from his loins, searching, aching passionately. The woman writhed hungrily against him, then he was there, surrounded by warm wetness.

Ted felt himself quickly reaching the brink. He opened his eyes. The blonde's lovely face filled the screen, just as he had anticipated. Her sunglasses had been knocked askew and one eye stared straight into the camera. Then those luscious lips parted and a shrill scream powered up from out of her throat. But in Ted's ears it was not the shriek of terror that it was intended to be. Instead, it was a cry of unbridled ecstasy.

Pleasure shot through him, exploding at the base of his spine, causing his hips to buck slightly. Then, a second later, it was all over. The scene had changed. Ted was watching a pipe-smoking scientist explaining a screenwriter's theory of evolution, while Ted's penis shriveled in the palm of his hand.

Ted paused the VCR with the remote control, while his other hand shucked a Kleenex from its box and sopped up the juices of his passion. After the strength had returned to his legs, he hopped off the motel bed and walked into the bathroom. He tossed the damp wad of tissue into the toilet, then cranked up the shower and stepped in.

As he bathed, he smiled to himself, recalling the scream of the monster's blond victim. No one could break the decibel level like Fawn Hale. Oh, many had tried, but none had managed to surpass… at least not in Ted's opinion.

Fawn was well-known and appreciated by aficionados of horror and science-fiction cinema, particularly the cheaply made features of the fifties and sixties. Fawn was considered by the majority to have been the premier scream queen of that era, very much the way Betty Page had become a cult favorite in the realm of nostalgic pinups. There had been dozens of others, some even more beautiful and bustier than Fawn. But none had possessed the lungs she had. For sheer expression of horror and vocal power, the actress had no equal. Ted remembered the first time he had heard Fawn scream. He had attended an all-night Halloween fright fest at a run-down theater off campus. Fawn's shriek had overloaded a couple of the theater's main speakers. They had popped with a burst of ozone, incapable of accommodating the high frequency of Fawn's famous cry.

Just thinking about it made Ted horny again, but he ignored the impulse and finished his shower. He had someplace to go that morning, someplace very important. It was so important, in fact, that he had driven nearly two thousand miles just to get there.

Ted toweled off, then dressed. He left his suitcase behind, but unhooked the VCR and took it with him. He didn't want to risk the chance of the maid ripping it off when she came to clean his room. He also took the cardboard jacket of the tape that was still in the video recorder. The movie was creatively titled Curse of the Swamp Monster and sported a black-and-white shot of the beast in all its low-budget glory.

He stepped outside and locked the door behind him. Ted looked around for a second. The Days Inn he had checked into the night before was off an exit on Interstate 24 in the heart of Tennessee. There was only one reason why a California grad student would waste his spring break and make a cross-country journey to the land of the Grand Ole Opry and Jack Daniel's, and that reason could be summed up in two words.

Fawn Hale.

Ted walked to his car — a restored '69 Mustang convertible — and opened the trunk. He set the VCR next to a cardboard box full of videotapes. All were the kind of schlock horror flicks Ted thrived on — the outrageously bad classics of Edward D. Wood and Herschell Gordon Lewis. And two out of three of them featured Fawn Hale and her bloodcurdling scream somewhere between the title and ending credits.

Before he closed the trunk, he picked up a copy of Filmfax that lay on top of the box. It was an article in the movie magazine that had been responsible for his journey south. The story chronicled the history of a dozen popular scream queens and, in the portion devoted to Fawn, had laid the key to a mystery that had bugged Ted for several years. After Hale had retired from films in 1968, she had left Hollywood and seemingly vanished off the face of the earth. But, according to the article, Fawn had returned to her hometown of Cumberland Springs in central Tennessee.

That single tidbit of information had been a revelation for Ted. Fawn had almost become an obsession to him, creeping into his sexual fantasies lately. His dorm room was papered with posters and glossy photos of the B-movie blonde, while Ted's dreams were filled with bizarre images of Fawn being seduced by the monsters she had shared the screen with. It wasn't long before Ted began to imagine himself inside those garish suits of latex and fur, conjuring screams of pleasure from the actress, rather than ones of horror.

After reading the article, Ted simply couldn't put it out of his mind. The closer spring break grew, the more maddening the knowledge of Fawn's whereabouts seemed to be. Finally the thought of driving to Tennessee crossed his mind, lodging there like a splinter. It was during the day of his last class that Ted had made his decision. He took seven hundred dollars out of the bank, packed up his suitcase and VCR, and hit the road. He knew it was foolish and against his better judgment, but he had still gone. Now, three days later, he was only a short distance from his destination.

Ted closed the trunk, taking the magazine with him. He climbed into the Mustang's bucket seat and sat there for a long moment. Across the main highway — which boasted several other motels, an Amoco station, and a McDonald's — was a post bearing two signs. The upper one pointed west and read MANCHESTER — 15 MILES. The one underneath pointed east and proclaimed CUMBERLAND SPRINGS — 7 MILES.

Well, what're you waiting for, Culman? he thought, feeling a little nervous. You came this far. Seven more miles and you'll be able to get this out of your system for good.

He took a deep breath to calm himself, then put the Mustang in gear and pulled out onto the highway.

The town of Cumberland Springs could scarcely be considered one at all. It consisted of only a church, a post office, and an old-timey general store with a couple of ancient gas pumps out front. A few white clapboard houses were scattered around the main buildings, but that was about the extent of the little hamlet.

Ted stopped in at the general store, which was called Roone's Mercantile, and bought himself a honey bun and a Dr. Pepper for breakfast. After he had paid for the food, he regarded the man behind the register. Oscar Roone was a lanky man of sixty with bushy eyebrows and a perpetual scowl on his weathered face. Ted debated asking the man for directions, then decided it wouldn't hurt.