Christopher Fowler - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 10

Dennis Etchison is a winner of both the World Fantasy Award and the British Fantasy Award. His first two short story collections, The Dark Country and Red Dreams, are currently back in print from EMR Books, and a new (fourth) collection is due from DreamHaven, illustrated by J. K. Potter. He has also recently compiled the art book Horror of the 20th Century for Collectors Press, and his Hollywood noir novel Blue Screen is forthcoming.

About the following story, Etchison explains: “One evening in 1997, my wife Kris and I ran into Peter and Dana Atkins at Dark Delicacies bookstore, a favourite haunt of horror writers in Southern California. The occasion was a street fair sponsored by the local merchants along Burbank’s Magnolia Boulevard. At some point Dana and I decided to search out a shop called It’s a Wrap, featuring clothes worn only once or twice in movies and TV shows filmed at the studios nearby, much of it with expensive designer labels and offered for re-sale at ridiculously low prices. There were rumours of Armani suits for $150.

“Before we got there, a woman with a clipboard sidled up to us and asked if we would like to attend the screening of a new television pilot. Dana had already spotted It’s a Wrap. I needed her advice about the women’s clothing inside so that I’d know whether to go back for Kris. ‘No, thanks,’ I said. ‘It pays fifty dollars,’ said the woman. That sounded like a painless way to cover the cost of some Oscar-winning threads. We both signed on, and a month later I found myself in a theatre owned by a market research company. The dreary sitcom I saw that day was soon forgotten, and the cash I received was quickly squandered, but certain details remained with me. The two-way mirrors, for example. The hi-tech monitoring equipment I glimpsed on the way out. And the unreadable expressions of the young women who worked at the testing facility. What sort of person, I wondered, takes such a job — and why? Was it only for the salary? Or were there were other, more secret reasons?

“Dana never followed up, and her husband, who is a horror writer, wasn’t offered the gig. A pity. I can’t guess what story he might have written, but I’m sure it would have been a good one, very different from mine and worth a lot more than fifty bucks. The reasons to be afraid are all around, if you make it your business to look for such things.”

Uncle Miltie did not look very happy. Someone had left a half-smoked cigar on his head, and now the wrapper began to come unglued in the rain. A few seconds more and dark stains dripped over his slick hair, ran down his cheeks and collected in his open mouth, the bits of chewed tobacco clinging like wet sawdust to a beaver’s front teeth.

“Time,” announced Marty, clicking his stopwatch.

Lisa Anne tried to get his attention from across the room, but it was too late. She saw him note the hour and minute on his clipboard.

“Please pass your papers to the right,” he said, “and one of our monitors will pick them up. ”

On the other side of the glass doors, Sid Caesar was even less amused by the logjam of cigarette butts on his crushed top hat. As the water rose they began to float, one disintegrating filter sloshing over the brim and catching in the knot of his limp string tie.

She forced herself to look away and crossed in front of the chairs to get to Marty, scanning the rows again. There, in the first section: an empty seat with a pair of Ray-Bans balanced on the armrest.

“Sixteen,” she whispered into his ear.

“Morning, Lisa.” He was about to make his introductory spiel before opening the viewing theater, while the monitors retrieved and sorted the questionnaires. “Thought you took the day off.”

“Number Sixteen is missing.”

He nodded at the hallway. “Check the men’s room.”

“I think he’s outside,” she said, “smoking.”

“Then he’s late. Send him home.”

As she hurried toward the doors, the woman on the end of row four added her own questionnaire to the pile and held them out to Lisa Anne.

“Excuse me,” the woman said, “but can I get a drink of water?”

Lisa Anne accepted the stack of stapled pages from her.

“If you’ll wait just a moment — ”

“But I have to take a pill.”

“Down the hall, next to the restrooms.”

“Where?”

She handed the forms to one of the other monitors.

“Angie, would you show this lady to the drinking fountain?”

Then she went on to the doors. The hinges squeaked and a stream of water poured down the glass and over the open toes of her new shoes.

Oh great, she thought.

She took the shoes off and stood under the awning while she peered through the blowing rain. The walkway along the front of the AmiDex building was empty.

“Hello?”

Bob Hope ignored her, gazing wryly across the courtyard in the direction of the adjacent apartment complex, while Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore leaned so close to each other that their heads almost touched, about to topple off the bronze pedestals. They had not been used for ashtrays yet today, though their nameplates were etched with the faint white tracks of bird droppings. She hoped the rain would wash them clean.

“Are you out here? Mister.?”

She had let Angie check them in this morning, so she did not even know Number Sixteen’s name. She glanced around the courtyard, saw no movement and was about to go back inside, when she noticed someone in the parking lot.

It was a man wearing a wet trenchcoat.

So Number Sixteen had lost patience and decided to split. He did not seem to be looking for his car, however, but walked rapidly between the rows on his way to — what? The apartments beyond, apparently. Yet there was no gate in this side of the wrought-iron fence.

As she watched, another man appeared as if from nowhere. He had on a yellow raincoat and a plastic-covered hat, the kind worn by policeman or security guards. As far as she knew the parking lot was unattended. She could not imagine where had he come from, unless there was an opening in the fence, after all, and the guard had come through from the other side. He stepped out to block the way. She tried to hear what they were saying but it was impossible from this distance. There was a brief confrontation, with both men gesturing broadly, until the one in the trenchcoat gave up and walked away.

Lisa Anne shook the water out of her shoes, put them on and turned back to the glass doors.

Marty was already into his speech. She had not worked here long enough to have it memorized, but she knew he was about to mention the cash they would receive after the screening and discussion. Some of them may have been lured here by the glamor, the chance to attend a sneak preview of next season’s programs, but without the promise of money there was no way to be sure anyone would show up.

The door opened a few inches and Angie stuck her head out.

“Will you get in here, girl?”

“Coming,” said Lisa Anne.

She looked around one more time.

Now she saw a puff of smoke a few yards down, at the entrance to Public Relations.

“Is anybody there?” she called.

An eyeball showed itself at the side of the building.

Maybe this is the real Number Sixteen, she thought. Trying to get in that last nicotine fix.

“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to come in now. ”

She waited to see where his cigarette butt would fall. The statues were waiting, too. As he came toward her his hands were empty. What did he do, she wondered, eat it?

She recognized him. He had been inside, drinking coffee with the others. He was a few years older than Lisa Anne, late twenties or early thirties, good-looking in a rugged, unkempt way, with his hair tied back in a ponytail and a drooping moustache, flannel shirt, tight jeans and steel-toed boots. A construction worker, she thought, a carpenter, some sort of manual labor. Why bother to test him? He probably watched football games and not much else, if he watched TV at all.