The Year's Best Horror Stories 9 (27 page)

When I arrived here with Ellen to take care of my sister’s affairs and arrange for the funeral, I intended to remain a week or two at most, seeing to the transfer of the property. Yet somehow I lingered, long after Ellen had gone. Perhaps it was the thought of that New York winter, grown harsher with each passing year; I just couldn’t find the strength to go back. Nor, in the end, could I bring myself to sell this house; if I am trapped here, it’s a trap I’m resigned to. Besides, moving has never much agreed with me; when I grow tired of this little room—and I do—I can think of nowhere else to go. I’ve seen all the world I want to see. This simple place is now my home—and I feel certain it will be my last. The calendar on the wall tells me it’s been almost three months since I moved in. I know that somewhere in its remaining pages you will find the date of my death.

The past week has seen a new outbreak of the “incidents.” Last night’s was the most dramatic by far. I can recite it almost word for word from the morning news. Shortly before midnight Mrs. Florence Cavanaugh, a housewife living at 24 Alyssum Terrace, South Princeton, was about to close the curtains in her front room when she saw, peering through the window at her, what she described as “a large Negro man wearing a gas mask or scuba outfit.” Mrs. Cavanaugh, who was dressed only in her nightgown, fell back from the window and screamed for her husband, asleep in the next room, but by the time he arrived the Negro had made good his escape.

Local police favor the “scuba” theory, since near the window they’ve discovered footprints that may have been made by a heavy man in swim fins. But they haven’t been able to explain why anyone would wear underwater gear so many miles from water.

The report usually concludes with the news that “Mr. and Mrs. Cavanaugh could not be reached for comment.”

The reason I have taken such an interest in the case—sufficient anyway, to memorize the above details—is that I know the Cavanaughs rather well. They are my next-door neighbors.

Call it an aging writer’s ego, if you like, but somehow I can’t help thinking that last evening’s visit was meant for me. These little green bungalows all look alike in the dark.

Well, there’s still a little night left outside—time enough to rectify the error. I’m not going anywhere.

I think, in fact, it will be a rather appropriate end for a man of my pursuits—to be absorbed into the denouement of another man’s tale.

Grow old along with me;

The best is yet to come.

Tell me, Howard: how long before it’s my turn to see the black face pressed to my window?

William Relling, Jr. is one of the newer writers to break into the fantasy genre, with recent sales to
Cavalier
,
Dude
,
Whispers
, and various small press publications—as well as an article for a now-defunct science magazine called
Probe
, “which despite the title was on a different shelf from
Cavalier
.” Born March 14, 1954 in St. Louis, Missouri, Relling now makes his home in the Los Angeles area. Over the past ten years he has worked as a librarian, truck driver, hospital orderly, professional musician, salesman—and just now is teaching junior high school English part time while a part-time graduate student at the University of Southern California studying cinema, TV, and dramatic writing. In his spare time Relling is working on a screenplay for “a science fiction swashbuckler.” His story “The King” is a reminder that fantasy fans aren’t the only ones prone to idolize (and capitalize upon) their dead heroes.

Man, that was a while ago and I still shake. But, Jesus, who wouldn’t? I’m probably not ever gonna stop, not as long as I can remember what I saw. And I’m not real likely to forget.

And I haven’t
even
tried to pick up the sticks since then. Kind of forced retirement, you know. I don’t think I could hold onto ’em. But I haven’t had much of an urge to try. And I’m not gonna for a long time. Not for a real long time.

It’s not like it didn’t get to anybody else who was there, like the guys in the band, or the people in that theatre, or anybody who read about it later, who really don’t know what happened. But I
saw
him, and he
was
there, and Jay’s dead and Tommy’s dead, and I
know
it was him. I know.

’Cause I worked for him. You remember back in ’69, when he made that comeback, and they did that big Vegas gig and the tour and the film of that Hawaii gig? The one that’s been on TV a couple times. Well, I worked part of that tour. When they were playin’ in the midwest and they did this job in Kansas City and Ronnie Tutt came down with the flu, I got hired—on account of one of the horn players knew me and we’d worked together before—until Ron got better. So I did the gigs in St. Louis and Chicago and then Ron came back. But I hung around and got paid as a percussionist, ’cause The Man liked me, you know, and wanted to keep me around. Just as a favor.

That was a great job, ’cause he paid the band real well, and everything was first class all the way. And those cats, those guys in the band, could
play
. Glen Hardin did the piano work and a lot of the arranging and he was fine, man, really fine. And James Burton, the guitar player. I never heard anybody who could play like him. Just jamming with those guys was all right. Yeah, it was all right.

But The Man himself was great. He was The King, you know, just like they said. I mean, a lot of people only knew him from the early days and “Hound Dog” and Ed Sullivan or maybe from those not-so-good flicks he made. Or they only know the last year or so before he died, when he got so bad, you know, puttin’ on all that weight, and his voice goin’ and all and the stories about the booze and the pills and all that other shit.

But when I knew him he was at his peak. He was at the top. He was in good shape—he worked out, you know, exercise and karate and all, two, three hours a day—and his voice was real smooth and strong. God, he could sing. Did you ever see that thing on TV from Hawaii? He was great. Just great.

And he would kill those crowds. Absolutely. Not just the chicks, either, but the guys, too. And not only the young ones, but like old ladies and housewives and little girls and all. They’d scream and faint and just wet their pants. He had ’em, man, and he knew it all the time. It was unbelievable. Like he lit a fire under every one of them. And he did, too. He did.

We could feel it, too, just playin’ behind him. And he still had some of that at the end, you know. That fire, that electricity. Even when he was goin’ down, when he was
dying,
they were still hangin’ on him. Even though he was fat and sick and all and couldn’t sing like before. But he was still The Man. He still had it, even though he was in bad shape.

Look what happened when he died.

Those people thought he was some kind of
god
or something, and they came from all over the world to that funeral. Like he was something more than an ordinary human being and not like the rest of us, you know. And really he was, in a way. He was special. And anybody who’d known him, or thought they did, or who loved him was there. There were thousands of ’em. Jesus, I was there and it was—well, like nobody out of all those people could believe it, you know, and they all felt so bad. Like he couldn’t really be mortal and couldn’t really die. You could feel it like a weight on your back in that crowd, that “how-can-he-do-this-to-
us
” sort of thing. He couldn’t really be dead.

They’re still comin’ today.

When I think back on it now, maybe that was a part of what happened later. You know, all those people not accepting that he was dead, wanting him to be back, praying to him like he
was
a god—

Maybe that was part of it. That and something else.

The hustlers. The hucksters. The cheap bastards who came down like buzzards to make a buck out of all that grief, that love, that worship. It made me sick to see those guys on the streets, man,
right out in front of that goddamn tomb
, sellin’ ashtrays and T-shirts and photos and records. And the people, those thousands and thousands of people were buyin’ it up, just because they loved him and didn’t want to let him go. Like they had to have a part of him to hold on to. I got pissed off, and punched one of those guys out, one who was sellin’ necklaces of little silver coffins with his name engraved on ’em. They had to pull me off that son-of-a-bitch.

But I knew Jay, and Jay was straight about his act, and he’d even been doin’ the material for a couple of years before. The Man himself had seen Jay once and then met him later a couple of times, and he really kinda dug it. He said Jay was the only guy he’d ever seen who could do him right, you know. And Jay was a big fan of his. But Jay did other stuff in his act, you know, his own material and all. And like I said, Jay had been kicking around for awhile.

So it wasn’t Jay’s idea, really, but Tommy Adams’s, who heard Jay at a club in Knoxville. He was the one who came around with the idea for the change in the act and the offer to manage Jay if he’d go along with it. Big bucks, Tommy said.

At the time I’d been gigging with Jay for about six months. He hired me after his old drummer quit somewhere around Springfield, Illinois, and I’d been back in the midwest after knockin’ around LA for a couple of years, and was just gettin’ by. I wasn’t workin’ real steady when I met Jay and he gave me the job. Anyway, when Tommy Adams came to him with the offer that September, Jay came to me. He knew that I’d known The Man personally—like he did, too—and he wanted to know how I felt about it. So we talked.

I told him what I thought of Tommy Adams, but that I really didn’t see anything wrong with the change, ’cause I knew where he—Jay, that is—was coming from, you know. A tribute, right? Kind of a memorial. The money didn’t have a thing to do with it.

Oh, no.

So Jay went for it, and became Jay Redman, Crown Prince to the throne of The King. Right down to the white suit and the scarves and the sequins and the rhinestones and the Mother of Pearl inlaid acoustic guitar and the hair and the sideburns and the sneer and the jewelry and the tight pants and the swivel hips and the karate kicks. Right down to “Heartbreak Hotel” and “In the Ghetto” and “Burnin’ Love” and “Jailhouse Rock” and all.

And I went right down with him.

Maybe I shouldn’t say that, I don’t know. At the time I didn’t think it was bad at all. Jay got hot almost from the start, and Tommy was gettin’ us gigs all over the south and the midwest, from Fort Lauderdale to Chicago to Atlanta to Nashville to New Orleans to St. Louis, in clubs and dinner theatres and bars and everything. It got to where by February I was pullin’ down about five bills a week, just by myself. Tommy wasn’t kidding when he said there’d be big bucks. For
all
of us.

But it wasn’t the money.

It was real strange. We’d do the gigs, you know, at those supper clubs and all and those people, man, they were just amazing. I mean, Jay was good and he had it down and all, but he was still just Jay. He was only pretending. It was an act, right?

But the people. It was like bein’ back on that old tour, with the chicks screaming and passing out and reaching up to touch Jay when he’d wiggle or smile or wink at them.

Funny. There must have been a hundred other guys around the country with the same gig, and from what I heard, it was like that for all of them. The people were just crazy for something to hold on to.

But Jay took it in stride, you know, and stayed just Jay. There was no magical transformation or anything like that, where Jay started to talk like The Man when he was off stage or was possessed or any of that other crap you might have heard about. He knew it was an act, so on stage
and
off he was always still Jay. Sure, he dug ail the attention and the bread, but he was always himself.

But Tommy, whew. Tommy didn’t really go crazy, at least psycho or anything like that. It was the bread, you know. The dough started rollin’ in and Tommy’s all the time walkin’ around with these big dollar signs in his eyes. That was all it was, was the bucks. Tommy was another buzzard, just like those other guys.

What started it was when Tommy lined up this TV gig for Jay that was a kind of “head-to-head” for the seven or so best impersonators doing the act. So we do the gig in Vegas at Caesar’s Palace. Very big deal, right? Much bread. We made out fine.

Except that Jay loses and finishes behind a couple of other guys who maybe looked a little more like The Man or moved more like him or sounded more like him or—like
I
said—were just better than Jay. So what? You know. We still got paid and we didn’t do bad at all. Jay was good, as he always was, and we weren’t gonna be workin’ any less or losin’. There was enough in it for all these other cats and it wasn’t like we weren’t pullin’ down our share.

Tommy wasn’t happy, though. We’re not makin’ enough, he says. We gotta go all the way, he says. We need another gimmick, he says, like it isn’t already gimmick enough. So he starts tryin’ to talk Jay into changin’ his face, for Christ’s sake, like some clown in Florida did, but Jay told him to shove it.

So Tommy comes up with something else. The memorial concert, right? In Memphis, on August 16, the anniversary of the day The Man died. And the whole time Tommy’s explaining this to Jay and me and the rest of the band, I keep hearin’ this
ka-ching
like a little cash register in Tommy’s head, and seein’ those dollar signs in his eyes again.

But we all say sure, we’ll do the job, and then we don’t think any more about it. Except for Danny Palmer, the bass player we picked up right about the time Jay changed the act. I’m not gonna do it, Dan tells Tommy. I’m quittin’.

This is a big surprise for all of us, you know, ’cause everything’s been goin’ along okay and the money’s good and Dan’s a good bass player. Tommy’s not worried at all, though, ’cause he figures what the hell, we got a good gig, we’ll pick up another bassman, no sweat. Which was true, of course. But there was something else about Danny Palmer that bothered me personally.

So I ask him, hey Daniel, how come you’re splittin’?