The Best New Horror 2 (47 page)

Jonathan had an absurd picture of the archetypal Hollywood Meeting. Haskell was pitching the idea for a dark little film indeed, and Jonathan was examining the concept from all angles, trying to decide whether to buy it. “The most creative intellect, therefore,” he decided, “would be the person who could compose social events or sculpt media attention unobtrusively. Real death can lure a jaded and reactionary public, and the scenarios must be increasingly complex in order to remain convincingly ‘real.’ The challenge to any creative mind is obvious: while your legitimate screenplays and ideas were considered disposable, your dictates as a Scripter would have to be elaborate, meticulous, loophole free . . . and absolute. You see? At last the
creator
gains control over one facet of the moviemaking business.” The ictus of Jonathan’s heartbeat was making his throat throb. “Tell me if I’m warm,” he said without humor.

Haskell’s gaze abstracted toward the curtains again. “That was the original idea. But like everything in Hollywood, it didn’t take too long before the original idea got adulterated.”

“That’s why you had to leave?”

“That’s why I went
mad
.” He drew the last word out into a long hiss. The cognac, it seemed, had displaced some of his itchy caution. “Wouldn’t a job like that drive you . . . mad?”

Jonathan shook his head. “You’re not moonblind. As far as I can see. And I’m an expert at picking out the walnuts, my diplomas all say so. Besides, Haskell, I flat-out don’t believe that you’ve actually snuffed anybody. And that leaves me in a quandary. If the Conclave is real, then you must be lying about your participation—you’re no murderer.”

“That returns us to the weird white vans. Scripters are creative talent only. The boogeymen in the white vans execute the janitorial work per se.”

“You’re afraid a van-load of hitmen is going to tool up my drive? Nobody knows you’re here,”

“Ascribe it to the caution of the insane. That was how I evaded their clutches, you see. It does no good to run, so I went mad. I went mad to get out and buy time to make sure the Conclave couldn’t erase me.”

“After you became disenchanted with the . . . adulterations.” Jonathan’s own voice sounded ominous and melodramatic, and he tried to downshift his attitude into the brand of uncondescending sympathy peculiar to the analyst’s calling.

“Actually, the change in the Conclave was fundamental and perfectly predictable,” said Haskell. “Their aims became corrupted. People in such a position of power should
never
acknowledge a higher authority. And yes, I realize it sounds horrible to describe
their original aims as pure, but I can’t come up with a better description.”

“Well, viewed objectively—pragmatically—the Conclave’s objectives were pure, I daresay. Uncompromisingly pure.” Jonathan was fascinated by the idea.

“Like every bloodydamn thing in the industry, it wasn’t satisfied with enough. Greed caused them to start monkeying around with chemicals. Additives to the junk movie audiences buy at theatre snackbars. Tiny jolts of light hypnotics, to render the viewer more receptive to planted visual subliminals. The first tryouts were merchandise-oriented—T-shirts, toys, novelizations, dolls, that whole farrago. Screenplays included a lot of subsurface pressure-point stroking for the median consumer. The suggestions, combined with the test drugs, ensured that audiences would buy tie-in merchandise like lab mice sucking up Violet Number Two—all it took was a squirt of mind-booze into the popcorn, and the funny thing was that the whole program was very cheap. Remember when popcorn butter was replaced by that orange, vegetable-oil glop at the snackbar?”

“That greasy stuff that comes in gallon cans and solidifies at room temperature, like candle wax?”

“We phased it under the guise of economization. Every household in America is sympathetic to the idea of frugality, and it was accepted as a necessary evil. Easy as a bread sandwich.” Pride still tinged Haskell’s voice, perversely. They were, after all, discussing his creativity.

“But so far the orientation was still profit. Money.”

“Things changed.” Haskell lifted his empty glass and slid it around on the tabletop in a ritualistic pattern. “About the time the government reinstituted draft registration, things began to change. The Conclave was contracted—I
think
—to apply our usual tactics, plus what we learned from the Popcorn Scenario, to find out if there was a cost-effective way to remilitarize the youth of the country, in order that they might accept the planned reinstatement of the draft itself more readily. The government set the stage economically by informing everyone that we were in a depression period, with very pointed allusions to the 1930s. The period just prior to our last ‘good’ war.”

“And the Conclave . . .?”

“Boiled down, our objective was to make killing and military life seem like adventurous fun, so for our inspiration we went back to the thirties as well. It was pure serendipity. Inside one of the Scripter offices there was an old copy of Doc Smith’s first
Lensman
space opera. It turned out that audiences in the 1970s were more receptive to the sort of thing they scoffed at as juvenilia in the 1930s. Our drugs conditioned them to repeat viewings, simultaneously serving the ends of profit and positive reinforcement. The movie we came up with
stroked all the correct psychological triggers. The fact that it grossed more money than any film in history at the time proves how on-target our approach was.”

“Oh my god . . .” said Jonathan, his mouth stalling in the open position.

“Six months afterward we ripped ourselves off and got secondary reinforcement onto television. We pulled a 40 share. The year after that we phased in the video games, experimenting with non-narcotic hypnosis, using electrical pulses, body capacitance, and keying the pleasure centers of the brain with low-voltage shocks. Jesus, Jonathan, can you
see
what we accomplished? In something under half a decade, we’ve programmed an entire generation of warm bodies to go to war for us and love it. They buy what we tell them to. Music, movies, whole lifestyles. And they hate who we tell them to. Khomeini, Quaddaffi. Ever notice how the leader of a country we oppose automatically becomes a lunatic? It’s simple to make our audiences slaver for blood; that past hasn’t changed since the days of the Colosseum. We’ve conditioned a whole population to live on the rim of Apocalypse and love it. They want to kill the enemy, tear his heart out, go to war so their gas bills will go down! They’re all primed for just that sort of dénouement, to satisfy their need for linear storytelling in the fictions that have become their lives! The system perpetuates itself. Our own guinea pigs pay us money to keep the mechanisms grinding away. If you don’t believe that, just check out last year’s big hit movies . . . then try to tell me the target demographic audience isn’t waiting for marching orders.”

Haskell rubbed his eyes, making them bloodshot and teary. “Not long after
that
masterstroke, I decided to take my leave of the whole cesspool. I didn’t feel so goddamned superior anymore. To see the manipulation of the masses as something cleaner than outright murder, one-to-one, takes the keenest kind of egomania. I couldn’t lie anymore—especially to myself. So, as I’ve said, I went mad.”

To Jonathan, Haskell looked deflated now, slightly shrunken, as if decanting his angst had left him physically diminished. He had become his job. He had been engulfed by his own obsession to leave footprints in the world of cinema, and now was kicking the underpinnings from the obsession itself and cannibalizing his existence. Consuming himself via confession. Jonathan half expected his old friend to dissolve away like a cinematic special effect, leaving a Cheshire cat rictus that would hold for a single, meaningful beat before fading to permanent black. He appraised Haskell through steepled fingers. After a precarious moment of silence he figured it out. “You didn’t really lose your mind.”

Haskell nodded, perking up. “I got angry, not crazy. It was to my advantage to convince the Conclave that one was the other.” He used
the tabletop to resume the liquor and cigarettes ritual, then leaned conspiratorially closer to Jonathan. “After the dazzle of the pay scale diminishes, you begin wondering what happens when Scripters say that’s
enough
—like I was about to. We all just assumed that a letter of resignation could be tendered, everybody would shake hands, and the retiree would traipse off to Monaco to spend his Swiss balance. Four Scripters announced their intentions to quit and did so, amid quite a lot of good cheer, during my tenure. Their replacements were introduced in a matter of days, as if the Conclave had a card file
full
of emotionally vulnerable hardcases . . . like me, like I had been. Even Scripting gets mundane after a few years, right?”

Jonathan nodded, although he could not see how it could possibly get dull. He wanted more cognac for himself but the bottle was drained clean.

“Then I stopped thinking like a schmuck and started thinking like a Scripter again,” said Haskell, pointing. “Wouldn’t it be much simpler for the Conclave to dispatch a white van to take care of the old blood? And juggle Swiss numbers so the ex-Scripter’s balance slides right back into the Conclave coffers? And thereby gain a fail-safe procedure against ex-Scripters multiplying, becoming a goddamned minority practically, and having one of them inevitably spilling the beans the way I’m doing right now?” His smile was sickly but expressive, the smile of a terminal cancer patient laughing at a tumor joke. “So yes, I did go mad. The mad are unpredictable, and if there is one quality the Conclave hates, it’s mad unpredictability—because it falls outside the realm of demographics and flowcharts.”

“No by-the-book solutions,” said Jonathan, understanding Haskell’s drift immediately. “No cut-and-dried solutions. Each case is different—almost random, like the real-life, accidental deaths versus the Conclave’s planned ones. Yes.” He said
yes
again to himself as he rose and rummaged through the low cherrywood cabinet for another bottle of something suitable. Tension was chewing at his knotted muscles. A pulsing in his head made him aware that his jaws had been squeezing together, grinding his teeth for at least half an hour. Giving up on the cabinet, he said, “Wait a second. Got to go to the kitchen.”

Wandering back from his empty kitchen, he stopped in his empty bathroom and forced himself to urinate five drops, and while staring at the brandy bottle he’d scared up, balanced on the tank lid of the toilet, he told himself that he had encountered no real problems. Haskell did not seem violent although he did seem delusional. There was no foreseable trouble.

Haskell was peering through a slit in the den curtains when he returned. Jonathan dashed a fresh taste into a clean crystal highball glass for himself and made a point of setting the brandy bottle down
on the low table near Haskell’s empty snifter.

“The rain’s letting up.”

“You’re not finished yet, Haskell,” Jonathan urged calmly.

He turned. “Yeah. Permit me to tell you how and why I went bonkers, Jon.”

“That’s not what I meant. You told me how you got into the mess with the Conclave, now I presume you’re going to tell me how you got out of it. I take it you evaded the guys in the white vans pretty expertly. You’re here, after all.”

“Yes.” Haskell fingered the flap pocket of his shirt.

“You must have outfoxed them, or found blackmail leverage against them, or both. If they were killing everyone else—”

“I had no desire to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. I plotted my escape as a Scripter, not a fugitive. I took a lot of evidence against them—documents—and I ran to earth, and then I let them find me, apparently insensate . . . without the documents. They didn’t dare kill or lobotomize me in case I’d socked away something that would tip over their monolith in the event of my demise. So they tucked me away in a very cozy asylum, to keep an eye on me for a while. Rather, I
let
them do it.”

“It was all a bluff?”

“No. I went north with two knapsacks full of cash and documents. Both still exist as I speak.”

“What, then?” Jonathan was inwardly exasperated. “Your brilliant plan was to finish out your days in a nuthouse?” He nearly startled himself with the word
nuthouse
.

“Jon, I’m not there now, am I? Haven’t you read the papers lately?”

Jonathan stopped to review.

Haskell’s eyes glinted with something like sick glee. “I’ll give you a hint. They’re still shoveling corpses out of the wreckage and ashes.”

“Briar Lane,” Jonathan murmured. “Good god, they filed you away in Briar Lane?”

“Can you think of a more exclusive nuthouse? They keep the patient’s entire medical history right at hand there—even the dental records.” He resumed his seat, now fiddling with an unidentifiable metal knickknack he’d taken out of his pocket to play with.

“
You
started the fire at Briar Lane?” Jonathan wanted more alcohol, but cut short his body’s urge to reach for the bottle.

“It was a classic old mansion, Jon. Ultra-wealthy incurables only. Pyromaniacs need not apply. The Conclave paid my freight—nothing but the best for those who might turn on you—and access to the files proves pretty goddamn easy if you’re not really crazy. Or if you’re crazy in the right direction.”

“Do you really expect the Conclave to be fooled by the old Hitler ploy? A body charred to unrecognizability and a set of labeled dental proofs, charred or not, are not going to reassure them much . . . from what you’ve said.”

“On the other hand, it’s been over a year now since I went ‘nuts’ and they’ve seen no provocative action from my presumed blackmail securities. I want them to understand that the Briar Lane incident is their escape valve regarding me—that they should relax, pursue their new projects, maybe even write me off. They don’t hurt me and I don’t hurt them. Just let me fade, with the money I’ve stockpiled.”

“Can’t they connect you to the money?”

“Assumed name,” Haskell said, with the air of repeating prepared answers.