Dark Terrors 3: The Gollancz Book of Horror

bikini she was already wearing, in preparation for her introduction to the press. ‘I can’t make it straight. Do you have just a little coke? I’ll be nice, you’ll see…’

From the hall I heard Donn searching for his new starlet. I waited for him to pass, then lifted her off her feet. She was light as a plastic doll. I swung her around, set her down and opened the door.

As I ducked through the crowd in the rec room Donn was making excuses to buy a little more time. Then he went back into the hall. I heard him raise his voice and another voice sobbing. A minute later he returned and announced that Celestine Prophet was almost ready to make her entrance. Meanwhile, he reminded everybody, WetWork was running continuously outside. On the way down to the car I felt his cheque in my shirt pocket. It seemed to be pounding against my chest. I wondered whether he had made it out to Geoffrey Nightshade or Skippy Boomer. Either way I wouldn’t be able to cash it, but I wasn’t ready to look yet. In the sky a movie was ending or beginning, I couldn’t tell which. I decided it didn’t matter. The last reel would be just like the first.

* * *

Dennis Etchison is the recipient of both the World Fantasy and British Fantasy Awards for his short stories, and he is recognized as a writer who has consistently expanded the boundaries of the horror genre. His incisive short fiction has appeared in various publications, and is collected in The Dark Country, Red Dreams and The Blood Kiss. Aside from the movie novelizations The Fog, Halloween II and III and Videodrome, his novels include Darkside (recently reissued as a limited edition hardcover with the author’s preferred text restored), Shadowman, California Gothic and Double Edge. He has also edited the landmark anthologies Cutting Edge, MetaHorror and Masters of Darkness. About ‘The Last Reel’, Etchison says: ‘This is the opening chapter of Blue Screen, a novel about reality and illusion in Hollywood. The title has a double meaning. It refers to a kind of special effects or process shot used in film-making, and to “blue” (X-rated) movies. It also stands alone as a short story complete in itself.’

Everybody Needs Somebody to Love MARK TIMLIN

People say, that when you lose someone close, it gets better as time goes by.

People are wrong.

If anything, it gets worse.

At first, when you think about them, they might just be down the shops. Or maybe away on holiday, and due back in a week or two. Or at worst, they’ve gone to the other side of the world to live. But even if they’ve gone to the other side of the world, there’s still a chance that they’ll come back for a visit, and you’ll bump into them one day in Oxford Street, and go for a cup of coffee or a drink, and catch up on their news.

Not if they’re dead you won’t.

And sometimes that truth hits you like a length of 2x4, and you suddenly realize with a gut-wrenching force that you’re never going to see them again.

Ever.

That’s what happened to me five years ago. Five Years. Just like the old David Bowie song on Ziggy Stardust. I had that album on 8-track cartridge. Remember them?

On 8-track cartridge in a special edition Ford Capri 1600 in Dayglo orange with all the chrome sprayed black, a black spoiler, and some kind of trick Venetian blind doodad on the back window. It was impossible to see what was behind you, but it looked cool.

That was before I met Louise. In fact I can never remember exactly when we did meet. I can’t quite pin it down, though I think about it often.

It must have been ‘73. Spring. And she died in ‘89. So we were together for sixteen years. On and off.

See, we were children of the permissive society. No responsibility. No obligation. No commitment. If you weren’t off screwing the world, you weren’t living.

And Christ knows, Louise and I tried.

We were both working in the music business then. Rock and Roll. Liberation. Sex, drugs, violence, booze, freedom. A heady mix. We had it all, and we fucked it up.

I’d just got a job in the record company that Louise worked for. She was the public relations girl. We called them girls then. I went out to record shops, and tried to convince them to stock our product. I took the managers out for boozy lunches, did window displays, that sort of thing. And when a band was in town, I’d go to gigs and put up displays there as well. And I supplied the drugs. Women too. You could’ve described me as a low-life ponce. But we never thought about it like that then. Not in those days.

That was why I was given the flashy car. We reckoned that a Dayglo orange Ford Capri 1600 was the cutting edge. Then.

I didn’t meet Louise until I’d been in the job for a couple of weeks, but I’d heard all about her. She was famous. Notorious even.

Then on my third Monday morning at our weekly sales and publicity meeting, I did.

She’d broken her ankle six weeks previously, walking down the little street that connects Oxford Street and Soho Square where our offfices were located. She’d been reading Melody Maker as she went, not looking where she was going as usual, and tripped over the kerb. Silly cow. A couple of guys who were working on one of the buildings carried her back to the office where they called an ambulance. So my first sight of her was as she blew into the conference room, red hair permed and flowing, full-on make-up job, with loads of lipstick and eye liner, wearing a halter top made out of patches of ten kinds of material that she’d got from Mr Freedom, a long black skirt with buttons up the front, unbuttoned almost to her crotch, one gold, platform soled boot with a six inch heel, and one built-up plaster on the other leg. She looked great and she knew it.

‘Who the hell is that?’ I said to my boss.

‘That’s Louise Spenser,’ he replied. ‘You wanna watch her.’

And I did. Couldn’t keep my eyes off her, to be honest. And she knew it.

After the meeting we all went to the boozer. The Nellie Dean in Dean Street. I stood next to her at the bar and hummed ‘Jake The Peg’. It’s a Rolf Harris song about a bloke with an extra leg. Funny what you remember.

She gave me a cold stare, and sat with two members of our most popular band of the time.

A few months later she told me that she thought I was one of the most objectionable men she’d ever met.

We were in bed together when she told me that, which just goes to show that first impressions can be misleading.

She was always accident-prone. Whilst we were together she broke her leg once, her arm twice, and I lost count of the number of times she fell over in the street.

Even the way she died was by accident, although it took over three years for it to happen.

But we’ll get to that later.

For some reason the pair of us saw quite a lot of each other that spring, and at first I knew she wasn’t very happy about it.

We had to go to the same places, you see. I got promoted to being a record plugger along with all my other jobs, and we’d bump into each other at Radio 1, Thames TV and London Weekend, as well as at concerts and in the office.

I followed her around like a dog. She was three years younger than me. Only twenty when we met. But believe me, she was a world of experience wiser.