Tales From the Darkside Part 28

Dr. Nis said smoothly: "I will translate freely. The mummy speaks: True believers only are safe herea"those who doubt are advised to open their hearts."

Bragg wanted to laugh, but sweat dried cold on his flesh and laughter wouldn't come.

The mummy was carried off.

"We have next," Dr. Nis said with pride, "an experiment of my own. Can a corpse be reanimated? Can the component parts of a man be brought together and endued with life? I shall allow you to judge how successful I have been."

A travesty of a man shuffled down the aisle and into the ring. It was hideous. The limbs were not identical; they had not come from the same body. The head, waxen and discolored, lolled at an angel, as if insecurely hinged at the neck. It lumbered unsteadily around the sawdust ring, and it smelled.

The man-thing did not speak; it stumbled over uneven feet, rocking from side to side as it tried to recover balance, and lost its head.

A small gasp was jerked from Bragg's lips as the detached head hit the sawdust and rolled to a stop.

The headless cadaver blundered on aimlessly, like a decapitated chicken, until attendants hurried to guide it from the ring.

Bragg felt sick, and his fingers drummed nervously on his knees. Impossible to believe the thing was just a freak; yet he had to believe, or admit the impossible.

Dr. Nis looked unhappy. "I must apologizea"obviously my experiment is not yet perfected for public viewing. And so we come to our final offering this evening. You all know, if only in a vague way, that before men inhabited his world, the reptiles ruled for millions of years. They were the true Lords of the Earth. Science maintains that they died out before men appeared, but science has been wrong before.

There was interbreeding . . ."

The creature that slithered into the ring was about five feet long. It had the general appearance of a man on all fours, but its skin was scaly and iridescent. The hands were clawed, the head narrowed and thrust forward, and a forked tongue hung from the mouth.

An attendant brought a plastic bag and released from it a cloud of flies. The creature reared up, long tongue flickering like forked lighting, catching the flies and swallowing them.

A sick show, Bragg decided; an outrage to perform this sort of thing before children. The catchphrases of popular journalism ran through his heada"This Show Must Be Banned!

Pipe music played again, a falling scale. Dr. Nis bowed and left the ring. Families rose and filed quietly out, their offspring subdued.

Bragg vaulted into the ring, crossed the sawdust and left by the aisle exit. As he hurried toward the caravans, he saw Dr. Nis entering one of them.

The door was just closing when Bragg arrived and leaned on it. Dr. Nis turned to peer at him.

"Ah, Mr. Bragg, I was half expecting you. You are, after all, well known in your trade."

Bragg pushed his way into the caravan and felt like a giant in a doll's house; everything seemed smaller, neat and tidy in its appointed place.

"Then you'll know the paper I work for and the sort of thing I write."

He couldn't be bothered to turn on the charm.

"Tell mea"tell the Herald's millions of readersa"how do you justify your show? Horror for adultsa"okay, we'll go along with that. But the kids?"

Dr. Nis made a small deprecating motion with his hands.

"Horror, Mr. Bragg? I deplore the term. My life is spent trying to keep alive a faith, a faith in the mystery of Nature.

Strange things happen. If a man who believes sees a ghost, is he frightened? Yet a man who disbelieves and comes face-to face with one may well die of shock. So perhaps my show serves a useful purpose . .

. as for children, what better time to develop a sense of wonder?"

"That's your storya"now let's have the lowdown on how your gimmicks work."

"Gimmicks?" Dr. Nis regarded him calmly. "I a.s.sure you I do not deal in trickery. Consider this: Who knows you are here? And aren't you just a little bit frightened?"

Bragg flinched. "Who, me? Of a bunch of freaks?" But his voice was edged with doubt.

Dr. Nis said, "I do not want the kind of publicity you have in mind, Mr. Bragg. I don't think it would serve my purpose." He smiled suddenly, and his smile was not for his visitor.

Arnold Bragg turned. Freaks crowded the door of the car avan: the vampire, the werewolf and the lizard-man. The resurrected man was conspicuously absent.

"I think it would be best if Mr. Bragg disappeared," Dr. Nis said quietly. "But don't damage his head, please." He looked again at Bragg, his eyes bright and hard. "You see, Mr. Bragg, I believe I have a use for it."

DISTANT SIGNALS.

by Andrew Weiner.

There was something not quite right about the young man. His suit appeared brand-new. Indeed, it glistened with an almost unnatural freshness and sharpness of definition. Yet it was made in a style that had not been fas.h.i.+onable since the late 1950s. The lapels were too wide, the trousers too baggy; the trouser legs terminated in one-inch cuffs. The young man's hair was shorta"too short. It was parted neatly on the left-hand side and plastered down with some sort of grease. And his smile was too wide.

Too wide, at least for nine o'clock on a Monday morning at the Parkdale Public Library.

Out for the day, was the librarian's first and last thought on the matter. Out, that is, from the state-run mental-health center just three blocks away.

"I would like," said the young man, "to be directed to the TV and film section."

His voice, too, had an unnatural definition, as if he were speaking through some hidden microphone. It projected right across the library.

Several patrons turned their heads to peer at him.

"Over there," said the librarian, in a very pointed whisper. "Just over there."

STRANGER IN TOWN. Series, 1960. Northstar Studios for NBC-TV.

Produced by KEN ODELL. From an original idea by BILL HURN. Directors included JASON ALTBERG, NICK BALL, and JIM SPIEGEL, 26 b/w episodes.

Running time: 26 minutes.

Horse opera following the exploits of Cooper aka The Stranger (VANCE MACCOBY), an amnesiacal gunslinger who wanders from town to town in search of his lost ident.i.ty, stalked always by the mysterious limping loner Loomis (TERRY WHITE) who may or may not know his real name.

Despite this promisingly mythic premise, the series quickly degenerated into a formulaic pattern, with Cooper as a Shane-style savior of widows and orphans. The show won mediocre ratings, and NBC declined to pick up its option for a second season. The ident.i.ty of Cooper was never revealed. See also: GUNSLINGERS; HOLLYWOOD EXISTENTIALISM; LAW AND ORDER; WESTERNS.

MACCOBY, VANCE (1938?-). Actor. Born Henry Mulvin in Salt Lake City, Utah. Frequent quest spots in WAGON TRAIN, RIVERBOAT, CAPTAIN CHRONOS, THE ZONE BEYOND, etc., 1957-59. Lead in the 1960 oater STRANGER IN TOWN and the short-lived 1961 private-eye show MAX PARADISE, canceled after six episodes. Subsequent activities unknown. One of dozens of nearly interchangeable identikit male stars of the first period of episodic TV drama, Maccoby had a certain brooding quality, particularly in b/w, that carried him far, but apparently lacked the resources for the long haul.

See also: STARS AND STARDOMa"From The Complete TV Encyclopedia, Chuck Gingle, editor.

There was something distinctly odd about the young man in the white loafers and pompadour hairstyle, the young man who had been haunting the anteroom of his office all day.

Had the Kookie look come back? Feldman wondered.

"Look, kid," he said, not unkindly, "as my secretary told you, I'm not taking on any more clients. I have a full roster right now. You'd really be much better off going to Talentmart, or one of those places.

They specialize in, you know, unknowns."

"And as I told your secretary," the young man said, "I don't want to be an actor; I want to hire one.

One of your clients. This is strictly a business proposition."

Business proposition my a.s.s, Feldman thought. Autograph hunter, more like. But he said wearily, "Which one would that be? Lola Banks? Dirk Raymond?"

"Vance Maccoby."

"Vance Maccoby?" For a moment he had to struggle to place the name.

"Vance Maccoby?" he said again. "That b.u.m? What the h.e.l.l do you want with Vance Maccoby?"

"Mr. Feldman, I represent a group of overseas investors interested in independently producing a TV series for syndicated sale. We want Mr. Maccoby to star. However, we have so far been unable to locate him."

"I haven't represented him in years. No one has. He hasn't worked in years. Not since . . . what was that piece of c.r.a.p called? Max Paradise? I don't like to speak ill of former clients, but the man was impossible, you know. A drunk. Quite impossible. No one could work with him."

"We're aware of that," the young man said. "We've taken all that into consideration, and we are still interested in talking to Mr. Maccoby.

We think he is the only man for the part. And we believe that if anyone can find him, you can."

The young man opened his briefcase and fumbled inside it. "We would like," he continued, "to retain your services toward that end. And we are prepared to make suitable remuneration whether or not a contract should be signed with Mr. Maccoby and whether or not you choose to represent him as agent of record in that transaction."

"Kid," Feldman began, "what you need is a private detectivea"" He stopped and stared at the bar-shaped object in the young man's hand.

"Is that gold?"

"It certainly is, Mr. Feldman. It certainly is."

The young man laid the bar on the desk between them "An ounce of gold?"

"One point three four ounces," said the young man. "We apologize for the unusual denomination."

He held open the briefcase. "I have twenty-four more such bars here. At the New York spot price this morning, this represents a value of approximately fifteen thousand dollars."

"Fifteen thousand dollars to find Vance Maccoby?" Feldman said.

He got up and paced around the desk.

"Is that stuff hot?" he asked, pointing to the briefcase, feeling like a character in one of the more ba.n.a.l TV shows into which he booked his clients.

"Hot?" echoed the young man. He reached out and touched the gold bar on the desk. "A few degrees below room temperature, I would say."

"Cute," Feldman said. "Don't be cute. Just tell me, is this on the level?"

"Oh, I see," said the young man. "Yes, absolutely. We have a property which we wish to develop, to which we have recently purchased the rights from the estate of the late Mr. Kenneth Odell. There is only one man who can star in this show, and that is Vance Maccoby."

"What property?"

"Stranger in Town," said the young man.

"I knew it," she said. "I knew you would come back."

"You knew more than I did," Cooper said. "I was five miles out of town and heading west. But something . . . something made me turn around and come back here and face the Kerraway Brothers."

"You're a good man," she said. "You couldn't help yourself."

"I don't know if I'm a good man," Cooper said. "I don't know what kind of man I am." He stared morosely at the corpses strewn out on the ground around the ranch house. "I just couldn't let the Kerraways take your land."

He mounted his horse. "Time to be moving on," he said. "You take good care of yourself and little Billy, now."

"Will you ever come back?"

"Maybe," he said. "Maybe after I find what I'm looking for."

"I think you found it already," she said. "You just don't know it yet.

You found yourself."

"That may be so," Cooper said. "But I still gotta put a name to it."

He rode off into a rapidly setting sun.

The video picture flickered, then resolved itself into an antique Tide commercial. Hurn cut the controls.

He turned to the strange young man in the too-tweedy jacket and the heavy horn-rimmed gla.s.ses.

"That?" he said, gesturing at the screen. "You want to remake that .

. . garbage?"

"Not remake," the young man said. "Revive. Continue. Conclude. Tell the remainder of the story of the stranger Cooper, and of the reacquisition of his memory and ident.i.ty."

"Who cares?" Hurn asked. "Who the h.e.l.l cares who Cooper is or what he did? Certainly not the views.

Do you know how many letters we got after we canceled the series? Sixteen. Sixteen letters. That's how many people cared."

"That is our concern, Mr. Hurn. We believe that we do have a market for this property. That is why we are making this proposition. We are prepared to go ahead with or without you. But certainly we would much rather have you with us. As the main creative force behind the original seriesa""

"Creative?" Hurn said. "Frankly, that whole show to me was nothing but an embara.s.sment. And I was glad when they canceled it, actually. I wrote those scripts for one reason and one reason alone. Money."