Gothic, page 22
In silence, all four men watch the glass, and the slowly shrinking head of foam, as it recedes. As seconds tick by, Tyson thinks he actually hears Harry groan, and is forced to stifle yet another giggle.
“Tyson…” Pruitt starts, but Tyson thrusts up a finger once more, eyes never leaving his glass.
“Ah-ah-ah…” he says, and Pruitt shuts up a second time, this time wearing a grimace.
Finally, Tyson sets down the empty can, lifts the glass, takes a long drink, then puts it down on the table, smacking his lips. “That’s better,” he says. “Please, go on Jim.”
Pruitt clears his throat. “We’re all very pleased with how your last book did, and the deal we are shopping now seems like it’s going to be very, very successful for you.”
“You mean, for all of us,” Tyson says.
“Of course, of course…” Pruitt agrees, then seems to gather his courage. “Anyway, there is one thing we’d like to address. Get us all on the same page, as it were.”
Tyson raises his eyebrows. He was expecting this, of course. Albeit not so formally.
“Oh?”
“Look, Tyson, I don’t need to tell you the kind of world we’re living in these days. It’s a hashtag-fueled society. With the global movement going on for equality and inclusiveness, and the new PC-culture, we need to be sure we’re stepping lightly and in-line with current… beliefs.”
Tyson’s eyes darken and he leans forward. “Beliefs…” He repeats the word slowly, rolling it on his tongue like sour candy. “Look, let’s cut the bullshit and let this gorilla out of the box, shall we? What’s your concern, Jim?” Tyson slides his half-finished glass to the side, crosses his arms on the table, and stares directly at the agency president. “Maybe you can spell it out for me.”
“I guess I’ll just say it,” Pruitt starts, speaking quietly at first but then picking up steam. “And I hope we can have a productive discussion about the issues.”
Tyson imagines the elderly man beneath the veneer of tailored clothes and a two-hundred-dollar haircut; the saggy-assed, worn-out piece of shit who probably just wants to be on a boat somewhere, fishing as the sun comes up, kissing grandchildren that likely don’t exist.
He’s nothing but regret in a nice suit, Tyson thinks.
“It’s the book, Tyson,” Pruitt continues. “More to the point, it’s some of the content of the book. It’s… well, to be frank, it’s not going to fly. I mean, we don’t think, with today’s… uh… sociopolitical climate…” he trails off, looking around the room for the right word, the right phrasing. “Hell, come on now, you’ve seen the headlines. Even you have to admit some of the ideas, er… the content, that is. Well hell, it’s a bit dated, is what it is.”
Tyson lets the dropped shoe sit for a beat, then reclines casually. “So, you’ve read my book, Jim?” he asks, already knowing the answer.
Pruitt flushes and, to his credit, doesn’t try to lie. He turns once again to his assistant. “Tim, why don’t you…”
Maybe I’m wrong, Tyson muses, watching the two idiots interact. Maybe it’s the kid does the ass-spanking in that relationship.
“Of course, sir,” Tim says with the snarky, youthful exuberance of a recent ivy-league graduate who believes themselves the bellwether of the new world order. It reminds Tyson of a joke: How do you know when someone has gone to Harvard?
They tell you.
The sour grapes joke makes him think of Violet, who once had dreams of getting a master’s degree at Harvard after her time at Brown, where she now goes from class-to-class in a wheelchair.
Tyson grimaces and shoves the thought of his daughter from his mind, does his best to focus on Little Assistant Tim, who is yammering away in a broken, high-pitched squawk. “To start with,” the kid says, “it’s way too gory. I mean, what is this, splatterpunk? Come on. Child abuse? Body horror? No, it’s mainstream horror for the masses, am I right?”
Harry shoots Tyson a look of concern, but Tyson says nothing. His expression placid, attentive. A look that says: Please, go on. I want to hear more.
“Second, to be blunt, it’s sexist. Completely tone-deaf. Describing a woman’s breasts for a paragraph may have flown in the ’80s and ’90s, Mr. Parks, but in today’s society we’ll get crucified for this stuff. I won’t even get into the extreme sexual violence. I mean, there’s a reason Richard Laymon’s novels were exiled to the UK.”
Read a lot of Laymon, have you Timmy? Lying shit.
“Uh-huh,” Tyson says.
“Last, and with all due respect Mr. Parks, the language. I mean, our editor counted 96 F-bombs, 88 shits, and, most shockingly of all, double-digit racial slurs, including use of the N-word. Twice.”
“Sure, but not as an insult,” Tyson says defensively, annoyed he’s even responding to the little pissant. “Look, that’s the way the characters speak. I mean, these aren’t good people we’re talking about. The characters, I mean.”
Harry looks at him with growing concern, but Tyson ignores him.
“That may be,” Tim continues, and even Pruitt appears uncomfortable now. “But your last novel, popular as it was—and still is—does not have a great reputation. People have reported feeling ill for days after reading it. Children have acted out violently against other kids—and adults—pointing to your novel as their inspiration. People complain about not being able to sleep at night. Twitter had a field day with it, and so did Reddit. The black altar hashtag was trending with hate groups and violent criminals, even sex offenders.”
“Sounds wonderful,” Tyson says with a smile. “I love trending.”
“And then there’s the rumors, Mr. Parks. More than rumors, the allegations.”
Pruitt looks suddenly ill, and the room takes on a quiet breathlessness.
“Rumors?”
The assistant looks heated now, like maybe this was all about to get personal.
Hell, Tyson thinks. Maybe it is.
“Yes, the rumors. The claims that people are reading your books and acting out. Did you know that a family in Los Angeles was gunned down by their sixteen-year-old child? He wrote the name of your book on the wall, Mr. Parks. In his mother’s blood.”
Tyson waves a hand. “Black Altar? Kind of vague, don’t you think? He could have meant anything…”
“He had a copy of your book on his nightstand,” Tim says, his eyes locked in. “He fucking highlighted the section in your book where the teenager kills his family. Does that seem coincidental to you?”
Tyson lets out a breath, then takes another long sip of his Coke. He licks his lips, raises his eyebrows. “Are you done?”
But the assistant is now half-standing, leaning over the table like a prosecutor objecting to the judge. “There are suicides! Murders, Mr. Parks. All clearly connected to Black Altar. To release more of the same would be…”
“Dangerous,” Pruitt finishes, eyes roving the tabletop, as if he’s unsure how he’d gotten in this room in the first place.
Senile old bastard probably thinks he’s in the Bahamas.
Little Tim, now red-faced, nods once to his boss, then sits back down.
Showing off a smile of newly whitened teeth, Tyson stands. “Well, gentlemen, this has been very educational.” He smooths down his suit coat. “It’s always good to have some face-time. Very interesting stuff all around. But, if you don’t mind, allow me to respond for sake of clarity. Just so we’re all on the same page. Sound good?”
Pruitt nods absently, even though Tim looks like he has more to say.
A lot more, Tyson guesses.
“First, I hear there’s a movie deal. I want to write the screenplay for that and be paid accordingly. I also want an executive producer credit with points on gross. None of this net bullshit.” When Pruitt opens his mouth to respond, he adds: “These are not suggestions.”
“Second, make the Scribner deal. I like the idea of making a run at King. Let’s see who’s worth more money come next year. And last,” he turns to the assistant, and the smile slides off his face like a snake slithering beneath a bedsheet. “If you, or anyone else, ever tell me what to put or not put into one of my books again, I will dump this agency faster than a whore with an Adam’s apple, and you can shove your fifteen percent up your asses. I didn’t go through some bat-shit fanatic killing my best friend and my girlfriend, not to mention putting my only daughter in a goddamned wheelchair, so I could sit here and listen to this shit-sperm with an MFA tell me how to write a horror novel.” He points to Harry. “Harry, get that Scribner deal done, and let the studio know my terms.”
“Yeah, you got it, Ty.”
“And you,” he says, turning back to the (now very pale-faced) assistant. “You limp teenage cock. If I ever see your face in this building again, I’ll walk out the door and never come back.” He flicks his eyes toward Pruitt, who looks like he’s bit into a rotten apple, and is now eye-to-eye with a worm.
“I hear CAA would love to be in the Tyson Parks business, Jim. So don’t piss me off.”
Tyson puts on his smile again, then raps his knuckles on the table.
“Good meeting, gentlemen. Good fucking meeting.”
Forty-seven
Six months to the day after his come-to-Jesus meeting with Jim Pruitt at PMA headquarters, the one where he made sure the suits taking a share of his income knew who—who, exactly—was in charge of this particular tour bus, Tyson stands naked in front of the full-length bathroom mirror, hair still dripping from a hot shower, the sodden towel he’d used to dry himself tossed onto the floor (the maid comes in the morning so there’s no point in being tidy).
As he considers the naked body reflected in the glass before him, the instinct he’d developed over the last couple decades (the same reflexive action all men over fifty come to know quite well) to suck in his gut, is strong. But as he studies himself—turning side-to-side, looking up-and-down—he realizes there’s no need. He hasn’t looked this fit and trim since college. Hell, maybe high school. The writer’s belt is history. The old spare tire deflated.
The gym has paid off in other ways, as well. Aside from a flat stomach, his arms, chest and legs are nicely toned, especially for a guy walking the back nine, as Uncle Steve might say. He won’t be mistaken for Arnold Schwarzenegger anytime soon, but an early-aughts Kevin Costner isn’t totally out of the question.
Of course, there are things that regular visits to the gym and a healthy diet can’t explain.
His eyesight, for one.
He hasn’t needed to wear glasses for months and can’t recall the last time he searched for one of several pairs of reading glasses placed strategically around the house, an infestation that began in his early-forties.
There’s also his hair, which is full and—he’d swear to this in a court of law—darker than it had been a year ago. The scalp treatments had helped, sure, but this was something altogether different. He never touched a box of hair dye, wouldn’t know how to use it if he did. And when his dermatologist said he’d never seen a response to the treatment as vigorous as Tyson’s, he thought it prudent to stop going in for treatments altogether.
In the months since, if anything, his hair had only gotten thicker.
Very soon that thing is going to stop feeding you, and you will begin feeding it.
Tyson shakes the stray memory away, shows himself a toothy smile, then steps closer to the mirror to study his eyes. He notices, with some concern, that the gold flecks are gone. The same gold flecks he’s looked at in thousands of different mirrors over the course of his life, starting when he was probably no more than five or six years old.
“Huh,” he says, and decides it’s likely nothing to be concerned about. The molecules of the human body complete a total reboot every seven years (or so he’d read somewhere), therefore, biologically speaking, humans become different people every decade. Literally.
So, it didn’t make sense to lose sleep over looking better, feeling younger. Having more hair isn’t something to cry about, and the restored vision, he figures, could be put down to being more healthy—eating right and exercise, etc. (he thinks maybe he read that somewhere as well).
Sure you did. And geese lay golden eggs and if you climb a beanstalk you’ll go to a castle in the clouds and reach the domain of one particularly nasty motherfucking giant, one with a hard-on for human meat.
Tyson lets the smile go and turns away from his reflection. He has no wish to see himself any further. Not today. Besides, it’s time to get ready for the big rumpus.
The Horror hadn’t sold as well as its predecessor, the much-maligned Black Altar.
It had sold better.
A hell of a lot better.
The movie deal had come through, and he got the terms he asked for, the ones he’d made no bones about sharing with Harry, Jim Pruitt and that little pissant assistant in the agency board room. What was the kid’s name again? Sam? Bill? No… Little Tim. Thaaaat’s right.
Little Tim had been canned right around the time the Scribner contract got wet with blue ink. Harry confided the information to him one night while out for celebratory drinks.
Harry had been doing a lot of celebratory nights recently—mornings and afternoons, as well. On one particularly strange evening, he called Tyson, hysterical, crying and raving like a madman. Talking about visions… no, that wasn’t it.
It was nightmares.
Yeah, sure, good old Harry was having some real doozies. Once, he called Tyson stinking drunk (and most likely high on coke) screaming about Tyson’s desk, of all things. Raving about a man who lived inside of it. Apparently, this man had been visiting Harry late at night. Threatening him, warning him. Making sure Tyson’s affairs weren’t left untended, that his priorities were right at the tippity-top of Harry’s daily to-do list.
Tyson calmly told Harry to get some sleep and hung up on him as gently as he could. He had a barrel-full of problems to deal with, including an idea for a new book, and an estranged daughter needing tens of thousands of dollars in medical care. A drunk literary agent with a bad case of night terrors wasn’t something he could take on. Nor did he want to.
Besides, it isn’t like Tyson can do anything about it. What the old man did was up to the old man. No one else.
Harry apologized the next day, of course. Swore to get himself cleaned up, take some time off, and the rest of that whole song. Tyson told him not to worry, reminded him they were rich and getting richer.
And they are.
They’re getting much, much richer. Still, there are hiccups… speedbumps on the road to Success and Happiness and all those other tourist traps the world sells you as being a great place to live!
Visit, sure, but live?
No thanks.
One of the problems being that, although the new books are selling like blankets in the arctic circle, what’s not going so well is the critical reception.
More alarmingly, as Little Tim once put it: the accusations.
Tyson’s used to negative reviews for his books. Hell, he’s been getting them for decades, and horror is always an easy target for a snooty newspaper critic-slash-wannabe-poet, and his feelings aren’t going to be hurt by a few scathing, one-star reviews on the internet.
No, it’s the other stuff that niggles at him.
One New York Times opinion piece wrote that Tyson’s last two books were “morally destructive” and “a blight on the landscape of genre fiction.” Another withering piece from Entertainment Weekly even suggested that Tyson isn’t the one behind the keyboard, that he’s been using a ghostwriter, or—get this kids—a staff of writers to complete his books for him. They figured the speed of the books’ releases, and the size of the books themselves (The Horror is what most folks refer to as a “doorstop novel”), is such that it would be impossible for one man to write it all. The same article also made references to the overall style of the writing, advocating that it was vastly different from Tyson’s previous books. Therefore, the rest could be inferred.
“They’re coming for you,” a voice says, and Tyson spins around, finds himself looking directly into the mirror. He sees his own startled face… and something more.
A semi-opaque version of flesh, muscle and bone. And beneath it, hiding behind the eyes, beneath the skin, he can see the old man.
The blind bastard stares back, leering, like he did that day in the movie theater except…
Except…
Except this time, he’s not just looking at you, hombre.
He IS you…
“Hogwash and bug spray,” Tyson says out loud, not allowing himself to get worked up, not on this very important night. He turns his back on the reflection and enters the walk-in closet adjacent to the bathroom, picks out a cream suit, a chocolate-colored silk shirt, and the new Magnani dress shoes he picked up that afternoon.
He pretends not to notice the old man watching from the mirror. Who keeps watching him as he walks away, wearing that same wide, ugly grin on his pruned face.
Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter.
Tonight, they’ll be toasting the release of his newest novel, and he plans to look dapper as hell for it. Nothing is going to stop him from enjoying this evening—not his doubts, not his memories, not his downward-spiraling sanity. If he’s losing his mind, so be it. He’ll still get what’s coming to him. He’s earned it, damn it.
He deserves it.
“Sure you do, Papa, sure you do,” the old fart says, his voice filtering through the mirror as if transmitting from another dimension. “First you play, then you work. Yes? Much work to do. Now go play, go play. Then come back to me.
“Come back to us.”
Tyson folds the suit over his arm and leaves the closet. When he walks into the bedroom, he ignores the hunched shadow in the corner, only slightly alarmed at the speed and ease with which the wraith seems to move through his world at will. No, he won’t acknowledge the dull white eyes following him, tracking him as he crosses the room to lay the suit out on the bed.
“Tonight is a special night,” he says, pretending not to hear the dry chuckle coming from the shadow. “Tonight’s a special night, and I’m going to enjoy it. I’ve earned it.”
