A Graveyard for Lunatics

“Remember that time when you called and said old Ralph Courtney, our best friend, was dead and for me to come over, you had him laid out in your house, but it was all a joke, you planned to get Ralph to put white powder all over his face and lay himself out and pretend to be dead and rise up when I came in. Remember?”

“Yep.” Roy laughed again.

“But I met Ralph in the street and it spoiled your joke?”

“Sure.” Roy shook his head at his own pranks.

“Well, then. No wonder I think maybe you put the damn body up on the wall and sent me the letter.”

“Only one thing wrong with that,” said Roy. “You’ve rarely mentioned Arbuthnot to me. If I made the body, how would I figure you’d recognize the poor s.o.b.? It would have to be someone who really knew that you had seen Arbuthnot years ago, right?”

“Well …”

“Doesn’t make sense, a body in the rain, if you don’t know what in hell you’re looking at. You’ve told me about a lot of other people you met when you were a kid, hanging around the studios. If I’d made a body, it would be Rudolph Valentino or Lon Chaney, to be sure you’d recognize ’em. Correct?”

“Correct,” I said lamely. I studied Roy’s face and looked quickly away. “Sorry. But, hell, it was Arbuthnot. I saw him two dozen times over the years, back in the thirties. At previews. Out front at the studio, here. Him and his sports cars, a dozen different ones, and limousines, three of those. And women, a few dozen, always laughing, and when he signed autographs, slipping a quarter in the autograph book before he handed it back to you. A quarter! In 1934! A quarter bought you a malted milk, a candy bar, and a ticket to a movie.”

“That’s the kind of guy he was, was he? No wonder you remember him. How much’d he give you?”

“He gave me a buck twenty-five, one month. I was rich. And now he’s buried over that wall where I was last night, isn’t he? Why would someone try to scare me into thinking he’d been dug up and propped on a ladder? Why all the bother? The body landed like an iron safe. Take at least two men, maybe, to handle that. Why?”

Roy took a bite out of another doughnut. “Yeah, why? Unless someone is using you to tell the world. You were going to tell someone else, yes?”

“I might—”

“Don’t. You look scared right now.”

“But why should I be? Except I got this feeling it’s more than a joke, it has some other meaning.”

Roy stared at the wall, chewing quietly. “Hell,” Roy said at last. “You been back over to the graveyard this morning to see if the body is still on the ground? Why not go see?”

“No!”

“It’s broad daylight. You chicken?”

“No, but …”

“Hey!” cried an indignant voice. “What you two saps doing up there!?”

Roy and I looked down off the porch.

Manny Leiber stood there in the middle of the lawn. His Rolls-Royce was pulled up, its motor running silent and deep, and not a tremble in the frame.

“Well?” shouted Manny.

“We’re having a conference!” Roy said easily. “We want to move in here!”

“You what?” Manny eyed the old Victorian house.

“Great place to work,” Roy said, quickly. “Office for us up front, the sunporch, put in a card table, typewriter.”

“You got an office!”

“Offices don’t inspire. This—” I nodded around, taking the ball from Roy—“inspires. You should move all the writers out of the Writers’ Building! Put Steve Longstreet over in that New Orleans mansion to write his Civil War film. And that French bakery just beyond? Great place for Marcel Dementhon to finish his revolution, yes? Down the way, Piccadilly, heck, put all those new English writers there!”

Manny came slowly up on the porch, his face a confused red. He looked around at the studio, his Rolls, and then at the two of us, as if he had caught us naked and smoking behind the barn. “Christ, not enough everything’s gone to hell at breakfast. I got two fruitcakes who want to turn Lydia Pinkham’s shack into a writers’ cathedral!”

“Right!” said Roy. “On this very porch I conceived the scariest miniature film set in history!”

“Cut the hyperbole.” Manny backed off. “Show me the stuff !”

“May we use your Rolls?” said Roy.

We used the Rolls.

On the way to Stage 13, Manny Leiber stared straight ahead and said, “I’m trying to run a madhouse and you guys sit around on porches shooting wind. Where in hell is my Beast!? Three weeks I’ve waited—”

“Hell,” I said reasonably, “it takes time, waiting for something really new to step out of the night. Give us breathing space, time for the old secret self to coax itself out. Don’t worry. Roy here will be working in clay. Things will rise out of that. For now, we keep the Monster in the shadows, see—”

“Excuses!” said Manny, glaring ahead. “I don’t see. I’ll give you three more days! I want to see the Monster!”

“What if,” I blurted suddenly, “the Monster sees you! My God! What if we do it all from the Monster’s viewpoint, looking out!? The camera moves and is the Monster, and people get scared of the Camera and—”

Manny blinked at me, shut one eye, and muttered: “Not bad. The Camera, huh?”

“Yeah! The Camera crawls out of the meteor. The Camera, as the Monster, blows across the desert, scaring Gila monsters, snakes, vultures, stirring the dust—”

“I’ll be damned.” Manny Leiber gazed off at the imaginary desert.

“I’ll be damned,” cried Roy, delighted.

“We put an oiled lens on the Camera,” I hurried on, “add steam, spooky music, shadows, and the Hero staring into the Camera and—”

“Then what?”

“If I talk it I won’t write it.”

“Write it, write it!”

We stopped at Stage 13. I jumped out, babbling. “Oh, yeah. I think I should do two versions of the script. One for you. One for me.”

“Two?” yelled Manny. “Why?”

“At the end of a week I hand in both. You get to choose which is right.”

Manny eyed me suspiciously, still half in, half out of the Rolls.

“Crap! You’ll do your best work on your idea!”