Castle of Horror Read online

  “And all the secret passages are to make up for the doorways that open onto blank walls and the stairways that just go up to the ceiling and stop?” Alec nodded toward the most prominent example of the latter – carved, gilded, and adorned with marble nymphs – at the far end of the tapestried parlor in which they stood.

  “Tor says it’s perfect,” declared Christine, coming in and looking around her in deep satisfaction.

  “For finding out the winner of the Belmont Stakes?”

  “Well, that’s what I thought. But Tor is really Attuned to the Higher Planes. He’s so spiritual! And he’s positive he and I were united in another lifetime, and wouldn’t it be wonderful to find out where and when? He brought his Ouija board with him – he never does anything without spirit guidance— and he’s going to talk to Marty Peacock and ask him to delay filming for a couple of days so that we can have the silence that spirits need to manifest themselves—Yes, dearest, Mama will put you down but you must be a good boy…” She had Black Jasmine cradled in her arms; Chang Ming was already flouncing all over the room sniffing at the base-boards. “Will Marty be here today?”

  Norah said she thought so, and reflected that the Centurion producer might have some reservations about losing a night of his expensive and limited shooting-time at the Castle so that Tor Westlake could find out from the spirits if he and Christine had been wed in a former life – not to mention the prospects of a horse called You Betcha in the Belmont – and moreover, wondered if it was such a good idea to be calling on spirits with a Ouija board in a place that was supposedly haunted.

  “At least she’s not trying to do it at your boarding-house,” pointed out Alec, as he returned to the ballroom, where Tor’s stand-in waited to sweat through the lighting set-up in a copy of Tor’s ostentatiously American-looking suit.

  “Well,” agreed Norah, “there is that.”

  Trailed by the helpful Pekinese, she proceeded with her task of listing of all rooms which could convincingly represent the home of a wealthy mine-owner – dining-room, three bedchambers, the Gothic Staircase (the house had four major stairways and two minor ones, only two of which actually communicated with the second floor), and the chamber which Alec referred to as Queen Victoria’s Drawing Room, crammed with heavy carved furniture and swagged velvet curtains – and built her story around those. The stables and coach-house were also useful, horribly weathered on the outside, but within, a cathedral of multi-colored woods, carved rafters, wrought-iron mangers and elaborately-laid brickwork floors.

  Because no stable scenes were required of the Brooklyn Queen, the Lost Lamb’s meeting with the wealthy young gentleman who would become (over the horrified protests of his parents) her True Love could be filmed in daylight, and over the course of the next three days Deacon Barnes swapped coats and pulled boots on over his silk stockings half a dozen times a day, alternately romancing Bebe Jolivet in the corral and then running back up to serve coffee on a silver tray to the Ruritanian royalty in the Louis XV Parlor.

  “I honestly feel terrible doin’ this to everyone,” sighed Miss Jolivet, when Norah came down from the Castle to let Deacon know he was needed for another drawing-room scene. “Draggin’ everybody up to Reno, and shootin’ in this Godforsaken place. But if I stayed in Chicago any longer…” She sighed, and lifted Chang Ming up onto the bench by the stable door where she sat, waiting for the Centurion “gaffer” Ti-Jo Girod to finish setting reflectors. “…Stan woulda talked me into goin’ back to him.”

  She turned her lovely face aside, while the golden Peke licked her fingers happily. Unlike Christine, who for all her dazzling beauty could not have acted to save her own life, Bebe Jolivet was a restrained and convincing performer. After the histrionics going on up in the Castle (neither Darlene Golden nor Tor Westlake were up to the standards of a Christmas pantomime either, in Norah’s opinion), it was a relief to see intense emotions subtly under-played, and gesture carry what words could not.

  A crying shame, thought Norah, that no Hollywood studio would hire this slim young woman, with her café-crème complexion like the most delicate ivory, and her features as European as Norah’s own.

  “That’s hard,” she said, thinking of Mrs. Latimer and the other women at the boarding-house. Miss Jolivet’s breath whispered in the tiniest sigh, before she stood and looked again at Norah with a rueful half-grin.

  “I have to keep tellin’ myself it’s like my daddy and liquor. He must have tried a thousand times to quit, knowin’ what it was doin’ to him – to me, to Mama, to my sisters… And in the end he couldn’t. It took all the help my friends could give me, to get me to pack my things and come here. I get telegrams from Stan every night.” She shook her head, stooping a little to run Chang Ming’s silky ear between her fingers. “And flowers – roses and orchids, and lily of the valley, which is my favorite…” Her hand moved for a moment toward her hair, as if to adjust some customary decoration. “He can be so sweet. But I just… I can’t.”

  Over by the stable doorway Danny Cross and Ti-Jo Girod fussed with the reflectors, while Sallie Collins, Bebe’s stand-in, held her pose with lips tight and eyes narrowed against the harsh glare. Sallie, Norah noticed, though her skin-tone was identical to Miss Jolivet’s (High yeller, was what Tor called them), was of distinctly African features, and her hair, despite evidence of rigorous straightening, still held traces of the soft scrunchiness of its original texture. Miss Jolivet, needless to say, had what the wardrobe-mistress called “good hair”: silky curls like a white woman’s, and curious gray-turquoise eyes.

  “Have you thought of going to Europe?” Norah asked. “Any French or Italian director would be insane not to hire you.”

  “Maybe.” Miss Jolivet looked rueful again, “I ain’t really thought what I’m gonna do. I got two more films yet for Centurion, an’ I sort of dread goin’ back to Chicago, knowin’ Stan’ll be there. But I can’t run away forever—”

  “That’s good!” yelled Danny. “Thank you, Sallie… Let’s get Miss Jolivet over here…”

  The actress gave each of the dogs a fond pat (Buttercreme was back in the castle hiding under a couch), and smiled at Norah. “Thanks for listenin’, m’am.” As she crossed the corral Norah heard her say, “Thank you, Sallie,” to the stand-in as they passed one another, but the younger girl only muttered and held up her head, giving her principal only the barest of glances before going to sit in the stable out of the chill.

  The following night – Friday – Centurion started filming in the Castle itself.

  As usual when they were “on location,” Norah assisted Alec while he developed test-strips of that day’s work in various levels of light – in this case, using the upstairs bathroom at the men’s boarding-house as a dark-room, though she’d performed the same duties in sheds, tents, and the kitchen of a ski-lodge at Big Bear Lake. Afterwards they went to the Sugar Plum with an assortment of lighting-men and props-managers; she returned to her own boarding-house to work on the next few scenes of Lost Lamb until midnight. Christine didn’t return until three. Though the Pekes patrolled the room, and the hallway outside, and growled at the spectral white-footed gray cat when it appeared, briefly, on the corner of the dresser, nothing untoward occurred.

  Saturday morning Christine (when she finally awoke) drove out to the Castle to watch Tor work, full of indignation that Marty Peacock wouldn’t let Tor (and Margaret Mackenzie, who was playing the Dowager monarch to the Brooklyn Queen) hold a séance in Queen Victoria’s so-called Drawing Room: “Surely he could have filmed someplace else last night.” She withdrew a cigarette and her long amber holder from her handbag, fitting the one into the other while maintaining control of the Packard with one elbow on the steering-wheel.

  “I’ll do that, dear,” said Norah, and added, “Nobody will be filming in there today, though.”

  “Don’t be silly, darling, ghosts aren’t going to show up in the daytime.”

  When Christine scurried off to flirt with Tor between takes Norah r
etreated – with the dogs, who had a tendency to wrap their leashes around the light-stands – to the music-room, to wrestle with the problem of how Mr. and Mrs. Grandison (the cinematic parents of Deacon Barnes) could be leaders of colored society if they lived clear out in the Wild West, castle or no castle. Ghosts might not show up in the daytime, she reflected, the third time she looked around at the faint whisper of noise behind her, but there was certainly something off-kilter about the elegant little room, with its two pianos (one of which was a dummy), harp, and harpsichord.

  Possibly, she reflected, it was only sounds from the filming in the ballroom echoing in one of the secret-passages. Or drafts from the same source stirring the curtains. The dogs didn’t seem to be troubled, anyway, but snored happily at her feet. At least there’s no spectral cat sitting on my papers.

  She was still glad when the Colossus crew packed up for the day.

  On the following morning (she’d long ago learned there was no Sabbath in Hollywood) the crew found clear signs that the furniture in the Grand Staircase (the one with the marble statues) and in one corner of the Louis XV parlor had been moved around. Norah, who was also in charge of continuity (with the assistance of the stills Alec took of the sets every afternoon), found minute spots of adhesive tape – such as cameramen and gaffers used to keep lights in position – on the carpets, approximately where the original furniture had been and also in places where it would be logical to put other chairs, tables, etc. A quick visit to the Gothic Staircase (the one with the gargoyles) confirmed her suspicion: the two Victorian chairs and the monumental hall stand had been moved from their places and now stood grouped in the middle of the hall like nervous water-buffalo.

  “Maybe they couldn’t get the lighting right,” surmised Alec, when Norah returned with the odd information that the crew of Centurion had evidently lugged all the gilt Louis XV furniture out of the Grand Staircase Hall, replaced it with the ponderous contents of the Gothic Staircase Hall, and then lugged it back again.

  “Why wouldn’t they? All their shooting was being done under artificial lighting anyway.”

  “If it was Darlene starring—“ Alec nodded in the direction of Brooklyn Queen’s leading lady, currently making an uproar over which doorway the script required her to stand in when first beholding her American beloved, “—I’d guess she thought the Gothic Staircase wasn’t grand enough. But from everything I’ve heard about Bebe, she’s easy to work with. Deacon—?”

  “Oh, don’t be such a goop, Darlene,” Christine was saying, on the other side of the marble-floored hall. “Nobody’s going to be looking at you in that scene anyway…”

  Deacon backed hastily from that exchange of opinions, and set his silver tray on a spindly-legged stand. “I don’t want to be the one to say it,” he murmured, “but they’re right about this place being haunted. We tried all Friday night to film that scene between Bebe and her sweetheart’s mama, and we couldn’t get one take Danny could use.”

  Norah and Alec traded a glance. There were locations in Los Angeles like that, and Norah had been on a shoot in one of them – an experience she didn’t care to repeat.

  “Sometimes it was just knocking.” Deacon shook his head. “You’d think, Hey, it’s no different than the music some stars have played while they’re doing a scene. But you try hearing it in the middle of the night in a creepy place like this. Bebe’s a trooper, but you see her flinch in just about every take. And twice, light-stands came down – stands I saw Ti-Jo put up myself, and he’s one of the best in the business. Last night it was the same thing, both here and in the yellow bedroom: knocking, and what sounded like footsteps. We all heard it, footsteps coming down the Gothic stairway, which as you know doesn’t go anywhere. It just ends at the ceiling.”

  (“Well, if you’re such a great star,” Darlene sniped, “why did they ask me to do this picture and not you? Oh, wait, it’s because the script calls for a ‘fresh-faced young girl’ instead of a ‘spooky old hag’…”)

  (“Ladies… ladies…”)

  “Sallie said she saw something in that parlor with the carved furniture, like flakes of fire, she said, moving just above the floor. She came running out of there shaking like a leaf, and wouldn’t go back, and I’ve got to say, when Danny and I went in to check, I kept… I don’t know, thinking I heard something.”

  Something like Christine’s voice in the bathroom, Norah wondered with a shiver, calling for you to come in…?

  (“Just because Tor doesn’t go for little girls with little curls like yours…”)

  (“Oh, he went for them all right,” shrilled Darlene. “Didn’t you, Tor? Mine, and Mary Minter’s, and Alice White’s, and Clara Bow’s, and—”)

  (“Ladies—!”)

  Alec asked, “You haven’t heard or seen anything here, have you, Norah?” and Norah shook her head.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Probably what we did last night.” Deacon didn’t look happy about it. Considering the fact that there was no electricity in the castle, and that outside the range of whatever lighting the Centurion group brought themselves the place would be pitch dark, Norah couldn’t blame him. “Film in here, or in the Purple Parlor. It’s definitely worse in some rooms than it is in others. There was no problem at all in the ballroom. But the thing is…”

  Deacon hesitated, not wanting to say it.

  Particularly, reflected Norah, not wanting to say it in here.

  “The thing is,” finished Alec, “there’s no telling what else is going to happen next.”

  *

  What happened next – inevitably – was that Danny Cross arrived in his beat-up Chevy with a request that Norah re-write the dining-room scenes to take place in a parlor. “This is givin’ me the willies,” he said, as Norah looked over the pages and Lenny Palmer finally achieved a set-up that pleased Darlene – whose unfortunate stand-in had, during the entire argument between Chris and Darlene, remained like patience on a monument in the rejected doorway under the grilling heat of the Klieg lights in a copy of Darlene’s gossamer evening-gown. “If it was down South I’d wonder if it was the KKK pullin’ one of their, ‘Let’s dress up in sheets and scare the dumb niggers.’ But the Klan usually lets you know beforehand what they want. And if they didn’t want us filmin’ up here, they’d have gone first after the lawyer that owns this place, and far as I could tell he was pleased as punch to rent to us.”

  “Have you had any other trouble in town?” inquired Norah. In India – according to Uncle Sher – native Indians were forbidden to enter any number of ‘sahib’ buildings and facilities, but she’d never heard of gangs of white toughs getting together to beat up those who challenged the system. They simply called the police – usually Indians themselves – and had the offenders put out.

  Danny shook his head. “’Course,” he added, “we know to keep our heads down. Stay in the back-end of town, eat at Jimmy’s Diner – which I must say is a damn sight better than half the white restaurants in Reno – don’t go around sayin’ Boo to anybody’s geese. We just want to get in, shoot our picture, and get out. So far, we haven’t heard of anybody who has a problem with that.”

  “Besides,” added Deacon, coming over to them after serving tea to Their Majesties yet again, “I don’t think anybody but red-neck country-boys actually believe that ‘all dem black folk is a-scaired o’ ghosts.’ They could do it, sure – this place has about twenty outside doors and anybody could sneak in and make noises and tamper with the light-stands without being seen – but that kind of thing went out with buggy-whips. This is… different.”

  While Deacon went back for another take (“It’s tea, for Chrissake,” sighed Christine, “not a Masonic Ritual!”), Norah went with Danny to Queen Victoria’s Parlor, and stood looking around uneasily at the shadowy room. It felt no different from any other room of the house: by far the most handsome of the parlors, with its black-walnut furniture and elaborately-carved paneling, and portraits of two regal-looking ladies staring
haughtily down from opposite walls (Mr. Blatt’s screaming ex-wives?). Yet Norah felt deeply uneasy, picturing in her mind what it would have been like shrouded in darkness, with “flakes of fire” darting a few inches above the floor like swarming insects.

  Christine, however, was ecstatic. “That’s where we’ve got to hold our séance!” she cried, and Tor – who’d once again left his poor stand-in sweating under the hissing Kliegs – made a clench-fisted salute of delight.

  “Sure enough, this is where the vibrations will be strongest! Will you join us, Mrs. Blackstone? There should be at least five – with Chris and me, and Margaret, and maybe Lenny… Or would Alec sit in, do you think?”

  “I thought you needed a medium.”

  “Not with a Ouija board. The Ouija board is the medium. It allows direct communication with the spirits.”

  “Oh, Alec’s a complete unbeliever,” Christine protested, completely forgetting the fact that Alec had risked his life for them against an undeniably believable Manchurian Rat-God. “Please say yes, darling,” she added, taking Norah affectionately by the arm as they walked to the castle gates. “I just have to know about me and Tor! And You Betcha is at twenty to one in the Belmont now, but everybody’s saying he’ll take everything in sight so he wants to get his bets in…”

  Around them, Alec, Doc Larousse – the Colossus gaffer – and prop-men Ned Bergen and Ned Devine were loading light-stands, reflectors, and Doc’s portable generator into the studio truck amid clouds of dust while their opposite numbers at Centurion drove up through the thickening gloom.

  “Did they actually hear Mr. Blatt’s ex-wives screaming?” Christine demanded eagerly, as Tor hurried away to relay the glad news to Miss Mackenzie, a plump and kind-hearted Scotswoman with a gift for looking steely-eyed and formidable on film.