Anno Dracula (39 page)

‘This shot, Gené,’ said Welles, ruminating, ‘will be a marvel, one for the books. And it’ll come in under budget. A whole reel, a quarter of an hour, will be in the can by the end of the day. Months of planning, construction, drafting and setting up. Everything I’ve learned about the movies since 1939. It’ll all be there.’

Had she the heart to plead with him to stop?

‘Mr Welles,’ prompted the assistant.

Suddenly firm, decided, Welles said, ‘We take the shot.’

On the first take, the sliding walls of the Bistritz Inn jammed, after only twenty seconds of exposure. The next take went perfectly, snaking through three stages, with over a hundred performers in addition to the principals and twice that many technicians focusing on fulfilling the vision of one great man. After lunch, at the pleading of Jack Nicholson - who thought he could do better - Welles put the whole show on again. This time, there were wobbles as the flying camera went momentarily out of control, plunging towards the toy forest, before the operator (pilot?) regained balance and completed the stunt with a remarkable save.

Two good takes. The spontaneous chaos might even work for the shot.

Geneviève had spent the day just watching, in awe.

If it came to a choice between a world without this film and a world with Dracula, she didn’t know which way she would vote. Welles, in action, was a much younger man, a charmer and a tyrant, a cheerleader and a patriarch. He was everywhere, flirting in French with Jeanne Moreau, the peasant woman, and hauling ropes with the effects men. Dracula wasn’t in the shot, except as a subjective camera and a shadow-puppet, but John Huston was on stage for every moment, when he could have been resting in his trailer, just amazed by what Welles was doing, a veteran as impressed as parvenus like Spielberg and DePalma, who were taking notes like trainspotters in locomotive heaven.

Still unsure about the outcome of it all, she left without talking to Welles again.

Driving up to Malibu, she came down from the excitement.

In a few days, it would be the Julian 1980s. And she should start working to get her licence back. Considering everything, she should angle to get paid by Welles, who must have enough of John Alucard’s money to settle her bill.

When she pulled into Paradise Cove, it was full dark. She took a moment after parking the car to listen to the surf, an eternal sound, pre-and post-human.

She got out of the car and walked towards her trailer. As she fished around in her bag for her keys, she sensed something that made quills of her hair.

As if in slow motion, her trailer exploded.

A burst of flame in the sleeping section spurted through the shutters, tearing them off their frames, and then a second, larger fireball expanded from the inside as the gas cylinders in the kitchen caught, rending the chromed walls apart, wrecking the integrity of the vessel.

The light hit her a split-second before the noise.

Then the blast lifted her off her feet and threw her back across the sandy lot.

Everything she owned rained around her in flames.

‘Do you know what’s the funny side of the whole kit and kaboodle?’ said Ernest Gorse. ‘I didn’t even think it would work. Johnny Alucard has big ideas and he is certainly making something of himself on the coast, but this Elvis Lives nonsense is potty. Then again, you never know with the dear old Count. He’s been dead before.’

She was too wrung out to try to get up yet.

Gorse, in a tweed ulster and fisherman’s hat, leaned on her car, scratching the finish with the claws of his left hand. A gangrene growth festered in his empty eye-socket. His face was demonised by the firelight.

‘You must have said something persuasive, love,’ Gorse continued. ‘Orson Welles has walked off his comeback picture, shut it down after a single day’s shooting. He can’t be found. The project’s dead. No other genius would dare take over.’

Everything she owned.

That’s what it had cost her.

‘But, who knows, maybe Fatty wasn’t the genius?’ suggested Gorse. ‘Maybe it was Boris Adrian. Alucard backed all those Dracula pictures equally. Perhaps you haven’t thwarted him after all. Perhaps He really is coming back.’

All the fight was out of her. Gorse must be enjoying this.

‘You should leave the city, maybe the state,’ he said. ‘There is nothing here for you, old thing. Be thankful we’ve left you the motor. Nice roadboat, by the way, but it’s not a Jag, is it? Consider the long lines, all the chrome, the ostentatious muscle. D’you think the Yanks are trying to prove something? Don’t trouble yourself to answer. It was a rhetorical question.’

She pushed herself up on her knees.

Gorse had a gun. ‘Paper wraps stone,’ he said. ‘With silver foil.’

She got to her feet, not brushing the sand from her clothes. There was ash in her hair. People had come out of the other trailers, fascinated and horrified. Her trailer was a burning shell.

That annoyed her, gave her a spark.

With a swiftness Gorse couldn’t match, she took his gun. She broke his wrist and tore off his hat too. He was surprised in a heart-dead British sort of way, raising his eyebrows as far as they would go. His quizzical, ironic expression begged to be scraped off his face, but it would just grow back crooked.

‘Jolly well done,’ he said, going limp. ‘Really super little move. Didn’t see it coming at all.’

She could have thrown him into the fire, but just gave his gun to one of the on-lookers, the Dude, with instructions that he was to be turned over to the police when they showed up.

‘Watch him, he’s a murderer,’ she said. Gorse looked hurt. ‘A common murderer,’ she elaborated.

The Dude understood and held the gun properly. People gathered round the shrinking vampire, holding him fast. He was no threat any more: he was cut, wrapped and blunted.

There were sirens. In situations like this, there were always sirens.

She kissed the Dude goodbye, got into the Plymouth, and drove north away from Hollywood along the winding coast road, without a look back. She wasn’t sure whether she was lost or free.

E
yes front, pledges,’ said Captain Gardner, commanding attention. ‘This is Miss Churchward. She will be your etiquette instructress.’

There were grins. This little lot didn’t think they needed lessons in manners. They were about to learn they were wrong.

Penelope perched on a desk, arranging herself decorously. She smoothed her immaculate cream skirt over her upper flank, drawing attention to her long, long legs.

All the class stared. Men
and
women. Penny was inches taller than she’d been when she died. A slight shapeshift, worked over decades. She’d exercised powers of fascination even before turning vampire. Now, she was mistress of sex fu.

Folding chairs noisily aligned. The pledges, sprawling and slobbish a moment ago, sat up straight. This class had been through Purgatory basic and were parade-drilled. They wore casual clothes with no rank or service insignia. Hot shots and cool customers. Pushovers, really.

Slipping off her sunglasses, she shook out her full, heavy hair. She tapped the diamond-sharp nail of her littlest finger against her fang-teeth.

She made a fan gesture in front of her neck. The top two buttons of her watered silk blouse were undone. What was the point of pricey underthings unless they were glimpsable? Though she didn’t need to breathe, she did.

After a century of clothing buttoned-to-the-throat, she was experimenting with cleavage. The leech-scars on her breasts and neck - left by quack doctoring in her new-born days - had faded to milky vaccination circles, almost imperceptible.

Some of the guys awkwardly crossed their legs. Others tented clipboards over their laps. The women were as interested, if not uniformly friendly.

Penny had sunk hooks in them all. Without even bleeding them. Just by walking into the room.

She tugged.

As one, the class shuffled forwards, scraping chairs across linoleum.

She put out a hand in a stop sign, then signalled a come-on to one of the pledges. An all-American youth was pulled from his seat, as if on strings. Code Name: Banshee. He wore an eye-abusing Hawaiian shirt over chinos and lace-up combat boots. Instead of regulation shades, he wore a New Wavy mirrored purple visor. He had about forty-eight teeth. She had him pegged as class clown. Did he know banshees were supposed to be women?

He began to sing to her, off-key and loud. Now she gathered how he got his call sign. The others were astonished, mouths open like goldfish.

‘I can’t li-i-ive,’ he warbled, ‘if living is without you...’

She laughed and cut him off with a gesture. Outside, a dog howled, presumably bleeding from the ears.

‘Elementary glamour,’ she announced, letting Banshee fall back in his chair like an unfisted muppet. ‘A little show, a little tell, a lot of imagination. If you’re to be vampires, you have to learn this. I am not the most seductive, dangerous person in the world. I am rarely the most attractive woman in any given room. But, if I concentrate, I can be. Any questions?’

A woman at the back, in short-sleeved dress whites, raised a cautious hand.

‘Can we learn how to do... that?’

Penny looked at her. Code Name: Desire. A fluffy blonde with a crooked smile and a killer body. Her time over the assault course was the best among the women. Third overall.

‘By the end of this course,’ Penny said, ‘you will have learned how to turn it on and off like a tap. A faucet, as you Americans say.’

‘Does it work on, ah, babes too, ma’am?’ asked Banshee.

She turned it all back on and aimed at him. Full force.

‘I am given to understand, pledge, that it does.’

The jock punched the air and whooped, ‘All ri-i-ight!’