“Secret Fears”
by
Bill Pronzini
It was one of those unwinnable discussions you get into now and then with strangers in bars. The kind that can turn confrontational because nobody ever changes anybody else’s outlook or opinion. Politics, religion, sports — the topic doesn’t really matter. This time it happened to be horror movies.
The tavern was a small neighborhood place not far from Golden Gate Park. I’d been there a few times before. Some of the other quiet bars in the area, too. When you live alone and have no friends, and spend your days at home designing action-adventure video games, you crave a little human companionship now and then. This was one of those nights. I was in a mood to talk and drink for a while with anyone willing to talk and drink with me.
There were only two people in the place, even though it was after nine o’clock — a bald-headed bartender I didn’t remember seeing before, and at the far corner of the bar a little guy wrapped in a heavy coat and hunched over a glass of something that glinted dark red in the backbar lights. I picked out a stool two removed from where the little guy was sitting, at right angles to him. He looked up at me, cocking his head to one side. I saw then that he was elderly, between seventy and eighty at a guess, with a shriveled-gourd face and hair as fuzzy-thin and white as an Angora cat’s. His eyes were bright and sharp, though. They held on mine in a way that said he wouldn’t mind some company himself.
“Cold night,” I said. “Must be in the forties out there.”
“Yes. Very cold.”
“What brings you out on a night like this, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I have been to the cinema.”
Cinema. He didn’t speak with an accent, but his English was too precise to be natural to him. Foreign-born, probably, emigrated to this country at a young age. Naturalized citizen. That’s a game I play when I meet somebody for the first time — try to figure out something about them from the way they look and talk and act.
The bartender came down and I ordered Wild Turkey neat. “Pour one for yourself,” I said then.
“Can’t do it,” he said. He patted his paunch. “Ulcer.”
I looked at the old man. “How about you? Another of whatever you’re having?”
“Yes, thank you. The same, please, George.”
“One Turkey neat, one port. Coming up.”
“So you’ve been to the cinema,” I said to the old guy, making conversation. “What did you see?”
“There is a theater nearby that is showing classic films.”
“Is that so? What was on tonight?”
“Dracula.”
“The ’31 original with Lugosi?”
“Yes, but it is not the true original, only the first spoken version.”
“That’s right,” I said. “The first vampire flick was a silent, made it Germany around 1920.”
“1922,” the old guy said. “Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens. The role of Count Orlok was played by Max Shrek. It is the earliest surviving screen version depicting Dracula, but it is not the first vampire film.”
“No?”
“Four others preceded it, all produced in this country and all with similar titles.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “The Vampire, based on the Kipling poem, in 1910. The Vampire in 1915. Vampire Ambrose in 1916. Vampire in 1920.”
“Probably all lost now,” I said.
“Two are not lost. I have copies.”
“No kidding? I didn’t know any of those obscure silents were available on DVD.”
“They are not.”
“…You don’t mean you have original sixteen-millimeter prints?”
“Yes. I do.”
“Wow,” I said, impressed. “Must have taken some doing to track them down.”
“It was very difficult, yes.”
“And expensive, I’ll bet.”
He had nothing to say to that.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing them,” I said. “You also have Nosferatu?”
“Yes.”
“I’d really like to see that one.”
It was as much a feeler question as a comment, but he just let it lie there without picking it up. Okay, so no invitation.
“I’m not exactly a horror movie buff myself,” I said, “but I do have quite a few in my DVD collection. Some of the more recent vampire flicks like Blade and Let the Right One In, but I prefer the earlier ones. Vincent Price in The Last Man on Earth. Christopher Lee as the Prince of Darkness in the ’58 Hammer production—”
The old guy’s mouth had quirked up as if he wanted to spit. “Trash,” he said.
“Trash?”
“Modern films do not stimulate the mind, they assault the senses.”
“You consider movies made in the 1950s and ’60s modern?”
“I do. Yes.”
“Oh, I get it,” I said. “You’re one of those people who dislike color. Everything in your collection is black and white or grainy sepia, right?”
“There is far greater subtlety and nuance in films of black and white,” he said stiffly. “But it is not color that I dislike.”
“What, then?”
“Barbarism. Visual obscenities.”
“You mean in-your-face violence?”
“I do not care to view torn flesh and fountains of blood.”
The bartender had brought our drinks and was standing off a little way, listening or trying not to listen. I treated myself to a long pull of Wild Turkey; the old guy took a small, delicate sip from his fresh glass of port.
I said, “So what else do you collect besides bloodless black and white vampire flicks?”
“Nothing else.”
“No interest in werewolves? The Frankenstein monster? Mummies and Egyptian curses?”
“The only truly frightening creature of legend is the vampire.”
Something to do with where he was born, I thought. Hungary, Croatia, Transylvania — one of those places where the vampire legend was deeply ingrained in the culture.
“Maybe, if you say so. But there are a lot of other pretty horrific things on film.”
“Perhaps,” he said.
“Not perhaps — definitely. Hellspawn beings, for instance. The demon in Curse of the Demon, Damian, Rosemary’s baby.”
Quick dismissive flip of his hand.
“Witches and warlocks. Burn, Witch, Burn, The Blair Witch Project.”
Flip.
“Ghosts and other supernatural creatures,” I said. He was starting to annoy me. “The Uninvited, The Haunting of Hill House, Ghost Story.”
Flip.
“One of Poe’s death obsessions — The Premature Burial, Masque of the Red Death, The Tell-Tale Heart.”
“Such things do not interest or disturb me.”
“You’re one of the few then. How about giant beasts? King Kong, the Abominable Snowman, Bigfoot, Godzilla.”
“Childish nonsense.”
Now I was really annoyed. “You could say the same about vampires.”
He pursed his lips and peered again into the dark red depths of his port.
“Okay then. The Creature from the Black Lagoon. The flesh-eating zombies in Night of the Living Dead.”
Flip.
I said between my teeth, “Beings from another planet. You must’ve seen the original black-and-white Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
“On television, yes.”
“And?”
“It did not frighten me.”
“What about Alien? That one gave me chills.”
“I have not seen it.”
“Well, that’s no surprise. Too recent, too bloody, too color.”
He gave me a long unreadable look. “Tell me, young man. What is it that truly frightens you? What is your secret fear?”
“My what?”
“Surely there is one horror that frightens you more than any other. What is yours? Alien beings from another world?”
“No. You want to know what kind of flick scares me the most, Pop? Okay, I’ll tell you. The ones about human monsters, the crazies that commit wholesale slaughter for no reason except homicidal compulsion or the sheer joy of it. They’re the most terrifying.”
No comment. But no flip, either.
“Norman Bates, there’s one example,” I said. “You ever see Hitchcock’s Psycho?”
“Once, long ago. It did not move me.”
“Well, that shower scene moved me.” I swallowed some more sour mash.“Jack the Ripper, Norman Bates, Freddy Krueger, Hannibal Lector, the Jigsaw Killer — they’re the riders in my nightmares.”
“Yet you have viewed such films, perhaps even own them.”
“Viewed them once, that’s all. I don’t own any.”
“Why view them at all?”
“The way to deal with what scares you is to face it, not hide from it. And I always feel sorry for the victims.”
A shrug this time. “Do you?” he said as if he didn’t believe me.
Well, all right. I’d had enough. “What about your secret fear, Pop?” I said, sharp. “Vampires, right?”
“No. I do not fear vampires.”
“Sure you do. You imagine what it would be like to be attacked by one of those phantom bloodsuckers and to become one yourself — a deep-down, gut-churning, irrational fear. That’s why you don’t like to see the bloody modern versions; they make your fear too real, too intense. Instead of confronting it, you take the coward’s way — pretend that collecting old black-and-white vampire flicks is just a hobby, that they stimulate the mind and all the rest of that shit you spouted—”
The old guy didn’t let me finish. He shoved his stool back and stood up. He wasn’t looking at me anymore; his face had a pinched, chalky look. He lifted his glass and drained it in a series of quick sips, set it down, walked around behind me and straight out of the tavern without a word or a backward glance. The wind slammed the door shut after him.
The bartender came over. “Couldn’t help overhearing,” he said. “You hit him where he lives.”
“Yeah. I didn’t mean to be so rough on him, but he was getting under my skin.”
“He had it coming. Harmless old bird, but when it comes to his favorite subject he can be a pain in the ass. Vampires, for Christ’s sake.”
“He can’t help it,” I said. “Part of his heritage, probably. None of us can help where we were born or what we were born with or who we are.”
“Guess you’re right. Like another Wild Turkey?”
“I’d better not. Time for me to get something to eat. I haven’t had dinner yet.”
“There’s a pretty good diner over on Irving. Maude’s Café.”
“Thanks. Maybe I’ll give it a try.”
I went back to the men’s room. While I was emptying my bladder, I thought that talking to the old man about secret fears had touched a nerve in me, too; put me a little on edge. If I watched one of my DVDs before I went to bed tonight, as I usually do, it wouldn’t be a horror flick. Even a mild one of those was liable to give me nightmares.
There was a rear exit near the rest rooms, so I went out that way. Narrow alley, stuffed with cold black. I pulled up the collar on my coat and started toward the faintly lit mouth at the far end.
Noise up ahead. Movement.
Something or somebody lurking behind that line of garbage cans?
I stopped, keening the shadows. Nothing but the wind for a few seconds. Then I picked up more sound and movement, a clicking and a scurrying.
Rat. Young one.
Instinctively I measured the distance. Twenty feet, well within the limit of my reach. I caught the animal with a quick release of my second tongue, expanded my jaws, snapped the rat back into my mouth, bit off the head and tail, and ate the rest in two bites.
Good. Warm and juicy.
I moved on through the windy dark, out of the alley and over toward Golden Gate Park. There was plenty of small game in there. I was always cautious while hunting; tonight I’d be extra careful. Dangerous people, crazy people, sometimes prowl the Park at night.
The rat had been tasty, but not much more than an appetizer.
I was still hungry.
