Shallow Graves. Rev. Goat Carson
at a time was a bad omen. I had been that one friend for several years when, as he put it, his “butt hole was snapping just inches above the pavement.” Sawyer had just about invented the “splatter flick” back in the early sixties. He rode the wave of notoriety from Texas to Hollywood then lost it all in the shallows of low-budget independents with producers who were determined to explode the myth of his genius. He had also lost a lot of money trying to make a starlet out of his girlfriend. “The rubber tits and pug nose were just the tip of the iceberg,” he would lament during those pre-dawn talk sessions that he called “story conferences.” Sawyer, you see, did not trust the night and could never relax until the sun came up. This town is full of witches just waiting for me to close my eyes so they can, varuuuup, suck my soul straight to hell!” Old Dad, as I called him, was a big believer in evil forces. He was known as a horror film director; movie society took for granted that he was a dedicated Satanist. At parties the darker element of this society gravitated to him, offering him admittance to their covens, hinting how much he’d enjoy their rituals. All of this scared the shit out of Old Dad. He fancied himself a great comedic talent who had only done that famous horror flick as a way to get quick bucks and instant recognition. It had worked; he had gotten both, but was still paying for it.
My headlights lit up the eyes of the Sawyer family cat as I pulled into the driveway. At first the cat didn’t move then suddenly he hissed and ran crazily toward the house. The cat looked like it was on acid as it zig- zagged its way to the front door, dodging the night phantoms. It missed the door and went scratching off the porch, down into the bushes below. I rang the bell. Old Dad’s son, Stony, answered the door.
“Have you seen my cat?” He asked, as we walked into the living room. Stony was about fifteen now, tall for his age, with long brown hair and a freckled face that hadn’t changed much in the five years I’d known him.
“Yeah I saw your cat; he looked freaked out to me. You haven’t been experimenting on that poor cat again, have you?”
Stony blushed. “Naw,” he grinned, “he’s been in ‘Nam; Captain Cat’s just having flashbacks of the Tet Offensive. You should see the great war movie I made with him on my 8mm.”
Walking into Old Dad’s house was like stepping into somebody’s nightmare. Props from his movies lined the walls, dismembered ugly things mounted like trophies.
“I’ll tell Dad you’re here.”
Stony bolted up the stairs to Sawyer’s bedroom, which we’d always called “the sanctuary.”
“Dad says come on up.”
Stony passed me on the stairs as I headed up.
“See if you can talk him into watching a movie with me later.”
The sanctuary had always had a unique odor. It was fainter now that he could afford a maid, but it was still there: the smell of decay.
“Come on in here, man.”
Dad was sitting on his bed, as usual, surrounded by used tissues and empty pop bottles. He was a dark heavy man, black eyes, thick beard, but with a strange air of jolliness about him: Satan’s Santa Claus.
“Come over here and have a seat, man, I was just filling up the pipe. Listen, Katey,” he turned to the thin young “actress” seated at his feet, “give the Professor and I a little slack time here, would ya?”
Katey rubbed her nose a little then stood up and stalked out of the room, leaving a trail of expensive perfume to do battle with the smell of death. Burns called me the Professor because during our working partnership I had always done such detailed research on all the grisly topics covered in the screenplays. From Jim Jones and John Wayne Gacy to Voodoo and Vampires, I had a talent for digging up unusual tidbits. Sawyer’s nickname, “Old Dad” had come from my Jim Jones research: it had been one of Jim’s favorite handles.
“What’d you want to see me about?”
“Oh, nothing in particular, I just wanted to see how you were getting along. Say, did you know I was starting another movie real soon?”
“Yeah?”
“Righto man, big, big budget too. Biggest yet.”
“So, now you can pay me that thirty-five grand you owe me!”
“Heh-heh, well not just yet man, I inked the deal today but I won’t see any real money till we start production—next year. I could give ya’ maybe fifty, sixty bucks here if you’re running tight.”
He rolled over a little on one hip to give his hand enough room to reach into his pocket and pulled out a small wad of crumpled bills. He twisted his stocky frame to hide the amount of his pocket money from me and selected a bill from the wad. He tugged hard at the bill, wrestling it from the others in his hand. It was a gesture I had seen many times before, one hand wanted to keep the money so badly that the other hand had to actually struggle to pry it loose.
“Here go, man.”
He handed me a fifty and quickly shoved the wad back in his pocket. The money returned to his pocket a lot easier than it had come out.
“Listen man, you remember that witchcraft thing you were looking into for me a few years back?”
“The one about that actress with that coven up here in the hills that you still owe me for?”
“Heh-heh. Righto, well, it’s a lot bigger than we discovered and it ain’t just candles and chanting.”
Old Dad’s eyes narrowed; there was a taste of fear in them—just behind the twinkle.
“And by big I mean big names, powerful people, dark, dark goingson.”
He paused, nodding his head. He put a pinch of grass into his small brass pipe and lifted it to his lips.
“Dark things,” he repeated, then fired up the bowl and took a long deep pull. He handed me the pipe which now contained nothing but pale gray ashes.
“Here take a hit,” he muttered, holding in his toke.
You didn’t get high smoking with Old Dad, but that was okay because usually you didn’t want to be high and hear what he had to say and tonight was definitely no exception.
“Hollywood is a decadent, old whore,” he philosophized, “and there’s only one way to make it in this town and that’s you gotta kiss the old whore’s ass! Yep, kiss it right, dead square in the middle. I told you that years ago but you didn’t listen. Now I’m directing my third feature and you’re still waiting to get paid. Do you know why? ‘Cause you ain’t got down on your knees and puckered up.”
This was Old Dad’s version of a pep talk. If I let him, he would drag on for hours.
“I hate to interrupt you but I’ve heard this speech before and unless you got something you’re building up to …”
“Damn right I’m building up to something! Witchcraft! The Oracula Malefactorum! Right here in the Hollywood Hills!”
The Oracula Malefactorum was the ancient ceremony that sealed the witch’s pact with the devil. It involved kissing the devil’s asshole. The significance of the ritual came from the medieval concept that man was the image of God. Satan, therefore, was God’s excrement, hell was God’s bowels, so the gate of hell – God’s asshole. Hence, the witch’s fascination with the excretory system and its products. Aleister Crowley lived for many months in Mexico on the dung of diseased prostitutes in order to gain the Serpent’s Kiss—a bite so toxic he could cause sickness just by breaking the skin with his sharpened canines. In his letter, Paps had mentioned the children’s peculiar attitude towards feces.
I was adding these things up in my mind while Old Dad, who had stood for his declaration of witchcraft, settled back down to his bed and his pipe. He took another deep pull and handed me the burned out bowl.
“Do you know what evil is?”
He spoke to himself more than to me.