Bloodcurdling Night by Peter Pogany

The modern two-story mansion in a sparsely-populated area northwest of Houston is not your pillared, Greek revival type that so willingly rents its attic to ghosts. But this circumstance was hardly any solace to an up-and-coming movie star who found herself alone and frightened almost beyond description on the night of April 20, 2010.

The owner of the extensive property — whom we will call simply Bernie — was a top oil executive. He had another house in Houston’s exclusive River Oaks (besides condos in New York, London, and Cairo) but that was still occupied by his second wife from whom he was allegedly getting divorced.

The young actress (let’s cover her identity with the name Marianne) was in Houston, shooting scenes for a new Hollywood sensation. In the spirit of Southern hospitality and perpetual good times, Bernie’s country club invited the entire crew “for an evening of celebration.” Everybody went, from the haughty, impossible-to-please director to the third grip, clinging to his beer bottle.

Poor superrich Bernie. The savage coup de foudre Marianne unleashed turned his mind and spirit into scrambled eggs.

“I must have this woman or I have lived in vain” was the only coherent thought that emerged from his miserable confusion after a fairly long, attention-provoking tête-à-tête.

Considering that he was almost twice her age, it is hard to ascribe such a “hook, line, and sinker” to a simple rush of humors.

Fame, tinsel, and gossip penetrate the celebrated female’s curves, eyes, hair, skin — every gesture she makes, every piece of cloth she wears, every word she utters — with a magic-mythical erotic sway. Marilyn Monroe, the prototype of collectively constructed super-enchantress in living memory, had been pursued by powerful men, not for her “true self” but for consuming the vortex our audiovisual civilization created around her, a commodity of the highest distinction like a Rolls-Royce or a 007 Aston Martin.

Luckily for Bernie, his display of disquietude and self-assurance, anguish and vital optimism did not leave Marianne unaffected. Just divorced (the endgame of a hurtful dissolution) and having lost her father in a tragic automobile accident two years earlier made her feel very much alone in the world — fatigued, vulnerable, receptive to grand gestures. Add to this that she, like all other showbiz personalities, became the target of an interminable parade of people with a mind-boggling variety of ulterior motives and you have a woman who craves a peaceful minuet amidst the dizzying roundabout.

When the country club soiree broke up and they hugged good-bye, Bernie had the impression that his case was not hopeless, a feeling that was confirmed when she looked at him straight in the eye before leaving.

We can only imagine how difficult it must have been for a man under constant pressure, preoccupied with the ups and downs of a multibillion dollar business, to develop a love relationship with a busy actress more than a thousand miles away.

But never underestimate the savvy and ingenuity of a midlife gallant whose power of persuasion had at least as much to do with becoming a Croesus as his technical know-how of underwater oil and gas extraction. After a few months of courtship she gave in. My source, a member of Marianne’s film crew at the time (much closer to the third grip than to the director) reported that she showed up in the studio one day, wearing a diamond necklace. It came from “that oilman in Texas,” she glowed.

Great Beauty and Big Money! Voila, the tragic old couple reincarnated!

Besides possessing egos the size of the cosmos (which, as astrophysicists tell us, never ceases to expand), they have in common that they both compel people to do things they otherwise would not do. And cursed are the fairytale lives of extreme outliers! Beauty turns the essential beneath into a Cinderella and the golden calf fattens suspicion, crowds out freedom — bleeds romantic sensitivities white.

The two constantly threaten each other with annihilation.

If Money can buy Beauty, Beauty depreciates to the status of a burlesque queen or false geisha. If it does not yield, Money is destroyed and belief in its power bursts like a stock market bubble. To make the relationship even more bitter for Mammon, Beauty is unfit for the role of “fixed asset.” It can only be “rented” or enjoyed as an amenity.

Of course, as always, antiseptic rules crave to be sullied with exceptions.

Marianne and Bernie had found a tenuous modus vivendi in a mutually sought escape from what each represented; trying to forget it so completely that they would no longer notice that they were not even thinking about it.

Both took a week off. She flew from Los Angeles to Houston on Tuesday. Bernie waited for her at the airport with a company helicopter. They landed on the rooftop pad of the mansion and by the time they were downstairs the chopping of blades had faded away.

There they were, completely alone; undisturbed, unpursued, unharassed, refugees from their own relentless ambitions and triumphs. How he relished the thought of being in this situation, contemplating the prospects, anguishing over the possibility that she might cancel out at the last minute or simply drop him!

Her slightly bitter perfume bespoke of a much lesser elation. Did she betray herself? The words of her late father clung painfully in her ears. “Nature blessed you with the looks of Helen of Troy and the talent of Sarah Bernhardt! For your own sense of purity and tranquility, authenticity, if you will, you must learn when and how to reciprocate for gifts that men are evidently ready to shower on you.”

(He said these words upon learning from Marianne that shortly after she moved into an apartment near the campus of the university where she enrolled as an undergraduate; she began to receive bouquets of flower at a ridiculous if not intolerable rate. She soon transferred to an exclusive all-women’s college.)

Good advice her father gave her — she knew — but how could she follow it without erecting a citadel of indifference in her own heart?

Now she was sitting in this godforsaken mansion; true, with a kind, middle-aged man whose charm filled her with wellbeing and tenderness. But what did she really know about him besides a demonstrated willingness to spend a fortune on her? She felt out of place, as if she were her own double, a professional stunt woman, requested from the director because she did not want to risk her own skin.

“What’s important in life is to know how to read the signs,” her father used to tell her.

“Yes, Dad,” she continued her dialogue with the deceased, “I read the signs and would like to flee but you are not here to help . . . ‘Papa can you hear me?’ Silly Broadway schmaltz! Or disembodied reality?”

She was thankful for the drink Bernie offered in his study and willingly engaged in small talk about Chinese frescos and African masks. Did he vaguely resemble her father?

They barely spent half an hour together in this initial warm-up mode, without so much as Bernie’s eyes betraying his intended approach, when the telephone rang.

“I told them to call me only if the company faced immediate demise” he grumbled on the way to pick up the receiver. Then his mouth opened, his face turned ashen.

“A series of explosions?”

“. . . “

“My GOD!!!!”

“. . . “

“The whole rig! My GOD!”

“. . . “

“Are you saying the lights went off before the first one?”

After nearly two minutes of listening –

“Swat operators? For heavens sake! Don’t talk about this to anyone, understand? Not even to employees. We are talking here about . . .”

“Of course,” he concluded, emitting a sigh of dejection deep as the Gulf of Mexico.

While giving Marianne the broad outlines about what happened, they could already hear the cadence of rotor blades. Bernie had to go to an emergency meeting and teleconference at the Houston office but should be back in a few hours. He showed Marianne the master bedroom; recommended a box of chocolates and an assortment of the latest magazines; bade her to consider herself to be the lady of the house and, cutting a figure reminiscent of Napoleon headed to the Island of Elba, disappeared into the night.

Placid rays of halogen lamps illuminated the terrace. Spanish moss hanging from nearby oak trees seemed to hide clusters of severed heads.

An unearthly noise coming from the nearby lake broke the singular calmness. The bubbling sound had no explanation.

What did that old gypsy woman tell her?

“I see a lake close to a fancy house, not deep, but very silent, and beautiful. Lakes will make you sad; lakes will make you glad.”

Blasts of rising wind — flocks of vultures, emissaries of doom?

Her keen sense of discomfiture and anticipatory unease turned into a self-stimulated whirlpool of dread and vertigo.

Teeth chattering, she proceeded tentatively among the over-decorated walls of the hallway.

Lines from a satiric musical popped into her mind. She had played one of the victims of a homicidal philosopher who sang to her in a falsetto while choking her:

“Trembling in fear of death is sad;

A cemetery without tombs is funny;

Opera without music is nonsense

And nonsense without convincing examples makes no sense.

—–

No longer tense?

Oh, I see, you have no sense, you little nonsense!”

Recalling the stupid lines along with the atonal screeching in the background pulled the rug from under her composure. Practically beside herself, she staggered to the study and closed the door.

Dog bark near the house!

No, no, this cannot possibly be her imagination. The doorbell rang; a thin line of intense light under the door.

Someone entered the house! But who? A marauder, a gang of them, a headless football player, a fiendish cowboy rocking on an invisible horse, the fallen angel, a malicious vampire, a zombie, broken-hearted but vengeful?

She saw her dying moment, dragged on the floor by a terrifying man, his eyes gauged, his expressionless face bleeding from numerous cuts. She heard a horror movie befitting arpeggio from the lower register of an organ.

Blood pressure pole-vaulting, breath in arrhythmic staccatos, white as sheet . . .

She swooned.

Welcome to the magic land of Morpheus where everything negative — from threats to snubs — is recycled into something positive, infusing our vile, useless world with fresh meaning!

First she saw tortured, deformed bodies floating to the bottom of the sea whence a dark substance gushed forth like a thick fountain of primordial blood. But after a few determined strokes the water became warm and gentle; curious-eyed goldfish moved with effortless swishes among crystal grottos; graceful medusas paid her calm, festive compliments. Then all of a sudden the water felt familiar. She came to the surface to find herself in the swimming pool of her parents’ house in Southern California.

Her father, tanned and healthy, sat on the edge of the pool dangling his feet in the water.

Smiling at her, he said in a conciliatory tone:

“We are allowed to ask our soul for forgiveness. It understands and will give us back to ourselves.”

Heart filled with poetic tenderness, she saw herself as Ophelia, heard her own voice:

“He is dead and gone;

At his head a grass-green turf,

At his heels a stone.”

Mellow light and the aroma of spring freshness woke her. Two apologetic knocks on the door.

“Yes?”

An older man dressed in business casual appeared on the doorstep.

“I’m Noah, the caretaker. Mr. Bernie asked me last night to come over and attend to your needs, ma’am. I’m sorry if I frightened you last night by ringing the bell. I have my keys but did not want to startle you.”

After some explanation about how did she end up on a bed after collapsing in the study, Noah offered to prepare breakfast. She accepted but asked to be left alone for an hour beforehand. While serving, Noah talked about the catastrophe.

“People are lost; there will be pollution on a scale never seen before.”

Soon Bernie called her on her cell. No, she had not turned on the TV but heard it all.

Understandably, the rescue effort and other developments demanded his presence.

“My . . . entire . . . future . . . is . . . in the lot” quacked haltingly the multimillion-dollar-bonus peacock.

By midday the flight was arranged back to L.A. and the helicopter was on its way to take her to the airport. Noah carried her suitcases to the roof.

The lake! It was covered with pearls that zigzagged among the wrinkles of shuddering waves — how beautiful! The $25 soothsayer was right on the money: “Lakes will make you sad; lakes will make you glad!”

Nose hanging deep, the craft descended in a sharp angle from the South Texas sky. She could already make out the wrap-around shades on the pilot’s face. The approach of a young masculine presence restored her good mood and confidence. She closed her bleary eyes and whispered:

“Thanks, Dad!”