Shatterday

Flop Sweat

Her first guest of the evening sat across the table from her, there in the tiny broadcast booth, staring at her with unreadable green eyes showing through the mask. She was dead certain he was crazy as a thousand battlefields; but he was, without a doubt, one of the best interviews she’d ever had on the program. She knew it without a doubt because her hands were soaking wet with perspiration and her upper lip above the glossed line of Ultima II was dewy with sweat.

When she had been in the theater, in the years before she had found that hosting a talk show was easier and steadier work, she had come to understand what the perspiration meant. In show biz they called it “flop sweat,” the physical manifestation of nervousness just before going on stage. And during the seven years here at KDID the flop sweat had dampened her palms and upper lip every time she’d had a dynamite show. It was a certain barometer of something happening.

But to call this strange man, dressed all in black, wearing a cheap K-Mart domino mask, the kind children wear at Halloween, a “happening” was to fling oneself face-forward into understatement. Brother Michael Darkness was more than a happening; he was a force of nature, a powerful presence, a disturbing reality; even if he was obviously a certifiable nutcase, a card-carrying whacko, a psychotic in the top one-tenth of the top percentile of emotional walking woundeds with whom she shared airspace.

“Reverend Darkness,” she said, “it’s almost the top of the hour and we have to break now for the network news, but—”

“Brother Darkness,” he said, cutting her off.

She was nonplused for a moment. His voice. It had the deep, warm, musky timbre of secrets whispered in dark rooms. When he spoke she thought of a stick of butter, squeezed through a fist. “Yes, of course; I’m sorry. You’ve told me several times you’re not a minister. I’ll try to remember, Brother Darkness.” He nodded politely. She could not read his expression around the mask. He disturbed her fluid ease behind the mike. That didn’t happen very often. Seven years at this gig had made her almost unflappable. “What I was about to suggest, Brother Darkness, is that we break for the news and you come back for the second hour of the show. My next guest is Dr. Jacob Theiss, a very well-known psychiatrist who works with the Los Angeles police; he ‘II be coming on to talk about this epidemic of razorblade killings… and I think some of what you’ve been saying about evil in our times might be very interesting to have him comment on.”

“I’d be pleased to stay, Miss Ketchum.”

The way he said it made Theresa Ketchum almost regret she had suggested it. He made his acceptance sound as if they had entered into some kind of unholy alliance. But she signaled to Jerry, the engineer in the control room, and he turned up the network feed pot and the news rushed in with drums and trumpets and the voice of the sixty-thousand-dollar-a-year announcer from New York.

Now she was alone with Brother Darkness. The on-air studio in which they sat was a claustrophial box, fifteen by ten, with two windowed walls: one side looked into the control room; the other looked into the waiting room where Millie sat taking and screening phone calls from the general public. The studio seemed somehow smaller than usual, and throat-cloggingly filled with menace. And it had started out being such a lovely day.

She took off her earphones and racked them. She stood up, smoothing her skirt, and was suddenly aware of Brother Darkness looking at her not as a dispassionate “communicaster,” but as an attractive woman, thirty-four years old, body tanned and well toned from afternoons at the Beverly Hills Health Club, nose bobbed exquisitely by Dr. Parks, auburn hair coddled and cozened just so at Jon Peters’s parlor in the Valley. She had a momentary flash of regret at not having worn something bulky and concealing. The blouse was too sheer, the skirt too tight, the whole image too provocative. But she had dressed for after the broadcast, for the party CBS was hosting that night at the Bonaventure to promote its new midseason sitcom. The party at which she would use the sensual good looks, the tanned and well-toned body, the exquisite nose and brushfire hair to play some ingratiating politics; to move herself out of a seven-year rut on local talk radio and into a network job. Dressing with care this afternoon, before coming in to the station, she had given no thought to the effect on her guests; only to how she would present herself at the party. Attention where it mattered.

But Brother Michael Darkness was staring at her the way men stared at her in the Polo Lounge or in the meat-rack pickup bar of the Rangoon Racquet Club. And she wished she were wearing a kaftan, a fur-lined parka, a severe three-piece tweed pantsuit.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” She heard her voice coming thickly and distantly. Not at all the liquid honey tone she used as the trademark of an aura! sex object when broadcasting.

“No thank you, Miss Ketchum. I’ll just sit here, if that’s all right.”

She nodded. “Yes, of course. That’ll be fine. I’ll go get Dr. Theiss and be right back. We have five minutes before we’re back on the air.” Arid she escaped into the corridor quickly, finding herself leaning against the sea-green wall breathing very deeply.

Over the station speakers in the hall the newscaster was headlining the Los Angeles razorblade slayings, commenting on the discovery that morning of an eleventh young woman, nude and with throat sliced open, in the bushes near the Silverlake off-ramp of the Hollywood Freeway. She heard the voice, but paid no attention.

She stepped into the waiting room beside the studio. Jake Theiss was leaning against the wall sipping coffee from a paper cup. The telephone switchboard was lit from one end to the other, all ten lines strobing with urgency. Millie looked up from the log and rolled her eyes. “Jesus, Tern, you’ve got a live one tonight. They’re crawling down the wires to talk to him.”

She felt her heart racing. “Keep the best ones on hold; I’ll try to get to them after I introduce Jake.”

Then she turned to Jake Theiss, who smiled at her, and it was as if someone had returned her stolen security blanket. He had been on the show a dozen times before, and they had even gone out several evenings. His mere presence reassured her.

“Theresa,” he said, stepping away from the wall and taking her hand, “you look a trifle whiplashed.”

She hugged him and kissed his cheek. “My God, Jake, have you been listening to him?”

The psychiatrist nodded slowly. “I have indeed. But it’s not so much what be says, as the way he says it. A little de Sade, a little Gilles de Rais, echoes of Proterius, a smidgeon of Cotton Mather and some direct quotes from the Evangelium Nicodemi, if memory serves well. All made contemporary by the addition of Jung, Freud, Adler and Werner Erhard’s look-out-for-number-one. Nothing particularly spectacular about it; most modern demonologists plunder the same bag. But your Brother Michael in there has a sense of the dramatic, and a voice to match, and a nasty way of bringing in current events that… well… I can’t say I’m looking forward to sharing a microphone with him.”

She drew a deep breath. “Jake, stop it! This flake does a good enough job scaring the hell out of me on his own. I mean, it’s like Exorcist time in there. When he starts talking about the return of the devils I swear to God I can feel the slimy things in that booth. And I never thought a kid’s Halloween mask could chill me, but each time he looks at me with those green eyes I feel every part of my body trying to run away and leave my head behind.”

Millie handed her a Kleenex from the box. “Your lip,” she said. Theresa took the tissue and blotted herself.

“Okay, don’t worry about it,” Jake said, setting down the empty coffee cup. “I’ll come on like the voice of rationality.”

She smiled wanly, feeling like a fool. This was hardly professional behavior.

They walked back into the on-air studio just as the news was ending. Theresa moved to the console and flipped the toggle switch on the intercom. “Jerry, let’s do the Southern California Buick Dealers, Pacific Telephone and Roto-Rooter. Is there a live tag on the Roto-Rooter commercial?”

The tinny voice of Jerry from the other side of the control room glass filled the booth. “Yeah. Ten seconds.”

He ran up the cartridges and for a moment, before she turned down the sound in the booth, the Buick announcer’s voice filled the air. When she turned back to her guests, Jake Theiss had already seated himself at the empty third mike, to the right of her swivel chair. She drew a deep breath and sat down. “Jake, this is Brother Michael Darkness; Brother Darkness, Dr. Jacob Theiss.” She watched them shake hands. She studied Jake’ s face closely, but if he reacted to the touch of Brother Michael’s hand, as she had reacted the first time he had touched her, the only time he had touched her, earlier that evening, the psychiatrist concealed the fact. Jake did not shiver. He smiled at Brother Michael and said, “I’ve been listening to the interview. Pretty strong medicine for a lay audience just around dinnertime, wouldn’t you say?”

Brother Michael’s face was impassive. “If you think I’m a fraud, Dr. Theiss, why not just come out with it. Mendacity is unappealing in someone who professes to being a man of science. Even such an alleged science as the study of the mind.”

Theresa’s heart beat faster. It was as though she had just received two separate and powerful electrical shocks, so close together they seemed one: outrage and fear at the antagonism of the man in black, which might lead in a moment to a thrown punch; and delight at the instant animus between Jake and the Brother, guaranteeing a controversial second hour for the show. She hated herself for feeling pleasure, but it was always this way when something terrible but promotable happened on the show.

“I didn’t know you also read minds, Brother Darkness,” Jake said, swallowing the affront. “If I wanted to call you a fraud, I’d certainly wait till we were on the air.”

Brother Michael’s tone softened. He knew he wasn’t going to get a fight. Not now, at any rate. “I’m pleased to know you recognize the apocryphal texts. Too few practitioners of what you call ‘the healing arts’ familiarize themselves with the black documents of antiquity.”

Theresa was lost.

“I beg your pardon, what do you mean?” Jake said.

“I mean: you were correct in recognizing my quote from the Evangelium Nicodemi.”

A chill spread its web across Theresa’s back. Jake had said that in the waiting room. How could Brother Michael have heard it? She reached over and flapped the toggle for Millie. “Did we leave the intercom feed open?” Millie shook her head no. Theresa stared at her through the glass. The chill spread deeper and farther. She looked at Jake with confusion.

He caught the look. “ A condemned document dating from the third century. It describes Christ’s descent into hell and a session of Satan’s sanhedrin, his court.”

The Roto-Rooter jingle was just ending and Theresa held up a hand for silence as she riffled through the sheaf of tags for commercials, and simultaneously punched the square red button that gave her a live microphone.

“So say goodbye forever to clogged drains caused by those tree roots that’ve grown into pipes. Get to the root of your problem by calling your Roto-Rooter service representative…” She conversationalized the written tag, reading it with warmth and friendly understatement, but all the while keeping her eye on her guests.

“Well, we’re back with Brother Michael Darkness, the head of the Euchite Sect, a group we’re told has no affiliation with any orthodox or recognized religious denomination; a man who says he represents those who believe in the return of the dark forces that once ruled the Earth. And we’re being joined now by Dr. Jacob Theiss, M.D., Ph.D., a member of the governing board of the American Psychiatric Association, he’s on the staff at the UCLA Medical Center, and the winner of many prestigious awards in the field of human behavior. Dr. Theiss, have you been listening to the interview so far?”

“Yes, Theresa. And I’m most intrigued by Brother Darkness and what he’s been saying. But I think you’re mistaken when you say that the Euchites are an unrecognized sect.

“Brother Darkness, correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t the Euchites an early Christian sect who believed that each man had a congenital devil that could be expelled only by constant prayer? They were supposed to have repudiated the sacraments and moral law, to have worshiped Lucifer as the oldest son of the Creator, isn’t that right? About twelfth century, if I remember correctly.”

Brother Michael leaned forward till his face almost touched the microphone. “Very good, Dr. Theiss. I’m pleased and surprised at your erudition. Quite correct, on every point.”

“And you’re reviving this sect here in Los Angeles, in the middle of the Age of Plastic?”

“When better? The time is right.”

“What do you mean by that?” Theresa said.

“Just look around,” Brother Michael said softly. “Everywhere a belief in the irrational and the obscure takes greater hold daily. Films tell us we are being watched by aliens from other worlds or that demons infest the night; there is a frenzied rush to believe in astrology, in demonology and assassination conspiracies, in superstition and magic; we seek messiahs on all sides; Atlantis, the Bermuda Triangle, lost worlds at the center of the Earth, spirits speaking from the grave; Eastern mysticism… they dominate our every waking moment and plunge through our dreams at night. Do you think this is accidental? No, I’m sure you don’t. You may be confused and frightened by it all, but in some secret part of your mind and your soul you understand that it is the first clarion call of the ancient devils, come again to rule us. As is only right and proper.”

And they were off. Theresa barely had time to get in the live commercials required by the log and the FCC. She had to run them in clusters, knowing her listeners were pounding furiously on the busy telephone lines. Jake and the Brother went at it fiercely, with Jake trying to hold a line of logic and sanity against the ferocious dynamics of Brother Darkness’s statements.

The first of the calls came in at twenty after the hour.

“Okay, let’s take a break from this for a moment,” Theresa said. “Wheeew! You two make my head spin. Let’s hear what our listeners have to say. Dr. Theiss, Brother Darkness, if you’ll use those headsets you’ll be able to hear the caller. Okay. Hello, this is Theresa Ketchum and you’re on KDID talk radio. Who’s this?”

The voice that came across the line was strangely unisexual, neither male nor female, identifiable neither as young nor old. It seemed to be corning from a great distance, though it was clear and precise. “This is someone all of Los Angeles wants to know,” the voice said. “I’m responsible for the razorblade cleansings. You call them slayings, but I assure you, they’re cleansings.”

Through the glass, Millie’s face filled with horror.

She grabbed for the private line and dialed. Theresa saw her frantic movement and knew at once she was dialing the police emergency number, 9-1-1. Thank God Millie was on tonight, and not Charlie, who was so slow on the uptake that he often patched through rambling dingbats.

“Come on, whoever you are,” Theresa said, stalling for time so the police could trace back across the phone company’s machinery to the line on which this self-proclaimed killer was speaking, “we know there are enough cuckoos out there who like to confess to crimes to fill The Forum. Why should we believe you’re the razorblade killer?”

“It isn’t necessary that you believe. But here’s a bit of information the police have been holding back: when I perform my cleansing operations, I always cut a pentacle into the sole of the left foot of my sacrifices.”

He went on speaking, but Theresa saw Jake signaling her frantically. She hit the green button killing the live mike, and Jake gasped, “It’s him! Or her! I can’t tell which! But that’s even been kept out of the coroner’s reports.”

“How do you know?”

“For God’s sake, Terri, I’m working with the LAPD on this! It’s the killer, I tell you!”

She punched the mike to life. “Why are you calling us?”

The voice went on carefully, very steadily, “I just wanted to say it would serve you to listen to what Brother Darkness is saying. He’s right, you know.”

The most violent reaction came from Brother Michael Darkness. He grabbed the boom on the mike and pulled the instrument to him. “Whoever you are.., you’ve got to stop this… it’s awful… it’s not right… you’re a sick person…”

But the line went dead. The dial tone came over the open mike.

They sat there in silence, knowing that all over Los Angeles pandemonium was gripping the thousands of listeners to this program; knowing that if the station management was listening they were already calling in on the private lines to find out why the four-and-a-half second time-delay intercept hadn’t been used; knowing that the police were on their way to the station; knowing that out there somewhere a lunatic was being primed to kill again. Surely that was what this portended. Another slaughter.

She didn’t know what to say. For the first time in seven years she was too terrified and too stunned to let her sense of theatrics override her shock. But Jake had already jumped in.

“Brother Michael, do you know that person?”

“I swear to you, I have never heard that voice. I don’t want you to think that my beliefs or the sect I represent have anything to do with murder.”

“But that person, male or female I can’t tell which, that person says your doctrine is correct. That speaker was an adherent of what you profess. Now do you see what your insane, your profane doctrine leads to? Chaos! Lunacy! It makes it all right for madmen to kill innocent people!”

And Millie was waving frantically from the other side of the glass, signaling Theresa to pick up line three.

She punched up line three and started to say, “You’re on KDID talk radio…” but the voice from the night came once again. “Don’t try to trace me; you’ll have no luck. I just want you to know that it all begins and ends tonight.”

Theresa heard herself gasp, and then she barely managed to say, “What do you mean?”

And the voice said, “It’s all coming together tonight. Have you looked out at the moon? It’s full tonight. And everything you people believe, all the mad things, all the terrible things, all the things Brother Darkness calls ‘the irrational’ come together. Belief in the dark things, the ancient fears, the crazy things you all believe in your souls really move the universe… all of it has become strong enough for the end of my cleansing labors… and the beginning of the Apocalypse.”

And the mike went dead again.

Theresa cut in Millie’s intercom. “Where did that come from?”

Millie was crying. “That was line three, from Orange County. But the first one was an L. A. line. It can’t be!”

Jake’s face was white with fear. “Oh, my God,” he said, very quietly, the words trembling with terror.

Brother Michael was babbling, saying over and over, “I had nothing to do with it, nothing… I don’t know him… I swear I didn’t mean any harm…”

And as the hour wore to a close, there were two more calls. One on a line from Long Beach, the other on a line originating in Glendale. It was impossible for anyone to get from one of those far areas to another in the space of minutes; yet it was the same voice, and it happened.

And when the police came they took Brother Michael away. And Jake went with them, to help coordinate the mobilization of every available cop in the city. And when the hour ended Theresa was left sitting in the booth, shaking with terror.

Party tonight? No, not possible. No party tonight. Perhaps no party any night. That voice, the calm in the words, the certainty. Tonight: the Apocalypse. And one word from the razorblade killer’s last message: Armageddon. The final battle between good and evil, the last battle between the forces of the Creator and the dark demons who had been banished before man walked the Earth.

“Terri, I’m going home now. Will you be okay?”

It was Millie’s voice from the other side of the glass. The control room was empty. Jerry had gone. Theresa looked up dazedly, nodded once, and tried to rise. She found she had lost the strength to leave this terrible little box, at least for the moment. “Go ahead, Millie; I’ll see you tomorrow.” She let her hand lie on the console after releasing the toggle. Millie left.

She knew there were other people in the building. In other studios, KDID was carrying on; even in the face of what had gone out over the air tonight. She found that she was too frightened to leave, to go out through the corridors, past the security desk, into the parking lot with its high wire fence, to get into her car all alone, and to drive across town to her apartment. No. She would stay here. Safe in the booth. Locked away from whatever might happen tonight.

There was a faint light in the empty control room.

She looked through the glass, strained forward to see what it was, moving toward her. A faint purple light, soft and blurred, like a fading bruise on battered flesh. And now another light, in the glass of the waiting room on the other side of the studio. She stared from one to another, watching them moving slowly toward the glass partitions. Now another light in the control room. And another. Two more in the waiting room.

There was a rumbling beneath her feet. The studio trembled with the reverberation of an impact in the earth. Through the sound-proofed walls came the dull roar of explosions. Tremblors rippled the floor, the vinyl tiles buckled around her feet.

The faint lights moved closer. Figures coming toward the glass. Stopping to stare in at her. Figures in long black garments, with drawn cowls that covered their faces. And strange, sickly purple light, the faintest, most terrible glow, shining out from beneath the cowls. They stared in at her. She could see no eyes: but they were staring in at her.

They raised their arms slightly, slowly, and the sleeves of their black robes fell back revealing their hands. Theresa found that she could not breathe, that her chest was convulsing with the pain of her wildly beating heart.

Their fingers did not end in flesh. Metal. Sharp, cold metal; thin and final. This was the answer to how phone calls from the same person could come from distant sources.

There was the sound of movement just outside the door of the studio. The walls shook with the echoes of the cataclysm outside. The roaring was louder now.

And in the moment before the door opened she had the final, petrifying thought that she had been part of it all, had spread the doctrine of irrationality and superstition every night for seven years, had given a platform to every demented True Believer whose wild fantasies might build her audience.

And now her worshipers had come to sacrifice their very own prophet. She felt cold and dead already, could feel the chill slice of the thin, metal fingertips. Her palms were soaked with sweat in expectation of the final performance.

The door opened and they filed in to fill the studio. They stood staring at her as she felt her life clog up in her throat and arteries. They raised their arms and the sleeves fell back from pale flesh and metal fingertips. She waited for the first touch.

And they sank to their knees, lifting their arms in supplication. She began to tremble with the rictus of a scream shaking her like a fever. Now she knew the worst, now she understood:

She was not to die. She had broadcast the word for them, every night for seven years, and she was not to die. She would be their dark priestess. Like the others who had done their spadework, like the others who had spread the word, she was to be kept alive, perhaps forever.

Dark priestess in a world of desolation, ruled by devils, cleansed of humanity. She would not die!

More ruinous than death: to rule forever in Hell. Lovelessly alive; worshiped by eaters of the darkness. To live on, coated always with a cold sweat, through a final performance that had no curtain, no exit lines.

Her scream could have shattered glass, but it didn’t; it merely resonated against the metal fingertips of her subjects, her masters.

From the burning world beyond the studio came the wind whisper of the plague of locusts.