Dark Labyrinth 1 Read online

  On the stage, a company of cloaked and hooded strangers entered, hiding their faces. Burbage continued to explain. “The Cardinal’s guests think these are some foreign ambassadors—but they are really the King and his party in disguise. There . . . that one is the King.” Or is it something that I will never understand?—he thought to himself. There are more things in heaven and earth, Cuthbert Burbage, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

  “How do you know that’s the King?” Lady Dalton asked.

  “From the cannons—we wouldn’t blast cannons for anyone but the royal presence, now would we?”

  “Oh.”

  They watched as the hooded company made its slow procession across the stage.

  “There, now Cardinal Wolsey suspects that one of the masquers is the King . . . he says as much . . . and he decides to unmask him . . . .”

  Burbage watched his brother walk on the stage toward one of the hooded figures, reaching up tentatively—more tentative than he actually should have been. He gripped the folds of the hood and began to draw it back.

  “FIRE!” someone shouted.

  Suddenly all hands were pointed toward the thatched roof which was in flames. Others took up the cry; tumult erupted. People fled toward the single narrow entrance.

  On the stage, Richard Burbage cried out wildly; his face was white as a sculpture. The hooded figure was gone, the false Thomas Radclyffe, vanished. Unnoticed in the uproar.

  And flames began to devour the Globe.

  “. . . some of the Paper or other stuff wherewith (the cannons) were stopped, did light on the Thatch, where being thought at first but an idle smoak, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly and ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole House to the very ground . . . yet nothing did perish but Wood and straw and a few forsaken cloakes. Only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broyled him if he had not by the benefit of provident will put it out with bottle ale.”

  —Sir Henry Wotton, eyewitness to the burning of the Globe Theatre

  “. . . while Burbages’ Company were acting at the Globe the play of Henry VIII, and there shooting off certain (cannons) in way of triumph. the fire catched and fastened upon the thatch of the house, and there burned so furiously, as it consumed the whole house, all in less than two hours. the people having enough to do to save themselves.”

  —Thomas Lorkins, eyewitness to the burning of the Globe Theatre

  Cuthbert Burbage found his brother Richard, much more shaken than he should have been from the fire, standing in the churning crowd around the flaming wreckage. Night was falling. A heavy beam collapsed in a shower of sparks.

  Silently, together, they watched their Globe Theatre burn . . . .

  SCENE VI.

  —Epilogue—

  Setting—London. Darkness. Cuthert Burbage has entered the cold, snow-covered wreckage. Voices.

  He listened, creeping closer—the voices were strange and scattered, speaking a pastiche of lines from old Shakespeare plays. They didn’t sound like children’s’ voices: in fact, they seemed to carry a great deal of emotion, sadness, loss.

  He stepped around some fallen timbers and came in view of the burned-out remnants of the stage. In the shadows he saw strange figures, masked and costumed.

  “What are you doing there? Who are you?” Burbage shouted, his anger rising before he had time to think. He expected them to scatter and run like frightened children, but instead the figures turned to look at him.

  Burbage stepped out from behind the wreckage and moved toward them. “Where did you get those masks?” he demanded, trying to place a tone of angry command in his voice.

  The central figure turned toward him; he wore an old mask of the ghost of Hamlet’s father, smashed-in but painstakingly repaired, blackened a little in the fire. He spoke in a deep, eerie voice, like many voices all in one.

  “We are the Globe Theatre, and we are almost dead. Do not disturb our final performance.”

  Burbage halted a moment, then stepped forward. “You are trespassing,” he said coldly, standing directly before the figure, glaring at the mask. He saw nothing behind the eyeholes. Nothing.

  They confronted each other in silence; and, unexpectedly, Burbage reached up to pull the mask off. And beheld the face of a leering skull, desiccated and fire-blackened.

  Before Burbage could cry out, the mask was snatched away from his numb fingers and placed back on the figure’s head.

  Burbage felt cold, and his eyes misted over with terror and confusion. “What are you?” The words slid through his clenched teeth like a cold wind.

  “A truly talented actor leaves a part of himself, part of his soul, within the theatre in which he performs. This wood, these timbers, are from the very first playhouse in all of Europe, which has absorbed countless performances . . . . We are what is left.”

  Burbage first began to tremble. “You! Ghosts! You are what Richard saw! You killed Thomas Radclyffe! Murdered him!”

  “We acted only to protect ourselves. In vain.”

  Burbage stood motionless, only his thoughts whirling—fear, anger, confusion—and he could not function until he accepted his inability to accept. “I do not understand . . . I cannot believe this.”

  “You are not an actor. You will not understand.” The central figure continued to stare at him with the frozen expression of the mask. “Tell your brother Richard—he will understand. It will comfort him. He knows us, but he does not realize it. Tell him not to fear us.”

  Burbage found he had taken one step backward, and another. The masked figure raised his voice. “Leave us! To complete our performance!”

  Burbage felt his fear taking precedence over all his other emotions, and he took another step backward, staring at the troupe of spectral figures one final time. Then he turned to flee from the ruins of the Globe Theatre.

  The wreckage of the Globe lay in Maiden Lane, covered with snow, until the winter of 1614 passed. “And the next spring it was new builded in a far finer manner than before.”

  —Master John Stow, General Chronicle of England.

  Special Makeup

  Kevin J. Anderson

  “Special Makeup” copyright 1991 by WordFire, Inc. Originally published in The Ultimate Werewolf, edited by Byron Preiss, Dell Books, 1991.

  When I was asked to write a werewolf story for an anthology, I didn’t see any reason not to do a funny one! I’ve always been a fan of the old monster movies, and for this tale I drew upon my years of diligently studying Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine.

  * * *

  The second camera operator ran to fetch the clapboard. Someone else called out, “Quiet on the set! Hey everybody, shut up!” Three of the extras coughed at the same time.

  “Wolfman in Casablanca, Scene 23. Are we ready for Scene 23?” The second camera operator held the clapboard ready.

  “Ahem.” The director, Rino Derwell, puffed on his long cigarette in an ivory cigarette holder, just like all famous directors were supposed to have. “I’d like to start today’s shooting sometime today! Is that too much to ask? Where the hell is Lance?”

  The boom man swiveled his microphone around; the extras on the nightclub set fidgeted in their places. The cameraman slurped a cold cup of coffee, making a noise like a vacuum cleaner in a bathtub.

  “Um, Lance is still, um, getting his makeup on,” the script supervisor said.

  “Christ! Can somebody find me a way to shoot this picture without the star? He was supposed to be done half an hour ago. Go tell Zoltan to hurry up—this is a horror picture, not the Mona Lisa.” Derwell mumbled how glad he was that the gypsy makeup man would be leaving in a day or two, and they could get someone else who didn’t consider himself such a perfectionist. The director’s assistant dashed away, stumbling off the soundstage and tripping on loose wires.

  Around them, the set showed an exotic nightclub, with white fake-adobe walls, potted tropical plants, and Arabic
-looking squiggles on the pottery. The piano in the center of the stage, just in front of the bar, sat empty under the spotlight, waiting for the movie’s star, Lance Chandler. The sound stage sweltered in the summer heat. The large standup fans had to be shut off before shooting; and the ceiling fans—nightclub props—stirred the cloud of cigarette smoke overhead into a gray whirlpool, making the extras cough even when they were supposed to keep silent.

  Rino Derwell looked again at his gold wristwatch. He had bought it cheap from a man in an alley, but Derwell’s pride would not allow him to admit he had been swindled even after it had promptly stopped working. Derwell didn’t need it to tell him he was already well behind schedule, over budget, and out of patience.

  It was going to take all day just to shoot a few seconds of finished footage. “God, I hate these transformation sequences. Why does the audience need to see everything? Have they no imagination?” he muttered. “Maybe I should just do romance pictures? At least nobody wants to see everything there!”

  #

  “Oh, God! Please no! Not again! Not NOW!!!” Lance couldn’t see the look of horror he hoped would show on his face.

  “You must stop fidgeting, Mr. Lance. This will go much faster.” Zoltan stepped back, large makeup brush in hand, inspecting his work. His heavy eastern European accent slurred out his words.

  “Well I’ve got to practice my lines. This blasted makeup takes so blasted long that I forget my blasted lines by the time it comes to shoot. Was I supposed to say ‘Don’t let it happen here!’ in that scene? Hand me the script.”

  “No, Mr. Lance. That line comes much later—it follows ‘Oh no! I’m transforming!’” Zoltan smeared shadow under Lance’s eyes. This would be just the first step in the transformation, but he still had to increase the highlights. Veins stood out on Zoltan’s gnarled hands, but his fingers were rock steady with the fine detail.

  “How do you know my lines?”

  “You may call it gypsy intuition, Mr. Lance—or it may be because you have been saying them every morning before makeup for a week now. They have burned into my brain like a gypsy curse.”

  Lance glared at the wizened old man in his pale blue shirt and color-spattered smock. Zoltan’s leathery fingers had a real instinct for makeup, for changing the appearance of any actor. But his craft took hours.

  Lance Chandler had enough confidence in his own screen presence to carry any picture, regardless of how silly the makeup made him look. His square jaw, fine physique, and clean-cut appearance made him the perfect model of the all-American hero. Now, during the War against Germany and Japan, the U.S. needed its strong heroes to keep up morale. Besides, making propaganda pictures fulfilled his patriotic duties without requiring him to go somewhere and risk getting shot. Red-corn-syrup blood and bullet blanks were about all the real violence he wanted to experience.

  Lance took special pride in his performance in Tarzan Versus the Third Reich. Though he had few lines in the film, the animal rage on his face and his oiled and straining body had been enough to topple an entire regiment of Hitler’s finest, including one of Rommel’s desert vehicles. (Exactly why one of Rommel’s desert vehicles had shown up in the middle of Africa’s deepest jungles was a question only the scriptwriter could have answered.)

  Craig Corwyn, U-Boat Smasher, to be released next month as the start of a new series, might make Lance a household name. Those stories centered on brave Craig Corwyn, who had a penchant for leaping off the deck of his Allied destroyer and swimming down to sink Nazi submarines with his bare hands, usually by opening the underwater hatches or just plucking out the rivets in the hull.

  But none of those movies would compare to Wolfman in Casablanca. Bogart would be forgotten in a week. The timing for this picture was just perfect; it had an emotional content Lance had not been able to bring into his earlier efforts. The country was just waiting for a new hero, strong and manly, with a dash of animal unpredictability and a heart of gold (not to mention unwavering in Allied sympathies).

  The story concerned a troubled but patriotic werewolf—him, Lance Chandler—who in his wanderings has found himself in German-occupied Casablanca. There he causes what havoc he can for the enemy, and he also meets Brigitte, a beautiful French resistance fighter vacationing in Morocco. Brigitte turns out to be a werewolf herself, Lance’s true love. Even in the script, the final scene as the two of them howl on the rooftops above a conflagration of Nazi tanks and ruined artillery sent shivers down Lance’s spine. If he could pull off this performance, Hitler himself would tremble in his sheets.

  Zoltan added spirit gum to Lance’s cheeks and forehead, humming as he worked. “You will please stop perspiring, Mr. Lance. I require a dry surface for this fine hair.”

  Lance slumped in the chair. Zoltan reminded him of the wicked old gypsy man in the movie, the one who had cursed his character to become a werewolf in the first place. “This blasted transformation sequence is going to take all day again, isn’t it? And I don’t even get to act after the first second or so! Lie still, add more hair, shoot a few frames, lie still, add more hair, shoot a few more frames. And it’s so hot in the soundstage. The spirit gum burns and ruins my complexion. The fumes sting my eyes. The fake hair itches.”

  He winced his face into the practiced look of horror again. “Oh, God! Please no! Not again! Um. . .oh yeah—don’t let it happen here!” Lance paused, then scowled. “Blast, that wasn’t right. Would you hurry up, Zoltan! I’m already losing my lines. And I’m really tired of you dragging your feet—get moving!”

  Zoltan tossed the makeup brush with a loud clink into its glass jar of solvent. He put his gnarled hands on his hips and glared at Lance. The smoldering gypsy fury in his dark eyes looked worse than anything Lance had seen on a movie villain’s face.

  “I lose my patience with you, Mr. Lance! It is gone! Poof! Now I must take a short cut. A special trick that only I know. It will take a minute, and it will make you a star forevermore! I guarantee that. You will no longer suffer my efforts—and I need not suffer you! The people at the new Frankenstein picture over on Lot 17 would appreciate my work, no doubt.”

  Lance blinked, amazed at the old gypsy’s anger but ready to jump at any chance that would get him out of the makeup trailer sooner. He heard only the words “it will make you a star. I guarantee that.”

  “Well, do it then, Zoltan! I’ve got work to do. The great Lon Chaney never had to put up with all these delays. He did all his own makeup. My audiences are waiting to see the new meaning I can bring to the portrayal of the werewolf.”

  “You will never disappoint them, Mr. Lance.”

  Without further reply, Zoltan yanked at the fine hair he had already applied. “You no longer need this.” Lance yowled as the patches came free of his skin. “That is a very good sound you make, Mr. Lance. Very much like a werewolf.”

  Lance growled at him.

  Zoltan rustled in a cardboard box in the corner of his cramped trailer, pulled out a dirty Mason jar, and unscrewed its rusty lid. Inside, a brown oily liquid swirled all by itself, spinning green flecks in internal currents. The old man stuck his fingers into the goop and brought them out dripping.

  “What is—whoa, that smells like—” Lance tried to shrink away, but Zoltan slapped the goop onto his cheek and smeared it around.

  “You cannot possibly know what this smells like, Mr. Lance, because you have no idea what I used to make it. You probably do not wish to know—then you would be even more upset at having it rubbed all over your face.”

  Zoltan reached into the jar again and brought out another handful, which he wiped across Lance’s forehead. “Ugh! Did you get that from the lot cafeteria?” Lance felt his skin tingle, as if the liquid had begun to eat its way inside. “Ow! My complexion!”

  “If it gives you pimples, you can always call them character marks, Mr. Lance. Every good actor has them.”

  Zoltan pulled his hand away. Lance saw that the old man’s fingers were clean. “Finished. It has all absorbe
d right in.” He screwed the cover of the jar back on and replaced it in the cardboard box.

  Lance grabbed a small mirror, expecting to find his (soon-to-be) well-known expression covered with ugly brown, but he could see no sign of the makeup at all. “What happened to it? It still stinks.”

  “It is special makeup. It will work when it needs to.”

  The door flew open, and the red-faced director’s assistant stood panting. “Lance, Mr. Derwell wants you on the set right now! Pronto! We’ve got to start shooting.”

  Zoltan nudged his shoulder. “I am finished with you, Mr. Lance.”

  Lance stood up, trying not to look perplexed so that Zoltan could have a laugh at his expense. “But I don’t see any—”

  The old gypsy wore a wicked grin on his lips. “You need not worry about it. I believe your expression is, ‘Knock ‘em dead.’”

  #

  Lance sat down at the nightclub piano and cracked his knuckles. The extras and other stars took their positions. Above the soundstage, he could hear men on the catwalks, positioning cool blue gels over the lights to simulate the full moon.

  “Now are you ready, Lance?” the director said, fitting another cigarette into his ivory holder. “Or do you think maybe we should just take a coffee break for an hour or so?”

  “That’s not necessary, Mr. Derwell. I’m ready. Just give the word, see?” He growled for good measure.

  “Places everyone!”

  Lance ran his fingers over the piano keyboard, ‘tickling the old ivories,’ as real piano players called it. No sound came out. Lance couldn’t play a note, of course, so the prop men had cut all the piano wires, holding the instrument in merciful silence no matter how enthusiastically Lance might bang on it. They would add the beautiful piano melody to the soundtrack during post-production.