The House by Edward Lee Read Free Book Online Page B

workbench in a room with stained walls and...drop cloths on the floor. Blood gushed from his mouth as another man wearing a rain poncho and a ...Lyndon Johnson mask was silently smacking a hammer into the long-haired man's—Asshole, from here on—mouth. Asshole flinched and quaked. Lyndon came around to the f.g., now brandishing a knitting needle, which he quite abruptly jammed into Asshole's penis via the ingress of the urethra. His hips bucked and bucked as the knitting needle was jammed down and down until it was gone save for the shiny cap on the end. Sewing needles then were placed almost daintily one by one into Asshole's clenched testicles. One after another, until the gonads more resembled some kind of sci-fi porcupine. Next another, much bigger man in a poncho entered the frame. He was wearing the rubber Spock mask. A fileting knife was produced, and then Spock began, with much technical dexterity, to slough strips of skin off Asshole's chest, abdomen, and legs. Shortly thereafter, Asshole died, but not before Spock had just as dextrously cut off his face.
    Leonard snapped off the editor's lamp.
    He just stared for a while.
    He felt numb.
    He felt unreal.
    He needed to get out again, out into fresh air. Not to escape, mind you—after witnessing Asshole's cinematic demise, Leonard heeded Rocco's warning well. He wandered the yard in moonlight, strayed past the small empty stable and then the dog pens. Within the latter, several skinny, mange-flecked dogs—a collie, a mongrel, and a German Shepherd—raised their heads from sleep and looked at him, their tongues hanging out. Leonard looked back in complete incomprehension. Here are my stars, he realized in a slow jolt. I want to make movies, and here is my cast...  Moments later, the dogs lowered their heads and went back to sleep, unimpressed by the new director of the production house.
    Then a hand touched his shoulder and a stonelike voice cracked, "Sinner, repent ye of your sins. For we, the vassals of God, know what it is you are doing here."

    ««—»»

    The time it took Leonard to shriek and piss his pants seemed like a full five minutes when actually it only consumed perhaps a few seconds. He spun around, eyes locked open and his heart hammering, to face a broad-shouldered figure standing in the dark.
    "Huh—who are you!" Leonard wheezed.
    The figure stepped forward into moonlight. '50s or '60s, it seemed, and a stern, work-weathered face with narrowed eyes full of contempt. The man's voice had sounded solid yet eloquent, like an evangelical fire-and-brimstone preacher, and his attire presented a parity. It's one of the Quakers, Leonard realized, or whatever they were. Rocco had mentioned a secluded township just over the hill. And the man looked the part: slacks and jacket made of what seemed black sack sloth, a starched white shirt and painfully stiff collar, a black string for a bow-tie, and black hand-cobbled shoes. He even wore an austere black brim hat, and looked just like Ernest Borgnine in Wes Craven's Deadly Blessing , not that Leonard himself could make such a simile, for that particular film would not be made for several years. Nor could he possibly know that the film would star a wan young blonde named Sharon Stone, and provide the only decent  role in her forthcoming megastar career, but that was beside the point.
    "Yuh-you're one of the Quakers from down the hill," Leonard jabbered when his heart rate went back down.
    "Lord on high!" the man cracked back. "We are not any foolhearty Quakers! We are the Epiphanites!"
    "Uh, sorry," Leonard apologized.
    "And I am the Rector Solomon come to warn ye to keep thy distance from our little circle of God, sinner!"
    Even Leonard had to raise some objection now. "Excuse me? You don't even know  me, so how can you judge me a sinner?"
    "Blast ye and your kind— all sinners and offenses against God in your devilish machines and evil electric light!" At the pause of Solomon's rock-hewn voice, the night