Sleeping in Flame

I kept watching through the scope. Someone tugged at my sleeve.

"Walker, what does it look like?" Weber's excited voice.

"Beautiful eyes. You can't believe the eyes." I stepped away to let him see. He only looked a moment, then told his cameraman to try and catch it on film.

Some of the crew ran down to the water for a better look. The dragon/serpent seemed unbothered and uninterested. It looped and coiled and swirled in the water, once showing a spiked tail that seemed a mile behind its head.

I'd seen blue whales off the coast of South America with heads as big as open parachutes. I'd seen a Super Galaxy transport plane block the view of the entire sky as it left the ground. Colossal things, but this creature lazing in a green sea half a mile away was the biggest of all.

The only reactions I had were awe and a kind of bewildered love. No fear and no real amazement. Somewhere inside, we know wonders like that exist: they have to in a world as varied and individual as ours. What's more, we want them to be there, but science and rationality hold tight rein on our reality – if we haven't seen it, it isn't there.

Fine, but twenty people stood on the shores of the Pacific Ocean and the twentieth century watching something they'd been told all their lives didn't exist.

A police helicopter spluttered overhead and flew straight out toward the thing. Raising its monumental head, the serpent looked sedately at the whirring bug. The purple eyes blinked. Like a tall building that's just been dynamited, the sea all around it flew up as the monster dove and disappeared.

The whop-whop of the helicopter circling the empty roiling sea, the long crash on shore of high backwash waves; for those of us who'd witnessed it, life had for once broken its silence (or one of its rules) and told us a secret.

Yet it was no use trying to tell others, as we quickly found out. George Lambert offered the film he'd taken of the dragon to the television stations. They dutifully showed it, but also covered themselves by filling their studios with "experts" who unanimously denounced the sighting as either absurd or hilarious.

The only places that took it seriously were the creepy/wacko newspapers like The Truth or The National Voice. They ran pictures of the monster next to articles on children who sold their mothers to the Ayatollah, or men who moved cream cheese with their minds.

The common belief was that Weber Gregston staged the whole thing to get publicity for his new film. He was unbothered either by the accusation or the days of craziness that followed.

"Who cares what they think, Walker? We know what we saw! That puts us one up on all of them. They want to think I'm pushing my movie? Fine. Or George's film is a fake? Fuck 'em. We saw it! We got a taste of what the world is really like under its skin. It's my friend Cullen's crazy dreamland, Rondua. That's the real truth. It's what we thought life was like when we were kids. Lying in bed at night, scared and excited about every sound and shadow out there. Remember those days?"

We were having drinks next to the swimming pool of his rented house in Laurel Canyon. Maris was doing slow laps alone while both of us watched her and took some sun. She wore a black swimsuit and, with her hair slicked back and gleaming, against the swimming pool blue she looked like a moving exclamation point.

"There are coyotes up here still. My neighbor told me when there was a fire in the canyon that he saw a whole family of them ru

"That's like our sea monster. Who the fuck would ever think on a su

Maris held on to the edge of the pool, listening. Her legs waved slowly back and forth in the water. The silence of the middle of the afternoon. The air smelled of chlorine, mimosa, and lemons. The extension phone nearby rang. With a groan, Weber got up to answer it. I looked at Maris and she blew me a little kiss.

"Philip! How are you? When'd you get back? Sure, I'm home. Sure, come over now. There are some people here you'll like. Come over when you like. Good. See you in a while. I'm glad you're back, you bastard!"

Gri

"No."

"No one has, but everyone knows who he is. 'Bloodstone.'"

"Bloodstone! You mean in Midnight? That's the most hideous horror film I ever saw. Midnight. Midnight Too. Midnight Always Comes . . . How many of them have they made so far?"

"Three. He's made a good chunk of change playing Bloodstone in every one. We were roommates at Harvard and started in films together."

"You made Breathing You and he made Midnight? That's some difference."

Half an hour later, a nondescript balding man with an open, sweet smile walked out onto the patio and grabbed Weber from behind. The two of them danced around in each other's arms, oblivious to us.

When they separated, Strayhorn came over to us with an extended hand and that good smile.

"You're Walker Easterling. I've seen your films."

"You're kidding."

He immediately named four obscure clunkers I had made long ago, and said they were "terrific."

He used that word a lot, but the way he said it made me believe him. Philip Strayhorn was one of those people who seem to know something about everything (and everyone) and love to talk about it. A polymath for sure, but no show-off. He talked in such an excited, compelling, way that you were quickly caught up in both his enthusiasm and information, no matter what the subject.

How he'd gotten to be one of Hollywood's most famous on-screen villains was interesting in itself. Broke and out of work as an actor, he wrote the screenplay for the first Midnight and sold it on the guarantee they'd let him play the heavy if the film was ever done. It was made for $400,000 and grossed $17 million. The day we met, he'd just returned from Yugoslavia where they'd recently finished shooting the fourth sequel.

I wanted to know why he thought the films were so successful. He smiled and said one word, "Bosch."

"What do you mean?"

"When I wrote that first one, I had a book of Bosch's paintings in front of me and just kept looking at them as I wrote. You won't find any better monsters anywhere. Bloodstone is a combination of several of his figures. The only hard part was trying to imagine what those monsters would be like if they came to life. People go to the movies to be entertained. The best entertainment in the world is great art. You want to be scared? Look at Garden of Earthly Delights under a magnifying glass; it'll give you nightmares. Just don't tell that to the guy who goes to the movies at the shopping mall Saturday night. If he heard where Bloodstone came from, he'd walk out or want his money back. All the Midnight movies are Bosch, plus a lot of screaming and stabbing. They're not art, but they come from art.

"Tell me about your sea serpent. That's what I came over to hear."

Weber brought him a glass of ginger ale (he didn't drink alcohol), and between the two of us, we gave him as complete a description as possible. Then we went into the house and watched a video of George Lambert's film. Philip took a piece of paper and pencil off the desk and began drawing. After a while he stopped looking at the film.

He held up the drawing. Even in the flickering gray television light, the figure he'd sketched looked too familiar.

"This is an Elasmosaurus. It lived about a hundred and fifty million years ago, in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Fifty feet long, with a neck on it that stretched about as far as the Golden Gate Bridge does. If your creature were real, that's what it'd be."