The Corps Vanishes

By Elliott Capon

Zoltan Szábo and his wife Hilka, the first couple of the Romanian theatre, are forced to flee the fascists in the mid-1930s and wind up in Hollywood. Big stars in Europe, Zoltan is relegated to playing a two-bit Poverty Row vampire again and again, while his incredibly beautiful wife, Hilka, gets a handful of small pointless roles. Zoltan resents the overwhelming success of Britisher, Ivan Chernov, former truck driver turned actor, whose deforming facial war wounds (not any notable talent) make him the perfect horror movie star. Everyone knows about Zoltan’s resentment, and when Chernov is killed by someone who seems to think he’s a vampire, guilt by public acclimation is Zoltan’s fate...and now he can’t find work (even his own bloodsucker, i.e. his agent, deserts him). Mocked by the press and getting little cooperation from the police with the sort-of help of Hilka (who puts her uncontrollable nymphomania to good use) and his friend, a homosexual screenwriter named Winston, Zoltan sets out across the high and low places (mostly the low) of Hollywood to find out for himself: whodunit?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rogue Phoenix Press
• Release date: Nov 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781624200328

Elliott Capon

“THE PRINCE OF HORROR” is Mr. Capon's first novel. Although he has had many short stories published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and one reprinted in the Scribner anthology “MYSTERY FOR HALLOWEEN,” as well as reproduced on a books-on-cassette. Another of the author’s Hitchcock stories was the TITLE STORY of the Simon & Schuster anthology “FUN AND GAMES AT THE WHACKS MUSEUM AND OTHER STORIES FROM AHMM AND EQMM.” Two stories have been reprinted in the French and German editions of AHMM. A variety of Mr. Capon's short stories have been published in “American Accent Short Stories,” “The Horror Show,” and “Amazing Science Fiction.”

Book preview

Chapter One

CONSTANZE READIED HERSELF FOR BED.

Her bedroom was the size of a small village, in a house apparently the size of a small country. The four-poster bed was hung with whisper-thin lace trappings that would have served well as mosquito netting were such an item needed in Germany in the winter of 1790. She wore a flowing white nightdress, long-sleeved and just barely off the shoulder.

Her bed had room, and was laid out, for two people, but Constanze was apparently going to sleep alone this evening. Three dozen candles burned in eight different elaborate silver candelabras, and one massive candle encased in a protective lantern on a huge dresser provided enough light on its own to chase the shadows from every corner of the room.

Should there have been a fly on the wall, and should said fly have had human cognizance, it would have come to the conclusion that Constanze was in extremely comfortable economic straits, lived in a lavishly well-appointed house, had an unlimited wardrobe budget, and very likely had an army of servants to make up the massive bed, and dust and polish the warehouse-worth of fine heavy furniture that occupied the room, still leaving enough empty floor space to accommodate an army of minuetters and gavotters.

But Constanze felt nervous this night. She locked the massive door to her room with a big key and placed the key heavily down on the room's smaller dresser as if willing it to stay put. She walked to each of the three massive wardrobes in the room and pushed on each one, making sure the doors were shut. She stared at the bed as if she had never seen it before, hesitated, then bent over and pulled the covers aside to look under it. Then she went to the window, a floor-to-ceiling construct that was basically two glass doors, beyond which stood a small balcony. She grasped the handles of the window-doors and rattled them, making sure they were locked. She pulled the heavy curtains over the windows from both sides, squeezing them together as if that would make them stay closed. There was a tiny gap in the top of the curtains, which allowed a sliver of moonlight—for the moon was full that night—to send a tiny little beam of light onto the floor.

Constanze scanned the room again, and blew out the giant candle in the lantern and those in seven of her eight candelabras. She left four candles burning in their holder atop the dresser next to her key; they provided a soft light that would afford comfort but not distraction. She went over to her bed and turned town the coverlet, the comforter and the top sheet, carefully lowered herself in, and covered herself up from chin to soles, then closed her eyes.

Constanze was asleep before the candles had burned out. She didn't mutter as the curtains she had so meticulously closed slid open of their own accord. She didn't frown and roll over as the window-doors slowly opened into the room all by themselves, without the knobs even turning. She let out a delicate little nose-snore as a shape just seemed to fade into existence on the small, previously empty balcony.

The shape stepped into the room, and the moonlight from behind it gave it form and definition, visible only to the nonexistent wall-fly.

It was a man, a tall man, wearing a black suit and a white shirt, with a cloak thrown over his shoulders. The man was clean-shaven and did not appear to have an ounce of fat on him, although he would not have been described as thin. He had slicked-down black hair, with what appeared to be streaks of gray at each temple. He stepped into the room, silently, and without hesitation turned and looked at the sleeping Constanze. He smiled and approached the bed. He pulled apart the lace curtains; he stood for a moment looking down at the woman, seeming to gloat. He smiled again, wider, and this time as his lips parted his long canine teeth stood prominently out from his hard palate. He looked at her for several seconds.

Constanze, my dear, he whispered.

She muttered something in her sleep, turned her head back and forth, then fell back into a deep sleep.

Constanze, my love, I am here, he said in a slightly louder whisper.

Again she turned with restlessness, and opened her eyes. It took a second for her to get her bearings, but she finally looked up and saw the smiling man bending over her. Her eyes got wide and her mouth opened as if to scream, but all she managed was an exaggerated exhale, like air escaping a balloon.

The man bent down closer, touching her earlobe with his vaguely-more-prominent-than-average nose. Welcome me, my dearest, he whispered, and lowered his head a little more.

Constanze's eyes were wide as she stared over his shoulder at nothing, and let out an exhalation that sounded like the wind howling through a cave.

CUT! PRINT IT! someone yelled.

Chapter Two

There was the general buzz of conversation, movement, sighs, chht of struck matches, and all the other noises that always seem to occur when a group of people who had had to remain quiet and still were suddenly given the 'as you were' command. The tall man in the cloak replaced his narrow-eyed evil smile with a warmer, more sincere one as he took Constanze's hand and helped up her from the bed. Allow me, my dear.

She didn't acknowledge him, save to push him with the back of her hand against his chest as she took a few steps past him. The wardrobe mistress came running up with an open bathrobe, which she quickly threw around Constanze, who, with vengeance, thrust her arms into the sleeves and yanked the robe closed around herself.

"Geez-is, Manny, Constanze called out to the room, whyzit gotta be so goddam cold in here?"

Emmanuel Marvel, the director, took a few steps toward her. We need it cold in here so the fog stays good and wispy, Gretch. He almost sighed, as if he'd said the same thing a thousand times.

Gretchen Bond pulled the neck of the robe tighter. Well Geezis, Manny, it's too goddam cold in here. I doan' wannamerica seein' my nips troo dis nightgown.

The gentleman in the cloak gave a little chortle behind her. Believe me, my dear, he said to her back, enunciating each word in a hard-to-identify but definitely European accent, but even from where I was standing, your precious buttons have remained secret.

Gretchen turned her head enough to give him a contemptuous 'who asked you?' snarl. Bob the clapboard guy was lucky she'd turned her head, because that took her out of earshot of his muttered comment to Sylvia the continuity lady, Yeah, they're about as secret as the Statue'a Liberty is in New Yawk harbor.

OK, everyone, I think we're done for today, Emmanuel called out to the people on the soundstage. Wrap things up, and all'a yiz be here tomorrow at eight-and-I-don't-mean-eight-oh-five, we'll do the vault scene. The general undercurrent of noise turned into a torrent of voices and the clanking and movement of cameras, lights, booms, and other equipment; and a lavish castle bedroom suddenly exploding into a dozen pieces of flats and phony balsa-wood furniture. As two of the stagehands went to take the only substantial item on the set—the bed—away, one of them murmured to the other, "Y'wanna lay down there for a minute? It's prob'ly still warm with her...her effifluvlience."

Nah, the other answered in an equally low voice. I might catch sumpin. The two of them snorted, then quickly bent to the task of moving the bed back to the storage trailer.

Gretchen was walking away when Emmanuel called her, Gretch, can you come here a second? Zoltán, you too.

Zoltán, the erstwhile vampire, grasped his cloak and swirled it around himself, creating a little breeze. He then clomped over the six or seven steps to where Emmanuel stood, making more noise than necessary. Gretchen, on the other hand, was halfway off the set, the wardrobe mistress in tow, when she turned around. Whaddaya want, Manny? she shouted at him. I'm in a hurry. I gotta date.

Emmanuel Marvel was silent long enough for his common sense to quash and send back into the deep recesses of his brain all of the sixteen thousand cracks that were at the moment rushing precipitously and foolishly to his mouth. I'd like to talk to you and Zoltán about tomorrow's shoot.

It's the vault scene, yiz said, right? Gretchen called to him as she backed toward the exit door, the wardrobe lady, remora-like, keeping in close proximity. "It's the scene what takes place in the vault, when me and what's-him ova'dere do whatever it is we do. Yes? Then goodnight."

Gretchen and her orbiting moon disappeared through the door. The soundstage was rapidly losing personnel as the crew finished the daily wrap-up. Soon only Emmanuel, Zoltán and one stagehand were left in the big, now barren chamber. Should I leaves the lights on, Mister Marvel? the last remaining stagehand yelled from the doorway he was halfway out of.

Marvel sighed. Yes, Zoltán and I are going to be here for a few minutes.

OK, g'night, Mr. Marvel, Mr. Szabó, the man called, and disappeared.

The two men stood in the sudden silence for a few seconds. Then Marvel blew out what he hoped was an exasperated puff of air. I shoulda listened to my father and become a rabbi, he declared, shaking his head.

Zoltán offered a little chuckle. Rabbi Emmanuel Marvel, he said, his accent making the words sound somehow glamorous. How would that look out on the signboard in front of Temple B'nai Gevalt?

Marvel fixed him with a dour, but obviously comic, look. I think I'd drop the stage name and revert to the moniker on my birth certificate.

Zoltán pretended to be surprised. Oh? You changed your name?

The director decided to continue the little impromptu comedy routine. "Sure. Who'd go see a pitcher called The Return of the Undead if the posters said it was directed by Eliahu Dov Geldenblattner?"

Zoltán effected a mock frown. "Yes, I'm thinking of taking back my birth name, too."

Which was— Marvel raised an eyebrow. He knew what was coming, but he didn't care.

Zoltán nodded to him, all dead serious. In his accented English, he pronounced, Buck Rockpile.

They looked at each other for a second then burst into quick laughter. The laughter eventually broke off into chuckles, then sniffs.

What did you want to talk to us about, for tomorrow? Zoltán asked.

Ah, Emmanuel made a dismissive gesture, screw that bitch. She takes direction like a cork in a hurricane anyway. We'll do tomorrow, tomorrow. Let's get outta here. You, uh…you gonna remove the makeup, or what?

Zoltán Szabó ran his fingers over his cheeks, and his vampire canines. Mmmmm….no. It's early, and the kids on the block will still be out playing by the time I get home. They love to see the vampire come down the street and menace them.

Well…don't get arrested for impersonating Count Schwartzherz without a license. See ya tomorrow. Marvel turned to leave.

Good night, Emmanuel, Zoltán said.

Zoltán was aware that many of the studios provided their stars with cars and drivers; Western Hemisphere Studios did not. Since he did not yet have a California driver's license, he asked the Spanish-American war veteran who zealously guarded the front gate to call a cab for him. The cab driver had worked in Hollywoodland long enough not to be surprised by anything, and so even though this was the first time he had taken a fully costumed vampire home, his conversation was about the upcoming World Series between the Detroit Tigers and the Chicago Cubs. The Cubs had lost the Series last year, but the cabbie assured his vampiric passenger that 1935 was the Cubbies' year. Zoltán had no interest in and less than no knowledge of baseball, but he politely nodded and made innocuous comments on the cabdriver's monologue. O zi meu bun natural is mergi la kill eu, he thought, then corrected himself into English, mentally kicking himself for forgetting to get out of the habit of thinking in his native language. One day my good nature is going to kill me.

He had the cab drop him off at the corner of Marlton Avenue and Don Felipe Drive, in the Crenshaw section of LA. He walked down Don Felipe toward his house, and, as the kids of the neighborhood were all fed at five and then sent out to disturb the other neighbors while their own parents dined at six, the street was alive with the neighborhood children. All of them shrieked with mock-fear and unfeigned delight as the Vampire-Man came striding down the street, baring his fangs at them, holding his cloak open, starting toward them and growling and gnashing his teeth. Some of the more daring ran up behind him to touch his clothing, only to turn and run away with high-pitched yells as the Vampire-Man turned toward them threateningly. It was a game that was too much fun for either side to stop playing. The kids on the block loved being threatened by the Vampire-Man, and Zoltán could not get enough of delighting them. Even the few adults out watering their lawns or watching their dogs poop on the front lawn smiled and waved.

The block was not home to movie stars or big-shot directors. About a twenty-minute ride from Western Hemisphere, where Zoltán worked, and a good forty-five minutes from the better studios, like MGM or Paramount, the neighborhood housed middle-class people who worked in middle-class jobs in middle-class offices. Some were in the movie business, as accountants, prop guys, stagehands, carpenters, and so on; Zoltán was the only on-screen talent who deigned to live on the block. It was also the best block Zoltán could afford to live on—even though Western Hemisphere was considered to be the best of the Poverty Row studios…it was still Poverty Row. It was a block of modest one-family California homes—stucco and red roofs and a more-or-less Spanish/Moorish motif repeated from house to house. The newest car on the block was a 1934 DeSoto Airflow Coupe, which happened to be parked in the small driveway belonging to the biggest house on the block—which belonged to the Dambrisis, who owned six shoe stores in the greater L.A. area and whose only connection to show business was that they went to the movies every Wednesday night.

There was no car in the Szabó driveway—or at least, there wasn't supposed to be. When Zoltán was about four houses away, he saw a man in a suit exit the front door and get into an American Austin Bantam Roadster that was perched in the driveway. The man started the car, backed out, and turned up the street, away from the approaching Vampire-Man.

Ignoring the two kids who still clamored for his attention, Zoltán sighed and bent his head. His steps might have slowed a little as he approached his house. Not again.

The door wasn't locked of course, so he just walked in. Hilka? he called, adding the question mark as if he wasn't sure she was there.

A second later Hilka Szabó came into the front hallway from the kitchen. She was wearing a white silk bathrobe with red roses on it, tightly closed at the throat and covering her to her instep. Even so, it was obvious she was naked under the robe: her magnificent sîni could barely be disguised by a suit of armor, much less a few millimeters of silk.

Welcome home, my darling, she said. Although she had been in America not one second less than he had, she retained more of her Romanian accent. Her w came out a v and her g sounded like it was trying to escape from the clutches of a k.

Zoltán took off the cloak and threw it across a convenient valet. Who was that man?

Hilka fixed her big brown eyes on him. What man, darling?

Zoltán turned to the small hall mirror and carefully extracted his prop vampire teeth. The man who just got into his car and pulled out of our driveway.

Oh, him? Hilka waved her hand, a dismissive gesture that was so her, one critic had said, that even blind moviegoers would recognize it. That was the insurance man. I was having our homeowners' policy re-evaluated.

Ah hah. Her husband nodded. "I'm sure he was evaluating something."

Hilka fluttered her eyes at him, another pure Reginâ de Bucharest, as another critic had called her, trademark.

And if I managed to get us a substantial savings, how is anything hurt? she asked him in her innocent little-girl voice—Voice #1, she called it.

Zoltán sighed, his ten-thousandth—or so it seemed— sigh of surrender to the inevitable. A leopard, as the saying went, does not change its spots, and Hilka would never change her proclivities. Still, she was HIS, and HIS ALONE, maybe ninety-percent of the time, so…

How was shooting today? she asked him, helping him off with his jacket and undoing his cravat. He took a second to marvel that, despite the fact she certainly hadn't had time to wash herself yet, despite his having put in a nine-hour day in front of the cameras, in spite of the fact he should be suffering the torments of a cuckold, despite their being an old married couple of six years…the touch of her fingers against his neck as she untied his tie caused him an instant and overwhelming reaction. He grabbed her by the hips and pulled her into him. She laughed, the Hilka-laugh that had stiffened more men than rigor mortis.

"Let me do you a little favor, before dinner, da?" she offered.

"Da, he breathed, and she took his hand and led him into the living room. Let's go in here. I never made the bed," she lied.

He didn't care.

Chapter Three

The tall young man with the full head of wavy black hair and the proud, if not prominent nose, wearing black tights and a gold-and-black doublet, leaned against a table, facing the audience. He looked out at nothing, his eyes unfocused, as if he were trying to pierce the veil of Heaven itself. He took a good long pause, then lowered his head to stare at the darkened auditorium, but somehow managing to keep his eyes fixed on the infinite.

"Kell vagy nem kell…Ez a kérdés, he spoke, and no one in the audience as much as breathed or blinked. To be or not to be…that is the question…"

Every theatergoer knows that it's all right to laugh during a Shakespeare play, if something funny happens, but that one never actually applauds before the end of the act. Precedent was set this night in September 1930, when thirty-six year old Zoltán Szabó received a spontaneous ovation at the conclusion of his recitation of Hamlet's soliloquy. Never before had an audience at the Teatrul Naţional behaved in such a boorish manner; but never before had they heard such a heartfelt and stirring rendition of a man debating the pros and cons of suicide. He held a frozen position for as long as he could, until he realized that the only way the play would continue would be for him to acknowledge the applause. Zoltán slowly nodded, lowering his chin to his chest with maddening slowness then raised it back up. While this spawned a fresh burst of applause, it was, as he had known it would be, a loud but short-lived burst. Ophelia entered to greet the Prince, and the smile on his face was not just that of Hamlet glad to see his best girl, but that of Zoltán Szabó seeing his bride of three months. Already they were being called the first couple of the Romanian Theatre, and on this, the first night of a projected four-month run, they and the stage about them seemed to positively glow with joy and radiance. Zoltán had no way of knowing that Hamlet's line, get thee to a nunnery, was, in Shakespeare's time, a double-entendre pun: a nunnery was indeed a place where nuns lived, but in the common vernacular of Elizabethan England it was also a brothel. The Romanian translation came out as get thee to a convent. Nor did Zoltán know that, soon enough, his new wife would take the command the other way Shakespeare intended.

The night was a triumph for the actors, as were the ninety-five performances that followed.

In February 1893, opera singer Maria Iordache presented her husband with their second son, whom they named Zoltán. The happy occasion took place in the city of Sibiu, at one time the capital of the Principality of Transylvania, now merely the county seat. The happy father, Trajan, was a part-time composer of throwaway operas and occasional music, who mostly made his living as a travelling conductor and concert organizer. As time went on, Zoltán's older and younger brothers became musicians (the former a staid, middle-class, decades-long-career-with-the-same-orchestra cellist; the latter an internationally-traveling violin soloist) and so Domn and Doamna Szabó were only slightly disappointed when young Zoltán's talents seemed to bend toward the dramatic rather than the terpsichorean. When he was fifteen, his mother got him his first speaking role in an operetta; although the phrase was unknown in Romania, from there the rest was show-biz history. Zoltán Szabó got himself a manager and became one of the busiest actors in Romania, occasionally crossing the borders into Hungary, Serbia, and the Ukraine, where there were enough Romanian speakers that he was able to perform in his native language yet put international appearances on his curriculum vitae. He inherited his mother's gift for memorizing foreign languages, and by the time he was twenty-one he was fairly well fluent in German and English, with a decent smattering of Hungarian and the ability to find a policeman, a meal, or a rest room in Russian. His choice of languages to learn was no happenstance or coincidence; Zoltán Szabó had a plan.

Unfortunately, the twenty-one-year-old's plans were interrupted by a little something called World War I. He was drafted into the army when Romania decided to enter the war on the Allied side, but never saw combat. Although almost three-quarter of a million Romanians died during the conflict, Zoltán found himself in a unit that spent two years marching back and forth, occupying land that had been abandoned by the enemy, and then abandoning positions when the enemy appeared nigh. He continued his acting in shows for the troops, and had gotten himself quite a reputation within the world of the Romanian army as both a great dramatic actor and a convincing comedian.

After the war, he chafed in small theaters across the country while waiting for Germany to rebuild. Finally, his (second) manager (the first had disappeared in 1917 and was presumed to have been killed) determined that the time was ripe and in August 1921 Zoltán went to Berlin and presented himself at the offices of Universum Film AG, or UFA, one of the the—if not the—leading film studios in the world. He was one of thousands of would-be actors who flocked from all over Europe to try and get work with UFA, the home to directors such as Fritz Lang (Metropolis) and F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu). Tall, with a natural muscularity and classic good looks, Zoltán struck the harried talent scouts at UFA as certainly being photogenic enough; a look through his scrapbook of reviews from the past twelve years (which he had to translate for them, of course) showed that this twenty-eight year old certainly had acting bona fides; a couple of screen tests showed that, indeed, even without his voice, he was the stuff of movie matinee idol.

Zoltán did not star in any pictures, at first. He was cast as third or fourth leads, playing henchmen, soldiers, servants, and the