Ed Wood Stole Four Hundred Dollars from Me

     “Ed Wood stole four hundred dollars from me and I want it back.”

    This is how he comes to me, standing at my door at just after ten in the morning, his gray, felt suit faded, its collars and cuffs worn ragged. I haven’t seen or heard from good Doctor Tarrec for several years now. What is it? Count it back, it was just before my divorce … my first divorce, so what is that? A little more than four years ago? Has it been that long? He comes and goes. He does his thing. He does whatever it is that scientist, alchemist, philosopher, magician, mystics like him do.

    And here he was again, after four years, on my doorstep ranting about my favorite low budget filmmaker from the nineteen fifties. I had the day off – a relatively rare thing for me. I’d been up early – early-ish. It was my day off – to mow the yard – a necessary thing as it was starting to get out of control. I actually enjoy mowing my yard – it’s relaxing. Therapeutic, maybe. So I mowed the yard that was all I had to do for the day. I grabbed a beer from the fridge (can’t drink all day if you don’t start before noon…) and sat on the couch with a battered copy of George Bernard Shaw’s play, Saint Joan.

ROBERT: Do you know why they are called goddams?
JOAN: No. Everyone calls them goddams.
ROBERT: It is because they are always calling on their God to condemn their souls to perdition. That is what goddam means in their language…

    That’s when the good Doctor banged on my door and announced. “Ed Wood stole four hundred dollars from me and I want it back.”

    “Doctor… Doctor Tarrec? What are you doing here? Where have you been?” I opened the door and motioned for him to come inside. “Can I get you a beer?”

    “Do you have any Pliny the Elder?” I didn’t of course. It’s a great beer, but it’s only released twice a year and in limited quantities. I’ve only had it one time and that was years ago.

    “I knew him, you know?” Doctor Tarrec said.

    “Who? Ed Wood?”

    “Pliny. The elder one. His son too, but I never cared for him.”

    “What?” The conversation was already getting away from me. I showed him the couch and got him one of the discount IPAs I was drinking. “Where have you been, Doctor? I haven’t seen you for years.”

    “Nevermind that,” he waved off my question and sipped his beer. “Have you seen the movie Orgy of the Dead? It’s one of Ed Wood’s movies. And not one of his better ones.”

    This wasn’t saying much of course, but…

    “He stole it, and four hundred dollars from me,” Doctor Tarrec continued. And I’d never seen him so agitated. His face was red and his hair frizzled. He sipped his beer and wiped his lip. “I told him of the secret graveyard rituals, I told him of the moonlight emperor and the black ghoul. It was me who told him of the parade of dead souls. But he twisted it all up into that … into that burlesque travesty.”

    Chimes and discordant music rang out in the moonlight, strange music, and a crash of piano chords. A sudden gust of wind and the scent of night things. Dead things. Other, unpleasant things. Something in that cemetery was not yet dead. Call the psychic Lord of misrule and the dollar store Lady of goth. The prince of sots and princess of chaos. The scum of serpent and the poison of the basilisk. Spread the names of false messiah and the world suffers whole. The lover of flames. The Streetwalker, the Mummy, the Werewolf, and the whip-lashed Cat before dawn arrives. A sound from nowhere, the sound of nothing. Ever increasing. The sound of failure and solar disintegration.

    “You may have to let it go,” I said carefully. “Ed Wood died a long time ago. Back in the seventies, I think.” I looked it up later. He died in nineteen seventy-eight, when I was barely three years old.

    “It’s no matter,” Doctor Tarrec said as he stood and set down his beer. “I know where to find him.” Then he waved farewell and walked back out my front door. Perhaps I will see him again soon. Perhaps I won’t. I never know.