Reincarnal Read online

  © 2018 by Max Allan Collins

  Library e-Book : 978-1-5384-7312-2

  Trade e-Book : 978-1-5384-7313-9

  This digital document has been produced by Nord Compo.

  CHARACTERS:

  HEATHER – 1980s era teenage girl

  ROD – 1980s era teenage boy

  NORA CHANEY – thirty; an artist; single.

  WILL WYMAN – fiftyish college professor

  MARY – gal pal of Nora’s; runs feminist bookshop

  CAROL – another gal pal of Nora’s

  NEWSCASTER – TV; male or female

  DETECTIVE LISA WINTERS – no nonsense thirty-ish cop

  DICK MATHIS – reporter, mid-thirties, confident.

  NURSE – twenties; works at nursing home.

  MRS. MEEKER – sixties but seems older; dementia

  PASTOR – fifties; not quite on top of things.

  CABBIE – male; Chicago accent

  DELBERT – fifties; a madman.

  MUSIC:

  FANGORIA THEME

  ANNOUNCER:

  You can run but you can’t hide. It’s far too late for that. Welcome to the dark side, where the night never ends – as Fangoria presents...Dreadtime Stories. With your host, Malcolm McDowell. Tonight’s Dreadtime Story: “Reincarnal” by Max Allan Collins

  NARRATOR:

  You remember the ’80s – big hair, heavy metal...slasher films? You don’t have to have been there to know about those awesome, tubular times.

  MUSIC:

  Generic ’80s heavy metal instrumental comes in, then plays under following speech.

  NARRATOR:

  It wasn’t so different then from now – girls and boys still went to the senior prom...always a big night for a young couple...the night so many innocent kids first go “all the way”...

  SOUND:

  Heavy metal music louder now. We’re in an echo-chamber school gym. Giddy murmur of kids.

  ROD:

  (working to be heard over the music) Come on, Heather...let’s blow this pop stand.

  HEATHER:

  They’re gonna announce the king and queen!

  ROD:

  Yeah, like it’s gonna be us! Come on, baby! You promised.

  MUSIC/SOUND:

  Heavy metal music continues. Heavy doors close, MUFFLING music. Couple walking on gravel. Outdoor noise.

  Metal music drops way back.

  HEATHER:

  I know I promised...but I’m scared.

  ROD:

  There’s nothing scary about love, babe. Nothing scary about growing up. It feels great.

  HEATHER:

  I didn’t mean that...I mean, those killings.

  ROD:

  Hey, no worries. Your Rod and his staff they will comfort you.

  HEATHER:

  Tell that to the four couples that got slaughtered!

  SOUND:

  Footsteps on gravel stop.

  ROD:

  Here, honey. Get in.

  SOUND:

  Car door opens. Rustle of clothing as they get in. Car door closes. Metal music gone.

  ROD:

  Sugar – those couples that got killed? They were all really old...twenties or thirties.

  HEATHER:

  Maybe. But it’s couples. They were all...you know...making love when they...got it.

  ROD:

  Yeah, they were doing it when they got chopped, but baby, it was in motels.

  Or out on that lover’s lane. Not in a school parking lot, for shit sake!

  HEATHER:

  You’re not helping. Listen. Prom night is special. It’s a night for memories. Maybe we should just go back inside and...

  SOUND:

  Zipper unzips.

  ROD:

  Let’s make some memories.

  HEATHER:

  Rod...Rod...I don’t know...I do love you...

  SOUND:

  Clothing rustle, belt buckle hits steering wheel, general sound of furtive undressing by the two kids.

  ROD:

  (murmuring) Oh, Heather, you doll...you are so beautiful. This is a memory I won’t never forget.

  HEATHER:

  Long as you live?

  ROD:

  Long as I live.

  SOUND:

  Car door opens.

  ROD:

  Hey!

  HEATHER:

  Rod – Rod, he has a knife!

  SOUND:

  Knife puncturing flesh. Ripping flesh. Splashing blood. Heather screams, then Rod screams, too. Sounds of terror continue under following speech.

  NARRATOR:

  Heather saw the killer’s face – a thin face with one blue eye and one brown one, and a smile too wide for so narrow a face...and sadder than any smile should ever be.

  SOUND:

  More slashing. But no screaming.

  NARRATOR:

  Then Heather was floating, flying – above the car, looking down at it, through it, looking at the blonde-haired husk in the white blood-spattered prom dress, a husk that used to be her, as the blue-eyed/brown-eyed man flailed with the knife in the moonlight.

  ANNOUNCER:

  Fangoria’s Dreadtime Stories will continue in a moment.

  ANNOUNCER:

  Now back to Fangoria’s Dreadtime

  Stories, and “Reincarnal.”

  NARRATOR:

  Let us leave those bad-to-the-bone ’80s and return to modern times...although the loft apartment in Chicago’s Old Town, where a hipster crowd has gathered for a regular Friday night get-together, does possess a certain timelessness. Take hostess Nora Chaney, a lanky brunette in black who might have been at home in the beatnik days of the 1950s – a`successful freelance commercial artist doing fine art on the side. Her guests, perching on second-hand shop furniture, have just watched a demonstration by Professor William Wyman, who sits beside Nora on a couch.

  NORA:

  What did I say? Please tell me I didn’t embarrass myself.

  WYMAN:

  Are you all right?

  NORA:

  Tell you the truth, prof – I’m not sure.

  WYMAN:

  You should feel fine. I gave you a post-hypnotic command...you shouldn’t remember a thing.

  NORA:

  I don’t...But why are you guys staring at me like that?

  SOUND:

  Footsteps on wooden floor.

  MARY:

  Honey, you just got a little...worked up...Here. Take this. A little white Zinn oughta bring you back to earth.

  NORA:

  Thanks, Mary...Professor, you may have told me to forget, but I know I’ve been through something disturbing. It...it’s like a taste in my mouth from a...a meal I don’t quite remember eating.

  WYMAN:

  I’m afraid we’ve taken advantage of how good a subject you are. My little hypnosis party games have been harmless, so far...

  MARY:

  Yeah, last week was a hoot – you stretched out like a board with Ted sitting on your stomach...getting pins stuck in your arm without a twitch from ya...

  CAROL:

  Yeah, and puttin’ those bananas in your purse before we went out to hear that band, last week.

  SOUND:

  Some nervous, polite laughter. Male and female.

  WYMAN:

  I’m afraid it was a mistake to try to regress you, my dear...no one really knows whether hypnotic regressions are merely the subconscious playing games, or actual evidence of reincarnation.

  NORA:

  Play it back...What did I do, strip and dance around like Isadora Duncan?

  Listen, I won’t be left out of the fun when I was the fun...Play it back!

  SOUND:

  After a beat or two, a click of a recording device.
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  NORA:

  (filtered; teenage voice) I think the thing that scares me most is how inexperienced I am. I mean, Rod’s been around. He’s...worldly and stuff. I mean, I don’t want to be a virgin forever, but what if I disappoint him? Here he comes – he wants to go out in the parking lot and do it, right now, I just know he does...

  DISSOLVE OUT, then DISSOLVE BACK IN:

  NORA:

  (filtered; teenage voice)...Now I’m floating, flying, like Supergirl – above Rod’s cherry-red Mustang, looking down at it, through it, like Supergirl’s X-ray vision, and that terrible thin-faced guy with one blue eye and one brown one, he’s just stabbing at me and stabbing and stabbing...

  NORA:

  (laughing) Turn that off! Come on, guys – you aren’t buying this?

  MARY:

  What, you were faking it?

  CAROL:

  Putting us on, huh?

  NORA:

  No, but...

  WYMAN:

  (somber) Who’s to say you aren’t the reincarnation of some poor murdered girl?

  NORA:

  Who’s to say I’m not channeling some dumb slasher flick? That fractured fairy tale is proof against reincarnation – my subconscious is obviously having a field day!

  CAROL:

  Well...you’ve always had a thing about the ’80s. You always said you were holding out for Eddie Van Halen.

  SOUND:

  Gentle, general laughter from the little group.

  WYMAN:

  And of course our local media is understandably obsessed with this current wave of Chicago Ripper murders...the papers and TV likening this serial killer to the notorious lover’s lane slayer who terrorized the Chicago suburbs back in the ’80s, and was never apprehended.

  NORA:

  Some part of my brain obviously assembled these elements – from my ’80s obsession to Halloween-type movies to these current murders. I’m surprised I didn’t go on to say that Heather in her blood-spattered prom dress has been seen haunting high school parking lots ever since...

  SOUND:

  More light laughter.

  MARY:

  Maybe that’s enough fun for one week.

  SOUND:

  Party breaking up. Footsteps as people head out.

  NORA:

  (intimate) I will admit, Professor Wyman, that I do feel kind of...wasted, after your little experiment.

  WYMAN:

  (grave) I don’t blame you. My dear, I’ve witnessed numerous regressions, but I’ve never seen one more convincing.

  NORA:

  Maybe we should come up with a new party game.

  SOUND:

  Opening door.

  WYMAN:

  (warm) Maybe we should at that.

  SOUND:

  Door closing.

  NARRATOR:

  The street level of Nora Chaney’s building is a feminist bookshop run by her friend Mary Dale. Mary is Nora’s closest confidant. And the next morning they sit in the little coffee-shop area for their usual mid -morning gabfest.

  MARY:

  Nora...child, you look terrible.

  NORA:

  Thanks. I knew I could depend on you to cheer me up.

  MARY:

  What’s wrong?

  NORA:

  I had a dream last night. You know how even the most vivid dream is gone within moments of waking up?

  MARY:

  Sure.

  NORA:

  Well, this one won’t go away. Mary, I need to tell somebody.

  MARY:

  So tell.

  MUSIC:

  Mysterious, playing under the following.

  NORA:

  I’m a blonde woman about thirty, and I’m making love to a gray-haired man in the cramped front seat of a sportscar. He’s married, and I’m married, but not to each other...we don’t speak of that, but it’s there with us, in the parked car, like a silent observer...but the love-making, it’s...wonderful. Waves of pleasure building and building until I’m screaming...

  MARY:

  I’m starting to get why you remember this one.

  NORA:

  (building tempo) Then through the open car window, a butcher knife flashes...slashes...and I feel it enter me, plunge into my chest, and I’m still screaming but a different kind of scream and I look up at the face, the thin face with the blue-and-brown eyes with the awful smile...

  MARY:

  (disturbed) The man you saw under hypnosis.

  NORA:

  My lover, the gray-haired married man?

  The killer plunges the knife right into him...again...and again...

  MARY:

  Terrible.

  NORA:

  And then the killer reaches in and pulls up my dress and takes my panties off, almost gently...but I’m already floating away, looking down through the car as the slashing starts back in...but I feel no more pain, and look away...and up...and...and I woke up.

  Middle of the night – 3:33 a.m. And you can bet I didn’t get back to sleep.

  MARY:

  Honey, can I say something?

  NORA:

  Sure.

  MARY:

  This dream...that regression vision or whatever...I’m probably the only person you ever told the truth to, right?

  NORA:

  (shyly) Right.

  MARY:

  That you’re a virgin. It’s no crime to be a virgin at your age...but that dream, that regression...it’s all about your weird guilt and curiosity about sex.

  NORA:

  Well, we know I’m not a lesbian. We tried that experiment.

  MARY:

  (good-natured laugh) Right. Look, I gotta get back to work. You want to chill out here? Should I flip the TV on for you?

  NORA:

  Sure.

  SOUND:

  Click of TV being switched on.

  NEWSCASTER:

  (filtered)...construction is expected to continue until at least mid-September...The so-called Chicago Ripper has apparently struck again.

  The bodies of Teresa Gibson, 37, and Robert Haller, 45, both of Naperville, were found in Haller’s parked car.

  Time of death is estimated at three-thirty a.m.

  MUSIC:

  Fangoria theme comes up.

  ANNOUNCER:

  We’ll return to Fangoria’s Dreadtime Stories – after these few words.

  ANNOUNCER:

  Now back to Fangoria’s Dreadtime Stories and “Reincarnal.”

  NARRATOR:

  Nora Chaney writes off her disturbing dream as her imagination running wild...until Monday, when photos of the murdered couple appear in the papers and she finds herself staring at the faces in her nightmare. She calls her mentor, Professor Wyman, at the university, and tells him of her concerns.

  WYMAN:

  I think you should go to the police.

  NORA:

  They’ll laugh at me.

  WYMAN:

  You have to try. Besides, law enforcement has been known to work with psychics.

  NORA:

  Is that what I am?

  WYMAN:

  My dear, I don’t know. I dare not even guess. But I do know I wish I’d never put you under at that party...

  SOUND:

  Bustling office. Specifically, a police bullpen.

  NARRATOR:

  Nora speaks to Detective Lisa Winters, a no-nonsense woman in her thirties with short blonde pixie hair, thick glasses, and the haggard look of a working mom. Detective Winters listens patiently, trying not to show her boredom. Then one detail sparks her to life.

  WINTERS:

  How did you know the Ripper collects the panties of his female victims?

  NORA:

  I told you. I dreamed it.

  WINTERS:

  Yeah. You said that.

  NORA:

  I...I also have a, uh...drawing.

  WINTERS:

  What?

  SOUND:

  Opening
a manila envelope. Handing over a sheet of paper.

  NORA:

  I’m a commercial artist. I thought this might be helpful...I used watercolor because of his eyes. One’s blue, one’s brown.

  WINTERS:

  May I make a photocopy of this?

  NORA:

  Sure.

  WINTERS:

  There’s something you need to know.

  NORA:

  Yes?

  WINTERS:

  You’re a suspect now.

  NORA:

  Suspect!

  WINTERS:

  Let’s call it ’person of interest.’

  You see, Ms. Chaney, you know a key detail about these murders that’s been withheld from the media. That means you might be connected to these crimes, somehow.

  NORA:

  (alarmed) Is that what you think?

  WINTERS:

  I think...you’re sincere. Perhaps even psychic. I also know that I’m not sure what to do with you. If I report our conversation up the food chain, well...