The Unholy

A Hollywood shrine hides unholy deeds

The 1940s: Hard-boiled detectives and femmes fatale are box-office gold. In one iconic scene, set in a deserted museum, the private eye arrives too late, and the buxom beauty is throttled by an ominous Egyptian priest.

Now: The Black Box Cinema immortalizes Hollywood’s Golden Age in its gallery of film noir tributes. But the mannequin of that Egyptian priest is hardly lifeless. He walks—and a young starlet dies a terrifying death.

Movie mogul Eddie Archer’s son is charged with the grisly murder. Eddie calls agent Sean Cameron, who specializes in…irregular investigations. As part of an FBI paranormal forensics team, Cameron knows that nightmares aren’t limited to the silver screen.

Working with special-effects artist Madison Darvil—who has her own otherworldly gifts—Cameron delves into the malevolent force animating more than one movie monster.…

Praise for the novels of Heather Graham

“An incredible storyteller.”

—Los Angeles Daily News

“Graham deftly weaves elements of mystery, the paranormal, and romance into a tight plot that keeps the reader guessing at the true nature of the killer’s evil.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Unseen

“A fast-paced and suspenseful read that will give readers chills while keeping them guessing until the end.”

—RT Book Reviews on Ghost Moon

“If you like mixing a bit of the creepy with a dash of sinister and spine-chilling reading with your romance, be sure to read Heather Graham’s latest… Graham does a great job of blending just a bit of paranormal with real, human evil.”

—Miami Herald on Unhallowed Ground

“Eerie and atmospheric.”

—RT Book Reviews on Unhallowed Ground

“The paranormal elements are integral to the unrelentingly suspenseful plot, the characters are likable, the romance convincing and, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Graham’s atmospheric depiction of a lost city is especially poignant.”

—Booklist on Ghost Walk

“Graham’s rich, balanced thriller sizzles with equal parts suspense, romance and the paranormal—all of it nail-biting.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Vision

“Mystery, sex, paranormal events. What’s not to love?”

—Kirkus Reviews on The Death Dealer

The Unholy

Heather Graham

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Very especially and with love for and thanks to Michelle DeVille, a gifted artist and fabricator!

For Doug and Laurie Jones, talented beyond all measure, sweet and all-around incredible.

And for the Wexler family, Cindy, Bob, Dallas and Reese, for their great kindness and generosity to my family.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

Excerpt

Prologue

“So, you think you know the truth?” Dianna Breen, femme fatale, demanded. She leaned on the desk in the P.I.’s dingy office, skirt tight against her curvaceous form, eyes sultry as she stared at the hero, Sam Stone. The film was dark and shadowy, and sexual tension between the players was palpable.

Sam Stone made no pretense of looking away from Dianna Breen’s chest, modestly covered in frilly white cotton beneath the linen jacket of her suit. “I do know the truth. I know you’re a hussy and a thief, and I don’t believe you’d think twice before resorting to murder.”

“You know nothing!” Dianna Breen leaned down to bring her face close to Sam Stone’s. She reached past him, drew a cigarette from a pack on the desk and continued to stare at him as he fumbled for his lighter, then lit the cigarette.

“I know that you’d do anything to own the Egyptian Museum, Dianna. Anything,” he added softly.

She moved away from him at last, striding toward the window, her walk a study in slow sensuality. There, however, in what remained of the winter light, her face told the story; she was being wronged. She was not a murderess. She turned to him, hurt and passion in her eyes. “You don’t understand! You don’t understand about…the museum,” she said. She gazed back out on the Los Angeles street; beyond the window, day was dying. The city’s shadows suited the ambience of the black-and-white film perfectly. “It was never mine—you must understand. It was never mine. It was Frederick’s, and it killed him, not I.”

The sound of the old reels flipping through the projector suddenly seemed loud as Sam Stone watched Dianna Breen incredulously.

Sam’s thoughts were heard then. He was narrating as he stood and walked over to the gorgeous and seductive widow. “I couldn’t believe it. A museum didn’t kill. But the way she was looking at me, those enormous blue eyes of hers brilliant with tears, a trembling in her lips—”

“Hey!”

Alistair Archer nearly jumped out of his seat; he barely managed to cut off the startled scream that threatened to escape him. Jenny Henderson had come running in, slipping her arms around him from behind, and nearly giving him a heart attack.

He was in lust—if not love—with Jenny. There was something about her, an aura of film noir seductress. She had Lana Turner dark brown hair that swept over her forehead, and she wore rich dark shades of lipstick. Today, she was in tight-fitting jeans and a cotton tailored shirt that reminded him of Marilyn Monroe.

“Hey!” he said, standing and allowing her to slide into his arms. His voice was a little tremulous, his muscles a little unsteady. “How did you get in here?” he asked, glancing back toward the door. Black Box Cinema was closed on Sundays; every other night of the week, a film noir movie played at 8:00 p.m. precisely. Or there might be more recent a movie influenced by the director’s vision of film noir. The cinema was owned by Alistair’s father, special effects whiz Eddie Archer, and stood just off Sunset Boulevard in the Los Feliz area. Eddie also owned the adjacent studio, and both buildings were situated on two acres surrounded by a very old cemetery.

Eddie Archer had bought the property twenty years ago when he started his special-effects business. For the previous five decades, the now-defunct Claymore Illusions had operated from the massive warehouse-style building in back. The company had been founded by the first Lucas Claymore and continued by his son, who’d eventually sold the place. All Eddie had needed to do was update it to create Archer’s Wizardry and Effects. While his artists and artisans sometimes found the cinema next door a bit annoying, with tourists parking here and there and everywhere, Eddie was adamant that it would stay. He loved film noir, and having his own cinema meant he could watch his favorite old movies on the big screen to his heart’s content. He made them available to the public as a way of sharing his passion, infecting others with his personal enthusiasm.

An underground tunnel—now a museum featuring posed mannequins in famous scenes from film noir and selected classic movies from the ’40s and ’50s—connected the cinema and the studio. But the main doors to the studio, which were next door and about fifty feet behind the parking lot, remained locked and guarded. During production, the studio often went into lockdown, as it was now.

Lockdown was for secrecy as well as security. No one wanted a big-budget movie’s effects and surprises out on the internet before the movie reached the screen. Archer’s Wizardry and Effectswas busy creating the costumes and creatures for The Unholy, the next remake to come to the silver screen.

The Unholy was actually an updated version of Sam Stone and the Curious Case of the Egyptian Museum. Unlike remakes that simply remade an old film, like Psycho, The Unholy used the same characters and situations, but cast them in a contemporary light.

Sam Stone now had a cell phone and a computer.

Alistair was happy that the studio had the momentous task of bringing the film up-to-date, and he knew the effects would be splendid, but he still wasn’t sure about a remake. In his opinion, some things were better off left alone. Film noir didn’t really fit with computers and cell phones.

“What are you doing here?” Alistair asked as the film wound on and the projector clicked, clicked, clicked. “How did you get in?” Alistair had keys to the studio, to the doors that separated the underground tunnel from the studio, and to the Black Box Cinema. His father trusted him completely.

He hated to betray that trust in any way. Even for Jenny. But he’d brought Jenny in with him before. It wasn’t unusual that she’d come; it was unusual that she’d been able to just slip in.

She touched his cheek and smiled seductively. At twenty-two, his senior by a year, she already had the moves—as well as the appearance—of a femme fatale down pat. She eased away, flicking back the strands of hair that had hidden her eyes. “You left the front door open, silly,” she told him. “I started to knock, but…it was open.” She grinned, and looked more like any other young Hollywood hopeful. “The rest of the place is tight as a drum, but my dear, darling, responsible Alistair, believe it or not, you left the front door open.” She paused to give him a charming pout. “I’ve been trying to call you. You didn’t answer your cell.”

He had to wonder what it was about one person that could turn the senses of another upside down. The senses and the sanity. Yes, Jenny was beautiful and perfect, but…it was Hollywood. The stunning, the perfect and the beautiful all walked about, ever hopeful, some willing to do whatever it took to get where they wanted to go, others starry-eyed and naive. He was the son of one of the most respected men in the movie business, and he suspected Jenny hung on to him because of what she thought he could do for her.

“Sorry,” he said, and the tone of his voice was annoyingly husky. She knew she sent his libido off the charts, and he hated the pathetic puppy-dog tail-wagging demeanor he must put forth when she was around. “I was watching the movie. It’s my favorite. Sam Stone and the Curious Case of the Egyptian Museum. I really love the film, and the special effects for it were actually done here, when the place was still Claymore Illusions.” That fact added to the pride his father took in securing the special-effects contract for The Unholy.

Jenny shook her head. “Silly boy, living in the past! Except, of course…”

The production company was trying to keep the information about the Sam Stone remake quiet, but of course the rumor mill was already on the case. The company had neither rejected nor affirmed the claim. Rumors and anticipation could give a film a tremendous box-office advantage.

“So, um, why are you here?” Alistair asked.

Despite her imitation of classic Hollywood vamps, Jenny was not a fan of film noir, or any other “old” movies. She loved silly modern-day romances and adventure flicks, the kind with überbuff heroes who lived exciting adventures and saved the world.

She threw her head back and touched her hair again, one of her moves calculated to be uncalculatedly sexy.

“I heard the studio’s locked down!” she said breathlessly.

He nodded.

“But not to the son of Eddie Archer!”

He groaned aloud. “Jenny, you know it’s not just my dad. It’s the movie studio, the producers, the directors—they don’t want information on pictures or anything on costumes and effects getting out.”

She gave him her pout again. She did it very well, making a little moue of hurt. “Alistair, you know I’d never tell a soul what I’ve seen. I’d never tell a soul I was even in there. But they’re still casting for extras—extras who might wind up with speaking roles. If I had a feel for what was going on, it would help me immensely. Please?”

He hesitated. Jenny always did pay up. If he took her through the studio, he’d be rewarded that night.

He was pretty sure she’d learned her lovemaking from the movies—dirty ones, at that. She was vocal; she liked to crawl on top and twist around like a voodoo queen dancing around a pole.

“You have a key to the studio,” she said.

He groaned again. “If I tried to go in with a guest, old Colin Bailey, who’s on guard at the reception desk, would push his alarm button and every cop in the area would appear,” he said. Colin Bailey had worked for his father for the full twenty years he’d owned the studio—which was most of Alistair’s life. He was like a fixture, dedicated to the studio. And during lockdown, he was fierce.

She moved closer to him. “I realize we can’t go in by the front but we can sneak in because you have a key and the pass code to get there through the tunnel door. And Colin Bailey would never see us, because you know right where the cameras are so we can avoid them.”

Almost involuntarily he felt his left pocket. He did have the keys. But he’d told her the truth. Colin Bailey would report Alistair to his father without blinking an eye.

She shimmied up against him, her body pressed to his in just the right way to elicit an immediate response. Her perfect breasts—albeit made that way with some saline enhancement—were firm against his chest and her groin pushed against his.

He forgot his father completely. He also forgot the danger—and the fact that he was being used.

“All right,” he said. Now his voice was flat-out hoarse. “We’ll go by the tunnel.”

She smiled. She rose up on her toes and brought her lips to his and did things with her tongue that nearly made him climax on the spot. Then she stepped back. “That was a little promise of things to come!”

He nodded. He couldn’t speak.

He turned around. On the screen, Dianna Breen was screaming. She was being chased by the Egyptian robe-clad murderer, who was forcing her deeper and deeper into the museum.

Alistair stumbled through the audience chairs to the back. He entered the old lobby, where wine and beer were sold, along with various forms of high-end movie snack food. To the far left of the lobby were a few offices and conference rooms, and at the back of his father’s favorite little meeting room was a door, nominally hidden by a movie poster.

“Oooh, this is like a high-tech spy adventure!” she said.

“There’s nothing high-tech about it,” he said as guilt clashed with the near-desperate desire she elicited. “It’s a movie poster covering a door.”

She was pressed to his back. Desire won out over guilt.

Alistair swept the canvas poster to the side, dug in his pocket and twisted the key in the lock, fumbling for a moment as he did so.

There were auxiliary lights set into the steps that led down to the tunnel; on the days that the small museum was open, before and after movies were screened, the stairway and the landing would be ablaze with light. But tonight, no one was expected.

“Be careful,” he warned Jenny.

“Of course!” she said.

Alistair walked slowly down the steps, ever aware of her sweet-smelling presence behind him. He reached the landing. He’d never been here before when there was no illumination except the emergency lighting. It changed the entire appearance of the place.

The museum’s first scene was from The Maltese Falcon. Humphrey Bogart sat at his desk while femme fatale Mary Astor leaned toward him and a creepy Peter Lorre hovered off to the side. They were all caught in shadow, and even Bogie looked dangerous, ready to strangle Mary Astor. Across from that tableau, Orson Welles as the title character in Citizen Kane stood by the breakfast table, angry after ignoring Ruth Warrick, who played his first wife. The old mannequins, created in the mid-50s by the previous owner’s special-effects studio, had been works of love, and in the dim red light and shadows, Alistair could almost believe that Orson Welles was about to speak angrily, his patience finally snapping him from the ennui of his marriage. Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake were together next, in a scene from The Glass Key, and then there were Dana Andrews, Vincent Price and Gene Tierney in Laura. The hall was long, and the exhibits were plentiful. A slim wooden barrier separated the walkway from the exhibits, and visitors could push buttons, which would let them hear the audio from the scene they were witnessing, along with information about the actors, producers, writers and directors. That night, to Alistair, all the characters looked as if they could speak without benefit of electronics.

Bogie made another appearance, with Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca; he was saying goodbye in front of the plane that would take her away. Bogie gripped Ingrid by the shoulders, and the emotion between them—and the greater good of the war effort, the sacrifice required—seemed palpable.

Toward the end of the hallway, Alistair stopped.

The scene was taken from the movie he had been watching that night, Sam Stone and the Curious Case of the Egyptian Museum.

There was hard-boiled Sam Stone, played by the ill-fated Jon de la Torre, arriving just a little too late in the fictional museum’s “Hall of the Pharaohs.” And there was the empty sarcophagus, and nearby, the man clad in the robes, his hands around the throat of femme fatale Dianna Breen, played by the equally ill-fated Audrey Grant. Snakes—Egyptian cobras—abounded on the floor, and Sam would have to make his way through them if he was to have any chance of saving Dianna.

Alistair stared at the scene and blinked; he could have sworn he saw one of the snakes move.

“Hey,” Jenny said, pushing against his back.

“What?” Alistair asked, distracted. He kept staring at the tableau.

“The door is open. The door to the studio is open!” she told him, speaking softly.

He turned to look down to the end of the hallway. The door into the basement of the special-effects studio stood ajar. He frowned; it should have been locked. His father and upper-level management were adamant about the rules when it came to lockdown.

He glanced at Jenny. For a moment she seemed to look like every femme fatale who had ever graced a movie screen. There was something wrong here. He was being played, he thought, really played. Perhaps punked. There could be cameras somewhere that he didn’t know about and other people ready to break into laughter. Yes, he was a fool, ready to do anything for a woman’s touch. And, as in so many film noir scenarios, the woman was luring him to his doom. At least that was how it felt in his fearful and overheated imagination.

But there was something else about the night, the way the tableau seemed alive. Something that sent a chill raking his bones.

He warned Jenny with a glance that he was wise to the situation.

But when he started through the door to the studio he heard Jenny scream.

When he turned around, he was so stunned that at first his jaw just dropped.

The robed killer—the evil priest, Amun Mopat—had come down from the Sam Stone tableau. The thing seemed to have no face. There was only blackness where a face should have been. He, it, stood behind Jenny, and seemed to be staring at him, but it had no eyes….

“Hey!” He wanted to scream. The sound came out like a croak.

An act. It had to be part of an act.

A hand appeared, brandishing a long knife.

It was a special-effects studio, for God’s sake! Someone was playing a game, he told himself, maybe even at his father’s request. Maybe his dad had suspected him of doing something like this, hoping for a hot night with his girlfriend….

The knife looked very real.

“Hey, enough! Let her go!” Alistair said, willing his feet to move toward Jenny and her costumed attacker.

Jenny was no movie femme fatale. She implored him, her blue eyes wide and filled with terror. “Alistair!” His name was a shriek of panic.

“Enough!” he roared again.

Then he stood dead still. The thing attacked and, with a hard, quick motion, drew the blade across Jenny’s throat. Blood didn’t merely leak from the wound; it spurted. Her scream died in choking sounds that accompanied the blood, and it was cut off within seconds.

There was a scent in the air. Hot and tinny and fetid.

Because it wasn’t stage blood being spewed.

The costumed form dropped Jenny and moved toward Alistair.

He’d spent his life among the creepy and the macabre, the greatest movie heroes and most terrifying villains. Monsters, vampires, ghosts, alien slime…

But something within him—logic, reason—turned off, his terror was so great.

And he fell toward the floor as blackness seemed to overwhelm his vision.

He fell into a pool of blood. And he knew, from its smell, that no, it wasn’t part of any special effect.

It was Jenny’s death, all bloody. Bloody, and real.

* * *

Vengeance.

In Hollywood, every character needed a name.

Vengeance was a good name.

And so Vengeance stood hidden, watching, feeling such a sense of glee, it was almost frightening. The scent of blood remained; the first few minutes after the scene were all but imprinted on the moving reels of memory.

Most people would consider the act, and Vengeance, crazy. Stone-cold crazy. But that wasn’t the case. Crazy could not have worked out all the technicalities and the precise timing that had been necessary.

Crazy could not have figured out everything that was needed to pull off the stunt.

Crazy could never act it all out, as it must now be acted out….

But it had gone better than could possibly be imagined. The girl…the blood.

And Alistair Archer, slipping, falling, knocking himself out.

Then waking, screaming…racing to the guard station.

And now…the blare of sirens in the street.

Cops would soon be crawling all over the place. But the cops would never suspect. Because the cops didn’t know the studio, and the cops didn’t know the past, and the cops would never recognize the brilliance that was bringing it all to fruition.

Ah, tomorrow!

Tomorrow…

Tomorrow, Vengeance would become normal, ordinary, once again. Vengeance would throw off the assumption of superpersonality, sympathize, go about day-to-day business….

And no one would ever, ever know.

Not in this lifetime.

Vengeance smiled, and Vengeance actually laughed aloud in the night; no matter, because Vengeance couldn’t be heard.

It was all too good to be true….

Time to move, but Vengeance needed to savor the moment. Alone in the dark, watching…

Vengeance was good, and vengeance was sweet.

And Vengeance had just begun.