Robert flicked on lights as he returned to his office, unconsciously maintaining the lop-sided Gravely gait. It was so quiet the fluoro tubes could be heard to hum. He slotted this week's air check onto the bookshelf with its fellows. The tapes bore a long-standing down of dust on their top edges; they had lived on the shelf for years, rarely played back. In the file drawer of Gravely stuff he discovered that the folder of 8x10s was empty. He had mailed off the last one a long time back--so long that if he were to order another 100 printed, the dent would probably hit his own pocket.
There were clippings in that drawer, stirred in amid crumpled promo posters, press releases, and the odd film clip--the whole history of a cadaverous wiseass named Gravely, from the heyday of the Screen Gems Shock Theatre package in the late Fifties, to the last gasp period, late Seventies, when the nation's eccentric, weird and just plain regional TV horror hosts dropped out of sight more quickly than shooting gallery wildlife. Born amid shameless hype, Gravely and his fellows were an anachronistic hangover, ill-designed to outlast the explosion of microchip media. Robert Blake understood evolution, especially natural selection.
In the eyes of someone like the ebullient Sherry, he thought, all his days were halcyon. No wonder she had left. Nobody relishes hanging around a funeral when the ghoul is bombing. The world had no need for him as a repository of classic fright film lore; his goldmine of myth had petered into common coign. Even Wilson could see it.
He wanted to pretend that 11-year-old John Sheldon's fan letter was a message from the past--a telegram bearing special powers from a time that mattered.
There came a thud on the office door, accompanied by a clotted voice: "Master!"
Robert tried to stand and turn all at once, but his hump constricted him. He had been genuinely startled since, as had been established by the worst of slasher flicks, he was supposed to be alone. He smiled the first honest smile of the night. How about that; I'm having the horror movie host version of a Nam flashback.
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