Ten

Max laid the furry pink bed in the fresh pit. With a final kiss, he placed his beloved dog's body atop it. He pulled Roger Ebert out of his back pocket and set it next to her so she'd have something to play with in the afterlife.

This was a fitting place for her to rest. She'd always loved these rosebushes.

He rested his hands on the shovel and said a prayer.

"Lady Susan, you died fighting. You died for art. If there's a Valhalla for good girls, I know there's a bowl up there for you."

Max never killed animals in his movies. Too mean-spirited. It was something of a rule in the genre; animals were always innocent. In the kind of movies he made, the monster only killed the deserving.

He wiped his tears away with his palm.

"Goodbye, friend." The only friend he'd had left.

It robbed him of the happiness he should be feeling this morning. Last night, he'd won a major victory, only he couldn't enjoy it.

Last night:

Jordan parked on Max's pastel couch swirling a tumbler of scotch on his lap, a smoking cigar poised for his next drag. As always, the burly producer presented the very image of self-possession.

Max paced the carpet. "I was trying out the new camera again. I didn't want her to bump the sticks and knock it over, so I tied her up. When she heard the door, she bolted straight for it, and—"

"She was a good dog."

"The best." Max let out a sob. He wanted to pull his hair out.

"Look, if it's a bad time, we can meet at my office later this—"

He stopped pacing. "What? No. We're doing this. I'm going to pitch you something fresh, and you're going to listen."

Jordan sighed. "You tricked me. We've been through all this already."

"Right. You reminded me our job is to turn art into edible garbage for a profit."

"I had no idea the horror genre was so pure."

Max gazed fiercely at him. "It could be."

The words hung in the air with Jordan's cigar smoke. The producer twirled the cigar in his meaty lips and puffed, regarding Max coolly.

At last, he smirked. "Crazy eyes."

"What?"

"I said, okay. Let's hear it."

Max sucked in his breath. Beyond surrendering to Arthur Golden and the camera's dark influence, he hadn't thought tonight through. Still on his feet so long without sleep, lurching from one thing to the next, he hadn't really thought out any of it, even as his brain screamed on constant overdrive.

In short, he hadn't developed a pitch aside from what existed in his own mind, which was to make a horror movie that distilled the essence of what Arthur captured with his cursed camera.

Max glanced at the apparatus still on the tripod, which hummed again.

"I'm still refining it," he said.

"Look, I'm giving you a shot here. Show me what you got. Anything." Jordan pursed his lips. "First, sit the hell down. You're making me nervous."

Max did as he was told, though his knee jittered in a blur. He took a bracing sip from his own tumbler.

"Great," the producer said. "Now we can talk. What's your vision?"

As a movie director, Max found himself asked this question every day while shooting a movie. The talent, the director of photography, the assistant director, the soundman, the key grip, and the gaffer all asked it. His production assistant once absentmindedly threw it out when taking his coffee order. Hell, he often asked himself.

Everything led back to the all-important question.

My vision is to make something entirely new and frightening, but what?

He started with what his vision wasn't.

He didn't want to have to find new and interesting ways to kill off attractive and unlikable kids on culturally significant anniversaries.

He didn't want to glorify and then exact horrible justice against youthful narcissism. He wanted to avoid making kids societal scapegoats punished for the cardinal sins of sex, drugs, playing with dead things, walking off alone to investigate noises, and saying, Stay here, I'll be right back!

And he didn't want a villain who'd evolve into a cultural hero beloved for giving teens the sick vicarious thrill of having an awful amount of power. No laughing at his screenings. And certainly no cheering the monster.

"The vision is we subvert expectations," Max concluded. "Every single one."

The rest poured out of him. He'd put together a cast the audience cared about. The characters would be thinking young adults placed in a horrible situation where they do all the right things to survive but still don't make it. He'd trust his audience's imagination by refusing to reveal the monster until the last act, with no instant gratification. He'd take a cinema verité approach—no quick, flashy cuts for this MTV generation, maybe add some dialogue ad-libbing—which would make the whole thing look and feel gritty and real. Besides that, he'd refuse to run the race to push the boundaries toward bigger gross-outs and taboo. He'd shock with true suspense, wonder, and surprise as much as gore.

In short, he'd stop chasing the proven formula and return to foundational horror storytelling to make something new. He'd give moviegoers characters they could empathize with and then stimulate the hell out of their imaginations.

Panting, Max stopped his manic rant. The camera filled the silence with its hum. It seemed even louder and more urgent now, as if cheering him on.

"That's the vision," he rasped.

"God," said Jordan. "You're not going to do some Sundance art-house product, are you? No offense, Max, but you're no David Lynch or Roman Polanski."

"No, I—ouch." Max glared at him. "No, it's not an art film."

"Then let me get this straight." The man sipped his scotch. "You think the key to commercial success is to buck every one of the decade's trends proven to satisfy our primary market of teens and yuppies."

"Yes," said Max. "Because they're all going stale."

The producer replied with a thoughtful nod.

"What's the story?"

Max let out a long um, uttered as a placeholder for an intelligent thought he hoped would come to him. In truth, he had nothing. He'd been living and breathing Jack the Knife for eight years. He'd toyed with plenty of ideas in that time, but he never bothered developing any of them.

Fresh scripts crossed Jordan's desk all the time. Max could ask to see them. But then he'd have to pitch him all over again. Max had him on the hook, and he couldn't stop until he'd gained commitment.

"It starts with a town," Max said.

Yes, keep going, he told himself. Worry about the consequences later.

"A little girl walks along with her dad, who is prospecting with a metal detector. He digs up an ancient amulet. Amazed at his find, he gives it to his daughter and asks her to make a wish. She thinks the people in the town are too mean. She wishes for everyone to leave her alone—"

The producer stirred on the couch. I'm already losing him. Jordan regarded time as money, and right now Max was wasting it. The man looked down at his cigar, and Max realized he'd never had a meeting with him that lasted longer than it took him to smoke one all the way to the end.

Talk his language, Max. Think.

The innovative and experimental seventies were dead and buried. The big studios ran the show. Under their control, Hollywood had become hyper-focused on return on investment. The bean counters wanted blockbusters and accordingly green-lighted big-ticket crowd-pleasers they believed would fill theater seats. That meant major stars and dumbed-down formulaic scripts, endless sequels, jaw-dropping explosions and special effects, teen sex comedies and muscly action heroes.

It also meant a picture was more apt to win backing from a man like Jordan if it could be condensed into a logline—a single-sentence summary presenting the protagonist and central conflict with a strong emotional hook.

Something marketable. Compelling. High-concept.

The camera went on humming its white noise. How could Jordan not hear it?

He changed tack. "Seeking closure, a young woman returns with her friends to the empty hometown they'd left after almost everyone died. As her friends die one by one in horrifying ways, she must find a magical item so she can put an end to the wish that killed the town and now threatens the outside world. Basically, it's a modern and expansive retelling of the classic story ‘The Monkey's Paw.'"

The producer grunted. "That's not terrible."

"It's gonna be the next big thing." More producer catnip. "It'll be so visceral they'll take it home with them. We'll be picketed by nuns."

"Okay." Accepting and dismissing Max's bragging.

"There's a strong but fragile female protagonist who must dig deep to—"

Jordan raised his hand. "I got the basic vision. It's a careful-what-you-wish-for Cinderella plot with a slasher element and the wish as the twist."

"So." Max was drenched in flop sweat. "What do you think?"

"I'm actually interested. I have to crunch the numbers, but off the top of my head, I'm thinking I could throw you half a million. Under certain conditions."

Max slurped his scotch, barely tasting it. His knee jumped a mile a minute. This was good news. Very good news.

But not great.

A half mil wouldn't be enough to do the movie he wanted to make. And there were conditions. There always were. Jordan rarely offered a clear green light. More often than not, financial backing pivoted on whether Max could meet this budget, hire some up-and-coming starlet the producer liked, whatever.

He braced himself for the anvils to drop.

Jordan counted them on his fingers. "One, you don't go a dime over budget. Getting picketed by nuns is terrific publicity, but we need actual distribution, so you will not screw with the censors. If we have to cut film, it goes on the floor. You won't have money for fancy reshoots. Got it?"

"Got it," Max grumbled.

"Two, you wrap principal photography by the end of the year."

He groaned, but Jordan still hadn't finished.

"And three, you sign a new contract with Lyman Entertainments."

He grimaced as it stacked up. He'd have to work miracles.

Then he blinked. "What new contract?"

"A new three-picture deal, my pick, and for the first, I pick Jack the Knife IV. Which I want to see concepts and a budget for on my desk first thing in January with minimal bitching attached."

"Then give me final cut on this one," Max said.

Final cut: final decision on every frame produced and placed in his movie.

The producer glanced again at his cigar. Almost done. He tapped ash into the little brass tray on the coffee table.

"I'll be happy to give you all the creative freedom you need."

A firm no to giving Max final say on everything, but a promise to stay out of his hair and not meddle with the story as much as possible.

Max didn't think highly of the producer's promises, but the camera roared its approval. Arthur Golden did a slow clap, mocking in its approval.

Jordan added, "Naturally, though, I'll want to see dailies and otherwise remain informed about the picture's progress."

"Should I sign it in blood?" Max asked.

The producer chuckled.

"I'll settle for your sweat, babe. We're going to do great things."

Yes, I am, thought Max.

Jordan's instincts detected that Max might be onto something, and he smelled profit. He also had his favorite horror director over a barrel. The deal wasn't perfect, but Max had his first green light. He could make his dream movie, and after, horror would never be the same. Now he just had to make it.

The only problem was the story he'd pitched Jordan didn't belong to him.

Max gazed into the little abyss he'd dug among Lady Susan's beloved rosebushes. The burial wasn't complete, not yet.

The camera rested next to him in its gray plastic case. He inspected the mundane aluminum alloy body, switches, and instruments. Nothing weird about it. Just a movie camera. A devil hiding in plain sight.

He picked it up to examine it from all angles. The compact machine weighed thirty pounds, though it seemed far heavier now, as if producing its own dark gravity. The gravity of guilt.

It still emitted its ominous pulsing hum loaded with want.

Why did the infernal thing take Susan and not Jordan? A question he'd puzzled over half the night, long after the producer packed up and went home.

You know why, Max, the camera said in Arthur Golden's voice.

The camera wasn't actually cursed. Whoever used it was cursed.

Bingo, said Golden.

Yes, it killed. Against all reason and sane expectation about how the world worked, Max had become convinced of this. It definitely, inevitably killed.

But it only murdered living things the filmmaker cared about. Things the filmmaker himself saw through the camera's evil eye.

No wonder the apparatus had killed the one man at the park Max had empathized with. Then his friend Raphael. And then his poor little dog.

No wonder it skipped right over Jordan—because Max hated his greedy guts.

He thought: Arthur Golden, you genius freak.

The rumors were true. You dabbled in the occult.

You loved horror. Truly loved it. So much that you dreamed of making the perfect horror picture. A picture that would shock an America jaded by war and the new crop of gross-out films.

You understood horror was only horror if it was real. Deranged by desire, you consorted with occult forces to make it so. Demons? Elementals? The Old Ones? Djinn? It doesn't matter. Whatever you called, it answered.

You empowered a camera to make horror. Horror created by the eye of the beholder. You thought you'd be the greatest director who ever lived.

Whether the rituals and spells you used were all a lark to you—a devilish attempt at fostering inspiration—or you believed with all your heart it was real, the result proved the same. Whatever you did, it worked.

Only you were a fool. Black magic always has a catch, buddy. Something you should have known as a horror fan. Something I should have known before fooling around with the camera last night. It's a venerable trope.

You thought the occult forces you drew into the Arriflex 35BL would serve your artistic vision. You were trying to paint with a scalpel, sculpt with a hand grenade. You made your picture without these magical effects, though you likely loved your own film enough to believe they had indeed been at work the whole time.

On the last day, while the crew prepped for the martini shot, you gathered the people you'd grown to love to thank them for contributing to your opus.

Then you witnessed the camera's power as it butchered them all in an improv horror short that made a mockery of your real work. Even then, you refused to blame the machine. So you filmed Helga Frost to capture the moment you confessed your love. And you killed her too.

Finally realizing what you'd done, you hid from the world.

Only you couldn't destroy the camera.

Because what if. Always what if. Words that themselves counted as a magic spell in Hollywood. The elixir of high concept. The prompt for a terrific story, a story that leaves everyone dying to know what happens next.

The occult apparatus always had so much potential to make something wonderfully terrifying, didn't it? Surely, it must have tempted you. You owned a machine that made real horror, but you couldn't use it. That was the real curse.

Unable to live with it, you at last wound up destroying yourself.

The curse now belonged to Max.

And the temptation.

You know, he heard Golden say, you could still—

No. He didn't need it anymore.

Max had Jordan's go-ahead to write a story treatment. He'd find a way to create the same visceral horror without the crutch. And, oh yeah, regardless of his scary pop-culture reputation, he didn't actually enjoy killing people, especially the scant few he actually cared about. He might be a misanthrope with a very morbid imagination and love of horror, but that didn't make him a psychopath.

This left him only one solution.

Max returned the camera to the case, latched it, and wrapped it in plastic. Then he placed it in the grave with as much remorse as he'd felt laying his dog to rest. He scooped dirt until he'd filled in his makeshift burial plot.

At last, the soil muted the machine's warbling song. Max greeted the silence with relief, though he already missed it. Another empty space. A new lack.

He finished by patting the dirt with the shovel. Wiping away fresh tears, he noticed Mariel gazing down at him like a guilty conscience from his bedroom window. Her face a mask of disapproval.

First, a bit of lady's lingerie discovered on the floor. A strange camera appearing in the living room. Now the dog was dead. All very suspicious. Her boss the horror movie director was clearly up to no good.

Hoisting the shovel onto his shoulder, Max exhaled a bitter chuckle.

Lady, you have no idea.

He returned the tool to the gardening shed and went into the house to buy a story from a science fiction writer named Frederick Munsch.

Time to start his own magnum opus.

Just before he entered the house, he turned to gaze longingly at the burial plot. Already feeling the black hole inside him reopen.