Twelve

Igot that motherfucker," a gruff voice said.

Heart pounding, Max lurched upright on a thin mattress. The bedframe squeaked. Rows of steel springs above his head. He was in a bunk bed.

What the hell? He looked around, processing what he saw.

Concrete walls framing a tiny room. Porcelain sink on the wall. Steel toilet in the corner. An iron-barred door. Empty and dim corridor outside.

A dungeon, the institutional kind.

With a gasp, he inspected his ankle. He still wore his bathrobe and pajamas and his foot was filthy, but his flesh remained intact. Not even a bite mark.

A dream, then. A horrible fever dream. His own fault too. He swore to himself that he'd never stay up that long again. The premiere and finding Arthur Golden's old camera had infected him with a sort of madness. He groaned as all the loony things he'd thought and done since then flooded his mind. Raphael, Lady Susan… God, he'd actually helped his evil camera try to kill his producer.

All of it culminating in the nightmare. Jeez, it had felt so real.

What about this place? Was this real?

Then he smiled, remembering Jordan granting him his green light.

"I got him good," the voice said from the neighboring cell.

"Hey," Max called out.

The loud muttering stopped.

"Hey, yourself," the man said.

"If you don't mind, can you tell me where I am?"

"Van Nuys pig station, man."

Max said nothing, and the man started up again on his guilty rant. Forcing himself onto his feet, he emptied his aching bladder into the toilet and gulped water at the sink's tap until he couldn't drink anymore. Wiping his mouth, he inspected his surroundings with a fresh eye.

From the looks of things, he was out of the fire and had landed in some sort of frying pan. He'd been arrested. But how? He'd gone to bed and experienced a bizarre and vivid nightmare that had him wondering what was real and what wasn't. And more important, why did the police arrest him?

All his memories since the premiere themselves felt like strange dreams.

"Hey," he ventured again.

"What."

"I heard you say you ‘got' someone. Who was it?"

A snort. "Somebody who needed to get got."

"I'm assuming you mean you killed him," Max said.

"Something like that. Exactly like that, actually."

"How do you feel about it? What was it like?"

"Good, I guess." A pause. "Then bad."

"You must have known what would happen," he pressed. "That you'd end up here. That it'd cost you everything. Why did you do it?"

"Because some things need doing. They just have to be. You got no choice. And when you finally get to it, it's like scratching the biggest itch you ever had."

Max could relate. Feeling good, bad, the itch. All of it.

"But enough about me," the man added. "What are you in for?"

Max opened his mouth to say he didn't have a clue but then closed it. Did the police know about the camera's power? He doubted it.

"I'm not sure," he said. "I'm a horror director."

"Director? You mean like the movies?"

"Do you like horror pictures?"

"Naw, man. No offense."

"None taken."

Max meant it. He took a perverse pride in the rejection, like he belonged to an exclusive club. Meeting a them always intensified one's sense of an us.

"Not since Cannibal Holocaust, anyway," the man clarified. "That movie was all right. It scared the shit out of me."

Ruggero Deodato's 1980 film was so graphically violent that it resulted in the director's arrest for obscenity charges. Multiple countries banned it.

Max doubted the police had nabbed him on similar grounds. Jack the Knife III was about as offensive as a loud belch at McDonald's.

"What did you like about that movie?" he asked.

"It freaked me out that it actually happened. People can be real garbage."

The found-footage documentary format had also proved so effective in convincing people the film was real that Deodato had faced an additional charge of murder, based on a rumor the actors had been killed while on camera. Even the murderer in the next jail cell deemed it offensive.

"Yeah," Max said. "They can."

Footsteps pounded down the corridor. Wearing a short-sleeved black uniform bulging with massive arms, a square-jawed police officer stopped outside his cell. The cop glared through the bars.

"You're awake." The man looked familiar.

"Can you tell me what I'm doing in here?"

The cop unlocked and opened the metal door, offering Max a long look at him. Seemingly made of muscle and rope, the man appeared to spend his spare time shooting steroids and working out. He was no Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he looked well on his way.

"Let's go, Maurey," he said. "The chief wants a word with you."

Max's mind rolled back to red and blue lights flashing in a twilight park. A cop strung up yellow tape. Another questioned him.

He shuffled into the corridor, slippers slapping the floor. "I remember you. You were one of the police who came to the park."

"Where two people died while you were filming, yeah."

"Officer McDaniel, if I recall."

"I'm onto you, shitbird."

Max started. "You're onto me?"

"Nobody just films nothing at a park for fifteen minutes and then two people up and die all of a sudden. The same day, we pick you up wandering around like a zombie at a school playground in the middle of the night."

"It is weird," Max agreed.

"Then you slept in that cell for a whole day and night. You're into something, and I'm going to find out what. Some kind of Peeping Tom stuff, from the looks of it."

"Peeping Tom?"

"Is that what you're into, Maurey?"

"Are you calling me a literal Peeping Tom, or are you talking about the horror picture?" Made in 1960, it was about a serial killer with a film camera fitted with a knife that murdered women while documenting their terrified final moments.

The cop snarled. "You make snuff movies for rich sickos, is that it? You're already into a sick genre, and now you want to see how far you can take it?"

"Seriously, I'm impressed you know that film." Like Mary's Birthday, it was obscure but considered a progenitor for the modern slasher. "Hardly a model for a real-life crime spree in broad daylight, though."

"Go ahead and act cocky. I'll be keeping an eye on you, Maurey. And when I figure out what you're into, I'm going to put you away where you belong."

They'd reached an office and stopped in the doorway. Behind the desk, a paunchy cop with a bullet head bristling with cropped silver hair glared at them.

"For Chrissakes, climb off the man's back," the man growled. "Take a hike, McDaniel."

"Sure thing, Chief." The big policeman gave Max a final meaningful stare. "I'll be seeing you around, Maurey."

After the man stomped away, the police chief offered Max one of the visitor chairs. "Sorry about all that. John's a solid cop and usually has excellent instincts, but he sees conspiracies sometimes."

As Max parked himself, he asked, "Was I really asleep here for a whole day?" Twenty-four hours of preproduction time lost.

The man chuckled. "A few more hours, I was gonna send you over to the hospital. It must have been one hell of a party."

"Actually, I got involved in a new project right after the premiere of—"

"Wow, wow. Very exciting." The police chief's tone said the exact opposite. In this part of town, you tripped over people doing projects and attending premieres.

"And I stayed up too long working and I guess I wound up sleepwalking."

"Well, maybe tie yourself down. Whatever else you were doing, do less of it."

"Was I disturbing the peace? Do I have to pay a fine or something?"

"No, no. You're an important member of this community in high standing, Mr. Maurey. We didn't want to see anything bad happen to you, that's all. You're free to go. There's a man outside who's been waiting for you."

"Jordan Lyman?" Max suppressed a groan. He'd hear no end of it.

"A guy named Womack. Said he's a friend of yours. He'll drive you home."

Blinking in the harsh sunlight, Max sank into the hot passenger seat of Dan Womack's cherry-red Chevy Camaro.

The actor filled the driver's side with his bulk. The door clunked shut. Taking his time, he put on calfskin driving gloves and a pair of mirrored shades. Then he started the car, which responded with a macho growl.

All of it conveyed the impression that this man was in control and had plans for him. Starting to sweat, Max stared at his shaggy profile and waited for the other shoe to drop. Again, he wondered if all this was real or not, whether he might be in a surprising double dream sequence like in An American Werewolf in London.

Womack shot him a glance, followed by a sheepish smile that broke character. He seemed just as anxious about their meeting, if not more.

Max smiled back, more practiced social reflex than genuine happiness, though he did feel a little less trepidatious now. Whatever was happening, this man wasn't sure of himself.

"How did you find out I was here?" he asked.

"Oh, you know, it's a small town," Womack told him. "In all the worst ways."

"What's the buzz?"

"You, uh, had some kind of mental freak-out about Raphael Rodriguez."

"Ah." It wasn't completely inaccurate.

Womack's face twisted into a bitter grimace.

"But we both know better, don't we?"

With that, he threw the car into reverse and stomped the gas, only to brake hard an instant later to avoid plowing into a cop walking into the station. He winced, his little dramatic moment ruined.

"Sorry, officer," he called out the window. Then he sighed. "Goddamnit."

"You seem stressed-out," Max said.

"You have no idea."

Max smiled again, the real kind this time. The cops had nothing on him. Officer McDaniel was all bark. As for Womack, he knew something about the camera, but he was just an aging actor feeling his way through an improv scene.

"I'm a huge fan," he said. "I'd love to ask you some questions about Arthur Golden and his picture sometime, if you don't mind."

Womack did mind. He grimaced and said nothing.

"So why are you here?" Max said. "Why did you pick me up?"

The man pulled out of the parking lot and took off onto Sylmar.

"I'm in the market for a movie camera," he said.

Then he blanched as Max started laughing.

"I don't have any equipment for sale," said Max.

"Sally Priest went to Arthur Golden's estate sale with you. She said you bought Arthur's old rig. It made me sentimental. I'd like to buy it from you."

"Sorry, but I'm going to keep it as a collector's item. Like I said: huge fan."

"Even after two men died at Lake Balboa?"

"Jeez Louise," Max said. "Word travels like a bullet in this town."

"I'm for real. Name your price."

"I told you it's not for sale." Acting on another dark impulse, he added, "I'm thinking about using it to make my next picture."

Turning a sickly pale, Womack gripped the wheel so hard that it creaked. The man's bearish frame appeared to deflate, and for an alarming moment Max worried he might crash the car.

At last, he spoke through gritted teeth. "You can't do that."

"If you're interested in getting back into film work and want to audition—"

"Destroy it," Womack said. "Or give it to me."

Max now had the full story. At first, he'd wondered if the man desired the camera's power at his own command. If nothing else, it was an instrument for the perfect crime. As a case in point, Max had pretty much killed two people with it in front of dozens of witnesses in broad daylight, and the only thing he'd suffered for it were the paranoid suspicions of one Officer John McDaniel.

But no, Womack's heart seemed purer than that. He wanted to end the curse. Only his idea of ending it was to destroy the camera. Max realized Raphael was right. If what he'd experienced in his long slumber was in some way real and not just a vivid dream, the camera was haunted by its victims. If Max destroyed the machine, he'd erase their existence, however unhappy it might be.

"Sally said you remained friends with Arthur over the years," he said.

"That's right. His soul was tortured by what happened."

"Yours too, from what I can see."

Womack gripped the wheel even harder. "That's right."

"Then you should know if Arthur wanted the camera destroyed, he would have given it to you before taking his life. And you should know why he didn't."

"And if you know about any of that, you know you should never use it!"

"I'm not going to," Max said.

"Wait. But you just said—"

"I was messing with you. I'm not going to use it."

"You will. You're just waiting for the right excuse."

"All I'm doing is keeping it safe. Turn left up here."

"At least leave Sally out of it," Womack pleaded. "She's innocent."

Max snorted. In Hollywood, no one was innocent. He suspected the actor had fallen in love with Sally. It wouldn't have surprised him if he had. The woman had been born to break hearts.

"That's my house," he said.

Womack parked the car in the driveway and sat trembling. "You can't do this."

"Let me ask you just one thing. Can I ask you something?"

"Go ahead, I'm listening."

"What was it like? When the helicopter—?"

"I don't talk about that."

"Well." Max didn't know what else to say. "Thanks for the ride."

"I won't let you hurt anyone else."

He looked over and gasped at the gleaming carving knife in the man's hand.

Then he chuckled right into the actor's sweaty, determined face.

"You'll have to kill me, I guess," he said.

The knife was the collapsible prop from Mary's Birthday.

With a cry that was equal parts despair and rage, Womack stabbed the dashboard. Max stared at the very real blade left wobbling where it had struck the hard plastic.

"Um," he said.

"Next time, I might stick it in you," Womack panted.

"For a second there, I thought I might be the bad guy," Max told him. "I'm heading inside to call the police. I suggest you be gone by the time they show up."

He stepped out of the Camaro and slammed the door. Just in time to avoid being dragged away, as Womack jerked the transmission into reverse and dramatically stomped the gas pedal.

Coming to a screeching halt, the man rolled down his window in a rage.

"Damn you, Maurey! That camera is a curse."

"Or a blessing," Max yelled back. "Depending on how you look at it."

"You won't get away with this!"

"And you need to stop overacting. Less is more, Dan."

Already cranking his window back up, the actor didn't hear him. With a final glare through the windshield, Womack swung the Camaro around, humped the lawn, and mowed down Max's mailbox before roaring down the road. The last Max saw of him was the silhouette of a hand raised to flip him the bird.

He growled. "Son of a…"

Then he laughed. Bubbling, maniacal, movie villain laughter that was mostly the catharsis of not being stabbed, though the whole thing really was comical. The clueless cop and the obsessed nemesis stood the test of time as venerable horror tropes, and now his personal horror movie had both.

Given these roles were played by the likes of Officer McDaniel and a washed-up actor named Dan Womack, Max suspected he didn't have much to worry about.