Twenty-Seven

The next morning, Sally returned to the rented soundstage in Burbank. Max welcomed her with hardly a nod of recognition, as if they'd taken a simple leisurely drive that hadn't ended in vehicular manslaughter. She met Johnny Frampton, whom Max had cast as the new Brad sometime in the night and who showed up eager and clueless at the hair and makeup trailer.

The day passed in a haze as she continued to process the shock of Jim's sudden and violent death. No longer living her dream but floating in a nightmare. Still riding the roller coaster of terror and relief until the final horror. Struck by something Dorothy said over sandwiches at the craft services table: Horror provides its own sequel. A little afraid of her director, who shared her love of horror but saw it so differently.

Sally viewed it as a sexy little outfit hung on a moral hook that you wore for a fun if punishing night out. Max regarded it more like a heavy, soul-crushing blanket of nihilism and shock that didn't let you climb out of bed.

Mad scientist, indeed. That was Max. Instead of a laboratory, he used the medium of film to conquer death. Though what Sally wondered, what made her afraid, was whether he didn't want to fight death at all but worship it, and the silver screen gave him an altar.

While waiting to walk on set, she conserved her energy more than usual, like a dozing cheetah awaiting prey to transform into the world's fastest animal. When the call came, she played Wanda with a ferocity that silenced her inner critic and surprised even her director.

Of course she'd give it her all. She'd seen something so horrible the earth had dropped out from under her feet, but she was an actor. Reagan and Gorbachev could push the button and drop the bomb, and even that wouldn't stop her from performing. Acting might not save the world, but it could save her from the same darkness that resided in Max.

Besides, she had a lot of self-loathing to purge. Her inner critic suggesting maybe Jim's accident was all her fault, an idea that crawled like biting ants across her psyche. If only she'd done something—maybe yelled at him to get off the road the same way she'd yelled at characters making bad decisions during the horror movies she loved—anything except sitting there gawking. If only his death hadn't felt so inevitable, as if the universe itself wanted to murder him. If only a part of her hadn't wished he'd piss off for good before the universe did exactly that.

If only, if only.

If something like it ever happened again, she'd do something. She'd act.

It all worked beautifully for her character.

Firing on all cylinders under the hot lights. Possession and ecstasy. Bringing all these heavy feelings onto the set, where her body adjusted on its own and acted naturally in the role. Playing Wanda demanded everything Sally had in her, and she was grateful for it. Wanda helped Sally heal while Sally brought her damaged but empowered alter ego to life.

On the sets built on the Burbank soundstage, the story unfolded.

One cool, foggy morning, the entire population of Lonely Pines walked into the lake and disappeared into its murky waters.

Wanda still dreams of it. Grinning folks, hundreds of them, all marching to some invisible pied piper, eagerly stumbling into the water and mud. Moms carrying babies that were conspicuously quiet as if they too obeyed the dark command. Nothing about it making sense—this is a dream after all—but it also happened exactly like this.

A few stragglers went in last. A flurry of bubbles, and then there were only the screams of the handful of children left behind.

In her waking hours, Wanda believes that with enough effort, you can outrun even your own past. In that sense, she already ran a marathon, though she never made it very far. Years later, she now lives in an enormous dirty city less than thirty miles from where she grew up on the lake's crystal shores. Looking at it another way, she moved to another world.

Bucked through the foster system, she abides as a solitary animal. Even at its most crowded, the city seems empty, occupied by dream people. Only her old friends, the fellow survivors of that terrifying day, appear substantial to her. In this world, she does what she wants without regret. She feeds Brad dribs and drabs, just enough of herself to prevent him from breaking. She keeps the rest.

Michael wants the gang to go back to Lonely Pines. They left as children without understanding or even the chance to say goodbye, and only years later do they realize how bad they need it. Yes, horror provides its own sequel, living on in never-ending grief. This horror needs an ending. But they must all go together.

Katie is skeptical that it will make any difference, but she will go if the others agree—particularly Wanda, with whom she carries on an illicit affair. Brad of course will go for the same reason. Jerry, the only one of them who appears content and successful, agrees as well—in his case as an old debt paid to Michael.

As for Penny, she has convinced herself she is to blame for all this. The strange epidemic of suicides in the city, their town's grisly and efficient self-murder. The most steadfast against going has become the most eager, as the plan to return to Lonely Pines changes from optional to necessary.

That leaves Wanda, Penny's childhood best friend. They work together as servers at the same restaurant. Of course she will join the trip. She will go because it makes no difference to her. And Penny's wild theories about why their families died are as good as any.

Wanda can be bad, but she is no Bad Girl. Authority holds little power for this woman who already feels punished. Despite the futility of her existence, she stubbornly lives. She lives for the day, and she lives to the fullest. And despite believing she lives in a world where God himself died in the lake with all the others, she has the strength to say: I'm going to do the right thing even if it costs me everything; I'll go home with you.

Wanda might not be the Final Girl, no. But she is special.

After the last wrap, Sally drove her clunker home from Burbank for the final time and discovered her mom waiting in front of her building.

As always, the senior actress created a scene. The sky bright but cloudy, the air mild but heavy with humidity. Spitting raindrops. Maude a picturesque beauty in raincoat and umbrella, hair perfectly wind-tossed as if Mother Nature had styled it. Watching Sally park, she struck a pose as if expecting someone to yell, Action!

Sally slammed the door and crossed her arms.

"Hi, Mom." Spoken like a question.

"Oh, hello, darling."

"What are you doing here?" The question a challenge.

Here it comes, she thought. More controlling head games—

"I came to apologize to you," Maude said.

"Because if you—wait, what?"

"I'm sorry. About everything."

Lying about Sally's parentage, maneuvering her into Chazz Morton's path, trying to control her career, all of it.

Not good enough.

The apologies came after catharsis. They didn't preempt it.

"I can have any life I want," Sally said. "You want me to redo yours so you can have another crack at stardom. Right down to making the same mistakes. Do you see how that's like burying me alive?"

"Yes. I do. All of it. I see it now. I'm sorry."

She opened her mouth, closed it. If her mother had come all the way down here to make a scene, she'd failed, as there was no conflict.

Unaccustomed to such easy surrender, Sally wondered which was more important, winning or the fighting itself.

"Well, okay," she said.

"Wonderful. Now please stop shutting me out of your life."

Maude's worst nightmare wasn't failing but being ignored. Sally had a chance to learn the truth. Demand to know everything. Find out the identity of her biological father and how it all happened.

Now that she had this chance, she no longer felt sure she wanted to know. She loved Ben Corn and considered him her dad in every way that mattered. What she truly wanted—what she still desired even after everything—was her mom's simple approval. Then Clare's words returned to her like falling bricks.

You can't win her approval and your own.

And trying to have both wasn't Maude's fault.

Why was it so important that her mother believe in her choices so she could truly believe in them herself? It maddened her.

Mom was Mom. Despite being on her best behavior at the moment, she'd never change. But perhaps Sally could.

If she truly wanted to live her own life, she could start taking sole responsibility for it.

"I have a movie to finish," she said. "We'll talk when I get back. I promise."

They'd wrapped for the last time at the Burbank soundstage. If Wishes Could Kill made ready for its next stage of production. Bombay Beach, here we come.

Out in the desert, Sally would scream again.

Maude pulled her into a quick hug that surprised her with its warmth.

"Phone me when you're back home," she said. "I love you, Em."

"I love you too, Mom."

For a moment, nothing else mattered.

Maude smiled. "You've grown even feistier. I quite like it."

"I've been learning from a punk rocker."

"Just be careful." Maude reached to touch Sally's cheek. "You're all I've got."

"I'll call you, I promise."

Sally returned to her apartment to find Monica and her friend Kayley sitting cross-legged on the sofa. Smoky vapor hung in drifts. The air reeked of ganja.

They burst into laughter at the sight of her.

"There she is," Monica said.

"What's up?" Sally asked.

"What's up is we need chips," Kayley said.

"We could slaughter some chips," Monica confirmed.

"I'm so hungry, I almost ate your roommate."

Monica grinned. "The world's first cannibal was no doubt high as fuck."

She lit her bong. The thick, bitter smell intensified.

Sally crossed the room to open the window.

"I don't have any snacks for you," she said.

Down in the street, Maude sat behind the wheel of her Audi parked on the far side of the road. She touched up her makeup in her rearview.

Wait until you see this movie, Mom. You might just like it despite yourself.

Even now, hoping for approval.

Or maybe Sally would change her own tune regarding horror. Max's unsettling vision of it and seeing Jim die so randomly had gotten into her head. She suspected that the next time she watched Jack kill Tina's unlucky friends on-screen, its grip would feel pretty weak, the spell its artifice created unable to affect her.

Or maybe she'd end up feeling too much. She didn't know yet.

Sally gasped, electrified.

It's him, she thought.

In the alley by the convenience store across the street, a man stared at Maude.

"That's a bummer," her roommate finally responded through a cloud of smoke.

"I'd settle for barbecue," Kayley said. "Salt and vinegar, cheddar—"

It was the hoodie man Sally had encountered after the concert.

The Breather.

Sally was sure of it.

No, it hadn't been Jim after all.

"Sour cream and onion," Monica put in. "Sour cream and freaking onion."

"Hell, even the plain salty kind with a lovely herb dip—"

The man wore the same gray hooded sweatshirt, though this time he carried an umbrella. It seemed discordant—Sally's imagination regarding stalkers and serial killers did not involve them fussing over staying dry during a drizzle—but he exuded a silent menace.

The man spied on Maude while she finished touching up.

Frozen with terror, Sally could only watch too.

"Do you see any chips out there?" Monica called from the couch.

Not this time, Sally thought.

She wasn't going to just watch.

She wheeled and bolted for the door.

"Call the police!"

"That's the spirit," Kayley said. "This is an emergency."

"Bring back, like, a variety," Monica yelled after her.

Sally slammed down the stairs, raced past the mailboxes, burst outside—

"Mom!"

The Audi pulled away, taking Maude to safety. The Breather stepped onto the sidewalk to peer after her.

He gave a little bye-bye wave.

Stomping into the street with fists balled for violence, Sally pulled up short.

"Oh, for Pete's sake," she said. "It's you."

"Hi, Sally," the Breather said.

Dan Womack wasn't looking so hot.

He'd lost weight since he fled the stage on the opening night of his own production. The neatly trimmed beard had gone shaggy. His eyes appeared crazed. His deterioration struck her as a mirror reflection of Max's own decline.

"You," she said again. "You're the one who's been calling me and hanging up. You followed me and Clare after that concert."

"I followed you other places too."

For God's sake! He was bragging about it.

Sally glared at him. "Why?"

"Because I'm worried about you. I've been trying to protect—"

"Again: Why?"

"Because Max Maurey is planning to kill you."

She balled her fists again. "I'm gonna kill you for being such a creep. The only person I've been scared of is you."

"Oh." Dan blanched. "In all honesty, I hadn't thought—"

"You freaked me out!"

"I'm sorry. I truly am."

"Our relationship had its fun, but it's over."

"This isn't about that, dear Sally. This is about life and death."

She frowned at his dramatic, erudite flair, which she'd once found charming but now grated in her ears.

"Just tell me what the hell you're talking about," she said, "and how I can get you to stop stalking me like a psycho."

He handed her a book. "This time, I came to warn you."

She accepted it with instant regret. The large, heavy tome had been bound in some type of leather embossed with strange sigils. The thing felt greasy in her hands.

Overcoming her repulsion, Sally opened it to inspect handwriting in an archaic language and what appeared to be blueprints for grotesque and unearthly machines. She settled on a spread from which a malevolent eldritch eye glared. Along the margins, someone had stamped matching columns of bloody thumbprints.

It all looked like gibberish to her.

"What does this creepy prop have to do with anything?" she asked.

"It's no prop," Dan said. "This is the spell book Arthur used."

"Uh-huh."

"The occult was all the rage back then. Arthur was about to give birth to his magnum opus."

"Uh-huh, and?"

"He cast the very spell you're looking at on his movie camera—"

"Max's Arriflex?"

Dan nodded, clearly annoyed at his delivery being interrupted. His important speech had been rehearsed.

"The very same. Arthur bought the book at a garage sale, of all places. His movie production wasn't going as well as he'd imagined, and he was hunting for fresh inspiration. The book seemed to call out to him. He thought the spell he cast would empower his camera to make the images it captured more horrifying to the audience. Honestly, he didn't think much at all. Arthur dabbled in the occult. He didn't qualify as a witch or anything. That drawing of the eye looked cool to him. Made him think of the camera lens, the medium is the message and all that. Something to get the creative horror juices flowing."

Sally let out an impatient sigh. He took his cue to reach a point.

"After Helga died, at last he figured it out. Finally found an expert who told him how badly he'd screwed up. In some cultures, people wear amulets that ward off the evil eye, right? Well, this spell turns it into the evil eye itself. You cast it on the amulet, and it destroys instead of protects what its wearer sees. You see, Arthur hoped to create art but only ended up hexing himself."

"Oh, Dan…" The man was off his nut.

Taking her sympathetic tone as encouragement, he nodded again.

"For years, I begged him to destroy the infernal machine. He couldn't—he said something about Helga's soul being inside it. In any case, he wouldn't. A few weeks before he took his life, he gave me the book and told me he'd decided to finally end the curse. I thought that meant he intended to destroy the camera, but I was wrong."

"He destroyed himself," Sally said.

"Yes."

"And then Max bought the camera."

"Maurey knows what it can do. It took me a while to figure out his plan for it, but I've got it now. He's going to kill all of you as his movie's last act. To him, it's not a curse but a blessing. A revolutionary new technique. He thinks if he can repeat what happened in Wilkes-Barre as part of the story, he'll make history by fusing reality with cinematic experience."

"Dan," she said patiently. "Listen to me. Do you know how this sounds?"

His eyes took on a vacant glint.

"That day in Pennsylvania," he murmured. "That sunny, mild day, I was running late. Arthur wanted to thank everyone on camera, but I didn't care, too caught up in my ego and doubts about my life. I hated the movie. Pure schlock. I don't even like horror as a genre. I studied Shakespeare…"

Sally crossed her arms and waited. Dan was monologuing again, but she allowed it. He'd earned this one.

He shook his head to clear it, only for his eyes to glaze over again.

"I arrived just in time to see the helicopter fall, lurching out of the sky, the blades scything through the cast. The blades weren't sharp, no. They didn't cut so much as smash. Thunk, thunk… A crowd of people turned into a bouncing pink cloud of arms and legs and faces. Thunk, thunk, thunk."

Sally let out a little moan, picturing it despite herself.

"The fire was worse. The guys rushing in to help. The helicopter exploding, the flames dancing along the ground to engulf the cast and crew. The bodies flailing blindly to escape the fire that was everywhere, that was on their clothes and skin and hair. All the while, I stood there like an idiot, utterly frozen, unable to look away. I can't unsee it…" He shook his shaggy head again, and this time his eyes remained clear. "I swore I'd never stand by and watch again."

It all sounded so similar to the oath that had surged through Sally's mind when she thought her mother was in danger.

"Dan." She collected her thoughts. "I'm so sorry that—"

"Thank you."

"But you have to admit, what you're telling me is way off the deep end."

Though her mind flashed to Max saying, I'll show you what I can do, not long before aiming the camera to film Jim Foster getting pulverized by a truck.

Raphael Rodriguez, Jordan Lyman, and then Jim Foster. All dead in the past few months. Not to mention Max's indignant little dog.

All starting the day Max acquired the movie camera.

Sally frowned again, this time at herself. Her inner critic had tried to sabotage her before, but never like this. The whole idea struck her as ridiculous. Curses didn't come true, and cameras didn't murder human beings. Dan's theory sounded like the kind of crazy that was just audacious enough to be contagious.

She said, "I can't quit in the middle of an important production because you believe Arthur's camera has a black-magic spell on it. I have to finish the movie."

"I figured you'd feel that way," Dan said.

He reached into his hoodie pocket and handed over a bulky handheld radio.

"What do I do with this?" she asked.

"I'm working with a very large, tough-as-nails cop who knows what I know. While you're out at Bombay Beach, we'll be nearby at all times. The minute something bad happens, day or night, call us and we'll come running to get you out."

Accepting the walkie-talkie, she resisted the urge to laugh. Ridiculous.

Then she remembered Max saying, Now you know horror like I do. Like she'd received a wonderful gift deserving a high five. Like she'd joined a special club.

Sally didn't need Dan's dire warnings to feel more than a little honest fright where her director was concerned.

"I'll hold on to this," she said. "On one condition."

"Name it, my dear."

"You don't show up unless I call asking for help. Got it?"

He raised one hand and placed the other over his chest.

"We'll lurk in the shadows," he swore. "You have my solemn word."

Looking at her bedraggled former workshop teacher who'd quite possibly lost his marbles, Sally wondered how much his solemn word might be worth.

"I mean it," she warned.

"Scout's honor." He offered one of his most potent rakish grins. "So how have you been otherwise, babe? You're looking good."

"It's time to exit stage left, Dan. And no more stalking, or I'll hurt you."

"Okay, okay."

He shambled off, leaving Sally holding the radio and the ugly old book, which were either props for one man's private movie madness or instruments of salvation and evil. Watching the old actor go, she couldn't help but feel a little sorry for him. Mostly, though, she felt relief. At last, she was alone.

No loaded motherly visit. No more stalking by a possibly deranged ex-lover.

Soon, she'd be in the desert, performing in the ruins of Bombay Beach. Until then, she had a few days to relax, rest, and run lines.

And soak in that warm bath she'd been looking forward to all day.

First, she had one more thing to do. Something that had to be done if she wanted true peace, both the inner and outer kind. Another cross to bear.

Sally headed to the convenience store to buy potato chips.