Thirty-Two

The convoy crept down the road on rumbling engines and grinding gears, dust rising in a gentle boil. MacDougal nipped from his flask and wandered away muttering. Frank Boston exchanged a feverish kiss with Dorothy that almost toppled them over. The actors walked into the night, laughing and excited.

Max watched them go. Sally lingered long enough to toss him a scowl.

"Okay, Sally?"

She replied with a slow, thoughtful nod.

"Okay, Max."

Like an implied challenge being issued and accepted.

The next time he saw her, he intended to kill her.

The next time she saw him, she might not let him.

"Remember what I taught you, cuddlebug," the soundman told Dorothy.

The writer answered with another over-the-top kiss that made Max wince. When he turned back to Sally, she'd already gone. He'd see her again soon.

"I'll be fine." Dorothy grinned. "Now, get lost before I jump your bones."

Chuckling, Boston hustled off to catch his ride out of base camp. The vehicles rolled past in whiffs of exhaust. The last truck ground into the dark until a single pair of brake lights remained like the burning eyes of some nocturnal beast. Then they too were gone.

Max heard the distant bark of feral dogs chasing the convoy, snapping at the wheels. At last, the rumbling train swung onto the highway heading west, where a stroke of lightning flashed on the horizon.

The mad circus vanished.

And with its departure, the night of reckoning arrived.

Max cackled, giddy and terrified about what this meant.

"Are you okay, buddy?" Dorothy said.

His smile shifted to become his usual directorial scowl.

"Yes, of course. Never better."

Max did feel content. Free and at peace. Soon, the camera would reveal its power by giving him a private horror show. Tonight, like a miracle, his movie would begin making itself. For the first time in his career, he felt like he didn't have to control everything, or even want to. He could trust in the process, and by the end, he'd touch perfection, the closest he'd come to seeing the face of God.

The biggest thing he felt was pure relief. The biggest itch he ever scratched. Some tools call to be used, some things must be done, and until it happens, the world remains off-kilter and incomplete. He could now envision the finished movie playing in the theater of his mind, fully edited and scored.

So darkly beautiful.

Dorothy eyed him. "Okay. I think I've just never seen you, well, happy."

"Soon, you'll see why."

"Trust me, I already know. I get like this too when a story I'm writing is racing to the finish. The best high that money can buy."

They set out down the road. The moon hung low over the quiet, resting town. In a few nights, it would fatten to full again, and Max would return to the land of the dead. He'd explain everything to Sally, and she'd understand. He'd love his goddess of death, and she'd never leave him. Jordan would at last acknowledge him as an auteur, a genius of his craft.

And after, so too would all of Hollywood. Make that the world.

They reached the Winnebago, where he unlocked the trunk in which he'd stashed the Arriflex 35BL. The camera already packed a magazine loaded with a thousand-foot film roll, which would deliver a little over eleven minutes of shooting. The anamorphic lens and eyepiece adapter were also attached. He'd cached fresh film at each of the night's shooting locations along with spare batteries, fuses, and lubricant, which had cost him a pretty penny but would prove worth every cent.

The camera sang in his hands.

"Back in," Max murmured. "Moving on."

Dorothy appeared draped in sound gear and toting a boom.

"You're good to go?" he asked her.

"I am woman," she answered. "I can do anything."

"What's next for you when this is over? Back to fiction, I guess?"

"Ha! I don't know if that'll do it for me anymore, Max. I've got the bug. As a matter of fact, I've never had this much fun in my life. It looks like it shouldn't work, but it does. I even met a hot guy. I might just stay in the movie business."

"I'll write a letter of recommendation," he offered.

"You'd do that for me?"

"Dorothy, again, I know I don't say it often, but here it is: Thank you. You're a hell of a writer. It's been an honor bringing your story to life."

Beaming, the writer followed him into the dark. Aside from the actors' trailers, the campground stood empty again. No guitars plucking around the bonfires, no classic rock wailing on transistor radios, no roaring laughter as old hands told stories about various production disasters. Tonight, there was only the moan of the wind and the faint roar of a jumbo jet still climbing out of Los Angeles.

Lights blazed in the ruins fronting the beach. Thick sheafs of electrical cables snaked along the ground to feed power to the tripod-mounted Mole and bell lights at the locations Max had designated for the death scenes. The gaffer had wrestled an enormous quantity of amps to get it all running.

And here came Johnny Frampton, right on time.

To the actor's credit, he didn't acknowledge the camera but kept walking. Similarly, Max didn't speak, didn't yell action. He simply pressed the camera's start switch, producing a clicking whir.

Camera speeding. Sound speeding.

"Wanda," Johnny called out. "Wanda!"

He carried a family-size bag of Lay's Italian Cheese Potato Chips. Max wondered what Frito-Lay would make of their paid product placement after this movie released. His smile turned into a worried frown as he pictured the camera making Johnny choke on a snack.

Job done and all, but it'd be kinda anticlimactic.

"Wanda, are you here?"

The camera's motor hummed. The 35mm film clicked along the sprocket gears to enter the exposure chamber. The shutter opened, exposing an image, and closed, producing a single still photograph. A mechanical claw yanked the film forward, feeding the exposed length into the rear magazine. This process repeated at dizzying speed, the quartz-crystal control keeping the film running at a constant twenty-four frames per second.

A mirror shunted some of the light entering the lens into the viewfinder, where Max watched Johnny poke into the ruins of a house, stripped by time and the elements to a shabbily dressed wooden skeleton. Concealed bell lights illuminated the scene.

Wanda's childhood home. Brad had hoped he'd find her here.

Max spotted a few shards of broken glass still stuck to the window frames that winked in the light. A wood shard sticking out of the back wall. A jagged, skinny plank angling down from the ceiling. So many hazards…

His gaze landed on a nasty, thick shard of wood thrusting more than a foot out of the floor.

That's the one, he thought.

Johnny walked straight for it. Max held his breath.

The actor veered around the shard to stop by a tattered old sofa chair in the middle of the house.

"Wanda? Come on, baby, where are you?"

Max suppressed a grunt as he hauled the camera along to track the action. The Arriflex 35BL was marketed as a lightweight camera, and it was indeed relative to its blimped competitors, but it still weighed about thirty pounds.

"Wanda, I, uh…"

Johnny shot a nervous glance at the lens. He wasn't used to improvising and appeared afraid of saying the wrong thing. Max gestured at him to continue, say whatever, let it rip. He couldn't kill his actors in the middle of them flopping. It wouldn't serve the movie, but more than that, he owed them their crack at excellence. He wanted them to die at their best, doing what they loved most.

The least he could do. After all, they were giving their lives for this movie.

Johnny dipped his hand into the bag, produced a chip, and briefly studied it before popping it in his mouth. His teeth crunched down. Prior to If Wishes Could Kill, he'd done a few TV commercials, so this was familiar ground for him.

"Mm," he said reflexively.

Then his chewing slowed. He forced himself to swallow. As if the Italian Cheese potato chip served as a metaphorical stand-in for his selfishness toward the woman he said he loved, turning it into a bitter pill.

Then he did choke, only he choked back tears.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

He lowered the bag and looked around, again realizing he was alone.

"Wanda. Goddamnit. Wanda! WANDA." His rage spent, he broke into another choking sob. "I don't think I can do this without you."

Raw emotion poured out of him. Johnny Frampton gave the performance of a lifetime. Max had no clue that all along, the kid had this in him.

I feel sorry for you, he thought.

Johnny often came across as vapid, but this didn't make him a bad person. In fact, the young actor was one of the most selfless people Max had bothered to get to know.

Every day, you care for your ailing granny, the woman who raised you. You work catering jobs to support you both, but it's barely sufficient. And she isn't getting any younger, is she? Every year, you told me, she needs more help. You can't afford to place her in a home. So you do your best. You wake up and give life your best shot and hope it's enough.

Surely, a tiny evil voice must whisper that things would be better if your granny were dead. But not in your case. The voice tells you that you'll be lost without her.

All the while, you keep yourself sane by believing that one day you'll win your lucky break. Then one day, it arrives like a stray bullet. A horror director making a movie. He tells you a cast member kicked the bucket and wants to know if you're available. He even offers to pay for a nurse to care for Granny during the shooting. Your dream is coming true, God at last answering a lifetime of prayer.

Who will look after your grandmother tomorrow, when you're gone?

"Ow!" Johnny cried. "What the hell?"

He gingerly raised his foot to expose an inch of rusty nail jutting from the floor. Hopping on the other, he leaned against the window frame to inspect the damage.

Straight onto a shard of glass, which sliced into his flesh.

"Jesus Christ, oh God," he howled.

Yanking his hand off the sharp glass, he backed into the wood shard jutting from the wall, which jabbed him in the ribs. The room seemed to be shrinking, crowding him with hazards. Blood poured out of his shredded hand.

"What? Why?"

Crying, he wrenched himself off the shard. Tripped on the nail.

And stumbled straight into the splintered end of the plank that angled down from the broken ceiling.

It entered his throat above the collarbone with a meaty crunch. For several agonizing seconds, he struggled with the shard of wood, which appeared unwilling to come out of him.

Johnny coughed a gout of blood. The room seemed to expand back to its original size. With a final shudder, the actor grew still, frozen in a standing position, arms slumped at his sides.

The camera lingered on him, soaking up the imagery.

"Whoa," Max murmured.

He was about to cut the scene when the actor stirred. Gripping the slim shank of wood, Johnny gently extricated it from his throat. He turned to Max and tried to talk, only to produce a gargle that came out in a bloody spray.

Pale, eyes rolling, he stumbled drunkenly backward.

Oh no, thought Max.

Johnny losing his balance—

No, not that, oh please—

The actor's legs gave out and he flopped onto his ass next to his chip bag.

Right on top of the nasty foot-long shard of wood Max had spotted earlier.

To his relief, it missed Johnny's rectum, though that didn't make the result any less horrifying. The splinter ripped through the actor's pelvic floor and popped out his abdomen, freeing a springy loop of intestine.

Johnny's face bulged in a rictus of agony. His high-pitched scream seemed to burst through his nose, eyes, even his ears. His body jerked and spasmed.

Then, at last, he stopped moving.

"Holy mother," Max breathed.

The horror of it. The real horror.

He'd finally bottled it in a movie, captured in ten thousand images imprinted on celluloid frames.

His technique had worked beautifully, just as it had with the Jim Foster screen test. He owed this success to Sally, who'd taught him how to fake empathy until enough of a glimmer of the genuine article bled through.

Funny, how it took him learning to kill with his cursed camera to get to know his actors as human beings instead of as varying combinations of annoying traits. Tonight, he saw them all as real people, people with real problems, neither all good nor all bad but a mix of the two and distinctly, beautifully human.

More, he regarded them as eager collaborators. Fellow travelers on an amazing journey into the unknown.

"And cut," he said.

Still holding the boom mic, Dorothy wheezed out a chuckle.

Max gritted his teeth. "What's so funny?"

"You scared the shit out of me!"

He didn't know what to say. "Well. Yeah."

"You said you weren't doing any special effects tonight. You had me fooled!"

"You were just surprised. You didn't actually think it was funny, right?"

"Well, for sure, it was powerful as pure spectacle," Dorothy said. "But just a little slapstick, though, don't you think?"

"Slapstick?"

"And the way he died with the potato chip bag right next to him. It's like a TV commercial from hell." She let out another grating wheeze.

"I'll fix that in post," he growled.

"It sure as shit looked real, I'll give you that! You're a magician, Max."

Someone called out from the dark: Johnny?

The voice belonged to Bill Farmstead.

Johnny, that sounded real. Are you okay? Holler back, buddy!

Dorothy handed Max the boom and entered the shack.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

She raised the clapboard.

"Don't you want to shoot end sticks to mark the scene?"

Then she looked down at Johnny.

I'm gonna come and check on you just in case!

Max scowled. Bill was leaving his mark. The wind picked up a little. Lightning flashed again. He had to keep moving. A storm would ruin everything. It looked like it would pass by Bombay Beach far to the south, but it concerned him.

Dorothy lifted her head to gaze at Max with wide, watery eyes.

"I don't understand," she said in a small voice.

"All along, you were hoping to see behind the curtain. You wanted to meet the Wizard."

He'd planned for her to carry the sound equipment through at least a few of the scenes, but he didn't mind taking on the burden early. In fact, he welcomed it. This part of the journey was one he'd always known he would take alone.

"I think he's dead, Max. Really dead."

Hang tight, Johnny. I'm coming!

"This is as much your movie as mine," he said. "We did this together."

"But he's…"

"I owe you for that. Now, drop the sound gear."

Understanding seemed to fall on Dorothy like gravity. She sagged under the weight of this dawning horror.

"Okay."

"You're finally going to find out where real horror lives, Dorothy. The shock or the grief."

"Please, don't…"

Max smiled at the camera and gave its enamel skin a gentle pat. Then he swiveled his burning gaze back to the writer.

"You'd better go now," he said. "And never stop running."