Forty-One

Sally said, "I'm glad you came."

The director bent over, choking like a cat working through the world's largest hairball. At last, he hocked up a massive pile of watery sand and sat back gasping.

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," Max said, his voice like wet gravel.

She'd visited the dead every full moon during the months following the Bombay Beach massacre, but he'd always walked off sulking.

"I'm sorry I killed you," she said. "Really sorry."

He picked a sand fly from his teeth and flicked it. "Jordan was right about one thing. The living dead don't have much to worry about."

"I just wanted to live."

"It's why I loved you. Like I said, you were always the Final Girl to me."

"And I always respected you, Max."

For all the dead didn't care, Sally could tell hearing this pleased him.

"I used to loathe people," he rasped. "Even my own audience. Now I kind of miss them. Funny, isn't it? The dead hate solitude more than anything."

"I understand."

"Yes." He cleared his throat. "No. That's not quite right. What we probably hate the most is having no story. We aren't in the script anymore. We're the audience now."

Max no longer existed as a creator god of dark worlds but a mere citizen, plagued by ennui. He'd gained what he'd always craved, a life of horror. Only the horror came from an eternity of being stuck with Hollywood people for company and without an audience.

"Well, your movie got finished," Sally offered. "You made history. You've got an audience tonight."

"Do people know about the camera?"

"No one but me. Dorothy might, but I don't know for sure."

"She doesn't. Have you spoken to her?"

"She's not speaking to anyone."

The writer had gone back to Big Bear Lake and secluded herself, apparently happy to have escaped the movie business alive and return to her safer, solitary art.

"If you're the only one who knows, that's probably for the best."

"The world thinks you somehow rigged the set to murder everyone and then died in one of your own traps," Sally explained. "They see you as some kind of evil genius, the Houdini of horror."

Again, Max appeared pleased.

"Perfect movie," he murmured.

Sally wondered if it was all worth dying but didn't ask. She knew what he would say. Worth dying, sure. Worth killing too.

"Thank you," Max added. "For bringing it to life."

"You can thank Jordan," she said.

Across the full moons she'd spent visiting the dead, the producer had walked her through everything. How to access the remaining funds, who to call for editing help, and how to bring it to market. He shared a few dark secrets about his brother Joseph—now the owner of Lyman Entertainments' surviving assets—which helped Sally gain a clear legal road to finishing the movie, signing a deal that made Lyman a silent investor.

Under Jordan's guidance, If Wishes Could Kill launched with limited distribution at indie and X-rated video stores nationwide as well as a handful of grubby little theaters in major markets like Los Angeles and New York. Since then, distribution and ticket sales had grown by leaps and bounds. It would take some time to turn a profit, but the movie had legs, propelled by sensational media coverage and attempts by various city governments to ban it, which produced court battles over free speech. Foreign rights and video sales, meanwhile, kept climbing. The French and the Japanese apparently couldn't get enough of it.

An instant cult classic.

The air smelled like ash and cigars. The producer arrived like royalty, carried down the aisle on his litter by charred, faceless mannequins that were once Arthur Golden's crew. They hoisted him into the seat on the other side of Max and shambled away smoking and ashing.

Smirking behind his mirrored shades, Jordan lit a fresh cigar and got right to business.

"How are we doing, Sal?"

She shared the release numbers. The producer whistled. The movie, he said, would start generating profit in a matter of weeks on its current trajectory.

"You should think about getting into producing," he added.

"No, thank you." Managing people and budgets was nerve-wracking. She might have discovered herself as a fighter and survivor, but she'd never enjoyed conflict. "Now that the movie's done, I want to get back into acting."

"What's in your pipeline?"

"A lot of opportunities, actually." In fact, it seemed every horror director under the sun wanted to cast her in a starring role.

"I'm not surprised," he said, puffing on his cigar. "Right now, you're hotter than Elvira, babe. You should be pouncing on anything that moves."

The old Sally would grab it all with both hands as fast as she could. She'd have exploded at the mere possibility of gigs like these. The new Sally found it overwhelming. She could sleep for a year. Dorothy had been right; horror might birth in violence, but it lingered in grief, trauma, and memory.

"I needed time to heal," she said.

Max cleared his throat again, sounding like an outboard motor trying to start. "Getting back to it is how you heal."

"Look at you two," Raphael said as he stomped onto the scene lugging a massive cardboard box. "Final Girl and director together again, as God intended."

The Final Girl the surrogate for the audience, the monster the surrogate for the director. Together, they told an ancient story of creation and annihilation. Life and death. Light and darkness. Order and chaos. Irresistible wind and immovable rock.

Opposing forces of nature ever locked in cosmic yin-yang struggle, played out in horror movie formula as mythic theater. One not able to truly exist and become its true self without the other. And while death may appear to be all-powerful and have the final say, life always triumphs simply by enduring.

An endless story about survival in a hostile world.

A rusty shape blurred into the scene and burst onto Max's lap. Licking her chops, Lady Susan gazed hopefully at her owner with her head slouched to the side.

He scratched her back, sending her bum into happy windmilling. Even Max smiled. The dead hated being alone.

"Who's still my good girl?" he asked. "Who? Is it you?"

"I… be… row," a muffled voice said inside the box.

Raphael grinned. "Oh, sorry."

After he opened the flaps, the voice became strident as a trumpet: "Is this the front row? I hate sitting in the front row."

"These are the seats we got, my dear," he said.

"I'm the star of this movie," Ashlee railed. "I had the best death. I should be able to sit where I goddamn please!"

Raphael laughed. While the actor went on shouting, he hefted the box and threw Max a glare. "This is your idea of bringing me Ashlee Gibson?"

Max shrugged with an impish smile, a shrug that said, Oopsie.

Helga Frost elbowed past the special makeup effects artist. "Miss Priest. You have not yet destroyed the camera. Are you still considering it?"

"Every day," Sally answered honestly.

Though, like its previous owners, she wouldn't.

"Yeah," Raphael enthused. "Ending our existence is a great idea."

Helga pivoted to peer up at him from her sideways head.

"Indeed—"

"Not," he added, tossing Sally a wink with his one working eye.

Ashlee carried on with her diva rant.

"At least take what's left of my head out so I can see what's—"

"Okay, okay." Raphael chuckled. "Let's find a seat in the second row."

"I said I want the back row!"

Helga frowned down at Sally. "We will talk again, I am sure."

Johnny Frampton limped down the aisle, propping up a tottering Jim Foster with one arm, rags wrapped around his middle to hold in his guts. Jim was scarcely recognizable after being struck down by racing steel, living among the revenants as one massive weeping bruise with broken bones jutting from his flesh.

"I still love you, Wanda." He grinned through missing teeth. "I always will."

"I love you too, Brad. In my own way."

Sally had honored him as well by jury-rigging his death scene into the film.

He eyed her with undying hope. "Can I sit with you?"

"Sorry, I'm saving this seat for someone else."

His eyes took on a look of quiet desperation. Stuck being Brad for eternity, Jim was still trapped in there, screaming to be freed.

"Come on, my dude," Johnny said. "We don't want to miss the movie."

Nicholas arrived next. He regarded Sally with a sad smile, the smile itself an apology. She smiled back and nodded. All was forgiven.

Then his shoulders lilted in a mischievous shrug. The dead didn't really care. Even the living only cared so much. He'd done what he'd had to do to try to survive, and because he was Nicholas, what he'd done hadn't been that difficult a decision.

Sally understood. She'd done the same, only she'd done it differently. By making better choices, the Final Girl provided her own solution to survivor's guilt. A good answer to the question of why she alone survived while the others didn't.

"I used to hate seeing my face on a screen," he said.

"I love it and hate it," said Sally.

"Now I'm curious what I looked like when I was alive."

A gruff voice intruded. "Well, look who decided to finally show."

Officer McDaniel regarded Max with a triumphant grin that grotesquely clashed with the rags of still-dripping flesh hanging off his large frame.

"Oh no," Max deadpanned. "My archnemesis is here."

Sally had made a point of not staring or jerking her head to avoid looking at the camera's victims, but even for the dead, the cop was hard to look at. The wild dogs had eaten parts of him and savaged the rest.

"I was right," Dan said, wearing a dazed look. A charred smear ran from his shoulder to his hip, still sizzling and bubbling from the lightning bolt that ended his life. Wavy black lines like tattoos radiated from it across his skin. His hair smoked. "I tried, Sally. I really tried. I was right all along."

"Thank you," Sally said. "For trying to save us. And sorry."

She'd said it before to him many times. She couldn't say it enough.

"I was right," Dan insisted. "I tried. But then everything… turned white…" Then he grimaced, both because he remembered and because he couldn't.

"She hears you, big guy." McDaniel shot her a sympathetic look. "You know how he gets stuck in a loop sometimes when he first wakes up. The lightning fried a few circuits."

They moved on, revealing Bill Farmstead waiting his turn to say hello.

"Hey, you," he said.

"Hi, Bill." It always hurt to see him like this.

Though, even dead, even holding his severed head in place to avoid grossing her out, he was still the same charming, hunky devil.

"I'm realizing we never did talk about, you know."

The unspoken potential.

"We never got the chance," Sally said.

"I just wanted to tell you we would have been fire."

She laughed. "It's true."

"Let's pretend it happened," he said. "I'll have memories to keep me company, and you can move on. You have your whole life ahead of you."

"Deal," said Sally with a bittersweet smile.

Bill plucked the head off his shoulders as if doffing his hat to a lady. Tucking it under his arm, he ambled off to find a seat.

"Hello, love," said the towering punk.

"Clare!" Sally swallowed back tears; it was turning out to be a very emotional night. Out of all the camera's victims, she missed Clare most. "I saved you a seat."

The punk sank into it. "We need more women here. Look at all these dicks. The after-party is going to suck."

"Congratulations. Your first movie."

"I just hope I don't look stupid during my death scene. The whole thing is a blur now. I hardly remember it."

"You looked great," Sally assured her.

"Well. Either way, we all put on a hell of a show."

Clare reached across to nudge Max while he extracted handfuls of wet sand from his jacket pockets and dropped them onto the floor.

She said, "I almost had you that night, fucker."

He smirked and said nothing.

"You know, we should put on a play or something," she added. "You could direct."

For a while, he didn't answer that either.

Then he said, "That's not a bad idea. Watching the living is pure tedium."

"It'd be something to do. Maybe Hamlet."

"No. Grand Guignol. Realistic murder and mayhem seven nights a week."

Sally said, "It's in the blood."

Her way of saying his distant relation, who'd once directed the infamous horror theater in Paris, would be proud.

"In the blood," he agreed.

The one big thing they'd always had in common.

Behind her, the Night Owl had filled to capacity. A sold-out show. Most of the moviegoers looked excited. A few bragged that they'd seen it before. Others seemed anxious, no doubt wondering what they'd gotten themselves into. All had come to see the bloodcurdling car crash they couldn't look away from.

Sally spotted her mother sitting in the back row.

The lights dimmed. The theater darkened like a warning. Some young guys whistled and hooted in anticipation, which set off a wave of nervous chuckling among the rest. Whistling not past the graveyard but straight into it. Because this was no mere movie but an experience, and a dangerous one at that.

The movie's sound came to life with a thump, followed by utter quiet.

Black screen. No music.

A single simple credit appeared in white blocky capitals:

A FILMS OF THE CRYPT PRODUCTION

Several long seconds of ominous, thickening silence. The words vanished.

And then:

IF WISHES COULD KILL

"Yes," Max hissed in the dark.

Sally patted his cold and lifeless hand.

"Thank you for casting me in your movie, Max."

Then she got up and headed for the exit.