Six

Clad in white stucco and shaped like an inverted V, Max's Spanish-style home in Sherman Oaks confronted him like a straitjacket outstretched in a cheerful hug. He parked in the driveway and lugged the trunk inside.

Flush with residuals from the Jack franchise, he'd entered the housing market in search of something deliciously Gothic or at least Victorian. Not so easy to find in happy, sun-drenched Los Angeles—the city of angels, not demons. He'd settled on this house, as it at least offered a three-story, cone-capped turret built into the center like the pin in a giant door hinge.

Dazed from lack of sleep and excessive sunlight, Max hauled the ornate teak box to his dining room table. His home's decor gleamed in perfect orderliness; Mariel, his housekeeper, had swept through the place in his absence.

Susan swirled and panted around his legs.

Then she cocked her head to growl at the box.

"You hear it too, Lady Susan? Sometimes, it screams."

The dog barked at it.

He crouched to give her a scratch. "Maybe Golden put a demon in the camera. Wouldn't that be cool for Daddy?" He slipped into his baby-talk voice. "Yes, it would. Oh yes, it would."

Distracted by his pampering, the Pomeranian grinned, her little pom-pom tail windmilling so hard her bum seemed about to go aloft.

Max couldn't wait to take the camera out for a test drive. First, he needed a nap, which he knew would cure him of his auditory hallucinations. He'd stayed up all night seething with ideas as he had many times during his creative life, but he was hardly a young man anymore, brimming with midnight oil to burn.

In his upstairs bedroom, he gazed balefully at the bed and furnishings afire in bright California sunlight streaming through the window blinds. Mariel liked to lecture him about vitamin D and otherwise enjoyed telling him all the things he did wrong with his health and how he'd die from it. He closed the blinds she'd cranked open and let out a relieved sigh in the resulting gloom.

While cleaning, she'd discovered his discarded tux and hung it up. She'd also done his laundry and put it all away, folded with military precision.

On the bed, she'd left a pair of red panties.

Max picked them up and pictured the young beauty with the overbite who'd worn them. The whole afternoon, she'd gone around without wearing any underwear. Chuckling, he dropped the lacy garment into his dresser's sock drawer.

During the ride home, he'd asked Sally what truly scared her. Not being good enough to survive in this business, she'd answered. When his turn came, he didn't have to think about it. People. Though this wasn't true, not really.

What truly scared him, he'd buried somewhere deep.

Max had left the girl buzzing at the hint he might cast her as a Final Girl in his next movie. Well, let her buzz.

He'd seen her perform in Mutant Dawn. She'd overacted a bit, which might have been a lack of confidence, or maybe her sensing the movie wasn't working so she might as well play it on the campy side. Nonetheless, she alone had inhabited her role among a rookie ensemble that largely looked like they were reading lines.

Under his firm and deft direction, Sally would do better. She had the look, and the minute her talent caught up to it with the right director, he saw no limit to how far she might go. So, yes, he'd be happy to work with her. If nothing else, it'd make a refreshing change from babysitting Ashlee Gibson and her coke habit.

Max stretched out on the bed on top of its preppy monogrammed linens. He closed his eyes and fidgeted until he'd reached a position approximating comfort.

His mind refused to relax. The Jack premiere. Jordan. Sally. Arthur Golden. The helicopter accident. The strange camera patiently waiting for him on the dining table.

The film in the cookie tin.

His brain still racing, he climbed out of bed and checked in at his home office. The answering machine blinked with recorded messages. His fax chattered opening-night reports detailing ticket sales along with breakouts per region and per-screen averages. So far, Jack's third time out looked like a commercial success, eking out a respectable showing against the weekend's other opening films, including Young Guns and Martin Scorsese's latest, The Last Temptation of Christ.

Which should have made him happy, only last night he'd stopped liking his own franchise. No doubt, one of the messages recorded on his machine was Jordan congratulating him for producing formulaic pap.

Susan padded over and looked up at him. What's next, Master?

"I want to make something that hasn't been made before," Max said.

At his tone, the little dog grinned.

He knew what he should do right now. What he should have done the minute he'd arrived home to this overbright house.

Returning to the dining room, he opened the box and removed the round metal cookie tin. Pried the lid with his thumbnail.

A stretch of developed film lay roughly coiled inside like a dormant and exotic parasitic worm. Under this work print, he found a magstripe, a length of blank film onto which a magnetic coating had been mounted with a sound recording. Despite their age, the uncomposited pair were in excellent condition. He guessed there was some two hundred feet in the can, about two minutes of footage.

On the back of the lid, Golden had scrawled a message in black marker.

Never use this camera, fellow traveler.

Max smirked. "Sorry, Arthur. That's not how it works."

He ascended the stairs to the top of the turret, where he kept the Moviola. If he were a mad scientist, this small circular room would be his laboratory.

Shutting the blinds to erase the spectacular neighborhood views, he settled onto the stool in front of his hulking apparatus. Constructed of smooth cast aluminum finished in gray-green enamel, the Moviola was a film- and sound-editing machine. The industry had moved on to flatbed editors but still used Moviolas to watch dailies, evaluate sizzle reels, and of course do a little editing.

Max enjoyed giving his own movies a last polish, as he liked having as much creative control as possible. Forsaking food and sleep, he'd disappear here for weeks—patiently slashing his slasher, littering the floor with bits of cut film—until the final product ran perfectly smooth and sharp where needed.

At his feet, Susan snuggled into her little plush bed and gazed up at him with quivering eyes. She let out a soft whine.

Max pulled on a pair of cotton gloves and threaded the film snug into the gate under the viewing scope. He inserted the sound on the left so it would run in sync. He levered the first picture frame until it appeared in full view on his bright scope, showing a woman leaning against a deck railing.

"Bonanza," Max breathed in the glow.

It was Helga Frost.

Mary's Birthday's lead and one of the only three people to survive its final day of shooting on a grassy field in Pennsylvania.

He stomped the pedal. Dragged forward by sprocket teeth biting through perforations, the ribbon of film chattered through the Moviola, which appeared to devour it as he fed the machine from his hands.

The picture came to life.

The scene is a deck overlooking a lush green slice of Laurel Canyon, where numerous flat and stilted homes were built along the hillsides during the sixties.

Helga Frost leans against the railing. Wearing a yellow housecoat, she raises a bare foot to idly scratch a spot on her other calf.

The view trembles a little. The scene is being shot as a handheld. As if following the action, the camera lurches into a voyeuristic zoom toward her legs but then pulls back.

She takes a drag on her cigarette and exhales a long stream of smoke before turning to the camera.

"Why did you bring that goddamn thing, Arthur?"

She speaks with a clipped German accent, which she altered during filming ofMary's Birthday to fit the character of an all-American girl.

"Because I want something to remember you," he answers. "I don't know when I'm going to see you again. You've shut yourself off from the world."

"What is wrong with that?"

"It's been months since the accident."

"And?"

"You're alive," Arthur replies. "You should live."

"Why?"

"I don't understand the question."

"It is a simple question. Everyone else died. Why do I get to live?"

"Ah. The question is about importance."

She turns away and takes another drag. "Go away, Arthur."

"We all die, Helga. Returning to the eternity before we were born. We're the only animal that knows it's coming. One way to accept the horror without losing our sanity is to try to transcend it. Do great deeds, have children, live a moral life, make powerful works of art. Anything that will endure."

Sighing, Helga leans against the railing with both hands as if she needs its support to stay on her feet. She appears mentally and physically exhausted.

"I feel like I was supposed to die that day," she says. "That it is only a matter of time before Death realizes he left someone behind."

"Survivor's guilt. I'm trying to tell you you're important to me."

"Put the camera away. I am done acting."

"This isn't about making pictures. This is about me and you."

She turns her head toward him.

"What do you mean?"

"The truth is from the first time I saw you, I've loved—"

The railing cracks in her hands.

In an instant, she is gone.

"Holy mother," Max shouted, his face burning with a sudden hot flash.

Arthur Golden cries out in anguish.

"HELGA—"

The image in the Moviola's scope lurched and then went blank as the length of film disappeared. Susan lowered her head and whimpered.

"Holy mother," Max said again, this time an awed whisper.

His face still felt hot. His heart pounded in his chest.

The camera failed to capture what happened next, but he could easily guess. Max had seen the houses built along those hillsides.

Helga had plummeted headfirst to smash against the canyon's rocky slope.

What caused it? Just before she tumbled over the edge, the deck railing had appeared solid. Then it crumbled under her hands.

The only things that came to mind were faulty construction or perhaps termites, but even then, the suddenness and bad luck of it were uncanny.

Max played it again and hit the brake to freeze the image on a frame showing Helga's hands blurring through the splintering wood.

The surprised look on her face.

He advanced the frames one by one. The railing coming apart. Helga's slim body pitching forward. Her face morphing from surprise to animal terror—

And then, for a single final frame before she disappeared, what appeared to be poetic resignation. Simple acceptance of her fate. Understanding. Possibly even relief.

Maybe Mary's Birthday truly was cursed. Or Arthur Golden was.

He'd delivered a heartfelt thanks to the cast and crew of his dream project only to witness them being mowed down and incinerated in a rush of flame. He'd filmed Helga Frost because he loved her and wanted at least one more memory of her that would endure, and then he'd helplessly watched her fall to plummet onto the rocks.

In the end, not Frost but Golden became the recluse.

A man who no doubt had come to believe he lived under a curse.

Max plugged in his editing room's rotary phone. He dialed a number and waited through the long rings, leg jittering.

An answering machine picked up.

"Hey, you've reached Raph. Leave a message and I'll holler back. Thanks."

The machine beeped.

"Pick up, damn you," Max railed. "I know you're there."

Muffled clicks, followed by the phone clattering across the floor and a sighed obscenity at the other end of the line.

At last: "Maximillian, is that you?"

Max gripped the phone in his sweaty hand. "What are you doing right now?"

"Do you know how hungover I am today? I'm not doing anything, man."

"I need you to meet me at Lake Balboa Park in half an hour."

At the word park, Susan raised her head with frank hope. Max shook his head at her in apology. She couldn't come this time. She whined again.

"What's the matter with Lady Susan?" Raphael asked.

"I just told her she can't come."

"You sound manic. Have you been up all night again?"

Max declared, "I've made an important discovery."

"Oh, for the sake of all that's holy—"

"The picnic pavilions area. Okay?"

A long pause.

"You're lucky you're my favorite client, you bastard."

The man hung up.

Max replaced the phone in its cradle and unplugged it again. He returned the coils of film to the cookie tin. He turned off the Moviola editing machine.

Then he went downstairs.

And stood smiling down at the Arriflex 35BL in its carved box.

Which once more sang to him.

Again, that feeling it tried to tell him something. Again, he wondered if he hallucinated from staying awake too long, or if something else was in play.

"It's time to take you out for a spin," Max said.

Lake Balboa Park sprawled lush and green in late afternoon sunshine. Stands of cherry blossom trees and distant oleander, lavender, and hyacinth produced a riot of pinks and violets. Geese and mallards quacked on the pristine lake. Butterflies fluttered past. And everywhere, Los Angelenos tossed Frisbees on the lawn or hung out on picnic benches in the shade of pavilions.

Even Max, who didn't know how to relax, considered this place a serene oasis. He tried to imagine something horrible happening. Nothing came to him, even as the shadows lengthened to herald the coming twilight. He had a hard time imagining the worst around cherry blossoms.

Max mounted the Arriflex 35BL on a tripod and aimed it at the lake.

Again the familiar voice behind him: "So you got a new toy?"

"Yep. I'm giving it a test drive."

Back at the house, he'd unscrewed the camera cover and wiped the film channel with a cotton swab and mild alcohol solution. Applied a high-grade, low-temperature oil to saturate the wicks in the cam shaft lubrication reservoir. Checked the drive belt for proper tension, replaced the power fuses, popped in a twelve-volt battery, and tested the signal lamps. Threaded a fresh roll of film until the sprocket teeth caught it and fitted the rest onto the magazine's supply core.

Then he'd found a battered old plastic case to house the Arriflex 35BL along with its lenses, filters, and accessories.

With all this finished, he'd driven the camera here to take it off its leash.

Wearing a leather jacket over a faded gray T-shirt, Raphael shambled up to him rubbing his forehead. "This is why you dragged my hungover ass out here? To test a new camera and drum up some slice-of-life inspiration for future shots?"

Max gave him an evil grin.

"It's not just any camera," he said.

"Christ, look at you. Did you get any sleep at all last night?"

"This is the camera that captured Mary's Birthday. And the tragedy."

"That's a fascinating bit of cinematic trivia." The special makeup effects artist plunked onto the ground and groaned.

Max kept grinning. "And then it witnessed Helga Frost's death."

"Wait." Raphael gazed up at him with bloodshot eyes. "What?"

"The camera came with a stretch of footage I loaded and watched on my Moviola. Golden filmed Helga while they talked about the accident. Right when he told her he loved her, bam! She fell through a railing."

"Holy crap." The man eyed the camera with a shiver. "That thing is bad juju."

"I have a theory that it somehow makes horror."

"What?"

"Or horror is drawn to it. I don't know."

"Maximillian."

"It was singing to me—"

"Max. Look at me, man. You need to get some shut-eye."

"I know."

"All right. Fine. It's just that sometimes you go a little nutty. Like, obsessive, man. Remember last year you couldn't find your keys and became convinced your house was haunted? We had a séance and everything—"

"It wasn't only the keys. It was other stuff. My office was freezing."

"Because your air-conditioning malfunctioned. Remember I fixed it?"

"Okay, okay. I'm probably being neurotic again."

"Well, good—"

"And yes, I'm enjoying it. Imagine being in your very own horror picture. Crazy or not, I'm mining these feelings for inspiration."

Max and the Arriflex had found each other at just the right time. Its horrible history fueled his creative juices. He could allow it to work again and fulfill its purpose. There was a movie here, lurking either inside the machine itself or in the feelings it produced in him.

It was all a game. A game of make-believe. He wanted to go on playing it.

"Well," said Raphael. "As long as I'm the one who survives."

Max evaluated his friend. "No, you're too nice. You're the one kind adult who tries to help the kids and then gets an axe in the face."

"Oh. Seriously?"

"Sorry, Raph."

"Jesus." The man shuddered. "Well, at least I'm nice." He sighed. "Okay, so what are we doing here? Waiting for magic hour?"

This was a period of time after sunrise or before sunset when the light turned warmer and softer than at midday. And the shadows were great. Ideal for shooting.

"You're half-right." Max hoped for magic. The hour didn't matter. "I just want to see what this thing can do. If anything weird happens, you're my witness."

Raphael waved at him. "Fine, fine. And then we grab a steak and a stiff drink somewhere. I think the only cure for me today is a little hair of the dog."

Max made a positive grunt as he positioned himself behind the eyepiece. He worked the zoom handle and brought a distant couple into both frame and focus. They dashed around the grass as they flung a Frisbee back and forth.

Aside from laughter and Frisbee throwing, nothing happened. Raphael prattled away about how wonderful the party was, narrating every detail of the skinny-dipping as if watching a movie in his head. In a reverent tone, he described Ashlee Gibson dancing in her glittering dress on the pool diving board. The man's long-standing crush on her had intensified to become religious.

Panning right, Max caught several kids trying to either skip pebbles across the lake or brain a duck, he wasn't sure. He kept panning. He loathed children and hated the current studio trend of ruining every interesting Hollywood franchise by sticking the precocious monsters into them.

The camera brought a family into frame. The tired and irritable dad hauled a cooler. Overloaded with bags and beach chairs, the mom trailed after him, a gaggle of kids in tow. Heading to the parking lot and home after a long day.

The father glared into the lens as if to say, Get that thing out of my face.

Max kept panning right.

The frame discovered two boys fooling around with lawn darts. If anything weird would happen, it'd be here. These darts had caused injuries and even a few deaths. Time passed as the camera consumed blank film. His four-hundred-foot roll offered roughly five minutes of shooting, and he'd already used up half that.

"What a gorgeous day," Raphael sighed. "This was actually a solid idea."

The man still sat on the ground resting on his elbows, head tilted to feel the sun on his face. He looked altogether too content for Max, who panned, fuming, across a large family setting up a meal at one of the picnic pavilions.

He finally settled on a smiling middle-aged man juggling for a pair of teenage girls, who pointedly ignored him. They lay on a blanket prodding and giggling at each other and shooting the man nasty looks.

Nothing to see here, but Max lingered anyway. The scene struck a chord in him.

There was meaning here. A story about a divorced father who missed most of his daughters' childhood. He used to be able to win their affection with weekends at Disneyland and trips to this park, but things are different now. The girls have reached an age where their parents aren't cool anymore. They chafe at being stuck here when they could be out with friends. So Dad learned juggling. Only the harder he tried, the more they scoffed, intent on punishing him for holding them hostage.

Behind the viewfinder, Max winced. The scene reminded him of his own father. Not a comparable memory, no. He had so few of those. No, it made him aware of the empty space where these memories should be.

When Max thought of his dad, he again faced that blank and sensed the black hole his father's death had punched through his soul. A tiny black hole behind which an infinite void stretched. A hole he'd spent his life stuffing with monsters that as a child he'd imagined lurking under his bed.

The girls' father gamely kept at it, tossing the red balls in the air in a blurred oval, face stretched in a pandering grin, dripping with flop sweat.

I know how you feel, guy, Max thought. Every time I make a movie—

A silver midsize sedan roared into the frame. He glimpsed a panicked driver fighting the wheel. The horn wailed.

The car swerved away from a group of running kids.

Straight toward the girls.

The tires narrowly missed thumping right over them—

The front fender instead striking the dad and plowing him into the grass.

The girls screamed as he disappeared under the left tire. The red balls plunked off the windshield. The body tumbled into the axle. The unyielding steel broke his bones with a sickening crack, loud as a gunshot.

A pale arm waved above the tire as the car kept going to crash against a cherry tree and almost topple it. Water vapor poured from the crumpled hood like horror movie fog.

"Holy mother," Max breathed.

He couldn't look. He couldn't look away.

Across the park, screams.

Raphael entered the frame and turned to deliver a disgusted glare.

"Are you still filming?"

An inhuman shriek passed overhead. He looked up as the shadow of a hawk crossed his face.

The red lawn dart came down right in his eye with a wet smack.

Flinching, the man gently pawed at its length.

"Damn," he said. "I'm hit."

Max gawked at him. "Raph?"

Raphael took a few stumbling steps with the foot-long dart and its plastic fins protruding from his face.

"Medic," he mumbled.

"Raph, are you okay?"

The man's remaining eye fixed Max with a glazed stare.

"Why are you still—?"

He pitched forward onto the ground, where the dart disappeared into his brain.

Max's vision sparked and dimmed.

"Raph?"

Raphael's leg twitched as if it alone could get him back on his feet.

Max's brain couldn't process it, fighting against what his gaping eyes told him. People shouted nearby. Someone screamed. The sounds barely registered.

"You're okay, right? This isn't real."

At last, the leg quit trying.

Max understood the game he'd been playing wasn't make-believe after all.