It’s like I never left this place. Like the last twenty-four years never happened.
Nothing but one big blur.
A black hole.
This is where I live. Where I’ve always lived. In the dark.
In the ground.
“There she is,” Sergio calls out from across the graves so that everyone, cast and crew and the dead included, can hear. “Welcome back, Amber!”
The crew applauds me.
Just for showing up.
Tonight is my first scene. It is my first, right? It has to be. This time around, at least.
“Ready to bring Jessica back from the dead?” Sergio asks. Then, to the rest of the crew, he shouts, “Let’s make history!”
He’s wrong. So, so wrong. This isn’t about making history.
It’s about rewriting it.
This story has already been told a hundred times before.
We’re here to revise it.
I’m here to edit myself out.
The Legend of the Little Witch Girl of Pilot’s Creek retold. Reborn. The force of this story—Jessica’s story, my story—has taken on a life of its own. It has evolved through the decades. Undying. Look at how craven pop culture has become. Look how it eats its own films and regurgitates them back onto the screen, again and again. Think of the mother spider whose body feeds its young. The first thing those newborn spiders do after they’ve hatched is devour their mother. These remakes are the same. They give birth to a swarm of sequels, feasting on the films that spawned them in the first place, only to repeat the process over and over again.
The story, the new story, was somehow even more threadbare than the original. I didn’t think that was possible. I imagined the plot, thin as it was, printed on the back of its VHS cover:
Sometimes the dead don’t stay dead…Cass (The Mouseketeers’ Jenna Handley) and her friends are assigned to work together on a group research project for history class. The assignment? Dig through their hometown’s past and see what local color they uncover. It’s not long before Cass and her pals uncover the Legend of the Little Witch Girl of Pilot’s Creek…and she wants to play!
Cass learns up on the legend. She’d never heard of it before, but now she immerses herself in the folklore. She becomes obsessed. Haven’t you ever heard of the legend of the Little Witch Girl? she asks her friends. They say if you stand on her grave at four minutes after midnight, you can see her, wandering about…looking for her mother. But don’t take her hand, whatever you do. She’ll grab you and drag you down, back into the ground, deep into her grave.
By the end of the film, when all of Cass’s friends are dead and only she remains, the authorities will suspect that she killed them all. The doctors will hypothesize she lost her mind the more she became obsessed with the urban legend. She had been the killer all along…
…Or was she?
Only Cass knows the truth, along with the audience. You don’t mess with the Fords. This is their story. The rest of us are merely storytellers.
Ella Louise and Jessica are the only remnant of the original movie. Everything else has been completely revised. Written away. New characters, new clichés.
Same ghosts.
No matter whose name receives top billing, the real star of this film is Jessica.
Wherever she is.
Her mother is waiting for her. The ghost of Ella Louise Ford is wandering along the perimeter of the cemetery, searching for her daughter.
Yearning.
See her spirit now, her skin translucent in the moonlight. Her scorched evening gown billows in the breeze behind her, bits of ash and cindered lace breaking away and drifting through the air. Her arms are held up in front of her, reaching out for someone off-camera.
She halts among the graves, standing before the headstone of her daughter, Jessica.
I was told to hold the pose the moment I hit my mark. Look longingly into the distance.
Yearn for my daughter’s return.
And I’m yearning…
Yearning…
“Aaaaaand cut,” Sergio calls out from behind the monitor. He’s not looking at me—not the flesh-and-blood me, at least—but the version of me on the monitor’s screen. “Great job!”
The crew applauds.
All of them.
I feel like I’m a classically trained thespian gracing the stage, not some has-been in a horror movie. It’s the strangest feeling, having the crew cheer the actors after finishing a scene. They clap even louder if the shot is a particularly demanding one. The more you suffer, the more they cheer.
Nobody has ever rooted for me before. There is such a warmth to this set, even if it’s thirty degrees tonight. The crew can see how cold it is for me out here. They’re all bundled up in winter parkas while the costume I’m wearing might as well be made of tissue paper.
I’m shivering between takes. Half of the acting for this role is simply holding a pose without looking like I’m freezing my ass off.
Blythe, my lovely makeup tech, my guardian angel, flanks me with an extra jacket, just for me, draping it over my shoulders as she circles around to touch up my face. “How’re you holding up?” She pulls out one of the fine-tipped brushes from her bun and dabs at my lips.
“I’m dying for a cigarette.” The cold has seeped into my bones, I’m shaking so much.
“Wish I could give you one,” she whispers. “But then your costume might catch on fire and where would we be then?”
“Too Method for me,” I joke. “I don’t need to get into my character that much.”
Blythe laughs at this. “Let’s not have history repeat itself, okay?”
We had started the evening with a quick shot. Nothing too strenuous. Just a simple angle of me traipsing through the cemetery. A monkey could do it. An undead, refried monkey.
But everyone on set is treating me like I’m goddamn Elizabeth Taylor. From the way they’re taking care of me, embracing me, you’d think we were on the set of Cleopatra.
“Can I get you some coffee?” Blythe asks as she dabs her paintbrush along my lips.
“Please,” I say between my chattering teeth. “Feel free to put something strong in it.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” She winks before slipping off.
This crew feels like family. One big, happy family. Had I finally found a family?
Had they met my daughter yet?
I met Jessica. The actress, I mean. A week before production got under way. Sergio had introduced me to Danielle Strode back in Los Angeles. Danielle and her mother.
Her mother.
Her mother was so—so sweet. Kind. We all gathered in Sergio’s production office to do a quick table read of our scenes. He wanted Danielle and me to “warm up” to each other.
The warmth at our feet—
The heat of the flames—
Danielle seemed so well-adjusted. So poised. She was just happy simply to be there, on the studio backlot, as if every minute working on this piece-of-shit horror film were a gift. A goddamn blessing.
There was a wideness to her eyes as she took everything in. Absorbing the world around her. When this girl smiled, it was easy enough to believe she was genuinely affected.
That she was truly happy.
“It is an honor to meet you, Miss Pendleton…” Talk about a firm handshake. This girl had a grip. Professional. What kind of kid talks like that?
We didn’t look anything like each other. How Sergio was going to convince the audience that this was my daughter was anybody’s guess. Nobody would mistake her for Jessica.
She didn’t look the part. She wasn’t Jessica.
“Hi,” Danielle’s mother interjected. “I’m Danielle’s mom. Janet.”
She held out her hand to me.
“Amber.”
Her mother
—Janet—didn’t hover. Didn’t impose. She kept her distance, not wanting to intervene. She carried Danielle’s backpack, pressed against her chest. Hugging it.
She looked proud. Proud of her daughter.
Her little girl.
“Well,” I said back to Danielle. “Ready to scare some teens with me?”
Danielle giggled at this. This was such an adventure for her. The world was still innocent. Fun. She’d never been frightened—not really frightened—by anything her whole life. Nothing terrifying, truly terrifying, had ever come into her mind’s orbit and shaken her world to its core. She didn’t know what it was like to be alone, alone in the woods, freezing, so totally numb, the feeling receding from your fingers, your hands, your arms, never knowing if you’ll ever see sunlight again, ever see your mother again, retreating into the innermost chambers of your mind, for warmth, for survival, compartmentalizing your own sanity like a squirrel prepping for a long, cold winter, storing those last scraps of reason, of rational thought, into the deepest corners of your skull, where no ghost, no monster could ever find them and steal them away.
“I’m you now,” Danielle said, dragging me back to the production office.
“What did you say?”
Danielle looked worried. Like she’d said the wrong thing. Had she said the wrong thing? “In the movie,” she clarified, hoping to make amends for whatever mistake she’d committed. “I get to be you in the movie.”
She smiled when she said it, uncertain if that was the right thing to do. Smile.
“Well, I bet you’ll be an even better Jessica than I was.” I beamed right back.
“I’ve got to confess,” Janet piped in from behind Danielle. “We haven’t watched the original film yet. I mean, I watched it. Of course. With Danielle’s daddy. We rented it together, right before Danielle auditioned, and we…well, we felt it might be a little too spooky for her.”
I glanced down at Danielle. Her head was bowed. She nervously rotated her waist as if she were playing with an invisible hula hoop. I could tell she was embarrassed by this. Ashamed. I kneeled down so that we were face to face. Danielle’s hips stopped spinning. She looked me right in the eye, both of us lost for a moment. “You know it’s make-believe, yeah?”
Danielle nodded. “Of course.”
I didn’t believe her. “When I played Jessica, you know what I did? I imagined what it would’ve been like if we were friends. That me and Jessica were the bestest pals. We would do everything together. We’d play and chat all the time, even if she wasn’t really there. The more I imagined us playing, the more I could see her. I watched her, studied her. That way, when it was time to be her, I knew exactly who she was. All her movements. Her laughter. The sound of her voice. I knew everything there was to know about her, because we had spent so much time together…even if it was all in my head.”
Janet stepped up behind Danielle and took hold of her shoulders. “Well, we can’t wait to get started. We’ve been working on Danielle’s lines and we think we’ll make you proud.”
It was a subtle gesture, but I could see Janet pull Danielle closer to her. Away from me.
She was protecting her daughter.
From me.
Danielle hadn’t made her way to the set yet. She must have been still getting into her makeup. Her burns. Maybe she was with her mother. With Janet. Maybe the two of them were working on her lines together or doing whatever the hell they do together as a loving family.
On the call sheet, it said the next scene would be our fated reunion. Jessica would rise up from her grave and waltz into her mother’s open arms. The two of us would wander into the woods, together forever. I’m not sure how Sergio wanted to shoot it, but the scene called for Danielle to claw her way out from the ground, to escape her fenced-in prison of crucifixes. We would wrap our scorched arms around each other for the first time in decades. All those unruly teens have been dispatched by this point in the script, save for Cassandra—sorry, Cass—the lone survivor. Our final girl. She must witness this family reunion. Someone needed to live to tell the tale. To keep our story alive. A story needs a storyteller, and fate had deemed her to be the carrier of that torch. Cass would wake up in a sanitarium in the next scene, screaming her pretty head off, insisting that it was real, all of it was real, that she saw the spirits of Jessica and Ella Louise Ford. The nurse injects her with a sedative, sending Cass back off to sleep, to her nightmares, while out in the woods, mother and daughter wander hand in hand.
Finis.
Sergio rushes up to me, looking like a little boy bundled in a winter coat two sizes too big for him, ready to play in the snow outside. “Hey,” he says. “That was great. You were great.”
“Thanks,” I say. “I’ve been preparing my whole life for this role.”
He laughs. “Think you’re up for doing another take?”
“Sure. Yeah. Of course.”
“Great. It looks great. You look great. Really. I can’t wait for you to see it.”
“Stop it.” This is the most we’ve talked since our little tiff about the script. Days ago, mind you. At least I think it was. He gave me the cold shoulder at the catering tent yesterday, like some high schooler shrugging me off in the cafeteria. But now, on set, he’s glowing. He’s in his element.
“I’m serious,” he says. “You’ll love what we’ve done. The lighting reaches right through you. It’s like you’re not even there. So cool.” I can’t help but notice the look he gives me, how it changes itself. He’s not even really looking at me anymore. His eyes trail off by the slightest fraction. He isn’t seeing me now, not in the moment, the present tense, not right here in front of him. He’s focused on some other version of me. A future version. A postproduction version. Color-corrected. It’s a bit discombobulating, feeling this way. That I am somehow unfinished.
“Oh.” He suddenly realizes I’m trembling. “You cold? We’ll do this really quickly. Then we’ll get you back to your trailer to warm up while we set up for the next shot.”
He turns to everyone else. The crew has been watching. Waiting for us. They know, they know all about us. It’s obvious. Everyone knows. Just look at the way that they’re staring. Their eyes. Oh God, their eyes. All those hollow eyes…Looking right at me. Staring. Not even blinking. Any of them. Gray eyes. So wide. Glassed over. Gummed up in something phlegmy, like oysters. Nothing but pearls of gray snot floating in each socket. I know those eyes. Always staring at—
Janet rushes onto the set.
I hadn’t expected to see Danielle’s mother. Not during filming. Something about it disrupts the balance of the set. The narrative. I can’t focus. Not with her here. Not with her—
Something’s wrong. Janet looks as if she’s in an absolute panic, trying—and failing—to maintain her composure as a percolating shriek builds into a volcanic swell within her throat.
“Has—has anyone seen Danielle?”
ELEVEN
Danielle wasn’t in her trailer. She wasn’t wandering around the set. She wasn’t spinning in the rotating barber chair in the makeup trailer. She wasn’t sneaking stale danishes from the catering tent. She wasn’t hiding in any of the production rigs that transported the lighting equipment. She wasn’t stranded in any of the porta-potties. She wasn’t in the cemetery. She wasn’t hiding behind any of the headstones, peeking out when nobody was looking. She wasn’t shuffling alongside the gravel road that connected the cemetery to the highway, walking back to town. She wasn’t hanging out with any of the other cast members in their spacious heated trailers. She wasn’t with Jenna or Freddie or Tara. None of the actors had seen her all night.
That left the woods.
The whole woods.
All those acres of swaying pines at either end of the cemetery.
Shooting halted as everyone, from the producers down to every last production assistant, took to the pines and searche
d for Danielle. She couldn’t have just vanished.
Nobody just vanishes. She had to be out here, somewhere.
In the woods.
I was still in my flimsy costume, freezing to the bone, but I could care less. I grabbed a flashlight like everyone else and dove into the trees. Nobody had said anything, not yet—not to me, anyway, not to my face—about how this was all beginning to feel a little familiar, as if we’d all done this once before. The slightest whiff of déjà vu permeated the set.
“Sure you want to do this?” the electrician asked as he handed me a flashlight. His stare lingered a little longer than I felt comfortable with, insinuating something. Accusing me.
“Of course,” I snapped.
History was not about to repeat itself.
Not tonight.
I just prayed nobody else made the connection before we found her.
Before I found her.
The search party branched out. The teamsters had taken the lead, boldly embarking upon their expedition like this was all some kind of gallant quest. Find the missing princess. I could see the flashlight beams slicing through the pines. We all called out her name as we traipsed deeper into the woods, a smattering of echoes bubbling up from the dark.
“Danielle…?”
“Danielle…?”
“Danielle…?”
I had a migraine from all the constant chattering. The enamel on my teeth was about to crack. There was a full-on throbbing in my jaw.
I could take a quick detour back to my trailer and rummage through my bag—
Focus, I said to myself. You need to focus.
You need to find Danielle.
Before anyone else.
“Danielle?” I called out, my voice cracking just a bit. “Danielle, can you hear me…?”
I knew what it was like.
To be lost out here.
I was the only one who knew exactly what Danielle was going through right now.
To be alone. Out here. Cold and shivering.
To think that everyone else had forgotten you, forsaken you. That nobody cared. Not the director or any of the crew. Not your castmates.
The Remaking Page 18