Scream Test: An unforgettable and gripping psychological thriller

by Mark Gillespie

  “I know,” Cassandra said. “We’re going to LA together. We’ll get through all that shit together, won’t we? Just like we get through all the shit here.”

  Ellie stood up and scooped her bag off the table. Without saying anything, she began to walk away.

  “Ellie?”

  “I’m going to the river,” Ellie called out without looking back. “Fuck school and all the assholes in it. I’m taking the rest of the day off.”

  “Want me to come with you?” Cassandra asked.

  “No. What’s the point? You don’t think she’s there anyway.”

  “I do. Ellie! Please.”

  “Don’t follow me Cassandra. In fact, just leave me alone for a while, okay? Let’s take a break from one another.”

  5

  Ellie listened to Klein’s shower running at full pelt. He’d been in there for at least five minutes now.

  It felt weird, just sitting there in his hotel room, waiting for him to come back out. Weird, that was one way of putting it. What would Klein’s wife think, Ellie wondered, if she were to walk into Room 59 right now and see an unfamiliar blonde perched on the edge of her husband’s bed? What would anyone think? Ellie recalled seeing the producer’s wife at the film festival in Toronto last year. What was her name again? God knows. Latina. Model good looks. The sort of drop-dead gorgeous woman who wouldn’t be seen dead with Klein if he didn’t have a fat wallet or if he was pulling eight-hour shifts at Walmart. Would she even care that Ellie was in the room? As long as the credit cards worked, maybe Klein could do whatever and whoever he wanted.

  Ellie turned her attention back to the script sitting in her lap. She was supposed to be reading the damn thing.

  She skimmed the text, tried to concentrate. Didn’t help that Klein was singing ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ in the shower and singing so loud that everyone in the hotel could probably hear him. He was even doing the horn parts, butchering the old classic, sending it down the pipes and into the sewers with the used water.

  Ellie wished he’d shut up. She wanted to read the script.

  Not entirely comfortable on the bed, she got up and moved to the chair by the desk. She pushed her tote bag to the side, making room for the script.

  This was a Tucci. Was it so wrong to be tempted? To reconsider everything that had brought her to LA and instead, go back to the old dream? The dream of being a movie star.

  It was exciting. She wasn’t doing bad for a stick insect from West Rouge.

  Ellie took a sip of coffee and thumbed through the script. It was raw and there were squiggly notes scribbled at the side of almost every page in the most appalling handwriting she’d ever seen. Felt like she was looking at the Hollywood equivalent of plumbing under the sink – the valves, tubes and pipes – seeing how the magic worked. Twenty pages in, she couldn’t find anyone called Sally. Thirty pages, nothing. Sally eventually showed up on page thirty-nine. There were a few lines here and there but it was obvious that Sally was a bit part and eye candy. Still, Ellie figured, a bit part in a Tucci script was as good as a lead role in most other movies. Bob Tucci calls, you say yes. Tucci was the only director in the world capable of achieving top level commercial and critical success and he’d been doing so on a consistent basis. He’d been at the top for what? Twenty years? Twenty-five? His movies were cultural events that drew millions and millions of people to the theater. People who didn’t watch movies watched Tucci’s movies. This was a legit opportunity and Ellie was close to being offered a part in a film that would be seen by millions, maybe even billions.

  How could she say no?

  She stared at the script. Trying to ignore the small mirror behind the desk that called to her.

  “This is not why you came here,” Ellie whispered. She took another sip of coffee and forced herself to keep looking at the script. The mirror called, but she couldn’t look at herself. Not right now.

  Ellie flinched as the shower cut out in the bathroom. She put a hand over her heart. Klein might as well have crept up behind her and yelled ‘BOO!’ in her ear.

  “Shit,” she said.

  Klein stepping out of the shower sounded like a sudden clap of thunder inside the hotel room. He was still singing to himself although the volume was mercifully lowered. Ellie looked at the script again. How much had she really taken in over the last ten to fifteen minutes? How long did she have before Klein shaved, put his clothes on and…

  The bathroom door swung open.

  “You’re just too good to be true!” he sang. “Can’t take my eyes offa yooooou.”

  Klein marched out of the bathroom with only a towel wrapped around his body. Ellie sat bolt upright in the chair. Even though it was his room, she felt like he was invading her space by stepping out of the bathroom like that. What the hell? Didn’t the hotel have bath robes, she thought, or had they all burned to ash in the big fire of ’78? She tried not to look, but it was too late. She’d seen enough. Klein had floppy man boobs hanging over the towel. His upper body and legs were as hairless as a mannequin and covered in droplets of water that plummeted onto the carpet and left stains. Ellie noticed how skinny Klein’s legs were in proportion to the rest of his body. If he went to the gym at all, every day was upper body day.

  She felt her joints tightening as if someone had pulled a rope inside her.

  “Damn that was good,” Klein said, announcing it to everyone on the fifth floor. He walked in front of the full-length mirror to the left of the door, pressed his face up to the glass and studied his reflection. He looked like a teenager checking for zits. As he adjusted the towel wrapped around his waist, he kept talking like it was no big deal for a married man to be walking around half-naked in a hotel room with a woman he barely knew.

  Ellie’s eyes were glued to the script although she wasn’t reading.

  “Hey,” Klein called over. “You need a shower? You’re more than welcome to use it if you want? The water pressure’s great in there. It’s like being hosed down by the gods or something.”

  Ellie shook her head. “No thanks.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  She was trying to breathe. Trying not to let Klein see how uncomfortable she was in the current situation. Or maybe she should let him see? Would it make a difference? She kept her eyes on the script but the words were starting to blur and that initial blur was spreading across the page. Blurred vision was never good.

  Was she about to zone out in here? Another syncopal episode?

  Or was it…?

  Ellie found herself thinking about the girl in the black and white movie. The movie that was always playing in her head. She thought about the Shadow Man and all the terrible things he did to that girl. What was Ellie doing here in the Chateau Lux? She was in a room that wasn’t safe with a man that wanted more than her acting skills. Anyone could see that. And yet here she was, browsing through a script and going along with it.

  A Tucci script.

  Have you forgotten our script?

  “No,” Ellie said.

  “Did you say something?” Klein asked.

  Ellie shook her head. Pretended to read the script. The places it could take her if she won the part. It was the passport to her dreams and beyond. It meant she’d never have to go back to her shitty job in a department store in the outskirts of Toronto. Who didn’t want to be seen after feeling invisible for their entire life? Fame and fortune and magazine covers with her face all over them. Didn’t she deserve something nice? A Bob Tucci script, of all things, was nice.

  Maybe it was worth it, she thought. Just this one time. After all, Ellie thought to herself, I could have run while he was in the shower. Maybe he was testing me. I heard alarm bells. I could have tossed the script onto the bed, pulled the door open and ran all the way down Lux Lane and back to the Motel Bliss and the smell of French fries and vinegar. But I didn’t. I stayed.

  Klein had moved back to the bathroom doorway. He was only a couple of meters away, looking at her.

  “W
hat’s that tune you were humming a second ago?”

  Ellie felt like someone had just shone a flashlight in her eyes. “Huh? What tune?”

  “Sounded like you were singing Happy Birthday just a second ago.”

  “Happy Birthday? Was I?”

  “Yeah.”

  Ellie wiped her thumb around the corner of her eye. To her relief, when she took it away, her vision was a little clearer. She blinked hard. Had she blacked out already? Was she just stressed out because Klein was standing half-naked, almost within touching distance?

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure. Think I don’t know how that song goes?”

  “I don’t remember singing anything. I zone out sometimes.”

  Shit. That was a dumb thing to say. What producer in their right mind wanted a liability on a multi-million-dollar film shoot?

  “So, is there a reason you’re singing Happy Birthday?” Klein said. His tone was playful, like he was talking to a child. “Something you’re not telling me Ellie Ferguson? Huh?”

  “No,” Ellie said, scratching her head. “I mean, it was my birthday not that long ago. On the day I always get a few calls from distant family members and they always sing down the phone like I’m still seven years old. My grandmother in Vancouver called. My cousin Lauren in Hawaii. My Aunt Betty. I guess the tune is permanently stuck in my head.”

  Klein laughed. “Cute.”

  He took a step closer.

  “You want me to sing to you?” Klein asked. “It’s a little late I know but turns out I’m late with everyone’s birthday these days. Let me sing to you, Ellie.”

  Ellie was frozen in the seat. She didn’t want Klein to sing to her. Given the choice, she’d rather press her ear up close and listen to squeaky chalk running over a blackboard.

  “You want to sing to me?”

  “Sure.”

  “Yeah,” Ellie said. Something told her to let him do it. “Okay, I’d like that. On one condition.”

  “What?”

  Ellie grabbed her iPhone off the table. “Mind if I record it? My mom will never believe me when I go back home and tell her that the one and only Grady Klein sang Happy Birthday to me. You don’t mind, do you?”

  Klein stared at the phone. After a moment, he shrugged.

  “Don’t see the harm in it. Do me a favor though Ellie. Don’t upload it to YouTube or anything like that, huh? I’m not exactly Elvis Presley and I’m not exactly dressed to kill either.”

  He laughed. This time, Ellie joined in.

  “I won’t,” she said, holding her iPhone out like she was about to conduct an interview. “I’m not filming, just recording the audio. Take it away, Elvis.”

  Somehow, she managed to sit there with a polite smile as Klein delivered the world’s creepiest rendition of Happy Birthday. As he sang, he walked towards Ellie, two steps forward, two steps back in a fumbling dad-trying-to-be-hip-dance, the sort of dance that teenage girls have nightmares about. His voice was raspy, breaking up on the high notes.

  ‘The Bulldog’, as the industry sycophants referred to Klein, couldn’t sing for shit.

  Ellie held the iPhone close. It was getting blurry in her hand. She was still worried about blacking out in the same room as a known sex predator and one who was currently serenading her if you could call it that. But she had to do this. Anyway, it was just the nerves. Emotional distress making things blurry, not helped by the godawful singing.

  She took a sip of black coffee, hoping it would clear her head.

  “There you go,” Klein said, bringing the song to an end. He pointed at the phone in Ellie’s hand. “You can play that recording every year on your birthday and that way I’ll always be there to sing to you. How’d you like that sweetheart?”

  Ellie put the coffee cup back down on the counter.

  “Great. That sounds great.”

  “Did Jami only offer you coffee? Just coffee?”

  Ellie stared at the coffee machine on the table. “Yeah. That’s cool, I wasn’t expecting anything else.”

  Klein made a loud tut-tutting noise. He marched over to the edge of the table with those heavy feet, stopping about a meter from where Ellie was sitting. She rubbed her eyes again. Blinked. She knew she had to get her shit together. This was not a good time to black out.

  “You come all the way to LA from Canada,” he said, rummaging through a paper bag propped up against the wall, “and the first thing someone offers you to drink is a lousy cup of Chateau Lux coffee? That’s not cool. Not cool at all. Hey, where are you staying by the way?”

  Ellie wished he would slow down a little.

  “Umm, a motel. Not far from here.”

  “You walk it here? Take a cab?”

  “Walked.”

  Ellie leaned back in the seat.

  Christ. Something was happening alright. It was syncope or it was that other thing that made her go under sometimes. It was her. Maybe it was just nerves. Now that she was here alone in a room with Klein, it was all too much. It was hot and she was sweating under her t-shirt. Was she really up to this? She couldn’t help but hear Cassandra’s voice in her head sometimes and it seemed that the doubts in Ellie’s head often took form in the shape of her former best friend. Either her face or her voice. She was an unwelcome guest that Ellie couldn’t get rid of.

  What if everyone else is right and we’re wrong?

  What if Ellie?

  “No.”

  “You reading from the script?” Klein asked, straightening up with a bottle of wine in his hand.

  “Uhh, sure.”

  “A proper drink,” Klein said, holding the bottle up like it was a trophy. “That’s what you need.”

  Ellie clung to the script like it was a safety blanket. “What is it?”

  “Coffee’s a wake-up call,” Klein said. “We can do much better than a wake-up-call, considering that you’ve come all the way from Toronto to see us. What’s that? Two thousand miles? Two and a half? What I’m holding in my hand is a Cabernet Sauvignon. Napa Valley, eight hundred bucks a bottle. You ever taste wine that costs eight hundred bucks for a bottle? You gotta try it, you gotta try this. It’ll blow your mind baby.”

  Klein was talking so fast that Ellie couldn’t keep up. On and on he went, riffing about the wine and its origins and how many bottles of this stuff he had in his private cellar at his house in Malibu. Despite feeling dizzy, Ellie was tempted. A glass of wine might help unscramble the mindfuck she was currently wading through. Or maybe it would accelerate it, only one way to find out. If nothing else, a drink would help Ellie get her nerves under control and nerves were the thing she needed to get on top of first and foremost. Relaxation was key. The nerves were screwing with her ability to concentrate on anything.

  “Sure. I’ll have a glass.”

  “Atta girl!”

  Klein skated two glasses over the desk. He opened the Cabernet Sauvignon whilst humming another tune and very quickly, as if he was in a hurry, poured out two large ones.

  “So how’d it go with the script?” he asked, handing a glass to Ellie. “Thoughts?”

  Ellie nodded her appreciation as she took the wine. Script? She couldn’t remember a damn thing about it. Something about a girl called Sally, about horror and thriller and psychology, and how it didn’t matter that she had hardly any lines in the damn thing because it was a Bob Tucci and that was the golden ticket. She tried to think of something constructive to say. Something that would make her sound like she belonged in a room by herself with the starmaker and that she deserved to be reading the first draft of a script written by a bona fide moviemaking genius.

  Say something, she thought.

  Anything.

  A gallery of single words without meaning flashed in Ellie’s mind, neon lights blinking on and off.

  Tucci.

  Thriller.

  Sally.

  Revenge.

  “I’ve only skimmed a few pages so far,” she said, after a second sip. “But it l
ooks good.”

  “Of course it looks good,” Klein said, putting the bottle on the table and stepping back with the glass in hand. He swirled the glass with vigor, then stuck his nose in to smell the aromas. “Bob Tucci couldn’t write a dud script if he tried. It’s just not in his DNA. Movies, novels, plays, TV shows – this guy can do it all and he has done it all. Guy’s a moneymaking machine these days but I remember when he was a pencil-necked nobody working a dead-end job in Long Beach. He was a goddamn nerd. Funding his first movie was a big gamble and everyone who supposedly knew better thought I was crazy for getting involved. Turned out to be the best career move I ever made.”

  He raised his glass.

  “Here’s to Tucci,” he said. “And here’s to you Ellie and what I hope will be the beginning of a special friendship between us. Welcome to Hollywood. Welcome to immortality.”

  They both reached over to clink glasses.

  “Thank you,” Ellie said.

  She took a sip of the expensive Cabernet Sauvignon. It was good but that didn’t change the fact, at least in Ellie’s mind, that it was little more than pricey grape juice from Napa Valley.

  “Not bad, huh?” Klein said, watching her closely.

  “It’s nice,” Ellie said, sitting the glass on the table next to the script. For a moment, she almost put it on the script, turning the brand new Tucci movie into a coaster. With any luck, the eight hundred bucks a bottle Cabernet Sauvignon would start proving its worth and immunize Ellie against the sight of Klein’s pink nipples staring at her over that towel.

  Or maybe he’d do the right thing and put a shirt on.

  Ellie could smell Klein’s body odor, despite the fact he’d just come out of the shower. Either that, or it was the carpet.

  “What do you say we take a look at the script?” Klein said. “I did promise you a screen test after all.”

  Ellie didn’t answer.

  “Ellie? Earth to Ellie. You wanna read for me?”

  She unknotted her tongue. “Yeah. Sorry, I was miles away.”

  Klein dug out another copy of the Tucci script from within one of the bags on the floor. Ellie didn’t know which way to look as bent over in front of her. She reached for the wine, drank with her eyes closed.