Scream Test: An unforgettable and gripping psychological thriller

by Mark Gillespie

  “Get off me.”

  His hands were all over her. He pulled and pinched at her body as if she was a toy to be inspected. As if he’d lost something of vital importance underneath Ellie’s skin and was trying to relocate it. His hand roamed her thighs, back down the leg and then up again. Klein moaned with pleasure. Then he stopped, lifted his head up and looked at Ellie.

  “Crazy girls, you’re the best.”

  My mouth. Not yours.

  Ellie managed to wriggle backwards a few inches, the sweat on Klein’s body loosening his overall grip on her. She gasped for air and as she lifted her head off the mattress, she caught a brief glimpse of her reflection in the diamond-shaped mirror across the room. She didn’t look scared. An accusing look hissed back at her.

  We’ve got work to do.

  Ellie’s head fell back onto the pillow. She winced like there was wet soap in her eyes.

  “Get off me!”

  The tired mattress sunk like a water-filled dinghy. Klein grabbed Ellie at the waist and forced her several inches back towards the headboard. The top of her head slammed into the wood and Ellie grimaced. At least she didn’t black out. She was alert, ready to seize whatever opportunity came her way. Klein pushed her back still even though there was nowhere else to go. Felt to Ellie like he was repositioning a mannequin. A sex doll.

  He crawled after her on the bed, stroking his dick.

  “Wanna get fucked?”

  “No,” Ellie said, both arms outstretched.

  “Happy Birthday to yoooou…”

  Outside, Ellie could just about hear the monotonous sound of traffic on Sunset Boulevard. The beep of a car horn. The sudden shriek of tires on asphalt. It all sounded so far away.

  Klein was close. Closer. His face was a distorted Picasso, all the fragments shattered and reassembled in the wrong places. Ellie saw a man with a hundred eyes. A hundred flickering tongues that all wanted her.

  He grabbed her legs and tried to prize them open with brute force. “Camera’s rolling baby.” His hands didn’t feel human. More like scaly claws on the brink of piercing her skin and drawing rivers of blood that would flood Room 59 from floor to ceiling. The pain was intense. By now, Klein was just a writhing sack of lust on top of Ellie. A thing that couldn’t be bargained with.

  She kept hitting him, exhaustion seeping into her leaden arms. She’d carried his weight for what felt like forever.

  “STOP!”

  Klein made a lustful hissing noise. It sounded like steam leaking from a valve. He was trying to pull Ellie’s t-shirt over her head. She fought back, wriggling constantly and making it as difficult as possible for him to maneuver her clothes off.

  Christ, she was tired. She heard a ripping noise as those sweaty, sausage fingers continued to claw at the garment. Klein was nuzzling her forearm. Her shoulder. Licking her skin like Ellie was the last dollop of ice cream on the fat kid’s spoon.

  Ellie howled in frustration.

  White-hot anger shot out of her, gushing upwards like geyser water. She lashed out with a series of quick slaps. To her horror, Klein started laughing. It was as if he enjoyed the fightback. Ellie gritted her teeth. Extending her index finger, she stabbed the tip of her nail into Klein’s mushy eye socket. It felt warm and juicy.

  Klein’s scream was deafening.

  He rolled off Ellie, both hands covering his wounded eye. Ellie felt like a tank had been lifted off her. She sat up on the bed, her head swimming in exhaustion. Then she was back on her feet, bouncing off the wall as she tried to walk forward and not trip over Klein’s bags which littered the corners of the floor. Her shirt was torn in several places – on the sleeve, neck and at the bottom. She hurried to the bathroom and once inside, closed the door and turned the lock. As she stood there, back against the door, she felt the sensation of fresh scratches on the back of her neck. A stinging pain seared her arms and legs.

  “Fucker,” she yelled. “You motherfucker!”

  She jumped as heavy footsteps charged towards the bathroom door. The handle rattled as Klein tried to turn it from the outside. Several loud bangs shook the wall. Sounded like Klein either kicking or barging his shoulder against the door.

  “ELLIE! Open the door. Open it now.”

  The lock held as Klein continued his assault. He was determined to get in. To get her. Ellie backed away, never taking her eyes off the door in case it flew off the hinges. She was certain he would kill her if he got in now. Bang her head off the floor till it split open and spilled brains all over the tiles. Strangulation. He was a powerful figure in this town and if he wanted to make her disappear, he could and he’d get away with it. Not like it hadn’t happened before.

  The banging stopped. It was followed by a round of muffled cursing.

  “Oh man,” Klein said. Ellie could hear the pain in his cracked voice. Then wild laughter. “Bob’s going to love you. My instincts were right, Ellie Ferguson. I knew they were right the moment I first set eyes on you in Canada. Holy shit. You can act girl and what’s more you got that fire in your blood again. I love it – that was one hell of a screen test we just put on baby. One hell of a screen test. No half-measures. Right? You went all the way and I respect that. Come on. Come out, let’s talk and we’ll watch the footage back. In fact, don’t even need to do that. You passed the test with flying colors. You want that part? It’s yours.”

  Ellie stared at the white-paneled door, waiting.

  “Ellie, you don’t think what happened out here was real. Do you? You thought that was real?”

  The laughter that followed was a little too hysterical for Ellie’s liking.

  She heard more cursing outside. If Ellie had to guess, she’d say that Klein was standing in front of the full-length mirror, checking out his eye and the damage her finger had caused. She wondered if he was still butt naked.

  Another knock on the door.

  “C’mon Ellie. Come out, will you? I don’t blame you for freaking out back there but it was only acting. It’s okay. Can we talk?”

  Ellie looked around the tiny bathroom. Toilet, shower, sink, mirror. But no window to escape from. Not that a window would be of much use on the fifth floor unless there was an emergency staircase outside. No, the only way out of Room 59 was to walk through the same door she’d entered earlier. That meant she’d have to go back into the main room. She’d have to face Klein.

  “Ellie,” Klein said, his voice bubbling up with anger again. He hammered the door. “What the fuck’s going on in there?”

  Ellie didn’t answer. She crept on her tiptoes over to the sink and ran the cold-water faucet. Leaning her head forwards, she splashed water onto her face and onto the scratch marks on her lower neck. The wounds weren’t as bad as she’d first thought. Neither were the marks on her arms. Superficial nothings, but they stung like a bitch.

  After about a minute of soaking, she patted her skin down with a fresh towel.

  “No more games,” she whispered. “Now you’ve seen it for yourself. Seen what he is.”

  She ran the hot water on full. The mirror steamed up quickly and Ellie watched as her reflection began to fade in the mist. Klein was still talking out there, either to himself or to Ellie, but his voice shrank beneath the force of the running water.

  Ellie reached out and put her finger to the fogged-up glass. She began to write. The letters were long and carefully drawn.

  MY MOUTH. NOT YOURS.

  She drew a sad face beside the words. Then another face next to that. Two eyes, a nose and a wide-open mouth frozen in a silent scream. She finished it off with a broken line of dots, tears spilling from the eyes, running all the way down to the edge of the sink.

  The bathroom felt like a sauna. Ellie cut off the hot water faucet.

  “Ellie, are you listening to me in there? Don’t embarrass me like this. Please. I’m a very important guy in this town and you don’t want to piss me off by embarrassing me.”

  Ellie wiped the mirror clean with the back of her hand. After cle
aring the center of the glass, she saw a girl looking back at her from the other side of the mirror. A teenage girl with jet black hair and olive skin. She was wearing a white embroidered summer dress with a ruffled hem. Her undeniable beauty peeked out from under a hideous mask of blood and bruises. There was a sad smile on the girl’s face. This was the girl who’d suffered at the hands of the Shadow Man and for years, along with the weight of cuts and bruises, had felt his hot spit in her mouth. But Ellie could feel it too because they were friends and friends shared the good and bad.

  The girl’s bruises were Ellie’s bruises. Her dreams were Ellie’s dreams.

  “Hello,” Ellie said.

  The other girl’s lips moved at the same time, forming the same greeting.

  Ellie pulled a fresh towel off the rack and dried her hands. Then she backed off towards the tiled wall and slowly, slid down to a half-squatting position.

  “Where have you been Nicole?”

  8

  “I swear to God,” Klein said through the door. “If you don’t come out now, you’ll never work in this town.”

  His voice was full of quiet menace. Sounded like he was leaning up against the door, waiting for Ellie to come out.

  “Coming out here to LA, it’ll all be for nothing. I can blacklist you ten times over. I can blacklist you in the time it takes to do a piss. Do you understand what that means?”

  Ellie straightened up and walked over to the shower. She turned the lever so that the water gushed out at full blast. The downpour thundered off the base like hailstones, heating up quickly and drowning out Klein’s ongoing threats. Ellie stood in front of the screen door, watching as the glass misted up. She raised her finger and traced the words that filtered through her mind. There was a squeaking noise as the letters emerged in slow vertical and horizontal scrawls, as if the writer was still in the process of learning the craft.

  I PUT SOMETHING IN YOUR BAG.

  Ellie read the words over and over again. Her bag was in the other room, sitting on the countertop beside Klein’s tripod stand. Beside the unfinished cup of coffee and the glass of Cabernet Sauvignon.

  “I put something in your bag,” she whispered. “What is it? What’s in my bag?”

  Ellie thought back to packing her bag in the motel room that morning. It was a blank. Like it had never happened. She could remember some things. Like waking up. Like sitting on the stairs trying to summon up the courage to call Klein, as well as the smell of French fries, vinegar and the feeling of the early morning sun on her skin. That bitch from the Klein Agency. The conversation with Jami. After that, she’d gone back to the room and then nothing. Next thing, she was walking west along Sunset Boulevard, the Chateau Lux towering over her.

  “I’m going to break this fucking door down,” Klein yelled, raising his voice so that it could be heard over the shower. “This is my hotel room. I paid for it and you’re an intruder who won’t leave. Want me to call the cops? Maybe you should know that some of my best friends in this town are cops. Real high-ranking ones too. If they come here Ellie, it won’t end well for you.”

  Ellie ignored him. She continued to stare at the steamed-up screen. Then her finger moved and the glass squeaked. Underneath the first line, the writing continued.

  NICOLE.

  “Are you in this room?” Ellie asked.

  IN YOU.

  “I’m sorry,” Ellie said. “I saw the Bob Tucci script and I got carried away. I almost forgot about you.”

  More squeaking.

  IT WAS MY MOUTH HE SPAT IN, NOT YOURS.

  “I know,” Ellie said. “And I know where the Shadow Man is. You want to go find him?”

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Are you coming out or not?” Klein asked, his voice still belligerent. “Last time I’m going to ask. Last time, I swear to God.”

  It was the girl who turned off the shower. Slowly, she walked to the mirror, wiped down the glass and stared at her battered reflection.

  “Be out in a minute,” she said.

  9

  Nicole stood in front of the mirror, watching the endless loop of torture playing over in her mind. The blood, the bruises, the beatings, the spitting and the raping. It was no longer in black and white. This was color.

  And he was standing over her.

  The Shadow Man.

  He was close, she knew that now, and she had to find him. Not in the dream but out there in the world, in the City of Angels where he’d survived all these years. Where he was loved and cherished and revered as a saint. But before that, she had something for the other man. The man outside the bathroom door.

  “ELLIE!” Klein roared. “I can hear you moving around in there goddammit. Will you come out and start behaving like an adult please? Listen, we’ll put the screen test behind us. I thought you were ready but I was wrong. I’m giving you a chance here sweetheart. You can still be in Tucci’s movie. Now, for the last time, will you please come out?”

  Nicole gazed at the battered reflection in the mirror. Her black hair, languishing in tousled curls. Purple bruises. Cuts that kept bleeding.

  “I’m coming.”

  “Well it’s about goddamn time,” Klein snapped. “This is getting ridiculous.”

  Nicole tore her eyes away from the mirror, the hint of a smile on her face. She placed her fingers on the door handle.

  “Here I come.”

  She pulled the door open and Klein was standing in front of her. Hands on hips, blinking fast, sweating buckets. He looked behind her as if there might be someone else in the bathroom with her. The white of Klein’s left eye was a blotchy red color and the sight of it, the thought of his discomfort, made Nicole’s heart beat faster. He’d put on some clothes at last – his crumpled jeans along with a fresh V-neck sweater and a pale blue shirt underneath. His eyes narrowed as he stared at the young woman framed in the bathroom doorway.

  “Okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s get back to work, shall we?”

  Nicole nodded. She walked out of the bathroom, moving past Klein as if he wasn’t there. She caught sight of her reflection in the full-length mirror and marveled at how Klein couldn’t see her. Couldn’t see the cuts and bruises.

  “Okay,” Klein said, his voice softening. “Let’s start over again, shall we? You kinda freaked me out for a minute there Ellie. Did you really think what we were doing on the bed was real? Seriously? You do understand what a screen test is, right baby? It’s preparation and that’s a whole lot more than just reading lines off a script. Got it? Bob is going to ask you to do some pretty fucked up shit in front of the camera and like I said earlier, you gotta get comfortable with being uncomfortable. That’s the Tucci actor’s philosophy in a nutshell. But I understand – you’re not ready. It’s okay. I still have faith in you. All that said, how about we do a little reading for now and then we’ll call it a day. Huh?”

  “I’m nervous,” Nicole said, turning to face Klein. He didn’t flinch as she made eye contact. “This is a big deal.”

  Klein smiled. The red eye made him look like a villain in a James Bond movie. “I see the fire’s back,” he said, stabbing a finger at her. “I like it. That’s what I saw in Canada that night when you backed me into a corner at the premiere. That’s why you’re in this room right now baby doll. You know how many girls would give their right arm to be where you’re standing? Do you?”

  Nicole stared at him. She knew those eyes. Not those eyes, but eyes like them.

  “Yes. I’m very lucky.”

  “You alright? You’re talking kind of funny. Kind of stiff. Did you bang your head off something?”

  “I’m fine. Let’s go to work.”

  Klein clapped his hands together like he was calling the entire city of Los Angeles to attention. He was still talking in a voice that was louder than required. One that hurt Nicole’s head. “That’s my girl. This is a screen test, right? We’re doing a screen test for Bob Tucci for God’s sake. It’s exciting.” />
  Nicole saw a trace of white powder around Klein’s nostril.

  “Right.”

  “Let’s go baby.”

  Klein pointed to the iPhone camera on the desk. “What do you say we do a little acting, huh? Let’s pick up the script and go, go, go. You good? Is everything cool between us?”

  Nicole pointed at the camera, then towards the crumpled bedsheets. The sheets were full of wrinkles, flattened by the weight of their bodies. “More of the same?”

  Klein’s eyes dimmed. He might have even blushed. “Uhh…no. I don’t think so.”

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “Stop talking like a goddamn robot for a start.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You’re okay? You’re ready?”

  “More than ready.”

  Klein edged closer, a look of caution in his eyes like he was creeping up on a sleeping panther. Then he started riffing. “Okay, let’s just read. Let’s try something different and remember, no matter what we say or do, this is purely professional. It’s acting. But I am going to need to see you naked at some point Ellie. Tucci – he’ll want to see it too. You gotta understand, it sounds lewd when I just blurt it out like this but what you look like naked is important. It’s a huge part of the movie, quite literally, because your body’s going to be up there on a massive screen and the eyes of the world are going to be all over you. Millions of people looking at your tits, your ass and whatever else blows their whistle. Jesus, those IMAX screens are at least seventy feet wide. You ever seen a pair of tits jiggling around on an IMAX screen?”

  He stopped and took a deep breath.

  “Okay. We got a little time yet before I gotta meet Johnny so why don’t we try another scene. Huh? Something non-explicit. A lot of actors like to warm up to the meaty stuff, I get that. Alright Ellie? Ready to go?”