Scream Test: An unforgettable and gripping psychological thriller

by Mark Gillespie

  He’s expecting you.

  Nicole would take this particular errand off Jami’s overworked hands. Now all she had to do was get to the house before Klein’s PA. She turned to the digital clock beside the bed. It wasn’t even twelve o’clock yet.

  She had time.

  Time to make that call to Ohio.

  But she’d clean up first – that was a must. Avoiding the blood on the floor as best she could, Nicole grabbed the tote bag off the desk, opened it up and took out the first spare set of t-shirt and jeans she’d dropped in there this morning along with the knife. She pinched the garments at the ends to avoid getting any blood on them. Then she stepped over Klein’s body, locking herself in the bathroom for the second time that morning.

  She ran a shower and stood under the hot water. It felt good, scrubbing the last of his blood off her skin.

  It would be over soon, she thought. She’d lucked out with the timing, no doubt about that. Nicole had expected to spend weeks in LA, kissing Klein’s ass and playing good girl before the opportunity came to go to the Shadow Man’s house for a visit. But here was an opening and it showed up on day one. It was luck or fate. It was the gods smiling down on her, willing this to happen. This thing could be over and done with quickly.

  And then, peace.

  She hurried out of the shower. After drying herself and putting on a plain white t-shirt and pale blue jeans, Nicole returned to the bedside table. She laced up a pair of fresh sneakers and then, after drinking three glasses of water, found a spot to sit down on the bed that wasn’t speckled or stained red. It felt great to be in clean clothes again. With a deep breath, Nicole picked up the handset and punched out the number for the West Store in Youngstown, Ohio.

  Her hands were shaking. Just a little.

  The ringing tone lasted a few seconds. Then a man’s voice answered.

  “West Store, Youngstown. You’re speaking with John – how may I help you?” The introduction was slow and labored. A strong, commanding voice that had shriveled up with time.

  “Hello,” he said. “Is there anyone there?”

  “Hello.”

  “Yes. Can I help you?”

  Nicole ran a hand through her damp hair. “Am I speaking to John West?”

  “You sure are. This is John West of the West Store, Youngstown. Your one-stop-shop for all your jewelry needs – watches, rings, necklaces, not to mention repairs and custom designs. How can I help you this morning?”

  Nicole smiled and brought the mouthpiece closer to her lips. “My name is Ellie Ferguson. You don’t know me, John. May I call you John?”

  “By all means. What can I do for you, Ellie?”

  “I’m an actress, originally from Toronto, now living in Los Angeles. The reason I’m calling you today is that I wanted to let you know I’m playing the part of your sister in an upcoming movie. Your sister, Nicole.”

  There was a long pause.

  “You’re playing the part of my sister?”

  “I am.”

  “Oh. I see”

  “Yeah. The movie is very sympathetic to her story. Very sympathetic. And to your mom too, of course. You don’t need to worry that it’ll be sensationalist garbage or anything like that. It’s not a daytime TV movie. For once, someone telling this story is on their side, committed to getting the truth out, and I just wanted to let you know. It’s only right that you should know.”

  There was another pause.

  “Well,” John said, his voice heavy and slow. “That’s most considerate of you to let me know. Tell you the truth Ellie, I’ve just about said everything I can think to say about Nicole and my mother. About what happened.”

  “I know you have. And I don’t mean to bother you. I don’t need anything from you either in terms of preparation. It’s just that you’re the last of Nicole’s siblings. Somehow it felt right to talk to you before I do this thing.”

  There’d been another West sibling besides Nicole and John. Stacey West, the youngest of the three children, had died of ovarian cancer aged fifty. She’d lived alone in Madison, Wisconsin, most of her life, working as an artist and leaving behind a great body of work that was admired by her peers. She’d never married and there were no children.

  “Well,” John said. “I’m still not sure what I can do to help.”

  “You don’t need to do anything,” Nicole said, her lips still touching the mouthpiece. She could almost smell the old man’s breath down the line. “I’ve read all the interviews that I can find online and in print about a hundred times already. Maybe it’s silly but I just wanted to hear your voice. Most of all, I wanted to reach out to someone who loved Nicole. Someone who cared about her. Seems like the world has mostly forgotten about her and your mom. You were a young boy when it happened, right?”

  “When what happened?”

  “When they were murdered.”

  A pause.

  “Well, we don’t know for sure what happened. Except that they disappeared. But yes, I was eleven years old at the time. And that’ll make me a whopping, oooh, seventy-eight now, I think.”

  “You’re seventy-eight?”

  “Honestly, I forget my own age sometimes. It’s easy to lose count when you get as old as I am.”

  A raspy chuckle.

  Nicole’s online research told her that John West had been a hyperactive child. That was hard to reconcile with the exhausted voice on the other end of the line. It was clear that he’d gone off the rails for a few years after his mother and sister’s disappearance. After their death. He’d become a juvenile delinquent in the late fifties, one of those early baby boomers in the James Dean mold with the red jacket, blue jeans and the messy quiff. After the 1954 murders, one of the ‘happy family’ shots still available online showed a picture of a fifteen-year-old Nicole, dressed in shorts and t-shirt, chasing her younger brother with a spray hose around the back garden in the family home, eight miles outside Columbus.

  “Why are you still working John?” Nicole asked. “Shouldn’t you be retired? Sitting at home with your feet up?”

  The old man laughed.

  “Always been my own boss. Besides I got my daughter doing most of the legwork around here. I’m more of an ornament these days but that’s okay-dokey with me. A lot of the old-timers still come in for a chat and you know how it is, they appreciate seeing me in here. Anyway, what would I do at home? Sit on my old ass and stare at the TV all day? No thanks. Ain’t much of a gardener either. I built this store from nothing and it’s where I belong until I fall off the perch.”

  “Your daughter,” Nicole said. That hadn’t popped up in the research. “What’s her name?”

  “I got two of ’em. The eldest is Deirdre, named after my mother and the other one – well you can probably guess what we called her.”

  “Nicole.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s my youngest and she works here with me in the store.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Yeah, she looks like my sister too. Lucky girl. Nicole was a beauty and I never saw a prettier face in all my life. But maybe that’s just the little boy in me remembering the older sister he worshipped. Anyway, it’s nice. I see my sister looking out from within my daughter’s eyes sometimes, telling me that she and mom are alright. I don’t know what happened to them, but I know they’re alright.”

  Nicole leaned back a couple of inches. She saw her battered reflection in the mirror. Klein’s blood was gone but the old blood was still tattooed on her skin. So were the bruises.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “I’m sorry if this is making you upset. Making you think about the past.”

  “I’m okay. Broken hearts never heal, do they? Not really. We just do whatever we can to forget about them. Lots of time, fill up our lives with distraction. Maybe that’s why I’m still working, who knows? But when I close my eyes at night…”

  “You see them.”

  There was a deep sigh on the other end of the line. “When’s this picture of yours coming ou
t then?”

  “Huh?”

  “This picture you’re starring in – the one about Nicole and my mother. You did say it was a movie, didn’t you? Or is it a TV show?”

  “It’s a movie,” Nicole said. “And it’ll be in black and white.”

  “That’s a nice touch – I still think black and white movies are better than all this fancy-dan color we got nowadays. It’s coming out when?”

  “Real soon,” Nicole said, staring at Klein’s grisly corpse on the floor. “Production is underway as we speak. Just between you and me John, you’ll probably see something about it on the evening news tonight. So whatever you do, keep watching.”

  “Today? I’ll see something about it today?”

  “Yes. I’ll do them both proud, I swear. People won’t be able to forget their story second time around.”

  There was a hint of bitterness in the old man’s voice. “They pushed that story aside when it first happened. The cops, I mean. Most people were happy to forget about the disappearance of my mother and sister and get on with their lives. I never forgave them for that.”

  She heard the old man coughing. The weak voice, the raspy cough – it didn’t sound like he was in the best of health.

  “Goodbye John,” Nicole said. “Just one more thing before I go. I want to tell you that I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” John said, clearing his throat and then coughing once more. “I don’t understand. What are you sorry for?”

  “Your big sister is sorry. Sorry that she wasn’t there for you.”

  Nicole put the phone down.

  11

  She wrapped up the knife for the second time that day, smothering it deep in the folds of the second set of spare clothes. Then she placed the clothes bundle in the bag and walked over to the full-length mirror beside the door.

  “We’ve got work to do.”

  Nicole placed a cosmetics case on the counter. She put on a subtle layer of makeup – a touch of mascara, warm-toned eyeshadow and some lipstick. Nothing that hid the damage of long ago, but it made her feel better.

  She grabbed her bag, slung it across her shoulder and stopped at the door. Her attention returned to the body on the floor. How long before anyone noticed Klein was missing? Late afternoon? Early evening? It would most likely be Jami or his wife what’s-her-name who’d raise the alarm but there was still time before that happened. Time enough to get to the Hollywood Hills.

  She hoped.

  Nicole closed the door to Room 59 behind her, walked down the empty hallway and stepped into the elevator. She hit the button for the first floor. The doors slid over and when they opened again, instead of the SWAT team she’d feared might be waiting for her, Nicole discovered that nobody in the lobby was paying much attention to her. Like Klein, they couldn’t see. They saw a woman in fresh clothes with clean skin and damp hair. They saw a tall, statuesque blonde strolling towards the front door, a tourist on her way out for a walk around West Hollywood. Or a wannabe actress, rushing out to keep a lunch date.

  She pushed through the glass doors, hurrying down Lux Lane. Pulse racing, desperate to put distance between herself and the hotel and the corpse lying on the floor in Room 59. She relaxed a little when she was back out on Sunset Boulevard, raising her face to the sun as she traveled west along the sidewalk.

  Los Angeles. Miles and miles of concrete and glass. Billboards towering above Nicole’s head, screaming for dollars. But her focus was on the sky, on a purple-bluish haze of cirrostratus clouds, thin and sheet-like.

  It was nice to be back.

  Toronto International Film Festival

  September 17th, 2017

  The noise was enough to make Ellie dizzy. There was a buzz, an electric jolt of energy and it felt contagious. It was like being at a rock concert, such was the level of excitement in the air. The streets were clogged from end to end with fans yelling, begging for the celebrities to notice them as they arrived at the theater. The celebs signed autographs. Struck a pose. Photographers hollered at their subjects on the red carpet, asking them to turn around and make eye contact.

  Cameras flashing endlessly. More screaming. There was no end to it.

  The magic of the movies. Tonight, it was in Toronto.

  This was the premiere of The Exorcism of Cassandra Saint, directed by Oscar-winning director George Ludlum, and made in association with Klein Productions, and based on the best-selling book by Allie Sawyer. It was almost seven o’clock in the evening and Ellie was packed in amongst the hordes of people who’d gathered outside the TIFF Bell Lightbox on King Street West to catch a glimpse of the stars, most of who were in town to promote the movie.

  Ellie still hadn’t gotten past how crazy all this was. Surreal. A heavily fictionalized account of a godawful book whose author had taken countless liberties with the truth and that was putting it mildly. And all of it starting with Ellie’s old friend, Cassandra and one morning in 2009 when things had gotten too much. Ellie had watched the movie’s teaser trailer on YouTube. Once, that was all she could handle. It was as bad as she’d feared. A generic horror flick with no relation to what really happened. There was nothing of Cassandra in there and instead, Debbie Frost, a skeletal fifteen-year-old Instagram favorite who was transitioning into acting, was playing the lead role. There was nothing of Cassandra’s shitty upbringing in there. Reality was ignored in favor of sensationalism, not for the first or last time. To Ellie’s horror, Cassandra’s parents were being portrayed as loving, considerate people who were terrified for their daughter’s safety in the face of a supernatural threat. Already, the hype teams were dubbing The Exorcism of Cassandra Saint as the true spiritual successor to The Exorcist.

  But Ellie hadn’t shown up at the premiere to protest the film’s credibility. That was a losing battle and besides, she had other more important business to attend to. Tonight, she was dolled up. The t-shirt and jeans were gone. As she stood outside the theater, Ellie was dressed to the nines in a red Calvin Klein gown that wrapped around her tall, slender figure like a dream. She’d even gone to the hair salon in Scarborough and let them dye her sandy colored hair. Now she was platinum blonde and Ellie wore her new silvery hair loose, flowing over her shoulders and almost down to the waist. High-heels. Lipstick. Polished nails. Everything was on point tonight.

  And it was working. She was turning heads.

  Ellie walked back and forth behind the barrier, smiling at the security personnel. She pressed her cellphone to her ear, pretending to talk like a PA, pointing at the venue and addressing famous people associated with the movie by their first name. She wanted the security stiffs to become familiar with her face. She also wanted them to see her Film Rep Pass (expensive) and the VIP pass (forged at even greater expense), which were clearly on display and hanging around her neck.

  This was Ellie’s first acting gig in a long time. Unpaid, but with a potential reward that exceeded anything that money could buy. She was playing the role of assistant to the stars and everything she was doing was the action of someone who belonged on the red carpet. How nice it was, she thought, to slip back into the skin of someone else. How comforting. She’d missed her acting due to the fact that she wasn’t getting many gigs. Not getting gigs meant working longer, soul-crushing hours at Holt Renfrew to stay afloat.

  Tonight, she’d change that. It was time to reignite that dormant purpose she’d been neglecting for too long.

  Black limousines pulled up at the edge of the road. There were screams of excitement everywhere while Ellie looked at her watch. The man she was expecting should be here at any minute.

  She put her cellphone to her ear again.

  “Yeah,” she said, speaking over the crowd. All the while, she was edging closer to the road. To the slip point in between the street and the barrier. The security personnel within earshot couldn’t help but overhear what she was saying.

  “That’s good,” Ellie continued. “That’s awesome. He’s arriving out front in a couple of minutes so I’ll be up t
here soon. Okay? Great. Bye, bye, bye.”

  Ellie went straight into another fake call, forcing her way past the die-hards. She halted within ten feet of the road which was damp after a slight drizzle of rain earlier in the evening. Security stiffs were everywhere, mostly big and burly men in dark suits and every single one of them wearing a mandatory look of grim concentration. Some were mumbling into walkie-talkies. Eyeballing the crowd for anything out of the ordinary.

  Ellie looked both ways down the road.

  Where was the white limo? He always turned up at these kind of events in a white stretch limo. It was his calling card.

  Ellie’s nostrils twitched. She could smell cigarette smoke hanging in the air. Maybe a little weed too, coming from the back of the crowd. All around, autograph books and cellphones were hoisted in the air by the mob of excited fans as a fresh procession of actors exited the black limos and made their way towards the theater door.

  Ellie stood at the end of the barrier. People beside her jostled for a better position, trying to get within arm’s reach of the stars, but she held them off. Someone who tried to barge past her felt the point of her elbow in their ribs.

  It was another three minutes before the white limo pulled up outside the theater. The crowd hollered and screamed. Did they know who was inside? Most of the people crammed behind the festival barriers were there to see the stars. The actors, not the producers.

  Unlike Ellie. She was there to meet one man and one man only.

  The spectators’ noise was starting to feel like a hammer drill inside Ellie’s head. Just the right time, she thought, to slip through the barrier and take her place with the celebrities on the red carpet.

  There was a flurry of activity around the white limo. Someone standing on the road opened the back door and Ellie watched as two people stepped out, a man and a woman, flanked by a swarm of security. The swarm didn’t hang around. It approached the crimson-hued carpet that ran in between the two signature TIFF barriers and wound its way towards the theater door.

  Grady Klein. The biggest, brashest, most famous movie producer in the world and Ellie was going to meet him tonight. He was wearing a dark suit with a white shirt unbuttoned at the top. Klein’s tanned bulldog features eased into a relaxed grin as he made his way off the rain-soaked street and onto the red carpet, all the while receiving the adoration of the crowd.