The midway came alive around him in a mind-numbing display of bright lights and loud music, even though it was deserted of people. He was alone, running through the nightmare.
As he approached the Bender’s entrance platform, he saw a man standing at the top, holding someone under his arm. The woman’s long blonde hair hung down like a shaggy mop. A gun was pressed against the woman’s temple. To Ethan’s eyes, it seemed distorted, almost as if it was a gasoline nozzle filling the woman’s head. The woman was in shock; her face was locked in a scream.
Ethan was shocked to realize that Robbie had somehow taken Katharine hostage. “You motherfucker!” Ethan screamed, running toward the platform.
Robbie turned and snarled, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Ethan stood mannequin-still, thirty feet below the man he thought he knew.
“You’re fuckin’ brain dead, Eth. Always smart enough to be dangerous.”
Shocked beyond words, Ethan could only stare at the man he had called his friend. He couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sadness. Robbie was standing on an eight-foot-wide metal platform, holding Katharine tightly against him. Ethan didn’t think Katharine was dead, but she wasn’t fighting. She wasn’t moving, for that matter; she was as limp as a Raggedy Ann doll.
“Don’t you fuckin’ move!” Robbie screamed as Ethan adjusted his footing, his heart pounding to its own heavy beat. Katharine moved her head—she wasn’t dead, thank God.
Ethan remained still, realizing he was staring into the face of evil. The moment was surreal. Everything seemed like that. At any second, Ethan expected the director to yell, “Cut!” He struggled to believe it wasn’t a film shoot.
Robbie glared back at him. Despite the distance between them, Ethan was sure he could see tears in Robbie’s eyes. His head was shaved. He looked like Bobby De Niro in Taxi Driver. The Robbie that Ethan knew was no longer in the eyes that stared back at him. Try as he might, Ethan couldn’t convince himself it was the same person. His Robbie was gone, devoured by this apparition that stood on the entrance platform to the Mind Bender.
“Look what you’ve done, you motherfucker!” Robbie shouted down, leaning forward over the steel railing. His eyes bulged. “You fuckin’ paid no attention to me when I wanted you, and now—fuck, I can’t get away from you?”
The Robbie thing cackled. It was a sound that would haunt Ethan whenever he closed his eyes. It was the kind of eerie laugh that wasn’t human. It came from the bowels of hell, at the very formation of evil.
Ethan watched the gun held against the side of Katharine’s blonde head. The scene was unimaginable. He prayed for Robbie to release her.
“Robbie!” Ethan shouted, amazed he could speak. Even from thirty feet away, Ethan could see the dark crimson blood dripping from Robbie’s pant leg onto the platform.
Robbie had been hit. He was moving because he had to. He could barely stand up but knew if he stopped, he was dead. “Don’t fuckin’ talk to me!” Robbie yelled, his voice rough. He spat out a mouthful of blood. Ethan realized Robbie could easily blow him away from where he stood. A trickle of blood ran down Robbie’s already wet chin. It seemed incredible to Ethan that Robbie still was upright. He coughed again, clearing his throat. “I wanted you. You fuck. From the first day we met. But you couldn’t give me the fucking time of day.”
The Robbie thing’s foot slipped in his blood pooling on the platform. Katharine’s head lifted suddenly, causing the gun barrel to jab hard against her. Several terrifying screams followed until her head dropped again. Robbie almost lost his grip on her.
“Why couldn’t you just love me?” Robbie shouted, his face contorted in painful emotion. “It’s just so fucking …” His voice trailed off as he choked out a cough. He spit out a gob of blood that fell to the ground five feet in front of Ethan.
Ethan heard the footfalls of the LAPD hastening their approach in the shadows behind him. He opened his hand behind his back to signal them to slow down.
Robbie’s foot slipped again as he dropped to one knee, but his hold on Katharine remained firm. She was his life support system at this point; he wasn’t about to let her go. If she’d been conscious, he would have leaned on her. As it was, she was like hauling around a heavy sack of potatoes. If he let her go, however, he would be instantly ripped apart by a barrage of police bullets. Whether he knew it or not, his situation was hopeless.
Still, they had to save Katharine.
“But I do love you, Robbie!” Ethan shouted, his voice and the idea coming from somewhere out of his control. “Ever since the first day we met.”
His words seemed to reach the monster’s attention. Robbie looked out into the darkness as if searching for who had spoken.
Robbie’s grip tightened on Katharine as his other knee dropped to the platform. He shifted her in front of him like a shield. Gravity pulled him down as he weakened. His blood dripped from the platform to the ground below.
Robbie then looked up into the darkness. He moved his lips, but the strength to speak failed him. Blood bubbled over his bottom lip. He continued to hold Katharine’s head in the crook of his arm with the gun against her temple.
“Please don’t let him fire that gun,” Ethan whispered.
You’re in the role of your life here, bud, so act! Mila said from inside him.
“Robbie, how can I prove my love for you?” Ethan called out, searching for the character Robbie was looking for. “You’ve misunderstood. I’ve always loved you.”
A long pause followed as Robbie seemed to muster together all his strength. His face smiled his confusion.
“I want to hug you,” Ethan said in as caring a voice as he could manage. He pictured a camera off to his right, adjusting to his facial expression. He could see himself on the set. “I’m afraid of you now. I don’t want to get hurt.”
Ethan heard the sounds of the midway in the distance, clashing metal music mixed with screams of excitement and barkers’ voices. The scene was real enough—the flashing colored lights of twirling rides and games of chance. His mind conjured up all sorts of amusements to match what he heard. The stage was set.
He tried to make eye contact with Robbie’s drifting sight. It would be the last chance he had to save the life Robbie held in his arms. He read another line. “You’ve had so many others, Robbie,” Ethan called out to him. “I was jealous.”
Robbie cocked his head like a dog and then looked in Ethan’s direction. His chin was covered in blood; his mouth opened without words.
“Please don’t let the gun go off,” Ethan whispered. Then he cried out to Robbie with clear emotion in this voice, “Please let me hold you!” His words had never meant more.
With the heaviness of a falling tree, Robbie fell backward. His grip on Katharine held, but the gun slid to his side, away from her head. Ethan moved forward with the swiftness of a cat. He had to get to Katharine. He nearly had reached the platform when Robbie moved … and aimed his gun at Ethan. What followed was the fleshy thunk of two bullets taking Robbie down to stay—one shot through his eye and one high on the left side of his chest. The silence that followed the clatter of Robbie’s gun hitting the platform signaled it was over.
Ethan needed nothing more to be on his feet, climbing to Katharine’s side. He prayed she was still alive.
The air was filled with the sound of an army of heavy footfalls reverberating across the steel platform as the police took over. Cops were everywhere. Paramedics were at Katharine’s side, attending to her. Her beautiful gown was drenched in Robbie’s blood, but she seemed uninjured, outside of bruising on her head from the gun barrel.
Crouched beside his one-time friend, Ethan looked over at Robbie’s open dead eye but had to look away. It was then his legs gave out as he lost the strength to stand. He fell sideways onto the platform beside Katharine. Catching his balance, he reached up and grabbed the platform’s steel ra
iling. For a moment, the railing looked different, as if the chrome was there to assist him. He pulled himself up, coming face-to-face with Katharine. But it wasn’t Katharine in a bloodied gown. She was dressed in white, like a nurse helping the paramedic.
Ethan leaned closer.
Katharine was whispering something to him. Blood was on her face and splashed on her neck.
“I knew it. … I knew you’d come back. You saw it all …”
Ethan was close enough to feel her breath on his face; feel her lips on his.
“Is he gone?” he whispered, his strength all but spent.
“Yes, Ethan,” Beth replied. “It’s over.”
He closed his eyes with the knowledge that his nightmare was ending.
A short while later, Ethan found himself standing beside the open rear door of a Los Angeles ambulance. Lights were flashing everywhere, like some kind of macabre Fourth of July celebration. Camera flashes, bright video camera lights, popping red, white, and blue emergency vehicle lights, and the strobes-of-life atop the ambulance were more display than Ethan needed. He couldn’t recall getting to where he now found himself standing; it was a point in time, like waking from a bad dream. A young crowd had gathered in the area as the calm that follows violence took over. Two efficient paramedics wheeled Katharine on a stretcher toward him. Her eyes were open. Blood—Robbie’s blood—was smeared across her shoulder. Though still in shock, she smiled at Ethan. Ethan stepped aside to the let the attendants move her inside.
“That’s William Avery,” cried one of the many teenagers loitering around the scene. Ethan held on to the door handle of the ambulance for balance, pretending not to hear the comment. The attention of the crowd shifted quickly from Katharine’s being lifted into the ambulance to him. Without notice, a hand suddenly grabbed his arm and pulled him backward, almost off his feet.
Before he could manage a word, Barnes was escorting him toward another ambulance.
“This time, I’m making sure you get to the hospital,” Barnes said, holding back an obvious smile. “Enough with the action-hero stuff for one night … but nice work.”
The screaming sirens caused Ethan to stumble.
Barnes chuckled. “Whoa, hold on there, cowboy. This posse has reached its end for today.”
The ambulance with Katharine inside started forward as people moved out of the way. Once clear, her ambulance sped away in the midst of screaming sirens and flashing lights.
Cops were in abundance. Ethan couldn’t help being reminded of the Blood Signs movie set. Barnes assisted him into the back of another waiting ambulance. People were trying desperately to get a look at the star being whisked away. Barnes slammed the door shut once they were in. As the ambulance moved away, Ethan waved out the window at the people who recognized him.
The police who remained on the scene began to disperse the crowd. People hovered near and around the yellow police tape surrounding the periphery of the crime scene and the spot where Robbie’s body lay covered by a yellow blanket.
“Well, Mr. Jones,” Barnes said from the front of the ambulance. A sense of relief seemed to lift his voice. “The Academy can credit you all they want. We just witnessed your best performance of the year, maybe of a lifetime.”
Ethan made his best attempt at a smile. It was all too incredible for him to even think about. “I want to go where they’re taking Katharine,” Ethan said. “How is she?”
“She’s okay,” Barnes replied. “Just some bruising around her head and neck. One knee was scraped up a bit.”
After that, Ethan missed the rest of the trip to the hospital. He came in and out of himself, his mind unable to remain in the present. The shock suffered from the events of the evening did little to change his state. There was a sense of relief, of a saga ending, and gratitude to be alive. The trip to the hospital seemed to take seconds.
At the hospital, Ethan found himself alone in the whiteness of an emergency room with white curtains drawn around a white-sheeted bed. He was retracing what had happened, trying to piece together what led to his being there. His broken fingers and wrist throbbed. His broken nose was swollen, and it ached. Both served as reminders of the ordeal he’d suffered earlier in the evening. It seemed like someone else’s life.
Closing his eyes, something shifted. He could sense things taking shape around him, yet had no energy to open his eyes or do anything about it. Sleep again took him away.
Chapter 59
Real Time
April 1984
For Ethan, the world seemed to shift around him. He found himself in another room, a room that looked familiar yet reminded him of another time—maybe not as distant as memory might presume. His eyes were closed as his thoughts drifted to a time before California. It was a feeling that didn’t seem that far off. He even felt younger.
Barnes’s voice interrupted his thoughts from a distance, like he was in the room but the room was large, and Barnes was not at his bedside but across the room.
Ethan sensed that others were around him, yet the energy to open his eyes evaded him.
“Ethan,” said a familiar, soft-spoken voice. “Can you hear me?”
Ethan opened his eyes. The light was bright, coming from a window and mixed with the overhead fluorescent light. What he saw was from a memory. Katharine was sitting on the bed beside him. A man stood at his bedside on the left, dressed in a white lab coat.
“Ethan,” said the man with Officer Barnes’s voice.
Ethan thought for a moment, trying to figure out why Barnes was dressed like a doctor. “Yes,” Ethan replied, trying to hold tight to what he was seeing to avoid getting lost in what his mind was thinking—he knew that despite the voice, the man was not Officer Barnes. In that instant, he realized the woman sitting beside him on the bed seemed a lot like Beth and very similar to Katharine. The woman wasn’t dressed as Beth would be, in a professional skirt and matching jacket; instead, she wore the white lab coat of a doctor. It couldn’t be Katharine, she was in … another room.
Ethan felt a sense of release, like returning home after a difficult journey.
“Ethan,” the Beth woman spoke. “How are you today?”
Ethan looked back at her, curious about the question. “I think I’m fine,” he replied, wondering why she was asking the question. “How are you?”
“Do you know where you are?” asked the Barnes look-alike in the white coat.
“Well, yes, of course, I do,” Ethan responded, as if it was a simple matter of fact. “Why do you ask? Is this a test?”
There was a pause as Barnes turned and raised an aluminum clipboard from the bed. He flipped through several sheets of paper.
“Ethan, can you tell us where you are?” the Beth woman asked, looking him straight in the eye.
Ethan smiled, not knowing quite what to say. He found it difficult to understand why they wanted him to explain the obvious. “I’m in the hospital being checked out,” he replied.
“Be patient for a moment, Ethan,” the Beth woman said. Her eyes were as blue as Katharine’s. “You’ve been through something of a traumatic experience.”
Her opening was just what Ethan needed. “I was pretty lucky tonight,” he started, looking from Barnes to the Beth woman and struggling to hold on to something—though he wasn’t quite sure of what. “I think I’m lucky to be alive. That first bullet was meant for me.”
Ethan noticed a visual exchange between the two people in the room. Vague questions came to mind that he couldn’t answer. How could Katharine be in his room, asking him questions, as if she was a doctor? Why was he noticing now how much she looked like Beth? Why had it never occurred to him before?
“Can you describe something of what happened?” asked Barnes, holding a pen in his hand and writing something on the clipboard.
“What? You don’t remember?” Ethan shot back, staring at Barnes in disbel
ief. “You were there for most of it.”
The expression from the man with Barnes’s face in the white lab coat gave it all away, despite his attempt to cover it up. “Well, I meant from your point of view.”
Ethan shrugged his shoulders. “I was accepting my award for …” As soon as the words came out of his mouth, he realized something didn’t seem quite right.
“Go on,” urged Barnes. “It’s okay.”
“I was in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles …” Ethan continued. “I’m in LA. This happened just …”
Silence filled the room. The Beth woman stood beside him. He recognized her but not as someone he’d not seen in a long time; it was in a much more familiar sense. His recollection of the events of the evening became more of a story he was telling than something he’d lived through.
“Go on, Ethan,” the Beth woman encouraged him. “You were saying, ‘This happened just …’ What did you mean?”
He thought for a moment before answering. There was something going on here. His mind was relaying what happened that night. He was standing on stage at the Academy Awards, accepting the award for Best Actor, when he was interrupted over the auditorium’s PA by his longtime friend, who he thought was dead. A short time later, a missile shot meant to kill him exploded on the stage. But the more he thought about the events, the more they seemed unreal. He now couldn’t actually remember them as personal experience. It caused him to pause as he explained it. The Beth woman stood beside him. Barnes remained at the end of the bed. Both seemed more real than what he was remembering and the story he was telling.
“Where am I, actually?” Ethan asked before trying to remember any more. He knew as he asked the question that he wasn’t where he thought he was.
“You’re in the Royal Ottawa Hospital, Ethan,” the Beth woman replied. “You’ve been a patient with us for almost six months. I am Dr. Beth Katharine, and this is Dr. Steve Barnes.”
The Actor Page 34