My father began to rent video recording equipment along with VCRs at the shop years ago, back when I was still around. It never caught on, but became something of a hobby for him. All movie buffs are frustrated, would-be filmmakers. Our home movies had title cards. Clearly, Dad had found a new project to dedicate his talents to late in life.
I do not see the thing in the corner until it moves.
After, I don’t know how I missed it. Rewinding the tape, I cannot determine the exact moment it appeared. Maybe it was always there.
Long, thin fingers reach out slowly from the dark. The girl sees what is coming and becomes hysterical. Slowly, the thing comes into the light, flesh the color of neutral gray on a photographic color card. Two long gangly arms, and legs ending in strange clawed feet, snake out from it’s grossly swollen torso. A pendulous belly droops over its lap, obscuring the thing’s gender. I cannot look at it for long. It shimmers and blurs as if it’s moving too fast for the tape to capture, even while seeming to be reaching out in slow motion. Tracking lines pull its shape this way and that. My head hurts.
Before, in the other tapes, I’d only glimpsed it. A hand reaching, a blur in the corner, an out-of-focus gray something standing near a ritual, observing a sacrifice, lording over a frenzied orgy and watching the bodies mingle, stroke, fondle, squeeze—always on the edges, though. Like a director. Like me. Now, I see it all.
These people, I realize, the people on the tapes, the people of my hometown, they’re performing for this thing. They aim to please it, to entertain it. They serve it. And now I understand, numbly watching as it embraces the squirming girl and begins to sloppily devour her, they also feed it.
Her blood on the hay-strewn floor is too dark, too thick. Romero’s Bosco chocolate syrup ichor straight out of ’68. It doesn’t look real. For a moment the gag comes free and the girl’s screams fill the room. I stare saucer-eyed at the glowing screen, crouching still in the dark, ledger forgotten. Quickly, the shrieks die in a wet gurgle.
Christ, Dad. What did you find out here?
The gore-streaked thing shuffles silently back into the dark in that same eerie, sputtering way it moved before. Soon, the men return and begin to clean up the scene of the sacrifice. The sheriff is among them this time, along with Fred and several others I recognize. The men of town going about a hard, unpleasant task with the usual stoic determination of rural workers the world over. Blood’s just business here. Not unlike any other harvest season, judging by their faces. Some are even smiling.
I review Dad’s annotations. He recorded dates, times and the places where he filmed these things. Camera settings, tape brands. Dozen of locations. He’d been at it for months.
Fast forwarding to the end proves there is little more to see. The men finish and leave in a speedy rush, and the light of dawn floods in through the open door to fill the empty barn. Finally, the camera is moved, taken from its hiding spot. I see a brief flash of my father’s tired old face before he turns it off.
Dad and I talked about movies the way other fathers and sons talk baseball or cars. After Mom died, it was all we had. My memories of my father are all in Technicolor, the good times echo through my brain in Skywalker Sound. His ghost smells like popcorn.
If my life was a movie, he’d be played by Martin Landau or somebody else really good. He deserves somebody good, somebody who’d never be in one of my movies. I know the power of pictures, and so did my old man. This documentary project would have seemed to him the best way to combat something he did not understand. It’s what I would have done.
I eject the tape and stand in the cold light of the blank blue screen, sipping his scotch from the bottle. I scan the walls of my father’s favorite room: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Gene Kelly’s Singin’ in the Rain. Orson Welles stares down at me from a vintage Citizen Kane poster. The curdled prodigy’s final bitter performance was voicing the planet-eating baddie in The Transformers: The Movie. I think of my film school degree, ambitious dreams buried somewhere in L.A. beneath a mound of scripts with titles like Lesbian Vampire Hobos and Revenge of the Jurassic Octo-Sharks and recipes for fake blood and vomit. I also know something about wasted potential. Guess nobody ends up where they think they will. Ask my second ex-wife.
Outside, a car is trundling down the driveway. Through the window shade I see headlights growing in the darkness. If this were a movie I’d know what to do. God, I wish this were a movie. I also wish my father had felt differently about guns. The biggest knife in the kitchen will have to do.
I stash the tapes hurriedly in my duffel bag, toss some clothes over them and move to the door, bottle of scotch in one hand, enormous knife in the other. I flick on the light above the small front porch, prepared to greet my most unwelcome guest.
It’s the pizza princess. Climbing out of a Ford Taurus more rust than red, carrying a fresh six pack and a pizza box. She looks better than she did earlier. A fitted black T-shirt hugs her best assets and her jeans are tight enough to make me concerned about her circulation. She is smiling until she sees the knife. Then, she starts to laugh.
“It’s a peace pizza,” she says. “I promise.”
“I already ate. You know I did.”
“It’s for tomorrow. Thought I’d save you a trip.”
“Who says I’ll still be here tomorrow?”
She walks slowly closer, stepping more into the light. I remember the gray thing on the tape, the way it snuck out into the lantern glare, bit by bit then all at once.
“Stay right there.”
“You can relax.” She stops walking. “I’m just here to talk. They thought you might listen to me.”
“Why?”
She looks sad for a second, then pushes it away. “I didn’t think you recognized me. We went to high school together. My name’s Heather. You remember?”
I shake my head, eyes on the dark behind her. The sound of crackling static is in my ears again, nagging and distracting.
“I’m not surprised. Two years of meth is like ten years of regular life. Sometimes I don’t recognize me either.”
“Funny, the sheriff was just telling me how clean this town is.”
“He’s not wrong, not now. Used to be real bad.”
“Guess quality of life around here depends on which side of the camera you’re on.”
“We just want the tapes, Davie. We want the tapes and we want you to go home. You don’t belong here anymore. No hard feelings.”
There doesn’t seem to be anyone else in the dark, but I’m starting to feel foolish posing under the spotlight. A classic Hollywood victim. “Come inside. Slowly.”
She follows me in, putting her offerings on the coffee table next to empty bottles. “Nobody wants to hurt you.”
“Is that what you told my dad? Was it you who blew his head off?”
She looks around the room with a hint of wonder, like someone walking through Graceland or the White House, like she’s amazed to be there at last. “That was unfortunate, but it was required. Your father was going to close the shop and take the movies away. He didn’t understand.”
“That’s why you killed him? So he wouldn’t close that stupid shop?”
She looks at me, eyes flickering as if lit from within by phantom film projectors. Or maybe it’s my eyes that are flickering. Either way, the static is getting louder.
“Your father was killed because the God of the Screen wished it so.”
“I’ve seen the tapes.”
“All gods demand sacrifices, Davie.”
“You think that’s God?”
“He’s a god.” She shrugs. “The one that’s here. He’s the one that cares, anyway.”
She began walking around the room, running her hands over the furniture and the posters as if they were sacred relics in an Old-World cathedral. I suddenly feel far too sober for this conversation.
“The house of the Purveyor,” she says reverently. “It was in your father’s films that the God of the Screen appeared to us. Fli
ckers at first, like glitches. We did not yet know how to look. Later, as we learned, He became clearer, His wishes more obvious. But only ever through your father’s films could we see Him, never in any others. We tried. We tried to find Him elsewhere, but we could not. Then, when your father learned what redemption required and could not understand, when he threatened to take the movies away, we did what we had to. We must visit the Realm and conduct the renting ritual. It pleases Him.”
She pauses before the television, head bowed slightly. Bathed in the cool blue light, she looks dead. “He saved my life, Davie. I was lost and He found me. I had nothing and He gave me purpose. He saved me, saved the town.”
I adjust my grip on the knife’s handle. “Did he save that girl in the barn? Or how about the kids, the ones on the missing posters my father collected? What did he do for them?”
She smiles, a quick flash of teeth. “He made use of them. It was more than they’d ever do for themselves.”
“Time for you to go, Heather.”
“Just give me the tapes, Davie. Give them to me and leave. You did it before. You, like so many others, abandoned your home as quickly as you could. All we ask is that you do it again. Go back to California. Go make more movies. We still walk the old roads, still worship the old gods.”
“You rent videos,” I say, sneaking a quick gulp of booze. “Not exactly forgotten lore, is it?”
“Nobody reads anymore.” She gestures to the tapes, the movie posters. “This is the new ancient. We must have the tapes. Then, we will take them, plant them in whatever other rental shops remain, and in rummage sales and secondhand stores and spread His gospel. We will make the world over again, Davie, so much better this time. We’ll get it right.”
I think of the car accident that killed my mother. Not a drunk. Not an epic pileup. Just a wayward deer, a buck on the road—dark charcoal, eyes shiny and black. Just a plain old everyday life-changing, life-ending accident. It would make a lousy movie.
I think of my father sitting alone in this room with his movies and his booze and a son who ran half a world away to make great art. A son who failed, who didn’t answer the phone when it mattered.
I think of Hacksaw. Gritty, authentic: The one time I got it all perfect. Someone’s remaking it, I hear, updating my best work already.
Heather turns, begins peeling off her shirt.
“What are you doing?”
“I am for you,” she says, undoing her belt. “Tonight, you can do what you like. I am His messenger, meant to please you. To show He wishes you no harm. Tomorrow, you will give me the tapes and go away. We won’t hurt you, Davie. You make movies.”
She’s suddenly naked. There’s a black garter tattooed on her left thigh, something a wannabe bad kid would have done. The kind who couldn’t afford to run off to California, who didn’t have a proud papa waving bon voyage with one hand and dishing out tuition checks with the other, so proud of his aspiring auteur, his little future Fellini. It made me sadder than I thought possible.
“But I make lousy movies.”
“Oh, no.” Her eyes are big as IMAX screens and filled with that hypnotic flickering again. “He loves all movies, even yours. Especially yours, in fact. He has often come to us in your work. He favors you, David, Son of the Purveyor. He’s in you already.”
She’s nearly pressed against me. Maybe it’s the booze, or the strange pulsing lights in her eyes, or the increasing noises in my head—sounding more like voices all the time—but she is undeniably appealing. If this were a movie you might be screaming at the screen right now, telling me to get out of there. My father always hated people who did that. So do I.
She reaches out to stroke my face, whispering. Her words are like the rumbling of surround sound thunder. I feel them and want to believe the things she says. The television screen begins to strobe behind her. I watch it ignite and die again and again. She leans in to kiss me, so obviously a trap.
If this were a movie, I might even fall for it.
I bring the bottle down over her head. It shatters, covering her hair and face with bits of glass and liquor. But it wasn’t how the movies promised me it would be. The sound, the feeling, her reaction—it was all so disappointingly real.
Then, suddenly it wasn’t.
She looks up, wide eyes full of static. Her gashed face drips spilled scotch, but no blood. She opens her mouth to scream, but only white noise explodes out. She’s a dead channel turned to max volume. She grabs for my neck with both hands, and I shove the knife forward into the taut muscles of her stomach. Her skin stretches and splits apart like cheap cellophane. The knife, then my fist, is swallowed. Her insides are dry and smooth and cold.
I shove, and she falls limply to the ground like a zombie shot through the head. The knife is tangled in the long black tendrils of her film-strip guts, plastic entrails that shine in the quickly strobing light. They stretch out from the void in her stomach like the tentacles of a parasite Cronenberg would dream up, unspooling further as she crawls away to lean against the wall.
She looks from the hole I gouged in her, up from her own dangling celluloid parts, to me, test pattern eyes brimming with tears. “I was all used up, Davie. I was dead and He began my life again. He rewound me.”
I pull the knife free of the shimmering strips, move quickly to stand over her. Raising it high, knowing already what I’m going to do.
“I hate remakes.”
The blade went in easily through her eye, nearly up to the hilt. Light spills from the gash, filling the room. I stab her again and again until that light goes out at last, until she lays down and is good and still and stays that way.
There’s no blood. The television goes dead. Fade to black. Roll credits. That’s a wrap, people.
Except it’s not.
In my business we call this part the Third Act. The finale. If this was a movie there’d be very serious music playing over a quick series of cuts showing yours truly hurriedly getting things together. An awesome ’80s-style montage of getting packed up and into the car. I’ve got the bag full of Dad’s tapes, three bottles of that fine scotch, and a tank half full of gas. The cigarette lighter in Dad’s junky old Buick still works fine, one of the only parts that does. And I’ve got a neon-crowned chapel to burn.
Speeding back down the state road toward town, the headlights show flickering glimpses of something large and gray on the shoulder always just ahead of me, out of focus. But I know what it is: The God of the Screen is angry. But that’s okay. So am I.
The world is again stretched and distorted by tracking lines. He’s in you already, that’s what Heather said. If that’s true he’s in good company, slinking around with the Wolf Man and Godzilla and a horde of vampires, mutants, and masked killers. I’ve been dreaming of monsters my whole life. I’ve seen all the movies. I know what to do.
I drive through the dark, remembering how it feels to live a dream, why I loved the movies so much back before it became a grind. Just a job. A way to meet women. I see why Dad never stopped. It can be a drug as powerful as any I ever found in L.A.—and I searched thoroughly.
I’m Han Solo, back to cover Luke and see the Death Star explode.
I’m the Duke, sniping Liberty Valance from across the street.
I’m Rocky, still on his feet in the fifteenth round.
But then I’m just me again, a scared guy in a crappy Buick. It’s tempting to hide in the comfy haze of nostalgia, to make our lives fit the stories we love. I’ve made a pretty decent living at it. But life has no end credits, no second takes. And remakes suck, almost always. I’m old enough to know that. I’ve paid my respects, but the old gods had their day.
Behind me, I see red and blue lights flashing. The sheriff must have been nearby, chaperoning my time with the pizza princess. An insurance policy, in case I didn’t respond to sweet talk and seduction. Everybody speaks bullets. I can’t outrun him, not in this heap. But that’s OK, too. I don’t have far to go now. I never did.
I think maybe I’ve always been working my way back to the shop. A part of me never left. I don’t know if torching it will have any real effect. I don’t know if these people can be saved, if they deserve to be saved. Because in many ways things here are better than ever.
Not for Dad though, are they? Not for the girl in the barn, either. Not for those missing kids, and who knows how many others? Nobody came to help them. Failing a better contender, it seems I turned out to be the hero of this strange little saga. It’s a new role, against type for sure, but I’m getting comfortable with the idea.
Nearing the shop, I see the Mayberry filter fade. The grocery store’s sign doesn’t actually advertise a healthy sale at all. It’s broken, missing most of the letters. The church windows are shattered—that was real. But the houses are just as decrepit as I remembered. The yards are patches of weeds. The homeless shapes slump against crumbling walls. These special effects are cheap and actually pretty easy to spot if you know how to look.
I depress the cigarette lighter.
Did you see the truth too, Dad? I think it’s a matter of taste, like a tolerance. Maybe our preferences made us harder to trick. It certainly made him harder to please, cranky old snob. Maybe he was saved by that snobbery? His standards were too sterling. And me? Well, I never minded a little squalor. High class, poor taste—our educated eyes imbued us with resilience to this, whatever it is. Not immunity, I think. Maybe we just know what we like.
If that thing is in my mind he should be the one afraid. He should have already seen there was only one way this would end. Because maybe I was a lousy son, maybe I have squandered my talent, maybe I don’t treat people very well, and I sure do hate a lot of things—not least among them myself. But I like a big dramatic ending. Just ask my last wife.
The lighter ejects.
I touch the glowing tip to the pile of tapes on the seat beside me. It goes up quickly, as I thought it would. On the floor is the booze, bottles uncapped, sloshing onto the carpet. Pedal to the floor, I aim the Buick at the large front window of the Video Realm. One hand on the door handle, I prepare to bail.
Monsters, Movies & Mayhem Page 4