The Ghost Sequences

by A. C. Wise

  It isn’t about being famous, not really. The way I see it, the camera sees people in a way we don’t see each other. The camera doesn’t lie. Sure, there are movie tricks, but those are all man-made. The camera sees what it sees and it remembers. So that’s me. That’s my plan, my dream. I’m going to live forever, up on the big screen.

  *

  Grauman’s Chinese Theater, September 1946

  Cameras flash, pinning their shadows to the red carpet like the splayed out wings of a butterfly. This is it, Mary’s screen debut, The White Canary Sings. George shouldn’t be nervous; he’s done this before. Mary—except she’s Eva today—should be, but she’s perfectly poised, lightly holding his arm so he feels like he’s the one clinging so he won’t fall.

  Her curls have been tamed into gentle waves. Lips red, teeth white, dress sleek, and heels impossibly thin. Yet she never stumbles, despite the champagne in the car on the way over. Her eyes are bright and hard. She smiles in a way that seems to light up her whole face. Only he knows she’s baring her teeth.

  He stumbles, right at the door, but Mary keeps him upright. She should let him fall. This whole thing has been a mistake, nearly four years from beginning to end—from a year of stalling and putting Mary off while he found just the right project for her, to conceiving The White Canary Sings as her debut feature, to production problems, delays in shooting, to just now in the car on the way here. Three glasses of champagne for her, two of whiskey for him, his hand on her leg, the silky sheen of her dress under his palm. Her head turning, her hand firmly lifting his and putting it back in his lap.

  “We’re not doing that anymore, George, I told you.” Barely twenty to his thirty-five, but she sounded like his mother, scolding him as a naughty child.

  He’d flushed shame-hot, but his hand moved to her arm, gripping harder than he intended. “Please, for old times’ sake,” on his lips. This is exactly what he’d expected. Why else put her off for so long?

  At the same time, he’d expected her to comply, fold as she had when they first met at the party on the beach, the taste of salt on her mouth and then his. In his mind, he was already guiding her to his lap, feeling the warm wetness of her wrapped around him. Picturing her carefully reapplying lipstick afterward, smoothing her hair.

  She pulled her arm from his hand. “No,” once more, final and firm.

  The ghost of his fingers remained, fading by the time the car pulled up in front of the theater. She hadn’t even needed to dust on powder to cover the marks, like they’d never been there at all. He hated himself, and he hated her, the resilience of her skin, resisting him, and the sickness roiling in his stomach with the aftertaste of whiskey.

  And now she’s guiding him into the darkened theater like a little boy who can’t find his own way. They take their seats in the front row. Mary, Eva, Lillian, Eve. The taste of all her names coats his throat as he glances at her out of the corner of his eye. She’s rapt, sitting forward, waiting to breathe in the silver screen ghosts and hold them in her lungs. He might as well not be here at all. Except, no. She needed him to see her first, to see that hungering thing inside her and put her up on screen.

  He holds onto this, even though she’s changed since those first moments in front of his camera. Did he change her, or did she do it on her own? Was she always dry tinder and he only the spark that finally let her burn?

  George wants to take her hand. He wants to apologize. It was supposed to be different. She was different. Not like the other girls, but he treated her just like one of them anyway. He’s always hungry, starving for more. Mary, Eva, Evelyn melting on his tongue like cotton candy. All spun sugar, at least the parts he can reach. Her core, whatever it is, lies beyond him.

  The curtains rise and Mary is there, larger than life, filling the screen. He cast her as a young ingénue, of course, a want-to-be star. She wears a dressing gown, waiting to go on stage, her curves tantalizingly visible through the sheer material. A little titillation for the audience, as though she’s something they can have. And oh, did he deliver up the satisfaction.

  Even as the opening credits roll, George can feel the end of the film rushing toward him. Her discovery, her meteoric rise, her jealous lover, her obsessed fan. Her body splayed in a cold alleyway, arranged as though death was a beautiful thing. Her throat opened like a bloody smile beneath lips painted jet and ash. The curves of her still a buffet; her body an invitation for appetites of another kind. A cautionary tale and an object lesson—this is how we break our girls and make them tame. This is how we keep them fresh and young. This is what happens when you run away.

  It’s all wrong. George bolts for the bathroom. He brings up whiskey and his breakfast from hours ago. He brings up guilt and bile and slides to the floor, resting his head against the wall.

  He killed her. He killed her because he couldn’t have her. He killed her because he doesn’t know what else to do with girls. His head pounds. Mary Evelyn Marshall is inside the darkened theater watching herself up on screen and he can’t shake the feeling something terrible is coming for her, for him. Like a train, barreling down a tunnel, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. Nothing at all.

  *

  Hollywood Hills, May 1942

  I’m up above the city, smoking. All the glamorous women smoke in Hollywood, that’s what Joyce told me, so I figured I’d better get on board. I can see so many lights, and it’s peaceful. I’ve never been this far from home. Back in Detroit, nothing ever changed. Here, the air tastes like rain and electricity and everything waiting to happen.

  There’s a big party tomorrow at some producer’s house on the beach. Joyce promised to take me. There’s a swimming pool, and there’ll be lots of alcohol, and maybe even drugs. Joyce said I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to, she’ll look out for me. She’s lying, though not on purpose. The only person Joyce’ll be looking out for is herself. I don’t blame her. We all do what we have to do.

  Girls like me, and Joyce even, we’re a dime a dozen. There’s so many of us, but there’s only so much room we’re allowed to take up in the world. So it’s every girl for herself.

  I’m thinking of introducing myself as Lillian, just to see how it sounds.

  Anyway, the dead girls followed me here. Unlike living girls, ghosts don’t take up any room. They can fit themselves in anywhere, spread themselves out and multiply, on and on. It’s more than just Nancy. There are dozens of them now. It’s like the man in the diner where I met Nancy said. There’s a monster killing his way across the country. I guess I followed behind him and cleaned up the mess he made. This whole damn country is haunted, every single step of the way.

  *

  Silver Screen Dream Productions, January 1947

  George looks up from his desk as Mary Evelyn barges into his office. She’s unsteady; she’s been crying, and he can smell alcohol on her—something much cheaper and harder than champagne—as she slams a newspaper onto his desk.

  “We did this, George.”

  He recognizes the picture under the headline: Killer Sought in Brutal Murder. Elizabeth Short. She’s been all over every newspaper for days. Her mutilated body was found in Leimert Park just under a week ago.

  He looks up from the black and white portrait of the smiling girl with curls in her hair, the want-to-be star. It could be Mary Evelyn, but it isn’t, because she’s leaning on his desk, her hands in fists, shaking.

  “We did this to her,” Mary says. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The movie was supposed to help them, give them a face, a name, so people would finally see.”

  “What are you—?” He stands up, but before he can get the words out, her hand cracks across his skin, hard enough to leave the ghost of her fingers behind.

  Then she crumples, sinking to the carpet in front of his desk, and putting her head in her hands. Her fingers muffle her words.

  “We put it up on screen, my body in the alleyway, so people would see.”

  George almost corrects her, tel
ling her Elizabeth was found in a park not an alleyway, and that some want-to-be starlet’s death has nothing to do with her. The movie they made, The White Canary Sings, all they did was make a crime flick, something to put behinds in seats and make a quick buck. But deep down, George knows it’s a lie. He made a crime flick, Mary made something else. Despite his best efforts, on screen, she transformed. So Mary is right; this is their fault, even if he doesn’t fully understand how. Movies are a special kind of magic, playing with make-believe and blurring the line between real and unreal. Humanity is the other half of the equation; they have to be willing to believe, take the ghosts flickering up on screen into their very souls and allow themselves to be changed.

  He looks at the newspaper again. The dead girl. He looks back at Mary. Evelyn. Eve. So many names. So many girls all rolled into one, and the dead girl on the front page could be her. He pours a measure of whiskey from the bottle in his desk and holds it out to her even though a drink is the last thing she needs.

  Mary downs it in two long swallows. He watches her throat work as the liquid goes down. She stands, a fawn on unsure legs. Her eyes are pinpoints of light, coming out of the shadows straight at him. She takes one unsteady step, bringing the raw sweat-and-alcohol scent right up to him. Her fingers graze the buttons of his shirt.

  “For old times’ sake.” Her words slur.

  Her mouth lands hot on his skin, and she murmurs words he can’t hear against his throat. His fingers move to help hers even though he wishes they wouldn’t. In his haste, in his regret, his shirt rips, buttons scattering. This isn’t about him; it’s about Mary and he’s caught up in her wake somehow. He should say no. He should be stronger, but she’s always been the strong one.

  She pushes him hard against his desk. Pain jars from his tailbone up his spine. Script pages and a letter opener and a heavy glass paperweight scatter. Every part of her is furnace hot, burning like a fever. George lets himself sink into the dark and the heat, the slick sweat of her, praying he’ll fall all the way through to the other side where light will shine again.

  *

  Hollywood Hills, February 1947

  I saw her last night, Elizabeth Short. She came and sat beside me and we looked out at the city together. I offered her a cigarette, the one I was halfway through smoking. She put it to her lips, took a deep drag, and I watched the smoke go right through her and swirl beneath her skin. Part of her was as blue as the sky above us. Part of her was silver, like a goddess up on the screen. Part of her looked just like me.

  That was only if I looked at her head-on though. If I looked out of the corner of my eye, I could see what had been done to her. The smile extending to the edges of her face, the cuts all along her body, the line bisecting her.

  I wonder if some mortician stitched her up before they buried her, tried to make her look pretty and presentable. Just like George cut up The White Canary Sings to make my death beautiful up on screen. Did someone do that to Nancy, too, and all the other dead girls?

  The world should have to see what happens to girls like Elizabeth and Nancy. They shouldn’t be able to look away.

  All the dead girls without names stood behind Elizabeth. The girls who followed me across the country and stuck to my skin. Vague outlines in starlight, the way ghosts are supposed to be. Only Elizabeth was sharp and clear.

  I figured it out pretty quick. They made her that way, all those newspapers and cameras, her image everywhere, repeated again and again. They made her a star. Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia.

  I didn’t tell her I was sorry. What would be the point? Sorry never brought anybody back from the dead. I swear I thought I was helping, but of course it doesn’t work that way. Dead girls up on the big screen are a thrill. My body filtered through the lens was a lie. It’s like I said—the camera tells the truth, but the tricks, those are all man-made. In the dark, it’s easy to bend the truth into something safe. When the lights go on, people can step back into the sun knowing a girl didn’t really die in an alley, it was all a show.

  I have to do more. I can’t just be a face or a name, I have to be every face, every name. I have to be all of them in one. If I can put all those ghosts up on screen with me, people will have no choice but to see.

  Dead girls aren’t lovely. The media tries to make them so, but they’re only dead, clogging storm drains and rotting on railway ties.

  I have an idea though, or at least the beginnings of one. The way Elizabeth died, and the way she’ll never die because her picture is on every newspaper page—there’s something there. I was always going to live forever in camera shots, in flashbulb lights, up on the big screen, but now it’s going to mean something. I’m going to bring the other dead girls with me. We’re going to show the world what we really are.

  *

  Silver Screen Dream Productions, October 1965

  “What the hell are you saying, George? You want to make a snuff film?”

  “No, Jesus, no. Aren’t you listening?” George’s hands tremble, so he shoves them under the desk as he looks across it at Leonard, his sometime business partner.

  He can’t help thinking of a film, one that doesn’t exist anymore, wrapped in brown paper and delivered to his desk. He sees it when he tries to sleep, playing on the screen of his eyelids. There’s something there, something Mary was trying to tell him. He needs to drag the horror out into the light. All those dead girls, he owes them an apology.

  “I want to recreate a snuff film.” George is aware he’s slurring his words, but if he doesn’t get them out fast enough he’ll choke.

  “The movie is about a guy who fakes snuff films, it doesn’t matter why. But the more he makes, the harder it gets for him to tell reality from fiction, until he crosses the line. Or maybe he doesn’t. Who knows? The whole idea is the audience can’t tell because the guy in the movie can’t tell. He’s gotten lost inside his movie. It’s a cautionary tale.”

  “I can’t sell a cautionary tale.” Leonard frowns.

  George wipes sweat from his palms.

  “Okay, how about this, then? It’s a movie within a movie, so the audience is two layers removed. It’s safe. It’s okay for them to be titillated by the sex and the violence. It looks real, but it can’t possibly be real.”

  George hears the words like someone else is speaking, and he wants to punch that guy right in the face. He wants to hear bone crunch, watch blood spill down a crisp, white shirt.

  Leonard’s expression changes, a smirk edging out the frown. George wants to punch him, too, but he keeps his hands where they are.

  “You’re not a director, George. You’re a producer, that’s what you’ve always been.” Leonard chomps on an unlit cigar; George sees the dollar signs spinning behind his eyes. It’s all show when Leonard throws his hands up. “What the hell. If that’s the movie you want, and you’re putting up the lion’s share of the cash, who am I to say no? I’ll get you some hot-shot kid to write it, find you your ingénue….”

  The word no sticks in George’s throat.

  “I want to see headshots,” George says.

  “Fine.” There’s a sour note in Leonard’s voice, like George has admitted something shameful. He tries not to blush.

  Leonard stands, but doesn’t leave.

  “What time’s your shindig tonight?” Leonard asks with a twist to his mouth, as if the thought of spending time with George socially is suddenly distasteful somehow. Did George invite Leonard to a party tonight? He doesn’t remember.

  “It’s an open house, come whenever you want. Someone will let you in.” George takes a guess; it sounds right. That’s the way his parties have always been, free-flowing, an endless succession of strangers, names and faces he doesn’t bother to remember. They all want something from him, feeding off him like parasites, and he feeds off them in turn.

  The door opens and closes. Leonard is gone and George is alone. George wonders briefly if anyone would even miss him if he failed to show up at his own party. But he squares h
is shoulders. It’s his duty to be a good host. Tonight, there will be a party. Tomorrow, Leonard will arrive at his office with a handful of glossy 8x10 photographs, a whole bouquet of girls for George to choose from.

  He imagines shuffling the headshots like a deck of cards, using them to tell the future. Except George already knows his future; it’s the same as his past.

  He’s tried this before, with Bloody Rose in 1959. It was a movie about a disappearance or a sensational murder, the line between the two all blurred. His ingénue was a girl calling herself Lily, a girl lying about her age, a girl with the sense of running away tucked under her skin. So much like Mary, but without the scent of desert and pine trees clinging to her from all the distance she’d run. Oh, her eyes were bright enough, pupils all blown with drug-fueled desire, but they were nothing like Mary’s eyes.

  Blue Violet Girls will be different; George swears it. Leaning back at his desk, he closes his eyes and watches it unfold. The ring of bruises left around the victims’ throats after the killer is done with them. The metaphor extended with flowers scattered on their graves. He reaches for his drink. There won’t just be one starlet this time, but a whole string of beautiful dead girls. Too many to ignore. His film will be a mystery and an apology. Maybe, just maybe, it’ll be enough this time.