Scream All Night

by Derek Milman

  “Dario?” he says, recognizing me, but seemingly baffled by my presence. Then a fan runs over, stealing away his attention, and I wonder if that’s all I’ll get. I didn’t know what this was going to be—Jesus, who would?—so there was no way to prepare.

  It’s funny how Hayley told me I might regret it if I wasn’t here. There’s this pinch of regret I always fend off whenever my dad comes into my thoughts—that I left him here, a lonely old man, and maybe there was a chance things could have changed; a chance for mutual forgiveness. That pinch just got sharper, because now I’ll never know.

  As he gets closer to his grave, I start to panic. I grab Hayley. “I should . . . um . . .”

  “All right,” she says, nodding at me, understanding. Hayley motions to Oren and then waves at Franklin. She hustles me quickly through the crowd of leering faces and vulgar costumes. Franklin stops the procession and pushes everyone out of the way so Oren and I can approach the casket. “Step aside, please,” says Franklin.

  “Why’d we stop?” says Oren, running over, hands out, in the manner of an annoyed wedding planner.

  “He wanted to say something,” says Hayley. She frowns at Oren. “Don’t you?”

  “It’s okay,” says my dad, taking my hands in his—they’re cold, limp, trembling.

  “Dad,” I say. Up close he seems practically dead already. His eyes are milky, sunken, clouded over with cataracts. He’s so skinny and wasted away he’s almost skeletal. He’s lost the remainder of his thin yellow-white hair. “Dad . . . ,” I say again. I can’t seem to say anything else.

  “It makes me happy to see your face again,” he says.

  I remember us sitting at the kitchen table, eating yogurt together when I was four. He’s about to be buried alive, and I’m thinking about yogurt. My dad puts his cigar in his mouth, and grabs Oren’s hand too, so now he’s holding on to both of us.

  “Okay?” Oren says to our dad, smiling gently.

  “Okay,” he says back, grasping our hands.

  “WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH! YOU’RE A GENIUS!” a fan shouts.

  My dad sticks his chin up, amused, always happy to be called a genius.

  “Dad,” I say again. I’m choking here. Why can’t I speak?

  My dad drops our hands. He takes us in like he’s trying hard not to forget our faces. Then he looks away, his face tight and determined. “It’s time,” he says.

  “Onward!” Oren yells.

  I have the sensation of something fading forever as the procession continues, and I fall back into the teeming crowd. I can almost see all the questions that will never be answered blowing away like dandelion seeds—scattered, tiny dark shapes against the flush of the sky, and then just gone.

  When they reach the grave, the pallbearers begin their routine of quickly running straps through the handles of the coffin, preparing to lower it. The crowd quiets as my dad sits all the way up in the casket and clears his throat.

  “Quiet!” someone shouts.

  “As many of you already know, I’m terminal,” he says, chucking out the remainder of the lilies from the coffin in a single fistful. “But I am blessed to have spent my life devoted to my sole passion—making films of horror and fear, envy and spite, love and loneliness, ghastly apparitions, and vulnerable, freakish creatures of the night; stirring emotions through the most powerful medium that ever was. I’ve always done exactly what I wanted—taking control of my life, and stilling it, in a chaotic world. Thank you to the Moldavia family, and to all of you who watched my films with the same passion we put into making them.”

  “Thank you!” some lunatic shouts.

  He coughs. “I have been sick a long time. But I have resolved not to let this disease win. Instead, my death shall be my final work of art, a tribute to the first heroine I ever put on celluloid, Veronica Bellwether, who was buried alive in a musty sarcophagus somewhere in the hills outside Kutná Hora.”

  People cheer at the mention of Veronica Bellwether. I can’t tell if my dad has scripted this farewell speech or if he’s just making this up as he goes along.

  “It has always been my lifelong desire to be buried alive,” he continues, “emulating Veronica’s tragic demise, so she and I could commune eternally in the misty zone of the imagination, where everything began for me. This has always been my first choice to exit this life. I leave you happy, content, and at peace with the world.”

  My dad waves, signaling he’s done. People get quiet.

  As they start slowly lowering the coffin, a Britney Spears song pierces the grief-stricken silence. It slowly dawns on the mourners that this is a ringtone, and everyone looks accusingly at everyone else. My dad is still waving, meekly, almost bored, as they lower the open coffin, but then he plugs his cigar in his mouth, reaches into his jacket pocket, takes out his phone, and holds it to his ear.

  “Joe? Hey. Yeah. How are ya?”

  My mouth opens. “Is he . . . taking a call?” I ask Hayley, leaning into her ear.

  “Um. I think so,” she says.

  “How ’bout that? Was it Ed?” He lies back, chatting, as they continue to lower him down into his own grave. We all move closer and peer down into the dark hole after him. The pallbearer trying to maneuver the oxygen tank into the open coffin is clearly struggling. This was obviously never rehearsed, or given much thought at all, and when he loses his grip on the tank, he careens into the other pallbearers, who all lose their grip on the straps lowering the coffin.

  Everything tumbles.

  The casket tips backward, the oxygen tank smashes against the side, the neck of the tank breaks with this horrible clang, and the lid of the tank pops open. I hear the rush of oxygen just as my dad’s cigar flies out of his hand. “Gosh!” he exclaims, halfway down, gripping the sides of the casket, trying not to fall out. He says it again: “GOSH!”

  Then the straps come free and everything falls at once, hard and far, down into the hole, followed by a loud, tremendous fireball, which shoots out of the open grave like hell upending itself. Chunks of mud and splinters of coffin belch out of the flaming grave, sending the mourners flying back, screaming.

  “Holy shit!” I scream, my hands flying to my face, just like that famous painting, all madness and furious swirls. “My dad just fucking exploded.”

  Franklin, always the coolest cat in the kingdom, brushes off his suit and removes his mud-coated glasses. “Well,” he says, “that was his second choice.”

  Chapter Two

  Horror Is Hell on Little Boys

  EVERYONE’S CLOTHES ARE SPATTERED WITH DIRT. SOME PEOPLE HAVE superficial cuts and burns, singed hair and eyebrows. But by some miracle, no one is seriously injured. Everyone assumes my dad was killed instantly from the explosion. Oren takes charge and determines this by cupping his hands over his mouth, and yelling down into the grave: “Hellloooooo down there? Dad? Dad?”

  When there’s no response, Oren motions for everyone to quickly finish up the proceedings. And we all obey, in a slightly rushed manner, family members and close friends each taking a turn shoveling a heap of dirt into the hole, which makes this awful dull thudding sound as it hits what’s left of the casket, way down below.

  Two gravediggers take over, shoveling and shoveling, while most of the random squeezers head out, clutching purses and props, looking dazed and bedraggled, even stupider now in their Moldavia “costumes.” Oren tells the real mourners to head into the music room, where the services will continue.

  “I will be giving the eulogy,” he tells me, clamping a hand on my shoulder as we linger outside by the door. “But tell me now if there’s something you’d like to say.”

  I shake his hand off me. “You’re talking about giving a eulogy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Oren is still pretending this is a real funeral that went off without a hitch. It’s like he has to prove at every step how inept he is. “Dad didn’t die in some cushy hospital bed. Do you not get what just happened out there?”

  “This was
his first choice. You heard him.”

  I slam my hands over my eyes and slide them roughly down my face. “Technically, we all killed him, you idiot!”

  “He’s not suffering anymore. He was ninety-one years old. There are worse ways to go.”

  “Like what, Oren? Getting eaten by a shark? Having your parachute fail?”

  Oren folds his arms. “Well, he didn’t mention those options—”

  “What is it going to say on his death certificate? What did he die from?”

  “Everything,” says Oren, with a long sigh.

  “That’s not an official cause of death.”

  “I’ll take care of it all,” says Franklin, heading inside, giving us each a look.

  Goddammit. This family. Why does literally everything have to be three thousand times more traumatic than necessary? Every single thing that would happen normally in other families, guided by tradition, planning, and decorum, has to become an all-out horror movie with us. We can’t just make them. We have to live them.

  Something twists open inside my stomach.

  “You look pale,” says Oren.

  “I—just—can’t—I . . .” I run over to a bunch of daffodils and bend over them, my palms grinding into my knees. God, please, no, I beg the flowers. But they’re not having it. I haven’t eaten today, so I just dry heave dribbles of bile all over them.

  Oren runs over. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

  “This is my fault,” I say, heaving. “I would have stopped this.”

  “But you—”

  I raise my arm in the air to stop him. “Don’t say I wasn’t here!”

  “But you weren’t.”

  I gurgle onto the flowers.

  “You could have had more of a say if you were,” says Oren.

  I spit and spit, trying to get rid of the taste of bile.

  “I didn’t know you cared enough. I thought you hated him,” says Oren.

  “That’s what you thought!” I shout into the flowers.

  “Well, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know.” I straighten up, wiping my chin. “He hated me.”

  “Gosh, Dario, is that what you think? Dad didn’t hate you.”

  “Stop, man, just stop.” I can’t listen to Oren contradict the cruel logic that’s guided my choices up to now. I can’t have that reality upended at the moment. It’s too much to handle. “Why did you really want me here?” I ask, resting a sweaty palm against my throat, trying to steady myself.

  “To say good-bye to him, Dario—one last time. I’m sorry this was painful.”

  “Someone’s always sorry around here!” I spit some more, over my shoulder. “And what are you even sorry for? For turning this into a circus? Of course you knew this was going to be painful for me!”

  “It was painful for all of us.”

  I can’t help it. I just start to laugh, darkly, this throttled noise boiling up from my guts like something ugly and mean I swallowed finally being regurgitated along with everything else. I cough and I laugh and then I spit some more.

  It feels like the consequences of every tough decision I made in my life (and questioned relentlessly) have been laid out before me—a pulsating grid of connected dots leading to today, when my senile dad gets blown to bits while being buried alive.

  I tend to my own wounds so much that I can forget about everyone else’s feelings. It’s a problem. I’ve recognized that in group therapy sessions. Leaving Moldavia felt like I was making the decision to survive my own whacked-out life. But it came with this heaping of guilt, which never felt fair to me. I worked hard to neutralize all of it—but not hard enough, clearly, because now I feel responsible for this mess.

  Oren takes a conciliatory step toward me. “Listen, Dario—”

  “No, Oren—”

  “Dario, I tried to honor—”

  “Honor what? Dad’s mind wasn’t clear! This was chaos! But what do you care? It’s always easier to turn your back on things and be sorry about everything years later, right?”

  I’m filled with disgust when I think about Oren’s lifelong habit of looking the other way, particularly when it came to me when I was a kid, but even here, even now.

  I leave Oren standing there and rush inside the castle.

  The music room is one of the rooms no one ever really used and I never went into, even though it’s one of the nicest in the whole castle—large mullioned windows face the east lawn, the super-high ceiling is all baroque, and the walls are hung with centuries-old Italian tapestries. A huge mirror hangs over the mantel. There’s a harp in one corner, a grand piano in another; the room looks like it hosted all these dances and concerts, with people in lace and corsets giggling and nibbling finger sandwiches, but none of that ever happened in here.

  The mourners sit on cushioned chairs that have been set up facing a podium, which sits on a small raised platform. There’s nowhere to spit, so I just clear my throat loudly, trying to get rid of the taste of bile, and take a seat.

  Everyone looks typically mournful, but with this extra topping of distress and grit, like we’re sequestering inside from a hurricane that just made landfall. A hundred heads swivel around as Oren closes the two large doors with a bang. It sounds like the first thing you hear in a climactic scene in an English boarding-school drama.

  Oren swiftly takes the stage, placing some rumpled papers on the podium. Then he does this totally unnecessary bow and places his hands in a prayer position. I wonder if he’s going to direct everyone to jump up, roll out our mats, and get into downward-facing dog. He brings his thumb and index finger together, looks out at all of us, and says: “What is love?”

  That’s when I know this will probably be the first eulogy in the history of funerals to require two fifteen-minute intermissions.

  I inhale, deeply, and gaze out the window.

  “Dario! You are not giving me what I need!”

  The crew is getting restless. Hulky shapes are shrouded by heavy coats behind equipment—booms and cameras and barn door lights with orange glowing gels, cords and cables snaking everywhere. I can feel the electricity fizzing in the air. It’s late. It’s freezing. No one has eaten. My tongue is numb from sucking ice cubes all night. Undead boys can’t have their breath show.

  I shake my head. “Let’s just do it again.”

  Roll sound. Roll camera. ACTION!

  I try to stave off this feeling of failure, of disappointing my dad. I lower my chin, flatten my gaze, and try to muster up the same throaty grunting and sloshing of saliva that I did for the previous eighteen takes, leading my army of undead brethren to the burning schoolhouse. I smell the pyrotechnics. I hear the breathing of the twenty extras behind me—none of them kids like me, just adults on their knees, blurred and insignificant in the middle-distance background (most of them members of the kitchen staff).

  CUT.

  “Goddammit! Something’s missing! Where is Alastair?”

  I punch my palm. “I did what you said, just like last time.”

  “Don’t you dare give me that look. Alastair is hungry. Ravenous! He has to kill. He’s angry he’s been reduced to an animal. He’s filled with rage. There’s only superficial fear on your face. Alastair isn’t a mouse! He’s not a goddamn pussy. He’s the enraged leader of a zombie army!”

  Every take has felt the same to me. I don’t know what he wants. He’s pushing me somewhere only he can see.

  “Do not kill the lights, and we are not breaking!” he screams to the first A.D., who just ran over, whispering into his ear. “He’s gonna get it. Go.”

  ACTION!

  We do another three takes, but my dad doesn’t like them, his frustration steadily building. I’m trying so hard not to cry, but I’m losing my grip on that. And now my dad is just starting to seethe instead of communicate.

  Take twenty-three:

  I lift my chin up for only two seconds, the biting cold freezing the tears to my face, before he screams CUT. There’s a swollen silence that rolls
in like a breakneck tidal wave through the heavy night and then he’s charging me, backhanding me hard across the face.

  I go flying into the frozen grass.

  “Get the hell back up!” he’s saying. My ears are ringing. “Are you angry now, Dario? GOOD! That’s what real anger is. FEEL THAT?”

  I don’t feel anything. Not anymore.

  “Now pretend every survivor in that schoolhouse is me,” he says.

  We do three more takes in a row—me with a swollen lip, a bruised cheek—and then he says, “Check the goddamn gate,” and walks off the set, muttering into a walkie-talkie.

  Later, I’m sitting on the frigid metal steps of the hair and makeup trailer, parked a mile away from set, on the base camp of the northern lawn. Semi-frozen tears skate down my cheeks. My shivering is so intense I’m almost mesmerized by it—watching my knees involuntarily knock into each other like I’m removed from my own body. I want everything to be numb.

  Hugo carries some equipment while two other burly construction guys, members of his crew, follow behind him. He sees me sitting there, hands off the equipment to his men, and heaves his tattered down jacket over my trembling shoulders. He’s wearing worn cords, a flannel shirt over thermal wear, which slopes over his bulging gut, a thick skullcap the color of his dark beard. “What you still doing out here, kiddo?”

  I just shake my head and stare at my hands.

  Hugo nods. “Horror is hell on little boys. You’re doing a good job. People will remember Alastair.” He frowns at my swollen mouth. “You gotta put ice on that. You want me to punch your dad in the face for you?”

  I shake my head slowly. “Don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  “There’s not another head carpenter who could do this crap, work these hours, for at least five hundred miles. Your dad needs me more than I need him. Say the word.”

  He’s right. No one, not even my dad, ever messes with Hugo. “It’s okay.”

  “Dario, I ain’t gonna say how he treats you is right, and I ain’t gonna lie to you and tell you he loves you more than his schlocky films, ’cause we both know that’s bullshit, but one day you’ll realize you can either be defined by him or defined by everything you are that he could never be. So that’s what I gotta say on that. Wanna eat?”