Scream All Night

by Derek Milman

  “Then it’s yours,” I say. “Can I . . .” I motion to the locket, and Hayley nods. I snap the face open. It’s empty: there’s no photo of me inside anymore. It’s like I got erased.

  It was an ordinary cloudy afternoon when my mom told me she was leaving Moldavia. We were standing under a cherry blossom tree on the west lawn. There was a light breeze. Blossoms fell on our heads in the creamy porcelain light as they came for her with a wheelchair.

  Good-bye, my peach.

  We used to visit her every week, then every month, then it winnowed down to three times a year, then only on Mother’s Day. She seemed worse—less and less herself each time. I haven’t seen her in seven years, two years before I left Moldavia.

  My mom is acutely psychotic, and to some degree mental illness is genetic. Oren may be old enough that he doesn’t have to worry as much about getting sick. But the risk is always there. I’m at the age when my brain could break too. I wake up every morning wondering if today’s the day I’ll start hearing voices.

  “Your mom kept the photo with her,” says Hayley.

  “You know about the photo?”

  Hayley nods.

  When I left this place, I left a hole here. I knew I would. But I never realized Hayley would take my place so easily. She belonged in my family more than I did.

  Hayley could see my mother and not have the same terror of becoming her. And my dad could let himself care about Hayley without worrying he might lose her too.

  I briefly make eye contact with the glassy stare of a knobby wraith peeking at us from behind a painted Styrofoam birch tree. I look at Hayley and laugh a little.

  Hayley smiles at me. I rub the tops of her hands with my thumbs.

  We both lean forward. Our lips brush.

  I kiss her softly. She kisses me back. And then we really start kissing, deep and intense. We fall asleep holding each other, our mouths still touching, but only a little.

  “Because you’re wasting our time!”

  He’s given me another bloody lip—this is his thing now: he’ll beat this performance into me if it’s the last thing he’ll ever do. Alastair is decaying. Bruises and blood only make it more real.

  He has a certain image of what Alastair should look like. He even has ideas about how Alastair breathes. Being emaciated is a part of that. He wants my rib cage protruding. Sometimes he’ll wake me with two fingers shoved down my throat (he always seems to know when I sneak food at night). When I start vomiting, he drags me to the toilet, holds my head over the bowl by my hair until it’s all out of me.

  He senses I’m his chance to some greater respect. Maybe this is the film that won’t be forgotten, regulated to the midnight circuit, to cult status. Maybe this will be his true masterpiece, mainstream even, dare we say it, admired by his fans and peers alike.

  He wants me to hate him. He’s trying to get me to hate him in that perfect way only he can pick out from the other shades of rage that trickle out of me, which he deems boring, weak, uncinematic, unauthentic, not a true facet of Alastair’s core torment.

  Does he think the hate boiling inside me can be flipped off like a switch once we’re done filming? The answer is: he doesn’t really care.

  This is the last Alastair scene to be filmed, but not the last one in the movie.

  I have to climb a wooden ladder to the roof of the custom-built firehouse where my latest victims cower inside: the dwindling survivors of a zombie apocalypse. After I get to the roof, I’ll shimmy down the chimney like a skinny, undead, prepubescent Santa Claus, something the audience won’t see; it will only be inferred by the sound of screams, ripping flesh, the breaking of bones.

  We’ve been at it for hours. He’s saying I’m not moving fast enough, my gait is wrong, my posture is off, I don’t have enough intention—we’ve done so many takes now the ladder leading four stories up is slowly coming apart. But my dad says it’ll hold for another take, or at least till I reach the top of the roof.

  “But it might not, you stupid sonofabitch, and your son could break his neck!” Hugo roars at him, and my dad roars right back that the ladder will hold.

  “If he climbs it one more time, you are gambling with his life.”

  Truthfully, I’d rather climb the goddamn ladder than deal with the aftermath of saying no to my dad. How messed up is that?

  My dad asks if we have another ladder. Hugo says that this already is the second ladder and we even have a third, but he has to fetch it from the props department, all the way back at the castle, because there’s only so much he and his crew can carry.

  “Dar’s wasted enough of our time,” my father spits. “We’re losing the light! This is my magic hour. I’m going for it. Let’s go, let’s go!”

  “You are going to kill your son!”

  “The ladder will hold him! He weighs thirty goddamn pounds! The ladder would even hold your fat useless ass!”

  “WHERE DOES THIS END, LUCIEN?”

  “Picture’s up.”

  “Quiet on set!”

  “Take twenty-three.”

  I don’t know why he does it except maybe just to save me, to literally save my dumbass life, but Hugo throws off his jacket and begins to climb the ladder.

  “Christ, what’s he doing?” my dad screams. “You see, Hugo? It holds!”

  Except it doesn’t.

  The ladder could have just collapsed after Hugo hit the third rung, but the goddamn thing is as stubborn as my dad, so it waits till he’s all the way at the top before it splinters and comes apart into a million bits and pieces. Everyone screams and then goes quiet, in one big shocked intake of breath, as Hugo falls backward, his flailing body a shadow puppet against the copper twilight. It seems like he falls forever. . . .

  And then Hugo is the one who breaks his neck.

  The next day, while my dad is hugging a sobbing, inconsolable Aida, I watch from the crack of a doorway in the small storage room where I’ve been hiding and silently crying all day. His hand drops a little further, lightly squeezing her ass. She couldn’t be more diplomatic, gently removing my dad’s hand and clasping it in both of hers, a gesture that marks boundaries, yet offers forgiveness, while she mourns.

  It’s such a clean move that it’s impossible to forget just how many times I’ve seen him do this shit. When my mom was still here, when I was in sight, when Hugo was in sight, when Hayley was in sight. My dad didn’t care. He was asserting his authority over his films, the studio, the castle, and all of its inhabitants.

  This is my vision, he was telling us. You’re all just pawns on my chessboard.

  That’s the moment when I lose it. I’m strong and lithe enough to knock him to the ground. I pound at his face until I feel his nose crunch. And when his hands defensively go to his face, I pound his stomach, his chest, his ribs, wanting only to feel more crunching and more breaking. It takes three crew members to pry me off him.

  I feel disgust. Not because of what I did, or even what I was reduced to, but because there’s a part of him inside me, and I know this at twelve; I realize it so completely that all I want to do is exterminate it. So I get on my bike. And I pedal away, out the gates, as far away from the estate as I can go, and when I see the edge of that cliff coming I don’t even bother to slow down.

  In the end it didn’t even matter that I was hospitalized. My dad already had what he needed. He just wanted to see if he could push me further, into something so desperate and bestial no one would ever forget my performance—or his film. Not this one. He had already gotten me there. He just didn’t know it yet.

  Only the camera did.

  My dad visited me in the hospital. He fell to his knees, begging my forgiveness, telling me about his hardscrabble life growing up poor in Romania, which pushed him to an almost sociopathic perfectionism in his work, a frantic will to succeed, and stave off failure, which he confessed filled him with shame. He regretted he risked so much, put me in the center of his own internal storm of madness. It was cruel and unfair of him.


  Ignosce mihi, he murmured, soothing me with Latin, kissing my hands.

  Actually, none of that happened. I just like to pretend it did.

  Franklin, the lawyer, my dad’s trusted confidant, was the only one who visited me in the hospital. And that was because I had been there for so long without anyone claiming me, the authorities got involved, and I was assigned a social worker.

  I told Franklin then and there I wanted to leave my family, leave Moldavia.

  I knew I couldn’t take another day there.

  Franklin was silent for a long time. Then he said: “All right, Dario. We can prove neglect. We can prove abuse.”

  Franklin stood and moved to the door, hands behind his back. This was the only time I ever saw him truly weighed down by something. I saw it in the rounded slope of his shoulders, heard it in the heavy, churning silence. “Your father and I have known each other a long time. We’re well aware of each other’s flaws. We respect that about one another.” He looked at me. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

  I told him it was.

  So I left Moldavia at twelve, although I had to wait until I was fourteen to get legally emancipated. That had to go before a judge, but then, with Franklin’s help, it was done, and I finally wasn’t a Heyward anymore. Not that Heyward was even my dad’s real name. He legally changed it from whatever vampirish Romanian last name he was born with and never spoke of it again to anyone. Another lost tale, another apparition.

  I wake up, blinking back tears. Hayley is still lying beside me. The locket glimmers around her neck. I sit up, hugging my knees. Then I feel Hayley’s hand, cool and firm, on my back. “I’m sorry,” I say, sniffling, wiping my eyes.

  “Your dad died. It’s okay to be sad.”

  “I was thinking about Hugo.”

  Hayley rests her chin on my shoulder.

  “I couldn’t get the scene right,” I say. “Your dad was just trying to protect me. . . .”

  She wraps her arms around my chest and speaks softly into my ear: “Is that what you think? Is that what you’ve always thought? That it was your fault?”

  I wipe my nose with the sleeve of my shirt. I have actually always thought that.

  “It was an accident,” she says. “My dad was being reckless. In no way was his death ever your fault.”

  This is bullshit: that she feels like she needs to console me. She was the one who lost him. I turn to her. She has a hard, determined look on her face, like this is the story she’s come to accept—Hugo was reckless—and there can’t be another version of it. But there are tears in the corners of her eyes, like paratroopers waiting for their turn to jump.

  I lay the back of my hand against her face, and she presses her cheek into it.

  We stay like that for a while, until she says we should probably clear out of the fake graveyard. We kiss once more. It feels so natural, like we’ve been kissing each other for years. Then we both make our escape through the predawn hush of the castle.

  I shower the dirt off when I get back. There’s a caged light over my showerhead that changes colors—Argento hues, like he personally lit my bathroom with his infamous colors—an emergency red rising to a sunrise orange, and then down again to a cold underwater blue. I close my eyes and let the water pour over my head.

  Even in the hot shower, I’m still trembling when I think about how it felt to kiss Hayley. Maybe she’s the real reason I came back here—to see what would happen between us after all this time. She softens everything, takes me out of my head. She gives me hope that the world can stay sweet and pure. She’s always done that for me.

  Coming back here, seeing Hayley now, is like being lost in time. I think about time itself, and how Moldavia can muddle it. I think about being unable to sail freely into the future because of the past chasing us, chaining us. I think of tentacles again. Coming through the walls. Wrapping around my ankles.

  Chapter Four

  The Last Will and Testament of Lucien Joseph Heyward

  THE NEXT MORNING, WE’RE GATHERED IN THE BILLIARD ROOM OF THE Romero Wing.

  There’s a purple pool table under a ceiling light shaped like a ginormous, upside-down funnel, and a shuffleboard table in a far corner, beneath a row of small windows. Vintage pinball machines line the walls. Because of its size and smoky light, this room was used as the study for Horace Rivers in Grave Robbers and the Whores Who Love Them. In the infamous scene when Horace opens the cursed gold cigarette case containing the severed mummified fingers of beheaded gypsy Leonora Quell, this was where his eyes liquefy and pour out of his sockets like milk.

  This room also boasts the largest collection of crystal skulls in North America, although I’m skeptical of this claim and not exactly sure who’s tallying it, because most of them are props, not artifacts. They line the bookshelves. Crystal skulls, like calla lilies, feature in many Moldavia films.

  We sit at a black, oblong table. Only Oren, Franklin, Hayley, and I are here. Oren is unironically wearing a black Victorian waistcoat, a white shirt with ruffled collar and laced eyelets in the front, and ripped black leather pants. He looks like a pirate who got lost somewhere in the Renaissance and wound up at an S&M club in 1973.

  Hayley’s hair is tied back in a ponytail. She wears a perfectly pressed white blouse and charcoal-gray skirt. I’m definitely super into her steely corporate day look. Oren gestures at me, lazily, with the back of his hand. “Why is he here?” he asks Franklin. “He’s not a member of our family anymore.”

  I lay my hands flat on the table. “Didn’t you say last night this is still my real family, my real home, all that crap?”

  Oren cackles. “Yeah, but not legally.”

  “Oren, please,” says Hayley with an impatient sigh. “I’m even here.”

  “Dario got emancipated,” he announces, like maybe no one knew. “He moved to an orphanage for unwanted children and deformed burn victims.”

  I hold out my hand. “What burn victims? No one there is burned.”

  “I’m pretty sure all the kids there are burned,” says Oren.

  “Not one person there is burned. What are you even talking about?”

  Franklin clears his throat. “All of you need to be here; all of you are mentioned in the will. Lucien—the testator—appointed me executor of the estate. I will be handling the probate process, dealing with creditors, distributing assets, and—”

  At that moment, Gavin enters the room holding a silver tray with a pitcher of orange juice, glasses, a neat stack of doughnuts, and multicolored packets of tea.

  “Oh goody!” says Oren, reaching.

  Franklin shuffles his papers while Gavin serves everyone breakfast. “Since you’re all here,” says Franklin, “I thought we might have a formal reading of your father’s last will and testament, even though the document is part of the court record—”

  “Do we have any more of these strawberry glazed doughnuts?” Oren asks from the side of his overstuffed mouth. “Sorry. But. They’re so yummy. Please continue.”

  “So,” says Franklin.

  “It’s the jam in particular.” Oren brushes off his leather pants, sees us all staring at him, and straightens his posture. “Sorry. Go ahead. Please.”

  My father, who declared himself of sound mind, ensured that my mother would get proper care for the rest of her life at the institution where she resides, Kingside Park Hospital—in their residential treatment program. They never divorced.

  There’s stuff about paying off a shitload of debt to a shitload of creditors, and then the remaining assets are to be divided between Oren, Hayley, and me; special trusts were set up for each of us. I’ll get this money, if there’s any left, when I turn twenty-one.

  And the grand finale:

  “‘I hereby appoint my son Dario Lancet Heyward chief executive officer of Moldavia Studios . . .’”

  Oren stops chewing. Hayley’s eyes open wide. I get a massive head rush.

  Franklin pauses, twirls a pen.

  “Go on,�
�� says Oren, stormily, staring into his clasped hands.

  “‘. . . with the stipulation that he is to return to Moldavia and live here full-time. In which case he has six months from the time of my death to achieve financial stability for Moldavia. If he manages to achieve solvency before those six months are up, or if there is sufficient evidence to reasonably conclude that Moldavia will be solvent within that period, Dario is free to leave the estate. If Dario should refuse this, or if solvency, or the likelihood of solvency, is not achieved in six months, the Moldavia name and library are to be sold to Rusty Blade Films, with the profits of the sale to be shared equally between my two sons as well as Hayley Fionnoula Marsh.’”

  Oren loudly digs his nails into the table.

  Franklin continues: “‘If Moldavia is not solvent, or not likely to be solvent, within the stated time above and if Rusty Blade no longer wants to buy Moldavia for market price, based on an impartial appraisal of the estate, I direct the estate to be liquefied. Any leftover profits, after all debts are paid, as well as the rights to the Moldavia library, are to be shared equally between my two sons as well as Hayley Fionnoula Marsh.’”

  The fates of the crew and the actors who live here (including Franklin), who gave their lives to Moldavia, are not mentioned in the will at all.

  “He clearly wasn’t of sound mind,” says Oren, aggressively licking pink frosting crusted on his upper lip.

  “Then you murdered him yesterday,” I tell him.

  Franklin tells us that Cassidy Blackwell, the founder and CEO of Rusty Blade, is coming to Moldavia in about three months to tour the estate and the studio facilities.

  “Why three months?” says Hayley.

  “His schedule,” Franklin replies. “Cassidy’s filming all around the world.” He explains that Cassidy’s visit will just be preliminary—an invite extended by my dad before his death.

  “Cassidy Blackwell will just want to liquefy everything and use the cash to fund one of those dreadful slasher flicks he shits out every year,” says Oren.

  “Those do very well,” says Hayley. “Especially in foreign markets.”