Scream All Night

by Derek Milman

  I have some more back-and-forth with Eric about scheduling. Then he says something about them not resuming filming at all, on anything, for another two days.

  “Wait, what?” I say. “Two days off? I’m confused.”

  Eric looks surprised. “It’s Crepuscular Dusk.”

  I forgot the first Friday of every month begins a Moldavia tradition—two days off so everyone can rest and get their wits back from the seven-day-a-week, thirteen-hour-a-day grind. There’s always a giant costume ball in the grand ballroom of the Carpenter Wing that begins at midnight of that first Friday. Resources like costumes and party food are recycled and redirected, so these soirees wind up costing the studio very little money.

  Eric says this ball will take place in the slightly smaller ballroom of the Karloff Wing, since the graveyard set from No Chance in Hell is still spread out all over the other ballroom, and they’re behind schedule.

  Hayley and Franklin come over.

  Hayley tries to tell me something, but I’m still in studio chief mode, so I quickly explain my plan to them, and they seem to think it’s a solid next step, although no one has a clue what we should film next.

  “I didn’t handle this well,” I tell Hayley. “I was just . . . so pissed at him.” I wince whenever I think of Oren’s face, that naïve devastation washing over him when he realized what was happening. “How is he? Have you seen him?”

  “That’s actually why I came over,” says Hayley. “He’s not great. He’s standing on the roof.”

  “He’s what?”

  “He’s on the roof,” says Hayley. “Threatening to jump.”

  We run out to the west lawn, the remains of my vegetal face falling away like so much tempura. By now it’s midafternoon, and the sky is becoming a bright, blank white that threatens anything. Firm gusts of wind stripe the lawn silver as the grass shudders. A bunch of the crew run out after us, and then the crowd slowly grows.

  Oren is standing on the roof of the turret where his bedroom is. His window is wide open below him, and the curtains are blowing out. It looks like he climbed out his window and used a rope with a grappling hook attached to pull himself up onto the roof above. Oren is wearing a brown monk’s robe with the hood up, hiding his face. He’s holding a bell, which he rings once, grimly, as we all fan out in a loose Stonehenge formation around the open window.

  Oren isn’t that high up, and the turret, one of the smaller ones, is over a big flowerbed, so he would probably only sprain his ankle if he fell. So really, he’s just standing there, looking like the cover art of a mediocre death-metal album, threatening all of us with the possibility of his own sprained ankle. Of course he could always fall the wrong way. As soon as I have that thought, I get scared. “Oren!” I yell up at him. “What are you doing?”

  Head down, and shrouded, he responds only with another ring of the bell.

  “Jump!” someone shouts. There’s a nasty burst of laughter. I turn around and the laughter immediately stops. Some of the younger, scruffier dudes in the props department are looking down, stifling laughter. Assholes.

  “Oren,” says Hayley. “Come down from there. Let’s talk.”

  Oren rings the bell once, takes a step closer to the edge. And then I just completely lose my shit. I fall to the ground and clamp my hands over my ears, desperately trying to shut out this whole experience. I press my forehead into the grass until it hurts. “Oren, get off the goddamn roof!” I scream into the ground.

  I’m having flashbacks of Hugo. Oren is doing this on purpose. . . .

  He’s all that’s left of my family. If I lost him because I was callous and vengeful, because of this stupid movie or this stupid studio, I don’t know what I’d do. I’m furious at my dad for putting me in this position, and furious at Oren for fucking up his one chance and leaving me no choice. I pound the grass. “Oren!”

  “Take it easy,” says Jude, pulling me up. “This is a delicate situation.”

  “Do something!”

  Jude walks toward the castle, looking up, shielding his eyes. “Oren, I totally get you,” he says. “It’s hard when you want to do something different, or are different, and no one understands you. Trust me, I know. I love the idea of the cauliflower movie suddenly becoming this old-fashioned werewolf thing. That’s so cool. I totally saw it in my mind when you set up that amazing shot and freaked the fuck out of everyone. It was something Kubrick would have done.”

  Oren slowly turns his hooded head to face Jude. He’s listening.

  “Keep going,” I whisper to Jude.

  “And it was so generous of you to invite me here and put me in one of your awesome horror movies. I’ve already had the best day of my life. Please don’t jump before I get to know you, and read more of your stuff. I think you’re a genius, and one day everyone’s going to know that. So don’t hurt yourself, man! I’ve known too many people who have hurt themselves in my life, and I don’t want to know another one, especially one I really admire.”

  We all wait and see, with bated breath, how Oren will react. He gives us an almost imperceptible nod and rings the bell again. He looks toward me.

  “Please come down,” I yell. “You’re really scaring me now!”

  “Your brother loves you,” says Jude. “I know this ’cause all he did at Keenan was talk about what a cool guy you are. People are stressed right now, so decisions get made quickly and brutally. It’s not worth dying over. Please, let’s talk down here.”

  Oren starts slowly backing away from the edge. I feel such a powerful hit of relief, it’s like I injected it. I turn to Jude. “Oh my God,” I say. “How did you do that?”

  “I’ve talked people off ledges before. I’ve helped people who were on the brink.”

  “Who? Who have you known who’s hurt themselves?”

  “People,” says Jude with a shrug.

  I hug him. “I love you, man. Thank you for talking my brother off the roof.”

  “Ooooh no,” says Jude, pulling away, clapping his hands to his cheeks. “I actually didn’t help at all—he’s jumping.”

  “What?”

  I turn back in horror just in time to see this brown blur drop over the roof and into the flower patch below, followed by the rustle and crunch of mashed flowers, a muffled oof, and a dull ring. It’s the awful sound of a grown man who has lost sight of who he is, whose dreams just got dashed, jumping off a roof that isn’t high enough, and landing on his own bell.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Psychedelic Soldier

  OREN DEMANDS A WHEELCHAIR EVEN THOUGH HE DOESN’T REALLY need it. All those flowers broke his fall, and he’s totally fine, but he’s limping around and insists he twisted his ankle, so a wheelchair is retrieved from the props department—the very same one used by Becky Staples in Tickle the Cripple. Then Oren shuts himself in his room.

  Jude and I have dinner in the commissary, where the general mood is tense and uncertain. People are gossiping in hushed groups about the day’s events. Moldavia is already a pretty strange place, but I think today set a new precedent.

  I can barely eat. I’m too upset. After dinner, I take a plate up to Oren. His door is open a crack, so I just shoulder it all the way open. “Hey, it’s me.” I walk inside.

  Oren is lying on his bed, still in his monk’s outfit, his right leg raised on a stack of pillows, a frosty-blue ice pack resting on top of his ankle. He’s covered in Band-Aids from all the thorns he said “tore at his flesh like teeth from angry little devil babies.” Someone finished painting his room black and he changed all the light bulbs to red, which cast rivulets of unnerving light everywhere. Hexagons and other occult symbols are painted on the black walls in glowing ultraviolet. His room is now Satan chic.

  Oren is watching Black Sunday, another classic Italian horror directed by Mario Bava. He’s always watching shit about witches. He eyes me as he sips a cup of tea.

  “I brought you some grub,” I say. “Thought you might be hungry.”

  He points at an e
mpty plate on the floor: wadded-up napkins and chicken bones.

  “Oh, okay. Can I sit down?”

  He doesn’t object, so I sit on the edge of his bed, and since he’s not going to eat, and I’m really hungry all of a sudden, I start eating all the food I brought up for him.

  I look around. “Why’d you paint your room black?”

  “I wanted a change,” he says icily. “I find darker tones soothing.”

  I finish eating and push the plate away. Oren ignores me, pretending to be engrossed in the movie. I can practically taste the bitterness in the air. But neither of us seems to want to be alone, or without each other. I feel sick about everything. But I’m also still kind of angry when I think about what just went down.

  “After what happened to Hugo . . .”

  Oren holds up his hand to stop me. “Don’t even—”

  “How could you do that? How could you jump off the goddamn roof like that?”

  He looks at me. When I see the hurt in his eyes, I feel heartbroken.

  “Everyone thinks I’m a fool,” he says. “Today was the most humiliating experience of my life. I just wanted physical pain to replace the psychic pain. I wanted you to see that when you’re around . . . people seem to fall from great heights.”

  I flinch. “That’s a fucked-up thing to say.”

  “I have no future. You’re still young. People have said yes to you. No one’s ever said yes to me. You don’t know what that’s like.” He closes his eyes, blinks back tears. “I thought you would stand up for me. You’re my family. I thought finally . . . I had someone in my corner.”

  Oren really knows how to push every single one of my buttons.

  “I have no purpose here,” he continues, “or anywhere. You don’t know. . . . To want to be able to do something so badly . . . but realize you . . .” He trails off, staring into the fire.

  Oren wanted this so bad; but he wanted something he’s not very good at. He can’t even bring himself to admit it. That’s what this is all about. My dad must have known. He’s orchestrating this circus from beyond the grave, letting me clean up the mess he left behind. I have to be the one to tell everyone all the terrible truths.

  I feel so rootless right now, connected to nothing and no one. I can’t listen to Oren go on, feeling sorry for himself. I wish he would just grow up already, and see reality. But I don’t know what it’s been like for him here. He’s lived here his whole life, dreaming one day that his vision would be Moldavia’s vision.

  “I know how much you wanted this,” I tell him. “But Jesus, man, it’s like you wanted to crash and burn out there. How can you not know what you can and can’t have? There’s no Laser Man. There’s no animal wrangler. You can’t switch genres on a whim, have a werewolf suddenly appear, and destroy the entire set the production design team spent weeks building! How could you not know that?”

  His jaw clenches, and his chest heaves. He moves the ice pack and then reaches behind him to adjust the pillow under his head. The light from the TV flickers off his stoic face, protruding out of the haze of his room like a tragic Romantic bust.

  He sniffles. “You enjoyed it. Firing me.”

  The truth is: I thought I would. But I didn’t at all. No one enrages me like Oren, but no one else inspires this level of pathos and remorse in me either.

  “I know I didn’t protect you,” he says, flatly.

  I glare at him. “You mean when Dad beat the shit out of me? When he tried to drown me?”

  “You think I didn’t bear the brunt of most of his rages?” he says.

  “He almost killed me. And you just stood there.”

  I clench my fists by my sides. Those bad feelings are starting to well up.

  “You think I haven’t been haunted about all that?” he says.

  “I think you worshipped him. You were willing to let him get away with anything so you’d get what you wanted out of him.” I grin cruelly at him. “Well, how did that work out for you?”

  Oren’s whole face crinkles, like my words are a nerve agent.

  He turns his head toward the fire, the flames reflecting in his eyes. “The truth is, I relished seeing you almost drown in that sink,” he says, quietly.

  It’s so horrible I almost laugh out loud—because I know it’s true. He’d have to be carrying a hell of a lot of fury to look the other way for so long. And then take advantage of my damage so he could win what he thought he deserved.

  “My loyalty?” he says, his voice rising. “My sacrifices? My obedience? My patience? My love? All of that meant nothing. You were always the favorite. Dad thought you were lit from within. With me, he only saw a clumsy shadow on the wall.”

  I put my head between my knees. “That’s what this is? You were jealous of me?”

  “Two decades being ignored in this family and then you came along and it was: light shining down from the heavens! And you never even realized it.”

  I sigh into the floor. “You should have gotten out.”

  He sits up. “You think I haven’t thought about it? I’ve had fantasies about traveling the world . . . maybe working as an au pair in Prussia.”

  I spring back up. “Prussia? Prussia hasn’t existed since World War II.”

  “Okay, so somewhere else, then—”

  “But how do you not know about the demise of Prussia?” I push my fists into my forehead. “How could you let yourself be isolated and ignorant for so long?”

  “Let myself? I didn’t get to escape like you did. I was too old. I didn’t have that opportunity. I never went to school.”

  Like Hayley, Oren really did sacrifice everything to Moldavia. He never got any kind of education. How could my dad allow that? Especially since he clearly had no plans to provide some other future here for Oren.

  All this happened before I was even born. I didn’t know; I was too young. Oren was always just here. I accepted that like I accepted everything else about this place. It never occurred to me that Oren should be graduating from college, out in the world. It never occurred to me that everyone was living in unnatural seclusion here, where all the flowers are imported and have spiders inside. I just knew I wasn’t safe here.

  “I wanted to have something be my own creation for once,” he says. “I wanted to show everyone I could make something of myself. That I’m not a joke.” Oren pours himself another cup of tea from an orange kettle sitting on a hot plate by his bed. “Dad always intended for you to be next in line.”

  This seems like a leap. “How do you know that?”

  “I always sensed it. Everyone did. Yet you were the one who left. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  I guess it is. I’m so exhausted all of a sudden.

  “Can I offer you some tea?” he asks.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Have some tea with your poor crippled brother.” He grabs an empty mug and pours me some. I take a sip. The tea tastes like licorice and fermented raspberries. “It’s my own little brew.” He laughs. “I created that, at least.”

  We sip tea in silence.

  “You’re not a joke, Oren. You just have nowhere to grow here. You can’t explore your potential trapped in this castle. And I don’t really believe I was Dad’s favorite—”

  “Believe it,” he says, sitting up, kicking a bunch of papers toward me. In the dark I can’t make out what they are, there’s so much mess on his floor. “Dad always wanted you to come back. That was his big plan all along.”

  I frown. “What are you talking about?”

  “He was working on a sequel to Zombie Children.”

  I don’t believe him. Moldavia doesn’t make sequels.

  Oren picks up the stack of papers. “He actually finished a rough draft,” he says.

  I don’t believe that either. My dad never wrote a script. He would film from his treatments—individual scenes would be fleshed out later. Dialogue would get written during production, even in the middle of a scene. Sometimes that was painfully obvious.

  “He
worked on it for years,” says Oren.

  “He didn’t work that way. He didn’t write whole scripts. And he didn’t take years either.”

  “This was a more personal project,” says Oren. “His most personal project. Maybe you didn’t know him as well as you thought.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He shows me the title page: Alastair and Abigail.

  Parts of my body start to feel prickly and numb. “For real?”

  Oren nods.

  “Is it any good?”

  “You know,” says Oren, lifting himself off the bed, wincing, and packaging himself into the wheelchair, “I never could bring myself to read it.”

  My mouth feels swollen and dry. My dad wanted to reconcile, and I never gave him the chance.

  “But you don’t want to dwell on the past, right?” says Oren.

  “I don’t want to revisit all that painful shit, but I also have no idea what—”

  “I figured you’d say that,” says Oren, wheeling himself over to the fireplace. “Which is why you don’t need this.” He deposits the entire script into the fireplace. I watch the flames rise and consume all the pages.

  I stand up, shakily. “Why did you do that?”

  He cranes his neck around. “You have all these painful memories of making Zombie Children.”

  “I’d want to know what the sequel was about,” I say. “We need ideas!”

  “Revisiting Alastair would only dredge up more pain for you.”

  “But it was about me! Alastair was always about me.”

  “Aww. And maybe Dad told you, somewhere in that script, how much he really loved you and regretted everything. Right?”

  “Dammit!” I gesture uselessly into the fire.

  “Don’t worry,” says Oren. “He wrote a treatment first. It’s in his office.” He puts a finger to his chin. “But I should probably burn that too.”

  “Don’t. Touch. It.”

  That treatment is the last piece of my dad I’ll ever have. It could offer an insight into everything I never knew about him. He may have even told me stuff through it that he never got a chance to say to my face. Suddenly, all I want is that goddamn treatment.