Halloween Carnival Volume 1

by Brian James Freeman (ed)

  She ran up and threw her arms around Armando, then exchanged a kiss with him that made Trick turn to look in the other direction. He heard Armando pull away, exclaiming, “Aurora, más tarde.”

  The producer and the woman—who Trick now realized must be the picture’s female lead—stood together in front of him, Armando making introductions. “Aurora, this is Trick McGrew. Trick, this is Aurora Calderón. She plays Rosita.”

  Trick shook the delicate hand briefly and tried not to stare. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Aurora. I have to say, I didn’t expect to find a señorita as pretty as you out here among the cactus and ghosts!”

  Rosita looked slightly perplexed, and Trick realized that English didn’t come as easily to her as it did to Armando. The producer translated for her, and she laughed and batted her lashes at Trick.

  Trick wished he had some of that tequila right then.

  Over the next hour Trick met the other key cast and crew members, including the director, Jorge Garcia Osés, a small, neat-looking man who was surprisingly in his sixties but still active and focused. He gave Trick a revised copy of the script, the only one translated into English, since all the other actors would be performing in Spanish (Marty had already told Trick that he would read his lines in English but be dubbed into Spanish for the Latin American release). A young production assistant showed Trick to his comfortable room and then ran off, explaining that they were actually shooting the movie’s first scene tonight, and although Trick wasn’t needed, he was welcome to come and watch the filming.

  Trick decided to relax by going over the revised script, drawing circles around his lines. He’d laughed when he’d first read the script, and he smiled now at the revision.

  Aw, hell, who cares how screwy it is? It’s a paycheck.

  The plot of La Hacienda de los Muertos centered on a mad doctor, Maceda, a man obsessed with the search for immortality; the doctor has captured a vampire, Count Rasputin, and needs an isolated place in which to conduct his experiments on the undead creature. He rents the deserted hacienda, which is now home only to a lovely young caretaker named Rosita; the hacienda is shunned because it is said to be the haunt of La Llorona, the malevolent spirit of a Wailing Woman who brings certain death to those unlucky enough to encounter her. When villagers start to turn up dead, the local constable, Garcia, is called in; his visiting American friend, Sheriff Cody (Trick’s character), takes over the investigation when Garcia becomes the latest bloodless victim. Meanwhile, a handsome young lawyer named Francisco arrives at the hacienda and informs Rosita that she’s actually the daughter of the hacienda’s former owner and is now officially the owner of the hacienda. Francisco and Rosita quickly fall in love, and in the climax Cody helps them stake the vampire and escape the evil Maceda, who finally falls victim to La Llorona.

  Trick, who’d never been a big fan of horror films, thought the plot was convoluted and even ridiculous, but he’d been assured that Armando Silvestre’s films always sported good production values and decent acting, and he had to admit that he would’ve been happy to waste two hours in a darkened theater watching the radiant Aurora Calderón onscreen.

  He was curious to know how Mexican film crews stacked up to their American counterparts (he figured he already knew the answer to that, but he wanted to confirm it, anyway), so once he’d finished with the script, he decided to saunter down to check out the filming.

  The first scene in the picture was also to be the first scene in the shooting schedule: It was a pre-credits prologue in which a peasant lugging a stack of firewood on his back takes a late-night stroll near the hacienda, and runs afoul of La Llorona. As Trick arrived at the front gates, he heard the familiar rumble of generators, and blinked when he accidentally looked right into the glare radiating from a bank of giant klieg lights set up at one end of a trail.

  The crew seemed similar in size and efficiency to a Hollywood crew, and Trick immediately felt right at home. He saw the extra playing the peasant getting wood stacked on his back, while an actress in a shredded white gown got a last touch-up to her ghastly greasepaint-and-mortician’s-wax makeup job.

  “What do you think of La Llorona?”

  Trick turned and saw Armando standing beside him, surveying the scene. “I gotta tell ya, Armando, I don’t quite get this La…Yer-rona.”

  Armando smiled and nodded. “It is a real Mexican legend, although I think it is also known in parts of your country. But probably not in California.”

  “Okay. So it’s a wailing ghost or some such…?”

  “Yes, a Wailing Woman,” Armando confirmed. “There are many different versions of the story, but the one we are using says that La Llorona was once an earthly woman who fell in love with a man and had two children with him. The man betrayed her, so she killed the two children by drowning them, then herself, in the Tecpan river.”

  Trick blinked in surprise. “The Tecpan river? You mean the same Tecpan river as the one we’re sittin’ next to?”

  “The same. Now her spirit supposedly wanders the banks of the river, looking for living human children she can claim as her own.”

  Trick laughed. “Ah, now, Armando, you can’t tell me folks actually believe that nonsense.”

  Armando raised one eyebrow. “Are not Americans now obsessed with flying saucers, Trick?”

  “Well,” Trick conceded, “yeah, but that’s different—there’s proof that those exist, like photographs and statements by airline pilots and such.”

  “Perhaps, but La Llorona has been around for a very long time, so surely there must be more to it than just nonsense.”

  Trick just shrugged.

  Director Osés had finished lining up his shots and adjusting the lighting, and Trick didn’t need to understand Spanish to know that he was now calling the actors and camera crew to their positions. The first setup would be a dolly shot, tracking backward in front of the actor as he trudged nervously past the hacienda. He’d hit a mark and pause, then they’d punch in for a close-up while he heard eerie screams off-camera (“to be dubbed in later,” Armando explained). The first shot would resume with the man picking up his pace, only to run headlong into La Llorona (who would be glimpsed only briefly, and mainly from the back). The peasant would then be pulled out of frame as he screamed, and the sequence would end with a medium shot of his firewood hitting the ground.

  The first few shots proceeded quickly, with Osés making slight adjustments between takes. As Trick watched the director work, he began to feel more confident about the entire film; Osés was easygoing but definitely in charge, and had obviously worked with his crew before, since he often communicated with little more than gestures or nods.

  Osés wanted one more take on the opening dolly shot, so he positioned the actor and camera crew again. The director called (in English, which Trick found amusing), “Action!” and the camera started to dolly backward while the peasant actor trudged forward.

  Until he stopped thirty feet from his final cue mark, that is. He froze, his head cocked as he listened, eyes widening in fear.

  Trick was standing near a generator, and at first all he heard was its mechanical rumble; but when he saw members of the crew also stop, immobilized by something in the night air, he stepped a few feet away from the deafening machinery until he could hear:

  Unearthly wailing.

  It seemed to be off in the distance, although Trick couldn’t figure out what direction. It was a woman’s voice, wailing in agony, almost operatic in its echoing pain. Trick caught a few words mixed in with the cries—he heard “niños,” which he thought meant children.

  He saw Armando nearby, with Aurora clinging to him in terror. Trick walked up to the producer, close enough to be heard over the combined noise of the gennies and the wailing.

  “What’s going on, Armando?” he asked.

  Armando shot one look at Trick, and Trick saw a second of naked horror before Armando’s confidence was back. “That is our La Llorona, obviously.”

  Trick loo
ked around, gesturing at the actress in the shredded gown who stood maybe twenty feet away, unmoving, certainly not wailing. “But your actress is right there,” Trick pointed out.

  “It is—”

  Armando broke off when the gennies suddenly died and the lights went out.

  The big kliegs faded fast, plunging the scene into black chaos. There were a few small flashlights zigzagging here and there, but it was a moonless night and the lights in the hacienda were too distant and small to provide any illumination. The entire crew seemed to be screaming. Trick was buffeted as people ran blindly past him, or into him.

  And over it all, that nightmarish wailing, louder now without the noise of the generators competing.

  And closer.

  Trick whirled when the next wail came, sounding as if it were only a few feet behind him. He turned, suddenly as fearful as any Mexican peasant; he thought he felt something cold brush past him, as if a graveyard chill had become a breeze. Some instinct in him said Run! And he would have, if there’d been any real light to run by, and he’d been twenty years younger.

  Then the generators fired back up. It was over.

  As the klieg lights came on, they revealed a scene of madness: Crew members were still running; some were on the ground, where they’d tripped during their attempt at fleeing; others, like Armando and Aurora, clutched each other in fear.

  At least the only sound came from human voices, gasping and questioning and sobbing. The wailing was gone.

  Armando released Aurora and moved to join Osés, who was trying to calm his crew. Trick saw Armando exchange a few words with the actress dressed as La Llorona; she shook her head frantically as she cried.

  Trick realized something about the same time that Osés did: The actor who had been playing the peasant was gone.

  Some of the pieces of firewood he’d carried lay in the middle of the trail, abandoned, but there was no trace whatsoever of the performer. Osés even had the technicians swing the big klieg lights across the surrounding chaparral, hoping to catch a glimpse of him hiding, running, something.

  But there was nothing.

  Producer and director conferred briefly and then both began shouting and issuing directions. Trick knew they’d called a wrap for the night. People began heading back to the hacienda, many looking around fearfully or clutching themselves.

  Trick joined them, relieved to have some human company around him, even if he couldn’t exchange conversation with them.

  “Glad I wasn’t in that scene,” Trick said to a pretty young wardrobe girl, who smiled, nodded, and obviously didn’t understand a word Trick had just said.

  —

  The next day was marked by the arrival of Javier Cruz, the real star of La Hacienda de los Muertos.

  Javier was blessed with matinee idol looks—the blond hair and green eyes of his Spanish parents, and a body toned from his years as a star rejoneador, a bullfighter who worked on horseback. Javier, who would be playing Francisco, had been educated in America and spoke flawless English. He’d also brought his horse: Apparently Reyo Dorado had his own following. Trick was reminded of how beloved his own Blazer had once been.

  American education notwithstanding, Javier’s main interests in life were riding, drinking, and women. Despite having starred in a string of successful ranchera films, Javier considered acting a lark, happily admitting he was nothing but a pretty face with a smart horse.

  He and Trick hit it right off.

  They met the morning after the incident with the Wailing Woman and the peasant actor. Armando had gathered the anxious crew of thirty or so in the hacienda’s courtyard for a pep talk. Trick, who had no idea what the producer was saying, stood on the edge of the crowd, admiring Aurora. Whatever the producer was telling the crew was working; as Armando spoke, they visibly relaxed; a few even laughed. When he finished, the crowd broke up, hurrying off energetically. It was then that Trick noticed the handsome new arrival, a grinning golden-haired man who approached Armando and gave him an enthusiastic bear hug. After Javier exchanged a few words with Armando and a kiss with Aurora, the producer led him over to Trick.

  “Trick McGrew, this is our younger leading man, Javier Cruz. I think the two of you may have something in common, since you are both true sportsmen. Now, if you will excuse me, I must go to work.”

  The day’s shooting involved the arrival of the mad scientist, who would be played by Armando himself, and a number of scenes in his dungeon laboratory, where he experimented on the imprisoned vampire (played by an incredibly fey actor named César Rojo, whose cravat and tight curled locks made Trick snicker every time he saw him). Trick and Javier had no scenes today and wouldn’t be needed until tomorrow. They decided to go together in search of the crew’s cook. Trick thought perhaps he could also seek out some explanations.

  “What was that speech Armando gave?” Trick asked his new friend.

  Javier smiled. “He told the crew that last night’s visit from La Llorona was a publicity stunt, in honor of the beginning of Días de los Muertos.”

  Trick rolled the thought around in his head some. “I didn’t see any press…”

  Javier slapped Trick on the back. “My friend, you almost sound like you believe in the Wailing Woman!”

  “You weren’t here last night, Javier. I’ve heard a lot of strange things in my time, but never anything like that.”

  “Do not underestimate Armando. I’ve made several movies with him now, and he is a very clever man. If it was a publicity stunt, he would make sure it was very effective.”

  Trick peered sideways at Javier. “If it was a publicity stunt? Who sounds like a believer now?”

  Javier shook his head. “La Llorona is very well known in these parts. One might almost say…inescapable.”

  “So do you believe it?” Trick asked.

  “I’m not sure if I believe it,” Javier began, “but I think it is very interesting. Have you heard the version, for example, in which she is a native Mexican who becomes the mistress of the conquistador Cortés? I’ve had people tell me they’ve heard her near rivers, wailing for her lost children. They say that if you see her, you will die yourself; or that she will take victims and drown them like she did her children.”

  “But you haven’t come across her?” Trick asked.

  “No,” Javier said, then mimicked a thrusting motion. “I’m too busy fighting bulls to have time for bullshit!”

  —

  They eventually found the crew’s cook, who made for them a meal of menudo and eggs. Trick thought it was dandy when Aurora entered and joined them. She gazed at Javier for a moment, then smiled wistfully and murmured something in Spanish.

  Whatever she’d said, it caused Javier to return her smile.

  Trick wondered if there was something more between them than actors sharing a horror film.

  Javier must have sensed Trick’s curiosity, because he said, “Aurora does not like César—the actor playing the vampire. She must shoot with him later today. She wishes we were shooting our scenes together instead.

  Trick nodded. “Ah. That César seems like an odd duck.”

  Aurora said something else, throwing Trick one apologetic side glance that made him want to learn Spanish.

  “She thinks César is liking his part too much,” said Javier.

  “Maybe this hacienda’s gettin’ to him,” answered Trick.

  Javier translated Trick’s comment back to Aurora, who responded in Spanish.

  Javier explained: “Aurora says this place was terrifying even when she was a child.”

  Trick blinked in surprise. “She was here when she was a kid?”

  “Oh, yes,” Javier said, “she owns this place—didn’t Armando mention that?”

  “No, I guess it slipped his mind.”

  After a brief conversation with Javier, Aurora laughed and shook her head.

  “She can’t believe Armando didn’t tell you,” Javier told Trick. “Yes, the hacienda has been in her family for hundre
ds of years. It was once a great working ranch, but something happened a hundred years ago…”

  Javier listened to Aurora again. “One of her ancestors was a very cruel man named Rogelio. He disappeared one day with his two children and was never seen again. His wife went insane and died a year later. People began to claim the hacienda was haunted and it fell to ruin.”

  “That’s some story” was all Trick could come up with by way of answer.

  Javier kissed Aurora’s hand, then suddenly stood up and turned to Trick.

  “I need a drink,” he announced.

  “After that, I’m inclined to agree. You know where we can get one?”

  Javier nodded. “A little village, not far from here. We are not needed today; neither are the horses. I have Reyo Dorado, there’s a nice horse for you, I think, maybe some señoritas…”

  Trick thought he was probably too old for the señoritas, but he had no objection to a ride and a few shots of tequila, so he agreed.

  Ten minutes later they were galloping across the chaparral, Trick struggling to keep up with Javier, who rode the exquisite Reyo Dorado like a demon, leaping ravines and dodging around cactus patches. Trick realized that, like Javier, Reyo Dorado was more than just a handsome movie star—he was a real working horse, trained to respond to Javier’s every command in the life or death of the bull ring. Trick’s horse, a pretty little pinto named Muchacha, was swift and sweet-tempered, but Trick was nonetheless glad to discover that Javier’s pueblo was only a twenty-minute ride (at least at Javier’s speed), because he wasn’t sure his middle-aged heart could’ve taken much more.

  The village, called Tres Hermanas, consisted of little more than a small inn, the bar, a scattering of houses, a central fountain, and one cobblestone street. The bar held exactly four tables, five chairs, and no señoritas, but it had plenty of tequila, which was all Javier and Trick really required. They stood together at the bar, each propped on one elbow, knocking back the shots.

  Trick was drunk in four. He was used to beer and could put away a dozen bottles with no problem, but he hadn’t been able to afford hard liquor in a long time. And this tequila was good—Javier called it añejo. Trick found its smoky, woody flavor doubly intoxicating.