by Greg Kihn
Clint watched, his eyes like saucers. Then, the screen went black—the horror show was over. The film continued to roll when the tail end passed through the machine and started flapping wildly. Landis switched it off.
Clint turned to face Woodley. “Great stuff, unbelievable, I loved it. It really gives you a feel for what it must have been like to be there.”
“You can’t imagine what it was like,” Landis replied. “You just can’t imagine …”
The lights came up. Landis pulled the take-up reel without rewinding and placed a new reel on the spool.
“Okay, now this next part is different,” Landis explained. “This is some footage I shot for a movie that never got made.”
Clint twisted in his seat. He watched the old man fooling around with the projector. Two dinosaurs, Clint thought, one preening the other. Landis treated the machine with a respect that he seldom, if ever, showed human beings.
“It is, without a doubt, the greatest few minutes of film I ever shot. Maybe even the most remarkable piece of film ever.” He paused, watching for Clint’s reaction, then sighed. “It’s a shame I couldn’t do anything with it way back when, but maybe now, with our enlightened society—” His words trailed off and he coughed deeply. “Ah, who the fuck am I kiddin’?”
Clint looked perplexed. “What were you gonna say?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Landis muttered. “Judge for yourself.”
When it was film he was dealing with, Landis’s ancient, gnarled fingers were suddenly as nimble as a surgeon’s. Clint watched the old man thread the wide 35 mm celluloid through the maze of toothed spools and running gears. It seemed like a needlessly complicated process, full of endless loops and twists. Old-time film equipment was like that.
Then, it was ready. Landis dimmed the lights and said, “What you are about to see, no human being besides myself and the cameraman has ever seen before. I think you’ll recognize the principals, if you’re half the horror fan you say you are. I gotta warn ya, this is very strong stuff. It was never released, for one reason or another, as you’ll see. One more thing—it’s all real.”
“What do you mean by that?” Clint asked immediately.
“You’ll see,” Landis replied cryptically.
Clint shifted back in his seat, anxious to see what was so incredible in the old man’s eyes. Another countdown filled the screen, the film blinked, then stabilized.
A pale woman with black hair and dark lipstick appeared on the screen. She looked familiar.
She spoke. Clint listened closely. “Hello, I am Devila, queen of your nightmares. Tonight, I invite you on a great journey, a journey into the unknown.”
Devila! The connection Clint had been looking for was in front of him. He looked back at the old man, saw he was absorbed with the image on the screen, then turned his attention back to Devila. She went through a short monologue saying that everything they were about to see was real. She appeared to be very nervous. Clint wondered why.
“I am now going to conjure up the spiritual entity. Remember, this is not a trick.”
Clint was transfixed. She took two huge tuning forks, hung them on a floor lamp, and struck them.
The sound they made was distorted on the film, but it seemed to be an intense vibration, too much for the microphones, and they canceled out. Clint was suddenly fearful. The feeling of dread coming off the screen was overwhelming. The sound on film went to white noise, yet even then, it seemed powerfully evil.
“Watch this part closely,” Landis rasped.
What happened next made him sit up straight and study what his eyes told him they saw. The woman transformed into a snake, or rather, her head became a serpent’s head.
If it was a special effect, Clint couldn’t see it. It appeared to be real. Clint realized that the only way to fake something like that was to use the clay-dynamation process like Ray Harryhausen.
A clay model could be photographed one frame at a time, but even then, by its movements you could tell what it was. This was definitely not that. Clint watched, studying the screen for a clue, but could find nothing that would give the effect away. The serpent’s head fit on her seamlessly; its coils seemed to meld into her flesh.
In his heart, Clint knew that it couldn’t be real. Such things don’t exist. It was impossible, but it looked real. It must be the old man, screwing with my head again, thought Clint.
His eyes were riveted to the horror occurring onscreen.
The snake thing moved around the room and flicked its tongue, the camera wobbled but kept rolling. Some guy in the background screamed. Clint studied the film. Then, abruptly, it ended. The screen went white as if an eye had opened into the sun.
Clint turned to face Landis. “What was that thing?”
“I don’t know, but it scared the shit out of me.”
“You never did anything with this film?”
Landis switched the lights back on, but the atmosphere stayed dark and ominous. The only difference was now you could see.
“What could I do?” Landis asked. “Devila blew her brains out on TV a few days later; we were all watching. I only had the couple minutes of film you just looked at … I was stuck. But, as you can see, it’s powerful stuff. That was completely real; it actually happened.”
Clint hesitated, gathering his strength, then made the decision to let the cat out of the bag.
“Devila was just one of the people involved with Cadaver to die, right?”
“Devila wasn’t in Cadaver,” Landis answered quickly, “and I know what you’re driving at. You’re going to tell me that each and every person who worked on that movie is dead, and that most of them died mysteriously, either by suicide or murder. You’re going to tell me that there’s a curse, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” Clint said, “I was. I’ve been doing some research.”
Landis snorted. “I’ll bet you have.”
“There are those who might believe that the corpse you used in the movie has come back to, how should I say it, even the score?”
Landis laughed. “Like who? That’s horseshit.”
“And you’re the last one left.”
“Pure crapola.”
“Aren’t you scared?”
Landis laughed another one of his humorless laughs. The skin of his face had sagged noticeably since he’d arrived, and Clint wondered if he wasn’t going to start gasping for breath any second. The laugh turned into a sharp, dry cough.
“Me, scared? Shit, boy, I invented scared. What do you think?”
Clint stood up, his notebook and pen in hand. He gestured at Landis, waving a hand over the room. “I think all this is part of something else, something bigger,” he said.
Landis sneered. “You’re crazy.”
“Hear me out,” Clint continued. “Yes, I do think there’s a curse, but that’s not what I wanted to say.” He took a deep breath. “I think I know whose body that was in drawer sixty-six. It was Albert Beaumond.”
Landis shook his head. “The Satanist?”
“Yeah, he came to your party with Devila, he was involved with devil worship, and he disappeared at the same time. He was never found. The cop in charge of the case said that they did find a body that matched the description, but before it could be identified, somebody stole it from the morgue!”
“Buzzy!”
“The body was in drawer sixty-six.”
Landis stared off into the distance of the blank movie screen as if he were looking out into a polar landscape. “Johnny D.,” he muttered.
“Johnny D.? Albert Beaumond.”
“Jesus.”
Clint leveled his gaze at the old man and began to weave a web of impossible logic. “Suppose that Albert Beaumond stumbled onto something truly supernatural, like those tuning forks. Suppose Devila got them from him after he used them and went crazy, then she used them herself in the film, and she went crazy. Albert probably went out and killed himself, but his body wasn’t found until later. Those forks are
the connection. Then you come along and make Cadaver and trot out Albert’s body for one last fling.”
“Buzzy ripped it off and brought it here,” the old man said.
“Here? He brought the body here?”
Landis sighed. “The asshole …”
Clint continued. “That was the corpse of Albert Beaumond, a man who worshipped the devil, a man who had become host to a demon.”
“That explains a lot of things,” Landis said, still staring at the snowfield.
“But that’s not the curse, is it?” Clint asked bravely.
“What do you mean?” Landis hissed.
“Well, that story about the demonic possession might account for Devila, but someone else, someone alive killed those other people, unless you’re willing to believe that something truly supernatural was responsible. Personally, I don’t. I think somebody did them in and made it look that way. Why? I don’t know.”
“Revenge,” Landis whispered.
“Maybe. The secret of Cadaver and the missing corpse was protected. The people who were part of it are all dead.”
Landis pulled his face back from the empty screen and narrowed his eyes. “What are you saying?”
“Who knew?” Clint asked.
“Buzzy Haller.”
Clint nodded. “And you.”
Landis didn’t seem surprised. His face showed no emotion whatsoever. Clint, unschooled in the fine art of subterfuge, wore his heart, soul, and guts on his sleeve.
“Me,” Landis said flatly. There was no inflection to give away what he was thinking.
“You had the most to gain,” Clint softly said. “You knew the score.”
“Landis Woodley is not a murderer,” the old man spit. “Say what you want about him, but he doesn’t kill people. Your theory is good, but you left out one little thing.”
The old man stared off into the arctic snowscape of the screen again and sighed. Clint could see the fatigue on his back, grinding him down. He stood hunched over, frail and sickly.
“The curse,” he said, “is real. And the body of Albert Beaumond is right underneath us.”
As if on cue, something pounded the floor at his feet, causing the floorboards to rise. Clint nearly jumped out of his skin. Then the moaning started. He felt a flush of fear race through his system.
The old man could see that Clint was completely unnerved.
“What is it?” he cried. “What in God’s name is it?”
Landis moved away, his eyes on the floor. “I just told you, it’s the body of Albert Beaumond.”
“But that’s impossible!” Clint shouted.
“Accept it, kid. I know it’s hard to believe, but accept it.”
There was another moan, louder than the last, and a scraping noise that seemed to move along the underside of the floor across the center of the room. Clint was not ready for that. It was as if he’d gotten on an amusement park ride and realized too late that it was the suicide big dipper.
“It’s buried in the dirt of the crawl space,” the old man droned. “It’s been right under my feet all these years, and I never knew it.”
Clint flinched. This was something he was not prepared to deal with. “But, it’s dead!” he yelled.
“Undead,” Landis replied, the hopelessness in his voice rising above the dreadful sounds of pain coming up from below. “With the demon trapped inside.”
“That’s impossible! It’s a hoax!”
“The body is undead.” Landis looked away, disbelieving his own words as he said them. “Undead,” he muttered, “and tonight … tonight it’s coming for me. I’m the last one, kid.”
The moans were getting louder and more agitated. Clint looked at the floor as if it were on fire. His dread swam unchallenged through his bloodstream, and the wild taste of terror was on his lips. “You’re insane,” he whined.
“Suit yourself.” Landis laughed, coughed. There was another escalation of moaning, sending shivers down Clint’s back as if he’d been doused by a bucket of ice water.
“What the fuck is it?” Clint screamed, his voice trembling now, brittle and unsteady as he began to back away.
“I told you, but you don’t believe me,” Landis said.
The pounding shook the floor.
“Let’s get outa here!” Clint shouted.
Landis shrugged. “No place to run, no place to hide.”
Clint grabbed Landis’s arm and shook the old man’s frail body. “Out! Now!” he shouted.
Landis looked into his eyes. The atmosphere in the room was becoming unbearable; the terrible moaning and pounding shook the air itself.
“Yeah, okay. Upstairs.”
Clint grabbed his cassette recorder and camera and stumbled toward the door. The old man stumbled behind him. Together they reached the steps, the owls screeched and flew from their perches. Clint slammed the door behind him when he realized that the old man wasn’t going to.
“Hurry up, for God’s sake!” Clint choked.
Behind them the sound of the floor buckling upward cracked the night. The trapdoor, set in the floor he’d been standing on a few moments ago, creaked and split, pulling the rug up. It hovered for a second, opened a few inches, screeching like a banshee, then crashed open with enough force to shake the house.
“Oh, shit,” Clint brayed. He pushed the old man aside to mount the stairs. Landis bounced off the wall like a skeleton. The kid flew past him with the swiftness of youth.
“Come on!” he shouted at Landis.
The old man arrived at the top of the stairs what seemed like hours later, puffing and gripping his chest, laboring across the threshold.
Clint slammed that door and fumbled with the lock.
He then turned and noticed the old man. His face was as white as parchment; a sheen of sweat had broken out and he seemed to be fighting for every breath.
“You don’t look so good,” Clint said.
Clint had never seen a person have a heart attack before, but he knew that’s what it was. The color of the face, the shortness of breath, and the dangling left arm gave it away. The old man leaned against the wall, looking like death itself.
“You got some medicine or something?” Clint asked.
Landis shook his head. He couldn’t talk anymore.
Before Clint could begin to worry about Landis Woodley’s health, the sounds from below drew closer. The first door banged open. The moaning continued.
“This ain’t real, is it?” Clint asked, his heart galloping.
In spite of his pain, Landis smiled.
Something began to climb the stairs. Heavy footsteps thudded closer.
Clint looked like he was going to cry. Landis’s smile was frozen on his face as he watched the kid. The terrible burning in his chest was overwhelming. He was in real danger of falling down, but he held on like the tenacious survivor that he was.
The kid knew that he should run, and, for some perverse reason didn’t. But the old man wasn’t going anywhere. His heart was too weak.
The thing trudged slowly up the wooden stairs, as if the weight of the world were on its shoulders. The kid realized that he was staying.
He rationalized it by saying that the thing, the bad thing, was slow. Even if it splintered through that door and made a lunge at them, Clint was young and quick and would be able to escape.
Besides, he wanted to see it. He had to get a picture. He had to. He fumbled with the camera, popping the autoflash up and sliding back the lens cover. Whatever it is, he told himself, I’m going to get at least one good shot of it.
All those years of horror movies had culminated in this, face-to-face with real terror. He shuddered, as much thrilled as afraid. The fear, like a drug, was numbing, intoxicating. It filled his blood as if injected there by a mainline fix.
Let me see it. I want to see it before I run.
The door shook. The thing on the other side had reached the top of the stairs and was leaning into it. The old wood creaked, then cracked. A thin f
issure appeared in the thick molding, splitting the length of the oft-painted wood. Funny that Clint could see so much in so short a time, but he noticed the colors it had been before, at least three different layers of paint.
He was rooted, poised to escape but not wanting to, just yet. Like a child covering his eyes when the monster came on the screen, he was aware of the intensity of his fear. It was a rich, heavy opium that paralyzed and stupefied. Was that how a cornered animal felt? Unable to find his legs, he stood by the old man and waited for death to make an entrance.
Let me see it. I just want to see what it looks like.
What would the monster do? Was it only after Landis Woodley, or did it want to destroy everything in its path? Clint realized, in a moment of lucidity, that he was measuring his chances. Apparently, his subconscious thought they were pretty good, because he had yet to move.
Why am I like this, Clint wondered. Why can’t I just turn my back on this shit and beat feet? Any normal person would be out of here. What is it inside me that makes me want to stay?
He thought about the army men he placed around his room at night; he thought about the plastic monster models and how they were so hard to control. Were they really his friends or enemies? He built them, but would they turn on him after the lights went out, as Frankenstein’s monster had done? The army guys had a dual role. Not only did they guard against the creatures from without; they guarded against the far more dangerous creatures from within.
Clint watched the door buckle. The hinges, screwed deep in the rotten wood, groaned as they were pulled out of shape. The bad thing moaned again, this time louder than Clint had ever heard.
The sound was terrifying. It pushed all the panic buttons in Clint, sending overdoses of adrenaline into his heart. He brought the camera to his eye and positioned his finger over the shutter release.
He was like a runner in the starting box, every muscle taut. Ready to explode. Ready to take flight. Yet, he waited.
Let me see it. I just want to see what it looks like.
Landis was waiting, too, but for a vastly different reason. He knew that he should run, but his body would not, could not, respond. So, he waited for his fate.