Night Film: A Novel

by Marisha Pessl

  It was the Saint Benedict necklace Nora had given me. I yanked it from my neck and, wedging the metal into the crack, inched it along the trench. After I’d gone all the way around it, I could see it was some type of circular door. I managed to lift up the wood a few centimeters, enough to wedge my fingers underneath. The door, a circular panel, came loose in my hands, falling away.

  I was staring into a black pipe entirely devoid of light, nothing visible at the end. I reached out, running my hands along the smooth metal sides, accidentally grazing that moth.

  It fell out onto my cheek.

  I rolled over, collecting the insect into my hand, and then, making sure it was all right, tucked it in the inside pocket of my coat, where I hoped it’d remain safe and alive. Then I wedged myself up inside the pipe. It was tight, horrifyingly so, like being trapped in an old air vent. There were no rungs to climb, nothing to grab hold of. All I could do was inch blindly up into the thing by pressing against the sides as hard as I could, bracing myself with the soles of my boots. Within a few yards I encountered a wall.

  I pressed against it. It opened easily and I shoved it back, blinking in the bright light.

  The metal ladder was directly over my head, bolted to the ceiling.

  I pulled myself out onto the top of the wooden hexagon, staring around me. This box I was standing on was a perfect replica of the box back at Beckman’s. Light was flooding in through narrow windows in the ceiling, though there were no trees visible and no sky, only white light. I couldn’t tell if it was artificial light or from the sun.

  I took another step. Suddenly there was a jolt and a sharp snap.

  I reached up, tightening my grip on the ladder’s rung just as the entire hexagon box swung out from under my feet, dangling for a moment by a piece of thread before breaking loose. And then the entire box was plunging, a spinning black box tumbling out of the sky. There was a sucking noise and then an explosion as the boxes shattered on the ground below.

  I didn’t wait, and I didn’t look down. I swung from rung to rung, heading toward that wall in front of me where the ladder twisted downward. As I moved, I noticed with amazement that the tiny white moth had managed to escape my coat pocket. It was now crawling down my arm, over the cuff of my sleeve, slipping over my watch.

  It was still only 7:58.

  Reaching the tower wall, I started my descent, the metal bars slipping eagerly into my hands and under my boots. But then, I began to realize in horror, the ground with its piles of demolished wood, it wasn’t getting any closer, no matter how long I went on. I was never going to reach the ground, never feel it hard under my feet, never wake up.

  Suddenly I was no longer on a metal ladder.

  I was tripping frantically down another black corridor. It looked exactly like the one leading to the crossroads. Had I been walking it for days and, reaching no end, simply lay down on the ground and fallen asleep?

  Or was I passed out on the living-room couch back in Thumbscrew?

  Abruptly I reached a wall with a ladder, at the top, another wooden hatch. I climbed up, sliding aside the rails, and opened it.

  I was in an abandoned factory surrounded by hulking machinery with rusted blades, piles of stripped logs and rubble. I scrambled out, racing across a floor strewn with wood chips and sawdust, heading for the small door—

  What the hell was happening? I was outside, racing through a field of grasses up to my waist, across old railroad tracks. I was sprinting past a derelict caboose on which someone had spray-painted another red bird, when I realized in shock I’d been running the entire time with my eyes closed.

  I opened them.

  Blinding sun crashed into my eyes.

  “I think he’s dead.”

  “Dude. Can you hear me?”

  Something sharp poked my shoulder.

  “Oh, my God. Don’t touch him. He’s covered in maggots.”

  “That’s not a maggot. That’s a moth.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t. My throat felt like it’d been burned. Sight slowly came back into my eyes. I was lying on my side in a muddy ditch. Two teenagers, a boy and a girl, were staring down at me. The boy appeared to have been prodding me with a long branch. Behind them, a blue station wagon was parked on the shoulder of the road.

  “Want us to call you an ambulance?” the girl asked.

  I rolled upright, my head throbbing. I stared down at myself, dimly taking an inventory. I was wearing a heavy overcoat, corduroy slacks, hiking boots, argyle socks, all of which were caked in black mud. My right hand, covered with dirt, was clasping something. My fingers felt dead, as if the bones had been broken, the flesh swollen stiff around them, because they refused to loosen their grip on what they clutched so resolutely, what I realized was a brass compass with a shattered face.

  And I was alive.

  94

  “You were gone for three days,” Nora said.

  I could only stare back at her, unable to speak.

  I’d been lost inside The Peak for three days. How was it possible?

  And the fact that all three of us were together now, alive, unhurt, huddled in an isolated booth in the back of a country restaurant called Dixie’s Diner, was also bizarre. The last four hours had transpired in such a haze, I wondered if there was a minute’s delay between what was happening in the world and my brain perceiving it.

  Struggling to my feet in that ditch, I’d managed to convince the two teenagers not to call the police but to give me a ride back to the Evening View Motel in Childwold. They seemed rather enthusiastic to oblige, probably due to their suspicion I could very well be the top developing story on the local news, themselves star witnesses. As we drove, they cheerfully informed me they’d been partaking in a cleanup project for their high school, picking up trash along the side of the road, when they’d found me.

  “We thought you were dead,” said the boy.

  “What day is it?” I managed to ask.

  “Saturday,” the girl answered with a shocked glance at the boy.

  Saturday? Jesus Christ. We’d broken into The Peak on a Wednesday night.

  They’d found me along Mount Arab Road, close to New York Route 3 and Tupper Lake, which I knew from poring over so many maps of the area was about fourteen driving miles to Lows Lake, some twenty miles from The Peak. Had I been running through the wilderness and passed out? Or had someone driven me there, left me like a sack of garbage on the side of the road?

  I had no idea. My memories seemed to have been trashed, ripped and crumpled, strewn haphazardly around my head.

  When the teenagers asked me what had happened, I managed to put together an excuse about drinking too much the night before during a bachelor party, losing my friends. Yet the longer we drove, my confusion over where I’d just woken up and what in the hell had happened to me quickly slid into paranoia over my present, including these two kids who’d randomly found me. There was something about them that was a little too vivid—from the peace sign scribbled in blue ink on his arm, her bare feet propped up on the glove compartment, toenails painted yellow, the way he turned the radio way up, playing Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue.” They looked like brightly painted characters from another Cordova film. The suspicion made my heart begin to pound in alarm as I sat in the backseat, watching the marijuana leaf ornament swinging from the rearview mirror.

  I didn’t fully believe that I just might be free of The Peak until we barreled into the Evening View parking lot. I thanked the kids and climbed out, waiting for them to swing back onto the main road, accelerating away, before I walked up to the room, #19.

  I did nothing but gaze at the door for a moment, wondering what I was going to find on the other side.

  An empty room, untouched since we’d left it? Or was a stranger staying there now, someone who’d claim he’d been there for weeks, no sign of Hopper or Nora? Or would my knock be answered by one of those figures in a black cloak, the nightmare only beginning again?

  I kn
ocked. There was a long pause.

  And then the door, chained from the inside, opened just a crack—someone peering out. It closed again, the chain slid back, and suddenly Nora was flinging her arms around my neck. Hopper appeared right behind her, silently hastening us inside, taking a suspicious look at the parking lot before closing and locking the door.

  The first thing we decided to do was check out of the motel, get into the car, get the hell out of here. Nora was agitated and had, I noticed, terrible scratches down her cheeks. She kept saying, “What happened to you? We thought they got you. We thought—” But Hopper only snapped that we should get out of here now and we could talk when we were away from this place, his terse explanation being that he’d noticed a banged-up maroon Pontiac loitering around the parking lot.

  “It has to be them,” he muttered, zipping up his gray hoodie, grabbing his canteen off the bed. “The windows are tinted black. It looks like it’s from the seventies. And it’s missing a headlight.”

  As I watched the two of them darting around the room, hastily stuffing clothing and toiletries and snacks into their backpacks, I remembered that I no longer had my own.

  Where had I left the bag? Those figures had pulled it off of me.

  I stepped dazedly in front of the mirror beside one of the beds and saw I was still wearing Brad Jackson’s herringbone coat. Its extreme heaviness was due to not just the dampness and mud but the pockets—they were stuffed with objects, one of which I noticed, as I pulled it out with a wave of revulsion, I didn’t even recall seeing, much less taking with me.

  And then I saw my face. I understood the teenagers’ shock, even Nora’s and Hopper’s worried sideways glances.

  I looked crazy. There was no other word to describe it.

  I rinsed the smeared mud off in the bathroom, watching the thick sludge spinning down the drain.

  We left the motel quickly, Hopper climbing behind the wheel.

  They had the Jeep but not the canoe. I meant to ask them about it but was abruptly so tired I couldn’t muster the strength. Hopper drove as if we were being tailed, careening down deserted roads, pines and maples and empty fields spinning past, eyeing the rearview mirror. Nora, in the passenger seat beside him, was subdued, her hands clasped in her lap.

  “You see the Pontiac?” she whispered.

  He shook his head.

  We’d been driving for about three hours when Nora pointed out a white farmhouse perched on the side of the road—Dixie’s Diner, Homemade Food That’s Doggone Good!—the parking lot packed. Only then did I feel I just might return to normal. My right arm was showing signs of life, tingling as if filled with needles. My fingers were moving again, though the palm of my hand, where I’d been holding that compass, was swollen. The horror of The Peak seemed to be drying on me, as if it were black water I’d been swimming through and now it was evaporating from my skin, leaving the faintest film.

  The three of us filed into the restaurant and Hopper asked the hostess for the booth in the back.

  “What happened to your arms?” Nora blurted out as we made our way to the back.

  I didn’t know what she meant. I’d taken off the coat, rolled up my sleeves, and saw now that my arms were covered with a horrific-looking rash. As we slipped into the booth, Nora said, “We’ve been waiting for you for three days.”

  “Christ,” said Hopper. “Let him eat.”

  We ordered food, and I was able to piece together from their disjointed and strung-out commentary that in the three days I’d been missing, apart from a few searches along the roads around The Peak, they’d been too paranoid and worried about me to leave the motel. They hadn’t left The Peak together. Nora had been the first to make it back, arriving at the room at five in the morning the same night we’d broken in. It wasn’t until after six that evening, Thursday, that Hopper showed up, driving the Jeep.

  “I thought I was going to have to go to the police,” said Nora. “I didn’t know what I’d say. ‘We broke illegally into this estate and now my accomplices are being held hostage.’ I got the number of your police friend, Sharon Falcone. She didn’t pick up.”

  “Can I interest you guys in any dessert?” the waitress asked, suddenly beside our table.

  “I’ll have a slice of apple pie,” I said hoarsely.

  “Anyone else?”

  Nora and Hopper stared at me in surprise. I was surprised myself. It was the first time I’d managed to speak with a normal voice.

  They ordered pie and coffee, and then, after the waitress brought the food, Nora, who’d been so jittery and talkative as she ate, fell silent, touching the scrapes on her cheek as if to check that they were still there. Hopper looked lost in thought. It was obvious then, the two of them weren’t simply upset over my three-day disappearance. They’d each had their own strange experiences up there.

  I also noticed uneasily, glancing around, that Dixie’s Diner, so cheery and bustling only minutes ago, had unexpectedly cleared out.

  It was just the three of us now and, hunched over the counter, an elderly man in a green-and-black checked flannel shirt, who looked as gnarled and spindly as the walking stick propped beside him. It was as if whispers of what we were about to tell one another, about The Peak, were already suffused in the air here, already drifting out of our mouths, darkening the place, and any innocent soul or carefree person couldn’t help but subconsciously sense that the time had come to leave.

  “Let’s start with the canoe,” I said.

  95

  “We don’t know what happened to it,” Nora answered. “We think they took it.”

  “They?”

  “Those people living there.”

  She glanced uncertainly at Hopper. He added nothing to this, only hooked his index finger through the handle of his coffee mug, frowning.

  “I told you to wait for me at the pond,” I said to her.

  “I meant to. But when I ran down the hill, I got mixed up, and went too far north. When I backtracked, I was heading toward the canoe, when someone grabbed my shoulder from behind. I screamed, sprayed him with the pepper spray, and then I just ran.”

  “Did you see the man’s face?” That scream I’d heard, it had been Nora.

  She shook her head. “He had a flashlight. Blinded me with it. I kept running and running, until I realized there was no one behind me. After an hour I came to this dirt road winding through the woods. I took off down it, hoping it’d lead me off the property and I’d be able to go for help.”

  Abruptly she fell silent, glancing apprehensively at Hopper again.

  “Did it lead you off the property?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Where did it lead you?” I prompted, when she didn’t go on.

  “To this concrete lot. An old-fashioned truck was parked there. At the center were these gigantic metal boxes. Five in a row. At first I thought it had to be an electrical plant used for powering the estate. Or maybe they were traps for wild animals. They looked cruel. But then I smelled smoke. I got closer and, shining my flashlight on them, I saw each one had a rusty door and a chimney sticking up into the air. Strewn all over the ground was a pale gray powder. I didn’t realize until I’d walked through it that it was ashes. The boxes were incinerators. And they’d been used recently, because I could still feel heat coming off them.”

  Incinerators.

  The word made me suddenly recall those tunnels originating from the underground alcove, those blackened entryways and the rudimentary words scrawled above the openings in white paint. I couldn’t believe it and I didn’t know how, but I remembered every one, as if they were the refrain of a nursery rhyme I’d sung as a child, the lyrics lodged in my head forever.

  Gatehouse. Mansion. Lake. Stables. Workshop. Lookout. Trophy. Pincoya Negro. Cemetery. Mrs. Peabody’s. Laboratory. The Z. Crossroads.

  Nora frowned. “I remembered the next-door neighbor in the trailer that you’d interviewed, Nelson Garcia, how he told you the Cordovas set fire to al
l their garbage. I went up to one and unlatched the door. There was nothing but black walls, piles and piles of ashes. The smell was awful. Synthetic, but sweet. I opened the other doors, raked a tree branch through the ashes to see if there was anything left. There was nothing, not one hair. I started combing the ground, trying to find some piece of evidence of what they were going to so much trouble to destroy. It wasn’t until I inspected the truck that I found something.”

  “What?”

  “A glass vial used for drawing blood at a doctor’s office. It was wedged along the side in the rear bed. It looked empty, but there was a tiny pink label on the side with a biohazard symbol. They must use the truck to transport medical waste or toxic garbage from somewhere at The Peak to burn in those ovens. The vial must have accidentally fallen out.”

  She took a breath. “It made me wonder if the whole area was contaminated. I began to feel sick, so I ran.” She stared at the table in front of her. “I had the feeling someone was following me, but every time I looked around, there was no one. When I reached the fence, I didn’t even think about it, I went right over it. I didn’t care if I died or got electrocuted or cut up. I climbed right through the razor wire, didn’t feel a thing. I just wanted to get out, and nothing would stop me.”

  “How’d you get back to the motel?”

  “I reached this paved road—this was about four in the morning—and a red station wagon pulled up, a tiny old lady behind the wheel. She offered me a ride. I was petrified. I thought for sure she was one of the townspeople. She even looked like a witch, with a green blouse and all these rings on her fingers. But I was so tired and she looked so fragile, I got in. She drove me straight back to the motel and said, ‘Take care of yourself, girl.’ And that was it. Nothing happened. I staggered into the room and slept for thirteen hours.”