The Final Cut

by Bark, Jasper

  He looked pretty ill when they left the party, and he started to go in and out of consciousness on the way home. The last time he came round he admitted he’d had a pretty strong dose of smack. It was obvious he’d taken too much and was beginning to OD.

  If they didn’t get him to a hospital he was going to die. Jennie didn’t think she could face a hospital though, not in the state she was in. She’d taken some heavy duty E and the come down was rough, so she’d smoked some skunk and was feeling paranoid.

  Benny went grey and his eyeballs rolled up into his head. Jimmy knew that if they didn’t get him to the hospital he was going to die soon. They had to turn round and go into the city right away.

  The out of town campus, where they were both living, was just over half a mile away. Jennie told Jimmy to drop her off and she’d walk back along the little country roads. She made him promise to come back and pick her up as soon as he’d dropped Benny off.

  The last thing she said to him, as she stepped out of the car and hugged herself against the cold and the rain was: “You will come for me won’t you? Promise me you’ll come back for me and not leave me too long.” She’d smiled with hesitation and apology, her pupils huge from all the E.

  Jimmy took Benny to A&E, but it had taken forever to get him seen and he died before the doctors could help him. Jimmy had to fill out forms and answer all sorts of questions, and then the police were called. It was early morning before he got away and he went straight to his room and crashed.

  It wasn’t till he woke, late the next afternoon, that he went to call on Jennie. She wasn’t in her room and no-one in her halls had seen her. He asked all over campus but no-one knew where she was. The next morning Jimmy put out an alert and the police were called. The roads around the campus were combed and Jennie’s body was found in a ditch under a hedge.

  There was no verge where she was found and she’d turned a blind corner in the dark just as a vehicle was coming round it. The coroner said she would have died soon after the impact. The driver who hit Jennie was never identified.

  Jimmy knew who was really responsible for Jennie’s death, though. He was. He’d put Benny before her, even though the guy was an asshole. He should have dropped Jennie safely home, not left her to walk. He should have gone back for her, not wasted time in the hospital.

  Benny was dead from the moment he took that smack, but Jennie wasn’t. It was Jimmy’s fault that she was walking that road when the van hit her. He shouldn’t have let her do it. He should have made her stay in the car. He shouldn’t have wasted his time trying to save someone who was as good as dead. He tried to help the wrong person and lost the woman he loved.

  The recrimination bubbled up inside him like a poisoned spring that seemed incapable of running dry. His whole body was heavy with it. Suzy listened politely, then went to make more tea.

  “I’m sorry you didn’t get to chat with Jennie,” she said.

  “It’s my fault I guess. I wouldn’t let her speak. She accused me of the same thing while she was alive.”

  Jimmy got to his feet. “Look, I’m sorry to have bothered you, I really don’t know what I was thinking. You’re right, I should go.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Wait a minute,” said Suzy. “You came here with information about my sister. I’d like to hear it now.”

  “Why now?”

  “You may not realise it, but your aura’s changed. When you came here your colours were guarded, deceitful and conflicted. The crying and the confession have opened you up, something’s been unlocked, your chakras are more in synch. I think you should tell me what you know.”

  “You don’t really believe all this new age claptrap do you?”

  “And here we are back to being cynical, in spite of what just happened. You’re not fooling anyone you know. This isn’t the only weird thing that’s happened lately is it?”

  “You couldn’t possibly know about that.”

  “Know about what?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You say you employed my sister, was this recently?”

  “Yes, we’re supposed to be shooting now. That’s why I’ve been looking for her, she’s disappeared again. We’re losing money on the shoot and . . . ”

  “Yes?”

  “Well she asked me to come and look for her, if something like this happened.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, in fact the last thing she said was: ‘you will come for me won’t you? Promise me you’ll come back for me and not leave me too long.’ Which is also the last thing Jennie said to me.”

  “And then Jennie, makes herself known to me, the minute you call.”

  “Well you are a medium, that must happen a lot.”

  “Not out of the blue like that. Usually it takes a while if I’m with a client. I have to make myself properly receptive. They’re not usually so loud and insistent.”

  “Do you think there’s a connection?”

  “I don’t know. How did you come to meet Melissa?”

  “She just turned up at the auditions, she didn’t even say how she found out. She wasn’t on the list.”

  “And you didn’t think that was strange?”

  “Everything about her was strange, no offence, but you must know that, she’s your sister.”

  “And yet you gave her the part.”

  “Well she didn’t really give us any choice. Besides she was perfect.”

  “In what way? She wasn’t a particularly talented actress.”

  “She just had . . . how did her agent put it . . . the right look.”

  Suzy stared a few inches above his head. “You’re keeping something from me,” she said.

  “What are you implying?”

  “I’m not implying anything. Just stating a fact. Your crown chakra is out of alignment and there’s a black and red pall over your aura. That means you’re lying. And before you accuse me of using new age bullshit, you also looked up and to the left as you spoke and you touched your nose, two classic psychological tells.”

  “Yes, alright, we’ve all seen Lie to Me.”

  “You do know you could be in danger don’t you? I know how Melissa comes across, I’ve seen her femme fatale act myself, many times, but she ran with some really wild crowds. Some of the people she hung out with were beyond hardcore.”

  “So, I know some pretty wild people myself.”

  “Not like these people you don’t.”

  “What, a bunch of violent drug dealers? You should see some of the people who back our films.”

  “I’m not talking about petty criminals, I’m talking about immortals and fanatical heretics.”

  “Now you’re sounding like a Hammer horror movie. What immortal heretics?”

  “Ever heard of a Mr Isimud?”

  “The guy who shot the . . . I mean, yes, someone mentioned him to me recently.”

  “I’m impressed, what did they say about him?”

  Jimmy shrugged. “Y’know, stuff.”

  Suzy rolled her eyes. “Did they tell you that’s who Melissa was looking for before she died? That she was studying the Qu’rm Saddic Heresy and . . . ”

  “Studying what?”

  “The Qu’rm Saddic Heresy, I doubt you’ve heard of it.”

  “Is it anything like ‘The Oldest Truth,’ or ‘The Faith that Came Before Man?’”

  Suzy looked at him with genuine surprise. “Yes, those are other names for it.”

  “What does that have to do with this Isimud character?”

  “It led her to him and she became certain he could give what she most wanted?”

  “Which was?”

  “Immortality.”

  “Like fame you mean, her name living on after she was dead?”

  “No, I mean real immortality, living forever without ever dying. Not that she found it.”

  “Oh come on, this is ridiculous. It’s one thing to do all this medium business, but you can’t expect me to believe fairy tales abou
t living forever.”

  Suzy frowned. “You have no idea, do you? You haven’t got a clue what she was into towards the end, the stuff she was playing with. She had you completely fooled didn’t she? Wrapped around her little finger, like most of the men she met. You know that was all an act don’t you? You weren’t anyone special. You are aware of what happened to her in the end aren’t you, when it all went wrong? You do know how she died?”

  “I saw it!”

  Shit! Jimmy couldn’t believe he just blurted that out. Suzy had been goading him, he was still vulnerable from opening up to her about Jennie and he’d reacted without thinking. Suzy’s expression changed to shocked indignation.

  “What did you just say?” she demanded.

  “Nothing.”

  “It wasn’t nothing. You said you saw my sister die. I knew you were holding something back but I never . . . How did you see her die? Were you there?”

  “No, it was nothing like that.”

  “Is this some kind of twisted game? Have you come round to gloat over what you did? Do you get an extra thrill from torturing the family?”

  “No, no, I wasn’t there, I wasn’t there, alright. It’s not like that. I saw a video.”

  “You saw a video? You mean you get off on this stuff?”

  “No, of course not. I didn’t want to watch it, I was forced to.”

  “Forced to?”

  “I owed somebody some money okay, one of these hardcore people you were talking about. He sat me down and forced me to watch it, me and a friend. He said he’d do the same to us if he didn’t get his money.”

  “So you haven’t actually met Melissa then?”

  “Yes, I told you, at the audition later.”

  “But what does all this have to do with a film of her death?”

  “Well, we . . . erm, we sort of got hold of the footage, we were going to use bits of it in the film. Then your sister turned up at the audition and we thought she was a dead ringer for the girl in the footage. We didn’t know anything about it. We just thought we’d got lucky, that’s all.”

  “You were going to take footage of my sister’s murder and turn it into entertainment?”

  “No, of course we weren’t, well . . . maybe we were, but it wasn’t going to be y’know—tacky or anything.”

  “Oh really, so how was it going to be?”

  “You know, edgy, exciting, hardcore. It’s not like anyone she knew was going to see it.”

  “What if I’d seen it, or another member of my family? How do you think we’d have felt?”

  “Why would you see it? Are you into Indie Horror?”

  “Does that matter?”

  Jimmy dropped his head and stared at the rug beneath his feet, filled with worse self-loathing than he’d felt over Jennie. “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

  Suzy let out a fierce sigh and held up her hands in barely suppressed anger. “This is worse than if you’d murdered her you know? Parading her death in front of total strangers like some sick sideshow. What kind of person are you?”

  “Look it’s not like that, she’s probably not even the girl in the film? She just looks like her. How do you know she’s dead? I mean I’ve met her, spoken with her, maybe she just disappeared for a while, to get away from these people you mentioned, and now she’s back.”

  “She’s dead, Jimmy.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “How did I know you were lying? How did I know about Jennie? I have my ways, I find things out and I know she’s still in torment.”

  “Then how come I’ve seen her? Not just me, but my associate. How is that possible?”

  “Did you see her a lot of times when you were in each other’s company?”

  “No, just twice.”

  “So she never appeared to you when you were together again?”

  “She had all these strange demands about how she wanted to work. She only wanted one other person in the studio with her.”

  “And did you ever capture her image on film?”

  “Yes, well no actually. She turned up for the first day of shooting but there was something up with the camera. She came out all blurry or something. I’m not entirely sure. I didn’t see it, my colleague told me about it.”

  “Did anyone get injured or killed while you were working on the film?”

  “No, no one.”

  “No unexplained deaths?”

  “No, well . . . sort of. The guys who forced us to watch the footage. Someone killed them all, while we were watching it, tore them apart, but I didn’t see what happened to them.”

  Jimmy got to his feet and began to pace the small room. He put his hands up to his temples as a wave of panic broke over him. “Shit, it’s all so completely fucked up isn’t it? I’ve never said it out loud, the things that happened, but now, just hearing myself talk about it, it’s completely fucked up. What’s going on. Do you know?”

  “I think my sister’s spirit is trapped inside that footage.”

  “Like a possession you mean?”

  “Yes, I think this Isimud did it to her, like a kind of sick joke. You spoke about actors living on after they’re dead because their image is caught on camera. That’s a kind of immortality. I think Isimud captured her spirit at the point of death so she’d live forever in that film.”

  “How does that involve me?”

  ‘I think you’re a lot alike.”

  “Me and Melissa, you’re joking right?”

  “No, you both hang on to your pain. Melissa could never let go of it. We didn’t have a happy childhood, our father was violent and abusive. Melissa never got over it. It’s why she was drawn to the worst kind of men. In her own way, I think she was trying to get back at our father, to overcome what he did to us. It’s probably what Isimud used to trap her spirit. It’s the one thing people find hardest when they’re recovering from a traumatic experience. They feel too guilty to let go of their pain and they torture themselves.”

  “That’s not like me at all.”

  “Yes it is, look how you reacted to Jennie’s death. You’ve never gotten over it, you haven’t allowed yourself. You can’t let go of the pain.”

  Jimmy sighed and heard his chest rattle. He ran his fingers through his hair. “You’re right, I haven’t gotten over it yet. I don’t think I want to. So, you think there’s some connection between Melissa and me, is that why I can see her?”

  “When you watched the footage you became emotionally involved with her and she was able to manifest herself to you.”

  “But how could I see her so clearly?”

  “Because you wanted to. You invested your own desires and imaginations in her and gave her more substance. Why do you think she asked you to help her and not your colleague, because you still want to help Jennie and you can’t.”

  “But how is that possible, how can a ghost possess a piece of film?”

  “A spirit can inhabit, or become trapped, by anything that bears its image while it was alive. Spare, the artist you asked me about, described his paintings as portals and mirrors for the spirit. A film is no different. It preserves the image of a person, as they were when they were alive, how they looked, moved and talked. It’s easy for their spirit to become trapped by those moving images, especially if there’s trauma involved, like a murder. Melissa’s spirit is imprisoned in the footage, like a victim who can’t escape the memory of an event. She’s forced to relive her murder over and over every time the film is played. That’s why she’s manifesting, why people are getting hurt. She’s desperate and she needs to escape.”

  “What can we do?”

  “You’ve got to forget this ridiculous film for a start. Bring the footage to me so I can have it exorcised and we can release Melissa’s spirit. Then we have to hand all the copies you have over to the police so my sister’s killers can be brought to justice.”

  “The police, are you sure?”

  “I’ll keep your name out of it, if that’s what you’re worried about. But
you do want to help my sister, don’t you? That’s what you came here for wasn’t it?”

  “I guess.”

  “Then you have to get me that footage.”

  Jimmy wasn’t sure. Suzy seemed convinced about the right thing to do, but he didn’t want to get the police involved. Even if she did keep his name out of it they might find something that could drop him right in it.

  Before he could say anything, Suzy’s eyes rolled up into her sockets and she fell backwards onto the floor. Jimmy froze, uncertain if this was part of some act. When she didn’t move he knelt next to her to see what was wrong. Maybe she’d had a heart attack or something.

  Jimmy patted her cheek lightly. “Err, listen, are you alright?” he said. When she didn’t respond he checked her pulse and was pleased to find she had one. He put his ear to her mouth to see if she was breathing okay and she jerked, like her muscles were going into a spasm.

  Jimmy leapt to his feet, his heart thumping with the shock. Maybe she was having an epileptic fit. Should he try and stop her swallowing her tongue? When he was younger, he’d seen a school nurse shove a wooden spoon into a boy’s mouth to stop him swallowing his tongue while he was having a fit. Jimmy wondered if he should check Suzy’s kitchen for wooden spoons.

  Suzy started to cough, her chest rose and fell with deep, ragged breaths, then she sat up. Only it wasn’t Suzy who sat up. She wasn’t moving or acting like she had before, it was as though she was someone else entirely.

  “Thank God she’s gone, the sanctimonious bitch,” she said. “She’s always been like that, no sense of humour, full of self-importance.”

  “Suzy, are you . . . are you alright?”

  “No, I’m not, and I’m not Suzy either.”

  “I don’t . . . what do you mean?”

  “Oh come on lover, don’t you recognise me? Okay, I wouldn’t have picked this outfit, given the choice, but then I didn’t have a choice.”