The Film You Are About to See, page 11
Green vomit bags blew in the wind and out drivers’ windows. Soiled popcorn left random trails in the mud. Bodies, and parts, spread like bloody confetti around the lot. Nearby a person lay face down, the center of her head smushed flat. Someone had driven right over her. The shiny silver of a candy bar wrapper poked out from beneath her dead hand.
The Corvair woman was alive and weeping over her dead children. The creature had left her with the realization of what she’d done. She violently threw her body as she coughed sobs and strained screams.
“Help,” she said over and over. “Someone help.”
June hoped with everything she had that the police would come soon. How they’d beat the creature, she had no clue. But they’d bring order of some kind. And the remaining moviegoers and police would figure out how to take this thing down, send it back to Hell or freeze it out just like they did in The Blob.
Just then, a speedster flew at the Corvair woman. It struck her and pinned her broken body between the two vehicles. The speed nearly split her in two, cutting her off at the bloody rim around her waist.
June had a gut punching pain.
The man shouted from behind the wheel. “Oh my god! What have I done?”
Before the driver could get out, his engine caught fire. The force of the flames shot into the windshield. He screamed only for a few moments. But to June, it repeated. Again and again.
More cars hurried to the exit. Several spun out and crashed into what became a fiery brocade.
Through all of that, June felt the fury of the creature as it climbed around inside Ingrid’s car. It would make it back to the other side soon. It was prepared to freefall out the window. Vulnerable for a beat, free to kill again.
“The actors put their stuff in a storage room around back,” the nurse shouted, waving them along. “We can barricade the door until the police get here.”
Without a better idea, June and the others followed the gimmick nurse behind the concession stand. She found the backdoor marked STAFF ONLY and said, “We were supposed to keep this light on.”
The nurse felt for the switch and flicked it up and down, up and down. The room sat in disquieting darkness. She grunted and stomped. “Ugh. Let me find the flashlights.” Metal and plastic clattered as she felt through the shelves of utility supplies.
The yellow beam of the flashlight clicked on and went out. The nurse beat the thing into the palm of her hand. It flicked on and off. And on again.
Various walls and shelves were lined with chemicals, rod-shaped bulbs, and other supplies labeled with bold red letters: DANGER. The nurse pointed the light out before her. It reflected wetness on the floor. Spotted. Smeared. And spattered. Blood of two victims of grotesquerie. The china doll nurse and the man she’d miraculously dragged through the lot.
Projection rods jutted from the man’s eye sockets. The eyes themselves were obliterated to bloody sludge. They’d been shoved in so deeply. It would take immense strength to do something like that.
“Betty!” The nurse cried, rushing to the china doll nurse.
Betty wore a necklace of bruises. The nurse tried to bring Betty’s head onto her lap but only stretched sticky pieces of skin from the floor, smacking as it tore away. She screamed, absolutely horrified as her friend came apart in her hands.
Lenny held his stomach and gagged. He apologized profusely between breaths.
“Did William do this?” Ingrid said, snapping her neck to look at June. A look that was both afraid and authoritative and said, Cut the crap and tell me.
June hadn’t quite made it there yet. She cupped a hand over her mouth. Still in shock. But then she remembered the last thing she’d said to William: “What’s that all over your shirt?”
This is where the blood had come from.
The nurse sobbed. She wiped her dripping nose and sniffled. “Who’s William?”
June had to tell them all what she knew if they hoped to survive.
“Yes,” June finally said. “William did this.” Then she glanced at the man with the rods rammed through his eyes. “But I’m not sure he did that.”
The nurse didn’t understand. She shook her head, the overwhelm unnerving her like a noir actor does a “hysterical” woman.
June turned to the nurse, “What’s your name?”
The woman shuddered. “Cathy.”
“Cathy,” June said. “Was Betty supposed to do that bit tonight?” June pointed to the dead man. “With him?”
June already knew the answer. The strength required for the task of dragging him through the mud was too great for this woman. She’d pulled it off because the creature wanted her to. Because the creature had the power. The audience applauded, cheered, and laughed as the woman dragged away one of the first victims of the night. A horrid creature attached to her spine.
“No,” Cathy said.
Vincent pushed through the group, eager to barricade the door. He shoved a work bench beneath the door knob.
Cathy faced June. Still lost and utterly traumatized like the rest of them.
“What’s happening, June?” Stef said.
June wasn’t sure where to begin.
“I can see things,” June explained. “I have these episodes.”
The gang nodded along, all having been witnesses to her episodes through the years.
“We know,” Stef said.
“No, it’s more than that.” June shook her head. How could she make them understand?
“She can see dead people,” Vincent said matter-of-factly.
Cathy’s mouth fell open. Whether she was shocked by the truth or in awe of the insanity wasn’t clear.
Ingrid shook her head. “That’s not quite it. I saw her . . . She had an episode on Monday morning just before . . .”
June remembered running the track, their exchange with Annie, the cheerleader Janice’s broken ankle, and then the intruder.
“Before my grandmother died,” June said, “I saw her last moments.” She winced at the memory. “And felt the pain of her injuries as she received them. I watched her die.”
She’d spoken aloud things she never had before. There was relief in this, but it was too soon to be savored. The screams outside their hideout hadn’t stopped.
“It explains so much,” Ingrid said. “The headaches. The way you zone out.”
June continued. “Yeah, and there’s something else. I can see through the killer’s eyes.”
They all perked up at this.
“What does that mean?” Stef asked, pointing her flashlight away from the bodies on the floor.
“It means that I can see who the creature latches onto next. I can find the next killer.”
June watched the group exchange glances.
“If you could see all of that, why haven’t you stopped it?” Cathy groaned. Fresh tears welled in her eyes.
That stung, but June understood. She’d been frustrated by the timing of the visions and pain, too.
“This is my first time wandering into it. My sense, I mean. That’s what I call it. I’ve never leaned into it so fully. It’s scary and painful and sometimes, it’s hard to come back. And other times, it’s just a cold, vast nothingness that I can’t shake for days.”
“But Ingrid, you and Vincent have already brought me back. It’s something in your touch. In your energy.”
She turned to Ingrid. “You did it in the bathroom.” Then to Vincent, “And you in the woods.” She took a deep breath. “We don’t have much time, but I think it’s up to us now.”
Lenny’s eyes widened, and Stef’s mouth hung open.
“Have you gone nutty?” Stef asked. “You saw it out there.”
Vincent and Ingird understood, though they were just as afraid. June could see it on their faces and sense it in her heart. But she sensed their belief in her, too. She just had to get the others on board. She needed all of their help.
“Stef, as far as I know I’m the only one who can sense this thing. And see through its eyes.”
Stef cried and nodded, accepting what she knew to be right. They had to do something. They couldn’t just stand there and let more people die. Come dawn, there’d be no one left.
“Where did it come from?” Lenny asked. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does. It came from the old oak tree behind the projectors,” June said. “Right after lightning struck it down.”
Vincent stopped and met her eyes. “What else did you see in the woods?”
“A woman buried alive hundreds of years ago. The whole town accused her of being a witch, and they . . . They just wouldn’t listen to reason. She begged them, but they . . .” June shook her head at the memory of raw hatred in the townspeople’s eyes.
June turned to Ingrid, “I first saw her when we were in the bathroom earlier. I think she is the creature.”
This stunned the group.
“What does it want?” Lenny asked.
June answered, staring ahead. “Revenge.”
Stef shielded her eyes from the bodies when Vincent’s flashlight found them.
“That’s it,” Vincent cried. “We’ve got to trap this thing.”
“Vincent,” Stef whimpered. “Move your light.”
He hadn’t noticed his beam migrate to the dead man’s face, the one they’d all been trying to ignore.
Frightened, Vincent stepped back and stumbled into the shelves on the wall. Bulbs crashed to the floor and shattered around them. Tubs of cleaning solution tumbled and spilled, running red once it met the blood. The image was enough to carry June away into the red clouds of the sense.
“June,” someone said.
She shrugged them off. The only way she’d learned anything about the creature was letting the sense take her. And they needed to know more.
“Give me a few minutes and bring me back.”
“How?” they asked, but something else caught June’s attention. Shadows ran through the red. There and then gone, just like that. She smelled smoke. And there it was, that pleading inner voice of whichever person the parasite had made its own.
Please, let me go.
Where are you, June thought.
But the red clouds fell to infinite black and the question was repeated back to June.
“Where are you?”
She recognized this voice. It was Nancy Jackson.
June didn’t answer. She felt a buzzing in her head. The sense vibrating like Percepto!
She leaned into and away from Nancy Jackson’s echoing, whispered question, “Where are you?”
June summoned what she’d seen at the oak tree: the men mangled beyond recognition, Nancy Jackson and the hysteria of her unjust trial, the children writhing on the floor, the sobbing mothers and shouting men. Then, the moment when the creature detached from Officer Reed as the bullet exited his skull. How it struggled on its back.
It had killed dozens of people by now. But June understood then, like all monsters in the pictures, CO2 in The Blob and a wooden stake to the heart in Dracula, the creature had a weakness. A vulnerability. And therefore, it could be destroyed. Monsters were always undefeatable, until they weren’t. She felt more in control moving through the sense than she ever had before.
“Witch’s souls are weightless. Gravity might destroy the body, but the witch’s power would remain,” the townspeople whispered outside the meeting.
Other theories argued the opposite.
Magistrate Cordier would have the final say, but he heard all propositions, inquiries, and concerns.
“Burn the witch!” children yelled, gleefully. Angry men echoed their chants behind them. “Burn the witch!”
Even still, the children had fooled them all, Nancy thought. And if there was a Devil, he certainly wasn’t playing on her side. No one was.
Nancy sat in the meeting house, shackled, as the townspeople came and went. She had brief breaks outside to relieve herself and a few hours of rest following the conclusion of the day’s final meeting.
In this final meeting, the priest’s wife suggested that Magistrate Cordier order Nancy Jackson to be killed with the help of her strong horses. She said to ensure the witch’s death, they would tie each of Nancy’s arms and legs to a horse and then let them take off in opposite directions, tearing her wicked body limb from limb.
The barbarity of this execution stunned Nancy silent.
How could she?
Nancy awaited a reaction from the magistrate. He had to think this woman was mad, too. But he didn’t denounce her. Didn’t deny this cruel and unusual punishment. He simply thanked the woman for the suggestion and sent her on her way, promising to see her at Sunday service.
A mother of one of the allegedly devil-altered children stormed inside the meeting house just as Magistrate Cordier backed away from the podium.
She did not wait for the magistrate to resettle. Intent and fury burned in her eyes. “Magistrate Cordier, hear my declaration. The witch,” she said, pointing a bony finger at Nancy, “should not be hanged nor torn apart.”
Nancy couldn’t take any more of this. What means of execution hadn’t they proposed?
“What would you have us do?” the magistrate asked. His tone was far too juvenile and inquisitive for Nancy’s liking. In those final days, she watched any decency that remained within the magistrate, lawmakers, and the Christian townspeople go up in flames.
The woman smiled.
“Nancy Jackson terrified those children with her witchcraft. I want her to die afraid.”
“I did not harm the children!” Nancy shouted, fervently. Silence was getting her nowhere. “Please!”
Nancy hurried forward, stopped by the short lead of metal shackled around her hands and feet.
Her eyes burned with tears. “Magistrate, please! I have not harmed these children. I have not harmed a soul!”
Magistrate Cordier cleared his throat and raised a hand. A man tasked with Nancy’s detainment shoved an elbow into her back. Nancy crumpled to her knees, whimpering.
Magistrate Cordier returned his attention to the vengeful mother. “Explain,” he said to her.
The woman approached the Magistrate and together, they plotted in whispers. Her eyes never left Nancy as she spoke. And staring her down with trembling fear, Nancy knew this woman, in whatever horrific manner she’d conjured, would seal her fate.
That evening, Magistrate Cordier led the townspeople away from their main roads. Lit torches spotted the dark fields with burning sparks of orange and yellow as they made for the plot of oak trees. The men in the back of the mob lugged a shabby box of oak over their heads. The carpentry of it was heinous, with rigid cracks along its nailed-shut lid and at its sides. But its shape was distinct enough to identify when they’d forced Nancy before it and then inside.
It was a coffin.
Light flitted inside through a small hole in the oak just inches from her face. She pounded her fists against the lid. “Let me out!”
She kicked against the wood at her feet, slamming her heels into it. If she had another thirty or so pounds on her, she might’ve been able to kick her way out. But she was petite and lethargic, having been fed just enough to keep her alive for the execution.
Still, Nancy fought. She’d known these people all her life. They had to listen. They had to stop this insanity.
“Please! I am no witch!”
Sticks snapped beneath the boots of the townspeople. They jeered, cursing wickedness, cursing Nancy, and any who may have conspired with her.
The children skipped about, singing, “Burn the witch! Burn the witch!”
“There is no conspiracy and no witch here!” Nancy cried. She hadn’t conspired with the Devil and against the children. But the townspeople, her neighbors, the midwives she’d befriended, the farmers she purchased food and supplies from, they had all conspired against her. Plotted her death with cunning and creative cruelty like she’d never seen before.
“Burn the witch!” the children clapped and skipped.
The torches and the nearby trees threw twisted shadows upon the coffin.
Nancy peered through a crack in the wood and saw a pair of strong hands carrying her to her death. A metal cross hung from between his fingers and beneath his palm. It was the priest.
“Father,” Nancy heaved. Her lips shook, and she swallowed hard between each word as she said, “Father, God watches. Your congregation. Your wife. Your children. Don’t do this.”
“It is God’s command,” the priest answered, coldly.
The group turned a corner and Nancy peered through the opposite side of the coffin. The torches pointed a spotlight at a gaping hole in the earth. It was a grave, six feet deep, and prepared just for her.
Her screams tore through the woods and burned her throat raw.
“Please, I’m begging you! Believe me!”
She threw her fists into the coffin lid, but the nails held fast. Nancy’s thoughts scrambled as panic stormed through her. Heavy sobs erupted from deep within her as she
flashed through the life she’d known before this night, before the sentencing, and before the accusation. She mourned the care she gave to people and their children who would destroy her in the name of God. She had once thought that to love God was to love his creation, his people, all of his people. But the townspeople loved God because of the wealth the scripture promised in return for faith, loyalty, and obedience. What they believed they served was no God that Nancy knew. They served a king. A tyrant.
Magistrate Cordier stood before the grave, covering his mouth and nose with a hand. “The chicken heads serve what purpose?”
Nancy’s nose wrinkled as a putrid smell wafted up from the grave. .
“They’re to attract the death beetles,” the vengeful mother said.
This made Nancy squeal. The beetles feasted on decaying animal flesh. She’d seen them upon poor rodents, gnawing away at their fur, through their skin, and into the innards.
“Ready now,” a man said, and the coffin shook as the men holding it adjusted their grips. “Release!”
And Nancy Jackson felt the coffin fall. A wet smack of blood shot inside and around the coffin as it crushed the chicken heads beneath it.
