The Film You Are About to See, page 13
Lenny froze, eyes wide with a shock that struck him greater than anything else that night. He'd just watched his best friend kill a woman. Just after he’d tried to kill him.
“Vincent,” June said, “I know you can hear me in there.”
Vincent stared her down. He grinned wickedly, dipping his chin just as the china doll nurse, Betty, had done.
“I’m going to get it off you,” June promised, tears in her eyes. “I’m going to kill it.”
But she wasn’t sure how to do both.
And she couldn’t let him kill anyone else.
Vincent still held the shovel. He looked at the dripping blade, then at Lenny, and back to June.
Ingrid and Stef had returned.
“It’s done, June! Now what?” Ingrid cried.
June felt Vincent’s fear as the creature flexed his fingers and tightened them around the shovel handle.
She remembered those moments from her childhood with Vincent; watching scary movies in her basement or those late nights at the drive-in when their mothers believed they were asleep. How he had comforted her at her grandmother’s funeral. How he’d called her back from what she’d seen in the woods. And how he had been one of the first people to introduce June to the feeling of being known by someone. To have someone who could read you so easily.
“I’m going to get it off you,” June repeated, searching the room. She held her hands up, as if to say, easy now.
But she felt something else, too.
Resignation? Had the creature already subdued him so completely?
She concentrated. Vincent, she said internally, hoping to reach him on some other level.
The silence was excruciating.
Vincent.
Vincent’s expression didn’t change. This was it. She had to get him away from the others. She had to fight or free him on her own. She backed toward the door to the projection room. Her friends inched closer to the exit.
The creature eyed them both.
Look over here. I’m the one you want, June thought.
Vincent turned toward the others, and he lifted the shovel, ready to run at them.
“Nancy Jackson!” June leapt up and down.
Then, she recalled the magistrate, the trial, the townspeople.
“Why do you harm these children?” June bellowed. And then, “Burn the witch! Burn the witch!”
Vincent hissed, shooting his deathly gaze from June’s friends and back to her. She could feel the fury behind the creature’s eyes. The vengeance it craved so deeply, so primitively. This is what those people had done to her, and now, Nancy Jackson came to collect the cost.
“Nancy Jackson!” June roared. “Why do you harm these children?”
Vincent growled at her, and Lenny pulled her friends along. June had to keep it up. Keep the creature mad and coming at her.
What had the priest said when Nancy Jackson pleaded with him as they carried her to her grave?
“It is God’s command,” June cried. There was disbelief within the creature. June could sense the bewilderment. After all this time, this single line from a person Nancy believed to be of great virtue, one that had condemned her on a whole other level, shook the creature.
Vincent hissed. Spit flew from his lips like a wild animal. Or a hysterical townsperson.
“Come and get me!”
“June, no!” Ingrid cried.
Lenny hurried her and Stef along, eventually lifting Ingrid off her feet, and carried her away kicking and screaming.
June backed toward the stairs. Vincent followed, step by step. She had to keep its attention on her to give her friends time to escape.
“Nancy Jackson, for your wicked crimes, I sentence you to death!” she said, echoing the magistrate’s verdict.
Vincent hissed in rage and lunged toward her, but then stopped.
Vincent, inches from her own face, dropped the shovel.
June jumped at the sound of clattering metal.
A wicked smile spread over Vincent’s face, but June could see the fear deep in his eyes. Could feel the panic rising within her friend.
June swallowed rising sobs. “Fight it, Vincent.”
In a quick motion, before she could comprehend what he was doing, Vincent grabbed the side of his face in one hand, and his jaw in the other, and twisted. In a quick snap, Vincent was dead.
June screamed like she never had before. A pain beyond pain caught fire in every nerve of her body. She sobbed and grunted, outraged and utterly devastated all at once. And she understood then how revenge had taken over Nancy Jackson so completely. How it had somehow manifested into that monstrous resurrection. She understood that burning desire for vengeance, and she would have hers. She would kill Nancy Jackson.
June still stood at the door. She had Arthur’s matchbook in her hand.
The creature slinked to her quickly, growing larger by the second.
June waited just long enough to push the door wide enough for the creature to pass through it.
When it did, she hurried for the stairs.
The creature snipped at her heels.
She struck the match head against the strike surface, and the wood snapped into two.
June hurried for another.
The projection room was full of film reels and canisters, just as June had hoped. It only had one window for projection. June would need to close them to extinguish any oxygen. She couldn’t let any steam escape from the room.
The creature crested the final stair, and June dashed to the window and slammed the shutters closed.
Ingrid and Stef had splashed the cleaner onto the small wooden table, and June thought that’s where she’d start. She struck another match. When a tiny flame burned at its head, she threw it onto the table, and it was immediately engulfed.
The creature scurried toward her and climbed along her legs. She kicked it from her and it crashed into a pile of film canisters. They toppled over, and film split out of them like innards.
The reels burst into flame, and June pulled down another shelf of canisters into the roaring fire. The blaze was all around her now, and thick black smoke billowed from the inferno. June could feel her skin begin to sear.
The creature scurried for the projection window in an attempt to escape the flames, but the shutters were closed tight. Then, it tried for the door to the stairs, but it too was closed shut and blocked with a thick, black cloud of suffocating smoke.
June felt its panic. It was acrid amongst her senses. Foreign and familiar all at the same time. June had panic of her own, but it wasn’t as harsh. She tried to give it space as the flames sparked around her, quickly eating away the room. There was nowhere to go. She already knew that, just as Nancy Jackson had known it once they’d put her in that shabby, oak coffin.
It’s over, Nancy, June thought.
The creature erupted in violent, shrill shrieks as the flames found its spindly legs.
Nancy Jackson was never a witch, June knew. But together, they’d burn.
And even if it returned to steam, in that cement room with the window closed, it would still perish.
The creature was afraid then.
The fire reached her feet and traveled over her. The burning pain was fast, an agony beyond agony. But along with the pain, June sensed a quiet peace she hadn’t had all week.
And then, she closed her eyes, taking her mind to driving in the Studebaker with Ingrid. Sitting beside the truck as Vincent fiddled underneath it with grease-covered hands. Stef’s primping. And Lenny’s kindness. Arthur’s cool aloofness. Her friends.
She envisioned them all together.
And then, above her, she saw only Ingrid. She cupped June’s face and kissed her.
In those final moments, she’d carried herself away to a place less painful than all the others before.
She took a final breath, knowing she’d see her friends again.
Vincent was already waiting for her.
Friday, August 12, 1960
9:30 PM
Ingrid drove the Studebaker along the lone path to Peterson’s Pictures with Lenny and Stef sitting beside her. Skeletal limbs of the surrounding oak trees still made for somewhat of an obstacle. Ingrid had revisited the lot so many times, though, that she casually turned the wheel to left and then to the right without missing a beat.
They’d driven by the lot on late nights where they just drove and no one spoke. What happened at the lot had become a sort of phenomenon.
No one believed the story about a monster that could latch onto people and make them kill at will. Not anyone who wasn’t there.
They’d wished they’d had better explanations for June’s and Vincent’s and Arthur’s parents. And for their own, because after what they’d seen, what they’d been through, they’d been forever changed. The memories crept into daydreams and dominated their nightmares.
The remainder of their gang made it through the woods that night with cars smoking and gore everywhere they stepped. The police had finally come just as they’d peeled back the last of the brush. Stepping out on the other side felt like stepping away from everything they’d known before that night. Because from then on, everything was different. Everything was sadder, like the world now had a permanent lens of gray even in the most colorful and joyous of moments. It was like that for Ingrid, anyway.
Lenny and Stef had each other.
But Ingrid, she felt more alone than she ever had before. Part of her wished she’d ignored June and stayed with her. Fought harder as Lenny carried her to safety. She wished she was stronger. Half as strong as June.
June was sensitive, as in caring and thoughtful. She had those strange episodes. They seemed awful at times. So jarring and unsettling. And she couldn't imagine the things June had seen the night of the massacre at the drive-in. Maybe if she’d stayed behind and followed June to the projection room, she could’ve asked her in those final moments. She could have told her what she wanted to say for so long. “You’re so brave, June,” or “You’re so special,” or “You’re the toughest person I know.” Because she didn’t think June had heard any of that as often as she should have. It was something the gang all knew of her. Her oddities, though they didn’t understand it, not before the DUSK TIL DAWN SPOOKTACULAR, were part of June just as much as her love of horror movies was, or even the bright blonde color of her hair. And carrying something like that, navigating it, and for good, was something truly incredible.
Ingrid pulled the Studebaker up to the entrance of the abandoned drive-in lot, and this time decided to go in. The marquee was unlit, but with the sun still peaking over the horizon, Ingrid saw that it still listed the films from that night. The T in the The Tingler had fallen away, so it read, THE INGLER.
Ingrid appreciated now what the night had meant to June after losing her grandmother. Ingrid smiled. Seeing any of the titles Vincent Price had starred in made her think of June, her horror cinephile.
Lenny and Stef had given up on horror movies.
But Ingrid saw every one released over the past year. She felt like she’d have to tell June all about them one day. The films she’d missed. A blonde Vincent Price in a Roger Corman flick released that summer. A Poe adaptation called House of Usher. William Castle’s latest, 13 Ghosts. It didn’t star Price, but Ingrid knew June would appreciate the fun of it just the same. She would’ve loved the new Alfred Hitchcock film, too. And she knew June would’ve been stunned and then absolutely delighted by the fact that they’d cast Janet Leigh just to kill her off so early in the film.
The first time Ingrid went to the theatre alone, she’d had an anticipatory dread that made it tough to sit still. The room felt like it shrank, the walls trapping her.
Then, a blissful warmth wrapped around her like an intimate embrace.
A tear fell from her eye. “June,” she’d whispered.
She’d seen House of Usher every time it played. And she’d sat through double-features, picking apart horror films, analyzing every scare, shadow, and sound, just as June had done. And in this way, Ingrid felt her friend. She knew she was there.
They pulled into the lot and saw the graveyard that had become of the drive-in lot. Authorities had cleared the cars that blocked the main path into the lot, only so emergency vehicles could get through, but so many others remained. Some were charred down to their frames, others sat upon half-melted rubber tires. Vincent’s truck remained in the same spot. His family never sent for it. The town didn’t want any relics of that night out and about. In his pocket, Lenny still had the key. They never went inside Vincent’s truck, but they took their spot beside it, as if the gang was all here, meeting once again, for another night of horror flicks.
None of the old smells remained. Not the delicious scent of buttery popcorn or burgers on the grill. It smelled of fire and ruin. Gasoline and death.
If Ingrid wasn’t careful, the nostalgia would escape her and she’d see only a sea of corpses. Reimagine the projectionist slitting the throat of a math teacher just before shoving the blade into his eye. Or the Corvair woman snapping the necks of her young boys, only for her to be crushed between two vehicles, and lost in an explosion of fire moments later.
When Stef turned her head into Lenny’s shoulder, Ingrid grabbed her friend’s hand, keeping one on the wheel.
And like that, all the bad evaporated like steam in the air. She remembered June sitting in the front seat with her and Stef. Stef fixing June’s hair and Doris Day on the radio. June wouldn’t want them to forget Peterson’s Pictures Drive-In Theatre. It was her favorite. She loved it so much that she’d come to the DUSK TIL DAWN SPOOKTACULAR at the height of mourning her grandmother’s murder.
Lenny unraveled a pack of beignets. The local baker, who had parked beside them that night, survived by tucking himself away, beneath the dash of his vehicle. He’d said he waited out the night. Closed his eyes and tried not to hear all the screams. Ingrid sometimes became angry at this fact and wondered if they had they done the same, maybe her friends, Arthur, Vincent, and June, would still be alive.
But June had a role to play, and she knew it.
Sweet June.
Stef squeezed Ingrid’s hand, and Lenny passed both of them a beignet.
“It’s sweet that we keep getting boxes of these,” Stef said, “but June wouldn’t approve.” Stef laughed to herself, fighting tears. “She’d say, ‘No movie night is complete without a big ol’ bucket of popcorn.’”
Lenny laughed. “And she’d finish a family-size bucket all by herself before the first flick was over.”
This made Ingrid smile. She remembered Vincent huffing and puffing about June hogging the popcorn.
“I feel her here,” Ingrid said, batting away happy tears. “I do so often.”
Lenny and Stef exchanged glances.
“What was your favorite film that night?” Ingrid asked her friends, popping the beignet into her mouth. The sweet rush of sugar did in fact feel wrong. Ingrid now agreed that popcorn and movies were the indisputable duo. Popcorn was a must. She’d make some on the stovetop the next time she drove out to Peterson’s Pictures.
When they didn’t answer, Ingrid said, “I wish we could’ve seen House of Wax. June told me about it. That’s the Vincent Price poster she has in her room, too.”
Vincent Price and his prized wax figurine of Marie Antoinette.
But they hadn’t seen it.
“I’ve watched it since then. You guys should too,” Ingrid encouraged. “I don’t know how, the sense, maybe, but I’m telling you, she’s still here. And she lives through those films.”
Ingrid put three cigarettes between her red lips and lit them all with a single match. She passed one to each friend.
“So, what?” Lenny asked. “You think if we sit out here, she’ll talk to us?”
Ingrid wasn’t wounded.
She’d questioned it when it happened for her, too.
“How about Vincent or Arthur?” Stef asked. “Do you ever feel them?”
Lenny looked to Ingrid, anticipating her response.
“I haven’t,” she said. “I don't think it works the same way for them.”
This unsettled Stef. She sighed and wiped streaming tears from her face.
“But I don’t think sensing June would feel like this if they hadn’t gone someplace good. When I sense her,” Ingrid said, lips quivering, “I just sense peace.”
Lenny shook his head. “But how? How it ended was so unfair.”
He balled his hands into fists.
Stef rubbed his shoulder.
“But she saved us,” Ingrid said, smoke unfurling from her lips.
He nodded, knowing what that would’ve meant to June.
“It’ll hurt for a long time,” Stef said.
“It will,” Ingrid agreed. “But the three of us are here to hurt and heal together. And for that, I’m so grateful to our friends.”
Ingrid looked into the dark woods, above the projector.
And once more, Ingrid felt a warm embrace envelop her.
Ingrid raised her cigarette to the dark screen and said, “To our friends. To Vincent, Arthur, and June.”
Lenny and Stef followed suit, raising the smoking ember ends of their cigarettes to the roof of the Studebaker.
“To our friends,” they echoed.
Ingrid swallowed tears and said, “And to all the crazy horror films to come. June would’ve loved them.”
This made Stef smile. “And she would’ve loved to see them scare the hell out of me.”
They laughed and smoked until the cigarettes were almost too small to hold between their fingers.
And when they turned on the radio, they heard an old ghost tale being read with heavy organ music in the background. The voice said, “Good evening. My name is Vincent Price . . .”
Acknowledgements
The Film You Are About To See would not exist without the following people:
First and foremost, Joey Powell and Mad Axe Media. Thank you for believing in women in horror and giving us a safe space to create. Also for pointing out to me that I write period pieces. This was news to me but made me more confident going into a story set in 1959.
