The Film You Are About to See, page 7
Not June’s.
She passed the tampon.
“THANK YOU.”
June wondered how long her friend had been waiting on her, speaking to her. Ingrid’s toilet flushed and June sat up, shaking away the remaining disorientation. She flushed her own toilet only for the reassurance of reality. A sign that she was rooted back in herself.
“You doing okay?” Ingrid asked as she and June exited their stalls. The doors groaned as they swung on their hinges.
“Yes. Sorry, I was miles away for a second.”
“I don’t think anyone could blame you after the week you’ve had,” Ingrid said.
Ingrid scrubbed her hands as June hunched over the sink. She rocked on her heels.
“June?”
The red had vanished, but the throbbing had not. She felt another strike against the back of her head.
“Just a headache.”
Ingrid hurried for paper towels and the wind of her movement sent green vomit bags floating from the vanity’s ledge. They fell to the floor and stuck in the strange wetness floors of public restrooms always had.
Ingrid ran the paper towel under cold water and moved June’s ponytail over her shoulder. June’s skin prickled.
Upon the cool contact, June felt relief. Ingrid took it away and held it to June’s forehead, then over each eye. As if it were a dying bulb, the pain dissipated. June turned her head from side to side, awaiting the painful impact, but it was gone. Just like that. It was like she’d just come back from another world. Back from the dead.
“Better?”
June nodded.
“Good. Let’s go see the show, then. And get some water in you before you have more popcorn.”
Ingrid tossed the damp paper towel into the trash bin positioned near the door.
Blood returned to June’s face and the dizziness died down.
Ingrid lit a cigarette, eyes narrowing, inspecting her friend for something.
“Thanks for taking such good care of me.”
Ingrid winked. “You get feeling bad again, you tell me, okay?”
The cigarette wagged between her lips with each word she spoke. This always made June smile.
“I’ll be fine.”
“Let me help you. A lot’s happened, June.”
June wasn't sure anyone could really help her. Help distract her? Maybe. Help ease some of the pain? Apparently.
“And if there’s anything you want to talk about, I’m here.”
June smiled. “Thanks, Ingrid.”
She didn’t say more, though she suspected Ingrid was hoping for it. June just wanted to enjoy the rest of the night. It was senior year, and for all they knew, it could be their last summer at the drive-in.
June hurried past Ingrid, catching her arm. “Let’s go find the guys.”
Just as they left the restroom, they spotted the shy blonde kid from the ticket booth. The pastor’s son. William.
Ingrid spoke to him, but June stared into his eyes. There was something behind them. Something pleading and desperate. She’d catch it and then it was gone again. She dismissed it, smiling politely. She’d just had an ordeal. Her brain was still adjusting.
Stand down, she thought.
Then, she noticed the blood on his shirt.
Friday, August 7, 1959
9:07 PM
The creature let the boy rise to the surface and lead the conversation with the girl. It could tap in and out of control, relinquish and retake it as it pleased. It wasn’t at full strength, not yet fully realized, though it would be soon.
The creature felt more acquainted with humans the longer it latched onto its host. The more fear it stirred in them, the stronger its hatred became. That particular human—William, others called it—harbored a primal fear that radiated. It was so powerful. So warm. The creature considered snapping his neck then and there.
All in due time.
It thrived in chaos, renewed its power in carnage.
The creature had to be patient. In patience lay its identity. Its ultimate revival.
William was groggy. His thoughts were distant and dull, like he’d been under sedation. He’d awoken to a beam so bright he put a hand up to shield his eyes. He turned and was surprised to be inside the Bel Air with Anna Lou. How did he get there, he wondered.
A presence shrouded over him. Looming and grim. His chest rose and fell in quick succession. He hesitated a moment, then he peaked over his shoulder and checked the backseat.
It was empty.
Anna Lou watched the large black panther circle its cage on screen. She loved Jacques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon, so she was eager to see one of the director’s earlier films.
William absorbed this detail as Anna spoke, but it seemed distant, like something someone else observed for him and relayed the message.
“Anyway,” Anna Lou said, waving her arms as if she’d said too much. “Mind turning it up a bit?”
William hadn’t noticed the speaker clipped to his window. He twisted the volume knob, discovering a crusty substance pilling on his fingers.
Anna Lou grabbed a dusty rag from the dashboard and offered it to him.
“Sorry, it’s all I have.” She gave him a once over. “For the blood,” she said.
He remembered running into Ingrid and June then.
“What’s all over your shirt?” June had asked.
William brought his ungainly arms out before him. He flipped his palms up, then down. A dark wetness spotted him in places and spattered in others. It cracked with itchiness as it dried, like it had on his fingers. He scratched a bit of it away from his elbow, and it clotted beneath his nails.
It smelled metallic. Like copper or iron.
Where had the blood come from?
“Bet it’s fun to be part of the show,” Anna Lou said.
“What?” William saw Anna Lou’s pink lips moving, but he was hearing something else. A part of him arguing with an invisible force.
Let go, he thought.
Leave me alone.
Where had that come from?
Anna Lou couldn’t have made him feel such disdain. She was lovely, even if she did make him nervous as hell. Her freckled face was sweet with a kindness that never went dull, even when she wasn’t smiling. At least with him, anyway. He thought she’d be great in one of those black and white crime films. Noir, they called it.
So, what was it then? Why did every nerve within him scream for him to look behind himself again and again?
“What’re you thinking about?” Anna Lou asked, following his eyes to the backseat, then the rear window. She smoothed her skirt across her knees and tucked her hands beneath her. “Still in murder mode? If you’re in on any more tricks, you count me out. Do you hear me?”
Her eyes pointed an accusatory glare at the blood. He looked down. How did he not know where it came from? Why didn’t he remember how it got there?
What did it matter? It was obviously fake. Had to be. What was it filmmakers used for blood in pictures? Chocolate sauce, red dye, and corn syrup? It had to be that. Though it didn’t have that cartoonishly bright red color shown in horror movies like The Tingler. And there was the smell . . .
Itchy flares broke out across his flesh. He leapt from his seat, skin crawling. A tight pinch between his shoulder blades made him gasp.
“Whoa,” Anna Lou said, giggling.
“I think I’m allergic to the stuff,” William said. He clawed at his neck, hands, and forearms in a frenzy. It was like his body had become a new home for fire ants.
Let go.
Let me go.
“Can’t make it in Hollywood, then.” She stuck her tongue out at him. “Sorry, kid.”
He laughed, the sound startling himself.
The itch spread down his back and he reached to scratch. Before he could, the creature wormed into position and sank its pincers into his neck. His laughter crescendoed, more maniacal. Mad. And terrifying. Tears sprang from his eyes with hiccuping sobs. Then, he laughed again. Louder. With more malevolence.
“Stop that.” Anna Lou crossed her arms.
Anna Lou tried for defiance, but the creature knew she was afraid. It could feel it. Saliva flooded William’s mouth, dripped over his bottom lip, and onto the seat. He threw his head up, veins stretched and taut around his neck like a noose.
“William? Are you alright?”
A woman onscreen warned of black cats and an accompanying curse. The light shifts onscreen flashed across William’s deranged smile.
“Stop it,” Anna Lou said. She gave him a good shove and her popcorn bucket fell to the floor. “Now you’ve done it.”
She sighed and scooped the popcorn into the bucket. “I told you we have to keep the car clean or Daddy will never let me take it out again.”
She found him still transfixed on her, still wearing that all-wrong, too-wide grin. A crooked imitation of the boy’s otherwise kind face.
“William, stop it. You’re frightening me,” Anna Lou said.
The creature slinked its body up and down with eagerness, dancing along the boy’s scrawny spine. This kill was ready to be devoured. It was trembling.
The creature guided its host and it snatched at Anna Lou. She hurried away, pinning herself to the door.
“Stop it!” she demanded.
The creature reached once more and its host fell into the bench, face down. The creature whipped its host back up in a swift inhuman motion, as if the torso and limbs were disjointed.
“Get out, William! Get out!”
She screamed a beautiful, horrified screech. The creature squirmed with pleasure.
The humans wouldn’t be alarmed if they heard her cries. It didn’t have to kill deep within the woods anymore. Or in the quiet of a storage room. The humans screamed at this place, encouraging one another to. Booming voices from all directions demanded it with a note of crackling static behind it. These humans sought terror, but assumed safety. The creature thought of no better place it could be.
Anna Lou tried for the door, and the creature shot its strength through its host’s limbs. It lifted and flipped the girl into the backseat. Her eyes indicated surprise at the thin kid’s newfound strength. She landed hard against the leather. It was good to disorient the kill, the creature knew. It was another means of controlling it.
She swung at the creature’s host. He grabbed her wrists with such force that she winced and yelped.
“William,” she sobbed. “Stop!”
The creature savored the girl’s disbelief. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not to her and not with this boy. But the boy would soon be swimming in spilled blood. They all would.
Anna Lou rammed her knee between the host’s legs and he released her. She climbed up to the rearview window and screamed, pounding into the glass. The creature clasped a hand over her mouth, infuriated. She tried to bite at the host, but as her jaws expanded, the creature stuffed the host’s pocketed vomit bags into her mouth. One after the other. She struggled against him, and with each cry came a strangled cough. Gagging. The creature crammed more of the green plastic down her throat and cupped his hand firm over her mouth.
Her legs kicked and kicked, but it was no use. The host was too strong with the creature tacked onto its spine. At that point, the boy was more monster than man.
In a final effort, Anna Lou reached a hand to William’s face. He turned away from her, but she kept coming at him. Grabbing at anything she could get a hold of. She found his eye and jammed her thumb into it. William didn’t so much as howl despite the spray of fluid that expelled from the socket and onto her.
Soon, the thrashing slowed to a stop. Bubbly yellow fluid bubbled from the girl’s mouth as her head lolled into the seat. Vomit bags, ripped to shreds and half-digested lay across her tongue and down her throat.
The creature was satisfied.
Friday, August 7, 1959
9:14 PM
Arthur ended up staying with Lenny and Stef for the second film. June suspected it was due to Stef’s stash of cotton candy. Arthur always had a sweet tooth after he’d smoked. She, Ingrid, and Vincent sat in the Studebaker watching one of the most famous scenes in Cat People.
It was Vincent’s first time watching it. He held the popcorn bucket in his lap, mindlessly munching as Alice walked the dark street, heels clicking against the pavement. Hands in pocket, Alice moved in and out of shadows, without music. A perfect setup for the scare to come.
Hiss.
Vincent jumped from his seat, sending popcorn over the front bench.
“Watch it,” Ingrid said, catching a few pieces in her hand. She tossed them into her mouth.
Stef squealed from the truck beside them.
Ingrid rolled her eyes and pointed to Vincent’s truck. “You could scare that one with a kitten.”
June turned to face Vincent in the backseat. He was sweating. “They got ya.” June stuck her tongue out at him. “It’s fun, right?”
Vincent shook his head, readjusting the popcorn bucket in his lap. June grabbed it from him.
“It wasn’t that scary,” he shrugged.
Ingrid snorted beside June.
“You sure looked scared,” June teased.
Ingrid waved a hand as new images blinked onto the screen. “Alright, you two. Pipe down. I’m trying to watch the show.”
June crossed her legs beneath her, adjusting her skirt around her knees.
She licked her fingers clean of butter and passed the bucket to Ingrid, who pulled a cigarette away from her lips to eat and slurp her soda.
June liked the way the smoke curled around and framed Ingrid’s face. She didn’t bother blowing it out the window with Vincent lighting ‘em up in the back.
“You’re right, June,” Ingrid said. “Cat People is a good one.”
“I tried telling you,” June said.
What June liked most about Cat People was its use of shadows. Unlike most horror movies, Tourneur’s film never really showed the scares. Instead, the director used sounds and shadows to suggest to the audience impending doom, transformations, murder, and even death. And it was effective.
The woman who played Irena, Simone Simon, was great despite what others said of her. Hollywood tabloids called her "temperamental" and “abrasive.”
June knew it wasn’t difficult to be labeled a temperamental or hysteric or crazy woman. Like the men of Salem who accused women of witchcraft for simply disagreeing with or rejecting them, modern men were quick to cry hysteria the moment women expressed concern or passion for just about anything. And that’s what June saw in Cat People and all the other films where a woman warned of the monster or villain. AND THE WOMEN, like Irena warning of the curse, WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG!
Razor-sharp claws slashed toward the audience onscreen.
The audience responded with cries of terror. But June heard one, not too far away, that was blood-curdling. There was no humor within it, just sheer horror.
Tourneur was good, but he wasn’t that good. Plus, the picture was nearly twenty years old. June had seen far scarier stuff, like falling into a boiling vat of wax in House of Wax.
Why then, did her heart feel like it was going to leap from within her chest, through blood and bone and flesh?
The scream came again. Too real. Too urgent. It reverberated through her skull, down her spine, and through each limb. She jerked in her seat. The others didn’t take notice.
She listened again for the heinous cry, but it had died away.
June swallowed a sip of her soda and something like plastic crawled over her tongue and down her throat. She coughed against it, feeling a lurch in her stomach.
She wanted to get through the night. She took another sip and reached for the volume control knob and cranked it up. The pictures were supposed to be loud, anyway. They were at the theater.
Her friends exchanged glances but didn’t complain.
She saw Arthur leave the truck, a cigarette between his lips. He wore a sly smile. He was on the hunt for some backseat bingo. A panther’s roar erupted from the lot’s speakers and June shot her eyes to the screen.
When she checked out the window once more, Arthur was gone. Part of her wanted to follow him. Get him back to the truck because—What? Because you think you heard a scream at a horror show?
June returned her attention to the screen. She tried to hone in on Tourneur’s every tactic, every detail utilized to add to the atmosphere of the film, and not that of her own reality. Because her reality was fine. She was fine.
Everyone is fine.
Lenny called from the truck. “Hey, a little help. I think Stef has fainted.”
June didn’t have to be asked twice. She took the distraction and dashed to the truck. She opened the rickety driver’s side door and saw sweet Stef hunched over the dash. Ingrid was on June’s heels, followed by Vincent.
“What happened?” June asked.
Lenny shook his head. “She was doing fine with this film, I swear. I would’ve told her to look away if it got too scary. But it must’ve been and she got herself worked up before I knew it.”
It wasn’t that. Lenny was a good guy, the best of them, maybe, but he was male. And men always assessed women’s health and distress with scrutiny of their emotions. Ingrid’s eyes met June’s, narrow with concern, indicating she felt the same way. It wasn’t the movie.
“Had she eaten?” Ingrid asked June and Lenny.
Lenny showed an empty popcorn bucket and candy wrappers. So, she shouldn’t have been lightheaded from hunger.
Lenny spoke in mumbles, stopped, and began again. He failed to string anything comprehensible together, and his brow knitted, and his teeth dug into his bottom lip. A prick of pain found June’s own lip, though her teeth remained in her mouth.
She paused. Lenny met her gaze, and that’s when June saw the fear on his face. He’d said the wrong thing, but he was worried for Stef. But something else rattled him, too.
“We have to wake her up before he comes back.”
He, as in Officer Reed.
June and Ingrid understood. They nodded.
“Lenny, I love ya,” Ingrid said, “but get outta the way and let me and June in.”
