The Film You Are About to See, page 8
Ingrid and June climbed into the truck and Vincent stood at the open window.
“Stef?” Ingrid asked. “Stef, wake up.”
“I’ve tried that,” Lenny said with a bite.
Stef remained slouched and still.
Ingrid moved red strands of hair from Stef’s face and tucked them behind her ear.
“Stef?” Ingrid tried once more. Nothing. “June, hand me her soda.”
June did, and Ingrid snatched it away. She threw out the straw and lid and dove her hand into the soda, splashing it on the seats and a little on June, too. Ingrid cupped dripping ice in her hand.
“Lay her back,” Ingrid said, and June did so. Lenny climbed to the middle of the backseat to support Stef’s head.
“Is she—”
You would’ve thought they were injecting Stef with the world’s thickest needle.
“Shush,” Ingrid said. She took one piece of ice and traced the curves of Stef’s face. Around her forehead, down the bridge of her nose. Stef would not be happy about her ruined blush. Water streaked through it. When the ice melted to slosh, Ingrid shook it free of her hand, sending a light spray over Vincent.
Ingrid dug for more ice, her hand bright red from the cold.
“Lift her head,” Ingrid ordered Lenny. He did, and she slapped ice on the back of her friend’s neck. She hoped the shock of it would awaken Stef.
It did.
Stef gasped. Her eyes fluttered and her head lulled as she came to, but Lenny’s hands were there to guide her.
“No! Let me go!” Stef cried.
Lenny let go, sending Stef’s head back in a way that June knew would make her friend’s neck ache later.
“It’s just Lenny,” Ingrid reasoned. She brought Stef’s hands into her own. “It’s okay. It’s us.”
Stef’s eyes circled around the group.
Her legs shook. Her hands trembled. “Where is he?”
“Who?” Vincent asked.
Stef began to cry.
“Who?” Lenny echoed. "What's wrong?"
Ingrid and June both rubbed their palms in soothing circles across Stef’s back.
Finally, between heaving sobs, she blubbered, “William.”
Friday, August 7, 1959
9:47 PM
They’d missed the rest of Cat People, but June didn’t care. She felt in her bones that whatever her friend saw was real. Something had been eating at her all night. She thought of the beetles, the mounding dirt that she’d seen in the restroom. The pounding from beneath it. That vision had felt different, somehow.
And that mattered, she decided.
Ingrid played her nurse role better than the actresses stationed around the Peterson’s Pictures Drive-In lot. June knew herself that even in her touch, her casual words, there was something nurturing in Ingrid, no matter how tough she was.
So, while she cared for Stef and revived her back into coherence, June prodded.
“Stef,” June took in a deep breath, hoping Stef would do the same. She did, and they exhaled together. Their eyes met. “Tell us what you saw.”
Lenny sat up, attentive.
On the screen, Irena lay just outside the zoo’s caged panther. Then, the credits rolled.
The ghoulish showman boomed over the lot’s speakers. “How about that one, folks?”
The audience cheered and rooted from their cars, clapping.
Panthers roared over the sound system.
“Next up is Shock, starring who?”
A recognizable and deep menacing laugh followed the announcer. He continued, “You guessed it! Vincent Price in his very first starring role.”
Shock was the film June had been most looking forward to, but right now nothing mattered more than Stef.
“Okay, Stef,” Ingrid said. “Feel like sipping a Coke or nibbling on some candy?”
Lenny offered a small pouch of milk chocolate candies. Stef shoved it away.
“Listen to me!” Stef shouted. The sudden burst of energy startled them all.
Lenny and Vincent exchanged a glance.
Stef shuddered a breath and raised a shaking hand. “William was in that red car.” She pointed to Annie’s Chevy Bel-Air that sat two rows ahead diagonally, its driver side door ajar. Their eyes followed. “The car was shaking, so I assumed they were, well, you know.”
They did. The group nodded. Vincent had a small grin that Lenny extinguished when he smacked his palm into the back of his friend’s head.
“And?” June said.
“And, I saw Annie clawing at the backseat. Like she was trying to get out.”
Stef sniffled.
“She was so scared. I’ve never seen someone so afraid.”
June knew something hadn’t felt right, and here it was, the proof that she wasn’t suffering from lunacy or being hysterical.
June rested a hand on Stef’s jittering shoulder.
“That’s when I saw William come from behind her and pull her back. He had his hand around her throat,” Stef continued through sobs.
The open driver side door bothered June.
“Did you see William leave the car?” she asked.
Stef shook her head. “I must’ve fainted by then.”
“I’m going to go check it out,” June said. “Vincent, you coming?”
Lenny sat up, ready to help. “I am, too.”
“No,” Stef said, turning to stop him. “We can’t let Officer Reed see you leave the truck.”
Vincent offered an apologetic frown. “She’s right. You stay with Stef and Ingrid. Hold down the fort. We’ll be right back.”
Just as Vincent and June left the vehicle, the concession lights were cut. Despite the late hour, the air remained sticky. The wind was light and did nothing to dispel the oppressive weight of the humidity.
When they were out of the gang’s earshot, Vincent said, “I don’t know what Stef saw, but I think Annie could take that scrawny boy.”
June stopped. It was a valid point, but June believed her friend. Trusted the disturbance she’d felt.
“Stef isn’t making it up.”
Vincent hushed. They weaved their way through vehicles. Cicadas sang their droning summer song, and aside from chattering moviegoers, the lot was quiet.
Just then, a cluster of human-shaped shadows emerged from behind the concession stands and past the Studebaker and truck. Barefooted and in hospital gowns, “patients” moaned as they trudged through the thick mud.
“Time for your medicine,” one man said, moaning afterwards as if he’d received a painful injection.
A group of nearby teens squealed.
“The doctor’s in,” said another man at least twenty years older than them.
A man reached into a '98 Oldsmobile and shouted at a startled couple. “I saw lights in the sky. They’re here. From the beyond.”
He repeated it, urging them to believe him.
“Go, while you still can!”
The other actors roamed through the lot, swatting at invisible pests or rolling their head from one shoulder to the other, mouths hanging open.
June and Vincent crept up to the Bel Air’s rear and saw no immediate sign of occupancy. June rounded for the passenger side and knocked on the window before she cupped her eyes and leaned in for a peak. Popcorn and green vomit bags were scattered over the bright red and white seating. As far as June could tell, no one was inside.
Just as she pressed off the glass window, June was struck with a hammering sensation in her joints, like every part of her was bruised, throbbing with blood. Then, the pain climbed to her skull, nesting there. She tried not to react too violently in case Stef was still watching.
The projector resurrected its bright glow—the perfect spotlight on the unoccupied vehicle.
She wanted to inspect further. She made for the driver side of the vehicle, but as she passed the trunk, something grabbed ahold of her ankle.
She shrieked and jumped back.
A man appeared, clawing through the mud.
“It’s time for your medicine!”
He gnashed his teeth at her while another psychiatric patient reached for Vincent, sending him backing away on his heels.
The man who grabbed June surfaced. His mud-slicked hospital gown gave him an even more disheveled appearance. He slammed the Bel-Air’s open door with a ferocious growl like a bloodthirsty werewolf.
A teen two cars over with a cigarette between his lips tossed it without stomping the butt and dove back into his car after an actor stopped and stared at him with wicked intent.
June and Vincent hurried back toward the truck. They scurried around a limping man who repeated under his breath and to no one in particular, “Time for your evaluation.”
This struck June. She’d come out on the lot because she believed her friend. Because Stef had validated the growing disturbance within her.
Something screamed within her and told her to act faster. Confront the disturbance, the inevitable pain. Something had happened in that car. She knew it.
Screams erupted across the lot. Several well-rehearsed, others natural and unsettling. Like only some of the crowd was in on the joke.
The screams unnerved her. She looked around the group and remembered Arthur was gone.
“Vincent, we have to find Arthur.”
The showman returned to the speakers. “Don’t be alarmed. Remain in your vehicles. We’ve contacted authorities.”
A mechanical police siren and red light ascended from the middle of the lot.
It was Officer Reed.
Vincent was making his way back to the truck.
“We have to find Arthur,” she repeated, with a grittier edge than before.
Vincent sighed. “June. It’s just a show. It’s the show that’s got Stef spooked. And Arthur can handle himself.”
“It’s not just a show anymore,” June argued. There was fear beneath her fury, and the next thing she said came out more desperately than she understood herself. “We need to find him now.”
Friday, August 7, 1959
10:11 PM
The creature sensed a change in its host. Its own perception through William’s eyes tunneled on one side. A consequence of the girl jamming her thumb into it. But that wasn’t the only change. William grew restless under the creature’s control.
I want to go home. Please, let me go.
Hot tears slid from the boy’s good eye, along with a pungent smell of pus from the other one. The creature recognized the scent and worried about infection. The wound needed tending to. But the wound wasn’t its own. It knew that. Yet it had the sudden urge to treat it. It even had this newfound knowledge of how to do so, which it assumed came from the host.
Even in the grip of death, humans made plans to save themselves. Futile and ignorant.
Please let me go. Please.
Though the voice remained in the birth canal of thought and didn’t reach William’s lips, it was loud for the creature. It thwacked against its host’s spine, straightening it out, quieting it down.
With brute force, the creature guided William to the edge of the lot. There stood a kid with his back to William. He was far taller and stronger than William, but not William’s host, of course. A name broke the host’s repressed conscience, ARTHUR.
“Oh, come on,” Arthur said to the blonde nurse. “You call it a night and come with me.”
The nurse stretched her arms before her as though she was reaching for Arthur, ready to nab him. She groaned like the living dead. He was undeterred.
“We would have a truck all to ourselves,” he said, smoothing a hand over the curls above his ear.
With a series of glances over her shoulder, the nurse recruited fellow patients to scare him off.
Arthur’s bravado faltered, and he brought his hands up in defense. “Easy.”
The beings came upon him waving at imaginary flies and annoyances. Another muttered something about the doctor poisoning him. “And they’ll poison you, too!” That actor jabbed a finger at the center of Arthur’s chest. The others formed around him, growling and jeering. The headlights of the vehicles created a perfect stage for the actors and Arthur. Their passengers cheered, and others gasped. Arthur backed further from the lot and into the dark veil of the trees.
The creature crept forward, just at the edge of the light, just enough so only those closest could see its host’s face. The blonde nurse noticed William’s injury. Her expression contorted into one of terror.
Arthur followed her gaze over his shoulder. He hadn’t seen William circling him. He sucked air through his teeth and laughed. “Shit, man,” he said, meeting William and bringing a hand to his shoulder. “You got me, good.”
When William didn’t respond, Arthur removed his hand. An awkward and unsettling air hung between them.
A few actors climbed into the hearse beneath the screen, occasionally poking their distraught or expressionless faces from behind the curtain windows and to the glass. Others returned to the rear of the lot like monsters hidden in the dark.
The creature hummed within as it sensed the burning warmth radiating from Arthur, who appeared more suspicious by the second.
“Hey, William,” Arthur said, incredulous. He pointed to William’s injured eye and hissed. “That looks bad.”
William feigned a smile, but Arthur’s repulsion was unmistakable. Something clicked. The creature could see it all over his face. It was how the dark-haired nurse had looked when the creature found her, right before she’d begun to understand that she’d been targeted by something wicked.
The opening credits of Shock rolled on screen.
Arthur turned to the glow of the projector.
He looked back to William, who had come much closer. Sneering. He stepped forward.
Arthur bolted, spooked.
And the creature chased that terror with absolute delight.
Friday, August 7, 1959
10:27 PM
“Do not be alarmed!” a voice came over the speakers throughout the lot. “Ladies and gentlemen, psychiatric patients have escaped the hospital. Please, remain in your vehicles.”
The film rolled as June and Vincent searched the lot for Arthur. They started with concessions, though the showman’s demands left it mostly abandoned. Still, they thought he might go there to smoke.
Bored concession workers leaned against the counters, waiting for their shifts to end. June waited just outside the men’s restroom as Vincent checked for Arthur there.
He came out shaking his head. “Nope.”
“Where could he have gone?” June said, giving herself whiplash as she searched the lot. A fuse of panic ignited within her because there was no sign of William either. And if he did what Stef accused him of . . . She wanted her friend to be wrong more than anything, but she couldn’t deny the swelling angst hammering in her chest, pounding like a fist in her ears.
The pain returned in her skull, and she let it steer her away from the lot and toward the dirt path, the only way in or out of the lot. Ahead was the tall ghostly glow of the Peterson’s Pictures sign and marquee.
An invisible fist collided into June’s face. She fell, muddying the knees of her skirt. The wet earth caked between her fingers, preserving her fallen hands in the ruts beside messy tire tracks.
“June? What’s going on?”
Vincent rested his hands on June’s shoulders, steadying her. He helped her to her feet. She shooed him away.
“He’s in trouble,” June said. She didn’t think of Vincent or Lenny or Ingrid or Stef at that moment. The guiding inner voice gave her only one name, Arthur. She quickened her clumsy strides.
Vincent was on her heels. His work boots squelched through puddles.
As June ran, a part of herself split away, leaving her frantic body behind. She still saw the marquee, though she stood at the top. Out of body like she’d been as she watched her grandmother die. With a hand that wasn’t her own, June swung at something in the shadow. It was a person. They spit blood, and the killer jerked their head forward. Though his eyes, nose, and lips were swollen three times their size, June knew who it was. The killer wound a rope around Arthur’s throat. Around and around again. Through the killer’s eyes, June watched as they secured the other end of the rope around the rail. She felt the bite of the frayed material in her hand.
Then, as she’d seen the intruder do to her grandmother, June outstretched her arms, connecting with the center of Arthur’s chest. He tumbled over the rail. The bruising she’d felt burst alive in a pain so hot and renewed, it took her breath away. Air rushed over her from head to toe. The rope creaked as it was pulled taut.
Vincent grabbed June’s hand, yanking her along as she returned to the moment.
When she came to, she said, “He’s at the marquee.”
Ahead of them, a shadow fell from the marquee. It thrashed in the moonlight.
June and Vincent reached the bottom of the marquee, and she screamed. Vincent stopped dead in his tracks. Arthur hung over their heads, dangling from the marquee on a rope. He struggled a final moment, twitched, and then stilled. His body was bathed in a cinematic golden glow as it slowly swung in the wicked wind.
Vincent jumped at his friend’s feet like a helpless child. Arthur was out of reach. And he was already dead.
William stood above them, looking down at Arthur.
Vincent growled in fury and started towards the ladder. Without a moment’s hesitation, William moved to the top of the ladder of the Peterson’s Pictures sign and dove head first, into the woods. They heard heavy thuds as William’s body collided with the strong oak trees on its way down.
They dashed into the woods after William and found his broken body where he'd landed.
His limbs were bent and horrifically jagged with broken bones. His neck was stuck to his right shoulder, exposing the kinks and knots of his fractured spine.
Vincent turned from the gore and bent over heaving, on the verge of vomiting.
June couldn't tear her eyes away from the body, and she saw a rustling in the brush beside William as something hurried away and disappeared further into the woods.
June gasped but couldn't fully trust that she saw anything. The shock of it all was like an endless ringing in her ears, vibrating through her body.
