She just couldn’t. She couldn’t be Jessica.
Amber…
Amber…
Amber…
The pinprick of insect legs scuttled across the back of her hand. She yanked her arm away. Whatever bug it was, it was gone now. A beetle or centipede, maybe. They had to be all over her now. She could feel them. All of them. Crawling over her skin. She couldn’t see them, but she knew they were there. They had to be there. So many insects skittering over the earth.
And what about the bodies buried just below her?
This was a cemetery, after all.
A real cemetery.
Why couldn’t they have just made a pretend one? Styrofoam tombstones in a soccer field somewhere back in Los Angeles? Why did they have to come all the way out here? Why this cemetery in particular? What was so special about this place, this graveyard, with all of its dead? All those bodies, their pruned flesh, withered and shriveled and peeling away. Their toothy grins and their dust-covered charnel suits. They must have been so angry at them, at Amber, mad at her for coming here, making light of death by waltzing over their graves.
Jessica…
Someone called out for her. The voice sounded different. Distinct. There was a softness to it. A tenderness. Certainly not her mother.
Jessica…
Whoever it was, their voice drifted along with the wind and winnowed through the tombs, brushing over Amber’s cheek.
Jessica…
It was a woman. A woman, calling out for her.
Jessica…
That’s weird, Amber thought. Why would they call out for her character?
Maybe she was just imagining it.
Jessica…
But no. There it was again. A woman’s voice. The tender lilt to it drifted over the cemetery. For a moment, Amber couldn’t shake the feeling that the voice had started within her own head. Whoever was calling for her had access to her thoughts.
Jessica…
Jessica…
Jessica…
But Amber wasn’t Jessica. She was just dressed like her. Pretending to be her.
This wasn’t real. This was all for show.
Didn’t they know that?
Jessica…
Amber turned herself over until she was kneeling before the headstone. She brought her hands up and grabbed hold of the crumbling sandstone. Pulling herself up, she peered over the edge of the headstone to see if she could spot the person calling out for her.
No one was there.
The cemetery was completely empty. Nothing but headstones. The lamps were still on, casting their shadows farther off. Amber sat within the inky puddle, curled inside the black.
Where had everybody gone? The crew? Shouldn’t they be looking for her now?
Where was her mother? Why wasn’t she looking for Amber?
Why was she alone?
Amber hesitated. Just a few rows ahead, she spotted a grave that looked unlike any of the other surrounding tombs.
This one had a fence. A metal fence that rose about a foot off the soil, sequestering its hallowed ground to prevent anyone from stepping on it.
Amber squinted, unsure of what she was seeing. But yes, yes, the fence was made up of crosses. Dozens and dozens of crucifixes, welded together into a rusted web. The same kinds of crosses she’d seen in the chapel. The larger crosses formed a scaffolding that impaled the ground. Several smaller crosses had been soldered along the arms of the bigger ones. The whole thing was choked with cobwebs and weeds. The ground itself hadn’t been tended to for a long, long time, from the looks of it. The crabgrass rose up from the grave and wove its way through the fence. Amber hadn’t even noticed the headstone. All those weeds were in the way.
Before she knew what she was even doing, before she could stop herself, Amber leaned forward and pressed her tooth into the dirt. She forced it down into the soil as far as her fingers could poke it, as if the tooth itself were a seed that would one day grow to bear wondrous fruit.
Jessica…
The voice was louder now.
Jessica…
Closer.
Jessica…
No—not closer. Not louder. Just…clearer. In her head.
Jessica…
Amber wasn’t ready to be found. Not yet. She couldn’t face anyone. Not from the movie. And certainly not her mother. She didn’t want Mom to see her like this. Crying like a little girl.
She could hide. Hide somewhere else. The woods, maybe?
There was still time to slip through the tree line. She turned to run. Quick. Before anyone spotted her. She could slip through the row of tombs if she hurried. They wouldn’t find her in—
The fence.
She hadn’t remembered the fence at her feet. All those crosses rising up from the ground. The tip of her toes caught a crucifix, snagging her foot and sending her tumbling forward.
She was falling. Falling onto this caged-in grave.
The crumbling headstone filled her vision, coming for her so quickly, until there was nothing else for her to see. The weatherworn slope of it. The brittle edge. The weeds strangling its façade.
Amber’s temple met sandstone. Shards of white-hot stars pierced her field of vision, like light from a projector burning through a snagged filmstrip, bubbling and distorting and chewing through the quivering celluloid until a black hole burst open and swallowed her, leaving behind nothing but darkness.
SEVEN
She felt her heartbeat in her head. Her skull was throbbing. Amber’s eyelids fluttered open, slowly taking in the graveyard.
It was still dark. Still night. How long had she been out? Patting at her temple, she found the source of her pain. Just tapping the gash along her forehead sent a fresh sting radiating through the rest of her skull.
Her fingers felt wet. Blood. She was bleeding. Or was that just her makeup?
Amber sat upright. Too fast. The tombstones spun, circling around her head. She pinched her eyes shut and patiently waited for the dizzy spell to fade. It was here, in the darkness behind her eyelids, that the pain felt even worse. In the dark it felt as if her skull had cracked wide open.
Maybe it had.
Placing one hand on the nearest headstone, she struggled to lift herself back onto her feet. Another dizzy spell swept over her. Her knees softened. She was going to fall, fall over again, if she didn’t plant her hand on the grave and hold the rest of herself upright. Hold on for dear life.
Jessica…
There. In the woods.
Just a step or two back from the surrounding tree line, where the shadows still lingered.
Amber could just barely make out the hazy silhouette of a woman. She was wearing a long white gown. The bottom of her dress was smeared with dirt.
No, not dirt. The hem of it was burned black, while farther up it softened to a gray. Like ash.
Even in the dark, Amber sensed this woman was looking right at her. Staring at her. She stood very still, making no moves, remaining in the woods. As if she were waiting.
Waiting for Amber.
There you are, the voice whispered gently within her head. There you are, my love…
Her makeup looked far more lifelike up close. Even better than Amber’s. Lifelike wasn’t the word for it, she realized.
More…deathlike? she wondered. Is that even a word?
Amber lost herself within the prosthetic work. The attention to detail. The special effects guys had really outdone themselves on Ella Louise. Her arms were outstretched, reaching out for Amber, as if she wanted to scoop the girl up and embrace her.
Amber couldn’t help but marvel at the mottled flesh, how the upper layer had blackened to a scabbed crisp, cracking and curling back until it exposed the seared pink tissue underneath. Even her bones were on display. Amber could see all
the way through the gap between the radius and ulna on her right forearm, as if the years buried in the ground had gnawed completely through.
How had the FX techs done all that?
Her gown had torn open along her torso, exposing bits of her flame-ravaged body. What little was left of it. Ashen ribs were stacked on top of one another. They flexed and fanned, in and out, with every wheezing breath. A gray sac that must’ve been her lungs shimmered underneath her charred chest cavity. There was a wetness to her exposed organs. The cemetery was lit, but she held back, standing in the woods, just out of the lighting fixtures’ complete reach. Their residual glow cast an unhealthy sheen over her innards. To Amber, it looked as if there were a gray serpent coiled up within her rib cage, slithering about Ella Louise’s skeleton.
Amber did it again. Thinking this was Ella Louise.
It’s Nora.
Nora.
When Miss Lambert exhaled, Amber could swear she heard her insides whistle. Oxygen hissed out from the thinnest fissures within her windpipe, like air escaping a waterlogged tire.
But it was the eyes that were the most unsettling, Amber believed. The rest of Nora’s face had blackened to a cindered crisp. Her scalp was nothing more than a blistered ball of waxen flesh and ash. Her nose, gone, revealed a yawning cavity at the very center of her face.
But her eyes.
Her eyes were alive. Two pulsing pearls were perched in their hollowed sockets, glistening in the dark. When Nora cast her gaze upon Amber, speechless Amber, the little girl could have sworn they were filled with some elemental sense of longing.
A sense of love.
A pale fire.
They had lost their color, the irises boiled away from the intense heat, leaving behind a creamy, maggoty hue. But they saw Amber. Stared at her and only her.
They’re beautiful, Amber thought. There was love in her eyes. Her milked-over eyes.
Nothing but love.
Amber forgot for a moment, just a brief moment, that this was all pretend.
Latex and makeup.
Movie magic.
It just looks so real…She looks real.
It had taken hours for the makeup crew to get Amber to look the way she did. Hours. How had they gotten all the burn prosthetics on Nora so fast? The face paint and airbrushed bruises? The wig and the contact lenses? The false teeth? Just how long exactly had Amber been passed out? She hadn’t realized they were shooting their reunion scene tonight. Maybe the director changed his mind and decided to film it this evening, shuffling scenes around. Maybe he told her mother and she had forgotten to let Amber know. Perhaps Mom simply chose not to.
Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter. Amber was completely entranced.
“Do you…” Amber’s voice faded, suddenly unsure of herself. She glanced down.
Why hadn’t Nora said anything to her?
Why was she acting so strange?
Her feet. Even Nora’s feet were done up. She wasn’t wearing any shoes. The toe bones sank into the soil. A flimsy strip of singed skin dangling from her shin flapped in the breeze.
Amber glanced back up and realized Miss Lambert was still holding her arms out.
Reaching out for her.
For her. For a hug. An embrace.
To hold Amber.
“Do you,” Amber started again, searching for the right thing to say. What was she supposed to say? What did Miss Lambert want her to do? “Do you wanna go over our lines?”
Nora smiled. It was an unnerving effect, watching her cindered lips peel back, like singed rose petals blossoming. There was hardly enough flesh to them, the vermillion border long gone, no longer lips, more like blackened worms. When Nora grinned, her upper lip halved itself through the center flap, as if there were a tear along the philtrum. Calling it a smile might have been a stretch, without enough flesh left along her mouth to lift. But what else could she be doing? What else could Amber call it? It had to be a smile. She looked happy, even with her face burned away. Her gums had receded to the roots of her charred teeth. And yet…
And yet…
There was joy in her face. Why was she looking at Amber like that? She hadn’t blinked once. Her eyelids had burned back, leaving those pearlescent orbs to float within their charred sockets. For a moment, Amber imagined those eyes as fireflies bobbing about in the darkness.
Will-o’-the-wisps! That was what they reminded Amber of. She remembered reading about foolish fire in one of her books about fairies, their phosphorescence flickering over the marsh at midnight. Amber could have sworn she was staring at a pair of the tiniest ghosts, watching them dance about the atmosphere before her, glowing in the darkest shadows of the woods.
The woods.
Miss Lambert still hadn’t left the woods. Hadn’t crossed beyond the tree line.
Why hadn’t she joined Amber? Why wouldn’t she step into the cemetery?
Amber didn’t understand why she was still hiding in the shadows, refusing to move beyond the surrounding circumference of trees. It was as if she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, cross some invisible barrier that separated the woods from the graveyard.
Something in the script bubbled up into her brain just then. A line her mother read out loud to her one night. Something about the ghost of Ella Louise Ford being unable to enter the cemetery or some weird superstitious rule like that. It didn’t make sense to Amber at the time, she recalled. Why couldn’t she? Wasn’t Ella Louise a ghost, too? Why couldn’t her spirit step into a graveyard with all the other spirits? What was so wrong, so awful about her soul that kept her locked out? Didn’t she deserve to rest, too? Eternal rest? Didn’t she deserve peace?
Stop asking so many silly questions, Mom had said to her, continuing to flip through the script. It’s just a stupid movie. They probably make up the rules as they go along…
Her mother had read over the dialogue so quickly, tossing it out under her breath and forging ahead to the next line, the thought of it was gone before it even had a chance to resonate within Amber’s mind. Mom always read these scripts to herself first. Then the two would read it out aloud together. Mom would skip over the parts that didn’t involve Amber’s character, which ended up being most of this movie. When all was said and done, Jessica Ford, the Little Witch Girl of Pilot’s Creek, only showed up around the midpoint—and even then it was done in the dark, her ghost drifting through the shadows, in silhouette, withholding the ultimate reveal of her character at the very, very end. Which completely pissed off her mom.
Aren’t you supposed to be the bad guy? she muttered as she flipped back through the pages, rereading them, searching for a spare scrap of dialogue she might have missed the first time. What kind of horror movie is this? Why are they hiding you for half the movie? Who in the hell is gonna be scared if they don’t show you?
Miss Lambert still held out her hand.
Beckoning to Amber.
Each finger looked like a candle melted down to the wick, the flesh ebbing away to bone. The distal phalanxes had sharpened themselves into claws. Clumps of dirt clung to her knuckles. Had she been digging? What was left of her dress was covered in mud.
She kept her hand held out for Amber to take.
How long had she been holding that pose?
Waiting for Amber.
Waiting.
Waiting…
Amber glanced over her shoulder. She scanned the cemetery, searching for someone. Anyone. A production assistant or producer or even her mother. She hadn’t heard her name in quite a while. It was as if they had all forgotten her. Or given up. Where had everyone gone?
Why was she all alone out here?
No, not alone. Not anymore.
Someone had found her.
Miss Lambert.
But Miss Lambert wasn’t…acting like Miss Lambert. She was acting like somebody else.
> Method.
That’s what this must be all about. Amber remembered her mother muttering on about the Method. Certain actors liked to lose themselves in a role. They plumbed the depths of their own personal experience in order to become their characters. Amber thought it all sounded pretty silly when she first heard about it. The lengths actors will go to for a role.
Couldn’t they just, you know…pretend? Say their lines? That was what Amber always did.
Supposedly, some actors get so caught up in the Method, Mom told her, they won’t even answer to their real name. While on set, they prefer to go by their character’s name.
Perhaps Miss Lambert was one of these method actors.
Maybe Nora wasn’t Nora anymore.
So this must be Ella Louise then.
Amber smiled. Method. She decided to play along. It would be fun! They could pretend together. Just the two of them. They were no longer Amber Pendleton and Nora Lambert.
They were Jessica and Ella Louise Ford.
Mother and daughter, reunited at last.
Just like in the script.
Amber couldn’t help but giggle. She felt like the two of them now had a secret to share. This was their own private game and no one—not even Amber’s real mother—could intervene.
They would lose themselves in their roles and never look back.
No more Amber.
No more Nora.
Just Ella Louise.
Just Jessica.
Amber—no, she chastised herself, remember, you’re not Amber anymore, it’s Jessica now—Jessica slowly lifted her hand from her side and slid her fingers into Ella Louise’s grip.
Her mother’s skin was cold. Wet. The crags of burnt flesh crackled against the palm of her own hand. She could feel the hard metacarpals shifting beneath the seared layer of skin.
Her skin felt so cold. So cold.
But Jessica held on.
Ella Louise took a step toward the woods, tugging on Jessica’s arm. She wanted her to follow. She wanted her daughter to step away from the hallowed ground of the cemetery and enter the forest. Where they could finally be alone.
Alone together.
Forever.
The Remaking Page 8
