The Remaking

by Clay McLeod Chapman

  I know what that feels like.

  I lean in until I’m only a few inches away from her. I want this just to be between her and me. “I hope you didn’t get any nightmares watching it…”

  The girl only shakes her head, no, no. Then, thinking twice about it, she slowly nods. Yes.

  Yes, there were nightmares.

  Of course there were nightmares.

  So many nightmares.

  I know those nightmares. Had plenty of them, myself.

  Too many.

  I glance around the convention center, pretending to check that no one else is listening. This is just between the two of us. Just between us girls.

  Just us Jessicas.

  When I deem the coast is clear, I ask her, “What’s your name, honey?”

  “Jessica.”

  “No, honey,” I say. “I mean, what’s your real name?”

  She only stares blankly back at me, repeating herself, “Jessica.”

  Holy shit.

  I want to call social services, right then and there. I have to struggle to suppress the rising tide of bile filling my throat. “Can I let you in on a little secret, Jessica?”

  She nods. Slower. Unsure what else she should do. If this is okay. Is this okay? Can she keep a secret? With me? This older woman? This…stranger? The source of all her nightmares.

  “I was your age when we made that movie,” I said. “It was pretty scary to me, too. I had some bad dreams back then. Really bad dreams.”

  The girl takes this in, absorbs it.

  “But it was all pretend,” I lie. “Make believe, you know? It was—it’s just a movie.”

  Just a movie.

  Just a movie.

  I don’t know how any times I repeated that to myself. All through my childhood.

  Well into adulthood.

  A secret mantra to keep the ghosts at bay.

  It’s only a movie…

  Only a movie…

  Only a movie…

  Only…

  We take our photo. I can feel the lie eating away at me. My throat is still burning, the words wrapped in stomach acid. I can still taste them in my mouth.

  Only a movie only a movie only a movie only a…

  I wish I could protect her. Save her from this awful movie. From her own awful goddamn parents. I should’ve stood up and grabbed her and taken her away or called the police or just run out of here or—or something.

  Anything.

  She’s just a child, for Christ’s sake.

  Just a girl.

  No one that young should ever watch that movie. Jesus, no one that young should have been in that movie.

  Why hadn’t somebody tried to save me?

  She turns her head back to look at me one last time before she’s completely eclipsed by the next fan in line, beelining his way up to the card table, impatiently waiting his turn.

  And Jessica is gone. Just like that.

  Nothing but a ghost.

  My attention drifts over the card table to my setup. All the headshots. The production stills. It’s been a while since I’ve subjected myself to a horror convention. I thought I could get through it. I thought I was strong enough again. I was keeping the panic attacks at bay. The benzies helped, yes. But glancing over all the pictures of myself in costume, as a child, nothing but a little girl, I feel that familiar tug, that gravitational pull back into the dark place.

  Back to Pilot’s Creek.

  To the woods.

  These last twenty-four years have felt like a dream. Like I never left that hole in the ground.

  I’m stuck here.

  In the ground.

  I never left…

  I never left…

  I never left…

  I never—

  “It is such a pleasure to finally meet you, ma’am,” this next fan says. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this. When I heard you were coming to TerrorCon, I took off from work. I had to switch shifts with Chet, but that’s okay. I drove three hours just to get here. I made sure that there wasn’t anything…”

  I give him a faint smile, but I’m distracted.

  I’m searching for the girl.

  That poor girl.

  For Jessica.

  Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe there’s still time. Maybe I can still save her—

  “…thought you’d never do another convention. I read your last interview in Rue Morgue and it sounded like you had sworn them off for good. So thanks, thank you, for coming back.”

  Back from the dead.

  He plops down a glossy headshot of me onto the table. Of course he’s brought his own. I start signing it without looking at the picture. The motions of my wrist are so automatic now.

  But when I glance down, my hand juts out, sending my Sharpie flying. The P in Pendleton stretches across the whole image. Over my face.

  It’s one of my childhood headshots. From my commercial days. Before Don’t Tread on Jessica’s Grave. I haven’t seen one of these photographs in…Jesus, I don’t even know how long. The edges of the image have yellowed. How did this guy get his hands on it?

  “I found it on eBay,” he says, as if he were listening to my thoughts, proud of his rare acquisition. “Only cost me five bucks…Totally worth it. You are worth it, Miss Pendleton.”

  I finish signing my name before sliding the picture toward him.

  And smile.

  “Oh, ah, actually, I was wondering…” he begins, only to stop himself.

  Christ, this one wants to ask for something special. I can sense it. It’s in his body language. He’s being sheepish. Bashful. But he won’t go away.

  That’s how these conventions work. They all want something. Need something. That’s why they come here. They’ve all come because they want something from me. Anything. Everything. An autograph. A picture. A hug. An ear to whisper into. A shoulder to cry on. A wisp of my hair. A drop of my blood. A piece of my soul. They want to tell me how much my movie meant to them. How it changed their life. How I was their first. Their only. Their everything.

  But this movie nearly killed me.

  It took everything from me.

  Everything.

  Can’t they see that?

  Don’t they know?

  I have nothing left. There’s nothing left of me to give. My bank account is nearly overdrawn. I’ve become well versed in the off-brand macaroni and cheese at my local deli. I have to put on a face that doesn’t feel like my own. It’s not mine…I have to relive this one moment from my life, over twenty years ago, over and over again, a broken record that keeps on skipping, just to get by. Just to survive. To live. But I don’t even know what I’m living for anymore.

  Even if I tried, the fans, all these fans, they won’t let me forget. Won’t let me move on. Run away. I have to reexperience it for them. Reenact it for them. The trauma of it. Like I’m trapped in an endless loop. Reliving that night over and over and over and over and over and—

  “Could you, uh…” He takes a deep breath. “Do you mind signing it as Jessica?”

  “Of course,” I manage to say.

  And smile.

  His cheeks flush red, his skin splotching over in a patch of pulpy, mushy strawberries. “Thank you, Miss Pendleton…Thank you. I, uh…I’m such a big fan of yours. Don’t Tread on Jessica’s Grave is one of my all-time faves. Top five, easy.”

  “Don’t let the other four films know that,” I kid.

  “Have you heard they’re remaking it?”

  Everything in my head goes quiet. A hush rushes through the entire convention hall. Every conversation diminishes. Every costumed fan continues to chat with the costumed fan beside them, but their voices are gone for me.

  The din is gone.

  All I hear is her
breath. Raspy. Wet burlap ripping in her chest.

  Ella Louise.

  “I’m sorry,” I say in a slow, measured tone. “Remaking…?”

  He can tell I don’t understand. “Don’t Tread on Jessica’s Grave,” he beams. “They’ve been talking about it for years. Now that the film is about to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary, the producers nailed down the rights. Ketchum finally let them go, I guess. They’re updating it for, like, you know…a modern audience.”

  The excitement on his face dissolves as soon as he realizes I’m hearing this news for the very first time. He is the messenger of this revelation.

  To my awakening.

  “You, uh…” He licks his lips. “You didn’t know?”

  “No,” I manage to say, my voice barely registering. “I didn’t.”

  “Pretty cool, huh?” He beams at me. “I wonder who they’ll get to play Jessica?”

  TWO

  There’s no air. No space. No privacy here. Nowhere for me to go to be alone. If I want to get back to the green room, I have to willfully immerse myself in the throng of costumes and cross the entire convention center.

  I can’t do it. I just can’t. Not alone. Not by myself. But there’s no other choice. Nowhere else I can go. I don’t have a boyfriend bodyguarding me. I’m not one of the higher-end scream queens who can afford a handler. I’m all alone out here.

  Contractually speaking, I’m supposed to sit and sign autographs for another forty-five minutes. The organizers will dock me, I’m positive, insisting I didn’t fulfill my end of the agreement. I’ve been in breach of contract before. I started showing up to a few too many autograph signings smelling a weeee bit besotted, making an ass out of myself in front of all the other scream queens, so that earned me a scarlet letter in certain circles for a while.

  Fine by me. I needed a break from these conventions anyhow.

  Needed to breathe.

  Just to be clear, I have never considered myself to actually be a “scream queen.” That designation is for my bustier genre-compatriots. I get lumped in with the final girls all the fucking time, no matter how much I try to qualify my character to these programmers. After two decades of hitting up the circuit, I’ve had to resign myself to the label.

  I’m not judging my sisters. We’re all just trying to get by here. Make a living. If people want to pay ten bucks for a signed headshot, then who am I to complain? If they want to pose for a photo for five, let them.

  But I never screamed on-screen. All my screaming happened between takes.

  Off camera. In the woods.

  It’s been over two decades since Don’t Tread on Jessica’s Grave came out. It was supposed to pop up on a few drive-in screens across the country and that was it. People would move on. Forget it.

  Forget the film.

  Forget me. I could move on with my life.

  We all would.

  But the story behind the movie took on a life of its own. Did you hear what happened on set? horror hounds whispered among themselves. True story. Supposedly, the kid playing the ghost girl saw the real deal and nearly died…They found her buried in a shallow grave, like, a mile off from where they were shooting. I’ve heard, if you watch the movie real close, you can even see the ghost in the background…

  All lies. Just stories to tell. But it was enough. Enough for people to seek it out. Hunt it down in the video store. Plop down two bucks to see if they could spot her. Then rewatch it.

  That’s when Jessica gets her fangs into you.

  No one was supposed to remember a piece of low-budget crap like Jessica’s Grave five years from when it first came out. Ten years. It was supposed to be consigned to the trash heap of cinema, lost alongside all the other awful tripe that got cranked out. All the schlock that didn’t deserve to be remembered, wrapped in webs of celluloid. Toss those prints into a landfill. Bury them forever.

  But the next time you rent Three Men and a Baby, see if you can spot a little boy in the background, hiding behind the window curtains, peeking out behind Tom Selleck’s shoulder.

  See him?

  That boy was murdered in the house they filmed that scene in.

  A ghost.

  What you’re looking at is the spirit of a boy trapped in celluloid for all to see.

  Everybody loves cursed movie productions.

  The Exorcist was cursed.

  Poltergeist was cursed.

  Hell, even The Wizard of Oz was plagued with mishaps. Dead munchkins and noosed monkeys. Whatever your opinions on the movies themselves might be, people eat up the idea that a film is doomed from the get-go because it tampered with the supernatural balance of things. The novelty of a production getting too close to its subject matter and paying the price sends the conspiracy theorists salivating. Don’t Tread on Jessica’s Grave is yet another entry in the canon of cursed movies.

  And I’m the living embodiment of that curse.

  For a few bucks, you can see for yourself.

  The role seared itself onto me, like a brand. People didn’t know my name, my real name, but they remembered her. Jessica wouldn’t let go. I couldn’t escape her.

  Hey, aren’t you that creepy kid?

  Always calling me Jessica.

  You’re Jessica, aren’t you?

  Stopping me on the street.

  Hey, Jessica!

  I lost myself. I wasn’t me anymore. Not to the rest of the world.

  To them, I was Jessica. To nonfans, I was the child actress who buried herself alive and blamed it on a ghost.

  Either way, it was a legacy I couldn’t escape. If I auditioned for another movie, all the casting directors would whisper to my mother that they just couldn’t see me shaking off my previous part. It followed me. Haunted me. When I looked back at my career now—or what Mom passed off as a career—I couldn’t help but laugh. What an idiot I was. Hopeless. I never stood a chance. I could see that now.

  I wasn’t made for this life. Not a life in the movies.

  I wanted to be a kid.

  Just a girl.

  The only offers coming my way were for horror movies. It was always the same role. Always some diluted version of Jessica. Just another spooky ghost girl with her hair covering her face. Always seeking revenge from beyond the grave. But that wasn’t me. That was never supposed to be me.

  Mom had promised me, had sworn up and down during the casting call, that this movie was merely a diving board, a launching pad into the rest of my burgeoning, blossoming career.

  Hello serious roles. Hello awards. Hello Hollywood Walk of Fame. Every serious actor does it. Demi Moore. Jennifer Aniston. Brooke Shields. I just had to follow in their footsteps…

  It was a lie.

  All a lie.

  I was trapped. Trapped in a film I didn’t want to be in. I never wanted to act again. Never wanted to set foot on set ever again. Not after what happened.

  Not after—

  When Mom tells the story of how I was discovered, she’s always the one who finds me. When I was younger, her version sounded the best. Hers was the version that I wanted to be true. She found me and uprooted me and clung to me, pressing my limp body against her chest and squeezing so hard until I gasped back to life, ushering the air back into my lungs. Reviving me. She wouldn’t let me go. Held on to me the whole way to the hospital, no matter how much the paramedics pleaded.

  “Don’t worry,” she whispered. I can almost remember the warmth of her voice drifting into my ear. “I’ve got you. I’m going to take you back home.”

  But the older I got, the more I didn’t trust her version. It didn’t sound right anymore. Didn’t sound real. It didn’t help that Mom’s telling of it changed whenever I overheard her whispering to others. Embellishing certain bits. Her role in my rescue.

  When I was asked what happened, I told them the tr
uth. I told them about Ella Louise Ford. Mom didn’t believe me. Nobody believed me about what I saw. Nobody believed my story. Not the director or producers or the crew. There were only a couple days left to shoot. Too late to recast now. Too late to replace me. Ketchum took what little footage he had and creatively edited around me. Made the most of it. The most of me. I was his Jessica whether he wanted me to be or not. Whether I wanted to be or not.

  I didn’t ask for this life. I never asked for it.

  That movie nearly killed me.

  It still wants to. Even now. Now more than ever. It won’t die. This goddamn film won’t die! For a while, I was able to avoid my rabid fans, always begging for an autograph.

  A picture with me.

  A slice of me.

  A drop of me.

  They want my life.

  All of it.

  They want Jessica. That’s what they’re really after. They want to see her. See if she’s lingering somewhere within me, hiding behind my eyes. These fans have heard all the stories. They’ve volleyed their own personal theories of what actually happened. They’ve convinced themselves it’s all true. How strange is it that the only people who believe me, after all these years, are the fans? They live for this shit. They eat it up. Because if it’s true, if Jessica is real, then maybe she’s still here. In me. Maybe they can see her. Touch her.

  I need her, too. Or just the money. That’s the only reason why I agree to do these goddamn horror conventions in the first place. Just one more, I swore to myself. One more weekend signing autographs and I can cash that check and it’ll go straight back to the bank and I can move on.

  Run. Run far, far away.

  They’re remaking it.

  Remaking Jessica.

  There are three Smirnoff travel nips in my fanny pack. Now I wish I’d brought four. Maybe I did and I’m just forgetting it. Three mini vodkas will be enough to get me through the day, right? I haven’t started yet, have I? Drink responsibly, as they say. All in moderation.

  Someone steps in front of me. He’s wearing a hockey mask. I let out a brief shout, so he pulls back the mask, propping it on top of his head to show me he’s just a fan. Just a man.

  I wish he’d left the mask on.