The Remaking

by Clay McLeod Chapman

  My eyes. I can’t open my eyes. They’re sealed shut. I feel my eyeballs skimming back and forth behind their lids, but there’s nothing to see. Not in the dark. Not in the ground.

  I know I’m going to die down here.

  I’m going to die.

  How many times will they do this to me? How many times will these men bury me?

  In the ground?

  The worms won’t have me. The soil will grow septic. My body will slowly break down and my blood will seep into the earth. If a root ever reaches me, they’ll wither. Choke from the inside out. Every last blade of grass. Every nearby tree. I will taint this earth.

  This will be my curse, here in the dirt. This is my curse on the people of Pilot’s Creek.

  On you all—

  Someone grips my hand and starts to pull. I am being lifted up. Lifted out of the ground. I can feel a tug at my chest. The earth is peeling back, breaking open around my torso.

  Light floods my eyes. I have to squint before the glare of fluorescents above me fades.

  I’m in a warehouse. Surrounded by corpses. There are bodies suspended from the walls. All of them in different stages of decomposition. There’s a row of decapitated heads lined along a workbench. Five all together. All little girls. Something about them looks familiar to me.

  They are me.

  Of me.

  That’s my head.

  I mean, those are my heads. All five of them. Each and every last one of them is…me.

  As a girl.

  Each has its own frozen expression. I’m looking at myself screaming.

  Then glaring.

  Grinning.

  It’s a sickening sight, seeing all these different versions of my childhood self. There’s even one of me after the fire. Burned to a crisp. My lips have peeled back, chewed through by the blaze, in a permanent sneer, this halted snarl spread across my charred face.

  They’re all looking at me, staring back with glossy-embossed eyes.

  Me looking at me.

  “Welcome back,” a man’s voice beckons. I snap out of it and turn to see him kneeling next to me, holding a rubber mold in his hands.

  It’s my head. The adult me. My skin. My flesh flops limply through the air, as if I have just shed my snakeskin, the flaps of my exposed chest quivering in the air.

  “How you feeling? Okay?”

  Howard Kurtz. Now I remember. This is his special effects studio. I’m surrounded by props and prosthetics from all his different movies. Werewolves, zombies, and bears, oh my.

  “How long was I under?” I ask.

  “Ten, fifteen minutes. The alginate dries quicker than plaster.” He hands the mold of my head to one of his underlings, the rubber flapping loosely through the air before disappearing.

  My skin. They’re taking away my skin. I’m a freshly mottled snake, my flesh tender in the cool air.

  It’s been a while since I’ve done a lifecast. Twenty-four years, now? A lifetime ago. But who’s counting, right? I have an entirely different body now. I’m no longer a girl.

  Somehow, I don’t know how, Kurtz and his team were able to reproduce these lifelike replicas of my younger self. My head, at least. His technicians busied themselves painting the various textures to my cindered flesh. A whole army of dead Jessicas, waiting for my command.

  Kurtz noticed I was staring at myself. “Pretty uncanny, right?”

  I nod. My scalp itches under the swimming cap. There is a remnant of alginate along my temple. My skin is smeared with so much Vaseline that I glisten.

  “We had Danielle come in last week. Talk about a trooper. That girl sat here for hours.”

  I didn’t understand. “Danielle?”

  “You two haven’t met yet?”

  I had met her, but I didn’t feel like getting into it with him. I played it off as best I could, giving him a dizzy expression: Yes, yes, of course it’s her, how silly of me, that’s not me of course.

  “That’s her.” Kurtz nodded to my heads.

  That wasn’t me. Those weren’t my heads. They were somebody else. Another actress.

  Another girl.

  I felt hollow in my chest. Mournful, almost, as if I’d just lost someone.

  I’d lost Jessica.

  Kurtz coughed. “We need to do a few more casts…Different expressions, you know? You down for one more, or do you want to take a break?”

  “I can do another.” I could hear my mother’s voice in my head, insisting that I smile.

  Smile, Amber. Smile. Let them see that you’re game. That you’re up for anything. That you’ll put in a hundred and ten percent. Don’t let them down, Amber. Show them you can do it.

  Show them you’re a star.

  The Klonopin certainly helped. I’d taken half a pill before coming in, so the room lost its harder edges. Jesus, where had this stuff been the first time I’d been forced to do a lifecast? If I had popped a K-pin before they poured the plaster on me as a kid, I probably wouldn’t be so claustrophobic now. I stared at all the zombie mannequins positioned around the studio, as if they were waxworks in a spook house and I was some silly teenager, stoned and stumbling about.

  “This time,” Kurtz said, mixing the alginate, “we’re gonna need you to scream. I want you to hold your mouth open…like this.” He dropped his jaw for me in a silent shriek.

  “Will any of that gloop get into my mouth?”

  “Nah, this stuff sets so fast, we can actually mold it. What you’re gonna want to do is slowly widen your mouth, a little bit at a time. You’ll actually feel the alginate tug, like taffy.”

  A scream. I could do that. I can be your scream queen, I thought.

  A frozen scream. How hard could it be?

  Kurtz started at my ears, squirting a syringe full of alginate within the lobe. After that, he plopped a handful of the cold gel on top of my head and rubbed it down my face.

  “Close your eyes,” he said as he used his thumb to nudge the alginate into the corners. The crevices of my flesh. Working it in and sealing me up.

  The head cast grew heavier, but I was already gone. Lost in the dark again.

  Under the ground.

  I’ve spent so much time down here. Lost in my thoughts. In my head. Nothing to do in here, down here in the dark, but dwell. Dwell on the past. The trash fire of my life.

  My only friends have been my therapists. Dr. Greenberg. Dr. Miles. Dr. Nolan. None of them ever last. Not after they refuse to fill out my prescription, which is always the inevitable.

  Parting is such sweet sorrow…

  For a while there, back in my teens—the Exorcist II Years, as Mom called them—I used to pal around with all the other scream queens on the scene. We formed a support group. Our own little Brat Pack…Not that Rob or Emilio or Ally returned any of our calls.

  No—we were the Hack Pack.

  Hack, of course, because the members of our group were all the dead girls. The kids who’d been eviscerated in our movies. Juliette and Tina and Tiffany and Melanie or Linnea. Who else understood what it was like to see yourself mutilated on-screen, then forced to relive that moment with all the fans? We’d all been there, dismembered that. And God, did we ever tear through L.A., just like we were torn up in whichever sequel our bodies had been butchered in.

  The Hack Pack prescribed its own sedatives. I did my first line of cocaine off Linnea’s headshot.

  I’ll admit, I don’t remember much from this time. Blackouts were quickly becoming par for the course, particularly after a night at the Whisky a Go-Go. I do remember trying to delineate the differences between myself and the other members of our elite little club, hoping to clarify that I was in fact the creepy ghost girl of the group. Not a victim. Not just another body.

  The final girls didn’t like that. Didn’t like me. They thought I was acting like I w
as better than them. All holier-than-thou, just because I was a witch. But it’s true. I wasn’t the cheerleader who got axed in the shower or the bubbly best friend who got electrocuted in the hot tub.

  I was the one who killed the kids in my film. I was the monster in my movie.

  I was the Little Witch Girl of Pilot’s Creek.

  I’d shout it out at the top of my lungs along Sunset Boulevard at three in morning, shout it out at the rest of the Hack Pack, at anyone wandering by or willing to listen—“Do you know who I am? I’m the Little Witch Girl of fucking Pilot’s Creek!”

  It wasn’t long before I was excommunicated from the crew. Christ, even among the dead girls of Hollywood I was still a fucking pariah…

  If those dead girls could only see me now.

  Look who’s getting remade.

  All done up.

  How much time has gone by? Has it been ten minutes yet? Why is this taking forever?

  Nothing ends anymore.

  Movies never die.

  A property is never put to rest. It’s never at peace. These movies can be resuscitated whenever a studio feels like bringing it back to life. There can be sequels. Sequels to sequels.

  Now they do remakes.

  Wipe the slate clean.

  Start over.

  Burn away the old residue to start fresh.

  What does it even mean to remake a movie? I wondered under the oppressive shell, my cocoon beginning to congeal around my skull. What does it mean to retell the same story?

  You’re supposed to update the characters.

  Update their clothes.

  Their lingo.

  Think of the cultural differences. Who were we then, when the original movie was first made? Who are we now? How much have we changed?

  Have we changed at all?

  The studio has always been crass about the original films. Execs believe kids these days won’t go see an old movie. It doesn’t matter if it’s a classic. Or if it’s been only a few years since the original came out—if there’s even the slightest whiff of antiquity to it, kids won’t care.

  A movie needs to be new.

  It has to be reborn.

  What was it about Jessica’s story that kept resurfacing? Why did she demand that it keep getting told, over and over again?

  These stories will find you.

  Your sin will find you, someone whispered from the other side of the alginate.

  Jessica had become a cinematic ouroboros. A serpent devouring its own tail, coiling round and round for an eternity. The longer I imagined that snake infinitely spinning, the more its scales slowly took on the shape of celluloid frames. The sprocket holes along either side of the film strip formed scales. When this snake shed its skin, the translucent husk would be fed through the projector. The images trapped within each scale caught the projector’s light and made their way to the big screen. Jessica filled that vast canvas, reaching her hand out to me.

  This film would never end. It continued to play on its own endless loop. Jessica’s story would be told over and over, forever now. She found a new audience.

  Fresh blood.

  That was exactly what Jessica wanted.

  To find new blood.

  “You can open your eyes now,” Ella Louise’s voice beckoned from the other side of my eyelids. At first, I didn’t believe I’d actually heard it. It was just another whisper in my head.

  It was her, wasn’t it?

  It had to be her.

  My eyelids flutter open. The light is different now. The room is different. I’m not in Kurtz’s studio anymore. There is no alginate. There’s no lifecast.

  No heads.

  I’m staring into the eyes of a woman I’ve never seen before. She looks as if she’s straight out of the 1920s. Her beauty feels timeless. Nothing like the dolled-up trollops of today. Her hair is done up in a bob. Clara Bow curls. Her skin is so pale, so phantasmal. A ghost.

  I blink, blink again, watching this stunning starlet blink with me. She’s mimicking me. Mirroring me.

  I’m staring at myself. There’s a wall mirror that takes up the entire length of space.

  I’m in a trailer. A makeup trailer.

  I don’t even recognize myself.

  It’s happening again.

  God, I’ve lost time. How much? This blackout feels big. They’re expanding. Opening wider. Swallowing hours. Days. These pitch-dark patches in my memory like sunspots searing through me.

  How long have I been out?

  How did I get here?

  Where am I? In the special effects trailer, yes.

  I’m on set, yes.

  I’m making a movie, yes.

  But when am I?

  I’ve seen this face before. Seen it in the woods. Here in Pilot’s Creek. The only difference now is the face belongs to me. It’s mine. I’m looking at myself.

  Oh God, I think. Oh God, it can’t be…can’t be me.

  But it is.

  It’s Ella. Ella Louise Ford.

  There’s another mirror along the wall behind me, just over my shoulders, reflecting my reflection back at me, until there’s an endless corridor of Ella Louises. The duplicates of her ghost replicate themselves on and on and on into oblivion, infinitely stretching into the horizon.

  The mirrors start to spin. The trailer is spinning.

  Spinning.

  Spinning…

  I keep staring at myself in the mirror, locking onto the eyes of my own reflection for as long as it takes the rest of the room to settle to keep the vertigo at bay.

  I’m Ella Louise, yes.

  Always Ella.

  Aren’t I? Haven’t I become a pariah, too? Aren’t I living in a pharmacy just like her? What if this whole time I’ve been on a path that leads from Jessica to Ella Louise?

  The makeup tech orbiting me leans over and smiles, glancing back and forth between me and my reflection. There are different fine-tipped paintbrushes poking out from her hair.

  “Looking pretty good, huh?”

  I look just like her. Just like the woman from the woods. Not Nora Lambert. Not the pretend rendition of Ella Louise.

  The real Ella Louise.

  “You okay?” the makeup tech asks. She’s starting to worry.

  “Yeah.” I laugh at myself. “Think I…think I must’ve dozed off for a spell.” I had taken that half of an Ambien before sitting down with Kurtz. But that was weeks ago…Wasn’t it? How had I gotten here? How many pills had I taken since then? I can’t remember if I popped the other half of the same pill or if I’m already on to the next. The days, the nights, are blurring together.

  “Night shoots are the worst,” the woman says, smiling at my reflection. Not at me. The reflection of me lingering in the mirror. “Throws my sleep schedule off. I just head back to the hotel and crash for the rest of the day. I haven’t seen sunlight in like, a week. Feels that way, at least.”

  I manage to smile. “Terrible segue here, but…Well. Because our schedules are so upside down, I…I haven’t been sleeping so well, either.”

  She nods. The brushes sticking out from her hair make her head look like a pincushion. She’s sympathizing with me. Good. That’s good. I have a fighting chance here.

  “I must look awful,” I say. “They’re gonna need to pay you overtime to get rid of my alligator bags.”

  “I hadn’t even noticed,” she replies. “You look great.”

  “Amber,” I insist. “Call me Amber.”

  “Amber.”

  “I don’t think I’ve slept in…Ooof. Jesus, two days. I don’t know if you know if anyone on the crew might…you know, have anything that might help? Take the edge off tonight?”

  She doesn’t respond, but it’s clear she understands what I’m getting at.

  “To help,” I
strain. “Just for tonight?”

  She looks back at the door. It’s only the two of us. These trailers can start to feel pretty suffocating very quickly. They can become lead-lined coffins in no time at all.

  “I’m not asking for you to do anything. Not at all. I’m just asking if, you know…If you know of anybody. Who might be able to help. Help me out here.” It was getting so hard to maintain that smile, but I had to. I had to let her know I was in control of myself.

  “Talk to the gaffer,” she says. Quietly. She says it to my reflection. The beautiful image of Ella Louise. “Noah. He might have something, I don’t know. But I didn’t tell you, okay?”

  My spirits lift. My lips lift, suddenly unburdened. Oh, my savior. My guardian angel. “Thanks. Thanks so much…?” I stretch the question mark out, searching for her name.

  “Blythe.”

  “Blythe. Thank you so so sooo much, Blythe. I owe you one. Really. You’re a lifesaver.”

  “They want you on set in fifteen, Miss Pendleton.” The warmth in her voice has gone cold.

  TEN

  I’m losing too much time. Losing my grip.

  Losing hold.

  This is not me bouncing back after some bender. Believe me, I know what that feels like. I’ve had my fair share. This is worse. Much worse. Entire pockets of consciousness have vanished from my memory. Time is gone. I’ll admit that I’ve been meddling with my meds regimen a bit too much. Mixing prescriptions. It took me years to strike the right balance. What pills to take and when. How many.

  Nobody can blame me for taking a full Klonopin when half would’ve sufficed, right?

  I’ve just been under a lot of stress lately. What with the film.

  Being back here.

  Working through these memories.

  Processing the past.

  Every inch of this place brings back another memory. Memories I thought I had buried.

  How long have I been back in Pilot’s Creek? Wasn’t I just getting my lifecast?

  How did I even make my way to the set?

  The production has overtaken the whole cemetery. Towering light kits suspend themselves over the graves, casting their powerful beams across the tombs. One Fresnel fixture flashes on directly in front of my face, blinding me for a spell. I can’t see where I’m stepping anymore and I bump into a headstone that wasn’t there a few footsteps ago.