This isn’t what—who—I expected to see.
She looks older. Not tired, per se. Resigned. Gray streaks run through her hair, nothing but ash now, tresses like spent cigarettes weaving around her head.
“…Miss Pendleton?”
No response. She’s not doing anything but staring impassively back at me.
Waiting.
The words are gone. Faded from my mind. My mouth is so parched. When was the last time I had a sip of water? “My name is Nathaniel Denison and…and I…”
The chain lock slides along its runners, then falls. Amber disappears into her trailer, into the shadows, leaving the door open behind her. “I was wondering when you’d come.”
DEBORAH PENDLETON WANTED TO BE A MOVIE STAR. LIKE MOST YOUNG GIRLS with stars in their eyes in the sixties, growing up watching Audrey Hepburn and Natalie Wood, Deborah dropped out of high school her junior year and moved to Los Angeles. Coming from Kansas City, however, Deborah wasn’t equipped to protect herself from such an unforgiving city as L.A. After a few odd modeling jobs and featured extra work, Deborah became pregnant…
And that was the end. Deborah’s dreams of ever becoming a movie star faded to black.
Amber Lee Pendleton was born on September 26, 1962.
Her biological father remains a mystery. His name, his whereabouts, everything. Some have speculated he was the Devil himself, but nobody believes in the Devil anymore. Not in Hollywood. The devils in L.A. are the casting directors. The producers waiting on the casting couch. The men ready to exploit a young, innocent, aspiring actress with no one to protect her.
That devil exists.
Amber possessed a radiance that her mother could only admonish. She looked like her father, as far as Deborah was concerned. She was a constant reminder of the past. Her failure.
Deborah quickly came to resent Amber. For what she stood for. What she could have been but would never be.
Amber’s freckled face and button nose were the picture of wholesomeness. People on the street would constantly stop and remark on how adorable little Amber was.
Some went as far as to suggest she could be in the pictures.
Had Amber ever acted on camera before?
Deborah realized she might have a second chance at stardom after all. This time with her daughter. She quickly focused all of her attention on preparing Amber for a life in show business. It wasn’t long before Amber was auditioning for television commercials. Local ads. Anything to put Amber’s radiant smile out there in the cosmos. A bright, shining star.
But that would all pale to the role of a lifetime, only a few years away…That role would be none other than Jessica Ford in Lee Ketchum’s seminal Don’t Tread on Jessica’s Grave.
Amber’s life would soon change forever.
Amber would soon meet Jessica.
TWO
The trailer is a mess. The air thickened, congealed, as soon as I walked in. Had to hold my breath. Such a suffocating space. How long had Amber Pendleton been living in this dump?
I attempt a quick tally of all the empties lining the window. The wine bottles clustered along the kitchenette countertop. So many colors. Green glass, brown. Some are half filled with liquid. Others are stuffed with cigarette butts. I spot the crumpled Pall Mall packs. A pyramid of cans on the table. Stray tendrils of sun reach past the slats in the blinds, casting their light through the various colored glass, until the walls are speckled in an alcoholic’s constellation.
It reminds me of a tidbit I had read regarding Ella Louise Ford. She was something of an herbalist, back in the day. The walls of her cottage had apparently been filled with mason jars full of primitive remedies. Roots and powders. Eye of newt, probably.
No wonder everybody thought she had been a witch back then.
Maybe Miss Pendleton’s working on her own spells out here.
Double, double, drink and trouble…
“Have a seat,” Amber says over her shoulder as she wanders into the kitchenette. She pours herself a cup of something. I can’t see what. All I spot is the coffee mug:
WORLD’S BEST MOM.
I’ve got to figure out where to sit. Nothing’s particularly inviting, if you catch my drift. I settle on a folding chair residing in the dining area. I drag it into the living room space, doing my best not to knock over any of the stalagmites of yellowed movie magazines.
“Thank you for agreeing to talk with me, Miss Pendleton…”
“We’re not talking yet,” she says, sitting herself down on a musty love seat. The slightest puff of dust takes to the air, spiraling through the slits of colored sunlight.
I take her in and imagine her outside, in the woods, the pines, in the snow, the white flakes drifting around her face. At this low level of light, I have an easier time finding the face I remember from all the newspaper articles, the news broadcasts. The Entertainment Tonight profile. The hatchet job on Inside Edition. Bill O’Reilly downright eviscerated her, making no qualms of expressing his own personal opinions about Miss Pendleton.
The Horror Movie Murderer.
Hollywood’s Latest Murderess.
Child Star Killer.
I’ve got to take a moment to privately acknowledge the fact that I’m now sitting directly across from Miss Amber Lee Pendleton. Former child star. Murder suspect. She’s got to be somewhere in her fifties, well beyond the age when Hollywood puts its stars out to pasture. So much ink had been spilled over her, twenty years back—and now, well, now it seems as if nobody cares. Not anymore. Everybody’s moved on, leaving Miss Pendleton behind. To marinate in the past. Does anyone want to hear her story now? Her side of the story? Her secrets?
“My name’s Nathaniel Denison. I produce a podcast called—”
“Podcast.”
Was that a question? I wonder. It’s difficult to say. “Digital radio, only you can listen to it whenever you want,” I clarify, hoping it might help. I didn’t notice a television set or a radio or a laptop or a carrier pigeon. Nothing. No contact with the outside world. “It’s called Who Goes There? and—”
“Never heard it.”
“That’s okay. We have around two hundred thousand subscribers, which isn’t bad for a—”
“You have a face for radio.” She chuckles before slipping into a coughing fit. Something phlegmy loosens itself in her throat after a few hacks, which she promptly swallows.
I hadn’t expected Amber to be this…blunt.
I don’t really know what the hell I expected, to be honest.
Definitely not this.
Not her.
“Well, as I’m sure you know, the eighty-fifth anniversary of Ella Louise and Jessica Ford’s death is tonight and I was—”
Amber smiles—or her lips do something that almost approximates a smile. There’s no pleasure in this, but now that I’ve said it, said their names, their familiar aural shapes taking to the atmosphere, cutting through the miasma clouding her RV, she seems…I don’t know.
Relieved.
Now she knows my number. She leans back in her seat, not saying a word. Just staring my way.
So I forge ahead. “The anniversary of their death is tonight and I figured it was time to look back at the history of—”
“Look back?”
Christ, is this woman purposely fucking with me?
She keeps throwing me off. Needling me. I spot the slightest grin playing across her lips just as she brings her mug up, eclipsing her mouth to take a long sip. If I’m not mistaken, I detect the slightest tremor in her wrist. Her hands can barely hold her mug without trembling. Parkinson’s?
“Yes,” I persist. “Time to reappraise the past. I think it’s long overdue that someone reexamine the Fords and all the stories surrounding them. Their lives, their deaths. The town itself. The movies. Both movies. All of it. There’s a
story to be told here, and I believe people haven’t heard the half of it…And that means hearing from you, too, Miss Pendleton.”
Now I’ve got her attention. She’s listening. Actually listening.
I’ve got her now. She’s all ears.
“You want to reappraise my past?”
“I want to hear your side of the story, Miss Pendleton.”
“Nothing left to tell.”
“I don’t think that’s true—”
“I’ve said everything I needed to say—”
“I don’t believe—”
“I’ve spoken my piece.” She says it so forcefully, I feel the trailer rock on its haunches. Or maybe I just imagine it. The contents of her mug—dark liquid, coffee, perhaps—fall to the floor, staining the carpet. Joining so many other spills.
Fuck. Fuck. I pushed too hard. I backed her into a corner. She’s feeling attacked. I’ve got to coax her back. I soften my tone, almost whispering, “I think something traumatic happened to you as a child that set you on a course that you’ve never been able to steer yourself away from. I think it has haunted you your entire life. All through childhood. Well on into your adulthood. I think you were forced to revisit that trauma when you returned to Pilot’s Creek in 1995. I think it was too much for you, even then. I think you reexperienced something that only made matters worse, not better. But no one ever asked you, really asked you, what happened. They had passed judgment before hearing you out. Am I right? No one understands, Miss Pendleton, because nobody wants to believe. Really believe the true story. Your story…”
A cloud must have passed over the trailer park outside. The sunlight recedes. Amber’s trailer lapses into darkness. In the silence, within the stillness of the cramped space, I can suddenly hear the slightest tinkle of glass against glass, as if the trailer itself just shifted, the surrounding bottles bristling against one another. The faintest peal of a hundred wind chimes.
Amber keeps still. Her expression is blank, but her eyes have sharpened. She resents me for saying these things out loud, I can tell. Giving her thoughts a voice, like this.
But she hasn’t denied it.
Hasn’t kicked me out.
Not yet.
I’m no psychologist, but it doesn’t take a PhD to diagnose this basket case. She’s clearly damaged goods. Probably has been her whole life. She’s slowly committing suicide out here, drinking herself to death in her steel-lined coffin of a trailer. But there’s one thing I am most certain about when it comes to people, no matter how off their rocker…
They always have a story to tell.
Are dying to tell.
All they need is someone to listen.
I want to listen. I have my Olympus ready to record and everything.
“I think people deserve to hear what you have to say. Don’t you, Miss Pendleton? Don’t you think it’s time? I think you’ve kept this secret for far too long. I think it’s taken a toll on you, ma’am. Bottling it up, like this. I’m sorry, but this”—I look around the room, hammily exasperated—“this is no way to live. You can’t hide in your trailer for the rest of your life.”
“Who says I can’t?”
I can picture her on set. Getting her makeup on. Sitting for hours in the special effects trailer, staring at her own reflection in the mirror, watching herself transform into Jessica.
Then Ella Louise.
No wonder she lives in a RV park now. Probably the only moments of peace for this poor woman were when she used to sit in that swivel chair in those suffocating trailers and become someone else.
One of the Fords.
Amber has been a surrogate to the Ford family her entire life.
A changeling.
“Something has kept you here in Pilot’s Creek,” I say. “Something you can’t let go of…What is it? I want to hear your side of the story. And I’m not alone. I know you’ve wanted to talk about it. The true story. Your story. I can tell. But you’re afraid nobody will believe you.”
“No one,” she barely says.
I seize on this. Have to. I’m finally getting somewhere. Gaining some traction. Baby steps. Leaning forward, I implore, “But that’s not true. That’s not true at all. I believe you, Miss Pendleton. People want to believe. They just need to hear from you. They want the truth.”
She isn’t looking at me anymore. I may as well have not been in the room. Her attention drifts off to some spot, some far-off place in her mind, losing herself.
“Jessica…”
“Yes. That’s right. Tell me about Jessica.” I need to be careful. If I push too much, the bubble will burst. The moment will be gone. She’ll snap out of it and I’ll be fucked.
“I…I saw…”
“What did you see?” Gently, now. Just a little nudge.
Let the question guide her to the answer.
“I…I saw Jessica.”
Boo-ya.
“Show me, Miss Pendleton,” I say. “Please. I want to see her. Will you show—”
Glass shatters not two feet from my face.
The window to my left has burst open.
I recoil as a rock lands on the stained carpet and rolls to a stop just before Amber’s feet. She leaps up, immediately electrified, alive again, quickly scooping the rock up with a swift sweep of her hand and grabbing some broken glass along the way. I merely sink deeper into my seat as she pitches the rock back at her invisible assailants.
“You can’t scare me,” Amber shouts out the gaping window. “You little chickenshits better run! I’ll find you! I’ll find you in the middle of the night! While you sleep!”
There’s laughter outside the window.
Boys’ laughter.
Amber turns back. Her hand has tightened into a fist. Blood seeps through her fingers, speckling the floor red. Her leaden breath won’t settle, her chest heaving. Her inhales are wet.
“You wanna hear my story?” she asks. “All right. I’ve got a story for you…”
PILOT’S CREEK, VIRGINIA, IS A FORGOTTEN TOWN. JUST WANDERING ALONG Main Street makes that clear. Most of its storefronts have long since shuttered. Only the diner is still open on the main drag. The shelves of the library are mostly bare, its books borrowed and never returned. A staggering percentage of its people live well below the poverty line. Towns like Pilot’s Creek remain frozen in time, trapped within its own past and unable to move forward. To escape itself.
But there…in the window of the library, I see a paper cutout of a woman wearing a pointy hat. She’s sitting on a broom. She has a long nose. This blackened silhouette is unmistakable all across town. In storefronts. Tacked to community boards among the other leaflets. They’re promoting the only industry left here in town, the only thriving business they have: The Legend of the Little Witch Girl. Cemetery tours. T-shirts (I Saw The Little Witch Girl!). Mugs. Keychains. A small museum run out of someone’s living room. Self-published books. Even a doll.
Whether the people of Pilot’s Creek are believers or not, one thing is clear…They know that the only reason people return to their town is to visit the grave of Jessica Ford. She and her mother have kept their grip on this superstitious town, and they’ve squeezed the life out of it.
Hmm. Scratch that last part. Doing the segment over. Five, four, three, two…
Route 60 remains the main artery between Pilot’s Creek and the rest of civilization. When the then-new Interstate 23 was built, forty years ago, most traffic was redirected away from Pilot’s Creek. The town suffered a major blow to its remaining commerce. No one drives through Pilot’s Creek anymore…Not on purpose, at least. Not unless, that is, they have come to see Jessica.
And they do. Like believers of a newfound religion, fans of the film Don’t Tread on Jessica’s Grave all flock to Pilot’s Creek, just to see if they can catch a peek at the Little Witch Girl…
> THREE
The diner is the only thing open after five. Whatever storefront businesses are still hanging on for dear financial life here in Pilot’s Creek have all closed for the day, save for the greasy spoon. I’m not particularly hungry, but I figure this is an opportunity to fill out the story a bit. I left Miss Pendleton in her trailer, promising to pick her up later that evening.
Time to soak up some more of that local color. Maybe collect a quote or two about Jessica Ford.
Talk about a Formica throwback. This isn’t one of those prefab Greek greasy spoons you spot cropping up along the Jersey Turnpike. This is the real soda-jerk deal.
The waitress working the empty tables didn’t make eye contact with me when I walked in. The rattle of the brass bell just over my head was enough to announce my grand entrance.
I sat at the counter, alone, taking the place in. The soda fountain. The cake dome perched at the end of the counter, covering a coagulated key lime pie. The place even has tin signs nailed along the back wall, promoting long-forgotten brands of ice cream and cigarettes.
And there they are.
I zero right in on them. I’ve got a radar for this shit. The Negro faces painted across the bygone advertisements. Their big grins. Their swollen red lips. Their blindingly white teeth.
Mmm-mmm! Drink this! Hoooo, boy, smoke this!
Aaaand smile!
I spin away from the signs on my stool. Away from Pilot’s Creek past, on display for all to see. I bet nobody has ever asked the owners to take that shit down, so they stay up. In front of everybody. In front of me.
Should I? Should I make a stink about—
Hold up.
There, tucked off in the far booth at the corner of the diner, is this wisp of a man. Guess I’m not the only patron in this shit-bucket after all. This fella is hunched over a cup of coffee, hands buried below the table. Has he been there this whole time? He’s staring out at the—
“What’ll it be?”
The waitress is upon me before I even know it, giving me a start. I play it off as best I can. Not that she minded one way or another. She’s a little on the hefty side. Too much of that key lime pie, I bet. She pulls a pencil out from her hair. There are a few other pencils piercing her bun, as a matter of fact, as if she stuck them in her hair and promptly forgot them all. A tired sea urchin.
The Remaking Page 21
