Pop the Clutch

by Eric J. Guignard

  I’d certainly rest easier when that happened. Fordyce, too. We all would.

  But I didn’t start there. What kind of storyteller would I be if I skipped right to the end?

  “You know Marvel Whitehead, the director?”

  The word “director” seemed to spark her interest. But again, she gave me a little head shake. No.

  “Marvel Whitehead is a nut case. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not that he’s ever going to work in this town again—Bobby will see to that. But if he ever approaches you, wanting to lure you into one of his celluloid abominations, you run the other way. You got me?”

  If she did, she gave no indication. She just stared at me.

  “Anyway, Bobby hired him because he needed another monster picture. He always needs monsters. The studio hasn’t had a bona fide hit since the green guy with the gills. When you’re desperate, you turn to desperate people. People like Marvel Whitehead. Goddamn weirdo.”

  We were headed up into the mountains by this point, on our way to the desert. I wondered if I should put the top up. It was already oven-hot.

  “I was in the office when Bobby brought him in to pitch. He tried a bunch of bullshit on us. Rampaging insects made of human body parts. A country full of witches. Ghosts who weren’t really dead, and so on. Nothing clicked with Bobby. And then Marvel pulled the old, ‘Well, I do have one more thing, but I don’t know if it would interest you, people have never seen anything like it, I don’t know if audiences could stand it, blah blah blah.’ We both realized all that other bullshit had been a set-up for this big idea he obviously wanted to pitch. So Bobby says, ‘Come on, let’s hear it, already.’”

  I side-eyed new girl to see if the warm air had made her drift off to sleep. But no. She was paying close attention to me, hanging on my every word.

  “Marvel had an idea for a new kind of monster. One that people in the audience can’t escape, he says. That’s because it actually comes to life and crawls off the screen, he says.

  “Bobby says, ‘So you’re saying this is some 3-D thing? C’mon, Marvel, that shit ain’t been new since Bwana Devil.’

  “Marvel goes, ‘No, I’m not talking about 3-D. I’m talking about an entirely new film process that brings screen images to actual, pulsating, tangible life.’”

  I struggled to remember the exact phrase he used. You’d think it’d be burned into my memory by this point, but scientific mumbo-jumbo wasn’t my thing. I searched the big blue sky as if the words might be floating around up there. “Silver . . . crystals or something.”

  New girl sat up in her seat. “Silver halide crystals,” she said. “Suspended in gelatin on a film base. This is how images are recorded on film.”

  Cut to me: gobsmacked. “How did you know that?”

  She smiled, which is the first one I’ve seen sneak onto her face. It was utterly disarming. Suddenly I wasn’t thinking about her big head or her waifish body. I was halfway to falling in love.

  “Why, I’m a chemist,” she said. “Specifically, an expert in the photochemical process.”

  “Then what the hell are you doing working as a D-girl for Bobby Fordyce?”

  To that, she had no response. She looked at me blankly for a minute, then returned her gaze to the horizon.

  ***

  WE WERE OUT in the blazing wasteland of the Antelope Valley by this point. Sweat ran down my neck and past my collar and into my undershirt. Meanwhile new girl looked as if she had just stepped out of an icebox.

  I thought maybe we could stop at a diner out in Pearblossom, grab a sandwich and a soda pop before hitting the road for the long haul out to the test site. But when I asked new girl if she was hungry, she acted as if she didn’t even hear me.

  Maybe she was right. Better to drive these infernal reels out to the desert and bury them as quick as possible. The sooner I was done with this little errand, the sooner I’d be back in my stuffy apartment in North Hollywood, drinking rail bourbon and fooling myself into thinking I was just doing this crap until somebody bought my heist picture.

  “So anyway,” I continued, “Marvel says he has this test reel he wants to show us. And he happens to have it on him. Of course. Bobby books a screening room on the lot, and we head off to watch it.

  “And you know what? The damned thing was impressive.”

  I didn’t get into it with new girl, but if I’m being perfectly honest: it was the most startling thing I’ve ever seen in my thirty-four years on this planet.

  ***

  THE LIGHTS GO OUT. The projector clacks and settles into a steady hum. The screen glows. And then . . . picture.

  We’re looking at a yard—somewhere out in the Valley. There are orange groves nearby. We don’t see them on screen. But my nostrils fill with the stench of citrus.

  There’s a blonde standing in front of the yard. She’s holding a gardening pail, drizzling her sad little flower bed. She’s wearing nothing but an Oxford tied up in front and a pair of short-shorts terminating about mid-thigh.

  I think this is going to be a crude little strip tease act for Bobby. Plenty of directors have tried it before, skipping the pitch and plot and going right to casting.

  But I’m wrong.

  The cute blonde gardener notices us. Places her pail down on the neatly-trimmed grass. Walks toward the camera. She’s cat-like and knows some moves. Nothing we haven’t seen before.

  What we haven’t seen before happens next. I’m trying to describe it now, and still having trouble wrapping my head around it.

  The blonde gardener is almost at the camera, which is the point when you’d expect her shape to overwhelm the lens and the image to blur.

  But she never blurs. She continues walking straight toward us.

  There’s the screen. And there’s the screening room. The screen is part of the screening room, but they’re still two separate things, right?

  Not anymore. I can’t tell where one stops and the other begins—because it’s all the same.

  Fordyce stands up in his seat, mouth hanging open. I follow his lead. Marvel chuckles softly to himself. The blonde steps closer, and closer.

  “What’s the gag here, Marvel?” Fordyce asks. “How are you doing this?”

  And closer . . .

  “You snuck the actress in here,” I say, then turn toward Fordyce. “He snuck the actress in here and did some editing trick. Like an optical illusion.”

  And closer . . .

  “This is no illusion, my friends,” Marvel says. “Film is emulsion. And emulsion is life.”

  The blonde is standing right in front of Fordyce now, reaching up to touch his face. He flinches. She laughs. He relaxes. Her fingertips graze his cheek. Fordyce closes his eyes; he shudders in delight. I’ve never been more jealous of anything in life.

  The reel ends; a harsh white light blinds us.

  A blink later, the blonde is gone.

  ***

  “YOU LIKE THE GIRL, eh, Bobby? How about I make you monster, same.”

  That was Marvel’s entire pitch. Brilliant, right?

  I make you monster, same.

  Fordyce hired him right on the spot, gave him four weeks to shoot. He tapped me to oversee production, make sure things didn’t get out of hand. But really, my mission was to spy on Marvel’s secret process. This thing was poised to become the next big thing in motion picture history, and Fordyce wanted to make sure he had iron-clad control over it.

  But Marvel kept me away from the set at all times, despite my best efforts. Fordyce gave me endless shit about this. I was supposed to be his security guy/fixer—yet I couldn’t force my way onto a goddamned soundstage on our own lot?

  That was exactly right. I couldn’t force my way onto a goddamned soundstage on our own lot.

  For one thing, the red “filming” light was always on. Always. That was the first lesson I’d learned at the studio. If you were to dare open a door when that red light was on, then you should fully expect to be forcibly ejected from the lot—first,
your decapitated head, followed by the rest of your body.

  But then I got wise to that trick. There was no possible way Marvel was burning through celluloid non-stop.

  One day I tried to get in at 4 a.m. The door was open, but within seconds two swarthy men in out-of-date suits with fezzes on their slicked-back heads intercepted me. They hooked my arms and carried me back outside. Their skin was oily. Their bodies gave off a dank, musky odor. They didn’t speak English; they spoke Grunt. Where Marvel found these guys, I have no idea. But they were there when I tried to breach the soundstage three more times over the next two days. I reported all of this to Fordyce.

  “Tommy,” he pleaded. “At least get me a good look at the monster. We gotta get guys working on the poster!”

  “I can’t even get into the soundstage.”

  Fordyce paced. “And who the hell has Marvel put in this thing? Is he paying them out of his own pocket? Because casting tells me they’re in the dark.”

  It was a good point. I didn’t have an answer for that one, either. But I did have a solution in mind.

  “Here’s what we do,” I said. “Let me gather some of my old pals from security. We kick in some doors, we storm the place, and we shut down the film until Marvel does some explaining.”

  The notion truly appealed to Fordyce. I could tell by the cruel little gleam in his eye. But then he listened to the accountant on his right shoulder. He grimaced like he had a hot tooth.

  “Ugh,” Fordyce said, wearily. “I can’t afford to shut him down now. We’re opening in Texas in three weeks.”

  ***

  WE WERE CROSSING OVER into Nevada now. I was sitting in a pool of my own bodily fluids, while new girl was still alpine fresh. Someday she’d have to tell me her secret.

  “Finally, after all of this hassle, he turns in this thing he called Summus. Nobody knew what the hell it meant. Fordyce said screw that—we’re calling it The Crawling Shadow.”

  “Summus,” new girl says. “A Latin word meaning the greatest, the most exalted.”

  “Just like Marvel’s ego.” Again, though, I’m surprised. New girl chimes in at the damndest moments. Where did Fordyce find her?

  Right about then I heard this horrible wrenching sound of twisted steel. I checked the rear view. The trunk lid was popped up and hanging by a couple of crooked hinges.

  “What the hell?”

  “Nitrate film stock is combustible,” new girl says. “It’s been cooking in the trunk for hours!”

  “What are you talking about? I’m pulling over . . . ”

  “No, keep driving!”

  Something grabbed my left wrist from behind and squeezed hard. I looked down and—okay, I’ll admit it, I lost my mind a little. Because I didn’t know what I was looking at: part squid tentacle, if squid tentacles had tiny razor-sharp bones and spikes running up and down them. Its color was nothing out of our world. The slimiest gray you can imagine, outlined by the deepest blacks and shimmering with these tiny white sparks that hurt your eyes.

  Whatever it was lifted my hand high off the wheel. Except for the blood trickling down my arm from my wrist, I probably looked like I was raising my hand to answer a teacher’s question in class.

  Oh—and I screamed my face off.

  New girl told me, “Try to stay calm!”

  I wanted to tell the new girl where she could stick her calm, but then the thing grabbed hold of my right wrist too and yanked it off the wheel. I had both hands in the air like this was a stick-up. New girl was digging in her purse for something. What, was she going to reapply a coat of lipstick before we crashed?

  And then the damned thing lifted me out of the driver’s seat.

  By some miracle I hooked my right shoe under the bottom of the steering wheel, so I was able to keep the Lincoln on the road and me from flinging up into the air. With my foot off the accelerator, however, the car was slowing down. Which was a good thing, since I didn’t want to be ripped apart by some tentacle monster at high speed.

  Tentacle monster—that’s when it came back to me. I’d seen these things before.

  Just last night.

  Sort of.

  ***

  MARVEL WHITEHEAD INSISTED on a preview audience first—even before Fordyce was allowed to screen it.

  Fordyce cried horseshit—this was still his picture, this was still his studio, and so on. Marvel was able to work his mystical voodoo on him, though, telling Fordyce he wanted him to hear the delighted screams of the audience before seeing a single frame of the film himself. I could tell this secretly appealed to Fordyce. He hated horror movies, so to be able to skip out of actually having to watch one of the damned things?

  “This is a bad idea, Bobby,” I told him. “Don’t you want to see this thing before we unleash it on John and Mary Q. Public?”

  “Let him have his preview,” Fordyce replied. “Get me a bunch of rubes from out in the Valley. Fill the seats with flotsam. Nobody under 18. Nobody who knows anybody, you got me?”

  I got him. But I also went to my old buddies in lot security and told them to be ready.

  Cut to preview night, and Fordyce was nervous-pacing outside the screening room. It was a crowded house; everybody loves a horror picture. Our usual projectionist, Terry, was bent out of shape because Marvel insisted on using his own guy—one of those Fedora-wearing tough guys. Fordyce calmed Terry down with a belt or two from his flask, told him he’d make it up to him.

  And then—about twenty minutes in—the screaming started.

  Not delighted screams from a well-planned jump scare. These were help me, I’m going to die kind of screams.

  Fordyce looked like he was about to vomit. He knew the mistake he’d made right away. I told him not to worry, and got my security buddies in there. I told them to come loaded for bear, and they did, kicking down the doors and taking out anybody in a Fez. I made a beeline for the projection room and almost dislocated my shoulder breaking down the door. The projectionist pulled a roscoe on me. I slapped it out of his hand then punched him in the face until my knuckles throbbed.

  The room was full of a loud whirring sound. The machine didn’t sound right, and I knew I had to turn it off. I didn’t know how film projectors worked, so I went looking for a plug. But I happened to steal a glance through the port, and I wish I hadn’t. Because all I saw, under the flickering lights, were scenes out of a butcher’s worst nightmare. I couldn’t tell the quivering body parts from the quivering people hiding under the body parts. The blood all over them glowed.

  On the lower left hand corner of the screen, a slimy little rope pulled itself up into the screen and disappeared, leaving a glowing slug trail behind.

  The next day, I would realize what it was: a tentacle.

  ***

  ANOTHER TENTACLE SQUIRMED its way along the body of the Lincoln and down into the floor of the car. I thought it was going for new girl, because that’s what monsters do. But then we started to accelerate, and I realized what had happened. It found the goddamned gas pedal.

  I turned my right foot this way and that, still trying to stay on the road. The little bones and spikes dug deep into my wrists, so there was no way I could pull my hands loose. What was this thing trying to do?

  I turned my head around and saw that another tentacle was headed straight for my kisser. Yeah, I screamed again. (Wouldn’t you?) My wailing, though, was cut short by the sharp pangs of metal through metal—in this case, bullets through the trunk lid.

  Something in the trunk yelled—and I say something, because that sound couldn’t have possibly come out of a human being.

  The thing released my wrists. I dropped back into the seat next to new girl, who was holding a small silver pistol that almost looked like a prop.

  “Take the wheel!” she said, then fired four more times into the trunk. I wanted to cover my ears so I didn’t have to listen to that unholy caterwauling, but I had to keep steering, even as the blood gushed down my arms. Something slid by my left leg. The third te
ntacle, retracting.

  She kept firing and I kept driving but soon I realized something was wrong. (Well, aside from the obvious.) Her cute little pistol wouldn’t have been able to fire all of those shots. It had to be a prop gun . . .

  Prop or not, it was hurting the thing in the trunk.

  The third tentacle lifted itself up until it was eye-level with me. The damned thing twitched, and then whipped toward my face. I ducked just in time.

  New girl didn’t.

  ***

  FORDYCE RAN UP TO THE BOOTH a second later and went right for the projector. Rumor was, his first job in the industry was running the reels in some backwater down South. True or not, he knew what he was doing. The awful whirring of the machine died.

  My job is to fix situations like these. Well, nobody in my position has ever had to fix something as awful as this. But I was ready to do whatever it took.

  “We go with a mad killer story,” I told him. “He snuck onto the lot. I don’t know how many dead we got down there, but I’m sure the survivors can be bought off. Maybe throw in a studio tour or something, too . . . ”

  But Fordyce wasn’t really listening to me. He was busy gathering up the reels of his movie, the one he’d greenlit, the one he’d paid for, the one he’d have to deal with.

  “Bobby?” I said. “You listening to me?”

  “We’re going to have to nuke this fucking thing.”

  ***

  I KEPT DRIVING, too afraid to stop.

  As long as I kept driving, I told myself, that thing wouldn’t come out of the trunk again and try to tear me apart like a French baguette. After all, it had only attacked when I said we were pulling over.

  New girl was unconscious in the passenger seat. The tentacle had clocked her in the head pretty good, but I didn’t see any bruising or blood. This didn’t surprise me. You couldn’t bleed if you weren’t real.

  She had come out of Marvel’s movie, too, just like the monster in the trunk.

  Part of me wished she’d wake up so I could ask her a few questions, but the other part knew it was better if she stayed asleep. This had been Fordyce’s plan all along. Take the reels of film and the new girl to the test site and . . . blammo. He didn’t tell me because he thought I wouldn’t believe him.