“If I snag my dress or Lulu ruins her stockings, the studio pays for them,” said Renee, a threat that could often cow Max, with his careful accounting of every penny spent. But this time he just shook his head and gestured at the path. With a sigh she led our small troop into the woods.
It was a little wooded plot, sandwiched between high hedges and fences of the French Hill estates. Back in Arkham’s early days, there had been a smaller house on the property, according to Sydney, but it disappeared. An odd word choice, I thought. “How can a house disappear?” I asked Sydney as we walked into the woods.
“Oh it burned, like the big house,” he said. “And the trees grew up around it. Trees like fire. Now it is a nice mix of pine, maple, oak, and hemlock. Mostly hemlock, according to my grandfather.”
“Isn’t hemlock a poison?” said Lulu.
“It’s a poisonous wood,” echoed Eleanor, pulling a shoe out of a muddy patch of ground. “Ugh, look at my shoe. And listen to those insects. What a noise.”
“A poisonous wood,” chuckled Sydney. “That’s perfect. We’ll have to put it on the title card. Nobody could quite agree on who owns this land and the pond in the center. My grandfather said that one summer the nearby houses stocked the pond with fish for the amusement of small boys with poles. It was considered safer than fishing in the Miskatonic River. But the fish died. Now most of the estates keep their woods gates locked.”
The crows flew from branch to branch, following us through the hemlock, the muttered cawing rising above the insects’ drone like old men grumbling over our heads.
“When I was a boy,” Sydney recalled, walking down the path, “I was often the only one playing in these woods. There used to be frogs there too. I’d catch them and put them in a jar. My grandfather said that they cut ice out of the pond in the winter and stored it in an ice house at the bottom of the garden. That’s all gone now.”
By the time I reached the pond, I felt unbearably hot and sticky. The woods exuded a moist heat that itched under my shirt and damped my collar. No birds sang in these woods but the odd hoot or caw continued as Fred set up the camera. Louder and more persistent was a humming buzz, more like flies around rotting garbage than bees. I kept expecting stinging insects, but none appeared. Just the horrible whining buzz that rose from all around the edge of the murky, weed-choked pond.
Sydney told Paul to emerge from the bushes at the edge of the pond, startling Renee and Lulu on the path. With much muttering, Paul pushed his way into the center of one large and prickly looking bush.
Fred set his beloved Bell and Howell number 242 in the center of the path. The sun filtering through the trees glinted on the camera’s black enamel case. The adjustments that he made earlier to the Akeley tripod made him grunt with satisfaction. The Akeley GYRO head proceeded to pan and tilt as Fred cranked the camera. The resulting film, as we’d learned from prior shoots, would give the audience a disorienting view of the sisters as they proceeded to the pond. Despite Fred’s usual application of care and grease, the gears whined louder than ever before, nearly drowning out all the other noises in the wood.
Paul crashed onto the path, forcing Renee and Lulu back toward the camera. With a dirty face and ragged coat, he made a fine figure of menace. The pair shrank toward each other as Paul held out a hand covered with a greasy, fingerless glove. My touch to his makeshift character. I remembered a drunk coming up to me one night as I got off the streetcar and headed to my apartment. He’d been a harmless old man, well known in the neighborhood for drinking bathtub gin and then begging a dime for coffee and a little something to eat. But that night, with his fingers bared by a torn glove, he’d startled me. I’d almost run away, but then Renee had come up behind me and spoken to him very gently, digging a quarter out of her purse and pressing it into his dirty hand. I’d been so proud of my sister then. Her kindness was well known throughout the movie community. She never turned down anyone who truly needed help.
I wondered if she remembered that night. Once again, as Lulu shrank away, Renee pressed forward, grasping Paul’s dirty hand in her own. This time, and much against her real character, Eleanor’s scenario called for Renee to throw Paul’s hand aside and threaten to call the dogs if he bothered them again. Paul started forward as if to strike her. Lulu shrank back further, having established that the younger sister feared the world more than the elder. Renee flung out an arm in an imperious gesture, and Paul turned aside, now shrinking away from her.
“That’s it,” directed Sydney, “go back around the pond as if heading away toward town. The sisters turn back to their house but pause. They hear the sound of real dogs hunting in the distance. A sacrifice in blood about to happen. A way to open. Cut!”
“Now how will they know that?” said Max.
“Know what?” said Sydney, frowning at the bush bent by Paul’s struggle to climb back into it.
“Know a blood sacrifice opens the way? Oh and dogs barking,” Max said, with more emphasis on the former and the latter – canine howling – sounding like an afterthought.
“Title card,” said Sydney. “And instructions on the score for the dog howl. I did tell you that we had to have a score made to send to all the theaters.”
“Yes,” said Max, a little reluctantly. “But the studio is wondering if that expense is necessary.”
“Of course it is necessary,” said Sydney. “Everything is necessary. If the studio wants results, if the studio wants worldwide results, we need a score to go with the film. That’s crucial. It’s all in the manuscript. The importance of music as the masked stranger descended into the darkness. How it called forth the shadows.”
Eleanor had been standing with Lulu, discussing the scene and possible modifications to her reactions. Upon hearing Sydney’s comments, she turned around.
“What are you talking about?” she said.
“The ending. How important it is that everything leading to the ending be as outlined in my grandfather’s manuscript.”
“About that manuscript…” began Eleanor.
“Your scenarios are marvelous,” said Sydney, talking over her. “Just the right touch of foreboding. Paul, get further back into that bush. I want to try your approach to the sisters again. Come onto the path a little faster.”
“Sydney, that bush is sticking to my coat,” complained Paul as he repositioned himself. “I don’t think I can escape any faster.”
“Try,” said Sydney with no sympathy at all.
Paul did multiple lunges out of the bush as Fred cranked the camera. Then they moved further down the path to show Paul stumbling away from the sisters portrayed by Renee and Lulu. Finally Sydney declared himself satisfied.
We walked up the path to the gate. I pulled the bloodied and ripped jacket out of my basket. I draped it across a bush for the first pass at the scene.
Renee and Lulu walked up to it, hesitated, and then recoiled from the discovery.
“No,” said Sydney. “That’s too tame. Try again, but with more terror upon seeing this evidence of a terrible accident, a mauling by a wild animal.”
Three more attempts left Sydney as dissatisfied as the first try. I couldn’t blame him. I had already suffered the same doubts. The unexpected discovery of blood was terrifying. It was just difficult to show. At least in a way that would make some type of horrid sense to the audience.
“Perhaps we should move the jacket?” I said. “Have it across the path so it blocks the gate. Renee or Lulu could pick it up to make it clear that it is ripped.”
I explained my idea of dripping blood, but without much hope. Renee, predictably, protested getting her hand smeared with a sticky mixture. “Besides, we’ve done that before. At least twice,” she said to Sydney. “Let’s be different this time.”
I couldn’t disagree. I hadn’t liked the idea much and I liked it less the longer we stood in the woods. Splashing blood about, even fake blo
od, seemed like a very bad idea.
Oddly, Sydney agreed, although not necessarily from the same trepidation that the idea gave me. “Just splattering gore about, that sounds like a Tod Browning film, not a Sydney Fitzmaurice,” he said. “Just act as if you see blood. We don’t need to show it to the audience.”
They tried again, but Sydney waved them back down the path. “That’s not right either. Put it on the gate itself.”
“Why would it be on the gate?” asked Renee. “What animal would leave it in such a place?”
“Push the back against the gate, as if the man backed up against it. That he was literally ripped apart just steps from safety,” Sydney said with satisfaction.
After that, I affixed the jacket to the gate by slinging it over my shoulders, pushing back against the gate as if something was charging up the path at me. Something so terrible that I would rather turn and face it than fumble with the lock. The wood gate scraped against my back. I felt the rough wool coat catch on the boards of the gate. Turning, I shoved the material so it truly caught on the top of the gate. Pulling away, it looked like a sad empty scarecrow dangling in front of us.
Once again Renee and Lulu approached the now filthy coat. They recoiled from it as if the tramp himself stood in front of them.
“That’s it,” Sydney said. “As if you stand accused of the man’s murder, as if your banishment led to his doom,” he continued, reciting from Eleanor’s scenario.
Renee stood proudly, as if the man’s fate failed to move her, while Lulu cringed away from the gate.
“Cut! Perfect. My vision exactly,” said Sydney.
Both Renee and Lulu slumped a little. The buzzing in the woods sounded louder and more angry than before. With some relief, I pulled open the gate into the garden. I couldn’t wait to leave the woods. For once, I wanted to return to the house. At least there were no insects there.
A large brown dog came charging up the path, with a man following after him shouting: “Duke, Duke, come back here, you mutt.”
The man behind the dog was a scruffy sort, dressed in an old worn suit and battered hat. Over one shoulder he had slung a guitar.
We all started to see a real tramp appear in the woods.
“Hello,” he said, upon spotting us. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
With the rest dumb with surprise, I stepped forward and held out my hand. “Hello, I’m Jeany.”
“Pete,” said the man. “And this here is Duke. He’s a good dog, don’t let his looks fool you.”
Eleanor followed my lead. She shook Pete’s hand and patted Duke on the head. “He looks like a very good dog indeed,” she said, with that croon that true dog lovers get in their voices. It did go a long way to explaining why, for all her jibes to the contrary, Eleanor was nearly always the person who walked Pumpkin and made sure that the pug was fed.
Pete looked over our heads at Sydney. “I heard you were back, Mr Fitzmaurice,” he said. “Didn’t expect to see you in the woods.”
“I’m surprised to see you still wandering around Arkham,” said Sydney. “How are you doing, Ashcan Pete?”
The man shrugged. “Well enough. Always something to do, something to see in Arkham. Duke was just certain there was something new on this path. Guess he was right.”
Duke was sniffing around the gateposts and the ruined coat that still swung from one corner of the wooden gate. The dog let loose a howling bark, which made me start. The dog’s deep baying sparked off the cawing and rustling of wings in the trees above us, the ever-present crows of French Hill.
“Oh hush, Duke,” said the tramp called Ashcan Pete. “Nothing here at all.”
Max stepped forward to shoo the dog away from the coat, trying to drive Duke off with a flapping of his hands that just made the hound wrinkle its brow at him.
“Oh, for goodness sake,” muttered Eleanor, stepping around Max. “Duke, go with your master. Go on. Go home!” The last was said with a firm emphasis on home.
Pete chuckled to see the dog retreat from Eleanor’s onslaught. “That’s right, tell him straight. Can’t shillyshally with that dog. Come here, Duke. Come here, now.”
With a whine, the big dog backed away from the coat and followed his master down the path. Above them the crows kept up a raucous cawing.
Sydney frowned after the pair as they wandered off. “I wonder how he got in here,” he said. “The woods are fenced all the way around. He must have cut across the back of one of the other estates.”
“Does it matter?” said Renee. “Are you satisfied yet?”
“No, it needs something else,” Sydney said. “Something more.”
Eleanor gave the birds in the trees an unhappy look. The cawing was so loud that it drowned out the buzzing in the bushes. “Maybe they could be attacked by crows?”
“No!” cried Lulu. “Eleanor, this is a Paris coat. I’m not getting bird mess all over it.”
Sydney nodded. “That’s an idea. Fred, how can we stage that? Max?”
“Perhaps one of the guns from the house?” Max said. “You could fire it off. That will scare them out of the trees and Fred could film them flapping around.”
Renee frowned. “And we can wait inside while you do it. I agree with Lulu. I do not want to be cleaning bird mess out of my hair.”
She rarely spoke so forcefully with Sydney, but I knew that she did not want to see Sydney kill one of the crows with this silly trick. Dead animals always upset her.
“We can scare them into flying about, and do it without any birds getting hurt,” said Fred. He too had caught the distress in Renee’s voice and knew how much she hated to see animals suffer. Once, back in Hollywood, he had helped me find a good home for a canary given to Renee by an admirer. She loathed caged birds, but we couldn’t just set it free as she demanded. The poor thing had had its wings clipped, something that I didn’t tell Renee. Instead, Fred found a very nice old lady who lived in a little house across the street from him and had always wanted a canary to brighten up her living room.
Fred adjusted the camera so it was pointing nearly straight up into the trees where the restless crows paced back and forth on low branches, ruffling their wings and croaking at us. “Use the shotgun but fire away from the trees and don’t hit any of them. We don’t want dead birds raining down in the shot.”
Renee winced, and Sydney looked thoughtful. “Well, one or two…” he began and then stopped at a glare from Renee.
“If we tossed some bread or other food on the path…” I said, hoping to hurry the scene along. I wanted out of those woods. “…we can lure the crows down. Then scare them into taking off. Like pigeons in the park. Less dangerous than firing off a gun, anyway.” I pushed for a decision. Sydney was capable of standing around all day, and the woods were closing in on me like Lulu being trapped in the coffin.
Fred agreed with me. “You could flap that coat at them.”
Max went up to the kitchen and brought back a couple of stale loaves. The crows didn’t seem to care for the bread, keeping up their cawing and ignoring our efforts to coax them. So Max trudged back up to the house and returned with aging sausages that somebody had bought for lunches but nobody liked. The smelly, bloody meat brought the crows out of the trees to battle over the bits. Fred cranked the camera, capturing the vicious fighting over the sausages, which Sydney pointed out could be taken for actual human fingers.
“Hays will certainly censure us if we say that,” I said, feeling slightly queasy. Sydney was right. It did look like the crows were tearing something living apart.
“We do not have to title it that,” Sydney said. “Just drop some hints to a few reporters about the scene where the crows dismember a dead body. Of course if anyone asks directly, we just say we did some wildlife filming of birds eating stale bread and old sausages.”
But when I flapped the coat at the quarreling crows, the co
ntrary birds simply hopped or skipped out of my way without taking to the air. Now the birds decided the bread was to their liking and the trees were a boring place to be.
After a couple more unsuccessful tries, I turned to Sydney. “Now what?”
“Rock salt,” said Sydney. “We can get some from the kitchen and load the shotgun with it. It will make a bang and a sting, but no dead birds. That should get them back in the air.”
“You don’t need us to film this,” said Renee, who already retreated halfway up the lawn with Eleanor and Lulu. “I’m going back to my room.”
“I’ll walk up to the house with you,” said Max, “and bring back the gun.”
Lulu and Eleanor decided to take their car for a drive, since Sydney’s efforts to direct crows seemed likely to account for the rest of the day. The pair strolled around the corner of the house, heading to the barn where they stored their car next to the touring automobile that Sydney had leased.
“Well, at least you have not deserted me,” said Sydney to Fred and myself. And somehow, I could not leave, much as I hated this little patch of hot, muggy woods. I felt like I was stuck trying to get this right. As if something had to happen now so we could resolve the rest of the film.
Max brought back a shotgun which Sydney loaded with rock salt. “Step away, Max,” Sydney said as he took aim at the crows. Max and I sheltered behind the gate. Fred started cranking. Sydney let off the shotgun. There was a tremendous bang and an even greater cry of outrage as the crows took to the air in a black cloud.
Then the cloud turned in midair and began a murderous dive toward Sydney. With a shout, he dropped the shotgun and lit out for the house, running ahead of pecking, clawing birds. Max plunged after him.
Fred swung the camera to follow them, still cranking and muttering a great deal. I ducked behind Fred, but the birds showed no interest in us. We apparently had earned some protection by being the dispensers of bread and sausages, while Sydney had been the god of rock salt and noise. Max should have stayed with us.
Mask of Silver Page 17
