Plan 9- Official Movie Novelization

by Matthew Warner

  Plan 9

  Official Movie Novelization

  by

  Matthew Warner

  Based on the Screenplay

  by

  John Johnson

  Remaking the Film

  “Plan 9 From Outer Space”

  by

  Edward D. Wood, Jr.

  Copyright © 2016 Darkstone Productions LLC

  Cover Art Copyright © 2016 Saint

  Interior Layout and Cover Design by Deena Warner Design LLC

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced without written consent from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, and events described are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  ISBN: 152348912X

  ISBN-13: 978-1523489121

  Darkstone Productions LLC

  1327 E. Market Street

  Charlottesville, VA 22902

  books@plan9movie.com

  www.plan9movie.com

  www.darkstone-ent.com

  “Can your heart stand the shocking facts about

  grave robbers from outer space?”

  —The Amazing Criswell

  Chapter 1

  JEFF

  “You are interested in the unknown, the mysterious, the unexplainable. That is why you are here. And now, for the first time, we are bringing to you the full story of what happened on that fateful day.…”

  Jeff Trent listened to the movie monologue playing from his passenger’s iPad in the airplane’s back seat. It was being piped through their headsets so they could hear it over the cabin noise of the propellers. It’d been nice to listen to the lady’s eclectic mix of pop and alternative music during the flight from Atlanta, but this was the first movie soundtrack she’d played.

  The audio cut off.

  “Sorry,” she said through the intercom. “I’ll find something else.”

  “No—please. I like it. Grave Robbers From Outer Space?”

  “Right. Made in 1959.”

  Jeff nodded. The opening was unmistakable because it was a classic. Director Edward Hickory. A cult favorite known for its cheesy special effects and cheesier acting. Number one on various Worst Movies of All Time lists for over fifty years.

  She resumed the playback. “The incidents, the places. My friend, we cannot keep this a secret any longer. Let us punish the guilty. Let us reward the innocent. Can your heart stand the shocking facts…”

  Jeff’s co-pilot and best friend, Danny, craned his neck around for the hundredth time to talk to the iPad’s owner. “Hey, I know that one. Wasn’t it Bela Lugosi’s last role?”

  Their passenger’s name was Edith Holman, an attractive young Latino woman dressed in tan slacks and blouse. They’d met her only a few hours ago, shortly before taking off from Atlanta. Jeff suspected it felt like a lot longer than that to her.

  When Edith ignored the question, Danny simply flashed his crooked-toothed smile and asked another. Just like he’d been doing for the whole flight.

  “Does this have anything to do with your movie job? Jeff here told me you’re flying in for a meeting at Smith Farm Studios.”

  Jeff glanced over his shoulder to see her roll her eyes and pause the movie. “Yes, as a matter of fact. I have it on here for research. I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to play that one.”

  Again she clammed up, and again, Jeff felt sorry for her. Edith had tried everything by this point: feigning sleep, reading, ignoring Danny to talk to Jeff, and finally, asking if they could just listen to some music she’d brought along. But there was no escape from ole Danny the Dannymeister in the tiny cockpit.

  Jeff had seen this scenario, oh, maybe a hundred times in the past four years he and Danny had been working together in Atlanta. Usually it was in hotel bars between piloting for Southwest. It wasn’t often, though, that Danny was so forward with one of their private charters.

  Be my wingman, Danny always said, and usually Jeff obliged, despite his better judgment. But it had never gotten the little prick anywhere with the fairer sex. The Dannymeister was still the same walking hormone and chauvinist he’d been in college. But Jeff still felt sorry for him. Jeff himself was a married man now and didn’t have to play that game anymore.

  He checked his instrument gauges. Still a few minutes until they had to prepare to land. He cleared his throat. “So, Edith. I always thought Grave Robbers would make a great modern horror film if was re-made. Is that what you’re doing?”

  “That’s what I’m going to find out.”

  Both he and Danny turned to look at her. Her pretty face was a block of ice. But after a moment, she thawed, just a little. “I’m sorry. It’s a long story. I’m one of the producers, and we’re having some trouble with our lead actor.”

  “Oh.” Jeff faced front again. There ya go, Danny. I helped the conversation along. So don’t fuck it up now. Please.

  “Really?” Danny said. “Who’s the actor? What’s he done?”

  Jeff closed his eyes. Wanted to smack him. They were the obvious follow-up questions, but they were a little too nosy. What did he expect from Danny? Subtlety?

  “I’d rather not talk about it. Really. Are we there yet?”

  “Oh, I see. Big-time business woman. Big-time business.”

  Jeff turned to him. “Danny, please.”

  “I just asked her a question, man. Why’s everyone getting so jumpy?”

  Jeff could only shake his head. The Dannymeister struck again—and, as per his usual form, when his quarry gave the inevitable fuck off, creep, ole Danny resorted to taunts and insults, as if that would change her mind. It would end with an all-night bender full of Jeff, why don’t women understand me and I’m so jealous of you for marrying Paula—she has the best rack, man—you so fucking lucked out—I would love to marry a rack like that, and one or two joints, a 4 a.m. deposit of vomit into the bathroom of the apartment they shared—possibly in the tub or sink—followed by a whole day of paranoia about whether someone would complain about his condition to the FAA and cost him his pilot’s license.

  Well, at least Jeff wouldn’t have to listen to that tonight. They were flying home, back to ole Virginny, and he had a whole month to look forward to with Paula, most of which he hoped to spend in the marital bed. They’d been married for only three months, and he’d been working in Atlanta for the past two. Edith here was just headed their way and paying their way home. So Danny could dump his shit in someone else’s toilet.

  Danny was about to open his mouth again, so Jeff interrupted. “Ignore him, please. Danny here’s testosterone-disabled.”

  Their passenger laughed. Jeff tried not to notice the look his friend shot him. He plowed onward: “This your first time to Nilbog, Edith?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “If you look out your window, you might see it up ahead. We’ll be on the ground soon.”

  Danny started to say something, and Jeff could tell that’s why Edith suddenly leaned forward and talked rapidly. “I heard Nilbog got its name from a Scottish legend. Is that right?”

  Jeff shrugged. “Sort of. When the Scotch-Irish came through Virginia, this was the frontier. Families built their log cabins, settled down with their goats, and hoped for the best.”

  And Nilbog, being a rather long, wooded island in the James River, was especially attractive to the first family that built a crude raft to get there. They figured the harder it was to reach, the safer they would be from Indians. They were wrong.

  “Some settlers on the island got wiped out by Indians. Burned their farm.
That’s what historians say, anyway.”

  Edith glanced at Danny, who was trying to interrupt. “So, what do you say happened?”

  “I say—” Danny began.

  “Well, I don’t have an opinion,” Jeff said, “but what matters is a little girl escaped, and she told her rescuers it wasn’t Indians. It was monsters. So all the settlers took to calling it the Isle of Goblin.”

  Danny wagged his tongue lewdly. “I have a book about it at my house, if you’d like to come see.”

  Edith kept her eyes locked on Jeff. “How interesting.” Her tone said she couldn’t care less. “And the name Nilbog?”

  “The British governor didn’t like the ‘Isle of Goblin’ name. Thought it would discourage migration. So he reversed the word goblin and made it Nilbog.” Jeff switched off the autopilot and took the controls. He turned to his little shit of a friend before he could dig a deeper hole. “You ready to land?”

  Danny seemed to wake up. “Sure. We’re just gonna beat nightfall.”

  “Better radio in.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Jeff sighed with relief as Danny pressed his transmit button.

  “Coastal Nilbog, one-zero-five-Charlie-Hotel, twenty miles southwest.”

  Coastal was a misnomer, too, a holdover from the days when the tiny landing strip was a popular inland layover point for small aircraft along the coast. Now it was just manned by a redneck with a smoker’s cough.

  The redneck in question answered the hail. “Is that you, Danny?”

  “Yeah, Mac. It’s us.”

  “Hot damn! Welcome home, boys.”

  Jeff laughed. He was so used to the formality of commercial air traffic controllers that Mac’s voice was like a warm bucket of tobacco juice. A welcome one, though. He wondered if Mac had any apple pie moonshine in the office mini-fridge today.

  “How long you been out there?”

  “Months. Ready to bring her in, Mac.”

  “Hear that, Danny boy. Ain’t been a plane in all day. You’re all clear for—”

  The sharp bang of something breaking the sound barrier made Jeff jump. It passed no more than two hundred feet off their nose and descended rapidly. Swathed in flame, the object filled the cockpit with orange light that heated Jeff’s face.

  They hit its wake a second later. A gale-force wind blasted the aircraft into an uncontrolled spin.

  “For fuck’s sake!” Danny shouted as the horizon flipped in their window. They were thrown against their seatbelts. Their passenger answered with an “oh my god!”

  Bile burned in his throat as Jeff reduced the power to idle. He placed the ailerons in neutral and held full rudder opposite to the direction of their roll.

  As the rotation stopped, he neutralized the rudder and held his breath as the plane kept diving.

  “Come on, Jeff,” Danny said, voice shaking. “The time is now.”

  He pulled up from the dive. Jeff glanced at the altimeter to see they’d dropped a sickening four thousand feet.

  Edith was sobbing. “My life!”

  “It’s all right, it’s all right,” Jeff said. “Danny. See any damage?”

  Danny checked the gauges and out the windows. “Looks all right. We’ll check on the ground. What was that?”

  “Don’t know. Falling satellite? Meteor?”

  Danny grinned at Edith. “You okay?”

  “I, uh…”

  “Well, now. That’ll change your whole day.”

  Jeff couldn’t see what was wrong with her, but it didn’t sound like she was dying.

  “Jeff, she’s…wet-ish.”

  Silently, Jeff vowed that this time he really would smack him. But later. He got on the radio: “Mac, this is Jeff in Charlie-Hotel. There’s a large meteor on its way to you right now!”

  Mac radioed back: “What’d you say?”

  “A meteor. You have to warn people.”

  Then he realized how silly that sounded. The meteor or satellite was assuredly a crater by now, assuming it hadn’t burnt up. But adrenaline was taking over, and he couldn’t think straight.

  “I’m not seeing anything out there,” Mac said. “Radar only shows you.”

  “I saw it with my own eyes.” He was lucky could speak at all now. He felt his whole body breaking out in a sweat, and he began to hyperventilate.

  “Well, I don’t know what to tell you, bud. I’m lookin’ at the screen. Ain’t nothing up there but you fellas.”

  Danny touched his shoulder. “You okay?”

  Jeff considered being macho but decided better of it. He shook his head. “Can you get us down?”

  “No problem.” Danny took over the controls. “Mac, just call the police, and let’s talk more on the ground. Can you give me an approach heading?”

  ***

  Sure, Danny was a boor, but he knew how to land a plane. A good thing, since Jeff was positive by the time they touched down that he’d wet his pants. Shameful. He was a commercial airline pilot with over twenty years of flight experience. Supposed to have nerves of steel and all that. Yet here he was in the same state as their passenger, who could do nothing to cover the wet spot on her pants.

  The moment they taxied to a stop, Jeff turned to Danny. “Give her a hand getting out, will ya?” Before Danny could answer, he opened the door and hurried toward air traffic control.

  He made it ten feet before losing his lunch.

  As soon as he straightened up, Danny was there, propelling him along with a hand to the back.

  “Danny, what are you—”

  “Come on.” Danny laughed like he’d tipped over a cow.

  Jeff glanced back to see Edith laboring to climb out of the plane by herself. Danny had only popped open the exterior door to the luggage compartment before abandoning her.

  “Thought I’d give her some privacy.”

  Jeff rolled his eyes. They would be lucky if she even paid them after all this.

  They entered the pilot’s lounge, where Mac waited. He wore a mechanic’s jumpsuit, grease on his neck and hands, and a baseball cap turned backward. Exactly the same as he looked two months ago. Jeff wondered if Mac had even taken a shower—and then when he took a whiff of him, got his answer.

  “Mac!” Danny hugged him, and then withdrew a step, holding his nose. “Ah, Mac.”

  Mac laughed and switched his wad of tobacco from one cheek to the other.

  After Jeff shook his hand, he surreptitiously wiped it on his pants. “You sure you didn’t see or hear anything?”

  “Yeah. Nothing on the radio ’bout a hit, either. Sent for the police the way you wanted. They should be here any sec.”

  Danny peered through the window, watching Edith struggle to pull her bags out of the luggage compartment. “We definitely saw it. Made Edith piss—”

  Edith lost her balance and dropped her suitcase on the runway.

  Danny feigned surprise. “Ah, shit. I’d better give some aid.”

  Jeff opened his mouth to say, Yeah, you’d better, idiot, but the redneck airport manager moved toward the door instead. “No worries, soldier. I like a wet one.”

  They watched him cross the tarmac. Mac turned his baseball cap from back to front and pulled his underwear out of his crack—his version of smoothing down his eyebrows to be presentable.

  Danny giggled and moved closer to the window. “This has just become the best day ever.”

  Sighing, Jeff turned to a Virginia map hanging on the wall. Nilbog was smack-dab in the center without much around it, but he couldn’t believe nobody had seen or heard anything. A sonic boom like that should have been audible for miles. Had the thing blown up before hitting the ground?

  Oh, well. He needed to find some fresh clothes.

  “Trent, you’re missing the show.”

  Jeff looked out the window in time to see Edith Holman slap Mac across the face. An arc of tobacco juice went flying from his mouth to spray the plane’s fuselage. God knew what he’d said to her.

  As Edith picked up her su
itcase and stormed off, Mac flashed a thumbs up back at them. Danny hooted and raised his hands in a victory pose.

  Yep, and there goes our fare.

  Jeff was about to go in search of clothes when he spotted an old police car parking on the other side of the runway. He groaned when he recognized one of the uniformed officers climbing out. “Here comes Five-O.”

  “Good.” Danny was still grinning at Mac. “You can report it, and then for me the sweet embrace of alcohol. I was going to ask Edith to join, but I don’t really want a wet one.”

  The Dannymeister strikes again.

  Shaking his head, Jeff crossed his arms and waited for Nilbog’s finest to enter.

  First in was Officer Paul Kelton, an overweight man in his thirties with ill-fitting glasses and teeth even more crooked than Danny’s. Kelton remained expressionless as he faced them across the counter Mac used as a bar during holiday parties. A poker face was just fine with Jeff. If they could get through this acting like they didn’t know each other, then maybe he could avoid throwing up again.

  Kelton’s partner was someone Jeff had never met before. He was a tall, goofy white guy who didn’t look like he belonged in Nilbog. When he smiled at Danny, his perfectly straight and clean teeth confirmed it. “Danny.”

  Danny nodded back. “Hey, Larry. How’s the world from behind a shield?”

  Jeff raised his eyebrows, wondering when they met each other. Most likely, it had been on the side of a road, with Danny handing over his driver’s license and begging Officer Larry not to haul him in.

  Kelton, thankfully, got right to the point. “So you saw a meteor?”

  Jeff nodded. “Yeah. Right before we landed.”

  “Did you see where it might have hit?”

  “No.”

  “Well, if we don’t have a confirmed point of impact, it would seem silly to waste the manpower searching for it.”

  Of course the fucking police wouldn’t search for it. What was he expecting—that he was back in Atlanta, where people actually cared? Did he expect fat-ass Kelton not to immediately give him the finger on the way back to his police car? He’d just landed in Nilbog, and he already wanted to take off again.