Plan 9- Official Movie Novelization

by Matthew Warner

  As Larry pushed Henry toward the house, the crazed eyes seemed to follow a split second behind like the lines of a time-exposure photograph. Henry’s curly hair and beard might turn into dreadlocks if he didn’t take a shower soon. For a moment, Kelton wondered if white trash Myra might not have a point about him.

  Larry gave Henry another shove and let go. “You guys know better than this. You can’t be acting up like this all the time.”

  “Where’s your dad?” Kelton said. “Where are the girls?”

  Henry shrugged. “Inside.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “That depends on why Emily was screaming.”

  Henry snorted before preceding them into the house. Butch followed but made sure to flip the bird at his brother’s back.

  Kelton shook his head. He turned to his partner coming up the steps behind him. “Larry, I want to go home. I want to go home.”

  Larry chuckled as the three of them went inside.

  ***

  Kelton liked to think he was destined for better things than this. His ultimate fantasy was to be Arnold Schwarzenegger, blowing away Al Qaeda terrorists—preferably ones remote-controlled by Amazon vampires from Planet X. He’d been shooting guns ever since his daddy gave him a .22 for his twelfth birthday and taught him to kill paper-target silhouettes. He still secretly, sometimes, took his shot-up targets home from the police firing range to add alien antennae, claws, and machine guns. Good marksmanship, more than anything—certainly more than his less-than-stellar memory for procedures and laws—was what pulled his ass through the academy.

  Little did he expect that, when he was finally allowed to wear a semiautomatic pistol on his hip, he’d spend his days scraping vomit-soaked panhandlers off the shoulders of the interstate exit or looking down at Myra Applewhite’s varicose-veined cleavage.

  And now, standing here in the living room of the insane patriarch of the Rooter family—while Jeff Big-Swinging-Dick Trent was home banging Paula, his Paula—well, that was the cherry floating in the motherfucking Manhattan. (And he didn’t care how it would make him feel tomorrow; he was gonna have two of those things tonight.)

  I hate my life.

  “Your posture speaks of great weariness.” Old man Rooter addressed him from the rocking chair at the end of the dusty room. “But tonight, your labors will be over.”

  Undaunted, Kelton crossed until their toes touched. “Save it.” He turned to the twelve-year-old blonde girl standing beside the rocker. “Sarah, honey, are you all right?”

  She nodded. “I am blessed.”

  “Where’s Emily?”

  Sarah just blinked.

  “I said, where’s Emily? Your sister?”

  Sarah pointed to the hallway.

  “Come with me.”

  He grabbed her elbow and yanked her out of the room.

  Behind him, the old grandfather and the father laid into Larry. “Where are they going?” “Tell him to come back with my daughter!”

  Larry laughed it off with his usual aplomb.

  In the hallway, Kelton made Sarah sit on a bench made from an old ammo box. A moose head hung from the wall above her.

  He tipped his head back and bellowed at the ceiling, “Emily? Where are you, honey?”

  The younger sister, a virtual clone of Sarah except for being in the first grade, emerged from a closet. She took a seat next to her sister.

  “Why were you hiding in the closet?”

  Emily shrugged and looked at her toes. If her blonde hair wasn’t held back in a ponytail, no doubt she’d conceal her face behind it like her mother did.

  “Did you hide because you heard us come in?”

  Shrug. Nod.

  Kelton sighed. He hated talking to kids. Wasn’t good at it. He turned to the older sister. “You can talk now. Are you all right?”

  “I am blessed.”

  “Yes, I know. But the neighbor heard you screaming or heard Emily. I’m not sure.”

  He examined her wrists and neck. He made her pull up the back of her shirt, searching for any sign she’d been harmed. He did the same for Emily. But there was nothing.

  “I screamed because I was scared.”

  “What of? Who frightened you? Was it your grandfather?”

  “Granddaddy loves me.”

  “Sarah, look at me.”

  He grabbed the sides of her face and peered into her eyes. Maybe he should just take them both away and let Child Protective Services untangle it. But there was no crime against being eccentric. He’d come out here often enough to know that’s probably all it was. Still, he had to make sure.

  “Tell me, honey. Did they hurt you?”

  “No. I just saw a vision, that’s all.”

  He let her go. A vision. Fuck.

  “They’re coming. Tonight.”

  The younger sister nodded. She even looked up at him and smiled, which kind of creeped him out. It was like she was saying, Yep, might rain tonight, and nothing more unusual than that.

  “Who’s coming?”

  Sarah shook her head. Emily looked away.

  He asked them a couple more times, but they refused to say more.

  Leaving the sisters seated on the ammo box, Kelton returned to the den, where old man Rooter waited with his adult sons. Kelton instinctively hated the sight of him: under white hair and a newsboy cap, those ancient pink eyes stared past him into space and dementia. Henry stood in the corner, arms crossed, curly hair flowing over his face.

  Larry was chatting with them, good-natured as hell. “Your boys are causing a ruckus again, Jamie.”

  The old grandfather’s gaze stopped on Larry for a moment before refocusing on whatever he was examining inside his mind. “I will talk to them.”

  Kelton took position in front of Henry and rested his hand on the butt of his gun. He waited until the lanky cocksucker raised his head to look at him. “Why were you fighting Butch?”

  Henry shrugged. “I don’t like him asking Daddy and the girls questions. Gets them upset.”

  “Questions about what?”

  “Curiosity killed the cat.” Henry started giggling and walked away.

  Kelton turned to the grandfather. “Is this about the goblins again?”

  On previous visits, old Jamie Rooter claimed he and his granddaughters were abducted by monsters—sometimes goblins, sometimes leprechauns, depending on when you asked him. Indeed, he and the girls once disappeared for an entire week, lost in the Shenandoah National Forest during a camping trip, before they were found by rescuers. It was during that trip that the old man claimed he, Sarah, and Emily were taken to a magical ring of hell beneath Nilbog. There, monsters granted them psychic powers in the hopes of forging a link between their world and man’s. The girls and old man repaid them by using their newfound abilities to slaughter them during a successful escape attempt.

  “No,” the grandfather said. “Not goblins this time.” He focused briefly on Kelton, anger flashing over his face before he returned to his blank serenity.

  “What then?”

  “I will not tell you. It is not our place.” He turned away and closed his eyes.

  Kelton glanced at Larry, who shrugged. He considered telling them they’d just come from Rachel and Myra’s house but decided it would be pointless.

  He nodded at Henry and Butch in turn. “Okay then, we’re going. But you all behave for now on. We don’t want to have to come back and lock anyone up.”

  He and Larry started for the door. They turned back when old man Rooter said, “This isn’t the first time they’ve been here.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “They will come.”

  “Good night, Mr. Rooter.”

  ***

  Outside, Larry paused to lean back against the police cruiser and smoke a cigarette. “I don’t know who’s worse for those little girls, the mom or the dad.”

  “The mom,” Kelton said without hesitation. “Or their aunt,
really.”

  “But the dad’s violent. You saw him.”

  “The dad’s just worried about his girls getting wound up by the senile grandfather. Nothing wrong with that. But Myra’s the one who blames them for all the ills of the world. For all we know, she has the mother believing the same thing.” Kelton climbed into the driver’s seat. “If monsters are coming tonight, I’d rather they be here with their dad.”

  Larry stomped out his cigarette and got in. “Never knew you were a softy. Thought you hated humanity.”

  “I make an exception for helpless children.”

  “Shit. Some badass police officer you are.”

  Kelton started the engine. He was about to tell Larry exactly where he could kiss his big ole bad ass when a familiar, rust-red van turned onto the street.

  The driver must have seen the police car, because she immediately turned around to leave.

  “What? Is that…?” Kelton was so stunned he couldn’t finish his sentence.

  “Myra and Rachel,” Larry finished.

  Kelton switched on his overheads and pursued the fleeing vehicle.

  They pulled it over near a cluster of elm trees already dropping leaves onto the road. A lone, old black man in overalls watched them from his porch, drinking something from a jar, probably moonshine.

  The moment they stopped, Myra leapt out of the driver’s seat. She advanced on the police cruiser, jabbing a lit cigarette in the air. “Why the fuck you after us? We didn’t do nothin’ wrong.”

  Kelton got out and stood behind his open door. “Get back in your car. Then we’ll talk.”

  “But I didn’t do nothin’!”

  She was right, and all Kelton wanted to do was ask why she and Rachel were there. But right now, that was beside the point.

  “You fuckin’ pigs!”

  “I said get back in your car, or you are going to jail.”

  “I’d like to see you try, Paul. You fuckin’ fat ass.”

  Kelton exchanged a head shake with his partner, sighed, and then went to work.

  Five minutes later, Myra Applewhite was handcuffed and beating her head against the Plexiglas barrier in the back of the police car. While Larry tried to calm her down, Kelton talked to her sister.

  Rachel Rooter was still seated in the van’s passenger seat. Her head was bowed again, long bangs shielding her face from the world.

  “I said, why’d you come here, Rachel? Answer me.”

  “It was Myra’s idea. She said we had to rescue my girls since you wouldn’t.”

  “Rescue them from what? We just left there. The girls are fine.”

  “All right. If you say so.”

  Kelton rubbed his face wearily. Arnold Schwarzenegger blowing away Amazon vampires from Planet X never had to deal with shit like this. He’d even written a short story about it. It was titled “Planet X Vampires,” except he’d used his own name for the main character instead of the Governator’s.

  He glanced back at the cruiser. Myra had stopped hurting herself. Larry leaned against the car as he smoked another cigarette. Well, that was something.

  “Look, Rachel. You haven’t done anything illegal just driving here. But I want to make sure you’re obeying the court order about custody and visitation. You don’t need to be here today.”

  She nodded. “Uh huh. Okay.”

  “So go home.”

  “Okay.” She climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

  Kelton trudged back to the police cruiser. He was at the exact opposite end of the road from being a badass action hero police officer, and he felt every inch of it.

  Larry stubbed out his cigarette. “Come on, old man. Shift ain’t over yet.”

  Kelton nodded and tried to pull himself together. He glanced at their prisoner in the back. “Let’s take out the trash.”

  Chapter 3

  LUCY

  The First Law of Thermodynamics states energy can be converted from one form to another, but it can’t be created or destroyed. So as Lucy Grimm stood by the freshly dug grave, listening to a priest drone “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” she couldn’t accept that an errant blood clot had simply wiped her grandmother out of existence. Grandma was now somewhere and something different. As a scientist, that was as close as she could come to believing in spirits or God.

  Standing beside her, Grandpa hugged Lucy’s shoulders and wept.

  When the priest was done, Grandpa nodded at the casket perched over the open hole. “I’ll be with you soon, honey.”

  Grandpa had different beliefs. He’d told Lucy so that afternoon as he shrugged on his suit. His wife was gone now, but they could still talk to each other. These days, he heard all the ghosts of his long life.

  Grief felt like a bear trap around her heart, its metal teeth ready to snap shut. To avoid triggering it, Lucy studied the cheap wooden casket. Her grandparents lived off Social Security—with no extant life insurance coverage, of course—and her own money was mostly tied up in student debt. So a few hundred dollars for funeral arrangements was all they could afford. There were no flowers, which would have been a frill. And no burial vault or liner, either, since Pinewood Gardens was a privately owned graveyard and didn’t require it. Grandma’s coffin would go straight into the ground unprotected but on the cheap. In recommending this place, the funeral director revealed it was popular with low-income families for that reason. Pinewood Gardens spun this by labeling itself a “green” cemetery.

  The few friends who’d come—mostly people from Grandma and Grandpa’s church—gave them hugs and handshakes, said the appropriate words, and then left. Lucy’s mother was ill and couldn’t make the trip here from Chicago, and her father—the direct link between her and Grandpa and Grandma—was still in prison.

  They walked slowly back to their car. A butterfly followed them, its wings flashing in the sun, before disappearing behind an ancient vined tree. Now it was just the two of them.

  Grandpa stopped short of the car. He leaned heavily on a tree branch and bowed his head.

  Lucy watched him awkwardly, not knowing what to do with her hands or what to say. She wished for her white lab coat and its big pockets, where she could reach in and give her Angry Birds tension ball a squeeze.

  When he was done weeping, Grandpa ran a hand through his thick white beard. He studied her from under the brim of his Stetson. “You haven’t said much.”

  “I…don’t know what to say.”

  He nodded. “It’s all right. It will come.”

  The bear trap around her heart trembled. She wanted desperately to retreat to the lab, to immerse herself in work. Spending another day alone with Grandpa—staring at the veritable greenhouse her grandmother had made of their home with all those potted flowers—would be suffocating. They’d been going out to dinner, taking long walks, and leafing through fifty-year-old scrapbooks for three days. No more.

  Lucy had only cried once in all that time, the first night when she and Grandpa returned home alone from the hospital. And she’d been ashamed her tears came from thoughts about herself. That all she could think about was how perfect life had seemed six months ago, when she’d landed her job with Dr. Robertson at the Institute, in the same town as her grandparents. It had seemed too good to be true: to be able to come here, live rent free, and make a modest salary doing what she’d been trained to do. Soon, her student loans would be paid off—or at least under control—her dissertation would be finished, and…

  And then her grandmother collapsed. Just keeled over in the kitchen one morning while collecting the breakfast dishes. For a horrible moment, Lucy thought Grandpa had scared her to death. He was showing off the Dracula cape he planned to wear when handing out Halloween candy a few days hence. He was so proud of it. And when Grandma got a strange look in her eyes and made a gurgling sound, her grandfather had been holding the cape over the lower half of his face, Bela Lugosi-style, saying, “I vant to suck your blood.”

  Grandma was still wearing her frilled
apron when paramedics strapped her onto a gurney. A medic frantically palpated her chest as they disappeared into the ambulance. The hospital hadn’t returned the apron with Grandma’s personal effects. Said they’d lost it.

  The apron. Lucy fixated on that thought—the loss of the apron—and before she could stop it, the bear trap snapped shut. Chomp. Just once.

  She turned away from Grandpa and wiped her eyes.

  “Are you sure you have to go to work, Lucy?”

  He had known without her even telling him. Known what she planned to do.

  She swallowed and nodded. “I’m not ready to feel it all yet. Best to keep busy.”

  Grandpa pulled her into a hug. “She was so proud of you.”

  She pushed away. “I can’t do this now.”

  A voice inside her screamed, When? When? Go home with him. His wife just died. But the bear trap was trembling again, ready to rip her open and make her bleed more selfish thoughts.

  Wasn’t abandoning him also selfish?

  “I need to forget. Until I’m ready to deal.”

  “Lucy, come home.”

  His skin was parchment, his face a gray skull with whiskers. The desperation there couldn’t have been written more plainly. But she hadn’t been to work all week, and if she didn’t get away from him, she was going to join Grandma before the day was through.

  In the distance, she saw an old man with a shovel take position beside the grave. He stood there, a Siberian Husky panting by his feet, and waited for them to leave.

  She gave Grandpa the car keys so he could drive himself home. She would take a cab. “The lab needs me. I’ll be home in the morning.”

  Then, with a kiss on his withered cheek, she turned away.

  After an all-nighter of catch-up work, everything would make more sense. The bear trap would lose some of its tension. The graveyard shift always made her feel better.

  Her steps faltered, and she stopped walking. The graveyard shift. She wondered who had coined that term and why. Surely no one who had lost somebody. Because graveyards and work didn’t go together.

  She turned around, ready to tell Grandpa to hold up, she was coming with him. But he was gone.