“But I—I do—” He dropped his forehead to his palm. “What do you need?”
“Go back to normal. Think about the role, worry about your lines, be here because you’re doing a job. You do yours; I’ll do mine. We’ll be fine.”
“Except for the other guy who walks around inside me.”
“Well, there is that.”
“Give me a kiss before you leave,” he said. “We might not have another chance.”
She huffed, exasperated, then went to him. He embraced her and kissed her, and this one went better; with him sitting and her standing, they were well matched in height. This time she tasted desire and desperation, two things she felt, too. Eventually, he eased away from her and smiled. She smiled, too.
“Okay. I’ll see you in the trailer at ten.” She grabbed her bag and went into the bathroom to shower.
On her way down the back stairs ten minutes later, she ran into Blaise. They slipped out of the house in silence. Blaise walked away down the street in the early morning light, then glanced over her shoulder. “Come on,” she said.
Opal followed her to a small but ornately gingerbreaded house in the next block. Blaise gestured her up the front porch steps. “Neil initially set me up with a room at the B&B, but I didn’t want it,” she said. “Didn’t want to be housed with the movie people. Said it’d be too noisy. More fool I.”
“So this is your lodging?”
“Right, a nice lady in her seventies with cats. A fan. Sickening, really, in a way, but handy, too. She always gets up and makes me breakfast if I’m here, no matter what time the call’s for. She made me a four A.M. breakfast one morning. She stocks my favorite foods. I bet she’d be thrilled if I brought another movie person to breakfast.”
Opal raised her eyebrows.
“Yes, you’re enough of a movie person to impress her. Come on in.” Blaise tapped on the door and opened it. “Myrna?” Blaise called softly as she and Opal entered the foyer. The walls were dark maroon with sparkles in the paint, and a strange, complicated coatrack stood against the right wall, with dangling garments hanging on it that looked a little like the cult robes in the film. A large, fluffy, tabby-striped cat stropped Opal’s legs, purring. “You up?” Blaise called.
“In the kitchen, dear,” called a pleasant alto voice from the back of the house.
“I’ve brought a friend. Is that all right?”
“Oh, who? Who?” A door flapped open in front of them. A stout woman with short curls of bright, copper-washed hair stood there in a gray silk dressing gown covered with blue butterflies.
“This is Opal LaZelle, who does the creature makeup for Forest,” Blaise said. “Opal, Myrna Partridge, my excellent landlady. Myrna, is it too late for breakfast?”
“Too late? Of course not. I was hoping you’d make it home in time.” Myrna held the door open and they walked past her into the kitchen, all white counters and yellow, flower-sprigged wallpaper and sunny floor tile. A black cat clock with wagging tail and shifting eyes ticked loudly on the wall by the fridge. Everything looked unnaturally clean, considering there were six cat dishes on the floor near the back door, each with a little kibble remaining, and three large water dishes on the floor near the sink. “What’s your pleasure this morning, Blaise? My goodness, Ignatious certainly has taken a liking to your friend.”
The big tabby had followed them into the kitchen, where he settled on Opal’s feet. The cat’s purrs were audible from the floor. He stared up at Opal with wide green eyes.
“Is there any more of that strawberry Special K?” Blaise asked.
“I bought a new box just yesterday,” said Myrna, “and more skim milk for you.”
“Thank you, Myrna. You’re much too good to me,” Blaise said.
Opal knelt and stared into the cat’s eyes. Their green glow looked familiar. The cat licked her nose.
“Oh, please,” she said.
He did it again, the rasp of a wet tongue against her nose. She sighed and stood up.
“What would you like for breakfast, dear?” Myrna asked.
“Cereal sounds good,” said Opal. “Thanks so much, ma’am.”
“You’re so welcome.” The landlady got down two large pottery bowls and poured cereal in one, eyebrows quirked as if to ask how much? Blaise held up her hand after only a little cereal had gone into her bowl. She took the bowl to the fridge and poured milk into it, then grabbed a couple of spoons from a drawer and returned to the kitchen table.
Opal waited until the bowl was half-full before cutting off the flow of cereal. “Okay if I get my own milk?” she asked.
“Surely. Help yourself.” Myrna sat down at the table with a large mug of coffee. “If you want coffee, there’s a full pot in the coffeemaker, and mugs in the cupboard above it. So you’re making the Lapis monster?”
“Well, the monster for the movie, anyway.”
“That creature is a local celebrity.”
“Oh? Did the writers base him on an actual local legend? They didn’t tell me. Are there any descriptions of him?”
“Tall and dark, they say, and he stalks the young girls. I remember when I was fifteen, all the girls talked about him, and none of us were allowed out alone at night. We had some shivery sleepovers, I can tell you.”
“Did he have a name?” Opal asked. She poured milk onto the cereal and set the bowl on the table next to Blaise’s place. Blaise handed her a spoon.
“There was something romantic we called him. Let me think.” She sipped coffee, narrowed her eyes, and stared into the past. “So sad, it was. The Last of the Lost.”
“Last of the Lost,” Opal repeated.
“There was a girl I knew then—what was her name? Linda, I think—who felt sorry for the Last.”
Opal got some coffee and sat beside Blaise. “What happened?”
“She had some idea that he was a sad and lonely creature someone had abandoned. This was the early fifties, and there were lots of things we didn’t talk about. Linda never had us over to her house after school, and she came to school with bruises she never explained. She had a terrible time at home; I think that’s why her heart went out to him. Anyway, at one of our sleepovers—now that I think about it, I remember she didn’t make it to many of those; her mother didn’t let her out of the house—she wanted us to sneak out the basement window and go to the forest with food for the Last. None of us would do it. We were all terrified. She snuck out after the rest of us went to sleep, and we never saw her again.”
“Whoa,” said Blaise.
“Was there a search?” Opal asked.
“Oh, yes. Everybody and their dogs were out in the forest looking for her. Somebody found her hair ribbon on a bush. Someone found a few bloodstains on those strange rocks out there in the clearing where you all are filming, but they looked old. I think some of the boys went out there and played weird games. Nobody who had a cat let it out of the house at night, I recall.” Myrna drank more coffee, sleep-walked to the coffeemaker for a refill. “They said it wasn’t the first time something like that happened. People went missing—that was why our parents were always telling us not to go out at night.”
She settled in her chair. “Sometimes I envied Linda. I thought she went off somewhere and found another life, and it had to be better than here. Maybe she found someone to care about. Maybe someone did her in. I did think about that, too. Might have been better for her, either way.
“Even these days, I don’t much sit on my porch after sunset. I’m still afraid of the night. I remember my husband and I went to Mexico on a trip one time, and there were all kinds of people out after dark, and music and drinking and dancing. It was like visiting another planet.”
Opal ate cereal and drank coffee and thought about the Invader. “Why did you stay here?” she asked. “Why not move away?”
“Oh, well. I inherited this beautiful house, and it was all I ever knew, really. My husband and I both grew up here. He went away to college, but something scared him and he droppe
d out his junior year and came home. He worked in the gravel pit here ever since. Died last year.” She shrugged. “I asked him what happened out there in the world, but he never did tell me. Boys do all right here, but we had no children, and not for lack of trying. If we’d had girls to look after, we might have made different choices.”
“Can I ask you more about the Last of the Lost?” Opal said. “Did anybody ever know where he came from or why he was here?”
Myrna closed her eyes and thought. “Collected girls,” she muttered. “Nobody ever said what he did with them, but it was probably about sex, which we never talked about, or murder, which we did talk about, but only from what we saw in the movies. Nobody ever found bodies or bits of them. We said the missing girls were runaways in the police reports. Why was he here? Well, because he’d always been here, forever and ever. Before there was a town, he was here. He was here because of the people who were here before.” She opened her eyes, stared into Opal’s eyes. “Isn’t that odd? I don’t think there were any people here before. Maybe Kalapuya Indians, but I don’t think so.”
“Opal, I’ve got to get to my seven thirty makeup call. I’m going to head over now,” said Blaise.
Opal checked her watch. “Shoot. I better go, too. Mrs. Partridge, thanks so much for everything. Is there anybody else around who might be able to tell me more about this Last guy?”
“Old Bessie Gates at the Early Bird Bed-and-Breakfast, where you folks are filming. She’s even older than I am, and she’s lived here all her life. Haven’t spoken to her in a long time, myself. Don’t get along with her. But if anybody knows local history, she’s the one.”
“Thanks. Should I wash this?” Opal held up her bowl.
“No, no, don’t worry about it. You kids just go. A pleasure, Opal.”
“Likewise,” said Opal. She grabbed her messenger bag and followed Blaise out.
“So that was quite the fishing expedition,” Blaise said.
“You know there’s something going on with Corvus,” said Opal. “This is all background.”
“You think the thing she was talking about is the thing that’s taken him over and molded him into a better actor?”
“He could always act!” Opal said. “You are such a snot!”
Blaise laughed. “You’re easy to tweak,” she said.
“Why would you want to?” asked Opal.
“I need to find out who you are,” said Blaise. “If we’re arming for some kind of war, I like to know who I’m fighting with.”
“Okay, maybe you’re right. Who are you?” Opal asked.
“It’s not that easy,” said Blaise. “It’s not my habit to get along with anyone, and I have my reasons for that.”
“You’re sleeping with the director, and suddenly you have more lines.”
Blaise laughed again. “Sure. I want to shine in this picture. It has potential. People aren’t expecting much, but some of the writing is sharp, and I must say, your work with Corvus, however it’s happening, is quite astonishing. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were nominated for an Oscar—or, I guess Dathan would get nominated for art direction, and take all the credit. Of course I’m angling to get more and better lines. Lauren’s not good at guarding her territory. Right now, the picture has two leads, and I don’t like that. I’d like to emerge the winner, the one people remember. The writing isn’t quite aimed that way yet. But I can work it around.”
“So you really are a bitch.”
“Yep.” She smiled. “We all would be, if we weren’t so busy being nice. Let that be a lesson to you. You could use a little bitching up, too.”
9
They arrived at the Makeup trailer. “Be right back,” said Blaise. “Gotta make a pit stop.” She headed toward the B&B.
Opal unlocked the trailer door. She figured she could nap in Corvus’s chair until he arrived—that would be easier than sneaking back into the B&B or driving her little economy car back to the motel in Redford.
Lauren, Rod, Corvus, and Magenta were already in the trailer. Corvus sprawled in his chair, his reading glasses perched on his nose, a novel in his hands and one of her lights angled so it shone on the pages. He straightened.
Opal wondered why he hadn’t gone either to his room or to his private dressing room in the trailer next door. Maybe he was feeling social. She said good morning to everyone and hopped up on the makeup counter to think about Blaise. She had seen principal actors behave in ways that led to increased roles for them, decreased roles for others, but she’d never had an actor be so up front about it. You were supposed to maintain an attractive surface.
Well, in public. Lots of stories made the rounds about stars whacking their personal assistants with phones or other handy objects. Opal had observed some bad behavior, experienced some herself, and heard many stories about much worse.
Corvus watched her. “Where’d you go?” he asked.
“I had breakfast with Blaise,” she said.
He quirked both eyebrows.
Lauren was already in her clothes for the shoot. The fight Serena was having with Caitlyn today was apparently early in the picture, when Serena was still dressed in dowdy, repressed clothes—a khaki skirt, a bulky oatmeal-colored shirt with long sleeves—before her relationship with the Dark God opened her up to her dark side, and she went wild and vampy. She was in her chair, waiting for makeup. Magenta was still setting out her tools.
“How’d that happen?” asked Lauren.
“We were leaving the B&B at the same time,” said Opal.
Magenta and Lauren looked at each other, then at Opal with varying degrees of dismay.
“Well, okay, I heard something like that was going on,” said Lauren, “but I didn’t want to believe it.”
“Believe it,” said Opal. “Corr said you mentioned rewriting last night, losing some of your lines, Blaise getting extra.”
“Yeah. It makes sense now.”
“She’s angling for even more, Lauren. I hope you figure out how to handle this.”
“I’ll come up with something.”
“Meanwhile, at breakfast, Blaise’s landlady told us about a local monster that stalked women here in the fifties.”
“What?”
“We need to ask the woman at the B&B about this. Blaise’s landlady said she would know about the monster if anybody did.”
“You could ask me,” said Corvus, “sometime in the near future.” His voice was deeper than usual. He stared at the new face of the Dark God, on its life-mask head on Opal’s counter where she had set it out the night before. She had already altered the rest of the stack of latex to add the horns and the other slight changes the Dark God had made, matching the rest of her mask supplies to the Polaroids, using magic without qualm because there was no other way around the continuity problems.
“I’ll do that,” said Opal. “You ready for this, Corr?”
He closed his eyes, sighed, and nodded. “Let’s go. Wait. A kiss for luck first?”
She held his head between her hands and touched lips to his. He ringed her with his arm and drew her closer. She thought about what she had learned about him overnight, and some of it was funny and sad. She still loved him. Plus, he tasted wonderful, even flavored with coffee. At last he loosened his hold around her, and she pushed up and away.
She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, as though to print his kiss on memory, and said, “Try to hang on while I’m doing this, okay?”
“I will.”
She shaved him and moisturized him, and he watched her, smiling. “How can I not love somebody who treats me this way?” he asked as she mixed the adhesive.
“How many of your barbers have you fallen in love with?” she asked.
“All of them.”
She lifted the brow piece and applied fresh adhesive to the back of it, then laid it carefully across his temple. She checked the Polaroid she had taken the night before and nudged it a little sideways, then lifted the second piece of leafy latex skin.
By the time she turned around, his eyes had changed, and it was the Invader looking at her with most of Corvus’s face. The effect was eerie. She hadn’t seen him using Corvus’s real features before. He looked almost natural there.
“Thanks,” he said. “I respect your honor.”
“Well,” she said, and laid the next piece of his face on over Corvus’s. “Are you an ancient entity?”
“I don’t care to discuss that.”
“Did you steal girls fifty years ago from this town?”
“Let’s get to know each other better before I tell you my personal history,” he said. “Where’s my kiss?”
She wondered if she still had Flint’s energy to shield her from him. It hadn’t stopped her from kissing Corvus, or even sleeping with him. She held out her hand, trying to ignore the shudder in her flesh. He took it in hands she had just been embraced by and brought it close to his mouth. The burn of Flint’s blessing heated her hand as the Invader drew her hand toward his mouth. “Clear a little space,” she said to herself, reassured and again charmed by Flint’s gift. She gave him the back of her hand to kiss, but then brought back the shield before she lost much energy to him.
“Strict,” he said.
“We have work to do,” she said. “If you’re hungry, I’ll get you food. Right now, let me finish putting on the mask, okay?”
He stared up at her, and leaves pushed up out of his skin, tracing themselves in the same paths as those on the mask she had made, changing his face from within.
“Don’t!”
“It’s more comfortable this way,” he murmured.
She saw Lauren watching her and Corvus. Magenta watched in the mirror. She looked pale.
“Turn him back and let me do it my way,” she said. “You have to be honorable, too, or I’ll leave right now.”
“You won’t,” he whispered. “You can’t.”
She set down her tools and walked toward the door.
The whisper followed her. “You’d leave him to me?”
She gripped the doorknob, turned it, and opened the door. He asked a good question, but she had to stay strong, or she might lose Corvus altogether. She stepped out of the trailer onto the landing. The door almost closed behind her before she heard the voice of the Invader.
Fall of Light Page 13
