Flickers

by Arthur Slade

  The daughters now stood weeping in front of the broken body of their father. His creation had struck out against him and thrown him from the top of the tallest tower. The ice was thawing around their mother’s body and soon there would be no saving her from her unjust death. Then a formless shadow crossed over the twins and ever so slowly they looked up. The camera showed a view over the shadow’s massive shoulder. The monster towered above them and they turned and fled the room.

  The camera followed their flight, showing their feet on the steps, one stumbles and the other puts her hand on her sister’s shoulder and they run down a long torchlit hallway that wavers and somehow grows longer so that they are running, running forever, their bonnets loosening and falling away, one by one. Their hair flows behind them.

  Rosella’s face, then Rona’s, fills the screen, both faces showing the pain of losing their father, their mother; the tears are real.

  ROSELLA AND RONA SEE TWO DOORS. ONE LEADS TO THE COURTYARD AND ESCAPE. THE OTHER TO THE HORROR CHAMBERS IN THE DUNGEONS OF THE CASTLE. A CHOICE MUST BE MADE IN AN INSTANT. THEY TAKE THE WRONG DOOR.

  Rosella pushes the wrong door, wiping her eyes. She is going down, down a set of spiral stairs and deeper into the castle, into the madness, her sister one step behind. This is the place where her father had done all of his work, the rooms that he had hidden from his daughters. The parts of his mind that he had hidden. Bats swoop at them, latching onto their hair, so that it pulls out even further. Rosella knocks one away, runs even faster. A shoe falls off, is left hanging on a stair. Then another shoe. And another. Until the twins are shoeless, their bare feet pale on the cold stone. The music rises, a mad symphony that mimics her beating heart. Rosella’s hair is wild and as she runs down the steps, rats scurry across her feet.

  Then Rosella and Rona are in their father’s operating room. A place where there are stained tables and hints of grotesque operations, blood splashed along the wall. The camera never settles long enough for Beatrice to tell whether the lumps on the tables are pieces of leather or parts of bodies. It’s all there. Right there. Rosella bumps a pail from the table and body parts fall onto the floor. An eye. An ear. A hand.

  The monster is close behind the twins, has slouched down the stairs. They have reached the end of the room and it is a dead end. The camera again is looking over the monster’s shoulder as it comes closer and closer to Rosella and Rona. And it slows down so that the twins, trapped at last, turn to see their captor, their enemy, their father’s killer. There is a moment when, united, hands held, they might be able to overcome this beast. But then all the fears of their young hearts are written on their faces.

  And as they turn and look full upon the thing, they let go of each other and raise their hands, their eyes widening as their lips tremble.

  Beatrice knows by the light in her sister’s eyes that what she looks on is real, or at least she believes it is real. It is worse than a vampire, a Hydra, or Satan. It is unimaginable and powerful. And, in her heart, Beatrice wishes the camera would show her what the monster looks like. She wants to see the horror. To give it shape and size, and to name it.

  But no, the music rises. Rosella who is Isabelle begins to open her mouth and to scream. At first it is silent, then the scream becomes real, coming out of the Cinétone, out of the very walls of the theater. And a moment later, Rona, her sister, joins with her own cry so that their scream has become one perfectly pitched scream. It is of absolute horror, of fear. Of all the things gone wrong in the world. It fills Beatrice’s mind and Isabelle’s and fills all the minds inside the Theatre Eternal and, without knowing it, without understanding why, Beatrice opens her own mouth and begins to scream in reply, to yell her terror, all the terrors of all her life and the theatre is filled with such a sound, a roar, for Isabelle is screaming beside her, and Uncle Wayne and Betty and all the people gathered below them. They become one voice and the very theatre vibrates and the sound they make is sent back to the screen, back into the story, so that, to Beatrice, it seems as though the screen is soaking up their feelings. It becomes lit with green outlines.

  Time stops.

  Then a second or a decade later the screen changes and becomes a scene of a grey world. Beatrice sees storm clouds and green lightning and a bridge across a chasm. And yet she doesn’t stop her scream; she cannot and she is Rosella again, she is Isabelle, she is Rona, she is Beatrice, and the very theatre shakes at the cacophony.

  She, Isabelle, Rosella, Rona, and the audience scream forever and ever.

  There is a splice in the film of her life, for Beatrice doesn’t know when she stops screaming, only that she does and the story somehow jumps ahead. Rosella and Rona are walking, stumbling, hand in hand across a wooden bridge that leads over a deep chasm. Their aunt is standing on the other side of the chasm; their mother’s twin. They reach her and it is as if their mother has come to life again and is holding them both. The horrible monster is dead. The sun is beginning to rise along the mountains, catching Rosella’s face and she smiles and Rona smiles and their aunt holds them and as they stand perfectly still a dove takes to the sky behind them.

  Two words appear on the screen:

  THE END

  27

  The crowd was still. No one made a sound. They just watched as the screen became that final scene of a bridge and a rocky world beyond it. But the story and the characters were gone. The place where they all were together had vanished into the ending of the movie.

  The torchlights came up. A few people even covered their eyes. Mr. Cecil crossed the stage and stepped up to a large round microphone that had risen out of the floor.

  “You are the first,” he said. His voice came from all corners of the theatre. “The first to see this. To hear the Cinétone, the latest in film technology. The sounds and the thrills and the terrors of Frankenstein. Go forth into the world and tell your friends, your family, people on the street to experience the film. Tell them it is the greatest cinematic creation of all time. You legions are released upon the world. Please bring the news of this story to all of your kind.”

  A lone person began to clap, then another and another until the audience erupted with clapping and the theatre shook with the thunder of applause.

  “That was wonderful,” Aunt Betty said. “It was so real. I was right there in the screen. In the story. It’s the way films are supposed to be. And my hair, it was perfect.”

  The crowd below them stood. They began to whisper to each other. One woman fell over as though she’d been shot. A man helped her up and she waved her hanky in front of her face. Several were leaning on each other. They shuffled out of the theatre.

  Beatrice felt as if she’d swum fifty laps. When she had been screaming in unison with everyone else, so much of herself had come out. If she had a soul—and she wasn’t certain souls existed, but if they did—a part of hers had been taken and . . . and what? Put inside the movie? Absorbed into the screen? No. More than her soul. Her imagination. Her fear.

  Isabelle was still staring at the screen. The crowds below didn’t look up at the balcony again, as though they’d forgotten they were in the presence of their stars.

  Uncle Wayne stood. “Why’s the projector still on?” An occasional spark of light would appear, then wink out and die. Another and another. The final scene of the mountain path remained. Had Mr. Cecil shot several minutes of the same scene and was now running it in a loop?

  Beatrice put her hand on Isabelle’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  She grabbed Beatrice and pulled her close. “He frightens me,” she hissed quietly.

  “What?”

  “I remember why I screamed at the movie set. Why I fainted.” Her body shook. “I saw Mr. Cecil’s real face.”

  “His real face?” Beatrice said.

  “What are you two talking about?” Uncle Wayne asked.

  “Nothing,” Beatrice said. “Girl talk.” She helped Isabelle stand.

  “Oh, I’m a girl,” Aunt Betty said. “I l
ike girl talk. Tell me.”

  “It really was nothing,” Beatrice said.

  “Did you see me on all that ice?” Aunt Betty asked. “It was so cold. But I played the part well, didn’t I? And I came out at the end to hold Isabelle and her twin. Just like a real mother.”

  Beatrice nodded. “I thought your part in the movie was excellent, Aunt Betty. Very natural.”

  “Why thank you, Beatrice.”

  “Wasn’t that twin thing amazing?” Uncle Wayne said. “I still don’t know how Mr. Cecil did it. Half the time I was talking to empty space, but he filled it with Rona—with Isabelle. Every newspaper will go bonkers over that and the Cinétone. We’ve done it!”

  The balcony door opened. Mongo gestured them toward the door. Beatrice glanced back as they left the balcony and saw Mr. Cecil alone on the stage, moving his lips as though he were talking or chewing. He stretched out his hand and touched the shimmering screen.

  He reached right into the screen up to the elbow. Beatrice blinked. Had that really happened?

  Mr. Cecil pulled his arm back. No, he was just touching it.

  Mongo patted her shoulder and she followed the others down to the entrance of the theatre and into a waiting car. The streets were already mostly deserted.

  The way she had screamed in unison with the film and the audience still echoed in her mind. It had been unbidden, horrible, and uncontrollable. All of those people screeching as one. She wondered if the viewers had even realized what had happened to them. Or were they too wrapped up in the story? Whatever Mr. Cecil was doing, he would be creating more of those screams. She was certain of it.

  What if imagination could be harnessed? Those weren’t his exact words, but close. Harnessed to do what?

  All four of them stared up at the Theatre Eternal through the back window of the car. “I won’t ever act as well as I did in that movie,” Uncle Wayne said. “Never again.”

  Then they were turning and travelling down the hills toward the ocean and the mansion. No one spoke the whole time.

  28

  The moment they returned to La Casa Grande Beatrice went to the washroom and wiped every last bit of makeup from her face. When she was back in her room she peeled herself from her dress and pulled on her cotton pajamas.

  Isabelle sat on their bed in her pink nightgown. “When we shot that screaming scene I saw such terrible things,” she explained. “Mr. Cecil said I’d see them. He explained that an actor pictures a word as the actor says it, then the word becomes real. The emotions become real. And he told me I would see something worthy of my scream—awful, evil, horrible images. I thought he was exaggerating.”

  “What did you see when you screamed?”

  “I—I can’t describe it. I really believed there was a monster behind me. Something horrible. Oh, the words aren’t big enough to tell you what I was feeling. And when I turned. Oh, Beets, it was horrible. That’s all. So very, very horrible.”

  “But what was it?” Beatrice asked sharply.

  “I can’t say, exactly. It was a burning house and I was trapped in the fire. It was a thing with ten heads. It was Uncle and Aunt with only skulls as faces. Then there were these creatures with . . . with stretchy things on their faces. And Mr. Cecil was there in the middle of it all. And his face changed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He . . . he looked . . . He looked like . . . those stupid ink splotches.”

  “Ink splotches?” Beatrice said. “Oh, you mean the Rorschach inkblots.”

  “Yes. I hate those things! How many times has he stuck them in front of my face. Testing to see what frightened me. But he became one. A living one. Real. Do you believe me, Beets? I know it sounds crazy. But you must. You must believe me.”

  Beatrice gripped her sister’s hand tightly. “I believe that you’re telling me the truth. Your truth.”

  “Oh, good. I thought I was going mad.” Isabelle pulled the covers over her legs.

  “We’re both going mad.” Beatrice touched the bandage on her leg through the cotton. Picked at the corners of it. “I—Mr. Cecil hurt me,” she said.

  “He what?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “We have all night. Maybe forever, for all I know. Mr. Cecil hasn’t mentioned shotting another film.”

  “Well, it started with sneaking into Mr. Cecil’s cottage,” Beatrice began. She related everything she could remember, describing the inside of the cottage, seeing a hat like Robert Russel’s, then feeling Isabelle’s pain and dropping the glass jar, releasing the scorpion hornets.

  “There was a finger bone in that jar,” she said. She had just remembered it. And with that memory came a realization. She shuddered.

  “A finger?”

  “Yes. I think. I think it was his finger. That maybe he fed it to them.” Or used it to create them somehow . . . No, that was madness. Better not to speak that thought.

  “Why on earth would he do that?”

  “I don’t know. To bind them to him. Maybe. Or imprinting of some sort. Anyway, it’s not important. This is what’s important.” And she ended, matter-of-factly, by relating what had happened when Mr. Cecil discovered the sting on her leg.

  “He—he did that to you? To your wound. And the whole time I stayed sleeping?”

  Beatrice nodded.

  “But I should have woken up. Protected you. I would have scratched his eyeballs out.”

  “There was nothing you could’ve done. Don’t beat yourself up about it. What’s more important is, who is he? It’s like he’s been pretending to be someone else all this time. We don’t know Mr. Cecil at all. Or what he’s capable of. I don’t like the theories I keep coming up with.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” Isabelle said.

  “Tomorrow, Izzy, we’ll make sense of it all. We need to sleep on it. To see everything more clearly in the light of day.”

  “You’re right. You’re right, Beets. I have you, though, don’t I? I’ll always have you.”

  “Yes. You’ll always have me. I promise. You can’t get rid of me.”

  They clutched each other and lay back. Beatrice glanced at the window, but only the moon was watching over them now.

  “In the womb we were together,” Beatrice said. “In this world we’ll always be together. One way or another.”

  Isabelle nodded. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you, Beets.”

  “Repay me?”

  “All my life you’ve been there. When I would come home from the studio, feeling weak, you’d listen to me and make me stronger.”

  “You’re just as strong as me.”

  “No.” There were tears welling in her eyes. “I’ve leaned on you. I’m always leaning on you.”

  “I’m your sister. I’m here for you to lean on.”

  “But that’s the thing, Beets. What have I done for you? For anyone? Even my fans. I’m only the face on the screen. I’m not real.”

  “You’re far too real.” Beatrice squeezed her hand.

  But her sister had a look of determination. “Someday I’ll do something,” she whispered. “I’ll do something that’s real.”

  “Just sleep, Izzy,” Beatrice said. “Tonight we should both get a good sleep. To be ready for whatever tomorrow brings.”

  Beatrice held her tight and Isabelle did, eventually, sleep.

  Beatrice lay with her eyes open, staring at the ceiling, watching the shadows cast by the moon. There was a plan behind this movie. Bigger than just making money and getting more fame. Something that was much larger than she could see. Mr. Cecil always had a reason, a purpose for doing things.

  She would have a purpose, too. Knowledge was power, she’d read that so many times. It was time to get just a little bit of that power. She closed her eyes. Her resolve brought calmness, slowed her heart and her thoughts.

  Sleep came.

  29

  Beatrice swung herself out of bed at sunrise and dressed in her khaki clothes. She felt her father’s war
medal in her pocket as she looked out the window. Mr. Cecil’s car was gone and she hoped he hadn’t come home at all. Perhaps the film was still running, projecting that odd dark landscape.

  She was certain that Isabelle, Aunt Betty, and Uncle Wayne would sleep the whole morning or even into the afternoon. The mansion was quiet as she crept down the stairs and outside. Raul wasn’t at his cottage, nor was he weeding with his father. She found him in the south garden, sitting on the lion’s-head bench with his sketch pad in his hand and a pencil in the other.

  “What are you drawing, Raul?” she said.

  He stuffed the pad into his front pocket, along with the pencil, and held up a dirt-stained hand. “No one sees an artiste’s work until it’s done.”

  “Well, I look forward to the unveiling.”

  “You are my biggest fan. Along with my father. How was the premiere?”

  “It was . . . it was horrible. I mean, it frightened me.”

  “Aren’t his films supposed to be frightening?”

  “But this one.” A chill ran along her neck. “It was more than that.”

  “I saw you in your dress. All made up.”

  She swallowed. “What did you think?”

  “You didn’t look like you. You looked like a . . . a starlet. But I prefer the old you—this you.”

  She had the urge to hug him for those words, but stopped herself. “I guess that’s why they call it makeup.” She rubbed at her cheek as if the stuff would never come off. “I’ve put together a hypothesis about Mr. Cecil.”

  “Trying to confuse me with big words?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “He really doesn’t want me to go into his home.”

  “We knew that already.”

  “No, I mean he’s hiding something—that’s why he was so . . . so cruel to me that night.”

  He pointed at the sting on his neck. “He was hiding those stupid wasps.”

  “I mean something bigger than that. He doesn’t want us to discover what it is. But something is calling me there.”