by Brian Rowe
“Where the hell have you been?” Anaya said, grabbing Brin by the shoulder. “We’ve been waiting for you for the past five minutes!”
“Did you feel it?” Brin said, coming to a stop and looking at the other five with trepidation. “The earthquake?”
“Earthquake?” Dylan said, stepping forward, seemingly the first to embrace Brin’s nuttiness.
“Yeah,” Brin said. “The ground was shaking.”
They all shook their heads. “There wasn’t any shaking,” Chace said, checking his phone for service.
“Well, did you hear it?”
“There was no shaking,” Lavender said from the side. “Are you OK?”
“No.” If she had been more involved in the making of the movie, Brin would’ve expressed some jealousy over Lavender’s spink dress, which was more feminine than her grungy garment. Brin turned around and pointed at the second-story window in the distance. “Did any of you see the children?”
“The what?” Dylan said.
“Yes! In that house!”
Anaya and Sawyer glanced at each other and smiled, clearly trying to refrain from laughing. Dylan was the only one who looked concerned.
“Brin,” Dylan said. “Relax. We’re the only ones out here. We’re the only ones out here for miles in every direction—”
“I’m not making this up!”
Brin could feel tears welling up in her eyes.
Anaya stepped forward. “Brin, snap out of it. We have a movie to make—”
“Oh, to hell with your stupid piece of shit movie!”
“Brin,” Dylan said, his mouth agape.
“No! Seriously! There’s something not right about this place!” Brin started heading away from the group. “We need to get out of here!”
Brin felt a hand grab her right arm and pull her around.
“You are not walking out on me!” Anaya shouted.
“I have to leave!”
“We’re in the middle of nowhere! Where are you gonna go?”
“Anywhere but here.” Brin kept walking.
“Wait!” Anaya grabbed Brin’s other arm and transformed her face from vicious anger to calm deference. “Please. I am begging you to stay.”
Brin stopped and turned around. “Let go of me.”
“We’re halfway done. We’re making good time. We’ll be done real soon. I’ve reduced your scene with Lavender to just three shots at the end.”
“Three shots?”
“Yeah. I took out all the handholding, the walk into the sunset, even the zombie stuff. The movie now ends with you and Lavender shooting each other. I’m gonna do a cool dolly shot, with the van.”
“A dolly shot?”
“Just… please, stay.” Anaya smiled. Brin knew full well the girl was faking her pleasant demeanor. But she had to admit it was working.
“One more hour?”
“One more hour. Two, tops. And then we’re done. Then we can all go home.”
Brin looked at the other four in the distance, who were all shivering, and irritated by the current setback.
“OK,” Brin said. “Let’s hurry.”
Anaya nodded, then laughed. “Your outfit looks great, by the way.” The director ran back to the group. “OK, Sawyer, get on the other side! Let’s shoot the next scene!”
Brin remained standing in her spot for a few seconds. She looked at the second-story window. Those creepy kids were nowhere in sight.
Brin felt a shiver rush through her body. She shook it off, loudly sighed, and meandered back to the group.
---
“Cut!” Anaya shouted. “That was perfect!”
Three hours later, the movie was almost a wrap. Or, at least, Brin hoped it was. Chace and Dylan had filmed their death scenes over twenty minutes ago, and Brin and Lavender had finished shooting their exposition shots, both walking toward each other with fake guns.
Brin didn’t laugh or screw up any of her takes. She knew the longer the filming took, the more likely they’d all be spending their Saturday night huddled together in the dusty Bodie motel, or, God forbid, the Bodie cemetery.
“You stay here,” Anaya said, turning to her cameraman. “OK, let’s film Lavender walking toward the center of the street. Let’s do two shots of it, actually. One of her from the front, and one from the back.”
Sawyer nodded, appearing so cold that to provide a vocal response to Anaya’s direction would have taken too much effort.
“You good here?” Anaya said, turning around to see Brin analyzing her fake gun. “It’s not real, you know.”
“I know.”
“Wait here by the church. We’ll be back.”
“OK.”
Anaya raced to the other side of the street, leaving Brin, once again, all alone. She wanted to check her phone to see what time it was—the sun looked to already be setting—but she remembered she had left her phone in her jeans pocket back by the jailhouse. She took a deep breath and sat down on the steps in front of the Bodie church, the most famous monument in the ghost town.
She looked down at the gun—of all the period items in the movie, this one looked the most modern, even though Anaya claimed she purchased it on a Civil War reenactment store website—and tried to fling it around her finger.
She tried to fling it forward, then fling it back. She dropped it on the dirt in front of her, then she dropped it in her lap. She flung it around her index finger and launched it up over her head, all the way to the top of the church steps.
“I’m the finest goddamn gunslinger in the west,” Brin said in a goofy manly accent. “I here done shot myself thirteen men, sixteen wolves, and a dingo, before it ate my baby.”
Brin picked up the fake gun, chuckling to herself, trying to keep her positive mood going despite the trying circumstances around her.
As she stood back up, she heard a noise emanate from inside the church.
“Oh, Jesus, what now?” she whispered.
Brin took a step forward, the floorboards creaking underneath her. She crossed her arms and peered into the church, which was blocked off by thin pink wires draped vertically and horizontally in front of the entrance.
Before her were sixteen pews, four on the left, four on the right, and eight in the center. Brin was surprised by how bright the interior of the church was, considering how gloomy with clouds and snow it was outside.
She almost took another step forward, when she heard Anaya shout her name from afar. Brin turned around to see Anaya waving for her to join the cast and crew down the street. Brin nodded.
But before she departed the church, she turned back to look inside one last time. She froze. She couldn’t believe her eyes. At the front center pew sat a man.
“What the…”
Brin set the gun on the floorboards and sunk her palms deep into the thick pink wires. She looked inside. The man was staring forward; she could only see the back of his head. He had black hair, and looked to be wearing a black tuxedo. He also had a top hat on his head.
“Sir?” Brin blinked a few times, trying to remain calm. The figure didn’t move. “Can you hear me?”
“BRIN!” Anaya stood at the bottom of the church steps. She looked beyond agitated, her hair decorated with dirt, twigs, and dandruff-like snow. “Come on. It’s time for your shot.”
“Uhh, OK, I’m coming,” Brin said, turning to the out-of-breath Anaya.
“Right now.”
“OK!”
“Now!”
Anaya rushed over to the rest of the group. Brin took a step back. She looked into the church one more time. The man was gone.
“No,” she said.
She grabbed the thick wires again, and looked from left to right. There was no one inside.
“I’m losing my mind,” she whispered.
“BRIN!” This shout echoed across the entire ghost town. Brin scampered down the steps and over to the cast and crew.
Anaya, a clipboard in her hand, was talking at a mile a minute to Sawyer, wh
o had the HD camera sitting on his right shoulder. Lavender was sitting on a giant boulder, while Chace and Dylan were chatting next to the Miller House.
“OK, Brin, stand right there,” Anaya said. “You’re gonna start the shot with your gun held high, your eyes looking just left of the camera. I want intensity, do you understand me? You want to kill this woman.”
“I know,” Brin said.
“OK.” She paused and stared at Brin incredulously. “Where’s your gun?”
Brin looked down. Her jaw dropped. She shook her head and put her finger up. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
“You have ten seconds,” Anaya said.
Brin ran back to the church steps, annoyed that she had to be spending her most athletic day of the year stuck in a frumpy, dirtied dress.
She reached the top of the steps. The gun was gone.
She glanced back at the bottom of the steps. Nothing.
She turned around and looked inside the church. There was the gun, past the thick wires, sitting below the pew furthest to the back.
How the hell did it get there?
Anaya shouted for her again, as Brin got down on her knees and stretched her arm out past the wires as far as it would extend. Another few inches and she could grab the gun. But she couldn’t reach far enough.
“Come on,” she said. Her fingertips brushed the tip of it. “Give me one break today, please.”
She closed her eyes and pushed her arm even farther inside, her index and middle fingertips grazing the back of the gun’s nuzzle.
“Yes!” She nicked the side of the gun and finally got a firm grip on it. She smiled big as she pulled the gun through the wires and up to her chest. She took a deep breath and stared forward, just in time to see the man with the top hat.
This time he wasn’t sitting with his back turned to her. This time he was standing next to the pew, facing her. He stood upright, his face looking down at the ground. He was dressed all in black with his hat masking most of his face.
But she could tell three things. His skin was pasty white. He appeared to be smiling.
And his eyes were the color of blood.
Brin didn’t say a word. As she backed down the steps, the figure’s smile grew bigger and bigger.
She wasn’t concerned about her mental wellbeing anymore. She was concerned about her wellbeing.
Brin raced up to Anaya, holding her gun up high. She tried to forget what she saw. She tried to pretend like nothing was wrong. “Got the gun!” she shouted. “Uhh, how many more shots do we have?”
“Just the two,” Anaya said.
“OK, OK. Let’s hurry. We need to get going.”
Brin didn’t say anything more than that. She figured at this point the less she said the faster they would be out of there.
She watched as Anaya said a few final words to Sawyer before he took a step toward Brin and shoved the camera in her face.
“OK,” Anaya said. “And… action!”
Brin blinked, bit down on her bottom lip, and raised her gun up high. She lowered her head a tad and started walking toward the camera, as Sawyer marched slowly behind her. Finally Brin stopped, pointed the gun forward, and smiled.
Nobody moved or said anything. Then Anaya said, “Cut! Perfect!”
“OK,” Brin said, dropping the gun to the ground. “What do we have left?”
“You and Lavender are gonna kill each other,” Anaya said. “And then we’re done.”
“All right. Let’s do it.”
Lavender stood up and wiped the dirt from her backside before walking over to the group. Chace and Dylan made their way up, too. They were talking about, of all things, the Resident Evil video games.
“We done?” Chace said.
“Just one more shot,” Anaya said. She looked at Brin and Lavender. “OK, you two are gonna be standing about ten feet away from each other. So Lavender, get over here.”
Anaya pushed Lavender to the middle of the dirt road as if she was an inanimate object.
“Point the gun,” Anaya said.
“OK.” Lavender pointed the gun up.
“Now you, Brin.”
Brin moved to her proper place and held up the gun.
“Looks good,” Anaya said. “OK, there’s one more essential element. I want to do a dolly shot—a push-in—from far away, all the way up to your faces, right at the moment you both shoot and die on impact.”
Everybody stared at Anaya, confused about her gibberish.
“What does that mean?” Brin said.
“What that means is, I need our van. Sawyer’s gonna drive in reverse while I sit in the back with the camera in my hands. I’m gonna film the two of you making your last few steps up to each other, raising your guns, and killing each other. And then? Cut to black!”
Brin shook her head. “Sounds complicated.”
“It’ll be worth it, guys. Trust me.” Anaya turned to Sawyer. “Go get the car.”
“It’s at the top of the hill.”
“I know. So go get it.”
“But it’s stuck! It’s stuck in that ditch.”
She grabbed Sawyer’s jacket and pressed her face against his. The other four looked on in revulsion to see that their lips were nearly touching.
“I’m not gonna ask again,” Anaya said. “Do it!”
Sawyer seemed to have been enjoying his role as Anaya’s henchman for most of the day, but not now. He, like everyone besides Anaya, clearly wanted to get back in the car not to assist in a dazzling camera shot, but to get the hell out of Bodie Ghost Town.
But he nodded anyway and headed up the hill toward the vehicle.
“You sure this is a good idea?” Brin said.
“It will give us the A,” Anaya said. “We need something to separate us from the other movies in the class. This shot will do it.”
“How about the period clothing? The ghost town backdrop? Those won’t separate us?”
“Shh,” Anaya said, taking a few steps forward to get a better look at the van up on the hill. Sawyer had almost reached it.
“Is he gonna need help?” Lavender said.
“You stay put,” Anaya said, and turned around. “In fact, I need you two to get in position. We’re gonna try to do this in one take.”
Brin stood where she needed to be and grabbed hold of the gun.
All the members of the cast and crew had their eyes on Sawyer now. Everyone wanted to see if he could get the van out of that muddy ditch.
Sawyer wasn’t feeling too confident. He slammed the driver’s side door shut and started up the van. He shoved his foot against the pedal. No surprise—the van didn’t budge.
“He’s trying,” Dylan said from behind Brin.
“Come on, Sawyer,” Anaya said, her eyes half-closed. “Come on, come on, come on.”
Sawyer played with all the levers. He slammed his foot on the brake, then pushed the pedal again.
“You son of a bitch,” Sawyer said, pounding his hands against the steering wheel. “Come on! Move it!”
He put the van in reverse, pushed his foot against the pedal as hard as he could, and jerked the wheel to the left. Somehow, miraculously, the van backed up out of the ditch.
“Yes!” Anaya screamed. “Go Sawyer!”
“All right!” Chace shouted.
“Woo hoo!” Dylan added.
“Thank God,” Brin said. “Now we can go home.”
“That’s right,” Sawyer said, pounding his hands against the steering wheel, this time happily. “You didn’t have the strength to mess with me!”
He veered the van around the large ditch and started heading down the hill.
“OK,” Anaya said, turning back to the group. “Brin, Lavender. You know what to do.”
Sawyer smiled. He had everything under control.
But then a pair of sharp teeth entered the back of his neck.
“Over here!” Anaya shouted, walking up to the hill. “Stop over here!” She motioned her h
ands to the left.
The van descended toward the bottom of the hill. It wasn’t slowing down. It was going faster and faster.
Brin was only half paying attention to the vehicle, until now. She squinted her eyes and pointed. “Is it just me… or is he going a little fast?”
“You’re right,” Dylan said, taking a step forward.
Anaya’s smile slowly faded. “Slow down, dude,” she whispered. “Sawyer! What are you doing?”
The van wasn’t slowing down. It was picking up speed. It was coming straight for Anaya.
“Stop!” she screamed. “For God’s sakes!”
Anaya jumped to her right, her feet nearly squashed by the van’s tires.
“It’s not stopping!” Lavender shouted.
“Get out of the way!” Chace screamed.
Chace, Lavender, and Dylan ran frantically behind buildings, but Brin stayed in her spot.
“Why won’t he stop?” she shouted.
“Brin! Move out of the way!” Dylan ran back and grabbed Brin by the arm.
“Should I try to jump inside of it?” Brin said.
“No! Hell, no!”
“But… but what about Sawyer—”
“MOVE IT!”
Dylan pulled Brin to the side and the two leapt forward just as the van careened past them, swerved to the right, and slammed head first into an old well, jumping forty feet into the air and landing upside down on top of the rotting jailhouse.
Brin’s eyes nearly jumped out of their sockets. “Holy shit—”
The van exploded into a giant, orange fireball, knocking everyone back down to the snowy ground.
Chapter Thirteen
Ash sat at the edge of the parking lot, his hands covering his face. He looked like he had been crying.
But as he turned to his left to see his group member Colin sporting a childish werewolf mask over his face, he wiped the tears from his eyes, not from crying, but from laughing.
“We’re not the comedy category, guys,” Ash said, standing back up and sporting a goofy soccer outfit. “This is supposed to be scary!”
“It’s a musical,” Thomas, the director, said. His best friend Valerie was manning the camera. “It’s impossible to make a horror musical not campy. Rocky Horror. Hello?”
“What about Phantom of the Opera?” Ash said. “That wasn’t campy.”
