by Brian Rowe
“Do you see Andrew Lloyd Webber around here, smart-ass?” one of the other cast members Janelle said. She had fake blood running down her long-sleeved t-shirt. Her character had been eaten already, as had the other female cast member, Marina.
“I’m just saying,” Ash said. “That mask is ridiculous.” He turned to Thomas. “Can you do what Spielberg did in Jaws? Show the werewolf from his point of view, and not show him until the very end?”
“I paid thirty bucks for that mask,” Thomas said. “I’m showing it as much as possible.”
“But it looks fake.”
“This is a high school movie, dickwad. Relax.”
“No! It’s not just a high school movie! One day, when I’m rich and famous and directing two features a year, this little movie’s gonna be dug up on Entertainment Tonight and Inside Edition and I’m gonna look like an idiot!”
“Like that’s gonna happen,” Thomas said. “Come on, let’s get set.”
“Where do you want me to start?” Ash said.
“Where you’re standing is fine. Remember, we’re gonna do this part in only three takes.”
Ash sighed. “But it’s kind of a long song.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“You sure?” Ash turned to Valerie, who had the HD camera in her dinky hands.
“You’ll be great,” she said. “I’ll just follow you.”
“OK,” Ash said. “Just tell me when.”
Colin crept up behind Ash, the werewolf mask covering his face. Ash wished that at least Colin’s entire body could be covered with something; only his face was. The rest of him was dressed in a modern green t-shirt and blue jeans, erasing any credibility from the film.
“At least it’s snowing,” he whispered. “At least it’ll give the movie a classy look.”
“What was that?” Colin said from inside the mask.
“Nothing.”
“OK!” Thomas shouted from a few yards away. “And… action!”
Ash turned toward the camera. And he started to sing.
“Oh my! What a sight! It’s the wolf maaaaaaaan!”
He strutted into the parking lot, Colin following close behind, hunched over, his hands in claw mode.
“He ate my friends! Now I’m next! Yes, it’s the wolf maaaaaan!”
Colin reached for Ash, and he dodged his grasp. Ash jumped around Colin, still singing at the top of his lungs.
The singing slowed down. “They said… he was dead. They begged… for his head. They searched… for his nose. And burned… all his clothes.”
Ash didn’t love these lyrics, but he was the only one who volunteered to write them. He knew if he hadn’t that nobody else would’ve tried to, and certainly no one else would’ve attempted rhymes.
Colin brought Ash down to the ground, more like a lover than an enemy.
“He’s going to eat me! He’s going to kill me! The wolf man is back, he’s broken from his pack, and escaped his shack, and he really wants to mack… on my face and my neck and my clothes and my back! Ack!”
Ash stumbled backward and jumped up to his feet, posing with a phony terrified look on his face.
Applause ensued. “And cut!” Thomas said. “That was great!”
Ash shook his head. “I’m sorry, I can’t sing.”
“It’s OK,” Thomas said. “It makes the movie funnier.”
“This is ridiculous,” Ash said, shaking his head in embarrassment. “Promise me nobody will ever see this.”
“I promise I won’t post it on Youtube.”
“You’re gonna put it on Youtube?” Ash’s jaw dropped.
“No, of course not.”
Ash knew he was lying. As he turned around, tears started streaming down his face. This time, the tears weren’t the result of laughing.
---
The group finished filming twenty minutes later, two hours ahead of schedule. It was only 3 P.M.
“Thanks again, everyone,” Thomas said. “Sorry it’s been so cold today.”
“Could’ve shot indoors,” Marina said. She was the cast member most covered in fake blood. “Don’t think it would’ve mattered.”
“It would’ve mattered greatly,” Valerie said, delicately placing the HD camera in the blue bag. “The snow we had today? It made for some crazy gorgeous shots. You guys are gonna be shocked at how beautiful this movie looks.”
“I won’t be,” Thomas said in a haughty manner. “I think I can say, here and now, that we’re gonna have the best movie in the class.”
Ash shook his head. “Not with all that singing of mine, we’re not!”
“Don’t be so negative,” Thomas said, breaking away from the group. “You were great, Ash. Your dads will be proud.”
Thomas started giggling to himself as the rest of the group split up and went their separate ways. Within a minute, five cars were speeding away. Ash was all alone, standing by himself in the parking lot.
He backed up against his Volkswagon Beetle and stared up at the sky. The snow had been coming down all day. He wondered how Brin’s ghost town movie was shaping up.
Part of him wanted to sing and dance in the falling snow—there was nobody around, after all—but he managed to stop himself. He unlocked his car and sat inside.
When he slammed the door, drowning out the noise of the outside wind, he checked his cell phone. He hadn’t looked at his phone in hours. He didn’t have any text messages or missed calls.
Ash knew he wasn’t one of the most popular kids at Grisly High, but he was OK with that. He had his core group of friends, and two dads who, while doing their annoying best to ensure their son to be gay—to no avail—were the sweetest, most loving pair of human beings he’d ever known. He also, at only sixteen, had found a passion in life, his raison d’etre—film.
“What am I gonna watch tonight? Silence of the Lambs, maybe?” Ash had recently started watching all of the Criterion Collection DVDs in order of spine number. He and his dads checked out Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, which stupefied him beyond belief but impressed his dads beyond measure. Ash liked genre movies, but nothing too weird and experimental. He preferred straightforward storytelling, like in the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Wes Craven, and Steven Spielberg.
Ash forgot what he was doing for a moment, before he finally scrolled through his phone contacts and touched Brin’s name.
He slammed the phone up against his ear and waited for his friend to answer.
One ring became three, and three rings became six, before he got her voice-mail. “Uhh, hey Brin. It’s Ash. It’s a little after three o’clock on Saturday. Was just checking in to see how your shoot’s going. You’re probably still filming and might be getting back late, but I wanted to tell you I’m gonna watch Silence of the Lambs tonight. I know you said you didn’t want to watch it, but I think you should give it a try. I hear it’s one of the best horror movies of all time. And it won, like, nineteen Academy Awards.”
He took a deep breath and looked out the window.
“Anyway,” he continued, “text me or call me. It’s been snowing all day and I wanted to make sure you’re all right. Talk to you soon.”
He dropped the phone into the cup-holder and turned on the car’s ignition. He didn’t realize until now how cold it was becoming inside his black Beetle.
He sped out of the parking lot and pulled up to the first intersection.
He glanced at his phone again. There was nothing yet from Brin.
“She’ll call me,” he said, turning on the radio to find Christmas songs blaring, despite the fact that it was the middle of January. “She’s probably just pre-occupied.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Is he still inside? Is he inside?” Anaya screamed as she rushed past the other four across the dirt road, all the way up to the burning van.
Brin didn’t move. She could only watch in horror as the van fell backward against the ground, the jailhouse crumbling for everyone to see.
“Oh my God,” she
said.
“Sawyer! Sawyer!” Anaya covered her arm over her face as she stopped in front of the burning vehicle. It was raging with fire.
“Maybe he fell out,” Lavender said, as she and Chace walked up to the van.
“Yeah, and maybe he’s just unconscious,” Chace added.
“Or maybe he’s dead!” Brin said, louder than she expected to.
“He’s not dead!” Anaya screamed from afar. “He can’t be dead!”
Dylan appeared beside Brin. “What do we do now?” he said.
Brin grabbed his hand, and they walked over to meet the other three. The van was completely destroyed, as was the jailhouse behind it.
Anaya was in tears. She kneeled down and wept.
Sawyer wasn’t in the van. He was sprawled out on the ground a few feet behind it.
“Sawyer,” Anaya said, taking a few steps forward and kneeling down. “Sawyer… please say something…”
His body faced the burning jailhouse, and nobody could see his face. He wasn’t moving, he didn’t appear to be breathing, and his left arm, the only body part Brin could see, was bright red and burned to a crisp.
Brin stepped past Dylan and put a hand on Anaya’s shoulder. “Anaya,” she said, “he’s gone.”
“He’s not gone!”
“We need to get out of here. We need to get an ambulance.”
“He’s fine! He’ll be fine!” Anaya jumped back up and faced the crowd. Her eyes had doubled in size and the veins in her forehead looked ready to explode.
Brin turned back to Anaya. “We need to get help—”
“We haven’t gotten our last shot,” she said, turning away from the roaring fire and wiping her tears away. “We can’t do anything until we get our last shot.”
Now it was Brin’s turn to get angry. She couldn’t take it anymore. “Forget about the damn movie, you crazy psycho! We’re in trouble here! We need to get help!”
“Not until we finish.”
“Are you insane? Sawyer’s dead! A member of our group is dead!”
“I know!” Anaya shouted, a tear rolling down her cheek. “And it would be a waste for his death to be in vain! Without that last shot, we don’t have a movie! And then Sawyer died for nothing!”
Brin shook her head. Anaya appeared to have lost all sense of human decency. “You’re sick,” she said. “I didn’t even want to come here. I told you we shouldn’t come here!”
“You little pansy,” Anaya said, turning to the group. “You’re all pansies!”
Everybody by now had tuned the director out. They all knew from the get-go that the girl was ambitious, but nobody thought her to be this insane.
“Will someone just knock her teeth out?” Dylan said, boldly.
“My pleasure,” Chace said, rushing up to Anaya.
“Stay away from me,” Anaya said, putting up a fist. “Or I’ll deck you in the neck, pretty boy.”
Lavender marched toward her, too, but she walked past her, all the way up to Sawyer’s motionless body.
“I’ve wanted to do this all day,” Chace said with relish. He tried to slug her in the face, but Anaya was too quick for his own good.
She jumped back and started running in the opposite direction. “This isn’t over!” she screamed from a distance. “I’m gonna get my final shot!”
“Is this really happening?” Dylan said. “Is that girl really human?”
“Come on, you guys,” Chace said. “There’s no use standing around here now. We need to get out of here—”
“There’s a pulse,” Lavender said.
Brin, Dylan, and Chace turned to her. They didn’t know what to say.
Finally, Brin said, “What?”
“It’s faint, but it’s there. Sawyer’s still alive, guys.”
Brin rubbed her eyes for a second, then nodded. “OK. Then we need to get going. We need to get him help.”
Brin was already ripping her black dress off. She didn’t care. Lavender followed her example, pulling her old-fashioned outfit over her head. Then Chace ripped off his vest and threw his goofy hat to the ground.
Everybody turned to Dylan. He shrugged. “I’m actually pretty comfy in this.”
Chace, Lavender, and Brin turned to the fire. Without saying a word to one another, the trio ran forward and tossed their period clothing in the flames.
“Come on,” Brin said, shivering, with only a white tank-top and pajama pants on. “Let’s find our clothes. Let’s get our things in order. And let’s get out of here.”
“What about Anaya?” Lavender said.
“Forget her,” Brin said, surveying the area to see if she could spot her. She couldn’t. The girl had disappeared. “Let’s go. Grab your clothes and let’s meet at the church in two minutes.”
Brin raced to the other side of the wreckage to find her present-day clothes—which, thankfully in this freezing weather, included jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, and a large, bulky sweatshirt. She threw it all on and raced over to the church. Lavender, Dylan, and Chace were already there.
“So what’s the plan?” Dylan said.
“What do you think, doofus?” Brin said. “We get the hell out of here.”
“It’s almost dark,” Lavender said. “This place is sixteen miles off the main road.”
“So?” Brin chuckled at the group’s timidity. “We don’t have a choice, guys.”
“I agree,” Chace said. He turned around and stared with confusion at Lavender. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Dylan took a step toward them, but Lavender took a step back. “No,” she said.
“What’s the matter with you?” Chace talked to the girl like she was his own wife, not the acquaintance Brin believed her to be. “Don’t be stupid.”
“Exactly. I don’t want to be stupid. It’s sixteen miles in the snow. We could lose our way and die of frostbite out there. I won’t have it.”
“You’ll die here,” Brin said. “Sawyer will surely die here. You think somebody’s gonna come save you in the morning? The road was closed, remember? We’re not even supposed to be here!”
“People know we’re here,” Lavender said, her eyes welling up with tears. “I told my family, my friends. They expect us to be home tonight. They’ll know something’s wrong when none of us come home! If we stay here until morning, they’re sure to come save us. I know it.”
“Yeah? Well what if they don’t?” Brin said. “What if nobody comes out here until Monday? We don’t have any food! We don’t have anything to drink! It was all in the van!”
“I’m not asking for Sunday,” Lavender said. “I’m just asking for tonight. Let’s stay tonight, let’s stay by the fire, and then start our hike early in the morning, as soon as the sun comes out. Is that too much to ask?”
“I don’t want to wait,” Brin said. “Sawyer won’t have a chance if we wait.”
“I’m tired of talking,” Chace said, and he started to make his way up the hill. “I’m going.”
“Fine,” Lavender said. “I’ll stay here with Anaya, with the psychopath.”
The girl turned around and headed back toward the burning jailhouse.
“Jesus Christ,” Brin said, shaking her head. She reached her hand out for Dylan. “Come on.”
He took a step back, too. “Lavender has a point.”
Brin couldn’t believe her ears. “Are you kidding me? Now’s not the time. It’s not safe here.”
“It’s safer here than it is out there!”
“How do you know?”
“I just do!” Dylan started running after Lavender. “I’m sorry, Brin!”
Brin sighed, but she didn’t run after him. She stayed put. Before Brin could blink, the young man was out of sight. She turned to Chace, and he looked back at her. She never thought she’d ever be alone with one of the hunkiest guys at Grisly High. But here she was.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hey.”
“So. You with me? Or are you gonna bail, too?”
�
�No, I’m with you.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
Brin and Chace started walking up the large hill. They had been walking for barely two minutes, when she heard a weird noise.
“Shit,” Brin said, turning around.
“What is it?”
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
Brin stopped and strained her ears. She couldn’t hear anything now, except for the strong wind.
“It sounded like a… a…”
“What?”
Brin swallowed her own vomit. “A growl. Like from an animal.”
“A growl?”
She nodded and started walking in front of him.
“What do you suggest we do?” Chace said.
“Walk faster. Walk a lot faster.”
Chapter Fifteen
Brin couldn’t help chuckling to herself forty minutes later as Chace, the star football, basketball, and baseball player, kept lagging behind as the two marched toward the paved road that would take them back to the 395 freeway.
“Come on, dude!” Brin shouted. “Hurry up!”
“I’m going as fast as I can,” he said. “You’ve got better shoes.”
He was right about that. While Brin was sporting a fairly new pair of comfortable boots, Chace had a pair of rundown tennis shoes that prevented him from keeping up a fast pace.
Brin stopped and waited a minute for Chace to catch up. She looked out at the dirt road before them. It was now officially nighttime, and five times harder to see the road—the sun had disappeared behind the mountains ten minutes ago. Brin and Chace were sitting ducks in a large open valley of nothingness, surrounded by the tallest and scariest of mountains that seemed to suggest the two of them weren’t alone.
At least there’s somebody with me, she thought. At least I’m not totally alone.
“OK, which way now?” Chace said.
“Did you check your phone?”
“Yeah, for like the hundredth time. Still no signal.”
“Damn it. Maybe we’ll get a signal when we reach the paved road.”
“Where is that?”
“Up ahead,” Brin said. “We should be there any minute.”
“Do you think the rest of the group will be OK?” Chace started shaking from the cold. Brin could tell he wanted to stop and rest. She wouldn’t let him.
