NIGHT OF THE PENTAGRAM
By
Barrymore Tebbs
© 2011 Barrymore Tebbs. All rights reserved.
Chapter One
Elizabeth York stepped out of her trailer to a flurry of instamatic flashbulbs stabbing like knives into her brain. She saw half a dozen faceless blobs behind the barricades, calling her name, autograph books waving in their hands. Jesus, some days they came crawling out of the woodwork. Any other time she would be delighted to greet her fans, but tonight she had been wrapped in the dark interior of the trailer for several hours as the migraine continued unabated until the Assistant Director tapped on the door, announcing that she was on camera in ten minutes.
“Can’t somebody get them out of here?” She held up a palm to ward off the onslaught of camera flashes. “Where the hell is security?”
The AD called over his shoulder, “Somebody get those kids out of here.”
Elizabeth’s hand massaged her temple. “Sorry, what scene is it?”
The AD rolled his eyes. “Scene 28. Roxanne finds the dead hooker.”
“Oh yeah. Right.”
Rhonda Craig stepped out of the trailer beside Elizabeth. Like Elizabeth, she was dressed in a scanty halter top, mini skirt and go-go boots. More shrieks of excitement from the diehard fans. Rhonda pushed the Styrofoam coffee cup into Elizabeth’s hand and fearlessly approached the barricade, signed autographs and blew kisses before striding across the street behind the AD. The next time Elizabeth would see Rhonda she would be laying dead in a pile of wet garbage in an alley on the wrong side of Santa Monica Boulevard.
The scene was to be shot hand held which would cut down on the usual amount of time it took to mount camera units and lighting rigs. Still, it promised to be a long night, with Elizabeth being coached through a series of different reactions for the camera. She would only get a few hours sleep before she was due back on set for day scenes. The physically demanding role was one that had been coveted by Hollywood’s brightest young stars. Everyone from Jane Fonda to Barbara Parkins had been up for the part of Roxanne, the rookie cop who goes undercover to catch a modern day Jack the Ripper who leaves a trail of bloody corpses in his wake, only to wind up as an addict herself. It was a career making role, a dangerous exploration of the under belly of Los Angeles inner city streets, a world of prostitutes and heroin addicts. Masquerade was a gritty, realistic film, intended to speak to a new generation of American movie goers who demanded social awareness along with their popcorn and Coca Cola.
Elizabeth pondered the milky gray coffee in her hand and then pitched it into the nearest garbage can. She winced once more at the pain encircling her head. She was certain it was brought on by the stress of the production combined with the state of her physical health and increasing lack of sleep
The AD escorted her across Santa Monica Boulevard, empty of real traffic now and populated by only a few studio owned cars. As she approached the film crew on the street corner, she allowed the character of Roxanne to take over. The popular method actors often proved difficult on set due to their penchant for living the roles they embodied, but Elizabeth was blessed with a natural ability to slip into character on demand. Her movements became both jerky and languid as she allowed the imagined sensations of booze and heroin to flow through her veins. She knew from days of sitting in make-up having the gaunt cheeks and hollowed out eyes painted on her face that she had the authentic look of a junkie. It also helped that she’d managed to lose twenty pounds for the role. Elizabeth was tiny to begin with, no more than five feet and as thin as Twiggy or Mia Farrow. Now she was as close to emaciated as one could get without serious risk to personal health. The frenzied shooting schedule left her exhausted and after two months of crash dieting she was often hungry and lethargic. And now these damned headaches.
Elizabeth stood at the entrance to the alley, already bent over with the type of cramps brought on by heroin withdrawal that she had witnessed first hand in the street junkies she had interviewed as part of her preparation for the role of Roxanne. The other actress playing the role of Second Hooker at the beginning of the scene stood by, waiting to be handed a lighted cigarette burned down to the pre-determined length called for in the shot. The Director of Photography was ready to hoist the camera onto his shoulder so that he could follow Roxanne into the alley, the gaffer behind him with a rack of hand-held lights.
“Roxanne?” She heard Kirk before she saw him.
Kirk Bancroft was the British wunderkind fresh out of film school. Not much older than Elizabeth and he was already shooting first studio production. Outside of Cannes where it had received unanimous critical praise, his independent feature Diamondback had only been seen at a handful of art houses in New York and L.A., but it was the kind of film that made proponents of the new Hollywood sit up and take notice. Combined with the country’s relaxed moral standards and Hollywood’s freshly minted motion picture rating system, studios were now looking to develop and market films which were more violent, more visceral, and more disturbing. Masquerade promised to give the American people what they wanted, sex, drugs, and a hard R rating.
“Ready, Roxanne?”
Elizabeth nodded. Despite the relentless pounding in her skull, she was as ready as she could be.
“Lights…” called Kirk, and the scene became painted with long, eerie shadows cast by the hand-held lights.
“Camera…and action.”
Elizabeth reeled across the sidewalk and slammed into the brick wall. Her painted fingernails clawed at the bricks as though she were in a prison cell clawing her way out.
“Roxy, Roxy, what is it baby? You all right?” said the actress playing Second Hooker.
“Cut, cut, cut!” yelled Kirk.
“What? I said it right didn’t I?” insisted Second Hooker.
“You were right on, baby, right on.” Kirk glared at her. “But I’m talking to Roxanne. Now, when you hit the wall, I want you to slam into it as hard as you can. I want to feel the impact when your body hits that wall. The audience wants to feel it. Do you think you can do that?”
A wardrobe assistant popped up to give Second Hooker’s Afro wig one last tease and swiped at Elizabeth’s face with his makeup brush.
Elizabeth swatted his hand away. She shut her eyes. The metal band around her head wrenched tighter.
“We can get someone to fling you into the wall if you think that will help.” Kirk mimed the action with balled up fists. He was as hyper as a hopped-up junkie. “And don’t come into the wall facing the camera. Face away from the camera when you hit the wall, and then just slowly turn your face down and to the right. We must see the absolute panic in your eyes when you finally turn your face toward the camera. Ready?”
Elizabeth nodded again.
Kirk shouted, “Action.”
Elizabeth threw herself into the wall. The snap on her purse came undone. Her hands clawed at the bricks. She was vaguely aware that one of the false fingernails had snapped off. One clawing arm came down as she turned her face into the wall, giving a bit of face to the camera. Her jaw was slack and a ribbon of spittle dangled from her lip. She felt the strap of the purse slip down her arm and knew that the pack of cigarettes, make-up compact, a bottle of pills and the other contents of the purse were spilling out onto the sidewalk.
“Roxy, Roxy, what is it baby? You all right?” The other actress grabbed for her shoulder, and then acting on instinct reached down to rescue the purse dangling from Elizabeth’s elbow. The camera zoomed in on Elizabeth’s face as she pushed past the other hooker, nearly tripping over her in the process. She stumbled into the alley. The camera man panned with her movement, and when her back was completely turned to the camera, Kirk again yelled cut.
Elizabeth turned away from the scene as the film crew reset in the alley for the shot where Roxanne finds the dead hooker.
“Are you all right?” Second Hooker asked. “I mean, for real, you don’t look so hot.”
“Migraine. Just want to get this over with and go home and sleep.”
Kirk pressed his lips close to Elizabeth’s ear and whispered, “Beautiful, baby, keep that up and we’ll all be home in our beds by sunrise.”
Elizabeth rubbed at her temple again. Bed, she wanted nothing more right now than to go to bed and sleep for a week.
Kirk hurried into the alley and scoped out the shot with his viewfinder, then positioned himself behind the camera crew.
Elizabeth could see her mark now, the overturned garbage can and the heap of trash where Roxanne would find the body of the murdered hooker.
Kirk called, “Action!” and Elizabeth staggered around the corner into the alley. She bent over, holding her stomach, willing the very real pain in her head to refocus itself to her stomach to lend realism to her performance. She groped her way along the wall, one hand propping herself against the bricks. As she looked down, she saw the leg with the go-go boot protruding from the pile of garbage. She paused and then lurched forward until she was able to see the dead hooker’s body in full view.
The throbbing in her head exploded as the rack of lights hit her full in the face like a sunburst, the sudden whiteout plunging her back in time until she was standing in the living room of the house on Mulholland Drive. She flicked the light switch by the living room door and the stark white walls and white leather and blond oak furnishings burst into view, blinding her as the furnishings and colors leapt from the darkness.
Blood ran in rivulets down the Naugahyde cushions on the couch and a sticky pool of blackish blood spread across the floor. Spatters of blood on the white couches and chairs, blood on the silver-pearl shag carpet, and that vile thing painted in blood on the wall.
Elizabeth knew what was happening and struggled to pull herself back to the moment. She was in an alleyway in downtown Los Angeles, not in the house on Mulholland Drive. It was November, not June. But she was no longer aware of the bodies of the film crew huddled a few feet away. The sound of late night traffic as it cruised the streets of Los Angeles slipped away as if she were being pulled down a long tunnel. She saw nothing but the blood splattered room and Sven’s twisted body on the floor, the gaping wound in his throat, the slashes across his chest. His eyes were white and wide and staring, still glistening with the wetness that welled in them as he had pleaded for his life, the look in his eyes that she would never be able to erase from her memory.
Elizabeth screamed. But no matter how hard she screamed it did nothing to blot out the memory of seeing her husband’s butchered body on the floor of their stately Hollywood home. She screamed, and screamed again. And the darkness overtook her.
*****
Elizabeth turned in the bed.
Blank walls. White. Clean. Sterile. No blood. Generic curtains covered a window, not thick enough to block out the light of another sun drenched Southern California day. She winced against the light creeping down the wall from beneath the curtains.
She twisted her head to the other side. Hospital. I’m in a hospital again. But was it then, or was it now? Had she just discovered Sven’s body or had that been months ago? Was this the first blackout, or the second, or the sixth? So many times she had lost count. She closed her eyes and drifted. There was no Sven, no blood, only a warm white comfort that wrapped around her like a psychic cocoon.
A nurse came into the room, generic uniform, generic smile. Took her vitals and offered a pill. Questions formed in Elizabeth’s mind, but her lips refused to form the words to give them life. She swallowed the pill with a sip of water and slipped away again into the soft white comfort.
During the night she came awake and began to piece together what must have happened. She remembered the night shoot in the alley off of Santa Monica Boulevard. She remembered the cool night air, could taste the bitter coffee on her tongue, and felt the pounding headache that had chosen the most inopportune moment to assault her. The scene of the location shoot was clear in her mind. She watched a succession of images, the crew maneuvering lights and cameras, Kirk’s dramatic gestures, the other actresses chatting and smoking as they waited for their cue, but after that there was nothing. Her memory became as blank as the hospital walls. What exactly happened? Had she filmed the scene, or had she been taken by another of her spells? That must be it. The headache was the clue. Her blackouts were always precipitated by a series of headaches, a demented creature banging around her head with a tiny silver hammer. The image of Sven’s murder flashed before her once more. The red blood saturating the white carpet, dripping down the clean, white walls, the gaping wounds, and the thing that horrified her the most and made the memory an obscene spectacle in her mind: the inverted star scrawled in her husband’s blood on the wall above his head.
A tear slid from Elizabeth’s eye tracing a wet trail down her cheek until it soaked into the pillow beneath her face. She shut her eyes, willing the images to go away, but she knew they would not. Not now and perhaps not ever.
*****
When she woke up again, she noticed the difference in the room right away. It felt warmer, more human. She smelled the flowers before she saw them, lavish bouquets arranged about the room amid a sprinkling of get well cards. Bright colors and warm wishes. A man in a pressed suit and pristine shirt who sat by the window turned his head toward her and smiled.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hello, Gavin.” Her voice was weak.
“How are you feeling?”
A sigh. “I don’t know.”
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
“All of them.”
“Doctor, I think the patient’s going to live.” He dazzled her with his smile. Gavin Danvers was her agent, young, bright, impossibly handsome. Elizabeth often wondered why he wasn’t in pictures himself. Captain of his high school drama team, romantic leads at UCLA. But good looks were everywhere in Hollywood, and film acting was a far cry from the school stage. Not everyone had the subtlety it often took to portray a nuanced performance for the cameras.
“Thanks, Gavin. Where am I?”
“At Cedars-Sinai.”
“How long have I been here?”
“You were admitted night before last.”
A day. She had lost a full day.
“So what happened this time?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I remember the location shoot on Santa Monica. It was chilly. We were doing the scene where Roxanne finds the first murdered hooker. I -” Her voice trailed off. She looked away. A stab of red caught her eye among the bursts of flowers at her bedside. “I had a terrible headache.”
“Do you remember anything after that?”
Elizabeth shook her head.
“Well, according to Kirk Bancroft you gave one hell of a performance. He said it was gut-wrenching. I’d say that was high praise coming from him. Only no one realized you were no longer acting.”
“What do you mean?”
Gavin stood up and lit a cigarette and paced toward the window. He lifted a corner of the curtain and squinted at the glare, then spun on the heel of one polished Florsheim to face her. His blocking was flawless.
“Kirk said your reaction to the discovery of the murdered hooker was on the money. I saw the dailies yesterday afternoon. Your performance was mind blowing. I’ve never heard such screams. The problem was you didn’t stop when he yelled ‘cut’. He let you have your moment. It was only after he yelled ‘cut’ three or four times that he realized you were no longer there. You were screaming out of control while they led you back to your trailer. You didn’t seem to know who anyone was, not even Kirk. They said it was as though you had gone somewhere else.” His little finger curled in the air as he took a drag on his cigarette.
Elizabeth closed her eyes
and turned away. None of this came as a surprise to her, but she was grateful to be told what had happened.
“It happened again, didn’t it?” said Gavin.
Elizabeth didn’t respond. There was no need. They both knew what the answer was. The blackouts had been coming more and more frequently since that fateful night in June.
Gavin had taken her out to dinner to celebrate her winning the part in Masquerade. It was the kind of part that had Oscar written all over it. Winning the statuette would not only solidify Elizabeth’s career for life, but boost the reputation of Gavin’s agency as well. He represented a handful of stars who had nominations under their belts, including Elizabeth York for her performance as Ophelia in last year’s contemporary take on Hamlet, but so far no winners in his stable.
They polished off several bottles of wine during dinner before Gavin dropped her off outside the door to the house on Mulholland Drive where she lived with her husband of less than a year, the Swedish film director Sven Lindstrom. Gavin’s Jaguar idled in the driveway. She had removed her heels so that she wouldn’t trip on her way into the house, but she found she had to steady herself outside the door as she fumbled with her key. She turned and waved to Gavin and with a honk of his car horn, the Jag eased out of the driveway.
Night of the Pentagram Page 1
