Experimental Film

by Gemma Files

  I did this, I watched Mrs. Whitcomb whisper to herself. I am doing this. I let this happen. Hearing, as she did—

  (yes, you did; you do)

  (you do my work, for you are mine)

  (you always were)

  (you always will be)

  No malice in that statement, or even passion, save the faintest possible hint of satisfaction; no cruelty except for that found in nature, occasionally rebalancing itself to the tune of a couple of hundred thousand extinctions. And while I’d never actually tell Simon this out loud—though since he’s eventually going to read this I guess the point is rendered somewhat moot—the closest I’ve ever come to believing like he and his family do is when I think about what happened next. How it was a random fluke, a complete coincidence, which somehow kept the world going on as it always has, instead of ripping apart like a bad episiotomy as Lady Midday birthed herself back into what we view as reality.

  The fact is if Mrs. Whitcomb’s compartment had been fitted with those newfangled electric light bulbs instead of the old-style Pintsch gas lamps, which most trains were already in the process of switching out, there wouldn’t have been any matches in that little tray beside the sconces on her wall. Which means she, in turn, wouldn’t have been able to grab one, scrape it ’cross the nearest hard surface—the top of that same side table—and then throw the lit match into the heart of her projector’s exposed gear work, thus causing Vasek Sidlo’s mentally-imprinted silver nitrate film, already overheated, to literally explode on contact.

  The sheet-screen caught fire, and in almost the same instant, a great howl of cheated rage seized her, gathered her up, bore her up and away and forwards. The world folded in on itself, wiping away sight, sound, smell—everything. No pain followed, only darkness, pressure, cold and damp; ground sealing fast overtop, grit of soil everywhere, a smothering weight of earth on her back. The field again, though from a very different angle.

  (“he here or I with him,” daughter: do you remember?)

  (you no longer care which, or so you say)

  Reaching out, blindly, barely able to move, till she felt the pressure of something against her outstretched fingers, just out of reach: tiny, sharp, hard. Like bones.

  (all I want is your toil, your duty, as promised)

  (so many others ask for much more)

  (yet if you make yourself useless to me, I will give you for gift something very different indeed)

  The twenty-seven secret bones of a dead child’s hand, almost seeming to fold themselves into hers, in that last mocking second before she breathed a double lungful of dirt.

  “Holy shit, Miss—Lois—that’s an awful fucking story, right there.” Safie’s face wasn’t much but an olive-toned blur, but I could imagine her expression from the sound of her voice: half appalled, half dazed, close to numbness.

  “I know, Safie.”

  “And you, what, dreamed all this? That’s why you called me last night?”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s what actually did happen, during the seizure, but I definitely get how you might not want to believe me on that one. Same way I’m sure you get why I didn’t want to tell you the whole thing over the phone, at least not before you agreed to see—to meet with me.”

  Safie shook her head slightly, whistling through her front teeth. “Jesus,” she said, after a moment. Then: “Okay, fine. So our really bad mistake was getting Sidlo to make another memory-film.”

  “Because it can be used as a door for Lady Midday, right.”

  “Which was—why we made it, I kind of thought.”

  I sighed. “Sort of. You know, what I said I was trying to do . . .”

  “Talk to Lady Midday. Get her to leave your kid alone.”

  “Yeah, well—that was basically bullshit, on my end. I was actually going to try and trap her, maybe even kill her. Get Sidlo to put her on film again, then burn it without looking at it like he said Mrs. Whitcomb should’ve, back when.”

  Safie rocked back as if I’d shoved her. “And Sidlo was down with this?”

  “Sure. I mean, he would’ve been. He hated Lady Midday, right? For ruining Mrs. Whitcomb’s life.” I paused. “That said, I didn’t really . . . tell him that part, as such.”

  “You thought you could trap a god in a freakin’ roll of film,” Safie repeated, understandably stuck on that particular part of the equation.

  “A little god, by your Dédé’s standards,” I pointed out.

  “Uh huh. Still . . .” Safie shook her head again then, as best I could make out, looked straight at me. “That was possibly the dumbest damn idea I’ve ever heard, Miss.”

  I hissed, rubbing the bridge of my nose where my glasses would usually rest if I were wearing them. “Christ, I know that now. Didn’t, then. Not to mention I was also kind of out of my fucking mind at the time.”

  “True enough,” Safie agreed, sipping her coffee.

  We were downstairs again, at Tim’s; it’d seemed the easiest option, especially since I still needed Simon’s help to get down there. He was off at the nearest local park with Clark, waiting for me to text him whenever I wanted to be taken back up. Today was comparatively good on the sight front thus far, in that I could not only make out most things held a few inches from my nose, so long as I studied them a while, but could also tell the difference between static and moving objects—more like blundering my way through a fog rather than being blindfolded, or having everything I encountered look like it was encased in white plaster.

  “So what happened to Sidlo in your dream?” Safie asked.

  I thought back. “He . . . said he was sorry,” I began, slowly. “And she said it wasn’t his fault, or mine, or hers. My sin brought you to Her attention, so She would not let you go till you had served Her ends once more. But I can make sure She never touches you again. . . .”

  And then I was back there, for a split second, watching Mrs. Whitcomb’s ghost slide her hand inside Sidlo’s chest, arm stiffening to the elbow, squeezing something. Saw Sidlo gasp, lift his head and smile, then slump sideways, blind eyes fixed; thank you, his lips shaped, silently. Mrs. Whitcomb remained motionless, fist still sunk wrist-deep between his ribs, as though reluctant to release whatever she was touching.

  You have to do it, Lois, she told me. Find the film. Destroy it.

  “I understand.”

  She will not make it easy.

  I remember opening my mouth to respond, maybe snap something stupid, like and why am I not surprised? But something suddenly stopped me, struck me hard, a punch to the stomach so deep it made me physically unable to breathe: light and shadow folding together, deep beyond the blinds’ narrow-thread window, like the flicker at the end of a tunnel. Vibrations in my feet, heralding an approaching train.

  “Is there . . . something . . . behind you?”

  Sister, this much is certain: something lies behind everything.

  Under the veil, once more fallen shut, Mrs. Whitcomb’s skull seemed to smile, sadly. Light mounted, wiping her features away.

  “Yes,” I managed, tongue dry to cracking. “But, what I mean is—is that—?”

  (—Her?)

  Yes. Which is why you should wake up.

  Now.

  I emerged from my fugue to find Safie snapping her fingers near my right ear, quick but discreet—eyes intent on mine, trying to catch my gaze without making a scene. “Miss,” she was saying, low and worried. “Miss, Miss Cairns, hey. Lois?”

  “Here,” I replied, at last.

  “Um, good. What just happened?”

  I shook my head, to clear it. “Not all too sure. Harrison said I might have episodes, like little drop-outs—sort of petit mal, but not a big deal, comparatively. Sorry to worry you, if I did.” She restrained herself from questioning what had happened. “Okay, so. The film’s in custody, right? And we can get it back now that they’re no
t gonna charge us with anything . . . They do have to release it, right? The reel belongs to us, after all—to you.”

  “Yeah, ’course. We can go down right now, easily.”

  I nodded. “And then we destroy it. We don’t watch it, don’t file it, none of that. Just burn the bastard up till it’s gone, pure and fucking simple.”

  “Co-fucking-signed,” Safie agreed, without blinking. We shared a sort of mutual half-grin, well aware how our lives had morphed into some unlikely genre mash-up—Quentin Tarantino does supernatural giallo, maybe, or a Guillermo del Toro sitcom, both with a CanCon twist.

  And then we were in a cab, me voice-texting Simon as to where we’d gone, him responding almost immediately: Wish you’d told me first but okay, love. And then we were getting out in front of 54 Division, Safie leading me by the sleeve, like the world’s largest five-year-old. And then we were talking to a constable on the front desk till, eventually, Detective Correa appeared.

  “Miss Hewsen, Ms. Cairns,” she greeted us, polite as ever. “You look—better, overall. What can I do for you?”

  “I’d kind of like my stuff back,” Safie said, which was an almost exact précis of what we’d already told that relatively nice-sounding uniform now busy answering the phone a few feet to our left. “Didn’t know who else to talk to about it, really. So.”

  “Hmmm,” Correa replied, not seeming particularly put out. “Well, as it happens, things are slow right now. Wait here.”

  Safie ushered me over then went to get us both more coffee, not that we needed it. I sat there for what seemed like longer than necessary, listening to the station’s din like it was a really extended John Cage piece; the coffee, when it arrived, was hot, grainy, Java-flavoured water. Eventually, I heard Correa’s sensible shoes tapping back down the hall, and sat up straighter.

  “I have some rather disappointing news,” she told us.

  Tired, holy Christ, so tired. It’s a long time since I’ve had to think about all this deliberately, or with any sort of genuine detail; at least the bulk of two years since I’ve even allowed myself to, and part of that is mere self-protection—for the child of two actors, amusing enough, I’m a remarkably shitty liar. Which means I basically have to all but convince myself whatever agreed-upon fable I’m currently parroting is true, in order to even attempt to put it over on anyone else.

  I don’t know who I expect to see this, or when. After I’m dead, maybe. But then again, how plausible is it, really, except as a litany of hallucinations and existential crises—the testimony of a woman who lost both her sight and her mind, at least temporarily, while getting caught up in forces far beyond her own control? It doesn’t even have to contain anything truly supernatural if you just consider it from the correct angle: already under intense psychological pressure, I experienced a series of sad but explainable traumatic events while researching a similarly eccentric and unstable woman who held odd, creepy beliefs which caused her to attribute every bad thing that happened in her life to a long-dormant monster goddess’s malign influence. A type of transference occurred, thus causing me to develop a version of those same odd, creepy beliefs myself. QED. And all that’s without even going into Wrob Barney’s contribution to the whole affair. . . .

  Oh yeah, right. I should probably start doing exactly that.

  What had happened, Correa was eventually forced to admit, was that Safie’s effects—Sidlo’s reel very definitely included—had somehow disappeared from their designated space in 54 Division’s otherwise hyper-efficient evidence processing and storage department. At first, they thought perhaps it was a matter of misfiling, of someone screwing up protocol, even filling out the paperwork incorrectly; Hewsen’s not such a weird name, in context, but Safie sort of is. And I’ve certainly heard myself called “Miss Korns” over enough P.A. systems to know how difficult it is to believe what’s right in front of you sometimes, especially if you’re afraid of embarrassing yourself by pronouncing it incorrectly.

  “So what now?” I asked Correa, who shrugged, though somewhat uncomfortably. “Wait and see,” she proposed. “We have a pretty good system here, you know—even when things do go astray, they tend to turn up fairly fast later on, once we start looking.”

  “There’s . . . a bit of a time element involved, Detective,” I said.

  “How so?”

  Which probably wasn’t the world’s smartest tack to take, considering it was the reason we spent a good deal of the next few hours explaining why we hadn’t warned the officers on scene they were handling a potential fire hazard. After a while, Correa’s perennially bolshy partner got involved and started tossing around phrases like anti-police terrorism, but she thankfully shut him down before it could go much further—maybe she figured out that grilling a legally blind woman who’s just gotten out of hospital over something you already know is bullshit wouldn’t end well, especially when they’re a former journalist who implies they have enough press contacts to get it looked into afterwards.

  Simon was waiting for us when we at last exited the station, alone, arms crossed. “I dropped Clark off with Lee,” he told me. “So, how’d you like the nickel tour of their interrogation suites?”

  I reached out for his hand, hoping my facial expression looked mainly apologetic rather than annoyed. “Don’t suppose you’d believe I got so jealous Safie and you had already been through once that I just had to experience it for myself.”

  He snorted.

  “Not really, no.”

  I sighed. “Should probably tell you the truth then, I guess.”

  “My dad tells me it’s a good policy in general, Biblically speaking.”

  We ended up in the Queen Mother Café, up near Queen Street West and Beverly. Three orders of Pad Thai later, Simon was up to speed and looking better fed, if not entirely convinced. “Importance of the film as an artefact left aside for a minute,” he began, “what do you think happened? Wrob Barney and his magic chequebook again?”

  “We don’t have any proof of that,” Safie pointed out.

  “No,” I agreed. “But I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  Now it was her turn to sigh. “Yeah, me either.”

  “Well then, that’s at least an investigative starting point,” Simon argued. “You’ve already got a documented pattern of him interfering in your project. We can call Correa, tell her about Malin Riegert, the NFA, the stalking—point the machine at Wrob and let it take over. Do what it’s supposed to do for us, for a change.” He pulled out his wallet and extracted a card, holding it up before me like a magician doing a trick. “She left contact information, last time we talked. I say we use it.”

  I looked at Safie, her expression unreadable in the dim light; seemed like as good an idea as any, and I said so. But just as Simon went digging for his phone, Safie’s started to ring out from our side of the table; Safie jumped to answer it. “Yes? Soraya, hi, yeah. What? No, haven’t had a chance. We were—” A longer pause followed, and when she spoke again, her voice had gone grim. “I’m actually with Ms. Cairns right now, and her husband. Can I put you on speaker? . . . Okay, go ahead.”

  “Hi, Lois,” Soraya Mousch said, her lovely, low tone unmistakeable. “And Mr. Lois.”

  “Simon, thanks.”

  “Simon. Sorry to interrupt you all, but I forwarded Safie an email yesterday, which I gather she’s just getting around to now. It came through an old distribution list, one of those things Max and I—well, at any rate, I keep forgetting to unsubscribe. I thought I’d better follow up; you and she will both want to know about this, given what you’ve been working on.”

  Simon rolled his eyes. “Or, you know, you could tell us what it says, just for the hell of it—” He cut himself off as Safie stiffened in mid-scan, sat up and spat something vicious-sounding, probably in Kurdish. She almost handed the phone to me automatically, then thought better and passed it to him instead. “Read this ou
t loud,” she told him.

  Simon took it from her, squinted down at the screen. “Ursulines Studio, 8:00 P.M., November 15, World Premiere,” he read. “Be one of the first to see a lost piece of Canadian history. . . .” His voice slowed, incredulous. “Untitled 14, by Wrob Barney, uses original antique technology to recreate the never-before-seen work of Canada’s first female filmmaker, Iris Dunlopp Whitcomb—oh, I don’t believe this.” He shoved the phone back at Safie, raking both hands through his hair. “That asshole!”

  “Ah,” Soraya’s voice observed. “So it is a surprise.”

  “To put it mildly.” I tapped forefinger to teeth, literally staring at nothing. “Classic Wrob. He’s going to pass her stuff off as his own—and ten to one he’ll use Sidlo’s whole reel, too, not just what he digitized from the cache Jan found.” I tried to laugh, but couldn’t manage much more than a grunt. “Talk about disrespect for somebody else’s work; can’t think Lady Midday’s gonna approve of that.”

  “Lady who?”

  Safie grabbed the phone again, breath quickening. “Soraya, I’m sorry, we have to go,” she said. “But thank you, so much—bye.” She disconnected, cutting Soraya off mid-farewell. “Lois, that’s less than half an hour from now, right in the middle of the Market; be a lot of people there, and none of them know better. We have to stop it.”

  “We,” I repeated. “Like, you and me, you mean. The almost-blind person.”

  “That might be an advantage.”

  “No.” Simon slammed his palm down between us, startling our nearest neighbours. “Look, if the both of you are convinced then we’ll all go. But no matter what, Lois—” He leaned forward, tone calm but hard, my hand abruptly in his. “No matter what, I want you to promise me you’ll stay back and let me handle it. I don’t want you risking yourself. Am I clear?”