by Shock Totem
Beyond the saddle of Cahuenga Pass, the rugged mountain terrain surrendered to Hollywood’s seedy evil twin, North Hollywood. The gyms, pawnshops, fast food joints, temples and porno studios had none of old Hollywood’s mystique or glamour, but over here, shit got done on time and under budget. Every blowjob was on the clock.
Jerry said, “You know anything about voodoo?”
“Like with the dolls and the shrunken heads? I’m hip, man, but...are you, like, into that shit?”
“No, God...” Sucking his painfully well-maintained grill, Jerry tried again. “You know how they dance around, drunk off their asses and make offerings to the gods and stuff, just so the gods will come down and take over their bodies?”
“I guess...”
“Well, what do you think it was like, the first time it happened? Before it became a religion, something they tried to make happen every full moon, or whatever? All those clowns pretending they’re getting possessed, it’s just acting, even if—no, especially if—they believe it’s really happening. But what if it really is happening?”
Aziz parked in a minimall lot on Cahuenga and Barham, in front of the Universal Psychic. He turned and looked at Randy like he was about to lay down some serious expository dump on his head...but then he just sighed and got out.
Randy trotted after him. Did he lock his car? Randy was nervous, and nerves made him hungry. “Hey, dude, you want to get a burger at the In N Out, after?”
“Come on, goddammit!” Aziz crossed the parking lot and turned onto the Barham Avenue overpass. The elegant New Deal-era bridge over the 101 looked like a relic from a bygone species next to all the pre-fab, Lego-block construction around it. There was nothing on the other side of the bridge but a few drab apartments, an auto body place and a casting office, unless you drove up the hill to Universal Studios and Citywalk, or over it to Forest Lawn.
Colin’s crack about suicide replayed in his head. Jerry did seem pretty depressed, but who didn’t? “Hey, man, whatever it is, it’s not worth it!”
Aziz stopped in mid-span, hacking up a lung, then lighting up an unfiltered Camel. “What, you thought I was coming up here to jump?” Aziz sucked half the cigarette down and looked out over the ballistic post-rush hour traffic.
The old northbound Barham offramp was closed down about ten years ago. Less than fifty yards long, one lane wide and steeply turning onto the Universal Studios driveway, Barham was a deathtrap for today’s speedfreak, phone-equipped suburban tanks, and in rush hour, the line to exit always backed up traffic halfway to downtown, so the city shut it down. As vital an exit as it was, its central location, surrounded by valuable real estate and the car-clogged aorta of Hollywood, made it impossible to seriously renovate, and so the orphan offramp persisted as an unintentional landmark.
Randy went to the edge of the bridge and looked over the railing. “Whoa, how did that get there?”
At the foot of the condemned offramp, there sat a house. Perched on the shoulder overlooking the freeway, silhouetted against the flurry of headlights and the blue neon miasma of the Vivid Video headquarters, it looked like a repossessed American Gothic farmhouse.
From above, in the sickly greenish highway lights, the shingled roof looked like the scaly hide of a long-dead dragon, sagging between crooked rafters and drooping over the eaves as if it was beginning to melt.
Aziz waved at Randy and then, at a break in the traffic on the overpass, he hopped the chainlink fence and ran down the offramp, stooped over like a bad SWAT team extra. Randy followed.
The house was a white early 20th century blue-collar bungalow with a porch and gable windows and a brick chimney—hardly out of place in Los Angeles, but way out of place up on blocks on the shoulder of the 101.
Nobody knew where it came from. It was just sitting there about a week ago, when morning rush hour broke. It was the only logical place in the area to dump something of its size if there were problems with the trailer, and nobody in the city had taken much trouble to do anything about it, beyond putting cones around it and a sign on the back so motorists would stop parking behind it and honking.
A few hastily scrawled graffiti tags—CHAKA IV – DOGNOGGIN – MOEBIUS DICK—marked the side of the house facing the retaining wall. They were so sloppy and rushed, it looked like just touching the house at all was some kind of badge of courage.
Jerry Aziz hopped the fence and the barricades at the foot of the aborted offramp. Randy caught up with him and grabbed his arm. “Wait up, man. What could possibly be down there—”
Aziz whipped around and shoved Randy away. For just a moment, he looked crazy enough to throw himself into traffic, and reminding him that it wasn’t moving fast enough to kill him anyway didn’t seem like the way to calm him down. “Get off me, you fucking lummox! I’m not trying to off myself. I gotta get in, before they cast everybody. You can come with me or not, but don’t get in my way. I’ve earned this.”
Randy let him go, but following him was much harder. This place was dangerous, and what was the payoff? A house dropped like junk by the side of the road. Jerry was consumed by it, the others were afraid of it. Randy’s own fear was dwarfed by his all-consuming phobia of missing out.
The house rested uneasily on some sort of block and tackle set up four feet off the tarmac. Jerry was too short to hop up onto the porch. It was almost funny, watching the little guy hop and curse. The lowest step crumbled under his feet and fell off, shedding fairy dust sprinkles of termite shit on the hot car exhaust wind. Feeling a surge of panic as headlights speared them like prison searchlights, Randy gave him a boost onto the porch.
The doors and windows were boarded up, but the plywood over the front door had been wrenched halfway off. Crushed cigs and glittering emerald bits of glass covered the scuffed, whitewash boards.
Jerry pried the doorway open and slid inside. Randy looked around, fully expecting the headlights to turn red and blue and start screaming at him. The plywood came off in his hands, but he laid it back over the open door and sealed himself up inside the house.
It was dark, stuffy and stale inside. Quiet, but not silent. Still, but hardly empty.
He heard voices, strident and loud, from somewhere in the house. And cheers and applause.
Randy forgot his fear and fumbled down the hall. At last, he’d found the underground.
Candlelight leaked into the hall, illuminating rounded archways and cracked molded ceilings draped with huge capes of dingy cobweb. Ducking under them, he stuck his head into the dining room and immediately flattened against the wall.
What the hell...?
The room was packed with people. He recognized a lot of them from workshops, but the rest were a weird mix of hipsters, freaks and the homeless. They sat on the floor or leaned against the wall, utterly rapt and wide-eyed, somewhere between children at a magic show and fiends watching somebody chop out coke lines.
A family sat at the dinner table, heads bowed over plates with pork chops and potatoes. Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. Were they mannequins?
He figured this must be some kind of guerilla version of those interactive dinner theater things that were all the rage when he first came to town, but the heavy pall of pregnant silence that sat on the room was not of the theater. It felt more like a séance.
At the head of the table, the father lowered his steepled hands and looked into the faces of his family. His brutish, ruddy face cracked like drying mud.
His wife kept her praying hands up in defense. Behind them, her face was a gray mask, colored only by bruises. His daughters, one a slender but plain teen, the other no more than ten or twelve, hunched their shoulders and prayed harder.
“Let us give thanks,” the father said. “Tonight, we’ll go around the table, and see what everyone’s thankful for. Mother, you start.”
“I’m...I...” the mother stuttered, “I am grateful for this meal...”
“Did God do that for you, or did I?”
“I—I—I...made the meal, but..
.”
Father shook his head ruefully and punched her in the mouth. “Nadine, pick it up.”
Without looking up from the church of her hands, the older sister answered, “I’m thankful for Daddy’s strength,” she said.
Father smiled and hacked at his pork chop. “That’s nice, baby girl. And what strength is that?”
“Our Daddy’s strong, and he’ll take care of us, no matter what.”
“That’s right, baby girl. I wish those cocksuckers at the plant saw it clear the way you do. Trudy?”
The little girl poked the creamed corn over to the edge of her plate. “I wish to God that Tim would come back.”
“I don’t think I heard you right.” Father dropped his knife and fork. “I don’t rightly know anybody by that name. Mother, do you?”
Mother shook her head so hard it almost came unscrewed.
Nadine put her arm around Trudy. “Oh Daddy, she’s just talking about her old kitten...”
“Really, darlin’? Is that what you meant?”
The whole room trembled as the audience forgot to breathe.
“I just miss him, that’s all.”
“Well...” Father pushed his plate away. “Maybe you just do. And maybe you just forgot who it is, that hears prayers and makes miracles happen around here. Maybe you forgot who giveth and who taketh away in this house.” Father snatched up his plate and flung it at Trudy like a Frisbee.
The little girl ducked and the plate sailed over the audience’s heads to smash into the far wall. A few giggled, and were dutifully shushed.
“Daddy, please don’t—”
Father stood up. A big, barrel-chested working man, his fists were bigger than his youngest child’s head. When he brought them down on the table, the plates danced. Milk glasses toppled. “Maybe the whole world’s forgotten what a man is worth, and maybe he don’t amount to much out there, but in here, a man is still king of his castle, and his word is law. And...and...”
Father gripped his chest. His eyes bugged out and a little string of bile erupted from his tightly clamped mouth. “I’m okay...I can do it...”
“CUT!” A short man with tall, bleached-blonde hair leapt out of the front row and rushed the table. “You.” He pointed at the father. “Get out.”
The father sat back down in his chair, hyperventilating, shrinking. Now, he was just a lanky bald guy in a spangled Ed Hardy T-shirt. Randy rubbed his eyes and stared. Was it magic? Or was it acting?
Randy knew better than to blunder into the room asking people what was going on, so he just crept back through the crowd until he found a vacant patch of wall.
He stood there looking at the table until a stunning redhead whispered in his ear, “You don’t belong here.”
“Sure I do,” he hissed back. “I came with my friend.” He pointed at Jerry. He burned to chat her up, but he knew better, so he shut up and listened as she told some guy who looked like a fit model for International Male.
The house came from Fontana, where it’d sat empty after the family—
“Spoiler alert,” a hipster with one of those Arab terrorist scarves cut in.
The most popular rumor went that the father killed the whole family, right here in this room. Some rich ghoul bought the house and was moving it, when it fell off the truck. A couple taggers went into the house the first night, and discovered that the dead people in the house wanted to talk. Every night since then, a growing group of actors, artists and seekers had come to play out the scene.
It was the ultimate improv game. When the actors really got into the characters, they disappeared into them, but like any scene, it was already starting to drown in its own audience.
“It’s still pretty awesome,” the redhead said, “but the ending is kind of fucked up. The whole thing kind of breaks down, when he kills them all, and then kills himself.”
“Actually,” the hipster corrected, “It’s not the same thing every night. Last night, the mother turned the tables on him and cut his head off.” When the conversation stalled, he added, “I mean, not for real...I don’t think...but it was awesome.”
The director got volunteers from the audience to carry the actor who played the father out. The mother and daughters sat hyperventilating, floppy and used-up and ecstatic like pilgrims touched by a faith healer. The mother’s nose was crooked and dripping blood freely onto her plate.
“We need a new father,” the director said, lighting a cigarette. “Quickly, who’s ready, who’s feeling it?”
Jerry Aziz jumped up with the others in the front row. Randy got up but didn’t play eager. Emote at the director from across the room. Feel that hot spot on the back of your neck? That’s me.
“You,” the director jabbed his nose at a mountainous lesbian with a grown-out Mohawk in the back of the room. “You were born to be the Daddy.” The dyke crushed an empty beercan and mowed down a path to the table.
And you,” he added, pointing at Trudy. “Out. That plate was supposed to hit you in the face. Trudy wants to be punished. I need somebody who can pick up what this fucking space is putting down. Someone who will really get lost in the role and show us what really happened. Anyone? No...You? No...Anyone...? You.”
Randy thought the finger was on him and rushed the table pumping his fist like a boss, which made the group laugh. The director brushed him aside and tapped Jerry on the head. Jerry smiled at the brief splatter of applause, and took his place in the little girl’s chair.
Randy took a bow. The audience deflated, venting contempt. Hands grabbed his arms and legs and passed him, bucket-brigade style, to the far corner of the room.
There was nothing for him here. Nothing to learn, no chance to shine. His first acting coach was right. You can’t polish a turd.
Exit, stage left. Don’t come back. Get a real job. Get real friends, start dating again.
Don’t let the dream die—kill it with your bare hands.
He shrank along the wall to the hallway, still festooned with broken ribbons of CAUTION tape.
That was it, then. The grave was so wide he couldn’t see the other side of it. The grave was so deep his whole life fit into it with plenty of room for a dismal, savagely truncated future.
Down the hall he wandered, sinking into the mildewed plaster and starting to feel like he was going to cry. Behind him, the crowd fell silent, the actors opening themselves up to the vibe of the house, or some other method technique.
Bullshit. Actor as psychopomp. Spirits, what’s my motivation? Let’s solve a murder with our ART! Fuckfuckfuck you. Fuck you all.
Feel better now? No, he didn’t. But now he didn’t fear feeling empty.
And into his emptiness, there flowed...everything.
If these walls could talk...they wouldn’t. They’d just scream. He could hear them in the fillings in his teeth, so loud and so shrill that he lashed out and punched them. His fist went through tarpaper and studs like stale bread. The coffin-shaped space inside the walls the reeked of mouse turds and dust and flop sweat and hungry breath, and it was stuffed with the brittle yellow pages of Variety and Playbill.
Nobody was ever murdered here. It didn’t take a murder to make a ghost. This house had become like a toxic waste dump—or a storage battery. The bad shit had to go to ground and saturated the termite-riddled wood and sagging plaster. The ground where it had sat probably had been fenced off and slowly reclaimed over years, like when they shut down his dad’s gas station.
Randy stumbled down the hall into the bathroom. Flipped up the lid and stooped to puke. The amputated drain opened on the grooved freeway pavement below. Scattered flashes of car headlights shone up at him. Wiping his mouth he looked around. Peeling and water-stained, but the remnants of posters on walls and ceiling were easier to read.
The flow was overwhelming back here, away from the crowd, the echoes of suffering and ecstasy and death, death DEATH in Shakespearean quality and Peckinpah quantity. But where every other actor in this impromptu troupe had snatched a m
ask out of the rushing whirlpool of phantoms that swarmed this place, Randy just watched them flow by until they repeated themselves and he saw through it all to the eye, to the heart, to the truth of the mystery.
Well, he thought, that fucking figures.
Nobody died here, he thought, and all of them died here, every night. The father killed them every night with his disapproval and endless demands and scenes, endless melodramatic improv exercises. The daughters, the mother barely had personalities of their own, and the son...the empty chair at the table, the one nobody could play and so he was simply written out of the shambling séance scene in the dining room. Their scene was going nowhere and doing nothing, because the one voice that could end it was silent.
But Randy could hear him, now.
Because Randy was his evil twin.
Randy came from a town where, if you couldn’t tell whether someone was a man or a woman from one hundred yards away, you had to kick their ass. Randy was the closest thing to a fag, so they thumped him every chance they got, to try to stop him from going away, from rejecting them and following his dream.
He had come to Hollywood so full of hope, and he’d been passed down the food chain of vampires, lampreys and leeches, sucked dry and hollowed out until he was only the thinnest of shells around a howling void.
At last, he was the perfect actor.
“I know what this scene needs,” he growled. The bathroom door sagged off its hinges when he slammed it and thundered across the hall to the back bedroom no bigger than the toilet and he ripped the closet door off its track and ripped up the floorboards and grabbed the mildewed duffel bag he knew would be there. He threw it over his shoulder like the boy it belonged to never could, and stomped back down the hall to enter the scene, stage left.
The audience shouted at him, the director leapt into his way, but Randy threw his hands out in a frustrated teenage gesture that clipped the director across the mouth and sent him sprawling into the crowd. Nobody else got in his way, because Randy disappeared. In his place, a skinny, pimply freckled kid stood with a duffel bag on his shoulder and a resolute stare burning a hole in the floor.
