He dialed Byron, got no answer and then tried Marvin, who picked up on the second ring. Simon gave thanks that the little man seemed incapable of holding a grudge.
He took a few sharp breaths and summoned all his willpower not to break down on the phone. “You don’t happen to know where Genevieve lives by any chance?”
Marvin said that he did, sounding confused.
“Good, I need you and Byron to meet me there. Can you get ahold of him?”
Who would have guessed Mark’s passing interest in the Cold War and trivial knowledge of Communist Russia would be such a turn-on for Trinie? Mark would have to send that professor at PSU a thank you note, maybe even go back and finish her class, learn what happened after 1985.
The date had been the most successful of Mark’s (admittedly limited) experience, not only because it had ended in sex but because he liked Trinie and enjoyed what she had to say. Most of the dates he went on were experiments in boredom, the possible make-out session in the end barely enough incentive to keep Mark from walking out if he found the girl tedious.
Trinie, beyond the boobs, was electrifying. Passionate about world and local politics the same way he was about Alejandro Jodorowsky. She never alienated him with her knowledge. Every tidbit she offered was the result of his genuine interest.
The only sore part of the night was when she had chastised herself for talking too much. “Oh, you don’t want to hear about Oregon’s gillnetting regulations.” But he did and he told her as much.
Waking up in her bed, Mark got the feeling that he’d gone where few men had ventured before, and none of them probably ever on the first date. How should he deal with the morning? He could try to slink out of bed without waking her and try to cook breakfast, but that seemed corny. Never mind presumptuous. What if her fridge was stocked like his? An open can of Coke that had gone flat a year ago and some Chinese takeout that was so putrid he kept the fridge closed at all times so his apartment didn’t reek.
Unable to decide, he stayed in bed listening to the softness of her breath. She slept on her back without snoring—was there anything not awesome about this girl?
There was a slight buzzing sound somewhere nearby, a phone set to vibrate. The noise woke Trinie, her eyes half opening, a look of confusion on them before they fell to him. Then she smiled. That smile made Mark very happy.
Trinie reached under her pillow, the sheets shifting enough to give him a show. The movement was effortless, but also seemed deliberate. She giggled to herself before flipping open the phone that she’d kept stashed under her head as she slept.
Whatever she read on the screen caused her to scrunch up her face. “Looks like practice is canceled today,” she said.
“Two days before opening night? Why?”
“I don’t know, it’s from Simon and that’s all it says: ‘Practice canceled.’”
“Well. That’s weird,” Mark said. Trinie looked more concerned about it than he felt. In fact, to him it felt a bit like this was a gift from the gods. “So, do you want to go get breakfast?”
He smiled and she lifted an eyebrow.
“Can’t get enough of me, eh?”
“Nowhere near enough.”
She pulled him down to the bed and a half hour later they got dressed and went out for late morning pizza.
Marvin would not stop crying, even while he was puking. It seemed impossible that all that liquid could fit inside Marvin’s tiny frame. All Simon was doing was gibbering semi-coherently about how he didn’t do it and needed Byron’s help. Byron just stood by the bed, sweat gathering at the creases of his shirt.
“You don’t need my help, you need the police,” Byron said. “Marvin and I shouldn’t be here.”
Marvin stopped sobbing long enough to agree. “He’s right, we shouldn’t. Oh God the smell! Poor Genevieve!” There wasn’t much of a smell that Byron could detect beyond Marvin’s vomit.
“The police will think I did it! We need to clean this up,” Simon said. “No one can know I was here. No one can know that we were here.”
Byron saw what Simon had done now, what he was implying with all this “we” stuff. They were now in this together. Just by entering the room they had contaminated the crime scene. This was doubly true now that Marvin was contaminating the evidence, spreading sizzling DNA all over the place with every heave.
Without much thought about what he was doing, Byron swung his fist wide and caught Simon in the cheek with the side of his hand. He must have hit him hard enough, because Simon crumpled and pain blossomed in Byron’s hand like he’d slammed it in a car door.
“You son of a bitch! What possesses you to do these things and use people like this? Do you realize how much trouble we could all be in?”
“I’m sorry.” Simon was crying now—it was unclear whether it was from the sock in the face or the pressure of the situation. “I didn’t know what to do. You guys are my only friends.”
“Then you have no friends, asshole. Have fun in prison. Come on, Marvin.”
“But we can’t just…” Marvin started, hoisting himself off his knees using the edge of the coffee table.
“Yes, we can and we should,” Byron said.
“What’s this?” Marvin asked, no longer listening to Byron’s tirade against Simon’s selfish, and maybe even murderous, tendencies. Marvin held up a small green note that had been folded in half lengthwise and placed face-up on the table. It was addressed to Simon.
Marvin opened it and read aloud:
“Ye fuckers ripped off my intellectual property
“That was not a great move for your physical longevity
“So consider this my cease and desist letter
“To fuck with me you should have known better
“Prepare now to pay for your larceny.”
They all stood in stunned silence for a moment. Byron glanced over at the grisly shamrock wall art, unable to keep his gaze on it for more than a second. “Give me that,” he said and snatched the note away from Marvin.
The words were dark green ink on pale green paper, the handwriting a delicate old-timey cursive. “It’s a limerick. A bad one, but a limerick.” They were standing in the middle of a Leprechaun-themed murder.
“You did this to me, you little fucker!” Simon screamed and launched himself at Marvin. “I knew there was something wrong with you the second you told us that the Leprechaun series was your favorite horror franchise. It’s nobody’s favorite horror franchise, you fucking psychopath!”
Simon lifted Marvin up by the shirt, stretching and tearing the fabric. The small man’s arms flailed, legs kicking. Both of them were crying.
“How did you do it? Did you drug us? What happened last night? Was she awake when you did this sick shit to her?”
“I didn’t do anything, I swear!”
“Put him down,” Byron said. “He didn’t kill anybody. He was with me the whole night.”
Simon wasn’t strong and his arms shook from the weight. Reluctantly, he released Marvin’s shirt. Marvin landed with a thud, his stunted legs doing a poor job breaking his fall.
“We stayed up all night watching movies. I nodded off around four. There’s no way he left. He was too busy stuffing the contents of my fridge down the toilet.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Marvin said. “Even I don’t know why I do it sometimes.” There was a tiny stream of blood trickling its way down his chin and he wiped it up with his sleeve.
“Someone could be trying to frame you, Simon. Know anyone you’ve pissed off recently?”
“Um. Everyone?”
“Those were my thoughts exactly.” Byron walked toward the kitchenette, taking big steps to avoid the puddles of Genevieve that spotted the studio apartment. Someone had taken their time on this. The level of violence was staggering. There was no sign of a weapon, though, and Byron wondered what kind of machinery could have done this. The magic of an ancient mythological creature? It seemed ludicrous.
But there was the
limerick. It had been phrased like a C&D. Could someone be getting revenge on Simon for adapting a movie he didn’t hold the rights to? This seemed a little extreme, even for Harvey Weinstein.
Byron started opening kitchen cabinets until he found what he needed. Genevieve kept a box of yellow dishwashing gloves under her sink—she had seemed like the type of girl who liked to avoid dishpan hands.
“Put these on,” Byron said, tossing the other two men a pair of gloves while he unrolled a large black trash bag.
“You can’t be serious, Byron,” Marvin said. Despite his protestations, Marvin was slipping on the gloves, the ends of them going beyond his elbows, the fingers bunchy and loose.
Byron ignored him and looked to Simon. “Did you let everyone know that practice was going to be canceled?”
“No, I hadn’t even thought of that,” Simon said, checking the time on his busted phone.
“Well you should have. If everyone shows up with you not there, they’ll be even more suspicious than if you canceled. Send a text.”
Simon did as he was told. The director who less than twelve hours ago had been chewing out his cast for the slightest mistake was now taking orders with no questions asked. Byron’s newfound control made him feel strong. He always suspected that he’d be able to keep his cool if real horror movie shit ever went down and now was his chance to prove it.
“You hold the bag, Marvin. If you’re going to hurl, just do it into the plastic, not on the floor anymore, okay?”
“Okay,” Marvin said, staring down into the black mouth of the bag.
“What do I do?” Simon asked.
“You start scraping that shit off the wall. We’re not going to be able to get it perfect, but hopefully she has some cleaning products we can use to get rid of most of the blood. I’ll go look, then I’ll help you.”
“And what do we do with the bags once they’re full?”
“After we wipe down every surface any of us could have conceivably touched, we’ll put them in my car and drive out toward Tillamook and leave them in the woods. Just Simon and I can handle that. I’ll drop you back at your place on the way, Marvin. We need to talk.” Byron eyed Simon with that last part and Simon shivered. Good, let him be scared. He should be.
“Poor Genevieve,” Marvin said again.
“Yeah, poor Genevieve,” Byron agreed. “And poor us.”
“That is some sick shit,” Mark said, thumbing through the copy of MPD Psycho that Lucas had handed him.
After Mark and Trinie were through with their pizza brunch and had said their goodbyes, Mark had decided to swing by Lucas’s comic shop, Bloody Vengeance Comics, to make sure that he wasn’t planning on showing up to a rehearsal that’d been canceled.
“Yeah, and that’s just the first volume. In the next one the police get sent a naked female torso in a cooler, everything amputated so that she’s just tits and beaver,” Lucas said, giggling.
“You are a grade-A creep, brother,” Mark said, eyes glued to the page. The comic was an uneasy blend of gore and pornography. Only in Japan. He realized he was in public and it would be best if he put it down.
Mark looked around The Vengeance, the shortened name that Lucas liked to throw into conversation the same way you’d give a child a nickname, and took in the store. It was not a big shop, but there were a few customers, mostly young kids, pawing through binders of Magic cards.
“Take it. None of these kids can fucking read anyway.”
“Hey!” one of the kids said, looking up from the binder.
“It’s true. Now are you going to buy anything? Then scram.”
“Nah, man,” Mark said, attempting to hand the book back to Lucas. “I don’t want to be taking stock off your shelves. This is your livelihood.”
“Mark, take the book. You picked up the pizza yesterday. I appreciate it.”
“I’ll come back in when I have cash.” Mark looked down and fanned the pages again. “Or if you really want me to read it that bad, do you have scans of it? Can you just email them to me? Then we’ll call it square for the pizza.”
The goodwill that their conversation had brought to Lucas’s large red face, the expression of camaraderie, vanished. Lucas started to speak, but there was a tremor in his voice, almost a growl. “I...as someone who runs a comic book store, a brick and mortar store that tries to keep the art form and community alive, do not download or produce scans of copyrighted material. I just don’t.”
Mark raised his hands. “Hey, neither do I, man. It’s cool. I understand, people gotta eat.”
This seemed to calm Lucas, but only a little.
Mark searched for something, anything, to reel Lucas back from the edge. “So I had my date with Trinie last night.”
A switch was thrown somewhere in Lucas’s brain and he eased off the attack, got a handle on the anger that he clearly kept just below the surface. Mark would have never guessed. Some people get real serious when it comes to comics.
“How did it go?” Lucas asked, propping his elbows up on the counter and resting his head in his hands, looking like an oversized teenage boy with too much stubble. “Details.”
“Well,” Mark said, unable to suppress the smile that probably told Lucas everything he needed to know. “Really well. I like her a lot.”
“That’s good to hear. It will most likely be the only positive experience anyone has in connection to Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical.”
“Oh, you love it,” Mark said, not sure it was true. Even Mark, Troma vet and glutton for B-movie punishment, was having a hard time putting up with Simon’s flights of megalomania and sets that spontaneously combusted.
“Speaking of which: what do you think is going on with the show?” Lucas asked. “Think the Three Musketeers called it quits? Do I need to make new plans for the weekend?”
“I doubt it. They’ve fought before. Besides, I think they’re in too deep now. Maybe they’re spending the day running through the Impala gag. That’s the only thing that’s totally fucked.”
“Yeah, everything else is only moderately fucked.”
“I bet we’ll get a text tonight telling us to be there bright and early tomorrow to make up for lost time.”
“I can’t wait for this shit to be over,” Lucas said, taking the manga from Mark’s hand and dropping it into a plastic bag. He pushed a few buttons on the antiquated 1970s register in front of him until the cash drawer popped open. Lucas put the bag into Mark’s hands. “Look, I entered it as a sale. Now take this and read it. For me it’s an investment in the future, because you’ll be back to buy the rest of them.”
“I’m not going to argue with you,” Mark said. He wanted to reference the burst of Lucas’s nerd rage that he’d witnessed, but somehow “I wouldn’t like you when you’re angry” didn’t seem appropriate. So instead he just said thanks and told Lucas that he’d see him at rehearsal tomorrow.
If they had rehearsal.
Byron’s car wove through the forest northwest of Portland. Simon could still smell the vomit from yesterday’s hangover and felt guilty for having puked on Byron’s freshly cleaned mats. Byron was willing to help him out like this, was such a good friend, while Simon was just a douchebag who bummed rides, slept on his floor, and then had the audacity to trash the car.
“You need to level with me,” Byron said, breaking the silence. Neither of them had spoken since loading the three black plastic bags into the trunk. “Did you do this?”
“Byron, I swear I didn’t.”
“You’ve been under a lot of stress lately, man. Is it even remotely possible? Is anyone in your family schizophrenic?”
“Jesus, I’m telling you, the only thing I remember was having weird dreams and then waking up in her apartment almost naked and her…” Simon paused. “She was like that. You know what gives you weird dreams like that? Sedatives.”
“Yeah, like the double dose of Nyquil you take to get to sleep every night.”
“I didn’t do this,” Simon said.
He wanted to bring up Marvin again as a possible suspect, but then remembered that Byron had vouched for him. It didn’t seem likely, given what a gentle guy Marvin seemed to be, even if he did most resemble a leprechaun.
“Then who?”
“You said it yourself: I’ve pissed off every member of the crew. You could be mad enough to have done it.”
Byron took his eyes off the road to toss him a look.
“I mean, you would have had motive. Not that you did it, obviously.”
“I barely ever talked to Genevieve.”
“I didn’t either, but that doesn’t mean she’s not in pieces in your trunk right now. It could be anyone, even people we’ve never met. You saw how pissed off some of those internet commenters got when Fango linked to the Kickstarter. There’s a whole reddit thread dedicated to how I’m the type of ‘hipster trash that’s ruining horror.’” Simon used air quotes for that last part; the post still rankled him.
“You’re saying that this is someone’s elaborate attempt to troll the musical?”
“I’m saying that it’s more likely than me having done it because I did not fucking do it.”
“Enough. We’re here.”
“Where?”
“Far enough away from civilization that I don’t want to talk about it anymore, I just want to dig.”
There was nothing but trees on every side of them, and they stepped out of the car, took turns digging the hole, and buried Genevieve in the ground. They didn’t say anything when they were done. Simon would have liked to have given some kind of informal eulogy, but he wasn’t even sure of Genevieve’s last name.
Marvin’s cat was an orange tabby named Brian Trenchard-Smith after the Australian journeyman director who had made the first two direct-to-video entries in the Leprechaun series.
Brian Trenchard-Smith—the human—had also directed Dead End Drive-In and Stunt Rock, which meant that he was cinema royalty who’d never gotten his proper due.
Leprechaun in the Hood: The Musical: A Novel Page 4
