Dead As Dutch

by Rich Docherty

“LOCK THE DOOR!”

  Keisha and Dana’s entrance was no less startling than a locomotive roaring through the Sistine Chapel. At first, Stan, Bryce, and Irv were too stunned to respond to Keisha’s command, numbed into indecision by the frenzy of the alarming arrival. Once the dust settled, however, Irv hotfooted it to the door and latched the bolt. Keisha and Dana were doubled over, wheezing and clutching their aching abdomens as Stan took stock of the situation. No blood, no apparent injuries, ergo, no emergency, he concluded. Besides, his sister was the poster child for making mountains out of mole-hills. A hangnail could send her over the edge. As for Keisha, chances were she’d just gotten caught up in another of Dana’s hysterical overreactions. The decision was an easy one: Stan hustled to retrieve his camera.

  “Oh, my god! Oh, my god!” Dana gasped.

  Bryce scurried to her side. “What is it? What happened?” He sounded more unhinged than Dana.

  Before she could answer, Stan sprang forward, full speed ahead. “Back off, Dana! Out of the way!” He barged through like an eighteen-wheeler rolling through a field of lilies and snagged Dana’s camera off the floor. He stuck it into her hands and tugged her by the sleeve to the rear of the room in front of the fireplace. “Stand here and start rolling!”

  “But—” she protested, but her usual starch was absent.

  “No buts. Just do what you’re told. Now!” Stan ordered.

  Dana was too frazzled, too unglued, to resist further. She turned on the camera and raised it to her eyes with all the pep of a robot on autopilot.

  This was more like it, Stan thought. The rush. He could feel it prod and drive him like the surge of some giant invisible tsunami wave propelling him forward. It was strong, true, vital and undeniable. This was what real filmmaking was all about, the way he always imagined it could be. Stan Heberling, taking control. Shaping his very own vision. Capturing the magic! It had finally arrived—the moment he long dreamed of, waited his entire life to experience and relished with a giddy anticipation not unlike that of an astronaut about to step out onto an unexplored planet for the first time. Keisha and Dana’s unexpected charge into the cabin was just the spark he needed, they all needed, to jumpstart the moribund production of Letter 13. He vowed to himself that this opportunity would not be frittered away. He was prepared and ready. After all, as his mother used to remind him, “now happens just once,” never to return again in the exact same way. Game on, mom.

  “Irv, grab your gear.” As Irv scrambled to collect his equipment, Stan eased next to Keisha and knelt down beside her. Pale was not a word he would associate with her normal skin color, but as he studied her face, that’s the precise description he would choose. Distressed, too. It appeared obvious that she had endured a real jolt of some sort out in the woods and was not just dragged down into his sister’s world of fantasy fears. Whatever it was, though, that Keisha and Dana encountered could be ascertained later. A debriefing would have to wait. Time was of the essence. But Stan also realized that his job entailed comforting his actors when circumstances warranted. A certain amount of metaphorical handholding was expected of the director to help cast members navigate the inevitable bumps and bruises that dinged their fragile psyches. “You okay?” he asked, with his most soothing bedside manner.

  Keisha nodded. “Let’s do this.”

  Maybe it was the determination he saw in her eyes. Or perhaps the direct, no-nonsense way she announced her readiness that inspired Stan to reach out and squeeze her forearm. “You’re a trooper. Thanks.”

  Keisha wrung out a smile and shrugged. “That’s what I’m here for.”

  They stared at each other a bit longer than necessary before Stan rose and clapped his hands. “Okay, here’s the way it will go down. Keisha, you’re leaning over the table, exhausted, winded. Bryce, you come up from behind her and start the dialogue. Always keep in mind who your characters are, what they want, and what stands in their way. All right, positions, please.”

  Bryce didn’t budge. He gazed around the room with the bewildered look of the odd man out in a game of musical chairs. “Huh? I don’t get it.”

  Stan was occupied preparing his camera. “What’s not to get? Keisha just had a traumatic experience. Just go with it. Work the scene. You’re an actor, so act. I’ll figure out how to use it later. Irv, you good?”

  Irv extended the microphone on the end of the boom pole across the room and dangled it above the table where Keisha had stationed herself. “I’ve got speed.”

  “Okay, here we go everybody. And…” Stan allowed the word to linger as he adjusted his viewfinder, focused the lens, and framed his shot.

  Bryce remained in a state of fluster, babbling like a sap who had just been informed he had been chosen to fill in for the President and present the State of the Union address before Congress. “But…wait…hold on…not yet. I need some time. I need—”

  “ACTION!”

  And action, of sorts, is what Bryce delivered: a personal grooming session, top to bottom. He retrieved a comb from his pocket and ran it through his hair until he was certain every last strand was tucked in place. He tugged at the hems of his coat until it was ironing-board smooth and adjusted the knot on his tie with the fussy precision of a groom about to walk down the aisle. He grabbed a rag off the counter and buffed his shoes until he could spot the reflection of his pearly whites gleaming back at him.

  It was not until he pulled out a nail clipper and began to file his cuticles with the vigor of a convict trying to saw through iron prison bars that Stan called a halt to this vanity stall. “Uh, anytime, Mr. Valentino.”

  Following several quick inhales, a few deep knee bends, and finger warm-ups, Bryce appeared ready. He reared back as though preparing to launch himself off a cliff for a hang gliding flight. His long-awaited entrance was more cheesy than dramatic as he leaped toward Keisha like the mustachioed villain in a silent movie-era melodrama and clasped onto her shoulders from behind.

  “Are you okay, Zoe?” he exclaimed, with breathless urgency.

  Keisha dabbed at her eyes as if she had just shed a bucket of tears. “Oh, Howie, it was awful!”

  Bryce shook her with such vehemence, it was like he was mixing a batch of martinis. “Tell me! Tell me everything!”

  Keisha turned and faced him, trepidation in her voice, her palm resting on his chest. “Strange and mysterious noises in the black of night.”

  Bryce appeared flabbergasted. “Do you think…”

  Keisha shuttered her eyelids as if to block out a terrible memory. When she reopened them, there was a resoluteness present that didn’t exist before. “Yes, Howie. I do. I do think it was—”

  “NO!” Bryce shouted, as if he needed to be heard in the last row of the upper balcony.

  “THEM!”

  “You mean…”

  Keisha stroked Bryce’s cheek. “They found us.”

  Bryce’s knees buckled and he appeared on the verge of swooning. “Oh, Zoe.”

  “Oh, Howie.”

  They collapsed into each other’s arms and embraced.

  “And CUT!” Stan yelled as he lowered his camera. “Yes! Bang-up job, Keisha. Way to go for it!”

  “Um, thanks.” Keisha managed to accept the effusive praise without blushing, but from the corner of her eye, spotted Dana shooting her a smug I-told-you-so grin.

  “How was the audio, Irv?” Stan inquired, the well-established standard protocol question every director asked after a take.

  “Clean,” Irv replied.

  No surprise to Stan. If there was any interference in the sound quality, Irv would have informed him, even if it meant stopping in the middle of a scene and restarting. No sense in recording an audio track that wasn’t useable.

  “What about me?” Bryce retained the forlorn look of the lone schlub standing in the middle of the dance floor without a partner.

  Stan grimaced. “What about you?” He powered down his camera and placed it in his knapsack. “I need more.”

  Bryce
stared at him as though the last drop of blood he’d just wrung out of his body and bestowed upon Stan still wasn’t enough. “More what?”

  “Less actually.”

  “Well, which is it, more or less?” Bryce had segued from perplexed to perturbed.

  “Both,” Stan said, his cryptic response eliciting furrowed eyebrows from Bryce.

  It was no great shock to Stan that Bryce was having difficulty transitioning to film acting. It was a common problem that many actors trained for the theatre encountered and had trouble surmounting, at least initially. The jump from stage to screen was an undertaking that required a higher degree of finesse than they could anticipate or foresee. What the typical theatre major failed to comprehend was that these were two distinct disciplines. The fact was that films demanded a more subtle approach to a performance. Everything from physical actions to the volume of one’s voice needed to be downsized. The reason was simple: a camera was capable of recording close-ups. The actor’s reactions and manner of speaking were more effective when the gestures were smaller, more natural, and relied upon the lens to magnify them. Film was an art form of restraint, not excess. Anything too overblown was the sign of a raw amateur and sure to be lampooned by the critics as schmaltzy.

  The stage was a different arena altogether. Beneath the proscenium arch, an actor was required to project in order to be heard in the furthest reaches of the audience and was urged—indeed, reminded—to do so by every director. Movements were also required to be somewhat exaggerated so that they could be understood and seen from every seat in the house. The habits of an actor such as Bryce, developed over years of rote drills and routines specific to performing “on the boards,” were as difficult to alter as those of a wild horse collared on the prairie and locked in a corral. Like that stallion, accustomed to the freedom of the wide open range where it could roam and gallop without constraints, a stage actor new to a movie set had to be broken…as in broken down, harnessed, and reprogrammed to adapt to a world where less really was more.

  Bryce had reached a point of utter exasperation. He clutched the sides of his head as if to contain an imminent cranial explosion. “Both? What do you mean both?”

  “I mean that I need you to give me more of less. Tone it down,” Stan explained. “Everything doesn’t have to be so big. Understand?”

  Bryce seemed about as amenable to this request as a circus clown being told to cut back on the pratfalls. “But that’s the way I do it.”

  Stan made it clear that compromise was not an option. “Then undo it.”

  “Well, Keisha wasn’t any different.”

  “Keisha had no other choice. She was following your lead.”

  “Oh, I get it. Blame Bryce again. It’s Bryce’s fault. It’s always Bryce’s fault.”

  “Not always,” Stan conceded. “Just usually.”

  Bryce ignored Stan’s flippant remark and scuttled toward him like an aggressive beggar in Calcutta. “Okay, well then, let’s do another take.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “The truth of the moment is lost.”

  “Truth?” Bryce gaped at Stan and thrust his arms up as if he had not just been told any old fib, but the biggest whopper of all time.

  Stan was more amused than galled by Bryce’s reaction and spoke in the measured way a jaded museum guide might leading a tour group past a collection of oriental tapestries. “See, you’re doing it again. Completely over the top.”

  Bryce’s eyes swelled like a bloated puffer fish. “What TRUTH?” he roared.

  Before Stan could respond, a shrill whistle rang out, and all heads swiveled to the source of the debate disruption: it was Dana, mounted atop the dining table with her forefingers hooked inside the corners of her mouth. She released her hands and glared at Bryce and Stan like a princess upset that her beauty nap was just disturbed by a couple of bickering fools below her balcony window. “HEY!”

  “See that, Bryce? A perfect example of over-the-top,” Stan snorted.

  “Literally,” Irv added, earning a thumbs-up from Stan for his bon mot.

  “Ha-ha. Doesn’t anybody care to hear about what went on out there?” Dana pointed in the general direction of somewhere beyond the walls of the shack just in case her colleagues didn’t realize “out there” meant the woods.

  “I do!” Bryce blurted and waved his arm as if to inform the room that his card was a winner on bingo night.

  Stan sighed, weary of yet another looming squabble. “Get down, Dana.”

  “I mean it, Stan,” she warned.

  “So do I. Get down. Stop this nonsense.”

  Dana resisted for a moment, then jumped off the table and stomped toward her brother. “It’s not nonsense. It’s serious.”

  “Sure, Dana. Tell us all about all those yackety crickets that spooked you when you were taking a dump.” Stan turned to the others and shook his head in the dismissive manner of a cavalier land baron poo-pooing the accusations of the hired help complaining about deplorable work conditions.

  “It wasn’t crickets,” Dana insisted. “I know what crickets sound like, and this wasn’t crickets.”

  Stan decided to call his sister’s bluff. “Okay, then, what was it?”

  “I don’t know…exactly,” she admitted. “But I do know something’s out there. Me and Keisha heard it!”

  “Something’s out there?” Stan asked, followed by a derisive snicker. “You mean like the big bad wolf that’s coming to huff and puff and blow the house down?”

  Stan’s attempt at levity only served to steel Dana’s resolve further. “Well, maybe it was a wolf. Or something even more horrible.”

  “You mean like the ghost in the closet?”

  Dana had the woozy look of someone just conked over the head by one of those oversized cartoon mallets. “Don’t you dare, Stan.”

  Stan licked his chops. It was if he was about to reveal the culprit was Colonel Mustard in the kitchen with the candlestick. “The haunted closet of Dana Heberling?”

  “Don’t you dare go there, Stan!” Dana pleaded.

  “Oh, I’m going there all right, baby sis, and put a stop to this goblins-in-the-forest baloney once and for all.”

  “That’s not fair!” she protested.

  “Your sister had a haunted closet?” Bryce asked, his curiosity piqued.

  “Or so she thought,” Stan said, as he meandered past the others like a prosecutor preparing to address the jury with his final summation. “Back when Dana was nine years old—”

  “Seven. I was seven,” Dana grumbled, as she slumped down onto one of the table chairs, resigned to listen to the tortuous and embarrassing tale her brother was about to recount.

  “Okay, seven, whatever. Dana came running into our parent’s bedroom every night—”

  “It wasn’t every night,” she interjected.

  “Claiming there was someone hiding in her closet,” Stan continued, without missing a beat. “She swore she heard strange noises and weird scratching sounds. Anyway, she’d end up screaming, tearing down the hallway, and hopping into bed with my mom and dad. They figured it was just a childhood phase of nightmares, but Dana insisted upon the existence of this phantom. She even had a name for him: the ‘boo-boo man.’”

  Like any master storyteller, Stan was in control of the spellbound audience, mesmerized by his every word. Except for Dana, hunched over and mortified by the intimate revelations, her face buried in her hands. Keisha took note, sidled next to her, and rubbed her back in a gentle, sympathetic signal of empathy. “So,” Keisha wondered, “did the ‘boo-boo man’ just go away?”

  “Nope. I captured him,” Stan announced, a proud, broad grin stretched ear to ear. “Turned out,” he resumed, as he squatted down in front of Dana, “‘boo-boo man’ was nothing but a tiny, brown field mouse.” He visualized the size of Dana’s nocturnal visitor by holding up his thumb and forefinger separated by a gap of about four inches.

  Dana lifted her head and riveted
her heated eyes on her brother, teeth gritted in attack mode. “Yeah,” she said, with all the cheery warmth of a woman scorned, “and how did that mouse get there, Stan? Huh?”

  Stan stood and drifted away from her, as if returning to the podium to continue his lecture. “You’re missing the point, Dana. It’s not about the stupid mouse. What I’m saying is that there’s a rational explanation for everything. Irv, what did you tell me once that was called?”

  “You’re probably thinking of Occam’s razor,” Irv replied. “It’s a philosophical principle some monk came up with in the Middle Ages. All it means is that when you have two competing theories, the simpler explanation is usually the correct one, until there’s actual evidence to prove it wrong.”

  “Precisely my point,” Stan said. “See Dana, you make things up in your goofy brain that don’t exist. No proof. Just like tonight. Besides, how would I know how it got in your closet?”

  “You would know because you put it there, that’s how!” Dana sprang to her feet and shoved Stan in the chest. “Admit it, you put that mouse in my closet. I know you did, Stan. I know it was you!” She began to pummel her brother, slapping and punching at him in a furious blitzkrieg as Stan crossed his arms to block her blows. He tried his best to fend off her frenzied, wild attack, but Dana wouldn’t let up the assault until…the rattle. That’s when she shrieked and the entire room fell to a hush.

  Chapter 12