“An hour. Probably less. Maybe forty minutes.”
“Actually,” she says, “I think I’m supposed to stay here.”
“Why?”
“I think I’m supposed to shoot a scene.”
“What am I supposed to do?” I ask.
“I think”—Chloe squints at the script and then, looking up—“you’re supposed to go.”
“And then?” I ask.
“And then?” Chloe says, smiling.
“Yeah.”
“You’re supposed to come back.”
7
There’s no need to punch in the code to deactivate the alarm system in the house in the 8th or the 16th. The door leading into the courtyard just swings open.
Walking quickly through the courtyard, I grab my keys out of the Prada jacket I’m wearing but I don’t need them because that door’s open too. Outside, it’s late afternoon but not dark yet and the wind’s screaming is occasionally broken up by distant thunderclaps.
Inside, things feel wrong.
In the entranceway I lift a phone receiver, placing it next to my ear. The line is dead. I move toward the living room.
“Hello?” I’m calling out. “Hello? … It’s me .… It’s Victor .…”
I’m overly aware of how silent and dark it is in the house. I reach for a light switch. Nothing happens.
The house smells like shit, reeks of it—damp and wet and fetid—and I have to start breathing through my mouth. I pause in a doorway, bracing myself for a surprise, but the living room is totally empty.
“Bobby?” I call out. “Are you here? Where are you,” and then, under my breath, “you fuck.”
I’m just noticing that cell phones are scattered everywhere, across tables, under chairs, in piles on the floor, dozens of them smashed open, their antennas snapped off. Some of their transmission bars are lit but I can’t get an outside line on any of them and then I
you are the sort of person who doesn’t see well in the dark
turn into the darkness of the kitchen. I open the refrigerator door and then the freezer and light from inside illuminates a section of the black, empty kitchen. I grab a bottle that lies on its side in the freezer and take a swig from a half-empty gallon of Stoli, barely tasting it. Outside, the wind is a hollow roaring sound.
In a drawer adjacent to the sink I find a flashlight and just as I turn toward another drawer something zooms past me. I whirl around.
A reflection in the gilt-edged mirror that hangs over the stove: my grave expression. Then I’m laughing nervously and I bring a hand to my forehead, leaving it there until I’m calm enough to find the .25-caliber Walther I hid last week in another drawer.
With the beam from the flashlight I’m noticing that the micro-wave’s door is open and inside it’s splattered with a dried brown mixture of twigs, branches, stones, leaves. And then I notice the cave drawings.
They’re scrawled everywhere. Giant white spaces heavily decorated with stick figures of buffalos, crudely drawn horses, dragons, what looks like a serpent.
“Just be cool just be cool just be cool,” I’m telling myself.
Suddenly, over the speaker system that runs throughout the house, a CD clicks on and covering the sound of wind roaring outside: water rushing, various whooshing noises, Paul Weller’s guitar, Oasis, Liam Gallagher echoing out, singing the first verse from “Champagne Supernova,” and it blasts through the darkness of the house.
“This is so fucked, this is so fucked,” I’m muttering, on the edge of panic but not in it yet and the yellow fan of light washing across the walls keeps shaking as I move farther into the house and
where were you while we were getting hi-i-i-igh?
the house smells so much like shit I keep gagging. One hand is holding the flashlight and I clamp the other, holding the gun, over my nose and mouth.
in the champagne supernova in the skyyyyyy
I bend down, pick up another cell phone. I pull up the antenna, flipping the phone open. No transmission bars.
I aim the flashlight down a hallway and then I shine its beam up into the circular staircase and I’m squinting, trying to make out the dim star shapes that seem to have appeared everywhere.
But then I see that those star shapes are actually pentagrams and they’re drawn with red paint everywhere on the walls, on the ceiling, on the stairs leading to the second floor.
Something turns in the darkness behind me.
I whirl around.
Nothing.
I run up the stairs. Every five steps, I stop and look over my shoulder, waving the beam of the flashlight into the darkness floating below me.
in a champagne supernova, in a champagne supernova in the sk-k-yyyyyyyyy
I hesitate at the top of the staircase and then I’m drifting unsteadily along one side of the hallway and I’m feeling along the wall for light switches.
I turn hesitantly around another corner and—except for the pentagrams and the cell phones scattered everywhere—the set is immaculate, untouched, everything in its place.
I make it to the room I’ve been staying in, my shadow moving across its door as I walk toward it. My hand freezes, then I reach tentatively for the doorknob, thinking, Don’t open it don’t open it don’t
After I open it I pocket the gun and shift the flashlight into my other hand. I reach out for a light switch but can’t feel one.
I shine the flashlight across the room.
I open a drawer—it’s empty. I open another drawer—also empty. All my clothes are gone. The passport I’d hidden, wedged beneath my mattress, isn’t there.
In the bathroom—all my toiletries are gone.
A giant red pentagram is slashed across the mirror.
where were you while we were getting h-i-i-i-i-i-ighhhh
I move toward the closet, my heart pounding.
All my clothes have been removed.
And in their place, posted all over the walls of the small walk-in closet, are Polaroid shots of me and Sam Ho, naked, sweaty, delirious, having sex.
A larger photo rests in the middle of this collage.
I’m driving a butcher knife deep into Sam Ho’s chest and I’m lost and grinning, my eyes red, caught in the flash, my expression addressing the camera, asking do you like this? are you pleased?
I pull away from the closet, slamming the door shut. On the door another giant pentagram, this one black and dripping, announces itself.
I shift the light over to another wall blighted with pentagrams and then focus the light on a series of letters spread high above me, floating against a huge expanse of pristine white wall over my bed, and I’m squinting, trying to focus, and I slowly fan the beam across the letters until I’m saying the words out loud.
DisaPpear
HeRE
The words cause me to sag against the wall and I’m gripping the gun so tightly I can barely feel it and the Oasis song is revolving into its climax and its endless soloing and as I stumble out of the room my shadow looms against another massive red pentagram.
The CD clicks off.
Silence.
And then my shoes are making noises moving down the hallway and they echo in the silence and suddenly lightning throws my silhouette against a wall and the wind outside keeps howling. I’m freezing. I pass another pentagram.
Within the silence of the house I suddenly hear one distinct sound.
Moaning.
Coming from down the hallway.
Keeping the gun held in an outstretched hand, I start moving down that hall, toward where the moaning is coming from. Bentley’s room.
Another pentagram looms over me. Outside, the wind keeps gusting and then there’s a peal of thunder. A vague fear keeps growing but never really defines itself—it’s just inevitable—and nearing panic, I bring a hand to my lips to keep my mouth from twitching and then I’m stepping forward, moving into the room.
I lower the flashlight’s beam, running it across the terrazzo floor.
&nb
sp; “Oh my god,” I whisper to myself.
A dark shape in the middle of the room, until I wave my flashlight over it. Bentley.
He’s splayed out across the floor, his mouth gagged with a black handkerchief, taped over, and his arms are outstretched, pulled above his head, each one tied separately to bedposts, rope and chain intricately entwined and wrapped around each wrist. His legs are spread and more rope and chain is tied around his ankles and connected to the legs of a white-oak armoire.
He’s signaling me with his eyes.
Attached to each thigh and bicep is some kind of device connected to its own timer—red digital numbers glowing in the dark and counting down.
Moving toward him, slipping on patches of ice, I notice another device strapped to his chest as I drop to my haunches and place the flashlight and the gun on the floor. Crouching beside Bentley, I pull the gag out of his mouth. He immediately starts panting.
“Help me, Victor, help me, Victor,” he squeals, his voice cracking on my name, and he starts sobbing with relief, but my own voice is thick with panic as I tell him, “Calm down, it’s okay, it’s okay.”
My legs start cramping up as I try to unlock the device connected above his right knee and Bentley starts babbling, “What did you tell him what did you tell him what did you tell him Victor oh god what did you tell Bobby?”
“I didn’t tell him anything,” I murmur, shining the flashlight over the device, trying to figure out the easiest way of removing it.
But I’m afraid to touch it.
“Who did this?” I’m asking.
“Bruce Rhinebeck,” he screams.
“But Bruce is dead,” I scream back. “Bruce died in that explosion—”
“Hurry, Victor, just hurry,” Bentley moans in a voice that doesn’t sound like him. “I don’t want to die I don’t want to die,” he says, teeth clenched, and then he starts making shrill little screams.
“Shhh … ,” I murmur. Wind is now throwing rain against the windows. I keep peering at the device on his leg, having no idea how to remove it, and I’m taking deep breaths that turn into short fast breaths, my mouth wide open.
“Okay,” I say, simply gripping the device and tugging up on it, but it’s strapped too tightly to his leg.
Suddenly—a sound.
A clicking noise.
It’s coming from the device strapped to Bentley’s right arm.
Bentley stiffens.
Silence.
Then another sound—tch tch tch tch.
Bentley makes eye contact with me, looking briefly as if I’d offended him in some way, but then his eyes come hideously alive and he starts opening and closing his fingers in anticipation.
Silence.
Bentley begins to weep.
Another clicking noise, followed by a whirring sound.
“Don’t let me die,” he’s crying. “Please I don’t want to die I don’t want to die oh god no—”
Bentley suddenly realizes what’s going to happen and starts snarling in anticipation.
There’s a loud whoompf as the device goes off, the noise of its activation muffled by flesh.
A thick, ripping sound. A mist of blood.
Bentley’s body jumps.
The arm skids along the floor, the hand still clenching and unclenching itself.
And then he starts screaming, deafeningly.
Blood pours out of the stump at his shoulder like water gushing from a hose and it just keeps splashing out, fanning across the terrazzo floor and under the bed.
Bentley’s mouth opens in a frozen scream and he starts gasping.
I’m grimacing, shouting out, “No no no no.”
It’s a special effect, I’m telling myself. It’s makeup. Bentley is just a prop, something spasming wildly beneath me, his head whipping furiously from side to side, his eyes snapped open with pain, his voice just gurgling sounds now.
The sharp smell of gunpowder wraps around us.
I’m trying not to faint and I pull the gun up and, crouching down, hold it against the rope attached to his other arm.
“Shoot it,” he gasps. “Shoot it.”
I push it into the coil of rope and chain and pull the trigger.
Nothing.
Bentley’s whining, pulling against his restraints.
I pull the trigger again.
Nothing.
The gun isn’t loaded.
In the flashlight’s glare the color of Bentley’s face is gray verging on white as blood keeps draining out of him, and his mouth keeps opening, making wheezing sounds.
Forcing my hands to steady themselves I start uselessly tearing at the ropes and chain, trying to unknot them, and outside the wind keeps rising up, howling.
Another terrible moment.
Another clicking noise. This one at his left leg.
Silence.
tch tch tch tch
Then the whirring sound.
Bentley understands what is happening and starts shrieking even before the device goes off and I’m urinating in my pants and I whirl away, screaming with him, as the device makes its whoompf sound.
A horrible crunching noise.
The device shreds his leg at the knee and when I turn around I see his leg slide across the floor and watch it knock into a wall with a hard thud, splattering it with blood, and I’m crying out in revulsion.
Bentley starts going in and out of shock.
I close my eyes.
The device on the other leg goes off.
“Shoot me!” he’s screaming, eyes bulging, swollen with pain, blood gushing out of him.
Desperately I try to unknot the rope wrapped around the device on his chest, my heartbeat thumping wildly in my ears.
“Shoot me!” he keeps screaming.
The timer makes its characteristic noises.
I uselessly hold the Walther against his head and keep pulling the trigger and it keeps snapping hollowly.
The other arm is blown off and blood splatters across the wall above the bed, splashing over another pentagram. Bentley’s tongue is jutting out of his mouth and as he starts going into his death throes he bites it off.
The device on his chest makes a whirring noise.
It opens him up.
His chest isn’t there anymore.
Intestines spiral up out of him. A giant splat of blood hits the ceiling and it smells like meat in this room—it’s sweet and rank and horrible—and since it’s so cold, steam pours out of his wounds, gusts of it rising over the blood and chunks of flesh scattered across the floor and my legs are stiff from crouching so long and I stagger away and outside the wind keeps moaning.
I’m backing into the hallway and there are dripping sounds as flesh slides down walls and bright lines of it are streaked across Bentley’s twitching face, his mouth hanging open, and he’s lying on a shiny mat of blood and clumps of flesh that covers the entire floor and I’m walking out of the room, one hand gripping the flashlight, the other hand smearing blood on anything I touch, wherever I have to steady myself.
6
I race to a bathroom, panting, keeping my head down, eyes on the floor even as I’m turning corners, and in the bathroom mirror it looks like someone has painted my face red and the front of my shirt is matted thick with blood and flesh and I’m pulling my clothes off screaming and then I fall into the shower and I’m hitting my chest and pulling my hair, my eyes squeezed shut, tilting forward, falling against a tiled wall, my hands held out in front of me.
I find clothes in Bobby’s room and dizzily just pull them on, dressing quickly, keeping my eyes on the bedroom door. Numb and singing softly to myself while crying, I quickly tie the laces on a pair of Sperry deck shoes I slipped on.
As I stagger through the upstairs hallway I run past Bentley’s room because I can’t bear to see what’s in it and I’m sobbing but then I suddenly stop when I realize there’s a new odor filling the house, overpowering the aroma of shit that hung in it before.
On my way ou
t I place the smell.
It’s popcorn.
5
The light outside the house has totally faded and the wind keeps screaming high above the courtyard I’m weaving through, a light rain slapping at my face, and the wind is blowing confetti into piles high against the walls like snowdrifts made up of gold and green and purple paper and there are bicycles I never noticed before lying on their sides, their upended wheels spinning in the wind. And in a corner a vague shape is slumped over and when I freeze, noticing it, the courtyard suddenly becomes quiet, which is my cue to slowly move closer.
Above Jamie’s head, another sloppy pentagram and in streaky red letters the words
DisaPpear
HeRE
HeRe
An empty Absolut bottle rests by her side and she’s sitting propped up, stunned, barely lucid, and when I feel her cheek it’s hot, her face puffy. I crouch down. Her eyes are closed and when she opens them she recognizes me but shows no particular interest and we just stare at each other uncertainly, both with dead eyes. She’s wearing a white Gucci pantsuit, the collar lightly spattered with blood, but I can’t see any wounds because someone has wrapped her in plastic.
“Jamie … are you okay?” I ask hollowly. “Should I get help?”
A shaky sigh. She says something I can barely hear.
“What?” I’m asking. “I can’t hear you.”
“You’re … supposed to be … at the … hotel,” she sighs.
“Let me get help—”
“Don’t get help,” she whispers and then she gestures vaguely to something behind me. I turn, squinting. It’s the mattress Tammy Devol was murdered on, half-burned, lying in a blackened clump and dotted with white and silver confetti, in the middle of the courtyard.
“I’ll call an ambulance,” I’m saying.
“No … don’t, Victor,” she says, her voice muffled.
“I want to help you,” I say, straining to sound hopeful.
She grabs my wrists, her face drawn and tense, her eyes half-closed. “Don’t. I don’t want … any … help.”
“What happened?” I’m asking.
“Totally … fucked … up,” she whispers, smiling.