PODEY
(howling)
I'm gonna kill you, ya little nigger bastid!
19 - ACTION SEQUENCE - EITHER STEADICAM OR RAPID INTERCUTS
- WHAT WE SEE
Podey running as fast as he can, jumping the last few steps onto a landing, banging off the walls to catch up with the kid. Pooch running full out in sneakers, fast as he can, rounding the corners and sliding along the bannisters, down and down and down.
We expect to hit the first floor foyer in a moment, but somehow we keep going down and down. Is it four storeys, five, six, eight...what the hell is going on here?!? It's a blur of walls and steps and stairwell, the angles tilting crazily as Podey keeps on going, foaming at the mouth, cursing, screaming, and at one point, when we've covered twice as many as four floors, but he keeps going because WE CAN HEAR the sound of the kid ahead of him, the feet hitting the steps and the landings ...and Podey's right around the bend, coming after him. We don't see the kid anymore, but he's there because we HEAR him.
20 - CUL - DE - SAC
Podey comes pounding down the last flight of stairs, and finds himself in a narrow, square bottom landing. No windows and only ONE DOOR...a door that is slowly closing as he hits the floor. He doesn't even stop to think. He grabs the closing door's knob, hurtles through and...
21 - TUNNEL - ESTABLISHING
He's not outside, and he's not in the basement and he's not anywhere that ought to exist. He's in a wide, dark tunnel with rock walls that scintillate faintly as though bits of mica schist are imbedded in the basalt. (Suggest something like featherstone.) There are tracks leading off into the darkness. The light comes only from the stairwell behind him, and as he turns to grab the still-closing door, it seals itself shut with a click. He grabs the knob, pulls at the door, but it won't open.
22 - THE DOOR - FULL SHOT
The door begins to run, as though it were molten lava. He yells with pain as the knob goes hot, and draws back his hand quickly, holding it as though it's been burned. Before our eyes the door melts into the rock and it is a seamless surface. He is trapped here, underground in a tunnel that shouldn't exist. He turns and turns, now filled with fear.
23 - THE TUNNEL - ANOTHER ANGLE
Showing Podey small and terrified in the gloom. Only faint light from an unknown source shows him anything. And he stands there with his attaché case, big mean face trying to comprehend what's befallen him. And then he cocks his head to one side, because he—and we—hear:
The strange sound of metal wheels rolling along tracks, and the peculiar clop clop clop of hooves on the stone floor of the tunnel. And he strains toward the sound.
24 - ANGLE DOWN THE TRACKS - PAST PODEY - HIS POINT OF VIEW
The tracks run into darkness, but there's a few slivers of light slanting down from above, as though someone has opened a lattice just a crack. And as we stare with Podey, we see something coming. We wait for it. Draw out the moment of greatest terror. Beat. Beat.
Then we see it is a coal car, being drawn by four blind white goats, their eyes milky and staring. . The coal car is old and dirty and rusty and black.
And the reins that come from the goats' harnesses run back into the hands of what looks vaguely like the little black kid from scene 1. The little black kid who was up on the roof with his muffler wrapped around his lower face like a desperado. Sure, it's that kid...isn't it? At least it looks like that kid until the coal car passes into total darkness between the slivers of light.
But when it emerges, and draws to a halt in front of Podey, the passenger in that coal car is no kid. He's eight feet tall, all in black, with a demon's hood drawn so we cannot see a face at all. But we see the two burning red points of his eyes, glowing in the darkness behind the hood.
25 - PODEY AND NACKLES
as the specter steps out of the coal car. He walks toward Podey, who is frozen there. The dark figure pats the head of one of the goats, who bleats kindly. Then he stops as the giant figure comes to stand in front of Podey.
PODEY
(terrified)
Who...
The specter speaks with a voice from the tomb. (Give us a voice we will not forget!)
NACKLES
You know who I am. You described me. Tall and thin and dressed in black. Dead white face and eyes of fire. My four dear blind goats.
PODEY
(terrified)
You don't exist. I just made you up.
NACKLES
I exist for you, Podey. I'm Nackles and here's my big bag.
He draws a huge black bag from the coal car.
NACKLES
And you almost got it right. Not quite, but almost.
[See below for additional scene: revised version]
26 - NACKLES - CLOSE SHOT
as he slips back the hood. His face isn't dead white, it is black. He moves toward camera.
SHARP CUT TO:
27 - PODEY
his face a mask of terror as a silent scream will not come from his open mouth and we:
CUT BACK TO:
28 - NACKLES
coming closer and closer. He opens his mouth and there are fangs there, real nasty fangs.
NACKELES
Merry Christmas, Jack Podey.
Then, slowly, as terrifyingly malevolent as we've ever heard the sound, with that face coming nearer and nearer:
NACKELES
Ho.
(beat)
Ho.
(beat)
Ho.
SHARP CUT TO:
BLACK AND
FADE OUT.
THE END
___
[additional scene from above]
(Additional scenes: revised, version)
26 - NACKLES - CLOSE SHOT
as he slips back the hood. His face isn't dead white, it is black. It holds for several beats, then alters and is the face of a man obviously. Puerto Rican. It holds Latino for several beats, then alters again. The face of a man Oriental. Hold. Alter again. Eskimo or Aleut or Native American. Hold for a beat, then congeal again as it was originally, the face of a black demon conjured in the mind of a bigot who hates all other peoples.
He moves toward camera.
SHARP CUT TO:
27 - PODEY
His face a' mask of terror as a silent scream will not come from his open mouth and we:
CUT BACK TO:
28 - NACKLES
coming closer and closer. He opens his mouth and there are fangs there, extremely nasty double-rowed fangs.
NACKLES
Merry Christmas, Jack Podey; from all of us.
Then, slowly, as terrifyingly malevolent as we've ever heard the sound, with that face coming nearer and nearer:
NACKLES
Ho.
(beat)
Ho.
(beat)
Ho.
SHARP CUT TO:
BLACK AND
FADE OUT
THE END
Sensible City
During the third week of the trial, sworn under oath, one of the Internal Affairs guys the DA.'s office had planted undercover in Gropp's facility attempted to describe how terrifying Gropp's smile was. The IA guy stammered some; and there seemed to be a singular absence of color in his face; but he tried valiantly, not being a poet or one given to colorful speech. And after some prodding by the Prosecutor, he said:
"You ever, y'know, when you brush your teeth...how when you're done, and you've spit out the toothpaste and the water, and you pull back your lips to look at your teeth, to see if they're whiter, and like that...you know how you tighten up your jaws real good, and make that kind of death-grin smile that pulls your lips back, with your teeth lined up clenched in the front of your mouth...you know what I mean...well..."
Sequestered that night in a downtown hotel, each of the twelve jurors stared into a medicine cabinet mirror and skinned back a pair of lips, and tightened neck muscles till the cords stood out, and clenched teeth, and stared at a face grotesquely cont
orted. Twelve men and women then superimposed over the mirror reflection the face of the Defendant they'd been staring at for three weeks, and approximated the smile they had not seen on Gropp's face all that time.
And in that moment of phantom face over reflection face, Gropp was convicted.
Police Lieutenant W.R. Gropp. Rhymed with crop. The meat-man who ruled a civic smudge called the Internment Facility when it was listed on the City Council's budget every year. Internment Facility: dripping wet, cold iron, urine smell mixed with sour liquor sweated through dirty skin, men and women crying in the night. A stockade, a prison camp, stalag, ghetto, torture chamber, charnel house, abattoir, duchy, fiefdom, Army co-op mess hall ruled by a neckless thug.
The last of the thirty-seven inmate alumni who had been subpoenaed to testify recollected, "Gropp's favorite thing was to take some fool outta his cell, get him nekkid to the skin, then do this rolling thing t'him."
When pressed, the former tenant of Gropp's hostelry—not a felon, merely a steamfitter who had had a bit too much to drink and picked up for himself a ten-day Internment Facility residency for D&D—explained that this "rolling thing" entailed "Gropp wrappin' his big, hairy sausage arm aroun' the guy's neck, see, and then he'd roll him across the bars, real hard and fast. Bangin' the guy's head like a roulette ball around the wheel. Clank clank, like that. Usual, it'd knock the guy flat out cold, his head clankin' across the bars and spaces between, wham wham wham like that. See his eyes go up outta sight, all white; but Gropp, he'd hang on with that sausage aroun' the guy's neck, whammin' and bangin' him and takin' some goddam kinda pleasure mentionin' how much bigger this criminal bastard was than he was. Yeah, fer sure. That was Gropp's fav'rite part, that he always pulled out some poor nekkid sonofabitch was twice his size.
"That's how four of these guys he's accused of doin', that's how they croaked. With Gropp's sausage 'round the neck. I kept my mouth shut; I'm lucky to get outta there in one piece."
Frightening testimony, last of thirty-seven. But as superfluous as feathers on an eggplant. From the moment of superimposition of phantom face over reflection face, Police Lieutenant W.R. Gropp was on greased rails to spend his declining years for Brutality While Under Color of Service—a serious offense—in a maxi-galleria stuffed chockablock with felons whose spiritual brethren he had maimed, crushed, debased, blinded, butchered, and killed.
Similarly destined was Gropp's gigantic Magog, Deputy Sergeant Michael "Mickey" Rizzo, all three hundred and forty pounds of him; brainless malevolence stacked six feet four inches high in his steel-toed, highly-polished service boots. Mickey had only been indicted on seventy counts, as opposed to Gropp's eighty-four ironclad atrocities. But if he managed to avoid Sentence of Lethal Injection for having crushed men's heads underfoot, he would certainly go to the maxi-galleria mall of felonious behavior for the rest of his simian life.
Mickey had, after all, pulled a guy up against the inside of the bars and kept bouncing him till he ripped the left arm loose from its socket, ripped it off, and later dropped it on the mess hall steam table just before dinner assembly.
Squat, bulletheaded troll. Lieutenant W.R. Gropp, and the mindless killing machine, Mickey Rizzo. On greased rails.
So they jumped bail together, during the second hour of jury deliberation.
Why wait? Gropp could see which way it was going, even counting on Blue Loyalty. The city was putting the abyss between the Dept., and him and Mickey. So, why wait? Gropp was a sensible guy, very pragmatic, no bullshit. So they jumped bail together, having made arrangements weeks before, as any sensible felon keen to flee would have done.
Gropp knew a chop shop that owed him a favor. There was a throaty and hemi-speedy, immaculately registered, four-year-old Firebird just sitting in a bay on the fifth floor of a seemingly abandoned garment factory, two blocks from the courthouse.
And just to lock the barn door after the horse, or in this case the Pontiac, had been stolen, Gropp had Mickey toss the chop shop guy down the elevator shaft of the factory. It was the sensible thing to do. After all, the guy's neck was broken.
By the time the jury came in, later that night, Lieut. W.R. Gropp was out of the state and somewhere near Boise. Two days later, having taken circuitous routes, the Firebird was on the other side of both the Snake River and the Rockies, between Rock Springs and Laramie. Three days after that, having driven in large circles, having laid over in Cheyenne for dinner and a movie, Gropp and Mickey were in Nebraska.
Wheat ran to the sun, blue storms bellowed up from horizons, and heat trembled on the edge of each leaf. Crows stirred inside fields, lifted above shattered surfaces of grain and flapped into sky. That's what it looked like: the words came from a poem.
They were smack in the middle of the plains state, above Grand Island, below Norfolk, somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, just tooling along, leaving no trail, deciding to go that way to Canada, or the other way to Mexico. Gropp had heard there were business opportunities in Mazatlán.
It was a week after the jury had been denied the pleasure of seeing Gropp's face as they said, "Stick the needle in the brutal sonofabitch. Fill the barrel with a very good brand of weed-killer, stick the needle in the brutal sonofabitch's chest, and slam home the plunger. Guilty, your honor, guilty on charges one through eighty-four. Give'im the weed-killer and let's watch the fat scumbag do his dance!" A week of swift and leisurely driving here and there, doubling back and skimming along easily.
And somehow, earlier this evening, Mickey had missed a turnoff, and now they were on a stretch of superhighway that didn't seem to have any important exits. There were little towns now and then, the lights twinkling off in the mid-distance, but if they were within miles of a major metropolis, the map didn't give them clues as to where they might be.
"You took a wrong turn."
"Yeah, huh?"
"Yeah, exactly huh. Keep your eyes on the road."
"I'm sorry, Looten'nt."
"No. Not Lieutenant. I told you."
"Oh, yeah, right. Sorry, Mr. Gropp."
"Not Gropp. Jensen. Mister Jensen. You're also Jensen, my kid brother. Your name is Daniel."
"I got it, I remember: Harold and Daniel Jensen is us. You know what I'd like?"
"No, what would you like?"
"A box'a Grape-Nuts. I could have 'em here in the car, and when I got a mite peckish I could just dip my hand in an' have a mouthful. I'd like that."
"Keep your eyes on the road."
"So whaddya think?"
"About what?"
"About maybe I swing off next time and we go into one'a these little towns and maybe a 7-Eleven'll be open, and I can get a box'a Grape-Nuts? We'll need some gas after a while, too. See the little arrow there?"
"I see it. We've still got half a tank. Keep driving."
Mickey pouted. Gropp paid no attention. There were drawbacks to forced traveling companionship. But there were many cul-de-sacs and landfills between this stretch of dark turnpike and New Brunswick, Canada or Mazatlán, state of Sinaloa.
"What is this, the Southwest?" Gropp asked, looking out the side window into utter darkness. "The Midwest? What?"
Mickey looked around, too. "I dunno. Pretty out here, though. Real quiet and pretty."
"It's pitch dark."
"Yeah, huh?"
"Just drive, for godsake. Pretty. Jeezus!"
They rode in silence for another twenty-seven miles, then Mickey said, "I gotta go take a piss."
Gropp exhaled mightily. Where were the cul-de-sacs, where were the landfills? "Okay. Next town of any size, we can take the exit and see if there's decent accommodations. You can get a box of Grape-Nuts, and use the toilet; I can have a cup of coffee and study the map in better light. Does that sound like a good idea, to you...Daniel?"
"Yes, Harold. See, I remembered."
"The world is a fine place.”
They drove for another sixteen miles, and came nowhere in sight of a thruway exit sign. But the green glow had begun to c
reep up from the horizon.
"What the hell is that?" Gropp asked, running down his power window. "Is that some kind of a forest fire, or something? What's that look like to you?"
"Like green in the sky."
"Have you ever thought how lucky you are that your mother abandoned you, Mickey?" Gropp said wearily. "Because if she hadn't, and if they hadn't brought you to the county jail for temporary housing till they could put you in a foster home, and I hadn't taken an interest in you, and hadn't arranged for you to live with the Rizzos, and hadn't let you work around the lockup, and hadn't made you my deputy, do you have any idea where you'd be today?" He paused for a moment, waiting for an answer, realized the entire thing was rhetorical—not to mention pointless—and said, "Yes, it's green in the sky, pal, but it's also something odd. Have you ever seen 'green in the sky' before? Anywhere? Any time?"
"No, I guess I haven't." Gropp sighed, and closed his eyes.
They drove in silence another nineteen miles, and the green miasma in the air enveloped them. It hung above and around them like sea-fog, chill and with tiny droplets of moisture that Mickey fanned away with the windshield wipers. It made the landscape on either side of the superhighway faintly visible, cutting the impenetrable darkness, but it also induced a wavering, ghostly quality to the terrain.