Night Film(153)

I could hear faint footsteps of more than one person—two, maybe three. They echoed through the warehouse, moving quickly, probably hurrying down those narrow corridors between the film sets.

I was no longer alone. I tried to ignore this reality for a few seconds, frantically digging through the flower bed with my bare hands.

I just needed one glimpse of what was here. I uprooted plants, throwing them aside, tunneling through the soil, my fingers feeling something.

It felt like denim. Popcorn’s overalls.

I fumbled to take the camera from my pocket, but realized, idiotically, I’d left it back in Brad’s herringbone coat. To excavate whatever it was buried here would require clearing away the entire flower bed.

I paused, listening.

Those footsteps were getting louder. They had to know I was here.

I’d have to come back.

I stepped out of the foliage, racing back around the pond to the work shed. I grabbed Brad’s coat, pulled it on, throwing the backpack over my shoulder. I fought my way through the plants to reach the back door.



I opened it a crack, staring out at the deserted lawn. I darted out, gulping down the freezing air, relieved to be out of that gory crimson light, that tropical heat, barreling into the crisp darkness of the soundstage.

I froze. The entire building was hiccoughing with footsteps, seemingly coming down the same passage where I’d entered Wait for Me Here.

I took off in the opposite direction, moving down a stone path out of the set straight into a vast desolate beach of white sand dunes and bristling sea grass. In the distance, an angular beach house rose high in the sky on stilts.

It was Kay Glass’s house from A Small Evil.

I headed across the sand toward the house and beyond it, the moonlit ocean. My sense was this set would take me back to the Jacksons’, and hopefully the exit out of here.

Suddenly—far ahead, a dark figure with a flashlight streaked over the dunes, heading straight for me.

I whipped around, stumbling back out, careening through the next opening I could find, finding myself racing down the middle of a deserted street.

It was the Main Street of a small town, a ghost town that I didn’t recognize, though I could see fairly well, due to the blinking red and green Christmas lights strewn up over the road.

Dark storefronts slipped past.

SILVER DOLLAR SALOON.

SUNSHINE GROCERY.

PASTIME GENTLEMAN’S CLUB. MEMBERS ONLY.

Sprinting footsteps ricocheted behind me. I leapt up onto the sidewalk to Dream-a-lot Movie House, heaved the door open, and sprinted past candy and soda counters and down a narrow hall, theaters advertising Distortion at eleven-thirty, Chasing the Red at twelve.

I yanked open the first door and it dumped me, thank Christ, back into the warehouse and smack into something hard, a concrete wall. I charged along it, looking behind, and saw the flashlight was there again, and another one was heading straight toward me. I grabbed the bars of some scaffolding and began to climb. I’d gone ten, twelve feet, when I reached a wooden platform. I scrambled up onto it.

“See anything?” I heard a male say below.

“He headed the other way.”

I waited several minutes, and, when the lights were farther off, cautiously stood up. The platform was sturdy, the rigging supporting tungsten lights pointing downward into some kind of stone interior. A pillar stood about four feet across from me with a banner reading—I could barely make out the words—STIR THE WATERS. It was Father Jinley’s church from A Crack in the Window. Just beneath me along the wall were stained-glass windows, a three-inch ledge. I bent down, sliding down onto it, and with a silent Hail Mary, leapt across the divide—intending to grab the pillar and slide down.

I missed. I reached out, seizing some sort of mounted wood plaque to break my fall. It wrenched loose, tiles clattering around me as I crashed to the floor, the plaque skidding across the stones.

Fuck. I scrambled to my feet, seeing a flashlight slipping down the arched passageway in front of me, illuminating a vaulted ceiling, alcoves with statues. I hurried away from it down the rows of pews, heading to the back portal, spotting the confessional in the back corner. The simple sight of it made my stomach plunge, but I unlatched the ornate door—it emitted a faint moan—and climbed inside.

It was tight with my backpack on, pitch-black.

I crouched down to the floor, waiting.

Within seconds, I heard someone enter the church and stop—no doubt inspecting the smashed hymn board I’d pried off the wall.

I waited, my heart pounding, noticing a stench. Vomit? Urine? The footsteps resumed, the flashlight edging closer, illuminating the confessional door, which I could see was a carved wood screen of vines and flowers. I recognized the pattern and could hardly believe now I was staring out of it with dread, exactly as Father Jinley had stared out—albeit for somewhat different reasons.

The film’s opening scene took place right in here, when Jinley was conducting his first confessional duties. He was fresh out of seminary school and believed, with the arrogant optimism of the young and inexperienced, that he would lead the depraved to the righteous path. After waiting for more than an hour without a single penitent sinner showing up, a mysterious figure at last enters the other side in a rush, sitting down on the seat with an ominous thud.

The memory made me inadvertently crane my neck to inspect that confessional window only a few inches above my head, the dark latticed smoke screen ensuring total anonymity.