Life in a Haunted House Page 2

  A folded scrap of blue construction paper drops into my open magazine. I didn’t see who dropped the note, but I’m pretty sure the student is nearby.

  Should I turn around? Perhaps a whole gang of students stands behind me, waiting to watch me read the note. The note might tell me I’m a horrible person. It might contain a threat. Better watch your back, New Kid. Or, complete with grammatical error: Meet us after school, behind the north field. Your dead.

  The teacher stands too far away. She waves her brush in the air as if conducting a delicate symphony.

  My new enemies need not wait until after school. They could tear into me right now with items from the unsupervised supply cabinet: X-acto knives, clay-carving tools, taut pieces of wire.

  I lift the folded paper. Flip it open with one hand.

  Inside, white chalk marks form thick capital letters on the blue page.

  DON’T SAY ANYTHING on one side of the fold.

  DO NOT REACT on the facing page.

  I feel a tap on my shoulder, and turn slightly in my chair.

  A fist raises into view.

  But it’s a delicate fist, not aimed toward me in a punch. The ring finger and thumb are curled to enclose a round, glistening object.

  It stares at me.

  #

  My first thought is: I recognize that eye.

  Not how unusual it was for an eye to appear in someone’s fist. Not relief that the gesture was too bizarre to be a threat. None of that. Just: I recognize that eye. Shortly followed by: Where have I seen it before?

  Geoff’s sitting with the mural group by the window. They’re goofing around, but nobody nearby seems shocked enough to indicate one of Geoff’s eye sockets is empty. Perhaps he has a spare. It’s rolled out of his pocket across the floor, and some polite girl has tapped me on the shoulder.

  Excuse me. Did you drop this?

  Then I consider the way the girl’s forefinger and thumb encircle the eye, similar to the bruised donut of flesh around Hendricks’ squinting eye in The Twisted Face. That movie has been on my mind today, which explains why I make the connection, but that solution is hardly possible. Thomas Hendricks was a real person, probably long dead, and this girl’s fist couldn’t be holding a real eye.

  And yet, I feel closer to the truth.

  It’s not a real eye, so it’s something the girl must have made from art-room supplies. White clay shaped into a ball, dried then painted with pupil and iris and blood vessels, a coating of clear glaze overtop to make it shine.

  Yet that explanation doesn’t answer why I recognized the eye. And the paint is faded in spots, like a book cover fades if left in sunlight. Some of the varnish on the surface has flaked off over the years.

  It’s old.

  I realize my connection to The Twisted Face wasn’t as far off-base as I thought. A few years later. A different movie.

  Different monster.

  One of the eyes of The Lake Monster.

  #

  “Took you long enough.”

  Her lips curl in a slightly lopsided smile. The girl lets her hand drop to the side, palming the eye like in a magic trick. She’s short and thin, with frizzy hair that hangs to her shoulders. Her skin is pale; her eyes are an unremarkable brown. I’ve seen her before, but never really noticed her. I don’t recall her name.

  “I know I told you not to react, but it’s like you were frozen.”

  “How did you…?”

  I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. How did she get that item? How did she find me, the exact person who’d know what it was?

  An actual prop from a Budget Studios monster movie.

  #

  I’ve watched this one with my dad, too. The Lake Monster is actually the first Budget film I saw with him, back when I was eight years old. He turned the channel after I complained I’d already seen the Johnny Quest episode. Dad clicked through a religious program, then local news, and settled on Channel 20’s weekend movie slot.

  On the fuzzy UHF image, two hands part the branches of a tree. The hands are as green as the leaves, and covered with scales.

  When the monster walks into the spotlight, it’s wearing a sports coat and trousers—a typical Budget concession, to avoid the need for a full-body costume. Mask over the head, two gloves for the webbed hands, flippers for the feet.

  Other movie fans might disagree, but I find the cheaper costume more effective than the elaborate, head-to-toe rubber suit Ben Chapman wore in Universal’s The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Sure, the make-up guys at Universal were master craftsmen, and they created an iconic, classic monster. But the incongruity of the human clothes and the monster elements in Budget’s version strikes me as a little more unnerving. Their Lake Monster wears clothes you’d see on people in an office building or shopping mall, or on the sidewalk outside your suburban home. A hideous scale-covered head sprouting from the collar of a J C Penney workshirt creates its own brand of uncanny shiver.

  The mask itself was fairly gruesome, with a stretched fish-frown mouth, and gill flaps at the neck. A string of tentacles hangs like dreadlocks from the scalp. The eyes were the most startling feature. Instead of cutouts for the actor to look through, this mask had bug-eyes attached to the deep sockets. The eyes looked human, as if they’d been plucked from a man’s face to dangle glistening from the mask—a spherical, unblinking horror.

  Mom walked into our rec room during one of the scare scenes. A woman sits reading in a chair, and she thinks her husband stands behind her. The camera pans up to reveal The Lake Monster. The tentacles on his head shake, and the eyes bobble as well. “Oh, turn that off, Scott. He’ll have nightmares for weeks.”

  “Oh, he’s okay. Aren’t you, kiddo?”

  I nod agreement, and the woman on the television screams.

  My overprotective mom turned out to be right—those eyes, especially, those eyes!—but this was an important bonding moment between father and son. He sided with me, assumed I was mature enough to handle new experiences. Another kid might accompany Dad on a weekend fishing trip as a rite of passage. My dad and I watched a fish-monster on Saturday-afternoon TV.

  Maybe that’s why I like Budget’s monster better than Universal’s. I guess a sentimental reason is as good as any.

  “That was kind of fun, wasn’t it?” my dad said once the movie ended.

  And he did a really cool thing after that day, finding a few more Budget films on Betamax video tapes and bringing them home for us. He kept tracking them down, and eventually we had a near-complete set.

  Those movies are pretty much my only remaining connection to my dad.

  #

  So I ask the girl, “Can I see it again?”

  There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s the real thing—a forgotten piece of film history.

  “Not here,” she says. Her cupped hand stays at her side. “Maybe later.”

  I glance around the room, locate the empty desk which is likely her usual spot. Another sketchbook misfit, like me. I’d never bothered to notice her.

  “I’m Brendan,” I said.

  “I know.” She doesn’t lift her hand to shake, considering it has an eye in it. She doesn’t volunteer her name, either, and I feel rude for not knowing it. I wish she’d signed her note. If I follow her to her desk, she might have written her name on a backpack or on the upper corner of a notebook.

  “Why did you bring that…?”

  “On the bus yesterday. That wasn’t fair the way people turned on you.”

  I search my memory, but can’t recall where she’d been seated.

  “All that fuss over Geoff’s eye,” she says. “We all know about it. It’s not like losing it made him into a better person.” She gave me that half-smile again. “I just thought it might be funny to show you.”

  Yes, funny—in an odd way. I smiled back, to acknowledge the joke. Then I attempted an innocent observation: “You know what it kind of looks like, right? From a movie?”

  “Of course. I saw one of
your sketches. And in your lab notebook yesterday, you’d written a few of the names in the margins. Titles, I mean. Of my father’s films.”

  #

  I’m still the Twisted Face of Edison High, an outcast among my peers. Perhaps my infamy will eventually slip away—a repulsive mask pulled off my head, revealing a normal kid, worthy of anyone’s friendship. For now the gossip is still fresh, and the other tenth graders mostly recoil from my presence.

  But now I have an ally. I’ve learned her name is Melissa.

  Can it really be Melissa Preston, daughter of the man who created Budget Studios? The idea seems impossible.

  Melissa has boarded the crowded bus before me, and there’s no room beside her at the back. I end up sitting near the front, among a clump of twelfth-graders. During the monotonous ride home, I nod at her reflection in the driver’s giant rear-view mirror, but she does not seem to respond. I wonder which of the stops will be hers, which of us might get off the bus first.

  The bus pauses at the edge of a field, and I see her reflection stand. Melissa and two other kids walk down the aisle toward the doors beside the driver. As she passes me, her hand lifts in a shy wave.

  Judging from the intersection, I try to calculate how far Melissa’s home is from mine.

  She’s invited me to visit sometime soon. I hope she means tomorrow.

  #

  The Fan

  Today I am a Fan. For once, that status is enough. I don’t dream of becoming a special effects artist, a potential writer or director, a child star growing into a handsome matinee idol. I am simply someone who appreciates movies. I watch them, memorize my favorite lines and images. I am hoping to visit the home of my new friend, Melissa Preston, who just happens to be the daughter of my all-time favorite filmmaker. If I’m lucky, she might be able to locate a few other movie props to show me.

  I won’t meet the director himself. Like me, Melissa lives in a single-parent household. Her father died a few years ago, during a location shoot for his final, unreleased film.

  I can’t believe how lucky I am to have ended up in this town. And after I’d been so angry with my mom, whose government job requires us to move frequently. Typically, I’d join a school community long enough to make a lousy first impression, and never have enough time to recover and make lasting friends. This latest move brought us to Graysonville, Alabama, a place I’d never heard of. I’d dreaded it, complained in advance about this small southern town in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but a large, nearby Army base to recommend it. And then it turned out to be the town where Budget Studios got its start.

  Why wasn’t that little detail listed on the “Moving Packet” my mom’s Pittsburgh boss had provided with her other reassignment papers? Why wasn’t there a billboard at the town entrance with the Lake Monster shaking his tentacle-dreadlocks at visitors? Alongside town square statues of Civil War heroes with unlikely names such as Bibb Graves or the Mighty Pelham, there should stand a statue of Thomas Hendricks from The Twisted Face—and a plaque beneath to commemorate his immortal screen words: “My world has no illusions. When people react to me, I see their real faces.”

  Instead, I had to find out by accident. If Melissa hadn’t spoken to me, I might never have known. Her last name was common enough. I never would have suspected she’d be related to that Preston.

  I have a momentary panic when I get home from school. The way she joked with me, the half smile and the teasing air of mystery. Perhaps Melissa was in league with the other kids. Once again, I’m the victim of some elaborate cosmic hoax.

  I rush upstairs and pull the box of videos from under my bed. The Sony Betamax format was discontinued in favor of larger, more prevalent VHS tapes, and we no longer had a machine that would play them. I couldn’t watch the videotapes, but I kept them anyway—fond memories of the films themselves, and of watching them with my dad while he was still around. The cardboard sleeves to the tapes were mostly in rough shape: faded, with bent corners; some of them with “Used” stickers or other tags obscuring part of an image or the synopsis on the back. I had most of the descriptions memorized, though, and let my imagination supply any missing words.

  I lift the tape for The Space Visitor, since that was a rare one my dad had found in “new” condition. The shrinkwrap is intact, except for a cut we’d made at the bottom to allow removal of the video cassette. The picture on the front displays a silver spaceship over a field, with a wide beam spreading out from the undercarriage. At ground level, the Visitor appears in the beam’s spotlight, transported to Earth. The alien figure stands in silhouette, a large yellow question mark over his vaguely humanoid torso. The lettering at the top turns the film’s title into a question: Who is…The Space Visitor?

  I flip to the other side, with four color stills from the movie—none of them showing the Visitor, but a cool flying saucer image in one, and a car in the process of being disintegrated. Beneath appears the cast list, then the crew, ending with the usual “Produced, Written and Directed by Bud ‘Budget’ Preston.” The release year (1962) and running time (84 min). All of these details I’ve pretty much memorized, and of course a familiar logo, the Budget Studios name superimposed over a dollar sign.

  Beneath that logo, in small print I’d never paid any attention to: Distributed from Graysonville, AL.

  I breathe a sigh of relief. Melissa Preston isn’t playing a cruel trick on me. She really was telling the truth.

  #

  When Mom arrives home from work later that evening, she’s immediately suspicious when I ask about her day. Guess I deserve that, since any other time I’d barely expressed an interest. And there I am, meeting her at the front door, opening the hall closet to help her hang up her jacket.

  “Still getting used to things.” She shrugs out of her jacket and takes the hanger I offer. “It’s a big change, the way they work here.”

  “But you like it?”

  “Oh, honey.” She puts away her jacket then closes the closet door. “Do we have to start this again? You need to give this place a chance. If you’re hoping I’m going to hate my job so we’ll move somewhere else, that’s not going to happen.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I…”

  “Let me guess: something happened at school.” Her shoulders slump. She’s been waiting for this conversation, dreading it. “Couldn’t we get through your first week without a call from the Principal, or some teacher note I have to sign?”

  “Nothing bad happened at school.” Not technically a lie, since my problems began on the bus ride. “I was just thinking that my bedroom here is a little bigger, and school seems kind of easier. It’s possible, maybe, that…” I smile, hoping it would serve as partial apology for all the complaining I’d piled on the past few weeks. “…that I don’t hate it here as much as I thought I would.”

  “Well, that’s a switch.”

  “So maybe, if your job’s okay, we might stick around longer than usual.”

  Her expression falls, and I think she’s going to get angry again. Instead, she gives me a hug. “I’m sorry we’ve had to move around so often, Brendan. I know it’s been tough on you.” She pulls back from the hug, then lays her palm gently against the side of my head. “I have to follow where we can get government contracts. That’s my job. You understand, right?”

  “Yeah. I know it’s not your fault.” I twist away from her hand, the way any teenager doesn’t want his mom treating him like a baby. But I also let some bitterness slip into my voice. An undercurrent saying, Try, won’t you? This one time, try to keep us in the same town for a little while.

  She heads toward the kitchen to pour a glass of Diet Rite. I follow, since I’ve already put two Swanson dinners in the oven for us. Practically cooking for her, so another suspicious instance of good behavior.

  “Something changed your mind about Graysonville,” she says. “You make a new friend?”

  “Uh huh.”

  Her soda fizzes over ice, and Mom waits for the foam to settle be
fore she takes a drink. “What’s his name?”

  “Geoff.” The name just comes out, before I’ve made any conscious decision to lie. Maybe I worried my mom would make too much fuss if I wanted to visit a girl’s house—not that I thought of Melissa in any romantic way. She’s nice enough, but whether she’s a boy or girl honestly doesn’t matter to me. There’s that bigger thing, about her dad and those movies I used to watch with my dad.

  And that movie part, I’m not ready to share yet. Budget Studios’ films were never something my mom approved of. She tolerated them at best, walking into the rec room as we watched, lingering just long enough to comment how the acting was bad, or that some special effect looked fake. “We know,” Dad would say. If she asked, “Haven’t you watched that one a hundred times already?” I’d say “more like a thousand,” and me and Dad would both laugh. Mom would shake her head, mutter something like “I’ll never understand what you two see in those films.”

  So when I tell her I might be late from school the next evening, that me and my new friend are going to study together or hang out or whatever, at a library or at the ball field or maybe at another kid’s house, she can think of that kid as “Geoff” for a while. It isn’t a malicious lie.

  The movies are a bond between me and my dad. Mom isn’t part of that world.

  #

  It’s a day later and, still in my role as Fan, I talk to Melissa during Art class.

  “Yeah, today might be okay,” she says. “We can get off the bus at my stop.”

  She asks if I can get a ride home, and I tell her I’ll be fine to walk. I’ll agree to just about anything, because she’s told me she looked through her father’s old stuff, and found a few more props from the movies. “Almost a whole box full.”

  To mix metaphors, the eye was merely the tip of the iceberg.