was, knew quite a few people there, and Stormy gave a thumbnail sketch of where he was going and why and asked his friend if he'd come along.
'I'm at the office. Pick me up on the way.'
Russ knocked on the door frame. 'Doug says P.P.
doesn't have classes today. He should be home.'
'You have an address?'
'I know where it is.'
'You're coming with me, then. Let's go.'
A half hour later, Stormy, Russ, and Ken were bumping along the dusty road across the mesa that led to the pueblo serving as tribal headquarters.
Ken's accounts of supernatural occurrences were not exaggerated. If anything, they'd underrepresented the degree of infiltration. Stormy pulled to a stop in front of the headquarters. Kachina dolls were indeed walking around, and they were doing so in the open. There were dozens of them on the flat ground in front of the pueblo, lurching, waddling, and crawling in different directions.
Several stood like sentries on the ledge above the door, swiveling about. On the other side of the creek that bisected the open gathering area, a group of dead men were standing in a circle, apparently speaking among themselves.
Stormy sat for a moment in the car. The extent of what was happening here was overwhelming, and he marveled at how the few people he saw walking about completely ignored the dolls and the dead. Human beings, he thought, can get used to anything.
But perhaps whatever was behind all this knew that.
Maybe it was starting here because the Native American culture was more open in regard to the supernatural, more readily accepting of the nonmaterial world. Maybe this was the first assault in a full-fledged invasion of ghosts and spirits and demons and monsters. Maybe they were easing in gradually, getting people used to them before they . . . What? Took over the world?
He'd seen too many movies.
But movies were the only real reference point for what was going on. There was no parallel in the real world, no factual, historical correspondence.
Ken hopped out of the car. 'I'll be back in a sec,' he said, running into the tribal office. 'I'm just going to tell them we're here.'
Stormy turned, looked at Russ in the backseat. The intern's face was white, blanched.
'What's going on?' Russ asked.
Stormy shook his head. 'I don't know.'
The dolls were not as frightening to him as he'd thought they'd be. He supposed it was because they were out in the open, in the daylight, with people around.
There was an old saw in the horror film industry about ghosts and monsters being more frightening when they were juxtaposed against normal, everyday life, but he had never believed that to be true. A ghost in a mall was nowhere near as scary as a ghost in an old dark house, and the same thing was true here. The kachinas were obviously alive, their wooden bodies and feathered faces were moving in a terrifyingly unnatural way, a way that shouldn't be possible, but they were nowhere near as frightening to him as the thought he'd had of a lone doll sneaking around the house --the inside of the abandoned theater.
Ken came running back. 'It's cool. Let's go.'
'Two streets down,' Russ said from the back. 'The white house.'
Stormy put the car into gear. 'Pretty fucking spooky,'
he said.
Ken nodded. 'You're telling me.' He glanced at the circle of dead men as they drove by. 'I'd like to get a close-up look at one of them,' he said.
Stormy shivered. 'No you wouldn't.'
'What's going on?' Russ asked again.
Neither of them answered him.
It was like driving through a foreign country, Stormy thought. Or an alien landscape. No, it was more surreal than that. Like passing through a Fellini world or a David Lynch world or ... No. Even film analogies broke down here.
On the side of the road, a woman popped into existence.
She hadn't been there a second before, and then she was, and she smiled and waved at them.
'Turn here,' Russ said, pointing. 'That's his house.'
Stormy braked to a halt in the middle of a short dirt driveway in front of a small dilapidated home. P. P. Rod man was already out the front door and walking toward the car before Stormy had even shut off the engine. The filmmaker was a scrawny little half-and-half who looked as though he was about sixteen. Russ had told him that Rodman was in grad school, but had he not known, he would have guessed high school freshman.
Stormy got out of the car and walked toward the filmmaker, hand extended. 'Hello,' he said. 'I'm Stormy Salinger--'
'President of Monster Distribution.' Rodman nodded.
'I know.'
'Russ here gave me a tape of Butchery, and I have to say, I was very impressed.'
Rodman squinted against the sun. 'Thanks.'
'Did you write the film?' Stormy asked.
'Wrote and directed it,' Rodman said proudly.
'Where'd you get the idea?'
The kid frowned. 'It came to me in a dream.'
A dream.
Stormy tried to maintain the bland expression on his face. 'I thought it might have been inspired by'--he motioned toward the land surrounding them--'everything that was happening.'
'Are you kidding? I wrote the original draft two years ago. It took me a year to film it.'
Two years. That was even more unsettling. He could not get the thought out of his mind that the movie had been made specifically for him, that an unknown power had inspired this kid, knowing he would make this film and that his friend would pass it to his friend and that that person would be working for Stormy's company and would show him the video. It was a frighteningly comprehensive plan, hidden behind an apparent series of coincidences, and Stormy found himself intimidated by the sheer scope of it all, by the complex and concentrated linkages.
He didn't know if he was being warned or threatened, but the idea that this kid was just a messenger, his film the message, and that it had been meant for him and him alone, remained strong in his mind.
He licked his lips. 'Where's the house?' he asked.
'Special effect,' the filmmaker said. 'It's a model. I
based it on the house in my dream.'
Stormy was sweating. 'How close is the film to your dream?'
'I thought you were interested in distributing my movie.'
'Humor me,' Stormy told him. 'How close?'
'It's almost the same.'
'Was there anything in your dream that you didn't put in the movie? Any additional images you cut out because they'd interrupt the narrative flow?'
'What narrative flow?'
'Was there anything you cut out?'
'No.'
He continued questioning Rodman, but the kid was a blank, and Stormy understood that whatever meaning he was supposed to get from this, he was supposed to get from the film itself.
'Have you seen any of the dead?' he asked before they left.
Rodman snorted. 'Who hasn't?'
'What's it mean?'
