almost too much to see at once. A single bulb burning in the center of the ceiling. Another light of some sort just around the corner ahead. A long table on my left, with cameras and tripods and a big glass cabinet with a million small parts. Cans of film, some the size of dinner plates. Others smaller. On the other wall a cork board almost completely covered with film strips. They were all tacked to the top of the board and many of them had slips of paper attached to them, with a jumble of letters and numbers.
I caught the chemical smell again and as I stepped down onto the concrete I saw that there was a small room built underneath the stairs. Through the open door I saw jerrycans and a high metal tub and even though I knew nothing about this I would have guessed this is where Clyde C. Wiley did his own developing, just as his son had boasted.
“Connie,” I said, “are you down here?”
Still no answer, and now it was starting to get to me. The scraping sound was louder now. It got louder still with each step as I approached the other side of the L. As I turned the corner I saw the light coming from a single desk lamp. This was the old edit bay that Connie was talking about. There was a small monitor in the middle of the console. There was an empty film reel mounted horizontally on the left side. On the right side a full reel was still spinning, the end of the film licking at the metal guide post with each revolution. Scrape scrape scrape.
There was a chair. A man was sitting in it, facing away from me. Long hair hanging down the back. Connie was standing next to the man, looking down at him. Connie’s mouth was open. No sound was coming out.
I stepped closer. The man in the chair… it had to be Clyde C. Wiley. After everything I had been through that day, I had finally come face-to-face with him. He was staring straight ahead at nothing. I pressed two fingers against his neck. His skin was cold. He had been dead for hours. But not days.
Connie didn’t move. He was paralyzed.
“He’s gone,” I said to him. “Let’s go upstairs and call somebody.”
Connie let out a puff of air. He kept staring at his father’s dead face. You never know how somebody’s going to react in a situation like this. I’d seen every possible emotion back when I was on the night shift in Detroit. All those dead bodies on the hot pavement, and then whoever was left alive, usually a mother but sometimes a son or a daughter… they’d cry or they’d scream or they’d let out a high whooping noise that you might even mistake for laughter. Or else they’d shut down completely. Stand there like Connie was doing now, like they’d never be able to move again.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“What was he doing down here?”
“Connie…”
“We were supposed to be working today. Why is he here?”
Before I could say another word, Connie found the switch inside himself and flipped it back on. He reached for the console, taking the full reel right off its post.
“You shouldn’t touch that,” I said, but he wasn’t listening to me. He pulled out the end of the film and stretched it back to the empty reel. The film looked yellow and brittle.
“No,” I said. “Leave that alone.”
I tried to turn him toward the stairs, but he pushed me away. He pressed a button and the reels started turning fast. He was rewinding the film.
The hell with it, I thought. He’s a zombie right now. I’m gonna go call the police.
Yet something made me hesitate. It didn’t take long for the film to rewind, or for Connie to rethread it through the console. He hit another button and the monitor came to life.
I stood there and watched it with him.
There was a neighborhood, the camera panning down the street, one house after the next. Pausing on one house, then finally moving. An ordinary scene, but strange at the same time. There was no sound, for one thing. That would come later. Or at least that’s what I assumed. Music and narration and whatever else, to complete the story. But for now as the film looped through the machine it was nothing more than a string of images, one after the other, rough and jittery and washed-out like something that had been filmed a hundred years ago.
I had to keep watching. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t move.
From the neighborhood, to a woman standing in her garden. She looks up at the camera with mild annoyance. Then her face widens into alarm. Into genuine fright. She is looking past the camera now. The camera doesn’t respond. We don’t get to see what she’s looking at.
The light shifting, the next scene indoors. The camera panning across a table. There’s a man’s belt. Then a large metal spoon. A broom handle. Then finally what looks like an old razor strop. The camera is shaking now. The focus is fading in and out. The scene goes black.
Then a flash of light. Sunlight. A bridge. The Mackinac Bridge? Yes, it is. There’s no other bridge like it. It’s a perfect summer day and we’re looking at the bridge, like we’ve suddenly stumbled into somebody’s normal home movie, taken by a normal person on a normal family vacation. It’s so out of place here.
From the normal back to the strange. A long, almost loving shot of a knife. The camera slowly moves up the edge, barely staying in focus.
Then what’s this? It’s hard to even tell what’s going on now. There’s a thin shaft of light. It grows wider. We’re looking through a door. A man is sitting in a chair. We can only see the back of his head. He tips his head back to drink something. A line of smoke curls above his head. He is jarred by something. He gets up. The camera doesn’t go up to see the man’s face. It stays at ground level. All we see are his pant legs and his feet. He comes closer and then everything goes black.
Then fire trucks. People running down the street. The camerawork seems a lot steadier now. It pans back and forth, zooming in on every detail. Flames coming out of a window. The firemen wrestling with the hoses. The camera follows the smoke, up and up, into the night sky.
I looked over at Connie. He was staring at the screen, his mouth half open. Between us the dead man. His father. Clyde C. Wiley. So close to me I could touch his neck again if I wanted to. His lifeless eyes still looking off at nothing.
This isn’t happening, I said to myself. I’m not here in the basement of this man’s house, watching these strips of film that have been pasted together into this bizarre sequence.
Then it got worse.
Misery Bay. Right there on the screen. Charlie Razniewski, the young man I never saw alive, is leaning against the back of his car. There’s a light shining on him. Otherwise everything around him is dark. He seems drunk or half-asleep. The rope is around his neck. From somewhere off camera, the slack is taken up and the rope tightens. Charlie snaps awake and he’s clutching at the rope. It gets tighter and tighter until finally Charlie’s feet leave the ground. He’s in the air now, kicking and struggling in vain against the rope. It’s all silent still, and somehow it makes this all the more unreal. Charlie fights for a full minute until he finally starts to go limp. He hangs there for a long time. The camera finally moves. It comes closer. It circles him. It zooms in on his face.
I want to say something. I can’t speak.
From the nighttime scene at Misery Bay, to daytime. Still winter, with a pale sunlight that makes everything seem to glow. The camera is in motion against the rough wall of a barn. It turns the corner and there’s young Brandon Steele. His back is to us. He has a pistol extended in his right hand. From the recoil we can see he’s shooting. There’s a pair of acoustic earmuffs on his head. He’s not aware of the camera approaching. Closer and closer. Slowly. Pan to the other weapon on the windowsill. A semiautomatic. A gloved hand reaches for it. The gun is pointed at the young man’s head. The barrel is three inches away. Then the side of Brandon’s head explodes. He goes down, pumping blood into the snow. The camera lingers on his body, recording every nuance. Then it cuts abruptly, as if the camera has just run out of film.
Immediately, we are indoors. It is dark. A sliver of light comes through a window and we can finally make out the features of a bedroom. There’s a woman in the bed. She is sleeping peacefully. Haggerty’s daughter. What’s her first name again?
“No,” I say, finally finding my voice. “Please.” As if I have the power to warn her. As if I can stop this from happening.
A helium tank. A hose. A plastic bag with a cord around the opening. The bag is carefully slipped over the woman’s head. Dina is her name. It comes to me. Dina Haggerty. She stirs and turns a little but does not wake up. The cord is tightened. The valve on the helium tank is turned. The camera waits for a long time. The woman seems to be sleeping still. There’s no discernable difference at all. Finally, the woman’s arm is lifted by the
