Shelby walked as quietly and unobtrusively as he could, being careful to avoid areas with any activity, at least until being told it was alright to enter. He was amazed that the amount of action, even in areas where they were not yet actively shooting. The lighting crew here, preparing for an upcoming scene, the continuity people consulting their notes for a continuation of a scene Gagne had previously thought completed … until “zee eenspiration came out from nowhere!”
So it took Shelby a little time to learn the areas in which he could move freely.
Mack had expected him to head for someplace quiet so that he could really have a good look around but was a little surprised to see his friend tarry so long in these heavily populated areas. He also noticed that Shelby seemed reluctant to touch anything. Obviously, he’d already been warned about this, so it would have been odd, and certainly frowned upon, if he was going around man-handling everything in sight, but at one point Shelby had caught his toe in a cable and lost his balance. He’d put his hand out, instinctively trying to steady himself, but when his hand touched the wall, he drew it back quickly, as if he’d burned himself.
Fucking Shelby and his down-homey superstitions. Following Shelby as he milled about the house gradually started to feel fairly mundane to Mack and little by little, he’d forgotten being freaked out just shortly before.
“Shel, it seems like there might be less going on upstairs right now. Why don’t we talk a walk around up there? I mean, since we really have no idea what we’re looking for anyway.”
The staircase with its ornately carved woodwork was at the end of a hallway that was currently being utilized mainly for storage. It was actually going to be a bit of a squeeze to get to the stairs.
“Yeah. Uh. Maybe. You know. In a minute or two.”
Mack had certainly not forgotten the trauma his friend had recently experienced, and he sure as hell didn’t fault him for not having his sea legs back under him yet. Hell, any new job was an adjustment, and while Shelby was no stranger to running security detail, it had been several years since the last time he’d taken this sort of work. So rust—yeah Mack got that. But this felt like something else.
It smelled like something else. Something smelled, anyway. The whole place, if he was being honest, had a faint tinge that took him only a moment to recognize. You don’t spend almost thirty years of your life going to every bloody, left-behind mess in every run-down apartment, every city back alley, every upscale sitting room, and not know the smell of death. You learn it the first instant it assaults your nostrils, and you never forget it, try as you might.
But here it was faint. Residual. Mack had known other old houses to carry it. It was almost less than an odor. It was like the memory of one. After the initial unsettling it might cause, you can generally assign it to the non-essential sensation bin. As the television commercials selling things to make other things stink less say, you become “nose-blind.”
So maybe it was the reputation of the place. The knowledge that over a hundred years before the stench of death hung heavy on the place in earnest. Or maybe it was Mack falling prey to Shelby’s queer behavior. But whatever the reason, the faintness did not fade, and he smelled death in every inch of the place.
Oh my God. He is screwing with my head now. It’s a stinky old house, McIntyre. Man up.
“You smell it too, right?” Shelby asked, startling Mack who had taken a step ahead of him in the direction of the staircase.
He considered playing dumb and doing the whole “Smell what?” ballet, but he figured the way Shelby was acting he might want to hold back on the skeptical voice of reason routines for something he hadn’t, in fact, just been thinking about.
“Yeah. I suppose given what went on in this place any surface could have been stained at one time. Death was probably everywhere.”
“Maybe not everywhere,” Shelby said. He was holding his hand out again, like he’d done involuntarily when he’d stumbled, but this time he wasn’t steadying himself. He seemed to be feeling the air. “But right here, for sure – I mean, I think. You know, I bet.”
“Dude. Are you okay?” He’d turned back to face his friend now. Mack was almost a little pissed. Shelby, for as long as he’d known him, had shown a mind that was sharp, quick, and often very non-linear. It was almost as if he looked at a thing from all angles at once. And that often led to almost indecipherable speech as Shelby’s mouth struggled to keep up with what was happening in his brain. But now every time he started mumbling this jabber, Mack found himself worrying the guy was stroking out.
The question, however, seemed to have cleared a bit of the mist from Shelby’s eyes.
“Yeah, I’m okay—mostly. I admit there’s something that happens to me when I’m in this house. Like I said, the same thing when I was a kid. But doesn’t it make sense? If someone was in one of the ‘guest rooms’ upstairs, and got really lucky they might have made it all the way down the stairs and to this hallway …” he pointed to the floor directly below their feet, “… right here, maybe—probably, before he caught up to them.”
“Hey, you two!”
From behind them the unmistakable voice of Tom Cook. This time they both jumped, and the Second Unit director laughed.
“Yeah, that happens a lot in this place. It makes you jumpy. So what are you thinking, based upon what you’ve seen so far?”
“Thinking? I’m not going to lie, Tom. At this point it’s more about what I’m feeling.”
Mack winced. As much as he’d like an outline of just what the fuck Shelby was feeling, he didn’t know if revealing it to the employers was the way to go.
“Feeling? How so?”
“Ah, well, I should explain I mean that on two levels. On the one hand, this place has always creeped me out a little.”
“Makes sense. You grew up here. The legend of this place probably runs pretty deep in you.”
“Right,” Shelby nodded. “That’s it exactly. But, whatever, right? Ha ha!” His attempt to laugh off the awkward confession made it about two hundred percent more so.
Keep your eye on the ball, Mack thought, hoping he did so with enough intensity that Shelby would “feel” his mental plea too.
“But what I really mean is that what I see makes me think that we should be in good shape security wise. The set construction, and even some of the physical modifications that have been done to facilitate the process of making the film have, whether by design or dumb luck, made it pretty easy to control.”
“That’s good, right?” Cook asked.
Shelby nodded, but his squinted his eyes as he did so,
“Yes …”
“‘Yes, but,’ your face just said.”
Shelby turned to Mack.
“He keeps going on about liking us.”
Mack smiled. “Yeah, me too.”
“What’s that?” the thin man asked, grinning a little nervously. “Michigan shorthand talk? Are you going to start talking about me in Odawa next?”
“See?” Shelby said.
“Homework,” Mack nodded.
“Use sentences, goddammit!” Cook said. But he was laughing.
“Shelby in his ‘Michigan shorthand,’ which is a phrase I’m stealing and will tell everyone I came up with, is saying we like you too, kid.”
“We’re calling it shorthand, but it would have taken a lot less time just to say that, don’t you think?”
“Yes, but,” Shelby began. At first Mack that he was going to continue the banter. “Yes, but it doesn’t feel secure.”
The other two men forgot the levity at once.
“I can’t put my finger on it yet. To be honest I’ve only been in a few rooms so far, but I don’t know how much more I’ll understand it once I’ve been all through.”
Tom looked a little concerned. Shelby noticed.
“Don’t moisten your drawers, Tom. I’ll figure it out. I always do. Seriously, what a face. You remind me of this one,” he said pointing his thumb toward Mack. “Every time I fart, he thinks my corpse is starting to purge the gasses and fluids.”
The momentary chill lifted.
“You would too if you ever smelled one,” Mack said.
“Couple questions, Tom?”
“Shoot.”
“I’m not the sort of small town rube who needs to know everybody’s business down to the tiniest hint of a rumor, so I don’t keep track of things like real estate transactions as a rule. More often I just realize I haven’t seen someone for a couple of years and find out they moved away. But with this house, it’s a little different.”
“Okay, I’m with you so far. How so?”
“Well part of the legend was always the ownership of the house—you know … after.”
“Uh-huh. Go on.”
“Even when I was a kid, part of the mystique was that some distant relative of Michael Parré was the legal owner of the property, but that no one from the family had ever come near the place. There were all sorts of conspiracy theories as to why. I was always pretty comfortable with, ‘Well, why the fuck would you?’”
Tom laughed. “Right.”
But about three years ago everybody at the Sunshine was talking about the papers that had been filed with the town clerk, who was sitting at the center of the group, and, I’m pretty sure was committing some sort of crime by doing so.”
“Papers.”
“Related to the sale of the murder house. Unfortunately, the clerk said that the new owner was in fact a corporation, so we didn’t really get the satisfaction of having someone to point at and say, ‘That’s the fool that bought the murder house.’”
“Ooo!” Tom said, rubbing his hands together. “A mystery!”
“Ha! Yeah, one I was hoping you might shed a little light upon. But you’re calling it a mystery.”
“If I were directing the story, yes. That’s what I’d call it. But I know the answer. You’re right about the name on the deed being a corporation. It’s Colmat Industries, Inc.”
“Okay, so I know the name of the curtain. I need to know the name of the person behind it.”
As they’d been talking some workers came into the hallway and were moving some of the materials there. One of them grabbed a large paper sack of what looked like plaster of Paris, and Mack could tell right away things were about to end other than well. After only two steps he lost his tenuous grip on the bag, and naturally it split down the side on impact, sending a cloud of the white powder into the air directly at the bottom of the ornate staircase.
Like witnesses at any car crash, all eyes turned to the commotion. There was a fair amount of cacophony, between the cursing and the coughing, but as the men looked on, a voice came from behind the cloud of particulates, which was just now showing the first signs of settling.
“Allow me to introduce you to the person behind the curtain,” the voice said. Shelby could not shake the feeling he recognized it.
Then to the shock of both of the security specialists, a man emerged from the cloud. Shelby gasped when he saw. It was the face. The face one saw when they entered the murder house by the grand front door, in the larger than life scale portrait that hung on the wall. The unmistakable visage of Michael Parré. Some of the plaster had clung to him as he passed through it, giving him an almost ghostly appearance.
“Gentlemen,” said Tom Cook, “let me introduce the sole shareholder in Colmat Industries, and the star of this film, Mr. Colton Matthews.”
Everyone stood silently for a moment as the cloud of plaster continued to descend, landing on everyone now. After a moment, through the compromised visibility, Mack’s voice could be heard, mumbling to himself no doubt.
“Colmat. Colton Matthews. Duh.”