“The camera loves you.”
He’s so young. Younger than me. Just a kid, really. He can’t be much older than twenty-two. Twenty-three, tops. Fresh out of film school. Christ, daycare. I look at his grin and the word cocksure comes to mind. His confidence exceeds his age. How can someone so young be so self-possessed? He’s used to getting exactly what he wants. Nobody’s ever said no to him before.
What studio in their right mind would give this kid fifteen million dollars to reignite their horror property?
I’m professional enough to take the compliment and smile. “It’s been a while.”
“It’s missed you,” Sergio insists. His tone drops an octave and I can’t help but think of a teenager pretending to act older than he really is, trying to buy beer by lowering his voice—
Uh, I must’ve left my driver’s license in the car.
“I’ve missed it, too,” I said.
The backless baby doll dress was a bold choice, but I wanted to make an impression. I was aiming for Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby but I really just feel like a Spice Girl.
I’ve perfected the rearview mirror makeup routine, putting on my face in the parking lot just before every audition…but today, I went to the salon. I wanted to make an impression.
But has this kid even noticed me? I feel as if he’s evading eye contact. He frames the shot, looking at me through the viewfinder, but not in person. Not face-to-face.
I’m crawling out of my skin. The Klonopin was a bad idea, but I needed to take the edge off the fluorescents. The studio had already given Sergio his own production office on the lot. Just another bland boardroom. Reminded me of the office space where I first auditioned for Jessica, years ago. These rooms with their dull lighting blend together. The faint hum of electricity pulses through the tubular bulbs directly over my head and I can’t help but feel the electricity sinking into my teeth. My skin soaks in the stray radiation coursing through the lights.
“I told the studio you were the only one for the role of Ella.”
“Better not let Meryl know,” I kid. “I heard she’s been campaigning for the part.”
Sergio pretends to laugh. Who’s Meryl?
He won’t come out from behind the camcorder, keeping the lens between us. It’s one of those new Handycams. I can’t stand looking at myself on these digital cameras. Their resolution is so low, I feel like my skin is all washed out. I look pale. Sapped of all my blood.
Don’t Tread on Jessica’s Grave had been shot on Super 16mm. The camera was so small, it felt like we were all making some homemade movie in our backyard. Not a real film. The film stock would be blown up to 35mm and get shipped around from one drive-in to another. They could only afford to make a handful of release prints. When one theater was done with its run, those reels would get stuffed into their steel canisters and shipped off to the next screen, hopping from one town to the next.
And the next.
And the next.
That was how our movie made its way across America. Infecting the country, one screen at a time. After a year on the road, the film reels were so fatigued, the celluloid barely held itself together anymore. You could see the spots where the strip had snapped, reattached with tape.
Like snake skin. Flimsy. Translucent. Scaly.
This was my big-screen debut. It was supposed to be my big break. But there would be no big premiere. No gala opening. No searchlights in front of the theater, sweeping through the night sky. No limo pulling up to the red carpet. No photographers rushing up to take a picture, setting their flashbulbs off in my face. Blinding me.
These starlet fantasies were reserved for real movies. Not horror films.
Not for me.
Not Jessica.
The movie had its “premiere” in Kansas. What a joke. Just some drive-in miles outside town. There was no fanfare. No newspaper reviewed it. Our film was paired with an anonymous slasher flick, just to fill out an evening’s double-billed creature feature. I can’t even remember what the second movie was called, if I’d ever known in the first place. That film was the lucky one. Long forgotten by now. Lost for all time.
I had to wait until the release print made its way out west to finally see it. It took over a year for the film to reach California. Even then, it was a two-hour drive to the nearest theater. It screened in some rundown movie palace all the way in Pismo Beach. Mom drove me; she wanted to make a big deal out of it. Celebrate the occasion. Treat it like it was a gala premiere, even if no one else cared.
“I’ll be your limo driver, hon,” she said, forcing a smile. “What do you say? Let’s be movie stars for a day.”
I didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to see it.
See Jessica.
But Mom was trying. Trying so hard to make me feel special. To make amends for everything that happened.
We went to a noon matinee. The first screening of the day was always a dollar cheaper. We bought our popcorn from the greasy-haired concession girl reading her dog-eared copy of Daphne du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now and Other Stories. She barely looked up as we paid.
The theater was completely empty, save for one gentleman sitting alone at the back. We gave the guy a wide berth. For the most part, it felt like we had the whole place to ourselves.
We sat in the front row. The screen loomed over us, a vast expanse of blank space. The seats were so old, so rusted, they squealed every time I shuffled around. The upholstery had torn, with tufts of foam padding spilling out. I remember that the floor was so tacky with coagulated cola. I could feel the soles of my shoes peel away from the ground, so I tucked my feet under my thighs.
What would I look like? All the way up there? How big would I be?
Would I even recognize myself?
What would my voice sound like?
The house lights slowly went down. Mom took my hand. Her grip tightened, her fingers squeezing mine. We looked at each other as the last bit of light in the theater faded. The expression on her face puzzled me. Before we were both lost to the dark, I could’ve sworn I saw a look of sadness pass over her. There wasn’t enough time to focus on it, and I was nowhere near mature enough to understand.
Regret. Reflecting on it now, I think it had been regret.
Too late to dwell on it now. The screen lit up.
Blinding white.
I had to brace myself for this. To see myself. How many years had gone by since the shoot? I had moved on with my life, hadn’t I? Wasn’t I getting better? The production was already receding into the deeper chasms of my memory. My recollections of what happened on set were now fuzzy around the edges. Like it never happened.
Like it was all a dream.
Just a dream.
A nightmare.
For every second on-screen, twenty-four frames of film pass through the projector, causing a fluid movement of images. Implying motion. Implying a continuous thread of action. The celluloid slips through the light so fast, the human eye never realizes it’s actually looking at a series of snapshots. The photographs are moving so fast, your mind never grasps the notion that it’s being tricked. Your brain wants that motion. It needs things to remain smooth. Connected. Tethered together. Persistence of vision.
I saw myself on-screen. My face cast across a stream of guncotton and camphor.
In makeup.
In costume.
I looked so sandy. Gritty. The film stock had a granular aspect to it. A gauzy quality. Everything was so hazy. I wondered if a piece of cloth—my costume, maybe—had slipped into the projector and was now flossed across its lens, illuminating the movie in this silken mist.
I was there all over again. Back in Pilot’s Creek. In the cemetery.
The woods.
This all had to be a dream. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t. I had to believe this. Had to convince myself none of this was real. None of this was actually happening. I was crazy. I had made it up.
That wasn’t me up here. That towering phantom girl. It couldn’t be me. It just couldn’t.
It was only a movie, I repeated to myself, hoping it would go away. Only a movie…
Only a movie…
Only a…
Only…
But it wasn’t until I glanced over at Mom and saw how transfixed she was by the screen, watching her watch me, that I felt the first inkling of something being so wrong, so foul, with this movie. It felt like the film was an entity in of itself—a phantom with my face.
It wanted to be watched. It was using my likeness, my smile, to lure people in.
It wanted me to see. See it.
See her.
I ran out of the theater, shrieking all the way up the aisle. Mom had stayed in her seat. She kept watching. Watching that wraith on the screen who had taken my identity from me.
Mesmerized by Jessica. Hypnotized by that witch.
I burst through the doors and collapsed in the lobby. The greasy-haired girl behind the concession counter put down her book and gathered me up from the floor, wrapping her arms around me. “Hey, hey,” she consoled me as best as she could. “It’s okay. It’s only a movie…”
Only a movie…
Only a movie…
Only…
With my eyes closed, for a moment there, I thought I was back in the woods. I was getting scooped up by someone—my mother, a production assistant, whoever had stumbled upon me first.
Don’t worry, they had said. I’ve got you. I’m going to take you back home.
home
home
home
But it was just some college kid running the concession booth. This popcorn girl had no idea what to do with me. Who I was. All she saw was a little girl.
Just a girl.
I was too young to be watching this type of movie. What kind of parent lets an eleven-year-old watch this piece-of-crap horror movie?
“Are you okay?” she asked, running her hand along my shoulder. “Didn’t you come in here with your mother or…?” Her voice faded. I could see her eyes widen.
That was when it struck her.
I watched it happen. That familiar epiphany that would soon haunt me for the rest of my life. The moment of recognition solidifying itself in her mind. She had been subjected to my burnt face projected onto the screen, three or four times a day, for the last week.
Of course she’d recognize me.
“Hold up. Are—are you Jessica? From the movie?”
The film should have died.
It should have gone to its grave and stayed there. Buried. Forever. We shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t be here, all these years later, talking about it like this. Honoring it like this. As if it were some—some kind of fallen war hero of horror movies. As if Jessica were something to pay respects to. So many films slip into obscurity. They’re released, they’re ripped apart by the critics, and then they’re supposed to slip off into oblivion, to be promptly forgotten about. There’re too many movies. Too many to remember. Too many to live.
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
Why this film?
Why did this particular movie survive while so many others slip into obscurity? Why did it outlive all the others? What was it about Jessica that inspired such a rabid fan base?
It was, without a doubt, a shitty movie.
There was no story.
No budget.
The acting was terrible. Community theater kids from the ’70s in skimpy outfits gallivanting about in the graveyard.
It was awful.
I was awful.
It’s true. Let’s just be honest with ourselves, okay? I was terrible in it. I was a kid, just a clueless kid, scared out of my skull, pretending to be dead.
There’s nothing to redeem Don’t Tread on Jessica’s Grave, nothing to salvage it from the landfill of cinematic history.
Why couldn’t the film just go away? Why wouldn’t it die?
What if it didn’t want to?
What if it wanted to live?
“The execs think I’m crazy for remaking it,” Sergio says, snapping me back to the present day. To the boardroom. To the camera between us.
To my screen test.
Oh. Oh God. I’m panicking. There’s cement in my chest. How long was I daydreaming? How long was I staring off into nothing? Did he notice? Does he think I’m a nutcase?
“I could give a shit,” he says. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I say.
And smile.
He’s grinning back at me, a bit sheepish. His hair keeps falling into his face. I can’t tell if he’s being bashful with me or not. There’s only ten years between us. Maybe a bit more, but I’m not budging on my birthday. But who’s in control here? Who has the power? He’s the director. My director. I feel that internal inclination to wait for his command. To mold me. Move me. But he won’t look at me. He just peers at me through the lens. Taking me in, like I’m something to behold. To marvel at. To—
To—
Oh. Oh God, he’s one of them.
A fan.
He’s a fan. Just like the others. Just like the rest. I can tell by the way he’s looking at me.
His eyes. He has that look.
That gaze.
“Did you know the studio didn’t realize they held the rights to the film?” he asks. I perk up to feign interest. “They had completely forgotten they even owned it after all these years. It had just been collecting dust in their vaults. I had to remind them about it. Can you believe that? I had to tell them the story of one of their own movies. They’d never even heard about it. Didn’t even know it existed. Most of these execs were still in their diapers when Jessica first came out. Some of them weren’t even born. They don’t get it. They’ll never get it.”
“I’ve got to say,” I say, finally finding my voice. An echo of it, at least. “I don’t know if I really get it, either, Mr. Gillespie.”
“Gillespie? Nuh-uh. Don’t even. It’s Sergio from now on, got me?”
“Sergio.”
He’s a fan. A fucking fan. A fan with those eyes a fan with that stare a fan licking his lips a fan with a basement a fan with his autographs a fan with his fantasies…
I have to go. I have to get out of here. Out of this boardroom.
I have to run.
Run.
Run!
“So many people don’t know this movie exists,” he says. “The genre die-hards do, sure. But not the rest of the world…this story is dying to be retold. It’ll reach a wider audience now.”
“Why?” I ask—can’t help but ask. He’s still looking through the viewfinder so I’m not sure if I should speak to his forehead or look directly into the camera.
“Because I’m ready to tell it.”
I’m not sure how to respond to this, so I just let him fill the silence.
“Ever since I saw Jessica as a kid, I worshipped that shit. I can’t even tell you how many times I watched it. But I knew, I fucking knew everything Ketchum got wrong on that film. What he should’ve done. So I started hearing this little voice in my head say: You can do better than that. You can tell that story right. And so…you know. I’m going to. I fucking will.”
The confidence. Even without the lack of eloquence. The resolute, absolute certainty.
Like he was chosen. Like he was The One.
“Why am I here?” I say it straight into the lens, imploring with the camera, hoping my words pass through its digital innards until this young man, this fanboy, sees me. Actually sees me. Sees what he is doing to me. I’m begging for him to look.
Look at me.
Not gaze, not stare, but see the human being pinned down by the lens of his camera.
See Amber. Not Jessica.
Sergio stands up straight. “I want to make a film that burns into people’s subconscious just as much as the original Don’t Tread on Jessica’s Grave did for me when I first watched it. Something they will talk about for years. Something terrifying. When I watched Jessica as a kid, I’m sorry, but it wasn’t you who I saw on-screen. I saw her. I saw the ghost of the Little Witch Girl. She spoke to me. Right to me. I—I heard her. And now I can’t stop hearing her. That’s what your movie did to me. So now I want to do that. Just that. I want to create that experience for the next little pipsqueak who sneaks into the video store. But to do it right, the way I see it in my head—I need you. I need you so I can tell this story the right way, the way it’s meant to be told…I can’t do it without you.”
I have to turn away from him. “Stop.”
“It’s true. You’ve always been horror royalty to me, Miss Pendleton.”
“Just…just call me Amber.”
Sergio steps out from behind the camera. There’s nothing separating us now. Nothing between us. He’s walking toward me. He kneels.
Takes my hand.
“You are a goddess, Amber,” he says. “You are my scream queen.”
This little boy will never see me for who I am. I’ll never be Amber to him.
All he sees is who I was. On-screen.
All he sees is Jessica.