Heather Graham - Ghost Night

Jay agreed with her that if they were going to do the project, an independent endeavor, it had to be done really well. However, they were also looking for commercial success. So the script was well written but also included the usual assortment of teen-slasher-flick characters—the jock who counted his conquests with scratches on his football helmet, the stoner guitar boy, the struggling hero, the popular slut coming on to the hero and the good-girl bookworm. So far, two characters had been killed in the water, two had disappeared from the boat—and two had to fight the evil, reborn pirates on land and sea and somehow survive until help could come to the patch of sand where they’d been grounded in the Atlantic.

The scream.

Vanessa had been sitting by the fire, sipping a glass of champagne and chatting with Jay, Lew and Carlos. They’d broken it open just a few minutes earlier, taking a minute to relax before they all gathered to cook dinner over the fire and the camp stoves they’d brought and finish off the rest of the champagne.

At the scream, she, like the others, stopped what she was doing. They looked at one another in the eerie light produced by the flames in the darkness, then bolted up and started running toward the sound.

Vanessa was in the lead when Georgia came tearing down the beach toward them. Vanessa caught the young woman, trying to hold her, trying to find out what had happened. “Georgia! Stop, stop!” Georgia Dare, a stunning twenty-one-year old blonde, stared at her with eyes as wide as saucers. “Georgia, it’s me, Vanessa. What’s wrong?”

“Nessa…Nessa…oh my God, oh, no, no…!”

Georgia started to scream again, trying to shake Vanessa’s hold.

“Georgia!”

By then, everyone had come, bursting out of their camp tents, forgetting whatever task they had been involved in.

The others gathered behind her while Jay came forward. “Georgia, damn it, what the hell kind of a prank is this?” he demanded. Once, Georgia had tried to pretend that a stunt knife was real and that she’d been stabbed by a woman from the Retirees by the Sea trailer park back in the Keys.

“The bones, the bodies…they are alive, they don’t like us, they’re going to kill us…they’re angry…we’ll all die!” Georgia blurted.

“Damn it, I’ve had it,” Jay said with disgust, turning away. Most of the others did the same.

Vanessa didn’t. Georgia was shaking violently. And that scream! The sound of that scream still seemed to be chilling her blood.

“They’re going to kill us all. Kill us all,” Georgia said. Her eyes fell directly on Vanessa’s then, and she was suddenly as strong as a sumo wrestler, breaking free from Vanessa’s hold and gripping her shoulders instead. “They’re real! They’re going to kill us, don’t you understand, we have to get out of here! They’re coming out of the sand. I saw them…the arms, the hands, the skulls…I saw them, coming out of the sand.”

“Georgia, Georgia, please, stop it. Hey, come on, we’re filming a horror movie, remember?” Vanessa asked gently. “The guys probably set up some of the props to scare you,” She frowned suddenly. “What were you doing alone, way down on the beach?”

“Travis and I…Travis and I…Travis is gone.”

Travis Glenn was the male lead, an exceptionally beautiful if not terribly bright young man.

“Okay, where is Travis?”

“Gone. Gone. The pirate took him.”

“The pirate?”

Georgia shook her head. “Maybe he wasn’t a pirate. I didn’t see him very clearly. But he was evil—he was like an evil shadow, skulking in the darkness. Travis was yelling, and he went after the shadow. He was mad. He thought you all were playing tricks. And then this monster came out of the sand, but he wasn’t right, he seemed to jerk around, like his bones were put back together wrong. And he took Travis and I started screaming and ran.”

Jay came back, hands on his lean hips, chest glistening in the darkness. “Slap her! Nessa, don’t look so damned concerned. She’s jerking us around and it isn’t funny. Damn you, Georgia. Look, I realize this isn’t anything major-budget, but the crew has worked hard and everyone is tired—and you’re acting like a complete bitch! It’s just not the time for practical jokes. Slap her, knock her out of it, Vanessa!”

Vanessa glared at him and shook her head. Georgia wasn’t that good an actress. She had disagreed with casting the young woman, but she had looked phenomenal on film.

“Let’s go down to the beach and see what scared her,” Vanessa suggested. She looked back at Lew, a big, broad-shouldered Bahamian man who had been one of their guides. “Do you think there’s anything down at the beach, Lew?”

“Sand,” he told her.

“Let’s go see.”

Georgia jerked away from her, shaking her head vehemently. “No, no, no! I am not going back there. I am not going back!”

Carlos Roca, their lighting engineer, came toward them. He’d been close to both actors, and Georgia liked him. Vanessa did, too. He was a nice guy—eventempered and capable. He took Georgia’s hands. “Hey, hey. I’ll stay here with you, and we’ll sit by the fire with the others while Lew, Jay and Vanessa go check it all out. How’s that?”

Georgia looked up at him. Huge tears formed in her eyes and she nodded. “Travis is dead,” she told him. “Travis is dead.”

Jay looked at Zoe, who worked with the props, makeup and buckets of stage blood they’d been using. He glared sternly at her, then turned to Bill and Jake, the young production assistants, earning credit from the U of Miami. “Hey, you guys didn’t rig anything, did you—any practical jokes?”

Zoe looked at him with incredulous disdain. “No. No, we did not.”

Jay looked from face to face and was obviously satisfied with the chorus of denials.

“All right, we’ll check it out,” Jay said.

“Yes, yes. Come on, let’s do this,” Lew said with his pleasant and easy Bahamian accent. “We’ll find Travis and see what’s going on. Miss Georgia, you’re going to be just fine, honey.”

But Georgia shook her head. “Travis is dead,” she repeated.

“I’ll light some torches from the fire,” Lew offered.

“I don’t believe we’re doing this,” Jay said, tired and irritated as they started down the beach. “I made a mistake in casting, that’s for sure. We’re filming a legend, a horror flick, for God’s sake. She’s letting it all get to her. This is crazy.”

Lew chuckled softly. “Ah, yes, well, that’s the way it is with American slasher flicks, eh? Two young people drink and wander off into the woods or the pines to make love, and then the monster comes upon them. They are mistaken. This is Bimini. There are no monsters.”

Vanessa stopped. They had come to the edge of the beach. A pine forest came almost flush with the water after a rise in the landscape.

“Nothing,” Jay said. “There’s nothing out here at all.”

Vanessa raised her torch to look around. She froze suddenly. There was nothing there now, but just feet from her, the sand looked as if it had been raked, and it was damp as well, as if someone had dumped buckets of water twenty feet inland from the shore.

“Look,” she said.

“Someone was playing a joke on her—on her and Travis, maybe,” Jay said. He swore. “We’ve got one more day of filming to tie up loose ends, and I guess it’s natural that someone just feels the need to play practical jokes.”

“But where is Travis?” Vanessa asked.

Lew was hunkered down by the disturbed sand. “Interesting,” he said.

“What?” Jay asked.

“It does look like something burst outward from the sand—more than it looks as if someone were digging in it,” Lew said. “As if it erupted, and was then smoothed over.”