Marisha Pessl - Night Film

“Years ago,” she went on, “he cleaned out the world’s supply. Murad. The brand’s been discontinued since the mid-thirties. It’s very rare. But he bought up every last pack from every obscure tobacco collector across the globe. He liked the caramel smell, the gorgeous packaging, and the fact that it was the only detail he remembered about his natural born father, a Spaniard, whom he’d last seen when he was three. But he especially liked the way they burned. It’s like nothing else. There are hundreds of shots of it in the films. The smoke spirals through the air like it’s alive. ‘Like a swarm of white snakes were struggling to be free,’ he once said to me.”

She’d gone on with strange, unchecked fervor, her eyes bright and raised to the ceiling, her mouth twitching in excitement. But then, remembering me, she stopped herself.

“I don’t see why it’s so important to you, these details, ” she muttered in annoyance.

“It’s where the devil is. Haven’t you heard?”

She eyed me disdainfully. “You’ve done a lifetime’s worth of mining, Mr. McGrath. Maybe it’s time to come back to the surface and go home with whatever lumps of coal you’ve managed to dig loose.”

“And be on my merry way. Like all the others.”

She shrugged, unperturbed. “Do whatever you like with the information. Of course, now there’s no one in the world to back up your story. You’re alone again with your wild claims.”

Staring at the woman, I couldn’t help but marvel at her smug meticulousness, the way she’d managed to get rid of each and every witness, one by one.

“What happened to Ashley’s mother? Astrid?”

“Gone. Somewhere in Europe. With her precious child now dead, there’s nothing keeping her here. Too many black memories.”

“But you don’t mind them.”

She smiled. “My memories are all I have left. And when I’m gone? They’re gone.”

I frowned, suddenly doubtful again of what she’d been telling me, suddenly struck by something. Maybe it was the last dying whisper of magic —the kirins and devils, the supernatural powers of one startling woman — before it was all laid to rest.

“But I went up to The Peak,” I said. “I broke in—”

“ Did you?” Gallo interrupted excitedly. “What did you find?”

Her reaction was puzzling, to say the least. She actually looked thrilled by my admission.

“A perfect circular clearing in which nothing grows,” I went on. “A maze of underground tunnels. Soundstages. Film sets entirely intact. Everything is overgrown and black. I walked over the devil’s bridge. And I saw …”

Gallo was hanging on my words so excitedly, waiting for me to continue, I fell silent, bewildered.

“Who lives there?” I went on. “Who are the watchmen with the dogs?”

She shook her head. “I’ve no idea.”

“ What —you … you no longer work for the family?” I asked.

“You really don’t understand. The Peak’s been left to the fans.”

“What?”

“The Cordovites. It belongs to them now. They’ve overtaken it. Quite a few squat there year-round. It’s a dangerous theme park, left, free of charge, to his most dedicated. It’s become a secret rite of passage, a cult expedition to be there, wander the work or get swallowed inside it. They can fight over it, tend it, destroy it, rule it as they see fit. He hasn’t set foot there in years. It’s finished for him. His work is done.”

I wondered if it could actually be true — the men who’d chased me, the mongrels, the spray-painted red birds. I’d been terrorized by fans ? I’d hardly managed to get my mind around this, when I had no choice but to reach for the other question she’d just left dangling in front of me.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“I was wondering when you might ask me that.” She turned away, staring somewhere in front of us, her expression like a truck driver looking out at a lonely road twisting interminably in front of her.

I had a sudden vision of that drunken South African journalist years ago, cautioning me that some stories are infected, that they’re like tapeworms. A tapeworm that’s eaten its own tail. No use going after it. Because there’s no end. All it will do is wrap around your heart and squeeze all the blood out.

For the first time since I’d met her, Inez Gallo smiled warmly at me. And I knew then I had it wrong. Because here it was. The end. The tail.

I’d found it, after all.

I was shocked there was no security.

I expected something miserable. How couldn’t it be? A place where men and women were tucked out of sight so they could bumble around the end of their lives — a place like Terra Hermosa. I thought about phoning Nora for this very reason, asking her to come, but then, sensing she’d say no, left it alone. But once I’d turned off the highway and pulled into the place, following the neatly paved driveway to the series of cream-colored signs and stucco buildings with red tile roofs, I saw Enderlin Estates Retirement Community was trying its best to bring to mind a Spanish hacienda taking a very long siesta. There were plantings and courtyards and chirping birds, a twisting stone path that led promisingly toward the main entrance nestled behind a wrought-iron gate.

I checked the paper where I’d written the address Gallo had given me.

Enderlin Estates. Apartment 210 .

I walked into the deserted lobby, took an elevator to the second floor, encountering a redheaded nurse behind a front desk.

“I’m looking for Apartment Two-ten.”

“Last room at the end of the hall.”

I headed down the carpeted hallway, passing a young nurse helping an elderly woman with a walker. The door marked 210 was closed, and the name — the beautifully generic Bill Smith —was mounted on a tiny blue plaque beside the door.

I knocked and, when there was no answer, turned the knob. It opened into a large sitting room, sparsely furnished, awash with sunlight. There was a bedroom on the left with a single bed, a dresser, a bedside table — entirely bare except for a lamp and a figurine of the Virgin Mary, her hands together in prayer. No photos, no personal items of any kind, but Gallo had doubtlessly seen to this, so there would be total anonymity or, as she put it, no more dark memories. “ What he needs now is peace, ” she’d said with a look of warning.

“You looking for Bill?” a cheerful voice asked behind me.

I turned. A nurse stood in the open doorway.

“I just took him to the morning room.”

She explained how to find it. I made my way back down the elevator and along the main hall, passing Activity calendars, an advertisement for Movie Night— Bogart and Bacall together again! — stepping through the double wooden doors into an old-fashioned glass-walled solarium. The room was bright and cheerful, filled with potted palms and flowers, white wicker chairs, a gray stone floor. Classical piano music played feebly from somewhere — an old stereo beside a bookshelf packed with paperbacks.

It was crowded. Elderly men and women, moving as if they were underwater, hair that looked like a few wisps off a cloud, sat at tables with jigsaw puzzles and checkerboards. A few nurses sat among them, quietly reading aloud, one pinning a pink carnation to an old man’s lapel.

Yet my eyes were pulled away from the activity to one man.

He sat alone on the farthest side of the room in the corner, his back to me. He was in front of the windows, staring out. And even though he was in a wheelchair, wearing an old gray sweater and old-man shoes, there was something sturdy about him, something oddly immobile.