Bentley Little - The House

He'd seen too many movies.

But movies were the only real reference point for what was going on. There was no parallel in the real world, no factual, historical correspondence.

Ken hopped out of the car. "I'll be back in a sec," he said, running into the tribal office. "I'm just going to tell them we're here."

Stormy turned, looked at Russ in the backseat. The intern's face was white, blanched.

"What's going on?" Russ asked.

Stormy shook his head. "I don't know."

The dolls were not as frightening to him as he'd thought they'd be. He supposed it was because they were out in the open, in the daylight, with people around.

There was an old saw in the horror film industry about ghosts and monsters being more frightening when they were juxtaposed against normal, everyday life, but he had never believed that to be true. A ghost in a mall was nowhere near as scary as a ghost in an old dark house, and the same thing was true here. The kachinas were obviously alive, their wooden bodies and feathered faces were moving in a terrifyingly unnatural way, a way that shouldn't be possible, but they were nowhere near as frightening to him as the thought he'd had of a lone doll sneaking around the house --the inside of the abandoned theater.

Ken came running back. "It's cool. Let's go."

"Two streets down," Russ said from the back. "The white house."

Stormy put the car into gear. "Pretty fucking spooky,"

he said.

Ken nodded. "You're telling me." He glanced at the circle of dead men as they drove by. "I'd like to get a close-up look at one of them," he said.

Stormy shivered. "No you wouldn't."

"What's going on?" Russ asked again.

Neither of them answered him.

It was like driving through a foreign country, Stormy thought. Or an alien landscape. No, it was more surreal than that. Like passing through a Fellini world or a David Lynch world or ... No. Even film analogies broke down here.

On the side of the road, a woman popped into existence.

She hadn't been there a second before, and then she was, and she smiled and waved at them.

"Turn here," Russ said, pointing. "That's his house."

Stormy braked to a halt in the middle of a short dirt driveway in front of a small dilapidated home. P. P. Rod man was already out the front door and walking toward the car before Stormy had even shut off the engine. The filmmaker was a scrawny little half-and-half who looked as though he was about sixteen. Russ had told him that Rodman was in grad school, but had he not known, he would have guessed high school freshman.

Stormy got out of the car and walked toward the filmmaker, hand extended. "Hello," he said. "I'm Stormy Salinger--"

"President of Monster Distribution." Rodman nodded.

"I know."

"Russ here gave me a tape of Butchery, and I have to say, I was very impressed."

Rodman squinted against the sun. "Thanks."

"Did you write the film?" Stormy asked.

"Wrote and directed it," Rodman said proudly.

"Where'd you get the idea?"

The kid frowned. "It came to me in a dream."

A dream.

Stormy tried to maintain the bland expression on his face. "I thought it might have been inspired by"--he motioned toward the land surrounding them--"everything that was happening."

"Are you kidding? I wrote the original draft two years ago. It took me a year to film it."

Two years. That was even more unsettling. He could not get the thought out of his mind that the movie had been made specifically for him, that an unknown power had inspired this kid, knowing he would make this film and that his friend would pass it to his friend and that that person would be working for Stormy's company and would show him the video. It was a frighteningly comprehensive plan, hidden behind an apparent series of coincidences, and Stormy found himself intimidated by the sheer scope of it all, by the complex and concentrated linkages.

He didn't know if he was being warned or threatened, but the idea that this kid was just a messenger, his film the message, and that it had been meant for him and him alone, remained strong in his mind.

He licked his lips. "Where's the house?" he asked.

"Special effect," the filmmaker said. "It's a model. I

based it on the house in my dream."

Stormy was sweating. "How close is the film to your dream?"

"I thought you were interested in distributing my movie."

"Humor me," Stormy told him. "How close?"

"It's almost the same."

"Was there anything in your dream that you didn't put in the movie? Any additional images you cut out because they'd interrupt the narrative flow?"

"What narrative flow?"

"Was there anything you cut out?"

"No."

He continued questioning Rodman, but the kid was a blank, and Stormy understood that whatever meaning he was supposed to get from this, he was supposed to get from the film itself.

"Have you seen any of the dead?" he asked before they left.

Rodman snorted. "Who hasn't?"

"What's it mean?"

"You tell me."

They left after that. Stormy was just as in the dark as he had been before the visit, and he felt both frightened and frustrated. He intended to watch the videotape again, but he had the distinct feeling that there was something else he was supposed to be doing. Should he return to the theater? Get the keys back from the real estate agent and check the bathroom again?

What would that do? He'd seen the kachinas , seen talking dead men and a reappearing woman, and he hadn't learned anything from that. Was there anything else that could be learned from the theater?

He needed to go back home.

It was as if he were a cartoon character and a lightbulb had suddenly gone off above his head. That was exactly what he was supposed to do. Why hadn't he seen it before? Everything he'd felt or experienced or heard about pointed in that direction. He'd just been too dumb to pick up on it. He needed to go back to Chicago, back to the house. The answer was there.

The answer to what?

He didn't know.

He dropped Ken off at the County building, drove back to his own offices. Russ returned to the duping room and the tapes on which he'd been working, and Stormy had Joan make reservations for him on a flight to Chicago tomorrow.

He locked his office and watched Butchery once again.

The flight was booked for noon, with an open-ended return ticket, and he stayed late, instructing his employees on what they were to work on in case he was gone for more than a few days, going over the agreements and contracts that needed his immediate signature. It was nearly nine when he finally arrived home, and he turned on all the lights in the house before collapsing into a chair.

Even his house seemed creepy.

He was not sure that his old home in Chicago was still standing, but he assumed that it was and he wondered what it would be like as he absently sorted through his mail. In his mind, it looked just like the house in Butchery, a dark forbidding mansion, but it must have been repainted and remodeled since his childhood.

At least he hoped it had.

He stopped shuffling the envelopes in his hand, not breathing, certain that he had heard something, a knock from the back of the house, but it was not repeated and when he walked carefully through the rooms he saw nothing unusual.

Most of his mail was either bills or ads, but one envelope was postmarked Brentwood, California, and the name on the return address was Phillip Emmons. Phillip was an old writer friend from L.A., and Stormy opened the envelope, curious. It contained a cryptic yet tantalizing note stating that Phillip had been writing narration for a PBS documentary on Benjamin Franklin and had run across something in his research that he thought Stormy might be interested in.

"It's an entry from Thomas Jefferson's diary," Phillip wrote, "and it concerns some sort of haunted doll.