The Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen (5 page)

Hours remained until dawn. I left the apartment and hit Kroger. The big grocery on Carpenter stayed open all night—and its video selection included
The Wizard of Oz
.

I wanted a copy because . . . because I wanted privacy. I’d need Denise soon enough to find Stan, if I gathered the courage necessary to broach the subject. The Hanged Man was a drug and I was a junkie. If I had my own copy, I might control the addiction. I’d first seen him with Denise and everything stemmed from that. I’d entered one of Silva’s infinite worlds; privacy might let me create a new perspective.

The shadowed streets looked different than they did during the day. The late-night wind didn’t touch the trees. Each moved on its own, apple hoarders, ready for a rematch.

“Just wait,” a voice rasped beside me. “It gets worse.”

I shouted and slammed the brakes. My car swerved, shuddered to a halt, and stalled. I turned and found myself facing the Scarecrow.

“What do you . . . what do you want?” I tried sounding angry, but my voice shook.

My Scarecrow smiled and the maw formed by his mouth—old burlap, leather, and rotting hay—made my stomach turn. “I won’t hurt you, Michael.” He nodded toward the back. “But I can’t speak for her.”

I twisted in my seat and craned to look. A shape huddled there, its outline weird and broken by too many angles. I fumbled to turn on the overhead dome light, but the person in the back actually
cackled
, and I leaped from the car and into the deserted street.

I tripped before I’d gone half a dozen steps. Scrambling up, I looked over my shoulder, expecting pursuit—and saw nothing. The door was open and the dome light revealed the empty interior. The only sound was the chime that signaled the keys were still in the ignition.

This isn’t happening,
I told myself.
The Scarecrow was in the passenger seat and the Witch—yes, the Witch—was in the back.

A soft noise broke the breathless silence. I saw something slowly swinging in the tree shadows across the way. I knew the noise was a rope creaking under the strain of a dead man’s weight. I retreated to my car, more scared of what hid outside than of my elusive passengers.

The residential speed limit was twenty-five. I did at least fifty and ran every red light getting home.

Two hours more till dawn.

I shredded the box wrap and popped the tape into my VCR. My head throbbed with too many ideas, as if I’d overdosed on coffee and Tylenol. I let it play and tried to clear my mind. I tried to tell myself there was no place like Oz. And this time the scene ran the same as I remembered it from my childhood.

The Tin Man stumbled and landed on the tree stump. Dorothy and the Scarecrow ran over to help. The Wicked Witch made her threats, threw her fireball, bolted in a puff of smoke. The three adventurers danced off down the road.

There wasn’t any sign of the Hanged Man.

There was movement among the trees, but I could see it was a long-necked bird moving one of its wings. Was there something different on Denise’s tape? I didn’t consider myself gullible. Because I didn’t trust my eyes, I rewound the tape and played it again, cursing myself for doing that.

The Tin Man collapsed on the tree stump. But he didn’t resemble Haley. His fingers and hat were burned, warped by some tremendous heat, even though the fireball lay moments in the future. Dorothy and the Scarecrow ran to help him. But she looked middle-aged and the Scarecrow was the rotting bag from my car. Once, all three stared at me. The screen thinned to gauze as thin as the dust coating its surface.

And the Wicked Witch screamed to life on the roof—a gangrenous, misshapen version of Denise.

I stopped the tape.

I waited in my car for two hours before Denise exited the apartment. I didn’t want to meet her in the hall. She had started the avalanche of fear that buried my senses, and I wasn’t ready for a confrontation.

Stay away from the Hanged Man.

Talk to Stan. . . .

I stayed at least a block behind her. She worked at a department store in the mall and liked to arrive early. I parked in the side lot. She was inside by the time I walked to the front entrance. I hovered there, wondering if I was too late. Entering the store wasn’t an option. If Denise caught me inside, I didn’t have any excuses. She’d know I’d followed her. Besides, I worked at a union job shop, creating ads on a computer, and I caught hell when I missed a shift.

Ten minutes later, Stan entered the lot.

I ran over and hovered as he locked his car. I’m not sure what I expected from him.

“I need help,” I said.

“What are you doing here, Michael? Don’t you have to work?”

“I’m taking a sick day.”

Stan nodded, lit up a cigarette. I could blame my imagination, but I thought his hands shook. “So? What are you doing here?” he asked again. He didn’t seem in any hurry to get to work.

“The Scarecrow told me to talk to you.”

Stan didn’t laugh. His mouth twitched, though.

“You know about it.”

He shoved past me. “You’re crazy,” he said, walking briskly towards the store.

I followed, grabbed his arm. I glanced around the lot to see if anyone was watching. No one was close.

“Don’t call me crazy,” I said. “The Scarecrow popped in and out of my car like a damned ghost and he brought the Wicked Witch along for the ride and I’m scared. This is all Denise’s fault, and you know something. You asked me about the movie. Don’t dare tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

Stan jabbed his lit cigarette against my hand as I held his arm. I jerked it away, hissed with pain, put my mouth over the burn. Stan backed up and pinned a sneer on his pale face.

“Get away from me, Michael.” He paused. “If you don’t, I’ll tell Denise.”

I stood there, silent, and watched him leave.

This time I observed the speed limit on my way home. A ghostly Dorothy rode shotgun this time. Toto sat in her lap. I didn’t recall seeing the mutt before. A taxidermist had worked him over, mounting him to a wood base, so he traveled well, no tongue flapping out the window, no prancing from one side to the other, nails digging into your thighs. The Scarecrow and the Tin Man held the rear seats.

All four were quiet, which didn’t bother me. Maybe the daylight silenced them. I parked in my slot, killed the engine. When I climbed out, chaff and aluminum dust and the ripe scent of a dead dog floated through the empty interior.

The apartment hall was empty. I pressed my hands against the cold surface of Denise’s door. The number and letter glimmered as each reflected the fluorescent light, incandescent with a promise like prophecy. I knew now that I
wanted
to see. The knowledge might release me.

My fingers ached where I touched the door, as if the wood sucked at my bones, robbing them of warmth. The 2C pulsed and my breath frosted the air, crystallizing inside my chest until I forgot to breathe.

Then my legs buckled under fatigue and gravity, and the door answered my weakness with its own, selling its solid soul so I could fall through into the reality that lay beyond.

Dry grass rustled beneath me as I fell to my knees. A brick-paved road ran past, its surface a river of yellow pus baked solid under a neon-strobe sun. Disease festered in the scabbed cracks, more efficient as a contagion than as mortar.

The Tin Man’s cabin sat across from me, wearing its abandonment like a badge. The logs sagged, eaten by dry rot and unable to sustain their weight. Years had passed since glass sealed the windows and thick cobwebs, choked with dead insects, served as the only curtains. The stone chimney wore moss and ivy like a fur coat, its only protection against the cold. Large gaps riddled the roof ’s green slate like open sores. In the places where there were not yet holes the sun glinted off shallow pools of water.

I stood and crossed the road, glancing left and right along its bumpy length—no one was visible in either direction. Not the intrepid trio or their hanged observer.

Light fell through the rear windows and the roof, illuminating the room. The sun had almost died in the west, but it was enough so I could pick out the familiar details of Denise’s apartment.

From the front window to the door, I picked out the vague outlines of furniture. A mildewed couch slumped on broken legs. Two rickety crates supported several planks that served as a table, with an apish skull still wearing shreds of flesh as a centerpiece. Instead of the entertainment center, a cauldron sat before the fireplace, its mealy contents still bubbling.

A mask hung above the mantle like a trophy stuffed and mounted by a hunter. The facial lines were soft, cheeks frozen in a perpetual smile, spawning dimples on both corners. But the eyes were empty and soulless, the mouth a toothless hole, and they sucked away whatever resemblance to humanity the mask ever possessed.

It was Denise.

I backed away from the cabin, dazed by what I’d seen. Before I knew it, I’d crossed the road to my original entry point, just as a dark shape moved across the cabin roof, catching my eye. The Wicked Witch froze, straddling the peak like an Impressionist vision of the Statue of Liberty, broom held high in place of a torch.

“It took you long enough, Michael,” she said, her smile as uneven as the road. “I thought I’d need to send someone out after you again.”

“I don’t know what you’re thinking, Denise, but I’m finished with these dreams.”

She cackled. “Stubborn to a fault, Michael. I love that. The longer you doubt, the closer I get. Eventually, it will be too late. . . .”

I walked towards the cabin, my first steps tentative as loose bricks threatened to turn my ankles. I stopped once, crouched, pulled one broken piece loose, steeled myself against the slimy feel as I clenched it in my fist. I needed a weapon. I didn’t think this ball-sized brick would hurt her, but it might serve as a distraction.

“You’re right. I don’t believe.” Debris littered the yard between the cabin and the road and matched the landscape of my chaotic dreams. “You’ve drugged or hypnotized me. Whichever, I don’t care. It’s over.”

From behind the trees the Scarecrow moved into the clearing. Dorothy and the Tin Man skulked in his shadow.

“Calling in your troops, Denise?” I asked.

Age lines shredded each of their faces, changing grins into something as old as the brown apples piled under the trees, something as calculated as the way the trees’ prehensile branches reached out, straining against the roots that kept each woody demon in place.

“Her name isn’t Denise,” said the Tin Man, brandishing an axe that looked freshly honed. “I don’t think she has one.”

“Names don’t matter here,” the Scarecrow said.

“Is that why you told me to talk to Stan?”

The Scarecrow cringed, glanced at the Wicked Witch. His companions backed away. I looked at the Wicked Witch too, expecting her to nail his straw frame with a quick fireball.

“You warned him?” she asked.

“No! No! I was trying to prepare him!”

The Wicked Witch leaped off the roof, black dress billowing behind her like crows hovering around a fresh kill. She landed in the middle of the road, nimble as a black widow.

Forget the rock,
I thought. I needed something bigger if I wanted to come out of this alive. I crouched beside rubble from the chimney, dropped my brick, and grabbed a discarded axe handle where it lay half-buried among the weeds.

The Scarecrow trembled, begged. “Please don’t hurt me! Please!”

The Wicked Witch formed her hand into a claw. Eldritch flames sprouted from her bitten nails, knotted into a pulsing globe.

“I release you, Scarecrow! I give you your freedom—in death!”

She hurled the fire and the Scarecrow tried to block it with upraised hands.

The ball hit him and ate his body up in seconds.

The Wicked Witch stepped into the yard, blocked my way to the road, as the Tin Man and Dorothy circled the Scarecrow’s smoldering remains. If I braved the apple orchard, I’d have to fight them both, one armed with an axe, the other with a dead dog.

“This is taking too long,” the Wicked Witch said. “It’s time for you to join me, Michael.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Denise.” I waved the axe handle before me.

“My name is not Denise. I can’t remember my name. It’s been such a long time since I heard it.”

“But if you’re not Denise. . . .”

My words trailed off. I let my eyes trace the lines in her face. I barely recognized the woman I’d flirted with in the hallway. She might be there under the thick cheeks, the warts, the bony chin and green skin, but there wasn’t enough to convince me.

“Then . . . I must be the Wicked Witch!” she said.

I swung my weapon and reached for the roof. The handle cracked when it hit, cut my hands as it splintered. The Tin Man was nearest the cabin and he screamed. His voice squeaked.
You’re going to need to oil more than that, buddy.
My blow shook the roof ’s remaining boards and the water puddles washed into the yard, striking the Tin Man. He scrambled into the road, metal limbs clanking, joints squealing from friction. The shower streaked Dorothy’s makeup, washed her brown tresses blonde, knocked Toto from her arms.