Read Online Slawter by Darren Shan - Free Book Online

to a chosen few. Some of the costumes have been given a public airing, but most are still locked up within the D. Dervish said it’s a maze of corridors and subsections in there. He’s only been allowed into to a couple of rooms so far, but he’s trying hard to gain access to the rest, to check out all the demonic details.
    “I’ve always wanted to eat human flesh,” Emmet says again, running through his big lines for the fiftieth time today. He plays a minor villain in the film, a kid who becomes a cannibal and works for the demons. He dies about a third of the way through, having been discovered by one of the heroes while eating the corpse of their headmaster.
    Davida is shooting the film in sequence as much as possible, although, as on any movie, certain scenes from later in the script have to be shot early. Which means Emmet is getting to “die” a couple of weeks earlier than he should have. He’s super-excited about it.
    “This is my first death scene!” he raved yesterday. “Most kids don’t get to die on-screen — how many films have you seen where a child bites the big one? And it’s the first visible killing of the movie!”
    Later, excitement gave way to nerves. He’s been fussing ever since, worried he’ll blow his lines or not be able to scream convincingly when the demon turns on him and rips him to pieces.
    “ ‘At least, not much badder than’ — Dammit! I did it again, didn’t I?”
    “Afraid so,” I laugh.
    “Play it cool,” Bill-E advises, mimicking Davida’s on-set mannerisms. He’s been even more impressed by the whole movie-shooting experience than me. Now he wants to be a director when he grows up.
    “
Cool!
” Emmet snorts. “That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one up there on display.”
    “You know the lines,” Bill-E murmurs, then laughs like Davida when she’s trying to calm a nervous actor. “You probably know your lines better than anyone on the set, even Davida. You’re a professional. They’ll come when you’re filming. And if not, who cares? Nobody gets it right the first time. And even if they do, Davida reshoots it anyway. You’ll nail it the fifth or sixth time.”
    Bill-E’s not exaggerating about the reshoots. Every scene is played out at least six or seven times, from various angles, the actors trying out different expressions and tones. Apparently this is common. Repetition is part and parcel of the filmmaker’s life. I don’t know how they stand it. I’d go crazy if I had to do the same thing over and over, day after day.
    “He’s quite the expert, isn’t he?” Emmet remarks cuttingly.
    “Hey, man, I’m just trying to help,” Bill-E says, unruffled.
    “For someone with no real experience, you certainly know a lot about it.”
    Bill-E laughs Emmet’s criticism away. “I’m just calling it like I see it. If you’d rather I left, no problem. Come on, Grubbs, let’s go and —”
    “No!” Emmet pleads. “I’m sorry. I’m just all wound up. One last time, please. If I don’t get it right, we’ll quit and all go play foosball. OK?”
    “OK,” Bill-E says. “But don’t forget —
coooooolllllllll
.”
    Emmet shoots him an exasperated glance, then shares a grin with me. Focusing, he repeats his lines silently to himself, then tries them out loud and all too predictably blows them again. As soon as he breaks down, we drag him off to the foosball table and keep him there, though we can’t stop him muttering the lines as he plays.
    Dinner with Dervish, Juni, and some others, in the ginormous catering tent at the heart of Slawter. Everybody talking at once, a nice buzz in the air. A mime artist signals to me that he’d like the salt and pepper. His name is Chai and he’s a bit of a nutcase. He never speaks, although he’s not mute. Apparently he’s perfectly chatty when he’s not working. But throughout the duration of a shoot, he keeps his lips sealed. It doesn’t matter that he has a tiny part in the movie, and