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Authors: Adrienne & Scott Barbeau
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lot at that hour if they didn’t have to be. Sun wasn’t even up yet.” She shuddered again. “I thought he was a ghost with that white skin.”
“Early riser” and “white skin”: two phrases I don’t associate with Benny. “Describe him.”
Tiny chewed and considered and then chewed some more. She was about to blow another bubble and then thought better of it. “He was thin,” she said finally. “Thin and ugly.”
She wasn’t giving me a lot to go on. “What about his beard?”
“Oh, no beard. And you know something else,” she added. “He smelled. Just like he’d been dipped in shit.”
“Thin. Ugly. Smelly.” I wrote it down, just in case I forgot the detailed description.
“And he was bald.”
“Bald?” Benny was many things—including thin, ugly, and smelly—but bald he was not.
“Bald and white,” Tiny added.
“A Caucasian male,” I added to my notes.
“No, white. I mean really white, white skin, no color. An Albanian.”
“An albino?”
“No, no, a white guy. Only really white, like that guy in Powder . Did you see that flick? Boy, that director did a great job.”
“Thanks, Tiny,” I said, “you’ve been a real help.” I turned and headed for the No Exit door, leaving Tiny to get back to the set. First Biblical Benny and now a bald albino; Eva Casale keeps very strange company.
The Nissan hut was set apart from the main studio, a slightly battered long metal rectangle that wouldn’t have looked out of place in any WW II movie. If Ovsanna Moore was putting money back into the company, she wasn’t spending it on the facilities. Maybe the hut had once been green, but decades of L.A. sunshine and Santa Anas had scoured it to that peculiar color men’s magazines like to call taupe. I’ve a pair of jeans in that color: I never wear them. The original tin structure had never been painted, but it was covered with Magic-Markered autographs from actors who’d filmed on the lot. My mother would have a field day on eBay if they ever demo’d the place and she got her hands on the pieces. I had a sudden image of her slicing it into irregular little chunks with a jigsaw.
The door was open and I could feel the frigid air blowing from massive air conditioners positioned on metal girders above the huge expanse. I stepped into a nine-year-old’s dream come true. The long rectangular building was crammed with dozens of monsters in various stages of construction. Bits of human bodies, really good work, hung on the walls, alongside an assortment of bladed weapons that would have made Kurosawa drool.
My mother would have been in eBay heaven.
There was a large, chest-high worktable in the center of the room, probably ten feet wide by twenty long. It had been divided into four sections with three-inch black tape and each section was covered with what looked like prosthetics and effects items from different movies. A mangled Santa torso lay on its back, sliced almost in half by the chef’s knife stuck in its liver. There was even an accompanying odor, sort of sweet and cloying. I didn’t know effects wizards went to such trouble; maybe it was a joke for their own enjoyment. Except the odor wasn’t coming from Santa. Crucified to the end wall of the hut was the amazingly lifelike body of a young woman. Her throat had been cut so deeply that her face was resting against her shoulder; she had a hole clear through her stomach right to the knotted white of her spine. A heap of offal on the ground represented the internal organs and that’s where they’d spilled whatever stench they were using to represent death. This Casale woman was good!
I took a step closer and the smell got stronger. And more recognizable.
Then I saw the flies.
And then I heard the sticky dripping of bloody fluids.
This wasn’t a special effect I was looking at. I had a good guess it was Eva Casale. Someone had just cast her in her own horror movie.
Chapter Nine
We were standing on the
“Early riser” and “white skin”: two phrases I don’t associate with Benny. “Describe him.”
Tiny chewed and considered and then chewed some more. She was about to blow another bubble and then thought better of it. “He was thin,” she said finally. “Thin and ugly.”
She wasn’t giving me a lot to go on. “What about his beard?”
“Oh, no beard. And you know something else,” she added. “He smelled. Just like he’d been dipped in shit.”
“Thin. Ugly. Smelly.” I wrote it down, just in case I forgot the detailed description.
“And he was bald.”
“Bald?” Benny was many things—including thin, ugly, and smelly—but bald he was not.
“Bald and white,” Tiny added.
“A Caucasian male,” I added to my notes.
“No, white. I mean really white, white skin, no color. An Albanian.”
“An albino?”
“No, no, a white guy. Only really white, like that guy in Powder . Did you see that flick? Boy, that director did a great job.”
“Thanks, Tiny,” I said, “you’ve been a real help.” I turned and headed for the No Exit door, leaving Tiny to get back to the set. First Biblical Benny and now a bald albino; Eva Casale keeps very strange company.
The Nissan hut was set apart from the main studio, a slightly battered long metal rectangle that wouldn’t have looked out of place in any WW II movie. If Ovsanna Moore was putting money back into the company, she wasn’t spending it on the facilities. Maybe the hut had once been green, but decades of L.A. sunshine and Santa Anas had scoured it to that peculiar color men’s magazines like to call taupe. I’ve a pair of jeans in that color: I never wear them. The original tin structure had never been painted, but it was covered with Magic-Markered autographs from actors who’d filmed on the lot. My mother would have a field day on eBay if they ever demo’d the place and she got her hands on the pieces. I had a sudden image of her slicing it into irregular little chunks with a jigsaw.
The door was open and I could feel the frigid air blowing from massive air conditioners positioned on metal girders above the huge expanse. I stepped into a nine-year-old’s dream come true. The long rectangular building was crammed with dozens of monsters in various stages of construction. Bits of human bodies, really good work, hung on the walls, alongside an assortment of bladed weapons that would have made Kurosawa drool.
My mother would have been in eBay heaven.
There was a large, chest-high worktable in the center of the room, probably ten feet wide by twenty long. It had been divided into four sections with three-inch black tape and each section was covered with what looked like prosthetics and effects items from different movies. A mangled Santa torso lay on its back, sliced almost in half by the chef’s knife stuck in its liver. There was even an accompanying odor, sort of sweet and cloying. I didn’t know effects wizards went to such trouble; maybe it was a joke for their own enjoyment. Except the odor wasn’t coming from Santa. Crucified to the end wall of the hut was the amazingly lifelike body of a young woman. Her throat had been cut so deeply that her face was resting against her shoulder; she had a hole clear through her stomach right to the knotted white of her spine. A heap of offal on the ground represented the internal organs and that’s where they’d spilled whatever stench they were using to represent death. This Casale woman was good!
I took a step closer and the smell got stronger. And more recognizable.
Then I saw the flies.
And then I heard the sticky dripping of bloody fluids.
This wasn’t a special effect I was looking at. I had a good guess it was Eva Casale. Someone had just cast her in her own horror movie.
Chapter Nine
We were standing on the
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