Abattoir (18 page)

“Somehow, in an act of mercy we do not yet understand, the house let her live. In what must have been a titanic effort, she fell toward the inside, and life, instead of toward the outside, and death.”

He turned away from the balcony and stepped back into the room, moving in close to the camera.

“Though she lives, Dr. Knaster, whose whereabouts at this time are unknown, is nevertheless the fifth victim of the Exeter.”

The camera pulled back as Cross walked further inside the empty apartment.

“What in this building drove these people to such terrible extremes? A skeptic might tell you that it’s all coincidence, mere happenstance of fate.”

He paused again for effect.

“You and I, my friends, know better. When we return, Night Crossing will seek out the truth of this wretched place.”

“Cut!”

Wingnut removed his headpiece and smiled at his star mystic.

“Best fucking show of the year, boss.”

§

It was coffee break time on the set.

Cross took a sip and bit the rim of his Styrofoam cup as he turned to his spiritual assistants.

“Okay guys, what did you get?”

The assistants stepped forward, stared silently at each other, as if prodding the other to speak.

Greg broke the ice.

“Nothing, Mr. C. Zilch. Nada.”

Cross did not look concerned. He turned to the young lady.

“Lisa? Same with you?”

She nodded, her disappointment obvious.

The mystic took another sip of his piping Starbucks. Before he spoke, he regarded Cantrell, Su Ling and the young girl a few yards away. They were paying close attention to him, and he lowered his voice to a near whisper.

“Here’s the deal, guys: we’re gonna have to improvise, okay? What’s the best visual in the place? The spookiest room?”

“It’s got to be the basement,” Greg responded.

“There’s a really creepy room just beneath the conference room,” Lisa added. “Very dark, concrete and cobwebs, with a long ramp leading somewhere upstairs.”

“We can have fun with it,” Greg chimed in. “It’s the perfect backdrop for you.”

Cross nodded his head. “Good. Let’s do it.”

Wingnut set up the next shot without being instructed—a quick hand-held, two camera shot with Cross in the lobby, interviewing Greg and Lisa.

He asked them what they had found in their explorations, whether their equipment had registered anything unusual.

The spiritual assistants didn’t disappoint.

Greg, portrayed in the show as an apprentice medium, spun it like a pro.

“There’s definitely something very sinister within the walls of the Exeter . . . something deeply disturbed. It doesn’t like us being here.”

Lisa, the technician of the pair, then gave her own contribution.

“We picked up several faint EVP’s on the fourth and second floors. Nothing coherent at this stage, but I’m positive there’s something substantive there which should come out in later analysis.

“I also sensed temperature anomalies and variations in several locations, but this is what’s interesting, Mr. Cross: not only did we pick up extremely cold readings—as low as 30 degrees in one case—but also read abnormally
hot
.”

Cross raised his eyebrows in staged interest.

“And where was this
hot
reading, Lisa?”

“In the basement. In a room almost directly beneath us. It’s very large and I’m convinced that it serves as the epicenter of the disturbances in this building.”

“Greg, do you concur?”

The young man closed his eyes for a moment, as if reflecting on the question.

“Definitely.”

Cross turned to the camera.

“My able assistants have guided me to the place where I must go. Their spiritualistic and technological expertise have once again given me what I need to begin.”

He raised his chin, allowing the long shadows to cast dramatic lines along his face.

“I invite you to join me as we venture deep below, into the very bowels of the Exeter, to face whatever entity plagues this cursed house.”

After the cut, Wingnut barked instructions to the crew to make their move to the basement. He gave them ten minutes to be ready to go.

Cross seemed especially low-key tonight. He was usually tyrannical in the way that he ran a shoot; usually taking over directorial responsibilities himself, despite the presence of Wingnut and his assistant.

Not tonight. He seemed distracted,
bothered
by something. Unusual.

§

Downstairs, things weren’t going well.

The crew was having a hard time transporting equipment down the narrow staircase that led into the cavernous basement.

The cameraman was frustrated too; at Cross’s direction, he’d set up the main shot, with the ramp visible in a long diagonal leading upwards. Cross would narrate before it, his face and the outline of the ramp softly lit in an eerie glow.

But the angles seemed somehow
off,
no matter how much he adjusted the equipment or repositioned himself. It was as if the place were subtly warping every time he blinked, entirely destroying whatever composition he settled on.

“Damn it!” he barked for the third time. “I can’t get this thing lined up. What the fuck?”

Cantrell, standing in an empty corner with Su Ling and Anna, understood exactly what he meant.

“Just get it right, Dan!” an impatient Cross barked at him. “We don’t have all night.”

In their unobtrusive corner, Su Ling whispered to Cantrell.

“What is this place, Alex? I don’t like it down here.”

“I know,” he whispered back. “I don’t like it either. But it’s a handy place to store the trash and recycling.”

“But what did it
used
to be? It’s got a very creepy feel to it.”

“I’m not surprised. According to the original plans, this used to be the holding pen. This floor space was divided up into back-and-forth rows, separated by iron railings. They used to drive the livestock into this room. This is where they waited their turn to be led up the ramp. We took out all the railings when we did the renovations.”

Su Ling looked at the ramp and shivered.

“You don’t have to tell me where that ramp used to lead.”

He put his arm around her and kissed her cheek.

They were jolted by a loud pop. The reek of electrical smoke filled the room.

“Shit!” one of the lighting technicians called out.

“What now?” Wingnut demanded.

“Fucking bulb just blew, the main spot. I just replaced it this afternoon.”

Cross cursed.

“What the hell is wrong with you people? What is this, fucking high school? Amateur hour? Let’s get it right. Now! I’m getting tired of all this bullshit.”

He faced the floor and muttered quietly, “And this place gives me the fucking creeps anyway.”

Wingnut, the only one who heard him, started. He had never, in all the years he’d worked for him, heard Cross say anything like that.

After a few more minutes of scrambling, the crew was once again ready to shoot. Wingnut silenced the set and Cross took his position in the faint amber glow before the ramp.

“This is what we’ve been waiting for, my friends” he began in a deep tone. “Our spiritual technicians have identified this subterranean room as the source, the
epicenter,
if you will, of the disturbances in this dreadful building known as the Exeter.”

He paused, and waved his arm across the darkened space. He closed his eyes and put his fingertips to his temples.

“My God. My God!”

Wingnut nodded and smiled. He could already tell this was going to be great.

“Can you feel it?” Cross asked no one in particular. “I’ve never felt anything like this in my life. This place is incredibly powerful.”

He took his fingertips from his temples and wiped them across his brow.

“A blast of hot air,” he said to the cameraman. “Right where I’m standing. The presence of a spiritual energy is almost always manifested in a blast of icy cold air. This is entirely different. This is very hot. Moist. Steamy.”

Su Ling turned to Cantrell, her expression questioning. Neither of them felt any temperature change.

He nodded his head and she understood. It was time to take Anna away from whatever was starting to happen here. With one motion, she lifted the child into her arms and made her way up the stairs.

Cross licked his lips, continuing his monologue:

“And something else. An
energy
. I can’t quite tell what it is. Something very strong, very threatening. But
pleading
as well. Helpless and savage at the same time.”

Wingnut whispered to the director outside in the van:

“I don’t know where he’s going with this,” he said as softly as possible. “But it’s kicking ass, isn’t it?”

“Copy that.”

As if trying to embrace the shaft of hot air only he could feel, Cross raised his arms above his head, his eyes following them.

“Whoever dwells in this place,” he boomed, his voice echoing in the chamber, “
whatever
dwells in this place, heed my words! I am Cross. I
command
you to listen. I order you to speak, or give a sign. Confirm your presence. Communicate with us.”

He stood there, his arms and face raised to the ceiling.

Nothing.

He lowered his arms, turning back to the camera.

“The spirit resists us. We’ve seen it before, many times. Perhaps it will take a little more coaxing.”

Time for plan B.

“I don’t want you to fear me. I am here to help you. I am here to release you from whatever chains bind you to this place, whatever curse commands you to stay, whatever dark force forbids your escape.”

“Good shit,” Wingnut whispered into his mike.

“Please let me help you. Speak in whatever voice or manner you can. I am here to listen. I can help you find the light.”

Nothing.

Wingnut smirked. Plan C it is . . .

Cross put his hands back to his temples and closed his eyes. “I am emptying my mind of all thoughts and emotions, of all clutter, so I can hear you. I . . . ”

The mystic began to walk. With his eyes still closed, he started near the back of the makeshift set, near the ramp. He walked in a straight shuffle until he was just a few inches from the far wall, then changed direction, turning around and walking back the way he came. It looked like somebody advancing in a long invisible line for an amusement park ride.

Wingnut frantically signaled with his hand for the two cameramen to switch to hand-held. They began to follow him in his blind, yet strangely purposeful, shuffle back and forth across the room.

“I think I can hear you,” Cross said at last, not stopping. “But I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. It’s not coming in words. It’s not coming in thoughts. It’s coming in . . . ”

Cross approached the ramp’s entry point.

Wingnut directed one of the cameramen to move in for a close-up of Cross’s face. When the camera came in tight, the mystic’s face filling the entire frame, his eyes suddenly shot open.

The cameraman jumped, not noticing that the time codes in his viewfinder had begun to flash zero.

“No!” Cross screamed, his voice full of fear. His eyes grew wide and frantic.
Terrified.

“No! Not me! Please. I don’t deserve
that
!”

Wingnut was growing nervous. This wasn’t Cross’s style at all. Something was wrong . . .

“Not
me!
Why
me
, for God’s sake? What did
I
do?”

His voice was now pleading, more than terrified. He sounded like a desperate child.

Wingnut spoke into his mike. “I’m worried, J. B. This is getting freaky.”

“I know,” the director’s voice came back in the earpiece. “I don’t care. Keep rolling.”

“But . . . ”

“Just keep it fucking rolling, Wingnut.”

“Gotcha.”

Cross was now stumbling erratically. It almost appeared as if he were being shoved by something behind, and he was trying to resist. At last, despite his contortions, he came to the bottom of the ramp.

Cantrell watched, his horrified expression reflected in the faces of every crewman on the floor. He was suddenly very grateful that Su Ling and Anna had left.

Shuffling up the ramp, Cross began to moan, in long, mournful tones. He no longer made any effort to speak actual words.

Wingnut rubbed a hand across his damp forehead.

“I think we’d better cut this off, J.B.,” he said, no longer trying to keep his voice low. “This isn’t right, dude. I think he’s losing it.”

The calm voice of the director wasted no time in his reply.

“Keep rolling. Just keep rolling.”

§

As his father entered the last mile—his arms and legs shackled—Cross could smell his fear.

He walked slightly behind the small group before him. His father, dressed in his striped prison jumpsuit, led the way, a burly, unsmiling state patrolman holding tight to each arm, urging him on.

A lone priest, a man in his 70s, walked directly behind the condemned man, whispering Psalms into his ear.

The boy who was Cross did not wonder why he was walking down this deadly hallway; the same he’d imagined countless times in the life he was to lead.

But he knew it was no dream. He could smell the linoleum wax on the floor, the institutional sterility of the prison, the cold sweat that was coming from his beloved father.

Cross watched helplessly as the door to the death chamber clanged open.

“This way, Mr. Cross,” one of the guards said in a macabre maitre’d voice, directing his father into the surprisingly small space.

The boy caught only a glimpse of the room—the small crowd of designated witnesses gathered in a neat row of folding chairs on the other side of a large glass window; the executioner standing beside the main switch; the horrifyingly ordinary chair that sat directly in the middle.