Slawter (7 page)

Not having any jobs to do, Bill-E and I have been enjoying the filming. We wander through Slawter, watch scenes being shot, check out the old buildings and fakes, hang out with some of the other kids, and generally just have fun. It’s great. Reminds me of when I first moved to Carcery Vale, when Bill-E and I spent pretty much all our free time together. We’re best buddies again, breezing along in a little world of our own, no Loch Gossel or other friends of mine to complicate the situation.

You can divide the children of Slawter into three groups. There are the actors, twenty or so. Most don’t have much experience, or have only been in a few films, like Emmet Eijit, who’s our best friend here.

Then there are the actors’ relatives. It’s a big deal being a child actor. There are all sorts of rules and regulations. They can only work so many hours a day. They have to be tutored on-set. At least one of their guardians — normally a parent — has to be with them all the time. And there have to be other children for them to play with. Juni’s in charge of that side of things. She makes sure the kids are being looked after, having fun, not feeling the stress of being part of such a costly, risky venture.

Finally there’s the likes of Bill-E and me, children of people working on the film. Because everyone involved had to move to Slawter for the duration of the shoot — at least three months — they were allowed to bring their families. Davida likes the relaxed family atmosphere.

We don’t have much personal contact with Davida Haym. Or with Dervish. He’s been working closely with Davida since we arrived, advising, censoring, subtly guiding her away from the workings of real demons wherever possible. He’s one of the few people to have seen inside the D workshops. That’s where the demon costumes are being created. The demons are to be a mix of actors in costumes and mechanized puppets. There will be some CGI effects, but Davida’s trying to keep the computer trickery to a minimum.

The costumes and puppets are housed in a giant warehouse, the biggest in Slawter, and access is granted only 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 will only be filming for a few days. Chai considers himself a
method actor.

“How are you two managing?” Juni asks Bill-E and me. “Enjoying yourselves?”

“Totally!” Bill-E gushes. “It’s great. Incredibly invigorating and inspiring. I think I’ve found my calling in life.”

“Not getting into any trouble, are you?” Dervish grunts.

“As if!” Bill-E smirks.

“I was discussing your situation with Dervish earlier,” Juni says hesitantly.

Uh-oh! It’s never good when an adult says something like that.

“I’m worried that you’ll fall behind in your schoolwork,” Juni goes on. “Things have been a rush lately — Dervish accepting our offer, bringing you two with him, a crazy first week of shooting. Tutoring arrangements have been made for the other children, but we overlooked you and Bill-E. I think it would be a mistake to let things continue as they are, and Dervish agrees, so...”

“No!” Bill-E cries dramatically. “You’re going to stick us in a class? Say it ain’t so, Derv!”

“It’s so,” Dervish laughs. “Juni’s right. We’re going to be here three months, maybe longer. If you go that length of time without classes, it’ll mean repeating a year when we get back to Carcery Vale.”

“You won’t have to do full days,” Juni promises. “We keep classes flexible, to fit in around shooting, so it’ll be a few hours here, a few hours there, just keeping you in line with what your friends are doing back home. That doesn’t sound so awful, does it?”

“Too bad if it does,” Dervish interjects before we can reply, “because you don’t have a choice.”

“Slave driver,” Bill-E mutters, but he’s only pretending to be grumpy. We both knew this was coming. The freedom couldn’t last forever.

Juni and Dervish start talking to each other again. Juni’s been with my uncle most times that I’ve seen him recently, which is strange, since they can’t have a lot of business together. Dervish is part of the inner technical circle, whereas Juni’s job revolves around the children. There must be another reason why he’s sticking to her like superglue, and I think I know what it is — good old-fashioned physical attraction!

It seems incredible. If someone asked me a week ago, I’d have laughed and said the bald old grouch didn’t have a romantic bone in his body. But something’s stirring in the hidden depths of Dervish Grady. There’s a gleam in his smile that was never there before. He’s switched to a pungent new aftershave. His clothes are freshly ironed. He’s even started combing the wisps of hair dotted around the sides of his head into place. There’s no doubt about it — he’s trying to impress the cute albino!

Juni knows that Bill-E and I are friends with Emmet, so she places us in his class. All of the other students are actors. There’s the Kane twins, Kuk and Kik, a boy and girl, small and slender, very alike in looks. They don’t speak much to anyone, going off by themselves whenever there’s a free period. They have big roles in the film, as eerie psychic twins.

Salit Smit is the main child star of
Slawter.
He’s a bit older than the rest of us. A nice guy but not the brightest spark. He just smiles and nods a lot in class, not bothering to apply himself, convinced he’s going to be the biggest movie draw since Tom Cruise.

I absolutely despise the other three. A clique of snobs, presided over by the dreadful Bo Kooniart, a girl who was born solely to annoy. She’s been in a few commercials and thinks she’s God’s gift. Always dresses stylishly, like a model. Sucks up to Davida and anyone else with power and influence. Ignores the rest of us, treating us like simpletons or servants.

Her brother, Abe, is almost as bad. A scrawny, miserable excuse for a child. He’s not an actor, but his father — the loud, obnoxious Tump Kooniart, a movie agent — insisted he be cast if they wanted to hire Bo. From the rumors, Davida resisted, but finally caved in and gave him a small part as a kid who raises the alarm when the demons are about to break through
en masse.
I don’t think Davida gives way too often, so Tump must be good at his job. Which is just as well, because from what I’ve seen of Bo and Abe, they’re awful at theirs!

The third mini-tyrant is Vanalee Metcalf. Her parents are multimillionaires. Too busy to waste time with their daughter on-set, so she came equipped with her own bodyguard-cum-servant, who glares at anyone who doesn’t grovel at her feet.

Bo, Abe, and Vanalee took one look at Bill-E and me when we were introduced to them this morning, smirked at each other in a snide, superior way, and turned their noses up to let us know we weren’t worthy of direct notice.

Our tutor is a sweet but nervous woman named Supatra Jaun. I can tell within ten minutes that she can’t handle Bo and her posse. She lets them talk to each other while she’s teaching and doesn’t ever try to assert her authority. Sometimes she’ll murmur, “Now, now, Bo, please pay attention,” but without any real hope that the blond, ponytailed, stick-thin brat will obey.

Miss Jaun seems genuinely pleased that Bill-E and I have been added to her class, probably because we’re polite and show some interest. She talks to us warmly, finds out what we’ve been studying, takes a few notes, and promises to bring us up to scratch in next to no time.

“I bet those dirtbags know a lot about scratching,” Bo sniffs.

“Meaning?” I growl at her.

“
Lice,
you moron!” she screeches, and Abe and Vanalee burst out laughing.

“We’ve found our nemesis,” Bill-E mutters in my ear, pegging it dead-on. “Hate her, Grubbs. Hate her good and proper.”

“Does her character die in the script?” I ask Emmet.

“No,” he says. “She ends up saving the town, along with Salit.”

“A pity,” I sigh.

“But she does fall into a pit full of demon manure at one stage,” Emmet says, and my day lights right up.

Our first session lasts two hours, a mix of history, biology, and math. Miss Jaun seems to be confident in all subjects — a smart cookie. Then an assistant director pops in and says they need Bo and Salit. Miss Jaun checks her watch, says we might as well all take a break, and asks those of us not involved in filming to return in an hour. It’s certainly a lot more laid-back than our school in Carcery Vale.

Emmet wants to practice his lines on Bill-E and me again, but we don’t have the patience, so we leave him with his mom in his trailer. We grab sandwiches from one of the many mobile cafeterias, then go see if anything exciting is happening. There’s not much to keep us amused today. Davida and her crew are setting up a tracking shot on a street, trying to get lots of actors in place and working in sync with each other. Fairly boring to watch. A lot of filming is.

“I still can’t believe we’re here,” Bill-E says as we wander around. “Maybe this will become Dervish’s full-time job and we’ll travel around the world on film shoots with him.”

“I doubt it,” I laugh. “Your gran and grandad wouldn’t allow it. I’m surprised they agreed to let Dervish have you for this long. Did he work some magic spells on them?”

“Nope,” Bill-E says. “They were happy to let me come. Gran loves movies, especially old flicks starring the likes of David Niven and Ingrid Bergman. She thought this was a great opportunity for me. I think she’s hoping I’ll fall in love with a beautiful blind cellist or some such nonsense. She believes that a lot of those old films were based on true stories, that the world’s really like that.”

“Mind you, a girl would have to be blind to fall in love with you,” I comment. “Otherwise they could never return your love, could they?”

“Your face,” Bill-E snorts. “My flabby nether regions. Spot the similarity?”

I get Bill-E in a headlock and rub my knuckles into his skull, but it’s all in fun. He has no idea of the real reason why he’s here. He thinks Dervish is his father, that he didn’t want to spend a few months parted from his darling son. He doesn’t know about Dervish wanting to make sure Davida doesn’t raise hell, or about Prae Athim’s interest in experimenting on him.

“I can’t wait to see the demon tomorrow — or it might even be tonight,” Bill-E enthuses once I’ve released him. “Emmet says it depends on how shooting goes today. If they finish that shot on the street in time, they’ll do his scene later. It’ll be coolio!”

“Hmmm,” I say neutrally.

“What are you moaning about, Goliath?” Bill-E frowns. Then, studying me carefully, his expression clears. “Oh. I’d forgotten. Your parents and sister . . .” He trails off into silence. Although Bill-E doesn’t know about his lycanthropic genes, or the battle Dervish and I fought with Lord Loss, he knows that demons killed my family.