The Summer Is Ended and We Are Not Yet Saved (6 page)

“Horror movies are great,” I told him. “Everybody loves horror movies.”

“Nobody has a real career in horror movies,” the kid said.

His mother nodded like he wasn’t saying something stupid.

“I don’t want to end up like that girl from
The Exorcist
—going crazy and having to do a bunch of porno movies before killing myself. I want to be famous.”

What kind of messed-up priorities did this kids’ parents give him, where he felt bad about being in a horror movie? I should have just kept quiet. This is my first day in Toronto, and I haven’t even started on the movie yet! But he was just wrong.

“First of all,” I told him. “Linda Blair was amazing in that film. She was nominated for an Oscar. And she didn’t go crazy afterward, or kill herself. She had a hard time with drugs, but she got through it. She’s alive and well. I met her at a horror convention last summer and she’s really down to earth. She runs a charity for animals, for Christ’s sake.”

“Uh huh,” the kid said. He had his phone out now, and was texting someone.

Martin, I wanted to slap it out of his smug little hands. What was he doing in a horror movie if he didn’t even like them? It was crazy.

“And secondly,” I said. “Linda Blair did not make porno movies. She got naked in some of her later films, sure, but you know who else has appeared naked in her movies? Hellen Fucking Mirren.”

They left the party shortly after that, but I guess I’ll see them bright and early tomorrow morning for our first shoot. I’m supposed to make a kitten’s eyeball pop out and splatter blood all over the little fucker, but to be honest, I’d rather make his eyeball pop out and splatter his mother. I know it’s impolite to speak ill of the mentally deficient, especially when they’re children, but God almighty. I’m glad you turned out to be a little weirdo. I’ll send you a picture of the cat eyeball and try to record the sound of the blood spire screaming.

I’m staying at the Hyatt hotel, and there’s supposedly a bar up on the roof, but I haven’t been able to find it yet. When I leave my hotel room, the hallway seems to lead to the elevators one way, and stretch off forever in the other direction. I tried to walk that way earlier, but it went on and on. The numbers started getting weird down that way, too. 1401, 1402, 1403 at first, which made sense, but the further I got, the less sense anything made. I turned back when I got to a room numbered 14-help-me-Elizabeth-help-me-die.

And in the elevator, the button for the rooftop bar was just a hole, rather than a glowing button. It was black and dark and deep-seeming, and there was a scritching sound coming from inside. I did not try to push the button. But I’m curious. And I don’t know how long I can refrain from jamming my finger in there! I miss you and I hope that you’ve wandered away from the camp and into the woods. I hope that you’ve been kidnapped by wolves, and they are raising you as your own. They could smell it on you, Martin. You are a wild animal. You will be a valuable member of their pack when you are grown.

Love,

Your mom.

Mitchell Hemsworth sat on the edge of a washing machine, and waited for the priest to answer his question. The machine he was sitting on was empty, but the one next to it was rumbling and making the whole row of machines vibrate. Mitchell had blond hair and blue eyes and right now they were rimmed in red. He wanted to accept Jesus into his heart. He did. But he didn’t know what that felt like. He felt normal. He didn’t feel filled with light or saved. He didn’t feel like he was at peace or special.

“No, it’s not like that,” Father Tony, the head counsellor, said. They were in the laundry room, so they could talk quietly. After the speech, when Father Tony asked whether they had accepted Jesus into their hearts, Mitchell hadn’t known what to do. So he stayed behind instead of going into the other room where all the cake and cookies were. He was the only one who stayed. “You let Jesus into your heart by having faith in Him,” Father Tony said. “Those other feelings, they come over time. It’s not like flicking a switch, son. Nothing in this life is as easy as that.”

Mitchell wiped his nose on the back of his hand and looked out the window where the rest of the campers were running around, and shrieking with laughter. They were all sure that they had Jesus in their hearts, but Mitchell hadn’t known. He wanted to let Jesus into his heart. But everyone else went into the next room like they were sure and Mitchell stayed.

And he was scared, too.

“If I accept Jesus into my heart,” Mitchell said, “Then I’ll be saved? And when I die, I’ll live forever in heaven?”

“Yes,” Father Tony said.

“But will my dad?” Mitchell had trouble getting these words out. His dad was an atheist. He didn’t go to church, and he made jokes about priests sometimes. He didn’t want to tell Tony that, though. “He doesn’t believe in God,” Mitchell said.

“Well, no,” Tony said. “I know it’s scary, but there’s nothing you can do for your father. He has to choose for himself.”

Mitchell cried harder. There was nothing he could do to protect his father from going to hell.

“But it won’t bother you,” the priest said. He put his hand on the boy’s head and tousled his hair. “You’ll be in a better place. You won’t even notice that your dad isn’t with you.” Tony smiled.

“I will,” Mitchell said. “It will bother me.”

Tony let out a laugh, and then clamped a hand over his mouth. “Sorry,” he said, and then he laughed again. “God, you’re a complainer, aren’t you?”

“What?” Mitchell said.

Father Tony was trying to stop laughing, with his hand over his mouth. He shook his head at Mitchell as if to apologize. But Mitchell could tell he was still laughing. Tears were rolling down Tony’s cheeks.

“Have you considered not being such a big baby?” Tony said. “I mean, what, are you going to go to Hell with him? If your father jumped off a bridge into a never-ending fiery pit of suffering, does that mean you have to, too?” Tony tried to catch his breath.

“I love my father,” Mitchell said.

“I have an idea,” Father Tony said. He reached out and helped Mitchell down off the washing machine. “Okay, I know that it’s scary to think your father might burn forever in the bowels of Hell with his skin torn off and all that. But you just have to take your mind off it.” He opened the metal top of the washing machine, and reached out to take Mitchell’s hand. “Here, just put your hand here,” he said.

And then he slammed the metal door down across the boy’s fingers as hard as he could.

Mitchell let out a scream, and pulled his hand back. There was blood all over the hand, and two of the fingers were bent strangely. They were probably broken.

Mitchell screamed again when he saw his fingers, and Tony had to sit down, he was laughing so hard. He couldn’t stop laughing, even long after the kid had run off in terror. That’ll give him something to complain about, Tony thought, and he giggled like a school girl, the ridiculous sound of his own high-pitched giggling only made it worse.

There was blood all over the front of the washing machine, and he knew that this was wrong. He wasn’t acting right. He should be worried about Mitchell and his fingers. Even more than that, he should be worried about Mitchell’s crisis of faith. But he wasn’t. Tony leaned forward and used his fingertip to draw a smiley face in the blood.

When he had composed himself, Father Tony left the laundry room and went looking for Mitchell. There was a ringing in his ears, but he should probably try to keep it together long enough to find the camper and calm the boy down. Or he could find Mitchell and hit him in the head with a hammer instead. Tony smiled, but then shook his head. No. Focus. He had to find Mitchell and apologize. Calm him down. There was a drop of blood on the floor headed toward the dining room.

Mitchell was sitting at one of the big tables, and a male counsellor, Quinn, was wrapping the bloodied hand in gauze. Tony came into the room quietly, and they didn’t notice him. There were tears streaked down Mitchell’s face, and he was shaking with sobs. Quinn was occupied with wrapping the hand. This was a pretty nice dining room, Father Tony thought, looking around. He liked the way the walls were shaped. How come he had never noticed that before? The way they seemed to curl around the room, like fingers holding him safe in their grip. It felt nice, just standing here. When was the last time he’d let himself just enjoy life like this? There was more to life than preaching God’s word. Didn’t Tony deserve to have fun, too?

“It’s okay,” Quinn had his hand on Mitchell’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “You’re going to be fine. We’ll find someone to drive you to the hospital over in town, and those fingers will be as good as new before you know it.”

Mitchell started to nod, but then saw Tony over Quinn’s shoulder and let out a wail.

Tony hid his smile before Quinn could turn and see. He looked at the counsellor, and they stared at one another for a quiet moment.

“Just stay right here,” Quinn told Mitchell.

“Can I speak to you a moment, sir?” Quinn said.

Tony nodded. “Of course,” he said. “Quinn, right?”

They walked out into the hall.

“What happened to that boy in there? He hurt himself on the Flying Fox?” Tony said.

“He says you did it to him.”

The counsellor was eighteen years old, tops, but he talked like he was used to being in charge. He puffed his chest up when he accused the priest, and it was all Tony could do to keep from smiling.

“I cut his hand?” Tony said.

“And broke two of his fingers, it looks like,” Quinn said. “He says you slammed his hand in the washing machine. And that you laughed at him and told him his father was going to burn in hell.”

Tony sighed and leaned back against the wall.

“Oh, I think I understand,” he said. “Well, this is certainly a new one.”

“Sir?” Quinn said.

“Quinn, I’ve been running this camp for years now. And every year there are kids who get homesick. Some of them get over it, and wind up having a great time, but some don’t even try. They pretend to be sick, or they act out. This is the first time I’ve ever had one break his own fingers though. That’s kind of gutsy, actually.”

Quinn seemed less certain, and Tony patted him on the shoulder and smiled his best priest smile.

“No, I didn’t break one of our camper’s fingers and then tell him his father was going to hell,” he said, chuckling. “I wouldn’t be a very good camp counsellor if I went around doing things like that. I’d be an even worse priest! Don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” Quinn said. He let out a breath. “That kid had me freaked out,” he said.

“Children are just like everyone else,” Tony told him. “They lie, too, sometimes. But they’re more vulnerable than we are, so we have to protect them. We’re conditioned to give everything they say the benefit of the doubt, because if it’s the truth and we don’t believe them, then we feel we let them down. The problem is that once they get to a certain age, they know it. They know it and it gives them a kind of power over their environment at a time in their lives when they feel powerless.”

Tony could tell he had him now. The young counsellor was looking at him with admiration and sudden respect.

“I’m thinking about studying psychology in university,” Quinn said. “I want to be a priest someday, like you. And I think that psychology has a lot of tools to offer to the church. It never hurts to try and understand people better, does it?”

Tony was watching Quinn talk but not listening to him. He wondered what was inside that blond head of his. Not metaphorically. Tony didn’t care about Quinn’s hopes or psychological motivations. He wanted to know what the boy’s brain looked like. Did it pulse and twitch? If he could get the skull open while Quinn was still alive, could he jab his finger into different parts of the brain and make him bark like a dog?

He almost laughed out loud at the idea of Quinn barking like a dog every time someone poked a finger into his exposed brain. Get it together, he told himself. But he didn’t want to get it together. Why did he have to explain his actions to this idiot teen? He should just take Quinn into the laundry room and slam his hand in the machine, too. Or his head. That would crack his skull open, maybe. If he did it hard enough.

Nobody was talking, and now Father Tony couldn’t remember who had spoken last.

“Psychology is very useful,” he said. “And I think we should talk more about this. You’re clearly very ambitious, Quinn. But right now I should take that camper up to my office and call his parents. He probably wants to get home before it’s dark and I don’t blame him. But come knock on my office door tomorrow morning. Maybe I can write you a letter of recommendation to the university.”

“Oh you don’t have to do that!” Quinn grinned. “That would be so great. Thank you, sir.”

Dear Martin,

Hello again. It’s me, your mother. I am still in my hotel room, and my clothes are still sitting unpacked on the floor. It’s not my fault, though. They have thousands of channels on the television here. There’s a channel that is just a little girl’s nightmares. All night long, from when she goes to sleep ’til when she wakes up screaming, the station just broadcasts chewing gum stuck to teeth, and thread running down her throat as she tries frantically to pull it out. Parts of her body are made of insects. And men keep stopping on the street to look at her.

Why would anyone watch that station? There’s another station that is just people eating cupcakes and smiling. I like that station better. Who knew there were so many different kinds of cupcakes? One for every kind of person I guess. That’s important, Martin. As your mother, it is my duty to make sure you know that the world is made up of all sorts of different people. And you can understand them, even if they aren’t like you. You can understand them just by trying to understand them. I’ve never liked butterscotch, but watching that old man’s smile as he eats his butterscotch cupcake? I understood. It didn’t change how I feel about butterscotch cupcakes, but I understood his pleasure. And that’s what life is about, Martin. It’s about connecting with and understanding other people.

This hotel is very strange. There are three taps on the bathroom sink. One is for hot, and one is for cold, and they’re marked H and C respectively. But I’m afraid to try the third tap, which is marked B. Does it control the flow of blood? Of bugs? Of brain matter, or bile? Or butterscotch? It could be any of these disgusting sludges.

The more I explore my room, the more weirded-out I get. So I’ve been trying to focus on work. The exploding kitten eyeball effect is going to be relatively simple. The eyeball is plastic. I found it in a cat doll at the dollar store. The cat doll had two plastic eyeballs, but I only really needed one. And if the doll comes to life later tonight, to have its revenge on me, I hope that it shows me a bit of mercy for leaving it with one eye at least.

I stuck ragged bits of latex around the edges of the plastic eye, and they are supposed to look like fleshy eye gunk. Then I painted the fake flesh purple and red, and strung thin lines of it off the back of the eyeball. It’s much more garish than a real eyeball would be, I think, but that’s good. More garish is better. Real gore is so plain and uninteresting. It makes me sad to think that when I die my body will just be pale and unhorrifying. I want to shock people from beyond the grave, Martin. I want to make rookie policemen vomit. Maybe I should put that in my will. I want my body to horrify people. Will you strap me to animatronic machinery, so that at my funeral I burst out of the coffin hollering and splashing everyone with embalming fluid? Anyone who attends my funeral should be given one of those waterproof ponchos in case they sit in the splash zone.

The actual mechanism to kick the gunky eyeball out of the socket is just a locking spring from a jack-in-the-box. It makes a click sound, but they’ll be able to edit that out. It’s a motherfucker to get set up, but I’m excited to show the director in the morning. I want to show you, too, but I can’t figure out how to send you a video.

What else is new in the few hours since my last letter ? Oh, I got a phone call from that stupid actor kid’s mother. The boring kid who thought he was better than Linda Blair.

Anyway, his mom called me just a while ago and said, “Are you Elizabeth? The makeup artist?”

“Yes,” I told her.

I didn’t know who it was, or I would have pretended she had the wrong number. Maybe. Or maybe I wouldn’t have. I like a good fight. It’s probably not the best way to go through life, but then, I’d rather be a fighter than a mother with an idiot son.

“What can I do for you?” I asked her.

“You can learn some manners,” the woman said. “You have no right to speak to Jim that way.” She cleared her throat. “You’re lucky you aren’t fired, is what I’m saying. I could have the director put you out on your ass in an instant.”

Do you know that tone of voice people get, and you can tell that they are pointing their finger? That’s how this woman sounded. It sounded like she was at her house, holding the phone in one hand, and pointing her finger at nothing with the other. Why can’t people smile? You can tell people are smiling from the tone of their voice, too, and that’s much nicer. You should always try to smile Martin, even if you don’t feel happy. After a while, you get happy. You trick yourself into actually being happy. It’s much better than pointing your finger at people, which is impolite.

Anyway, there’s a certain desperate smell to this kind of bluster. People who have nothing to back up their threats but don’t want to admit it to themselves. I’ve seen real anger and its consequences. This wasn’t frightening in the least. This was entitlement disguised as anger.

“And who is Jim, exactly?” I said. It figures a boring kid would have a boring name.

“You know exactly who I’m talking about,” the woman said. “Jim. My son. The boy you swore at just a few hours ago.”

“I didn’t swear at your son,” I told her.

“Are you calling me a liar?”

She sounded so indignant that I laughed.

“No,” I said. “I called your son ignorant. But I didn’t swear at him. I swore in front of him. You understand the difference, right? I swore while I was talking to him, because I don’t see any harm in that. I’m not going to tiptoe around a kid as though the word ‘fuck’ is somehow going to make him cry or stunt his growth, and I think you’re a fucking hypocrite for calling me up and acting like I’ve crossed some unforgivable line by cussing in front of your little boy who is about to star in a movie where you’re letting a grown man suck on his neck for money. If he can handle that, then he can handle me telling him that he’s wrong about Linda Blair, and he can sure as fuck handle a little cussing.”

“You’re going to regret using that tone with me,” the woman said.

“Lady, I regret talking to you at all,” I told her, but she had already hung up.

And then, right away, the phone rang again. But this time it was an old man’s voice.

“Hello?” he said. “Can you hear me, hello?”

“I can hear you,” I said. “Who is this?”

“She can hear me, Mitchie,” the old man said away from the phone. Then he was back, talking into the receiver again. “Hello, miss? My name is Charles, and I think I might be dead. I don’t know where I am, or where this phone came from. But I’m happy here. It’s cold and strange, but I have my dog with me. We’re together. Mitchie is still dumb as a post, but we’re together. Can you tell my daughter that we’re together?”

“Who’s your daughter?” I asked, but there was static on the line now. It was loud and clicking and hissing. “Who’s your daughter?” I said again.

“Julia,” was all I could make out, and then he was gone. So, now I guess I have a mystery to solve, Martin. I have to find a ghost’s daughter and tell her that he’s happy. That is, if this hotel doesn’t devour me first. While I was in the bathroom, one of the chairs seems to have disappeared from the room. And the ceiling feels lower than it did before.

I hope that camp is fun!

Your loving mother,

The Ghost Detective.

“They put us in Cabin Three,” Melissa said when Courtney sat down at the picnic table.

Martin slid over to give her room, and his arm brushed against Joan’s, skin on skin. It was an accident, but he felt his face go red. He tried to concentrate on not blushing. He didn’t want to make Joan feel weird. He didn’t want any of them to make fun of him. He liked them. They were going to make camp so much better.

“Our counsellor just wants to talk about chess all day,” Melissa said. “Look at her.” She nodded her head toward Sherri-Lynn, who was standing beside a big outdoor chess board with a couple of the girls from their cabin.

The chess pieces were black and white, and some of them were as tall as her knee. The counsellor was pointing at one piece, and then another, and gesturing wildly in the air. Martin had never learned how to play chess. He always just kind of assumed it was boring, but Sherri-Lynn looked genuinely excited.

“Chess is better than hairstyling tips,” Courtney said, slumping down over the table with her head on her arms. “I got stuck with Cindy. There is no way I am ever going to put curlers in my hair, let alone stay up late having some kind of curler party. What kind of insanity is that? Let’s all stay up late and do our hair? Honestly, it’s like a bad dream. I think that our counsellor might be completely nuts. Or she’s fucking with us. Do you think she’s just fucking with us?” She turned to Melissa, but Melissa was staring at Sherri-Lynn still, and shaking her head in disbelief.