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  ROUGH CUT

  Brian Pinkerton

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  © 2012 / Brian Pinkerton

  Copy-edited by: Paulo Monteiro

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  NOVELS:

  A View From the Lake by Greg Gifune

  As Fate Would Have It by Michael Louis Calvillo

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  COLLECTIONS:

  Dark Matters by Bruce Boston

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  Dedicated to my parents for encouraging my creativity …even when it got weird.

  Acknowledgments

  This book was inspired by my childhood affection for monster movies —the good, bad and ridiculous. In particular, I am indebted to Famous Monsters of Filmland, the movies of Ed Wood, Kolchak: The Night Stalker and WGN’s “Creature Features.”

  Surfer Psycho is a wipeout. The surfing is spare, the psycho is listless, and the movie just drags pointlessly from scene to scene, as if the script got buried in the sand. Occasionally a supporting cast member is introduced in a Speedo or bikini and then dispatched with a splash of dime-store gore. Too bad the filmmakers couldn’t be the killer’s first target. Surfer Psycho deserves to be lost in the endless march of low-budget, high-concept, empty-headed horror movies that are regularly flushed into discount DVD bins across the country. Don’t catch this wave.

  —Robert Murphy Los Angeles Daily News

  Harry Tuttle surpasses the cheerful ineptitude of Surfer Psycho with another bucket of celluloid slop, Soul Snatchers. The pseudo-thespians on display here appear to be random citizens grabbed from the local supermarket and asked to recite lines without emoting. The movie aims low, hoping to find an audience with college stoners looking to discover the latest camp classic, but fails to produce any legitimate thrills, chills, or coy self-awareness. Tuttle’s career has been in steady decline for more than a decade, and his earliest movies— Valley of the Zombies, Slash, and the sublime Grip of Terror —remain his strongest work, backed by confident budgets and a certain filmmaking finesse.

  Don Bis, Fangoria

  I must confess that I cannot write an honest review of Harry Tuttle’s Ghost House III because during the course of this direct-to-DVD monster mush I (a) dozed off from boredom, (b) made myself a sandwich, (c) read the morning paper and completed the Junior Jumble, and (d) eagerly accepted calls from telemarketers. If anyone has ever sat through this snoozer from start to finish, perhaps they should claim some kind of prize. Like a cyanide pill.

  Mark Estdale

  Videoscope

  REEL ONE

  1

  Please God, don’t let him wake up. Nora Hurley peeled back a corner of the down comforter, virtually soundless, a small ripple of movement in the dark. Lenny didn’t move. Her husband slept soundly, a mountain of flesh at her side.

  He faced her, eyes shut, mouth open, producing a gurgling snore. Claw-like tattoos snaked up his thick neck. His hand lay near her, huge, hairy, and balled into a fist. Why did he make fists in his sleep?

  He was tense. Always tense. Regularly on the verge of some kind of eruption. The next time he erupted —whether it was screaming, breaking things, or pounding someone —she would be long gone. Nora peeled back the second layer, the blanket. Only a thin sheet remained, touching her legs and chilling as it met the air. Lenny didn’t move. Nora strained to look at the clock. One-forty-five a.m. Unusually late for her, but she wasn’t tired. How could she be? She trembled from the excitement of escape night. The three cups of coffee during her waitressing shift at Dottie’s Diner didn’t hurt, either.

  When Lenny stumbled home earlier that night, shortly after twelve, sloppy drunk —nothing new —she had already retired to bed. She faked sleep, drawing on her acting skills for a good performance. He banged around for a while, ate something, probably made a mess in the kitchen, and then crashed into the bed beside her.

  The only thing he said to her was “Jesus Christ your feet are cold.” She rolled away from him, wordlessly. He hacked loudly, cleared his throat and scratched below the waist. He smelled like gin and cigarettes. The stench clung to his beard. Inside of ten minutes, he was still.

  She waited. She kept waiting. She wanted his sleep to be deep. No restlessness. No awareness of the room. She wanted his senses shut down.

  I hate you Lenny.

  Nora peeled back the final layer, the bed sheet. She was now completely uncovered. She remained on her back in her flannel pajamas. She already felt liberated, simply by lifting the thin blue linen.

  Her cell was open. It was time to leave the jail.

  Nora moved one leg off the side of the mattress. For a moment, she held the fear of Lenny’s big hand snatching her shoulder and his voice booming, awake and alert, “Going somewhere?”

  But it didn’t happen.

  She began moving her other leg off the bed.

  Both feet touched the floor. She began to rise, transitioning her 125 pounds from the bed to the ground.

  The floorboards creaked.

  She froze. She didn’t even breathe.

  Absolute silence.

  Nora made short, cautious steps around the bed. She left the room. Her pace quickened in the corridor. It was dark, but she knew the small house well; and her instincts guided her into the kitchen, where an outdoor streetlamp provided a splash of illumination through the window.

  Nora opened the cabinet under the sink, where the cleaning supplies were kept. Since Lenny had never used a single cleaning supply in the course of their three-year marriage, there was no danger of him finding what she had stashed inside a plastic bag in the back: getaway clothes.

  Nora undressed, letting the flannel pajamas pool on the floor. She pulled on jeans, two sweatshirts — it was freezing outside —socks and gym shoes. Her yellow winter coat, with scarf and gloves shoved in the pockets, hung on a chair in the living room.

  She brought the coat into the kitchen and pulled it on in super slo-mo.

  Lenny typically slept soundly —especially when soaked in booze —but she couldn’t risk a small noise waking him up.

  If caught, there would be a beating. The face was fair game. An
d he would never take his eyes off her again.

  Nora posted her farewell note on the refrigerator, under a Philadelphia Flyers magnet.

  The note simply said, Don’t come after me. This is forever.

  Nora left the house.

  Lenny’s pride and joy, his 1988 Gulf Stream Sunstream RV, crowded the dirt-and-gravel driveway. For a big man, it was a big vehicle, stretching thirty feet. The interior needed a lot of work, but he had picked it up at a good price from a coworker at Berger’s Auto Body. Lenny had promised Nora long, scenic vacations to the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls, but instead filled the vehicle with his buddies and their beer coolers for weekend camping and hunting trips.

  Nora opened the RV door and retrieved two suitcases from where she had stashed them in the dinette booth. The suitcases were heavy, consisting of everything that would accompany her to her new life: mostly clothes and toiletries, plus a few treasured mementos, such as a photo album with faded pictures of her dad and grandma. She’d also packed a book, Actors on Acting, checked out from the public library and not going back.

  Nora shoved the suitcases into the backseat of the blue Mercury parked curbside. She closed the door without a slam. It didn’t hook correctly, but she could fix that a few blocks away. It was dead silent outdoors and any noise would be amplified.

  Nora gave a final look to the square brick house that had held nothing but pain and misery since the day she got married and moved in. It was truly a haunted house. Lenny could have it all to himself now. He could guzzle malt liquor, punch holes in the walls, and scream her name 24 hours a day. She didn’t care.

  She wouldn’t hear it. She wouldn’t see it. She was going to erase him from her memory. Delete Lenny.

  Nora looked at their bedroom window, drapes closed, nothing but darkness behind them.

  This is forever.

  Nora turned the key and started the engine. It hummed in the cold. She had to give it a moment, however brief, to warm up.

  My God, this car is loud, she realized as it shook and rattled in the winter air. It needed a new muffler. She had never noticed before. Lenny usually drove. She hardly ever —

  The bedroom window lit up. Nora gasped.

  Immediately she threw the car out of park and jammed it into drive.

  With a roar, the Mercury plunged down the street. Nora cried. She could feel the heat from Lenny’s explosions taking place behind her. He was erupting. He was storming through the house calling her name. His footsteps were pounding the floor. There would be no response, just her note.

  Forever.

  Snow began drifting across the windshield as she reached US-422, the highway that would whisk her from Pottstown to Philadelphia. Although daybreak was still hours away, tomorrow had arrived. It was February 16, a date that would live in infamy.

  Weeks of preparation and anticipation had led to this jailbreak. Lenny had been left behind in the cold and dark. She would never see him again. She would never see snow again. A warmer climate awaited. A brighter hope.

  Lenny would be sorry, eventually. The sad, remorseful little boy beneath the hot-tempered ogre would make one of his rare appearances; but it would be too late. She would never deal with him again. He would eventually realize one thing in that dense head of his: he had messed up a really good thing.

  That’s because Nora was destined for greatness.

  Few people knew it. She didn’t discuss her destiny openly, because most of the people around her would be dismissive. They wouldn’t see it. And that was understandable, given the circumstances.

  In her hometown, Pottstown, and many of the other surrounding middle-class suburbs, the crumbling economy had wiped optimism off most everyone’s plate. Pennsylvanians were buckling under years of heavy job losses in manufacturing. Steel mills, tire companies and garment factories had shut down, leaving thousands of blue-collar workers, including Nora’s friends and relatives, unemployed. Many of the jobs that remained were shipped overseas. A feeling of powerlessness hung heavy in the air. The small towns around Philadelphia were depressed in every sense of the word.

  One day, sharing a break with Pedro, her gay friend at Dottie’s Diner, Nora revealed her dream, a secret aspiration she had never mentioned to Lenny. He would have laughed, hard and mean.

  “I want to be an actress.”

  Pedro’s eyes grew big. He smiled, “Well then go for it.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Don’t get all ‘yeah, right’ on me. Sweetheart, you want it, it’s yours. What’s stopping you?”

  “Lenny.”

  “No, he’s not.”

  She gave him a long, weary stare, “You don’t know Lenny.”

  “The only person in your way is you. Think about it.”

  And she did.

  At Owen Roberts High School, she had performed in some musicals — West Side Story, Oklahoma, Annie. Her drama teacher, a veteran of Community Theater, said she was one of the best in the class. “You act from the heart,” he told her. “When you do that, it reaches the back row. Don’t ever let that go.”

  She knew that stardom was possible for a girl like her because it had happened before. One of Nora’s friends, Crissy Cryer, knew someone who knew someone who had a neighbor who was friends with Lesley Banks. Lesley had started out as a small-town Pennsylvania girl, cute and scrawny but not stunning, acting in a few local shows and television commercials. One day she headed west with a cousin and wound up landing a small part on a short-lived sitcom, What a Shame. Two years later, she reappeared in a bigger role in a more successful sitcom about zookeepers. Feature film roles followed. The local papers touted their hometown success story. The men in the neighborhood ogled Lesley’s magazine pictures, and the women marveled over her newfound fame and fortune.

  Lesley’s rise to stardom fascinated, then inspired, Nora. She fantasized about ditching Lenny and following Lesley’s footsteps to Hollywood. The more she thought about it, the more vivid it became. She could see the flashing bulbs of the paparazzi, hear the autograph seekers calling her name, and feel the red carpet beneath her feet. As Nora served patrons in Dottie’s Diner, she imagined telling them, One day you’ll see me on TV and you’ll say, “That’s the girl who used to serve me hash browns.”

  Between servings, Nora plotted her escape. She scheduled the date: two days after Valentine’s Day. The only person in the world who knew about Nora’s plans was Pedro. She told him on her final night at the diner.

  He hugged her.

  “Seize your destiny!” he told her, so loudly that she shushed him.

  She didn’t tell her boss, Mr. Murray, that she wasn’t coming back. She told him, “See you tomorrow,” waved, and laughed inside.

  Pedro chased her out the door.

  “If you get really, really famous...” he said to her in the parking lot, “...don’t forget the little people.”

  “You can visit anytime,” she promised. “You can swim in my pool and ride in my limo.”

  “Will you introduce me to Brad Pitt?”

  She laughed and walked the four blocks home, barely feeling the bitter wind cutting through her clothes.

  The 40-mile drive into Philadelphia was quick and gloriously uneventful. Nora found herself glancing in the rear-view mirror a lot, fearful of a single image: Lenny in the RV speeding to catch up with her.

  But it was not to be.

  The big lug had no idea where she was headed. He was probably frantically calling her sister or her mother, but they didn’t have a clue. Only Pedro knew, and Nora didn’t think Lenny was even aware Pedro existed. Good thing, too. Lenny hated gays.

  Nora pulled the Mercury into the Stuckey’s parking lot. It was still dark out, but more drivers were sprouting up on the roads, and a lot of trucks.

  She pulled the two suitcases out of the backseat and placed them on the ground. She slipped the car keys under a floor mat and shut the door. Lenny could come get the car. She wasn’t going to steal it.

  Nora dragged th
e two suitcases inside Stuckey’s and called a cab.

  The cab arrived and transported her deeper into Philadelphia, to the curbside of the Greyhound bus terminal. She paid the driver from a thick wad of bills that caused his eyebrows to rise.

  She didn’t have a lot of money, but what she did have was in cash. She had scraped together funds by accumulating small amounts over a long stretch of time, not wanting to arouse Lenny’s suspicion. She had also drained her secret savings account, money left when her father died, before she married Lenny.

  In the bus terminal, Nora bought a one-way ticket to Los Angeles and patiently waited for departure. She dozed a little bit on a bench, but then became afraid of missing her bus. She forced herself on her feet and headed over to the newsstand.

  Happy, fresh faces greeted her from magazine covers. They had glorious suntans, white smiles, shapely bodies, perfect hair and dazzling clothes and jewelry. Celebrities.

  One day that will be me. The ticket to Los Angeles was her winning lottery ticket. Her golden pass.

  Nora bought People, Us, Star, The National Enquirer, and Entertainment Weekly. It was an impulsive splurge that made her feel great.

  When the bus began boarding, she was the first person in line. The baggage handler loaded her suitcases into a space beneath the bus. She grabbed a window seat, but didn’t intend to spend much time looking outside.

  The bus rolled out of the terminal. The scenery was familiar, gray and bleak: peeling billboards, webs of electrical lines, dirty curbside snow, slumped road lamps, and miles and miles of industrial wasteland. She focused instead on her stack of magazines and tabloids. She consumed them cover to cover, absorbing the details, often returning to material she had already read. She placed herself inside the dreamlands depicted on the color pages. Sprawling mansions. Expensive clothes. Steamy lovers. Extravagant shopping. Parties and awards. Hanging out with the rich and famous.