Authors: Sandra Brown
Molly saved the image and then opened the real estate website that had posted the listing of their home. She found a picture of the bedroom and saved it to the desktop.
She tweaked the images with Photoshop until she felt it looked perfect. It depicted the money sitting on top of the bed, the piles looking exactly as they had over the
Did you ever…
caption. Except the same piles now appeared atop their covers and neatly folded afghan, promising a better and happier life.
Molly hit the print key and waited for the HP to roll out the resulting product. Her mind wandered while she waited, drifting back to the honeymoon they’d taken. Finances didn’t allow for the typical week in the tropics, so they’d opted to go white-water rafting, something neither of them had ever experienced. Pictures of them framed amid the rapids was part of the package, only once the photos arrived Bob’s face wasn’t visible in any of the shots. At her wits’ end, Molly had labored with paste and tape in the pre-Photoshop days to repair the omission, before finally coming up with something acceptable, Bob displayed clearly now alongside her.
In creating it Molly had the sense that if she made things right on paper, they would remain just as right in life. Even though that had hardly been the case, the picture had remained her favorite of the two of them together for all this time. How often she had stared at it displayed on their family room wall as if to will such unrestrained happiness back into reality and how foolish that had made her feel.
But maybe not so foolish anymore.
The Photoshop effort of the money stacked atop their bed emerged from the HP looking even better than it had on screen. Molly trimmed the edges to make sure it would fit on the Kodak 470, stealing a glance toward the rafting shot hanging on an adjacent wall.
Just one last time, she promised herself.
* * *
Molly was there minutes after the Rexall opened, Bob having offered to drop Matt off at day care after she told him she had an important job interview.
“Back again?” Jasmine said from behind the counter, blowing a bubble. “Can you wait until tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?”
Jasmine tilted her eyes toward the Kodak 1000, a state-of-the-art scanner pressed up against the wall currently with protective plastic wrapped around its shiny frame in stark contrast to the 470’s worn and faded casing.
“We’re installing it later today, matter of fact,” Jasmine told her.
“No, the old one will do just fine.”
With that, Molly positioned the Photoshop shot of a million dollars on the glass and hit Scan. The stench from the Kodak 470 was worse than ever, the thing rattling up a storm as soon as she hit Print, threatening to burst from its bonds and rampage through the store spewing chemicals in its wake. The machine’s corrosive smell assaulted her, blackening smoke now rising in thin wisps from its innards.
Please, let it work. Just this one last time… .
The copied picture emerged from the slot in a series of fits and starts, much too hot to touch at first, but looking even better than the original she’d created.
Thank God,
she thought, brimming with hope and expectation for the first time in longer than she could remember as she moved to the counter.
“Anybody ever have, you know, any strange stories about that scanner?” Molly asked Jasmine.
“I don’t know about stories, but we’ve had plenty of complaints, especially in the last month or so.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, like people saying their pictures were gone by the time they got home.”
“Gone?”
“Washed out, colors all bleeding together, something like that. I called the company, but customer support doesn’t support the 470 anymore. That’ll be a dollar six with tax.”
* * *
Molly rushed straight home, breathless with expectation, the Kodak 470’s parting gift to her hopefully lying on the bedcovers. But she couldn’t stop from wondering why the machine, and the magic behind it, had chosen her of all people instead of the multitude of others who had seen their memories dissolve in a mishmash of blended colors. Certainly there was a reason and whatever the reason was, it stopped her from questioning the moral implications of what she had done. Besides, was it any different from praying in church for the impossible to come true.
But what if this time it didn’t?
She stepped into the bedroom with eyes closed, terrified she was about to learn she’d played herself for a fool. That it would turn out Bob really had hired someone to brush up the house’s exterior and the new Sherman was no more than a look-alike stray. She realized in those final moments between breaths that the machine had taken her hostage, enslaved her in hope. But what if that hope were false?
Molly opened her eyes.
And saw the money, big heaping piles of it stacked atop her bed exactly as it had been in the picture. The scale was identical, the denominations, she was certain, identical, as well.
Molly reached out and touched the cash, half expecting it to be no more than an illustration set atop the spread. But, no, it was real. Smelled real, felt real, fanned like real. An assortment of neatly wrapped twenties, fifties. A million dollars.
A million dollars!
Molly sat on the bed and tossed packet after packet into the air, enjoying the
thump
when each one smacked the pile. Her family’s problems solved, the house to remain theirs. No For Sale sign added to the endless collection dotting their suburban world.
Then a different
thump,
one car door and then another slamming closed, brought her to the window.
A pair of police officers was heading up the walk, having exited their cruiser parked in the street. They looked dour, purposeful. Molly shrank away from the window so they couldn’t see her, heard the doorbell ring.
Were they here to arrest her? Did they somehow know what she’d done? Surely this couldn’t qualify as counterfeiting; she hadn’t printed the money, she’d just, well, brought it to life. Was that a crime? Was she going to have to explain this miracle to Bob from a jail cell?
Molly debated briefly about not letting them in, then figured they’d get her sooner or later anyway. So after the second ring she went downstairs and opened the door.
“Good afternoon, Officers,” she said, forcing a smile. “Is there a problem?”
The cops removed their caps in eerie unison. Molly saw the look in their eyes and knew.
* * *
An 18-wheeler had run a red light and obliterated Bob’s Volvo, while he was on his way to drop Matt off at day care. Both Bob and Matt had been pronounced dead at the scene. Of course, if she hadn’t made up the lie about the job interview, so she could be at the Rexall when it opened, they’d both be alive now. Bob never would have been behind the wheel at that exact place and time. So this was all her fault, the scanner’s fault. Not a blessing, after all, but a terrible curse. A gift from hell, not heaven.
“Ma’am,” one of the cops was saying, as Molly sat in a chair with broken springs that felt ready to swallow her. “Ma’am?”
She wanted to wake up, wake up and find the fence posts still broken, Sherman still dead, and no million dollars upstairs in her bedroom. Because then Bob and Matt would still be alive. She was fresh out of miracles. There was no magic that could bring them back to life.
“Is there someone we can call for you, ma’am?” the cop was asking now.
Unless…
Might the scanner, could it possibly…
“Is there someone you can be with, someplace we can take you?”
“Yes!” Molly blurted out, hoping against hope. “The Rexall! Please take me to the Rexall!”
The cops did, both eyeing her strangely but not bothering to question a grieving woman. Molly wished only they’d drive with siren screaming and lights flashing the whole way, praying it wasn’t too late. But he drove at a modest clip and it turned out it was too late indeed.
The Kodak 470 was gone, having already been replaced by the 1000 that glistened beneath the harsh fluorescent lighting in the Rexall.
Molly grabbed the clerk Jasmine by the white jacket.
“Where is it?”
“Where’s what?”
“The scanner, the old scanner!”
“Out back,” Jasmine said. “With the trash.”
Molly bolted for the back, nearly crashing through the automatic doors before they had a chance to open. There it was, the Kodak 470 leaning up against a fence surrounding the Rexall Dumpster. The smell of garbage assaulted her as she rushed up to it, already tearing her wallet from her handbag and a picture of Bob and Matt together from her wallet. The top that covered the scanner’s glass had been broken off in the move and was resting against the bottom of the sun-faded frame. Molly laid the small picture down on the clearest portion of the glass and wedged the cover over it, reaching up for the scanning controls to the chilling realization that the machine was no longer plugged in.
Since even the 470’s magic extended only so far, Molly ran back into the Rexall and yanked three extension cords from the home electronics shelf.
“Where’s the nearest power outlet?” she screamed at Jasmine, already unraveling and connecting them.
Jasmine pointed to a wall featuring the store’s ATM machine.
Molly had to snake a hand behind it to plug in the strung-together extension cords and then burst back outside with the cords strung like a white snake in her wake. The store alarm began to wail, a surprisingly polite female voice advising her to please return inside because the store had failed to deactivate the security sensor. So now she was a shoplifter on top of everything else.
Outside a garbage truck was backing its way toward the Dumpster and the scanner.
Beep, beep, beep…
“No!” Molly screamed, daring the truck to hit her as she found the 470’s power cord and plugged it into her assemblage of extensions.
She hit the on button and the machine coughed to life, black fluid seeping out from its front, more with each spit and rumble.
“What the hell?” one of trash men asked, approaching warily as if afraid of what the crazed woman operating a junked scanner with patched together extension cords might do next.
Molly hit Scan.
Nothing happened.
She pushed it three more times and still nothing, not even a wheeze. She pushed and held the button down and finally the old-fashioned grid that charted the scan’s progress popped up and began filling in, each lurch accompanied by a burning smell that reminded her of a blown-out tire. The scanner’s steel casing grew so hot it burned her fingers and forced her to shrink away.
The screen flashed Scan Complete in scratchy letters that were dissolving before her eyes. Molly hit Print.
Black smoke wafted outward, the machine’s insides grinding, seizing up. Fluids colored red and green and blue flowed outward from the slot where finished pictures were retrieved, the screen now flashing Paper Out.
Paper! She hadn’t even thought to check if the machine had any left in its feeder!
The trash men were grabbing hold of her, pulling.
“Get away from the machine!” one wailed. “It’s catching fire!”
“No, please! It’s not finished!
Please!
”
She tried to grab hold of the scanner’s lip but it singed her fingers and she felt herself being yanked backward. Her hands flailed for the Kodak 470 as more colored fluids leaked from the retrieval slot and the Scan Complete message dissolved into nothing. She saw flames peeking out from the machine’s underside before bursting out its feeder slot. Then the glass screen blew out and smoke swallowed the scanner in a thick black cloud that looked like a monstrous specter with a mouth formed of crackling flames laughing at her.
* * *
The same cops who dropped Molly at the Rexall brought her back home and escorted her up to the door, exchanging no words because there was nothing to say. Molly entered to find the new Sherman wagging his tail to greet her, oblivious to the scanner’s failure to right this terrible wrong. A life so filled with hope barely twelve hours ago now lost to tragedy and guilt. Was it so wrong what she’d done? Was it so wrong to want to preserve her family’s life and happiness?
She heard the cops slam their doors closed and drive off, leaving her alone as she’d be for the rest of her life.
Then she saw the tiny football flash by the window looking out into the backyard and, after a brief pause, flash by again in the opposite direction. Molly moved out into the backyard through the sliding glass door off the kitchen, gasping for air as if she’d forgotten how to breathe. Time slowed, then froze.
“Where you been?” Bob asked. “I was worried. The school called when you didn’t pick up Matt.”
Molly finally found her breath, but not words. Then Matt hugged her tightly and she knew it was real, all of it.
“We made a photo book in school today, Mommy.”
Scan Complete, the machine had said. The lack of paper must not have mattered… .
She pictured the remains of the Kodak 470 being hauled away to some junkyard, compressed and sold for scrap.
“A photo book,” Molly managed to echo. “Wow.”
“Wanna see it?”
“Later, Matty, later,” she told her son, taking her husband’s hand in hers. “We’ve got plenty of time now.”
* * * * *
GRAVE DANGER
Heather Graham
Spooky…and then some! Action-packed…and then some! Trust Heather Graham to plot so many twists into one short story. ~SB
The shuffling sound of footsteps had brought her here.
A leg lay on the floor, burned and scorched, blood pooled and congealed along the severed flesh at the kneecap area. In the shadows, Ali MacGregor stepped carefully by it. She blinked and saw the enormous monster beyond the leg. Fanged teeth appeared to drip saliva; the eyes were red, as if within them, all the fires and brutal evil of hell could be found.
Ali stood still, her heart thundering. She heard the noise again, the shuffling sound that had brought her here. She moved as silently as she could. Another step brought her face-to-face with the decaying skeleton of a one-eyed zombie.
Tattered flesh fell from the bones. The jaw bare, the tongue and teeth looked truly macabre. Now, its head hung in a parody of sadness, creating something even more horrible about its appearance—a touch of humanity, eaten away.
On screen, it had been one of the most terrifying creatures ever.
She was proud of the zombie. She’d had a part in the creation, and she thought it was one of her best pieces. The one eye was brilliantly blue, and it seemed to watch her as she listened again to the shuffling sound that had come from the storage room at the production facilities of
Fantasmic Effects.
It was strange. She was accustomed to the horrific and the bizarre; without it, she wouldn’t make a living. But it was one thing when she was here during the day, when the rhythmic churn of sewing machines could be heard, when buzz saws roared, and there were people at every different workstation.
How different it was by night… .
She was there alone for the first time. Of course, she wasn’t supposed to be alone. Victor Brill was supposed to be working with her. They were finishing up the last of the half-eaten zombies for tomorrow night’s shoot in the “graveyard.”
The ironic thing, of course, was that the fake “graveyard” lay just beyond a real graveyard. A small plot in back fell under the jurisdiction of the Catholic Church. The land had been purchased and donated by Blake Richards, the brilliant man who had founded
Fantasmic Studios
. Despite his love of horror and the occult, Blake had been a devout Catholic, and a boy who had almost gone wrong, except for the intervention of a priest. Now, Blake Richards was buried in the plot that immediately bordered the brick-walled parking lot of the studios, and the fake cemetery had been established nearby.
The cemetery had never frightened her. Not the real one, certainly. She’d loved Blake Richards; he’d hired her. He’d been the kindest man in the world, and the first to give a young artist a chance.
So why was she so frightened tonight?
Victor. The jerk.
Victor had headed out to buy them both some fast food to get them through the next few hours. He’d left at five, when it had still been light. Now the sun had set, and the world around her was dark.
Fantasmic Effects
was out of the city, away from the congestion that seemed a part of all of Los Angeles County. Still, there were other studios and businesses not that far away. Enough so that there were scattered streetlights here and there.
The werewolf still seemed to be looking at her.
Hungrily.
I could call Greg. If he wasn’t working, he’d come. He’d come save me…just as he had been determined to save Cassandra.
That sudden thought made her wince. Maybe Greg was with his ex-girlfriend now. Or, maybe, Ali had thrown away her happiness because she’d never really grasped his sense of responsibility. He’d told her once that as a homicide detective, he’d learned that it was only the living he could really help. Sure, the dead did deserve justice, and he could help get that justice for them. But it was those still in danger—whether from a perp or themselves—who still really needed help.
Thinking about Greg wasn’t going to help her now. Realizing that she’d only gone on a few half-witted dates since she’d left their apartment that night certainly wasn’t exactly good for her mind, either. Remembering the ruggedly handsome and rough-hewn sculpture of his face, and thinking that she’d never been frightened of anything with him around was not going to get her through the night. And, certainly, thinking about being in bed with him on a lazy day, his naked flesh next to hers, even the scent of him intoxicating, would not stop the shuffling sound from terrifying her now… .
She gave herself a mental shake. Oddly enough, thinking about Greg was helpful. She felt stronger, remembering his strength and determination, coupled with an even temper that always seemed to allow him to go forward.
What would Greg say now?
she wondered.
She smiled to herself. Well, in all honesty, Greg would tell her to get out and get away, and call a cop. But then, he might also smile and remind her that her imagination was truly
fantasmic,
and that sometimes she had to live in the real world. Lord, there had been that one time when she had been working on the gauntlets for
Knights and Aliens
when he had stood behind her, fingers in her hair, knuckles brushing down over her cheeks while his whisper teased her ear, reminding her that the knights weren’t real, but he was, and he only had a few hours left before heading out for his shift.
They’d made love for hours then, and she had laughed and suggested they should actually make a movie:
Homicide Cop and Prop Girl.
Naturally, he’d be Supercop, and she’d have extra powers, and of course, he told her, she did have extra powers—what her lips did to his flesh was superhuman… .
That was then. This was now.
Yes, it was just that it was dark, and she was alone. What was benign by day seemed frightening by night.
So, the werewolf had the appearance of being about to pounce at any given second. And the damned zombie seemed to be watching her, too, as if it was about to salivate any minute. She’d had a part in creating them; they were damned good effects!
She heard the shuffling sound coming from the rear of the storage room again.
She was an idiot. She needed to get downstairs and get the hell out.
She couldn’t just run out; she had to finish work tonight—if she still wanted to have a job tomorrow. She could imagine trying to explain herself to Dustin Avery, her boss. “The zombie and the werewolf were freaking me out, Dustin, and I kept hearing this shuffling sound…so, let’s just put that umpteen-million-dollar shoot off a day. It’s Victor’s fault. He didn’t come back with dinner.”
For a moment, she was almost overwhelmed by the impulse to call Greg. No. She stood still, trying to turn every muscle in her body into steel with her mind; she couldn’t call Greg. Not now. Not ever.
He’d been the love of her life at one time. But she’d left him the night he’d left her—because his crazy ex had been hospitalized and arrested on another drug charge. She’d tried so hard to tell him that he couldn’t keep bailing Cassandra out; he’d assured her that it didn’t mean anything. He felt responsible. Cassandra had a little boy—
not his
—but he still had to hope that she could get straight and care for the child. Once Ali had left him, she couldn’t talk to him again. And she couldn’t just call him casually now. “Hey, sorry, how are you? Yes, I know I’ve ignored your calls. But I’m alone at the studios, and I think a coworker is trying to scare me into getting fired.”
No, she couldn’t do it. She
had
to be rational.
She heard the shuffling sound again, but when she felt the chills race along her spine again, she straightened, gritting her teeth.
Victor was a jerk and a prankster. When he’d left, the place had supposedly been locked. He’d had a key to get back in, and she’d been so busy sewing the last zombie shirt, she probably hadn’t heard him return. And now…Victor was trying to freak her out.
She wasn’t going to run. She was going to turn the tables on him.
She gave the werewolf a pat on the chest. “Work with me, okay?” she whispered. She smiled grimly, and, using the creatures and mechanics to hide her, she began to tiptoe back toward the rear of the storage room.
* * *
Not at all far away, Greg Austin was on a case.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Tony Martini whispered.
Something similar almost escaped Greg Austin; he managed to remain silent as he surveyed the scene.
Gravestones. Opalescent in the moonlight, some full of lichen and appearing so worn by time that those buried beneath them must have been long forgotten, some bearing funerary art that drew the eye with its sheer beauty. Angels with folded wings wept over freestanding crypts, and cherubs holding crosses looked up to the skies. The ground seemed overgrown, as if the cemetery had long been neglected, completely lost in time.
And then, of course, there was the dead man. The newly dead man.
At first, he must have been hard to see, even for film director Howard Engel.
Because there were corpses lying everywhere. Some were missing limbs. Most had decaying flesh, and bone jutted from torn shirts and worn pants.
They
weren’t real. They had been set two days ago for the scheduled shoot in the graveyard. The graveyard, of course, wasn’t real, either. It had been put together by the wizards of
Fantasmic Effects.
Thing is, filmmakers never planned for a real corpse showing up in the middle of their zombie shoot. It was understandable that Tony was spooked by the fake graveyard. He wasn’t as familiar with special effects as Greg. And, of course, Greg was familiar. He had lived with Ali for a year; he had loved to see the flash of emerald in her eyes when she’d had an idea for a superhero costume, or an evil elf, or some other being of fantasy or horror.
He winced, looking back at the studio building where she worked. Well, she’d be off for a few days now. There would definitely be no filming here by tomorrow’s light.
He felt the same dull ache he always felt when he thought about Ali, and he winced, and forced the pain down. He was working.
“Do you think it might be the work of the Slasher?” Tony asked. Over the past year, four women had been found in a similar position, torsos bent over on top of their beds, as if they’d died saying their nightly prayers, throats cut ear to ear.
“This is a man. So far, the Slasher only kills women. And in their homes,” Greg said. “I’m not saying that it might not be, but we can’t come to any real conclusions right now.”
Was it the Slasher? He’d been following clues. They’d questioned dozens of suspects, but the killer used gloves, and he seemed to know exactly what he was doing, studying police procedure, evidence…hell, he didn’t leave a hair, a drop of fluid—anything.
Greg hunkered down by the real corpse. The man lay half in and half out of a hole that had been dug in the ground—not a true six-foot depth, but maybe three and half or four feet. He’d been wearing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt sporting a ravenous shark on the back. That seemed an irony now, because the slashes just lower than the gaping jaws made it appear that a shark had taken a bite out of the man. But Greg doubted the slashes on the back had killed him; it was the fact that his head had nearly been severed by a ragged blade and lay at an odd twisted angle on the ground, along with his torso, while his legs dangled over the dark pit of the grave.
He could so easily have been a part of the set!
Greg slipped a gloved hand into the man’s pocket and found his wallet. His California driver’s license identified him as Victor Brill of Topanga Canyon. In his wallet, Victor also carried nearly two hundred dollars, an ATM card and a Platinum American Express. Robbery didn’t seem to be the motive. But then, overkill was seldom in play when the motive was robbery.
Overkill was usually the work of a psycho.
Still hunched down, Greg looked around the area again. He shook his head. The crime scene units were going to groan aloud when they arrived on the scene what with the body parts everywhere, and fake blood spattered across the “zombie” areas where the creatures had apparently just dined on unwary mourners. He’d checked the ground for impressions in the fake landscape himself; footprints, telltale signs indicating the killer’s path. There was such a hodgepodge of horror on the set that it was almost impossible to tell anything.
Greg motioned to the police photographer hovering back at the edge of the fake graveyard. “Come on over. M.E. will be here soon, and I want a good photo record before we move anything else.”
The police photographer, a grim young woman, started snapping even as she made her way over.
Overkill.
It was actually not an easy feat to nearly sever a man’s head. The throat and neck were vulnerable, of course, but to slice through all the flesh, muscle and ligaments down to the bone, well, that took some effort. And anger.
What had Victor Brill done to have received such wrath? Or had he done anything at all? Was this the work of the Slasher?
Greg stood; old Doc Mabry was carefully maneuvering his way to the site.
“That’s the real goner?” Mabry asked him.
Greg nodded. “Old” Doc Mabry wasn’t that old. But, recently, a series of retirements had left him, at fifty, the oldest M.E. working in the area. He was tall, straight, fit, and could have easily passed for an aging character actor.
“Well?” Greg asked.
“I may puke,” Tony Martini said.
Puke would really foul up the scene.
“Tony, go over to Durfey, there. He was the first to arrive, and I think that’s Howard Engel, the director standing with him. Find out what Engel was doing out here alone this late, and how he stumbled on the real body. Ask him about this fellow, Victor Brill. He might work here with the special effects people.”
Tony nodded and moved away. Greg watched while Doc Mabry hunkered down himself, investigating the corpse.
“How long has he been here?” Greg asked him.
Mabry looked up at him, looked around the “graveyard,” and then back to Greg. “Less than an hour. The guy is still warm and pliable, Greg. Hell, he must have died two minutes before he was found.”