The Devil's Cinema (18 page)

Sulking around the house, Twitchell told Jess about his little horror movie he was making. She was immediately worried about the cost, but he assured her it would be of no concern. In fact, a draft of the script was complete and he explained how it had been an outlet for him during their recent problems. He had been inspired by their marital difficulties and mixed it into his interest in psychological thrillers. It was only a few pages long but he had come up with a title:
House of Cards
.

His proposed ending for the short film, however, had Jess horrified. The thought of a man being decapitated was revolting to her. She demanded he change it. Twitchell resisted, having planned that specific ending for weeks. But Jess persisted and in a huff Twitchell eventually assured her that he would think of something else.

S
TANDING IN HIS CONDO
in a black T-shirt, Johnny showed off his huge flat-screen television and custom-built computer to his house guest, Marie Laugesen. He was nearly as pleased with his integrated home entertainment system as he was with having Marie finally visit.

She had called recently to say she was catching a ride from Vancouver to Edmonton for a late-August weekend and the time together could help repair their strained friendship. They had known each other for more than a decade, from their time on Vancouver's online bulletin boards, but had later fought and stopped talking. Johnny had finally called to say sorry. While she accepted his apology, Marie was going to make him grovel a little.

Johnny was a gentleman and gave her his bed while he pulled out a mattress on the living room floor. She was in town for only a day, so he asked her what she wanted to do. Everyone had told her it was a lame idea, but Marie confessed in excitement to wanting to experience one of the city's only attractions: West Edmonton Mall.

The pair jumped in Johnny's red Mazda 3, a departure from his usual beloved German cars, but one he was willing to make as his age tipped closer to the big four-o. Marie started taking pictures as they pulled into the mall's giant parking lot. Johnny couldn't stop snickering as Marie snapped away.

The mall offered new discoveries for Marie along every vast corridor of marble and brass, mirrors and skylights scattering the daylight. They strolled past fountains, a lagoon once home to a fleet of submarines and an indoor water park, simulated waves rolling across a fake tropical beach. The pair stopped at the ice palace, watching skaters twirl on the rink surface. Stores were stacked in long rows around these amusements.

During her trip, a lull in conversation prompted Johnny to make a confession to Marie. “You've inspired me, you know?”

“What?” she asked, puzzled. “How?”

“Because you chose never to have children.”

“I shouldn't be an inspiration for that.” Marie tilted her head. “It's from within that you make this decision.”

Johnny nodded. He told her about his journey of self-discovery by studying New Age philosophy. “It's made me a happier person.”

The pair soon found their way wandering under the vivid colours and flashing lights of Galaxyland, the mall's indoor park of roller coasters and fairgrounds. The main entrance opened to reveal a spinning carousel, children bumping along on hard plastic horses. From the purple flooring they saw a giant swing lit up with red twinkling lights. A funhouse and haunted castle loomed in the corner. They toured the grounds of painted-blue space rocks as nervous screams echoed from visitors thundering by on noisy rides overhead. Ahead lay a winding bed of red and yellow tracks. Marie's gaze was lifted high as she saw the rails twirl into a triple-loop across the sky. The ride was aptly titled The Mindbender.

“Let's go on it!” she smiled, tugging on Johnny's arm. The pair climbed into one of the three cars, holding a total of a dozen souls aboard a steady climb to the top.

They clasped the safety harnesses around their shoulders as the track clicked higher and higher. Upon reaching the summit, the cars seemed to hover for a brief moment before suddenly plunging in a freefall and banking hard to the left. Racing at an incredible speed, the cars tore back up the track before plunging again and curving upwards, rolling upside-down as riders screamed through the ride's triple loops.

The entire ride lasted about a minute but was forever burned into their memories. Screaming and hollering, stomachs in their chests, Johnny and Marie climbed out of the car and decided quite quickly: they would ride the roller coaster once again.

Marie left Edmonton the next morning knowing the trip had been worthwhile. Driving back to Vancouver, staring out at the evergreen forests, she realized her bond with Johnny remained strong. Despite their distance and brief period of difficulties, she knew he would remain a loyal friend for the rest of his life.

P
LACED ON MULTIPLE WEBSITES
, Twitchell's casting calls for
House of Cards
had achieved much success. One actor, a local comedian, would be playing the victim, another was flying in from Toronto to be the killer, and a young woman agreed to portray the wife in the script. While they would be working for free, Twitchell was promising them potential roles in
Day Players
alongside stars like Alec Baldwin for their efforts. All were excited by the coming possibilities.

Twitchell's search for movie props had been successful too. A military surplus store had a variety of knives, for which Twitchell had personally selected a sturdy KA-BAR blade as his killer's weapon of choice. He also bought a large oil drum to help dress the set, hoping to give the garage the gritty look of a serial killer's lair. Joss had urged Twitchell not to buy it since the drum would cost more than $150 after shipping, but Twitchell was adamant that he own such an item.

One of his most striking props brought back memories of Twitchell's childhood video efforts. In an online sporting goods store, he had found a hard plastic hockey mask. It looked steeped in a horror vintage from the
Friday the 13th
slasher-film franchise, like something a goalie for the original-six NHL team the Detroit Red Wings would have worn. All he had to do was cut out the jaw, maybe dress it up with gold and black paint.

Far darker concepts were also brewing as he prepared for the film shoot, but like many aspects of Twitchell's life, he was hiding them in plain sight. For no one, save for his suspicious spouse, was looking very closely at what was really transpiring. On Facebook he revealed his biggest clues, often wrapping them within his love of the double entendre.

He had already become Dexter Morgan on Facebook. He had opened an account under the fictional character's name and included more than a dozen photos of the actor who played the role. He was gathering friends who were pretending Dexter was real. Twitchell would then communicate
with his followers, responding as Dexter would with every reply. “Dexter is thinking deep these days,” he wrote.

Twitchell continued to update his own account. At the time, some users of the social-networking site were making references to themselves in the third person. Twitchell played along. It was just like a narrative technique used in
Fight Club
, one of his favourite movies. “Mark feeds on the souls of his defeated foes,” read one of his September offerings. “Mark is making the magic happen.” And as month's end neared and the film shoot drew closer to reality, his excitement became quite evident: “Mark is gearing up for a crazy weekend of filmin' action.”

Although
House of Cards
was only a short film, Twitchell had been spending a great deal of time researching the psychology behind his killer character – anything that could be used to describe the motives and personality of such a troubled man. He read books on psychological disorders and the kinds of diagnosed conditions that define a rare breed of uncaring, real-life criminal who can kill with as much emotion as required to slice bread. It was like a fundamental part of what it means to be human was missing from these people, a quality that made others uneasy.

What Twitchell was surprised to discover during his research was that he actually shared some of these undesirable personality traits with such monsters: an emotional detachment, a tendency to lie. At times, he was selfish. He sat down at his computer, struggling with the horrible self-discovery he had just made, and began typing a long passage that began with an admission that his continued lying to his wife was spiralling out of control:

He expanded on this point later:

Twitchell was worried his exploration into the depths of the killer instinct had uncovered a startling, unexpected portrait of himself. Twitchell picked up the phone and called a therapist. He also visited an on-staff psychiatrist at his nearby hospital. But both mental health experts, he later claimed, insisted that he was fine. After all, the beasts he was using as comparison never sought treatment because they insisted nothing was wrong with them – it was the world that had the problem. The fact that he visited a therapist was all the proof he needed to believe he was fine. “After a much wider series of probing questions that weren't closed ended or leading, we discovered I have no deficiency in this area,” he later wrote, brushing off the incident. His fear of what could lie beneath found a way to subside.

Twitchell returned to designing what would make his killer tick. He was a fan of Batman's Joker, especially actor Heath Ledger's portrayal of the warped, sadistic prankster. Twitchell wrote how he loved the same concepts the Joker had exploited in the movie
The Dark Knight:

And, of course, Dexter Morgan had always been top of mind:

The concept of fate was of interest too. Twitchell had been struck by a passage in a book by fantasy writer David Gemmell, in which an assassin views himself as simply the “hand of fate” at work. As Twitchell would write days after the film shoot: “Not only does fate exist, but I am very important to this fate machine, and it has gone out of its way to teach me a valuable lesson so that I may continue carrying out its inevitabilities.”

After all his research, a composite of his killer character, blended from his various passions, was finally complete.

Twitchell had actually been honest with his wife when he confessed that
House of Cards
took inspiration from his personal life. In fact, the film focused on the concept of “self-hatred,” an admission he would later make to a total stranger drawn to his Dexter Morgan profile on Facebook. And as the years passed, Twitchell would continue to reveal how far more sinister themes had also played a role in the plot of his short film.

After all, at the very heart of his project, a film he was scheduled to begin shooting in a few short days, was a story of deception. Twitchell stayed quiet on this front, especially during filming when he appeared subdued, even slightly detached from his film crew. But the brutal violence of his serial killer came almost secondary to his film's premise of a man living his life as a performance – perfecting day-to-day motions to mask his real identity and to fool the world – just like Dexter Morgan.

C
HRIS
H
EWARD SAT HUNCHED
over in the darkened garage, strapped to a metal chair in the middle of the musty wood building. His wrists were duct-taped to the back of the chair, his ankles strapped to its legs, his stomach spilling out over the sides of its narrow frame. It had been welded together out of angle iron. He was the victim trapped in the victim's chair.

Before him stood Mark Twitchell in a dark hoodie and jeans, a studio light glowing behind his head, throwing a soft hue onto the grease-stained walls. Joss was nearby, checking on the sound equipment. David huddled over a rented digital camera mounted on a tripod. Scott, who towered over everyone, was fiddling with a light.

The crew had already unspooled a roll of duct tape across Chris's chest. It tugged tight on the navy blue dress shirt he was wearing, squeezing his arms into his sides. Twitchell took a step back and looked down at the captive Chris, completely restrained from his shoulders to his feet. Twitchell's lips pouted a bit as he tried to hide a brief smile of pride.

“Okay,” David announced, adjusting the camera a little. “We're ready for the killer stuff.”