Curse of the reaper, p.14
Curse of the Reaper, page 14
“You can’t kill me.”
Howard recoiled at the Reaper’s voice. “Dear God, no …”
“I am immortal!”
“What’s wrong?” Jake asked. “If you don’t want them to play the supercut, I’ll tell them to hit stop right now.”
“Supercut?” Howard asked, confused as another line resounded, this time more clearly through speakers on the other side of the curtain.
“It’s time to fear the Reaper!”
“Yeah,” Jake explained, “they edited a bunch of clips from every film into a little video intro for you. Wanna go watch?”
Howard was awash with relief to discover that the voice was not a mental manifestation. Still, he wasn’t keen on exposing himself to the films right now for fear that it might trigger something when he was so close to doing what he came here to do.
“No. No, I’ll just wait until it’s done.”
He tried to ignore the symphony of slashing and screaming as he paced back and forth, thinking of all the lives the Reaper had claimed. Purely fictional, yes, but the weight of all that death suddenly fell on Howard’s shoulders as the announcer’s voice kicked in.
“Ladies and gentlemen. Here to accept a Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the genre … the Reaper himself in his final public appearance … the one … the only … Howard Browning!”
Howard didn’t even wait for the applause as he stepped through the curtain, eager to deliver his grand goodbye. The lights blinded him for a silent moment before the bulbs swiveled back to illuminate his audience. But the small spattering of costumed attendees in a roomful of empty seats hardly qualified as an audience. A few half-hearted claps echoed across the space as Howard turned back toward Jake, who shrugged helplessly at the low turnout.
Howard had hoped to go out with a bang, but the gathering before him represented a whimper of the grandest scale. Where were all those fans he had given so much of his time to over the years? Why couldn’t they be bothered to show up for him now, to support him, to show him their love in this most pivotal moment? They’d been so outraged at the remake announcement, but now it was Howard who felt abandoned as his anger swelled.
He swallowed that rage deep down, fearing what it might bring as he approached the podium, where the announcer handed him the award. A shiny golden skull, true to life size and heavy as a bowling ball, with his name engraved on the base below: Howard Browning.
Holding the skull in his hands now, Howard thought again of Hamlet’s madness. “Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune … Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.” It was time now to take arms, to oppose this specter in his mind and end his troubles, once and for all. Howard placed the skull on the podium as he cleared his throat into the microphone, sending a feedback screech across the nearly empty room.
“Thank you. My dear … dear fans. It truly is an honor. Your support is what has kept me going through all these years.” He looked out again at the meager crowd, the empty plastic chairs mocking him as he refocused himself.
He was not here for the fans. He was here for release.
“I can’t tell you exactly what this award means to me. But I can tell you that when you give your whole life to something, as I have to this role, you make a certain sacrifice. As you do in any relationship.”
A muffled snickering emanated from someone in the audience. Howard scanned the dozen or so masked attendees, but couldn’t tell which one it was. He wanted to scold them for their disrespect, but decided to ignore it and press onward.
“When you truly dedicate yourself to a character for the length of eight films, you give up a little bit of yourself to make room for this … other person. I have shared my mind, my heart, my soul with the Reaper for twenty-five years now. But my term of service has ended. I promise you, my friends, that I have given it everything I possibly could. But the honest truth is, I have nothing left to give. I am but an empty vessel. Hollow. Drained.”
“HA!”
The sharp laugh caught him off guard. A man in a hockey goalie mask stood at the back of the room now, pointing his finger at Howard and laughing out loud.
“Hahahaha!”
Howard looked around at the other fans, none of them even turning their heads to look at the heckler, all focused on Howard, whose face was twisting in confusion. But the sinking feeling in his gut told him that this wasn’t happening at all. He was imagining things again, hallucinating. The drugs clearly weren’t working anymore, but then, some part of him had expected that. That’s why he was here, wasn’t it? He had to keep going.
“And you, my dear fans. It is truly you who wield the power of immortality. It is you who can galvanize a corpse, bring the dead back to life. But there comes a time when every creature must meet his maker.”
Another masked attendee with a blank white face and a shock of brown hair rose now, pointing and laughing alongside the hockey goalie. The next laugh came from a burned face beneath a brown brimmed hat. Then a hook-handed man in a long coat. A sad ghost and a ginger doll. A bald head of nails and a stitched face of human skin. An ax-wielding Santa and a goggled miner. The whole audience of ten masked killers all pointing and laughing at Howard as they stalked their way down the aisle now, swinging knives and machetes, meat mallets and pickaxes.
Howard tried to ignore it as he continued onward.
“Perhaps Frankenstein’s monster put it best before he and his bride met their own poetic demise. ‘We belong dead.’”
“Hahahahaha!”
The mob grew more manic now as it neared the stage and Howard spoke louder to overpower their mocking mirth. “And so I lay this monster to rest! The Reaper dies here, today! And should he crawl out once again from his endless grave …”
The monsters crawled up to the podium, circling Howard as their collective cackle took on one cohesive tone. The Reaper’s cackle emanated from their mouths as they pointed their deadly tools in Howard’s face.
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
“… it shall not be through my hand that he finds resurrection! Because Howard Browning …”
The slashers dropped their weapons to paw at him now, tugging at his limbs, fingers digging into his skin.
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
“… is the Reaper …”
They were trying to tear him apart, rip his flesh to shreds. Drag him straight to Hell.
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
He squeezed his eyes tight as he screamed, “NEVERMORE!”
Howard’s whole upper body collapsed on the podium as he panted, out of breath. He looked up, only to find the small crowd still in their seats, their wide eyes visible through the slits in their masks as they looked around in dismay at what must have seemed like a very strange performance.
But it was over now. Howard uttered a weak “Thank you,” garnering some awkward claps from the room as he lifted the golden skull, cradling it in his arms like a newborn as he walked away from the podium.
Jake was on the other side of the curtain, snapping his phone shut now to pretend he’d been paying attention. “That was beautiful, Howie, really. Best speech I’ve ever heard. I’m just sorry there wasn’t a bigger turnout.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Howard replied. And it really didn’t. Yes, his ego was wounded, but his unconscious was calm. Even in the face of that monstrous hallucination, he had done what he came here to do. Imbued with the power of intention, the words seemed to have worked their magic as he now felt delicious tranquility coursing through his veins.
“Ya know,” Jake began, ever relentless, “since there are only so many fans out there, we could still set up a table for a quick final signing and photo-op. Special limited edition pricing. What do you say, Howie?”
Howard looked at the golden skull in his hands, feeling its heft as he stared into the dark eyeholes. Those two empty pits surrounded by all that glittering gold. He ran a finger along the nameplate.
“My name is Howard,” he responded, soft but firm as he handed Jake the skull. “And I say it’s over.”
With that, Howard walked away. Only this time, he didn’t want to take the cavernous back route to his car. He walked straight through the main hallway of the convention center, the humming artery off of which every conference room lay.
Weaving his way through the throngs of fans, he felt like a ghost. The weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders and he was merely passing through this space, no longer fated to haunt it for eternity. The masked demons around him only added to the feeling that he was passing out of Hell, or perhaps through Dante’s Purgatory, toward some brighter existence in Paradise.
He soon found his way toward the front of the building, where the sun blasted through floor-to-ceiling glass windows.
A radiant white light at the end of the tunnel.
His freedom lay on the other side of those doors, but he no longer dreamed of the possibilities that came with it. He didn’t think about new hobbies like building a chair or even returning to his evening routine of books and records. After all this chaos, the only thing Howard wanted to do was rest. A deep slumber like he’d never experienced before. This is what he was dreaming of as he drifted toward the glowing doors, twenty feet away now, when a muffled sound stopped him in his tracks.
“REAP-ER! REAP-ER! REAP-ER!”
The chanting came like a cult of religious fervor as Howard stood rooted in terror, fearing the noise in his head had returned. But then he saw two fans open double doors beside him and enter Hall H, the largest of the lot, where the sound leaked out, loud and clear.
“REAP-ER! REAP-ER! REAP-ER!”
No, this wasn’t a hallucination. This was really happening.
He was relieved to know he wasn’t hearing things. But then what was going on in that room? Why were they chanting for him?
A surprise. Perhaps Jake had planned a surprise. It was a clever ruse, pretending that nobody had come to see him for the award when they were all gathered in another, much larger room, waiting to shower him with praise. Yes, that must be it.
Howard looked to the sunlight outside, inviting him into a world of endless brightness. Then he turned back to the doors of Hall H.
“REAP-ER! REAP-ER! REAP-ER!”
He was being summoned, but he need not heed the call. He could still walk away, leave it all behind. Howard walked onward, getting close enough to the glass entrance to feel the sun’s rays on his skin now, warming him to the bone.
But he could still hear them, even at a distance, faint but forceful.
“REAP-ER! REAP-ER! REAP-ER!”
They wanted him, needed him. As he watched the sun hang above the building tops, he had a strange feeling that this might be the last time he ever saw it.
Howard spun on his feet, away from the light as he walked back toward the double doors to Hall H. Gripping the handle, cold against his skin, he thought no more of the warmth of the sun as he pulled the door open, stepping across the threshold to whatever lay waiting on the other side.
As he stepped into the enormous room, Howard found himself at the back of a packed house. Thousands of people were crammed in with standing room only behind endless rows of filled seats. A convention worker beside the door handed him a pair of black sunglasses, only adding to his confusion as he squinted over the sea of heads toward the stage, where a giant screen was flanked by posters, too far to read.
Howard gently tapped the shoulder of a young woman who was wearing no costume, but plenty of makeup, as if waiting in line for a dance club.
“Excuse me,” he said as she turned to him with no attempt to hide her instant disgust. “What’s going on here?”
“It’s the teaser for the new Trevor Mane movie,” she said, turning her attention back toward the stage as Howard’s heart sank. A fan on the other side of him interjected, plastic chain wrapped around his neck as he rolled his eyes at her answer.
“It’s the new Night of the Reaper movie,” he corrected with fanboy authority.
Howard waited for chain-neck to recognize who he was talking to, but the moment never came. Instead, the lights went dim and the crowd roared as everyone lifted their sunglasses and put them on their faces, as if readying to gaze into a solar eclipse. Howard couldn’t fathom what was going on here as the screen lit up.
The image was blurry and out of focus. He could barely make out some kind of building at a distance, but it appeared in double vision. Howard placed the cheap plastic glasses on his face and everything came into startling clarity in three dimensions.
A dirt road led to a lone barn in the distance, dry cornfields on either side as the harvest moon glowed in the sky. Howard’s heart stopped at the familiar imagery as the generic movie trailer voice-over boomed.
“Lester Jensen was a good man.”
A figure ran toward the screen, toward Howard in crystal-clear 3D. The figure was Mandy, her shirt conveniently torn to reveal the black lingerie cupping her breasts.
“Lester Jensen never hurt anybody.”
Howard felt like he was going to vomit, but didn’t know if this urge came from the dizzying effect of the glasses or the awful content of the trailer itself.
“Lester Jensen is gone now,” the voice-over continued as Mandy kept running, closer and closer to the camera. Close enough now to see the desperation in her eyes and the tears streaking across her cheeks. Then came a different voice, a monstrous growl.
“And the Reaper … will have his revenge …”
Howard’s gut sank at the unmistakable sound of Trevor’s Reaper. Familiar on the surface, but different at its core. Mandy was about to collide with the camera, the audience collectively braced for impact as THWACK!
The glossy CGI chain snapped around her neck from behind and Mandy’s eyes shot wide before CLANK!
The chain was pulled and Mandy flew backward like a rag doll through the air, across an impossible distance, into the barn as the doors slammed shut and the image cut to black.
The crowd let out a collective gasp as the words crashed into the screen.
Night of the Reaper 3D
The Reaper … REBORN
The speakers boomed with the Reaper’s cackle, only this time Howard was certain the sound had been stolen from his own performance. The lights flicked on over the screaming crowd and he stood frozen in the aftermath. The fans erupted with cheers, tossing their 3D glasses into the air like graduation caps as Howard wiped away the tears he didn’t know had fallen. He looked to chain-neck and makeup girl, both shrieking with glee. They loved it, both Reaper-fan and Trevor-fan alike. They actually ate it up, just like Jake had suggested. They didn’t care about Howard, standing in their midst, utterly unknown.
It had been a mistake coming into this room. He should have kept walking straight out that front door. He wanted to leave now, to get away from this demoralizing experience and forget all about it. As he turned, stepping toward the door, the announcer kicked in.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome … the Reaper himself …”
Howard stopped with his hand clenching the door handle.
“Trevor Mane!”
24
Trevor heard his name through the curtain, followed by the roaring crowd, and he wanted to turn and run. But he remembered what Danny had told him.
“You’re never alone. Your Higher Power’s gonna be with you on that stage, making sure you don’t fuck up.”
Trevor was finally starting to believe that something bigger than himself might actually give a shit about him, might want to see him succeed. It gave him some comfort as he took a deep breath and stepped through the curtain, coming face-to-face with the biggest crowd he’d ever seen in his life.
Family Genius tapings brought in two or three hundred people max, but he was now staring down thousands of screaming faces. With the lights blinding him, they looked like one amorphous blob of limbs with glinting eyes and chomping teeth. A ravenous group, ready to devour him at any moment. He smiled and waved awkwardly for what felt like several minutes until the interviewer finally began.
“So, Trevor.” The crowd died down to listen intently. “What was your first reaction when you were offered the role?”
“I was just totally honored,” Trevor lied. He feared the collective crowd could read his mind, that they knew he really thought these movies were trash. But he couldn’t tell them the truth now, so he just piled on the bullshit. “The original films are such absolute classics and they were a huge part of my childhood.”
Not only had he never seen a Reaper film before his agent pitched him the part, but he still hadn’t finished watching the entire franchise. Once he got to the ridiculous entry where a voodoo priestess exorcised the monster’s soul from Chicago straight to Hell, he had to call it quits.
“And what can fans expect from this remake? How is it going to be different from the original?” the interviewer continued as the sweat pooled under Trevor’s leather jacket. Why were these lights so fucking bright?
“Well, I think we can all agree that the films got a little more kitschy toward the end of the franchise, and the Reaper became more silly than scary.”
The crowd was silent in response and Trevor could hear his own gulp echo through the microphone.
“Which is great. I mean, we all love that stuff. But my approach is to go back to the core, to the horror, and make the Reaper scary again.”
“What do you guys think?” the interviewer asked the crowd. “Are you ready for a scarier Reaper?”
Trevor waited with bated breath for what could have only been a second before the crowd exploded with cheers, champing at the bit. He wiped some sweat from his brow and relaxed his shoulders at their approval.
“I’m gonna be honest,” he said, testing new waters, “When I first found the online fan base for these films, I was terrified.” He looked out into the dark sea of fans. “I was sure you guys were gonna burn me at the stake, and some of you were promising to do exactly that in the comments section.”
Howard recoiled at the Reaper’s voice. “Dear God, no …”
“I am immortal!”
“What’s wrong?” Jake asked. “If you don’t want them to play the supercut, I’ll tell them to hit stop right now.”
“Supercut?” Howard asked, confused as another line resounded, this time more clearly through speakers on the other side of the curtain.
“It’s time to fear the Reaper!”
“Yeah,” Jake explained, “they edited a bunch of clips from every film into a little video intro for you. Wanna go watch?”
Howard was awash with relief to discover that the voice was not a mental manifestation. Still, he wasn’t keen on exposing himself to the films right now for fear that it might trigger something when he was so close to doing what he came here to do.
“No. No, I’ll just wait until it’s done.”
He tried to ignore the symphony of slashing and screaming as he paced back and forth, thinking of all the lives the Reaper had claimed. Purely fictional, yes, but the weight of all that death suddenly fell on Howard’s shoulders as the announcer’s voice kicked in.
“Ladies and gentlemen. Here to accept a Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the genre … the Reaper himself in his final public appearance … the one … the only … Howard Browning!”
Howard didn’t even wait for the applause as he stepped through the curtain, eager to deliver his grand goodbye. The lights blinded him for a silent moment before the bulbs swiveled back to illuminate his audience. But the small spattering of costumed attendees in a roomful of empty seats hardly qualified as an audience. A few half-hearted claps echoed across the space as Howard turned back toward Jake, who shrugged helplessly at the low turnout.
Howard had hoped to go out with a bang, but the gathering before him represented a whimper of the grandest scale. Where were all those fans he had given so much of his time to over the years? Why couldn’t they be bothered to show up for him now, to support him, to show him their love in this most pivotal moment? They’d been so outraged at the remake announcement, but now it was Howard who felt abandoned as his anger swelled.
He swallowed that rage deep down, fearing what it might bring as he approached the podium, where the announcer handed him the award. A shiny golden skull, true to life size and heavy as a bowling ball, with his name engraved on the base below: Howard Browning.
Holding the skull in his hands now, Howard thought again of Hamlet’s madness. “Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune … Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.” It was time now to take arms, to oppose this specter in his mind and end his troubles, once and for all. Howard placed the skull on the podium as he cleared his throat into the microphone, sending a feedback screech across the nearly empty room.
“Thank you. My dear … dear fans. It truly is an honor. Your support is what has kept me going through all these years.” He looked out again at the meager crowd, the empty plastic chairs mocking him as he refocused himself.
He was not here for the fans. He was here for release.
“I can’t tell you exactly what this award means to me. But I can tell you that when you give your whole life to something, as I have to this role, you make a certain sacrifice. As you do in any relationship.”
A muffled snickering emanated from someone in the audience. Howard scanned the dozen or so masked attendees, but couldn’t tell which one it was. He wanted to scold them for their disrespect, but decided to ignore it and press onward.
“When you truly dedicate yourself to a character for the length of eight films, you give up a little bit of yourself to make room for this … other person. I have shared my mind, my heart, my soul with the Reaper for twenty-five years now. But my term of service has ended. I promise you, my friends, that I have given it everything I possibly could. But the honest truth is, I have nothing left to give. I am but an empty vessel. Hollow. Drained.”
“HA!”
The sharp laugh caught him off guard. A man in a hockey goalie mask stood at the back of the room now, pointing his finger at Howard and laughing out loud.
“Hahahaha!”
Howard looked around at the other fans, none of them even turning their heads to look at the heckler, all focused on Howard, whose face was twisting in confusion. But the sinking feeling in his gut told him that this wasn’t happening at all. He was imagining things again, hallucinating. The drugs clearly weren’t working anymore, but then, some part of him had expected that. That’s why he was here, wasn’t it? He had to keep going.
“And you, my dear fans. It is truly you who wield the power of immortality. It is you who can galvanize a corpse, bring the dead back to life. But there comes a time when every creature must meet his maker.”
Another masked attendee with a blank white face and a shock of brown hair rose now, pointing and laughing alongside the hockey goalie. The next laugh came from a burned face beneath a brown brimmed hat. Then a hook-handed man in a long coat. A sad ghost and a ginger doll. A bald head of nails and a stitched face of human skin. An ax-wielding Santa and a goggled miner. The whole audience of ten masked killers all pointing and laughing at Howard as they stalked their way down the aisle now, swinging knives and machetes, meat mallets and pickaxes.
Howard tried to ignore it as he continued onward.
“Perhaps Frankenstein’s monster put it best before he and his bride met their own poetic demise. ‘We belong dead.’”
“Hahahahaha!”
The mob grew more manic now as it neared the stage and Howard spoke louder to overpower their mocking mirth. “And so I lay this monster to rest! The Reaper dies here, today! And should he crawl out once again from his endless grave …”
The monsters crawled up to the podium, circling Howard as their collective cackle took on one cohesive tone. The Reaper’s cackle emanated from their mouths as they pointed their deadly tools in Howard’s face.
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
“… it shall not be through my hand that he finds resurrection! Because Howard Browning …”
The slashers dropped their weapons to paw at him now, tugging at his limbs, fingers digging into his skin.
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
“… is the Reaper …”
They were trying to tear him apart, rip his flesh to shreds. Drag him straight to Hell.
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
He squeezed his eyes tight as he screamed, “NEVERMORE!”
Howard’s whole upper body collapsed on the podium as he panted, out of breath. He looked up, only to find the small crowd still in their seats, their wide eyes visible through the slits in their masks as they looked around in dismay at what must have seemed like a very strange performance.
But it was over now. Howard uttered a weak “Thank you,” garnering some awkward claps from the room as he lifted the golden skull, cradling it in his arms like a newborn as he walked away from the podium.
Jake was on the other side of the curtain, snapping his phone shut now to pretend he’d been paying attention. “That was beautiful, Howie, really. Best speech I’ve ever heard. I’m just sorry there wasn’t a bigger turnout.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Howard replied. And it really didn’t. Yes, his ego was wounded, but his unconscious was calm. Even in the face of that monstrous hallucination, he had done what he came here to do. Imbued with the power of intention, the words seemed to have worked their magic as he now felt delicious tranquility coursing through his veins.
“Ya know,” Jake began, ever relentless, “since there are only so many fans out there, we could still set up a table for a quick final signing and photo-op. Special limited edition pricing. What do you say, Howie?”
Howard looked at the golden skull in his hands, feeling its heft as he stared into the dark eyeholes. Those two empty pits surrounded by all that glittering gold. He ran a finger along the nameplate.
“My name is Howard,” he responded, soft but firm as he handed Jake the skull. “And I say it’s over.”
With that, Howard walked away. Only this time, he didn’t want to take the cavernous back route to his car. He walked straight through the main hallway of the convention center, the humming artery off of which every conference room lay.
Weaving his way through the throngs of fans, he felt like a ghost. The weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders and he was merely passing through this space, no longer fated to haunt it for eternity. The masked demons around him only added to the feeling that he was passing out of Hell, or perhaps through Dante’s Purgatory, toward some brighter existence in Paradise.
He soon found his way toward the front of the building, where the sun blasted through floor-to-ceiling glass windows.
A radiant white light at the end of the tunnel.
His freedom lay on the other side of those doors, but he no longer dreamed of the possibilities that came with it. He didn’t think about new hobbies like building a chair or even returning to his evening routine of books and records. After all this chaos, the only thing Howard wanted to do was rest. A deep slumber like he’d never experienced before. This is what he was dreaming of as he drifted toward the glowing doors, twenty feet away now, when a muffled sound stopped him in his tracks.
“REAP-ER! REAP-ER! REAP-ER!”
The chanting came like a cult of religious fervor as Howard stood rooted in terror, fearing the noise in his head had returned. But then he saw two fans open double doors beside him and enter Hall H, the largest of the lot, where the sound leaked out, loud and clear.
“REAP-ER! REAP-ER! REAP-ER!”
No, this wasn’t a hallucination. This was really happening.
He was relieved to know he wasn’t hearing things. But then what was going on in that room? Why were they chanting for him?
A surprise. Perhaps Jake had planned a surprise. It was a clever ruse, pretending that nobody had come to see him for the award when they were all gathered in another, much larger room, waiting to shower him with praise. Yes, that must be it.
Howard looked to the sunlight outside, inviting him into a world of endless brightness. Then he turned back to the doors of Hall H.
“REAP-ER! REAP-ER! REAP-ER!”
He was being summoned, but he need not heed the call. He could still walk away, leave it all behind. Howard walked onward, getting close enough to the glass entrance to feel the sun’s rays on his skin now, warming him to the bone.
But he could still hear them, even at a distance, faint but forceful.
“REAP-ER! REAP-ER! REAP-ER!”
They wanted him, needed him. As he watched the sun hang above the building tops, he had a strange feeling that this might be the last time he ever saw it.
Howard spun on his feet, away from the light as he walked back toward the double doors to Hall H. Gripping the handle, cold against his skin, he thought no more of the warmth of the sun as he pulled the door open, stepping across the threshold to whatever lay waiting on the other side.
As he stepped into the enormous room, Howard found himself at the back of a packed house. Thousands of people were crammed in with standing room only behind endless rows of filled seats. A convention worker beside the door handed him a pair of black sunglasses, only adding to his confusion as he squinted over the sea of heads toward the stage, where a giant screen was flanked by posters, too far to read.
Howard gently tapped the shoulder of a young woman who was wearing no costume, but plenty of makeup, as if waiting in line for a dance club.
“Excuse me,” he said as she turned to him with no attempt to hide her instant disgust. “What’s going on here?”
“It’s the teaser for the new Trevor Mane movie,” she said, turning her attention back toward the stage as Howard’s heart sank. A fan on the other side of him interjected, plastic chain wrapped around his neck as he rolled his eyes at her answer.
“It’s the new Night of the Reaper movie,” he corrected with fanboy authority.
Howard waited for chain-neck to recognize who he was talking to, but the moment never came. Instead, the lights went dim and the crowd roared as everyone lifted their sunglasses and put them on their faces, as if readying to gaze into a solar eclipse. Howard couldn’t fathom what was going on here as the screen lit up.
The image was blurry and out of focus. He could barely make out some kind of building at a distance, but it appeared in double vision. Howard placed the cheap plastic glasses on his face and everything came into startling clarity in three dimensions.
A dirt road led to a lone barn in the distance, dry cornfields on either side as the harvest moon glowed in the sky. Howard’s heart stopped at the familiar imagery as the generic movie trailer voice-over boomed.
“Lester Jensen was a good man.”
A figure ran toward the screen, toward Howard in crystal-clear 3D. The figure was Mandy, her shirt conveniently torn to reveal the black lingerie cupping her breasts.
“Lester Jensen never hurt anybody.”
Howard felt like he was going to vomit, but didn’t know if this urge came from the dizzying effect of the glasses or the awful content of the trailer itself.
“Lester Jensen is gone now,” the voice-over continued as Mandy kept running, closer and closer to the camera. Close enough now to see the desperation in her eyes and the tears streaking across her cheeks. Then came a different voice, a monstrous growl.
“And the Reaper … will have his revenge …”
Howard’s gut sank at the unmistakable sound of Trevor’s Reaper. Familiar on the surface, but different at its core. Mandy was about to collide with the camera, the audience collectively braced for impact as THWACK!
The glossy CGI chain snapped around her neck from behind and Mandy’s eyes shot wide before CLANK!
The chain was pulled and Mandy flew backward like a rag doll through the air, across an impossible distance, into the barn as the doors slammed shut and the image cut to black.
The crowd let out a collective gasp as the words crashed into the screen.
Night of the Reaper 3D
The Reaper … REBORN
The speakers boomed with the Reaper’s cackle, only this time Howard was certain the sound had been stolen from his own performance. The lights flicked on over the screaming crowd and he stood frozen in the aftermath. The fans erupted with cheers, tossing their 3D glasses into the air like graduation caps as Howard wiped away the tears he didn’t know had fallen. He looked to chain-neck and makeup girl, both shrieking with glee. They loved it, both Reaper-fan and Trevor-fan alike. They actually ate it up, just like Jake had suggested. They didn’t care about Howard, standing in their midst, utterly unknown.
It had been a mistake coming into this room. He should have kept walking straight out that front door. He wanted to leave now, to get away from this demoralizing experience and forget all about it. As he turned, stepping toward the door, the announcer kicked in.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome … the Reaper himself …”
Howard stopped with his hand clenching the door handle.
“Trevor Mane!”
24
Trevor heard his name through the curtain, followed by the roaring crowd, and he wanted to turn and run. But he remembered what Danny had told him.
“You’re never alone. Your Higher Power’s gonna be with you on that stage, making sure you don’t fuck up.”
Trevor was finally starting to believe that something bigger than himself might actually give a shit about him, might want to see him succeed. It gave him some comfort as he took a deep breath and stepped through the curtain, coming face-to-face with the biggest crowd he’d ever seen in his life.
Family Genius tapings brought in two or three hundred people max, but he was now staring down thousands of screaming faces. With the lights blinding him, they looked like one amorphous blob of limbs with glinting eyes and chomping teeth. A ravenous group, ready to devour him at any moment. He smiled and waved awkwardly for what felt like several minutes until the interviewer finally began.
“So, Trevor.” The crowd died down to listen intently. “What was your first reaction when you were offered the role?”
“I was just totally honored,” Trevor lied. He feared the collective crowd could read his mind, that they knew he really thought these movies were trash. But he couldn’t tell them the truth now, so he just piled on the bullshit. “The original films are such absolute classics and they were a huge part of my childhood.”
Not only had he never seen a Reaper film before his agent pitched him the part, but he still hadn’t finished watching the entire franchise. Once he got to the ridiculous entry where a voodoo priestess exorcised the monster’s soul from Chicago straight to Hell, he had to call it quits.
“And what can fans expect from this remake? How is it going to be different from the original?” the interviewer continued as the sweat pooled under Trevor’s leather jacket. Why were these lights so fucking bright?
“Well, I think we can all agree that the films got a little more kitschy toward the end of the franchise, and the Reaper became more silly than scary.”
The crowd was silent in response and Trevor could hear his own gulp echo through the microphone.
“Which is great. I mean, we all love that stuff. But my approach is to go back to the core, to the horror, and make the Reaper scary again.”
“What do you guys think?” the interviewer asked the crowd. “Are you ready for a scarier Reaper?”
Trevor waited with bated breath for what could have only been a second before the crowd exploded with cheers, champing at the bit. He wiped some sweat from his brow and relaxed his shoulders at their approval.
“I’m gonna be honest,” he said, testing new waters, “When I first found the online fan base for these films, I was terrified.” He looked out into the dark sea of fans. “I was sure you guys were gonna burn me at the stake, and some of you were promising to do exactly that in the comments section.”
