TWENTY-FOUR
“Say, isn’t that Max Cramer?”
Jeff Miller was sat at his desk in the stilted prefabricated production hub, deep in concentration going through his camera set up notes for the forthcoming show. So he was only vaguely aware Carol one of the production assistants had spoken.
“Huh?” He grunted not looking up.
“What the fuck? Is that going to be part of the show?” She said.
There was an edge of fear in the woman’s voice that made Miller look up from his notes. She was standing in front of the main monitor which dominated the office.
“Is what going to be part of the what now?” He said.
Carol turned away from the monitor to look at him. Miller was surprised to see she had gone ashen. All she could do was gesture mutely to the screen.
Miller got to his feet and moved over to stand next to her. He followed the gesture to the screen, and his breath caught in his throat.
On the screen was a long shot of the house and a figure standing on the front porch. Miller leaned closer to get a better look and then expertly took control of the camera’s remote control system which was on a bank of switches and controls on the desk in front of him.
He tapped the zoom and the shot closed in on the house and to the figure which now stepped down off the porch and onto the low stage.
As the camera closed in he heard Carol let out a strangled sob. The noise made the hair stand up on the back of his neck and was the perfect soundtrack to what he was seeing.
Max Cramer had stopped and was now just standing there. He looked like someone had tipped a bucket of blood over his head he was so drenched in the stuff.
He had a bloody claw hammer grasped in his right hand which hung limply by his side.
“Christ’s teeth,” Miller uttered. “What the hell happened in there?”
Carol cried out behind him and started to fumble in her skirt pocket for her phone. “I’m calling an ambulance.”
“No!” Miller warned. “Call Davis first.” That was the standard response to anything weird that happened around demon time’s sometimes troubled (cursed maybe?) production.
“Sure, sure,” Carol replied and hurriedly scrolled through her phone book.
Miller was transfixed by Cramer’s blank expression, then he had a horrible thought. Weren’t there others in the house? Including Keeler?
“Shit,” hands working with a practiced efficiency and without taking his eyes off the screen, Miller moved the mouse and clicked on one of the house camera icons.
The picture flicked to the main downstairs room. Empty. He clicked onto the hall camera and cried out in shock.
A body was hung, no not hung... He tapped the camera’s control letting it slowly zoom in for a better shot. Crucified to the closed door of the downstairs room. The victims head was little more than a bloody pulp but Miller recognised John Keeler’s trademark lumper jack shirt.
Someone screamed behind him. But he just couldn’t take his eyes of the screen. Again without really realizing he was doing it, Miller flicked between the other cameras in the house.
Stairs, empty. Landing, empty but with a splash of what could have been blood on one wall. Back room, bingo. One of the other crew members, Perkins was it? Again the body had been crucified this time to a wall, his head bashed in beyond all recognition.
“Christ Jeff, that’s enough!” Someone shouted, but the voyeur in him just couldn’t stop.
Next room, same nightmare. This time the victim was a woman, not that you would have known it from the destroyed face. But Miller knew Bev Rice had been wearing a micky mouse t-shirt today because he remembered ogling her breasts through the tight material earlier. Again she was nailed to a wall arms stretched horizontally from her body.
“Jesus!” It was Carol again, she sounded close to hysteria. “Please God tell me this is just part of the show!” Another voice, way off, comforting her as best it could.
‘Please God tell me this is just part of the show.’ And secretly Jeff Miller wished that it was.
That was it wasn’t it? Miller tried to remember if there was anyone else in the house. Just in case he gave another click of the mouse. Final room, final victim. Hung on six inch nails through the palms. No head to speak of, a bloody mess. Miller realized he had no idea of the guy’s name. He was new and Miller didn’t remember ever actually speaking to the man.
A large figure appeared at his side. “Turn this off, Miller.” Thick Russian accent, all authority and threat. Nico Gorodetsky, Davis’ head of security. The Russian put his hand over Miller’s on the mouse. “I said, turn this off.”
Miller let him pull his hand away but kept looking at the grainy snuff film image on the monitor.
“And you had better not have been recording this,” Nico added.
No he hadn’t, but oh how he wished he had.