What if this time I put Bloodstone out on the street in a conservative blue suit, a tattered Bible in hand: Puke Puss set in the earnest sweat hypocrisy of a television evangelist? What if this time he was worshiped for what he was, not feared?
Worshiped by a society that wants God and salvation to be as plain and filling – accessible – as a deluxe cheeseburger with French fries. A bread-and-miracles saviur.
Only in Bloodstone's case, he would present himself as the other side of salvation.
Look at me, brothers and sisters! I went the wrong way, and witness what happened! I've seen Hell, the end, the No Exit place. Yes, it is as bad as you thought. Yes, there are devils – look at me. Flames? Look at my face. Check me out; I'm a living visa from those countries. Ground zero for your worst fears. Okay, stare, but listen to me; I've been there. I can help you through.
Leo Knott. That was the name, folks, a plain American name, as American as your best friend. As American as you.
Leo Knott. That was my name. That was me.
Not the Bloodstone you see now. Not this human scream with a face like puke and a soul that stinks of old perfume and meat.
"No, only Leo Knott, a minister of God who started out going in the right direction. But then something happened, folks. Suddenly Leo Knott saw he could use whatever powers of persuasion he had to get what he wanted. Not what the Lord God wanted, what Leo Knott wanted.
Did I use it to get women? My house was filled with blondes. Had to take the phone off the hook, they were calling all day and all night. I owned two black address books!
Did I use it to get money? I had so much money in my pocket, it looked like I was carrying a couple of sandwiches in there all the time!
That's the trick, you see. Say the name "God" and good people come running. They'll sell their farms and businesses and send you the checks. When they believe, they open their hearts and you can reach right in and take whatever you want.
That's what I did. I took their best parts and didn't think twice about it. I took their love, I took their trust, and, yes, I took their money as well. Not for God, for Leo Knott.
I spent it all! Spent it in fancy stores and fancy beds. Spent it on nights I couldn't remember the next day except for the full ashtrays and pink lipstick stains on the whiskey glasses.
You know what I'm talking about?
That's how Midnight Kills begins: Bloodstone confidently pacing the pulpit of a flyblown church in Watts, his audience a rotting array of junkies, bums, one-foot-in-the-graves, nothing-lefts on a Tuesday afternoon at the end of their lives, listening to a freak wail God at them until the free soup is served.
We'd chosen the men and women from the worst we could find on the street. I wanted them looking as real as possible: their faces, their clothes, their broken-cup hopelessness.
As I spoke to them I felt no need to act or play. Outrageous as he appeared, Bloodstone was easy to "be" because his hatred was pure and sharp as the smell of shit. He was shit: no subtlety, no calm, no mask. Only hatred that came in one aroma, and too bad if you don't want to smell it; it's right here in your face.
I knew him because I knew my own wild hatred. It'll disappoint you, however, if you think I'm going to say I was my monster, that I was Bloodstone. Never. I never walked a street with curled Dracula fingers and stone heart looking for victims. Nor did I dream of his sins and wish I had the courage or kink to commit them.
But I'll tell you something. The heart of darkness or banality of evil is no more than interest. The fact we don't stand in wonder at the honors some people do today is proof enough that the dark things interest us too much.
What did Goethe say: "I can't imagine a crime I wouldn't commit in certain circumstances"? Update that to "I can't imagine a crime that doesn't attract me somehow" and you have our world. People "loved" Bloodstone and the nightmares he did because he took our few moments of crazed, invigorating anger and turned them into a lifetime. Rest in Piss.
The first day on the set didn't go well. The crew made many foolish mistakes getting used to one another. But that was usual when you began shooting a film.
More importantly, in the middle of my "sermon " one of the bums in the audience was supposed to fart loudly. I even remember the man's name, because he was famous in the neighborhood for being able to fart at wilclass="underline" Michael Rhodes.
When I said, "Any man who thinks his heart well is a fool and a liar," Michael Rhodes was supposed to do his stuff. In rehearsal everything had gone fine. I'd say, "a fool and a liar," and he'd let fly enough wind and sound to flap a sail.
But when the cameras started rolling and Michael's big moment arrived, his tail winds died. Not one toot, although the squeezed, panicked expression on his ruined face said he was certainly trying.
The first few takes it was funny. But you can laugh only so many times at a slipup. Then it gets boring and frustrating and hardens permanently into plain failure.
The fifth or sixth time nothing happened, I was about to call Cut! when someone let zap a blast that sounded like a tugboat crossing the harbor. Everyone on the set cheered.
Looking out over the congregation, I did a double-take when I saw a new face that hadn't been there before. Who's dat?
A little girl, but what a little girl! Short hair, gorgeous features. She stood out from those rats like a small but brilliant acetylene flame. Smiling wickedly, she held her nose with two fingers the way kids do when something stinks – P.U.!
Pinsleepe.
"You were here when Phil killed himself?"
Pinsleepe shook her head exaggeratedly from side to side, a child saying no too hard. "I told you – I came up here to fix him lunch but he was dead."
"You found him or Sasha found him?"
"I told you, Weber, it's the same thing! We're each other."
"Explain that." It was maddening. One moment she spoke with the aplomb of a career diplomat; the next she was only a little girl, crabby from too little sleep or too much stimulus. How was I going to find out all the things I needed to know?
"I have to go to the bathroom." She jumped up and left the room. I looked out the glass doors onto the patio. There was the chair he'd died in. There was –
The telephone rang. I heard the bathroom door close just as that first ring stopped. An extension was nearby so I picked it up.
"Weber? It's me, Sasha. Are you almost finished there?"
"Wait a second, Sash. Hold the line." Dropping the receiver on the couch, I moved fast for the bathroom door. If I caught the kid on the pot, tough. I had to see. The door swung open onto no one there. No Pinsleepe, no Sasha. An empty room.
I have a friend whose cat always knows when the phone is going to ring before it actually does. The child jumped up right before the ring and was out of sight by the time I heard Sasha's first words. Standing there, my hand still on the doorknob, I heard the girl's last words.
"It's the same thing! We're each other."
"A long long time ago this terrible thing happened. . . ."
Dumbfounded, I looked up from the paper. Across the grave, Sasha stared at Phil's coffin, an expression of dulled, empty sadness on her pale face. Wyatt Leonard stood on one side of her, Harry Radcliffe on the other. The two men were looking at me, surprised, but Sasha continued to gaze at the open hole in front of us.
I returned to the paper and the words Phil had asked that I read at his funeral, the words that were the voice-over beginning to Midnight.
"A famous poet once said, 'Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage, Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.'