As I climbed back into the car, Jake asked, “Where to now?”
“If this thing works, I should be able to project it on any wall, so we might as well go back to my hotel.”
The poor guy sweated the whole way back to Hollywood. As for me, I was foaming at the mouth to see those reels in the trunk. And I decided along the way that I’d be giving Barbara Tilitson a call as soon as I did.
It seemed to me the job was back on.
And of course the damn thing didn’t work. The bulb was older than my dead grandfather and the plug looked nothing like any plug I’d ever seen. It sure as hell wouldn’t fit the outlet in my room, or any other room I’d ever been in. I sat down on the bed and groaned.
History was kicking my ass.
I was inches away from making for the mini-fridge and considering it an insoluble problem for now when Jake said, “I know a guy.”
He went for the phone.
Thirty-seven minutes later I found myself smoking in front of a derelict theater with Jake beside me, bouncing on the balls of his feet and impatient for me to finish. Between us, on the sidewalk, were seven reels of old, flammable nitrate film footage. Some of the cans were marked, others were not. One of them was labeled as reel 5 from Battleship Potemkin, strangely enough, but we brought it along just in case.
When I finished my smoke, Jake helped me haul the cans into the lobby, where a sullen-looking teenager was sweeping up for the night.
Jake asked him, “Is Franco here?”
The kid jabbed a thumb at a door marked OFFICE. Jake went for the door while I waited, eyeballing the Junior Mints in the concession counter.
Shortly Jake reemerged with a reed-thin guy in a ridiculous red bowtie, who I presumed to be Franco. I wasn’t introduced. The three of us carried the cans through the office door, up a flight of stairs, and down a hallway to a projection booth. There we were greeted by a greasy-faced kid who eagerly volunteered to load the film up for our enjoyment. We went back down. Jake directed me to auditorium two of two. We sat in the dead center. I wished I had some of those Junior Mints.
The film was eleven reels long. We were still missing reels 2, 7, and 11—and number 3, which was swiped when Leslie was killed. The result was something of a disjointed mess, but I’d spent my fair share of time in dilapidated grindhouses to piece together a story from a bad print missing key segments.
What we did have was the title card:
SAUL VERITEK PRESENTS A MONUMENTAL PICTURE —
ANGEL OF THE ABYSS
Following that, a vertical list of the key players, Grace Baron at the top. Jack Parson was name-checked after that, and then the picture began.
The girl hustles from one scarred wooden table to the next, her tattered apron flowing around her. Her arms laden with steins and plates piled high with roasted turkey legs, braised pork giving off curls of white steam. The big men pound the tables with their fists, toothy grins slicing through their beards. Among them a giant with coal dark eyes raises his voice above all the others—Intertitle: Clara! More beer! More wine! Hurry, girl! — which sets her scurrying back for another impossible armload.
At the bar, a rail-thin old man with sunken cheeks touches Clara’s elbow, leans in close.
Serve the Bürgermeister first, child! Do not keep him waiting.
Indeed the Bürgermeister grows impatient, hollering and standing atop the bench. Clara collects flagons of wine, foaming steins, and rushes from the bar to his table where a booted foot strikes out to catch her ankle. With startled, wide eyes, Clara tumbles forward and sends the libations flying toward an adjacent table where spirits drench a threesome of hunters. The Bürgermeister howls with mirth. The hunters leap to their feet, soaked and enraged.
A melee ensues. Plates and flagons shatter. Tables are overturned. Fists the size of hams collide with huge, hairy faces. The thin man snatches at his ears and laments the horror. The Bürgermeister laughs, and laughs, and laughs.
Clara erupts into tears and escapes out the back. Waiting for her is the thin man’s wife, a bullish woman with a shock of cloud-white hair.
Intertitle: You needn’t ever come back, devil. Black devil!
From a frosted window in the tavern, the grinning Bürgermeister watches gleefully as Clara scuttles away.
The next reel, number two, was not among our footage. The picture skipped then to the fourth reel, though I’d already seen the third by way of Leslie Wheeler’s cell phone capture. It was much, much better on screen as it was intended to be seen. The film was battered almost to the point of unwatchability, but the magic remained — as did the horror of Clara’s terrible abduction. While it was running, the phone in my pocket vibrated. I checked the screen and didn’t recognize the number. All the same, I bolted for the aisle and answered it on my way out of the auditorium.
I’d barely managed a hello before a froggy voice croaked, “Mr. Woodard? This is Florence Sommer. I do so hate to trouble you, but do you think you could come see me right away? There are a few things I didn’t tell you and your associate while you were here, important things.”
“We’re just watching some of the reels we found among your father’s things,” I told her. “There were quite a few, as a matter of fact. Can I call you back after we’re done?”
“I’d rather talk to you now, if I can,” she said, a little breathlessly. “I was reticent before, but to be truthful this simply can’t wait.”
I narrowed my eyes, stepped out of the lobby to light a Pall Mall.
“What’s this all about, Mrs. Sommer?”
“Please do hurry, Mr. Woodard. I’ll put some coffee on before you get here.”
With that, the phone clicked abruptly in my ear. She’d hung up.
The picture was into the fifth reel when I went back in to explain the situation to Jake. To my surprise, he was almost too engrossed to care what I said to him, when what I said amounted to I’m going back to Sherman Oaks, take notes.
As I reluctantly left, poor Clara was being stripped naked on a tomb in a foggy cemetery, surrounded on all sides by cloaked apparitions. I prayed this wouldn’t be my last shot at seeing the rest — or most of the rest — of Angel of the Abyss.
Mrs. Sommer’s cottage was lit up from every window when I pulled the rental back in front of it for the second time that day. I checked the digital clock in the dash before I killed the engine — it was a quarter past eight in the evening.
After I made my way down the path to her door, I knocked all of once before the door opened without any clicking locks and Florence Sommer’s substantial frame filled the doorway. Her face was slick with sweat and her chest heaved as though she’d been humping it on a treadmill, a piece of equipment I was willing to bet good money she neither owned nor had ever used.
“Thank you, Mr. Woodard,” she wheezed. “Thank you for coming. I’m so sorry to have inconvenienced you this way.”
Her voice was monotone, unnatural. Almost robotic. I scrunched one eye half-closed as I pushed into the short hallway, a moment too late to grasp her blatant attempt to alert me. By then it didn’t much matter.
The arm that wrapped around the woman’s neck yanked back, dragging her violently into the kitchen where two other men waited. It took me a few seconds to register what was happening, for their faces to come into focus. They were regular faces, people you’d see in the street and instantly forget. I thought then that I’d have a hard time describing them to the police later.