I had to keep watching. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t move.
From the neighborhood, to a woman standing in her garden. She looks up at the camera with mild annoyance. Then her face widens into alarm. Into genuine fright. She is looking past the camera now. The camera doesn’t respond. We don’t get to see what she’s looking at.
The light shifting, the next scene indoors. The camera panning across a table. There’s a man’s belt. Then a large metal spoon. A broom handle. Then finally what looks like an old razor strop. The camera is shaking now. The focus is fading in and out. The scene goes black.
Then a flash of light. Sunlight. A bridge. The Mackinac Bridge? Yes, it is. There’s no other bridge like it. It’s a perfect summer day and we’re looking at the bridge, like we’ve suddenly stumbled into somebody’s normal home movie, taken by a normal person on a normal family vacation. It’s so out of place here.
From the normal back to the strange. A long, almost loving shot of a knife. The camera slowly moves up the edge, barely staying in focus.
Then what’s this? It’s hard to even tell what’s going on now. There’s a thin shaft of light. It grows wider. We’re looking through a door. A man is sitting in a chair. We can only see the back of his head. He tips his head back to drink something. A line of smoke curls above his head. He is jarred by something. He gets up. The camera doesn’t go up to see the man’s face. It stays at ground level. All we see are his pant legs and his feet. He comes closer and then everything goes black.
Then fire trucks. People running down the street. The camerawork seems a lot steadier now. It pans back and forth, zooming in on every detail. Flames coming out of a window. The firemen wrestling with the hoses. The camera follows the smoke, up and up, into the night sky.
I looked over at Connie. He was staring at the screen, his mouth half open. Between us the dead man. His father. Clyde C. Wiley. So close to me I could touch his neck again if I wanted to. His lifeless eyes still looking off at nothing.
This isn’t happening, I said to myself. I’m not here in the basement of this man’s house, watching these strips of film that have been pasted together into this bizarre sequence.
Then it got worse.
Misery Bay. Right there on the screen. Charlie Razniewski, the young man I never saw alive, is leaning against the back of his car. There’s a light shining on him. Otherwise everything around him is dark. He seems drunk or half-asleep. The rope is around his neck. From somewhere off camera, the slack is taken up and the rope tightens. Charlie snaps awake and he’s clutching at the rope. It gets tighter and tighter until finally Charlie’s feet leave the ground. He’s in the air now, kicking and struggling in vain against the rope. It’s all silent still, and somehow it makes this all the more unreal. Charlie fights for a full minute until he finally starts to go limp. He hangs there for a long time. The camera finally moves. It comes closer. It circles him. It zooms in on his face.
I want to say something. I can’t speak.
From the nighttime scene at Misery Bay, to daytime. Still winter, with a pale sunlight that makes everything seem to glow. The camera is in motion against the rough wall of a barn. It turns the corner and there’s young Brandon Steele. His back is to us. He has a pistol extended in his right hand. From the recoil we can see he’s shooting. There’s a pair of acoustic earmuffs on his head. He’s not aware of the camera approaching. Closer and closer. Slowly. Pan to the other weapon on the windowsill. A semiautomatic. A gloved hand reaches for it. The gun is pointed at the young man’s head. The barrel is three inches away. Then the side of Brandon’s head explodes. He goes down, pumping blood into the snow. The camera lingers on his body, recording every nuance. Then it cuts abruptly, as if the camera has just run out of film.
Immediately, we are indoors. It is dark. A sliver of light comes through a window and we can finally make out the features of a bedroom. There’s a woman in the bed. She is sleeping peacefully. Haggerty’s daughter. What’s her first name again?
“No,” I say, finally finding my voice. “Please.” As if I have the power to warn her. As if I can stop this from happening.
A helium tank. A hose. A plastic bag with a cord around the opening. The bag is carefully slipped over the woman’s head. Dina is her name. It comes to me. Dina Haggerty. She stirs and turns a little but does not wake up. The cord is tightened. The valve on the helium tank is turned. The camera waits for a long time. The woman seems to be sleeping still. There’s no discernable difference at all. Finally, the woman’s arm is lifted by the cameraman. It falls back to the bed, lifeless. The helium tank is tucked into the bed beside her. The woman’s arm is draped around the tank.
I’m standing there watching this. I feel like I could throw up at any moment.
Then Maven’s kitchen. Charles Razniewski Sr. has already been attacked. His throat is already cut, the blood is already pooling on the floor. The camera can only play catch-up now. It zooms in on his dead face, and on the last gallon of blood as it leaves his body and spreads slowly across the floor.
Then a house. A door is pushed open. I’ve seen this house before. I’ve pushed open this very door myself. The camera goes inside. It seems to search, like it has no idea where it’s going. It’s disorienting to watch. Finally, a gun on the table. The gun is picked up. Another door is pushed open. An interior door this time. We see a man’s back. We see the red flower blossom on his back. He goes down. Only now do we see the woman in front of him. She looks at the camera with confusion, growing into abject horror. She falls backward. The camera comes in close. The gun is aimed at her forehead. It fires. She lies there bleeding. The camera sees everything, then finally a hand reaches out. The same black glove. It takes the woman’s arm and pulls it so that the woman’s body is turned over. She is facing the floor now. The arm is hiding her face. The camera retreats. We see it all getting smaller and smaller, until we’re back outside again. Cut to black.
The black resolves into the shapes of trees. There is deep snow. The camera moves forward slowly. In the distance, finally, we see the lights from a house. The camera approaches the back door. The door is pushed open. There is a man sitting in a chair. He seems to be asleep. The camera comes close. A white PVC pipe is placed against his forehead. The man wakes up. One second later, the pipe is jolted. The man has been shot in the head. The chair is thrown backward. The man is spread eagle on the floor. The hand behind the camera comes out, adjusts one arm so that his position is perfectly symmetrical. The camera watches the man for a few moments, then it goes back to the door, quickly now, and out into the night.
A sudden noise broke the spell. The film had looped all the way through and now it was spinning on the right-hand reel again, making that same sound I had first heard from upstairs. Scrape scrape scrape.
We both stood there for a long time. I didn’t know what to say to him. I had absolutely no idea what combination of words would make any earthly sense at that moment.
Connie finally closed his mouth. He swallowed hard and then he looked down at his father.
“Did you really do this?” he said. “Did you?”
He closed his eyes. He started to sway like he was going to collapse. I took one step toward him and he put up his hand to stop me.
“Don’t touch me,” he said.
“I’m going to go call somebody.”
He put his hand down. I turned and left him there. I left him there with his dead father, his murderous evil dead corpse of a father, and I went up the stairs to pick up the phone and to try to find the words to describe what I had just seen.
And we’re rolling…
… Two miles through the snow. Uphill both ways, right? That’s the old joke.