Page 76 of The Cut
‘Hey, Freckles,’ Nate tapped on the keyboard. ‘You there?’ He watched the screen, hoping for three repeating dots, but there was no response. Texting his sister and messaging with a cartoon graphic deepened the hollow feeling in his tummy. He’d never felt more alone.
He opened his iMovie program and began to load the analogue footage from the Sony Hi8 camera on to the TV screen, converting it to digital fingernails in three-minute segments. The old video tape he’d found in the basement was poor quality and grainy, and he wondered if the film had degraded after all this time. Filming on video felt like he was making some kind of cult film from the seventies. He’d struggled to keep focus and his handheld technique was a bit shaky. His iPhone used auto focus on a self-steadying gimbal, but the video camera required a different kind of skill. Nate sat back and watched the embarrassing ‘Minaj à trois’ come to a bump and grinding end. The audience went wild.293
As Nate leant forward to switch off the tape, a high-angle shot of the girls’ changing room suddenly spliced on to the screen.
‘That’s odd,’ he muttered to himself. He watched as a girl dressed as one of the characters fromStarWarsentered through the door. ‘Very retro … don’t remember filming this bit.’
Nate pressed fast forward and the girl from the bathroom was suddenly centre stage in a white spotlight.
‘Definitely don’t remember this …’ Nate hit upload and let the tape play.
The camera panned slowly around the room; the movement was steady and in focus. The girl in white began to dance. There was no sound, but her movements were mesmerising. The translucent white gown draped and floated around her like fluid. Nate leant forward with his hands on his chin, totally absorbed by the apparition on screen, turning on the tips of her toes. Nate yawned and looked at his watch: 11.55 p.m. His eyes drooped as the girl continued to dance; his head lolled forward as sleep overwhelmed him.
‘Oh shit!’ Nate was jolted awake with a start and his heart raced.
He looked at the screen as a nightmare face, grey with rusty nails hammered into the skin and scalp, lurched into the frame. He paused the tape.
‘What the hell is that?’ The face on the screen was covered in a grey rubber mask, mouth open wide, black with some kind of sticky slime. Nate rubbed his eyes and tried to focus; he advanced the tape forward frame by frame. As the camera moved, the girl in white appeared again, but now there was blood on her dress. Nate moved to his laptop and uploaded the next three-minute segment from tape to digital. As it rendered, the image on the screen scrambled into a mess of blurred movement and then cut294to black. On the laptop, Nate zoomed into the girl on the floor. Above her head was a banner of red, white and blue painted letters covered in sequins: Pearls Before Swine 1994.
‘Oh my God.’ Nate zoomed in on the face of Annabel Maddock. ‘That’s her.’ He dragged and dropped the thumbnail into a new file. A shriek like a wounded animal made Nate’s head snap back to the TV screen. The old tape from the Sony camera he’d found in the suitcase from the basement had been playing on; he’d forgotten to turn it off.
Nate rubbed his eyes and tried to focus; he advanced the film forward. Fireworks fizzled across the shot, lights exploding in the dark. Then the camera jerked violently around, as if someone was running or struggling against the wind. Eventually, there was a series of blurred shots from high above, looking down on to a clump of trees. He paused the tape. Then very slowly began to rewind. The focus moved in closer; the subject was obscured with rain on the lens. He paused the tape again. There in the woodland was a blue car parked up in Doggers Dive. Nate painstakingly advanced the film frame by frame. Like an old kineograph, in staccato movements, a girl in white appeared to fall backwards out of the open car door, lying out onto the ground as a figure in black clambered on top of her. The shot disintegrated again, obscured by rain, but Nate persisted, stepping each frame forward at a snail’s pace. Out of the black, a sudden pan to the right and the camera was high up in the tower. It picked up the girl in white again; she was being chased. It slowly began to dawn on Nate that this was Annabel Maddock on the night she was killed. It was a recording of the leavers’ party from 1994 and this may have been the last time she was seen alive.
The fight that was happening before his eyes was brutal. The cavernous door to the ruined Blackstone Mill was open and a few295kids in costumes streamed out and ran across the grass towards the cover of the dense wooded area behind the car park. The camera panned down and zoomed into the tall lanky silhouette in a Pinhead mask. He was reaching his hand towards her face; the diaphanous chiffon of her costume billowed in the wind. She slapped him away and turned to leave. He caught the fabric of her white scarf and yanked her towards him, grabbing her by the throat. In that second, her foot appeared to slip, and she fell out of sight. The screen went black.
A shaft of light cut across the frame. A fork of lightning lit up the night and a demonic grey face punctured with rusty nails suddenly lurched into the shot. Nate paused the film and with trembling hands began to upload the images to digital thumbnails. There was one frame he desperately wanted to look at more closely. The upload disc spun painfully slowly.
‘Come on … come … on.’ The files loaded and Nate froze the image and zoomed in closer. ‘No. Please no. It can’t be.’
The torn mask hung from the chin, flapping like dead skin, revealing half of his face. The eyes were unmistakable, as was the tiny mole just above his father’s eyebrow. There was blood everywhere.
‘Dad?’296
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JULY 1994
‘It’s dead.’ Ben’s hands grip tightly on to the steering wheel. ‘The engine.’ He turns the key in the ignition; the dull click makes Annie’s stomach sink. Ploughing through the ford at Water Ford Gate at top speed may have given Ben a crazy thrill but he has completely flooded the engine.
He’s intoxicated by a skinful of Bacardi. ‘Sorry … but you have to admit, that was bloody fun.’ Ben begins to chuckle.
‘All right, Harrison Ford, so now we’ve wrecked the car, what are we going to do?’ Wiping the condensation from the window, Annie leans her shoulder against the door. ‘It’s still chucking it down out there.’
Ben’s head turns to her, his red-rimmed eyes blinking through his grey mask. Something in his body language makes Annie nervous. He’s trembling.
‘We can’t even listen to the radio.’ She twiddles the volume button.
A startling crackle of golden rain illuminates the sky from the far bank of the river. The glittering explosion of the fireworks reflects on the windscreen, accompanied by distant howls and screams of delight.
Ben leans back and reaches a hand over her shoulder.
‘We’ll be OK. I’ve got a blanket in the boot; we can keep each other warm.’ He’s quivering with anticipation. ‘It’s romantic.’
Annie folds her arms. ‘Maybe we could just head over to the mill.’ She tries not to flinch as Ben’s hand reaches her other shoulder. ‘Enjoy the fireworks with everyone else …’298
‘I wanted this to happen, you know. I’ve dreamt about it.’ Ben rolls his head towards her, his glassy eyes trying to focus. She can smell alcohol, and cheese and onion crisps, on his breath.
