Bloodless

51

Gannon finished setting up the lighting and positioning her two camera operators in opposite corners of the mausoleum, where they wouldn’t accidentally film each other. As she looked around, she felt a certain thrill. The interior couldn’t have been better if a Hollywood set designer had created it. The two side walls were lined with marble crypts, each with a door carved with a name and dates, and various short epitaphs in Latin or English. Some doors had been shattered by vandals or age. Several crypts even had bones spilling out of them, and an actual human skull sat on the floor, staring upward, its jaw agape as if in a frozen scream. A skeletal arm hung out of another crypt, with shreds of tendons adhering to the bone, dressed in a decayed sleeve of silk and lace. A gold ring decorated a bony finger. It was a director’s dream. But at the same time it made her uneasy, thinking that these remains had once been people, that this was not just the plaster and paint of a movie set. Why wasn’t there somebody taking care of old vaults like this, before they deteriorated into such a frightful state?

The central area of the crypt was open, and it led to a broad doorway in the rear. The doors that had once hung there had been made of wood. They had evidently rotted and then been smashed and torn off their hinges by vandals, pieces scattered about. Beyond, a staircase led down to a second level, with walls of cut stone blocks and a vaulted stone ceiling, prickled with tiny stalactites of lime, some dripping water. In the reflected lights, she could see more crypts down there, also smashed up by vandals. She shuddered.

Pulling her gaze from the doorway, she turned to Gregor. “Move the fogger over there,” she said. Gregor, a big muscled guy she truly hated, did everything she asked, at least — but only reluctantly and with grudging slowness. Sure enough, with a scowl, he picked up the fog machine. “Where, exactly, do you want it?” he asked in a tone of aggrievement, as if her request had been too vague for him to follow.

“Right in that corner, where it’s out of sight,” she said. She had never been on a set that didn’t have at least one asshole. She never allowed herself to be provoked, even by sexist jerks. This set had more than its share of pricks, but it was balanced by the fun of being in Savannah and the efficiency of Betts and the talent of Moller, both of whom knew exactly what they were doing — fakery or not.

“Gregor,” she said, “set a Lume Cube up against that back wall, low, about three feet off the ground.”

Wordlessly he carried the light over, hooked it to a cable, and turned it on. Gannon eyed it critically. It cast light from below, which gave everything a creepy Lon Chaney look: effective if not overdone.

Betts had been going over Moller’s moves in the next scene. Now, with cameras rolling, Moller came in through the mausoleum door — there was a background spot behind him, raking through the mist — his silver dowsing rod twitching.

“Evil,” he pronounced in a stentorian tone. Then: “There is great evil here...”

His voice dropped to a near whisper at the final words. Once again: effective. She glanced over; her camera operators were nailing it, as usual.

“One, do a slow pan of the crypts,” she murmured into the headset.

Craig did the pan, lingering on the skeleton’s arm and the skull on the floor. Beautiful.

“Two, close-up on face.”

Pavel zoomed his Steadicam in on Moller’s face, which was twitching, the eyes wide and staring. The wand continued to tremble, and then, slowly, began to point downward — toward the doorway and descending stairs.

“Down,” said Moller in a tremulous whisper. “Down.”