TIMELINE: FROM MOVIE TO NOVEL

A Filmmaker set out to make a horror movie. Strange things happened.

September 17th

Through an ad we placed in the local newspaper, we've cast most of the smaller roles. These are mostly inexperienced actors, but they fit the characters we've cast them as.

September 18th

We've been receiving weird phone calls. When we answer, the person on the other end hangs up. We know there is a person on the other end because we can hear breathing.

While out later that night picking up groceries, the fog became so thick, Sharlene couldn't drive. She pulled off to the side and let me take over.  I couldn't see three feet in front of me. I'm going to have o invest in fog lights.

September 21st

The Los Angeles casting went great. We posted our ad in Backstage West. We were casting for the heroine's sister Kaitlyn, the love interest Darryl, and for the role of the antagonist: the DEMON JEREMY. We were very happy with our choices. The actor playing our demon rocker once played Charlie Manson in an NBC MOW about the Beach Boys.

September 24th

We placed an ad for a music composer. I wanted someone on the mountain so I wouldn't have to schlep back and forth to LA to edit scenes to music. Disappointingly, we only received two submissions: one from a music student down the mountain in San Bernardino (I immediately rejected that one) and one from a man named Jerry up on the mountain. We arranged to meet Jerry at his house. He lived in Crestline, but it was off the beaten path. It was in the boondocks, if you're familiar with that expression. Sharlene came with me. She nervously joked that we were in Ed Gein country. I didn't disagree with her. The house was rambling and rundown. Jerry was one of the most bizarre individuals I had ever met. His wife Angel was even stranger. While we were there, she placed a kitten's head in her mouth. I thought for sure she was going to bite it off. Thankfully - and to Sharlene's major relief - she didn't. Jerry was strange, but his music was brilliant. What the hell was he doing on this mountain? Jerry maintained that he suffered form the disease of Lycanthropy (the werewolf curse), which he had unintentionally passed to Angel through sexual intercourse. Who know the werewolf curse was an STD?  Despite this, we not only hired him as the music composer for the film, but also its special FX artist. According to Jerry, he helped with SFX for some of the PHANTASM movies (I loved those crazy cult films). On the way out, we met his landlord Della, a heavyset Native American woman and her thuggish brothers. They had the feel of grifter gypsies. Della gave Sharlene and I each a bracelet made with wolfsbane.

Our house sat at the bottom of a hill. We have to take a long flight of wooden stairs down the side of the hill to get to our house. Behind us is nothing but thick forest. That night, we were kept awake by a chorus of coyotes on a nearby hill, baying at the moon. There must have been thirty of them.

TO BE CONTINUED

   "Every horror film needs a clown."

Image courtesy of "The Black Album"

The scariest movie you'll never see