Free Fiction

THE MAN BEHIND THE MASK
by David Jack Bell
Originally published in Wicked Karnival Halloween Horror

For twenty-five dollars a day, I wore the mask.

What mask, you ask? And why did I wear it?

Shit, you all know, you’ve all seen it about fifty times. You’ve probably seen it in your dreams. Your nightmares to be more exact.

What you haven’t seen is me. My face. But you’ve damn sure seen that stupid mask. They sell it in Wal-Mart every Halloween. Show it on the movie channels, the drive-ins, the video store.

Ten days work at twenty-five dollars a day. You do the math. I’m tired of thinking about it. Twenty-five years ago, I’m working in a body shop in my hometown of Elwood, Indiana. Painting, finishing. Decent money for a guy like me who never went to college. Barely finished high school, for what that’s worth. School was never really my thing anyway.

So the body work did me okay. Gave me some spending money. A car, a little apartment. It wasn’t going to make me a millionaire or anything, but who ever gets that? I figured my life was about what I deserved.

Back then, I was in good shape. Lifted some weights, did a little running. Played on the offensive line during high school. The body shop kept me moving and using my muscles.

One day this guy I work with comes in says that his sister is working for a movie director. They’re going to make a movie in Elwood. A horror movie. Some low budget thing about a bunch of teenagers getting slaughtered.

“She says they need a guy like you, Tony. A big guy. Someone who will scare people.”

“You think I scare people?” I asked.

“Your mom probably isn’t afraid of you,” he said.

It sounded like a joke to me. Who the fuck ever makes a movie in Elwood?

But I needed some extra money—who doesn’t, right?—and the idea of being in a movie kind of got me excited. My luck with the ladies had been a little…sporadic at the time, and I figured it would make a good pick-up line.

You know that movie they’re shooting here? Well, I’m in it…

So I found out the information and I went to the audition. They must have liked what they saw—or else they were desperate—because they offered me the job on the spot.

I was going to be the bad guy. Turned out, they weren’t looking for Sir Larry Olivier or anything.

I didn’t have a single line in the entire movie.

All I had to do was carry a big butcher knife, puff up my chest and chase screaming girls around an abandoned church on Halloween night.

And I had to wear that mask.

Since their budget was for shit, they couldn’t make a real mask. They just went to the local costume shop and bought some old Planet of the Apes’ mask, something with a lot of hair. They monkeyed around with it—painted it, stretched it, teased the hair out—so that when I put the thing on I looked like some kind of lunatic.

And it worked.

When I put that thing on and started chasing those little bimboes around, they really screamed. They let loose like they were being tortured or something. I mean these chicks looked terrified. And it wasn’t because they were good actresses or anything. They were just little teenyboppers who could barely remember their lines. They couldn’t walk and think at the same time.

But they were afraid of me. I noticed that they stayed away from me between takes. If I tried to talk to one of them at the catering table, they just kind of backed away like I had a disease. At first I thought they were just stuck-up bitches, the type I knew plenty of in high school.

But then I came to understand that it was that mask.

It got to the point where I hated being in the same room with the thing. I’d go into the make-up trailer in the morning, and that thing would be sitting there on the counter…just sort of looking, with its empty, dead eyes.

I couldn’t wait to be done with it.

And before I knew it, I was.

My ten days were up real quick, and on the last day, they handed me a check for two hundred and fifty bucks, minus Uncle Sam’s cut. And they stuck a little piece of paper in front of me saying that I wasn’t entitled to any cut of the box office, merchandising, sequels etc. I thought they were joking. So I signed it.

I figured that was the last I would ever hear of that stupid movie. Except, something funny happened.

People went crazy for that movie. “Halloween High,” they called it. What a bullshit name.

It started slow, through word of mouth. But pretty soon, people were lining up to see it, and the movie went from showing in a few drive-ins in Bumfuckville to about a thousand theatres all across the country. Newspapers wrote stories about it. Newsweek did a spread. And the thing made money hand over fist.

Every story mentioned that the movie only cost $75,000 to make, but the box office take kept going up. Twenty million. Forty million. Seventy-five. It became the highest grossing horror film of all-time.

I started seeing the lead bimbo all over my television. Talk shows, news programs. She was the flavor of the moment. It didn’t matter to anybody that she didn’t have a brain in her head or that she couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag. They loved her. And pretty soon she was announcing other movie deals. She was going to be a bonafide movie star.

And the director was all over the place, too.

Ron Davidson. Mr. Bigshot Hollywood.

Let me just say, I never liked that guy.

He was a little guy, about five-six, and he strutted around while we were making that movie like he was Napoleon. Full of himself, barking orders. He wanted us all to think he was making great art. All the President’s Men or some shit instead of a low-budget horror movie. Guy never even gave me the time of day. Just pointed and told me where to stand. If I passed him between shots, he would act like he didn’t know me. I don’t think he even knew my name.

But he put up most of the money for the movie. He used his credit cards, mortgaged his house. So most of what the movie made was pure profit for him. Millions upon millions of dollars. And those Hollywood shits all came around sniffing his ass after that. They offered him the moon, the sun and the stars to write and direct whatever shit he wanted. They didn’t care how good it was, they just wanted his name on it. So he kept churning the stuff out, and they kept paying him, and everybody who worked on the movie—even the make-up people who made that stupid mask—got richer and richer.

Everybody except me. After the movie hit it big, I sat back and bided my time.

I figured I’d be getting some calls myself: interviews, offers, endorsements.

The guys at work kidded me whenever I came in and punched the clock.

“What are you still doing here, Hollywood?” they said.

I just laughed. I felt like a guy with a million dollar lottery ticket in my pocket. All I had to do was cash it in.

The local paper did a story. I still have a copy—yellow and crumbling—in a drawer in my bedroom. At the end of the interview, the reporter asked me if I had plans to act again.

“Of course,” I said. “It worked out pretty well the first time.”

But nobody ever called.

It was as if I disappeared off the face of the earth, at least as far as Hollywood and the movies were concerned.

The guys at work stopped asking me. People in town went back to treating me like they always did. My life went back to the way it was before, only worse, because now I didn’t have something that I knew I deserved.

When the movie started making all that money, people started talking about a sequel. All right, I thought, here comes my big payday.

When I didn’t hear anything about it, I placed a call to Hollywood myself, to the offices of the big man’s production company. Ron Davidson Enterprises. Of course, he wasn’t available, but I left a message with my name and phone number. I even made it clear to the secretary that she was talking to a star.

“You know,” I said, “I played the killer in ‘Halloween High.’”

“I’ll give him the message, sir.”

But he never called me back. And no one from his company did either.

So I called and called again, week after week. I kept talking to that same secretary, and every time I called, she acted like she had never heard of me. I was polite and respectful, even though I knew I was getting the brush-off.

Then one day I saw in the paper that the director was shooting his sequel, and as he put it, “the whole cast was reunited.” Everyone but me, I guess.

My movie career was over before it even started. My life over the last twenty-five years has certainly had its ups and downs.

I didn’t stay in the body repair business. I’ve had a few other jobs.

Some construction. Carpet and upholstery cleaning. Assembly line work. I’ve been unemployed for stretches too, living off a government check.

I got married in there somewhere to a girl from my high school. We had a couple kids together, but things didn’t work out as they often don’t. I had to hustle to make child-support, sometimes working a second job, and sometimes just not making ends meet.

And for a time, I kept trying to get a hold of Ron Davidson.

The calls tapered off over the years, but I would still occasionally get the itch to try. Usually, I would call late at night, when I couldn’t sleep and the tv was playing nothing but infomercials because I couldn’t afford cable. I’d throw back about five or six beers and do a little “drunk-dialing.” I’d call the big man’s office and get his answering machine or voicemail and just talk too it.

Sometimes I’d just tell him how it was, how tough it was to try to make a living.

Sometimes I’d get emotional and maybe cry a little.

A lot of the times, I’d get pissed and maybe tell him that I was going to wring his scrawny-ass neck if I ever laid eyes on him again.

But I always ended the same way.

“Hey man, if you can throw a little work my way. Stunt work. Extra work. Anything. Just give me a call. You know I can do it, man. We made a hit together.”

Only once did he make contact with me. It was a package in the mail, not a phone call.

This was about fifteen years after the movie came out.

I don’t know how he found my address since I had been moving around a lot, ducking bill collectors, but I guess if you’re a big-shot Hollywood director you can find people.

So one day I find this package outside my door with a return address from the big man’s production company in L.A. I couldn’t help myself. I allowed my hopes to soar. I figured maybe he sent me some scripts or an offer of some kind of job.

I ripped the package open and what do I see instead:

That godawful mask. Those empty eyes and that fucked up hair.

What kind of sick joke was he pulling?

But then I thought: Maybe he wants me to be in one of the sequels or a remake or something.

So I dug around in the box until I found a note.

“Dear Tony, Accept this as a token of my appreciation for your work on my film, ‘Halloween High.’ There is quite a market for movie memorabilia, and this should fetch a high price—perhaps in the twenty thousand dollar range. Consider this your bonus for the success of the film and allow us to then call things ‘even.’ As someone who knows this business well, I can assure you that you are not a ‘Hollywood’ person. You are too raw, too untutored. However, I hope this gift gets you over whatever rough patch you have encountered in life. Best, Ron Davidson. PS—If you call me again, I will have to report you to the police. Don’t make this unpleasant.”

So I never did call him again.

But I still have that mask. Sure, I looked into selling it. Only an idiot wouldn’t.

I even called a memorabilia dealer in California, told him who I was and what I had. Would he be interested?

Of course, he said. Even quoted me a price of fifteen thousand right there on the phone, but I got the feeling he would be willing to pay more. That was more money than I’ve ever had or seen in my life. It would get me out from under some things, get my head a little above the water.

But I couldn’t make the deal.

I’ve kept that thing in a box in my closet for the last ten years. I know it seems like I can’t let go of my past glory, but it’s more than just that.

I’ve always had the feeling I was going to be able to use that thing again someday. As fate would have it, I’m going to get my chance.

I read in the local paper that Mr. Big himself, Ron Davidson, is coming back to Elwood. And he’s not coming alone.

Turns out he’s bringing the whole cast back to Elwood tonight for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the opening of “Halloween High.” The movie’s getting rereleased with the sound and picture cleaned up and some extra footage of the lead bimbo doing her nails or something.

Of course, everybody in Elwood is bouncing off the walls over the news. Movie stars are coming to town. Glamour and the media and the money.

Hell, I’ve been walking among them for twenty-five years, and they don’t get excited about me.

There’s even a rumor that Ron Davidson is going to announce a new movie project, a sequel that brings back the original cast and the original lead bimbo. Nevermind that her character was offed in the third sequel about twenty years ago. He’s a movie director—if he wants her back to life, she’ll be back to life.

So tonight, I’ll put on the mask for the first time in twenty-five years.

I’ll buy a butcher knife like the one I used in the movie. It won’t cost much since this is a low-budget production.

I’ll show up at the premiere, reprising my greatest and only movie role.

I’ll make sure everybody gets exactly what they deserve.

And this time, I’ll be the one who walks away famous.