The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

Hardcore fans have every line memorized (not that there are many). They know the plot back and forth (though there isn’t one of those, either). You see, that’s the beauty of Kaleidoscope, its terrible genius. It is the most famous eighty-seven and a half minutes ever committed to film (don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise), but it doesn’t exist. If you were to creep through the film, frame by frame (and people have) you would know this is true.

Kaleidoscope exists in people’s minds. It exists in the brief, flickering space between frames. The real movie screen is the inside of their eyelids, the back of their skulls when they close their eyes and try to sleep. When the film rolls, there is action and blood, sex and drugs, and not a little touch of madness, but there are shadows, too. There are things seen from the corner of the eye, and that’s where the true movie lies. There, and in the rumors.

Jackson Mortar has heard them all. Crew members died or went missing during the shoot (or there was no crew); a movie house burned to the ground during the first screening (the doors were locked from the inside); fans have been arrested trying to recreate the movie’s most famous scenes (the very best never get caught); and, of course, the most persistent rumor of all: everything in the movie — the sex, the drugs, the violence, and yes, even the flickering shadows — is one hundred percent real.

“You know that scene in the graveyard, with Carrie, when Lance is leading the voodoo ceremony to bring Lucy back from the dead?” Kevin leans across the table, half-eaten burger forgotten in his hand.

Jackson nods. He traces the maze on the kiddie menu, and refuses to look up. Kevin is a fresh convert. Like moths to flame, somehow they always know — when it comes to Kaleidoscope, Jackson Mortar is the man. Jackson supposes that makes him part of the mythology, in a way, and he should be proud. But his stomach flips, growling around a knot of cold fries. He pushes the remains of his meal away, rescuing his soda from Kevin’s enthusiastic hand-talking.

“And you know how Carrie is writhing on the tomb, and the big snake is crawling all over her body, between her tits and between her legs, like it’s doing her, and she’s moaning and Lance is pouring blood all over her?” Kevin grins, painful-wide; Jackson can hear it, even without looking up.

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Do you think it’s real?”

Jackson finally raises his head. Sweat beads Kevin’s upper lip; his burger is disintegrating in his hand. A trace of fear ghosts behind the bravado in his eyes.

“Maybe.” Jackson keeps his tone as neutral.

The glimpse of fear gives him hope for Kevin, but Kevin’s smile does him in. Maybe the kid sees more than the sex and drugs and blood, but that’s all he wants to see. Kevin has seen Kaleidoscope, and wishes the movie was otherwise. That, Jackson cannot abide.

“Listen, I gotta get going.” Jackson stands. “I got work to do.”

“Oh, okay. Sure.” Kevin’s expression falls. Another flicker of unease skitters across his face.

Guilt needles Jackson — he can’t leave the kid alone like this — but Kevin pastes it over with another goofy, sloppy grin. “Maybe we can catch a midnight screening together sometime?”

Jackson’s pity dissolves; he shrugs into his worn, black trench coat, “Yeah, sure. Sometime.”

Jackson squeezes out of the booth. Kevin turns back to his cold hamburger. Jackson wonders how the kid stays so skinny. As he pushes through the restaurant door, out into the near-blinding sun, Jackson tries to remember to hate Kevin for the right reasons, not just because he’s young and thin.

Jackson steps off the curb, and freezes. Across the street, on the other side of the world and close enough to touch, Carrie Linden walks through a slant of sunlight. She glances behind her, peering over the top of bug-large sunglasses, which almost swallow her face. She hunches into her collar, pulls open the pharmacy door, and darts inside.

A car horn blares. Jackson leaps back, the spell broken. His heart pounds. No one has seen any of the actors from Kaleidoscope since the movie was filmed. There are no interviews, no ‘Where Are They Now?’ specials on late night TV. It plays into the mystique, as though Kaleidoscope might truly be a mass hallucination thrown up on the silver screen. No one real has ever been associated with the film. The credits list the director as B. Z. Bubb and the writer as Lou Cypher.

It’s been nearly forty years since Kaleidoscope was filmed, five years before Jackson was born (but long before he was really born). But Jackson knows it’s her; he would know Carrie Linden anywhere.

Jackson has been in love with Carrie Linden his whole life. (Yes, he considers the first time he saw Kaleidoscope as the moment he was born.)