We used the Rolls.
On the way to Stage 13, Manny Leiber stared straight ahead and said, “I’m trying to run a madhouse and you guys sit around on porches shooting wind. Where in hell is my Beast!? Three weeks I’ve waited—”
“Hell,” I said reasonably, “it takes time, waiting for something really new to step out of the night. Give us breathing space, time for the old secret self to coax itself out. Don’t worry. Roy here will be working in clay. Things will rise out of that. For now, we keep the Monster in the shadows, see—”
“Excuses!” said Manny, glaring ahead. “I don’t see. I’ll give you three more days! I want to see the Monster!”
“What if,” I blurted suddenly, “the Monster sees you! My God! What if we do it all from the Monster’s viewpoint, looking out!? The camera moves and is the Monster, and people get scared of the Camera and—”
Manny blinked at me, shut one eye, and muttered: “Not bad. The Camera, huh?”
“Yeah! The Camera crawls out of the meteor. The Camera, as the Monster, blows across the desert, scaring Gila monsters, snakes, vultures, stirring the dust—”
“I’ll be damned.” Manny Leiber gazed off at the imaginary desert.
“I’ll be damned,” cried Roy, delighted.
“We put an oiled lens on the Camera,” I hurried on, “add steam, spooky music, shadows, and the Hero staring into the Camera and—”
“Then what?”
“If I talk it I won’t write it.”
“Write it, write it!”
We stopped at Stage 13. I jumped out, babbling. “Oh, yeah. I think I should do two versions of the script. One for you. One for me.”
“Two?” yelled Manny. “Why?”
“At the end of a week I hand in both. You get to choose which is right.”
Manny eyed me suspiciously, still half in, half out of the Rolls.
“Crap! You’ll do your best work on your idea!”
“No. I’ll do my damnedest for you. But also my damnedest for me. Shake?”
“Two Monsters for the price of one? Do it! C’mon!”
Outside the door Roy stopped dramatically. “You ready for this? Prepare your minds and souls.” He held up both beautiful artists’ hands, like a priest.
“I’m prepared, dammit. Open!”
Roy flung open the outside and then the inside door and we stepped into total darkness.
“Lights, dammit!” said Manny.
“Hold on—” whispered Roy.
We heard Roy move in the dark, stepping carefully over unseen objects.
Manny twitched nervously.
“Almost ready,” intoned Roy across a night territory. “Now …”
Roy turned on a wind machine, low. First there was a whisper like a giant storm, which brought with it weather from the Andes, snow murmuring off the shelves of the Himalayas, rain over Sumatra, a jungle wind headed for Kilimanjaro, the rustle of skirts of tide along the Azores, a cry of primitive birds, a flourish of bat wings, all blended to lift your gooseflesh and drop your mind down trapdoors toward—
“Light!” cried Roy.