1 1967 Sudden Lake It takes hours to find, as he knew it would. Smooth highway asphalt yields to blacktop cracked into snakeskin scales by a caustic sun, which in turn yields to powder-dry dirt track. Paul Conway's Rambler makes its dust-cloud-waked way across an ocean of scorched earth navigated by no other cars, unbroken by any truck stop, gas station, or island of habitation where he can pause to ask directions. The only other vehicle he encounters is the rusting wreck of a truck on the side of the road, forsaken, flaked, and faded, slowly being comminuted into the desert by twenty years of excoriating abandonment. Other than that, all there is, is the vast, pale, hot-as-hell desert stretching gray and white, yellow and rust, all the way to where the mountains rumble dark on the horizon. Conway remembers someone once saying there was a special beauty to the desert. But he can't recall who said it, or even if it had been a real person or just a character in a movie. It wouldn't be the first time he's gotten the two universes confused. Maybe they hadn't even been talking about a real desert, but a set: a cinematographer's idea of a desert. Whoever said it, Conway doesn't see any unique beauty. For him, the desert is empty of beauty. Empty of anything. Dead space. Then again, Conway knows he doesn't see or experience the world the way others do. He never has, and it led him to the profession he now pursues, now excels in. Part of that innate otherness means scenes from movies--whole and flawlessly recalled--play out continuously in his head, holding up confected celluloid realities against the harsh mundanity of daily life. Now, unbidden, as he drives across the desert, the final scene of von Stroheim's Greed is projected onto the screen of his mind. For Conway, no other scene in movie history so confuses the real and the unreal. He knows that von Stroheim, in his near-insane drive for authenticity, filmed and refilmed the scene in Death Valley in midsummer, at midday. Actors and crew returned from the months-long shoot blistered and burned; one died, many were hospitalized, almost dead from heat exhaustion; co-star Jean Hersholt began vomiting blood when his insides ruptured in the heat. But shit, thinks Conway, what a scene: the character McTeague under a blazing sun, keylessly handcuffed to the man he has just killed, the money he has schemed and murdered for lying just beyond his reach, the last of his water spilled and evaporating from his bullet-punctured canteen. Tantalus in Death Valley. Maybe that was the truth of the desert. The desert as death, as desolate judgment and arid purgatory. Conway pushes the scene from his mind. He scans the road ahead for any landmark to indicate he's getting closer to his goal. After several dust-fumed stops to check a map that refuses to yield to folding, he has all but given up when he finds the turnoff he's searched for, little more than a dirt trail opening like a dry, dead mouth at the side of the road. An ancient wooden sign, long separated from its post, lies on the ground, half propped up against a rock. The sign is so sun-faded and grit-scoured that if Conway didn't know the name he's looking for, he wouldn't be able to make it out. But he does know the name, and he mentally traces its faint outline on the sign. SUDDEN LAKE The desert growls and crackles beneath the Rambler's tires as he turns up the even rougher track. He sees it almost immediately, and it is a bizarre and intimidating sight: black and jagged, like some dark malignancy growing on the bleached skin of the desert. As he comes nearer, he gradually makes sense of it: a huge old house, tall and stark, with a jumble of mock-Victorian gables and mansard roofs stabbing the sterile pale-blue shield of sky. The house backs onto a long, wide depression, like a vast shallow crater, a mile wide and two long, paler than the desert beyond it and almost white in patches. The skeleton ribs of other buildings lie scattered around the depression's rim as if they have died of thirst at its waterless edge. He slows as he approaches the house and sees that the wood of the roof shingles, the deep eaves and clapboard siding has been stained dark and restained darker over the years, until the house has become an impossible black silhouette in the desert, impervious to the scalpel-sharp sunlight. Christ, he thinks, it's like a movie set. He gives a small laugh at the weird appropriateness of the thought, but at the same time it sits uneasily with him, as if he struggles to decide to which of his universes the scene should belong. He now realizes that the building is too big for a house. A hotel? Out here in the middle of nowhere? Whatever it is, nothing could look more out of place in this setting. Outside the house itself, an old Packard of indeterminate vintage stands rusting on rotted tires; a newer Airstream trailer blade-gleams in the sun. An even newer sedan is parked in the shade of a lean-to port. She is waiting for him. As he pulls up outside, she stands at the top of the steps in the main doorway, her shoulder holding the screen door open, her face in the shadow of the dark-tanned blade of hand she uses to sun-shield her eyes. He guesses that she must have followed the cloud of dust the Rambler kicked up all the way along the half-mile access road to the house. Why, he thinks, would a woman of her age choose to live so far away from anything, with no neighbor or help for miles? Then again, he pretty much knows the answer to that. Conway steps out from the air-conditioned cocoon of the car, and the heat hits him instantly: dry and sharp and relentless. He takes a step toward her, and a dog--a huge, dark beast of a dog--emerges from doorway shadow and sniffs the air as if it has caught the odor of fresh meat. "It's okay," she says. She makes the slightest of hand gestures, and the dog sits. "He's harmless." "Hello, boy," Conway says nervously as he approaches the foot of the steps. The dog sits unresponsive, looking down at him impassively. "What's his name?" he asks. "Golly." "Golly?" "Short for Golem." "Oh, I see. . . . He's your protector. . . ." "Of sorts. I named him for an old friend." "A friend from back then?" Conway asks. "Come in." She ignores his question. Another hand gesture: the dog follows her, and both are swallowed by the black mouth of the doorway. Conway, like the dog, follows her command. He slips his sunglasses into the breast pocket of his shirt, and it takes his eyes a moment to adjust to the inner gloom. When they do, a large lobby is revealed. It's now clear that this is a hotel, or at least it has been at some long time past. There's a pervading sense of desuetude in the lobby, but it is nonetheless scrupulously clean. He imagines it must be swept daily to remain free from the constant, importunate probing of the desert's dusty fingers. "This is quite a place," Conway says at last. "It was built in the early Twenties," she explains dully. She has her back to him as she leads the way across the lobby. "The big salt pan out back was Sudden Lake back then." "So there was a lake?" "For about thirty years. It was called Sudden Lake because it sprung up out there over a few months in 1910." "A lake just appeared?" he asks. Her back is still to him and she shrugs. "A river changed course after freak heavy rainfall. They say the basin was ready-made, from some prehistoric lake, waiting to be refilled. I guess it's waiting to be filled again in another million years." "And the hotel was built because of the lake?" She stops and turns to him. He sees her features clearly for the first time, and a thrill of recognition runs through him. There remains a faded magnificence to her. Her hair is bright white against the dark tan of her face, but he realizes that, were she to dye it, she could pass for a woman twenty years her junior. What fascinates him most is that hers is a face he knows so well--not aged, as it is now, but in bygone, camera-captured flawless youth. Looking at her now, he can see the fundaments of the beauty that had distinguished her younger self. It is, he thinks, like looking at some classical monument--like the Acropolis, or the Sphinx of Giza--where hints of the original, long-distant splendor shine through the ravages of time. "It became quite the attraction back then," she answers his question; her tone is detached, as if discussing some distant place she'd read about, rather than the architecture around them, the home she occupies. "A New York financier moved his family out here about '20 or '21 and built this hotel and a whole lot of lodges around the lake. He was sure Sudden Lake was going to be the next big thing--that and the movies--so he built the hotel with a movie theater." "What happened to the lake?" "A small earthquake up north redirected the river's course again. The lake became landlocked and started to evaporate. It got saltier and saltier, until anything living near was poisoned. The last brine pool dried up sometime during World War II. Come on, I've set everything up in the parlor," she says, turning once more from him and leading the way across the lobby. "What about the financier?" Powell asks her back. "The '29 Crash and the lake drying up bankrupted him. He went out into what was left of the lake and stood in the midday sun, drinking the brine to kill himself." Conway looks through the archway that leads from the lobby to a large hall. Beyond the hall's picture windows he can see the vast waterless lakebed, lying as white and dry as sun-bleached bone. "The sludge he drank didn't kill him as quick as he thought it would," she explains in the same passionless tone. "It took hours, and he went mad before he died, his brain all swelled up from the salt and the heat. He came back into the hotel burned scarlet, raving, and bleeding out his ears and nose. Then he murdered his wife and four kids"--she nods through the arch--"there, in the dining hall, before the salt poisoning finished him off. Or so the story goes." She leads him into a medium-sized, neat parlor, the walls of which are lined with books. A hall leads off to a small kitchen and another door that Conway guesses is to a bedroom. He gets the feeling that this is the only regularly used part of the building and has, at one time, been staff quarters of some sort. "This was the night porter's accommodations," she says, as if she has read his thoughts. The slats of the parlor's plantation shutters are angled against the severe desert sun. There's a red leather chesterfield sofa, two club chairs, a coffee table. Next to the window, a mahogany bureau sits with its top rolled up to expose a forty-year-old Remington portable typewriter that gleams like new. The books sit ordered and neat on dustless shelves. Everything is scrupulously clean, but nothing is new. Conway senses a discordant lack of proportion: that these pieces, all items of quality, have been made long ago for a much larger, much grander room. She must have had to select just a few things to bring with her, he thinks, all those years ago. Back then, when it all happened. But there is something missing in the room, an absence that he can't pin down, and it nags at him. "Sit," she says, and Conway isn't sure if she is talking to him or the dog, but both obey simultaneously. He places his briefcase on the floor next to his chair. "Sorry I'm late," he says. "I got a little lost. You're quite a ways from anywhere here." "Yes," she says, and the subject of her remoteness closes. "I can't believe I've found you." He waves a hand to indicate their surroundings. "I would never have believed it. I just don't understand why you gave it all up, back then, at the height of it all--why you went to such lengths to disappear." "I had my reasons." Another conversational door slams shut. "I've made some lemonade." She leaves to go into the kitchen. Beneath his shirt he feels a trickle of sweat run down between his shoulder blades, like a tepid fingertip tracing his spine. He examines the room more closely while the dog in turn examines him with coal-black eyes. In the absence of air conditioning, a ceiling fan rattles ineffectually above him. He thinks of rising from his chair to examine the books on the shelves, but the black gaze of the huge dog keeps him pinioned. What, he thinks, has he gotten himself into? And still the absence in the room tugs at him, like an impatient child on a parent's sleeve. Then it strikes him. There's no television. That's it: no television. The thought hits him with a sense of relief. But it's more than that--or less than that. He senses a greater absence: no photographs grace the walls or punctuate the bookshelves; no painting hangs from the picture rail. This is a space without images. There are no similitudes of reality. The harsh, hot, bounded here-and-now of the room and the harsh, hot, boundless desert beyond is all there is. She returns carrying a tray laden with a pitcher and two glasses already filled with lemonade. She sets it on the coffee table and hands Conway a glass before taking her own, then sits in the chair opposite. He sips the lemonade and winces slightly at its tartness. "Thank you for seeing me," he says. "You left me little choice." There's no bitterness in her statement. "I'm sorry," he says, though he isn't. "I know you've tried so very hard to stay . . ." He struggles for the word. ". . . lost ." "You've told no one else where I live? That I still live?" "As we discussed on the phone, no, I haven't. I understand why you have sought solitude and I respect it." He pauses. "Because you're the last. You are the last, aren't you?" "You're the one who's researched all this. You must know." "I do," says Conway. "All the others are dead. Dead or disappeared. Everyone connected to the movie, to the screenplay, to the book that inspired it. Victims of the Devil's Playground curse, as they call it in Hollywood. I thought you were dead too, everyone does, until I tracked you down. But don't worry, your secret is safe with me--and it will remain safe." "So you think that's why I'm here--that I am running from some curse? That I'm hiding from a demon brought back to the world because we told his story?" She gives a small, scornful laugh. "You can't seriously believe all that-- mythology ? It was just a movie. It was magnificent, it was beautiful, but it was a movie. Just a movie." "It was much more than just a movie," he says. "As for mythology--that's what Hollywood is built on, what it trades in. It has its gods just like Olympus; its devils and monsters, just like Hades." "And why is it so important to you, Mr. Conway?" "Dr. Conway," he corrects her. "I have a Ph.D. in film history." "Why did you come looking for me, Dr. Conway?" He pauses before answering, brushing the sweat-cabled red-blond hair from his eyes. "According to the few, the very few, who saw the film before it was lost in the studio fire, The Devil's Playground is the greatest horror movie, sound or silent, of all time. But it's a lost film. The most significant loss in movie history, along with the missing footage of Stroheim's Greed ." "I know all that," she says, impatiently. "But when the studio burned down, the master and all other prints were lost. I really can't see how I can help you." "There is a rumor--again, a legend, almost--that a single copy, just one print, of The Devil's Playground survived. Every piece of research I have done suggests that only one person could possibly know where that print is--the only person to have survived all the mishaps, on-set accidents, and mysterious deaths and disappearances that have given the movie the reputation of a cursed production. There's only you. The only one left living." She sips at her lemonade. "Well, all I can say is you're looking in an odd place for your lost masterpiece." She nods to the window, its tilted slats muting the dazzle of the sun. "This time of year, it hits a hundred twenty out there. No moisture in the air. You know what happens to old nitrate film if it goes above seventy degrees?" "Believe me, I'm aware how hot it is." Conway pauses for a moment, mops his freckled brow with his pocket handkerchief. "But the rumor is that the surviving nitrate print was transferred to safety film in the Forties. I'm here because someone has asked me to track down that last surviving print of the movie. The person who has hired me is willing to pay a very large sum of money for that print." "Who is this someone? And why did he pick you to be his ferret?" "I can't disclose my client's name. Confidentiality. Let's just say it's someone with a special interest in these things." "These things?" Conway shrugs. "Lost movies. Lost classics. This lost classic in particular. As you've pointed out, cellulose nitrate film is notoriously unstable and flammable. What with stock degrading, rotting, spontaneously combusting, studios harvesting the silver from it, or reels just being dumped in the trash over the years, countless epic silents have been lost. And what is rare becomes valuable--like I say, there are those willing to spend fortunes on securing any surviving prints, especially after the 20th Century Fox vault fire back in '37, and everything in the MGM vault going up in flames a couple of years ago. One buyer--a different buyer--has offered me fifty thousand dollars if I can find a print of Tod Browning's London After Midnight , starring Lon Chaney. The last known print of that went up in the MGM fire." "And for The Devil's Playground ?" she asks, her face impassive. "More. A lot, lot more. And as for my ferret skills--my buyer is aware of my knowledge of the industry and the era, and of my expertise as a researcher." He holds his hands out in a gesture to indicate their surroundings. "It would appear that I was the right choice." "This last and only print of the film," she says. "You think I know where it is?" "It took a long time to find you. And I nearly didn't. But when I do, I find you in the middle of nowhere in an abandoned hotel that happens to have a cinema screening room. Maybe you have the print here; maybe you don't. Either way, you're my best bet for someone who might know where it is. Like I say, that's information I'm empowered to pay a small fortune for. Actually, not that small a fortune." "And what use would all that money be to me now?" "I'm sure you could find a use for it," says Conway, and casts his eyes around the room. She gives a small laugh. "And you're not at all afraid? Of the mythology? Of the curse?" "I believe there is a masterpiece of cinema that isn't lost, like everyone thinks it is. A masterpiece directed by an Expressionist genius who surpassed Lang, Murnau, Dreyer, Leni--all of them. Those few who saw the movie said they had never seen or experienced anything like it. And that's something that should not be hidden from the world." He pauses. He looks from the woman to her dog and back again. The impotent rattling of the ceiling fan's blades fills the silence. For that moment, he is unsure if he is going to say what is in his mind. He commits. "I don't think it was the curse that made The Devil's Playground so dangerous." "Oh?" "There's this other theory that one scene in the movie--perhaps only a few frames--captures something." "Captures what?" "In the mid-to-late Twenties, there were murders in Hollywood, young women who were supposed to be connected to important people, big names. Those few seconds of film are supposed to give a clue to the identity of the murderer--someone connected to the movie and connected to the kind of weird secret stuff that was going on in the background." "And you believe this?" Conway shrugs. "It's more believable than crazy conspiracies about the movie bringing a demon back to life." He takes a notebook and pencil from his briefcase and scribbles a note. He tears off the page and stretches it out to her. The dog makes a low, deep noise, and he drops his arm, setting the note on the table. She picks it up and looks across at him inquisitively. "That is the sum my client is willing to pay. That's the figure to you, after my commission. With this you could stay lost, but lost in a hell of a lot more comfort." She sits and watches him for a moment, and he is aware of the dog's eyes on him as well. After a while she says: "Please, Dr. Conway, drink your lemonade--I have something to show you. . . ." Excerpted from The Devil's Playground: A Novel by Craig Russell All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
