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Eye sockets were blackened. The lower half of the face was only a skull, as if something had eaten away the tissue.
This wasn’t the doll! The mannequin! This thing in the water was real. A dead woman! With rotting flesh flaking from stark white bone, pale hair floating around a face without eyes, rotting flesh hanging by sinews, a gossamer dress wafting in the current.
Bianca shot to the surface and shrieked for all she was worth, her scream echoing through the canyon. She scrambled wildly away, splashing water, slipping on the bank, trying to get away from the horror of the dead girl’s face, the terror that seized her throat. Coughing and sputtering, she staggered to her feet. Pain screamed up her ankle. She fell, slid back toward the water and the wretched, rotting corpse. “Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God!”
Heart thundering, she flailed backward, scuttling frantically backward up the bank, eyes stretched wide, her body soaked, her fear real.
Then, like a bolt of lightning, it hit her. The production crew and Barclay Effin’ Sphinx had played her.
“What the hell did you do?” she cried.
“Cut! Cut!” a voice called loudly, then Mel, a production assistant who’d been beyond the scope of the lights, ran forward. “You’re okay,” she said. Small, athletic, hair cropped close to her head, she grabbed hold of Bianca’s arm.
Bianca yanked her arm back. “I’m definitely not fine! You put that horrid thing in there. You made me think there was a real girl down there.” She pointed a shaking finger at the stream. “What the hell is that?”
“Don’t worry. It’s not real. Hey, can I get a towel over here?” she called to someone behind her.
“I know it’s not real.” Now, Bianca silently added, I know it’s not real now.
Mel admitted, “We switched out the mannequins.”
“But that’s all wrong . . . I mean you were going to fix it in post-production. CGI or whatever.”
“We wanted to get your real gut reaction. Your horror.” Someone gave Mel a terry-cloth hand towel, which she passed over to Bianca. “And it worked,” she said as Bianca swiped the dripping water from her face. “Your expression was perfect. We wanted to see that terror, that fear, to get it all in one take, and you were fantastic!”
“I was scammed. I want to talk to Barclay.”
“It was his idea to change things up and surprise you, make it real to enhance your performance.”
Bianca was burned. Who did these people think they were? Obviously, despite anything else he’d said, Barclay Sphinx didn’t have faith that she could act, could pull off the scene on her own. God, she was pissed. Tossing her hair to one side of her face, she wrapped her hand around the strands and squeezed, wringing out the water, feeling like a fool, or worse yet, a naive teenager who’d just been shown how foolish she was.
Crap!
Mel said, “The point is, it’s done. Unless something shows up in editing, we’re good here.”
Bianca was pressing the towel to her face.
“Oh, watch that. Don’t dry yourself off too much. We need you wet for the next scene.”
Bianca wasn’t sure she wanted to do any more scenes. She was starting to believe that her mother was right about the whole damned show. ?
?You got any more ‘surprises’ for me?” she snarled.
“That only works once.” Mel flashed an encouraging smile.
Bianca tossed a look to the creek, where the hideous, lifelike mannequin lay beneath the surface of the water, the blond hair still wafting in the current.
Her face burned with embarrassment, and she had the absurd feeling she was about to cry.
“Now come on,” Mel said. “Let’s get moving. Back to the parking lot. We want to wrap up that scene with you talking to your mom about what happened.”
Bianca reined in her emotions with an effort. “She’s not my mother,” she muttered, following after the woman to the gravel-strewn area where the party scenes had been filmed. The campfire, though gas-fueled and controlled, was still burning, a couple of rocks and a few sleeping bags scattered around it, while farther back, out of the camera’s sweep, were all of the equipment and vehicles—cranes, light poles, trucks and the like—and people clustered and waiting. Beyond the perimeter of the set, there were other vehicles, curious bystanders hoping for a glimpse of the filming, reporters thinking they might catch a story, as this was, after all, the scene of a recent murder.
“Take five,” Mel told her, waving toward an empty chair. “And you can put your ankle brace back on. We won’t film you any lower than your waist, so it won’t show.” She started to walk away, then turned and added, “But don’t dry off, okay? The next scene will be you, here.” She twirled her finger to include the parking area, where three pickups and a couple of sedans were parked around the perimeter of the lot, about ten feet from the campfire pit. “That’s the scene with your mom, the woman cop.”
That was another thing that bothered Bianca. Michelle being cast as not only her mom, but a policewoman, a detective. They had her dressed in slacks, a blouse and jacket, her hair clipped behind her head, a fake gun mounted on her belt, boots with significant heels, not at all like her mother’s, which was probably good. But acting as if Michelle were her real mom, that would be tough. Michelle was okay and all, and really cool usually. . . but . . . she just wasn’t her mother.
While waiting for the scene to be set up, Bianca grabbed a bottle of water from a cart, cracked the cap, and took a long swallow just as Maddie and Lara approached.
