deathlings.com: Owl Creek Super Saver

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Super Saver Cinema 14
by David Ballard

A man sat in a movie theater in northern Alabama, looking up at swift water on the screen twenty rows ahead. The man's hands gripped the empty chair in front of him, his wrists tight as cords. The smooth barrel of a Smith & Wesson .357 pressed into the back of his neck.

A retired couple sat ten rows ahead of the man and down to the left; the woman snored softly as her head rested on her husband's shoulder. Two other young men sat at opposite ends of the middle row: one an off-duty usher wearing a Crimson Tide t-shirt and jeans, the other a graduate student analyzing the film for a grade. They were watching the three o'clock showing of "Rebel Water," all unaware of what was occurring in the back of the theater.

On the movie screen, a Southern planter swam for his life in the swirling river. He struggled to remove ropes from his hands and a broken noose from around his neck as Union soldiers fired at him from a bridge. The gunfire exploded as the planter fought to keep from drowning.

The man with a gun to his head was forty-five years old, wearing a beige tweed jacket, button-down collar shirt with no tie, and light brown khakis. His beard was neatly trimmed. He wore his hair slightly shorter than he had worn in college, but still longer than most of his students now wore. His eyes were large and dark gray and held a kindly expression when he lectured. Now his eyes stared straight ahead at the screen.

"That's real good," came a dark whiskey voice behind the man. "Jus' keep real still with your hands out in front. If you turn around, I'll blow your fuckin' head off. You got me, Chief?"

"Now reach down," the gunman whispered, "and pass back that fat wallet of yours. Jus' keep lookin' straight ahead."

He did as he was told as he stared at the screen. Union soldiers shot cannonballs and grapeshot into the river as the Southern planter crawled up onto the bank and crept slowly toward the woods.

The man clenched his eyes and thought of his wife and children. He tried to picture them safe in their house at the end of their cul-de-sac with its watered lawn and heavy doors and security lights at the end of the driveway, but the angry gunfire on the screen distracted him. His legs cramped as his feet pushed into the sticky floor. Artillery fire and cannonade bombarded him, pounding at the inside of his head, making his chest burn. He wanted to shriek, to tear at his throat with his heavy arms, to claw at the burning and relieve his suffocation, until he realized he had simply forgotten to breathe.

You could jump the guy, a movie voice suggested inside his head. You might get the gun away from him. All you have to do is watch the barrel, go for that first and stay out of the line of fire, but no, that was insane.

The man heard the rough shuffling of paper money quickly groped from his wallet, followed by the snicking of credit cards from clear plastic windows. He expected to hear his wallet plop to the floor next, but no, he heard more sliding -- the photographs of his family?

As the man pondered whether the gunman meant his wife or his daughter, the voice added, "I may just have to do her, yesssssssss sir."

Peyton Farris was a well-liked professor of American literature, whose most popular class by far was an evening course he offered in American cinema. There he showcased classic works of John Huston, Orson Welles, and Martin Scorsese along with newer movies, though he refused ever to show a remake of any Alfred Hitchcock film. His walls at work were covered with black-and-white movie stills of detectives, criminals and femmes fatales, transforming his small campus office into a Southern museum of American film noir.

One afternoon when Peyton left campus early to catch a matinee of Rebel Water, he stopped at Bud's Convenience Store next to the Owl Creek Super Saver Cinema 14 for a money order. He had just won-- stolen was more like it-- an online auction for a mint set of lobby cards for the 1962 film, Cape Fear, for four hundred dollars. As long as Bud didn't talk his ear off about baseball and the Braves' chances in the World Series, there was just enough time to get one before the movie started.

The clerk at the counter was a tall, rawboned man with red-ringed eyes. He wore a white t-shirt and, of all things, a Yankees baseball cap over uneven hair. A blue tattoo of a snake rearing back and biting itself ran down his left forearm. He watched Peyton open his wallet and finger the stack of bills.

Peyton looked at the clerk's cap and said, "I never thought I'd see that team's cap anywhere near one of Bud's stores. He out of town today?"

"The Yankees are gonna sweep the Series," the clerk responded in a cool monotone. His eyes never left Peyton's money.

Startled by the clerk's odd manner, Peyton closed his hands over his wallet. "I need," he said, clearing his throat, "I mean, can I please have a money order for four hundred dollars?"

The clerk, his hands never moving, raised his eyes toward Peyton's and said, "Sorry, Chief. Machine's broken."

Peyton considered at least getting some candy for the movie, but then he looked at the security monitor behind the counter and saw the tiny black-and-white versions of Peyton and the clerk in an empty store.

"Okay, whatever," Peyton said, eager to leave. He put his wallet back and walked quickly out the store toward the theater, glad to be outside.

One minute later the man in the Yankees cap also left the store, taking with him the money he had removed from the cash register and a bottle of Southern Comfort. He also took from under the counter a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum with a four inch barrel, a weapon much too large for the teenage clerk who had reached for it earlier, and who now lay stuffed under the counter with his throat slit.

As Peyton Farris shot back over his chair in the theater, he twisted to face the startled gunman with the red-ringed eyes and the dark blue baseball cap. With the movie light from the screen now behind him, Peyton watched the gun barrel opening toward him like the glowing mouth of a lamprey. With absolute clarity, he saw the reflection of his own eye on the tip of the bullet that was chambered and ready to fire.

He stabbed his hand underneath the barrel in cinematic slow motion and pushed it up. The snake tattoo on the gunman's arm flexed, as if it might just detach its fangs from its own back and go for Peyton's eyes. His momentum over the chair continued to carry him, until both men tumbled out into the aisle, heads facing down the incline, with Peyton's knees miraculously landing on the other man's chest.

Gasping for breath, Peyton twisted the gun backwards out of the other man's grip. As he fumbled to get it turned around, the sound of rushing water from the movie surged through his ears. He gripped the heavy gun in both hands and aimed it at his attacker's face.

When the other man saw this, he grinned stained teeth, spread his hands palm-up on the floor and said, "Whoa, I give. Your move, Chief."

Peyton stared in amazement at the utter nonchalance of this reaction. This is only a minor setback, the look said, because nothing serious will ever happen to me. You're no more of a threat to me than a tick under my arm.

"Help!" Peyton shouted. "Someone call the police! This man tried to rob me! He has a gun!" He kept on shouting, into the man's face, into the dark theater, over the roar of the movie, until the surprised patrons in front crept up the aisle to investigate the commotion.

An electric flash popped in front of Peyton, followed by the whir and click of an automatic camera. From somewhere up the incline a photographer materialized, followed by a woman in a short dress frantically unwinding a microphone cord behind her.

Peyton felt electrified. Another reporter appeared from nowhere, followed by a long-haired kid with a mobile cam. They all shouted questions over the roar of the movie: Who are you? What drove you to become a vigilante? Do you believe violence in movies influenced you?

The gun weighed heavy in Peyton's hands, but he kept it steady, ready to fire, until the police finally burst in with guns drawn. The attacker's name, Peyton overheard in the bustle, was Billy Amery Gwin, according to an officer who recognized him. Gwin smiled at Peyton as the police cuffed him and hauled him off.

Throughout the next two weeks, pictures of Peyton appeared in magazines and on news shows across the country. Each one showed Peyton, arms rigid, with the large revolver poised inches from the smiling face of Billy Amery Gwin. The commentaries sparked renewed debate over suburban violence, self-defense, and the right to carry concealed weapons in the South.

Peyton turned down all demands for talk show appearances. He also kept the phone off the hook at night, wishing only to be left alone, but the kids really enjoyed the attention. His son, Max, pestered him for a week to come to his third grade class so he could show off his dad as a real-live action hero. "Like having Arnold Schwarzenneger for a father," Max kept urging.

Katie, who since entering high school had complained that everything her parents did was designed specifically to humiliate her, enjoyed the extra attention the boys now paid her. Once the newspapers linked Gwin to another unsolved murder, Peyton often overheard her whispering to boys on the phone, "My dad beat up a psycho. Isn't that just too wild?"

Jenny was simply thankful to have her husband home alive. "You did the right thing, Peyton," she told him with each kiss. "You did good."

The media frenzy eventually died down. Peyton spent most evenings on the back deck with Conroy, their golden retriever, drinking Jack Daniels and replaying the attack in the theater. Gwin would have shot him right there if given the chance, no question about it. Just what was it that drove a man to do something like that?

On the day of Gwin's trial, Peyton sat in the courthouse hallway for two hours before an assistant prosecutor with slicked hair recognized him and told him that Billy Amery Gwin had accepted a plea bargain the day before. "It seems," he drawled, "that there just wasn't enough evidence to charge Gwin with any of those other killings. He accepted three to five for the assault in the theater. Didn't someone from our office call yesterday and tell you not to come down here?"

Two months after that a woman from Witness and Victim Protection called to advise that Billy Amery Gwin had been released from prison. "It seems," she explained, "that he gave a lot of information that led to the arrest of several prominent drug dealers. He was eventually credited with time served. I wouldn't worry, though. He told the board he was going to New York. The hearing was last week. Weren't you informed?"

The next day, Peyton found a yellow mailing tube he had been expecting-- a poster for the film, Taxi Driver-- leaning next to his mailbox. It felt heavier than usual, so he tore it open and tipped it. A fat copperhead slid out. The snake writhed on the grass in anger at being sealed in the stifling tube, and then it snapped at Peyton's shoes before slithering off. The poster had fallen out of the tube as well, and it lay unfurled on the driveway. It was for the movie, "Rebel Water."

He looked up at his house, through the kitchen window at Jenny making lunch, and then at the blue and white security sign boldly posted in the front flowerbed. All of their windows had locks. All of the security lights had fresh bulbs. There was no need to bring the media circus back into his home.

The next morning, after the kids had gone to school, Conroy started whining in his dog bed. As Peyton tried to comfort the old dog, he began to heave, eventually coughing up great gobs of blood. With no time to tell Jenny, Peyton wrapped the dog in a sheet and rushed to the vet. Conroy died in the back seat before they arrived.

The vet, an old family friend, reasoned that the dog must have dug up something poisonous at the landfill. After Peyton authorized dissection, the vet found shards of green and brown glass mixed in with undigested hamburger. "I'm sorry," the vet sympathized. "I know you had that boy a long time, Peyton. God, I hate to see somebody do that to a dog."

That night, Peyton slept in a lawn chair by the front window. He had told everyone only that Conroy had died peacefully in his bed early that morning. He still had not told his family what he suspected: that Gwin, for some reason, had come back to torment him.

The old vet's words mingled with Peyton's nightmares as he drifted off to sleep. You had that boy a long time, Peyton. You had him in your sights.

At dinner the following night, Katie casually mentioned that some weird guy had been following her and her friends at the mall, taking pictures of them. They had wondered if the guy might be scouting for one of the glamour magazines, so all three girls had flashed him some skin on the escalator. Katie wasn't sure if the guy was cute or not, because he wore an old blue baseball cap low over his eyes.

"Oh, that's Rebel," said Max, his mouth full of corn. "He's not a baseball player, he's a soldier! He showed me and Bobby all kinds of war stuff after school. He's cool!"

That night he told Jenny about Gwin's release from prison, and what had occurred.

"Oh my God, Peyton, you've got to do something! Our children! Have you called the police? Oh, Peyton, oh Jesus, he's stalking our children!"

Peyton picked up the telephone to call the police. He heard rushing water through the receiver as he dialed.

The police came, but could not promise much. None of the neighbors had seen anything. There were no fingerprints, footprints, blood, or hair of Gwin's anywhere to be found. They tapped the phones for a week, but no calls came. The security system checked out fine. The post office was alerted, but nothing unusual arrived. One of the police officers eventually took Peyton aside and gave him a business card for a private detective. "For the tough work," he said, squeezing Peyton's shoulder hard.

Peyton took a leave of absence from the university and drove around his neighborhood every day and early evenings until dark, looking for the blue baseball cap, the red-ringed eyes, the copperhead tattoo. When he went to bed, he fought to keep from drowning in water surging all around him. Eventually he began cruising the neighborhoods throughout the night.

The private investigator didn't have an office. He worked out of his garage, and he was much too expensive anyway, but he did direct Peyton to a spy shop in Atlanta that sold surveillance equipment and voyeur paraphernalia. "For your money," he offered, tapping a stubby finger onto a food-stained catalogue page, "this stuff is tops. You can hide one of these cameras in a motel room, in the bathroom, or next to the shower if that's your thing. Besides," the P.I. clucked, "you can't stay awake forever, Bub. You look like shit. You ever think about buying a gun?"

So Peyton bought a surveillance camera with a transmitter and a receiver that hooked directly into his VCR, and he installed it over the front door. During his vigil by the back door that night, he dreamed about sitting on Gwin's chest, holding Gwin's heavy gun until his biceps throbbed, putting the gun in Gwin's mouth, and Gwin's smile widening, growing fangs, stretching, until it swallowed them both.

The next morning Peyton awoke at dawn and saw someone standing out in the front yard, arms outstretched. Without waking anyone, he investigated in his pajamas and found a scarecrow-- ragged clothes over a burlap body, a pumpkin head with an Atlanta Braves cap on the stem, all tied loosely around a two-by-four that had been jammed viciously into the ground. Attached like memos on a bulletin board were hundreds of magazine clippings, all showing the same picture of Peyton sitting on Gwin's chest with gun outstretched.

Peyton tore the scarecrow from the post. The pumpkin head split open on the ground, and two dozen live snakes spilled out, fanning out across the grass in a wriggling wave. Peyton ran to his video camera, and found taped to the front of the lens a note: Your move, Chief.

Peyton had not slept in weeks. He saw Gwin everywhere: at the mall, in his few remaining classes, reflected in the mirror behind him just dodging out of sight. After a while Peyton began to resemble Gwin, especially in the eyes. He even considered buying a gun, buying a dozen guns, he just wanted to scream, his exhaustion was overwhelming.

One night two officers arrived to take Peyton and Jenny to the hospital. They said to leave Max with a trusted neighbor. Katie had been found unconscious in her car at the mall, with blood all over her face and neck.

The surgeon tried to caution them about what to expect, but the resulting shock drove Peyton into a sleepless ringing void. The doctor's buzzing monotone reverberated to the point where Peyton could no longer tell what was real-- there will be scarring, Mr. Farris ... plastic surgery can only do so much ... it was her face, Chief, her pretty face ... the attacker must have intended to inflict such a wound ... you could have stopped this ... the facial nerve in the upper lip was severed, Chief ... he must have first put the blade in her mouth, up into her cheek, and thrust outward ...

Katie remained in the hospital under surveillance, while Jenny and Max spent most of the time locked inside their home. Peyton endured in an unfocused, aching haze, constantly on the lookout.

On the one night after he indulged himself and stayed up late with his daughter at the hospital, he drove home in the rain and found all the lights out in his house. He ran upstairs to Jenny and found her tied to their bed on her stomach, stripped, bloodied and badly bruised, and virtually incoherent with hysteria. "Oh, God, Peyton! He ... he ..."

Peyton's eyes burned as he untied her and held her close, trying to squeeze the pain into himself. She was alive at least, but she continued, despite the crying, as if she had to say it. "He ... he tied me and put--" but she choked on her own sobs. "Oh Peyton!" she screamed as she beat her fists on him. "You had him! You had him and you had his gun! You had the chance to kill him, Peyton, and oh, God, how I wish you had taken it!"

Peyton's arms and shoulders ached from holding her tight as she cried herself to sleep. He had failed-- forget the justice system, forget the police protection and the home security and the private detectives, he could easily have prevented this back at the movie theater. No one would have questioned him. It was self-defense! He had already gotten the gun away from Gwin. All he had to do was pull the trigger.

After Jenny passed out from exhaustion, still weeping in her nightmares on the bed where Gwin had assaulted her, Peyton pressed his fingers hard into the back of his neck. It's too late, he thought. I had all the power then, and now I have none. I can't even find the bastard!

Then he noticed the window in Max's bedroom across the hall was wide open. Max's small bed was empty. Peyton trudged with exhaustion toward the window to close it before the rain soaked the floor, but his arms burned with fatigue now, unable to lift any higher. In a sudden flash of lightning, Peyton stared out the window in open-mouthed terror at the tiny, naked body swaying lifeless and exposed in the rain, hanged by the neck with a clothesline lashed around the largest branch of a tree. The scream would not come.

He must have fallen asleep while staring out that window, for now he sees another scene. He stands at the front entrance to his dining room. All is at it was before, all bright and cheerful in the morning sunshine, with his family-- his family!-- seated at the table for Sunday dinner. He glides inside, but trips over the body of a dog lying before the table. It is Conroy, stiff and bloated with gas, his shriveled tongue thrust out between canine teeth. Down on his knees now, he holds out his heavy arms in front of him, as if in prayer. Katie turns her head and gapes at him, her stare an accusation, her once beautiful face now marred by a frozen mouth notched like an open beer can. Jenny cries at her place at the table. She is tied to her chair and will not look at him. Max, sweet innocent Max, gets up from the table to bring him a plate of food. There are deep bruises under the garrotted flesh of his tiny neck. With powdery hands blue-gray from the grave, Max passes him the dinner plate. On it is a writhing copperhead, its fangs buried in its own back, twisting and flopping on the plate. With numb hands he tries to take the plate from Max, but his heavy arms are exhausted from holding them outstretched for so long, so long, and the plate slips from his fingers. It does not break because it hits something soft. He looks down, and lying on the floor under him is Billie Amery Gwin, who spreads his hands palm-up on the floor and grins his malignant invitation: Whoa, I give. Your move, Chief.

Peyton Farris gripped the heavy gun in both hands and fired, blowing most of his attacker's head down the incline of the aisle. The shot rang out, echoing throughout the darkened corridors of the Owl Creek Super Saver Cinema 14.

Author David Ballard reports that this story has been optioned as a feature film by 2Bridges, Inc. in New York, and is scheduled to go into production some time next year. His short story "Child Support," was reprinted in Best American Mystery Stories 1998, edited by Sue Grafton, and it was turned into the short film, "Sporting Dog," in 1999.

Ballard has been an assistant editor for Dread: Tales of the Uncanny and Grotesque for two years, where he also contributes a regular column, "One Flew Over the Gargoyle's Nest."