A Head Full of Ghosts Read online

  I humored him even though I wanted to drop to the floor in a boneless heap and weave myself into the fibers of the throw rug, to disappear under everyone’s feet and to be forgotten. I danced on my toes until they cramped while he halfheartedly opened and closed his outstretched legs in weak attempts to catch me. Desperate, I escalated my attack, smacking and pinching his legs. It worked. Dad lunged off the couch with a fierceness and power that was as exhilarating as it was frightening, and he grabbed my arms and pulled me into him. He tickled me and rubbed his coarse beard on my cheeks while I giggled and screamed for him to stop. He stopped too quickly and let me slide off him, thudding to the floor.

  “Ow, Dad!”

  “Sorry. Look, I’m trying to watch TV. Go upstairs and see what Mommy is doing.”

  I tried going after his legs again, but he crossed them and said, “Seriously. Stop bugging me.”

  Fine. I ran up the stairs on my toes as quietly as I could. Thank you, Coach-Dad. I stopped at the top of the stairs and pressed up against the wall opposite the banister. I slowly peeked around the corner and saw Marjorie’s door was shut. I did not want her to hear me. I’d been avoiding being alone with her since the sunroom incident.

  The hallway was dark and the old, brass-plated, push-button light switch was right next to my face. Nose to nose with my distorted reflection in the brass, I didn’t press the little black button, thinking it was best not to change or disturb anything up here. I considered going back downstairs and trying to get Dad to play with me again, or sulking next to him quietly on the couch.

  My room was too far away, at the other end of the yawning chasm of hallway. The bathroom door, which was adjacent to Marjorie’s room was also shut, but inside the fan was on, running roughly; revving then slowing like a lawn mower about to run out of gas. Marjorie had been spending more and more time in the bathroom, usually with the fan on, sometimes with the sink running water, much to Dad’s consternation. Water wasn’t free, you know.

  I relaxed. Marjorie wouldn’t hear me creeping in the hallway; the fan was too loud. Instead of the long walk and then barricading myself in my room, I bounded across the hall to Mom’s and threw open her door.

  I said, “Dad said I should see what you’re doing,” fully knowing that Mom would be mad at Dad for sending me up there to bother her when he should be watching and/or playing with me.

  The comforter and sheets had been kicked off the foot of my parents’ bed. Mom wasn’t in the room. Marjorie was. She sat propped up against the headboard with pillows folded and stuffed behind her back. Her breathing was shallow, but rapid, and she grunted, snarled, sighed; a sputtering engine, the dying fan in our bathroom. Her head was thrown back, chin pointed at the ceiling, as sharp as the tip of an umbrella, eyes closed so tight, like she was hiding them deep inside her head. She had on a too-small black T-shirt, tight enough to outline her rib cage. No pants, no underwear. Her hands were between her long, skinny, pale legs. Both hands, and they gyrated up and down, making wet sounds.

  I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there and watched. I wanted to yell What are you doing? I don’t know what you’re doing! even though I did know this secret that wasn’t a secret. I felt myself flush, turning red on the outside and white on the inside, and then vice versa. I didn’t exactly feel sick to my stomach, the feeling was lower, and deeper.

  Her hands moved faster and she grew louder, and I didn’t want anyone else in the house to hear her, so I quietly said, “Shh,” and thought about shutting the door but I couldn’t. I was afraid to look at her hands and look between her legs, but I still leaned hard to my right, peering around the hard corner of her knees and thighs.

  Marjorie rocked in place, her entire body moved in rhythm with her frantically working hands. She opened her mouth and released a deep sigh.

  Politely peering wasn’t enough. I tiptoed down to the foot of the bed, and with the new vantage I saw that her hands were red with dark blood, and so was the white sheet beneath, and so was between her legs.

  I ran out of the room, stumbling into the hallway, and banged on the bathroom door. “Mom! Mom! Something’s wrong with Marjorie! She’s bleeding.” I tried shouting directly into the wood of the door. I didn’t want Dad to hear me.

  Mom couldn’t hear me over the fan and yelled back, “What? Just give me a sec. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  I turned and Marjorie was in the hallway behind me, perched precariously on her impossibly thin legs, back arched up against the wall, her body a new punctuation mark. One hand still manipulated herself, the other left red smears on the wallpaper. She panted and spoke the same gibberish made of rocks and broken glass that she’d spoken that night in the kitchen. Her eyes opened and then rolled into the back of her head, showing off those horrible bright whites with their convoluted red maps. She laughed, groaned, and said in small, tight whisper, “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god . . .” Then something that might’ve been nonsense or it might’ve been I can still hear them. She stopped talking, and she grunted loudly, like she’d just taken a punch to the gut. Her body shook, and she urinated and defecated right there in the hallway. The smell of shit, blood, and piss was overpowering and I tasted pennies in my mouth. She slid down the wall and sat in her own puddle, rubbing her hands on the floor, herself, and the walls.

  I screamed for Mom to please help, to please let me in. I closed my eyes and I hung on the doorknob, turning it with both hands. The bathroom door shook and rattled in its frame. Mom was yelling now too, sensing my panic on the outside.

  Dad bellowed our names from down below, those powerless one-word prayers for peace. And he thundered up the stairs, shaking the railing and banisters, sundering the house beneath him, sounding like the end of the world.

  CHAPTER 14

  THE LAST FINAL GIRL

  Yeah, it’s just a BLOG! (How retro!) Or is THE LAST FINAL GIRL the greatest blog ever!?!? Exploring all things horror and horrific. Books! Comics! Video games! TV! Movies! High school! From the gooey gory midnight show cheese to the highfalutin art-house highbrow. Beware of spoilers. I WILL SPOIL YOU!!!!!

  BIO: Karen Brissette

  Tuesday, November, 15, 20 _ _

  The Possession, Fifteen Years Later: Episode 1 (Part 2)

  All right, all right, let’s dig into the first episode, shall we? WE SHALL!!!

  First, a quick addendum/important follow-up point to the previous blog post about the show’s opening. Besides serving as the patriarchal-breakdown theme of the show (as I already discussed in GREAT detail), the show’s opening explains (without having to spell it out for everyone) how a family would possibly consider allowing a network to broadcast their living nightmare: a teenage daughter going through a particularly nasty, devastating psychotic break, while believing (or pretending, yeah?) she was possessed by a demon, and a stereotypical demon at that. Let me say it simply: The Barretts were about to default on their mortgage and lose the house. They needed cash, and quick! The show’s producers paid them that quick cash for their televised pounds of flesh.

  (aside 1: Sixth Finger Productions was a new company headed by Randy Francis, who was a twentysomething venture capitalist [um, thanks for the money, Dad, gimme more] and who has since carved out a niche producing direct-to-video fantasy flicks that rip off J. K. Rowling, George R. R. Martin, J. R. R. Tolkien, and other fantasy writers with initials in their names. How Sixth Finger heard of the Barretts’ story, how they knew to swoop in and offer financial salvation, and exactly where all the money came from before the Discovery Channel became involved is still a bit of a mystery. Father David Wanderly, the priest who befriended John Barrett, is the clear go-between for the Barretts and the production company. However, rumors of Wanderly’s involvement with conservative PACs, their monies being rerouted to the production, backroom deals with the archdiocese to keep his parish’s church from closing, and rich and powerful and mustache-twisting Opus Dei members ominously being involved are all iffy hearsay at best, as far as little old me can
tell. I’ve found both unauthorized accounts of the show [To Hell and Back: The Real Story Behind The Possession and Possession, Lies, and Videotape: The Dark Angels Behind the Possession] lacking in the how-the-show-came-to-be department, and frankly, poorly written overall. Yes, I said that.)

  Okay. Enough of that. For realsies this time. Let’s get to it. To the it! To the fictional possession of poor Marjorie Barrett, age fourteen.

  After the intro, the bulk of the pilot is a string of reenactments, and sets of interviews with the parents and Father Wanderly. If the intro was the opening argument about what was at stake for the soul of family values and patriarchy in America, the meat of the pilot was the show laying out their evidence of Marjorie’s possession by an evil spirit, entity, sprite, demon, impish ne’er-do-well.

  The story they present sounds a tad familiar, yeah? That’s because it should.

  The Exorcist (the movie directed by William Friedkin based on the novel by William Peter Blatty) is a 1970s cultural touchtone and phenomenon. Admittedly, it has lost some of its punch, its visceral impact. To wit, aside 2.

  (aside 2: I asked the neighbor’s twelve-year-old kid what his favorite movie was and he surprised me by saying The Exorcist. I asked him why. He said that, “It was really funny.” I know, the kid is a total psychopath!!!! And put three locks on my doors now!!!! But you get my point. Kids these days, ain’t a’scared by that movie no more.)

  But, sheeeeet, when that movie originally came out, it messed people up big-time. Many a critic/academic/smart lady has written about how The Exorcist combined the Hollywood budget and art-house street cred with exploitation, and heavy on the exploitation. I mean, people lined up to see the thing because they’d heard about Regan’s potty mouth (literal and figurative!), the crucifix masturbation (fun at parties, not that I’ve tried it, no), and spinning head (that I’ve tried!!!). It wasn’t the power of Christ that compelled you, but gore, baby, gore! You *Karen wags her finger* shouldn’t be surprised that the lukewarm parade of PG-13 possession movies of the 2000s never came close to approaching the critical or popular successes of The Exorcist. The Exorcist was a wildly popular event horror film, and one that, unlike its politically progressive/transgressive, indie counterparts (Night of the Living Dead, Last House on the Left, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), just happened to be one of the most conservative horror movies ever. Good vs. evil! Yay, good! The pure, pristine little white girl saved by white men and religion! Yay, white men and religion! All you need is love faith! The triumphant return of the status quo! Family values! Heroic middle-classers battling a foreign boogeyman (the demon Pazuzu was literally a brown-skinned foreigner first glimpsed by Father Merrin in the movie’s opening in Iraq)!

  Yes, much of The Possession follows the urtext of The Exorcist and that of other horror films. At times, the reenactment’s obviously brazen sameness to classic scenes strikes an innate cultural chord (yeah, I’m making that shit up as I go, sounds good though) within us, and in a weirdly reassuring way authenticating what we’re seeing. Other scenes are clever and even subtle enough in their deviations from their antecedents to somehow feel new again. Or their antecedents are obscure enough to feel new, or new enough. Yeah.

  Let me break down a bunch of the reenactments:

  —Marjorie stands over Merry’s bed, hovering over her sister, which clearly recalls the found footage is-it-a-haunted-house-or-demon-possession movie? Paranormal Activity. Both camera angles and lighting are similar. Marjorie is dressed just like Katie, wearing boxers and a tight T-shirt. The Possession spices up the simple dread of hovering over a sleeping loved one with Marjorie pinching her little sister’s nose shut. It adds a layer of sadism that’s subtle and hints at possible greater acts of violence.

  (aside 3: Yeah, more politics. Sorry. But it’s just so there and waggling in our faces!!!! The reenactment actress playing Marjorie, Liz Jaffe, was no fourteen years old. She was twenty-three and looked it. Marjorie was still a kid. Miss Jaffe was not. Liz had similar hair color, skin tone, etc., to Marjorie, but she was obviously more physically . . . cough . . . mature. She wore makeup, tight clothing, and in the masturbation scene, no clothing, but oh, she had on a few digitally blurred pixels to protect the poor audience from her nasty lady parts. So, yeah, “the male gaze” [please see Laura Mulvey’s essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”] is in full effect in The Possession at both extremes. The camera ogles a sexualized Liz Jaffe whenever she’s on screen. When the real Marjorie is eventually on screen [at the end of the pilot and in the following episodes], she’s ogled in a different though no less demeaning way. Real Marjorie is an object to be observed, but never too closely as we the voyeurs might find she’s a real teenage girl and actually begin to be concerned for her mental health and general well-being. John Barrett represented the valiant struggle of patriarchy in our decaying, secular, postfeminist society, and Marjorie was the withering object of the camera’s male gaze.)

  —Marjorie projectile vomiting all over her family as they watched Finding Bigfoot (psst, they never found her!) in the living room was an obvious nod to The Exorcist. Maybe not so obvious, this scene is so over the top in its gastric viscera, it recalls the spewing geysers of blood and goo from Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead movies (the originals, not the shitty remakes).

  —Marjorie’s postpuke, backward crawl out of the living room, away from the family, and up the stairs is the film negative of perhaps the most famous piece of celluloid to be cut from a film: Regan’s contorted “spiderwalk” down the stairs in The Exorcist. The special effects in both the show and the movie aren’t convincing and each “walk” scene suffers because of them.

  —We get a medley of Marjorie performing contortions and linguistic horrors in the hospital and in her psychiatrist’s office. The inner demon getting its groove on for the benefit of the men (always men) of reason and science in the white antiseptic hospital room just might be the second most stereotypical scene in a possession movie (with the actual clergy-performed exorcism as number one). The Exorcist, The Rite, The Possession (the 2012 movie by Sam Raimi, featuring a sneaky little Dybbuk hidden in a Jewish wine cabinet box bought at a yard sale . . . SOLD!), season two of the gory and horny TV series American Horror Story, and . . . you get the idea. Marjorie’s psychiatrist, Dr. Hamilton, refused (of course) to be interviewed for the show. Instead we’re treated to creepy witness-protection-type interviews of orderlies, nurses, and office secretaries.

  —Marjorie’s midnight screamfest, the jangling camera running down the hallway after Merry, and Marjorie’s wall climb? See The Last Exorcism. But don’t see its dumbass ending.

  —Dipping briefly into the second episode, there’s the basement reenactment. Marjorie surprises her sister, Merry, down in the basement. Her cold clammy hand lands on Merry’s shoulder. She whispers more sweet nothings ramblings, clods of dirt spill from her mouth, cue the eyes rolling white, and then she slowly walks after a screaming Merry up the stairs. Marjorie’s long hair hangs down over her face for most of the scene so that she resembles Sadako, the angry spirit of Ringu (or The Ring) and other J-horror films.

  —Okay, yeah, the masturbation reenactment scene. *Deep breath* In The Exorcist, it represents the ultimate blasphemy and proof positive that the girl is possessed by an evil spirit, right? A cute, innocent little girl (wearing a prim nightgown, btw) raving like Tourettic Louis C.K. and jamming Jesus Christ up her vagina so violently she bleeds all over the place. Score one for Pazuzu, and yeah, we’re down that it must be the devil making her do it. So to speak. The Possession’s masturbation scene is both more problematic and disturbing. It begins with a camera run from Merry’s POV as she opens her parents’ bedroom door. It’s dark, but we can see Liz Jaffe as Marjorie in profile. She’s on the bed wearing only a small black bra. Digital pixilation boxes obscure her buttocks and her hands. The camera switches away from Merry’s POV to a straight-on, close-up, loving view of Marjorie’s face. The camera pulls back and there’s a series of jump cuts that are
so fast we feel like we really can’t see much of anything in real time. I’ve watched this scene with countless friends and I’ve asked them what they saw after viewing it in real time and no two answers are the same, until I slow it down. Going frame by frame we see the following: Marjorie biting her lower lip; a shadow on the wall of a bedpost, and can we say phallus?; forearms framing her six-pack abs and navel; open mouth and tongue on her teeth; biceps framing her cleavage; a white inner thigh; blood on white sheets; a wooden cross hanging on the wall; her closed eyes, white forehead, and wooden headboard; a bearded male face covered in blood (hmm, Satan?); a full shot between her legs, dark and pixilated so we can’t see her actual fingers in her actual dirty lady parts vagina; the bedpost again, only its shadow is larger than it was previously; her knees together; the wooden cross again, totally in shadow; her feet with curled toes; then finally three different shots of blood on the sheets before the camera returns to her little sister, Merry, but not her POV. After the frenetic cuts we see Marjorie stumbling in the hallway wiping her bloody fingers (also see the locker room scene in Carrie) on the walls and we hear her peeing on the floor, but just in case we don’t get it, Merry says, “You’re peeing on the floor!” (note! Regan peed on the floor in The Exorcist but it was in a scene separate from the masturbation scene.) Marjorie says, “I can still hear them. They’ve been here forever!” in a TV-speakers-rattling modulated voice that crosses the Cookie Monster with Wicked Witch of the West and the “help me” man-fly from The Fly. The scene ends awkwardly with the camera POV falling to the floor and on its side as though, just like Marjorie, it has blown its wad is spent. Marjorie is on the floor, her back to us, buttocks obscured by more pixilation, and Mom and Dad Barrett rush to the hallway and huddle around Marjorie’s body. The camera lingers and its male gaze is conflicted, as it has been during the entire masturbation reenactment scene. It’s both titillated and horrified by the natural expression of a teenage girl’s body.