The Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen by Ellen Datlow Read Free Book Online

contagion than as mortar.
    The Tin Man’s cabin sat across from me, wearing its abandonment like a badge. The logs sagged, eaten by dry rot and unable to sustain their weight. Years had passed since glass sealed the windows and thick cobwebs, choked with dead insects, served as the only curtains. The stone chimney wore moss and ivy like a fur coat, its only protection against the cold. Large gaps riddled the roof ’s green slate like open sores. In the places where there were not yet holes the sun glinted off shallow pools of water.
    I stood and crossed the road, glancing left and right along its bumpy length—no one was visible in either direction. Not the intrepid trio or their hanged observer.
    Light fell through the rear windows and the roof, illuminating the room. The sun had almost died in the west, but it was enough so I could pick out the familiar details of Denise’s apartment.
    From the front window to the door, I picked out the vague outlines of furniture. A mildewed couch slumped on broken legs. Two rickety crates supported several planks that served as a table, with an apish skull still wearing shreds of flesh as a centerpiece. Instead of the entertainment center, a cauldron sat before the fireplace, its mealy contents still bubbling.
    A mask hung above the mantle like a trophy stuffed and mounted by a hunter. The facial lines were soft, cheeks frozen in a perpetual smile, spawning dimples on both corners. But the eyes were empty and soulless, the mouth a toothless hole, and they sucked away whatever resemblance to humanity the mask ever possessed.
    It was Denise.
    I backed away from the cabin, dazed by what I’d seen. Before I knew it, I’d crossed the road to my original entry point, just as a dark shape moved across the cabin roof, catching my eye. The Wicked Witch froze, straddling the peak like an Impressionist vision of the Statue of Liberty, broom held high in place of a torch.
    “It took you long enough, Michael,” she said, her smile as uneven as the road. “I thought I’d need to send someone out after you again.”
    “I don’t know what you’re thinking, Denise, but I’m finished with these dreams.”
    She cackled. “Stubborn to a fault, Michael. I love that. The longer you doubt, the closer I get. Eventually, it will be too late. . . .”
    I walked towards the cabin, my first steps tentative as loose bricks threatened to turn my ankles. I stopped once, crouched, pulled one broken piece loose, steeled myself against the slimy feel as I clenched it in my fist. I needed a weapon. I didn’t think this ball-sized brick would hurt her, but it might serve as a distraction.
    “You’re right. I don’t believe.” Debris littered the yard between the cabin and the road and matched the landscape of my chaotic dreams. “You’ve drugged or hypnotized me. Whichever, I don’t care. It’s over.”
    From behind the trees the Scarecrow moved into the clearing. Dorothy and the Tin Man skulked in his shadow.
    “Calling in your troops, Denise?” I asked.
    Age lines shredded each of their faces, changing grins into something as old as the brown apples piled under the trees, something as calculated as the way the trees’ prehensile branches reached out, straining against the roots that kept each woody demon in place.
    “Her name isn’t Denise,” said the Tin Man, brandishing an axe that looked freshly honed. “I don’t think she has one.”
    “Names don’t matter here,” the Scarecrow said.
    “Is that why you told me to talk to Stan?”
    The Scarecrow cringed, glanced at the Wicked Witch. His companions backed away. I looked at the Wicked Witch too, expecting her to nail his straw frame with a quick fireball.
    “You warned him?” she asked.
    “No! No! I was trying to prepare him!”
    The Wicked Witch leaped off the roof, black dress billowing behind her like crows hovering around a fresh kill. She landed in the middle of the road, nimble as a black widow.
    Forget the rock, I thought. I