FICTION BY LISA MORTON
Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of non-fiction books, and prose writer whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening.”
She is the author of four novels and 200 short stories, she is a world-class Halloween and paranormal expert, and her awards include the Bram Stoker Award, the Rondo Hatton Award, and the Black Quill Award. Her latest releases are Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances and The Art of the Zombie Movie, and she is also the host of the weekly Ghost Report podcast.
Lisa lives in Los Angeles and online at www.lisamorton.com.
THE WITCH AT MIDNIGHT
by Lisa Morton
THE WITCH (1923, d. Delbert Vidalgo) – The Witch is a lost silent film, less famed than the Lon Chaney vehicle London After Midnight only because it apparently never saw release (although it was completed). Starring Frances Hart in the title role, the plot followed a naïve young woman (played by Mary Miles Minter in her last film role before she retired after being implicated in the murder of William Desmond Taylor) who seeks the help of a witch to win the man of her dreams. Produced by Carl Laemmle, the film would have been the initial entry in the Universal horror cycle, but after one press screening it was shelved; Laemmle himself was said to have destroyed the negative. Neither Hart nor director Delbert Vidalgo ever worked in Hollywood again; Vidalgo died three years later of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and Hart simply vanished. Thanks to nothing more than a handful of surviving stills, the film continues to excite curiosity and speculation. – From The Encyclopedia of American Horror Movies (2nd edition) by Daniel Maltz
The Creature Walks Among Us finished at 11:47 pm, and Luke turned off the DVD player, flicking through the remote’s buttons. “Thirteen minutes to go. Perfect.”
Keri downed her glass of pumpkin spice liqueur, debating whether or not to have another. On the one hand, it might help mollify her irritation over the evening: once again she’d given in to what Luke wanted to do. They could have been at a party with her friends right now, laughing and talking and playing silly Halloween party games, but no – they were here, in Luke’s living room before his huge TV and getting drunk by themselves.
On the other hand, she really did want to see the premiere of The Witch. When it had been announced a month ago that a copy had been located and would be screened at midnight on Halloween, she and Luke had both been excited. She’d been hearing about this movie since she’d been a monster-loving kid who found her dad’s stash of old horror movie magazines in the garage (about all he’d left behind when he’d taken off for good not long after Keri’s 8th birthday); she’s spent hours staring at the magazine pages, mesmerized by the photos from the 1923 film. One shot in particular, that showed lead actress Frances Hart leering at a skull, still held her spellbound. Something about the woman’s dark eyes, her painted lips, her wild hair…it all said freedom and power to Keri.
Freedom and power…two things Keri seldom felt, at least in the year since she’d been with Luke.
When they’d first met, she fell for his unabashed love of scary movies; when she talked about how much she loved them, he didn’t peer at her curiously like so many men did. No snide jokes, no sidelong glances; instead, he’d mapped out a first date for them at a theater that was showing a seasonal double feature of Trick ‘r Treat and Haunt.
Now, a year later, he was still the one deciding what to do on their dates.
Keri had brought up the party, of course – “We could be back in time for the The Witch,” she’d argued—but Luke had already planned out their Halloween. “Awww, babe, c’mon – this is our special night! Just the two of us, some good booze and the weirdest snacks we can find…I’ll even let you pick the movies.” Her friends were disappointed, had teased her about Luke in that “we don’t really mean it/we really mean it” way, but at least she had enjoyed the movies (uninterrupted since Luke’s apartment complex had zero trick or treaters). She’d opted for a mix of decades: Theatre of Blood from 1973, 2008’s Tokyo Gore Police, and finally the 1956 sequel The Creature Walks Among Us, a film that had made her cry as a child because of misguided attempts to turn the Creature humans.
Deciding in favor of another glass of the too-sweet pumpkin liqueur, Keri retrieved it from the kitchen, refilled her jack-o’-lantern-patterned tumbler, and returned to the living room to see that Luke had the television set up for the streaming of The Witch. An animated clock in the center of the frame counted down the minutes and seconds.
As Keri sipped her drink (while Luke finished another pumpkin ale), she said, “Did you hear they got Daniel Maltz to do an intro tonight?”
Frowning, Luke said, “Didn’t he die a year ago? Right after his husband was killed in that accident?”
“Oh,” Keri said, checking on her phone, “yeah, he did. I guess they taped it a while back.”
Luke crumpled his empty can, popped a new one, and asked, “Did you read about how they’re rolling this out differently in each time zone so everyone sees it at exactly midnight in their area?”
“So that means people on the east coast have already seen it.”
“Whoa, that’s right.” They both opened social media apps, looking for reviews.
Luke spoke first. “Here’s Tony Wagner in New York…he posted earlier today about how long he’s been wanting to see it…” He scrolled through the phone for a few seconds before adding, “Weird…by now he would’ve finished it, but he didn’t say anything.”
Keri found her friend Abel’s feed because they’d been talking just earlier today about tonight’s premiere. She froze for a few seconds when she saw his last post, made at 1:04 am his time. “Luke…”
He looked up, curious.
“Here’s what my friend Abel posted tonight.”
She held the phone up so Luke could see the two words Abel had written: DON’T WATCH.
Shrugging, Luke said, “Maybe that’s about something else.”
“I don’t think so. The film runs 63 minutes, right? So he posted this at 1:04 his time – 64 minutes after the movie started.”
“So maybe the movie’s bad…or maybe your friend’s just got sucky taste.”
Keri tried a DM to Abel: Was The Witch that bad?
The reply came instantly: This account has been deactivated. When she tried to return to Abel’s last post, it didn’t come up.
She blurted out a cry that caused Luke to look up. “Abel’s deactivated his account. That’s just…” She wanted to say, Impossible, because they’d communicated almost daily via the platform’s private messaging. She didn’t even have Abel’s e-mail.
“Wow. I guess he really didn’t like the movie.”
Keri stifled a jolt of anger. It was just like Luke to turn something distressing, especially surrounding one of her friends, into a joke. She almost called him on it, but was distracted when the countdown on the screen turned red—sixty seconds left.
Luke snuggled back in his faux leather chair, taking a long slug from his ale before announcing, “Okay, here we go.” He raised the can over his head, calling out, “Delbert Vidalgo, tonight we salute you on Halloween!”
Keri stayed silent as the animated countdown continued—30 seconds, 15, 10, 5…0.
An image appeared on the screen: a medium shot showing a man in his forties dressed in a suit. “Good evening and Happy Halloween,” the man said. “I’m Daniel Maltz, and I’m here to welcome you to the premiere screening of The Witch.”
Keri nearly laughed at the absurdity of it—not only had Maltz died of brain cancer a year ago, he’d been 82. “That’s not Daniel Maltz,” she said.
“It looks like him when he was younger,” Luke responded.
Keri peered at the screen and realized Luke was right—it did look like photos she’d seen of the esteemed horror scholar when he’d been working on the first edition of his essential Encyclopedia while he taught at the University of Pittsburgh. She listened as the Daniel Maltz on the television recited the known facts about The Witch, and she said, “It’s AI, right? They used AI to recreate him.”
“I…well, I guess, but if that’s AI it’s really good.”
Leaning forward to look more closely, Keri could find no giveaways in the image – no “uncanny valley” effect when the head turned slightly, no abrupt appearance of a sixth finger, no shifting pixels. It looked completely real and human.
“Maybe,” Luke said between gulps of brew, “they recorded this a while back.”
Shaking her head, Keri said, “He was 82 when he died. This guy is maybe half that. How could he have known 40 years ago that The Witch would be rediscovered? And why would they have waited that long to release it?”
“Yeah, okay…that’s messed up,” Luke answered.
They waited as Maltz (or, Keri thought, whatever AI is pretending to be him) finished the introduction. He talked about the film’s history, about how it was found on a paper negative registered to the Library of Congress and then forgotten until it had been recently (recently!) rediscovered, about how it had been patiently restored.
“Just get to the movie already,” Luke shouted, crunching another empty can.
“And now,” the pixel-man on the screen said, “we’re in the witching hour on Samhain, so here’s The Witch.”
“Samhain?” Luke said. “What are we, Druids?”
The movie started, and it was immediately clear that this was a silent film—it had the flickering, hypnotic quality that indicated something shot at a different frame rate from contemporary movies. A title card with a recent orchestral score laid over it segued to an inter-title: The Witch practices magic in her village.
The film cut to Frances Hart stirring a bubbling cauldron, surrounded by stone walls bearing shelves of books and potions, and Keri felt her pulse quicken. This – THIS – was what she recalled from those childhood moments spent perusing her vanished father’s old magazines, when an image of a beautiful middle-aged woman radiating focused intensity had become a part of her forever. Now here was that still photograph, but it was moving now, and she nearly wept at the impossible magic of the movies, as powerful as any of the occult spells enacted on the screen. It was Halloween (Samhain?) night, that most ancient of magickal times positioned between the solstice and the equinox, and the world suddenly felt alive around her.
“I didn’t expect that opening,” Luke murmured. “I mean, that sacrifice was seriously gross. I know this was before the Hays Code, but still…damn.”
Keri blinked in surprise. “What sacrifice?”
Lucas tore his eyes from the screen long enough to look at her, his lips twisting into a sneer. “Jesus, babe, that thing with the goat. How much of that pumpkin spice crap have you had?” Snickering, he returned his attention to his ale and the movie.
Keri knew she wasn’t so drunk that she could’ve missed the sacrifice of a goat.
A new card: On Halloween night the Witch prepares her spells.
“Oh, wow,” Keri blurted out. “I didn’t know this would be set on Halloween!”
Lucas didn’t respond. His eyes were wide as he stared at the screen, where the Witch cackled as she threw ingredients into her bubbling cauldron. Her appearance fascinated Keri: she wasn’t the clichéd aged hag nor the sexy young enchantress, but was instead a woman in her late thirties with waves of flowing dark hair, a tall black hat, and a fitted dress that revealed a curved and toned body. She moved with elegance and awareness, and Keri wondered what she’d done before The Witch. Her charisma was undeniable, even a century later.
The story moved from the Witch to young Mabel, played by the lovely ingénue Mary Miles Minter, and Keri could see why the actress had broken hearts around Hollywood, even as hers was being broken by her beau in the movie. She glanced across a crowded ballroom during a Halloween party and the shot irised in to show her fellah kissing another woman. Mabel fled the party in tears.
“Asshole,” said Keri.
“Dude’s a player,” said Luke.
Keri realized then that she would break up with Luke tomorrow.
But for now she was watching The Witch, and she let the story carry her.
Sobbing, Mabel staggered away from the club where her heart had just been broken and found herself lost in the deep woods. Spotting a light between the trees, she made her way to a small crooked house; she hesitated there, looking in fearfully. The Witch looked up from her potion, spotted the observer, and beckoned her to enter.
Somewhere outside Luke’s apartment, from another unit in the building, a man screamed, not playfully. Keri looked up in shock, but Luke didn’t; his eyes never left the screen.
“Luke?” she asked.
He didn’t respond. He was breathing fast, almost panting.
Don’t watch.
Keri knew something was happening, something beyond an old movie playing on a modern television. Movies were magic, yes, but this was magick, something older, primeval, something that could open doorways and change worlds.
On the screen, the Witch beckoned to Mabel and her lips moved, leading to the next inter-title card:
“Would you join the Sisterhood?”
Keri gaped. The Sisterhood? In college, she’d once done a paper on a notorious 1921 book called The Witch-Cult in Western Europe that suggested there was a longstanding, hidden pagan cult throughout Europe…but finding a reference to that in a 1923 Hollywood movie?
On the screen, the betrayed young woman nodded, entering the crooked house, stepping beneath the tilted lintel.
“Welcome,” the Witch said as the orange firelight flickered on her dark red gown.
And Keri was the young woman in the movie, not Mary Miles Minter, not some spurned lover named Mabel. It was Keri, there with the Witch on Halloween, in a world full of sound and color. The Witch (and Keri knew then that there had never been an actress named “Frances Hart”) gave her a warm smile (not a toothless grin) that Keri returned.
“What do you desire on this Samhain?” the Witch asked her.
Without hesitation, Keri answered, “Everything.”
The Witch embraced her, accepting her into the ancient practice. The veil between worlds lifted, and Keri saw endless possibilities. She simultaneously saw the Witch offering her an intricately-bound book of shadows, and Luke, his face frozen in open-eyed horror as his fingers twitched in a tarantella. She knew the truth: that the men who had created The Witch realized too late what they had unleashed, who “Frances Hart” really was, and they’d attempted to destroy it. But the Witch had bided her time, waiting, knowing the film would reach the widest audience possible this year, this night, when gateways previously shut opened wide. There would be accountings on a mass scale, and finally a Sisterhood that would reign supreme.
The Witch stepped out of the screen and into Luke’s living room. If he was aware of her, as he sat paralyzed, he gave no sign.
Keri, though, trembled and knelt. The Witch placed a hand on her head at the same moment that she blessed tens of thousands of others. Keri looked up and a single word escaped her.
“Mother.”
Together, they walked out into the primeval magick of the Halloween night.
