Midnight Special by Phoef Sutton Page A

filtered through the headstones, more to provide atmosphere than to add illumination. The only word Matt could think of to fit this place was a word from his childhood, a word he hadn’t used in years—it was spooky . Like a Halloween haunted house spooky. Like funhouse spooky.
    When he was a kid, he would have eaten this place up with a spoon. He wasn’t a kid anymore.
    The hearse rolled to stop.
    “Last stop!” Barnabas cackled as he opened the door.

    Eva spread a blanket on the ground, as if they were having a picnic in a park. The crowd, once it was let in, filled the rolling hills like a fog. Barnabas sat in among them, a part of them, but separate. Matt marveled at the way he seemed to ride above the throng, passing his hands through them like the pope in Vatican Square. They worshipped him, Matt realized, and the thought made him feel a little sick in the pit of his stomach.
    Barnabas cracked open a bottle of Craftsman beer and took a long drink from it. He leaned back on a headstone and sighed. “Isn’t it a beautiful night, Darren?”
    Matt looked around. There was no one named Darren in the immediate vicinity. Just Eva stretched out over a grave like it was a tanning bed and Flint, carrying a basket of chicken and waffles out of the hearse. The running sores in Flint’s eyes were getting worse.
    “Who’s Darren?” Matt asked.
    “Darren McGavin. You know, Kolchak, The Night Stalker .” Barnabas reached behind himself and tapped the gravestone that he was resting on. It was a tall piece of marble, and over Barnabas’s head Matt could read the name etched in it. It looked familiar.
    “He was the father in A Christmas Story , right?” Matt said.
    “OK, we’ll accept that,” Barnabas said, sounding aggrieved. “All the Hollywood luminaries are buried here. DeMille. Valentino. Douglas Fairbanks. Junior and Senior. Mel Blanc. Peter Lorre. Even Johnny Ramone. I’m going to be buried over there. If I ever die.”
    Matt took his duffel bag out and propped it up underneath himself—somehow he didn’t think it was right to use a headstone as a pillow.
    Flint put the basket down in front of Barnabas and cleared his throat. He was obviously bringing up a touchy subject. “So, Barney…did you ever get the chance to read that new draft I did on my screenplay? You’ve had it for a couple of weeks now. Do you have any notes?”
    “I said I’d get to it!” Barnabas snapped. The rudeness of his tone was palpable to Matt. Matt would never talk that way to someone who had just brought him a basket of chicken and waffles.
    “He thinks I have nothing to do but read his shitty spec screenplays,” Barnabas said, laughing to Matt, as if Matt would understand, even though Matt didn’t know what a spec screenplay was, let alone what notes were.
    “As a matter of fact, I did read it,” Barnabas went on. “It has promise, but, man, the third act still feels like I’ve wiped my ass with it a million times. It’s so predictable! You know what it reads like? A fucking Lifetime made-for-TV movie! I’d have flushed it down the toilet if it wouldn’t have stopped up the drain with its clichés!”
    Flint blinked at him. One of the maggots in his right eye popped out and jumped down his cheek as his eyelid snapped shut. “OK,” he said, “but you think it has promise, right? If I work on it, you’ll read it again?”
    “I suppose. But don’t expect me to keep wasting my time with such utter, boring, puerile bullshit, all right?”
    “Thanks.” Flint scuttled off to sit with Eva.
    Barnabas chuckled and whispered to Matt, “I didn’t actually read it, but I didn’t have to, to know it sucked.”
    Barnabas settled down and sat facing the wall of a huge mausoleum that Matt guessed was going to be the screen. It was like the drive-in movie theater Matt went to once as a kid. Except, instead of cars, everyone was sitting on graves.
    “Only in Hollywood, huh?” Barnabas said, as if echoing Matt’s