Hope Falls Read online

  Too late, she found out that the rumors were true. One Monday, she got her script shockingly discovered that Jackson was going to be shot by a mugger while they were at Hope Falls Mall. The entire set had a waterfall running behind it and every time she was on set, she could hear the roar of water.

  Hope Falls, the town, is a fictional place based in the western United States. The old shows told the story of how the Stevens’ had come to the town and found the waterfall and named it Hope Falls, after the hope in their hearts. Hope Falls was essentially the story of the Stevens Family and all who knew them.

  Miriam remembered reading that scene and feeling a cold, twisting pain in her stomach. That cold, twisting knot of worry that was gnawing at her insides. She ignored it, not really believing that anything would actually happen. How many times in hindsight had she wished she had listened to her intuition.

  If she had, maybe Bruce would be alive today.

  Taking a hot sip of coffee, Miriam pictured the day clearly in her mind; it was branded there, burnt into her skull. She could close her eyes and replay each moment. They had come on set and Bruce had been rigged with fake blood that would burst when the fake gun was fired. They took their places and the director called action!

  "Mother, look at that!" Bruce had said, pointing to something in the Hope Falls Mall window. The patter of water was loud.

  "Oh, Jackson isn't that darling!" God she hated her dialogue. "Stacey would love that!" Stacey was Bruce's onscreen love, played by a young woman named Hillary Chase.

  "Oh, Mother!" Bruce said, hugging her tightly. He was careful not to put his head on Sylvia's shoulder, lest he get make up on her blazer. "Do you really think she would like it?"

  "Of course she will. She would be crazy not to." Miriam had always regretted that those were her last words to Bruce.

  They were both expecting it, but the gunshot echoed on the set, startling Miriam and causing her to jump back. Blood gushed out of Bruce’s chest, his neck, his stomach. Again the gun went of and again and again. Ten shots in all. Miriam remembered thinking there were a lot more bullets than a gun would normally hold.

  Blood poured from a wound in Bruce’s neck and dripped onto his shirt. Miriam ran to him and clutched him like the script said she should. "Oh, Jackson darling!" She expected to feel Bruce's blood packs squeezing out their ooze, but instead she felt the hot sticky flow of real blood. She looked into Bruce's eyes and saw the truth.

  "Oh god!" She screamed. "OH GOD!" She couldn't stop screaming. Bruce was dying in her arms. He fell and she grabbed him tighter, falling to the ground with him, cradling him in her arms. Bruce’s eyes sought hers.

  "Mi-Miriam..." he whispered.

  "It's Okay." Miriam touched a hand to his cheek.

  "It's going to be okay."

  "I...tell....love you...so much….you’re so beautiful…"

  "Don't speak, honey, don't speak." Blood bubbled out of his mouth and flowed down his chin. She kissed him on the forehead and felt him go limp in her arms."

  "CUT! Good work people!" The director came onto set and grabbed her, pulling her away from Bruce. "NO!" she screamed. "NO! You killed him, you killed him!" she screamed. She was taken off set and given a sedative.

  Later, Howard came to see her in her trailer.

  "I hear there was a commotion on set today." He said.

  "You can go fuck yourself."

  Howard came forward and slapped Miriam soundly across the cheek. "You remember who you're speaking to. Remember who holds the cards."

  The slap stunned Miriam out of her shock and fresh, hot tears began to run down her face. "Bruce, oh God Howard, Bruce, he-" She was babbling. She knew she was babbling, but she thought that if she stopped talking, her heart would break.

  "He had a lifetime contract." Howard said. "He knew what was happening." He patted her hand. "Don't worry, he didn't feel a thing."

  "His ratings…"

  "They were dropping, yes. He had to go, Miriam. I'm sorry."

  She missed Bruce horribly after he died, but she knew that if she said anything, to any of the authorities, they would most likely kill her.

  And besides, who was likely to believe her? She ate her bagel and than hopped in the shower. She was meeting DeDe for lunch at Spigo's. She needed some food therapy.

  TEN

  DeDe tells Miriam she needs a facial

  "Oh, god sweetie, you look horrible!" DeDe said. “You look tired. You need a facial.”

  They were sitting at a corner table in Spigo's, a fashionable Italian restaurant that served really wonderful mimosas. Miriam stirred hers with her finger, the ice clinking in the glass. She licked her finger and took a sip. "Thanks." She said.

  DeDe looked at her friend over the rim of her glass. White wine swirled at the bottom. "I'm sorry honey, but you do look awful. Have you been sleeping?"

  Miriam shook her head. "No, I've been having these…. Dreams." Last night, she had dreamt of Toby, sweet Toby. His face haunted her still.

  "Are you having nightmares?"

  Miriam smiled weakly and shook her head. "No, no, nothing like that."

  "Than what is it?" DeDe put down her drink. "Honey, what aren't you telling me?" DeDe put down her drink. "Is this about last night? Didn't the shoes help? Jimmy Choo’s make everyone feel better."

  "I'm okay." Miriam said. "Really."

  "No, your not." DeDe reached across the table and took her friend’s hands in her own. "You're shaking, you have dark circles under your eyes, and your hair looks horrible. What is wrong, Miriam?"

  Miriam closed her eyes and blinked back tears. How could she tell her? How? If she told anyone, they would know. They would find her. But could she go on like this? How long would she last like this, unable to talk to anyone? "I'm okay, I just…I just don't like my storyline." She frowned. "That's all."

  "You're lying to me."

  "You wouldn't understand."

  "Try me."

  "I can't, I'm sorry I can't." Miriam felt the tears starting.

  "God, honey, what is it? What has you so scared?"

  "Do you remember Bruce?"

  "The actor who played your son?"

  "Yes."

  "He didn't just leave the show." She lowered her voice and whispered, moving closer to her friend. "They killed him." She said quietly.

  "Who killed him?" DeDe said.

  "They did, the show did." Even softer whisper. "Howard did…"

  "Miriam, what are you saying?"

  Miriam shook her head, wiped away the tears that were spilling from her eyes. She reached out with a shaking hand and lit a cigarette. "I told you that you wouldn't understand."

  Her friend looked at her and shook her head. "Oh, sweetie." She patted her hand. "You know what you need? You need a vacation."

  "What?" Miriam couldn't believe what she was hearing.

  "You're worn out. You've been working on that serial killer storyline and they haven't given Sylvia Stevens any rest, have they?" DeDe smiled. "You're the star honey, talk to them, and get them to give you some time off honey. You look like you need it."

  Miriam blinked. She spoke slowly. "Didn't you hear what I said?"

  DeDe giggled. "Oh, Miriam, sweetheart. You take your job too seriously, you need a break. Honey, a real vacation." She laughed. "Howard killing Bruce, honestly!" her laughter was like needles into Miriam's heart.

  No one would believe her, not even her best friend. She was in this alone, she thought.

  She was in this alone.

  She went back to her apartment and took a shower, letting the hot water wash over her sore body. Thinking of the past was hard on one’s self esteem and ones body. Miriam felt as if she had been through a five-day workout, she was so sore.

  She felt dirty, like she couldn't get clean. The entire way home, she felt as if she were being watched. That knot stirred again; she wondered if Howard were going to kill her in her apartment.

  While she was toweling off and putting on her terrycloth
bathrobe, she heard a noise in the hallway outside her apartment. And then a knock at her door.

  She froze. She stood there, in her hallway, looking at the front door and not breathing. She had forgotten to lock the door. She could see the chain dangling, a flash of gold against the white doorframe.

  Miriam waited, listening hard. There was movement in the hallway. She watched as her doorknob was slowly turned, and then it stopped. She heard a noise and looked down. A black envelope was being slid under her door. Footsteps walked away from her apartment.

  She started breathing again, standing there for a few minutes until the beating of her heart slowed to a normal pace. Slowly, carefully, she bent down and picked up the envelope. She locked both the door, the deadbolt and than slid the chain across for good measure.

  Ripping the envelope open with her fingernails, she took out the single white piece of paper inside. There was no name on the front of the envelope.

  The paper was white and thick, good stock. It felt smooth under her fingers. She opened the paper and stared at the words written there:

  Talk to no one. You are being watched.

  Miriam gasped and clutched the paper to her chest. She looked around her apartment and suddenly felt like a prisoner. Who had left this for her and why had they not come into her apartment when they had the chance?

  Miriam shivered and went to find the vodka.

  ELEVEN

  Miriam finds a severed head

  Miriam went into the studio the next morning and blinked behind her sunglasses, narrowing her eyes against the bright lights and the flashes from people's cameras. She didn't stop to sign anything today. That weird fan and her sour mood put her off being courteous to anyone but herself.

  And she couldn't even do that.

  Today, everything seemed bright: the Burbank sun, the lights above her. She had another hang over and had three scenes to shoot today. She choked back another Pepto-Bismol tablet and made her way inside.

  The fact that DeDe had not believed her had crushed her. She could not believe that her best friend did not believe her. Didn't all the heroines of novels have sidekicks that they could count on, best girlfriends that came to their aid? She cursed herself for her romantic notions. She would have to go through this alone. She had to remind herself that she wasn't in a goddamn soap opera.

  Besides, there was still hope. Her ratings were slipping, but they had yet to fall drastically. Miriam had read the Lifetime Contract through cover to cover a total of twelve times. She knew it inside out now. She would not make that mistake again. The contract said that, only when the ratings fell below the fifty- percent line, then she was in trouble.

  There had to be something she could do. With her present storyline making her the evil character, her ratings would drop like a hot potato. She didn't understand. Usually when a good character went bad on a soap, it brought in tons of ratings. But the audience for Hope Falls seemed to be fickle. Her characters current position displeased them. Not that Miriam could blame them.

  Sylvia Stevens had been on Hope Falls since its heyday, and so had Miriam. She had played the roll from the very beginning.

  Her character had started out as heir to the Stevens fortune, become a countess, married four times, had been brought back from the dead six times and was still the most beloved character in Hope Falls.

  And now her star was falling. The injustice of it nearly killed her.

  Miriam supposed she shouldn't be surprised. Soap Opera's were hypocritical. Many a time she had seen an actress start out the week and be fired at the end of it. Acting was such an unstable field. But she had thought she had stability. She had been wrong.

  She passed by the front desk, waved to Louise, the receptionist and went down the long hallway to her dressing room. She stifled a scream when she saw what was inside.

  A woman's head had been severed at the neck and sat on her dressing room table, bleeding from the wound that was her neck. She had pale blue eyes and platinum blond hair, not unlike her own hazel eyes and light blond hair. She stifled another scream when she could hear the blood dripping onto the floor and closed the door behind her.

  Standing there in darkness, Miriam felt her head spin. It felt as if she would float away. She closed her eyes in the darkness to steady herself and reached out to flick the light on. When she felt the light hit her eyelids, she slowly opened her eyes. She turned around slowly and slowly approached the woman's head.

  As she got closer, she realized something however: the head was not real. It was a very convincing prop, made to look like her. They were warning her; they knew that she had talked to DeDe; how they knew, she had no idea.

  There was also the question of the mysterious envelope. Who had brought it to her? Why didn't they show themselves so that they could help her? With a small, disgusted sound, Miriam picked up the dummy head by the strings of its hair and dropped it in the garbage.

  That was when she saw what was underneath.

  It was the script for her three scenes. Hope Falls taped in the morning like most soaps and ran their taped footage in the afternoon. Actors on soaps didn't have a lot of time to get their lines right, but acting on a soap was so spontaneous, normally she loved it.

  She picked up the script. It was a copy. There was no front page and the paper felt different than the script pages, coarser. She flipped through the script and was about to put it back when she saw what was on the back.

  Miriam,

  I am a friend. Watch for me.

  X

  Miriam blinked at herself in the mirror. Was this friend the same person that had sent her the black envelope? What was going on? Why was X playing with her? She wasn't a toy to be batted this way and that. She wasn't a plaything. She was an actress, dammit.

  Putting the script inside her bag, she blew her nose, wiped at the mascara that had blurred around her eyes and went to get ready for hair and make up.

  TWELVE

  Miriam has a gun pointed at her

  On set, Miriam breathed deeply. She had shot two scenes already, one with Anna, the actress who played one of her ten children and the other with husband number four, Douglas Calliway who played Marcus Daniels. Miriam hated acting with Douglas, he had breath bad enough to peel wallpaper, and he was always making lewd passes at her.

  Anna, who played her daughter Allison, was a wonderful treat to work with. She found herself happy knowing that there was no chance of Allison having to sign a Lifetime Contract and have her life taken away from her.

  They were shooting the third scene, where her character continued to evade police. They were getting close to finding the Hope Falls Serial Killer, someone responsible for killing twelve children from the neighborhood. But they had yet to figure out it was Sylvia. Miriam wished they would find out soon. Playing the evil character took so much more energy to make her acting convincing.

  The scene took place between Sylvia and two police who stopped her car during a routine traffic check. A child was hidden in the trunk of her car. The director yelled action and she felt the lights get brighter. It was hot inside the car they had erected on set. She could feel her skin sweating against the fake leather interior. "What seems to be the problem, officer?" Miriam said as Sylvia.

  "Nothing ma’am," said one of the cop actors. "Just a routine traffic stop."

  "Oh, of course, silly me!" Miriam said. "Carry on."

  “You seem nervous, Ma’am. Is there something wrong?”

  “No, no,” Miriam said. “Nothing wrong, nothing at all!” She eyed the guns they were carrying, knew that there were real bullets inside.

  “Would you get out of your car please?”

  “Out? Whatever for?” Miriam was sweating now. This hadn’t been in the original script. They had let her go on her way, the cops had let her drive on. They hadn’t made her get out of the car.

  “We’re trying to locate the killer, Ma’am. Surely, you’ve read the papers? Seen the news?”

  “I find the news dr
eadfully boring.” Miriam said in Sylvia’s voice.

  "Step out of the car, please, ma’am." The cop said.

  Miriam smiled and opened the door and knew they were going to kill her on set.

  Execution style.

  THIRTEEN

  Miriam crashes a car

  "I don't want to get out of the car." Miriam said.