The Skull Ring (46 page)

Mabel looks into the woods, then at Julia's house.

MABEL

Wheatley. The one that used to live in your house.

JULIA

I'm in a hurry.

MABEL

(waving her stick at Julia)

You don't understand. He was here. He was messing around your house. I called the cops, figuring he come back to get something he left.

JULIA

Why would he come back here?

MABEL

You must have found out something. You been snooping around. I was hoping and praying they'd leave you alone.

JULIA

Please tell me.

MABEL

They told me to stay out of it. I done said too much.

Mabel hobbles away. Julia goes to her front door.

MABEL

(from her porch)

They said he owns you, Julia.

Julia fumbles for her house keys. She looks at the woods and sees a ROBED FIGURE dodging between the trees. She gets the key out, opens the door, looks back and sees a second ROBED FIGURE on the opposite side of the woods.

She closes the door and—

CUT TO:

INT. JULIA'S HOUSE

Julia runs to the bedroom and closes the door. She looks at the window, the curtains are still closed. Suddenly a hand is over her mouth and she tries to scream.

It is Walter.

WALTER

Shh.

Someone pounds on the front door. A siren wails in the distance. Julia bites Walter's hand.

WALTER (CONT'D)

Damn it, Julia—

Walter pulls Julia into the closet, drags her down and closes the closet door. Clothes fall from the hangers as they wrestle, Julia slamming her purse against his head.

WALTER

Listen. I ain't going to hurt you. They're all around us. I know a way out, but you got to trust me.

(beat)

Do you trust me?

With Walter's hand still clamped over her mouth, she nods. Walter releases her.

JULIA

What in the hell are you doing?

WALTER

Shut up for a second.

Julia is frantic, words running together.

JULIA

You're him. You're the creep. You always had a key, didn't you? Where's your robe? You took the skull ring, didn't you?

WALTER

Listen to me. Don't break down right now. I need you.

JULIA

(hysterical laugh)

Need? You don't know a goddamned thing about need.

WALTER

(shaking her)

They're outside, Julia. Wheatley, Snead, and the others.

JULIA

No, no, no. They're already in. They’ve always been inside.

Walter bends to the closet wall. There's an access door, and Walter rips it from the wall. He pulls the insulation away in clumps to reveal plumbing pipes.

The door leads to the crawl space beneath the house. Walter wriggles down through the narrow opening. He turns and holds out his hand.

WALTER

You coming? Or do you want to stay here and wait for them?

Someone pounds on the front door. The bedroom window breaks.

JULIA

Did you take the ring?

WALTER

What ring?

JULIA

Did you draw the pentagram?

WALTER

You're starting to sound like her. Trust me, damn it.

Someone is kicking at the front door. O.S., someone calls "JOOOLIA!"

She reaches out and takes the hand that Walter offers. He helps her into the crawl space.

CUT TO:

INT. CRAWL SPACE.

Walter and Julia wriggle on the dirt. Shouts come from outside, and someone breaks down the front door.

JULIA

(whispering)

What do they want?

WALTER

Everything. But they ain't going to get it.

(beat)

The door's over there.

Footsteps drum along the floor above them. More shouts.

Julia rakes something free from the dirt. She pulls it close to her face. It is a small human bone. She claws at the dirt, and a small skull turns up.

She fights down a scream. Walter sees the skull.

WALTER

Wheatley. That goddamned scum.

Walter's eyes are moist. The sadness is replaced by anger.

WALTER (CONT'D)

Come on. My Jeep's on the other side of the woods.

JULIA

Do they know you're here?

WALTER

I don't think so.

(beat)

Move!

They scramble and claw until they reach the crawl space door.

WALTER

Now!

(kicks open door)

Run for it.

CUT TO:

EXT. JULIA'S BACKYARD.

Julia and Walter run through the forest. They leap over a creek. Walter falls and Julia helps him up. They duck behind a tree and catch their breaths.

JULIA

Did they see us?

WALTER

Listen.

The only sounds are birds and rustling leaves.

JULIA

How many are there?

WALTER

Enough. More than enough, knowing them.

JULIA

How come you know so much about them? It's all too crazy to be real.

WALTER

I've been telling myself that for a long time. Ever since my wife walked off the face of the earth. Ever since they took her.

JULIA

(looking back)

Do you believe in the devil?

WALTER

I believe in Wheatley.

(beat)

Let's go. The Jeep's only a few hundred feet from here. There's an old logging road that runs down the valley.

CUT TO:

EXT. OLD LOGGING ROAD.

Julia and Walter, out of breath, get in the Jeep, which is parked in the weeds. As Walter starts the engine and puts his hand on the gear shift, Julia puts her hand over his.

JULIA

Why are you helping me?

WALTER

Let's just say I got a debt to repay. And you look like you could use a friend.

Walter pulls onto the road and checks the rear view mirror.

JULIA

We need to tell the police.

WALTER

Julia, those are the police.

JULIA

They can't all be in on it.

WALTER

Maybe not, but which ones you gonna trust? They follow a different law.

They drive beside a barbed-wire stretch of pasture. Both of them keep checking the windows. Walter pulls the Jeep under the cover of a thicket and idles.

JULIA

They were after me in Memphis.

WALTER

Wheatley? The guys in the robes?

JULIA

(losing it)

My father was one of them. One of the creeps. When I was four years old—

Walter yanks her hands from her face.

WALTER

Listen here, damn it. I don't know what I got myself into. I just might be heading for a bullet, for all I know. I risked my neck to drag you away from your 'creeps' and now we're driving into who the hell knows what. Don't tell me I won't understand.

JULIA

They took the ring.

(beat)

They gave me to Satan. Blood sacrifice. My father disappeared that same night. I got adopted, lucky me, and grew up and forgot it all. And everything was fine until I met Mitchell.

WALTER

Mitchell? He your boyfriend?

JULIA

We were going to get married. Then I started having my...little problems.

WALTER

Problems.

JULIA

Amnesia. Confusion. Times when I couldn't breathe and a big sheet of black was falling on me and suffocating me. But Dr. Forrest said I was getting better.

WALTER

Panic disorder. My wife was seeing Dr. Forrest for the same thing.

A police car comes up the road toward them, lights flashing. Walter guns the Jeep across a pasture, through the fence, and bouncing across the pasture.

WALTER

They probably blocked the highway. But they don't know the back country like I do. Hang on, and say a prayer or two if you know any.

In the rear view mirror, the police car stalls in the pasture. The Jeep enters the forest and they come to a shallow creek.

Walter drives the Jeep into the water and heads upstream.

WALTER (CONT'D)

I learned this from Clint Eastwood. Except he used a horse.

JULIA

You'll have to work on your wounded squint.

Walter gives his best Clint Eastwood impersonation, which is miles off the mark. Julia laughs, on the edge of breaking.

WALTER

(serious now)

There's something I need to tell you.

(beat)

My wife was pregnant when she disappeared.

JULIA

I—I'm sorry. That must have been awful.

WALTER

That's why them bones under your house got to me so. I reckon I should be over it by now. It's been so long.

JULIA

(touching his arm)

You can't escape the past. It lives inside you. You just have to let it out and make it harmless. Open the door.

WALTER

That's what Dr. Forrest told her. For all the damned good it did.

They come to a bridge. Walter drives out of the creek and onto another road. A pick-up truck passes, driven by a MAN IN A GREEN CAP. The man waves at them.

A goat is tied in the truck bed. As Julia looks at the goat, she sees the IMAGE from her past of the goat's head dripping blood.

WALTER (CONT'D)

Do you have a cell phone?

Julia digs in her purse, pulls out phone, and hands it to him. He tosses it out the window.

JULIA

Hey!

WALTER

They might track us with GPS. Signal’s lousy out here anyway.

JULIA