The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

She’s standing right behind Maddie, and staring straight into the camera. It’s shocking, arresting. Her bottomless black eyes pierce into me, and her rose-pink mouth opens. Her hand reaches slowly forward, toward the camera, and the lighting is such that it almost looks like her hand is reaching out from the surface of the screen and into the space where we’re sitting. I imagine I see her arm cast a shadow on the flat movie screen. For a second, I’m terrified.

Then just as quickly, she’s vanished, the scene is the same—how did he do that?—it’s just Maddie at the table, looking down, in fact now I can clearly see that Maddie is asleep (of course she’s asleep). The phantasmagoria of images continues: candles, the baby, candles, the guy in the Rangers jersey crying (when did that happen?), the Ouija pointer moving with no one touching it (that totally did not happen), white screen with contrails of lights, quick cuts of color digital film of shapes that I can’t make out, Tyler’s eye again in soft filter, and then it’s over.

There are no credits.

The lights go up, and for a long minute nobody does or says anything. I can see Tyler gripping the armrests of his chair next to me, can feel the anxiety clinging to him like sweat. I can almost smell it.

Then I realize that I’m gripping my armrests, too.

“Well then,” Professor Krauss falters. “Who would like to comment first?”

There’s another long pause, and then Deepti’s hand creeps up.

“Deepti?”

“Um. I actually thought it was kind of derivative? Kind of like Stan Brakhage, if he, like, used real people?”

Oh, man. Here we go.

Rage vibrates off Tyler so hard it makes the hairs on my arms stand up.

“Deepti,” Professor Krauss says slowly. “Have you ever actually seen Stan Brakhage?”

I raise my hand.

“Yes, Wes,” says Professor Krauss.

“Okay, so, maybe I’m biased, since I did sound for Tyler, but . . .” I glance at him to see if it’s okay, what I’m doing. His face is a mask. “But I thought it was kind of awesome.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“Well . . .” I hesitate.

I’m not really an art film guy. Documentaries, I can talk about. I can talk about the Up series, I can talk about Michael Moore. The Maysles brothers. The only art film I’ve seen to my knowledge is Cremaster 3, and to be honest, I fell asleep halfway through and woke up with no impression beyond a vague desire to wash my hands. I am totally out of my element. But I can’t back out now. I can feel Tyler waiting next to me.

“So,” I start, “one of the things I really admired about it was its use of time?” I wait, wondering if I’m going to say anything else. Then I continue, “It managed to use non-narrative image structures to convey a simultaneous passage of time forward and backward. It made me really involved in the aesthetic experience of the film. And I thought the way he incorporated diegetic sound with the music was pretty tight.”

A heavy pause deadens the room while everyone stares at me.

“I thought so, too,” Professor Krauss say finally, looking at Tyler over the rims of her reading glasses. “Well done, Tyler. You made some bold visual decisions in this piece that really paid off. The transitions were a little clunky, but that’s just a matter of technique. It’ll improve with time. And I thought your homage to Kenneth Anger was wry and unexpected. Next time, don’t leave off the credits. Okay. Up next, we’ve got Kanesha Wright, with a piece called Summertime . . .”

Next to me, I hear Tyler exhale long and slow. I glance sidelong at him and smile an encouraging smile.

“Thanks, man,” he whispers to me as the lights start to drop for Kanesha’s film. “That means a lot.”

“No problem,” I whisper back. “It rocked.”

There’s a long pause, and as Kanesha’s opening music kicks in, I just hear Tyler whisper, “You really thought so?”

“Definitely,” I say. But I can’t make myself smile when I say it. I’m thinking about how it’s going to be my turn, one week from today. One week. That’s not much time. One week for me to make something that might get me the thing I want most in the world.

And I’m thinking about Annie’s nighttime eyes staring out of the screen, straight at me.

I look up at the ceiling of the screening room to keep myself from tearing up. I count sixteen divots before it gets too dark to see.





CHAPTER 10