Chapter Text
Jonathan Crane sat across a table from perhaps the most inept movie director to ever slither from the gutter and disgrace the name of Hollywood. Brett Bennett had been churning out low-budget, ultra-violent, borderline pornographic schlock for ten years. As far as Crane could tell, the only thing that kept the director from total bankruptcy was his skill for finding attractive buxom actresses who were willing to wear as little clothing as possible while they were pursued by everything from aliens to horny Sasquatch.
"Before we begin this consultation, I feel I must be frank. I am a wanted felon and fraternizing with me is highly illegal," Crane said.
Brett waved a hand. "Yeah, I know I'm not talking to a saint. But half of my crew has a rap sheet, and the other half just hasn't been caught yet."
"Also, I am not fond of your breed of cinema."
"Nobody is! That's why you're here. I need an expert on horror to help me rebrand. Because—and this is just between you and me—I either get my act together on this next project or I'm screwed. I'm two months behind on rent, my star is on the verge of quitting, and my girlfriend says I'm a deadbeat and if I don't start paying my share, she's going back to her ex."
Crane wasn't surprised. The few minutes he'd spent with the director's Wikipedia page had woven a tale of terrible decisions across all aspects of Brett's life.
"My knowledge of the film industry is limited, but I know fear better than anyone."
"Great, that's just what I needed to hear. How do I fix this?" Brett asked.
"You mentioned a future project. Do you have an outline or description?"
"Hell yeah, check out the trailer!" Brett produced a laptop and slapped it down on the table. He played with it for a minute and then spun the computer so it faced Crane.
For the next two minutes, Crane was subjected to poor font choices, CGI straight from 2002, a sex scene involving a clown, and dialogue he was relatively sure was plagiarized from internet male enhancement scams.
"So, what do you think?" Despite the garbage he'd just shoveled into Crane's eyes, the director actually looked excited.
"I think you should change careers," Crane replied. "That is abysmal. As either a horror or pornographic film, it's irredeemable."
Brett's mouth fell open like that of a beached fish. His jaw trembled a few times before he burst into tears. Crane grimaced at the waterworks.
"But I need this to work!" Brett cried.
"You begged for help after you made the film. You waited until your only option was to seek out the Scarecrow. And then you asked me to spin dog vomit into gold," Crane summarized.
"It's only half finished. I can scrap it, reshoot everything, I just need ideas. Something meaty I can throw to my investors."
"By 'investors,' do you mean your internet fundraisers?"
"Mostly. But I do have a couple guys who might bite if I can show them something legit."
Crane sighed. "I will give you the agreed-upon hour of my time at the agreed-upon price. If you stop sniveling. And if you answer all my questions earnestly."
Brett nodded like a bobble-head. "Anything!"
Crane leaned toward Brett. "Tell me what scares you."
"This movie bombing, that's number one. Losing my apartment and my girlfriend and ending up on the street is pretty high up there, too. Centipedes. Getting robbed. Getting shot while getting robbed. Spiders, but not all of them, just the hairy ones." Brett started counting off his fingers. "Wrecking my car. Global warming. Having a heart attack. Leeches."
Most people were, for good and obvious reasons, reluctant to share their deepest, darkest fears with the Scarecrow. Brett seemed to have no such qualms. He continued to list all the things that kept him up at night, from the existential to the absurd.
"And a snake coming out of the toilet and biting me on the ass." Brett took a deep, heaving breath and wiped his sweaty forehead. "That one bothered me a lot when I was a kid, but I still think about it every now and then."
"That was...quite extensive," Crane said. He wished he'd brought a notepad or, better yet, had thought to record the responses. There was simply no way to remember everything that had spilled from Brett's psyche.
"What do you think? Are any of my fears gonna inspire the next surprise horror blockbuster?" the director asked.
Toilet snake attack not included, most of Brett's fears could be transformed into a powerful film by the right hands. And therein lay the problem. Brett's expertise was with exposed breasts jiggling through haunted forests and gallons of fake blood exploding across the screen. He and subtlety had never met. Crane was going to have his work cut out for him.
"I see potential, but it must be unlocked."
Brett leapt to his feet. "Yes, that's what I'm talking about! I'm not going to the poorhouse yet!"
Crane coughed. "I wouldn't celebrate prematurely."
The director lowered himself back into his chair. "Sorry, I'm just looking for any good news I can get."
"The good news is, that slop will never see the light of day. Delete it. The trailer, all recorded footage, any documents pertaining to it."
The dying fish mouth was back in action. "But that's weeks of work. And money. And-"
"Didn't you tell me you were willing to scrap and reshoot everything?"
"Yeah, but I didn't think it would actually come to that! I thought it would be more editing and maybe redoing a few scenes," Brett protested.
"Your framework is rotten. There is nothing that can be reworked. Tabula rasa is your only option."
"Is that Spanish? I don't know what it means."
"It's Latin and means 'blank slate.' What you have created is nothing except another guaranteed flop and proverbial nail in your coffin. If you truly wish to break away and have any chance of salvaging your career, you will do as I say."
Brett swallowed hard. He silently took the computer and spent the next several minutes erasing everything Crane had ordered him to. When he was done, he closed the laptop and tried not to cry.
"How do you feel?" Crane asked once Brett had finished.
"Like I'm gonna puke." The director paused. "But maybe a little bit of relief? Maybe."
"To be expected. Now that the past is gone, we can discuss the future."
Crane tented his fingertips together. "You are a man terrified of failure, yet terrified of change. I've gone through your filmography and, despite your diminishing rate of return, you have stuck to the same tired formula."
"It's hard when you're trapped in a rut. I know what I make is crap, but it's all I know how to do. I don't want to make excuses, but I'm never going to be Stanley Kubrick. Shit, I don't even know if I can be Uwe Boll."
"Let's aim a bit higher than that."
"Thanks for having faith in me."
"I don't," Crane said simply. "I have faith in me."
Before Brett could take offense, Crane surged across the table and grabbed the startled man by the front of his tacky Hawaiian shirt. Brett tried wriggling away but found Crane's long, thin fingers had a grip like a bear trap.
"With a few outliers, yours are the fears of people everywhere: failure, loneliness, insects, a dark and uncertain future. If we can shake an ounce of nuance out of you, we can create something that chills the very soul."
Despite his discomfort at being choked by his own shirt collar, Brett gave an enthusiastic nod. "Chilling souls sounds a lot better than competing for the shittiest rating on Rotten Tomatoes."
"Excellent. If you're in agreement, let's move forward."
"Totally with you. How do we commence the soul-chilling?"
"First, you must become more intimate with your fears. If you survive that, I think you will have everything you need to start your journey afresh."
"I'm so ready- Wait, did you say if I survive?"
Tendrils of green mist began to waft from Crane's sleeve.
"But you're not wearing your mask! You'll be exposed too!" Brett yanked at Crane's hands and achieved nothing.
"Please, this diluted formula will hardly be a microdose for me." Crane didn't even bother turning his head to avoid any of the noxious vapor.
By the time Brett thought to hold his breath, it was far too late. Crane waited until the director was a struggling, crying mess before releasing him. The man immediately tried to stagger away but things visible only to him grabbed at him from the walls.
"Sit down before you fall," Crane ordered.
Brett had just enough control over his body to obey. He collapsed into his chair and drew himself into a tight ball.
Ignoring Brett for the moment, Crane reached for the laptop. He opened it and found the keys slimy and slippery like frog skin. That seemed...unlikely. Crane attributed it to the fear toxin he'd breathed in. As he'd expected, the dose was light enough to leave him functional and able to power through the unpleasant texture of the keyboard.
A little experimentation with the computer, slimy keys be damned, confirmed the built-in webcam was in perfect working order. Crane ensured Brett was fully captured on the screen. Once he was satisfied that the director would have plenty of useful video, Crane addressed the poisoned man.
"We haven't got much time left in the consult, but I will leave you with a memento of our meeting. Don't touch this computer until your head is clear. Do you understand?"
Brett whimpered miserably but nodded. "Please don't yell at me anymore, I'm sorry, I'll listen."
Crane hadn't even raised his voice. Though, no doubt, a slew of people were shaking Brett's fear-addled mind. His soon-to-be ex, his desperate starlets, anyone unlucky enough to stumble across his films online...
"I'd like you to describe your fears again. Whatever you are seeing and hearing, verbalize it."
"There are so many voices and they're all really pissed off. They're telling me I wasted my life, and their money, and my mom just said I killed my granddad because he died of shame after he watched my first movie."
Crane had to disguise his laughter with a quick cough. "I see. No snakes emerging from the toilet?"
Brett shook his head.
"No—oh, what were some of your film plots—no vampire strippers? No Bigfoot lusting after coeds?"
"My landlord is calling the cops to throw me out. Sharon, wait, I promise I'll pay the cable bill!"
"Remember this. Real human fear. No more ratty costumes, no more clowns, no more naked romps in the murder cabin," Crane said.
Brett grasped for something, likely the hallucination of his girlfriend heading for the door. Or maybe it was the ghost of his old career descending into hell, where it belonged.
"That's the hour." Crane sat for another few minutes, watching Brett flinch and make promises to the air. "Wire my consultation fee to the account I provided. And I will keep an eye open for your next movie."
With that, Crane rose from his chair. He made a quick exit from the room and found himself in a hallway. There was nothing unexpected about that: he'd walked down the same hallway a little over an hour ago. Only, thanks to the minor dose of fear toxin, it wasn't quite the same.
"Shame Brett can't see this," Crane said aloud. "This would be a perfect setting for any horror movie."
What had been a dimly lit hallway on the basement floor of a nearly-deserted, rundown office building was still all of those things, but the atmosphere had changed. It was more...liminal. Off-putting. The air was cooler, damper, heavier, like Crane was standing inside a tunnel under a river. When he touched a hand to the wall, his fingers came away wet.
"Maybe I should have deployed my mask after all." Crane wiped his hand on his trousers. He took a deep (but shaky) breath.
Crane forced himself to take a few steps down the hall. The floor felt uneven. When he looked down everything appeared to be in order, but upon looking straight again, the walls now seemed to stretch and bend.
"Damn it." Trying to find the elevator while the hallway behaved like the body of a serpent was not going to be a fruitful venture. Crane turned back the way he'd come and re-entered the dusty little conference room.
"Sharon, you're back?! I don't have the money yet, please baby, don't-"
"I'm not Sharon!" Crane snapped. "I'm an idiot too sure of his tolerance to his own drug."
With no other option, Crane returned to his seat. Brett kept talking to Sharon, begging her to give him more time, he was really onto something, he just needed one more chance. Crane rolled his eyes at how purely pathetic it all was. The thrill of unleashing Brett's fears was long gone, replaced with an unpalatable combination of boredom and disgust.
"You're going to pay me for every minute I spend in here, subjected to your caterwauling."
Brett let loose a fresh howl of pure woe. "But I don't have any more money! I'll have to sell...some stuff...just to pay for the consult!"
That was true. If Brett couldn't pay the cable bill and win back Sharon, he certainly couldn't produce enough cash to make up for Crane's wasted time. Crane thought about his options for a moment. "I have a better idea, one that will pay dividends if your next film exceeds expectations. You are going to give me royalties for my work, a fraction of your profits, however large or meager they may be."
"But what if I don't have any profits?" Brett asked.
"Then I'm going to hunt you down and you will pay me back by becoming my test subject," Crane replied.
Brett gulped.
"For your sake, let's hope for a rousing commercial success."