Enough to melt your face off

Like all the other social institutions and ways of life that surround the characters in Falling (technology, mass transit, employment, etc), they also have pop culture. Movies, books and TV shows aren’t talked about in great detail, only because when faced with the most active and public paranormal event in modern history, nobody’s really got to time to stop and relax by going to the movies or reading books.

But the other reason I didn’t delve into the world of entertainment too deeply is because I wasn’t really sure what form it would take 20 years from now, and to describe it in too much detail would mean getting a bit too far off track.

It didn’t stop me doing it for something else. Possibly a little bit jarringly, the story leaves the plot in the middle of a character answering a phone to describe all the things mobile phones can do in the year 2037.

The reason I did that was because – just like us – these people are hyper connected, and their mobiles are the conduits through which they work, entertain themselves, stay in touch and so much more. They also use them so much in relation to stuff that happens in the plot I figured it wasn’t too much of a cheat to leave the story for a few paragraphs to tell you about the history of mobile phone advances from now until then so you had a more rounded appreciation of where they fit into Falling’s world. I even gave them a new and common nomenclature – the CMD (for Converged Media Device), which I modelled after the way British people call vacuum cleaners ‘Hoovers’ even though it’s only one brand name.

But short of talking about Dale reading a message on his TV set, various characters playing music through what I call a ‘media deck’ instead of a boom box, cassette or CD player or iPad (to say nothing of not wanting to give anybody free product placement) or Vicki reading a book on her phone, I never thought about or described entertainment technology too deeply.

But none of that is to say that (again, just like us) movies, TV shows and other mass entertainments didn’t play pivotal parts in the characters’ lives. I made up a cheesy 60s horror movie called The Curse of Blackwoods Manor for Donald, the metallurgist hired by Barry Paul (Dale’s orthopaedic doctor) to test the bridge for abnormalities.

He watched it as a kid, was scared out of his wits by it, then grew up and wasn’t scared about stuff like that anymore, a rite of passage we should all be able to relate to. But we never forget how the fear feels – the very weight and shape of it – when something scares us as kids. For me it’s still An American Werewolf in London, so it’s probably no coincidence that The Curse of Blackwoods Manor is a werewolf movie, and as Falling describes;

If he wanted to, Donald could instantly recall the sight of the thing’s dripping, metal-looking mouth, the angry rasp of its howl.

Of course, I’ve only ever seen and heard An American Werewolf in London in cinemas, VHS and nightmares. At one point Donald finds himself locked in the research van near the bridge, apparently being taunted by hideous monsters and paranormal entities outside including the creature from The Curse of Blackwoods Manor for real. In fact, when he reaches the denouement of his part in the story, the creature appears to him in the worst possible way, stitching all his living nightmares together so completely his lifelong training in reason and science is quickly forgotten.

Then there’s the unfortunate minor character Lance Corporal Peter Cuff, perched on top of one of the cable car gondolas with a scientist conducting tests after the disturbances on the bridge have become too visible for authorities to ignore.

Stuck so far off the ground with a woman he doesn’t even know for company, the young army soldier is already terrified when the supernatural manifests in an explosion of bright light and what feels like a huge, heavy weight slamming into the gondola’s underside, trying to topple them off.

When he looks around, Cuff sees human-like figures floating through the light around him, and it becomes one of Falling’s only references to contemporary entertainment from our world when it talks about a movie he and his brother watched when he was little. Like Donald and the rest of us, Cuff also has instant recollection of the scene that kept him awake at night, only now it’s come to life in front of him. If you’re a Gen Xer like me you’ll know instantly which movie I’m talking about.

Little Peter had been only four, his brother had told him the kids at school talked endlessly about the really cool face-melting scene. The movie was over 50 years old and the special effects were totally stupid, except for one Peter never forgot.

He’d long forgotten what the movie was even about, but somebody opened a large chest and angels flew out, wheeling round and round the gathered people like fish swimming through the sea.
One of them flew towards the camera and it was the face of a beautiful woman, but suddenly it hissed and changed into a leering skull. That was where the face-melting scene had happened but Peter had almost wet his pants at that hissing ghoul that came before.

Even now in the dead of night, grown up and sleeping beside his girlfriend in their rented flat in Homebush, he only had to remember that face change into that awful, ethereal skull and he pulled his exposed foot back under the covers.

What’s the scary movie scene from your childhood you can bring instantly back which causes a shudder and a glance over your shoulder?