M.T. was three times as successful at the box office (and video counter) as its predecessor. As a result, Phil and Matthew Portland formed Fast Forward Productions and started looking around for other properties to develop.

One of the funnier results of the first film was the surprising popularity of Matthew Portland, actor. He received so much fan mail for his portrayal of Paul Eddoes, town mayor and professional dumbo, that he and his new partner decided to keep Paul around for the second and third parts of the series. Matthew was thrilled.

That third part was Midnight Always Comes, but by the time they got to the end of filming, Phil was calling it "Midnight Never Leaves." He was tired of Bloodstone, tired of gore, tired of signing autographs because he was a beloved mass murderer,

"I don't want to go off-off Broadway to do King Lear, Weber, but it would be nice to act in something other than a bloodbath for once."

I was shooting Wonderful then and asked if he'd like to play the small role of the transvestite, Lily Reynard. He quickly said yes and was damned good in it.

Not long afterward, the earthquake came and Phil saved my life. If he hadn't pulled me out of the restaurant as soon as the tremors began, I'm sure I would have been crushed with the others when the roof fell in with one big, horrifying whump!

Tired and empty and still shaken by the sound of that roof, I left for Europe as soon as I finished Wonderful. I wanted out of California and was already half sure I wanted out of my life there. Europe was the green light at the end of my dock. I was convinced being there would at least give me some perspective.

I didn't hear much from Phil in my year overseas, except for a few postcards saying vague things like he was looking into possibilities.

When I came back he showed me The Circus on Fire. A fifteen-minute video he'd been commissioned to make by the rock group Vitamin D, the film is a beauty, a small Joseph Cornell box of wonder and deceit. You can watch it five times in a row and hope for a sixth. In many ways it's the best thing he ever did, but the thugs in the group thought it was too heavy and said no. They'd expected Bloodstone to make them a video like Midnight. What they got instead was some weird thing with almost no music and puppets speaking ancient maps.

Without a word he put it in a drawer and went back to work on Midnight Kills. When I asked how he felt about that, he said working on the video had given him a superb idea for a new film. After playing Bloodstone again, he'd have enough money to finance the whole project himself. What was this new idea? He wouldn't say. That was a good sign.

About this time two very different things happened to him. The first was meeting Sasha, the second were the killings in Florida.

Many newspapers tried to call them "The Bloodstone Murders," but luckily the nickname didn't stick. A seventeen-year-old lunatic in Sarasota saw Midnight too many times. Then, while babysitting one night, he killed his little brother and sister the same way Bloodstone got two people in the film.

4

The dead glow. I still don't know why, but they do. There is much love, warmth, and companionship here . . . all the good things, plus we have – or rather we are – this soft light. It is not so different, but you can't help smiling in the beginning when you look and see you have a lot in common with fireflies.

Those children Weber spoke of are here. They are quiet and sweet, and I try hard to be their friend.

I must, because it is my fault they're here. I didn't believe that when I was alive, but now I understand. That is part of the process. You are taught to understand.

There is a life review, of course, but it was so much more interesting than I had ever imagined. For one thing, they show you how and where your life really happened. Things you didn't experience or weren't ever aware of, but which dyed the fabric of your life its final color.

I was shown the night my parents slept together and conceived me (my father came so quickly, Mother patted his back and fell immediately asleep).

Unknown pieces of the real pain, surprise, and love that lived inside the walls of our growing-up house, our younger hearts: my parents', my sister's, mine.

I have seen it all now: Jeffrey Vincent murdering his little brother and sister, Sasha finding my body on the patio, even the death of Weber's mother.

I was permitted to show him that, although they say they've rarely done that before: allowed someone to see any part of their complete truth while still alive. It is an essential part of the job of living to alone find what we can of these ruins within and translate their hieroglyphics. The archaeology of the heart is the only important study.

For instance, there is a photograph of me (among others) on Weber's dresser in New York. I am in his comfortable old leather chair, hands in lap, one leg crossed over the other. My face is its usual expressionless thin spade with hair on top. On the floor next to the chair are four of those Bloodstone masks that were once popular. I'd brought them to Weber that day as a joke.

I am sitting there looking very self-satisfied in my Anderson & Shepard sport jacket, a silk ascot wrapped in a pompously correct knot around my throat. On the floor are those identical silver faces, strewn at random.

Weber has looked at that picture often, carefully or nostalgically, happily. . . . We have so many ways of looking at a photograph that means something to us. But although he has looked, he has never seen what's important there. Not that it's easy.

Why do we photograph, why do we look, why do we remember so little but forget so much? It isn't coincidence. The ancient Romans discovered what to do: haruspication. Studying the entrails of dead animals, the order and form of anything in the world, they hoped to decipher clues to the future within that order.

They were right. If Weber were to look at that photograph correctly, he would see so much of what will happen to him. Not because it is a picture of me, but because of the way the masks sit on the floor, the tight knot in the silk, the half-light across the side of my face. When he took the picture, he kept saying, "Turn your head. Move your hands. Look a little away. I have to get the masks in too. . . . That's it!"

Why was that it and not something else? Because in some part of him, my friend knew he was about to capture a splinter of his future on film. Unfortunately, his other parts didn't know how to see it, so he only framed the splinter and put it on the shelf with others.

This is true about everything. The cigarette he is about to smoke: how he holds it, the number of puffs he will take. So many answers floating lazily in the air above our lives, like the gray smoke at the end of Weber's face.

"Did Phil ever tell you about the dog and the time death came into his room?"

"Wyatt, what happened to Pinsleepe the angel? I thought you were going to tell me about that."

He pursed his lips and nodded. "I am, but we've got another – hours to go.

"That's what I like about The Decameron and Canterbury Tales – everyone sat around telling sensational stories, since there was nothing else to do while the plague was raging outside or there were another hundred miles to ride till Canterbury.

"First let me tell you about the dog and death. It has something to do with Phil and Pinsleepe anyway.

"When he was a boy, Phil's family had a dog named Henrietta. They let her run free on the streets, so she had puppies pretty regularly. She slept in a corner of Phil's room, and when it was time to have the babies, she went over to her bed and just let them come.

"One time she had a litter with one real sick runt in it. Phil said you could tell from the first it was going to die, but Henrietta was crazy for the pup and treated it best of the bunch. Which is queer, because animals usually ignore or even kill a runt.