Scene 1 Flashcards
DAVE WINFREY
This is Willa Mae Jesper, tavern owner.
WILLA MAE JESPER
Mayor Arnsen is a distillation of this town. First off, he’s full of shit.
Now, I’m not saying the whole town’s full of shit. It’s a nice place to live. Good people, always willing to lend a hand. When I had trouble with the liquor license….
See, Jesper’s Tavern was started up in 1887, and we had a license back then. Then Prohibition came and went, and I guess my granddad never realized he needed to reapply. Eventually some government folks came along and said I owed something like 89 years of back taxes.
But folks just pitched in, had a little bake sale, and made things right. That’s what it was like around here. Friendly people helping people get you drunk.
See, round here, people would drink to forget. Forget how the founding of this town — and that’s what I’m getting at — the founding of this town was full of shit.
— you’re gonna be driving home in a new Toyota.
I’m just saying
WILLA MAE JESPER:
Dick Arnsen is exactly who you should be talking to and I’ll tell you why.
MARCUS CHURCHILL
Yeah, we’re not 100% sure that’s what it is. Let’s just say, over near them hills,
late at night. You could always tell. Something wasn’t right.
WILLA MAE JESPER
There’s no Hellmouth. I’ve lived here my whole life. If there was any demons
from another dimension crossing through a portal to wreak havoc upon our space-time continuum — I’d have heard about them.
No, it wasn’t anything sent from Satan. It was just your garden variety reanimated corpses. Some kind of something rained down from the heavens or leaked into the groundwater or what have you and woke those bastards up. I suspect radiation
MARCUS CHURCHILL
…..Until they come back to life and start looking around for something to feed their carnivorous hunger, and then look what’s right in their line of vision. Poor planning, if you ask me.
WILLA MAE JESPER
Harwood Cemetery’s right at the base of them hills out there. Which means
rainwater runs down from the hills, soaking up all the radiation, and it all puddles up right on top of them graves. You give me a fresh grave with radioactive groundwater leaking into it, and I’ll give you a reanimated corpse, guaranteed.
DAVE WINFREY
So this much we know.
ANNIE DALTON
Dave Winfrey, a member of our theatre collective.
SLASH MURPHY
And for kicks, I thought, hey. Let’s go party at Harwood Cemetery.
DIDI DRAGO
I remember it like it was yesterday.
DAVE WINFREY
Didi Drago, student.
DIDI DRAGO
I was sitting right over there, by the magazine rack, on that red couch. And I
was like, “I’m not gonna spend Friday night drinking coffee at freaking Casper’s Coffeehouse.”
And my friend Hannah’s all, “But we scored the couch. If I give up the couch, we gotta go somewhere good, because I don’t want to give up my precious couch.” And I’m like, “Get off the couch, Jesus.” And she’s like, “I’m not getting off the couch.” And I’m like, “I just mean ‘get off it’ like ‘stop talking about it.’”
And we would’ve probably gone around and around like that for a couple of hours, which would actually be an exciting night here in Harwood — like the heighth of entertainment — except Slash came over.
SLASH MURPHY
Because if there’s one thing high school girls like, it’s a dude who can legally buy beer.
DIDI DRAGO
So Slash comes over and he’s all, “Hey, the boss man’s gone, rock ‘n’ roll.” And I
was like, “Um. Okay. Well, we don’t have jobs because we’re like students.” And he’s like, “It’s metaphorical. Who wants to party?” And I’m like, “There’s no frigging way I’m getting in a car with a psycho like Slash Murphy.” But before I can say that Hannah’s all, “We’ll go — if you buy the beer.”
SLASH MURPHY
Score!
DIDI DRAGO
And I’m like, “If I’m gonna drink, it’s gonna be somewhere where goddamn
Mayor Arnsen isn’t gonna drive by, because he already saw me drinking vodka and Red Bull back at Jason Eisenberg’s and told my mother, and I’m not going through that again,” and Slash goes, “No problem. We’ll go to Harwood Cemetery. Nobody goes there.”
HAROLD DELOITTE
But either one would work for you. Point is: if Arnsen would have done his job, things could have been contained.
DORA JOHANNSON
I was out at Harwood Cemetery just that afternoon.
DAVE WINFREY
Rancher Dora Johannson.
DORA JOHANNSON
Friday afternoons me and the girls play bunko at the lodge, and it just so
happened I cleaned everybody’s clocks. Which meant I got to take the centerpiece home. Now I got no need for bouquets around the house, so I decided to run ‘em over to my sister. She’s buried next to Mom and Pop, don’t you know, right there in Harwood Cemetery.
So I suppose if I’d lingered, I’d have a different story to tell. But as it is, I didn’t see a thing out of the ordinary. Except for Darrell Murphy’s boy, gallivanting around. But he’s liable to pop up anywhere.
SLASH MURPHY
So she’s all waving her beer around and she’s like, “I’m gonna get on the fanciest grave around. Old Judge Levinson.”
DIDI DRAGO
So Hannah’s completely wasted. And she jumps up on that crypt, the fancy one,
from the judge’s family. And Slash has his El Camino pulled right up on the graves around the crypt, which I’m sure is completely illegal, and he’s blasting “Highway to Hell.”
And Hannah starts pulling the whole fake lesbian thing. Where she’s like,
“Let’s make out with each other and drive him crazy.” And I’m like, “Hannah, I know you’re not a lesbian, but you’re talking about PRETENDING to be a lesbian, which is actually pretty offensive to real lesbians.” And she’s like, “How do you know unless you ARE a lesbian?” And I’m like, “Oh, yeah, that’s super mature. But I guess that’s what you’d expect from a girl who’s totally topless and dancing on a grave and with an extra hand growing out of her foot.”
And she’s like, “What?” And I’m like, “What?” And I look down, and I’m like, Oh, that’s not a hand growing out of her foot; I must be totally wasted. That’s a hand coming out of the GRAVE and grabbing her foot.
SLASH MURPHY
I just thought, “Wow, she’s a crappy dancer, she fell right off of there.” And then
I saw this like, hand. Skeleton. Like disembodied skeleton hand coming out of the grave, grabbing her foot, and that’s what knocked her down.
So then I’m feeling bad about disparaging her dancing ability. Cuz she’s probably a pretty good dancer when she’s not being fondled by a disembodied hand. And then I’m like, “disembodied” is probably the wrong word cuz — here comes the body.
DIDI DRAGO
I am not kidding you: This decomposed, rotting, disgusting — Like, picture after
Thanksgiving, that turkey carcass that’s left over? It’s all picked over and nasty and bones hanging out? And then picture someone vomits on it.
And then they take this puke-covered dead carcass with flesh still hanging off it and they bury it. And it becomes mummified.
And then someone digs it up, and re-pukes on it. And buries it again. Only it’s a person. And it’s crawling right at you.
You’d be like…. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
SLASH MURPHY
So this guy — or I guess you’d say a quarter of a guy — because about three-
fourths of him had sort of decomposed and flaked away — this corpse comes climbing out of the grave.
DIDI DRAGO
Hannah sees him and starts scrambling to stand up.
SLASH MURPHY
While still covering her, you know, her chestal region.
DIDI DRAGO
Like she hadn’t just been swinging ‘em around ten seconds before, but
whatever.
