The first hour on Channel 27 felt like any other Halloween. Kids lounged on couches while parents let bedtime slip. Rex Rigor sat in his plywood crypt at WKES in Linden, Indiana, grinning at Camera Two just like he had since 1965.
His white leisure suit caught the lights, with gold on the lapels and a red-lined cape. The carnation on his chest was already turning brown at the edges. He held up a scratched print of The Screaming Skull and joked to viewers at home that the skull had more range than the lead actor. For the close-up, he did his signature limp left hand. He tapped the coffin charm on his chest and promised a surprise after the first feature. No one in the booth laughed. They never did anymore. But the towns still did.
The show now reached fifteen markets. Brock Browers had pushed the tape that far.
Rex Myers sold used cars at Darnell Motors five days a week. He had a square face and a salesman’s handshake. His voice only came alive when he put on a cheap Transylvanian accent. Two acting teachers in Indianapolis once told him he didn’t look the part and couldn’t act it. Still, he went home to Sharon, the car lot, and the late-night movies that inspired him. In 1965, he spent part of a commission to buy Saturday airtime after the national anthem. Sharon agreed he could try it if he paid the bills and she didn’t have to wear a costume. On weekdays, he walked the rows and talked trade-ins. On Saturdays, he made his widow’s peak in the men’s room with a comb and a can of spray.
The first year, the set was just a painted sheet and a folding chair. Ed Loomis ran Camera Two, since Ed handled everything after midnight. Hal Dwyer took the check and smiled, easy money. Connie Pell typed up the credit cards. No one thought the show would last through the winter.
Letters started arriving on lined paper. Stations across the state picked up the tape, and then two more in neighboring states joined in. Sharon never liked the makeup or the cape, but she still watched the show every week. Fifteen years went by.
By the fall of 1980, his face appeared on a button at the state fair. Brock arrived in September from a bigger market, with the kind of looks Rex had once hoped for. Brock brought ratings in a folder and promised fifteen more states by spring. Six months later, they’d have a real studio in a bigger city. Rex thought it over for a week before saying yes. He wanted the people who had turned him down to see his face on TV in a prime-time slot.
On October twelfth, a shoebox fell out of the hall closet. Inside were love letters, addressed to Sharon and written in Brock’s handwriting. They mentioned a motel off I-69 at a time when Rex was always at work. He read them in the driveway. That week, he sold two wagons and a pickup, eating lunch in the break room. On Saturday, he did the limp left hand and wore the dead flower. No one knew what was going on in his mind.
On Halloween, he asked Sharon to come down after the first feature. He told her that Brock wanted both for a surprise. Outside, pumpkins sat on porches and kids in cheap masks ran across lawns. Sharon arrived wearing a nice coat. Brock showed up in a sweater that you called big city. Hal was already in the building, and so was Connie. Ed was at Camera Two, where he had worked for fifteen years without ever getting a raise.
During a station ID, Rex locked the front doors. He returned to the crypt set and spoke to the camera as if the building still had a crew that could stop him. He kept using the Rex Rigor voice and telling cheap jokes. He introduced the next movie and kept talking. Screaming started behind him and carried over the air with the theme music. In Linden and the other towns, people thought it was just the old sound effects he used in his bits. A woman in Anderson called the station to say this special was the best one yet. The lobby phone kept ringing.
After midnight, it wasn’t just an act. A boy in Muncie told his mother the host was good this year. A bartender in Terre Haute changed the channel, then switched it back. Someone at a relay in Fort Wayne kept the broadcast going, thinking Rex was doing a Vincent Price laugh and the guests were actors. The police scanner picked up the call late. Halloween always fills the scanner. Two police cars arrived at the WKES lot after the feed had gone to static in half the towns and kept running in the rest until someone at the relay finally shut it off.
Someone had locked the lobby door from the inside. The police found Hal first, then Connie, and then Ed, who was still by the camera as if he had tried to keep filming. The red tally light was still on. Sharon and Brock were lying on the crypt boards under the skull-movie lights. Rex was still talking when the first officer came down the side hall.
Rex was still wearing the suit when they took him away. He wore the cape and the gold buckle, and his left hand was stiff. He asked the first officer if they had enjoyed the second feature.
The doctors said he was not fit for trial, so they sent him to the state hospital on the north side of the county. He is still there. They packed the suit away in a box because he no longer needs it. On Saturday nights after lights out, the aides say he sits in the common room and talks to an invisible camera. He holds up his empty hand as if it were a film can. He says the print is scratched, the acting is worse, and the flower on his coat is already dead, so they are on time. Some of the other patients stay and watch the wall. Some of them laugh when he pauses.
He never drops the voice.