“Good stuff, angel. Put it in the player, please.”
She scoffed as she moved to the DVD player. “You don’t like my announcer voice?”
“Let’s just say that as an announcer, you’re an amazing daughter and young woman.”
“Oh my god.” She pressed the disc into the slot and grabbed the tiny TV remote from atop the player. “You are so mean.”
He handed her the cocoa. “Forgive me? And don’t get cocoa all over my bed.”
She grinned as she took the mug. “Cocoa, no. But I will be hiding popcorn under your sheets. You’ll never find them all.”
“Nefarious,” he said, deadpan.
He grabbed the bowl of popcorn as Juliet slid onto the bed, putting her back against the comfortable pile of pillows against the rear wall of the RV. She looked at him expectantly as the FBI warning faded in on the TV screen. Her dad was just standing there, bowl in hand.
“What’s up?”
“Maybe I can just get a folding chair or something,” he said.
“What are you talking about? Just come sit next to me.”
Reluctantly, he slid onto the bed next to her, being careful not to spill the popcorn. She looked at him quizzically. Why was he being so weird?
“I’m sorry,” she said as she paused the movie at the flickering Obelisk Studios logo.
“For what?”
“Can we turn off the lights? It’s kind of bright in here.” She grinned apologetically.
He made a faux-resentful noise and slid back off the bed. One by one, he flicked off the lights in the RV, until the only radiance came from the blue light of the TV.
“Better?” he asked, sitting next to her again – a little closer this time, she noticed.
“Better. I’m excited for this, Dad.”
“Me too.”
She started the movie again. Their shoulders brushed as she settled in next to him, feeling happy and content.
***
As Juliet had both feared and hoped, the movie got weird right away. The first scene opened on some kind of demonic ritual. In true Douglas Pierce fashion, there was a lot of nudity. Naked men and women chanted in a strange language around a blazing bonfire, while a young couple, also naked, copulated passionately on an altar.
“Oh,” Juliet said. “It’s going to be that kind of movie, huh?”
“Not surprising for Pierce,” her dad said.
“I was just thinking the same thing.” She nudged him affectionately.
They watched together, drinking cocoa and eating from the same bowl of popcorn. The film unfolded, slow and deliberate, in the surreal and dreamlike style of Douglas Pierce. Juliet knew her father had fallen in love with them because of their languid, sensual style punctuated with moments of intensity, and she had cultivated that same love over the years. Seventh Sacrifice did not disappoint.
The movie told the story of a British mystic Roarke, living as the patriarch of a remote village in 1970s Britain. Roarke’s ambition was to make a deal with a demon to gain immortal life. To satisfy the demon, Roarke schemed in the lives of the villagers, leading them one by one to bizarre, macabre deaths.
Even more intriguing to Juliet was the character of Roarke’s daughter, Lisbeth. She was young, supposedly innocent, but as the film went on, she grew more involved in Roarke’s dark crimes. It became clear she was every bit as dark and clever as he was. Soon the two became emotionally intimate, and she began to aid him in his occult work while distracting the American detective who was the movie’s supposed protagonist.