They ran the first film test on the animated monster a week later.
When it was over, Clarence sat in darkness and nodded imperceptibly.
“Better. But … more horrorific, bloodcurdling. Let’s scare the hell out of Aunt Jane. Back to the drawing board!”
“I’m a week behind schedule now,” Terwilliger protested. “You keep coming in, change this, change that, you say, so I change it, one day the tail’s all wrong, next day it’s the claws—”
“You’ll find a way to make me happy,” said Clarence. “Get in there and fight the old aesthetic fight!”
At the end of the month they ran the second test.
“A near miss! Close!” said Clarence. “The face is just almost right. Try again, Terwilliger!”
Terwilliger went back. He animated the dinosaur’s mouth so that it said obscene things which only a lip reader might catch, while the rest of the audience thought the beast was only shrieking. Then he got the clay and worked until 3A.M. on the awful face.
“That’s it!” cried Clarence in the projection room the next week. “Perfect! Now that’s what I call a monster!”
He leaned toward the old man, his lawyer, Mr. Glass, and Maury Poole, his production assistant.
“You like my creature?” He beamed.
Terwilliger, slumped in the back row, his skeleton as long as the monsters he built, could feel the old lawyer shrug.
“You seen one monster, you seen ‘em all.”
“Sure, sure, but this one’s special!” shouted Clarence happily. “Even I got to admit Terwilliger’s a genius!”
They all turned back to watch the beast on the screen, in a titanic waltz, throw its razor tail wide in a vicious harvesting that cut grass and clipped flowers. The beast paused now to gaze pensively off into mists, gnawing a red bone.
“That monster,” said Mr. Glass at last, squinting. “He sure looks familiar.”
“Familiar?” Terwilliger stirred, alert.
“It’s got such a look,” drawled Mr. Glass in the dark, “I couldn’t forget, from someplace.”
“Natural Museum exhibits?”
“No, no.”
“Maybe,” laughed Clarence, “you read a book once, Glass?”
“Funny …” Glass, unperturbed, cocked his head, closed one eye. “Like detectives, I don’t forget a face. But, that Tyrannosaurus Rex—where before did I meet him?”
“Who cares?” Clarence sprinted. “He’s great. And all because I booted Terwilliger’s behind to make him do it right. Come on, Maury!”
When the door shut, Mr. Glass turned to gaze steadily at Terwilliger. Not taking his eyes away, he called softly to the projectionist, “Walt? Walter? Could you favor us with that beast again?”
“Sure thing.”
Terwilliger shifted uncomfortably, aware of some bleak force gathering in blackness, in the sharp light that shot forth once more to ricochet terror off the screen.
“Yeah. Sure,” mused Mr. Glass. “I almost remember. I almost know him. But … who?”
The brute, as if answering, turned and for a disdainful moment stared across one hundred thousand million years at two small men hidden in a small dark room. The tyrant machine named itself in thunder.
Mr. Glass quickened forward, as if to cup his ear.
Darkness swallowed all.
With the film half finished, in the tenth week, Clarence summoned thirty of the office staff, technicians and a few friends to see a rough cut of the picture.
The film had been running fifteen minutes when a gasp ran through the small audience.
Clarence glanced swiftly about.
Mr. Glass, next to him, stiffened.
Terwilliger, scenting danger, lingered near the exit, not knowing why; his nervousness was compulsive and intuitive. Hand on the door, he watched.
Another gasp ran through the crowd.
Someone laughed quietly. A woman secretary giggled. Then there was instantaneous silence.
For Joe Clarence had jumped to his feet.
His tiny figure sliced across the light on the screen. For a moment, two images gesticulated in the dark: Tyrannosaurus, ripping the leg from a Pteranodon, and Clarence, yelling, jumping forward as if to grapple with these fantastic wrestlers.
“Stop! Freeze it right there!”
The film stopped. The image held.
“What’s wrong?” asked Mr. Glass.
“Wrong?” Clarence crept up on the image. He thrust his baby hand to the screen, stabbed the tyrant jaw, the lizard eye, the fangs, the brow, then turned blindly to the projector light so that reptilian flesh was printed on his furious cheeks. “What goes? What is this?”
“Only a monster, Chief.”
“Monster, hell!” Clarence pounded the screen with his tiny fist. “That’s me!”
Half the people leaned forward, half the people fell back, two people jumped up, one of them Mr. Glass, who fumbled for his other spectacles, flexed his eyes and moaned, “So that’s where I saw him before!”
“That’s where you what?”
Mr. Glass shook his head, eyes shut. “That face, I knew it was familiar.”
A wind blew in the room.
Everyone turned. The door stood open.
Terwilliger was gone.
They found Terwilliger in his animation studio cleaning out his desk, dumping everything into a large cardboard box, the Tyrannosaurus machine-toy model under his arm. He looked up as the mob swirled in, Clarence at the head.
“What did I do to deserve this!” he cried.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Clarence.”
“You’re sorry?! Didn’t I pay you well?”
“No, as a matter of fact.”
“I took you to lunches—”
“Once. I picked up the tab.”
“I gave you dinner at home, you swam in my pool, and now this! You’re fired!”
