The next couple of days fell into a regular rhythm: wake up at 7:00 a.m. to head out to "Sara's farmhouse" near Napoleonville—a sweltering parish where Louisiana's summer heat clung to the skin like wet wool, the kind of flat, mosquito-bitten landscape that felt so punishing even Napoleon wouldn't have fought for it. There was always lukewarm coffee from a tired PA, a quiet huddle with Rian to talk through beats and take notes, the scenes with Emily—easily the best part of the long hours—and the late crawl back to the hotel past 11:00 p.m., clothes smelling faintly of dry dirt, bug spray, and diesel exhaust.
The air in the parish didn't circulate so much as sit on your shoulders, heavy and smelling of stagnant bayou water and baking soil.
Every morning started the same: swatting horseflies off the craft tent mesh, watching the gaffers tape heavy stinger cables through the high grass, and feeling the sweat collect under the collar before wardrobe could even finish pressing the grease stains into the fabric. The local crew members swore you eventually got used to the humidity, but Ryan was convinced that was just something people said to stop newcomers from packing a bag and heading straight for New Orleans airport.
Between setups, Ryan sat slumped in a plastic lawn chair, chatting amicably with Rian beneath the shade of a faded rainbow golf umbrella. The relentless midday glare bleached the surrounding cane fields into pale stalks, while cicadas kept up an unbroken, mechanical drone from the tree line.
Dust kicked up by grip trucks hung suspended in the stagnant air.
"Have you got any new movie ideas you want to do?" Ryan asked, stretching out his legs into the sun.
"I don't know. I've always wanted to do a murder mystery," the middle-aged director said, shading his eyes. "A real whodunit. But so many of them lean on gimmicks."
"I like Agatha Christie novels, especially Murder on the Orient Express."
"Me too. Although Endless Night is my favorite. I know, it's a controversial pick."
"Oh, I didn't care for how that poem was repeated so many times."
"You just have to read it near a Gothic church with a cup of coffee while the rain comes down," Rian said, smiling.
"Reading is magic that way. Where else does the storyteller have total control? Out here, I have to bow down anytime James Stern or a studio head visits the monitor. It feels like being a kid drawing with markers while your parents hover over your shoulder."
"Bow down? If you bow, they won't see you at all,"
Ryan said with a smirk. Rian let out a short, high-pitched chuckle that broke through the heat.
"Remind me not to cast you in my next project."
Rian reached down and absently turned a loose piece of gravel between his fingers, squinting toward the crew as they rigged black flags over the farmhouse windows.
"Why not? I'm cheap labor," Ryan replied, throwing up his hands as if the umbrella fabric had just shoved him.
"True." Rian pushed himself up from the folding chair and gathered his sides, while Ryan drifted across the gravel toward young Pierce Gagnon to ask what games he was playing on his portable console.
Will he deliver when the camera rolls? Rian wondered silently, watching the boy bounce on his heels. Everything hinges on the kid pulling his weight today.
"All right, folks, let's bring it in," Rian called out, walking side by side with Pierce toward the house.
The practical interior felt close and stuffy.
Emily finished the last sip of her iced coffee, condensation dripping down the plastic cup, and strolled over to join them. Garret Dillahunt, dressed in Jesse's dusty dark wardrobe, fell into step beside her.
"Morning, everyone," Rian began. "You all know the shape of this beat, right?" The cast nodded quietly.
"Any questions before we rehearse the physical stuff?" Seeing none, he clapped his hands once.
"Let's find our marks."
As they took their positions inside the clapboard set, Rian felt the familiar knot in his stomach tighten. The stunt was intricate, and the script demanded raw vulnerability from everyone involved, but watching Ryan and Emily find their focus put him at ease.
"Roll sound... and action!"
Jesse had his arm locked around Sara, using her as a shield as Ryan stepped cautiously down the wooden steps, revolver drawn.
"Jesse."
"Put that down and let her go," Jesse barked, his voice sharp and ragged.
"Sara," Joe said calmly, eyes locked on the barrel,
"Jesse here is the best shot with a gat that I know. When he lets you go, just sit on the couch. Don't do anything stupid."
"He's coming here, Jesse," Sara said, strain evident in her neck. "My loop is coming here."
"I gotta take you in," Jesse pleaded, sweat cutting paths through the grime on his jaw.
"I got nine hundred and forty-eight bars of pure silver. I close my loop, I get right with Abe.
Whatever he gives back, I'll split it with you."
"Was that your plan?"
"Fine, take all of it!"
"Are you delusional? You ain't getting right."
"Long as Abe got one gat-man standing, he's gonna hunt you until his dying day."
"We're gonna leave now," Jesse muttered, backing up toward the hall. "Gonna take your truck, and you're just gonna—"
A floorboard groaned above them. Jesse snapped his gun upward toward the stairwell, and Cid slipped, tumbling down the steps in a panic. Instantly, the practical effects triggered: pneumatic solenoids released with a deafening hiss, wires yanked furniture straight toward the ceiling, and Jesse's stunt rig snatched him off his boots into the air.
"Cut! Watch the debris!"
The team cleared the timber splinters off the set.
Rian, determined to keep the adrenaline up before the sun moved, yelled, "Resetting for the blast! Let's go!"
The air cannons only give us two clean tries, he told himself. Don't blow it.
The charges detonated on cue with a concussive thump of compressed air, wood fragments bursting outward through the shattered framing. Ryan and Emily hit their marks, tumbling off the porch onto the packed dirt just as the dust settled.
Got it.
They scrambled to their feet, Sara's voice cracking as she shrieked, "Oh God! Cid! Cid!"
Joe stared at the doorway in disbelief. "It's him. What is he, some TK freak? You knew!"
"What are you doing?" she gasped, scrambling after him.
"How did your sister die?"
"Put the guns down!"
"How did she die? Is that what happened to her?!"
The anger came through in Ryan's delivery, but under Rian's direction, he allowed the terror beneath it to bleed into his eyes.
"No!"
"He killed her like that!"
"No, he was climbing a bookshelf and it fell over on him! He gets scared, and things blow up—"
"Jesus fucking Christ—"
"He'll learn to control it!"
"Do you have any idea what he's going to turn into?!"
"If he's raised right, he won't! If he has me to look after him, he'll turn out good—"
"He doesn't," Joe said flatly, the line cold and hollow.
"Stay away from him, Joe!"
Joe turned and pushed his way into the dense wall of sugarcane, the broad leaves rustling violently as he shoved past them with the blunderbuss held low.
"Cid! Stay away from him, baby! Come to Mom!"
A few yards in, Joe found Cid curled against the dark soil, his clothes stained with soot and blood. Joe stopped, lowering his weapon as the harsh line of his jaw softened. The camera pushed in tight on Pierce's tear-streaked face, then panned back to Joe, whose hard expression began to crumble.
He knelt down, shifting the heavy gun into his left hand, and gently rested his palm on the boy's hair. A small, reassuring smile broke across his face.
That's the scene, Rian thought from the monitors. How could anyone look at that terrified kid and choose to pull the trigger?
Watching the monitor, Rian's thoughts drifted back to bringing his own boy home from the hospital—the quiet hum of the tires on the asphalt, the late-afternoon light coming through the back window, and that tiny bassinet waiting in an unfamiliar nursery. Every parent on that crew, every aunt and uncle holding a boom mic or adjusting a dimmer, recognized that sudden, absolute vulnerability. It was the ancient instinct to place your own body between a child and the world—even to protect them from what they might become.
Cid leaned his forehead against Joe's knee, trembling. Sara burst through the stalks, dropping to her knees and wrapping both arms around her son, whispering, "It's okay, baby. It's okay."
The camera adjusted over Ryan's shoulder as Joe caught his breath. "Right now, two things have happened. My loop knows Cid is the kid he's after.
And the gat-men know I'm here. That gives us fifteen minutes before one or both of them come down that road. Pack up the truck. Take whatever you can carry and leave."
Sara looked up, her cheeks wet, and nodded.
"Drive north," Joe added, turning away. "Get clear of the city."
"Thank you," she managed.
They broke apart, moving in opposite directions through the dusty haze of the yard.
From behind the video village tent, Rian called out,
"Cut! That's a wrap on the setup, beautiful work."
The sudden quiet was broken only by the crackle of walkie-talkies calling out the wrap and the distant rumble of the generator powering down behind the barn. Ryan stood there for a beat in the tall grass, wiping grit and synthetic sweat from his forehead with the back of his forearm.
The Louisiana sun was finally dipping into a hazy orange smudge across the flat horizon, throwing long, spindly shadows of the grip rigs across the yard. The crew was already moving—coiling thick black cables like sleeping pythons, packing Pelican cases, and lugging folding chairs into the back of a box truck.
It had been brutal, messy work under an unforgiving sky, but watching Emily and Rian huddle by the monitor, laughing over the playback, made the red mud caked on his boots feel like a doing honest work.