Shortly after the invention of film reels, land developer Donald Cardiss shot a series of homemade pornographic reels featuring his friends and his own wife. The films were made in Cardiss’ home for distribution among a close-knit circle of ‘cinema enthusiasts’, in semi-open defiance of the authorities while he was awaiting trial on an obscenity charge.
The contents wouldn’t be considered particularly racy by today’s standards, being spliced together from scenes of unattractive naked people staring at the camera in drink or opium-befuddled complacency or having unenthusiastic sex in twos and threes. The most interesting moment is when one woman who’s sampled too much of Cardiss’ inducements over-balances and slides right off her partner, knocking herself unconscious on a coffee table.
However, anyone who watches the reels and doesn’t get distracted by the bumping and grinding in the foreground will notice that set up behind the participants and carefully framed in every shot are a series of canvas dropcloths crudely painted with erotic symbols and other, less recognisable (and faintly disturbing) marks.
The making of the tapes contributed to Cardiss’ conviction on the obscenity charge, and he was sentenced to three years in prison. During his time behind bars, there were a series of unexplained deaths among his friends who watched the tapes. Cardiss himself seems to have had a change of heart during his time in prison -- upon his release he made a frantic effort to re-acquire and destroy all copies of the reels. However, he died of a heart attack before completing the job, and the Cardiss tapes are still out there.
Possibilities
1 The Cardiss home was situated in an area where another reality is close to intersecting with our own. The frequent use of drink, opium, and other perception-altering chemicals made the household’s members receptive to outside influences. The weird symbols on the backdrops in the reels are concepts and ideas from outside our universe.
The senders are so alien to our way of life that there’s no knowing what their intentions were, but in our world their message, when completely assembled by watching all the tapes, takes on actual physical shape -- it hatches in the form of a worm in the viewer’s brain, which slowly eats the surrounding flesh, driving the victim mad and eventually killing them.
Cardiss felt the worm hatch in his own brain, and spent his time in prison in the horrified knowledge that a parasite was slowly destroying his faculties. The re-acquisition of the tapes was an attempt to find a cure for himself, and stop the malady from spreading, but in the end, there wasn’t enough time left to him. Anyone who watches the complete series of tapes is in danger of suffering the same fate.
2 The symbols in the backdrops are just a distraction. Anyone who studies the tapes carefully will notice that there are occasional frames spliced into the reels which have nothing to do with pornography -- they’re texts copied from a magical tome venerating Y’Golonac and laying out the materials and method of casting spells peculiar to Y’Golonac’s cult.
However, one of the viewers who was a quicker study than the others transcribed the tome and began using its spells to murder his fellow cultists and potential rivals. Cardiss was unable to do anything about this while behind bars, but when released, he tracked down and confronted the killer. Three years without practicing had made his skills rusty enough to lose the fight, though. The other cultist and the remaining tomes-on-tape are still at large.
3 There is nothing unusual about the tapes, the weird symbols are just Cardiss’ idea of good cinema.
When his corrosive influence was removed, his wife Dorothea (who fell pregnant during the shoot) set about reinventing herself. She moved away with her infant son, concocted a fictitious background to protect her reputation, and married well. The destruction of the tapes was a peace offering made by Cardiss in an attempt at reconciliation, and the deaths were just Cardiss’ friends falling victim to their other vices.
However, Dorothea’s family can still be hurt if her past comes out. Their money is in a complicated series of legal trusts set up by a conservative religious ancestor, and the bulk of it will revert to another branch of the family if the line is revealed to include an illegitimate birth. If evidence of the her activities on film is made public, the trust’s executors will strip them of their rights as beneficiaries.
© Chris Kerr
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