When a man discovers that the truth about his dark past is embedded within a fairy tale he and his father created, he is compelled to figure out if the tragic events long thought to exist only in his imagination actually happened.

Please enjoy an excerpt from the screenplay below:

FADE IN:

SUPERIMPOSE: 22 YEARS AGO

EXT. BACKYARD/JONES HOUSE — NIGHT

A GARDEN suffers the ugly effects of neglect.  Decayed vegetation collapsed on itself, given over to the disease of weeds.  Flowers bent, withered, bow submissively before death. 

HOLCOLM JONES (30’s) a short, compact man with unruly head and facial hair drives a shovel into the parched earth of this dying garden.

HOLCOLM

The boy was scared, right?  So he ran away to hide in a forest that was deep and dark. Soon he was lost, but afraid to cry for help.  Too afraid to do anything but listen for what might be lurking in the night.  What he heard though, was strangely familiar.

YOUNG FAIRADAY

Music.  Happy music.

 Holcolm looks at his son, YOUNG FAIRADAY JONES (8), who digs alongside him.  They both haven’t slept in a few days.

 HOLCOLM

The boy followed the happy music into a clearing in the forest…

Flashback

EXT. FOREST CLEARING — NIGHT

THE BOY (YOUNG HOLCOLM) pasty-faced with a bowl cut and large glasses, emerges from a dark cluster of trees and enters a MEADOW DRENCHED IN LIGHT. His jaw drops. 

HOLCOLM (V.O.)

…and couldn’t believe what he saw.

CHILDREN gravitate toward a CAROUSEL brilliantly lit with bulb lights.  CALLIOPE MUSIC swirls and swells in the air.

Young Holcolm joins the other children in climbing on the backs of ceramic steeds.  They bob up and down as the carousel turns. 

HORSE EYES BLINK AND WINK.  BODY CASINGS SPLINTER AND CRACK. 

The horses WHINNIE and rear up, BREAKING away from the carousel canopy.  The children SCREAM. They grab for the jagged poles jutting from the horses’ backs as they’re carried off into the night, the horses leaving behind a trail of their deceitful coating.

The carousel COLLAPSES, crushing the LIGHTS, the MUSIC.

HOLCOLM (V.O.)

It was all a trick.  The children were on their way to be eaten by a nasty, vicious ogre.

 End Flashback

EXT. BACKYARD/JONES HOUSE — NIGHT

Holcolm and Young Fairaday widen the hole in the garden.

YOUNG FAIRADAY

Like the baby was?  Like Mom?

HOLCOLM

Yes.  But there was a small sliver of hope.  A strange man was driving a horse-drawn wagon through the same woods that night.         

YOUNG FAIRADAY

The wrinkled man? 

HOLCOLM

Some time ago, this man’s own child had been eaten by the ogre and all the sadness the man felt had cursed him with old age and terrible wrinkles.  He saw the carousel and knew it was the same trick that had taken his child. 

YOUNG FAIRADAY

He followed the broken horse pieces all the way to the ogre’s cave.

HOLCOLM

But the cave had two giant doors that he’d never be able to open on his own.

YOUNG FAIRADAY

That’s not fair.

HOLCOLM

No. But the Wrinkleman had a trick too.