"You're on, Mister!" The runner pointed without seeming to look and took off, weaving past the grips and two honeys in sequins who must have wandered in from stage 4.

Issac stood, more quickly than he had intended, losing any pretence at being cool or calm or collected. His nerves rose with him. He patted the guns the wardrobe girl had hung on him and plonked the broad-brimmed hat on his head. At least they'd found one that fitted.

He looked around. They called it the Extras' Waiting room – a shed with chairs in would be more accurate. Make that an oven with chairs. The room had been built off the main stage and had a corrugated iron roof that the sun beat on so hard you'd swear you could hear it knocking after five minutes cooking there. Apart from Issac only two extras had yet to be called, both old women wilting in bonnets and shawls. A western they'd told him. So far he'd seen a cowboy and an undertaker, but no Indians.

"Wish me luck, ladies," he said, but neither of them could summon the energy to so much as raise a hand.

Issac ducked under the doorway and strolled into the corridor in the direction the runner took. He strolled rather than strode, partly to calm his nerves, but mainly because he had very little idea where he was supposed to go. He could feel the sweat running down his neck, and from his armpits down across his ribs, making the checked shirt stick.

Props men, grips, wardrobe girls, runners, filled the corridor, all in a hurry, all with an overpowering sense of purpose and urgency that made it impossible for him to ask for directions. Hell he didn't even know where he wanted directions to. "You're on!" was all the boy said.

Issac towered above everyone around him, above everyone in the cast come to that, but right now he felt like a little boy facing day one at school. He remembered that day, September eighth, nineteen twelve, pencil case clutched tighter than tight. Before the Great War. It had been hot that day too.

At the corner he turned left. He almost missed the 'Mister Bannon' in the general chatter and clatter, but the voice, though quiet, snagged his attention.

"Mister Bannon." A short man, thin, wrapped up despite the heat, hat and scarf, as if he were an actor too, sunglasses as if he weren't inside.

"That's me," Issac said. It didn't feel like him though. At nineteen he hadn't got used to people calling him Mister. And somebody had remembered his name? He hadn't expected that. Had to be a good sign.

The man pointed at the door opposite with a gloved had.

"Thanks." If the fella wants to die of sweating that's his business. Issac held his shrug back and pushed his way through the door, ducking again. Seemed like Hollywood didn't make any doorways for men who stood six three.

The door snicked shut behind Issac and the brim of his hat revealed the room beyond as he straightened. The place could double as an aircraft hangar, the lights so high above and far away looked more like stars and offered about the same level of illumination. Issac took two steps in, the echo of his boots giving the impression of more empty space than a man would ever need. Somewhere a floodlight went on, picking out a locomotive, a steam loco, polished brass and gleaming green enamel. Old-style, like the ones that carried his grandfather across the states to fight in the Civil War.

"Holy heck! That's a beauty." He pushed his hat back and stared.

Behind the loco stood at least one carriage but in such gloom Issac could barely see it. In fact apart from the locomotive and the ground around his feet he couldn't see anything or anyone.

"Hello?" Play it cool, Issac. Don't want to be the farm-boy in front of these Hollywood types.

Nothing.

He walked toward the train, certain a dozen pairs of eyes watched him. It lay further away than he thought.

I'll show these jokers I can ad lib with the best of them. Now there's a bit of Latin they'd be surprised I knew.

He drew closer, slowly. The hangar must be three hundred yards wide! He felt a hot wind blowing up from somewhere. A door left open at the far end, or one of those giant fans they use. He could see the carriages now, three of them, lighting up as he approached. The nameplate bore the legend, "The Wayne."

What now? Damned if I'm asking again.

To climb into the loco made no sense. They'd dressed him as a passenger, not a rail man. In fact, as he got up close he thought he saw a figure in the driver's cab, short-ish, thin-ish. Issac took hold of the side rail on the first carriage and hauled himself up by the narrow step. The door opened easily enough and the plush interior lit up for him, though he couldn't see what lit it.

Nice.

He took a seat, confused as hell, but enjoying the magic of Hollywood none the less. He'd give it a moment or two and see what happened. Possibly the distant clack of a movie slate and a cry of action, or cut, or a round of applause and he'd be initiated into the secret order of movie extras. Who knew?

The sensation of motion, of sudden and inexorable acceleration past all reasonable speed, took Issac by surprise and ended before he could part his lips to let a yelp out. In two heartbeats he went from pressed back into his seat by a thousand ton weight to flying into the back of the next seat. He found himself on the floor, hatless and gasping for breath.

"Not funny!" Issac scooped his hat from the carriage floor and used the armrest to heave himself up.

He had more to say but he swallowed it all in one loud gulp. The hangar had been replaced by a white desert.

"What the heck?" Issac moved to the window, crouching.

A desert.

It looked like Arizona. A bit.

"Must be a set." They must have hauled the train outside and this must be a set. Only he would have noticed square miles of desert on the way into the studio . . .

"Hell if I know . . ." He put his hat on and made for the door. As he turned he spotted the platform on the other side, a plain raised stonework platform with a tiled awning on cast iron pillars.

Issac blinked, paused, shrugged, and left the carriage by the platform-side door. He had heard of the magic of Hollywood but the camera tricks happened inside the camera didn't they, not out in the lot?

"Somebody slipped something into my water. I'm wacked out. I'll be seeing pixies next." Issac knew what the right drug could do to a man. In little brown bottles on the high shelves at his father's drugstore there were painkillers that could make a man think he was Jesus flying off the cross.

The sun hit him hard in the brief gap between carriage and the shadow of the awning. "I gotta wait this out, keep calm." Blow this chance and he might not get another, might find himself working the till back at the pharmacy.

Issac looked out across the desert. White – nothing but white. A blind white heat.

Motion at the corner of his eye. Issac spun round. "Who's there?" He'd seen something. Something small and quick. With a tail?

"Come out! I've seen ya." He tried to sound more confident than he was. The shadows looked blacker than pitch and green afterimages swam before his eyes. "Now!" He let his frustration put an edge on it.

Slowly a small figure stepped forward. It seemed to change as he stared, as the red and green memories of the desert faded away. A girl? A little girl?

"Hey . . ."

A little girl, skinny, very skinny, dressed in a skirt and blouse and bonnet . . . just like the old women in the waiting room. Issac took a step toward her. She half opened her mouth but no words came. Teeth? He blinked and looked again. A little girl with little girl teeth. For a moment he'd though she had a sharp row of cat teeth. He shook his head and sweat flicked off his hair.

"Hey there. Who are you?" he asked.

She stared at him. She had something clutched to her chest. Very tight. A rag doll.

"Hey," he said. "What's your name? I'm Sykes. Well Issac really. But everyone calls me Sykes. What's your name?" He pointed to her.

The child opened her mouth again. For a moment he saw cat teeth, clear as day. He blinked. No, just regular girl teeth. Her lips moved but no sound came.

"Your name?" He said it slowly, loud, as if she were foreign, crouching to be on a level with her and pointing again.

She squeezed her dolly. "Leelee."

"Lilly? I had an Aunt Lilly." Issac smiled. "Lilliana she'd tell us, but we always called her Lilly."

"Lilly."

"Please to meet you, Lilly." Issac stood and held his hand out. "Let's get out of here shall we?"

Lilly squeezed her dolly and watched him with solemn eyes glittering in the darkness of her bonnet.

"Say! Are you hungry?" Issac hadn't ever seen a child as badly in need of a meal, not even the hollow-cheeked street girls down on 42nd. He patted himself down. "I got something ... here!" He fished out a strip of jerky and held it out.

"Take it. It's good. Jerky."

Lilly stared at him.

"Beef jerky. Mmmmm!" He waved it. And then it was gone. The girl moved like a whip crack. Issac didn't see her move so much as remember it after the event. One moment he was waving the strip of jerky. The next she was on the ground devouring it. Devouring. That was the word. Not one he'd ever spoken perhaps. But this was the moment he'd been saving it for.

"Nice?"

Lilly looked up. For a heartbeat, when her eyes met his, Issac felt a long way from home. The moment passed. She stared at his hand as if willing another strip to appear.

"All gone. Sorry." He patted himself down again.

He made to hold his hand out again, but that moment when their eyes met stopped him. He shook his head.

She's just a little girl. A starving little girl.

Issac held his hand out. And Lilly took it.

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I written other books too - check out Prince of Thorns or Prince of Fools on Amazon!