The Switch House: A Short Novel

by Tim Meyer

  “You don't know me,” Means told him, as it became increasingly difficult to breathe. Spotting the creatures in the darkened corners, his heart raced. They were waiting, biding their time.

  “Enough of this meandering. You've made your choice, captain. You've doomed your ship, your men, all in the name of love, or your misguided views on the subject.”

  “Who are you to judge me?”

  Leaning closer to the lantern on the bar, he shrugged. “No one. Just a man. Remember? Most dangerous devil there is.” He smiled and then blew out the small flame that had kept the entire establishment aglow.

  In the darkness appeared several pairs of eyes, too many to count. They were a radiant turquoise, bright like the Caribbean seas he'd explored when he was younger. The ovals were drawn to him. They sped forth at once, and quick, and when they arrived there was pain.

  Means screamed the only thing that mattered, his lost love's name—“Isabella!”—as the creatures dug into him, drank his sanguine nectar, and separated his muscle from the bone with their hungry mouths.

  APERTURE

  Placing the film against the aperture plate, the old projectionist grumbled, to himself, words of indignation. He snapped the gate over the film, adjusted the framing, and then turned to face the control station positioned directly beneath the porthole. Looking out across the theater, over the Friday night crowd and toward the screen, he pushed the glowing green button in the center of the panel. The motor kicked on, drowning out the distant noise of anxious moviegoers and the collective hum of the other nine projectors. The platter system spun with life, all three in sync with one another, feeding the rollers seven reels worth of footage. The projectionist stepped away from his work, folded his arms across his doughy chest, and looked to his company, his new apprentice, the preppy-looking youngster whose face had been taken over by utter confusion.

  “Um,” the kid said, his eyes darting back and forth. “That was great and all, but I have no idea what you just did.”

  “Weren't you paying attention, numb nuts?” the hermit asked, wiping his dirty, oily hands off on a shop towel. Once he deemed them clean enough, he stroked his gray-streaked beard, combing loose the speckles of leftover Doritos. Shooting the kid a steely gaze, the projectionist moved away from the machine, seemingly satisfied with the way the print was running. “I just threaded the fuckin' thing for ya. Pay attention next time.”

  Rob Garland wanted to take the timid approach. He thought about keeping hush, really thought about it, but he only had a week to learn everything the old hermit knew about being a projectionist. Instead of remaining quiet, he cleared his throat.

  “I learn better when I do.” He kept still in fear that sudden movement would cause the hermit to start chucking empty reels at his head.

  “You'll do. You'll do plenty. Patience is a virtue. Doesn't your generation know any-goddamn-thing?” He didn't allow a response, which was fine because Rob knew the question was rhetorical. “Goddamn millennials. We're talking about threading a projector here, not splitting atoms. Come here. I want to show you the building station.”

  Rob followed the man over to the secluded area of the booth that consisted of a work bench with two circular disks angled outward, jutting pegs in the center where the reels were commonly placed. Compiling five to six reels into one massive print looked complicated—Rob had seen it done before—and he wasn't sure if he'd “get it” in only five days. No, it wasn't splitting atoms, but it might as well have been.

  The projectionist pointed to the splicer sitting on the bench. “See that? That's your best friend. That's what we use to splice the frames together. Get it?”

  “Uhhhh... sure.”

  “Good. I'll show you how to build a print on Wednesday when the new movies come in. In the meantime, we can splice together some trailers for practice.” He nodded in the direction of the cage on the far end of the booth. “Let me show you where we keep some supplies.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Before he took his next step, the old man shifted his gaze back to Rob, his eyes barely visible between his lids. “You call me sir one more damn time and Imma splice your chode off, cock boy. Got it?”

  Snickering, Rob nodded.

  “Now call me Dan, my fuckin' name, or suffer the fuckin' consequences.”

  “Yes, Dan.”

  Rob followed Dan to the cage, a small corner of the booth sectioned off by raw wood framing and chicken wire. Dan popped open the gate and led Rob inside. The cage was trashed with what Rob considered junk. There were Christmas decorations and old projector parts, cardboard boxes filled with rolled-up movie posters dating back to the eighties and dozens of empty reels. Rob also noticed several unopened canisters tucked away in the corner. There was some crap, various marketing materials that never made their way downstairs, cardboard displays and paper handouts, covering the orange and silver canisters, but he spotted them anyway.

  “Okay,” Dan said, kicking a path to the far wall. “Here's where we keep the trailers. We got a ton of old ones we keep for training thumbsuckers such as yourself. Here's one for Pulp Fiction.” He snatched the small hockey puck-looking disc off the shelf and held it to the light as if he'd discovered a blood diamond beneath the African soil. “You like Tarantino, kid?”

  “He's all right,” Rob replied, his eyes drawn to the corner and the canisters. “I mean, I like everything he's done, even though Jackie Brown was kinda boring.”

  Dan blew an irked breath between his lips and said, “Well, you're fuckin' boring” quietly, so Rob couldn't hear. But Rob did hear and only laughed at the crusty old bastard. “Nonsense,” he barked, and continued to grumble on about kids and respect, and did so in near silence. “Anyway, have your pick. There are all types of trailers up here. Knock yourself out. I might take Pulp Fiction with me. Consider it my retirement gift from this piece-of-shit, no-one-gives-a-fuck-about-you place they call The Orchid 10.”

  “What are those?” Rob asked, pointing to the partially-hidden canisters.

  Dan arched his brow. “Those?” He waddled over to the old dented cans and bent down on one knee. “Well, one of them is Austin Powers and the Spy Who Shagged Me, and the other...” He knocked over the marketing materials like the trash they were. They spilled across the floor, mixing with other throwaway items of little to no importance. The first thing Rob wanted to do when he took over Dan's job was to clean out the cage, make it look somewhat presentable. “The other is a rare print from my own personal collection.”

  “You collect prints?”

  Dan rotated his entire body toward the kid. His lips carved out an almost sinister smile. “Yes. Yes, I do.” A faint laugh lived and died in his throat. “Mostly foreign flicks. Rarities and B-sides. Stuff you've probably never heard of, stuff you might not even find on the Internet. Stuff that may or may not sell for a fortune if I live long enough.”

  “What kinds of movies?”

  Dan's forehead bunched together, creating wrinkles and ripples across his pale stretch of skin. “Do you like horror movies, kid?”

  Rob shrugged. “Sure. Rob Zombie's first couple were good. I'll see the new one.”

  The projectionist scoffed. “Rob Zombie? The man wishes he could make the types of films I'm talking about. The types of films I collect are true masterpieces. They're true art. They're... how shall I put this?” He pressed the tip of his forefinger against his chin. His eyes expanded as the words came to him. “They are morbid perfections.”

  Rob stared at him, unblinking. “Oh-kay, then.”

  “Take this one for example.” He popped the latch on the orange canister and pulled back the lid. Inside sat three reels. “It's a short flick. Only about an hour. French title. Ouverture. English translation: Aperture.”

  “Like an aperture plate?”

  Dan winked at him the way one might near the end of a flirty date. “Exactly. Guess you were paying attention after all. An aperture is an opening. In our biz, it's the space that allows light to pa
ss through the projector, allowing the image captured on film to project onto the screen. In this film's case...” He stroked the reels as if they were the spine of his favorite cat. “...it's... well.” He laughed incredulously. “Never mind, kid. You wouldn't believe me. Not a thing like this.”

  Rob folded his arms across his chest. He'd just turned eighteen and had learned a long time ago the difference between when someone was sincere and when someone was putting him on. But in this moment, he couldn't decipher if Dan was serious or yanking his cord. At the very least, the old, nearly-retired projectionist believed in what he was talking about. He'd known Dan for about a year, since he'd started working at The Orchid 10 last summer. He'd only spoken to the man a handful of times since, and he hadn't seemed too loony. A man of few words, sure, but not the bat-shit bonkers turd everyone made him out to be. The man was a hermit, a real recluse, and Rob didn't know him any better than he knew the guy at Wawa who brewed his coffee every morning.

  “Try me,” Rob said, his curiosity piqued.

  Dan flashed him an excited, grinning look. “You want to see it?”

  “Sure.” He didn't know if he did or not, but the answer came forth anyway, as if there were no possible way he could stop it. “What's it about, though?”

  Dan rubbed his hands together in delight. “Oh boy. You're in for a real treat. A reel treat,” he said, snatching a reel out of the canister and holding it up to illustrate his pun. “It's a story about love and death. Life and what lies on the other side of death's door. Some say,” he said, that sick grin still pasted across his face, “that one viewing will open up a portal in your mind, allow you to see what's on the other side. A temporal gateway of sorts.”

  “An aperture,” Rob mumbled.

  “Yes, kid.” Grinning still, the hermit revealed gums that had blackened over the last sixty years. Teeth that were long overdue for repair, maybe past the point of restoration. “An aperture into another world.”

  “So you've watched it?”

  He looked down at the reel in his hand. “Well... no.”

  “No?”

  “No,” he said confidently. “Why would I? That sounds scary as shit.”

  “You've never watched it?” Rob asked, almost angrily.

  “No. Nope. Started to once. Got about five minutes in and had to shut it down. Gave me a headache something fierce.”

  “What happened? What was on it?” Rob felt his obsession with Dan's story grow, as if it were some living, palpable thing inside him. Feeding on him. Gnawing from within.

  A crown of sweat dripped from Rob's forehead. He felt lightheaded.

  “You okay?” Dan asked.

  “Fine. Tell me about the print. What happened?”

  Dan shrugged. “It was just too... bizarre.”

  “Isn't that why you'd watch it?”

  “Listen, kid. When did this turn into an interrogation?” Dan put the reel back in the canister and shut the case. “I just collect the shit, hoping it sells when I retire. Which is next week, by the way. Which means you're going to be the new lead projectionist. Which means we need to learn your ass.”

  “We should watch it.”

  Dan's smile danced off his face. His color paled. “You... really... want to?”

  “Yes.” He'd called the old hermit's bluff. “Yes, let's watch it.”

  “Oh... oh, okay. Tonight then. Midnight. I'll thread theater one.”

  “Perfect.”

  He didn't know why, but midnight couldn't come fast enough.

  * * *

  The lobby of Orchid 10 was unsurprisingly vacant for a Monday night after the last show had gone in. Rob drifted toward the popcorn stand where the cute new girl stood behind the counter, prepping the popcorn popper for closing. She had already emptied it and was beginning to wipe down the greasy interior.

  “Jumping on that a little prematurely, huh, new girl?” Rob asked, leaning on the candy counter.

  She twisted her neck, continuing to spray down the stainless steel kettle. Flashing him a superficial smile, she said, “Dude, no one else is coming in.”

  The second the words left her mouth, a couple stumbled through the front door, holding hands and giggling. They asked Rob if they were too late, if they had missed any part of the movie. While staring at the new girl, he simply said, “No,” and then proceeded over to the ticket booth.

  “And be sure to try our number one combo,” he said loud enough so the new girl could hear, his lips pressed into a devious smile.

  The new girl scowled, but when the couple came over to order a number one, she greeted them like the training videos instructed. “Anything else?” she bubbled and they shook their heads “no” and headed for the theater.

  “There's always one,” Rob said, winking at her.

  She wriggled her lips and returned to her closing tasks, starting the process from the beginning.

  Rob leaned on the counter again, the lower half of his face barely able to contain his grin. “Always one—”

  “Cram it, Garland,” she said sharply. She turned to him and pretended to squirt cleaner at him, mimicking the squishy sounds it made when it shot from the nozzle. (pshoo-pshoo). She returned his goofy grin.

  The two of them had been playing this little flirty game over the last week, basically since Brianne Welker's orientation. On her first day, she had told Rob that she had broken it off with her boyfriend and was looking forward to spending the summer before senior year single. He thought that info was a little too much to reveal on her first day, but he didn't mind; they had shared a strong connection from the second he had laid eyes on her, the second he had opened his mouth. Their first conversation felt like it would never end, be consumed by awkward silences or grow dull. They shared likes and dislikes and discovered they loved the same movies. They spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning theaters, discussing their favorite films, albums they'd require if stranded on a desert island, and which books they'd read over and over again. She was a little too much of a Harry Potter nerd for his tastes, but that was okay; he liked the books too and told her Universal was supposedly opening up a Harry Potter theme park, which she already knew about and claimed she'd be first in line when it opened next fall.

  They talked for hours even though their exchange only seemed like minutes. And when the day was over, they continued their conversation via text message.

  They next day they were making out in the ice room. Rob had her back pressed against the ice machine. She jumped up on his hips and wrapped her legs around his waist. It was a scene out of every romantic comedy he'd ever seen. They'd spent the next ten minutes swapping saliva until one of the other ushers had barged in. The usher's face had twisted with alarm and embarrassment, and he'd immediately thrown his arm over his eyes and backed out of the room.

  Since then, they had made sure to carve out at least ten minutes of every shift to make kissy-face in the maintenance closet.

  “What are you thinking about?” Brianne asked him.

  “Nothing?”

  Her eyes slimmed. Cocking her head, she said, “You're thinking about the broom closet again, aren't you?”

  “No...” Rob winked and held the pose. “Okay, I was. Sue me. Wanna go?”

  “I have to finish cleaning the popper. Then sweep and mop the stand. You know the routine.”

  “Yeah, I sure do.”

  “Plus, I was thinking we could do something else. You know, besides making out.”

  “Oh?” Rob perked up. His pants suddenly felt a little tighter. Sweat crawled down his inner leg. “Like what, pray tell, did you have in mind?”

  Buffing the counter with a clean rag, she shrugged. “I dunno. Dinner? The diner on 37? IHOP? I'll even let you pay the bill.”

  “How gracious of you.” Rob folded his arms. “Got a better idea. Dan just invited me to a movie tonight. A sneak peek.”

  Brianne's brow spiked with interest. “Oh? The new Nolan?”

  He shook his head. “No, something a littl
e more obscure.”

  She seemed almost disappointed.

  “Some foreign film,” Rob said, filling up the napkin dispenser. “It's French. Aperture, or something. Says it's supposed to be scary as fuck.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “I do like French films. Ever see Chocolat?”

  “No. God, no. And I don't plan on it either.”

  “It's so good. Plus, you know—Johnny Depp and stuff.”

  “Terrible.” He slammed the top down on the napkin dispenser and tugged the first one through. “So... you in?”

  “I don't know. Sounds weird. And creepy. And that guy Dan gives me the willies. He should invest in some deodorant.”

  “Come on. He's not so bad.”

  “He never comes down from up there. I met him once, my first day. I said 'hello' and he grunted something back that wasn't even English.”

  Rob squeaked with laughter. “Yeah, that's Dan. Man's a bit of a recluse. He's harmless. And a good guy once you get to know him. This theater will suffer without him.”

  Brianne finished the counter, and then bent over to put the lid back on the candy case. “Fine. We'll watch your French flick. But can we get food? Fuck, I'm starving.”

  * * *

  Two minutes to midnight and Dan Galloway had finished threading Ouverture. The sensation in his fingers while placing the film on the rollers had been too strong to ignore. They'd gone rigid a few times, especially while he'd fed the film through the brain, the piece stationed in the center of the print that controlled the speed of the platter. Numbness ruled his hands, down to the bone, every nerve shredded. When the tingling sensation abated, a shooting pain took its place and shot up his arm, needling his elbow. Nerves swam like a school of sharks in a feeding frenzy. His brain felt cloudy and empty, like a veil draped over his thoughts, preventing any original content from forming. He got the sense that, if he tried to speak, his words would come out as inarticulate syllables.