by Tim Meyer
When finished, he took a seat next to the projector. He inhaled slowly, heard himself wheeze with each breath. A funny tingle fingered his heart, and he wondered if this was it, if this was the big heart attack that had ended many other Galloways before him.
He rested, but, as the seconds ticked on, he felt no better.
Eventually, he pulled himself up. Looking through the porthole, he spotted his protégé, the kid who'd replace him in a week's time, and the kid's new squeeze, the saucy new girl who served up one hell of a number two combo.
His lips spread into a smile, but the emotion behind the action quickly faltered. The realization of his successor's dim future hit him hard. His mood suddenly soured and he felt awful for Rob. In a few years, this job would be gone. What was once a pretty decent-paying job complete with benefits and union perks, would give way to part-time minimum wage work only. True projectionists were a dying breed and he was the last of his kind. Dan predicted digital hardware would replace film in two year's time, maybe less depending on the market. Soon, any two-bit numbskull with the brave ability to press a button could start a projector. Projectionists were trending toward obsolete, like the clockmakers and switchboard operators before them, and that bent Dan's smile, crushed his high spirits.
Dan pressed the green button. The motor buzzed to life. The rollers fed the film along. The lamphouse glowed bright, projecting images on the screen. Dan raised his vision and focused on the front of the theater. Some French words were written in white against a black background.
Dan felt a presence behind him. A figure. Standing tall in the booth, looming over him, stretching like some indefinable shape, free from the constraints of gravity and other earthly restrictions.
He turned and saw nothing. No floating shape. No dim, jellylike figure reaching for his neck. Nothing but shadows and the small cone of light looking down at his workstation.
Silly, he thought, you're being silly.
He returned to the film. The black and white images appeared before him, changing within a few seconds of showing themselves. They were of random things. Grotesque things. Things he'd seen before, once, when he first acquired the film from some junkie ex-actor who'd stolen it from some big-wig Hollywood executive twenty years prior. He'd made it about five minutes in before having to shut the damned thing off; he wondered how long he'd last the second time around.
The feeling returned. Something behind him. Some unspeakable horror, some gangrenous creature dripping with black, vile fluids, reeking of death and disease, a limitless mouth filled with tiny white shards of teeth, motivated to destroy and defile all that made the human world good and perfect, all that made it human.
Dan turned and expected to see nothing again, much of the same; the dim light and shifty shadows the projection booth usually harbored.
But what stood before him wasn't a trick the shadows provided. It actually resembled the horrors his brain conceived.
Only worse.
The thing was real.
* * *
After the first few minutes of random gross-out frames and still credits, the meat of the film began. Rob threw his arm around Brianne and pulled her close. The top of her head fit perfectly in the space between his cheek and shoulder, snugly, like there was no other head in the universe meant for that special place. They locked together and fixed their eyes on the screen, waiting for the story to unfold and sink its claws into them.
(The woman on screen was folding laundry. She sat on her bed, piling the squared articles on top of one another. She was crying but trying not to. Sniffling.)
The scene changed: a dead bird spattered against the dotted line on the asphalt surface, a feathery blob of bones and blood. A hammer coming down on a human hand, smashing the fingers into twisted extensions of flesh and exposed white. A woman hurling herself off the balcony of a sky-high tower and a few frames of the black, soupy puddle she'd become.
“What the hell are we watching?” Brianne whispered.
“I don't know,” Rob said, feeling slightly disgusted, slightly amused. A cold wave crashed against his arms and legs, causing a layer of gooseflesh to sprawl over him. “Whatever it is, it's cool as fuck, though.”
“Cool?” She pushed away from him, breaking contact. “This is sick.”
Rob turned to her. “We can go if you want.”
On screen, an army of spiders crawled over a woman's mostly-deteriorated corpse. There was no denying the corpse was real and not a prop. Rob felt its authenticity in his bones.
Brianne seemed to weigh her options in silence, as more unspeakable acts of violence were projected before her. Scenes depicting real-life mutilation flashed between brief moments of what might have been a cohesive, coherent story had the filmmakers stuck with it.
“No,” she finally said. “But I need to pee.”
“Okay.” Rob looked around the empty theater. “If you see Dan, tell him to come join us.”
She nodded, and then took off down the aisle.
He cupped his hands over his mouth. “And bring me snacks!”
She gave him two thumbs up.
Rob reclined in his seat and focused on the picture.
(The woman moved to the window, looking out across the street. Below, townspeople bustled. As she watched, the woman said something in French and there were no subtitles to accompany her voice.)
“What the hell are you making me watch, Dan?” Rob whispered to himself.
More quick scenes: a man getting hit by a car, a tire rolling over his head, flattening his cranium, coagulated lumps of brains and blood spurting through the cracked skull and split flesh. A pack of lions tearing into a zebra, ripping huge chunks of skin and muscle away, still alive as the predators quarter the defenseless, struggling animal. An entire hallway of flyblown bodies, the surrounding walls dripping with dark fluids. A homeless clown sitting on the street corner of some busy intersection, munching on a severed hand, while several pedestrians pass by seemingly unaware of the menace's existence.
(With her back to the camera, the woman faced the open window. The bustle of Paris faded into the background, reduced to faint white noise. She turned to the camera. The woman's face had changed, suddenly different. She had morphed into a different woman altogether. It was...)
“What the hell?” Rob asked the empty theater, pitching himself forward.
The woman on screen was no longer the Frenchwoman.
“Help me, Robbie,” the woman said in a voice that no longer carried a French accent. It was American. It belonged to Brianne. “Help me, Robbie,” the new girl repeated. “Help me.” There were tears in her eyes, streaming down her face, running off her cheeks. But she didn't appear sad like he thought she ought to, rather, indifferent about the situation. Maybe not even that. Maybe... happy? He swore the ends of her mouth curled, traces of a smile beginning to take shape. “They're coming for you, Robbie. They're coming for all of us. They can't be stopped.”
Rob launched himself out of his seat. He stood there, eyes glued to the black and white screen.
Brianne's body heaved as she began to sob. “They're coming.” Her voice changed just then. Deeper. Several octaves lower. Eerily demonic. “They're coming. We let it out, Robbie. We let it out.” The last sentence sounded like a record played backwards, low and warbled. “We let it out! We let it out! We let it out!” Her screams sounded like the howling gale of a bad storm. Her fists beat against the camera, shaking the frame. No, not the frame. Him. She was beating him. He felt the impact of her blows on his chest and shoulders.
Rob turned to run but there was only darkness behind him, an endless, lightless void. He thought about jumping into the inky lake before him, but there was a sense of threat there, a notion that this was darkness not to be trespassed, that there was no return from this place. This was a place that kept things, his intuition told him. There was no coming back.
No coming back.
No coming back!
He turned back to the screen and faced Brianne, wh
o was now standing in the row before him dressed in the Frenchwoman's attire, that silky satin robe.
“NO COMING BACK!” Brianne shouted in a voice that wasn't her own, and possibly belonged to some foul soul residing in the deepest depths of Hell.
Rob backed away as Brianne's mouth remained open, displaying rotted teeth, a tongue comprised of writhing maggots, which spilled over her lower lip as she continued to shout. “NO COMING BACK! NO COMING BACK!”
Rob jumped backwards expecting to clear the seat, but there was nothing left of the theater behind him except the dark abyss. Icy hands grabbed him and pulled him under, taking him to—
* * *
Rob flailed and cried out. Gasping for fresh air, he lunged forward. Brianne screamed and jerked the wheel, causing the tires to wail beneath them.
“What the fuck, dude?” she asked, flipping off the horn-honking driver to her left.
“I'm sorry,” Rob said instinctively. “What-where? Where am I?”
“Um, you're in my car. On the way to IHOP. Like we said. Like two minutes ago. Before you passed out and went all Jacob's Ladder on me.”
Rob wiped a layer of cold sweat from his brow. “I thought... the movie.”
“What movie? Jacob's Ladder?”
He shook his head and suffered a sudden wave of dizziness. He fought off the urge to puke all over the glove box. “The one we were watching.” He swallowed and tasted acid, the bile in the back of his throat. “The French flick.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” She took turns between eyeing him warily and concentrating on the road. “We left work and decided to go to IHOP. There was never any movie.”
“No,” he said, shivering. A fever worked over him, and he could feel a sickness crawling through his veins, infecting each organ as it traveled deeper and deeper into his body. The sudden notion to rip his hair out became strong, and he found himself fingering around his scalp. “No, we were watching...”
“Are you feeling all right?” She felt his forehead. “Jesus, you're burning up. Maybe I should just take you home.”
“No. Home.” The highway lights became a shifting kaleidoscope of bright colors. He took another spin on the fever carousel.
“Fuck that,” she said.
“No.” But he had no choice in the matter. She had already pulled off the main drag and was heading down Green Street, toward Rob's parent's house.
* * *
The next morning he felt much better, at least physically. He went to work with his head in a cloud, his brain polluted with weird thoughts, but his body felt all right. He wasn't hot or sweating pellets of ice; he was good. But his head, on the other hand, felt like someone had set off a fog machine in there, pumping ghostly images of things that should not exist directly into his mind's projector. He tried to remember the previous night in its entirety; the film, what happened during the viewing, the bizarre events that had followed. But he couldn't do it. It wasn't there, not all of it. There were fragments, just pieces. Broken images and shattered visions. Tidbits of a good bad dream, there somewhere beyond the veil of reality. Enough to verify what he'd seen was real, but enough to doubt its authenticity.
When he arrived at work, he decided what had happened last night was real. The film was real. The viewing was real. Everything that had happened was real right up until he'd awoken in Brianne's car, screaming like a newborn baby thirsting for the teat.
But what was real?
The movie he hardly remembered?
The reels in his mind began to spin, projecting the Frenchwoman while she pleaded for help. But it hadn't been her, right? No, it had been Brianne.
He remembered the sick, nasty scenes spliced between those involving the Frenchwoman. Yes, it was all coming back to him. Slowly. Fragments. Dirty, twisted concepts weaving together like fine threads until they had come together and become one complete garment. The closer he got to the projection booth, the more he remembered. By the time he passed theater six, he had recalled everything.
He found Dan sitting behind his desk, awkwardly slumped. He lifted his head from the blank wooden space before him, and smiled. His teeth had seemingly rotted completely black overnight. His eyes and the tone of his skin had yellowed with jaundice. Most of his hair had fallen out, leaving behind noticeable patches of scalp. A dozen or so clumps of silver strands remained.
Dan coughed. “You like the movie, kid?”
Rob had approached with no apprehension, but once he set eyes on the old projectionist, he found himself backing away. “What happened to you?”
“I watched it,” he said with a bright smile. “I finally watched it.”
“Jesus, your face.”
“My face is beautiful.” He touched a spot on his face where a boil had formed. The tumor-like growth had filled to the point where Rob thought it might break and discharge pink, toxic juices. “I'm transforming. Becoming one with the other side.”
“What other side?” Rob trembled. “What are you talking about?”
Leaning forward, Dan squinted. “You didn't see it? You didn't stare into the abyss?”
“I saw...” What had he seen? He remembered gazing into the black and seeing nothing but the endless void. “I saw nothing.”
Dan shook his head violently. “Oh no. You saw what I saw. You saw into the aperture. Into the dark world. And you know what?”
Rob was too terrified to respond.
“The dark world saw you.”
He wanted to turn and run, but fear rooted him to the floor.
“You can't run,” Dan said as if he'd read the kid's mind. “You can't outrun what is everywhere. The dark world is everywhere now, hidden behind the veil of our own precious domain. There. Hidden. Waiting. Gaining traction. The film,” he nodded to the three reels sitting on the desk, “will be shown to the masses.”
Rob found enough courage to speak but he was still trembling. “N-no. It can't.”
“Yes, it can. And it will.”
“W-we can stop it.”
“Too late. Darkness is like wildfire; it spreads quickly. And this film is pure darkness.”
“P-please.”
“Go now,” Dan suggested, sweeping the three reels closer to him so he could rest his head on them. “Go and live your life. What's left of it. Live until the darkness catches up with you. It's not far behind. In the meantime, I will protect the film, as I always have.” He perked up. “Funny, how I've never watched it before. After all the years I've had it in my possession, I picked now to view it. Curious.”
Rob thought it was curious too, but kept quiet. Too many of his thoughts were bumping into each other, fumbling.
“I never watched it until I met you,” he added, before putting his head back down, where it would remain for a good long while.
Rob went downstairs, handed in his immediate resignation, and walked out the doors of Orchid 10 for the last time.
He thought he felt a cold darkness saunter after him and follow him into the parking lot.
* * *
Rob grabbed the door handle and pulled.
“Where do you think you're going, hot stuff?” Brianne asked from behind him.
Rob turned, and the sudden movement brought a sickly sensation to his stomach. Brianne strolled toward him casually, twisting her body with each step. Overhead, roiling gray clouds closed off the sky. The atmosphere reeked of damp air. Rain was on the way. Lots of it.
“Didn't think you could quit and not say goodbye to me,” she said with a friendly, welcoming smile that almost erased his uneasiness. “Did you?”
“I was gonna text you.”
“Sure you were.” She stopped a few feet away from him. “You okay? You've been acting weird. First last night, now, you quit your job? It's not me, is it?”
“No, definitely not you.”
“What then?”
Rob knew what it was—that goddamn movie. He couldn't bring himself to speak the words aloud. “Nothing. Just going through some stuff.”
She clicked her tongue. “Got it. Say, wanna take a ride with me?”
He glanced around the half-vacant lot thinking he shouldn't, how he should go home instead and wait for Dan's darkness to slither over him like a bucket of poisonous snakes.
“Sure, why not.”
“Follow me,” she said, almost seductively.
He did.
When he plopped himself down on her front seat and shut the door, he felt better. Not perfect, but better than he had only minutes ago. Like he'd shut out Dan's darkness. Brianne's car acted as a safe place, a haven from the unnamable things released by the foreign film.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
She pulled out of the parking lot, onto the main drag. “I dunno. For a drive. We never got that IHOP dinner you promised me.”
“I'm not hungry.”
“No, I wouldn't imagine you would be.” A horde of invisible spiders crawled down his arms. “With everything you've witnessed.”
He snapped his head in her direction. “What?”
She smiled. Grinned. Much like Dan's jaundiced face had.
“Did you like my movie?” she asked. “I made it for you, you know.”
“Wha-what?”
“Well, not you specifically. The children like you. My little puppets. There have been so many of you over the years.” She giggled, a high-pitched noise that sliced open his nerves. “My little agents of darkness.”
Rob went for the door handle but the child locks were already on. He tried to push the button, but it didn't move. He elbowed the window but the glass held, held through each violent effort.
“There's no escape, little one,” she said, the lower half of her face complete with a crescent smile. “Did you know the Frenchwoman was my birth mother? Bet you didn't. That's a fun piece of trivia for you. One you won't find on IMDB. Though, you won't find Ouverture on there, either. Will you?”
No, he didn't think he would.
“What are you?” he asked, squeaking the words out.
“Oh, a little of this. A little of that.” She let her head fall sideways and set her eyes on him. He stared back, looking into the shimmering black orbs that filled in her irises. “My kind are the creators of the void. And I'm its keeper. Its protector. Its mother. Like my mother before me and hers before her. And, like all good mothers, we need to feed our babies.”
