Witching Hour Theatre

by Jonathan Janz

  Something clattered in the shadows of the chamber in which the three characters stood. The butler’s eyes shifted for a moment, but he didn’t look alarmed. From the way the old man took the clamor in stride, Wilson speculated that the butler was privy to whatever secrets the castle held. Had he been around when Cassandra Thistlebottom lived? Larry wished one of the siblings would ask the question, and again he marveled at how much the film was growing on him. It was still a B-movie, of course, but it was also an engrossing little affair.

  In fact, Larry realized, he’d begun to feel a bit creeped out.

  Though he felt silly thinking the thought, he was glad there was a policeman here. The old theater could enhance the sense of foreboding a good horror film created, and Veil of the White Temptress was turning out to be just that kind of film. Wilson threw a grateful glance over his shoulder toward the burly policeman but was disheartened to discover the man and his wife were gone. Larry assumed for a moment the three college boys were obstructing his vision, but by tilting his head he could see there wasn’t a single soul behind the boys. That part of the theater was deserted.

  Only seven left, Wilson thought.

  Seven was a low number even for a third feature. It was their loss, though. For his money, this film was far better than Death Mountain.

  Proud of himself and the six remaining theatergoers who’d stuck it out this far, he swiveled in his seat to make sure the other two people who had come by themselves were still there.

  Wilson squinted into the darkness, confused.

  The white-haired man who’d been rescued by the policeman was still there, as was the figure in the rear section of the theater. Yet the latter appeared to have moved up again so that he was now only a couple of rows behind the white-haired man.

  Why, Wilson wondered, was his heart racing? What was so odd about someone wanting to move forward a few rows? Perhaps the man’s eyes—if the figure was a man, he reminded himself—were growing weary and he therefore needed to sit closer to the screen to see better. Or maybe the guy didn’t want to sit in the back of the theater alone. Wilson could commiserate. For his own part, he was grateful for the girl sitting in front of him. In other circumstances Larry and the girl wouldn’t have given one another a second thought, but here, in Witching Hour Theatre, they were bound by a fellowship. In a weird way, they were keeping each other safe from the terrors onscreen.

  Evan and Susan Treadwell had retired to their respective living quarters. Wilson felt a pang of excitement as Susan shed her conservative blue dress and began to untie the corset that bound her. Moments later she was nude and stepping into a steaming bath.

  To Larry’s disappointment, the scene cut to Evan Treadwell, clad in one of the long white nightgowns male Victorian film characters insisted on wearing. Evan sat reading a book in a rocking chair by his four poster bed. With an elaborate yawn he placed the book on his nightstand and squirmed under the sheets. Evan reached over and snuffed the candle with his fingertips, and soon he was drowsing peacefully.

  Then, the quality of the light changed, grew colder. Crinkling his brow, Evan muttered in his sleep and shifted uncomfortably.

  The door opened and in glided a slender feminine figure whose ghostly white cerements fluttered as she moved through the dark bedchamber.

  The White Temptress, Wilson thought.

  Evan Treadwell awoke and stared at the figure as it floated at the foot of his bed. As the score devolved into eerie choral chanting, the figure rose and hovered in the air above him.

  Beneath the sheer gown Wilson could make out the dark triangle of the woman’s pubic hair. From the neck up, she was obscured by a veil of thicker material than that of her gown, so that the viewer could see nothing of her face.

  Her floating feet drifted forward and materialized on the blankets of the bed. An extreme close-up of Evan’s face expressed more arousal than fear, which summed it up for Wilson as well. The specter’s smooth white fingers were unbuttoning her gown, and the sheer material was pooling around her ankles. The low angle camera crawled slowly up her naked body, giving the viewer Evan’s perspective. The woman, whose face remained hidden behind the eponymous white veil, knelt over Evan Treadwell and slowly peeled back his bedclothes.

  What came next shocked Wilson.

  He’d seen pornography a few times as a younger man, though he’d never made a habit of it. Yet never in his years of moviegoing at the Starlight had he witnessed such explicit sexual content. Not only did the lens linger on Evan’s erect member, but it captured the insertion of said member into the woman’s vagina with jarring clarity. The woman’s labia parted, the light skin glistening with moisture.

  Wilson began to sweat, feeling suddenly like a pervert at an adult movie theater. He half expected to hear the sounds of opening trenchcoats and feverish masturbation break out around him. The Goth girl rose from her seat and shrugged as if to say I’m not into this before giving Wilson a sad little wave and disappearing up the aisle.

  Embarrassed and a little annoyed, he nevertheless found himself watching closely as the nude woman rose and fell. Evan Treadwell’s face contorted as though his appendix were being removed with a paring knife. Just as Wilson expected porno music to accompany the action onscreen, the veil swung up from the woman’s face.

  Wilson gasped.

  Though her features were lovely in every detail but one, Larry couldn’t suppress the revulsion serpentining through his body.

  The woman’s eyes had no pupils, no irises, were completely white.

  Wilson had seen such a thing before—in the Martin Sheen movie The Believers, for one; yet never had the effect provoked such a dramatic visceral response from him. The vacuous white stare chilled him to the marrow. He wished the Goth girl wouldn’t have gone. Not only would she have appreciated the shock of the white eyes, but her presence also would have been a salve for his solitary nervousness.

  Evan Treadwell bellowed in terror, and just as the woman’s face twisted into a rictus of terrible malice, she vanished. Evan covered himself and leapt from his bed to stare down at where he’d just made love to a phantom. As he passed a trembling hand over his face, his sister, draped only in a white bath towel, dashed into the chamber to investigate her brother’s scream.

  Wilson exhaled.

  The scene cut abruptly to the dining room where Evan and Susan were eating breakfast the next morning. As the brightness of the dining room illuminated the theater, Wilson’s his fear evanesced. He knew not why, but the film had really gotten to him. The gratuitousness of the sex scene, he knew, had something to do with the weird emotions coursing through his body, but there was more to it than that.

  He giggled. After seven years of his patronage, Witching Hour Theatre had finally managed to frighten him. He craned his head around to see how many people were left in the theater.

  And felt his stomach lurch.

  Only one person remained.

  The boys, angry perhaps their fun had ended, had departed. Absent too was the white-haired man Larry had earlier strode up the aisle to defend. The figure, the same figure that had begun the night in the shadows of the back row, had advanced to the front third of the theater and now sat closer to Wilson than anyone had since The Omen. Though there were still ten or eleven rows between Wilson and the figure, the silhouette behind him made his skin crawl.

  For now he saw how tall and thin the figure appeared, how unnaturally still it sat. He strained to see but couldn’t make out its face.

  It’s fine, Wilson told himself. Nothing had changed. He’d reasoned earlier the man or the woman had a bad case of eye strain and that it made perfect sense for him or her to move continually closer as the night wore on. This latest development only served to confirm the theory.

  He checked his watch: 4:06.

  Folding his arms, he rocked back in his chair and focused on the movie. He was too old to be acting so skittishly. So he was alone in the theater with only one other person. So what? Was he too craven to
sit there for another hour until the film was over? Hadn’t he only twenty minutes earlier taken measures to confront a group of hostile young men? If they hadn’t intimidated him, why should a single emaciated figure strike fear into his heart?

  He wasn’t even alone. Not really. Nichole Patterson still remained at her confectionary post, and the old man who took tickets was likely vacuuming the lobby or the hallway, as Wilson had often seen him doing as he left the theater.

  And of course there was the projectionist. He was an unknown, but he might prove an ally.

  His courage bolstered, Larry settled into his chair and listened to Evan Treadwell recounting his experience of the night before to the butler, who listened to the tale impassively, as though Evan were sharing a recipe for roast mutton.

  Growing restless once more, Wilson became aware of an electric tingle in his abdomen and was surprised to find he had to urinate.

  Yet he didn’t want to leave his seat. As childish as he knew it was, he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. Something about the figure ten rows behind him made getting up seem like a bad idea. If Larry stayed where he was, he could retain his anonymity; he could blend with the darkness. If he rose, well, what was to stop the figure from rising with him and meeting him in the narrow aisle?

  Larry gritted his teeth, angry with himself. So what if the figure confronted him? What of it? He’d asked a girl on a date, by God, and even if she’d spoon-fed him the opportunity, it was he who had taken advantage of it. Since when was walking to the restroom a more daunting venture than asking a beautiful woman out for dinner?

  Wilson was about to rise when the scene switched to Susan Treadwell, who walked alone through a misty forest. The afternoon was growing dark around her and thankfully, Ludlow had opted not to ruin the foreboding atmosphere with his obtrusive score.

  Susan drifted through an overgrown patch of brush and found herself alone in a clearing. The director chose to shoot her from a high angle, and for once, Wilson found himself agreeing with one of Richard K. Ludlow’s choices. Framed this way, Susan looked both small and alone. The gray, dusky light gave the shot a somberness of texture, as though Susan was both mourning her dead father and fearing for her own safety. Her eyes haunted and lost, she glanced behind her to see if anyone were watching her.

  Feeling much like Susan, Wilson turned and beheld a long pale face two inches from his own. The man was leaning forward, his alabaster skin nearly touching Wilson’s.

  The man’s eyes were rolled back white.

  Chapter Three

  Screaming, Wilson recoiled and pushed away from the man’s freakish face. The twin odors of hot feces and congealed blood swam over him. Transfixed by those white eyes, Wilson retreated and the back of a front row chair bumped his upper legs. Then he was toppling over backward, arms flailing, mouth hinged open in a voiceless shriek. Rolling with the fall, he scrambled over the seats, feeling at any moment the man would fasten onto his ankle and reel him backward like a wayward toddler.

  Susan Treadwell shrilled out her terror above him but Larry hardly noticed. He sprang to his feet and found himself between the exit tunnel and the staring, silent figure. The man had risen and now towered before Wilson, the glow from the screen bleaching the man’s already pale skin of color. Impossibly tall, the man wore black pants and a dark long-sleeved shirt. Only the long, thin head moved as Larry backed away, the pupilless eyes tracking him as he edged toward the exit. The creature’s face looked like those sketches of aliens featured on UFO shows, only instead of widening at the forehead, this being’s entire face was narrow, a man’s face but stretched out of human proportion into a grotesque caricature. As Wilson backpedaled toward the screen and away from the hideous creature, he sensed warmth in his crotch and knew he’d wet himself. His back pushed through the exit, and without thinking, Larry turned and lunged through the short dark tunnel and hurled himself against the alley door.

  It gave only an inch before the chain holding it caught and thrust him back into the dark corridor. Realizing his error, Wilson spun and watched the door he’d just burst through easing slowly shut.

  Just like the drunken men earlier, he thought bitterly, he’d chosen the wrong exit.

  He was trapped.

  Larry stood panting, waiting for the ghastly figure to follow him.

  The door wheezed shut, snuffing out the dim light that had momentarily filtered through from the theater. The darkness of the tunnel was mitigated only by the red exit sign above the alley door.

  Wilson’s body shook. His heart thundered. He covered his eyes and felt the sweat pouring in runnels, dampening his trembling fingers. He stood like that for half a minute.

  Then, a thought occurred to him.

  Why was he afraid?

  What, he wondered as his breathing began to slow, had he to fear? The man with the long face was a horrific sight, unquestionably. Especially in the gloom of an old, empty theater. Anyone in Larry’s position would have reacted the same way.

  But, objectively, was there really anything to fear?

  By degrees, Wilson’s lifelong knowledge of horror films returned to him. He could use that knowledge, he realized, to help himself now. The first thing he’d need to do was take away the bastard’s sense of superiority.

  That was good, he decided. Think of the creature who’d scared him as a man instead of some ghoul from the beyond. The guy had some sort of medical condition. That explained the elongated face.

  The eyes?

  Well, couldn’t anyone do that with his eyes if he rolled them back far enough? Wilson remembered kids in elementary school who’d done the same thing, and if they could do it, why couldn’t an adult—particularly one with a sick sense of humor?

  As for the way he’d snuck up on Larry, well, that was no great feat; the Starlight’s revamped sound system made it impossible to hear much of anything other than the films. Any shadows the man had cast as he approached would have trailed behind him, so there would have been no ocular clues to aid Wilson.

  The man’s smell was unpleasant, like the untended urinal of a slaughterhouse, and he wondered why he hadn’t noticed that before the freak had startled him. Dismissing the thought, he steeled himself, extended his arms like a cartoon sleepwalker, and made his way across the murky corridor.

  His outstretched fingers found the door. Placing his palms flat on the smooth wood, he sucked in breath and prepared to shove. The door, he knew, was on the kind of hinges that allowed it to swing both ways. If the man were pressed against it, eavesdropping to hear if Wilson were weeping or screaming for help at the back door, the son of a bitch would get a good knock on the head for his troubles. Serve him right, Larry thought. If the man were waiting, poised to the right or left of the door only to leap out and scare him once more for good measure, Wilson would give him no such pleasure.

  The door felt cold under his sweaty palms. Beyond it he could hear Susan Treadwell’s frightened whimpering as she fled from who knew what in the forest.

  Wilson took his hands from the door, stepped back, and kicked.

  The door swung away, and compared to the darkness of the corridor, the theater looked as though it were washed with neon. In the moment before the door rebounded and came back at him, he could discern nothing but empty seats. If the man were still in the theater, he wasn’t seated where he’d been when he’d frightened Wilson.

  Larry stepped back and allowed the door to swing past him. He caught it with his elbow and braced it open. If the bastard were hiding beside the doorway to scare him or jump him, Larry would be ready. He tensed, summoning what courage he possessed, and burst through the doorway.

  No one jumped him, and a quick check right and left showed that the areas adjacent to the doorway were empty.

  Larry’s breath released in a quivering moan. He peered at the empty theater. On the back wall, the glass window of the projection booth was dark. In the middle of it, protruding through a hole in the glass, the projector lens blazed like a mi
niature white sun. Was the projectionist inside there?

  Larry scanned the shadows of the room, but saw only a vacant theater. The realization dawned on him that the man could be anywhere, hiding, marking his movements.

  Goosebumps misted Larry’s arms.

  Because of the way the shell of the exit’s short hallway protruded, there was a space beside it, directly under the screen. The man could be lurking there, preparing to spring. Knowing he’d lose his nerve if he tarried any longer, Wilson took a step and jumped out from behind the exit tunnel.

  But the space beside the tunnel was empty.

  Larry exhaled shuddering breath.

  The man had either concealed himself in the darkness between the rows, or he’d gone to the concession stand to buy himself some candy to celebrate his immature little victory. Then again, perhaps he’d been so pleased with Wilson’s reaction to his prank that he’d departed the Starlight on a high note and treated himself to an early breakfast.

  Then again, probably not. Real-life problems were rarely solved that painlessly.

  Gazing into the theater as it flickered and undulated like a live thing, Wilson placed a hand on his galloping heart and made a wish that the freak had gone home. He didn’t know if he could take another scare. He could wait to leave until after the film ended, but the suspense of standing here doing nothing was already growing unbearable. He checked his watch and estimated the film was only half over. He knew he’d not be able to stand here that long and he’d be damned if he was going to sit back down again and give the freak another opportunity to scare him out of his wits. How would he explain himself to Nichole if she found him huddled in a ball under his seat, wet-crotched and quivering?

  He regarded his pants in the darkness, a new concern knitting his sweaty brow. What if Nichole discovered he’d wet himself? Would she cancel tomorrow night’s date? Bring along a supply of adult diapers?

  Untucking his shirt, he found that by arranging it just so, his accident might be concealed. He stuck out his chin and stood up straighter.