Night Shadows

by Greg Herren

  She would teach him to care about other people’s things. She’d teach him to pay more attention to something other than his goddamned comics.

  But with each rip, Elaine Mitchell, bitter and stewing in the putrid excretion of her own miserable life, sent her son’s heart and spirit spiraling into an emotional paper shredder that day.

  Adam came to understand the depths of human cruelty.

  He had retreated into himself that day and into the comforting sanctuary of the Liberty. Buying a ticket for The Bad News Bears Go to Japan, Adam expertly ducked into Halloween when old man Carson had his back turned. Tears coursed down his cheeks that afternoon as Tommy Doyle presented a stack of contraband comics to his kindly babysitter Laurie and asked her to read them to him. How he had ached to jump into the celluloid images of the screen, to have Jamie Lee wrap her loving arms around him and comfort him the way she did ungrateful little Tommy Doyle. He pictured himself safe in the Doyle house carving pumpkins with Laurie and Lindsay Wallace while Michael Myers wrapped a telephone cord around his mother’s throat in the house across the street.

  The horror of Halloween became his safe haven.

  “How many, please?” The voice pulled him from his daydream. Adam looked skeptically at the blond-haired kid behind the plate glass window, momentarily disoriented.

  “Do you want a ticket or not, buddy?” The kid couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen, yet appeared oddly sophisticated in his formal usher garb. Two teenage girls behind Adam giggled at his hesitation, much to the pleasure of the kid behind the ticket window who gave them a conspiratorial wink.

  “One, please,” Adam finally said, pulling out a crumpled five-dollar bill from his jeans pocket and sliding it under the window. The kid was looking at him the way the bullies back in high school had looked at him, with unfettered contempt and anger for what they perceived as weakness. Adam hated the way the kid was looking at him, his expression obvious enough to further engage the little sluts behind him. They cooed and cackled like miniature harlots.

  “That’ll be four fifty, sir,” the kid said with mock formality. The sluts erupted in giggles. Adam looked at him as he slid him his change. His name badge read Brad.

  As Adam turned away from the ticket booth, movie stub in hand, he heard one of the sluts say to the other, “I didn’t realize the actual Michael Myers would be here today.” The sound of the sluts’ cackling and Brad’s uncontained laughter followed him into the theater.

  He was careful to choose a seat far away from the little sluts who followed him into the theater. They seemed to forget all about him in the space of seconds, moving on to more important topics of adolescent chitchat—such as which of this year’s football players was the cutest. They were miniature Elaines-in-the-making, mean-spirited whores whose callous words cut deeply and then continued on, oblivious to the wide swath they had slashed in the emotional landscape behind them.

  The lights finally dimmed amidst nervous giggles of excitement from the crowd, and the film started. From the initial strains of the piano-laden score, Adam felt a sheath of comfort creep over him, contentment coursing through him. No more tricks for Adam, only treats. For ninety minutes, he would finally be at home on the night he came home.

  December

  Adam hurried down Main Street toward the theater, flurries swirling around his head as both Bing Crosby’s dreams of a white Christmas and his dreams of a black Christmas were realized in Barnesville. His feet left large imprints in the freshly fallen snow on the sidewalk, his boots vilifying the purity of the holiday snowfall. The streets of the town were bare, save for the occasional car undoubtedly on its way through the woods to Grandma’s house. Adam appreciated the preternatural silence of the afternoon, the way sound muffled as if the town lay beneath a heavy down comforter. His spirits were unseasonably high as he approached the Liberty.

  Then he stopped.

  Despite the snowflakes that dotted his eyeglasses and blurred his vision, Adam could see the unmistakable form of Brad behind the ticket window. The kid had gotten suckered into working the holiday shift at the Liberty by old man Carson’s son—now the owner following his father’s stroke several years ago. Adam felt his stomach churn at the recollection of their last encounter. Brad would be pissed that he wasn’t home opening gifts with his idyllic suburban family, pissed that he wasn’t home watching college football with his father, who beamed with pride for his own son’s athletic accomplishments. Brad would be pissed—and Adam would be an easy target. He approached the window.

  “One, please,” he said, his voice cracking with apprehension. Adam braced himself for Brad’s unadulterated contempt, but a welcome indifference greeted his request instead.

  “That’ll be four fifty,” Brad said flatly. This lack of enthusiasm for preying upon an easy target like Adam momentarily unsettled him slightly. He slid a five-dollar bill under the window, and Brad pushed two quarters back at him with gloved fingers. “Enjoy the show,” he said mechanically, barely glancing up before returning to the sports magazine on the counter in front of him. If he had remembered Adam from their Halloween encounter, he wasn’t letting on now.

  Adam took his ticket, resisting the momentary urge to wish Brad a Merry Christmas, fearful any expression of humanity would summon the kid’s inner rage. He entered the theater and was hit by the concentrated smell of buttered popcorn. He viewed the candy counter, instantly spying an improbable mountain of mini-meteors of popped kernels spilling out of the popcorn case, their cragged surfaces glazed with greasy butter topping that looked slick and shiny under the warming light. Standing alone in the lobby, Adam wondered who would be eating all that popcorn.

  “Hey there, Adam,” a voice called from behind him. “What can I get for you?” Louie Carson, eldest son of Alfred Carson and now proprietor of the Liberty, approached him from behind carrying a cardboard box filled with assorted candies to restock the display case.

  “Hey, Mr. Carson,” Adam returned. “Merry Christmas.” Despite his penchant for splatter, Adam was a polite man, etiquette and manners having been beaten into him as a child—often with a wooden spoon at the dinner table or a quick backhand while standing on a neighbor’s doorstep.

  “Same to you, buddy,” Carson said, smiling absently. Louie Carson was a kind man of almost fifty, with a retreating hairline and an extra jowl that gave him the appearance of a sea lion. He was one of those born-and-bred Barnesville boys who never quite made it past town lines, destined to a life of first-name familiarity with almost every store clerk and civil servant in their shared New England hamlet. Adam imagined that the deep lines branching out from the corners of his eyes were created by rivulets of tears cried year after year over his disappointment with life in this godforsaken hellhole. But if Carson was bitter over the lot in life he was cast to play, he never let on; he dutifully took over his father’s business after his stroke, forsaking his own position as one of the town’s more in-demand freelance carpenters to run the family movie theater.

  The Liberty itself was something of an institution in Barnesville. Built in the early 1900’s, the theater first rose to local prominence featuring raucous burlesque shows that brought patrons in by the dozens to the fledgling town. The Liberty found itself at the forefront of the burgeoning motion picture movement following an influx of Quakers to the area and the prohibition of anything deemed immoral. Townsfolk, and those on the outlying farmlands around Barnesville, made Saturday afternoons and evenings all about the delightful moving pictures flashing across the larger-than-life screen, creating entire evenings out around the novelty of this new entertainment medium. The arrival of talkies seemed to coincide with the town’s booming textiles business. When the town’s young men marched off to war in the ’40s and ’50s, the good people of Barnesville used the Liberty as an escape from the cruel reality that many of the young men would never return. In the ’60s and ’70s, the Liberty introduced color cinema to the town just as hippies and free-thinkers unleashed the
ir own colorful way of life upon a nation entangled in a web of civil rights struggles and radical social change. The theater forged its way into the ’80s riding the wave of low-budget horror flicks that caught on like wildfire, despite a growing threat from the cancerous malady known as the multiplex. And although the Liberty eventually succumbed to competition from nearby mega-cinemas (as well as a short-circuited popcorn machine that necessitated substantial remodeling following a fire in ’89), it rebounded, finding a niche as a neighborhood bargain matinee, lovingly bringing back celluloid images from the golden years of cinema once it ceased showing first-run features.

  For more than eighty years, the Liberty had stood sentry over a town that had lost track of its own history, as a beacon for those needing an escape…those needing a reprieve from the harshness of the world around them.

  “What’ll you have today, Adam?” Carson asked, setting the box down with a thump behind the counter. “Your usual?” He reached for the Goobers.

  “Nah. Today is special…being Christmas and all. I think I’ll go for a large popcorn,” Adam replied. Despite being in his late thirties, his voice was almost childlike.

  “Popcorn it is, then.” Carson grabbed a monstrous bucket from a stack next to the soda dispenser and scooped several large shovels into it until it threatened to overflow the rim. He handed the bucket across the counter to Adam, who was fishing in his pockets.

  “Popcorn’s on the house,” Carson said, holding up his hand. Adam looked at him, confused. “You keep me in business, Adam. Been coming to the Liberty since I can remember. And I can always count on you showing up for one of these damn slasher flicks.” He chuckled.

  “Thanks, Mr. Carson,” Adam said, taking the bucket and avoiding the man’s eyes. Gestures of kindness were so foreign to him that he lacked the capacity to accept them with any degree of grace.

  “Enjoy the show,” Carson called after him as he headed toward the theater doors.

  Adam found the theater to be exactly as he enjoyed it—empty. Christmas was good for one thing—keeping people at home and away from his matinee. His mother used to say that only Jews and Chinese people went to the movies on Christmas because they hated Christ. Adam wasn’t sure if it was the snow or a love for the Christian savior that kept people out of the theater today, but he was happy nonetheless for their absence.

  He settled into a row almost dead center in the theater and hunched down into the seat just as the film sprang to life on the screen. The Liberty’s no-frills bargain matinee came with no previews, no clever little animated jingles instructing you where to throw out your trash or how to escape in the event of a fire. No, a matinee at the Liberty was a bare bones moviegoing experience. The way it should be, Adam thought.

  Adam shoved a handful of popcorn into his mouth as the peaceful image of the Pi Kappa Sig sorority house came into view against a snowy night backdrop while an unseen angelic chorus sang “Silent Night.” Soon, Billy was looking in the windows as the hapless sorority babes inside went about their yuletide merriment unaware of the psychotic doings about to befall them. Somewhere between Billy’s climb up the trellis and the first obscene phone call, Adam sensed movement behind him and heard the heavy thud of someone plopping into a seat. He hated people who were late for movies. Why even show the fuck up? He strained his eyes to the far left, careful not to turn his head lest the latecomer should think he gave a rat’s ass.

  As if in answer to his silent curiosity, a voice spoke behind him.

  “How old is this fucking movie?” Brad said loudly, in disregard of movie theater etiquette.

  Adam swallowed hard. Why did this asshole have to ruin the holiday matinee he had been looking forward to for weeks? “1974,” he answered curtly.

  “Me and my girlfriend went to see the remake a few days ago over in Spring Hill. Movie rocked,” Brad said from behind him, his mouth full of something.

  “Original’s better,” Adam shot back warily. “A classic.”

  “Even see the new one?”

  “No.”

  “So how could you know this one’s better?”

  “Because remakes suck,” Adam said forcefully. Brad continued to chew behind him. There was sudden movement behind him, and Adam braced for the sting of Brad’s hand against the back of his head in response to his snappy retort. But then he realized that Brad was heaving himself over the row. He landed with a heavy plunk in the seat next to him.

  “You really dig this old shit, huh?” Brad asked from beside him. He popped a handful of M&M’s into his mouth.

  “The classic slashers rule,” Adam replied, eyes facing forward as he watched Margot Kidder grab the telephone from a fellow sorority sister and give Billy a verbal lashing on the other end. Billy would get her back good for that later, with the glass unicorn.

  “But the new stuff is so much better, dude,” Brad said. “Better special effects and shit.”

  “The new movies are just copycats of the old stuff. Half the crap in these new WB-populated PG-13 rip-offs is watered-down versions of the classics. Black Christmas, on the other hand, is the most underrated slasher film in history.”

  “How so?” Despite Adam’s unease at playing Ebert & Roeper in the darkened theater with Brad, the kid seemed genuinely interested in hearing his theories. Against the advice of the little voice inside his head that told him never to trust, he relaxed a bit in his seat.

  “Well,” Adam began, “even though this movie predated it by five years, When A Stranger Calls gets all the credit for the whole the call is coming from inside the house thing.”

  “Katie Cassidy was smokin’ in that movie, dude!”

  “Not the remake—the original one with Carol Kane as the babysitter.” Brad just blinked and stared straight ahead. Adam continued, undeterred. “And even though everyone said that Carpenter was a fucking genius with the shot where the audience sees through Michael Myer’s mask when he kills his sister at the beginning of Halloween, Bob Clark had already done that POV shit in this movie.”

  “POV? Huh?” Adam hoped Brad was good at sports.

  “Point of view. Black Christmas came out four years before Halloween, yet everyone’s always going on and on about how Halloween was the first modern slasher movie.”

  “Jesus, dude,” Brad said from beside him, “you really know your shit when it comes to these old movies.” Adam’s cheeks flushed at the pseudo compliment. Brad wasn’t so bad after all. Despite their age difference, Adam felt a connection to the kid sitting in the dark theater. He was about to ask him if he wanted some of his popcorn when Brad’s cell phone erupted in a cacophony of expletive-laden rap music from somewhere in the darkness of his lap. He fished in his jeans for the phone, retrieved it, and looked down at the display.

  “Shit. It’s my girlfriend. Dude, gotta take this. Catch you some other time?” Brad’s face glowed in the translucent light of the rapping cell phone as he looked at him expectantly.

  “Yeah, sure,” Adam said, dejected by the interruption.

  Brad held up his right hand. For a split second, Adam thought he was challenging him to arm-wrestle, but then realized what was expected. They clasped hands momentarily, wrists meeting. Adam tingled at the momentary sensation of Brad’s skin against his.

  “Merry Christmas, dude.” Brad said as he turned and walked away. Adam watched as he left, could hear him say hello to the intrusive girlfriend who’d disrupted their budding camaraderie. His words trailed off behind him as he went out the theater door.

  Adam turned back to the screen. Claire was about to be asphyxiated by the sheath of plastic hanging in her closet, her last frantic gasp for air effectively shrink-wrapping the plastic to her panic-stricken grimace. Billy would then haul her up into the attic, where her corpse would sit in a rocking chair in the uppermost window of the sorority house, her lifeless eyes staring out into the dark wintry night. The image was grim and sad, yet Adam sat watching it with buoyed spirits. He couldn’t be certain whether it was the movie, or his mom
entary connection to another person, or some residual sentiment of the holiday, but for the first time in a long time, Adam actually felt giddy and began to softly hum “Silent Night” as Claire rocked and rocked and rocked.

  February

  Brad wasn’t behind the ticket window the next time Adam went to the matinee. Instead, he was greeted by an elderly woman with a swirl of bluish hair piled impossibly on top of her head. It resembled cotton candy. An image of Marge Simpson flashed through his mind and almost made him laugh aloud.

  “One ticket, please,” he announced, sliding the five-dollar bill toward her. Without a word, the woman took the money and returned a single ticket with his change.

  “Thank you,” he said and could hear the woman’s barely audible grunt of acknowledgment as she looked past him toward the next customer in line. Adam stepped out of the line and scanned the crowd. He was actually glad Valentine’s Day had fallen on a Sunday. His eyes scanned the sea of red- and pink-garbed moviegoers, but there was no sign of Brad.