The Horror of the Crowford Empire

by Amy Cross

  “Some men will be along to pick the pallets up in the morning,” he explained. “I could get them to go all the way back to the storage area, but I really don't like to impose.” He looked back down at one of the folders and resumed his search through its contents. “And now I've mislaid the invoice that I'll need to show them. I could have sworn that it came in August, but I can't find it in the August section. Unless I put it in one of the other folders, with the other August files, but I just... I don't remember.”

  “What kind of system do you use?” she asked.

  “System?” He looked at her again. “What do you mean?”

  “You could probably organize these better,” she suggested. She didn't want to interfere, but she couldn't help thinking that Mr. Gough seemed to be drowning in paperwork.

  “I'm not really sure that I follow,” he admitted, clearly becoming increasingly flustered. “I'm not sure what I'll do if I can't find that invoice, though. I suppose I shall have to go down to the bank first thing in the morning and take out some extra money, just in case.”

  “Do you not keep all the invoices together?”

  “That probably would have been a good idea, wouldn't it?”

  She watched as he continued to search through the folder, and then as he took another and began all over again. She wanted to offer to help some more, but she hated the idea that she might seem pushy. She was also feeling more and more exhausted, and she began to think of the warm, soft bed waiting for her at home. Since she still had a good half hour's walk ahead of her, she figured that it might be a good idea to get going again.

  “If there's nothing else that needs doing,” she said finally, “I should probably head home. If my parents wake up and realize that I'm not back yet, they might start to worry.”

  She waited, and then she turned to head back out into the foyer.

  “Have you ever worked in a cinema before?” Harry asked suddenly.

  Stopping, she furrowed her brow as she wondered whether she'd misheard the question. After a moment, however, she looked back at him, and she realized that he was serious.

  “Well, that useless Sam seems to have left me in the lurch,” Harry continued, “and as much as I hate to admit it, I'm a little too long in the tooth to be running the cinema by myself. I shall have to find someone to employ, and since you've demonstrated yourself to be such a capable young woman, I...”

  He paused, and then he shook his head.

  “No, of course not,” he chuckled, looking back down at the folders. “What was I thinking? I need a strapping lad to help me around the place, not a young lady. Please excuse my foolishness. Sometimes I think I'm completely losing my marbles.”

  “Well...”

  Hesitating, she considered the possibility. Until that moment she'd never thought of working in the cinema, but she suddenly realized that the idea was quite enticing. She looked back into the beautiful, old-fashioned foyer and realized that she could definitely imagine herself working in such a stunning place. By the time she turned to Harry again and saw that he was rifling through another folder, she was filled with a desperate yearning to take the job. Quite where that yearning had come from, she wasn't sure.

  “I want to work here,” she told him.

  He looked up her again.

  “I want to work here,” she said again. “If you take me on, you won't regret it, I promise. I'll work hard and I'll do any job you want. I don't even mind scrubbing the toilets, I just...”

  She waited for him to reply, and then she swallowed hard.

  “Please,” she continued, “just give me a chance. I promise, you won't ever regret it.”

  Chapter Five

  “I have a job,” she whispered as she leaned back against the front door, having finally made it all the way home. She paused for a moment, and finally a smile began to spread across her face. “I have a job!”

  She'd had a job, technically, when she'd left the house many hours earlier, but that had been a job that had filled her with absolutely no enthusiasm. She'd hated the idea of working at the golf club even before she'd discovered the somewhat revealing attire that she'd been expected to wear. Now she was home with an entirely different job, one that felt as if it had dropped straight into her lap. Even though she was tired and wanted to go to bed, she found herself thinking about how marvelous it would be to work in the most beautiful building in all of Crowford.

  How had she never realized that working at the cinema would be so wonderful?

  “You can start in the morning,” she heard Harry saying, his voice ringing in her ears from earlier. “It won't be easy and you'll have to learn rather fast.”

  “I will, I promise,” she'd told him. “Thank you so much for this opportunity, Mr. Gough. I'm going to be the best employee you ever had!”

  She felt like the happiest girl in the whole town.

  Suddenly hearing a grumbling sound, she turned and looked toward the open doorway that led into the living room. She'd assumed that her parents were in bed, but now she could hear the springs of the sofa starting to creak slightly and she felt a sinking sensation in her chest as she realized that either her mother or her father – or possibly both – had waited up. And if they'd waited up, there was only one thing they'd have been doing for the duration.

  “Susie?” her father's voice groaned. “Girl, is that you?”

  Realizing that she'd missed the opportunity to sneak straight upstairs, she stepped into the living room and saw her father slowly sitting up on the sofa. He was rubbing his eyes, and the smell of stale, spilled beer was impossible to miss.

  “What time is it?” he muttered. “Have you only just got back from that golf club?”

  “It was a long walk,” she told him cautiously.

  “How did it go?” he asked. He tried to stand, but he only got halfway before slumping back down onto the sofa. “How did you get on, serving all those bloody rich bastards?”

  “It was fine,” she replied, figuring that there was no need to go into the details. She certainly wasn't going to try to explain how she'd ended up with a job at the cinema. “I'm tired, though, so I'm going to go to bed.” She waited, watching as he yet again tried and failed to stand, and then she stepped back into the hallway. “Goodnight, Dad.”

  “Wait!” he called out. “Susie! Don't go!”

  Stopping, she realized that couldn't just leave him on the sofa for the night. As much as she hated the fact that he'd yet again stayed up drinking into the small hours, using money they didn't really have for the beer, she wanted him to at least have the dignity of sleeping in his bed. She hesitated, and then she stepped over and helped haul him onto his feet, before taking a moment to make sure that he was steady.

  “I don't know why I'm so wobbly,” he murmured. “I only had a few. They don't usually hit me like this.”

  “I know, Dad,” she replied, preparing for the arduous task of getting him up the stairs. “Let's just take it steady, okay? After three. One. Two. Three!”

  ***

  “Gah!”

  Finally flopping down onto her bed, Susan felt the stresses and strains of the evening starting to fade away. Her feet were aching again, but she was more concerned about the tightening sensation in the small of her back, as well as the myriad other little pains that seemed to be making themselves felt all over her body. Working at the golf club had been hard enough, but moving those fifteen pallets at the cinema had taken more effort that she'd really admitted to herself at the time.

  Now she felt as if her entire body had been ruined.

  “You'll be fine,” she whispered, staring up at the ceiling of her dark bedroom. “A good night's sleep and everything'll be okay.”

  She took a deep breath, and then – realizing that there was one thing she hadn't done yet since getting home – she sat up and reached over to switch on her bedside light. Then, opening the drawer of the little table next to the bed, she pulled out the purse that she kept hidden at the back and clicked it o
pen. Slipping the brown enveloped from her pocket, she took a moment to count her earnings from the night and then she added that money to the little stash she'd already managed to save up.

  “One day,” she said, keeping her voice low.

  For a moment, in her mind's eye, she imagined the day when she'd finally be able to walk out the door of the house and never return. She'd been dreaming for years of a whole new life in London; every time she saw a picture of the city in a magazine, or some footage of the place on the television, she felt as if she was being called to a new beginning. Life would start for her once she reached London, she knew that, but first she needed to have more money saved up.

  Deep down, she knew that if she hadn't lucked into the job at the Crowford Empire, she'd have had no choice but to go back to the golf club again and again. As much as she'd hated working there that night, she figured that she'd have been able to buckle down and ignore the leering glances and just get on with the task of earning the money she needed. Now, however, she had a much better option. Sure, the cinema wasn't going to pay quite as much as the golf club, but she'd be able to retain her dignity and she'd also be doing a job that she figured she'd actually enjoy.

  “One day,” she said again, more firmly this time, before hiding the stash of money back in the drawer. “Definitely. I'm going to -”

  Before she could finish, she heard a bumping sound coming from the other bedroom, followed by the sound of a door creaking open. She stiffened immediately, worried that something might be wrong, and a few seconds later she heard something she'd been dreading.

  “Susie?” her mother called out, her voice filled with a kind of whining sense of pain. “Susie, get up! Susie, I need you!”

  Susan briefly considered pretending to be asleep, but she knew that wouldn't be much good. Her mother would only end up stumbling into the room and switching all the lights on, so instead she got to her feet and headed to the door. Once she was out on the landing, she saw that her mother was attempting to get to the bathroom while clutching her belly.

  “Susie, it hurts so much,” her mother groaned. “I drank too much gin again. Be a love and go downstairs, will you? I need something to settle my stomach.”

  “Why did you -”

  “Don't nag me,” her mother added. “Please, just do what you're told, alright? You know what I need, so get down there and fetch me some.”

  “How about water?” Susan asked.

  “Oh, don't be silly. You know water doesn't do it, not anymore. Just get me a nice big glass and -”

  Suddenly she began to retch. Susan stepped over to help, but her mother shoved her out of the way and stumbled into the bathroom before dropping to her knees. Susan could only stand and watch her leaning over the toilet, and then she flinched as she heard her mother starting to vomit. She knew there'd be blood in the bowl, too, and that come morning her mother would once again insist that there was no need to go and see a doctor. Every night the same thing happened, and every day too, in a kind of self-fulfilling loop that Susan had long since come to realize would only ever be broken by one thing.

  “Are you still there?” her mother gasped between retches. “Get downstairs and fetch me a drink! Quick!”

  Sighing, Susan did as she was told. There was no point arguing, and as she reached the living room and switched on the light she found herself wondering why her mother didn't just sleep with the bottle of gin next to her bed. Then again, she knew that such things weren't proper, and her mother was certainly a stickler for keeping up appearances.

  As she poured a glass of gin, Susan could hear her mother still vomiting upstairs.

  Chapter Six

  The following morning, bright and early at 9am, Susan Jones stood in the foyer of the Crowford Empire wearing her new name badge and felt...

  Content.

  Fulfilled.

  Happy.

  The double doors at the front had been propped open, allowing sunlight to stream into the building. A car occasionally rumbled past, but otherwise Susan could see the beach and the glittering sea beyond, and she took a deep breath of the fresh coastal air that was blowing into the room. Seagulls were squawking in the distance, and somehow everything seemed right with the world.

  She looked down again at her badge, and she saw how Harry's spindly writing had just about managed to make her name legible.

  “Now, where were we?” Harry asked as he shuffled back through from the office and then stopped next to the ticket booth. “Ah, that's right, I need to tell you how to sell tickets, don't I? After all, the cinema won't last very long if we can't do that, will it?”

  “Of course,” she said keenly, hurrying over to the booth as Harry held the door open for her.

  “In you go,” he told her with a smile. “This is going to be one of your main responsibilities. I do it sometimes, but to be honest people like a smiling, beautiful young lady to take their money, so who am I to argue?”

  “Oh, I -”

  “Now don't be modest,” he added as she took a seat. “You're the face of this cinema now, at least for most people when they visit. I want you to remember that, and I want you to always look your best.” He hesitated, and then he furrowed his brow. “I'm sorry,” he added, “I hope you don't think that I'm too old-fashioned for saying something like that.”

  “Not at all,” she replied, taking care to sit up straight in the booth. “I want to represent the Crowford Empire to the best of my abilities, and that means being professional.”

  “Such a good attitude,” he said with a chuckle. “Yes, I think I had a stroke of luck when I met you last night, Susan. I think this arrangement is going to work out very well for the both of us.”

  “So what do I need to do?” she asked, looking around the inside of the booth and seeing various boxes and tins, as well as some stamps.

  “How about I pretend to be a customer and I can walk you through the whole thing?” he asked with a friendly smile, before turning and shuffling toward the open door. “Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it in no time.”

  “I will,” she replied, taking a deep breath. “I know I will.”

  She opened the tin in front of her and found that it contained books of tickets, and then she looked over at the door just in time to see that Harry had gone outside and was disappearing around the corner. She waited, puzzled, and then she watched as he shuffled right back inside again and headed to the board that featured the week's film listings. He stared up at the board, and for a few seconds he seemed to be muttering to himself.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked.

  “Hmm?” He turned to her. “Oh, I'm just seeing what's on.”

  “But you -”

  Stopping herself just in time, she realized that he was truly immersing himself in the role of a paying customer.

  “Absolutely,” she replied, adjusting her posture again and waiting for him to make a decision.

  After another half minute or so, Harry made his way slowly over to the booth and stopped at the window, and then he smiled at her.

  “Why, you're new here, aren't you?” he said, affecting a slightly different voice with – for some reason – a faint Welsh accent. “Old Harry's hired a beauty this time, and no mistake. Now, if you don't mind, I'll be having one ticket for this afternoon's matinee!”

  ***

  Several hours later, having gone through several rounds of Harry's role-playing teaching methods and accents, Susan sat in the office and tried to make sense of the cinema's somewhat arcane filing system. So far, she'd begun to separate out the various document types, although she was quickly coming to realize that the task of getting everything sorted would not be the work of a moment.

  Hearing footsteps out in the foyer, she glanced at the door and waited for Harry to appear. Instead, the footsteps seemed to walk straight past, although she saw no sign of anyone. The footsteps were already heading off into the distance.

  After hesitating for a moment, Susan got to her feet and
wandered over to the door. She leaned out and looked all around the foyer, but there was no sign of anyone. Harry had told her that he was popping down to the bank, so she hadn't expected to have any company, and the main doors weren't due to be unlocked again for another forty-five minutes. Still, she could just about hear the footsteps getting further and further away, seemingly heading toward the auditorium.

  “Hello?” she called out, figuring that Harry must have returned early. “Harry? I mean... Mr. Gough?”

  She waited, and after a moment the footsteps stopped.

  “Mr. Gough?”

  Heading to the end of the corridor, she looked toward the double doors at the far end. Despite the fact that the footsteps had seemed very clear, and that they'd certainly been on their way toward the auditorium's entrance, now there was nobody around. Susan continued to look along the corridor, but there were no other doors leading away and that meant that there was simply nowhere for anybody to hide.

  “Hello?” she said again, wondering whether she was being tested. What if Harry wanted to see how she handled an unusual situation? “If there's anyone here,” she continued, “we're not open until midday. You'll have to wait outside.”

  Again she waited for a reply, but after a few seconds she began to feel very much as if she was being watched. She told herself that she was just allowing herself to become a little paranoid, but the sensation continued until finally she took a step back. Even though she could see no-one, she felt that the empty corridor was somehow...

  Intimidating.

  “Okay, then,” she continued, trying to get back to some semblance of normality. She adjusted her name badge and straightened the front of her shirt, and then she turned to make her way back into the office.

  Suddenly she heard a loud bang, and she turned just as one of the photos fell from the wall at the corridor's far end. As the picture hit the floor, the glass frame shattered.

  Susan's heart was racing now, even as she told herself that the picture's fall has simply been an accident. She hesitated, and then – figuring that she had to demonstrate some initiative – she headed to the cupboard in the office and grabbed a dustpan and brush. Her hands were trembling slightly, but she forced herself to get them under control as she walked back out into the foyer and then made her way along the corridor toward the smashed picture.