The Horror of the Crowford Empire

by Amy Cross

  “No, thank you,” Susan said, stepping past Oliver and looking down at the L.P. as it spun on the player. “This sounds...”

  Familiar.

  She had no idea how, but she felt certain that she'd heard the music before. The more she tried to remember, the more she felt as if the music was actually entering her mind, to the extent that she finally began to sway slightly.

  “Look at her!” Angie laughed. “My oldest friend, Susan Jones, a girl who could never dance in her life, has actually found the beat!”

  “No, it's not that,” Susan replied, even as the music swelled in her heart, “it's just...”

  She couldn't explain, but the music was awakening something in her, something that felt simultaneously familiar and alien. It was almost as if another soul was opening its eyes within her body, and after a moment – without really realizing what was happening – she turned and began to dance gently across the room, lost in the sheer power of the recording. Somewhere deep inside, she felt a faint sense of embarrassment, but this was almost immediately overshadowed by a blossoming love of the music itself, and soon she was dancing all around the room, deliriously wrapped up in a world of her own.

  When she moved her arms, she felt other arms inside them; when she turned, she felt as if another soul was turning for her. She began to smile, except she could somehow tell that it wasn't really her own smile at all. Quite what was happening, she didn't know, but it felt wonderful and faintly terrifying at the same time, and it lasted for so long that she only stopped when – eventually – the first side of the L.P. came to an end.

  Startled, she looked around and saw that Angie and Oliver were staring at her with shocked expressions. After a few seconds, however, Angie began to applaud.

  “I'm sorry,” Susan murmured, “I don't know what -”

  “That was amazing!” Angie told her. “You were like some flapper from the old days! I never knew that you had something like that in you, Susie. Where did it come from?”

  “I don't know,” Susan replied, blushing as she began to worry that she'd made a fool of myself. “How long was I dancing for?”

  “Almost three-quarters of an hour!”

  “That was quite something,” Oliver told her. “Where did you learn to dance like that?”

  “I didn't,” Susan said, turning and hurrying to the door, still beetroot-red from the embarrassment. “I really should get to bed now, I'm sorry for disturbing you.”

  “You rock, Susie!” Angie called after her. “We'll make a good-time girl out of you yet!”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Morning light revealed that little had changed in the year since Susan had left Crowford. The same fishing boats were on the beach, and she even recognized some of the cars and people who wandered along the promenade far below the flat's windows.

  Although she'd promised to drop by the department store and see Angie at work, Susan still hadn't quite summoned the courage to leave the flat. She'd spent most of the morning getting used to her surroundings, but she knew that at some point she was going to have to go back out and walk the streets that she'd once thought she was leaving far behind. Sure, she was scared of running into people she knew, and of having to come up with some lie about where she'd been, but beyond that she was absolutely terrified by the thought of going anywhere near the cinema.

  “I saw his body!” she remembered Sam shouting, and she also remembered the thud as he'd pushed her against the wall at the hospital. “How thick do you have to be to not understand? The man is dead, and do you know what else I know? He wouldn't be dead if that gang of animals hadn't stormed the cinema and caused all of this to happen. So before you think about telling me to calm down, you need to take a good long look at yourself and realize what you've done!”

  She remembered trying to answer him, but she'd been unable to say a word. Deep down, she'd known – even back then – that he was right.

  “Get out of here,” he'd sneered, shoving her hard. “Go!”

  The thought of anything like that happening again was enough to send a shiver through her body. At the same time, she knew that she had to go and see Sam, that it was the only right thing to do. And as she stood at the window and checked her watch, and saw that it was almost lunchtime, she realized that there was no time like the present. Turning, she grabbed the coat that Angie had let her borrow, and she headed to the door.

  ***

  “Hey.”

  Standing in the doorway, looking into the foyer, Susan instantly felt as if she was making a terrible mistake. She could see Sam sitting in the office, and she began to turn to leave, only to freeze as soon as he looked up at her.

  She waited, convinced that he was going to yell at her and tell her to get the hell out of his sight, but instead he got to his feet and walked through into the foyer, and then he stopped.

  “Hey,” she said again, “I know I'm probably the last person you ever want to see again, but I just wanted to come and see how things are going, and to...”

  Her voice trailed off as she realized that she wasn't entirely sure why she'd felt compelled to return to the cinema, although after a few seconds she began to understand.

  “I'm so sorry about what happened last year,” she said finally, speaking so quickly that she stumbled over some of her words, “and about your uncle, and about letting everyone down, and about the fact that I basically screwed everything up.” She could feel tears in her eyes again, but she knew that she had to stay strong. “I'm sorry that I couldn't save Harry – I mean, Mr. Gough – and I just want you to know that if I could take any of it back, I would. I'd do anything to make things okay again.”

  She waited, but for a moment Sam said nothing.

  “Do you still now how to deal with paperwork?” he asked finally.

  “I'm sorry?”

  “Because I'm struggling,” he continued. “Frankly, I'm doing worse than Harry, and if you could see your way to giving me a hand, I'd be really grateful.”

  Staring at him, she tried to work out what he really meant.

  “It's okay, though,” he told her, “I understand if you'd rather not. After everything I said to you last time, I mean.”

  With that, he turned and headed back into the office. Susan watched as he sat down and got to work, and after a few seconds she realized that she had to at least go and see what he was doing. She glanced around, and then she made her way across the foyer and stopped in the next doorway.

  “I can't get my head around this stuff,” Sam said with a sigh, leaning back in his chair. “I think they do it to deliberately mess with people. Every year, there are more and more forms, and I'm honestly starting to believe that it's all some big plan to drive people like me out of business so that everyone has to have some kind of university degree just to run a goddamn cinema.” He sighed again. “Or is it possible that I'm a complete moron?”

  “It looks like you've got the wrong papers for the tax filings,” she said cautiously, stepping into the room and walking around the desk, then looking down at the documents. “See,” she continued, already moving some of the papers into different piles, “these forms are for two completely different things, but they look quite similar and you seem to have mixed them up.”

  “Is that right?”

  “It's difficult at the start, when you don't know how it works. I worked in Mr. Shriver's office one summer. You know, the accountant?”

  Sam nodded.

  “I can fix this,” she continued. “It won't even take that long, I can probably have it all done by the end of the day.”

  “So I could leave you to do it, and I could go and fix the projector instead of wasting my time on this stuff?”

  “Of course,” she told him.

  Getting to his feet, he stretched as he walked around the desk and headed to the door.

  “You've just about saved my bacon there, Susie,” he said, before stopping and looking back at her as she took a seat. “Is there anything I can get you while you
're working? Tea? Coffee?”

  “No, thank you. I'm fine.”

  “You know where I'll be if you need me,” he told her, before wandering out of the room, still stretching his arms. “Man, I'm not made for paperwork. If I never sit behind another desk in my entire life, it'll be too soon.”

  Somewhat stunned by the development, Susie listened to the sound of him heading up the stairs, and then she looked back down at the papers. She'd told the truth about her summer job with Mr. Shriver, and she was confident that she could get everything sorted within a few hours. She just wished that she'd had a chance to talk to Sam properly, to tell him everything she was thinking. Figuring that she might get that chance later, however, she resolved to focus on the paperwork first, so she began by trying to separate out all the different documents that had ended up mixed together.

  “That goes there,” she muttered as she made one pile, “and that goes there, and that goes over there...”

  ***

  “I'm done,” she said finally, several hours later, as she looked up from the paperwork and saw that Sam had come back down to check on her. “It's all ready to be filed.”

  “That quickly, huh?”

  “It's almost seven,” she pointed out, checking her watch. “Why aren't you opening?”

  “We've cut back our days,” he told her, as he leaned against the jamb. “We only have screenings on Fridays and Saturdays now, and only in the evenings. Any other times just weren't working. To be honest, the Empire's taken a bit of a dive over the past year without Harry. It's getting harder and harder just to pay the bills to keep the place open. I don't know whether people are genuinely not so interested in coming anymore, or whether Harry just had some magic way of holding everything together, but sooner or later something's got to give.”

  Susan waited for him to continue, but after a few seconds she realized that now was her chance.

  “About last year,” she said cautiously, “again, I just -”

  “Do you want to see something cool?”

  “Uh, maybe, but I wanted to let you know that -”

  “This way,” he said, stepping back and nodding toward the stairs. “Come on.”

  “Can we just talk about -”

  “Last one up there's a wet blanket,” he added, heading out of sight and making his way back up toward the cinema's upper floor.

  “Hey, wait!” she called out, getting to her feet and hurrying after him. “Listen, I really need to talk to you about what happened last year!”

  She looked up the stairs, but she could already hear Sam walking along one of the corridors up there, and she quickly realized that she was going to have to go after him. She felt as if she really hadn't managed to get her point across yet, so – after glancing around for a moment to make sure that there were no other options – she headed to the stairs and made her way up to find Sam.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Pushing open the metal door, Susan cautiously stepped out onto the roof of the cinema and then stopped as she saw the vast starry sky above. For a moment, looking around, she ignored the cold and she could only focus on the fact that she had a perfect panoramic view of the entire town.

  “Wow,” she whispered, having never been up onto the roof before, “it's...”

  Suddenly she saw Sam sitting cross-legged on the floor, a little further over toward the front of the building, bathed in the light from the red 'Empire' sign. She hesitated, convinced that he looked like someone who wanted to be left alone, but then she remembered that he'd specifically asked her to join him. She still hung back for a few seconds, before finally – from somewhere – summoning the strength to walk over.

  “Isn't it beautiful?” he asked as she reached him.

  “It's incredible,” she replied, unable to keep from turning around again to look at the lights of the town on one side, and then the darkness of the sea on the other.

  “You live up near the old mill area, right?” he asked.

  “Yes, but -”

  “Look at it,” he said, turning and pointing toward the rows of lights they could both see on a gentle hill to the west of the town. “Look at all those houses. I suppose one of them is yours.”

  “I suppose it is,” she replied, thinking of her parents.

  “Sometimes I sit up here and I wonder how it's possible for so many people to live in this crazy little town,” he told her. “Look at those houses, all in their neat little lines. Think of all the lives that rumble on in each of those houses. Sometimes I see a light flick on, or off, and I try to imagine what that person's up to right now.” He paused. “Do I sound completely crazy?”

  “Absolutely not,” she replied with a smile, possibly her first genuine smile for a very long time.

  “And there's Mill Road,” he continued, pointing at the snaking road that could be seen winding its way up from the beach toward the hill, and then he pointed toward the other end of town. “That's the golf club up there, and you can also see some of the pubs. They really stand out.”

  “Sam -”

  “And of course there's the center of town,” he added, pointing at the main street. “Look how many lights there are there. From up here, you can literally see the whole of Crowford. Makes you realize how big the place is, huh?”

  “It certainly does.”

  “Let's not forget France, though.”

  “France?”

  She turned and looked out to sea, and she realized she could just about make out a faint glow on the horizon.

  “You ever been?” Sam asked.

  “No.”

  “You ever left the country.”

  “No.”

  “Me neither, but I've got all these plans.” He paused, still looking at the light of the continent in the distance. “People sometimes make fun of me for talking about leaving and never actually doing it,” he continued, “but they don't understand. When I hit the road, I want to do it in style, otherwise what's the point? When I talk about getting out of Crowford, I don't mean a day-trip here and there, or moving somewhere a few hours away. I mean traveling the world. I mean Europe, and Asia, and Australia, and Africa, and America. That's how much of the world I wanna see. It's worth waiting for, too, until I know I can do it right.”

  He held up a ring that hung from a chain around his neck.

  “This belonged to my father,” he explained. “He died years ago, and he never set foot outside Crowford his whole life. One day I'm going to take him all around the world. Sad, huh?”

  Susan hesitated, before sitting next to him.

  “I never should have said those things to you last year,” he added.

  “Sam, I was -”

  “No, listen,” he said, interrupting her. “A few days later I called your parents' house and tried to talk to you, but they told me you'd already left. I wanted to tell you that I was wrong, that I never should have acted the way that I did. I was in shock after Harry's death, but that's no excuse. To be honest, I'd assumed that I'd never have a chance to say any of this to your face. I figured you were off living a swanky new life in London and that you'd have forgotten about all of us in Crowford by now.”

  “I could never do that,” she replied, before reminding herself that there was no need to tell him exactly what she'd been doing in the city.

  She looked over at the lights of the town center for a moment, and then she turned to Sam.

  “I'd do anything to see Harry again,” she told him.

  “Me too,” he replied, “but if the old man taught me anything, it's that we have to keep looking to the future. The past might be fun, but the future... the future's where it's at.”

  “You really believe that, huh?”

  He turned to her.

  “I really do,” he said, and for a moment they both fell silent.

  Although she felt she should turn away, Susan nevertheless found herself unable to do so; instead, she looked into Sam's eyes and felt a growing, tingling sense of anticipation in her chest, a s
ensation that she'd never really experienced before. Something was about to happen, she knew that much, and after a few seconds she saw Sam lean a little closer, and she realized that he was looking at her lips. In a rush, she understood to her immense surprise that he was about to kiss her, and – even more surprisingly – that she was going to let him.

  Suddenly a bang caused them both to look down toward the street, and they saw several people racing past on bikes.

  “I swear,” Sam said, “sometimes I think those things are gunshots.”

  Susan turned to him, wondering whether the moment had been entirely lost.

  “Do you want to get out of here and maybe grab a drink?” he asked. “I don't know about you, but I sure could do with feeling like a normal person, at least for a few hours.”

  ***

  “I'll be back in a moment,” Susan said a short while later, as she got to her feet and left Sam sitting at the table in the corner of The Crowford Royal.

  After picking her way carefully through the late-night crowd, she managed to reach the bathroom. As she pushed the door open, she couldn't help but feel that her date with Sam was going well. Sure, they hadn't managed to get back to the moment when they'd almost kissed, but she felt that they were both waiting for another chance. Then again, as she made her way to one of the cubicles, she couldn't help wondering whether she'd misread the whole situation. Were they really on a 'date' at all? Or was Sam simply being friendly?

  Once she was done in the cubicle, she headed to the sinks and washed her hands. Glancing at her reflection in the mirror, she was once again shocked by how gaunt she appeared, although she quickly reminded herself that a year living rough in London was bound to have left a few marks.

  She looked down at her hands and dried them on a towel hanging next to the sink, and then – realizing that she perhaps needed to be more interesting for Sam – she tried to think of something she could do or say to make him laugh. She decided to try talking to him about films, and then she glanced at herself one more time in the mirror, hoping to make herself a little more presentable.