“Can you imagine what this old building remembers?” Ginny had stage-whispered wide-eyed to the camera when they’d pulled the records from archives at Portland State University. “More than we could ever forget.” The building’s blueprints were torn and damaged, but they showed enough for Ginny to locate multiple entrances and exits, just in case. Ghost Town Caving, unlike newcomers Urban Spelunking and Olde Towne Caverns, did the work of getting to know a place, not merely abseiling through it.
Cambell let his eyes get used to the darkness before crossing the damp carpet to the concession stand. His footsteps squelched. Above, winged masks held back torn swaths of rotting velvet and dust swirled in the glimmer of a broken window somewhere high up.
The back of Cambell’s neck prickled with anticipation. He’d been right. The Underhill was the perfect place to propose.
11/1/19 4:52 pm—Going to be a couple minutes late, Cambell, ok?
* * *
Cambell breathed relief. Definitely ok. Glamming up?
* * *
You know it.
Cambell pushed through the theater’s heavy doors and walked between rows of seats. With a penlight in his fist, he scanned the floor, looking for danger. Where would be best? Up on stage, where Vaudeville singers had once performed, and a giant screen now sagged? Or down in the seats? The box seats, paneled in peeling commedia dell’arte masks and elaborate scrollwork, to the left of the stage had the best angle to catch Ginny’s reaction. Would she scream? Be surprised? Then happy? He hoped for the last one.
The box to the right had partially collapsed. So had several rows of chairs, falling through a hole in the floor like a trailing tentacle into the basement.
So, really no choice then.
“All right, friends, let’s do this.” Cambell sent the drone up to the left-hand box, where it perched on the railing, its red eye focused on the scene below. He grinned up at it, as he walked down the middle aisle. He sifted through his gear bag for the LED throws.
Water dripped onstage and had been doing so for long enough that the screen had a scrim of mold. It looked like what happened to Ginny’s mascara after she’d had a good post-scare cry. Had it been raining when Cambell came in? He didn’t think so.
When he heard the voice, he froze. “Welcome to The Underhill Cinema,” the recording had deepened with moisture and age. “A Landmark property.” The last part wobbled and faded, so that it sounded more like “a large majesty.”
“Thanks,” Cambell replied. It was always nice to get on a building’s good side before you went exploring.
“We’d love your feedback after the show,” the voice continued, a garbled whisper.
“So far, so good,” Cambell whispered back.
Outside, sounding muted by the doors, boards, and the chain link fence, the rent-a-cop yelled, “Who’s in there? Get out, whoever you are.”
A dispatch radio crackled. Cambell shut off his penlight and stood still in the dark as a beam breached the outside door, which he’d left ajar. “Damn kids wouldn’t know what to do if they got hurt, treat for rabies or tetanus first? Or should I let you rot in there, you and the building both?” The guard slurred his words. “Place gives me the creeps.”
After a moment of silence, the radio crackled again. “Nah, some rats. Probably triggered the motion sensors. Not worth worrying about.” The light receded and Cambell texted Ginny: security by the marquee.
Okay, almost there, she texted back.
The rent-a-cop wouldn’t come in a place like The Underhill unless he had to. Nor would Urban Spelunking or Olde Towne Caverns. Chickens.
Not like him and Ginny.
Cambell touched the ring in his pocket for luck, then tossed nine sticky LED throws at the stage and the walls, then a couple more. The tiny glitter lights made the whole place look even more romantic. A piece of velvet curtain beside the giant screen tore a little from the weight and swung slowly, making the screen look like it blinked from the dazzle. Between that and the way the fallen marquee had resembled nothing so much as a set of teeth, chewing the pavement, he knew Ginny was going to love this place more than she already did.
“Can you believe this?” She’d asked at the archives. “So much history. And weird shit too.” She waved the multiple resurrections of the property as evidence: Vaudeville hall turned silent film stage, with a full orchestra pit. Then the 90s renovation, preserving the elaborate carvings and velvet seats, which had made it, briefly, the place to be seen for local-artist premiers.
When Cambell had scouted, some long-faded palm prints and signatures of forgotten stars had still been visible, beneath the bite of the marquee.
A dark wave skittered beside Cambell’s foot, a ripple of fur and carpet. Rats, indeed. He coughed and whatever it was scattered.
“Actress vanishes during premiere,” Ginny had read aloud to their GTC fans for the pre-show. “In at least the second occurence, The Underhill is home to a mystery.” She’d wiggled her eyebrows, looking smart and cute in her glasses. Even though it turned out that the actress had been fleeing the law, an outstanding warrant, and everyone knew she’d evaded the cameras and escaped out the back, the disappearance had added to the building’s legacy. Same for the violinist who’d vanished from the orchestra pit during a performance of The Wind, an old silent film. She’d reappeared decades later, supposedly none the worse for wear. Except that had been a scam, for publicity, the woman, her daughter.
Ginny ate things like that up, then talked through them during the show, wondering if this was where the violin section was; if that was the exit the actress had left by. “Learning a building’s secrets,” she winked at the camera, and at Cambell himself, “was a bit like falling in love, from the inside out.”
Where are you? He texted. His palms were clammy, now that he’d gotten everything ready.
He reached in the pocket of the blue tuxedo pants again and spun the ring twice. He hoped she’d say yes.
11/1/19 5:05 pm—Okay! I’m here! Where are you?
* * *
11/1/19 5:05 pm—In the theater. Front row, center.
* * *
11/1/19 5:05 pm—Really? I can’t see you at all. I’m right here.
Cambell looked at the message on his phone and then gazed around wildly. No shadows, no squeaks of footfalls on floorboards. Was she playing a trick on him?
11/1/19 5:05 pm—Oh you monster, you got the projector working. What a wonderful surprise.
In the darkness, with the LEDs twinkling like bee lights at a picnic, Cambell had most certainly not gotten the projector working. He hadn’t even thought of it.
The screen was blank, concrete gray, rippling with a few LED shadows. That didn’t constitute working. Where are you?
11/1/19 5:05 pm—Front Row, Center, like you said. Oh this is wonderful. I love this movie. How did you know. And where are you filming from? What’s my angle?
A chill ran down Cambell’s spine, from the base of his skull to his feet. Ginny was not in the front row. He was alone.
Then the projector flicked on, and a black and white film, silent, began.
On it, he saw Ginny, watching a movie, wearing a glittering black dress. She’d done her hair up like a movie star, and had found full-length white gloves. Behind her, the velvet chairs, fallen into the floor, began to ripple. Her eyes looked right into his as she was embraced by the seats, then drawn down into the basement of the building. No chance to scream; she’d been so surprised. Her face had framed a panicked laugh before she disappeared, while the film continued to roll.
“Ginny!” Cambell shouted. Then, when his voice echoed through the empty cinema, he texted: Ginny?
Somewhere, deep within the movie theater, a slow sound rumbled. Like bricks and mortar, grinding together. Almost like laughter.
Breathing in panicked busts, Cambell signaled the drone, which left the balcony box and came to settle on his shoulder. He ran through the aisles, looking for the hole down to the basement.
; “Ginny! Virginia Bell!” He shouted until he heard the security guard outside, daring himself to come into the theater and haul Cambell out.
Did he want the guard’s help? Maybe?
Cambell hesitated, on the edge of asking.
He looked at the drone. The thing’s red eye still held firm. Still recording. “Did you see that? What the heck’s happening?”
His viewers wouldn’t like it if he asked for help. Not one bit.
A board fell. A flashlight lit up the concession stand’s glass front, and sent glare into the theater. “Projector’s running,” the guard slurred. “Kid, you’d better get out of there, before I haul you out.”
Cambell wasn’t about to get hauled out.
“Whatever’s happening,” he whispered to the drone, “I’m not leaving Ginny.” If he left the Underhill, he felt certain he’d never find her. Maybe no one would.
He ran to the theater’s farthest exit, opened the door, and tossed a broken arm from a chair into the hallway. The arm clattered against the floor, loudly.
Cambell crouched down, near the stage. The smell of damp and rot was overwhelming.
“He’s getting out the back,” the rent-a-cop shouted into his radio. The radio replied with a burst of static, and then the guard, breath heaving against the weight of cheap body armor, ran through the theater, and out the other side.
Cambell relaxed, but only a little bit. “Weird shit,” Ginny had said. Her face had lit up, blue eyes dancing. The Underhill was behaving strangely, and he was catching it all on film.
That was great for ratings. But Cambell’s stomach churned. It was super bad for him personally. If Ginny really had disappeared, people were probably already on the chat logs saying he’d planned it. Because she’d been getting ready to leave him.
If she hadn’t disappeared, people were definitely going to say he’d planned this, and faked it all.
They wouldn’t care about the truth: that he loved her. That he’d wanted to surprise her.
Either way, the only good outcome was for him to find out what was happening, and to find Ginny. He shivered as he recalled her face on the screen, so trusting.
So convinced this was part of the show.
Once he was sure the guard was gone, Cambell shone his penlight down into the hole in the floor of the theater. Light rippled back at him. Water. He heard the drip-drip-drip, again, and something swimming down there.
“Ginny?” He whispered as loud as he could.
“Ginny.” The basement echoed back.
He dropped an LED throw down into the water, and it took a long time to splash. Then it disappeared, fast. The basement must be huge.
He’d have to go down there, alone. He reached into his equipment bag for the ropes. Ghost Town Caving recommended at least two climbers for safety when exploring structures, and Cambell wasn’t excited about going alone. He was even less excited about the prospect of tying a rope to any of the theater chairs nearby, which could fall into the basement at any time.
Maybe there was another way. He tried to think of the blueprints. There’d been a door to the basement behind the stage. “Ginny, I’m coming okay?”
When he stood, his shadow stretched long behind him, falling into the hole with the seats. On the screen, which was still lit, the opposite set of seats looked like a wide mouth, an open throat. Ginny had disappeared inside those rotting, crimson guts.
Cambell stuck both hands in his pockets, feeling the ring press hard against his fingertips. Then he put the ring in a sealed plastic bag in his equipment kit and buckled the bag over both shoulders.
This was not the kind of surprise he’d planned, but urban caving meant be ready for anything, and Cambell was. Most of the time.
In his scramble to get up onto the stage, he triggered the motion detector again. The voice returned, deep and slow now, but stuck on a few words of the tape. “Love your feedback,” blurred and became “love you back,” as if the recording was water damaged.
After seeing the basement, Cambell couldn’t imagine how it was still playing at all. He shivered. He hadn’t planned on swimming in a tuxedo. Or at all. Neither had Ginny, though, and that’s all he was thinking about now.
“Ginny?” Cambell kept calling as he pushed apart the backstage curtains and found the door to the basement.
His fingers punched right through the fabric, but he got the door open, on the first try.
“Hold up there, mister!” The drunken security guard lunged from the wings and tried to grab his arm. “Gotcha, you punk kid!”
Cambell jerked away, plowing through the stage curtain—what was left of it—and slamming the door behind him. He threw the latch and could hear the guard pounding against the door all the way down the stairs. But when he reached the bottom of the stairs, the pounding stopped, and the only thing Cambell could hear was water dripping and the welcome tape’s drone: Love you back. Love you back.
“Ginny? Ginny!” The basement echoed her name back to him.
He pushed through piles of boxes, knocking over several. Reels of film spilled out into the water, snaking around his ankles. Cambell shook free and kept moving deeper into the basement. She wasn’t answering him. Was she even down here?
Wait a minute. Cambell stopped again. Had she even been in the theater? Or had she been punking him?
The idea that maybe Ginny would have set up a last-minute goodbye surprise for him had never crossed his mind. He’d always been the genius of the Ghost Town Caving operation. Even if, over the past thirteen months, Ginny had done far more than the ad she’d answered had specified. Actress wanted, 25% of net for popular YouTube & GetNow vodcast, was what he’d written. But she’d helped him ramp up. Logos, advertising revenue, everything.
She could totally plan a gotcha reel.
Cambell sighed and made sure the drone was still filming. “Ginny, game’s over. Knock it off.”
11/1/19 5:05 pm—Cambell? I can hear you, but I can’t see you.
* * *
Stop kidding around okay? It’s getting cold down here.
* * *
Where are you?
* * *
Somewhere in the basement. I can’t get out of this chair.
All right, so she wasn’t punking him. Or at least Cambell didn’t want to risk it. He stepped deeper into the basement, into the water.
A beam of light caught him directly in the eyes. “Got you, punk-assed kid. You know how hard it was to get down here through that hole? I’m taking it out on your hide.”
Cambell backed up, splashing. The guard grabbed for him, but stumbled and dropped his flashlight into the water, where it shorted out. The guard cursed. “I can tase you, you know.”
The guard wasn’t much older than Cambell or Ginny. He had curls like hers, and long dark lashes. He could have easily been Ginny’s cousin. Distant cousin. Except the guard was a pasty white, and paler now with fear, and Ginny’s skin was olive hued. She was a classic beauty, in the old-movie kind of way. Plus, she was a good foot taller and her eyes—Cambell couldn’t think about how beautiful her eyes were right now.
“If you’re going to tase me, do it. It will look great on camera. If not, help me, I need to find my girlfriend,” he shouted.
The guard smirked. “I’m only here to help you get your ass out of the building, son. Your pretty girlfriend’s already with my partner. We drew straws.”
Cambell knew the guard was lying. That the guy wasn’t willing to help him find Ginny, wasn’t even willing to listen to him, fueled his frustration.
He pushed the guard into the water and ran again, through a hole in the basement wall, that looked like it used to have a door in it. “Ginny?”
When he emerged, it was into sub-basement half flooded with something darker than water. Something that smelled like the contents of a drunk’s stomach.
He saw pieces of foam cushions and old film reels floating in the brine. “What the hell is this?” Had the river nearby broken through? That wasn�
��t likely but it wasn’t impossible. If so, he knew the building’s foundation was really unstable, not just the floors.
11/1/19 5:45 pm—Ginny if you can hear me, yell, ok?
For a moment, he stared at his phone, waiting for the sound of her voice. Willing it to echo through the basement.
Then he looked at her messages. The timestamp was wrong on every single one. Somehow, Ginny was still there, messaging him, but from forty minutes ago. He could see the cursor blinking as she typed.
11/1/19 5:05 pm—It’s dark and I can hear your voice. But I can’t see you. And your voice is strange … like it’s all around me. Can you say something else besides love you? Please?
Cambell froze.
He almost typed “That’s not me,” but he knew Ginny would freak at that and he needed her to stay calm, to tell him where she was. Just give me a minute. Can you see anything?
Splashing behind him. The rental cop.
11/1/19 5:05 pm—Just the movie. And your hand. You’re holding on to my shoulder, right? That’s you?
The next few words were garbled.
Cambell took a deep breath.
I’ve got you, Ginny. I’m going to get you out of there.
11/1/19 5:05 pm—Okay. The movie’s almost over. The lights will come up soon.
She sounded so scared, and for a moment, Cambell worried he had left her upstairs in the theater, but then the building moaned and he knew he hadn’t.
Monsters, Movies & Mayhem Page 34