by Phoef Sutton
Barnabas rushed for the door that wasn’t barricaded by the popcorn maker. He flung it open.
And revealed bedlam.
There were at least three “infected” people. One was picking up a young man and slamming him down onto a seat, breaking his back. Another had a young woman down in the aisle and was digging at her face, peeling it off bit by bit. The third had chased a man up the side of the wall. The man was hanging from the balcony. He lost his grip and tumbled down into the seats.
On the screen, the zombies were on the attack too. Ripping off faces. Breaking backs. Mirroring what was happening in the theater. Or was it the other way around?
It was all melding into one great scene of horror, and the red eyes of the harpy in the ceiling were spitting fire.
Barnabas was thrilled.
He raised his sword, and as the people ran madly up the aisle to escape, he was ready.
To stop them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The four walls seemed to close in on Matt. The more he circled them, the more they seemed like his whole world. And the little window that looked out onto the screen drew his focus no matter how much he tried to look away.
The woman on screen who was Gina-but-not-Gina lay unconscious on the bathroom floor. The zombie bent over her and sniffed at her. He lifted her up in his arms and began to carry her away, in the time-honored way that every monster from the Mummy to the Creature from the Black Lagoon had carried away damsels to their lairs. What did they plan to do to them when they got them there? The movies never said. The hero always came to the rescue before the monster’s desires could be fulfilled.
In this case the hero was a continent away, locked in a tiny room, watching the monster rape and devour the girl. Forever.
Matt closed his eyes.
He could still see the movie, as if it was projected on the inside of his eyelids. He literally couldn’t look away.
“It’s inside you now,” Zander said. “By the time this screening is over, you will be the movie. And I will be free.”
Matt looked at Zander, fading away in the shadows of the projection booth. He could still see the movie out of the corner of his eye. It would always be there.
“Free?” Matt asked him.
“Free to die,” Zander said, his voice full of wistful desire.
Eva ran.
She ran from the madness she heard erupting down in the theater. She ran from the footsteps of the tall man on the stairs behind her. She ran from the insanity that seemed to ooze from the walls around her.
“Girl!” the tall man called out; an order, a demand, an ultimatum.
She ran to the office door and flung it open. Flint was there, lying chained to the wall, dead, with staring eyes that seemed to cry out to her.
She backed out of the doorway and into the tall man’s arms.
He seized her, pulling her to him, squeezing the life out of her.
Eva twisted around in his grasp and kissed him.
The tall man hesitated, as if recalling something from his life before the movie, a desire more primal than the desire to kill.
That hesitation was all Eva needed. She reached her hand to his face and dug her black fingernails into his left eye. He screamed, a blast like a foghorn from deep in his soul.
She pushed him away and ran down the hall.
His footsteps faltered; then she could hear them chasing after her.
She turned the corner and saw the door to the projection booth. It had been busted down and was lying in pieces on the floor, so it would afford her no protection. But it was the only way open to her.
She sprinted into the projection booth hoping against hope that Matt would be there.
With his ax.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Matt had no idea how long he’d been watching the film. It might have been minutes. It might have been hours.
It might have been years.
His life before the movie was becoming an indistinct memory. Images of childhood and Janey and snow and killing flashed across his mind, but he couldn’t tell if they were real memories or memories from the movie he was watching.
The movie he’d always been watching.
“Matt?” Eva screamed.
She was screaming from a long way off. As if she was in another theater at a multiplex. He wished she’d stop. She was interfering with his enjoyment of the film.
She slapped him across the face.
He grabbed Eva’s wrist and twisted it. “Shut up and let me watch the movie!” he shouted.
Then it all came back to him. Eva was standing in front of him. Behind her was the open doorway, the broken-down door lying across the threshold, the tall man standing outside, his eye socket bloody, his mouth open in a silent scream.
Matt grabbed his ax and swung it toward the tall man, who darted away into the shadows of the hall.
“Get out!” Zander was shrieking to Eva. “Get out and leave us alone!”
Matt staggered for moment, his feet stumbling amid the tangle of film that wrapped around his legs like the tentacles of an octopus.
His eyes focused on Eva.
“Your lighter,” he said.
Eva looked at him, confused and frightened. “What?”
“Take your lighter. And set fire to this fucking film.”
“What film?”
He blinked and looked at the floor. There was no film coiled around his feet.
He looked around. Zander was nowhere to be seen.
And the projector was there, whirring away, all in one piece, showing the film. As if he had never attacked it with his ax.
He shook his head. Too many questions.
But only one answer.
“Take the film out of the projector,” Matt said to Eva, calmly.
“What?”
“Do it. Rip it out.”
She went to the projector and turned it off. A great cry rose from the theater.
Grabbing the film, she yanked it from the projector. Matt took the reel, unwound the film into a huge pile in the middle of the floor, and used Eva’s lighter to set it aflame.
As they ran from the projection booth, Matt could hear Zander’s screams mingle with the sizzling sound of the film as it burned.
There was more than one way to set a person free, Matt thought.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The office was clear, except for the corpse of Flint, and that didn’t seem like such a bad thing to Eva now. Matt sat her down on the sofa and told her to wait for him. He had things to do.
People were being killed down in the theater.
Matt ran barreling down the stairs. Matt didn’t see the tall man hiding around the turn.
The tall man clotheslined him as he ran past. Matt was knocked off his feet, falling back onto the stairs, stunned. The ax flew out of his hand.
Matt reacted fast, bounding back to his feet. The tall man reacted faster, punching Matt hard in the face as he rose. Matt took the blow, then reached for the ax and found it was gone. He looked up and saw that the tall man had the ax by the grip. And was swinging it down.
He rolled aside as the ax blade chopped into the step. It bit in deep. As the tall man tried to pry it loose, Matt rolled back and grabbed the handle. The tall man wrenched it away from Matt and brought it down again.
Matt caught it by the belly of the ax handle, just inches from his face. The tall man tried to push the ax blade down into Matt’s cheek. He was strong, but Matt was stronger.
Matt yanked the ax to the side, pulling the tall man off balance. The man teetered for a second, then fell down on the stairs. Matt punched him as he fell; then he grabbed the ax with his two hands and pulled it from the tall man’s grasp.
Springing to his feet, Matt raised the ax and brought it down into the tall man’s back, severing his spine. The tall man flopped for second, then went limp. Dead.
How many had Matt killed over the past two years—including Zander?
No time for
thoughts like that now. He raced down the stairs.
The lobby was chaos.
The popcorn machine was tilted and blocking one of the entrances to the theater. Arms were reaching from the theater, trying to claw their way out.
Barnabas was at the other door, trying to hold it closed, bloody sword in his hand. The pounding and scratching from the other side of the door were deafening.
At Barnabas’s feet were scattered limbs and fingers, chopped off in the fight. Looking up at Matt, Barnabas’s expression was one of mild annoyance.
“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” he said.
Matt didn’t reply. He was looking toward the popcorn machine, at the people desperately trying to get past. To escape.
“What are you doing?” he asked Barnabas.
“Get the Staff!” Barnabas ordered.
Matt realized that Barnabas was keeping everybody trapped in the theater. The sick and the well. The damned and the tormented.
“Open the door!” he screamed at Barnabas. “Let them out!”
“Just a second,” Barnabas answered, the calmness in his voice in sharp contrast to the tension of his body as he held the door fast, despite the thudding and hammering and crying from within.
“Those are innocent people!”
“Innocent? Have you read their screenplays? Seen their short films? They’re guilty of being hacks!” Barnabas laughed and checked his watch. “I guess I’ve left them in long enough.”
Barnabas stepped back and threw the door open.
A crowd of people burst out, running, getting jammed in the door and struggling, like something out of the Three Stooges. Barnabas laughed manically as he watched. Nothing like slapstick.
The mob made a mad dash for the door. One of them, his hand a skeletal claw, reached for the pink hair of a screaming woman and yanked it back, twisting the neck of his victim at an impossible angle.
Matt brought his ax down and chopped the hand off. The man whirled around in anger as the woman fell to the ground, lifeless. With his remaining hand the man reached for Matt’s face, scratching the flesh, searching for Matt’s eyes. Matt batted the hand away and found himself pinned against the concession stand. The man was climbing on top of him, biting the wrist that held the ax, pushing his whole weight on Matt’s chest. The stump of the man’s right hand, still gushing blood, was pressing into Matt’s face, while his teeth were digging into Matt’s wrist bone—Matt dropped the ax. The man reared back with glee.
Matt stopped resisting and used the weight of the man on top of him to carry them both over the concession stand.
The man flipped and crashed into the soda machine. Matt flipped over too and found himself on the sticky floor behind the cash register. His hand grabbed something—a weapon—and he picked it up. The Staff of Truth.
He brought it down on the man’s head. He didn’t spark or catch on fire. But the Staff did split his skull.
Dead.
Another one.
The Staff broke in two at the impact. Matt could see that it was made of plywood.
He looked around to see that the lobby was nearly empty. A few moaning victims lay on in the floor.
And one rotting woman trying to strangle Barnabas.
He leaped over the concession stand, picked up his ax off the floor, and hacked at the woman’s head. Her brains spilled out onto the carpet.
Another.
Barnabas was laughing like a hyena.
“That was a close one!” he said.
Matt went to the double doors that stood open to the street. He looked out and saw a mob of limping people, survivors of the massacre, heading away. Out of fifty people, maybe seven were dead.
Sirens approached from a distance. Someone must have kept a secret cell phone and called the police from the theater.
Matt closed the doors and barred them with the two pieces of the Staff of Truth. Would it keep the cops out? Matt doubted it.
He doubted it would do anything.
He doubted the shepherds of Bethlehem used plywood to make their staffs.
“What is this?” Matt demanded of Barnabas, gesturing to the Staff.
Barnabas sputtered with laughter. “It’s a prop! From an old Twilight Zone episode. Don’t you remember? ‘The Howling Man.’ John Carradine? H.M. Wynant?”
Matt remembered. That was why the story had seemed familiar. He’d seen that episode when he was a kid, like all the others, staying up late at night, peering at the TV set from behind the sofa, too scared to watch it full on.
“So you made it up?”
“Well, Charles Beaumont made it up. I just retold it. We call it an homage.”
“But up in your office. With Flint…”
“The chain was hooked up to a battery. I like to do a little electric play now and then. I just turned it up all the way and zapped him!”
“Why? Why did you do all this? Just to kill people?”
“No, no, no! You don’t understand at all!” Barnabas jumped to his feet, excited. “It’s the people that lived that matter. That’s why I kept them trapped in the theater just long enough to experience the horror! They have this night in their souls now. So when they make movies, they’ll have something to make them about! And every little film they make will have a part of Mr. Dark in them. And everyone that sees those movies, they’ll see that, they’ll be exposed to the darkness! It’ll spread like a summer blockbuster!”
“I burned the film up,” Matt said. “It will never harm anyone again.”
Barnabas shrugged. “The damage has already been done, Cowboy.”
Bang! The street doors vibrated with a sudden impact. “Open up! LAPD!”
“Oops. I just remembered. I haven’t killed Eva yet. What was I thinking?” Barnabas gripped his sword and ran for the stairs.
Matt followed him. As he ran up the stairs, he heard the front doors crashing in. The cavalry had arrived.
When Barnabas made it to the top of the stairs, he turned and faced Matt, brandishing his samurai sword like Yojimbo.
Matt stopped. “Why do you want to kill Eva?”
“Did you see her short film? She’s very good. I don’t want the competition,” Barnabas said with his barking laugh.
Matt raised his ax.
“You can’t kill me!” Barnabas said. “I can’t kill you. We’re immortal. It’s just like Highlander.”
Barnabas swung his sword.
Matt swung his ax.
When the sword hit the ax, it broke in two, but the ax kept going and struck Barnabas square in the chest. It plunged in, splitting his ribs and puncturing his lungs.
Barnabas looked at the wound in dull surprise. “Fuck,” he said. “I guess I was wrong.”
Matt shoved the ax the rest of the way in, and the light went out of Barnabas’s eyes.
EPILOGUE
Harrisonburg County Hospital
Gina lay, looking like she was asleep.
Which, Matt realized, she was. How long the coma would last, the doctors couldn’t say. A month? A year? A lifetime?
Her sister had found her. She had been attacked by an unknown assailant. He’d broken in through the bedroom window and broken down the bathroom door, carved out her right eye, and then left her.
Why? Nobody could say.
Matt took her hand and wept. It had been a long time since Matt had cried, and when he did, it burst out of him in long, horrendous sobs that unnerved the nurses in attendance, though they were used to all manner of tears.
After an hour, he decided to leave.
What was there to stay for?
He had come to Harrisonburg the day before, after dropping Eva off with her mother in Bakersfield, California. They had made it out of the theater by the back way, just avoiding the LAPD’s careful sweep of the structure. That was just as well. Matt didn’t feel he could explain why he’d killed three people. Or was it four?
He walked down the hospital corridor in Harrisonburg, and he was struck by how much it fe
lt like a hospital corridor anywhere. He could have just been leaving Janey after chemo, asleep in her bed, not Gina.
As he walked down the hallway, he kept his eyes on all the doctors, waiting for one of them to pull a lollipop out of his pocket and reveal himself as Mr. Dark.
Mr. Dark, who had lured Matt to LA in order to make him the new projectionist for his dark masterpiece. Mr. Dark, who had turned Barnabas into another of his living tools. Mr. Dark, who had even twisted that stewardess on his flight into an insane harridan, just to prevent Matt from suspecting that he was walking into a trap.
But Matt had beaten him, hadn’t he? Destroyed the film, the projectionist, even Barnabas himself. He had saved most of the crowd at the theater too.
Or did he just save them only to have to hunt them down again someday, after they’d made their own films to spread Mr. Dark’s evil?
Maybe they’d be stuck in development hell. And deservedly so.
Matt sighed. Mr. Dark wasn’t there. He thought of Gina, trapped in that hospital bed, probably for the rest of her life. No, Matt hadn’t beaten Mr. Dark. This game had turned out, at best, as a draw.
In the parking lot, Matt kick-started his motorcycle and took Route 11 North. To nowhere in particular.
Twenty-five hundred miles to the west, Eva finally opened her eyes after sleeping for three days. She got out of her mother’s guest bed and ate four bowls of Cap’n Crunch cereal. Feeling fortified, she decided it was time to do something with her life.
She opened her mother’s old Mac Pro laptop and began to write a screenplay.
FADE IN:
Times Square. A WOMAN walks down the street. A MAN follows her with blood dripping out of his mouth. The man grabs the woman. He pulls her into an alley. He eats her.
Now that’s the way to start a movie, she thought.
About the Author
Phoef Sutton was born in Washington, DC. He cut his eyeteeth as a playwright, but first made a living as a writer in TV. He worked on the classic NBC series Cheers for eight years, went on to write movies (The Fan, Mrs. Winterbourne), and served as consulting producer and writer for Boston Legal and Terriers. He lives in South Pasadena, California, and Vinalhaven, Maine, with his wife and two daughters.