Spine Shivering Stories!

by Michelle E Lowe

  And just like that, it started all over again.

  Movie House Murder

  Eva stood in the doorway as the last movie ended. Her watch read 12:34 pm and she was tired and ready to leave. For being such a slow night, her shift had gone by rather quickly, especially during the last show after taking over for Paula behind concessions. The past couple of hours zipped by and before she knew it, she was closing out her register.

  At last, the lights came up as the credits rolled. A handful of people stood from their seats and began leaving. As they passed by, Eva wished them a goodnight and walked into the auditorium to begin her rounds. When she did, she immediately spotted a lone man seated by the side aisle on the other side, watching the credits.

  Eva strolled down the aisle, glancing between rows of worn seats for any personal belongings left behind on the sticky floor. She checked behind the curtains for remaining guests, and made sure all exit doors were locked. She then made her way up the other aisle where the man sat. As she drew closer, she took notice of the man’s drooped eyelids and slightly parted lips. Eva stopped and studied him a moment.

  “Sir?” she said over the movie soundtrack. “Sir, are you alright?”

  When he didn’t respond, Eva leaned forward and shouted, “Sir!”

  The man didn’t move.

  Eva became concerned and decided to check the man’s pulse. She reached her hand over, expecting him to jolt awake just before she touched him, scaring them both into an early grave. She held her breath and pressed her fingers against his neck. He felt cold, as if he’d been sitting under an air conditioner vent all day. She kept searching for a pulse but there was no beat. Not . . . one . . . thump.

  Different colors flashed throughout the auditorium and loud pops and burrrrrrs blasted through the speakers as the tail end of the film played out. Eva jumped back when the sound burst into her eardrums. As familiar as it was, it caused her heart to skip. She glanced at the screen and then back over to the dead man.

  How did he die? Eva wondered while reaching into her pants pocket. She brought out her cell phone and dialed 9-1-1. “Shit,” she cursed. “No signal.”

  “What’s going on?” someone asked, entering the auditorium. She turned as Vic the projectionist came down the aisle.

  “Saw you through the window while I was shuttin’ everything down upstairs,” Vic said, stopping near her. His eyes traveled to the man in the chair and asked, “What’s his problem? Is he drunk or somethin’?”

  “He’s dead.”

  Vic stood silent for a long moment. “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “Aw, c’mon, man.”

  She hated it when he called her man, or dude. Apparently, Vic didn’t hang out with many women.

  Vic reached for the man’s wrist. “He’s probably asleep or something’.” He searched for a pulse. Eva waited for him to make the discovery for himself.

  In spite the situation, she choked back a laugh as he quickly withdrew his hand, jumped back and shouted, “Holy Crap! That’s really a dead guy, man!”

  “Told you,” she fired back. “I might just be a manager at some dive theater, but I’m smart enough to recognize when someone’s dead.”

  Vic studied the corpse with morbid curiosity. “Wonder how he croaked. He could’ve had a stroke, but he looks so young.”

  “You’re never too young to suffer a stroke,” Eva pointed out. “He could’ve been a drug user.”

  “He doesn’t look like a drug user,” Vic argued.

  “How would you know?”

  “Well, besides him being a stiff and all, he looks pretty healthy. Y’know, in tip-top shape.”

  “Maybe he was a pill popper,” Eva challenged.

  Vic rolled his eyes and said, “If he had a stroke, he would’ve most likely fallen over trying to get up for help, or at least be slumped. I mean, look at him, he’s sitting too casual-like.”

  She hated to admit it, but Vic had a point. The dead man sat straight back in the chair with one arm resting comfortably on the armrest and the other lying across his lap. There were no signs that he had experienced any kind of trauma before his death.

  “Hey,” Vic said with odd excitement in his tone. “What if this dude is a victim of the Venom Killer?”

  “The who?”

  Vic turned to her with a disdainful expression on his shaggy face.

  “You haven’t heard about him?”

  “No.”

  Vic focused back on the corpse and moved his hand up the man’s T-shirt. Eva winced in horror as Vic lifted up the shirtsleeve.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Just checking.”

  “Checking for what?”

  “There,” he said, pointing to the dead man’s bicep. “See it?” Eva couldn’t believe what she was doing as she leaned in.

  “See what? I don’t see anything?”

  “Right there,” Vic said, drawing his finger closer to the spot. “See that little red mark?”

  Eva noticed it and said, “So? It’s a pimple.”

  “It’s not a pimple. It’s a mark where a needle pricked him. You really don’t know about the Venom Killer?”

  Eva gave no answer.

  Vic lowered the shirtsleeve, “The Venom Killer is a serial killer, man. He’s been knocking people off across the nation. He gets his jollies by killing his victims in public places.”

  “How does he do that?”

  There was a brief silence before Vic replied, “He injects them with poison.”

  Eva’s eyes widened.

  “With what?”

  “With a hypodermic needle. Duh, dude,”

  “Wait a minute. I think I’ve heard about this guy,” she confessed. “Doesn’t he drug them first?”

  “Yeah. They say when he targets someone, he finds a way to slip ’em a roofie. He got some twenty-two year old chick like that in a New York City nightclub. He drugged the girl and poisoned her after she was down for the count. They later found her propped up by the bar. Sometimes he really lucks out, though. Like, the other night, he found some dude here in Atlanta passed out drunk on the MARTA train and killed him. For hours no one noticed him dead ‘til some lady sat next to him and the dead dude went flop!—fell right over onto her lap.”

  “Do the cops have any leads?”

  “They don’t even know what he looks like.”

  Eva slid her eyes over at the corpse. It was apparent that the victim had come to the movies alone, and in such a dark atmosphere with so few people around it was all too easy for a madman with a poisonous needle to strike. She noticed the soda cup inside the cup holder next to body. The killer may have slipped Rohypnol in his drink whenever the victim had left his seat during the movie, then waited until the victim was out cold to inject him with the venom.

  All evidence pointed to it being this psychopath. If the Venom Killer had, in fact, killed the man it made sense that he’d choose this nearly vacant movie theater to play his sick game. Vic just said it himself that the killer’s latest murder had been local.

  Eva felt sorry for the dead man. He appeared young, in his early thirties, handsome, with a dark complexion. He seemed the type of guy who’d have many friends and possibly a loving family, soon to be devastated by the news of his senseless murder. Then her sorrow turned into fear when Vic said, “The killer must’ve done this at the last show. That means he was just here, man.”

  She shuddered at the thought that a serial killer had perhaps brushed by her as the other customers were leaving.

  “He might even still be in the building,” Vic added unhelpfully. “Let’s go upstairs in the projection booth and call the police.”

  She followed Vic out from the auditorium and through a wide corridor. They came to a door on the left hand side with a sign reading: EMPLOYEES ONLY. She thought to leave for the office located on the other side of the theater. It would take minutes to reach, but she didn’t want to risk it, not with the possibility of a
serial killer looming about. She even considered leaving through an emergency exit door, but was afraid that the killer would be lurking in the shadows somewhere right outside.

  “Why did Paula leave after the seven o’clock shows?” Vic asked, unlocking the employee door.

  “There’s a murdered man in our auditorium, plus the threat that his killer might still be around, and you’re asking me about Paula?”

  “Just making conversation, dude.”

  She found Vic’s nonchalant attitude about their gruesome situation more and more disturbing.

  Vic opened the door and they went up a flight of stairs leading to another door ahead.

  “She asked to leave early,” Eva answered. “How did you even know she left?”

  “I saw her leaving while I was outside smoking.”

  “Well, since you’re so curious, why didn’t you ask her yourself?”

  “She don’t like me much.”

  That came to no surprise. She herself didn’t particularly care for Vic. Too many things about him creeped her out. His slick, heavily jelled hair that he kept combed straight back was as black and shiny as the leather jacket he always wore. He was very narrow-minded in his conversations and generally wouldn’t join in on a topic that didn’t involve movies. Also, he walked with a slight hunch, almost like he was trying to repel people from him. The general manager had once told her that Vic was a loner with virtually no friends and wasn’t very talkative with the floor staff. Granted, most of the staff was in high school and had little in common with an oddity like Vic. However, something about him had always rubbed her the wrong way.

  Once they reached the top stair, Vic unlocked the door and went inside. Eva hesitated a moment. A bad feeling had crept into her very core and hunkered down inside her gut. It made her stomach ache.

  “Are you coming, dude?” Vic asked, standing in the doorway.

  “I . . . uh . . . I think I’m just going to call the cops from the office.”

  “And what are you gonna do if you run into the killer, huh? Offer him free movie passes to let you live? C’mon, it’s safe up here. No one but me has a key to the booth.”

  Again she dithered, but in the end decided to push aside her suspicions and follow Vic into the room.

  Everything was dead quiet inside the projection booth. The steady hum of the projector machines had been silenced after Vic shut off the breakers. Minimal light from the auditoriums came in through three small windows in front of each machine. One window was for the projectionist to check the film on screen and make sure the picture was in frame and in focus, the actual movie projector faced the middle window, and the third was for the theater’s old fashioned slide projector, showing local advertisements and movie trivia questions.

  To distract herself from her fear, Eva studied a movie projector as she passed by it. They were bulky machines, and the area where the film threaded through for viewing was like looking into a mechanical jigsaw puzzle. The movie prints, which looked like large vinyl recorders, sat on one of three stainless steel platters attached to a seven-foot tall tower erected right beside the projectors.

  They walked through a short, dark hallway and into a more spacious room where a laptop rested on a single desk against the wall. The dim room was lit by two bulbs, slightly reflecting off the water-stained ceiling. The walls were painted light grey and adorned with many movie posters. Eva had only been in the projection booth once before when the general manager had given her a tour on her first day.

  “It’s pretty dark in here,” she observed.

  “Well, duh, man, it’s a projection booth. It’s supposed to be dark ’cause bright lights can shine through the windows and reflect off the movie screens.”

  “Doesn’t it bum you out to be in the dark like this all day?”

  “Nah, I actually like it. Sunlight is way overrated.”

  She stopped beside a table, pulled her cell phone from her pants pocket and redialed 9-1-1. No signal.

  “Dammit! Why can’t I make a call anywhere in this freakin’ place?”

  “It’s caused by the electrical interference,” Vic explained, approaching the desk.

  “Do you have a phone we can use?”

  Vic unplugged his laptop and shrugged, “Yeah.”

  “Well, call the cops, dude,” she demanded. “If you can’t get a signal either, we ought to leave for the office.”

  “I never said I couldn’t get a signal,” replied Vic, carrying his laptop with him as he walked back. “Besides, you said you wanted me to show you this before we spend hours talking to the fuzz.”

  “I said what?” she said, confused.

  “Hold this,” Vic ordered, handing something over to her. She took the object so Vic could set his laptop down on the table.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “It’s a splicer.”

  She studied it as Vic logged onto the Internet. The splicer wasn’t large but it was heavy and awkward looking with a small slanted cutter that resembled the blade of a Guillotine.

  “Check this out,” Vic said.

  She turned her attention away from the splicer and looked over at the monitor. Vic had searched up the Venom Killer on a local news website where an image of the killer had been caught by a MARTA train security camera. The killer was sitting beside the unconscious passenger. He wore an Atlanta Braves ball cap and sunglasses. It was clearly seen that in his hand was the syringe he’d used to murder the unsuspecting passenger.

  “See?” Vic said. “Look how he hides his face. He knows that cameras are on ’im, but wants people to see him actually killing this dude. Isn’t he friggin’ great?”

  Is he serious? She thought. It’s like he admires him.

  “Great? Sounds more like sick-o, if you ask me. Why are you so interested in this guy?”

  Vic craned his neck around to her, sliding his hand through his dark, viscous hair. He grinned widely and narrowed his eyes as if squinting them in the overrated sunlight. His creepy expression caused icy tingles to rush down her spine.

  “I’m writing a screenplay about a serial killer. My main character is the killer, not a detective trying to find him or a would-be victim, but the killer himself. It takes place inside his head and what he’s thinking about when he’s committing murder. Guess I’m trying to understand the mindset.”

  An overpowering eeriness came about him as he spoke about his project. His demeanor was unnerving, reminding her of Frederick Loren in House on Haunted Hill, but lacking the charm and grace that Vincent Price had portrayed in his poised, yet, terrifying character.

  “I didn’t know you were a writer.”

  “You never asked, dude.”

  “Why did you want to show me this?”

  Vic gave her a funny look and then said in an irritated tone, “For the second fucking time, this was your idea.”

  There was a long uncomfortable silence between them. Eva’s stomach acids bubbled like a witch’s brew as her bad feelings worsened.

  “I’m going to the office.”

  “Why are you so anxious to leave?” Vic asked as he reached into his jacket pocket.

  Then she saw the syringe.

  Vic’s voice seemed to be coming from far, far away when he said, “I cannot be stopped.”

  Oh, my God! It’s Vic! Vic is the killer!

  Before she knew what she was doing, Eva swung the heavy iron splicer up.

  “No!” she shouted as she slammed it across his head.

  The impact sent him straight to the ground; his skull cracked opened like a coconut when it hit the hard tile floor.

  She stood over him while waves of tremors shook her every bone. She had never realized she possessed such strength. She tried to slow her rapid breathing, nearly vomiting as the blood oozed out of Vic’s head, forming a thick red pool across the floor. Then a new terror forced her rigid body into motion.

  “What have I done? I killed him! Oh, shit! I gotta get out of here!”

  She dropp
ed the splicer and ran out of the booth. She flew down the stairs, then through the lobby with the lingering scent of buttery popcorn still in the air. Rushing up another stairwell, she reached the office door. She fumbled for the office key hidden within her own set of keys. Finally, she found the right one, unlocked the door and went inside, slamming it behind her.

  I gotta call the police! she thought, rushing to the desk.

  As her hand reached the phone, she heard a voice say, “Hello, Eva.”

  An unknown woman sat behind the desk with feet casually propped up. Her outlandishly attired was a black smoking jacket, pinstripe pants and a vivid red tie tucked inside a white vest, with matching white snakeskin boots. She had sharp facial features, sallow skin and wore thick, dark eyeliner, with glossy red lipstick that perfectly matched her tie.

  Eva stood stunned and blinked several times in disbelief before finally managing to say, “Who are you?”

  “Tsk, tsk,” the intruder said, disregarding her question as she admired her glittery gold rings. “What a mess you’ve made of ole Vic.” She turned her eyes up at Alicia and said in sarcastic pity, “That poor, poor useless skin sack.”

  Eva knitted her eyebrows together with confusion and said, “What are you talking about?”

  The intruder smirked and lit up a cigarette wedged inside a sixteen inch cigarette holder.

  “You were never too fond of Vic, were you? I think you wanted an excuse to pop him off, so you made yourself believe he was going to harm you.”

  “I didn’t murder Vic. I was defending myself!”

  Smoke spread throughout the room when the intruder exhaled. Surprisingly, Eva couldn’t smell it.

  “Ever wonder where the time goes?” the intruder asked abruptly.

  Eva was taken aback.

  “The time?”

  “Yes, time. It seems to pass by so fast for you. So many mysterious gaps riddled throughout the fabric of your lifespan. Sometimes it feels like you’ve jumped into a time warp and skipped ahead a few hours, doesn’t it, hon?”