by Michael West
I’d like to see even a field mouse squeeze in or out through these doors.
He scanned the cinderblock walls for a rabbit hole or some other chink in the building’s armor, but there was none to be found.
Wilber marched back into the auditorium, confused. How did they get in? Where did they go? He had the only set of keys. The front door didn’t appear forced, and the back doors ... In the past, before the cinema had opened for business each morning, those padlocks and heavy chains had come off, and every night at closing, they’d been put right back on. It was against the law to bar an exit. If there was a fire, the patrons had to be able to get to safety. And that blaze in the Woodfield’s balcony had been one of the worst fires anyone could remember.
Wilber’s eyes rose unconsciously to the upper gallery and his joints froze in mid stride. He formed a shelf across his forehead with his wrinkled hands, shielding his eyes form the xenon glare of the projector above. A girl sat silently in one of the balcony chairs, her eyes still on the screen, watching the credits make their upward crawl as if he wasn’t even there. His eyesight wasn’t what it used to be, but he could tell she was a teenager.
He called out to her, trying to be heard above the music from the speakers, “This here’s private property, little lady.”
And the girl slowly stood.
“Come on down to the lobby, and I’ll let you out without havin’ to call the cops.”
But she didn’t move, didn’t say a word; just continued to stand at the balcony railing, continued to stare ahead at the silver screen.
“Hey, you hear me up there? What —”
Something screeched behind him, the jarring sound of metal grinding metal.
He whirled around. Dozens of cinema chairs had been yanked out by the root and piled high along the aisle runner. Wilber expected to find that one of these stacks had toppled, but they remained standing.
Wilber next gazed up at the screen, at the golden statues that hung above it, the muses. They stared back at him with blank, flaxen eyes. The old man stumbled back a few frantic steps, taking them all in, imagining the weight of them, afraid that they had picked this particular moment to fall to the floor, but when he eyed the cables that anchored them, he found that none had snapped.
He slowly returned his attention to —
That gargoyle ...
It sat perched atop one of the gold columns that lined the wall to his left, a gothic nightmare with forged wings and metal claws. Its dog-like snout should have pointed straight ahead, a mirror of its twin on the opposite side of the auditorium. But now ... now its face was tilted down at him; fanged mouth open in a mute growl, yellow tongue curled, polished eyes narrowed.
He craned his neck back toward the balcony, toward the girl, hoping she’d seen it actually move, hoping he hadn’t lost what mind he had left.
She was gone.
Before he could even wonder where she went, another shrill screech echoed behind him, the same sound of metal on metal, but this time it was deafening. His head jerked back around and his eyes shot right to the gargoyle, terrified that he would find it had moved again. It hadn’t. The one next to it had. And the one next to that, and the one next to that ... Wilber’s eyes flew to the other side of the theater and were greeted by the same horrible truth.
All the gargoyles stared down at him.
A sudden chill enveloped him like a frozen blanket.
The speakers broadcast a loud warble, and for one horrid instant, he thought it was the communal cry of these golden monsters. When he looked up and saw numbers and letters strobe across the movie screen, however, he realized the film’s tail had just worked its way through the projector and sound system. And then the projector shut off altogether, plunging the room into darkness.
Wilber inhaled deeply and backed into a stack of cinema chairs. It collapsed like a house of cards, the resulting bang and clatter ricocheting off the walls and high ceiling of the empty auditorium.
He felt blindly for his pocket, then wormed his hand inside. The small flashlight was there on his key ring. He pulled it out and continued backing up the aisle. One foot slid on a spilled chair, nearly costing him his balance. He turned on the small light, aimed it around the auditorium, at the perches where the gargoyles had sat perfectly still for so many decades, illuminating one after another.
They’re gone, his frantic brain cried out in the dark. They’re all gone.
But he knew better. They were out there, hiding in the gloom, stalking him like a pack of wolves after a deer. Yes. He could feel it.
Wilber turned and ran, using the tiny light to navigate his way up the aisle.
The lobby doors were closed.
He’d had dreams like this before, nightmares of being chased, lurid fantasies where his only means of escape was a door at the end of a long, dark tunnel, and when he reached that door, he would inevitably find it locked. But he knew this was no dream, no nightmare, no fantasy.
I don’t have Alzheimer’s or dementia or none o’ that crap. Those statues did move, and now they’re after me.
Panic seized Wilber and he threw his shoulder against the double doors to break them down. They yielded easily to his weight, however, and he stumbled backward into the lobby. Breathing harshly, his hand on his chest to rein in his galloping heart, he hobbled across the floor toward the main entrance. All the while, his eyes kept watch on the auditorium doors, waiting for the animated gargoyles to follow him out into the light.
The box office door creaked open.
He turned his head to look inside. There was something there, something moving around within the confines of that boarded up ticket booth. Whatever it was, it spoke, “Help us.”
That voice ... I know that voice ...
“No,” Wilber said aloud. He was shaking all over. In his mind, he saw Shelly Wells’ shambling corpse, half its face still blown away. “It can’t be.”
The voice came again, “Please ... save us.”
Outside, it was a beautiful spring evening. The air was cool. The sun was setting, casting a golden glow on newborn leaves. Yes. Outside.
“Save us from the demon,” the thing in the box office cried out.
There were tears in Wilber’s eyes now. He reached out for the antique brass door handle and the parking lot beyond. And then he felt the air at his back turn hot, scorching. Something was behind him, breathing down his neck. At first, he thought it was one of the gargoyles, but no. This was huge. Wilber dared a glance over his shoulder and saw nothing but teeth. Row after row of teeth.
It fell on him, pushed his wrinkled, terrified face into the dusty carpet, and then it started to bite.
27
Look out!
A pair of round reflectors loomed straight ahead, mounted to a crumpled metal guardrail at the edge of the road. Geoffrey Burke’s headlamps caught them, and for an instant, their orange glow appeared as eyes shining in the blackened woods. Terror grasped his heart and squeezed tight, the childhood fears again, trying their best to throw him off his game.
Not tonight.
He became instantly alert and steered sharply to the left. The car skidded, but the tires remained on the pavement. As he continued on toward the doomed cinema, an old, nearly forgotten voice was in his brain: Kate, his ex-wife, chastising him for his lack of skill behind the wheel.
“Slow down! Why is you’re driving so bloody awful tonight? Pull your head out of your arse and pay attention to the road!”
Burke shook his head.
In the end, they’d argued every aspect of life, but what she’d taken issue with most was his obsessive quest for truth, a mission he had pursued to the exclusion of all else, especially her. It was odd that he should think of her tonight of all nights, when he was on the cusp of obtaining the proof he’d sought for so long. He’d considered her so rarely when they shared a home and a bed, and she’d come to mind with even less frequency in the decade since their divorce. Sometimes he would come across an old photogr
aph in some forgotten box or pocket, a bit of evidence that he’d neglected to destroy before pulling up stakes and moving to America, and the image of her always brought with it a dismal feeling of sadness. But it wasn’t Kate that he pined for. God, no. He could do no right in her eyes, and he was happy to be free of their constant squabbling. No, the tears he cried were certainly not for her.
He wept for himself.
Burke mourned a life that might have been and wasn’t: finding a kind, loving woman to grow old with, having children to carry on his family name, starting a successful practice as an analyst, perhaps even owning a dog or two to greet him when he came home for the evening. It was a happy life, free of any fixation with the supernatural, void of all terror and fear, a life without pain, and it had all been stolen away from him some forty odd years ago, murdered by that shadowy devil in the dark.
He saw a glimmer of light ahead through the trees, then lost it behind thicker foliage. When he rounded the next bend, however, the marquee was visible in its entirety.
The Woodfield was near.
His proof was near.
As the professor closed the distance between them, he thought back to the news clippings that filled the folders in his desk. Patrick Gorman ... Vernon Armstrong ... Delbert King ... she had become an obsession to so many of the men who had entered her over the years. They had given her everything, and in return, she had shown favor to none.
Please, old girl, just this one night, let down your hair and your knickers and let me see the real you.
Burke drove across the car park and came to a stop. Wilber Harvey’s dilapidated truck sat near the main entrance, still cooling in the night air, but the young people had yet to arrive. He glanced at his watch. It was early yet. He studied the marquee lights another moment before opening his door, thinking of Vernon Armstrong’s suicide note, the one he left in a roach-infested hotel room more than fifty years ago ...
“I’m miserable and long for my cinema. I miss her so much.”
Burke stepped slowly across the lot, patches of crumbling asphalt crunching beneath his shoes. At first, a light breeze brushed his cheeks and played with his graying hair, but it died suddenly. The air seemed to thicken, and the sensation only grew more intense as he neared the building, a distinct heaviness that quickened both his breath and the beat of his heart. The same anxious feeling he used to get when the lights went out in Wolverhampton.
I had a sense of something before, no more than a hint, really, but it’s so much stronger now.
He quickened his pace. There was definitely a presence here. He knew it. He glanced at the access road, eager for his equipment to arrive, eager to get it all on record. He was so very close to capturing that which had eluded him, taunted him. It would deny him no longer. He could almost taste the achievement on his tongue; sweet, satisfying.
When he reached the entrance, the door opened before he even laid a finger on the handle.
The gentleman standing in the lobby was not Wilber Harvey. Harvey was in his mid to late eighties. This man ... this man was ancient. He was bald, his skin ashen, lined and creased with countless wrinkles and blue webs of veins. Thick glasses with equally thick black frames were perched on the bridge of his pug nose. He wore a gray polyester suit and a red tie. “Good evening.”
Burke blinked. “Yes ... h-hello.”
The stranger smiled pleasantly. His teeth were dingy, tobacco stained, his glasses like the twin barrels of binoculars, making his eyes appear tiny, sunken deep in the wells of shadowy sockets. “How can I help you tonight, son?”
“Yes, well, my class will be arriving soon. We’re from the university, here to —” What? Search for spirits? Burke hesitated to mention the supernatural to this older man. He might think him daft and shut the door in his face. “— here to take readings for a research study.”
The man had an expression of surprise on his furrowed face, but it was exaggerated, feigned. “Mister —”
“Doctor Geoffrey Burke.”
This stranger was unimpressed. “Are you sure you have the right address?”
“I’m quite positive. Mr. Wilber Harvey’s the caretaker here. He’s aware of the whole arrangement.” Burke turned toward the lot and pointed. “That’s his truck. He is here, isn’t he?”
“Oh, yes.” The man nodded to the right, toward the stairs on that end of the lobby. “In fact, he’s just been promoted. He’s up in the projection booth right now. Nobody knows that booth the way he does. He’s helping us get all the equipment up and running again for a Grand Re-opening.”
Burke’s eyebrows leapt up. He scanned the graffitied wood and brick of the outer walls, the missing panels and hanging letters of the marquee. “I was told the building was scheduled for demolition next week.”
The stranger laughed at that. “Oh no, son. I don’t know where you’d hear a thing like that. We’re not going anywhere.”
They stood there at the threshold, regarding one another in silence, then the man in the cheap gray suit opened the door a bit wider; made a sweeping gesture with his right hand. His fingernails were as yellow as his teeth. “Would you like to come inside?”
Burke eyed him cautiously.
The man’s smile broadened. “Please.”
Despite his misgivings, the professor stepped inside. The lobby was colder than the lot, and he threw a brief glance over his shoulder at his car. He could barely make it out in the distance, a dim outline at the outermost edge of the marquee light. It was all alone out there. No one else was in sight. His eyes moved back to the stranger.
Just look at him. I mean, really. He’s an old man. Slight. Frail. A stiff wind might snap him like a dry branch. What possible harm could he bring me?
Burke turned away, surveyed the lobby. The chandeliers were lit and full of nesting birds. Some cooed agreeably, others hopped from one golden perch to another, many stared back at him.
He grinned and gave a nod.
A casual observer might dismiss such creatures entirely, might simply assume they’d taken refuge in this abandoned structure, choosing to roost here rather than the hollow of some bloody tree. Burke knew better. Crows, owls, ravens, sparrows and the like, their appearance often signaled the presence of an entity, be it spirit or demon. They were psychopomps, from the Greek, meaning “guide of souls,” and as myth would have it, they ushered the dead on to the next plane.
The fact that there were so many of them gathered together here further fueled the professor’s excitement.
Burke turned around and found the stranger standing not more than a foot behind him, giving him a start.
“Just follow me,” the old man said, still smiling, and there was an odd tang on his breath, calling to mind the damp scent of a riverbed, of mushrooms and moss. “I’ll walk you upstairs and we’ll get this whole mess straightened out.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry for my confusion, but I pride myself on knowing all the facts, and this business about opening the cinema again is all quite —”
A golden nameplate was pinned just above the man’s breast pocket. Burke read it and froze, then his eyes snapped up.
“Vernon Armstrong?”
“That’s right,” the stranger said, his smile broader than ever, his teeth black at the root. “But you can call me Vern, if you like. Most of the other managers do.”
I was just thinking about you, Vernon. Rather a funny story, really. I was just thinking about how much you loved this place. And here you are! Isn’t that rich? Here you —
No.
Burke shook it off and took a few steps back; looked the old man up and down, paying particular attention to his polyester suit pants, to his worn brown shoes. He frowned. Was he to believe this was an apparition?
Apparitions were largely of the partial body variety; a torso, a face, an arm, a hand. The appearance of a true full-bodied apparition was quite rare indeed, an investigator’s holy grail. But this ... this man was no specter, no phantom.
No.
No. This was not a spirit at all. This was a man, pure and simple.
Burke’s momentary bewilderment boiled away beneath the glare of hot anger. Someone was trying to pull a prank here, trying to make him play the fool, trying to discredit him in some fashion. Did they really think him so daft? So blinded by obsession that he would blindly accept such a thing without first thinking it through?
“Something wrong, son?”
“What’s going on here?” Burke demanded.
The stranger, this “Vern,” shrugged and moved on toward the staircase as if nothing were amiss. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“You bloody well do. I’m to believe you’re Vernon Armstrong, am I?”
The old man laughed at that. “Son, I am Vernon Armstrong. I don’t much give a damn what you believe.”
“Of course you are. Well, Vern, I want to know what you’re playing at. Where’s Harvey?”
The man lifted his sunken eyes and looked up the stairs, craning his neck. Burke could now see purple marks on his pale throat, peeking just above the starched collar of his white shirt, ligature marks, as if he’d hung himself. Someone had done their research here, but who?
Harvey? Had he drafted one of his friends from a retirement home to play dress-up? And why? What was the point?
“If you’ll just follow me, son, I’m sure we can get all your questions answered.” Vern mounted the steps. “The other managers are already upstairs. It’s been years since we got together for a meeting. He usually doesn’t like us getting together at all, but tonight’s going to be special.”