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forbidden-creepypasta · 6 years ago

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The Late Showing

For a few years now, there has been no cinema in my old hometown. The building that used to house three screens was boarded up nearly twenty years ago- people have never had the money or the required paperwork to fix it up once more or turn it into yuppie flats. It sits, a rotting hulk, in Alderlake town centre. I never gave much thought to it until the events of nearly a decade ago- this is the first I've written about what happened there, and when you've read this, you'll understand why I hope they level the place. It was the summer between the end of school and the beginning of university, and the last few weeks of school were bordered with a strange feeling of nostalgia, almost, for the place we were leaving to go our separate ways. My friends and I, who had been inseparable for as long as we could remember, were going to different universities. I remember when our conversation as the sun rose the morning after our prom turned to the old cinema in town- what was in there, how we remembered going there as kids and so on. Myself and Theo resolved between us later to find out for ourselves. It would only have been Theo who would suggest such a thing, and it would only have been him I'd have done something so risky with. We met up to visit the old cinema one dark night in late June, walking between the rows of old workmens' houses that went up in the years when Alderlake was a centre of industry. The cinema itself was a Fifties thing, or so I'd heard- it replaced a playhouse-slash-cinema that stood until a bombing raid burnt the place down in the war- I dimly remembered some sort of plaque or memorial in the lobby. It was securely boarded- naturally, otherwise local vandals would have torn the place apart and burnt it long before now.The heat of the day still hung in the air as we walked down the road on which the cinema stood- the road itself was once a thriving city centre street, but the glaring lights and loud music had shifted with time, leaving this street to the kebab places and off licences. Now, the street was never busy, but you could count on one or two people walking down it. The back of the cinema, darker, overgrown and looming over a residential street, seemed the better way in. I stood guard as Theo hauled himself onto the roof of an old outbuilding to check a seemingly inaccessible window. I cast alternate glances between him and the quiet road before me, growing slightly nervous as he shone a torch and stretched to try to peer through the old and broken glass- he looked so obviously criminal that I was sure even a slight glance from one of the houses would get us reported to the police. I was looking away when a sudden noise froze me in place- Theo had jumped from the outbuilding, landing on his feet, if quite awkwardly. He told me (rather more loudly than I was comfortable with) that there was nothing but plywood to see through the old frame. None the wiser for Theo's little climb, we turned our attentions back to the front of the building. We walked off round to the front of the cinema, and we crossed the road and looked up at the windows, their lower halves concealed by the jutting balcony that topped the high, Art-Deco arch that stood above the main entrance and stretched across the front of the building. Some of the windows were boarded over, but I noticed one board seemed to move a little, as though shook. It was odd, I thought, as the air was still and muggy as we sat on the bench infront of the takeaway, but the cinema's arch was probably high enough up to catch the wind a little. A light breeze wafted down the road- I fixed my eyes on the board and watched it shake once more. I nudged Theo, and started dicreetly murmuring what I could see. He cut me off- he could see it too. We made another pass of the cinema, this time on the pavement that led us straight by the main entrance. Looking up over the row of shops that had been built up next to the cinema's walls, to the point that only a narrow alley remained, I saw an antique drainpipe, painted to match the flaking white exterior, but its shadow was cast long across the wall by the sodium-yellow glare of the streetlights. I noted the drainpipe, but its thirty foot track up the side of a sheer wall, coated in crumbling plaster, seemed too daunting even for a jokey suggestion. It was not until we passed the front of the building that inspiration struck. The old box office, and indeed all of the one-time grand entrance to the place, was covered by sturdy board, covered in turn by garish adverts for urban music gigs. One hatchway remained in the board- a doorway, blended into the rest of the board by greenish lichen and posters, with rusted hinges on one side and an elderly combination lock on the other. Without a word to Theo, I stepped up to the doorway and grabbed the lock- I gave it a sharp tug, just on the offchance that it would come away in my hand. It didn't. I held the lock, and turned the dials on the side- they didn't turn easily- the greenish lichen and the black paint of the boards lay on the numbers and had probably crept into the lock over time. The thing that struck me, though, was how loose the hasp was- it practically rattled in its holes. I shone my mini torch down into the gaps- maybe, just maybe I could get a strip of metal from a beer can down into them to force the bolts back... "To the offie!" I proclaimed, turning to Theo who was looking on in mild interest. I explained my plan on the way, and as we walked back, drinking hastily, we felt almost confident we could make it in. "Hope the old front door isn't locked behind it" I said, as we stood in the alley at the side. I pulled out my penknife, and cut a section out of the can. I folded it, over and over, until I had two thick strips of rolled up steel can, with a narrow tongue protruding that could just slide down inside the gaps in the lock. We scurried round to stand under the archway again, and as Theo looked up and down the road from the pavement outside, I started to work the shims into the lock. The archway had a strange way of funnelling sounds in from the street, or so it seemed. "What the fuck was that?" I muttered urgently to Theo. I had started on hearing muffled laughter, coming from a direction I couldn't place. For an uneasy moment, I wondered if it had come from behind the door. "Ah, just some drunks" he whispered back, not turning to look at me. As he spoke, the shims slipped further into the lock, and the hasp popped out with a quiet click. A sense of triumph leapt inside me as I crept up to Theo and grabbed him roughly- he jumped but calmed down quickly as I presented him the defeated lock. With Theo looking over my shoulder, after a glance up and down the street- nobody- I flipped the latch and pulled on the flap of metal attached to the door. After sticking a bit, the door opened and my mini torch shone through into the blackness. All I could see were one or two walls- everything else was invisible. We hurried through into the lobby, pulling the doorway closed behind us. In a moment, with my torch off, it seemed as though the darkness and silence had enveloped us- the sounds of the city outside seemed totally muffled, and all I could hear was the slight ringing in my ears and all I could see were swimming shapes, like you see if you push on your eyelids, as my eyes struggled to find even a trace of light. It must have only been a second I was staring hard into darkness before Theo clicked his torch on, but what struck me was how well those shapes, in their psychedelic reds and purples, arranged themselves with the walls I could now see. I tried to banish the image of a face from my thoughts, but as the oval of brightest light from Theo's torch sped across the wall to where I thought I had seen it (Him? Her?), my stomach tightened- but nothing there except grimy perspex at the old box office window. We walked up and down the lobby, our torchlights shining on the film posters, left in their frames from the cinema's last days. It was like stepping into a time capsule- posters for Ghostbusters and Batman were still inside their perspex frames. Our dim memories of the place came trickling back, piecemeal- what was strange as I looked around at the old popcorn machine was how much lower to the ground my viewpoint was in my memories- it had of course been at least fifteen years since we'd been there as kids. A stair rail, heading upwards, suddenly shone in my peripheral vision as I worked my way along the lobby wall. I called to Theo who was fixated by the result of fifteen years of neglect on pickn'mix sweets. He ran lightly towards me, brandishing something translucent and greenish. "What the fuck is that?" I laughed, as he caught up with me halfway up the stairs. "Remember Gummi Snakes?" "Eat it, y'fucker, dare you!" I shone my torch on what he was holding- he was trying to pull it into two pieces, his own torch shining up the stairs behind me. THUMP- on the stairs, where they joined another staircase at a square landing not six feet above me. I whipped round, torch held as if it were a gun. Theo's light too shone at the blind corner- nothing there. "A rat..." I whispered in the silence that dragged on as we stood stock still. "Yeah- or a ceiling tile or something". Memories of my earlier reluctance to climb on the outbuilding roof stirred me to be the first to look around that corner- keeping my light on where I thought I heard the noise, I crept hurriedly to the landing. I swung round the corner to the right, to face a flight of stairs leading up to "Screen Two", as I heard Theo do the same on the left, where the staircase led down. Nothing, but it didn't relieve me as much as I'd hoped. Theo spoke from behind me- "I can't see shit. Ceiling's fallen through here before. Want to see Screen Three?" "Screen Two up here, man..." My reply tailed off as I noticed a slip of card on the floor- a ticket to Star Trek! What struck me was how pristine the ticket seemed- it was only a small thing, but in my torchlight it seemed the card had lost none of its gloss over the intervening years, the black dot-matrix printing on the front as dark as the day it was printed. I walked to Theo, holding the ticket. "One please" I said in a false-posh accent as I handed it to him. "Haha, wow- I can just remember that coming out- my brother was a massive fan". He gave me it back, and I slipped it in my pocket. I turned my light back up the stairs- I didn't feel like descending into the bowels of the earth. Theo followed me as I climbed the stairs to Screen Two, torchlight shining ahead of me again like the aim of a pistol. The staircase led onto a long corridor- double doors on my right marked the entrance to the screen. Without further ado, I pushed the door open with my shoulder, shining my light into the space beyond. Outer space was my first thought on opening the door- my little torch light was swallowed up completely- whatever wall it landed on was too far away for the reflected light to make it back to my eyes. The darkness even swallowed up the sound of the door closing behind me as Theo edged through. I strained my eyes again- again came the odd shapes my mind made my eyes see in the pitch black. Despite myself, I couldn't help seeing in the shimmering shapes rows of seats, with people sat there, lit by the shining of a screen. I shone my torch at the wall beside me, to get my bearings. Dark fabric, like a curtain, was fixed to the walls, and it bulged here and there as the boards behind it sagged with damp and age. I could follow it forward along the wall, to the screen itself, which glowed dimly in my torchlight. A flickering of the reflection from the screen set my already frayed nerves crackling again. Theo had walked off among the rows of seats, and from a creaking sound I could tell he had folded one of them down and let it spring back into place. I heard more than that- a rustling sound, distant and indistinct. I decided my mind was playing tricks with me, but I wasn't completely convinced. I could no longer see Theo's torch in the background of the light I shone on the aisle infront of me. He had headed off among the seats. I turned my light off momentarily- that rustling murmur was still in the air- perhaps closer now, but from what direction I couldn't tell. I ran up towards Theo's light, now at the back of the room, where the floor rose almost to meet the high ceiling. He was next to a door, I saw, as I approached, my light on the aisle along which I ran. Theo seemed a bit put out by my haste, and I could hardly keep the nerves out of my voice as I asked what he had found. "Just a few tickets, nothing for anything we'd remember." He flashed a few card slips in his torchlight. "This is the door out to that walk between the main screens- you know- the one with the windows..." With that, he hauled the door open- the frame protested a little but the door swung open easily enough. A rich yellow light now shone from the doorway down into the void of Screen Two. I looked back as I stepped out into the damp-smelling passageway- I wish I hadn't. Clearly now, the back of somebody's head in one of the seats- next to that figure, another one- sat motionless, facing the screen. I drew the door to sharply, my heart beating in my throat. "Theo!" I rasped, no longer able to keep my growing panic out of my voice. "What?" "I've got a real bad feeling about this place- honestly- have you heard funny shit? Like other people are here?" He paused, halfway along the corridor. I could see him quite clearly, as the streetlight filtered in over the boards that covered half of the high windows along the walkway far above the street below. He turned and ran back, still in the customary crouching position. "Yeah- it's a pretty fucking freaky place- but who else could be here? Your mind is playing tricks- this place is full of fucking pigeons. One scared the shit out of me back there." "Fucking hell... I mean... fucking hell... I swore I saw two fuckers sat in the seats... shit..." Theo grinned, and I couldn't help smiling back. "Fucking crazy stuff, huh?" I said. "You know it, man- come on- I've found that board that was flapping about earlier!". We scuttled along the corridor side by side. Pigeons, no doubt roosting in the holes where the ceiling had fallen through, shuffled and burbled as we passed below. Again I started to feel more confident as we approached the middle of the corridor- an ornate door in the middle of its long stretch led presumably to some kind of service duct between the screens. Theo scampered ahead of me to the loose board, and pushed it outwards. Fresh air flooded in- I had forgotten how dank the air around me was. I looked down at the kebab place and the bench outside- it was somewhat calming to look back down at a familiar sight. Two drunks staggered past- one had paused for a moment when Theo shouted "Oi!" I started, and so did the drunk- he whipped round and round again- we were invisible. We ducked down, away from the gap, laughing. "Come on- let's see the main screen" said Theo, visibly more relaxed. I followed on down the corridor, an occasional peek on tiptoes over the boards. We turned the corner, and found ourselves in a mirror image of the way out of the last screen. The vision of the figures in the seats returned in my memory as Theo shoved the door open- nothing but the dark inside. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled as we walked down into the main screening room- it felt as though I had plunged into deep water, deadening my sight and hearing. Theo was walking a few paces ahead, his torchlight pointed at the ground ahead of him. I followed him, my torch pointed at the walls and ceiling. They seemed in excellent condition, I thought as I walked down the central aisle. I stumbled slightly when about halfway down the rows- I had stepped down onto a step that wasn't there- rather the walkway leading across from the main doors to the screen. In that moment, my torchlight flicked down from the walls to the seats. My heart froze. People, or at least what looked like people, sat in the rows, staring silently forward. They were indistinct in the edge of my torchlight- features blurred and translucent, I could not focus on any feature of their faces without it shifting with my torchlight, as though many faint figures sat one within the other. There could be no mistaking what I saw- my throat closed up and cold water seemed to pool in my legs, numbing them and rooting me to the spot. "Shit!" I heard, shouted from nearby. Panicked, I flicked my torch round to catch Theo in my beam. Not three yards from me, he stood in the top row of the lower bank of seats facing the screen. He seemed shocked that I would shine my torch full in his face, but he drew up slowly, looking into the seats in front of him. Clearly now I saw the backs of people's heads, moving slightly as if to look around Theo. Theo looked again, his face frozen- no doubt he could see something there. I moved to keep him in the beam, but as I did so a face loomed up at me- from outside the torchbeam a young man walked into the hand which held the torch. As it fell, the young man vanished as the torchbeam was taken off him, evaporating into ghostliness in the reflected light and finally vanishing altogether as the torch came to rest, shining a bright spot against the panels at the backs of the seats. I was alone. I grabbed the torch, shone it back and forward across the seats- the figures were there once more, fading with the fringes of the light, but Theo clearly wasn't. I tried to call to him, but all that I could produce was a sort of strangled gasp. As soon as I broke the silence, I realised what I had done as one of the shifting ghosts in my torchbeam turned to look at me. I had not looked into the eyes of one of these apparitions up to now, and as soon as I did a wave of nameless terror gripped me- as that man's gaze met mine I felt as though a million eyes were on me- that I was being seen, read, drawn into their world. I stumbled backwards and caught myself as I stumbled over the first stair in the aisle. My arm, as though frozen, still caught the man's form in the edge of the torchbeam. But now, dim light seemed to bathe the entire screen. Faces, shifting, ill-defined faces were outlined and silhouetted in the blue-white glow of the screen and I was aware of each vaguely formed spectre in there as it perceived my presence- with each passing millisecond the musty odours and darkness around me became more and more dreamlike. I could see the silhouette of the man, and in his hand I could see a glowing disc that I knew to be the light of an usher's torch. Urgency seized me- I must not be caught in that beam! Reflexively, I threw my torch from me- as it bounced in the lower stalls the light vanished, and with an odd mental lurch my surroundings, my mind even; seemed somewhat restored to me. But still, the usher and his torch! The disc of amber light, like a ten pence piece turned back, guided by an unseen hand. I did not wait. Half mad with fear, I started to scramble up the stairs towards the balcony. As I did so, once more numbness crept into the edges of my mind and kept trickling in, and once more shapes formed in the rows of seats and hollow eyes were set on me. Light from the screen, towards which I dared not look, bathed the back wall, and speakers, first whispering and then droning, slid into life. I reached the door and looked up into the glowing "FIRE EXIT" sign. A voice from all directions and none seemed to call out to me as I hauled the door open and dove through, dragging it shut behind me. The last thing I saw through that crack in the door is burnt into my memory. The screen was alive with movement, indistinct but lively. People (Ghosts? Echoes?) were in the stalls, their unmet gaze dragging at my consciousness. The usher stood halfway up the aisle, and as the door closed his torchlight, bright and white, shone into my eye. A voice called, no, screamed my name. Theo's voice. I can only remember then the brilliant white light and a falling sensation. The onrush of self-awareness at the instant the door closed sent me physically reeling- to arrest my fall I staggered against the boards that covered the lower part of the old windows. Automatically, I began to run for the corridor that led along the balcony as it was the only way out I knew. So absorbed was I in my flight that I didn't properly look down the long, sodium lamp bathed corridor until once more a feeling of first unease, then terror seized me. A spectre, formed of shadow and dully reflected light, stood between me and the far end of the corridor. I was cornered. To my right, the door to Screen One and the nightmare to which I had surrendered Theo. Ahead of me, a shade, fading with shadow and taking form in the pools of light, noiselessly walked towards me. I stepped backwards, and again. I put my hands out for the black boards- one last chance to hide in darkness. No board was there. Backwards again, reaching out for the contact with the boards but the light kept growing, now from around me (us?) and down the corridor. As it did so, my pursuer became more distinct. Red waistcoat over white shirt, perhaps a nametag... again I floated, almost as if dreaming. I didn't realise I was on the balcony, looking in at the ornate windowed gallery through double doors until I stumbled backwards into the low wall and railing. The lights were bright now from the gallery, shining in its one time glory, and my pursuer advanced on me, his features now utterly invisible, nonexistent in shadow as he stepped through the doorway not ten feet from me. I could feel him looking at me, I could feel my own mind fading and drifting. No shadows, nowhere to hide. I leapt onto the railing, and jumped into the night. I returned to my mind as I hung in the air, the sloping roof of a kebab place a distance below me. I had barely the time to register my situation before impact, my legs bouncing away from me as the slates rushed up to meet my head... I fell further, tumbling down the roof onto the flat roof of the shop front, but I have no recollection of that whatsoever. I came to, lying in a pool of collected rainwater as voices raised somewhere below me. I forced myself unsteadily to my feet, and scuttled along the storefront roofs, over low brick walls and around chimneys. The second storey of these shops, set back from the storefronts by the ten-foot wide flat roof, had windows- large, sash windows which meant anybody inside could see me wherever I hid. I ran low, and lay with my back against the extension of a party wall as lights came on in the building I had landed on, and I heard a creaking window being drawn up and excited foreign voices carrying over the rooftops. My hiding place was probably the best I could have hoped for- the windows facing me were unlit and seemed to have no curtains in them, and my would-be pursuers had probably assumed I had jumped from the roof and run off down the narrow alley between the shops and the cinema. As I heard the windows being drawn down, a horribly familiar feeling of being watched crept over me. In the window, a small figure, all in white, stared. I choked back a yell which quickly subsided- a young girl, wearing some sort of nightdress, had come to the window to see what was going on outside and had seen me lying there. I almost laughed from relief, and the smile I gave her as I waved was genuinely meant- as I hauled myself to a crouching position I waved goodbye and crept off along the roof to the end of the row, where I dropped down onto a side street and ran for a while, melting back into the town. ------------------------------------------------------------------- The police investigation into Theo's disappearance came and went- the last time I saw him, I said, was as we parted that evening shortly after going to the off-licence. He had intended to make his own way back, and as far as I know they assume he met some mysterious end on his long way home. The cinema may have been searched- after all, I never put the lock back on, but no trace of him was found there or anywhere else. It made news headlines, possibly a footnote in the national news even. I remember the rest of the summer as being punctuated by visits from mutual friends, and the occasional search effort after it became apparent that the police investigation had stalled. Naturally, nothing was ever found, but I was painfully aware that people might think I knew more than I was letting on- although they never did say anything like that. It wasn't something I got over easily- I tried seeing a psychiatrist while I was at university, but of course I could hardly name names or places, and I certainly couldn't say what I had seen. Some help that was. I graduated, qualified as a doctor regardless, and went to work at a hospital in southern Scotland. It was a strange place, set around the brow of a hill. It had been a tuberculosis quarantine hospital at one point, but now housed a secure wing for mentally disturbed patients where I was to spend a year in training. I met the patients one by one- some were more functioning than others. Those worst affected spent much of their time under sedation in one ward on the wing, and the quickest route between the staff rooms and the ward where I was working last November was through that ward. I took that route back towards the main building after a routine errand, and passed along the mental ward's one long corridor. As I hurried along, a bed was wheeled out of one of the wards, bearing a patient who moved lethargically and moaned. I couldn't quite tell what colour his hair was, as it had been shaved very close to his head, and his skin was almost deathly pale. I waited behind the bed as it was pushed out into the corridor, and it was then that the patient turned his head to look at me. I recognised Theo almost instantly. The eyes looked almost as they did however many years ago, but he seemed terribly aged- the face was that of a man in his fifties. My gaze was locked to his as his eyes widened, staring at me, seemingly emotionless. "STEVE! STEEEVE!". I froze to hear him shout my name- he sat up, as far as the straps on his bed would allow, his arms now struggling to free him from the bed. I was paralysed. The nurses pushing the bed turned to stare at me, as though they expected me to know him. I met their gaze and shrugged, although my face probably let on how unnerved I was. What on earth could I have said?

Credit to: Ultra

#creepypasta #horror microfiction

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