Saturday Matinee

The projector comes to life. A single eye lighting up as its body shudders. Clack! Clack! Clack! It grinds and hisses with a dry insect symphony that is both terrible and beautiful. Down in the room they named Screen One, the huge velvet curtains swish silently apart and the projector’s secrets are revealed.

The Odeon is a barely living antique that has never been subjected to restoration and probably never will be. Age has withered it, but somehow it keeps plodding along. Things were made to last when it was born. Imbued with a grit and stubbornness that overcomes the petty trials and tribulations of life. On the day the last of these old timers falls there will be no reminders of better times, and the serpent will eat its tail all the way up to its surprised and indignant eyes. 

Michael took a seat three rows from the back. He knew the back row was to be avoided just the same as his mother’s bedroom. Things went on there that he was best not knowing. His seat protested as he pushed it down. The material covering the cushion was threadbare but intact. Thousands upon thousands of butts wriggling away at the seat in a patient war of attrition that remained a stalemate for now. Michael would add to the campaign as the film played out. In his excitement he could not sit still. But then few boys could. Boys were not made to be statues.

Today’s film was wallpaper. Michael couldn’t focus. All he had was the plan. And although the plan was simple, he could only think about its execution. Thinking and preparation were everything when it came to ensuring the success of a plan. 

Scanning the theatre he noted the handful of nondescript people watching a film they had all seen many times before. Most came for the big screen experience. But Michael knew that the opportunity to sit in the warm and maybe sleep for a while was too good to miss for certain lost souls. Then there were the lovers, the more daring of which would ply their trade in the midst of the audience. Michael had heard stories about the goings on in these sorts of places but had never seen any evidence of them being true. Not here in Screen One at least.

Despite his agitation the duration of the film was surprisingly short. He was made aware of the film’s ending by the clearing of throats, chatter and stirrings of the small congregation. Now was a critical time for him. The lights would go up very soon. He was kicking himself as he scrabbled in his bag for the books he’d brought to stick in the gap at the back of the seats around him. In a crouch he quickly jammed the seats down and slipped underneath them. 

Hiding was an activity that Michael was well practiced in. It had been his idea to bring the books. As he lay in the shadow of the seats he wondered how his companions had gone on with their own plans. He’d know soon enough. The Odeon was closing for the rest of the day. No one knew why and that mystery added to the adventure Michael had decided to embark upon. A chance to wander the empty Odeon and discern at least some of its many secrets. 

He lay there barely breathing as he waited the next minutes out. He was banking on the staff being lax. A cursory sweep of the place before they shut up shop and went home. The plan may fail if there were a conscientious usher who insisted upon checking every row for rubbish and signs of things gone amiss. Mister or Miss Primandproper must’ve been on their holidays because no one seemed to care about checking Screen One out. The lights went out one by one leaving the room in an empty darkness. Michael found that both sad and annoying. People just didn’t care anymore. He seethed for a while in his quiet spot until his anger made him find his feet and pace the row of seats. The restriction of the row spewed him out into the aisle and from this position he surveyed the almost pitch black room his eyes adjusting sufficiently to see the shadows of the empty seats. An eerie sight that reminded him of graveyards. The stillness of a gathering of people who have ceased to move but hold on to an intention of movement still. This a mere freezeframe that threatens to surge forth in the next instant.

Michael looked about him and smiled. There was no fear here. This was his adventure. Fear was for those who did not have the appetite to explore and to stamp their mark on the world. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation of what was to come. Imagined he was brushing the dust of boredom away as he galvanised himself for the coming evening of exploration.

Carefully he pushed open the doors of Screen One and peered out into the foyer. All was in darkness, but an orange glow came through the glass doors and gently lit the area. He would have to avoid those outer doors. He did not want any passers-by to spot movement within. 

Just as he was about to venture forth there was a flash of light behind him. He froze and failed to turn towards the source of light. Only caught it in his peripheral vision. His interpretation of what he’d seen was garbled and made no sense and then there was no more to see. The light blinked out and the image was gone. Still there was no fear but Michael steadied himself as a sense of foreboding tickled the back of his neck. There was more to this place than he’d anticipated.

He crept along the wall until he was out of sight of the foyer doors. The world outside was for all intents and purposes a hostile arena that must be avoided. He chuckled to himself. The pavements beyond the Odeon’s walls were lava. The sound of his supressed laughter was impossibly loud and echoed down the corridor. He paused to attend to the lonely sound. Michael was not afraid of his own company, but in this place a transformation had taken place and he was unfamiliar with himself right now. He was a stranger in his own skin. This thought proceeded a feeling of unease. As this feeling arose within him he heard a far off sound of music. The music was old and distorted. The voice of the Odeon. The ghost that dwelt within the skin of its walls.

The distance to Screen Two was impossibly long. Michael did not dare to turn to see how far he had come. The darkness threatened to close in on him if he did. The hairs on back of his neck stood on end. Electricity fizzed in the body of a place that feigned a benign quality when there were witnesses to observe the building’s behaviour.

Michael knew the door to Screen Two would not open before he reached out tentatively towards it. There was an unwritten script here that he somehow knew his part in. He grasped both of the brass handles and pushed. For good measure he then pulled and pushed in order to confirm what he’d already known. The doors were locked. The silent intransigence of the doors upset him in a way that went beyond simple frustration. He unhanded the doors and did not call out. Did not see the point.

The impossibly long walk to Screen Three was punctuated by the open area of the foyer. As he neared the orange lit spot he saw that the doors to Screen One were wide open. A taunting travesty to contrast the locked Screen Two doors. Michael slowed as he saw the gaping maw of the auditorium. Stopped before he could see all the way in. Thoughts of the waiting seats rising and filing out towards him made him shiver. The building was alive and aware of him. He knew that much. He also knew there was more to it than that. And as though reading his thoughts there was that flash of light again and an image that he could not process. Deprived of meaning just as he was deprived of access to Screen Two. The image was gone before it had a chance to find purchase in his mind. Yet it lingered. Hurriedly he walked into the dark corridor at the end of which lay Screen Three. 

Before he reached his objective the darkness enfolded him. He felt his way carefully with each foot as he continued forth. The dark was a curiosity to him. Comforting somehow. He was reminded of his fondness for hiding. The prospect of others hiding in the same darkness barely occurred to him. This was familiar territory within the bosom of the unfamiliar.

His hands found the door handles as though they had muscle memory of their positioning and he applied barely any pressure on them to establish the truth of their nature. These were not doors. They were a pastiche of doors behind which was an unbreachable wall. He did not linger. There was nothing for him here. The darkness whispered many truths to him as he returned to Screen One. He missed its caress as he stepped into the orange light of the foyer. Slipped into Screen One to avoid the cloying, intrusive light. The doors closed silently behind him as he walked down the aisle towards a single seat at the very front of the theatre. This seat was twice the size of its fellows. An armchair placed in front of the Odeon’s usual seating. 

He took his place and sank into the forgiving leather as though he were being cupped in a giant hand. The feeling of being held heightened his senses and alerted him to what was to come and yet he relaxed all the same.

The projector once more cranked into insect life and shared yet more of its secrets.

This time there was no preamble. The main feature was already part way in as it began to play out on the drawn blood red curtains. Michael saw the twin of his surroundings and somehow knew he was watching events unfolding in the locked Screen Two. There was no hiding for the boy in that room. The inquisitive eye of the projector drew near and the ending of this film was clear. The screams of the frantic boy were heard within the confines of Michael’s head and he fancied he also heard them through the left wall of Screen One.

The light died and then gently resurrected as the same scene played out with another boy. This one thought about running, but the large eye of the projector froze him in place like a mounted butterfly. His demise was louder and more protracted. The screams rattled Michael’s eyeballs in their sockets. 

When the third film began Michael entered an altered state. These morality plays had presented their hidden message to him and now he understood. There was no question of this film taking place within Screen One. The setting purported to be Screen Four. The projector panned across a clumsy sign before heading into the familiar seating area. This boy was curled up under a seat. Wide eyed and terrified but also resigned to what was to become of him. Michael recognised what this was now. He understood where he was and had an idea of why he was here.

He pushed himself upwards from the grabbing, unyielding chair and turned to look up at the aperture high up in the wall above him. Traced the light from the closed curtains back to its source. 

Leaving Screen One he walked slowly but surely to his objective. The stairs to the projection room wound around and around forming the shape of Michael’s DNA helix. He rose up and up until he reached the top of the stairs and walked into a bright room with no door.

As the projector chattered away to itself, a slight man in a drab grey suit looked out through the round hole in the wall. Michael stood there and gazed upon that which the man was studying, and as he did, the ghost of an eye faded in and out. Michael smiled as he looked upon his own eye. 

“You’ve done well Dr Stanmore,” Michael whispered into the man’s ear as he leaned forward and squeezed both of the small man’s shoulders. He was rewarded with the response he had anticipated. The man would have jumped out of his seat had Michael not held him in place, “but it’s rude to trespass. I did not have you down as a burglar.”

“Michael… I…” Stanmore squirmed in his seat. Tried to process this unexpected development, “this isn’t supposed to happen! How are you doing this?!”

“You’re in my mind,” Michael whispered softly to the criminal psychologist, “my head, my rules.”

“But this is impossible!” cried Stanmore.

“You thought you could come here and discover all my secrets?” Michael chuckled, “well I’m feeling unusually generous, so how about I share what it is that you came for.”

The projector growled as the spool of film lurched forward and span at a dizzying rate. Stanmore’s eyes grew wide as the images assailed his mind.

“This is for you Doc. Only for you,” Michael squeezed Stanmore’s shoulders before straightening up and leaving the man to his fate, “but be warned, my secrets will never leave this place and neither will you.”

The projector was turning towards the seated man now. Moving towards him on its rickety insect legs. Clack! Clack! Clack!  As it faced him fully it painted him in the light of a thousand barbaric crimes and tore Stanmore’s mind apart.