The Late Night Horror Show (6 page)

The real fun was about to begin.

Chapter Six

John Dorsey took no note of any oddities regarding the theater employees. He was too off kilter physically and emotionally for such things to register. The employees, in turn, opted to ignore the pint bottle of whiskey shoved down his right hip pocket, though the outline of the bottle was very plain to see. At any other theater on any other night, the bottle would have been confiscated by theater staff before he was allowed in. He was so drunk many theaters might have barred him from entering at all.
 

But the Sunshine 6 was no ordinary theater and, despite appearances to the contrary, the employees were not actually human.
 

John purchased his ticket and entered the theater with no complications. He staggered over to the concessions stand, purchased a fountain soda, and promptly reeled off in the direction of the nearest auditorium, which turned out to be the one showing
Chainsaw Maniac
.

Some fifteen minutes later, Greg Nelson got out of his car, walked up to the ticket booth, and purchased a ticket. Unlike John, he was absolutely sober and therefore noticed the employees’ similarity in appearance, along with a few other odd little quirks, including the way their dark complexions masked somewhat the flawlessness of their flesh, which was devoid of any wrinkles or blemishes. Their skin had an almost artificial quality to it, as if they weren’t quite real at all. Greg dismissed this as fanciful nonsense as he entered the theater, where he bypassed the concessions stand and headed directly for the auditorium showing
Rise of the Dead
.

The lights had gone down in each auditorium in the Sunshine 6. The theater-safety announcements and lame commercials were over. Trailers for all six films that were a part of the Late Night Horror Show festival were being screened now.

Brix Harris and Trevor McKinley were kicked back in seats in the approximate middle of the auditorium screening
Rise of the Dead
. Brix had her right leg up, with her foot wedged into the space between the two empty seats in front of her. She munched on a piece of popcorn and watched the trailer for
Blood Lust
, which looked boring as hell. It was the usual angst-ridden vampire nonsense.
 

This impression had nothing to do with how pissed she was that Trevor’s friend had opted to see it first with that hipster chick Kira, rather than sticking to the original plan. She loved horror in general, but vampires were her least favorite of all the major monsters. Modern authors and filmmakers were too prone to portraying them as objects of desire or as potential romantic partners.
Puke.
The old vampires were all right. Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee. All those old Universal and Hammer Films classics. But the angsty shit?

Fucking…PUKE.

The
Blood Lust
trailer ended at last, mercifully. A trailer for something called
House of the Damned
began a few moments later. It looked better than
Blood Lust
—almost anything would—but it stirred no real excitement in her. It was a haunted house thriller. There were scenes of people dying in weird accidents apparently caused by hostile poltergeist activity. The main characters were introduced in a series of quick cuts. They were ghost hunters or something. It looked like a tedious rip-off of
Paranormal Activity
.

Whatever.

The trailer ended.

Brix smiled.

Just two to go and then—
ZOMBIES!

She glanced at Trevor, who was watching her in his standard adoring way. As usual, he was far more interested in her than anything else that was going on. She leaned over for a kiss and felt his tongue flick between her lips. The physical contact sent a delicious shiver through her body. She couldn’t help thinking back to the wild abandon of their coupling in the woods this afternoon. When she was with Trevor, it was as if the rest of the world didn’t exist at all. She bit down on his lower lip, making an animal sound deep in her throat and eliciting a groan from him in return.

She abruptly broke the clinch and popped another piece of popcorn into her mouth. She smiled.
“Zombies.”

He chuckled. “Yeah. Yay, zombies. I just wish Monroe was here. Then I could relax and watch the movie without being distracted by your hotness.”

Her expression darkened. “Monroe needs a better class of friends.”

“We don’t really know them.”

Brix grunted. “I know all I need to know. Fuck them.”

Trevor didn’t say anything this time, but his discomfort was palpable. She knew he thought she was too judgmental. What he didn’t understand was that life was too short to waste time trying to accommodate assholes. She didn’t have room in her life for obnoxious clowns like Jason Tatum, end of story. The same went for his dim-witted, busty girlfriend. Kira and Lashon weren’t as bad, but they both irritated her in different ways. They were the kind of chicks who thought they were better than regular people because they were in college. Smarter and more sophisticated. The hell with both of them.

So, status quo. The only person she gave a damn about was Trevor.

And he was right here with her.

She squeezed his hand.

Another trailer was starting. The very last one before the feature presentation.

Brix grinned in anticipation.

The zombies were almost here.

A quick scan of the auditorium showed maybe as many as two dozen people seated and waiting to see
Rise of the Dead
. Given the paltry number of cars in the parking lot, Greg deduced that a large majority of the paying customers had elected to see this film first.

The door swung shut behind him as he moved farther down the aisle. It was too dark to identify any individual from this distance, but he could see that most of the audience was comprised of couples on dates, with one largish group of perhaps five or six people seated together in the front row. From the noise they were making, he assumed they were drunk teenagers. A few other people sat alone at various spots throughout the auditorium, usually well removed from anyone else. In his effort to locate Lashon, Greg elected to ignore the singles and the large group up front. He took a few more tentative steps down the aisle and attempted to study the rest of the attendees without being obvious about it. Despite his efforts at subtlety, a pretty blonde girl in a denim jacket caught him looking and flipped him a middle finger. Her expression made it clear she was not to be fucked with and he quickly moved along.

Lashon was having second thoughts. The decision to see
Chainsaw Maniac
had been made hastily. She hadn’t wanted to be around that weirdo Brix and had tried to do something nice for her friend by giving her some space. The latter was admirable, she supposed. The kind of thing a real friend just did now and then. Considering she’d abused her friendship with Kira lately, it was no doubt the
right
thing to have done. But here she was. Alone.
Goddammit.
She did not care for this shit at all.

Here I am,
she thought.
Sitting by myself in a smelly old decrepit theater, waiting to see a movie about a chainsaw-wielding asshole butchering young virgins. I am not a pimply sixteen-year-old boy with a head full of fucked-up slasher fantasies, so what’s wrong with this fucking picture?

“The hell with this.”

It was time to swallow her pride and get out of here. She still had just enough time to get to the theater showing
Blood Lust
before the final trailer ended. She wouldn’t even have to bother or intrude on Kira and Monroe. She could maybe sit a few seats down from them. Close enough to her friend that she didn’t feel so alone, while still allowing her some space. She grabbed her purse, stood up, and smoothed out her skirt. She made her way down the row of seats to the aisle. The half-dozen other people in the theater all turned their heads to look at her. It made her skin crawl. She was the only girl seeing this flick. She felt a distinct sense of unease as she reached the aisle and started toward the door, doing her best to hurry along without seeming panicked.

She reached the door and grasped the handle.

She pulled on it. It didn’t budge.

“What the fuck?”

She pulled again. Same result. She peered through the narrow vertical window inset at the edge of the door and saw one of the strange theater employees staring in her direction. She pounded the base of a fist against the door, rattling it in its frame. Someone in the theater made a
shushing
noise. She ignored this and banged her fist against the door again. The employee tugged at his bow tie and came closer. He was grinning.

“Hey, asshole!”
She pitched her voice as loud as she could and banged on the door yet again.
“Open this fucking door! It’s locked!”

He came closer still, almost right up to the door, but he made no move to open or unlock it. He was still grinning. Lashon’s heart hammered as she realized the expression had a mocking quality to it.

I see you in there,
the expression said.
And you are not getting out, no matter how much you scream and shout.

People in the auditorium were hissing at her and telling her to sit down and shut up.

The man in the bow tie was laughing now.

Lashon’s sense of panic and exasperation gave way to genuine fear.

What the hell is happening here?

Lashon turned away from the door and raced down the aisle to the bottom of the auditorium, where she veered right and headed straight for the emergency exit. Which was also locked and would not budge, no matter how hard she threw herself against it.

A burly man near the front of the theater came out of his seat and approached. The expression on his puffy face was a mixture of agitation and concern. “Lady, what the hell is wrong with you? Are you having some kind of fit?”

Lashon reeled away from him and lifted her face toward the screen.

The trailers were over.

The movie was starting.

The man came after her. “Hey, calm down. Do you need help?”

Lashon sobbed and dropped to her knees. “We’re trapped.” She said it over and over, the anguish in her voice rising every time. “We’re trapped.
We’re trapped.
”

On the screen, a metal door banged open and light spilled into a darkened hallway. A man wearing a mask stepped through the opening. In his hands was a big chainsaw, buzzing at high rev. Lashon stood and backed away from the screen as the masked man started down the hallway.

She felt a hand at her back.

Heard a voice in her ear, a low, throaty tone.

She opened her mouth to scream.

By the time the final trailer was over, Monroe was at peace with missing the chance to catch the zombie movie with his old friend. Kira’s body felt so warm and soft beneath the arm he’d draped around her shoulders. She had kissed him once already. Which had made him realize how much he’d been repressing his true feelings for her. Being her friend was nice. He’d derived a not insignificant degree of fulfillment just from that. She was the only truly close female friend he had. She’d shown him different ways of looking at things, viewpoints he didn’t get from his male acquaintances. And yet, some hidden part of him clearly had always desired more, something deeper.

The movie was starting. He could tell by the sudden swell of ominous music. But he couldn’t bring himself to watch the screen. He was entranced by Kira. Everything about her suddenly seemed so perfect. The soft, round shape of her face. The small nose. The slightly plump lips. Eyes so big he could imagine falling into them.

She sensed his scrutiny and looked at him.

There was a long moment of electric tension. Nothing was said, but much was communicated in that shared gaze.

Kira set the popcorn bucket on the sticky floor, then she seized a handful of his shirt and pulled him toward her.

Monroe kissed her.

Slid a hand up one of her bare thighs.

And then there was an abrupt crash of amplified thunder. Monroe jumped. There was a flash of bright light. Lightning? That had to be it. It was storming in the movie. The movie he didn’t give a shit about right now, a sentiment apparently shared by Kira. She gripped the hand on her thigh and urged it farther up her leg.

She moaned softly, whispered his name. It was a delicious thing to hear from her lips.

There was another bright flash.

And then another, brighter now, almost blinding. Monroe blinked and felt suddenly woozy. His head felt thick, his body distant, his thoughts fuzzy. The light flared brighter still, blotting out the world. For a long moment, he seemed to exist only in a sightless, soundless void, a place of pure white. He couldn’t even see his own body. A thought drifted out of the formless ether. He had died. Some sort of sudden attack. This was the afterlife.

The moment passed.

He heard another huge crash of thunder.

Then he felt rain pattering on his head.