Curtain Call

He wanted a friend who loved horror movies

The way it started, I just wanted someone to like me. I wanted to have friends. I wanted to be more than that weird kid who lived with his grandmother above an abandoned movie theater. When people looked at me, they saw a scrawny boy with shaggy brown hair whose pants didn’t cover his ankles. I’d had a growth spurt after my thirteenth birthday, and my grandmother’s clothing budget hadn’t caught up.

I don’t remember my mother. She dropped me and a load of dirty laundry at her parents’ house when I was three and she never came back. Not a bad deal for me, though. Better to have lived with Pappa and Babba in a tiny loft apartment than with a woman who thought as little of me as she did her stained towels and ripped jeans.

The movie theater was one of those old-fashioned ones, with a velvet curtain hiding the screen mounted above a real stage. It had last shown a movie back in the 1980s. For a while, when Pappa was alive, we’d rented the place out to an evangelical church. Babba tired of being woken on Sunday mornings with choruses of Onward Christian Soldier. The congregation moved on, but they left their out of tune piano.

Now, dusty cardboard boxes covered the wooden stage. Most of the folding seats had torn upholstery, with stuffing spilling out like dirty clouds. Spots of mold dotted the threadbare velvet curtain and the place stunk like something old and damp, dredged up from the bottom of a dark lake. I didn’t mind the smell, though. Days, I’d turn on the faint lights high in the ceiling and prop open the door to the alley behind the theater so I could curl up with a book among the stacks of boxes on the stage. And if I heard scrabbling, shuffling sounds from the auditorium, I’d tell myself it was just rats. Without Pappa, I didn’t like to go in there at night.

“You shouldn’t spend so much time in that place,” Babba scolded. “Go out and find friends.”

“It’s quiet there. And I have all the friends I want.” This wasn’t true. Not the quiet part, and not the friends part. Once, there had been a boy in our neighborhood — Jason Binks was his name. We were in the same class in first and second grade. Jason and I would play fort on the wooden stage, and the theater would fill with shouts and laughter. But he went away and after that, no one wanted to play with me.

When I was little, Pappa would let me sit beside him in the projection room. He had stacks of metal film canisters, old horror movies from the 1950s, the 1960s, and into the 1970s. The room would fill with the stink of hot celluloid as the movie flickered across the screen below, playing to an empty auditorium. Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, the zombies in Mr. Romero’s flicks — we’d watch them over and over, until the characters felt as real to me as my flesh and blood Babba and Pappa.

No more movies after Pappa died, and I had given up on friends. Then, Cassidy Pearson came up to me during lunch one day.

“You’re that guy who lives in the old theater?” Cassidy glanced over her shoulder, at the table she’d left, crowded with teenage girls. They covered their mouths to hide laughter and stared at us. I tried to ignore them.

“No,” I answered. When she scowled at me, I added, “we live above it, not in it. In an apartment.” I wiped my mouth with my sleeve, hoping she hadn’t seen the spot of mayonnaise from my sandwich. The sun behind her lit up Cassidy’s hair like a blond halo. Pretty Cassidy, the star of our junior high school drama department. I bet she dreamed of being a movie star.

“I’d like to see it sometime,” she said.

“Okay.”

Cassidy spun and stalked back to her table. This time her friends didn’t bother hiding their smirking faces. It had to have been some kind of dare, her coming over to talk to me. But I didn’t care, even though it wouldn’t turn out like in the movies, the ones where the good-looking guy takes out the ugly duckling girl as a joke but then it turns into true love.

When I got off the school bus that afternoon, Cassidy was waiting for me. I spotted her, leaning against the brick at the boarded-up entrance to the movie theater. My foot caught on the last step at the bus exit, and I stumbled toward her.

“Hey,” Cassidy said. She gestured toward the faded poster framed next to what had once been the box office. “Is this the current feature?”

I studied the poster — it was from a 1980s slasher flick, one of the B movie reels Pappa and I had watched a couple of times. The image featured a cloaked figure standing over a barely clothed woman. Most of the ink had faded in the sun, but I could still make out the shiny silver of the bad guy’s knife.

“I’m kidding.” Cassidy laughed. “Can we go inside?”

For a second, I thought she might reach to take my arm, but she stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets, and followed me to the alley behind the theater.

“We can’t go in that way,” I said, nodding toward the front. I took out my key to the padlocked chain wrapped on the rear door to the auditorium.

Inside, I flipped on the overhead light and led Cassidy to the stage steps. Our footsteps echoed in the open space, the boards creaking under our feet. This was the best view of the place.

“Cool.” Cassidy spun, taking in the stacks of boxes blocking the screen. “Is it true? This place is haunted?”

“Who told you that?” My voice was sharper than I’d intended.

Cassidy shrugged. “It’s what everyone says.”

I jumped off the stage. “You should go.”

“I’m sorry.” Cassidy followed me, and this time she did grab my arm. I stared at her hand, her long, pale fingers. “Do you ever watch movies in here? I bet it would be really neat, to have the whole place to yourself,” she said.

My shoulders loosened and I nodded. “Let me show you something.”

Together we climbed the stairs to the projection room, where Pappa had stored the canisters with the old movie reels. One by one, I held them out to Cassidy, reading off the titles from each container.

“These are so cool! I bet they’re worth a fortune.” She brushed dust from the projector. “Does this still work?”

When I nodded yes, Cassidy asked if we could watch one of the movies. “Not now,” I answered. I thought of Babba upstairs, waiting for me to come home from school. If I lingered too much longer, she might come downstairs to look for me. “Come back tonight,” I said. “Around midnight.”

After Cassidy left, I went upstairs to check in with my grandmother. I told her I had homework and I’d study in the theater, where it was quiet. I spent an hour pushing the ratty cardboard boxes to the side of the stage, in order to clear the screen. Which movie would I pick for Cassidy?

I worried Babba might not go to sleep early, like she usually did, but she kissed me goodnight right after she watched her news program. I tiptoed back downstairs, to the theater.

Right at midnight a tap sounded on the alleyway door, just like I’d told Cassidy to do. I rushed to open it. I led her inside.

“It’s really dark in here,” she said. “Can you turn on some lights?”

“You can’t have a movie with the lights on.” I took her hand. “Come here, let me show you something.”

We shuffled to the stage steps, and I guided her to the center of the stage. Darkness cloaked the theater, hiding the forms shifting like smoke in the torn seats. I heard them, though — tiny scratching noises and creaks from the chairs. The audience settling in. In a little window high on the wall above the last row of seats I could just make out the round lens of the projector, like a blank eye.

“Do I smell popcorn?” Cassidy asked.

The air filled with the aroma of that stale oil that the concession stands passed off as butter. “Sometimes it stinks in here. There’s probably old popcorn still under some of the seats.” I hopped off the stage. “Wait here. I have to set up the projector. I’ll be right back.”

“Shouldn’t I sit down?” Cassidy motioned to the first row of seats.

“Not yet. Stay on the stage, you’ll see, it’s really cool.”

In the projection booth I flipped the switch to start the movie reel winding through the projector. I rushed back downstairs. Cassidy waited on the stage.

I stood at the front of the stage, with my back to the audience as the film flashed across the screen, and across Cassidy as she stood in the path of the images. I should have asked her to wear white.

“Oh! This is neat! It’s like I’m in the movie.” Cassidy turned sideways to watch the scene behind her — three teen-age girls strolling down a tree-lined street. “Which one is this?”

I didn’t say anything. I hoped she’d recognize it when the music started. A low growl sounded behind me, followed by a moan like someone in pain. Cassidy spun around to face me.

“What…?” She backed up against the screen, her mouth a round “O” of shock.

I turned to see them — my true friends. Werewolves, vampires, zombies — all the old creatures preserved on celluloid and made solid with a sacrifice. They surged toward the stage, all claws and fangs and blunt, dead eyes. As the last of them climbed past me and onto the stage, Cassidy screamed and tried to fight them off.

I sank into a seat on the front row, my Pappa on my left and my old friend Jason Binks on my right. Neither one looked especially well- their clothes were matted with graveyard dirt and most of Jason’s flesh had been stripped from his skull. He hadn’t been preserved by a funeral home like Pappa had.

Cassidy died with a gurgle, her blood splashing red on the screen. As she lay there on the stage the film continued to run and my friends returned to their seats, to watch the movie play out across Cassidy’s still form. Her last performance, everyone agreed, had truly been her best.

THE END