Chapter Text
Silver Screen Cinema, 1987.
Sirens blared as a red car swung through a dark city with reckless abandon as police cars chased after it. Gunshots fired at the car from the police as the sirens blared loudly and the red and blue lights of the cars lit up the road. An audience full of people watched with intrigue as they snacked on buckets of popcorn in their laps.
POW!
The criminal’s car veered out of view, turning a corner as the police cars screeched to a halt. An officer emerged from the doors, leaning into his walkie talkie with an aggravated tone.
“It looks like he’s headed for the train, see if you guys can’t catch him!”
He yelled into the device as the screen cut to the red car driving into a dark tunnel, passing by lightbulbs on the ceiling ever so swiftly. The sound of the tires driving against the opposing train tracks made an offensive noise.
Suddenly, the car drove out of view on the screen, and appeared physically onto the stage of the theatre. The audience gasped in shock, their jaws falling practically to the floor. Before them was an identical replica to the car in the movie, and a man dressed exactly like the actor in the film emerged from it as the car came to a screeching halt onstage. Then another figure dressed as another criminal appeared.
“You got a fat lotta nerve showin’ your face around here.”
The two criminals pointed pistols at each other with accusing looks on their faces.
“It doesn’t have to be this way. Just hand over the money and this will all go away.”
The car driver sneered, shooting a dirty look at his opponent. The bag of money suddenly appeared in a seat next to a woman in the audience, a spotlight shining upon it.
She looked at it in surprise before the criminal spoke to her.
“Toss me that bag, would ya, toots?”
The woman stood up, asking surprisedly.
“Who, me?”
He nodded before ushering her to the bag. The woman, bewildered, grabbed the duffel bag full of money and tossed it to him. The audience was baffled at the sudden immersion of the film.
It was as if the movie had suddenly come to life before their eyes, and they didn’t know what to think. Nothing like this was in the advertising or information of the movie on their tickets. Was this just exclusive to this theatre?
The man slowly put his gun down and handed the other man the bag. He kept pointing his gun to the other man, opening the bag with a contemptuous look. Inside the bag was not money, however. It was full of slithering, horrifying snakes that began crawling up his arms. He screamed in surprise, shooting his gun at the bag. The audience laughed at the reveal, before things took a turn for the worst.
Snakes appeared from under the audience seats, followed by screaming from practically everyone in the theatre. Some people shot up out of their seats, buckets of popcorn spilling on the floor. Everyone began running out of the theatre in fear and horror.
Scatterbrained workers at the concession stand could be seen watching people run out, confused looks on their faces.
In the slew of people that had run out in horror, one audience member remained.
One person could still be seen in the theatre, a young child laughing, completely unphased by the presence of the creepy crawling snakes. Tossing a popcorn kernel in your mouth ever so casually. You’d snuck in with your older friends you rode the bus with, who had more or less forgotten you came with them.
There you were, about 7 years old, watching the movie that had come to life before you with an engaged stare. Bright eyed with amusement and fascination at the way fiction had become reality. The two criminals had suddenly stopped moving, frozen in place, the room going dead quiet. Their bodies were covered in some sort of projection light, like they were made of the cinema screen itself. Your young eyes stared confusedly for a moment, the screen behind them slowly began changing to something. You got up out of your seat silently to investigate, walking down the steps and up to the stage, it hurt your eyes to look at the screen this close. You turned to a curtain on the side, a strange light and humming noise emitting from it. You slowly approached the curtain before a voice from behind you interrupted.
“Hey! Kid, what’re you still doing here?!”
You were pulled by your arm out of the theatre by the stranger.
That was the last time you ever set foot in that theatre.
Or so it would seem…
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It was your second day working at “Red Tape Rentals”, it was a locally owned video rental store at the Island Town Mall. It was summer and you needed something to get you out of the house. Your first day wasn’t very noteworthy, getting your uniform and nametag, and getting to know the store’s layout. Getting out of your car and shutting the door, you walked in through the front glass doors. The video store was on the second floor, it was a fairly small shopping plaza that circled around, a big fountain in the middle as well as an escalator. It had been here as long as you could remember. Indoor shopping malls had seen less and less customers over the years, but this place still got busy on occasion, especially during the holidays. Like most malls, this one had a cinema attached to it-but unlike the shopping centre- it had been indefinitely closed.
Apparently it was shut down due to strange happenings during the films they showed, movies would come to life and either scare people or put them in danger. The cops wrote it off as some crazy kids putting way too much effort into a prank, but no one was ever arrested. Some locals believe it to be haunted by an aggressive poltergeist. You’d always been curious, but also knew that trespassing on abandoned property was a one way ticket to getting in trouble, so you steered clear of it. But now that you were working in the very mall of where it was, your curiosity lingered on.
You finished clocking in and putting your uniform vest on, complete with a few pins you added to personalize it as well as your nametag. It appeared the manager you met yesterday wasn’t present, the only one there appeared to be a young man at the checkout counter. You approached him.
“Hey there! You must be the new one.”
You looked at his nametag that read “Kevin”, he was about an inch shorter than you, thin with a fluffy brown hairstyle reminiscent of a mullet. He wore thick-rimmed, rectangular glasses, under his employee vest he wore a plaid green and blue casual button up, and a rather aged looking pair of jeans. You waved silently at him, before replying only out of obligation.
“That’d be me.”
Kevin turned around, fumbling through a box.
“So we’ve got a new shipment of returns. I’ll handle comedy and you can stock horror, sound good?”
You nodded, shuffling over to the box and grabbing the stack of tapes. Grabbing as many as you could, you made your way over to the horror section. You picked up the first tape on the stack, reading the title and finding the correct spot of the letter. You did the same for the other two in your hand before your attention towards the windows of the store. Outside you could see the sun peaking through the glass ceiling, the main source of light throughout the plaza. Right across the store you could see the old entrance to the theatre, it was rather ominous, dark and just covered up with a few thin slabs of wood nailed to the wall. Behind it was total darkness, making it hard to see anything. You couldn’t help but let your gaze linger for a moment before Kevin approached you, resting an elbow on the shelf behind you.
“Freaky, right? Apparently it was closed ‘cause of some crazy trippy incidents. They say the movies jumped off the screen and made everybody freak out!”
He lowered his voice.
“But I have this theory that there’s some sort of secret government fortress underneath this mall that controlled the screens and brainwashed everyone to make them think all of that happened.” He continued rambling on about his conspiracy, your eyes narrowed at the entrance again before turning back to your work.
All things considered, the rest of the day was pretty average, stocking shelves, helping customers out and all that normal stuff. Kevin took his break before you, and during yours he came up to you again and started yapping again.
“The cops found this like secret message in one of the audio files for a movie once, and it definitely wasn’t supposed to be there, it was some secret code of words. Typical that they couldn’t figure it out, bet I could though.”
You simply rolled your eyes attempting to ignore him. He wasn’t obnoxious, but you weren’t big into conspiracy theories. However, you did end up contributing somewhat to the conversation when he asked you if you had any weird experiences there.
You told him about the time you went to see a movie with your older school friends, they snuck you into your first ever R-rated movie. It was some action gangster movie, you don't remember much except for when snakes came out from under the seats. You thought that going up to the curtain and hearing the strange noises was just your overactive child imagination, you didn’t believe it really happened. Kevin was otherwise much more enthusiastic about this, however.
“But what if it did happen?! There was totally something going on back there!”
Your conversation was cut short by the front door opening, Kevin leaving to go tend to the store, leaving you alone with your thoughts.
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As your shift came to a close, the manager graciously let you pick out a tape to take home as some sort of “new employee benefit”. You weren’t sure how legit it was but you weren’t about to turn down a free movie. You browsed the different genres, not putting much thought into it as the store was about 10 minutes away from closing. You found yourself in the horror section again, something about it just drew you in. As a kid you weren’t really allowed to watch them, so you were always curious, and in your teenage years you went through somewhat of an obsession for horror and you developed a liking to them. One tape seemed to stand out to you, a movie you hadn’t seen before, and you wanted to try out something new tonight.
“Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street”
You nonchalantly picked it up, examining it from the front and back before settling on it.
You set the tape down on the counter as Kevin rang it up in the catalog.
“Freddy here always gave me the heebie jeebies.”
You found that somewhat amusing. You peaked your head around him, eyeing the movie he’d picked out.
“And yet you checked out Alien 3?”
You teased, Kevin gave you a playful look, replying in a sarcastically defensive tone. He pointed a finger in the air as he did so.
“Only because I’m more of a Sci-Fi guy, and Sigourney Weever is hot!”
You half-scoffed, half-laughed at his response. Kevin handed you the tape and your employee receipt.
“Enjoy your tape, newbie.”
As you and Kevin locked up, the mall was dark and desolate during its closing hours. It almost left a chill in the air. You and Kevin stopped for a moment as you passed by the entrance to the theatre, an ominous aura emitting from it as you two gazed at it for a moment, thinking completely different things.
“I’m tellin’ ya. It’s either an evil government or aliens…Maybe an evil government made of aliens.”
He whispered before you two carried on. You shrugged his theory off as him just being a conspiracy junkie, but you still felt subconsciously that there was something strange in there. Something that hadn’t left. Something that was waiting.
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After you came home and changed into something more fit for lounging around the house, you grabbed the tape from your bag and popped it into the VCR in your room. The cover was slightly worn from age, but otherwise it looked normal. The cover depicted a girl seemingly topless, only her bare shoulders present, she looked straight at you with an expressionless, petrified look of terror in her eyes. A stretched out hand with fingers made of knives loomed above her just below the film title. You set the cover down to go grab a drink from your fridge. When you returned expecting the previews on the tape to still be playing, something else was onscreen.
Clips from the movie had been shortened together, playing in a very unusual pattern. Was it busted? You set your drink down to investigate, tapping the side of the TV in annoyance.
“What the…”
The clips continued to play over and over.
A shot of a woman turning her head while a man’s voice next to her spoke.
“Come”
A shot of a girl talking to the main character in front of what looked like shrubbery.
“Be”
A shot of a man in a lab coat and stethoscope and a woman in a trenchcoat in an observation room.
“High…”
A shot of the main character opening a pair of curtains with a fearful look as maniacal laughter could be heard behind her as she screamed.
“What the…?”
You said out loud in disbelief. Was this someone trying to mess with you? Did someone who checked this out tamper with the film reel? The strange compilation of clips continued as you tried to figure out what was wrong.
A clip of a young man with black curly hair behind prison bars spoke.
“Somebody in there.”
Another clip of the main character speaking to someone in a dark room.
“Just watch me.”
Another clip of the main character talking to someone on the phone.
“Just come here.”
The same clip of her talking on the phone came up.
“Find”
She only uttered one word before the screen filled up with black and white static, followed by the same clip of the main character in the dark room.
“Me.”
Static again. Then it repeated.
“Find.”
“Me.”
Static again.
“Come here.”
“Find.”
“Me.”
You stared at the screen in utter disbelief, confusion, and slight fear.
A man talking on the phone appeared.
“I love you, sweetheart.”
You couldn’t take it anymore, you shut the TV off using the buttons on the bottom, ejecting the tape from the player. You examined the tape for anything strange, for the most part it looked normal. Why was it doing that? What was that? You rolled your eyes again, assuming someone who rented this tape had either tampered or broke the film somehow. Which just meant more work for you to do tomorrow as this would have to be written off, and you’d have to find whoever owned it last. You inserted the tape again in another attempt to see if it would still work.
The strange message played again, before static for a moment, then the opening scene. The film appeared to play normally after the strange message. So maybe it was just something wrong with the beginning. That night, you snacked on popcorn and your drink while watching the movie. The strange clips in the beginning made watching the actual film hard to focus on, but nevertheless you finished it.
After the film you were nearly about to doze off, but because of your fascination with horror and the plot being rather engaging, you managed to finish the whole thing. The credits rolled as you got up, the light from the TV illuminating the room as you scrambled for the remote.
You were about to shut it off before letters flashed onscreen, seemingly the same font as the credits.
L
____
O
____
O
____
K
You watched the screen in confusion again, letters just continued appearing, the room was dead quiet. The only sound coming from the humming of the TV and your room’s air conditioning.
B
___
E
___
You got up and scrambled to find a pen and paper, grabbing a pencil from your desk and flipping to a random page in your journal.
H
___
I
___
N
___
D
__
T
___
H
___
E
___
C
___
U
___
R
___
T
__
A
___
I
____
N
“LOOK BEHIND THE CURTAIN.”
You’d written down, staring at the words as a pit formed in your stomach. Whatever this was, it didn’t feel right.
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The next day you went to work, despite not being able to get much sleep. Whether it was from the movie or the creepy hidden messages, or both, it made you dread leaving the house knowing you would have to explain this to your boss. You just hoped they wouldn’t blame you for the tape being messed up, not that you did anything wrong.
You were met with a slightly on-edge Kevin standing at the counter, he let out an exasperated sigh of relief when you arrived, rushing over to you.
“Oh thank God, you’re here. Dude, check this out.”
He ushered you over to the small CRT television on a rolling tray with tapes stacked underneath it, this was where you would display new movies or play cable networks as background noise for the store. Kevin popped in the copy of Alien 3 that he rented last night. Had he experienced the same thing you had? Were you not crazy after all? Your assumption would soon be proved false when the tape began playing.
Seemingly unedited footage of the film began to play, much to Kevin’s dismay. He raised his hands up in disbelief.
“What?! Seriously?! Dude, I swear. When I went to play it at my house last night it was doing something totally weird!”
You turned to him, brows furrowed.
“So did mine.”
You stated, showing that you believed him.
“At first I thought the tape was busted, but it kept playing this message over and over! ‘Come Find Me’ or something…”
The young man paced around, his hands twitching slightly as he readjusted his glasses. You and Kevin recounted your similar experiences, apparently he got too scared to continue watching the movie after the creepy message played. You responded in a more calm tone, but just as concerned.
“Mine did the same thing, and when I finished the movie, these letters kept popping up where the credits were supposed to be.”
Kevin rescinded with a question.
“Well did it spell anything?”
You turned away for a moment, remembering the chilling phrase.
“Look behind the curtain.”
You recounted.
The two of you tried rationalizing or finding some sort of answer for why this all happened, Kevin swearing that something more was going on. He quickly came to the conclusion that it was more alien nonsense, but you didn’t know what to think. You thought for a moment, “look behind the curtain” what could that possibly be referring to?
Then you remembered. The deep and buried memory of the empty theatre and the light behind the curtain appeared in your mind, that allusive dark purple curtain…
This utterly baffled you. What could this possibly all mean? Was someone trying to find you? Was someone stalking you? You were pulled out of your thoughts by Kevin who was trying to regain your attention, his hand waving in front of your face.
“Hello? Earth to ____!”
Your gaze shifted back to him.
“Should we tell the boss about this or what? I mean, I don’t think anyone’s gonna wanna rent cursed tapes.”
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The rest of the day followed you and Kevin calling the previous owners of your tapes to investigate any suspicious behavior but it seemed to be a fruitless effort. No one had allegedly tampered or had any recollection of the tapes showing anything but their respective films. You did your best to just forget the incident and brush it off, you weren’t about to go investigating a haunted theatre just because a jacked up movie tape told you to. Kevin could be seen aggressively taking some sort of notes in a little journal he kept throughout the day, but you didn’t question it.
The rest of the day was somewhat normal, some people came in, a mother and her son came in and rented a sports film, a couple came in to buy a chick flick, and some kid in a green and yellow sweater came in and rented a christmas movie with their female reindeer friend despite it being the middle of the year. Overall, the day was rather average.
Until it was time to close up.
It started with the display TV turning on despite you being so sure you unplugged it earlier.
It turned on showing static, the buzzing sound spilling into the room rather loudly, scaring both you and Kevin. You unplugged the TV again before leaving the room to get your things. As you were clocking out the TV came back on once again, Kevin throwing his head back in annoyance. You were looking at your phone in the back looking at a text message before you came out to see a strange sight.
Kevin seemed to be in a trance staring at the TV, you called out to him.
“Uhh, everything okay?”
He didn’t respond. You approached him before being taken aback by the sight of a sharp object in his hand. It was the box cutter the store used to open up boxes of new releases. Kevin was staring at the floor, clutching the knife firmly. Before you could say anything else he had plunged the knife into the floor, a loud, ear-piercing sound filling the room as a bright, blinding light emerged from the floor where Kevin stabbed the floor. Your vision suddenly went black and you were out cold.
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A dark red suitcoat was taken off of a hook, placed upon the shoulders of a tall, dark figure. A gloved hand came up to rub the side of his dark colored TV-shaped head in minor annoyance.
He adjusted his gloves, pulling on his neon purple tie.
“Not quite the stage I wanted, but I suppose I can still put on a show.”