THE PROJECTOR part 7

Copyright (c) 2017 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

By R. Peterson

The theater owner was the first up the stairs to the projection booth. The key was still in the lock; he turned it, but the door wouldn’t open. He pounded on the metal with both hands, as insane laughter erupted from inside the tiny room. “I’ve always loved Linda Blair and I can’t believe this is happening,” he moaned, as screams came from the darkened audience section of the theater. Suddenly waves of green light like fluid electrical energy flowed from under the door and washed over him. A voice saturated with insane sexuality came from inside. “I love you too … you always lick your lips when you see me in the Welch's commercials … it’s #%$^%$# time we hooked up.”

Cranston’s long hair stood on end and wild looking eyes bulged from his head as dismay suddenly turned into a childish smile. “I did promise everyone some fun and excitement,” he blabbered. “What’s more fun than warm toast dripping with grape jam?”

“We’ve got to stop this movie from showing or by the time the credits roll every person in Cloverdale will be possessed by that demon from The Exorcist,” Jesse yelled at his friend, over Cranston’s insane laughter.

Kurt scrambled up the stairs and pulled the man away from the locked door. “If I remember right, the fuse-box is in the basement,” he told Jesse. “See if you can shut the power off to everything while I try to help Mr. Cranston!”

            Jesse disappeared down the hallway leading to the basement as Cranston collapsed in a heap. “Are you okay?” Kurt leaned over him. “I’m here to help you!” Cranston suddenly vaulted upward in jealous fury and seized him by the neck. “She’s mine! I don’t need you here!” In a display of ethereal strength he lifted the youngster over his head and flung him down the stairs. “You want to help?” Cranston’s eyes cleared for just a moment before he pointed toward the basement. “Go make some popcorn … a lot of popcorn … it sounds like our audience is becoming very hungry.”

This time the door to the projection booth opened and a demonically possessed Regan MacNeil took Cranston’s hand and pulled him inside. “Glad you could join me, lover,” she hissed. “I need your help to get this #%$^*@$ party off the ground!”

Then the metal door once again slammed shut.

-------2-------

A metal cabinet with two rows of fuses and switches hung from a cement wall behind a pile of broken seats, a dozen fifty-five gallon drums and an enormous bubble-top Pop King popcorn machine in one corner of the basement. The popcorn maker was on wheels and was relatively easy to move even with its monster size. Jesse noticed a plate on the side that read: Callahan Industries and figured it must have been one of Joseph Callahan’s earlier failures. It figures Jesse thought. Everything that man does is over-the-top.

The drums would barely budge. Jesse figured each one had to weigh in excess of three-hundred pounds and started to walk them across the concrete inch by inch until he noticed a hand truck in the corner. He opened the lid on one barrel as he sat it down and wasn’t surprised to see that it was filled with enormous kernels of un-popped corn each seed the size of his thumb.

It took Jesse a couple of minutes before he could clear the rest of the litter and reach the power main shut-off lever. His hand was six inches from the rubber-coated handle when a high voltage charge surged outward and knocked him to the ground. A demonic image made of static electricity flowed from the box and flooded the room with insane laughter. “Try that again #%$^@$ now that your pants are wet!”

-------3-------

Kurt was staring into the darkened theater entrance when Jesse arrived out of breath. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to shut off the power,” he gasped.

“Then we’re in trouble!” Kurt pointed.

“Good God!”

“I don’t think God’s doing this!”

Screams filled the theater each time the projector stopped, ran in reverse and replayed a three-second close-up of a deathly white face turning and spraying the camera with green spittle.  “Your mother #%$^@  #^$%# in Hell!” Each time the possessed girl opened her mouth, dark specks flew from between her jagged, bleeding teeth and joined a swarm in the air above the projector’s beam.  A corpse-stiff Ruben Butterfield rotated slowly in the air above the center section. Nancy Benton, standing on the armrests of her seat, tried to pull her boyfriend down while next to the ceiling shadow fingers made of legs and wings tugged at the moaning cowboy with invisible strings. Fleeing audience members were trampled in the aisle by a charging rhinoceros as the silhouette of a girl vaulted across the front of the screen pursued by what looked like two upright running Dobermans made of squirming crawlies. Sheriff Walker’s fire breathing Colt 45 roared twice as he was lifted into the air and disappeared in the cloud of buzzing flies. Jesse looked for Chloe O’Brian but didn’t see her or her friend. He thought that under the circumstances … that was a damn good thing.

“Does Cranston have any idea how to stop this?” Jesse moaned.

“He’s out of his mind and the demon is making him run the projector,” Kurt said with a shrug. “He told us to make popcorn … but he must have been insane because he was pointing toward the basement.”

Jesse’s eyes lit up. “All matter has weight and occupies space right?”

            “You’re asking someone who got a D is physics?”

“Callahan created this monster with his projector invention,” Jesse said.  “Maybe one of his earlier creations is our way out of this trouble!”

            “What are you talking about?”

            “There’s only so much space in this theater even for light beams or demons!”  Jesse started for the basement and Kurt followed. “Perhaps we can slow them down until the film ends!”

-------4-------

            Kurt and Jesse moved the Pop Corn machine and two barrels of corn up the stairs and partway down the hall. They went back for one more, careful to stay away from the electrical fuse-box which now had an eerie blue/red glow. “Something in this place is using an enormous amount of power,” Jesse said.

            “How can you tell?”

Jesse pointed to a power meter on the far side of the fuses. An old fashioned rotary dial was spinning like an airplane propeller.

            “Wow! I’d hate to pay this theater’s Comanche County electric bill!”

            “If we don’t stop this madness there won’t be a theater.”

Kurt agreed. “… or a Comanche County!”

            “This is going to be the tricky part,” Kurt said as they tilted the popcorn maker onto the hand truck. The threshold above the doorway leading into the theater was covered with flies as if the air above the seats could no longer contain them and they were spilling out into the hall. The screams coming from inside seemed muffled … as if covered by a blanket.

            “I say we push this thing past as quickly as possible and into the lobby,” Jesse said. “We don’t stop for anything!”

            “Not even for an invitation to make out on the back row with Chloe O’Brian,” Kurt snickered.

            “If that happened,” Jesse said. “I’d be too worried about her head spinning around on her shoulders to enjoy myself … let’s go!”

For a couple of minutes it looked like their plan might succeed. They moved the enormous popper past the doorway and two of the barrels filled with corn into the lobby. It was when they went back for another barrel that all hell broke loose. Ruben Butterfield came charging out of the screaming theater surrounded by a cloud of flies. “Doesn’t this guy ever take a bath?” Kurt was tilting the last corn barrel back on the hand truck.

“You little pecker-wads are done for!” Ruben thundered as he lunged for Kurt.

“You may have a demon or two inside you … but you still move like a cow on ice-skates!” Kurt laughed. He released the metal latch at the top of the hand cart and the barrel fell onto its side. It only took one kick from his boot to start it rolling. Ruben was knocked down like the last pin in a bowling alley.

“We’re not out of the woods yet!” Jesse yelled. The door to the projection booth opened and a furious Regan MacNeil spider walked down the stairs’ wall.

“Better get that corn popping,” Kurt told him. “I can’t keep these people entertained forever!”

Jesse vaulted past Kurt just as his friend jumped over the barrel and grabbed a fire extinguisher off the wall. “You going to be okay?”

“Sure what’s a Star like me against a few Devils?”

Just then a crowd of possessed people surged outward from the darkened theater entrance.

            “A few Devils?”

            “Oops! Didn’t know I was so popular! Better make it a hundred!”

Jesse ran into the lobby and plugged in the giant popcorn maker. He used a bucket to pour corn from the barrel into a side hopper. He only hoped the machine would heat up fast. Kurt was filling the entire hallway up to the ceiling with fire extinguisher foam. One figure fought his way through the white bubbles and lunged toward him. It looked like Ruben sculpted into a snowman. “I’m going to #%^%$# kill you!”

            “Better hurry, Paco!” Kurt yelled. “I’m running out of songs!”

The tile floor in the hallway proved to be slippery and Ruben fell for the second time in less than a minute. His enormous bulk and the overturned barrel created a crude kind of barricade. Luck appeared to be on his side and Kurt was almost ready to laugh when Regan appeared skittering along the wall. She stopped and pointed a bony finger. Kurt was lifted off the ground and into the air. “Hurry, Paco! Hurry!” he yelled.

-------5-------

Jesse was thankful that all the demonic eyes were on his friend even though he felt sorry for Kurt. They had him suspended in the air thrashing with his arms and legs while squadrons of flies tried to land on his body. “Join us and together we’ll rule the galaxy,” Regan told him.

            “That’s got to be the corniest line I’ve ever heard!” Kurt laughed.

Jesse could feel intense heat coming from the machine. Just then the first kernel of corn popped with a loud bang. It was at least ten inches across and echoed down the hallway like a gunshot.

            “Now I know why this popcorn maker failed,” Jesse said. “They couldn’t find any bags big enough!” A moment later, the second kernel popped and then a third. Within seconds the popping corn sounded like a high powered machine gun.

Jesse struggled to keep the hopper full as the giant popped corn blew out the glass dome above the machine and quickly filled the room and spilled into the hallway. The screams coming from inside the theater were replaced with a kind of crunching sound as every available place in the theater was stuffed with the giant puffs of corn.

It took almost an hour for Jesse to find the entrance to Townsend Avenue and open the glass doors to the Royal Theater. Elephant sized popcorn spilled onto the sidewalk and then into the street.

-------6-------

            Kurt and Jesse stood on the sidewalk in front of the theater and watched as construction equipment dumped scoops of the giant popped corn into the backs of dump trucks. Most of the audience had left. Sheriff Walker was assuring a half-dozen deputies that he was okay. Jesse watched as Chloe O’Brian and Susan McKinney climbed into the back of one of Chloe’s father’s limousines. The long black car slowed as it started past and then stopped. The tinted glass in the back came down with an electric swish. “I saved you a seat but you never showed,” Chloe said looking at Jesse. “I don’t know how many chances you’re going to get!”

Both boys gaped as the car sped away.

            Cranston came out of the theater saw the boys and walked over. “Thank you,” he said. “The night was a disaster but you two saved my theater and probably the whole town.”

            “How do you know the demon from the movie isn’t lurking around somewhere?” Kurt asked.

            “I didn’t want to take any chances, Cranston said. “So I burned all seven reels of the movie in the theater furnace. I’ll pay the distributor for new copies.”

            “What makes you think this won’t happen with the next movie you show?” Jesse was looking at a poster in the theater window advertising WEST WORLD with Yul Brynner.

            “The mechanical mouse that Callahan gave you proved to be more resilient than anyone thought,” Cranston said. “The demon possessing Linda Blair thought the robot had been destroyed but shortly after the film ended I found that it had recovered and removed the Aremac from the projector.” He handed Kurt the tiny robot … and the alien device.

-------7-------

Kurt and Jesse found themselves alone on the street as the last police car and dump truck left and they watched the theater owner drive away. Kurt spied a kernel of the huge popped corn hanging in a shrub near the sidewalk. He held it with both hands and took a bite. “Yuck!” he said as he spat out a mouthful.

            “Not big on taste huh?” Jesse laughed.

            “Not bad,” Kurt said. “But it could use some butter … a lot of it!”

Jesse looked at his watch. “It’s only a little past 2 AM. Do you think your mother will still be working?”

            “Someone is usually at Spare-A-Dime all night on the weekends,” Kurt said. “We might as well get something to eat … while we wait for the city library to open.”

            “The library?” Jesse laughed. “As far as I know you’ve never buried your nose in a book unless you absolutely had to … and most of the time not even then.”

            “Joseph Callahan said this Aremac is kind of a reverse camera,” Kurt said turning the alien artifact over in his hand. “Instead of turning something real into an image, it can turn an image into something real.”

            “So what are we looking for?” Jesse asked, “Pictures of machine guns … maybe a tank or two … something to scare away the Hodemedod from that pretty Momett girl?”

            “Just a present for Sarah when we find her,” Kurt sighed. “Something that shows her she no longer has to hide her face … when she’s in my world.”

It began to rain. A sallow moon slipped from behind moving storm clouds and made the old buildings and asphalt on the streets glisten as the two boys walked down the almost deserted street toward the lights of the corner café in Cloverdale … the strangest small town on Earth.

THE END?