style="font-size:15px;"> Why does this feeling that she left the screen, having just crossed the line of two worlds, offscreen and real, does not leave him? And the cinema itself is like a portal between these two worlds.
“Alais!” he called her the name of the heroine from the film, without even thinking about the consequences. What if she gets offended? After all, the beauty at the end of the film was beheaded by Taor. Daniel has long ago noticed that for many people, even unbelievers, there is a certain set of beliefs and will accept. Not everyone is happy when he is compared, for example, with the executed Marie Antoinette, even if she was a queen during her lifetime.
“Okay, you can call me that,” the girl responded vividly. “I also give you permission to come here in the future whenever you want. You haven’t seen much here yet.
“There are sessions here not only at midnight?”
“There’s a lot going on here. And you can see even more.”
“That is, there are many such unusual films shown in the cinema?”
She nodded.
“There must be variety.”
“But I thought that nothing better could be done. It was just a masterpiece. It is impossible to repeat it.”
“You’re wrong.”
“In any case, I was only given an invitation for today.”
“It’s just a souvenir,” Alais attached to his invitation either a pin or a hard sticker in the shape of a scarab.
So is the scarab a symbol of the cinema or is it a sacred blue lotus? Daniel did not dare to ask directly about it. You never know how you can offend a stranger. Many people he worked with were nervous about some topics that most people find funny or completely harmless. Everyone has their own phase shift, developed in the course of difficult family relationships or hard work. And according to Alais it was clear that she was especially sensitive to some local traditions known only to her.
“My permission is enough to always let you in here.”
It’s good if she didn’t exaggerate her importance. It is unlikely that such a young fragile girl is capable of running everything here. Unless she is the owner’s daughter.
“And I hope that’s enough to make you feel safe here.”
The guards in front of the entrance would have increased the sense of security much more, but, of course, he did not tell her about it. Why be rude to a girl who charmed you so much. You can go to hell for such a beauty. He even feared that he would hardly leave this place, as it would turn out that the whole cinema was just a fantastic dream. And there will be no repetition of such a dream.
The exit door suddenly flung open by itself, and the beauty easily stepped into the auditorium, overcoming several steep steps at once.
“Alais!” he still called to her before leaving. “You’re not dead after all.”
She was not even offended by such unhealthy curiosity. She just shrugged her shoulders casually.
“As you see!”
Casual viewers
Old newspaper headlines turned alarmingly black on the glowing screen. It was worth buying a new smartphone and reconnecting the Internet to see it. Missing People, No Corpses Found, Tragedy in the Blue Lotus, Victims of a Terrorist Attack or the Devil?, “The terrorist attack brought a hell of a fire”, “The dead take revenge.”
All of the articles retold the same story in slightly different ways, in which too many details remained unclear. Basically, journalists only made assumptions based on a few known facts. The cinema was seized on the night of the premiere, one of those present was armed and resisted, somehow their actions provoked a fire. Atenais certainly died among the first victims. According to reports for the summer of 2013, the entire cinema burned down, but in the fall of the same year, people who entered it out of curiosity began to disappear in its building. Where then did the building come from if it burned down? Several months are definitely not enough to rebuild it. The cinema itself could not be reborn from the ashes and grow in the same place like a tree.
A tree? Daniel tensed at the memory of a hellish trunk with faces and ashes. Is it possible? Was it that tree?
For such thoughts, they may be considered insane, and, of course, he does stupidly, wasting time looking for information instead of studying the script. So tomorrow he will not be able to work again, because again he will not get enough sleep, and in the end they will really decide to replace him with someone else. He should focus on pressing problems, and not look for a clue to what happened many years ago. But Athenais was so hooked on him that he could not think of anything else. Why hadn’t he noticed her before when she was still alive? Surely, her face flashed in all the glossy magazines and news bulletins. Judging by the abundance of information about her in the press of those years, she was overly popular, and he did not even see her. And if he saw it, he would certainly join those fans who began to die en masse after her death. This is not surprising! She possessed the gift of strongly influencing the psyche, frames from her film penetrated into consciousness and continued to spin there by themselves, even when the screen was already extinguished.
A golden creature, Egypt, ceremonies with blood and demons, a winged beauty behind the throne of the pharaoh, a bloody sickle in her hands… All this contained some special symbolism. The frames were etched into the memory and, together with admiration, caused fear.
Was this movie scheduled to be shown at the premiere where Athenais was killed? Probably, after that tragedy, the film never got into wide distribution, because otherwise most of the world would have gone crazy from watching. Probably because of this, some knowledgeable group of people undertook the act of terrorism. The film was planned as a secret weapon capable of penetrating viewers’ psyche and depriving them of their will to live, the ability to think. Daniel still felt himself there, in the halls of the Ancient Egypt. The reality is almost completely erased after viewing. Alais seemed to be standing next to him and knocking into his mind.
“Let me in this world!”
And next to her, a dazzling golden monster crawled across the dark screen, multi-armed, like the Indian Kali, and even more dangerous than a sharp razor.
After the tragedy, people began to disappear in the cinema. At first, those who carried out the examination disappeared. Police officers, detectives, investigators, forensic scientists, even the sheriff – all disappeared into nowhere or became victims of accidents. Trees collapsed on some inquisitive professionals or passers-by, some were crushed by debris, and most were hit by such a terrible hurricane that they were thrown with their heads right on the pavement and smashed their skulls. The elements were so raging in that place, and the disappearances of people became so frequent and mysterious that all investigative commissions were eventually recalled. If one of them, of course, survived.
Moreover, it was not clear in the press reports whether the investigation was carried out in a still-preserved building, or there were only ruins. Information and conclusions, as well as descriptions of what was happening, often contradicted each other. If the journalists knew everything, then one could say that they are deliberately hiding the facts.
Daniel had already read
