Читать книгу Devil’s Cinema. Crypt of the Seven Angels - Natalie Yacobson - Страница 7

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 dozens of articles, and his idea of the tragedy was still very vague. One thing was clear – everyone who came to the premiere died. There were about a few thousand people. Such a calculation is quite reasonable, given the huge auditorium he saw. If we add to the victims the guards and the terrorists who attacked, then the purely victims increase. He did not even count the dead investigators. Apparently, there were quite a few of them.

Then the suicide victims began. They were all fans who could not survive without Atenais. Well, then the disappearance of people in the “Blue Lotus” area has become countless. True, the bodies of the disappeared were never found.

Even assuming that not all of the missing people are dead, the conclusion is that the Blue Lotus is too dangerous a place to visit. But Daniel was going to go there anyway. What has he got to lose?

The hotel where he was given a room was not very comfortable. And the room could not be called spacious. But it had a good TV with an antenna that picked up all the channels. Only after the session in “Blue Lotus” did all the films and TV programs seem completely unworthy of attention. Daniel unplugged the TV and threw the remote control somewhere. It is a pity that even if the screen is broken, the film about Egypt will not return. The film with him remained there, inside an abandoned cinema.

Daniel wanted to go there again. But he just left there.

In the middle of the night, he dreamed that the disconnected TV turned on by itself, and something was crawling across the screen. The Egyptian film is on again. The frames are spinning. A reel on a tripod is somewhere nearby, and someone in a red hood is turning the lever with its claws. Alais sits in a chair in the corner of the room, legs crossed casually. Instead of a dog, she has some kind of hellish creature on her habits. She says something about filming now. Daniel notices that his bed is covered in blood, and the golden creature, instead of a screen, is already crawling over it, pressing his body into the bloody sheets.

And the movie is coming to an end! No, this dream is coming to an end. He wakes up screaming.

In the morning everything was quiet in the studio. The caretaker explained to him that everyone had gone to shoot the crowd scenes in the city. Daniel’s presence was not required. All these scenes were with Jane.

“I heard that for filming they fenced off the old part of the city, where historical buildings are still preserved,” Daniel tried to start a conversation with the caretaker. “I remember it surprised me. The town is so tiny, the population is so small, there are forests and sparse highways around. And in such a wilderness, such rare historical monuments were suddenly discovered that for their sake it was worth coming here to photograph them in a film. Does your city really have so many values?

The caretaker, of course, did not know about the arrival of the group in the wilderness, solely due to the low budget and the presence of old streets in the city, which can be cheaply rented for a day or two, so he kindly nodded.

“There are many interesting things.”

Often moving from filming to filming, Daniel drew attention to the fact that all the indigenous people of even the most unassuming settlements love it when their hometown begins to be praised. Especially praise was received from tourists. And the film crew, who came here only for two and a half months, could only be compared with tourists. Some of the staff actually intended to take a short stroll around town, visiting local bars first and catching a glimpse of the sights. This attitude is already similar to travel plans. Daniel himself was considering a much narrower range of visits. He was only interested in one place. But he was not going to be considered a madman, asking exclusively about the Devil’s Cinema. By the way, why did the locals call it the Devil’s Cinema, because its real name is “Blue Lotus”. And what does the devil have to do with it? Nothing demonic was used in the design of the building. In addition to angels, there are only scarabs, a fountain with a lotus, sphinxes, a barely noticeable script of hieroglyphs on the walls in the hall, and many other mysterious symbols of the Ancient Egypt. What is the connection between the devil and the Ancient Egypt? Daniel felt that the desire to justify everything drove him into a trap. Indeed, in the film about the Ancient Egypt, which he saw there, the devil was equated with the patron saint and lord of the local pharaohs. And this devil names a seductive girlish look.

“And his name is Dennitsa” – read the title of the film, crushing all the established ideas of mankind about the world, history, religion and even love. But why does the title say “him” and not “her”, because it is more about her. Alais!

Was the girl he met after the session real, or was he just dreaming? And who is she? A dead star that rises from death only on the territory of the cinema, where did she die? Or a star who just faked her death for some reason? What if Alais is a different girl? Or is it just a dream?

“I heard that you have something like a haunted house here,” Daniel began carefully approaching the topic.

“No, definitely not at home,” objected the talkative caretaker.

“Then, probably, the building of some closed organization where ghosts allegedly live? Factory? Factory? Or maybe a theater?”

Daniel, as if by chance, nudged the interlocutor so that he himself raised the necessary topic.

“Yes, there is one such cinema,” the caretaker finally admitted. “But it is located outside the city, and there are no excursions.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not all pretend there,” the inspector hesitated, choosing his words. “Not like places where tourists are attracted by fictional ghost stories.”

“What is it like?”

“Well, people disappear there.”

“Maybe there was a gang of smugglers, criminals, and, after all, terrorists who had a weapons store there.” It was easy to assume all this after he himself had not found anything of the kind there. “I heard something about a terrorist attack that took place there.”

“Terrorist attack?” There was doubt in the voice of the inspector, as if he had not read about it in the newspapers. “Rather, a mass madness. People went there to watch films, and then did not return. And those who returned pulled others along with them.”

“And they disappeared together.”

“No, I meant…”

“What does it mean: to drag others along with you?”

“Well, there are many different strange cases in the city.”

“What, for example?”

“Those who began to behave strangely, as if infecting others with madness, and now instead of one potential suicide, a whole gang leaves them. Suicide is preceded by an attack on the police, acts of vandalism, some kind of rituals with black magic. I myself have seen the symbols that teenagers drew in blood on walls and roads.”

“Where have we stopped?!”

“Don’t be alarmed! All this was and ended several years ago. Since then, the city has been almost calm, apart from rare repetitions of the past. It’s safe to walk everywhere, but it’s best not to go to the old cinema.”

“It’s not that old,” Daniel almost let slip that he was there and nothing bad happened to him. Nobody even tried to attack him. Well, unless the film watched there hit hard in the head, suspiciously resembling the effect of a drug, after which a withdrawal occurs. He wanted to look at something like that again with just one eye. But for this he need to go to the “Blue Lotus” again.

“By the way, have many people disappeared there lately?”

The caretaker tried to remember everyone, even bent his fingers.

“Some couple, an old film fan, various young hooligans and many teenagers – lovers of scary films. Even the police patrol disappeared there once, and no trace. No car, no radio. And last year a whole senior class disappeared there. The brave guys went to celebrate the end of school there. Moreover, neither the students nor the teachers returned.

“And someone was looking for them?”

“Of course! Someone is looking for all the missing, but they have not yet managed to find at least one.”

“Everyone was eaten by the cinema? Does he swallow people like a monster?”

“Do not laugh! Local people believe that some technical force of the future dwells there. Something cosmic or demonic. Young people in the city can even beat you up. If you start to insist that there is nothing like that in the cinema, and it is just an old building. Young townspeople are looking for legends there. By the way, it is young people who are drawn there the most.”

“Is it permissible that they become casual spectators, for example, at some night show, which is not widely announced. And only those who enter the cinema at the call of curiosity get on it.”

“Ruled out! Films have not been shown there for a long time. The last premiere was in 2013. It all ended there. A fire started in the building. All is lost.”

“Sorry, I’m bothering you like a real detective,” Daniel was making calculations in his brain. Not everything they say is true. The sessions are going on there. But even if we assume that spectators who accidentally wander into the cinema disappear on them, how? Are they being carried away directly from the session by some cosmic forces? Is a certain funnel opening between dimensions that sucks people in without returning? Or more simply: some sectarians or maniacs hiding in the cinema grab and kill everyone who wanders there? Then why did none of this happen to him? He was in the Blue Lotus and came back. No one even bit or scratched him.

“I would like to know where they all disappear,” Daniel expressed his desire aloud.

“Just don’t go there, otherwise you will also disappear like everyone else.”

Daniel was definitely not going to follow this good advice. He crumpled his invitation in his pocket. Did he have it, and did other casual spectators come to the cinema without him? Or some demonic creature roamed the city and handed out tickets to them.