Natalie Yacobson - Devil’s Cinema. Crypt of the Seven Angels

She somehow became sad, looked away. Fans of golden eyelashes fell on her cheeks. Eyelashes are definitely not false, but how long they are. And the scarabs on her skin, as if alive. Are they moving?

“You need to live for today.”

Did she say that or did he just hear it?

“I’m sorry if I disturbed any bad memories,” Daniel apologized hastily.

“I have no memories. Everything was filmed a long time ago, like a film.” She nodded at the long-extinguished screen, on which nothing else was crawling.

Daniel scanned the rows of empty chairs. The feeling was as before, as if the golden monster was still in the hall, crawling between the rows and was about to cling to its legs.

“Truth, lies, hidden truths… Everything is not important until you capture it in the frame. People are interested in sights, not memories, and we give them more than they want. In a similar way, the desires of the public were fulfilled in the amphitheaters of Ancient Rome, only the audience there was not touched.”

“It’s hard to understand you.”

“But it’s nice to look at me,” she stepped towards him, and he was so frightened of what that he backed away, stumbled over one of the corner chairs and nearly fell. Looking up at Alais was the same as looking at a deity. She was all glowing, and the darkness behind her was forming into two patterned wings.

Something seemed to be crawling between the seats. Daniel heard claws scraping on the floor, he even saw suspicious claw scratches on the carpet. This is definitely not a cat scratch. Moreover, not five, but six claws were imprinted. There are no animals with six claws on their paws. Or has he just not heard of such?

His first agent liked to say that all actors are extremely dumb, but Daniel persisted in thinking of himself as an educated guy. And even if he managed to unlearn at the university only one course before he received a dubious offer to act in film, for which he dropped out. But he has a wide outlook, he traveled a lot, moving from one shoot to another, he managed to see a lot. But he had never seen anything like it. The cinema is unique. Maybe that’s why they spread a rumor about it that it was abandoned so that people would not besiege it in droves in the hope of peeping at the local miracles even through the keyhole.

This is good! Thanks to the rumor about the tragedy and the dilapidation of the building, he sat alone at the session, like a king. And if everyone had access here, word of mouth would work in a matter of days, and all tickets would be sold out a year in advance. Young people love thrills, and the cinema provides them in abundance. After it, you do not need to visit any fear rooms or attractions. The impressions from one session will last for a lifetime. Daniel himself did not know where to go after watching the film, except for the nearest tree on which to hang himself. If he met Alais in person, he could commit any extreme.

The extinguished screen indicated that the golden era of the film was already over, and there would be no continuation. But the star of the film stood by. Thanks to her presence, even someone’s heavy claws, scratching the floor here and there, did not cause much fear.

“Who are you?” it was probably stupid to ask, but the silence strained. “Athenais? This name is shown in the credits.”

“Athenais,” she repeated the name as if she had heard for the first time and twisted her face in displeasure.

“Well, yes, you are an actress. Probably, Athenais is just your nickname.”

“I’m not an actress!”

Her harsh objection burned like mercury. So, the act of terrorism was not invented in order to scare away annoying viewers from the plebeians from the elite cinema? And then it turns out that Atenais really died, and does not stand in front of him. But even her clothes are almost the same as in the film. Only now, in a strange Egyptian costume, details of something modern appeared. He just now saw that under a sophisticated top with stones and chains, he was wearing the most ordinary newfangled low-waisted jeans. Notice the piercing on the flat stomach and the scarab ring threaded into the navel. Involuntarily he glanced at her. Everything went well with her. And she’s definitely not dead. Her skin is pale and slightly phosphorescent, but not rotting.

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!”

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.