Midnight Special by Phoef Sutton

turned and brought his ax down on the projector. It exploded in a hail of sparks and flying metal. He chopped at it again and again until it lay, like a smoking, steam-punk nightmare, at his feet. The film unfurled from its reel like a snake, getting tangled and torn and twisted and finally coming to rest on the floor with an audible hiss.
    He rested, breathing heavily, satisfied. Through the corner of his eye, Matt could see that the little man had his arm raised and was pointing out the little window. He looked.
    The movie was still showing.
    With no beam of light being projected from the booth, the image was still flickering on the screen. The woman was peeking through the hole in the door—a corkscrew came through the other side, puncturing her eyeball and yanking it out.
    The crowd exploded with laughter.
    Matt wheeled around and faced the little man with his mummified, dried-apple face.
    “How do I stop it?” Matt asked.
    “You can’t. It’s begun. You have to see it through to the end.”
    “There must be some other way.”
    “No. No, no, no. You have to see it all. Till the end credits. That’s the way it works.”
    Matt wanted to throttle the little man, to chop him to pieces, to do anything he could to save Gina. But would killing this sinful dwarf do anything to achieve that? He took a deep breath and tried to control himself. He had to find out what was going on before he acted.
    “Who are you?” he asked with a semblance of calm.
    “Zander Taman.”
    The name jarred Matt’s memory. “Zander Taman? Warren Worley’s boyfriend? The one who killed all those people in 1998?”
    “No! I didn’t! They killed each other! I came up here to hide!”
    Matt took a closer look at his face. It looked like one of those shrunken heads he used to see advertised in the back of comic books. He wanted to squeeze it and see if it crumbled. He controlled himself.
    “Where have you been all this time?” Matt asked.
    Zander took a look around the tiny room and said, “Here.”
    Matt stared at him in disbelief. “You’ve been in this room for fourteen years?”
    “Is that all? It feels longer than that.”
    “You’ve never left?”
    “Oh, I leave sometimes. When the film leaves. I go with the film.”
    “What do you mean?”
    The little man sighed and repeated himself, as if he were talking to an idiot. “I accompany the film to other venues. And watch it unspool. I’m the projectionist. I show it and move on.”
    Matt paced the tiny room, refusing to look at the screen. He could hear the screams of the woman on the sound track. The zombie had her.
    “I thought you were going to let me out,” Zander went on. “I thought you were my replacement.”
    “Replacement?”
    “The movie must be shown. The demon must be fed.”
    “Mr. Dark?”
    The imp shrugged. “He’s known by many names. He comes in many guises. You’re one of his windows into this world. So am I. But he wants more. That’s what the movie’s all about.”
    Matt picked Zander up—he weighed nothing, as if he were made of dust—and slammed him against the wall.
    “Tell me! Are you the reason those people went crazy? Did you drive them to it?”
    The little man shrieked. “No! It’s the movie that drives them to it! I’m just the projectionist!”
    “Tell me how to stop this! Tell me how to save Gina!”
    Zander shook his desiccated head. “I don’t know any Gina, but whoever she is, she’s dead now. And she was just a distraction anyway. To get you up here.”
    Matt let Zander go and he slid to the floor, getting tangled in the mass of unspooled film. He heard screams from the theater. They weren’t fun screams. They weren’t roller-coaster screams. They were real screams.
    “It’s begun,” Zander said.
    Matt hefted his ax and ran to the door. He stopped.
    The doorway was gone.
    He spun around. Looking for the door he had broken down, looking for the way out. He just saw four walls around him and no exit.
    “You see?” the