The Midnight Hour by Neil Davies Page B

POPCORN
     
     
    Four girls in two weeks. Tortured. Mutilated. Murdered!
    Crystal Roberts tore her eyes away from the headline and stuffed the paper into the black trash bag she dragged behind her. The thought of a killer prowling around her neighbourhood was frightening, so she tried her best not to think about it.
    She reached under the flipped-up cinema seat on her left but couldn’t reach the discarded coca-cola can. She sighed, lay down flat on her stomach and edged under the seat. She reached again, grabbed the can, and banged her head on the underside of the seat as she straightened up.
    “Shit!”
    “Language Crystal. It’s just as well there are no customers about.”
    She looked over her shoulder at the man who stood at the end of the aisle. Rupert Jenkins, the manager of this small, local cinema. He was tall, fat and permanently sweaty, with a lustful leer in his eyes and, according to some of the girls, fast and groping hands. Not that he’d tried anything with her yet, but she was suddenly very aware of how short the skirt of her uniform was, and the fact that, lying on the ground as she had been, he had probably got quite a view.
    In two weeks she would be 18. She worried that Mr Jenkins would suddenly become more than just a drooling onlooker. He was surprisingly puritan in some ways, disgustingly perverse in others.
    She shifted her position, drew her legs in under her, pulled the skirt down as far as it would go, which was not far, and checked the zipper that ran the length of the top. She had heard that Mr Jenkins had designed the uniform himself.
    “Sorry Mr Jenkins.”
    “Well, we’ll forget it this time Crystal.” His eyes flickered to her breasts, the cleavage prominent above the low V of the uniform top. “Now, the reason I came here was to tell you the others have all left. I’m just about to lock up. Will you be long?”
    Everyone left? Including Richard from the concessions stand? She had hoped that tonight he would wait for her, tonight he would ask her out. She had hoped that for the past two months or so, ever since he started work there. Richard. Tall, slim, muscular, and four years older than her. Still, she hoped.
    “No Mr Jenkins. Just one more aisle after this, then I’m done cleaning.”
    “Good, well…” He took one more look at her breasts, her thighs, her young firm body. “I’ll be in the main foyer when you’re done.”
    She watched as he walked away, waiting until he was out of the doorway before turning and crawling along the aisle once more, gathering the trash left behind by the evening’s customers, grumbling to herself as she went.
    “17 years old. Still living at home with my parents. No boyfriend. Got a crush on a guy four years older than me who hardly knows I exist. Working for an old letch in a dead-end job… Why do I bother?”
    She knew why, of course. She needed money to get away from this small town, to go to college in New York, or Los Angeles, or any big place. Anywhere but small town Ravensville, CA. There weren’t many places in town that an unskilled 17 year old could get money. Not legitimately anyway.
    She stuffed the last of the trash into the black sack and pushed herself to her feet. She reached up to the small band holding her ponytail in place and dragged it out. Black hair, long and straight, fell over her shoulders as she shook it out. It felt good to let it loose. She only wore it in a ponytail for work.
    There was a dull thump from over by the door, outside in the foyer. It startled her. Her hand flew to her chest as if to calm the beating of her heart.
    “I’m coming Mr Jenkins,” she called, turning to look towards the exit at the back of the cinema. There was no sign of the manager, but he was obviously getting impatient. Banging things about.
    I’d better hurry up before he locks me in!
    She tied a knot in the sack and made to carry it. Too heavy. Instead she dragged it behind her as she trudged up the centre aisle.
    Another