CHAPTER FIFTEEN #2
Only silence answered her. The white light continued to pour onto the screen, creating an uncomfortably bright void where Roberta Rimes had been moments before.
Crystal waited, certain that Ted would notice the problem and stop to patch the break. Seconds stretched into a minute, then two. The projector continued to run, its mechanical whir audible in the silent theater.
“Ted?” she called again, louder this time. “Is everything all right up there?”
The silhouette she’d seen earlier was no longer visible in the booth windows. Crystal’s mild annoyance shifted toward concern. Even an amateur projectionist would immediately respond to a burned film—for a professional like Ted to ignore it was unthinkable.
She rose from her seat, gathering her handbag. Something felt wrong. The emptiness of the theater, previously cozy and exclusive, suddenly seemed ominous. The harsh white light from the screen cast everything in an unnatural glow.
“I’m coming up to check on you,” she announced, her voice sounding smaller than she intended.
No response came from the booth.
Crystal made her way up the sloped aisle, her shadow stretching grotesquely ahead of her in the projector’s unfiltered light. At the back of the theater, a small door marked “Staff Only” stood slightly ajar. Beyond it, a narrow staircase led upward, presumably to the projection booth.
She hesitated at the threshold, a vague uneasiness settling over her. In her decades as a critic, she had visited countless projection booths, watched operators thread film through complicated paths. There was no rational reason for her sudden reluctance.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she muttered to herself, pushing through the door.
The staircase was dimly lit by a single bulb, the steps worn in their centers from years of use.
Crystal climbed slowly, one hand trailing along the wall for balance.
The mechanical sound of the still-running projector grew louder with each step, a steady rhythm like the heartbeat of the theater itself.
At the top of the stairs, another door stood partly open, spilling light into the stairwell. Crystal paused, listening. No movement, no voice—only the whir of the projector.
“Ted?” she called, rapping her knuckles against the door. “It’s Crystal. The film’s caught in the gate.”
Silence.
She pushed the door wider and stepped into the projection booth.
Two massive projectors dominated the small space, their complicated mechanisms gleaming under the overhead lights.
One was dark and silent, while the other—the one projecting the stark white light onto the screen below—continued to run, its reels spinning steadily despite the absence of film passing through the gate.
Ted Coonfield was nowhere to be seen.
Crystal moved deeper into the booth, her unease growing with each step. Obviously Ted had been here, otherwise the showing wouldn’t have started. And yet he had vanished without addressing the film problem—behavior entirely at odds with his reputation for professionalism.
A strange sensation prickled along Crystal’s spine—recognition not of a place but of a scenario. Something about this moment felt familiar in a way that had nothing to do with her previous visits to projection booths.
Then it struck her with chilling clarity. The Broken Window. The 1954 film noir directed by Weston Black. In its most notorious scene, a female film critic is murdered in a projection booth, her body then chained to the projector as a macabre statement about the relationship between critic and art.
Crystal had written about that scene in her book, analyzing its visual composition and thematic resonance. Now she stood in an eerily similar setting—alone in a projection booth with no sign of the projectionist who should be there.
The parallel was too precise to be coincidental.
Her heart rate accelerated as adrenaline flooded her system. She needed to get out of here. If someone had deliberately recreated this scenario, if Ted’s absence was not an accident but a design...
She never completed the thought. As she turned and reached for the door handle, a dark shape lunged from behind a storage cabinet—moving with terrible purpose. Crystal caught only a glimpse of a face contorted with hatred before strong hands seized her from behind.
Something thin and flexible looped around her neck. It tightened with vicious speed, cutting off her airway and digging into the soft flesh of her throat.
Crystal clawed at the garrote, her fingernails scraping uselessly against her attacker’s gloved hands. She tried to scream, but only a strangled whimper escaped her constricted throat.
The pressure increased. Dark spots swam before her eyes as oxygen deprivation set in. Her struggling weakened, her body betraying her as consciousness began to slip away.
In her final moments of awareness, as the projection booth dimmed around her, Crystal Keene experienced a film critic’s last irony—dying exactly as described in a scene she had analyzed dozens of times.