Chapter 2: The Audience of One

Theater 5 stretched before Leo like the throat of some massive beast. The darkness was so complete it seemed solid, pressing against him as he stepped inside. His flashlight beam cut through the blackness, revealing rows of empty seats covered in what looked like decades of dust and neglect. The red velvet upholstery had faded to the color of dried rust, and several seats were missing entirely, leaving behind skeletal metal frames that looked disturbingly like rib cages.

The screen at the front was enormous, easily thirty feet wide, but completely black. Leo made his way down the sloped aisle, his footsteps muffled by carpet so worn it felt like walking on concrete. The air was thick and stale, carrying that same organic smell from the lobby but stronger here, almost sweet in its decay.

He reached the front row and chose a seat in the center, directly facing the screen. His phone showed 10:38 PM. Eight minutes and twenty-two seconds until he could leave. The rules had been specific: exactly ten minutes, no more, no less.

Leo settled into the seat and immediately wished he hadn't. The upholstery was damp, and something sticky had soaked through the fabric years ago, leaving a stain that felt unpleasantly warm against his back. He tried not to think about what it might be.

The screen remained black. Completely, utterly black.

"This is ridiculous," he muttered, but his voice seemed to die just inches from his mouth, swallowed by the oppressive silence of the theater. He checked his phone again: 10:39 PM. Nine minutes to go.

That's when the static began.

It started as a barely perceptible hiss, like the sound of an old television tuned to a dead channel. Leo leaned forward, squinting at the screen. Tiny white dots began to appear against the black background, dancing and swirling in random patterns. The static grew louder, filling the theater with a sound like rain on a tin roof.

Seven minutes remaining.

The dots on the screen began to coalesce, forming shapes that almost looked familiar before dissolving back into chaos. Leo found himself leaning forward, trying to make sense of the patterns. There—for just a moment—it had looked like a face. But then it was gone, lost in the electronic snow.

The static was getting louder. Much louder. It filled the theater now, a roar of white noise that made Leo's ears ring. He wanted to cover them, but something about the screen held his attention. The patterns were definitely forming shapes now, and those shapes were becoming clearer.

Six minutes.

A picture began to emerge from the static. Blurry at first, then sharpening with each passing second. Leo's blood went cold as he recognized what he was seeing.

It was the theater. Theater 5, specifically. The same rows of decaying seats, the same worn carpet, the same enormous screen. But this wasn't a recording from some security camera. The angle was wrong, the perspective too intimate. It was as if someone were sitting in the back row, filming everything with a handheld camera.

And in the front row, clearly visible on the screen, sat a lone figure.

Leo.

He was watching himself on the screen, seeing his own hunched shoulders, his own nervous fidgeting as he checked his phone. The image was crystal clear now, the static completely gone, replaced by this impossible live feed of his exact position.

Four minutes.

On screen, Leo watched himself lean forward, squinting at the image. The recursive loop made his head spin. He was watching himself watch himself, an infinite regression that seemed to mock the very concept of reality.

That's when he saw it.

Behind his on-screen self, barely visible in the darkness of the theater, stood a figure.

Leo's heart hammered against his ribs. The thing on the screen was tall and impossibly thin, its body bent at unnatural angles as if several of its joints had been broken and healed wrong. Its face was a blur of shadow and static, but Leo could make out what might have been eyes—too many eyes, arranged in patterns that hurt to look at.

The figure was standing directly behind his seat, its long, spindly arm reaching down toward his neck.

Three minutes.

Leo's whole body tensed. Every instinct screamed at him to turn around, to look over his shoulder and confirm that nothing was there. But the rule had been explicit: "Do not turn around, no matter what you hear or see."

On screen, the figure's hand was inches from his neck now. Leo could see its fingers—if they were fingers—long and pale and ending in what looked like black talons. The thing's head tilted to one side with a wet, crackling sound that somehow transmitted through the speakers, and Leo realized it was studying him.

Two minutes.

The figure's hand stopped moving. On screen, Leo watched as the thing seemed to notice the camera, seemed to realize it was being observed. Its head snapped up with that same sickening crack, and for one horrifying moment, it looked directly into the lens.

Leo saw its face.

It had no face.

Where features should have been was only a smooth expanse of pale skin, broken by a single vertical slit that ran from what should have been its forehead to what should have been its chin. As Leo watched in paralyzed horror, the slit began to open, revealing row after row of needle-sharp teeth and something that might have been a tongue but moved with far too much intelligence.

One minute.

The thing on screen opened its mouth-slit wider, and a sound emerged that Leo felt more than heard—a low, subsonic moan that seemed to vibrate through his bones. The theater around him began to shake, dust raining down from the ceiling as the entity's cry built to a crescendo.

On screen, the figure lunged forward.

Leo's phone alarm went off. 10:48 PM. Ten minutes exactly.

He bolted from his seat and ran for the door, not daring to look back, not caring that he might be breaking some unwritten rule about dignified exits. Behind him, the screen went silent, but he could feel something vast and hungry turning its attention toward him as he fled.

He burst through the door and into the hallway, gasping for air that tasted like freedom. His hands were shaking so badly he could barely hold his phone. The hallway was empty, lit by the same flickering fluorescent bulbs he'd noticed earlier.

Leo forced himself to walk back toward the lobby, his footsteps echoing in the silence. It had been a trick. Some kind of elaborate prank involving hidden cameras and special effects. It had to be. The alternative—that he'd just seen something genuinely supernatural—was impossible to accept.

But as he reached the lobby, he heard a sound that made his blood freeze.

A slow, deliberate scratching, like fingernails on glass.

It was coming from behind him.

Leo turned, dreading what he might see, and looked back down the hallway toward Theater 5. The door was still open, and from within came that scratching sound, growing louder with each passing second.

Then, cutting through the noise like a blade, came a voice. It was his own voice, but wrong somehow, distorted and hollow:

"Leo... Leo, come back... the show isn't over..."

He ran.

Leo sprinted through the lobby, past the dead concession stand and the faded movie posters, his footsteps thundering on the worn carpet. The front doors were locked—Dennis had warned him about that—but he rattled them anyway, desperate for escape that wouldn't come until sunrise.

The scratching had stopped. The voice had gone silent. But in the sudden quiet, Leo heard something worse: footsteps in the hallway, slow and deliberate, getting closer.

He looked around frantically and spotted a maintenance closet near the concession stand. Leo threw himself inside and pulled the door shut, plunging himself into absolute darkness. He fumbled for his phone and used its light to examine his surroundings. Cleaning supplies, a mop bucket, shelves lined with dusty boxes of theater snacks from decades past.

And on the back wall, someone had carved words into the wood with what looked like fingernails:

"THE SCREEN SEES ALL. THE SCREEN REMEMBERS ALL. WELCOME TO THE SHOW."

Below that, in fresher scratches:

"SARAH WAS HERE. SARAH TRIED TO WARN YOU."

The footsteps in the lobby had stopped. Leo held his breath, listening for any sound that might tell him where the thing was, what it was doing. Minutes passed in silence so complete it felt like being buried alive.

Finally, he worked up the courage to crack open the closet door and peer out. The lobby was empty. The hallway beyond was dark and still. Whatever had been following him was gone.

Leo checked his phone: 11:00 PM exactly. Time for rule number two.

He pulled out Dennis's list with trembling hands and read: "At 11 PM, close and lock the door to Theater 3. Do not open it again until morning, regardless of what you hear from inside."

Theater 3 was the middle door in the hallway, currently standing wide open like a mouth waiting to be fed. Leo approached it cautiously, every nerve ending screaming danger. The theater beyond was dark, but unlike Theater 5, this darkness felt different. Expectant. Hungry.

He grabbed the door handle and began to swing it shut. As the door closed, cutting off his view of the theater's interior, he heard something that made his heart skip:

A child's laughter, high and sweet and absolutely terrifying in the context of this place.

The door clicked shut. Leo turned the key Dennis had given him, hearing the tumblers fall into place with a sound like a coffin being sealed.

From inside Theater 3 came the sound of applause. Slow, rhythmic clapping that seemed to come from dozens of invisible hands.

Leo backed away from the door and checked his phone again: 11:02 PM. Seven hours until sunrise. Six more rules to follow.

He looked down at the list in his hands and realized something that filled him with a new kind of dread. The rules weren't just arbitrary commands designed to test his obedience. They were a survival guide.

And he was only two rules in.

From Theater 3 came the sound of breaking glass, followed by a scream that might have been human but probably wasn't. Leo walked quickly back toward the lobby, the applause following him until he was far enough away that the sound faded to a whisper.

He had made it through rule one and rule two. Eight more to go.

Behind him, something in Theater 3 began to sing.