Chapter 4: The Wrong Movie Title

The digging sounds from the bathroom had stopped fifteen minutes ago, but Leo could still feel the phantom weight of that shovel-wielding reflection watching him from every reflective surface in the lobby. He'd positioned himself with his back to the concession stand's glass display case, unwilling to risk another glimpse of something that wasn't him staring back.

1:15 AM. The night was crawling by with agonizing slowness, each minute stretching like taffy under the weight of accumulated terror. Leo had survived three rules so far, but his nerves were already shredded. The wet footprints, the thing behind him during the sweep, the chorus of screams from Theater 3—it was all building to something, he could feel it. SilverGate wasn't just testing him; it was wearing him down, looking for the moment when fear would override caution.

A new sound cut through the oppressive silence: knocking.

It came from the theater hallway, slow and deliberate. Three heavy knocks, followed by a pause, then three more. Leo pulled out Dennis's list with trembling fingers and found rule five: "Theater 4's emergency exit will receive heavy knocking between 1 and 3 AM. Do not investigate. Do not acknowledge it."

Theater 4. The second door from the end, currently standing open like all the others except the locked Theater 3. The knocking came again, definitely from that direction, but it didn't sound like it was coming from an emergency exit. It sounded like it was coming from the theater door itself.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Pause.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The pattern was hypnotic, almost musical. Leo found himself counting along with it, his body swaying slightly to the rhythm. There was something soothing about the sound, something that made him want to get up and investigate, to offer help to whoever was trapped on the other side.

The knocking stopped.

In the sudden silence, Leo heard something that made his blood freeze: a child's voice, small and sweet and absolutely terrifying.

"Excuse me, mister?"

He spun around, his phone's flashlight cutting through the darkness of the lobby. Standing near the front doors, almost lost in the shadows cast by the dead chandelier, was a little girl.

She looked to be maybe seven years old, with pale skin that seemed to glow faintly in the dim light. Her dress was pink but faded, the kind of vintage style that hadn't been fashionable for decades. Her dark hair hung in limp ringlets around a face that was almost angelic in its innocence.

Almost.

There was something wrong with her smile. It was too wide, too knowing, like she was in on a joke that Leo hadn't heard yet.

"Excuse me, mister?" she repeated, her voice carrying that particular quality of childhood that could pierce through any amount of ambient noise. "I'm looking for my mommy and daddy. They said they'd meet me here after the movie."

Leo's mouth went dry. Rule six blazed in his mind: "If a child approaches you and asks what movie is playing, you must ask them to repeat the title back to you. If they get it wrong, run."

But she hadn't asked about a movie. She was just a lost child, looking for her parents in this nightmare theater. Maybe she was real. Maybe she was just as trapped here as he was.

"What movie are you here to see?" Leo asked carefully, his voice barely above a whisper.

The little girl's smile widened. "Oh, it's a wonderful movie! All about a man who works in a theater just like this one. It's called 'The Last Showing.'"

Leo felt every muscle in his body tense. The girl tilted her head to one side, studying him with eyes that seemed far too old for her face.

"Can you tell me the title again?" Leo asked, following the rule exactly as written.

"Of course!" The girl's voice was bright with enthusiasm. "It's called 'The First Performance.'"

Wrong. The title was wrong.

Leo ran.

He bolted from behind the concession stand, his feet pounding on the worn carpet as he sprinted across the lobby. Behind him, the little girl's laughter followed—high and sweet and absolutely inhuman. It echoed off the walls, multiplying and distorting until it sounded like a dozen children laughing, then a hundred.

"Wait!" the girl called, her voice changing, deepening. "Don't you want to see the movie? Don't you want to be in the movie?"

Leo risked a glance over his shoulder and immediately wished he hadn't. The girl was following him, but she wasn't running. She was gliding across the floor, her feet not quite touching the ground, her pink dress flowing around her like she was underwater. And her face—

Her smile had grown impossibly wide, stretching from ear to ear and revealing row after row of small, perfectly white teeth. Not human teeth. Too many teeth, arranged in patterns that hurt to look at, like a shark's mouth crammed into a child's face.

Leo reached the hallway and ducked into the first open door he could find—Theater 1. He slammed it shut behind him and fumbled for the lock, but there wasn't one. The door had no lock, no way to secure it from the inside.

The theater was pitch black, darker even than Theater 5 had been. Leo's phone light revealed the same decaying seats, the same worn carpet, but something felt different about this space. The air was thicker, more oppressive, and it carried a smell like old film stock and developer chemicals.

From outside the door came the sound of fingernails scraping against wood. Long, deliberate scrapes, like someone drawing patterns in the door's surface. The little girl was right outside, just on the other side of a few inches of wood, and she was taking her time.

"I know you're in there," she sang, her voice muffled but still sickeningly sweet. "I can smell your fear. It's delicious."

Leo backed away from the door, his phone light sweeping across the theater. The screen at the front was glowing faintly, displaying a title card in elegant script: "Now Playing: The Midnight Confession - A SilverGate Original."

Rule nine flashed in his mind: "If Theater 1 is showing a movie with a title, do not watch it. Ever."

But the title was already burned into his vision, already working its way into his consciousness like a splinter. The screen flickered, and for just a moment, Leo saw himself reflected there—not in static like Theater 5, but in perfect clarity, as if he were already part of whatever film was about to play.

The scraping outside had stopped. The little girl's voice was gone. But somehow, that felt worse than when she'd been taunting him. Silence in SilverGate wasn't peace—it was anticipation.

Leo found what looked like a supply closet at the back of the theater and squeezed inside, pulling the door shut as quietly as possible. The space was tiny, barely large enough for one person, filled with old projection equipment and film canisters that felt brittle to the touch. He crouched in the darkness, listening for any sound that might tell him where the girl had gone.

Minutes passed. His phone showed 1:47 AM, but time felt meaningless in this place. Had he been hiding for five minutes or fifty? The darkness was so complete it seemed to have weight, pressing down on him from all sides.

Then he heard it: the theater door creaking open.

Footsteps on the carpet, light and deliberate. The little girl had found her way inside. Leo held his breath, pressing himself back against the closet's rear wall as the footsteps moved closer.

"I know you're here somewhere," the girl's voice drifted through the theater, no longer sweet but flat and mechanical. "There's nowhere to run in SilverGate. Nowhere to hide. The theater sees everything."

The footsteps stopped directly outside the closet door.

"Found you."

Leo's heart hammered against his ribs as the door handle began to turn. Through the crack at the bottom of the door, he could see a faint pink glow—the girl's dress, illuminated by some impossible light source.

The handle stopped turning. The girl giggled, a sound like breaking glass.

"Not yet," she whispered. "It's not time yet. But soon. Very, very soon."

The pink glow faded. The footsteps retreated, moving back toward the theater entrance. Leo heard the door open and close, and then silence returned.

He waited another ten minutes before emerging from the closet, his whole body shaking with adrenaline and terror. The theater was empty, the screen once again black. But as he made his way toward the exit, Leo couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched by invisible eyes, judged by entities that existed beyond human comprehension.

He slipped out of Theater 1 and back into the hallway. The little girl was nowhere to be seen, but her presence lingered like a bad smell. On the door to Theater 1, carved deep into the wood, were fresh scratches forming letters:

"SOON"

Leo hurried back to the lobby, checking his phone as he went. 2:03 AM. Time for another sweep, another opportunity to make a fatal mistake. But he was alive. He'd encountered the entity from rule six and survived by following the instructions exactly.

The knocking from Theater 4 had resumed, steady and patient. From Theater 3 came new sounds—not screaming this time, but applause. Slow, rhythmic clapping that seemed to echo his footsteps as he retrieved the broom for his second lobby cleaning.

As Leo began to sweep, he found himself thinking about the little girl's words. "The Last Showing." She'd called the movie "The Last Showing," then changed it to "The First Performance." But something about that first title nagged at him, felt significant in a way he couldn't quite grasp.

What was "The Last Showing"? And why did the thought of it fill him with a dread that went beyond anything he'd experienced so far tonight?

The applause from Theater 3 grew louder, more enthusiastic, as if whatever was inside approved of his questions.

Leo swept faster, suddenly desperate to finish his task and move on to whatever horror waited in the next rule. Because despite everything he'd endured, he was beginning to understand that the worst was yet to come.

The little girl had been testing him, preparing him.

For what, he didn't dare imagine.