Chapter 29: A Show

As Violet walked, she kicked aimlessly into the grass, scattering grasshoppers and tiny silver moths like flakes of fluttering ash. After another block the cat reappeared and positioned itself close to her side, ears twitching.

“Hmm.” It grumbled, aiming a displeased glance over one shoulder.

Violet stopped and looked back, just in time to catch a hint of amorphous motion, a skirt of white fabric slipping silently around the corner of a building perhaps a block back.

“It’s still following us.” Violet said, and, despite herself, felt slightly relieved to have something else to talk about. Even if it was the beast, at least she knew (as much as a person could know anything) that it wasn’t planning to hurt her.

The cat nodded, tail twitching thoughtfully.

“You really don’t know what it is?” Violet asked.

“No.” The cat said.

Violet reviewed what she knew about the beast, which was precious little. It certainly didn’t feel like a demon, even if it spoke like one, and the construction of its form was entirely inanimate. Demons lived off of souls, the life force that could only be gotten from a living being. Violet couldn’t imagine a demon ever choosing to construct its body out of something entirely devoid of sustenance.

“Of all the myriad things that we’ve encountered,” the cat said suddenly. “I’m shocked that this is the one you’re not afraid of.”

“It doesn’t want to hurt me.” Violet said with a shrug.

The cat began to roll its eyes, then seemed to realize something and laughed instead. The noise was sharp, filled with a sudden and very genuine amusement.

“I am occasionally surprised by how feline your observations can be.” It said.

Violet looked to the corner the beast had disappeared behind.

“Do you think it’s an animal or a person in there? You know, at the….” She fumbled for the right word but found herself wanting. How could one accurately describe the very font of a soul?

The cat considered.

“Human,” it decided after only a moment. “I think it would take a greater interest in me if it were an animal. In any case, I wonder if I could kill it.”

Violet blinked, caught off guard.

“No.” She said, displeased by the sudden turn in the conversation.

“You’re right,” the cat nodded, giving her a sidelong glance. “I have no thumbs, the killing part would have to be up to you. I expect you could break its skull with your fire poker if you hit it hard enough.”

Violet said nothing, her gaze returning to the ground. The cat was being at least somewhat facetious, but a worrying thread of authenticity ran the length of her companion’s words.

“Genuinely, though,” the cat said after a long moment had passed. “I don’t think breaking its skull would be enough. More than likely it would turn right around and kill us both. Or just stare. I can’t say.”

“Can we stop talking about this?” Violet asked.

The cat ignored her.

“Really, we’re extremely lucky that this thing doesn’t seem too homicidal. It’s not afraid of your sigil, it’s not afraid of the daylight…I suppose we could try catching it on fire, but that’s not guaranteed to work either….”

“I feel sick.” Violet mumbled faintly. Really, the sickness had never gone away, but now it was beginning to roil again.

This time the cat gave her a small, almost guilty look.

“…Stop talking about this?” It asked.

Violet nodded.

“Is there anything you do want to talk about?” Her companion gently pressed.

“No.” She said.

“Okay. Um…keep an eye on your skeletal friend back there and let me know if it does anything interesting.”

Violet sighed, which the cat seemed to interpret as an affirmative, and went to stare at the ground once more. More than any dread and despair, now she just felt numb and faintly, persistently ill.

They’d proceeded only halfway down the next block when the cat, which had strayed well ahead, suddenly took a keen and very demonstrative interest in one of the buildings on the righthand side of the street. Violet paused to examine her companion’s find.

The building itself was wider than it was tall, only two stories at most. It had probably been quite grand once, but time had taken a toll on its more decorative elements. There were a pair of revolving doors standing side by side beneath a portico with faded red tile columns. The glass panes that walled off the door’s segments had survived mostly intact, but were filmed with grime and cracked in a thousand places.

A white plastic rectangle spanned the length of the portico, filled with horizontal black lines like a sheet of writing paper, but the facade itself was blank except for a number of cracks and holes where the plastic had begun to crumble.

Through the nearest of the holes, Violet saw rows and rows of tiny glass lightbulbs neatly seated in copper sockets. They glittered prettily in the afternoon sun.

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of these.” The cat said, glancing back at Violet as though expecting her to take part in its nostalgia.

Violet had a brief urge to ignore the cat and keep walking, for she had the sense that it was trying to lure her somewhere, but she was just curious enough as to the application of the strange building that she only shuffled in place for a moment before giving in.

“One of what?” She asked.

The cat beamed, knowing it had gotten exactly what it wanted, then nodded towards the first revolving door.

“Follow me,” it said. “I’ll show you.” A moment later it had vanished through a tiny gap in the grimy glass, leaving Violet alone but for the distantly lurking beast. She glanced back, wondering if she might catch a glimpse of her follower, but the beast itself was presently out of sight.

Suppressing a sigh, Violet approached the door. There was a brass plate against the door’s leading edge, helpfully labeled PUSH, and she did just that. The doors had clearly not been operated for a long time, yet still functioned.

Violet, who’d never seen a revolving door in action, tried to turn to watch the whole thing move but realized quickly that she had to keep going, for behind her was another pane of brass rimmed glass, shepherding her busily forward. Mystified, she continued to push, only to accidentally pass by the entrance to the building, a slice of darkness slipping by on her right.

The door couldn’t be described as exceptionally efficient, Violet decided, for it was confusing in a way that didn’t dissipate even after she put together the mechanics…but it held a sense of bizarre exhilaration that no ordinary door could possibly match.

She stepped reluctantly out after another circuit, into the blackness of the building’s interior. Behind her, the revolving door slowly whirred to a halt, settling neatly into place. Violet dug out her lantern and wound it up, splashing light across the length of the room.

It was a large, high ceilinged space, the walls lined with brass framed posters, each frame adorned with the same round glass lightbulbs she’d seen behind the white plastic facade outside. The glow of her lantern glinted merrily within their darkened forms, lending them a moment of new life, however brief.

The posters themselves had long since deteriorated, only shreds and ruined, pulpy bits still enduring. Beneath her feet, Violet could see that she was treading through a great deal of dust, a checkered, red and black tile floor lumpy and half ruined by the intrusion of tree roots and bursts of pale fungus. None of it held even a hint of influence, however, and Violet made herself relax.

On the opposite side of the room from her was a linoleum topped counter that ran for perhaps ten meters. Behind it, at the edge of her lantern light, glass fronted containers glinted dully, rows of glass cylinders rising above nozzles and enamel fronted iceboxes. The counter itself was lined with the skeletal forms of ancient cash registers, and before it stretched a small maze of decaying velvet ropes, meant to herd any approaching people into neat, orderly lines.

Across the back wall, above the counter, stretched a familiar white facade, though on this one Violet could see a small scattering of black plastic letters and numbers still remaining. There were gaps in the letters and Violet couldn’t even begin to guess what the numbers meant, but one word amidst the jumble had remained intact.

“Popcorn.” She read aloud.

“Exactly.” The cat answered, slipping sleekly from the space behind the nearest cash register. Its back paw hit a key and the machine chimed, the noise echoing out into empty space.

“…Are we in a restaurant?” Violet asked, but was already doubtful. If they were in an eatery then where were the tables and chairs? She could see a place next to the counter where a hallway began, so perhaps the whole room was just one big atrium meant for taking people’s orders, but….

The cat smiled and shook its head lightly before trotting along the length of the counter. Its gaze was measured and cool, like an ancient king cataloguing a cache of hidden wealth.

Violet ducked beneath the decaying loops of velvet rope and joined the cat. The floor close to the counter felt unpleasantly sticky beneath her feet. Something not unlike sweetness lingered at the edge of the air.

“Come on back.” The cat invited, and Violet, more curious than ever, decided she might as well see what her companion was so fixated on. She clambered none too gracefully over the counter and immediately found herself ankle deep in a crinkly drift of old plastic wrappers. There were curls of colorful wax paper as well, lying alongside vivid blooms of mildew and faintly phosphorescent moss wherever it seemed that things had been spilled. Along the back wall, in narrow cabinets, Violet saw plastic jugs full of oil, gone milky and hard like wax, streamers of fungus feasting upon their remains. Violet ignored the places where toadstools had developed sulphur yellow petals or rows and lines of feathery feelers akin to the fuzz that came off of lichen. None of it mattered, she told herself.

Further down the line, other cabinets were lined with wire racks that had once held perishable food. Here Violet could see the mummified husks of dried apple cores, and pretzels dry and hard as petrified wood, crumbs of salt glittering like jewels where the dust had not yet dulled them.

A few others were lined with shredded plastic where mice had systematically eaten whatever they could get at, but here and there Violet came across intact packets of….

“Candy, I think,” the cat said from behind her, where it was still pacing along the counter. “Take it with you.”

Violet glanced back, caught between surprise and a sudden uncertainty. There were usually sweet things to be had back home; honey and berries and whatever jams and jellies her mother could successfully make, but candy itself was an unspeakably rare luxury. It also had the faintest tinge of the taboo baked into its very core, for any sort of candy typically required sugar to make…and sugar could only be gotten from the outsiders, when their random drop-offs happened to include it.

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She fingered the packet, its plastic crinkling beneath her fingers. Inside were a dozen hard, oval lozenges. Whatever it was supposed to taste like, Violet could not tell, for the labels had faded to a dull, mucky gray.

“Go ahead.” The cat insisted, taking notice of her hesitation, and Violet pocketed the packet, supposing that it couldn’t hurt.

A more thorough search of the cabinets resulted in her finding another few packets of candy and one wax paper bag that rattled when she shook it.

“Kernels.” Said the cat, ears twitching at the sound.

At this Violet brightened.

“For popcorn.” She said, and was pleased when her companion nodded.

Her mother made popcorn on occasion, usually in the fall when there was spare seed corn to be given out. She served it hot and steaming, with salt and just a little bit of oil sprinkled over top, and they ate it in the parlor while watching the sun set and the Glow become apparent in the northern skies.

Even thinking back on that made Violet feel faintly sad. Again she found herself wondering what her mother was doing at this very moment. What the whole village was doing. Had they given up hope that they’d ever see her again, or was there optimism? Were they waiting to see the Glow rise as an avenging force to cleanse the demons and rescue their home?

“Is that everything?” The cat asked, breaking Violet from her thoughts.

She looked up from the popcorn packet and tucked it away with a sigh.

“I think so.” She said, and the cat turned its gaze towards the neighboring hallway.

“Follow me.” It said mysteriously.

Violet had thought that the candy and popcorn were the main attraction, but it seemed that there was still more to see.

Once into the hallway, Violet left behind even the faint trickles of daylight that had penetrated the revolving doors. Feeling slightly nervous, she wound her lantern back up and took some comfort in the fact that the cat seemed relaxed. The walls of the hallway were similarly filled with framed posters, though these ones had survived in slightly better shape than their counterparts in the atrium. Violet paused next to one that had held its form and leaned in close. The paper sagged in places, and where the colors had not completely faded Violet could see dripping lines where water had dragged colors out of their proper formation. Even through this, she could see a man and a woman, the woman executing some sort of dramatic swoon into the man’s arms. She thought that behind them was a fire, but the swirls of flame were so distorted that Violet couldn’t be sure.

The poster was labeled as well, in great, ornate letters that had all blotched into perfect incomprehension. Drips and drabs of running ink stained the paper below like hanging stalactites, piercing what appeared to be several rows of tiny white text.

Violet moved on, quietly confused.

In between the posters were doors, spaced rather widely along the length of the hallway, and the cat guided her through the very first one. It led straight into another large room, though this one proved to be very different than the atrium. There were seats in the room, rows and rows of closely spaced velvet chairs, with padded seats and backs. Violet focused on this for a half second, then realized that the perspective of the room was entirely off from what she’d been expecting and took a quick step back, unnerved.

The walls and ceiling were perfectly straight and level, but the floor dipped at an angle, like a ship about to capsize, and the seats dipped too, though, strangely, they remained perfectly upright, not quite following the decline of the floor.

Then Violet’s eyes found the opposite wall of the room and her attention was diverted yet again.

A great sheet of white silk hung from corner to corner, enveloping the entire wall. It had clearly suffered over the years, for great rips and gaps had opened in its length. Behind it Violet could see a wide, empty space filled with mysterious bits of ruined equipment.

Again she looked at the perplexing nature of the floor and the seats and suddenly understood. The whole room had been purposefully oriented in such a way that everyone, from the closest row to the furthest, could easily see the screen. What the purpose of the screen was Violet could not say, and indeed she felt a prickle of uneasiness at the thought of such attention being paid to an inanimate object; yet the reverence was clear.

Violet stepped forward and wandered slowly down the narrow aisle that ran between the right wall of the room and the rows and rows of seats, perplexed and weirdly impressed all at once.

Around her, the cat walked along the tops of the sturdier chairs. Some had collapsed, but most remained just as they had probably been when this place, whatever it was, had been functional.

It was a bizarre thing to imagine people funneling themselves into the dark, packed close together, the screen dominating their view. Even envisioning such a scene for a moment put a shiver through her, though not entirely one of fear.

“Do you know where we are?” The cat asked from off to Violet’s right, standing primly atop one crooked, sagging seat.

“No.” Violet said.

“We are at the heart of a cinema.” The cat’s voice rose, a certain grandiosity inflecting its tone.

Violet furrowed her brows, then decided simply to wait for the cat to further explain, which it gladly did after a suitably dramatic pause.

“Most everything humans have ever created in the service of civilization has only served to degenerate the species, but this….” The cat stared intently up at the ruins of the great silken screen, a shiver of awe running the whole length of its body. “What a marvelous annihilator.”

“I still don’t know what any of this is.” Violet said, but the intensity of the cat’s voice had infected her somehow and she couldn’t help but feel an electric prickle of significance as she followed its gaze to the head of the room, up to the screen again.

“Imagine that this place is shiny and new,” the cat instructed as it leapt from seat to seat, tail waving demonstratively behind it, and for a moment Violet thought that the colors really did get a little bit brighter, the velvet renewed and the screen put back together. “You’d take a seat and upon the screen would come a story, like a picture book in motion.”

Violet stared hard at the screen, which hung great and pale in the half light, like the ghost of all things that had been. It was difficult to imagine the whole of its expanse lit up in color and motion like a world unto itself.

The cat observed her efforts for a moment, then zipped a row forward and cleared its throat.

“Come to the front of the room.” It said, and Violet did so.

From there the cat had a series of very specific instructions, which at first Violet could only balk at.

“Why?” She asked.

“Leave your lantern right here,” the cat repeated, tapping the chosen spot gently. It was the very centermost seat in the first row of the theater, with an uninterrupted view of the screen. “Make sure it’s as bright as it can be, then go back a few rows and sit down. I’ll take care of the rest.”

“But why?” Violet repeated, reluctant to give up her lantern, even for a moment. She didn’t like the idea of moving back even a dozen or so meters. Of sitting in the half darkness, perfectly vulnerable in the event that something terrible did come through the door and make a run at her.

“Just for a moment,” the cat said. “Trust me.”

Sensing that the cat probably wasn’t going to let this go, Violet set her lantern down, then moved a few rows back and took a seat. The velvet, old and dirty, crackled beneath her, yet there remained an undeniable sort of luxuriant softness. She did her best to relax into the seat, then began to realize what the cat had done. Staring at the screen now, a portion of it had been illuminated, and though that portion was just as shabby and neglected as the rest of the cinema, Violet could see a hint of what it must have been like in that indeterminable time before. It was a bit like the Glow, she thought distractedly, then was surprised by a distinctly cat shaped interruption in the light, a shadow pouring forth onto the screen.

“Are you ready?” The cat asked from where it stood, unseen, before her lantern. “Perhaps eat some candy. A show is best observed with treats at the ready.”

Violet blinked, suddenly remembering the scavenged packets, and dug one out. Ripping the top away, she peered inside, finding that it was full of dusty, oval lozenges. She thought that they were yellow but couldn’t be entirely sure. Popping one into her mouth with only a hint of caution, Violet blinked and couldn’t keep herself from shaking her head reflexively. The candies might have been old but the taste was sudden and sharp, sweet and acidic and very much present. She’d not tasted something so unbelievably sharp before and had a sudden urge to spit the lozenge out. Violet stuck out her tongue, the lozenge fizzing busily where she’d tucked it into one cheek, but couldn’t exactly say that she disliked it.

Really, it was like anything else in the cinema, overwhelming and bizarre but also immensely exciting. Before her, where it was projected on the screen, the shadow of the cat began to move.

It was slow at first, the cat getting itself used to the limitations of the lantern’s light and what could be shown upon the screen, but slowly the motions grew more complex. The cat was dancing, and then it was flickering and leaping and Violet could not be entirely sure how many of the cat there were for it seemed to be everywhere at once, in midair and upon the ground, crouching low as if playing a hunter, and held regally high in the image of a conquering king. And though no music played to accompany the story Violet could hear the cat’s paws upon the ground as it landed, and the subtle, nearly imperceptible fizz of its travels as it dashed in and out of the shadows, twisting and leaping in the air.

The candy dissolved into sugary shards in her mouth and though it made the back of her throat feel sticky and strange, she ate another lozenge and realized that her heart was racing and her headache had been very much subdued.

Then the lantern began to dim and Violet blinked, broken from the moment. The screen was suddenly filled with blotches and rips again, and the cat paused in its motions as Violet stood and hurried forward to wind her lantern back up. She knelt next to the seat on which the lantern stood and watched as the cat trotted forward, panting, legs trembling with exertion. Still, her companion remained perfectly upright, tail held proudly aloft and eyes gleaming with a pride that was sun bright and indelible.

“That was….” Violet struggled to find a name for what she’d just witnessed. “A cinema?”

The cat chuckled lightly, still out of breath.

“Yes,” it said. “Don’t applaud too generously, girl.”

Violet hurriedly clapped, the noise echoing in the empty room, and the cat laughed before vanishing, sliding comfortably into place on the seat next to her a half second later. One velvety paw stroked the back of her shoulder.

“Feel better?” It asked.

Violet nodded, and truly meant it.

She left the cinema blinking like a mole in the sunlight, very much streaked with dust. Yet, she couldn’t bring herself to care about that, for her pockets were loaded with candy and there was an undeniable lightness in her center. All of the old worries and dread remained, the cinema had not erased them, but Violet found that it was suddenly much easier to not be overwhelmed by their weight.

Unable to bite back a sudden yawn, Violet stretched her arms over her head, then caught a slow curl of motion out of the corner of one eye and whirled to see the beast peeking shyly from around the far corner of the cinema building.

Next to her, the cat fixed the lurking beast with a suspicious gaze.

“Look at this thing,” it said. “It’s not even hiding anymore.”

Violet wasn’t paying much attention to the cat, her eyes settled instead upon the beast. It didn’t look lost exactly, but there was a certain aimlessness about it, clearly perceptible even across the blankness of its skull.

“Hey, um….” Violet hesitated, lost for something to call the indefinable thing. “Hey you. You can come over if you want.”

The beast ducked its head almost bashfully, jaws falling open. Violet heard a tiny questioning crackle at the front of her mind, but it held nothing decipherable.

Then, delicately, the beast detached from its corner and swept smoothly over. Violet was unable to keep an instinctive shiver of unease from rolling through her as it drew up, just out of easy reach. The beast’s skull was still held low, the inherent grin even more pronounced from that angle.

Next to her, the cat shuffled unhappily but said nothing.

Unsure what to say, and with the beast’s intent stare burning a hole in her, Violet held out her half empty packet of hard candy. The beast eyed it for a moment, visibly curious, then slipped silently forward, jaws opening. Though a fearful flash of suspicious noise clouded her mind, insisting that the beast was surely about to take her hand off at the wrist, Violet felt only the barest brush of polished bone as it took the candy, then the beast had withdrawn. Once it was a polite distance away, it tipped its head sharply back and swallowed the packet whole, like a person downing an oyster.

The candy seemed to have an invigorating effect upon the beast, for quite suddenly it was rocking in place, the bottommost folds of its fabric body curling and stamping as though it was trying to dance. The beast’s jaws fell ecstatically open, then suddenly it had swooped forward to turn a quick circle around Violet, surrounding her in a whirl of plasticky white fabric. There was a distinct coldness at the beast’s center and the touch of its cloth felt slick and soft and strangely electric all at once.

t h a n k --- y o o u --- g -º-

          V i i o l e t

The beast said, then drew swiftly back, its volume somehow increased…a bit like when the cat’s fur was fluffed up, Violet supposed.

She blinked, unsure how to react to the beast’s action. Had that been the spectral equivalent of a hug?

The cat, which had been caught just outside of the beast’s whirl, stared hard, the fur along the center of its back standing straight up. It hurried close to Violet, practically gluing itself to her side.

“So…you’re inviting it in now?” The cat asked, voice brittle with displeasure.

Violet fixed her hair, which had gotten somewhat mussed, and shrugged.

“Why not?” She asked lightly, and couldn’t help but enjoy the discomforted squirm her companion gave in silent response.

Muttering to itself, the cat turned and sulked a few meters down the street, until Violet could only see its eyes staring balefully from out of the grass. She turned her gaze to the beast, riding out another shivery moment of uncanniness as she got used to the strangeness of its form.

“Do you have a name?” She asked, hoping that maybe this time the beast might give her an answer.

n a m e . ? . ---- It asked.

Violet sighed.

“You too?” She asked, and felt something close to pity before wondering if that was the right emotion. The cat seemed to be getting along just fine with nothing more than a taxonomical definition, though…what even was the beast behind its skull and cloak?

The beast opened its jaws slightly, then seemed to reconsider and clicked them shut. It drifted down the street, past the cat and away, stirring the grass as it went. Tiny whirls of blue-green butterflies rose to follow and fluttered gently around the circumference of its skull.

It paused after perhaps twenty meters and looked back, disposition serene and slightly expectant. The jewel bright glow of a turquoise butterfly shifted at the corner of one eye socket, while a glittering and only slightly clumsy grasshopper made a staggery landing atop the beast’s nose. The beast seemed to notice none of this, only watched placidly as Violet stirred and began to walk.

It had followed her for long enough to know that she was going north, Violet realized, and so north was where it was going too, no questions asked.

The cat collected itself next to her as she walked, and though Violet could sense a hint of annoyance in its bearing, her companion’s gaze wasn’t too questioning when it met hers.

“I suppose I did advocate the practice of talking to everything.” It said, then turned its gaze to the ground and was silent.