Tomorrow Lies in Ambush

Repeat Performance

The trouble came to a head when they picked on Milton Pryngle.

Do you remember him? In old movies he was usually the harassed, exasperated hotel clerk. He was short and dapper, with a petulant round face and an exquisite slow burn which I have always considered the equal of Edgar Kennedy’s. And when they picked on him, they had gone too far.

Perhaps I’m wrong about when this mess started. Perhaps, if I was one of those people who think deeply about causes and effects—like my projectionist, Porter Hastings—I would say it all began in my childhood. I was a fanatical moviegoer from the age of seven and before reaching high school had already decided that the only business worth considering was owning a theatre. Twenty years later I finally made it and, although I hadn’t foreseen the effects of things like colour television, was still convinced it was the best life in the world. Mine is a small suburban theatre—a stucco cube which had once been white and now is an uncertain yellow, with streaks of saffron where the gutters are particularly bad—but I make sure it’s clean inside, and my choice of repertory movies attracts a steady flow of customers. There are plenty of old films on television, but they get chopped up too much, and any connoisseur knows the only way to appreciate their flavour is in the original nostalgic atmosphere of the stalls.

Anyway, the trouble sneaked up on me a month or so ago—in disguise. I was standing beside the box office watching the mid-week crowd trickle out into the blustery darkness. Most of the faces were familiar to me, and I was nodding good-night to about every other one when C. J. Garvey shuffled past me, turned up his coat collar and disappeared through the outer door. His name probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but C. J. Garvey was a bit player in upwards of a hundred undistinguished movies, always as a kindly, world-wise pawnbroker. I doubt if he ever spoke more than three lines, but any time a script called for a kindly, world-wise pawnbroker, Garvey was automatically the man.

I was surprised to discover he was still alive, and amazed to find him going to a movie in a small-town theatre in the mid-West. The thing which really got me, however, was the magnitude of the coincidence—the main feature that night was The Fallen Rainbow and Garvey was in it, playing his usual role. Filled with a sentimental yearning to let the old guy know his movie career had not gone entirely unnoticed, I hurried out on to the front steps but there was no sign of him in the windy, rain-seeded night. I went back in and met Porter Hastings coming down the stairs from the projection room. He appeared worried.

“We had that dim-out tonight again, Jim,” he said. “That’s the third Wednesday night in a row.”

“It can’t have been serious—there weren’t any complaints.” I was in no mood for technical trivialities. “Do you know who walked out through that door just a minute ago? C. J. Garvey!”

Hastings looked unimpressed. “It’s as if there was some kind of a power drain. A real massive one which sucks all the juice out of my projectors for a few seconds.”

“Listen to what I’m saying, Port. C. J. Garvey had a bit part in The Fallen Rainbow—and he was in our audience tonight in person.”

“Was he?”

“Yes. Just think of the coincidence.”

“It doesn’t seem much of a coincidence to me. He was probably passing through town, saw that one of his old movies was showing here and stopped by to have a look at it. Straightforward cause and effect, Jim. What I’d like to know is what goes on around here on Wednesday nights to overload the power supplies like that. Our regulars will be noticing these dim-outs and getting the idea I can’t handle the job.”

I started to reassure him but just then old Mr. and Mrs. Collins came shuffling out into the lobby. They both have rheumatism and so are usually the last to leave the building before we close the doors. Sometimes, when their twinges are worse than usual, they complain a bit about draughts, or it might be smoke or someone crunching popcorn too loudly, but I don’t mind. My business is built upon people feeling as comfortable, and relaxed in the theatre as if they were at home, and the regulars are entitled to have their say about things.

“Good-night, Jim,” Mrs. Collins said. She hesitated, obviously with something on her mind, then came a little closer to me. “Have you started selling seaweed?”

“Seaweed?” I blinked. “Mrs. Collins, it’s years since I have even seen a piece of seaweed. Do people actually go around buying and selling it?”

“The edible kind they do. And if you’re going to start selling that smelly stuff in the kiosk Harry and me aren’t coming back. We can just as easy go to the Tivoli on Fourth Street, you know. Dulse you call the kind you eat.”

“Don’t worry,” I said seriously. “As long as I’m running this theatre not one piece of dulse will ever cross the threshold.” I held the door open while they hobbled through, then I turned back to Hastings but he had disappeared back up into his den. By that time the place was empty except for staff so I went into the auditorium for a final look around. There’s a sad, musty atmosphere in a movie house after everybody has gone home, but this time something extra had been added. I sniffed deeply, then shook my head. Who, I thought, would be crazy enough to bring seaweed to the movies?

That was the first Wednesday night to go slightly off key, C. J. Garvey’s night—but it wasn’t till the following one that I began to get an uneasy feeling there was something queer going on in my theatre.

It was another rainy evening and a pretty good crowd had come in to see Island Love and the main feature, The Fighting Fitzgeralds. I was standing in my favourite spot, a niche in the rear wall where I can see all of the auditorium and watch the screen at the same time, when one of the dim-outs which annoyed Hastings so much occurred. It happened near the end of the show when another of my favourite bit players, Stanley T. Mason, was on the screen. Mason never became a ‘star’ bit player—which is what I call that handful of lesser actors whose names always crop up when people who think they know a lot about old movies start to chew the fat—but he turned in quite a few gem-like performances in ‘B’ features, usually as something like an English remittance man exiled in the States. He was lecturing one of the Fighting Fitzgeralds on the value of good breeding, in his superbly reedy British accent, when the picture faded to near blackness for a good three seconds. Some of the audience were starting to get restive when the screen flickered and brightened to its former intensity. I breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed—complete shutdowns are bad for business, more because of the loss of audience confidence than the issue of a houseful of complimentary tickets.

Just then it came back. The seaweed smell, I mean. I sniffed it incredulously for a minute, then walked down the centre aisle and used my flash to see if I could catch some health food crank flagrante delicto. Everything seemed normal enough, so I went back out to the lobby to think things over. The smell seemed to cling in my nostrils, an odour of … not seaweed, I suddenly realised, but of the sea itself. At that moment the main feature ended and the crowd began to pour out, those in the vanguard blinking suspiciously at the real world outside as if something might have changed during their absence in another dimension. I stood to one side and was; bidding the regulars good-night when Porter Hastings came clattering down the projection room stairs.

“It happened again,” he said grimly.

“I know.” I nodded, keeping my gaze on the departing patrons, picking out the faces I’d known for years–Mr. and Mrs. Carberry, old Sam Keers who was so regular that he even came in the day of his wife’s funeral, short-sighted Jack Dubois who always sat in the front row, Stanley T. Mason …

“What are you going to do about it?” Hastings demanded.

“I don’t know, Port. That’s your side of …’ My voice faded away. Stanley T. Mason! I had just seen one of the actors in The Fighting Fitzgeralds walking out of my theatre from a showing of his own film.

“We can talk technicalities in the morning,” I said, moving away. “There’s somebody over there I want to see.”

“Hold on, Jim.” Hastings grabbed my arm. “This is serious. There might be a fire risk, because …’

“Later!” I broke away and shouldered through the crowd to the door, but it was too late. Mason had disappeared into the breezy darkness of the street. I went back inside to where Hastings was waiting with a hurt look on his face.

“Sorry,” I said, trying to put my thoughts in order, ‘but there’s something weird going on here, Port.” I reminded him about having seen C. J. Garvey the previous Wednesday, and was telling him about Stanley T. Mason when a fresh thought struck me. “And I’ll tell you something else. He was wearing the same clothes as in the film—one of those tweed overcoats with the big herringbone pattern you don’t see any more.”

Hastings looked unimpressed, as usual. “It’s a television stunt or something. Hidden camera, old-time actors forgotten by the millions they used to entertain. What’s worrying me is this smell of ozone around the place.”

“Ozone?”

“Yeah—allotropic oxygen. You get it floating around after there’s been a massive electrical discharge. That’s why …’

“That’s the stuff you smell at the seaside?”

“So I’m told. I’m worried about a short circuit, Jim. That power has got to be going somewhere.”

“We’ll get it sorted out somehow,” I assured him absent-mindedly. My brain was slowly getting into gear and had just come up with another brand new thought, one which gave me an inexplicable cold feeling under my belt. It’s easier to spot people when they are going into a movie house, because they enter in ones and twos. I had been in the lobby both Wednesday nights when the place was filling up, and I could swear that neither Garvey nor Mason had gone into my theatre.

But I had seen them coming out!

On the way back to my apartment that night I stopped in at Ed’s Bar for a couple of relaxers, and the first person I saw was big Bill Simpson, a reporter on the Springtown Star. I know him pretty well because when he does movie reviews for the paper he calls in at my office and borrows the promotional hand-outs. As far as I know, he never actually attends any of the films he writes about unless they happen to be science fiction or horror.

“Have a drink, Jim,” he called from his stool at the bar. “What are you looking so worried about, anyway?”

I let him buy me a Bourbon, then I bought a couple, and in between I told what had been going on. “Porter Hastings thinks somebody’s working on a television programme about has-been actors. What do you think?”

Simpson shook his head solemnly. “It’s perfectly obvious to me what’s happening, and I’m afraid it’s rather more sinister than somebody taking a candid camera movie.”

“So what is it?”

“It’s all part of a pattern, Jim. Remember that big meteorite which came down near Leesburg last month? At least, they said it was a meteorite—although nobody ever found a crater.”

“I remember it,” I said, beginning to suspect that Simpson was putting me on.

“Well, the Star carried a very strange story a couple of days later, and I think I’m the only person in the world who had the perspicacity to grasp its true significance. A farmer out that direction went out to inspect his prize hog the morning after the supposed meteorite fell, and what do you think he found in the pen?”

“I give up.”

“Two prize hogs. Absolutely identical. His wife swears the second hog was there, too, but by the time one of our boys had got out there the second hog had vanished. I wondered what had happened to this mysterious creature—then you walked in here and filled in the gaps in its life story.”

“I did?”

“Don’t you see it, Jim?” Simpson drained his glass and signalled the bartender. “That so-called meteorite was a spaceship. Some kind of alien being came out of it, a being so hideous to look at that it would have been shot on sight, but it has one very valuable defence mechanism—it can mimic the shape of any other creature it sees. Having landed in farming country, it first of all made itself into the shape of the only native it could find—a hog.

“Then it got away and came into the city where, in order to get by, it has to assume the shape of a human being. It has to study its subject carefully while adopting its shape, which presents problems, but it discovered there was enough detail in movies for it to use actors as models, and it’s nice and dark inside movie houses.

“So every week the alien comes along to your place, Jim. Perhaps to renew its memory of the human form, perhaps to select a different outward appearance so that it would be difficult to track down. In a way, I almost feel sorry for it.”

“That,” I said stonily, ‘is the greatest load of garbage I ever heard.”

A look of indignation flitted across Simpson’s round face. “Of course it is. What do you expect for one shot of cheap whisky—The War of the Worlds? Set up some decent stuff and we’ll really go to work on your problem.” An hour later, when Ed threw us off the premises, we had decided that one of my Wednesday night regulars was a night club entertainer who was working up a good impersonation act. Or that I was suffering from a very special form of DTs.

Apart from the hangover next morning, my jawing session with Bill Simpson did me a lot of good. Conscious of how ridiculous my formless fears had been, I worked efficiently for the rest of the week, got in a good day’s fishing on Sunday, and was back on the job on Monday feeling great.

Then, on Wednesday night, I saw Milton Pryngle walking out of my theatre, and that was too much.

Because I happened to know that the magnificent Pryngle had died ten years earlier.

During the following week I worried myself into the ground, using the best part of a bottle of whisky a day in the process, and by the time Wednesday came round again I was in pretty bad shape. My poor condition was partly a result of excessive liquor consumption, but mainly it was because—so help me—I was beginning to believe Bill Simpson’s first crazy theory, the one about the monster which changed shape.

Porter Hastings was no help at all. He is so unimaginative I wasn’t able to confide in him, and to make matters worse he had rung the power company on his own initiative. The result was that inspectors came snooping around checking the power circuits and muttering darkly about closing me down for a week for a complete re-wiring job. All I got in the way of real help from Hastings was confirmation that an image of Milton Pryngle had been on the screen during last Wednesday’s dim-out. This convinced me that Simpson’s alien was a reality, and that it needed power to do its changing act—power which it somehow managed to suck out of the theatre’s supplies. It also gave me the idea of setting a trap for the beast which was making such a mess of my affairs.

On Wednesday morning I went down and saw Hy Fink in the distributor’s office on First Avenue. Knowing my taste in movies pretty well, he was a little surprised when I asked if he could let me have a print of any costume production; but after much consulting of hire schedules he fished out a copy of Quo Vadis. I thanked him fervently, ignoring the way he winced when my breath hit him, and hurried away with the cans under my arm.

I went to the theatre earlier than usual and slipped upstairs to Hastings’ projection room. Hastings doesn’t like me fooling around with his gear, but I was in no state to worry unduly about his feelings. I put the first reel of Quo Vadis on the stand-by projector and fiddled around with it until a close-up of Robert Taylor in the uniform of a Roman officer was in the gate. Satisfied with my work, I went to my office, had another drink and rang the Springtown police station. It took only a few seconds to get through to Sergeant Wightman, an officer I’m on good terms with because I give him complimentaries for all the children’s matinees.

“Hello there, Jim,” he boomed in a jovial voice, doubtless imagining I was giving out more tickets.

“Bart,” I said carefully, “I’m having a bit of trouble here at the theatre.”

“Oh!” His voice immediately became wary. “What sort of trouble?”

“Well, it isn’t very serious. It’s just that most Wednesday nights this screwy character comes in for the last feature. He doesn’t actually do anything—he just sort of puts on funny clothes while the show’s running—but I’m a bit worried about him. Never know when somebody like that might go over the edge, do you?”

“Why don’t you refuse to let him in?”

“That’s the trouble—I’m not even sure what he looks like. He’s normal enough on the way in, but when he’s coming out he could be dressed differently. He might even …’ I swallowed painfully, ‘… be tricked out like a Roman centurion.”

There was a lengthy silence. “Jim,” Wightman said finally, ‘you haven’t been drinking, have you?”

I laughed. “At this time of the day? You know me better than that.”

“All right. What do you want me to do?”

“Could you have a squad car in the district from say nine o’clock till 10.45 when the crowd is leaving?”

“I suppose so,” he said doubtfully. ‘But if this guy does show up, how will I know him?”

“I told you—he’ll probably be wearing funny clothes. I have an idea that …’ I laughed again,”… he looks a bit like Robert Taylor,” When I set the phone down I was perspiring freely, and it took two more drinks to get my nerves quieted.

Porter Hastings looked surprised when I followed him upstairs to the projection room. “Don’t breathe on me,” he said. “I want to keep a clear head for the night’s work.”

“I only had a quick one—is it noticeable?”

“I wish I could figure out what’s eating you these days.” His tone left no doubt he was pretty disgusted with me. “What do you want up here, Jim?”

“Ah … it’s about the Wednesday night dim-outs.”

His eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. “What about them? I told you there’d be complaints.”

“There haven’t been any complaints as yet, and there aren’t going to be any. I’ve found out what’s causing the power drain.”

He paused in the act of hanging up his jacket. “What is it?”

“This is a little awkward for me, Port. I can’t explain it to you right now, but I know what we have to do to stop it for good.” I gestured at the stand-by projector with the reel of Quo Vadis in place.

“What the … !” Hastings scowled resentfully at the projector as he realised his domain had been invaded during his absence. “What have you been doing in here, Jim?”

I tried to smile casually. “Like I said, I can’t explain it now, but here’s what I want you to do. Have the stand-by projector warmed up and at the very first sign of a dim-out tonight cut your main lantern and switch over to the stand-by. I want this piece of film on the screen when the power starts to fade. Got it?”

“This is just crazy,” he said moodily. “What difference will that particular piece of film make?”

“For you, a lot of difference,” I promised him. ‘Because if it doesn’t come on just the way I want it—you’re fired.”

The main feature that night was Meet Me In Manhattan—a movie which had an unusually large number of bit parts for Simpson’s alien to choose from. During the supporting programme I stood in my niche at the back of the hall trying to reassure myself about the possible consequences of my plan. If the alien existed only in my fevered imagination no harm would be done; and if it was real I was doing a service for mankind by exposing it. Put like that, there was nothing to worry about, but the normally amiable dimness of the familiar hall seemed to be crawling with menace and by the time the main feature started I was too jumpy to stay in one place.

I went out to the lobby and spent some time scanning the few late arrivals. Jean Magee, who runs the box office, kept staring through her window at me, so I walked outside to check that the squad car promised by Bart Wightman was in the vicinity. There was no sign of it. I debated trying to get him on the phone, then noticed a vehicle which might have been a police cruiser parked near the end of the block. It was raining a little, as is usual on a Wednesday night, so I turned up my collar and walked towards the car, glancing back at the theatre every now and again. The incongruous architecture of the yellow cube looked more out of place than ever in the quiet street, and its neon sign fizzed fretfully in the rain, like a time bomb.

I was nearing the car when the reflections on the wet pavement and store windows dimmed abruptly. Spinning on my heel, I saw that the marquee lighting had faded out. The theatre remained in darkness for a good ten seconds, longer than on previous Wednesdays, then the lighting came on strongly again.

Suddenly scared stiff, I sprinted towards the car and saw its police markings. One of the windows rolled down and a policeman stuck his head out.

“This way,” I shouted. “This way.”

“What’s the trouble?” the officer demanded stolidly.

“I … I’ll explain later. Just then I heard running footsteps and turned to see Porter Hastings belting towards me in his shirtsleeves. I began to get a ghastly premonition.

“Jim,” he gasped. “You’ve got to get back there—all hell has broken out.”

“What do you mean?” The question was rhetorical on my part, because I suddenly knew only too well what had happened. “Did you project that piece of film as I instructed?”

“Of course, I did.” Even under stress he still found time to look indignant at his professionalism being queried.

“The exact frames which were in the gate?”

He looked guilty. “Well, you didn’t say anything about that. I ran a bit of the film to see what it was.”

“And did you wind it back to the frames I wanted?”

There was no time—and no need—for him to answer, because at that moment a wild commotion broke out farther down the street. The police officers in the car, Porter Hastings and I got a grandstand view of something which hasn’t been seen on Earth for over fifteen hundred years—a Roman legion fighting its way out of a tight corner. Their helmets, shields and short swords glinted as they formed a tight square under the marquee, ready to take on all comers. And above their heads, with an irony I was in no mood to appreciate, my neon sign spelled out the word: COLOSSEUM.

“There must be an explanation for this,” one of the policemen told me as he reached for his microphone to call headquarters, ‘and all I can say is, it had better be a good one.”

I nodded glumly. I had a good enough explanation—but I had an uneasy feeling that my Wednesday night trade was ruined for ever.