Devil’s Cinema. Crypt of the Seven Angels. Natalie Yacobson

in a matter of days, and all tickets would be sold out a year in advance. Young people love thrills, and the cinema provides them in abundance. After it, you do not need to visit any fear rooms or attractions. The impressions from one session will last for a lifetime. Daniel himself did not know where to go after watching the film, except for the nearest tree on which to hang himself. If he met Alais in person, he could commit any extreme.

      The extinguished screen indicated that the golden era of the film was already over, and there would be no continuation. But the star of the film stood by. Thanks to her presence, even someone’s heavy claws, scratching the floor here and there, did not cause much fear.

      “Who are you?” it was probably stupid to ask, but the silence strained. “Athenais? This name is shown in the credits.”

      “Athenais,” she repeated the name as if she had heard for the first time and twisted her face in displeasure.

      “Well, yes, you are an actress. Probably, Athenais is just your nickname.”

      “I’m not an actress!”

      Her harsh objection burned like mercury. So, the act of terrorism was not invented in order to scare away annoying viewers from the plebeians from the elite cinema? And then it turns out that Atenais really died, and does not stand in front of him. But even her clothes are almost the same as in the film. Only now, in a strange Egyptian costume, details of something modern appeared. He just now saw that under a sophisticated top with stones and chains, he was wearing the most ordinary newfangled low-waisted jeans. Notice the piercing on the flat stomach and the scarab ring threaded into the navel. Involuntarily he glanced at her. Everything went well with her. And she’s definitely not dead. Her skin is pale and slightly phosphorescent, but not rotting.

      Why does this feeling that she left the screen, having just crossed the line of two worlds, offscreen and real, does not leave him? And the cinema itself is like a portal between these two worlds.

      “Alais!” he called her the name of the heroine from the film, without even thinking about the consequences. What if she gets offended? After all, the beauty at the end of the film was beheaded by Taor. Daniel has long ago noticed that for many people, even unbelievers, there is a certain set of beliefs and will accept. Not everyone is happy when he is compared, for example, with the executed Marie Antoinette, even if she was a queen during her lifetime.

      “Okay, you can call me that,” the girl responded vividly. “I also give you permission to come here in the future whenever you want. You haven’t seen much here yet.

      “There are sessions here not only at midnight?”

      “There’s a lot going on here. And you can see even more.”

      “That is, there are many such unusual films shown in the cinema?”

      She nodded.

      “There must be variety.”

      “But I thought that nothing better could be done. It was just a masterpiece. It is impossible to repeat it.”

      “You’re wrong.”

      “In any case, I was only given an invitation for today.”

      “It’s just a souvenir,” Alais attached to his invitation either a pin or a hard sticker in the shape of a scarab.

      So is the scarab a symbol of the cinema or is it a sacred blue lotus? Daniel did not dare to ask directly about it. You never know how you can offend a stranger. Many people he worked with were nervous about some topics that most people find funny or completely harmless. Everyone has their own phase shift, developed in the course of difficult family relationships or hard work. And according to Alais it was clear that she was especially sensitive to some local traditions known only to her.

      “My permission is enough to always let you in here.”

      It’s good if she didn’t exaggerate her importance. It is unlikely that such a young fragile girl is capable of running everything here. Unless she is the owner’s daughter.

      “And I hope that’s enough to make you feel safe here.”

      The guards in front of the entrance would have increased the sense of security much more, but, of course, he did not tell her about it. Why be rude to a girl who charmed you so much. You can go to hell for such a beauty. He even feared that he would hardly leave this place, as it would turn out that the whole cinema was just a fantastic dream. And there will be no repetition of such a dream.

      The exit door suddenly flung open by itself, and the beauty easily stepped into the auditorium, overcoming several steep steps at once.

      “Alais!” he still called to her before leaving. “You’re not dead after all.”

      She was not even offended by such unhealthy curiosity. She just shrugged her shoulders casually.

      “As you see!”

      Casual viewers

      Old newspaper headlines turned alarmingly black on the glowing screen. It was worth buying a new smartphone and reconnecting the Internet to see it. Missing People, No Corpses Found, Tragedy in the Blue Lotus, Victims of a Terrorist Attack or the Devil?, “The terrorist attack brought a hell of a fire”, “The dead take revenge.”

      All of the articles retold the same story in slightly different ways, in which too many details remained unclear. Basically, journalists only made assumptions based on a few known facts. The cinema was seized on the night of the premiere, one of those present was armed and resisted, somehow their actions provoked a fire. Atenais certainly died among the first victims. According to reports for the summer of 2013, the entire cinema burned down, but in the fall of the same year, people who entered it out of curiosity began to disappear in its building. Where then did the building come from if it burned down? Several months are definitely not enough to rebuild it. The cinema itself could not be reborn from the ashes and grow in the same place like a tree.

      A tree? Daniel tensed at the memory of a hellish trunk with faces and ashes. Is it possible? Was it that tree?

      For such thoughts, they may be considered insane, and, of course, he does stupidly, wasting time looking for information instead of studying the script. So tomorrow he will not be able to work again, because again he will not get enough sleep, and in the end they will really decide to replace him with someone else. He should focus on pressing problems, and not look for a clue to what happened many years ago. But Athenais was so hooked on him that he could not think of anything else. Why hadn’t he noticed her before when she was still alive? Surely, her face flashed in all the glossy magazines and news bulletins. Judging by the abundance of information about her in the press of those years, she was overly popular, and he did not even see her. And if he saw it, he would certainly join those fans who began to die en masse after her death. This is not surprising! She possessed the gift of strongly influencing the psyche, frames from her film penetrated into consciousness and continued to spin there by themselves, even when the screen was already extinguished.

      A golden creature, Egypt, ceremonies with blood and demons, a winged beauty behind the throne of the pharaoh, a bloody sickle in her hands… All this contained some special symbolism. The frames were etched into the memory and, together with admiration, caused fear.

      Was this movie scheduled to be shown at the premiere where Athenais was killed? Probably, after that tragedy, the film never got into wide distribution, because otherwise most of the world would have gone crazy from watching. Probably because of this, some knowledgeable group of people undertook the act of terrorism. The film was planned as a secret weapon capable of penetrating viewers’ psyche and depriving them of their will to live, the ability to think. Daniel still felt himself there, in the halls of the Ancient Egypt. The reality is almost completely erased after viewing. Alais seemed to be standing next to him and knocking into his mind.

      “Let me in this world!”

      And next to her, a dazzling