Chapter One - Black and White
“May it be...” Anne sang softly
“No!” Kathryn clapped her hands firmly over her
ears. “You are not getting that song stuck in my head!”
“What’s wrong with ‘May it Be’?” Cammy asked, defending the song.
“Nothing...I just don’t want
it stuck in my head,” Kathryn replied firmly.
“Here we are!” Anne
announced, deftly changing the subject, as she pulled her car into a parking
space and switched off the engine.
The three girls practically
flew out of the car and into the old dollar theatre - the only place in town
still showing their favorite movie - The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship
of the Ring.
“You know what?” Cammy commented thoughtfully as the girls
stepped into the ticket line, “I should make this the last time I see the
movie. Then, I’ll have seen it nine
times!”
“Ooo...” Kathryn replied,
feigning awe. Ignoring Cammy’s teasing
glare, she said, “I’ll have seen it five times.”
“Four for me,” Anne
replied. “And this’ll probably be the
last time I see it in the theatre.” She
sighed regretfully.
All regret vanished from her
face, however, when she stepped up to the ticket counter. “One for Lord of the Rings!” she
announced.
The girls trooped down the
hallway, chattering contentedly about the movie.
Just then, a tall figure
draped completely in a black robe swept past them. As it did, the figure’s face turned towards
them, as if it stared at them from the depths of its inky hood.
All three girls shuddered as
a chill raced down their spines, averted their eyes, and hurried in to choose
their seats. Silence enveloped them for
a long moment as they sat stock-still, trembling ever so slightly.
Finally, Cammy regained her
composure and remarked, “That guy was really creeping
me out! The way he looked at us was just...ugh!” She shuddered dramatically.
Silence descended upon the
trio as each of them shuddered once more with the memory of that black-robed
figure.
Finally, a hint of a smile
touched Kathryn’s mouth. “What kind of
crazy would come to Lord of the Rings dressed like a Ringwraith?”
“A
complete Tolkien nut?” Anne asked
rhetorically.
“The movie’s been out six
months, though,” Cammy put in. “You’d
think that even the nuts would get sick of dressing up after that long!”
“Besides, he hasn’t come in
here yet...” Kathryn let the thought
trail off.
Once again changing the
subject, this time to keep herself from freaking out,
Anne said, “We need to remember to listen for that one line in Danish.”
“Yeah!” Cammy
seconded, eagerly following the topic shift.
“I really want to hear that. And
you two need to watch Frodo during the ‘Right...where are we going?’ line. He looks highly amused.”
“I am going to see the car
this time,” Kathryn vowed. “I have seen
this movie four times, and I have still
not seen the freakin’ car!”
Cammy, the only one who
actually had seen the car, just laughed.
“Kat, you keep saying that...”
Just then, the lights
dimmed. Anne jumped slightly and scanned
the room. “Girls,” she whispered, “we’re
the only ones here!”
Sure enough, the theatre was
empty, save for the three friends.
“That’s really weird,”
Cammy said, her voice low.
Kathryn shrugged this
off. “You know what that means, don’t you?
That means we can make all the comments we want, as loudly as we want,
and nobody will care!”
“True...” Cammy was clearly hesitant.
“Besides, the movie has been
out for over six months now. It’s to be
expected that there’s nobody here.” Anne
sounded suspiciously as if she was attempting to convince herself.
Just then, however, the screen
darkened after the final preview, Galadriel’s familiar voice began the
prologue, and the girls reverted to their overly-hyper state, commonly dubbed “Lord
of the Rings Hyperactivity Syndrome.”
True to Kathryn’s earlier
comment, the three girls took full advantage of the empty theatre to voice
their usually whispered comments aloud.
They hummed aloud with the theme music, oo-ed and ah-ed at Frodo’s
wonderfully blue eyes, aw-ed at Sam’s “I’ll be the furthest from home I’ve ever
been” speech, poked each other when Merry and Pippin appeared, and generally
laughed their way through the entire first section of the film.
Anne poked both of the
others when the hobbits sat down at the
On the screen, Sam said,
“That man’s done nothing but stare at you since we’ve arrived.”
Anne sat up a bit
straighter. The other two girls giggled.
The screen went completely
dark.
“What?” Anne yelled.
“They can’t do that to me!”
“Ok...that’s really bogus,”
Cammy added.
Silence rushed in to fill
the void left behind by the disappearance of the movie. A long pause followed, during which all three
girls stared hopefully at the screen, willing the movie to restart.
Without warning, a crash
echoed from behind the girls. As if with
one mind, all three leaped from their seats and ran back to the small window in
the back wall that opened into the projection room.
A whirlwind spun violently
inside the projection room. Bits of
equipment and movie reels whirled around in circles, glancing off the walls and
colliding heavily with each other.
And, in the very center of
the whirlwind, yet untouched by its fury, stood the black-robed figure the
girls had seen earlier!
Considering their position,
the three girls reacted fairly well to this mind-boggling sight. Anne remained frozen, eyes unblinking, as if
she had been turned to stone; Cammy began hyperventilating; and Kathryn worked
her senseless lips soundlessly.
Suddenly, the black-robed
figure turned its hood in their direction.
Instinctively, all three girls ducked below the window, putting
themselves out of the eerie creature’s sight.
For a long moment, the three girls crouched side by side, breathing
heavily.
As abruptly as it had begun,
the noise stopped, drenching the theatre in total silence.
Slowly, hesitantly, the
three girls peeked over the edge of the window once more. Complete disaster met their eyes.
The movie now lay in ripped
pieces all over the projection room floor, mixed with pieces torn from other
movies and components from the projection equipment.
The black-robed figure was
nowhere to be seen.
“Oh....“ Cammy whispered.
Without warning, white,
pulsing light flooded the movie theatre, forcing all three girls to close their
eyes against its penetrating force. When
their eyes adjusted enough that they would open, the girls saw that someone
else now occupied the projection room.
The newcomer was tall and decidedly beautiful, with long blonde hair
that waved down her back like a waterfall, piercing blue eyes, and subtly
pointed ears.
The girls said the first
thing that came to each of their minds in precise unison. “Aaa!”
The woman did not react to
the scream at all. Critically, she
examined the ruins inside the room, now and again picking up a bit of film to
get a closer look.
The girls exchanged shocked
looks, but none of them could voice what they felt.
Suddenly, another blast of
white, pulsing light caused the girls to cover their eyes. This time, when they peered back into the
projection room, they saw that the strange woman now held an intact reel of
film!
Before the girls could cheer
with joy, however, they noticed the pieces of film that still littered the
floor, as well as the grave look on the woman’s face. For the first time, the strange woman looked
up from her work and met the eyes of the three teenagers.
“Greetings,
inhabitants of another world.” It sounded as if the window between them was
open, so clear were the woman’s words.
“I fear a great evil has befallen you, as well as those in my
world. I now require your help to right
this horrible evil.”
All three girls fainted dead
away.
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