A song came from the theater’s speakers. Pete wasn’t sure … was it Kanye West? He thought so. Then the song stopped, repeated the same section again. Stopped, repeated. Stopped, repeated.
Pete lowered the phone slowly, hardly hearing the ringing in his own ear. “Oh no….” He realized what was piping through the theater’s speaker system. The ringtone of the sitter’s cell phone. In their apartment.
Ringing, but not answered.
Holly smiled, wagged a finger. “Uh-uh-uh…” she said, scolding. “There’s no help here, Pete.”
Pete heard the sitter’s voice come over the phone’s speaker, pulled it to his ear, hope flooding through him.
Hey, this is Stacy. Can’t answer the phone, shoot me a text or leave a message. SEE YA!—BEEEEEEEEP—
Pete hung up, dialed again.
And again, the song clip played over the theater’s speakers, in what must have been Dolby Digital HD, some part of him thought. It sounds so clear…
“If we’re done with that nonsense, I’d like to get this over with,” Holly said, arms folded. Pete wondered if she was going to yawn next. “Believe it or not, Pete, I’m a busy girl. Got shit to do, you know.”
Pete watched in helpless horror as Holly Pages—global movie star and lead actress of such hits as The Science Revolution, The Thing from Time, and Bird’s Nest—slowly pulled his daughter’s blanket away from her neck, lowered it tenderly, almost lovingly, to her waist.
“What are you doing?” Pete cried.
“Dude, shut up!” from a man two rows back. He ignored it, all his attention on Holly. On his little girl. His sweet Gina.
“Let me explain,” Holly said, and walked toward the screen once more, her body growing in the foreground. She stopped midway. He could see her from the knees up. “Initially, all I wanted was … well, this is embarrassing … but I really just wanted my fucking panties back. You know … the ones you stole? The ones you sold?”
Pete looked at his phone, realized he could do something … had to do something. He opened the dial screen to call nine-one-one, tell the police there was an intruder at his house. He was twenty minutes away, but they would beat him there easily.
“Don’t do it, Pete,” Holly said, her voice loud enough to make him wince. “Not until I’m finished.”
Pete stood up, his phone gripped in one sweaty palm. He heard angry voices behind him, but they barely registered.
“Anyway,” Holly continued. “Then I realized what I really wanted.” She put a finger to the corner of her mouth, as if thinking. She absently rubbed her other hand against her thigh, then moved it up to her breast, as if aroused.
“What? What do you want?” Pete said.
Holly dropped her hands, scurried forward so her face filled the screen. Her eyes were wild and black, her skin gray as a corpse. “I want her! I want your baby girl, Pete,” she spat, lips wet and twisted into a snarl. “You took my life away from me, you fuck, and now I’m going to take something from you.”
“No!” Pete yelled and heard more angry voices all around him. He saw Noemi at the bottom of the stairs, steeped in the red of the tinted floor lights. Everything else was becoming a blur. He was crying and sweating and shaking. His heart raced and he began to dial nine-one-one. “Don’t hurt her!” he yelled. People in the theater were standing. Pointing.
Holly laughed lightly. “I’m not gonna hurt her, Pete. I’m not a monster.”
Pete paused over the digits, confused. He felt hot tears and sweat coating his face. Noemi was coming up the stairs toward him, hands raised in supplication toward the other theatergoers. People were screaming at her, at him.
“Look at me,” Holly said softly, her silky voice coming from inside his head.
Pete wiped his eyes, focused on the screen. Holly looked normal again, and she was smiling, almost warmly. For a moment Pete realized just how beautiful she had been. “I’m not going to hurt her, Pete,” she repeated, that voice in his ear again, seductive and sweet, and he felt the slightest glow of relief settle on his nerves.
Holly pointed to a hidden corner of the room, the corner that would have been tucked just behind the camera. Just off screen. “He is.”
A dingy white fabric filled the screen. It shifted and crescents of black broke in at the far edges, then closed in quickly as the object moved deeper into the bedroom, away from camera. After a few moments, Pete saw it clearly.
A white hoodie. Dirty and worn.
Noemi was clutching his arm, tugging at him, saying something over and over, but he wasn’t listening, couldn’t listen. He could only stare at the bent shape of Jimmy as it shuffled toward his little girl’s bed; watch helplessly as the hooded figure, his face a smear of shadow, looked down at the sleeping child, then gently pick up a pink pillow that had fallen to the carpeted floor.
“N-no … ” Pete stammered. “Oh god, no ….”
Pete fell back into his seat. His phone dropped to the sticky floor, forgotten. Noemi tugged at him, put her hands onto his face.
“Pete! Are you okay? Are you having a heart attack? What the fuck’s going on?”
Pete tried to look at his wife but found himself staring at the cup of soda. He watched a bead of perspiration run down its plastic side. He just wanted to stop watching. Wanted to take his eyes off the screen forever. “This can’t be real,” he said.
The sounds from Gina’s bedroom came through the speakers—sounds of a muffled struggle. Pete tried to ignore them. He clutched Noemi’s hands in his, looked deeply, sorrowfully, into her brown eyes, searching for help, for sanity, for forgiveness.
“We’ve got to go,” he said, his voice rasping, choked by tears. “We need to leave right now. I think … I think something’s happened.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Holly Pages’ mouth filled the screen. Her wet red tongue slid across giant, perfect white teeth. Deafening laughter crashed over him in surround-sound.
“Don’t you want to see the credits?” Noemi asked, and something in her voice broke through the shock, pulled him back, if only for a moment.
He studied her face, unbelieving.
“Gina might be in them,” she said, her eyes ice-blue and dancing.
“And you might be, too.”
