In 2009, an old childhood friend contacted me on MySpace. I hadn’t seen or talked to him since I was 12 years old, way back in the 80s. A few weeks after reconnecting, we went to a movie together. A movie about human beings and their special interactions with big blue humanoid aliens on a moon far, far away.
It was a bitterly cold night. The new multiplex was situated way out on the outskirts of town, almost in the boonies. We caught the last showing of the night, so the theater wasn’t packed to the gills. In fact, our showroom was less than half full. I enjoyed the film itself, but I honestly wasn’t blown away.
My friend, however, was another story. When end credits began to roll, he didn’t immediately spring out of his seat as I did. He just continued to sit there and stare at the screen. I had taken off my 3D glasses, but his were still on.
“Let’s go, man,” I said, and nudged his knee with mine.
“No,” he said. “Put your glasses back on.”
“Why?”
“Just do it,” he said softly, staring straight ahead.
With a dutiful sigh, I sat back down and retrieved the glasses I had just deposited in an empty popcorn bucket. I brushed them off, slid them on, and looked at the screen as the end credits continued rolling.
“Do you see the stars?” he asked.
“No,” I replied. There was no 3D effect to the credits, at least none I could discern. I certainly didn’t see anything like stars. I took the glasses off again.
“They’re just floating there,” my friend said. “The stars. Moving and not moving at the same time. Oh!”
He sucked in air the way a startled person does.
“What’s wrong?”
There was a soft creaking noise. I glanced down to see his fingers tightening around the armrests of his chair.
“I’m seeing through their eyes,” he whispered. “Oh, God.”
And then he let out a blood curdling scream.
That was enough for me. I got up, jumped over his knees, and bolted out of the showroom.
He was still screaming when I pushed through the door into the lobby, where I nearly collided with a female usher holding a broom. This usher was taller than me, at least six foot. Something about her strikingly large eyes stopped me in my tracks. Her eyes, and the way she was smiling at me.
“My friend…” I began, a bit out of breath from my sprint.
“Your friend,” she said, still smiling. Her eyes held me in place.
I looked at her nametag. It read: SCOUT. Then I noticed the freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her rather long nose and upper cheeks. I distinctly remember thinking: Those aren’t freckles…those are stars…if I keep looking at them, they’ll move…
The stars. Moving and not moving at the same time.
“He…he’s screaming,” I finally managed to say.
Her peculiar smile widened. “Are you sure?”
I turned toward the showroom door, which was by no means soundproof. The screaming had indeed stopped. When I turned back to the usher she looked even taller than before. And then I noticed the lobby behind her was completely deserted. No workers cleaning up behind the concession stands, no one loitering outside the restrooms. No one anywhere. Had the place really emptied of moviegoers and employees so quickly?
My thoughts returned to my friend. He was still alone in there. Still in danger, I thought.
“He was screaming,” I insisted. “He may have had a seizure or something. I think I should call 911.”
I reached for the flip phone in my pocket. I had been meaning to upgrade to a BlackBerry but hadn’t gotten around to it yet. My friend had a BlackBerry.
Before I could open the phone, the usher said: “It was probably the glasses I gave him. He’ll be fine.”
“What do you mean?” We had both received our glasses at the same time, and not from this usher.
“He came out of the restroom and said he accidentally stepped on his. He asked for a replacement pair, so I gave him one of mine. Don’t worry. He’s fine.”
I tried to process this, remembering my friend’s bathroom break halfway through the film’s final battle sequence, but I was also trying to process something else: this usher standing before me looked somehow less female and more androgynous than she had before. Something in my mind told me to stop looking at her, to avert my gaze from her constellation of freckles and her big, tractor beam eyes.
I looked at my phone again. My pathetic little flip phone. What had I been intending to do with it? Why did it feel so warm in the palm of my hand? I thought about how tiny and weak my hand would look next to the three fingered hand of one of those blue monsters from the movie.
Monsters?
They weren’t monsters, though. They were the good guys. But still…imagine encountering something like that in real life. Something that looks human, but really isn’t human at all. Imagine one of those big, blue humanoid faces turning to look at you. Imagine a smile forming on the creature’s face—a big, toothy smile. Now imagine its big eyes with their golden irises growing to the size of golf balls as it leans toward you.
Confronting something like that in real life wouldn’t evoke wonder in me. It would evoke horror.
The usher pulled something out of the front pocket of her burgundy vest.
“For you,” she said. It was a new pair of 3D glasses.
As if in a trance, I took the glasses and slipped them in my pocket.
“They’re special,” she said. “Not like the ones you left in the popcorn bucket.”
A wave of nausea hit me which blunted the impact of what she’d just said. Before I could formulate a response, the showroom door crashed open. My friend came running out. I caught a fleeting glimpse of his terror-stricken face as he raced toward the long row of glass doors fronting the lobby. He wasn’t wearing the glasses anymore.
“See?” the usher said. “He’s fine.”
I thought about running after him, in part because he was my ride home. Instead, I walked up to the front and peered outside. I watched him drive away. There were no other cars in the parking lot.
“Put your glasses on,” I heard the usher say behind me.
I turned around. The usher was nowhere to be seen. I was completely alone in the lobby now. Lights began to click off one by one. The glowing hallways that led to the showrooms became black caves. The main concession stand went dark except for the dull gleam of chrome trim around the popcorn machine and candy display case. And then I heard a series of sharp metallic clicks to my left.
I realized what I was hearing: the doors fronting the lobby were locking one by one. Each click got closer to the door I was standing in front of. I threw myself forward. A long metal bolt shot out of the lock as the door swung open, and I staggered out into the cold night.
Getting away from the multiplex had become my number one priority. I could worry about finding a way home later. Cold vapor billowed from my mouth as I made my way down the concrete steps to the parking lot.
The parking lot itself was as empty as the lobby had been, but it was adequately lit. I started off across the cold expanse of desolate asphalt. I heard a rattling of keys behind me; a bolt was drawn back and then shot home again. Something told me not to look back. If I looked, I might see the outline of someone standing in the darkness behind the glass, watching me walk away through eyes that might not be entirely human.
My flip phone began to ring in my pocket. I paused under one of the parking lot lights and answered it. I hoped it was someone, anyone, who could get me out of here.
It was my friend. “I still see the stars,” he whispered. “I’m not wearing the glasses anymore, but I still see them.”
“Where are you, man?” I asked. It took me several seconds to realize my phone was heating up.
“The blue people called me,” he said. “They’re in my phone…in my head…in my brain…”
My phone went from warm to red hot. I cried out and dropped it. My friend kept talking as it clattered to the ground. “They’re in my braaaaiiiiinnn…..”
The hideously distorted voice was suddenly drowned out by the sound of an approaching car. Headlights washed over me, blinded me, and I dove wildly in a direction I hoped would preserve my life. I heard my phone crunch under squeaking tires.
I lifted my head to see red brake lights flaring less than ten feet from where I lay. It was a yellow car. A taxi, in fact. The driver’s door swung open, and a rotund man wearing a newsboy cap got out.
“Jesus, buddy, are you OK?” the cab driver asked.
“I think so,” I said, getting up.
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” I replied, not sure at all. My heart was still thudding in my chest.
“Well, somebody here called a cab. Was it you?”
I glanced at the multiplex. The hulking structure looked even bigger and darker than before.
“Yes,” I said. “I’d like you to take me home.”
The cabbie eyed me warily for a moment, then nodded. “Get in,” he said, blowing warm air into cupped hands. “Feels like it’s getting colder by the second.”
I got in the back seat. The cabbie drove out of the parking lot and onto the road leading to the main highway. I told him my address.
“You sure you’re OK?” he asked.
“Fine,” I answered, remembering the usher’s words: Don’t worry. He’s fine.
Somehow I doubted he was fine. I pulled the 3D glasses out of my pocket and looked at them. Part of me wanted to roll down the window and throw them out. Another part of me wanted to put them on.
“Turn right onto Sandy Creek Road,” a silky feminine voice said.
“Yes, ma’am,” the cab driver said, and hit his blinker. He glanced over his shoulder at me and bragged: “Got my first GPS thingy last week. She works like a charm!”
Sandy Creek Road turned out to be a little road with nothing but dark, frigid woods on both sides.
“Where are you going?” I asked. “The highway was back that way.”
“This baby knows shortcuts,” the cabbie said. “She knows shortcuts you could never dream of.”
“Turn,” the GPS voice commanded, sounding less feminine now.
The cabbie hit the blinker again and swung the car onto a bumpy dirt road. “Yessiree,” he said. “Shortcuts you could never dream of.”
In a decidedly deeper (and less human) voice, the GPS said: “Put your glasses on.” Then came the sibilant roar of static.
“Damn it!” the cab driver exclaimed, and jerked the adapter out of the cigarette lighter socket. “They’re trying to jam the signal again!”
“What signal?” I asked with growing alarm.
The cabbie ignored me. He turned his high beams on as the sound of static interference grew louder. It was the type of static one normally associates with radio, not GPS. I heard snippets of multiple voices. Fragments of prayers. Intermingled and incomplete cries for help. Human and inhuman screams.
“You gonna put them on or not?” the cabbie asked. “The window’s about to close, buddy.”
“Stop this car!” I demanded.
In lieu of stopping, the cabbie sped up. I considered the survivability of jumping out. The car was shuddering as it jounced along the rutted, potholed red clay road. Peering out the side window, I saw a light in the distance. A house, maybe. If I could make it there, I could call for help.
“Put the damn glasses on!” the driver shouted over his shoulder at me.
“No!” I shouted back at him.
A fierce snarl contorted his plump face, and he reached back with one arm and tried to grab hold of my collar. Only I saw the twin sparks appear directly ahead of us. I swatted the newsboy cap off his head and pointed. “Watch the road, you asshole!” I yelled.
The silky feminine GPS voice returned to say two words: “Too late.”
The taxi was flooded with light as the car ahead of us hit its high beams. I opened the rear passenger side door and flung myself out. I remember hearing the cabbie utter an expletive, followed by a tremendous crash. And then the world went black for a time.
How much time, I’m unsure of. When I came to, I tasted blood in my mouth and my left knee was throbbing. Stars shone coldly overhead. I sat up and tried to get my bearings. Somehow I had ended up in the bushes on the side of the road. My knee hurt like hell.
A gasp escaped me as I turned to survey the dirt road. The taxi and another car had crashed into each other. I realized with astonishment that the other car belonged to my friend; its front end had been accordioned, and a crumpled airbag was visible through the ruined windshield. The taxi was upside down behind my friend’s car.
I heard groaning, followed by a weak cry: “Help me.”
Limping toward the voice, I discovered the cab driver. One of his legs was pinned under the taxi. Bloody lacerations crisscrossed his face.
“Oh, God,” I muttered.
“Kill me before it comes back,” the cabbie said. “Please.”
He pointed. I looked.
Footprints in the red clay. Twice as big as a man’s. One big toe, three little toes. They led off into the pines. My blood went cold.
“Took…took your friend…” the cab driver managed to say. “It’ll be back for me. Kill me.”
His broken, bloody fingers were reaching for something. A long, sharp shard of glass lay just out of his reach. I picked it up. He gestured to his neck.
“Tell me what’s happening,” I said.
The cabbie gave a hoarse cry of despair. “We fucked up! We knew something was going to happen, but not this! Oh, Jesus, not this!”
“Not what?” I kicked his arm, and he screamed. “What are you talking about?”
“The movie…” he moaned. “It weakened the spells holding them back…ripped a hole into their dimension…just like the old bastard warned us…” a series of painful coughs seized him.
When he finished coughing, I urged him to continue.
“How were we supposed to know?” Tears ran down his bloody cheeks. “How were we supposed to know that they were…were…”
“Were what?”
“Demons!” he cried.
“What?”
“The blue people aren’t aliens at all! They’re demons!”
“That’s impossible,” I said, only dimly aware that I was squeezing the shard of glass hard enough to cut myself.
“They’re demons…from hell! Or someplace worse than hell! Kill me before it comes back! Cut my throat!”
Overwhelmed, I began to slowly back away. Then I heard something moving through the woods behind me. Something big.
The creature exploded out of the cold foliage like a ten foot blue nightmare. It was humanoid, roughly the same size and color as the aliens from the movie, but the similarities ended there. While the film portrayed them as spiritual beings and reluctant warriors, the eyes of the thing standing before me now blazed with a murderous intelligence that had deliberately discarded spirituality, empathy, and mercy long ago. Every tooth in its smiling, demonic maw was filed to a sharp point.
With its three fingered hand, it reached down to grab one of the cabbie’s flailing arms, and ripped it off. Beneath the subsequent screams, I discerned an inhuman yet terribly familiar guttural sound. Laughter. It held the arm up like a freshly caught fish for a moment, then flung it at me.
I ducked. The arm hit the rear of my friend’s car with a sick thud, then flopped to the ground. I decided the time had come to run. Before I could make it off the road into the trees, however, a searing pain shot through my left knee. I crashed to the dirt.
The cabbie continued screaming as I struggled to rise.
You’re next, I thought. Get up, take the pain, and run like hell.
Something heavy fell out of the sky and landed beside me. The cabbie’s head.
The blue monster was walking toward me now, smiling with sadistic glee. It held a huge spear in one hand. Something ropey and glistening in the other. I wasn’t going to get up. I wasn’t going to get away. I was quite literally paralyzed with fear. I was done.
The ropey stuff hit my face and midsection with a wet splat. A girly yelp escaped me. This made the creature laugh again. It caressed my bloody face with the tip of its spear, then moved the blade down to my abdomen. I think it intended to slowly gut me.
A voice in my head said: Put the glasses on.
I was still holding the shard of glass. Tossing it aside, I reached in my pocket and took out the 3D glasses. I put them on. Time ceased to exist for a moment. I saw stars hovering in space, moving and not moving at the same time. And then I was looking at myself from ten feet up. My grip loosened and I felt something fall out of my hand. The spear.
I was inside the creature’s mind and had control of its body. Tenuous control; I could feel its hideous consciousness just outside the cockpit door. Every time I blinked, reality blinked. Suddenly I understood that closing my eyes brought me back into my own body, and I had an idea. I shut my eyes, resumed control of my human form, and began to frantically pat the surrounding dirt until I found the shard. The creature stood paralyzed as I stumbled blindly toward it.
I dropped to my knees in front of the thing. Just as it breached the cockpit, I jabbed the shard into what I hoped was its Achilles tendon. The glasses slipped off my face. An inhuman scream filled my ears. The creature collapsed. I forced myself to get up and run.
The woods swallowed me as I plunged forward. Something flew past my face. I lifted my eyes to the sound of rending timber. A tall, skinny tree almost hit me as it fell down. The pine had been cut in half by a 12 foot spear. I kept running.
There was a light up ahead. It was a trailer, not a house. I could see the glowing ember of a cigarette being smoked by someone on the front porch. “Help me!” I cried, then lost my footing in the pine straw. I came down hard, directly on my bad knee, and the subsequent explosion of pain rendered me unconscious.
I woke up in the hospital. A tired, morose looking police officer interviewed me. I felt it prudent to keep the most unbelievable aspects of my story to myself. The officer didn’t have many questions and seemed completely uninterested in my answers. I made a point to ask him for his card. He said he’d give me one before he left. He informed me that the deceased cabbie had recently been diagnosed with epilepsy and should have had his license revoked months ago. As for my deceased friend, he had been ostracized by his family for undisclosed reasons many years ago.
“If I were you, I’d do my best to forget this ever happened,” the cop said while studiously avoiding eye contact. “Consider the matter closed.”
He left without giving me his card.
And for all practical purposes, that was it. Once I tried to reach out to a member of my friend’s family via email. My inquiry garnered a two word response: fuck off. So I let it go and did my best to move on with my life. I tried to convince myself that either my friend or one of the employees at the concession stand that night had slipped something in my soft drink.
I didn’t go anywhere near the multiplex again until 2012, when far too many people were reading far too many blogs about the end of the world (myself included). It was late in the afternoon as I guided my car down Sandy Creek Road, where foundations had recently been laid for a number of Habitat for Humanity homes. When I made the right onto the dirt road, I discovered that it wasn’t a dirt road anymore. It was partially paved now, and a lot of the woods had been cleared.
The trailer was still there. I pulled over and got out to take a closer look. It was in pretty bad shape. Windows were broken, the front porch had rotted away and collapsed, and several layers of pine straw covered the roof. I spotted a glass ashtray half buried amongst weeds. My thoughts turned to the person I had seen smoking that night. Who was he—or she? There was a chance I owed my life to him or her. Was this unknown person still alive?
Walking around to the back of the property, I came across an old school, C-Band satellite dish standing behind the trailer. Although the dish was little more than a bowl for pine straw now, something about it triggered my memory of the cabbie’s GPS device. And this in turn made me remember what my friend had said the last time he called me. The stuff about the blue people being in his phone. In 2012, I still hadn’t upgraded to a BlackBerry or iPhone. I kept using a flip phone until 2017.
I thought about looking for the spear. But did I really want tangible evidence of my unbelievable story? An ominous breeze coursed through the pines, and I decided to leave. I haven’t been back since.
For several years I followed news regarding the film’s sequel. A target release date for 2014 was announced initially, but that didn’t happen. For a time I thought there was a chance it wouldn’t happen at all. Then filming finally began in 2017. Stuff happened in the real world that slowed things down, and the movie took five years to complete. We’re in the last month of 2022 as I write this, and the sequel is number one at the box office. It’s playing at the multiplex. I won’t be going to see it.
Deep down, I know what happened to me that night was real. I was attacked by an entity from some other dimension. I was almost killed by it, but I survived, and I’ve been plagued by unanswered questions ever since. Why did my childhood friend decide to track me down on MySpace? Why did his family excommunicate him? Who was that usher? Who called the cab? Who was the cab driver really working for? The government? A cult? What was the nature of the “spells” he referenced, and how did the movie supposedly weaken these spells? Perhaps by casting a spell of its own? Who was “the old bastard” that warned them not to proceed? Who was responsible for creating the glasses? How did they really work? Was the man who interviewed me in the hospital actually a police officer?
All I know for sure is that we know nothing for sure. Reality encompasses the entire universe, meaning we see and understand only a small fraction of it. We should be careful where we look.