ATTACK OF THE SLASHERS
Note: Warning for strong language, graphic images (well, written ones) and multiple character deaths. I put this in the M-rated section for a reason!
Gordon leaned back in the movie theater-style seat with a bucket of popcorn ready for munching in the seat to his left, and a big theater-style drink in the cup holder on the arm. While he didn't much think anymore about the fact that he wasn't in a "real" movie theater – a la one on the mainland where other people besides his own family went – he certainly appreciated what was on the screen in front of him an awful lot more than the drek Hollywood was churning out these days.
"Oh, man," came a familiar low-pitched whine from back at the double-door entrance.
Gordon didn't even have to twist his head around to know who it belonged to.
"Not these again," Alan groaned as he, his own bucket of popcorn and his own big drink came down the five-row aisle. He plopped unceremoniously into one of the six seats in the front row right next to Gordon, put his drink in the drink holder on the arm and stuffed a handful of popcorn into his mouth. "Fie muost cahn't unnersand why you...like this shit."
Gordon grinned as an odd sound something like "Ch ch ch ha ha ha" in amongst some creepy tunes came from huge speakers hidden behind the walls.
"Christ, where'd you go for this one, 1970?"
"Decade too early. 1980," Gordon corrected as the title of the movie flashed before them.
"Friday the 13th?" Alan read, then took a sip of his drink through the straw, swallowed and continued, "This the one where all those teenagers get killed for having sex?"
"Pretty much. Though that could describe a lot of the slasher movies from that time period," Gordon admitted.
"You know, the horror flicks they make these days are a lot more sophisticated."
Gordon shrugged. "Yeah, but Mrs. Voorhees was the first female serial killer on film, Al. It's a classic."
Alan rolled his eyes but settled back to watch.
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A good hour into the movie, the popcorn was gone, the drinks were empty and Alan was more than just a little bored. "Gotta take a leak," he said.
Gordon just nodded, not looking away from the screen. Not, that was, until about five minutes later as a blonde girl was being chased through the woods, when he caught movement out of his right peripheral vision. He glanced over, expecting it to just be Alan, or maybe one of his brothers checking out what he was watching.
Well...what he saw wasn't any of them. In fact, it wasn't even a man. He did a double-take, blinked and she was gone. At that very moment, a woman's voice came on-screen and he turned to look at it. His eyes widened. He looked back to the now-empty space a good twenty feet away, then to the screen again.
"Nah," he said, sure his eyes must've been deceiving him. "Couldn't be."
Some time later, after a bathroom break and choosing what his next film would be, Gordon was right back in his favorite seat. He was convinced this spot had the best acoustics even though Virgil insisted the entire theater was acoustically sound no matter where you sat. Big brothers, they just always want to be right, was his attitude.
This time he was setting the way-back machine to 1978 and the Jamie Lee Curtis movie Halloween. It'd been a while since he'd checked this one out, and he particularly enjoyed the fact that Michael Myers' mask was a painted one of that old, over-acting actor William Shatner who'd died in the 2020s but left legacies like Star Trek around to make sure future generations knew exactly who he was. He wondered how the guy had felt about having his face turned into a horror movie icon.
Alan never had come back to join Gordon, who figured his younger brother was busy with one of two things that always demanded his attention: the latest race car he was designing, or Tin-Tin. Or both. You never knew with Al.
But that was fine with Gordon. Most of the time, because of the old-style...and sometimes really awful...movies he favored, he found himself alone while watching them. He stood up to stretch his legs and windmill his arms around to loosen his muscles, just as a man in a white sheet wearing glasses over top of them appeared in the doorway where a shirtless girl was calling him Bob. Gordon remembered enough to know the ghost person was Michael Myers and that the girl was about to die, so he turned his back to the screen and bent himself in half to touch his toes a few times. Ah, that always felt good, stretch the old back muscles.
On his fourth time righting himself to ramrod-straight, he couldn't help the small gasp that escaped his lips when something at the back of the theater caught his eye. This time he didn't blink or look away. This time he just stared...for all of the five seconds it took for his eyelids to insist on blinking anyway. In that instant, the figure was gone.
Michael Myers in the theater? On Tracy Island? Yeah. Right. Sure.
"Note to self," he muttered, turning around and sitting back down in the seat, "see if Brains ever finished double-checking the holographic movie projection equipment."
And that was that for another couple of hours. Halloween had finished and on he'd moved to an even older movie called Psycho from 1960. Unlike many of the other flicks he watched, this one he defended to anyone who'd listen that it was far and away one of the best-written horror films in existence to that very day. After all, he argued time and again, anyone who could make you feel sorry for a psycho serial killer had to be a good storyteller..not to mention the caliber of the actors. He barely looked away from the screen on this one, and had almost reached the end...right when a woman named Lila was about to find out who and what Mother was...when a creak to his left caught his attention.
Gordon turned his head at the very moment Lila screamed on-screen, and stifled a choked sound that wanted to come from his throat as his eyes took in, fully black-and-white just like on-screen, a man dressed in a woman's dress, wearing a wig, and wielding a huge chef's knife.
He didn't have to look back at the screen to know who it was.
Gordon swallowed, purposefully moved his eyes back to the movie screen and half-listened as a psychiatrist explained Norman Bates' split personality to a roomful of people. When he looked back to where he'd seen the woman-dressed-as-a-man, there was – of course – no one there.
"You're losing your shit," he whispered, wide-eyed, as a car was being winched out of a swamp, letters shown over that proclaiming this to be THE END of the movie. Maybe he should go talk to Brains right now about the projection equipment...then again, he only had one more movie...the last one he figured he'd watch tonight, the original Nightmare on Elm Street. Oh, there was nothing in his opinion that screamed 80s slasher movies more than that one did. He loved Freddy Krueger's outfit, leathery burned face and all. And those nails. He kept forgetting to see if he could find some on eBay just because.
It was the excitement surrounding the prospect of seeing crazy Freddy work his deadly magic that made his decision for him. Gordon settled back to watch Freddy invade teenagers' nightmares and kill them, and considered for a moment that Halloween was just around the corner. He wondered if maybe he could get his brothers – or at least, Alan – to go in on him with making their own haunted house. They could locate it somewhere around Sydney, maybe, since they all knew that area well.
They wouldn't charge anyone for it, it'd just be something for people to enjoy FOC, as Norman Bates would say: Free of Charge. Since nothing these days was free of anything, he was sure it'd be a hit. Dad would probably agree on the grounds of it being philanthropic...in a creepy sort of way.
By the time the first kid had died a bloody sleeping death, Gordon already had the plan formulated for the type of house he'd need and a myriad of gadgets that would help him bring these crazy killer characters to life in a way that was both fun and scream-inducing. By the time the female star of the movie was forcing herself to stay awake to the point of exhaustion, Gordon's mind was filled with outlines and precise locations for various points within the haunted house. He resolved that when this movie was over, he was going to get Virgil to help him draw out his ideas, which he would then present to the rest of their brothers for consideration.
If Virgil helped with the drawings, he'd want to help with the house itself. Alan would do it just for the hell of it, and while he wasn't sure how much Scott would enjoy such a thing, he knew John would go for it because he'd want to throw in some completely unexpected subtleties. Yes, this would be the Tracy Haunted House, and with just under two months left until Halloween, he knew they could pull it off.
Pleased with himself, and locked inside his mind with all his plans, he was missing the final confrontation with Freddy. But he didn't miss the shadow that suddenly appeared in front of him, or the glint of light from the movie projector off something long, silver and...sharp-looking. His head whipped up and his gasp was as loud as any potential victim's might be, when he took in Freddy Krueger standing there smiling garishly at him like Gordon was his next target.
He bolted out of the seat, poised on the balls of his feet for combat. Just like that, Freddy disappeared. Gordon looked up at the screen, eyes wide, as the first end credits began to roll. "Holy shit, Gordo, enough of these for the night," he whispered, turning and making his way to the small spiral staircase that led up to the projection booth. Yep, he definitely needed to get Brains to check the projector, he thought as he powered it down. Because damn.
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Two days later...
So excited and involved was Gordon with the new Haunted House project that his brothers had all jumped at the chance to be involved with – and that his father had approved, no less – that Gordon forgot all about asking Brains to check anything in the theater. Brains, whose incredible genius had been working overtime to bring Gordon's original...well, revised with Virgil's help...idea to life. On rotation, two of them were at the new site in a suburb of Sydney for twelve hours at a time, overseeing the work. First came the building of the house with electrical wiring and nothing else.
After all, a Haunted House didn't need a bathroom. That's what the spooky outhouse was going to be for. Gordon was actually looking forward to the first time Tin-Tin decided to try to use it. He'd have to make sure he made himself scarce when that happened.
Back on Tracy Island, the young lady in question had been up most of the night working with John, remotely on Thunderbird 5, to restore one of the antenna arrays on a satellite they'd lost contact with two days prior. Exhausted but satisfied that at last the satellite was at full strength again, Tin-Tin staggered into her bedroom suite, pressed the button on the inside control panel that locked the door, pressed another button that closed the curtains over her balcony sliding glass doors, and stumbled sleepily toward her bed.
Rubbing her left eye, which was beginning to hurt from having stared at computer 3-D holographic images for the past ten hours, she was about to faceplant onto her bed when something caught her attention out the peripheral of her right eye. Tin-Tin looked up. She screamed.