1926
Washington, D.C.
Shaw District

 

“There’s a man on the front stoop.”

The words spilled from her in a much more mundane way than Judy had expected, considering how her neck was fluttering with her excited pulse. Alvin looked up from the new Langston Hughes poetry collection he was reading under the lamp in Professor Garrett’s parlor. Every window confirmed that it was long after dark, a full two hours since supper.

“What man?” Alvin said. He was not sociable by nature and had been reared in Florida to boot, so he was never happy when strangers turned up at the door. Judy’s calm voice must have assured him, or else he would have shot to his feet.

“He”—this was the truly strange part, and she’d expected to say it with derision instead of childlike intrigue—“says he wants to do business with us.” She held up the crisp twenty-dollar bill he had given her as a token of his sincerity.

At that, Alvin stood up to examine the bill and Grover Cleveland’s stern profile. They had just been talking about their lack of savings when Judy thought she heard a knock on the door. And imagine carrying a bill so large to wave around! The timing seemed both oddly ordained and suspicious, as if the stranger had eavesdropped on their desires.

Alvin went to Professor Garrett’s desk and found the ivory-handled derringer they had discovered in his drawer, beside the pages of his novel manuscript she had been typing for him, left behind during his summer break from Howard. He slipped the delicate gun into the back of his waistband with the ease of a bespectacled hoodlum in a picture show. A part of him was always remembering his violent formative years in Florida. They had been formative, indeed.

“Let’s invite him in and hear him out,” Alvin said.

Which was exactly what Judy had both hoped and feared her husband would say.

Her first thought was Why is he wearing a coat in July?

The style of his long black coat struck her as old-fashioned, and its unlikely presence made her skin twitch in the heat that had settled over the parlor. She was so distracted by his coat and its rows of gleaming gold buttons that she barely realized he had laid out his palm to receive her hand, which he gave a courtly kiss.

“Madame,” he said. “Sir.” A firm, respectful pump of Alvin’s hand that was rare from white strangers. “Thank you for receiving me at this hour. You’re very kind.”

Her memory of his appearance would change over time, but the first impression she would always remember was pale golden hair that curled nearly to his coat collar and eyes that looked silver more than blue, the color of moonlight. Those eyes smiled as if the young colored couple living in such a well-appointed bungalow amused him. So much about him was a puzzle, but she recognized his condescension on sight.

“You mentioned something about business to my wife.” Alvin’s emphasis on the word wife was so pronounced that the stranger took a step from her. Judy felt him move away, a tangible void. His palm had been frigid, and she hadn’t realized how much the coolness of his presence was refreshing in the stifling room.

The stranger removed his hat. “May I sit?”

He slipped into Alvin’s chair beneath the reading lamp before either of them could respond. In brighter lighting, his skin seemed more olive than alabaster. He might be mixed. This was only the first instance of how his appearance would remain fluid in her memory.

“I’ll get right to my point,” he said. “My name is Frederic Cartier. I’m a producer of pictures. Race pictures, to be specific. My company is Onyx Pictures out of Jacksonville.”

The mention of Florida made Alvin scowl, but in a moment of irrational delight, Judy thought he had come knocking because he somehow knew how much she loved going to features to see colored actors, often twice a week. Her favorites were Oscar Micheaux’s The Dungeon and Body and Soul, which she must have seen a dozen times. Alvin far preferred stage to pictures, of course. He cut her a look as if to say, Do you have something to do with this?

“Forgive me in advance if my proposal sounds a bit strange…but I’m touring our new picture for the summer. For this leg of the tour, I’m due in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Harlem. I loathe trains, you see. Too many people might damage my reels. And I couldn’t help noticing your lovely Chrysler touring car—”

“It’s not ours to sell,” Alvin interrupted him. “It’s Professor Garrett’s.” He said this with his voice bright with pride, as if the stranger knew the Emeritus Professor’s name as well as anyone on campus. Or had seen his plays in New York, or laid eyes on his brilliant unborn novel.

Again, that twinkle of amusement came to Cartier’s eye.

“The fact is, Mr. Jenkins…” he said, just before Judy realized they had not introduced themselves in return, “…I’m not asking to purchase the machine. I’ll admit I only know how to drive a horse, and those engines seem daunting at night. I’m asking you both to accompany me on my summer theater tour, if you would be kind enough to drive me in the Chrysler.”

Judy had only been married to Alvin Jenkins for six months—their summer house-sitting job for Professor Garrett was their closest thing to a honeymoon—but she knew him well enough to anticipate the way his jaw clenched with irritation.

Mr. Cartier leaned forward to fully meet Alvin’s eyes. “I know—you didn’t sacrifice to come to Howard University to end up working as some white man’s chauffeur.”

Alvin’s shoulders shuddered with surprise at hearing his mind spoken aloud.

“First, you should know that my grandmother was from Ayiti, although I never tan because I’m sensitive to the sun,” the man said. “But I do consider myself colored, if that matters. It’s only a convenience that most people assume I’m white.”

“So…you’re passing?” Judy couldn’t help saying with a ring of judgment.

“All of us are passing as whatever the outside world sees in us, yes?” he said. “But more to the point—the real point…” He pulled a fat envelope out of his coat pocket. “I would compensate you far beyond the payment for a traditional chauffeur. My offer is this: for three weeks of driving, two hundred dollars per week. A third paid up front.”

He extended the envelope to Alvin for inspection. Alvin glanced at Judy before he took it, as if it were a contract. His eyes widened slightly when he peeked inside, and he showed her the neat row of bills before he slipped the envelope into her palm. Neither of them touched the money to count the bills. It felt like theft to have so much cash between their hands.

“Of course you may ask Professor Garrett’s permission, but in case he’s hard to reach…”

“He’s in London,” Judy said. “He wanted to see Shakespeare’s birthplace.” She didn’t say before he dies, since Alvin had told her it was morbid to assume he was afraid of dying soon. He was only sixty-five, after all. But between his noticeable weight loss and the tremor in his voice when he’d told her about his plans to go to London, it was obvious to her that he was ill. “He’s unreachable, except maybe by telegram. At his hotel.”

Judy looked at Alvin, hoping he wasn’t annoyed that she had volunteered so much, but Alvin was listening intently to the stranger now. The frown lines had melted from his brow.

“Yes, as I suspected,” Cartier said. “But even if you can’t secure his permission, know this: I’ll compensate him separately for the miles to his Chrysler. And in the case of accident or theft, I’ll replace it with a brand-new model. I can put all of this in writing.”

The envelope lay heavy in Judy’s hands. Even the cash within was enough to buy their own touring car from the classified pages or significant savings toward a down payment for their house—with two more payments owed to them? For driving?

“In addition to driving duties, I may need some assistance with protecting the reels, customer relations, that sort of thing,” he said. “But if you’re in need of a nest egg, you can spare the time, and if you want to learn more about the picture business, this would be an ideal way to pass the summer.” Now his odd eyes returned to Judy.

Judy felt as if she were floating above herself. Everything he had said was true about her. How often had she sat in the theaters staring toward the projection booth with curiosity, wondering what went on within? Marveled at how the audiences gasped, hooted, or laughed, transported by the images on the screen? She’d become a better playwright under Professor Garrett, but could she also be a picture writer one day? The uncle who had raised her still lived in Harlem, so she could surprise him with a visit. The job was tailor-made for her!

“That’s a lot of money, Mr. Cartier,” Alvin said. “You must be making a bundle in pictures, huh?” Alvin didn’t conceal the skepticism in his voice.

Mr. Cartier laughed so hard that he coughed. “Oh, Lord no. I’m lucky to break even. But my grandfather’s old sugar plantation gives me the freedom to follow my passion. The funds were ill gained, but I’ve tried to put them to good use. That’s the only thing I enjoy about the road: the way people’s faces light up when they see their own as cowboys, or gangsters, or the dashing hero. It’s the only antidote to the ignorant imaginations in Hollywood.”

Judy and Alvin had been discussing this very thing a few days before. Every word Cartier spoke made it feel almost certain that her frustrations and desires had summoned him.

“What’s the picture?” Judy’s voice thinned, breathless. “Have I heard of it?”

He smiled with luminous teeth. “I just finished cutting it. It’s a monster story set at a mansion in Louisiana. It’s called A Stranger Knocks. In the vein of Bram Stoker.” He nodded toward the bookshelf behind him. Had he spotted Professor Garrett’s shelf dedicated to tales of the fanciful? Where he housed the Shelley, Stoker, Poe, and Wells novels that kept her up at night?

The coincidences were dizzying. If better judgment had prevailed, Judy would have asked Cartier to leave at once. She had known he would reveal it was a picture of the uncanny before he spoke, her heart already skittering in her chest. The title’s irony also felt uncomfortable and prescient: a glaring dare to gather her better sense.

But she adored Nosferatu when she chanced upon a rare screening, and she couldn’t ignore her excitement at the notion of such frights with a colored cast. Although Alvin always chuckled at the melodramatic performances by silent actors, she believed moving pictures could prove to be a powerful vehicle for actors and storytelling. Monster pictures for Negroes! And just as Nosferatu mingled its unearthly terrors with fears of plague, colored pictures could express her people’s everyday terrors behind the safe barrier of a monster’s mask. She ached to see his film on the spot.

Still, the proposal frightened her. He frightened her. But weren’t all important steps in life a bit frightening? Like leaving her uncle’s care to study playwriting under the great Wilson T. Garrett? And her impulsive marriage to this miraculous man she had known less than a year, but with whom she already wanted to grow old in a house like the one they were boarding in?

“We’ll do it!” she said. She braced for an objection from Alvin, but he took the envelope back into his hands, not ready to let go. Alvin wanted them to claim a house of their own more than she did. In three weeks, they could afford that and more.

“When would we need to leave, Mr. Cartier?” Alvin said.

Alvin asked with no joy, his eyes cast down. In that moment, she assumed he was entranced by the money. How couldn’t he be? But the same night, sleepless with anticipation in bed beside him, it dawned on her like sunlight that her dear man of a husband had not agreed for the money at all: he had done it to please her. She had agreed to the job without consulting him, and instead of chiding her, he had relented. A wedding gift to her, even.

She often remembered his downcast eyes later, picking apart the moment of their terrible union with the producer like a scab she could not stop examining, a wound she might heal only if she could achieve crystal clarity on how their entanglement began. The origin.

Alvin’s downcast eyes would always haunt her as the signal she should have heeded. Why hadn’t she paused at his sober tone and said they would excuse themselves to the hallway to confer? Invited him to express his own opinion? Because she knew what he would say?

It was as if her dear husband already knew.

Cartier showed them the map of their journey along Route One. He vowed that his reels would not “explode” during the drive—a scenario that had not crossed their minds—because he would store them in a cool container. He promised to bring an auto tent in case Alvin got tired of driving in the middle of nowhere. I know all of the out-of- the-way camping spots where we can disappear from sight, he said, which did not sound as assuring as he intended. He didn’t bring up the difficulty of finding lodging for colored people, but it need not be spoken. Cartier would have no problem renting a comfortable room in any city or backwater town along the way, but Judy and Alvin were obviously deep hues of brown.

Any potential problem they imagined—and as a writer and actor, Judy and Alvin had endless imaginations for catastrophe—Cartier had a ready answer to try to put them at ease. Alvin confided that Cartier had taken him aside and told him that if he had any misgivings about such a long trip with a stranger and his new bride, he should bring a weapon for peace of mind. Even a derringer would do, Alvin said he’d told him with a wink.

Even after they agreed in theory, Judy and Alvin spent hours discussing the proposal alone. Atop their shared bed, their feet twining like schoolchildren’s as they lay on their stomachs, they made a list of things Cartier should not have known: their surname, for one. The contents of Professor Garrett’s bookshelf. Judy’s love for picture shows. The derringer capped a list of ten remarks that were none of Cartier’s business. He had more intimate knowledge than he let on. He had lied. Or, in the most generous light, he wanted to dazzle them into saying yes.

But he had left a contract, and his money, behind—including the extra twenty dollars.

Their neighbor was a lawyer and agreed to read the contract for a small fee—he said the terms seemed sound, and the compensation was so high that he didn’t see the point of haggling. Even then, they decided they couldn’t agree to the job without consulting Professor Garrett, which should have ended the matter—but he answered their telegram by the next morning: Use your judgment. But exercise caution. He was proud of his practically new Chrysler with its shiny brick-red paint, but he trusted them to care for it.

It was real. They would go on an adventure this summer.

The phone rang just as Alvin was giving the Western Union man such a large tip that he looked like he would hug him. Their celebration was contagious.

Judy picked up the black phone receiver. “Hello, Mr. Cartier,” she said before he spoke. Because of course it was him: one more coincidence to add to their list. She was cocky enough try to dazzle him right back.

“I see I’m not the only mind reader.” A glib joke, or so she’d thought. Or at least that was what she’d told herself she was thinking.

As it turned out, she was as expert a liar as he was.

“If you’ve laid your last doubts to rest, an extra spot opened up,” Cartier said. “I need to get to Baltimore tonight.”

They followed Cartier’s directions to the rural outskirts of the city to a crumbling old Tudor-style house with a carriage house. Old-fashioned, like his coat. His lawn was so green that it glowed in the last of the daylight. Alvin drove the car along the wagon-rutted path into the carriage house as they had been instructed. They idled in silence until a voice said, “Please close the doors. I have a migraine.”

The voice had a disembodied quality that seemed to be inside of the car with them, but Judy made out Cartier’s shadow from a corner, standing beside his traveling trunk.

Judy flicked on the Chrysler’s headlamps as Alvin closed the carriage house doors and helped Mr. Cartier move his luggage inside. She hoped for a glimpse of the celluloid reels, but they weren’t in sight. If not for the Chrysler’s lights, they would have been in pitch blackness.

“Anything else you need, Mr. Cartier?” Alvin said after he had settled their employer. Playing his role like a good actor.

Mr. Cartier had carried a heavy plaid blanket with him into the car, and he lay down to sleep curled beneath it, covered from head to toe. “I’ll block out the light to help recover from my migraine. Follow the map to the Douglass Theater. They call it The Royal now. The showing is expected by eight o’clock.”

His headache had stripped the cheer from his voice. He was another man entirely. Judy and Alvin gave each other a knowing look: a drunk, most likely. Neither of them was surprised. But they had been paid in advance for their first week, at least.

“Do reels actually explode?” Judy whispered to Alvin.

“Guess we’ll see,” he said.

Their trip began.

At the newly dubbed Royal Theatre in Baltimore, Judy first saw A Stranger Knocks. The theater had a dizzying thirteen hundred seats, similar to the Howard Theatre where she had first seen Alvin onstage with the Howard Players. Posters still flapping from the walls proclaimed that the Harlem Strutters had performed the night before, billed with an Oscar Micheaux feature called A Son of Satan. Another mysterious picture! She hated she’d missed it.

Mr. Cartier’s mood and energy were much improved by the time they arrived. He ushered them to their seats with packages of Butter-Kist popcorn, as giddy as a child to show off his picture, and rushed to meet the white theater owner with blustery pats on the back. Again, his appearance had shifted although he wore the same unseasonable coat; his golden curls and rosy cheeks hid any hint of African ancestry. He was not only passing; he was more like a changeling.

Mr. Cartier made his way to the theater’s organ, which was stationed beside the stage. The audience applauded. It was all a happy spectacle.

The lights darkened and hushed the crowd. A Stranger Knocks began.

Judy agreed with Alvin that organ accompaniments to pictures and radio dramas sounded overwrought, but Mr. Cartier’s was a pulsing heartbeat. The first image was the promised mansion, nestled by trees with hanging swamp moss. A slave plantation. Judy felt the audience stirring, restless, at the reminder of slavery. Then the narration card appeared: The new owners of Louisiana’s formerly most reviled Sugar Estate have settled in for the night.

The next image was a colored man and woman sitting side by side on a sofa in a library brimming with books, and the crowd cheered. Judy felt herself smiling at first too, until she realized how much the room resembled Professor Garrett’s parlor. The colored actors were wearing pale powder on their faces and didn’t closely favor her and Alvin, but they were a similar age and size. The woman’s hair was also wound in a French braid, her own style.

Alvin, beside her, squeezed Judy’s hand. He saw it too.

Mr. Cartier stabbed at the organ keys to strike three somber chords just as the actors looked up as if they had heard the music too. A new title card appeared: They were surprised by a loud knock on the door. Visitors did not usually come to the Estate, especially at night. Many considered the site to be cursed still.

A shadow crawled across the library like a cloud draping the moon. The actors were swallowed by darkness. The couple looked at each other’s ghostly faces in the lamplight, uncertain. The man rose to his feet while the woman clutched her book to her chest. Everything inside of Judy wanted to scream Do not open that door.

“Just pretend y’all ain’t home!” a man shouted behind her, and the theater roiled with nervous laughter. Cartier’s organ silenced the crowd with its menace, voicing the man’s wary footsteps across an impossibly long foyer to the mansion’s double doors. Here the angle changed, now from the outside looking in. A hulking silhouette in a sagging rain jacket stood in shadow in the entryway, seen only from behind. In the doorway, the man stared up at the mysterious figure, gape-mouthed.

“Lord help us, how do they call this acting?” Alvin muttered.

Judy did not want to revisit their old argument here. As much as she thought she should tear her eyes away from whatever waited in the entryway, she also wanted to stay rooted. The rain falling across the dark figure’s back seemed to lick at Judy’s face, and she dabbed at her cheeks. (Was that moisture?) The man took a step away from the dark figure. And another. His eyes had gone vacant; not the wide-eyed, dumb affect that offended her so much in white pictures, but as if his soul were seeping from him. His eyes were now rimmed with dark smudges. As the man stepped back, the figure’s shiny black boots crossed the threshold.

“He’s bewitched,” Judy whispered. A woman sitting nearby shushed her, but Judy barely heard over the Stranger’s scraping footsteps. (But how could she hear his actual footsteps when the film was silent?) Now his wife came behind him to investigate the delay (No! Stay away!) and she swooned when she gazed at the mysterious visage entering their home. (Was that it? Should they avoid meeting his eyes?)

The figure now stood inside of their house: he was much bigger than he had looked before, as wide as the doorway, rising toward the raised ceiling. He was too big to take in all at once, or to see his face, an inky visage so overpowering that it bled from the screen. The frenetic organ was drowned out by a metallic screech in Judy’s eardrums. Were migraines contagious? She covered her ears with both hands, and—

“…Judy? Sweetheart, please wake up.”

Alvin was shaking Judy’s knee and not gently. Judy’s head had drooped forward so far that she had to knead out a cramp from the back of her neck. She expected to find herself in a vast library—no, in Professor Garrett’s parlor—but instead they were still in the theater. Baltimore, she remembered. The house lights were up, and most of the theatergoers had left their seats, only a few stragglers left behind to share how afraid they had been. One man said, “Shoot, I ain’t scared.”

But Alvin was. Concern radiated from his face as he leaned over her. “I’ve been trying to wake you up for two minutes. I was about to go fetch a doctor.”

Judy licked her parched lips. Her mouth and throat felt sucked dry. “What happened?”

“You fell asleep,” he said, and lowered his voice: “Not that I blame you.”

When she stirred, her joints and muscles ached from being clenched. Judy wouldn’t touch liquor even if it were legal, but she imagined this might be what a hangover felt like.

“The dinner scene was ten minutes too long,” Alvin said. “But the rest wasn’t too bad, mostly. We’ll have to ask him to explain that lousy ending. I think he should cut it out. But what do I know? You’re the expert on pictures.”

After such a scare, Judy didn’t want to alarm Alvin by letting him know that she didn’t remember any dinner scene, or the ending, or any scene beyond the Stranger’s arrival. The images tried to creep back to her, but her mind walled them away. She stared at the pale, empty screen, surprised that the feature hadn’t torn a hole through it.

“It was…powerful,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, a rare agreement. “My heart jumped a couple times.”

By now, all of the seats ahead of them were empty, making the theater look like a man-made cavern—except for a man three rows ahead who was on his feet, apparently deep in thought. Staring up at the empty screen. He was in stylish attire, his hat canted to the side.

“Come on, let’s find Cartier,” Alvin said. “He’s supposed to pay boarding, so let’s see if we can find a room at the colored hotel. I’m not sleeping in no damn tent.”

At the sound of Cartier’s name, Judy looked toward the organ. No one sat there.

Judy heard Alvin talking to her, but her attention was fixed on the lone man in the row ahead of them. He still had not moved. He might as well be asleep on his feet.

“Alvin, that man…?” she said. “Do you think he’s all right?”

Alvin gave the man a dismissive glance. “You finally found someone who loves pictures more’n you do,” he said. “I’d better keep you away from him.”

Cartier came to the aisle, waving to them with unbridled glee. “The verdict?”

Alvin offered a nod and a smile. “We loved it!” Judy said.

Cartier grinned at her in a frozen way that was not entirely pleasant. His dancing eyes made Judy certain that he knew she had dozed off, that he had seen her sleeping from his organ bench. Her faced flared hot.

“I’ll handle my own affairs now,” Cartier said. “Meet me here tomorrow night.”

Before they could ask what time to meet him, or what the next driving plans were, he had turned away from them to walk to the man who was still staring at the screen. Judy watched Cartier join the man in his row, moving closer to him seat by seat. When he reached the man’s side, Cartier leaned over and whispered in his ear.

The man’s bones folded over so suddenly that Judy gasped. Cartier caught him. Slumping against Cartier, the man began walking with him.

He had fainted! Judy realized that the same thing had happened to her. The film had stirred such deep fear in her that she had lost consciousness.

“There was something wrong with that man,” Judy said. Did she share his affliction?

“You heard Cartier—he’ll handle it. Let’s go ‘fore all the rooms get booked up.”

Judy followed Alvin but kept her eyes on Cartier as he continued to steer the man toward a door stage right. When Cartier opened the door, it was dark within. Judy’s heart churned as she watched Cartier lead the man into the gloom.

She’d felt the same dread watching the shadowy Stranger in the feature, an image that now seized her memory with icy clarity. The urge returned to yell out No! Turn back!

But Judy did not say a word as the stage door slipped shut.

Judy could not sleep that night, and not only because of the unfamiliar bed in the modest hotel. Alvin snored peacefully, nestled against her, but every time Judy closed her eyes, she saw the dark visage leak from the screen. Not a substance—a hole. And Cartier sat at his organ, his shadow made giant across the screen, growing taller as if to meet the fearsome maw.

She woke up several times, always damp with sweat. She scolded herself for having such vivid nightmares from a picture show—one she didn’t even remember—but they did not feel like dreams. The frights felt more like a memory of an event only she had experienced…and perhaps that one man left standing in the theater. Lying awake fresh from her nightmare, unable to lie to herself, she finally had the courage to wonder: What did Cartier say to him?

The curtains flapped in the breeze from their open window. Judy saw golden buttons shining in the curtains’ gap. But when she leaped from bed to see if Cartier was there on a balcony, she realized there was no balcony. She only saw the hotel’s white picket fence below. And the dead night, with the loud revelers finally home in bed. Her heart was in a furor that made her lightheaded. She hoped she wouldn’t faint again.

Judy had never been more grateful to see the dawn.

They had no word from Cartier during the daylight hours—and the theater manager had no idea where he was when they called—which was fine with Judy. With the sea breeze and pleasant meals with her dear Alvin, her terrible nightmares felt sillier and farther away. By seven, Alvin decided they should head back to the theater to see if their employer needed them.

That was the first time she realized the picture would play for a second night. And maybe a third or a fourth. Would she be expected to view it again and again?

Alvin saw it in her face. He took her hands. “Listen…” he said. “You can stay here. If you want me to tell this fella we’re going back to D.C. after our first week, it’s fine with me.”

And just like that, not feeling trapped gave Judy enough freedom to take a breath and gather her courage. This was their job. Just because she would be at the theater didn’t mean she had to rewatch the picture. She could stay in the lobby, or even in the parked Chrysler.

She only wanted to stay close to Alvin.

“Come see the projection booth,” Cartier’s voice said behind her.

It was nearly eight o’clock, and she and Alvin had been looking for him all evening in the throng: tonight, the theater was standing room only. She’d finally excused herself to use the ladies’ room, wading through the crowd. Inside, she’d overheard a tearful woman saying that she was looking for her brother, who had never come home from the theater the night before. She thought of Cartier and the overwhelmed man he had led away. Judy almost said something to her—and wondered why she didn’t.

And on her way back out, Cartier found her. He was stationed just outside the door, waiting. His silvery eyes were far too bright, his pupils as large as a cat’s hunting in the dark. She could swear on a New Testament that he was two inches taller than he’d been the night before although he wore the same boots. (Or had the boots been in the picture?) Boots in July?

“I…” she began, trying to think of an excuse. Before this, she would have tripped over herself to see the projection room. But if it meant being near Cartier or his reels, the thought made her tremble. “…I have to meet Alvin.”

“I’ve settled it with Alvin,” Cartier said. “He’s keeping an eye on the audience. A couple of scofflaws were raising a ruckus. Come with me, will you?”

She didn’t believe him. Alvin was not overly jealous, but he would never agree to send her anywhere alone with Cartier. Come with me, will you? But Cartier’s question was a command—not just by her employer, but with a sway that reminded her of being an obedient child again—so she followed him past the crowd to a side door that revealed unpainted walls, debris from old sets, and untidy stacks of boxes and crates, the way every theater’s illusions dissolved in unlit corners. From behind, his hair looked springier and coarser, like her uncle’s, the nape of his neck the color of honey. Was she only imagining the changes? A trick of lighting? But lighting would not create such a dramatic effect.

She remembered Alvin’s downcast eyes when he granted her wish for an escapade, and phlegm clogged her throat. They had made a mistake. She had led her beloved toward danger. Judy never had been more afraid or angrier at herself.

“We need to break our contract,” she said. “We’ll give your money back.”

Cartier lightly raised his hand to wave her words away like vapor.

She tried to say more, to insist, but her lips were dry enough to feel welded together. She was afraid to try too hard to open her mouth, or to stop following him, because of the waiting horror if she could not. The only way to not know was to keep pace with his sure steps in silence, like the voiceless actress in his film.

Cartier took her to a narrow stairwell, and again she followed. She too easily imagined now what he had whispered to the afflicted man last night: Come with me, will you?

“What are you?” She could speak. But she hadn’t intended to whisper her fear aloud.

He stopped in front of a narrow door and looked at her for the first time since the lobby. His eyes sparked in the dark passageway. Judy was ready to beg forgiveness for her rudeness, almost relieved to tears that his face wasn’t angry in the brief flash of light.

He was studying her; not the embarrassing way men had admired her since she was fifteen, but with a regard that reminded her of Professor Garrett.

“Now,” Cartier said, “you learn the secrets.”

The stairs to the projection booth were so narrow that her feet were too big unless she climbed at a careful angle, and she had to walk with her skirt clutched high. Cartier, walking ahead of her, might as well have been gliding up the untenable stairs. As they passed an open doorway to the balcony, she saw a glimpse of the gilded theater beyond the stairwell’s patchy walls, most seats already filled. She searched for Alvin, but it was hopeless even with the house lights still up. He was lost somewhere in the sea of people far below.

Judy fought the impulse to run the other way. Or, better put, the impulse came and left after a voice in her head that didn’t sound quite like hers told her, Don’t be silly. You’re here to learn, aren’t you?

“It feels like entering a crypt up here, and that is fitting,” Cartier said as he opened the door at the top of the stairs. “Celluloid is nitrate, and it’s as alive as a demon. It will catch fire on a whim. It will kill you with gas even as you try to put out the flames. It wants to burn.”

Judy’s annoyance helped mute her terror as they entered the narrow room. Washington had been unbearably hot all summer, and Baltimore wasn’t much better. He had underplayed the peril of their drive, which explained the high salary. This mundane detail clawed past her fears of everything about Cartier she did not yet understand—or want to.

“You should have told us the true dangers,” she said.

“But all beauty is dangerous, yes?” Cartier said. “This particular demon—moving pictures—casts a spell. It spirits all who see it from our world to steal a glimpse of another.”

Like the petrified man at last night’s showing. What world had he seen? Or her?

The large black projector glaring down toward the theater screen looked like a beast out of Shelley’s Frankenstein, a tangle of cords and sprockets like teeth. She was only vaguely aware of Cartier closing the door. Then his cool—no, cold—presence close behind her made her turn quickly around. He held out a round metal cannister with a film coiled within. She couldn’t help raising her finger to touch the rim, curious. The cannister was also cold to the touch.

“Each reel is fifteen minutes,” he said. “A Stranger Knocks is five reels. And these projectors are old. Sad to say, most theaters on the colored circuit can’t properly maintain their projectors. Without delicate handling, the reels will be damaged. That fool last night was unsuited to the task. So, you must pay careful attention. I am entrusting them to your care.”

With deft fingers moving quickly, he showed her how to thread the film, where the sprockets caught the gaps in the celluloid to coax life into the frozen images. His voice lowered to a hurried whisper, so she found herself leaning closer to hear his flurry of words, which at times did not sound like English. Only then did she notice his scent. His scents. Cartier smelled like lavender at first, and then wildflowers, and then like the sweet corn cakes her mother used to make her in the griddle before…

Judy knew she was swooning again, but she was still upright. Her hands were busy on the projector, following Cartier’s whispered instructions although she could not clearly hear him, or understand his words when his voice reached her ear.

The knowing that had seized her during their long walk to the projection room returned with the fury of a thunderclap, and her mind asked again: What is he? He was not the old man with sharpened canines in Stoker’s Dracula. He was not the horrid Count Orlok in Nosferatu, who was monstrous on sight and whose narrow head slowly rising from that poor woman’s bedside, from her neck, had visited her sleep many nights.

But Cartier was some kind of monster. She could not deny it now, watching her ignorant fingers traverse this strange contraption as if she had mastered it years ago. Doing his bidding.

And if he could compel her to do this, what else might he demand of her?

The strangest thing happened: inside, she was weeping as she had only at her parents’ funeral after the flu orphaned her in 1918. But her weeping was silent. Hidden. Hers alone.

“You have no reason to fear me.” Cartier sounded more bored than kind, almost scolding. As if she should already have known, despite his tyranny over her will.

“Of course I do,” she said, gasping out the words, digging them from a well.

“You are in my employ. Why would I hurt you?”

“What happened to that man last night?”

Cartier’s silence was so long that she would have turned to look back at him if she’d still had command of her limbs.

“As you will come to understand…” he began. “I have needs I must satisfy. My hungers bring me no joy. But I’ve found a feeding method that suits both my animal drives and my artistic ones. I’ll answer no more questions.”

“What about Alvin?” she said.

True to his word, he did not answer this time.

“I won’t do it,” she said. “I won’t stay with you. I’ll burn it myself. I’ll find a way.”

She waited an eternity that was only a few seconds. Then the house lights went down, turning the room dark, and the dreadful organ drumbeat sounded below.

The projector hummed. She had started the picture.

Cartier’s unearthly grip released her, and she was able to control her muscles enough to crane her head around to see what she already knew: Cartier was not in the room. How could he be, when he was coaxing such brooding music from the organ in plain view?

When had he left? Was the voice she’d heard only in her own mind?

Her weeping began anew, but his time it wasn’t bottled inside of her. She hoped the audience would hear her wails from below, and she might disrupt Cartier’s plans. If only she could scream for all of them to flee the theater before Cartier’s sinister hunt began.

At least he granted her one mercy: she could close her eyes.

He did not force her to watch A Stranger Knocks again.

When the house lights came back up this time after the fifth reel ended, three people were standing to stare at the screen as everyone left around them: a burly man, a smartly-dressed woman with streaks of silver in her hair…

And Alvin.

Alvin might be in the same seat from the night before, when she had been beside him. His wiry frame was swaying slightly, his chin angled high toward the screen. Judy had emptied herself of tears, but new grief clawed at her. Alvin looked as helpless as a mouse.

“Not him,” Judy whispered, although she was still alone in the room. “Not Alvin.”

No sound came from behind her, not even a phantom’s whisper.

But Cartier glided into the aisle below. As he stood closest to Alvin’s row, he slowly turned to look up at her with a grin.

“As you can see…” his voice said, far too close to her ear to be anything other than sorcery, “…you’re not the only one capable of threats. I’m sure you understand now that if you harm a frame of my reels, you will lose your mate. And I will need to hire a new driver.”

“Yes,” she said, because she had nothing to bargain with.

“I think you’ll find, over time, that you’ll enjoy our work,” he said. “You can write pictures for me—the regular kind. And Alvin can be coaxed to act for the camera, I’m sure.”

Never, she thought. She would never take any joy from helping this unhuman creature.

“Perhaps…” he said, his cool breath finding the inner recesses of her ear although he still stood far below. “…you might earn your way into my fellowship one day. Despite the demands of the hunger, the rewards of long life remain.”

This time, she said it aloud: “Never. I would never want to be like you.”

Below, she watched his grin widen until his cheeks inflated to grotesquery, reaching his ears. His skin seeped with pigmentation until he was as dark as she, or darker. If he were not wearing his coat with the gold buttons, she would never have recognized him now.

“These race pictures you love so much?” he said. “How long do you think they will survive? Most of them will burn, or rot, and be utterly forgotten. Have you heard of the new invention to come—sound? Yes! Sound from the pictures themselves! No more pantomimes. Sound is going to lay waste to one empire and give birth to another. Future residents will forget where these old colored theaters once stood. And the stories of colored heroes in race pictures will be replaced by Hollywood’s servile bowing and scraping. Only your grandchildren will live to enjoy the era of colored pictures you dream about. If they live to see it themselves.”

Judy did not realize she had been holding her breath until she exhaled so violently that she shuddered—but with hope instead of fear. He had meant to taunt her, but had he just confirmed that she would survive to have grandchildren? Did his vision see that far?

“I can live with that,” Judy said. And, again, because none of the frozen spectators below had moved, including her beloved, she said firmly: “Not Alvin. Leave us as we were. Please.”

Her heartbeat hammered at her ribs as she waited for Cartier’s answer. No sound came.

But below, Alvin turned his head right and left, obviously confused. But he was awake!

The tears Judy shed were not from joy, although relief shook her knees. She wept for the man and woman below that Cartier was gliding toward past Alvin’s row. What horrors lay in store for them? She had no way to warn them and dared not try.

Cartier, after all, was her employer.

“Alvin!” she called down to her husband.

He turned around and looked up, smiling when he saw her. A fully human smile.

She freed herself from the projection room to race to the stairs, and she found him already climbing the steps up to the balcony to meet her. They ran to each other like a lovelorn couple in a play, holding each other as if there were no other eyes in the room.

And there weren’t, after all. Except for the man and woman shambling behind Cartier toward their fate, the theater was empty. She held Alvin a long time, feeling her heart pounding against him, wondering what he knew of the true nature of their employment. Of Cartier. And if he did not know, how could she tell him? But how could she not?

“I had my doubts before, but now I understand,” Alvin said. “I think it’s better now.”

“What’s better?”

His smile fanned her soul with enough affection to help her forget Cartier’s insidious grin, at least while her chest rested against his. Alvin kissed the top of her head.

“The ending,” he said.

 

(Editors’ Note: “A Stranger Knocks” is read by Matt Peters on the Uncanny Magazine Podcast, Episode 60B.)

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