The man in the leather jacket was the Magician.
He looked similar to the last time we’d seen him, the same worn-out look in his eyes, his hair the same length and style. But there’s a calmness to his demeanor in the film. Whatever’s about to happen, he appears to be ready for it.
“Go on, now,” he says to whoever’s operating the camera. “But leave it rolling.”
After a few seconds, the Magician pulls out what appears to be a journal. Then he compares something in its pages with some of the graffiti on the wall in front of him, and just as he turns to check out one of the other walls, there’s a burst of static and light. It only lasts a millisecond, but in that time, something has happened.
The Magician is no longer alone.
In the corner, behind the Magician, is an impossibly tall figure, maybe seven or eight feet in height—way too tall for the size of the room. The figure is standing incredibly still, its neck bent beneath the ceiling, towering over the Magician, who doesn’t seem to realize that he’s no longer alone.
When the tall figure finally begins to move, it becomes immediately clear that—whatever this thing is—it’s definitely not a man.
Its form slowly changes as it begins to fill up the shadows, sucking up what little light remains in the room.
Suddenly, the Magician stops looking at the wall and straightens up.
He understands there’s something behind him.
I felt Chloe shudder beside me. She moved closer, hooking her arm around mine.
Back on the screen, the Magician looks down at his journal and then up again. He can see it now, the darkness moving toward him from the corners of the room—a terrible thing made up of smaller dark gray shapes pouring and swirling in from around the edges.
I could feel myself reacting to the familiar gray shapes. My heart was racing, and an unpleasant warmth began seeping into my body.
Then the film itself slowly begins to lose light.
As the darkness moves to take over the frame, the Magician looks up toward the camera and we can see immediately by his expression that something is terribly wrong.
“No,” he says, looking down at his journal and then up at one of the graffiti-covered walls. “This isn’t right. This can’t be right!”
He drops his journal, turns, and bolts toward the camera.
He doesn’t make it more than two steps before he runs into part of the darkness that has been slowly seeping into the room.
As he lunges forward, something happens.
The lower part of his body becomes stuck immediately, but the top continues to move, stretching unnaturally as his momentum carries him forward.
For a moment it looks as though he’s entered some kind of advanced and beautiful yoga pose. He’s stretched thin, like he’s made of hot, freshly blown glass, and then his body snaps and pops, slowly breaking in two, right around the middle of his chest.
Dark pink-and-crimson mist sprays the air as his body splits open.
For just a moment, we can see his lungs moving beneath the shining white teeth of his rib cage, and then he’s suddenly snapped apart and sucked back into the darkness, and the room is completely black again.
The film ran out with a metallic flapping snarl and Chloe jumped.
I switched off the projector, and everything was silent. I could feel Chloe shaking beside me. She was crying.
“Chloe,” I said, but I didn’t have the words to continue.
After a minute or so, Chloe got up, switched on the lights, and opened the curtains. Her tears were gone, and the broken expression I’d seen on her face as she’d watched the film had been replaced by a look of resolute focus.
“That wasn’t the Magician,” she said. “It’s impossible.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t sure. There was something about that movie that felt…real.
“It was pretty freaky,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Those gray shadow things? Come on, K. Those were clearly visual effects.”
I nodded and tried to hide the fact that my heart was pounding and I was having trouble breathing. I’d just seen the Magician torn apart by a deadly, terrifying darkness, but unlike Chloe, I was pretty sure those shadow things weren’t special effects.
I’d seen them before.
I saw them coming for me the night I’d spent walking around Portland, outside the elevator in The Tower, with Crow on that city bus, and I’d seen them in a dream, standing in the middle of the road, the night of the accident with Annie and Emily Connors.
I understood something in that moment.