“Hell’s bells.” Poppy gaped at me.
“Let’s try the others.” I moved the second projector around on the outside track, trying to find two projected images that made a different scene.
“There!” yelled Poppy excitedly as the second film superimposed itself over the fifth film. Now, the girl ran along the corridor as before, but the two lines of hooded figures walked in lines on either side of her—looking like ghosts inside the walls of the corridor.
There was one last set of films to pair up.
Noticing my trembling fingers, Duncan took over, rotating the third projector around on the metal ring until it overlapped with the only film left—the sixth film. The two films put together showed the girl running into the chapel on the hill, but now the group of hooded figures were circling the chapel, ominously closing in.
All six films automatically stopped looping and locked into the scenes.
We’d gotten it right.
Our heads turned in unison to the clock.
The light remained red.
“There must be something else,” Poppy whispered. She turned her face back around to the films. “Oh my God . . .”
I wheeled around.
Something was happening with the three sets of superimposed films.
The films had begun to continue. But each set of projected images now operated as one, as though the films had merged inside the projectors as well. Somehow, there were now just three films, looping in pairs on six projectors.
In set one, the girl woke on the stone grave on the hill, terror on her face. She jumped up.
In set two, she ran away towards the cliff. Hooded figures rose from behind the gravestones and filed out in two lines, following her.
In set three, she ran into the chapel. The figures surrounded the chapel. I held my breath as one of the figures turned and looked . . . at us. His face was completely in shadow inside the hood that he wore.
Poppy stumbled backwards. “Damned creepy shit,” she muttered.
What were we meant to do? Hadn’t we already done all we could?
No, there was something else. Think.
“Let’s forget about the scary-as-hell fact that it looks like that guy is staring right at us,” I said, “and work out what he’d be looking at in the actual scene.”
“That would be the cliff edge.” Duncan nodded. “The aspect where he is now, he’d be looking directly that way. I can picture that from the day when we were all out there on the hills. After poor Saul died.” He gazed at the man in the hood as if transfixed.
The hooded man broke away from the group. And headed towards us. I felt a chill wind up from my stomach.
Duncan threaded his hands together nervously. “I hardly think this is necessary. What’s this all about? I don’t like this man. No, I don’t like him much at all.”
For the first time that I’d seen in a challenge, Duncan took action. With quick movements, he rotated the first, second and third projectors back to their original positions.
Now, there was a film projecting on all six walls again.
The films all went blank.
Then every film snapped on again. All showing the same film—of the man on the cliff edge advancing towards us.
“Oh no,” Duncan muttered. “That wasn’t the idea.”
The films began showing flashes of something else.
The girl in the chapel.
The hooded man advancing.
The girl lifting something in the chapel—stairs?
The hooded man advancing.
A hidden passage appearing beneath the raised stairs.
The hooded man advancing.
The girl entering the passage and lighting a candle.
The hooded man advancing.
The girl running along a dark passage.
The hooded man advancing.
The candlelight showing a door ahead.
The hooded man advancing.
The girl opening the door.
The hooded man advancing.
A flash of images so quick my mind couldn’t register them.
A sudden nausea rose in my stomach. It was just the flash of images doing that to me, wasn’t it?
Duncan and Poppy made gasping, stuttering sounds, no longer watching but trying to turn away and cover their eyes.
Panting hard, I rushed to turn off the projectors. Anything to stop those images.
No, turning them off wouldn’t win the challenge.
What hadn’t we tried?
How could I undo what we’d done? How could I send the hooded man away?
I rotated the first, second and third projectors to align with the sixth, fifth and fourth projectors. The opposite to how we’d done it last time.
Again, the projected images on the wall went blank.