The Old Cinema at Midnight
Lao He runs the midnight show and cleans a label-less reel that turns out to be news of a fire thirty years ago that killed seven patrons. On the night of spring's beginning the projector lights itself; the house is full of people in old dress, and after the show a fresh layer of seed shells lies on the floor.
Lao He is the projectionist on duty at the city's last old cinema, running the midnight show. The cinema has three floors; the red velvet curtain has long faded, the chair arms are chipped, but Lao He guards it and wipes it once every evening.
The midnight show plays old films; no one picks, you watch what is scheduled. Lao He does not only project; he also cleans the reels — the film is old and must be hand-run through a cleaning bath so it will not jam.
Once he cleaned a reel with no label, its sprocket holes brittle, as if stored for decades. He ran it on the machine; the screen showed a newsreel: thirty years ago, a fire broke out at a midnight show in this very cinema and killed seven patrons. The camera shook; through smoke people rushed the door; a girl in a red dress was pinned behind a pillar, staring at the lens as if looking for someone.
The film broke there; what followed had burned away.
Lao He did not sleep that night. From then, after each show he ran that reel empty once — no projection, just letting the machine turn — saying he was running one more show for those seven.
The strange part came on the night of the spring beginning. The projector lit on its own, with no touch from him. The screen was full, all dressed in old fashion; the red-dress girl sat in the third row, watching the screen quietly. Lao He stood behind the projection window and dared not make a sound. When the house lights came up, the seats were empty, but on the floor lay a layer of fresh sunflower-seed shells, as if someone had just cracked them.
The next day Lao He locked that reel in a cabinet and told his apprentice: "Don't run this one outward. They have watched it themselves."
Midnight Record note: A cinema burned seven people; the facade shows nothing now, the walls repainted, the chairs replaced. But Lao He knew some shows cannot let out — those seven were stuck in the night of the fire and never left. Each night he ran an empty reel, not for ghosts but to give the "un-ended show" a closing: the film has run out, now you may go. In each of us there is a show that never let out, stuck on some winter night, waiting for someone to turn the light on for us.