The kid gave him a strange look at the end of the show, but rushed out of the lobby without speaking.
The next several weeks involved a painful process of elimination. Scott had decided to drop from his original list anyone who was absent during a subsequent incident. David Warner's rape of Mary Steenburgen in Time After Time eliminated seven people the very next weekend, but it took two more films to eliminate another five, and there were still eleven contenders. Confusing the issue was an influx of new viewers, primarily high school students lured by rumors of X-rated films. Scott's quarry must have noticed something amiss as well, because there were no alterations for almost a month, long enough for attendance to dip back to its usual level.
Scott was on the verge of giving up when the changes resumed. They had been growing increasingly daring all along, and the single-mindedly sexual nature of the alterations continued. But now the sex was frequently distorted, even violent. The mute girl, Nova, was subjected to some sort of painful electrical stimulation in Planet of the Apes. and the Morlocks tied Weena over an open fire for a prolonged sequence in The Time Machine.
For three straight weeks, Scott was unable to eliminate any of his candidates, the list of whom now consisted of two teenagers, the woman who talked to herself, an elderly man who seemed to fall asleep frequently, a man in his mid-twenties suffering from the worst case of acne Scott had ever seen, and an overweight middle-aged man whom Scott had chosen for no particular reason as the most likely culprit. The kid with the glasses stopped coming after Dian the Beautiful was brutally ravished in At the Earth's Core.
On the last Saturday in November, Scott got lucky.
For one thing, it was sleeting and promised to get worse. Candy had been glancing nervously outdoors ever since she arrived, even though she lived only six blocks away. Only seven people bought tickets, and two of them were among those whom Scott had already eliminated. There was also a middle-aged couple he'd never seen before. That left the acne case, the middle-aged man, and one teenage boy, the only one who always sat by himself.
The first feature was Night of the Comet. For a long time, Scott was afraid that there would be no change in the script, that this would be another fruitless night. But when the insane stockboys stripped and spanked the two sisters before tying them up, he knew his quarry was in the theater.
But there were still three possibilities.
Then the middle-aged man rose and walked up the aisle to the door, zipping his coat as he did so. Scott ran quickly downstairs and confirmed that the man had indeed left the theater. Two suspects remained, Acne Face and the quiet boy.
The second feature was Wavelength, a relatively low-key story about a young couple who stumble on a secret military base where three extraterrestrials are imprisoned. Scott watched intently but with growing unease. If nothing changed, did that mean the older man was his quarry? The brief nude scene early in the movie passed without alteration, and Scott settled back in his chair thoughtfully, trying to decide how best to approach the man.
The story unrolled before him, but Scott's mind was elsewhere as Robert Carradine and Cherie Currie made their way through the tunnels, eventually to be discovered and captured. He was so preoccupied, in fact, that he never did see how the girl's sweater was lost during the struggle with the guard, and only the brutality of the beating administered afterward was enough stimulus to startle him from his reverie.
Scott was downstairs waiting even before the closing credits began to scroll across the screen. Just possibly something in the demeanor of one of the two remaining suspects would tip him off. Acne Face walked by, eyes downcast, hands tucked into coat pockets, and never even looked in Scott's direction.
The quiet boy never came out at all.
Scott checked the theater thoroughly, but there was no sign of him. Something of his perplexity must have shown because Candy asked him what was wrong.
"One of the customers never came out," he explained. "That mousy little kid with the glasses who's in here all the time. Maybe I should check the rest room again."
"Don't bother." She sighed. "He took off right after the first picture ended. I heard him asking for a ride."
Reality seemed to freeze in place. "Are you sure? He left before the second feature started?"
She shrugged. "About then, yeah. The older guy who comes in here a lot is his neighbor, I guess. What difference does it make?"
Scott never answered her question, never even heard it, and a few seconds later, Candy turned away, shaking her head.
The following Saturday, Scott was waiting for Acne Face, having decided upon his strategy the night before.
"I know what you've been doing," he whispered as he accepted the ticket. Startled eyes met his own, then darted away.
"I don't…" The sound drifted off.
"Wait for me outside, half an hour after the show ends." Scott spoke more firmly. "I won't tell anyone if you do what I say."
There was no reply, but the look of guilt that passed over the acne-scarred features was as good as a confession.
There were no changes in that evening's double feature.
"I'm Scott." He offered his gloved hand in the darkness outside of the theater. The slouched figure standing in the shadow made no effort to respond. "What's your name?"
"Chuck. Chuck Scusset."
"Pleased to meet you, Chuck. Look, it's freezing out here. Why don't we go to some place quiet and talk about this, somewhere warm?"
And so it was that they ended up in Chuck Scusset's cluttered apartment less than six blocks from the theater.
Scott was no fanatic about neatness, but he was appalled by his surroundings. Chuck lived in what amounted to a bed-sitting room with an adjoining half bath on the third floor of one of Managansett's seedier apartment buildings. Other than the bed, there was a single folding chair and a card table, no other furnishings. Chuck's clothing was apparently stored in two cheap suitcases and a half dozen cardboard boxes he had retrieved from behind one of the local markets. Chuck had taken the chair, so Scott was forced to sit on the bed, the only relatively uncluttered area available.
It was evident that Chuck was a science-fiction fan. There were piles of genre paperbacks and digest-size magazines lining every wall, covering the card table, under the bed, filling the few shelves mounted on the walls. A model of the starship Enterprise stood in one corner of the room, surrounded by figurines of monsters, aliens, and space-suited humans. There was no other indication whatsoever of human habitation except for an occasional candy wrapper or empty potato chip bag.
"So how do you do it?" Scott asked.
"I didn't do anything," came the sullen reply.
"No shit? The movies just changed themselves and you let me come up here just because you're a nice guy."
No response.
Scott leaned forward, hands on knees. "Listen, Chuck, you're messing with copyrighted material here. You could get into a lot of trouble doing that."
"I don't hurt anything!"
Scott sat back, sighing with satisfaction. "Ah, but you do change things, don't you?"