<< INSIDE - KELLY AND ERIKA'S DORM ROOM >>

ERIKA'S HAIR STYLING BUSINESS BOOMS 

Aretha Franklin's "Rock Steady" plays in a whirlwind montage of hairstyling. 

-- INSIDE - KELLY AND ERIKA'S DORM ROOM - Erika styles several girls' hair, one after another. Girl after girl of all types; long, short, curly, and straight hair, come to the dorm room with messy hair and leave excitedly with nice new hair do's.  

-- Erika curls hair into ringlets with the golden curling iron.

-- Several different girls hand Erika money, which Erika pockets in her stylist's apron. 

-- Erika oils up The Chair's leather upholstery. She wipes down the wood and metal finishes, gently wiping down the metal with rust cleaner. She sprays the metal with gold spray paint.

She sews the gashes in the seat gently with green thread. 

She whips The Chair around revealing a very new looking chair to Kelly who smiles awkwardly, keeping her distance. Erika doesn't notice. 

-- INSIDE - GIRL'S DORM BATHROOM - Erika runs with a girl from the bathroom to Erika's room, while keeping a dripping towel wrapped around the girl's hair from falling down. 

-- INSIDE - MCKELDIN LIBRARY - Erika studies with Gennard and his friends. They are sitting very close to each other.  They smile and steal glances. Erika's phone vibrates on the table.  

She takes the call with a serious look on her face, then packs up and leaves quickly, not saying goodbye, leaving Gennard looking confused at her abrupt departure.  

-- INSIDE - KELLY AND ERIKA'S DORM ROOM - Erika blow dries hair and straightens it with the golden hot comb. 

-- OUTSIDE - STAMP STUDENT UNION - Erika and Gennard walk and talk, holding hands on a bright sunny campus day. Three girls with nice modern 60's hairdo's wave and beam bright but eerie smiles toward Erika as they walk by.  

The look in their eyes is completely vacant. Erika smiles and nods back at them. Gennard squints curiously at their oddly blank facial expressions as they pass by.  

<< INSIDE - MCKELDIN LIBRARY STACKS -- NIGHT >> 

Gennard walks down a dimly lit aisle of bookshelves alone.  Backpack slung over one shoulder, he turns a corner and heads toward a door marked "EXIT" a few yards ahead.  

Eyes drooping with fatigue, he yawns against the back of his hand, which is holding his cell phone.  

He turns his palm over and hits the home button.  

The time on his phone reads "12:44" over a background photo of he and Erika playfully leaning on each other and smiling, her arms around his neck.  

Suddenly, a rustling noise comes from somewhere down the hall behind him. Gennard whips around, peering nervously down the deserted aisle, not moving.

A few rows away, a single sheet of paper glides out onto the aisle floor. Someone slowly exhales a long raspy sigh. 

Gennard narrows his eyes, and tenses up his body. Slowly, he leans down and around the nearest row. He looks through the openings above the books on the shelves, toward the sound. 

Squinting, he sees a dark hooded figure sitting at a study table. 

The figure passes a handless sleeve over its head, pulling off it's hood.  

Gennard flinches, just as long red hair falls down around the figure's shoulders.  

GENNARD 

“Kelly?” 

Kelly looks up and squints through the shelves. Gennard exhales and throws his head back with relief. He stands up straight and walks over to her table. 

GENNARD 

“Man... this library's creepy as hell at night! I thought you were some, something else.” 

Kelly blinks wearily. 

KELLY 

“Oh, Gennard, hey.” 

She puts on a strained smile as she rushes to gather up dozens of photocopies that litter the table. She stuffs them all under a large text book, and wipes the empty table as if tidying up.  

GENNARD 

“You know crammin' never works right?” 

He smiles kindly. Kelly gives a single laugh. The bags under her eyes glow, accentuated by the light coming from her laptop.  

Gennard rests his bookbag in a chair on the other side of the table and picks up the lone paper that fell on the floor.  

GENNARD 

“What class's got you up here so late?” 

He looks down at the paper as he walks back to the table and places it next to a large legal pad full of messy shorthand.  

KELLY 

“Just some research.” 

On the paper, an old black and white picture of a tall white man smiling oddly catches Gennard's eye. 

The man stands in front of a salon wearing a white barber's jacket with a three petal flower logo. The shop sign says "Lina's Hair & Barbery". Gennard squints as he sees a chair through the shop window that looks just like Erika's chair. 

Kelly grabs the paper from him and hides it under a stack of papers. She puts on a fake smile, but she has no poker face. 

KELLY 

“Oh, thank you.”

GENNARD 

“Is that Erika's chair?”

Kelly blinks and stutters guiltily. 

KELLY 

“No, it's just some old antiques. They all look the same.”

Gennard half chuckles nervously. 

GENNARD 

“Kelly, what's going on? I know those flowers like the one on that guy's shirt. Two big petals, one small petal, all those antennae things all in the center. Erika draws them all over her notebooks.”

He rolls his eyes at the thought. 

Kelly purses her lips as Gennard stares at her expectantly.  Kelly hesitates for a moment and then blurts out in a heavy breath. 

KELLY 

“I saw it move.”

Gennard stares confused. Kelly spills out everything rapidly.  

KELLY 

“Or at least I think I did. I think that thing tried to kill me. I dropped one of those stupid hairsprays under the bed and when I got down to get it the leg rest clamped down on my back and I couldn't get out, and Erika says it's just a broken mechanism in the lever, but I know what I felt and I know what I saw. And she won't listen to me when I say get rid of it because some crazy astrology or something lady she met at Sheila's friend's party told her it's a sign and it will bring her 'good fortune', and it has. Like girls are in our room around the clock, and that's great because I know she needs the money, but something's not right. There are a million old chairs on craigslist and ebay and she's stuck on that one.”

Gennard sinks down slowly into a chair on Kelly's right. He looks at her seriously and she continues, barely stopping for air. 

KELLY 

“I know it sounds crazy, and I'm the biggest skeptic there is, but there's a six inch gash on my back that isn't quite healing right since that thing cut into me. I thought I was nuts, but I couldn't let it go so I looked up everything, anything I could find on old chairs. I googled things that didn't make any sense, "killer chair", "Evil salon chair", dumb stuff, I didn't even know what I was looking for until I looked up this flower.”

She pulls the stack of papers back out from under the textbook and thumbs through them. She lays three pictures out in front of Gennard. He leans over and studies the pictures showing different variations of the same three petal flower. 

KELLY 

“It's a commelina. Three petal flowers are not that common, so when I looked them up and found the name I matched it with salon, chair, hair, and this article came up.”

She hands him another sheet with a printed copy of a faded newspaper article on it. She squares it up next to the picture of the smiling man.  

Gennard looks closely at the man in the picture who is smiling proudly as two men hoist the salon sign onto the building and another man sweeps the sidewalk. 

KELLY 

“That guy was Alfred Everby.”

Her talking slows down to normal as she points out different things on the page. 

KELLY 

“His shop was one that burned down during the riots in Baltimore when Martin Luther King was murdered in nineteen sixty-eight. The salon was called Lina's, but it was registered as Commelina's.”

She stares at the picture of The Chair in the window. 

KELLY 

“When I saw that thing in the window in the picture, I felt like I got dipped in ice water.”

Gennard shakes his head slowly. 

GENNARD 

“What does all this mean, Kelly?”

Kelly chews her bottom lip. 

KELLY 

“I don't know. All I can find is pieces of the story.” 

She shuffles through the pictures, laying them side by side. 

KELLY 

“There are bits that don't add up to a full picture, urban legends about Everby's salon being strange, women being addicted to getting their hair done. A confrontation with neighbors, complaints filed. I don't know if he was messing around with his clients or just making so much money the people in the neighborhood felt taken advantage of. It doesn't explain if that chair has anything to do with the complaints. If I could just find someone who knows, someone I could talk to first hand, I could convince Erika to dump that thing.”

GENNARD 

“All this stuff happened so long ago, are any of these people even still alive?”

KELLY 

“Everby died in the fire. The only other person I could find even related to the salon was a maintenance man named…”

Kelly looks at her laptop screen, scrolls through an open web article and skims the words. 

KELLY 

“...Maurice Johnson. He'd be about eighty-three now. I couldn't find a working number for him, but this locator service is going to get back to me.” 

Gennard looks at her with surprise. 

GENNARD 

“Wait, did you try the guy who sold it to her? Maybe he'll take it back.”

Kelly laughs sarcastically. 

KELLY 

“I called and his phone is disconnected. Erika gave me his info the day she bought it just in case he was a craigslist crazy. The landlord said he and his partner moved out that same night. No forwarding address, no trace. Maurice Johnson's the only lead left.”

GENNARD 

“You're really serious about this?”

Kelly stares at him, silent. 

GENNARD 

“Ok, I get it, but what are you going to do? Go up to this old dude and say 'Hey, a hundred years ago when you worked at a hair shop, did a freaky old salon chair ever try to kill you?'. Kelly, that sounds crazy.”

Kelly rolls her eyes and lets out a small laugh. 

KELLY 

“I know it sounds crazy, but I also know what I saw. If there's even a chance she could get hurt... I have to get some proof so I can convince Erika to get rid of that thing.” 

Kelly looks at Gennard, her face full of pain. Her voice breaks quietly. 

KELLY 

“We've been friends since the overnight stay program before freshman orientation. I can't let anything bad happen to her.”

Gennard nods with understanding.

KELLY 

“I'm waiting on this people search to send me a working number to reach him. I'm just going to call and try to find out more. Maybe he knows something that can help.”

Kelly taps the picture absent-mindedly as Everby's odd smile stares back at her.