“I am guessing if Peters was a petite young redhead with big breasts and a nice ass, the answer might have been different.”
“You’re evil, Amy…” Sophia said with a wide smirk.
“Don’t I know it…”
……….
After their first real heart-to-heart, Amy and Sophia fell into a comfortable working relationship as well as an at least superficial personal one as well. Amy could see the eagerness and desire in Sophia’s eyes from time to time as she gazed upon the performers at The Review. From their occasional conversations, Sophia had made no secret of what she dreamed of. And Amy actually would have liked to have helped her out, but when she looked at what had happened to her with all the breaks that had come her way, and still she had not succeeded, who was she to offer advice or be of counsel? Besides, and though it was small-minded of her, Amy was reluctant to aid Sophia in that direction. She was not proud that those thoughts filled her mind, but it was what it was, and she could not deny it was self-preservation for her on some level. As she looked at her lowly status as an usher at a less than third rate theatre, Amy reluctantly fell into a mindset of taking care of herself first. Deep down she still knew she could make her own dreams come to fruition…
The other bug that sat in Amy’s craw and nagged away at her as well was Lynch’s complete disregard for her possibly getting into any type of performance. To rub salt in her wounds, Lynch now had her cleaning up after the shows as well as doing the ushering beforehand. In general, the audiences at The Review were polite and tidy, but there always seemed to a few slobs among the elite, and this required her to scour the entire theatre just in case. She knew if even the area around one seat in one row was found not in the condition that his royal highness, Darren Lynch, approved of, there would be hell to pay. And Amy especially hated this requirement of her job.
All her life she had envisioned herself the center of attention as an actress or singer. But what was she instead? A half-time seat finder and half-time custodian. Many days it was all Amy could do to even get out of bed and drag herself into The Review for another day of menial employment. However, as she was living with her parents, she was able to stash away almost all of the pittance that Lynch paid her. And all that kept her going these days was knowing that nest egg would eventually be large enough for her to make another run at London.
Haunted Night Events
Swinson, UK
August 2017
One night late in August, as Amy was plodding around and half-heartedly making the rounds of cleaning up after one of the film nights Lynch had just put on, she sat in one of the aisle seats and exhaled in disgust and exasperation. If she thought it would actually have done any good, she would have sunk her head into her hands and cried. But so many nights, in the privacy of her old room in her childhood home, she had succumbed to this level of self-pity. It had been a waste of time and energy, and quite frankly at this point, she was flat cried-out. She leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes, remembering what it had been like when she had been on the stage. She could actually see it…hear it…even smell and taste it. The feelings were that enmeshed in her being.
She opened her eyes, and the reality of her life came back to her harshly as she stared up at the empty stage illuminated by just two dim lights on opposite sides of the curtains. She was about to get back to her feet and finish up the last of few rows she had yet to examine when she stopped in her tracks and cocked her head. Had she actually heard that? She held her breath and listened again. Sure enough, there were the faint strains of music that seemed to be drifting down toward her from the stage. Then to add to that oddity, Amy could swear she was picking up on a lone voice singing along with the barely audible musical accompaniment. She walked slowly and silently down the center aisle and tip-toed up on the stage. She gently parted the heavy curtains back that at the moment were covering the screen used for the films as well as the expansive backstage area when plays were ongoing.
It was dark as night, so she flipped on a wall switch just to the left, which while not illuminating the space brightly, was enough to see that all it was, was empty space. No one was there but her. The music had stopped. The singing had ceased as well. Amy shook her head, figuring her daydreaming was making her hear things now. The place was spooky enough at this time of night when she was here alone and the whole incident, though she was sure she had just hallucinated it, gave her the shivers. She doused the light, finished up her cleaning for the night and headed home after locking up the theatre tight. Other weird and inexplicable things began to transpire late at night from time to time after Amy had experienced the music anomaly.
The musical phenomenon did not repeat itself, but Amy, from time to time, could have sworn she heard doors creaking open, as if on ancient and rusty hinges, though that had to be impossible. Lynch made sure minor things like that were addressed. Amy should know. She was the one required to take care of such minor details. She also heard footsteps in the dark of the large hall as she worked sometimes. Not anything threatening or dangerous sounding, but more along the lines of the patter of feet that she had grown very accustomed to from dramatic moves on a stage to dancers rehearsing their moves. However, each time Amy poked around following the direction in which the sounds seemed to be coming from, she found nothing.
The most disturbing of these incidents was when she really began to question her own sanity, as she would have sworn in a court of law that objects had moved of their own accord between the time she began her cleaning routine and finished it up. Boxes, crates, microphones, light booms…you name it when it came to inanimate equipment in and around the stage and Amy was sure they were in different spots as she was leaving for the night as when she had begun her rounds. None of these things seemed to happen concurrently, nor did they seem to manifest even on the same night. The music and singing also did begin to recur more frequently as time went on, and it was all Amy could do some evenings from running screaming into the night. Not so much from fear, but out of a concern that she might be going crazy.
On the most recent time in which Amy heard the mysterious and, as of yet, unlocated music and singing, she sat as the sounds lilted through the dark and eerie interior of The Review. The pattern of the music seemed vaguely familiar to her but as hard as she tried she just could not think of what it was. For sure, the melody and tune seemed as if it was right there in her brain, but the actual identity of it would just not come to her. As the sounds eventually faded to silence, as they had in all other episodes, Amy left her seat and went to the stage to do the final sweeping and mopping of the wide hardwood expanse so she could call it a night and head home.
Just as she was making her last pass across the very center of the stage, Amy bent down to pick up a stray fragment of paper that had been eluding her broom. A stray wind came by just then and pushed the paper beyond her reach, and she huffed in frustration as she chased the flitting piece of debris. Just as she stepped away from her broom, one of the overhead lights fell behind her and came crashing to the stage floor with a resounding crash as it shattered on the wood. Amy gasped in surprise and shock and found herself on her rear as she looked back at the heavy apparatus that would have smashed into her, had she not been chasing that silly piece of paper.
The indentation left in the floor, as well as the heft of the light, made Amy know she would have been seriously injured or perhaps even killed if she had been under the thing. Her legs were shaking as she got to her feet and she supported herself on the wall at the edge of the stage as she regained her composure and looked around wildly. However, as was the case every night, she was alone. After the near deafening echo of the accident had faded away, the theatre was again as silent as could be. She cleaned up the mess as best she could, making a mental note to let Lynch know the next day what had happened, just to protect herself from his wrath when he found out.
As she was walking home, the falling light incident began to make her brain churn around some more. A
t the time, she had not connected the two items, but all of a sudden it hit her: a falling light was what all the long-time residents and her grandparents and everyone else in town who had related the demise of Rosalva to her had said happened. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, Amy thought as she approached her parents’ home, and for sure some of the equipment and infrastructure at The Review was old, outdated, and in need of repair. If nothing else, Lynch was a cheapskate on top of a drunk and womanizer. However, she had never been one to believe in coincidences. Then, just as she was reaching for the handle on the front door of the house, Amy recalled the music she had been hearing. It was called Habanera, and it was the famous aria from Bizet’s Carmen. She did not know much opera, but that aria was one she had studied while at LAMDA. To add to that, she suddenly shuddered as she recalled her grandparents saying that had been Rosalva’s favorite piece of music…one she was always called on to perform in encores following her shows. Amy found herself shaking uncontrollably and had to steady the key in her hand with her other hand so she could let herself inside.
……….
The next morning, she went into Lynch’s office to inform him of the broken light. He was pissed about it, as he always was when he found out he would have to pay for yet another unexpected expense, but relief spread through Amy when he did not turn his anger on her or try and blame her for the accident. She was about to leave and not say anything more, but she had tossed and turned all night as she could not get the association of what had happened to her and how similar it was to Rosalva’s near death. She had never been one to buy into anything even remotely touching on the supernatural, but this sure seemed to have no other explanation. She recalled the conversation she and Sophia had just had over the old Regent and how Malcolm Peters wanted to run one of his events in The Review. Maybe, Amy thought, it was worth mentioning to Lynch.
“One other thing, Darren…” Amy said as she pivoted in the door.
“What now?” he replied, the annoyance over the light still evident in his tone.
Amy paused a beat, wondering if she should continue. He was sure in a foul mood, though she could not recall a time recently when he was not. This had gotten noticeably worse ever since he had been rebuffed by Sophia.
“You know the old legend of the old Regent Theatre and Rosalva, don’t you?”
“Since I redid this place and had to placate all the old geezers here in Swinson to get The Review off the ground, don’t you think I might be aware of that?”
Amy blanched at his irritation to a simple question. Why was it, she wondered, he had to be an asshole about everything?
“Well…I…”
“What? I’ve got stuff to do, Amy…what?”
“Well…the similarity of what happened here last night seems pretty similar to that accident.”
“And?”
“I heard that guy, Malcolm Peters, came by again to run one of his haunted evening events here. Maybe we should think about it. Maybe there is something to the old legend about Rosalva’s spirit still being around the theatre.”
“You cannot be serious. First of all, there is no we, Amy. Any decisions made here about what does or does not go on in the theatre are my decisions and mine alone, understood?”
Amy just looked at him blankly as she felt her face redden in embarrassment.
“And second, Peters is just a charlatan. He’s able to con a bunch of old fools around England into believing in ghosts and hauntings and all of that nonsense. We had a light fall from the rafters. Just a coincidence with the old place. End of story. Got it?”
“But, Darren…what could it hurt?”
“Was I not clear?”
Amy found herself getting just as annoyed with Lynch now as he seemed to be with her. Her pulse was pounding in her ears as she felt her own ire rising.
“All I…”
Lynch cut her off as his voice rose to a new level of anger.
“Look, Amy…why don’t you just come in here and do your job? It’s a simple thing, for Christ’s sake! Seat the ticket holders. Clean up their messes after they leave! Maybe focus on that for a change!”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning…I know all about you and your acting flop. You’re just another diva who thinks she’s entitled or privileged or something as far as I can tell. I only gave you this job as a favor to your folks and the fact that everyone in this seaside joke of a town loves you. Just do your job, please. It’s not rocket science, and I am sorry it does not fulfill your dreams of being on the stage, but right now you are doing such a lousy job of it. I regret letting myself take you on in the first place.”
Amy could feel tears welling in her eyes. His words, even though she cared little about what Lynch thought of her, stung her sharply. She was, overall, though, a sensitive and caring person, and his verbal barrage felt crushing at the moment.
“Anything else, Amy…no? Good. This meeting is over, then. I am sure you have work to do.”
With that, Lynch picked up his phone to begin finding a supplier to replace the light and Amy fled his office before she gave him the satisfaction of seeing her cry and see how deeply he had hurt her.
Life Goes On At The Swinson Review
Swinson, UK
October 2017
Amy licked her wounds from Lynch’s dressing down in August and just kept her head down and came in each day going through her monotonous routine at The Review without another thought of interacting with her boss from hell any more than she absolutely had to. The odd sounds and other oddities inside the theatre late at night seemed for the time being to have disappeared, though Amy still could not get the strains of Habanera out of her head as she cleaned up each night. It had gotten to the point where she was no longer sure if she was actually still hearing the aria or if it was all in her head. In any case, the aria she had once loved so much as a student, was now just a haunting piece of music that was making her edgy and nervous.
Between August and October, Amy finally went to Sophia to confide in how Lynch had jumped on her, both in regard to Peters as well as making her aware he had more or less been forced into hiring her in the first place. Since they had first bonded over that beer in the pub a few months ago, Amy was grateful for her relationship with Sophia as she really had no one else in Swinson she could talk to about such things. Sophia felt Amy’s hurt and offered her a shoulder to cry on as well as an open mind to hear her concerns.
“It was horrible, Sophia. It’s not like I give two shits about what Darren Lynch thinks of me, but still, it really felt like a slap in the face.”
“Sure…sure. He has definitely been on the warpath ever since I declined his ‘generous offer’ to me.”
They both chuckled.
“He ever beat you down like that? Gone out of his way to make you feel insignificant and worthless?”
“Fortunately, no…but there have been days…days when I screwed something up that I could feel it coming.”
Amy wondered if Lynch might be holding back with Sophia just in case there might be any chance with her in the future. She hated thinking this, but she still saw how Lynch looked at Sophia from time to time, especially through his alcoholic haze.
“I know it sucks…working for him…” Sophia went on, “but you can always come find me to talk when it gets too bad, OK?”
“OK. And thanks. Let me as ask you something else.’
“Shoot.”
“You ever hear or see weird things back in the gloom and dark of the theatre like I told you about?”
“Not the music or singing, but from time to time I thought there were creakings or maybe footsteps when no one was there that I picked up on. Never saw anything and just wrote it off to an old building settling. That is until you told me the background of this place when it was The Regent and now all this stuff about the music and Rosalva. Now I wonder…”
“So, you believe that maybe this place could actually be haunted? That Rosalva might still be hanging on here?”
Sophia shrugged.
“Could be. I’ve poked around in some other supernatural stuff when I was a kid. Who’s to say it’s not true?”
Amy nodded as she thought.
“If we could only get Peters in here to at least give his efforts a go…” Amy said, rhetorically.
“Yeah, but Lynch is never going to go for that.”
“Unfortunately…oh well, thanks again for lending me an ear to vent.”
Amy felt better after finally unburdening herself about Lynch, and for a time her mood and attitude while working at The Review actually improved. Her bank account was growing, she and Sophia got together regularly just to hang out, and Lynch seemed to be less and less visible these days. All things considered, Amy supposed this was about as good as it was going to get until she could get back to London.
Malcolm Peters still put in regular visits to The Review, and both Amy and Sophia spoke with him from time to time. Amy had to agree with the consensus opinion in Swinson, that Peters was eccentric to be kind, but deep down she had been a bit freaked out when she had first met him. He had small, beady black eyes that seemed to be constantly darting about, like a small rodent that was afraid of being suddenly on the menu for a larger predator. He was thin and gangly reminding her humorously of the character of Ichabod Crane, the milquetoast school teacher, from the Washington Irving story, “The Headless Horseman.”
After her initial impressions, though, Amy, as well as Sophia, found Peters quite engaging and clever, even enigmatic, though they often had to keep the conversations with him flowing or he would wander off on tangents that had nothing to do with what they had been talking about. He seemed persistent about getting a show set up at The Review, but the girls let him know in no uncertain terms that Lynch was not to be persuaded in that regard. In private, Amy and Sophia discussed the possibility of going behind Lunch’s back for one of Peters’ haunted evenings, but in the end, they knew this would be a disaster.
Haunted House Tales Page 108