by Kat Shepherd
Ethan opened the book and ran his finger down the table of contents, talking to himself under his breath. “Are you sure you’re up for this, Ethan?” Clio asked. “No offense, but things got a little out of control the last time we decided to talk to a ghost.”
Ethan looked up and grinned crookedly. “Yeah, well, like I’ve said, I’ve gotten a lot better since then. Great-Grandma Moina’s been helping me a lot.”
“You mean your great-great-grandma Moina, who died, like, way before you were born?” Tanya asked, raising one eyebrow.
Ethan nodded. “Totally.”
“Whatever you say,” Tanya said. “After all, you’ve proved me wrong before.”
Maggie picked nervously at her pink-and-black striped shoelaces. “Can we get on with it, you guys? I love this place, and I hate that it gives me the creeps now. I just want to figure out what’s here and what we can do about it so things go back to normal.”
Clio gave Maggie’s shoulder a sympathetic squeeze. “Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.”
Everyone quieted down, and Ethan closed his eyes. “If there are any spirits in this place, please make it known by ringing this bell,” he intoned. Maggie waited breathlessly, certain the bell would ring at any moment.
Nothing happened.
“Fear not, spirits,” Ethan said. “We mean you no harm. Please speak to us. We are here to help.”
The bell was still. The flames on the candles burned steadily. Tanya’s eyes flickered, her pen poised to record anything unusual.
“Why isn’t anything happening?” Maggie whispered to Clio.
“Shh,” Clio whispered back. “Ethan has to concentrate.”
“Well, he needs to concentrate harder.”
“Give him a minute; he’s trying his best!” Clio hissed.
Maggie gave Clio the side-eye. “Just friends, huh?” Clio rolled her eyes and looked away.
Ethan swallowed audibly, and he bent over the book open in front of him, his blue-streaked bangs falling into his eyes. He flipped back and forth through the pages, seeming uncertain. “Um, I think I’m just gonna try something else. Does anyone have a flashlight?”
“I got it.” Maggie slipped her phone out of her pocket and opened the flashlight app, eager to prove to the group that she could help. She held the harsh white light up at eye level, blinding the others.
Ethan shielded his eyes. “Whoa. Easy.”
“Sorry.” Maggie pointed the phone’s light at the floor. She was glad it was too dark for the others to see her cheeks flush red with embarrassment. Even when she tried to help, it still felt like she managed to mess it up.
“I have one, too.” Tanya unclipped a purple keychain flashlight from a carabiner hooked to a side loop on her jeans and clicked the button, careful to point the thin beam at the floor.
“That’s perfect, T. Thanks,” Rebecca said, and Maggie looked from Rebecca down at her own flashlight beam, still pointed at the floor just like Tanya’s. The others turned on their phones’ flashlights, and soon there was a small circle of light in the vast cavern of the darkened theater.
“Great,” Ethan said. He stood up and blew out the candles. “Follow me.” He led them off the stage and down into the rows of seats.
“Where are we going?” Tanya asked.
“Well,” Ethan said, “I was thinking about the ghost light. The light on the stage is supposed to keep the spirits quiet, right? So maybe our lights on the stage are doing the same thing: keeping them quiet.” He walked a few rows back and slid into a worn velvet seat in the middle of the row. The others followed suit.
“Okay, now, at the count of three, let’s all turn off our lights. Maybe the darkness will bring our spirits back.”
“Do we really have to?” Maggie’s voice quivered.
“Relax, Maggie,” Tanya said. “I’m sure nothing’s going to happen.” She sighed and put her notebook to the side. “At least I hope it doesn’t, since I won’t be able to record any notes. No wonder we have so little scientific evidence of the paranormal. It’s pretty hard to write anything down when you can’t see.”
Ethan glanced along the row. “Everybody ready? Okay … one … two … three.” Everyone clicked off their lights. The darkness felt so sudden and complete that at first Maggie saw bursts and spots of light flit across her vision, the way she did behind her eyelids when she closed her eyes against the sun. After a moment her vision adjusted, and she could make out the faint red glow of the exit signs. They looked like they were miles away.
The group sat in silence. The minutes ticked by. Maggie could hear the breathing of the others, the creaks and groans of an old building, the distant scurry of a mouse. She felt her heart beating in her chest. The cavernous theater loomed around her, and she felt small and insignificant, a tiny speck swallowed by a sea of velvet black.
Tanya shifted impatiently in the seat next to her and let out a small sigh. Finally, she spoke. “Look, Plan A and Plan B obviously aren’t working. Is there a Plan C?”
Ethan cleared his throat, and his voice rose with uncertainty. “Um, not really? I guess, I don’t know, maybe there isn’t anything here after all?”
Just then there was a blinding flash and the stage lit up with a wide rectangle of white light. “What is it? What’s happening?” Rebecca asked. Her voice was high and frightened.
Light flickered and danced across the stage. Tanya twisted and looked up behind her. “It’s coming from the projection booth!” She pointed back to the stage and scrabbled under the seat for her notebook. “It looks like an old movie or something!”
Maggie squinted at the stage. Tanya was right. Maggie could just make out a scene of women in beaded costumes and elaborate headdresses, dancing in a line. The rippling lights and shadows solidified and slipped in and out of focus as they passed across the curtain, shifting like water.
In the film a glamorous woman in a long gown stepped in front of the dancers, the image of her body perfectly superimposed over one of the plastic skeletons onstage. Her projected face flickered across the skull, shifting back and forth between beauty and horror. In the film she stood in front of the microphone and raised her arms in a gesture Maggie immediately recognized. She tapped Clio’s arm next to her. “Guys, I think that’s our ghost! The lady in the film has got to be the woman in red! She’s here! What does she want?”
Ethan’s voice sounded faint and confused. “I … I don’t know.”
“What are you talking about?” Maggie demanded. “Obviously the ghost is trying to tell us something. So, talk to her!”
“I’ve been trying,” Ethan said. “But there isn’t any spirit here that’s communicating with me.”
“Well, what do you call that?” She pointed at the stage. “I’d say that’s some pretty clear communication, wouldn’t you?”
Ethan shook his head. “Sure, but the problem is I don’t know what’s doing it.” His voice was emphatic. “I don’t feel any spiritual presence at all!”
“I don’t get it,” Maggie said in frustration.
The projector stopped and the stage went black again. There was no sound in the darkness except for Ethan’s quiet answer.
“I don’t know what the woman in red is, but she definitely isn’t a ghost.”
CHAPTER
13
EVERYONE SAT IN silence for a moment as Ethan’s words sunk in. Finally, Clio spoke. “What do you mean?”
Ethan turned on his flashlight and stood up. “I mean that whatever supernatural entity is here, it’s not something I know how to communicate with.”
“Well, can’t you try?” Maggie turned on her own flashlight and stood up, too.
Ethan shrugged helplessly. “Sorry, Maggie, but I’m strictly a ghost guy. Asking me to communicate with something else is like asking a Mandarin speaker to suddenly turn around and translate Spanish. I can’t do it.”
“Yeah, but what about animals? You can communicate with them!” Maggie said.
Ethan sighed.
“Yeah, okay, fine. Then I can confidently tell you that the woman in red is not an animal, either.”
“I know that,” Maggie said, exasperated, “but the point is if you can communicate with both of those, maybe you can do more. Maybe you have hidden talents you don’t even know about still.”
“Don’t push it, Maggie,” Clio said. “If he says he can’t do it, he can’t do it.” She stood up and started walking down the row toward the lobby with the others close behind her. “I’m going to text my auntie to come pick us up.”
Maggie trailed behind. “Wait, so we’re just gonna give up? What about Emily? What about Juniper?”
Clio flicked on the house lights. “Nobody’s saying anything about giving up. We just need to hold a beat and think about what we know before we do anything else.” She paused and looked around at the others, dropping her voice. “But since we don’t know exactly what we’re dealing with or how dangerous she is, maybe we should get out of here first.” Clio led them through the lobby and out the front door, where they stood shivering under the awning. She turned to lock the padlock on the door. “Don’t worry, Mags,” she said. “We’re your friends, okay? We got this.”
Tanya flipped the collar up on her long coat and absentmindedly spiked her short hair. “Okay. I think we can agree at this point that there’s something supernatural in there.” The others nodded. “And it’s obviously not a ghost or a changeling, and it’s probably not the Night Queen. So our next step is to find out what it is.”
“Looks like it’s research time again.” Clio rubbed her hands together. “Who’s up for a visit to the library tomorrow after school?”
Maggie made a gagging face. “No way! I’m not getting stuck behind one of those boring microfilm machines again.”
“But I thought you were the one who’s so gung ho to get to the bottom of this,” Clio said. “And to do that we’ve all got to be willing to put in the work.”
“I know that,” Maggie snapped. “And I’ve done just as much work as you have! But this time I have a better idea.” She turned to Tanya. “If we borrowed some of the equipment from the projector room upstairs, do you think you could get it to work?”
Tanya nodded. “For sure, but what are we going to do with it? We could watch that film clip a million times and still not get any closer to figuring out who the woman is.”
“You’re right,” Maggie said. “But I think I know someone who could.”
* * *
On Saturday morning Kawanna helped Maggie and Tanya unload the film reel and a small, portable projector in front of an old, Spanish-style apartment building with a neglected, algae-coated fountain in the courtyard.
“Are you sure you girls will be okay?” Kawanna asked. “Do you want me to come in with you?”
Maggie did, but she shook her head. “We’re good, but thanks so much for the ride.” Myles Dubois was already high-strung enough, and now that Clio’s aunt had taken over his position of assistant director for Macbeth, Maggie wasn’t sure he would welcome seeing Kawanna at his door.
As Maggie and Tanya crossed the courtyard, Maggie lowered her voice. “I just want to make sure we have our story straight. We’re doing a research project for school on the Twilight Theater, and we found this film in the projector booth, right?”
Tanya lugged the projector by its handle. “Yep, and we’re hoping to interview him for the oral history part of the project.” She pulled open the door, and they walked into the building’s threadbare lobby. They passed a few sagging leather armchairs and an empty reception desk that probably once held a concierge in the building’s glory days.
Maggie couldn’t find any buzzer, but near the mailboxes there was a list of tenants and their apartment numbers. Myles Dubois was on the top floor, in Apartment 13. “It figures,” Tanya grumbled, heaving the projector along the chipped marble floor.
“Don’t worry, there’s an elevator.” Maggie helped Tanya drag the projector into the rickety old elevator and pressed the button. “I really hope he doesn’t kick us out.”
“Would he do that?” Tanya asked.
“I don’t know, maybe,” Maggie said. “I’ve never really talked to him.”
The bell for the floor dinged and the elevator doors slid open. “Wait a minute, I thought you knew this person.”
Maggie and Tanya stood in front of Apartment 13. “Not exactly, but I know of him.” Maggie rang the doorbell. “Whatever, I’m sure it will go fine.”
When the door to Apartment 13 opened a few moments later, it was anything but fine. “What is the meaning of this intrusion?” Myles Dubois’s resonant voice boomed through the empty hallway. He stood in the doorway with his arms folded and his chin lowered, his gaunt face glowering down at them over his tortoiseshell glasses. He wore linty black trousers and a black turtleneck sweater with the cuff of one sleeve partially unraveled. A black beret was perched on his head, and his snow-white hair puffed out beneath it.
Tanya cleared her throat. “We’re doing a history project for school, and we need to interview you.”
“This isn’t amateur hour, young lady. If you want to conduct an interview, you’ll have to go through my agent,” he snapped.
“Oh, okay. Sorry,” Tanya said. “Who’s your agent?”
“I don’t have one!” he shouted, and slammed the door in the girls’ faces.
Maggie and Tanya looked at each other. “Well, that went well,” Tanya said. She started lugging the projector back toward the elevator.
“Wait,” Maggie said. “We’re not going to give up that easily.”
“Yeah, we are, Mags. He slammed the door in our faces.”
“I think there might be a better way to convince him to help us.”
“What was wrong with the way I did it? I stuck to the story, didn’t I? I think I was very clear.”
“Nothing’s wrong with what you did. Just let me try one more time, okay?”
Tanya sighed. “Fine.”
Maggie rang the bell again and braced herself. The door opened a crack. Myles Dubois’s wild white eyebrows sank down over his eyes, the long hairs poking forward like antennae. Before he could say anything, Maggie spoke. “Please, Mr. Dubois. Please just hear me out before you close the door again.”
The door stayed open, so Maggie went on. “Everyone in town says you were one of the greatest actors that Piper has ever seen.” The eyebrows rose slightly, and the harsh lines around the mouth softened. Maybe it was working. She pointed to Tanya. “We found an old film of a stage show. We’ve only seen a tiny clip of it, but we think there’s a good chance that you might be in it.” Maggie was pretty sure the film was way too old for there to be any chance of Mr. Dubois being in it, but he didn’t have to know that. “And honestly, sir…” Maggie watched his eyes, wondering if she had pushed too hard with the sir. “… since nobody knows more about theater than you do, we would love to hear some of your favorite stories about your enormous contributions to American theater.” She was laying it on really thick.
Mr. Dubois preened. “Well, why didn’t you mention that in the first place? I’m always happy to talk with fans.” He swept the door open wide and welcomed them in.
The apartment walls were covered in posters, playbills, and framed photos of Mr. Dubois. Maggie looked closer. They were autographed. What kind of person hangs up autographed photos of himself in his own home? Maggie wondered. Probably the same kind of person who would believe that a couple of twelve-year-olds are his biggest fans. There was a glass cabinet with some statuettes and awards in it. They weren’t any that Maggie recognized, but they were spotless, as though he kept them regularly cleaned and polished.
A large home-movie screen covered one wall, and there was an old-fashioned film projector set up in the middle of the room. Tanya looked down at the projector she was carrying and then back at Maggie. Sorry, Maggie mouthed.
Tanya brought out the film canister and attached the spool onto the projector, threading the thin film strip through th
e narrow grooves and hooking it into place. She turned on the projector, and Mr. Dubois closed the heavy blackout curtains at the windows.
There were a few flashes of shapes and numbers, and then the silent line of dancing ladies appeared on the screen. Tanya adjusted the focus until it was clear. There were the sparkly outfits and elaborate beaded headdresses. It reminded Maggie of the time her parents took her to see the Radio City holiday show in New York. “Are those the Rockettes?” she asked.
Myles stroked his goatee. “The Rockettes started in 1925, so it could be, but I don’t think so. This looks like the Ziegfeld Follies, judging by the costumes.”
“What’s that?” Maggie asked.
“They were Broadway shows similar to the vaudeville revues that were popular at the time. Both shows were mixes of acts highlighting some of the most popular singers and comedians of the day, but the Follies always featured the legendary Ziegfeld girl chorus lines. Many starlets owed their early careers to the master producer Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr.”
On-screen the woman took her place in front of the microphone. Her hair was platinum blond and framed her face in close-cropped waves. She wore a glittering gown, and her lashes were so long they cast shadows on her cheeks when she closed her eyes and began to sing. “I don’t believe it,” Mr. Dubois said, gripping the arms of his chair.
“What is it?” Maggie asked. Tanya pulled out her notebook, her mechanical pencil poised over a clean page.
“This recording you found is very rare! If I’m not mistaken, that’s Vivien Vane! She got her start as a Ziegfeld chorus girl, where it seemed she would languish forever in obscurity, but she shot to overnight stardom when one of the lead acts failed to show one day and she stepped in and took her place. She became one of the most sought-after starlets in the vaudeville circuit. She had been poised to make a splash in legitimate theater and perhaps even Hollywood, but unfortunately, she never did make the transition to international stardom.”
“Why not?” Tanya asked.
“Well, she was scheduled to play Lady Macbeth at the grand opening of the Twilight Theater right here in Piper. She was seen arriving at the theater on opening night, but she didn’t appear onstage for her cue, and an understudy had to step in.”