Much Ado about Macbeth

by Randy McCharles

  “Scarlet says she’s pleased to meet you,” Paul said to Sylvia.

  Sylvia spoke to the ghost’s left shoulder. “Have you tried to make other people see you? Ghosts in the movies can do it.”

  “I’m not in a movie,” Scarlet said. “And of course I’ve tried. I’ve tried until I’m blue in the face. Not literally, of course. And I’ve tried moving things. With my hands and with my mind. The only thing I’ve been able to accomplish is to not fall through the floor.”

  “Scarlet says she’s tried,” Paul said. “And she can’t move objects either.”

  Sylvia shook her head. “But the other ghost can make Paul see him. And he put that boy to sleep.”

  Scarlet waved a dismissive hand. “I’ve been thinking about that. It must have been the witch who did those things.”

  Paul conveyed Scarlet’s words then added, “We have to find out more about this witch. We’re going to run through the banquet scene again today, and Scarlet, I need you to find out from Banquo as much as you can.”

  “Promise him anything,” Sylvia said. “But make him agree to not tell the witch that we’re on to her.”

  “What if the witch is here watching? Invisible?” Scarlet asked.

  Paul let out a deep breath and repeated the ghost’s question to Sylvia.

  Sylvia shook her head. “Then we’re pretty much screwed no matter what we do. But we can’t do nothing. If Scarlet has a better idea, we’d love to hear it.”

  Scarlet didn’t. And by the time Paul and Sylvia had set the stage and the students began arriving, none of them had come up with a better plan.

  Paul sat in his director’s chair and toyed with his megaphone while his actors assembled. The second chair was empty. Sylvia had gone backstage and concealed herself behind the forest scenery flats. Paul had no idea if she could hide from a ghost or if she would see anything, but it was worth a shot.

  “Okay, students,” Paul said. “We’re going to pick up from where we left off yesterday: the banquet scene. Go get your costumes and get ready for the curtain to go up.” When they were ready, Paul said, “Curtain.”

  Like the previous day, the servants hustled out onto the stage, once again looking like real servants. They placed their burdens on the trestle tables and faded backward to stand against the castle walls. The guests entered merrily from stage left and mingled in front of the tables, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth greeting them.

  Macbeth then spoke the cue for the guests to sit. “You know your own degrees; sit down: at first and last the hearty welcome.”

  The First Murderer appeared and reported to Macbeth. “My lord, his throat is cut; that I did for him.”

  Macbeth dismissed the murderer and hobnobbed with Lady Macbeth and some of the thanes. He then went to his seat, looked out at his guests, and went horribly off script. “Banquo’s missing again.”

  “Pretend he’s there!” Paul shouted into his megaphone. He waved back at the empty theatre seats. “The audience is watching. Unless the director lowers the curtain, you continue the scene. Adlib if necessary. You can’t just stop. The show must go on!”

  Lenny shrugged and made a halfhearted effort at his lines, pretending to see the ghost taking up his empty seat. “Prithee, see there! Behold! Look! Lo! How say you?”

  Paul didn’t care what Lenny or the other students did, so long as the scene continued. What was important was that Paul could see the ghost sulking in Macbeth’s seat, then vanish, then return after Macbeth’s toast to the absent Banquo. All the while, Scarlet hounded him, talking fast and waving her hands, coaxing words out of the reluctant ghost until Macbeth’s final importuned banishment sent him away for good.

  The scene ended two minutes later, and Paul called, “Curtain.”

  The students immediately rushed backstage, Paul chasing after them, and found John Freedman fast asleep with Sylvia standing over him.

  “Unbelievable!” said Lenny. “Is John trying to ruin my performance?”

  “This isn’t about you,” said Gemma. “John must have mono or something.”

  Paul hadn’t heard anyone mention mono since he was in high school. He wasn’t even sure it was a real illness. A kissing disease that made you sleepy? There were just too many connotations you could hang on that.

  “Gemma,” said Sylvia, “you and some of your friends please take John to the nurse’s office and ask her to check him out.”

  “The rest of you,” Paul said, “go find a spot up in the theatre seats and practice your lines until the bell. Some of you aren’t completely off book yet.”

  John looked sheepish when Sylvia woke him up but knew better than to argue. There was no argument for falling asleep twice in two days.

  Once they were alone backstage, Sylvia said, “John just sat down and fell asleep. One moment he was awake, and the next, he was visiting dreamland.”

  “It happened the moment Banquo appeared,” Scarlet said. “Banquo didn’t do anything. He just appeared from thin air, and the boy dropped off.”

  “What did he say?” Paul asked. “Banquo didn’t look very cooperative from where I was sitting.”

  Scarlet shook her head. “It was confusing. I think he was scared. He said the last thing he remembered was talking to me yesterday. The next moment, he was here again. It’s like he didn’t exist during the time in between.”

  “That’s not what it’s like for you?” Sylvia asked when Paul relayed Scarlet’s words.

  Scarlet nodded. “I’ve been awake every moment since I died. No sleep. No lost time.”

  “Did he agree to help us?” Paul asked.

  Scarlet shrugged. “He said he hasn’t seen the witch since she woke him up and ordered him to read Shakespeare’s play. After that, he’s been with us twice, with no memory of anything in between. He doesn’t think there is anything he can do. He sounded pretty fatalistic.” Scarlet shuddered. “I’m glad I’m not him.”

  “So we still know nothing about this witch,” Sylvia said. “What she can do. Why she’s doing it. What we can do about it.”

  “Maybe she’s cursing the play,” said Scarlet.

  “Should we cancel the play?” Paul asked.

  “But the kids,” said Sylvia. “They’re working so hard. And Susie has never been happier.”

  “I know,” Paul said. There was a heavy lump in his stomach. “But I’m out of ideas.”

  Scene 8: I Dreamt Last Night of

  the Three Weird Sisters

  “I’m reluctant to admit this,” said Agatha. “But I’m growing tired of GrillBurgers and fries.”

  “Try one with cheese,” Gertrude suggested. “And order poutine instead of fries.”

  “I can’t abide poutine,” said Netty. “Or anything else French. Quiche. Crepes. Baguettes. You call that food? How the French can stomach any of it is beyond me.”

  “Poutine originated in Canada,” said Agatha, “not France.”

  “You like the French fries well enough,” Gertrude said. “Heh. You’ve eaten enough fries to sink an iceberg.”

  “You’re mixing your metaphones again,” said Netty. “They might call the fries French, but they’re from Belgium, along with Trappist Beer, Godiva chocolate, the Smurfs, and Jean-Claude Van Damme.”

  Gertrude’s eyes went shiny. “Jean-Claude Van Damme.”

  “I’m going to send out for pizza,” Agatha said. “Who’s with me?”

  “No anchovies, please,” said Netty. “It was the French who put anchovies on pizza.”

  “No it wasn’t,” said Agatha.

  “From that little place downtown?” asked Gertrude. “Where they weave a rope of cheese through the crust?”

  Agatha nodded.

  “Then count me in.” Gertrude licked her disfigured lips. “I don’t care what’s on it. I’m just going to eat the crust.”

  “That’s no proper way to eat pizza,” Netty said. She looked at Agatha. “What’s that you’ve got?”

  The tall witch’s face reddened. “A cell phone. Ho
w else am I going to order pizza?”

  “You?” Gertrude asked. “A cell phone? Heh. You’re the one who still takes carriages rather than a taxi.”

  Agatha harrumphed. “Have you seen taxi fares lately? Five dollars. And that’s before you’ve even left the driveway.” She pressed the number three on the phone and held the device to her ear.

  “You’ve got the pizza place on speed dial!” Netty crowed.

  “Sometimes,” Agatha sniffed, “you need to give a nod to change. Yes, it’s Agatha. I’d like the usual. Times three. On my tab, yes.”

  “You’ve got a tab?” Netty let out an uncomfortable cackle.

  “Deliver it to the Dairy Queen next to Ashcroft Senior High. Yes, the Dairy Queen.” Then she hung up and buried the phone somewhere in her layers of shawls. “We’ve got twenty minutes. Perhaps we should see how our ghost is doing.”

  Gertrude smiled like a Cheshire cat. “You just don’t want us to heckle you about your cell phone.”

  “Heckle all you like,” invited Agatha. “No phone, no pizza. Oh, look! We have company.”

  Where moments earlier the bench seat next to Netty had been vacant, it was now occupied by a diminutive man with scraggly, greying hair and three days’ growth on his chin. He sported a scar beneath his left eye, was missing half his teeth, and wore a grey tunic that had seen better days. His eyes were very wide, with a yellow tinge where there should have been white. Those eyes were currently shifting among the witches’ faces.

  “There are three of you!” he said.

  “Oh my,” said Gertrude. “The boy can count. Who knew?”

  “You brought him here?” Netty cried. “To the Dairy Queen? What will the staff think?”

  Agatha let out a cackle. “They’ll think that we haven’t moved from this spot in three weeks and that Hecate has dropped in every day or three wearing some outrageous outfit. In other words, they won’t think anything. It’s business as usual.”

  “What do you want?” Banquo mewled in a trembling voice.

  “The boy’s got cojones too,” said Gertrude.

  “He’s ill?” asked Netty. “I didn’t think ghosts could get ill.”

  Gertrude rolled her eyes at Netty. “Christmas is coming. I’ll get you a dictionary.”

  “Please,” Banquo whimpered. “Just let me go to my rest.”

  “Of course,” said Agatha. “When the job’s done. Tell us, how goes our drama teacher’s sanity?”

  “Who?” asked Banquo.

  “The man in charge of the play,” Gertrude said, “the one who can see you.”

  “Oh,” said Banquo. “The fellow shouting through the horn. What a magnificent device. I could have used that on the field of battle. If I—”

  “His sanity!” Agatha repeated just a tad more forcefully.

  Banquo looked at her and at the other two witches with large eyes.

  “He’s thinking something,” Netty said. “I don’t like ghosts who think.”

  “Stop thinking!” Agatha ordered.

  Banquo shrank back against the bench seat. “I—I’m just trying to decide how to answer. I’ve only observed him for perhaps ten minutes in total. And all that time he was sitting a distance away from me in a tall chair, watching. When he wasn’t shouting ‘Curtain’ or ‘Cut’ into that horn of his, whatever that means.”

  Gertrude frowned. “He didn’t jump out of his chair and cry out with fright that he was seeing a dead man while no one else around him could?”

  Banquo stared at her. “Um, no, the boy in the black outfit did that. Which is odd because he also claimed that he should be able to see me but couldn’t. Is confusion adequate? I don’t know if anyone was insane, but there was much confusion in the room.”

  Then Banquo was gone.

  “It’s too soon,” Gertrude said.

  “What’s too soon?” asked Hecate. “And who was that fellow warming my seat for me?” The senior witch wore a fluffy white dress with puffy sleeves and had a piece of white cloth woven through her hair. Her makeup was modest, and she looked a decade younger than usual.

  “That was Banquo’s ghost,” Netty said. “He was reporting in.”

  Hecate grimaced. “I don’t like ghosts. They’re always uppity and protective of their haunts.”

  “Banquo is a summoned ghost,” said Gertrude, “not a haunting ghost. We wouldn’t dream of meddling with a haunting ghost. Nothing good can come of it.”

  “What are you supposed to be now?” Agatha asked. “Snow White?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Hecate. “Well, actually, yes, I am. But it’s a complicated story, so I’m not getting into it.” Princess Hecate sniffed. “I was thinking about our last conversation, and I’ve changed my mind. Using Banquo’s ghost to turn the director into his own Macbeth isn’t brilliant. I finally got around to reading the play and—”

  “Yhaaaah!” Agatha let out an ear-rending howl. “You’ve never read the play?”

  Hecate continued as if nothing had happened. “—the ghost played a much more minor role than I had been led to believe. He was barely on stage for five minutes.”

  “You’ve never read the play!” repeated Agatha.

  “And he had no lines,” Hecate finished. “Using him as a curse is like slapping a soldier in the face with a duck.”

  Silence.

  “A what?” asked Gertrude.

  “A minor inconvenience,” suggested Hecate. “No wonder it is taking you weeks to curse the play. If all you’re using as ammunition is wilburys from a gaudy Anglo-Saxon skit—”

  “Skit!” Actual thunderclouds formed over Netty’s head. “This ‘skit’ has been our livelihood for over four hundred years. We have slept, eaten, and breathed this ‘skit’ until we are red in the face.”

  “Blue,” suggested Gertrude. “Blue in the face. Not red.”

  “Blue, then,” said Netty. “And we have been doing this on your orders!”

  Hecate let a cold smile creep across her young, flawless lips. “Well, what did you expect? Ineptitude is punished, not rewarded. And four hundred years is just the beginning of your punishment.”

  Gertrude turned to Agatha. “What is this silly young girl on about?”

  “She’s on my nerves,” said Agatha. “Apart from that, I have no idea.”

  Hecate’s girlish face grew suddenly long and horselike, the carefully styled hair fought against the white bow, and the heads of snakes emerged and bobbed about as though dancing to a soundless tune. If a thundercloud had formed over Netty’s head, the rest of the storm had found refuge above Hecate.

  Hecate grinned though overlarge teeth. “You didn’t think your reprimands were the end of it, did you?”

  A weathered document appeared on the table in front of Agatha. Parchment that was once the pale white of human skin was now almost black with age, yet the words could still be read. A Weirding, it said. For Sister Agatha, for sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong.

  A similar document appeared in front of Gertrude. A Weirding for Sister Gertrude, for behaviour unbecoming of a witch.

  A third document appeared in front of Netty. A Weirding for Sister Anjennette, for failing to show the merest smidgen of witchlike zeal.

  Gertrude stared at Netty. “You got an award too? You never said.”

  Netty’s thick lips curled into a frown. “Didn’t seem worth mentioning.”

  “Award!” shrieked Hecate. “You have you no idea what Weirding means, do you? You three have the distinction of being the only witches in history to be so disappointing, so vexatious, so utterly useless as witches as to earn the Weirding title!”

  “Are we?” asked Agatha. Hecate’s visage and demeanour were enough to frighten bark off a tree, but Agatha was having none of it. She tapped a bony finger on the table in front of the senior witch. “If we’re such pariahs, what did you do to earn the privilege of being our boss?”

  Hecate glared at each of them in turn then vanished.

  “Uhrm,” said
a voice.

  Standing next to the table was a skinny, freckle-faced kid with long hair and bad breath. He held three pizza boxes in his trembling hands. “Did someone order delivery?”

  Scene 9: Aroint Thee, Witch!

  Paul spent the remainder of the day, when he wasn’t in class, in the school library. He flipped the pages of countless books and searched the Internet until his eyes were sore. If he had thought the World Wide Web held too much inconsistent and frivolous information on ghosts, ghosts had nothing on witches.

  They ranged from housewives experimenting with herbal remedies to candle-lighting sorority girls, to baby-eating daughters of the Devil. And he found all that in the first five minutes.

  Eventually he focused his efforts on the Weird Sisters from Macbeth, who were arguably not witches at all. If the three hags hadn’t been focused on Macbeth’s destiny, they might be hedge witches or village wise women. The more he searched, the more he confirmed his original thought, that the Weird Sisters were just Shakespeare’s literary device to push Macbeth down the road he was already traveling, but at a quicker pace. They weren’t key to the story at all.

  When his sixth-period class ended at four o’clock, Paul received a summons to Winston’s office.

  “You had some trouble in class this morning,” the heavyset man said from behind his desk.

  “Trouble?” Paul asked. There were a dozen things Winston could be referring to. None of which would be good for him to know.

  Winston tapped a sheet of paper on his desk. “You sent John Freedman to the nurse’s office.”

  Paul let out an involuntary breath. This was nothing he couldn’t handle. “John fell asleep in class.”

  “Kids fall asleep in class all the time.”

  Paul smiled. “Two days in a row. I was concerned he might be ill.”

  Winston frowned at the paper. “Nurse couldn’t find anything.”

  “That’s good news,” Paul said.

  “Is it?” Winston’s eyes narrowed. “Freedman is in your senior class, isn’t he? Your Macbeth class?”

  “The play is coming along nicely,” Paul said, grinning. “I’ve never seen students more excited.”