The Show Must Go On!

by P. J. Night

  And the events in the play seemed all the more real to Bree now that the set was completed. She caught the eye of Justin, the boy in charge of putting the set together. He was being extra cautious since the light incident and came out on the stage in between scenes to make sure everything was in order. Or in the case of the mess that was Carrie’s bedroom, disorder.

  “Everything looks great, Justin!” Bree said, trying to take her mind off everything and focus on the fact that this was going to be a very good play.

  “Thanks,” Justin replied, tightening a clamp that held two sections of wall together. “It does look pretty cool.”

  “Now that the window is in, it looks like a real room.”

  “Check this out,” Justin said, slipping back behind the wall in which the window hung. “Tony, do the lightning!”

  Lights flashed on and off behind the window. The shutters whipped back and forth, slamming against the outside of the “house” as if the wind were blowing them during a storm.

  “Very cool!” Bree exclaimed. “It’s going to be great when an audience sees it.”

  “And we got the chandelier up and working,” Justin said.

  Bree glanced up and saw that the chandelier had been hung. It was dusty and covered with cobwebs. Its lights flickered on and off. She was standing directly beneath it.

  A wave of fear suddenly swept through her as she relived the moment when the stage light fell right next to her. She took a step to the side so that she was no longer right under the fixture.

  “Awesome,” she said, regaining her composure.

  Bree walked to the side of the stage, where she spotted the top of a staircase that the crew had built. The handrails and the top few stairs disappeared behind a curtain offstage, giving the impression that a person could walk downstairs to a lower level of the house.

  “This looks so real!” Bree exclaimed, gripping the handrails and looking down, almost expecting to see a real staircase. Instead she saw a soft mattress a foot below, there to break her fall in the play’s final scene. “You guys are good!”

  Melissa, who had run off to the dressing room after their scene, joined Bree onstage.

  “Doesn’t it look incredible, Lis?” Bree asked.

  “It’s so real I’m almost scared!” Melissa joked.

  Bree smiled, but Melissa’s innocent comment reminded her of what had happened last week. She had tried to forget it. She didn’t want to ever tell Melissa about it, but now she felt like she couldn’t keep it to herself any longer. She pulled Melissa away from everyone and spoke in a voice barely above a whisper.

  “This is going to sound so strange, but last Thursday, before I went home, I heard footsteps.”

  “Footsteps?”

  “Yes. Well, first I thought that someone else was in the auditorium.”

  “Well, that sounds terrifying,” Melissa said sarcastically.

  “It was actually because no one else was in the auditorium. At least not that I could tell. And it felt like someone was watching me. Then, as I walked down the hall toward the front door, I was certain I heard another set of footsteps. Someone was following me. I could just tell.”

  “Uh, we’re on a break, Bree. No need to continue rehearsing.”

  “No joke, Lis,” Bree said, realizing as she said it how crazy this all sounded . . . and how much like the lines they had just rehearsed. “I’m not talking as Carrie now. I’m me. And I’m telling you that the same thing that happens to Carrie in the show happened to me the other day. Someone followed me home.”

  “Did you see anyone?” Melissa asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean, ‘not exactly’? You either saw someone or you didn’t.”

  “I caught glimpses, a quick peek of something, like a shadow moving in the hallway.”

  “Bree, I think this creepy play is really starting to get to you,” Melissa said. “All this so-called crazy stuff can be easily chalked up to coincidence.”

  “But here’s the other thing,” Bree continued. “I went to the library and found out that the girl playing Carrie thirty years ago did die on opening night. And, get this. Her name was Gabrielle!”

  “Yeah, so . . .”

  “Don’t you see, Lis? It’s all happening again. It’s connected. There’s something not right about this whole play. Tiffany was right!”

  “Say it louder. I love when people say that,” Tiffany said, stepping up behind Bree. “What was I right about?”

  “The girl who died thirty years ago,” Bree replied. “How’d you know?”

  “Something I overheard my parents talking about ages ago. I told you the play was haunted,” Tiffany said. “You should quit before something happens.”

  “Are you threatening her?” Melissa asked.

  “I’m just saying,” Tiffany replied casually, walking away.

  “I can’t believe she’s still trying to get your part,” Melissa said, seemingly more upset at Tiffany’s words than Bree was.

  “I’m starting to wonder exactly what I believe, Lis,” Bree said softly, not quite sure if Melissa even heard her.

  “Okay, everyone, the break is over,” Ms. Hollows announced. “Places onstage, please.”

  Once again, Bree tried her best to shrug off her unease and put her mind back into the play.

  The girls took their places for a key scene in the show. In the story, the sleepover was well underway. Carrie suggests they play a game.

  CARRIE: The game is called “The Witch’s Body.” It’s kinda creepy and kinda goofy.

  (CARRIE PULLS OUT A LARGE PLASTIC BAG BULGING WITH ITEMS INSIDE IT.)

  CARRIE: This is the story of the witch who was so old that her body began to fall apart. And it just so happens that I’ve got the body parts right here in this bag!

  (CARRIE SHAKES THE BAG MENACINGLY AT HER FRIENDS. THE OBJECTS RATTLE AND MAKE SQUISHING SOUNDS.)

  RACHEL: Body parts? Gross!

  CARRIE: That’s where the game part comes in. I’m going to pick a body part from this bag and put it in this smaller bag.

  (CARRIE TAKES A SMALL PLASTIC BAG AND PUTS IT NEXT TO THE LARGER BAG.)

  CARRIE: Everyone will take a turn reaching into the small bag and feeling a body part. Then you have to say what body part it is and what the object REALLY is. Okay, now, everyone close your eyes.

  (CARRIE REACHES INTO THE LARGE BAG AND PULLS OUT ONE OF THE ITEMS. THEN SHE PUTS IT INTO THE SMALL BAG.)

  RACHEL: I’ll go first!

  (RACHEL SHOVES HER HAND INTO THE BAG.)

  RACHEL: EWW! I feel something round and wet and squishy. And it’s bigger than my hand. Wait. Wait. I know. It’s the witch’s heart!

  CARRIE: You got it. Okay, now what is it really?

  RACHEL: A—a peeled tomato!

  CARRIE: Two points for Rachel. Okay, Laura, you’re up.

  (SOUND EFFECT: TAP. TAP. TAP. THE GIRLS ARE ALL STARTLED BY A TAPPING NOISE AT THE WINDOW.)

  RACHEL: What was that?

  LAURA: Sounded like someone tapping on the window.

  CARRIE: Yeah, but we’re on the second floor. How could someone be up here?

  LAURA: Maybe it was just the wind blowing a tree branch against the window.

  CARRIE: Totally. Let’s get back to the game.

  (CARRIE PULLS ANOTHER “BODY PART” FROM THE BIG BAG AND PUTS IT INTO THE SMALL ONE. LAURA REACHES INTO THE BAG.)

  LAURA: I feel two little round squishy things. I know. I’ve got the witch’s eyeballs.

  CARRIE: Great!

  LAURA: And I know what they really are. They’re peeled grapes!

  CARRIE: Another two points. Excellent. I—

  (SOUND EFFECT: TAP! TAP! TAP!)

  CARRIE: Did you see it? Did you see it?

  RACHEL: See what?

  CARRIE: The face! There was a face in the window.

  (LIGHTNING FLASHES, REVEALING THE FACE OF A LITTLE GIRL WITH DARK, SUNKEN EYES AT THE WINDOW. CARRIE IS THE ONLY ONE TO SEE IT.)

&nbs
p; CARRIE: Look!

  (ALL HEADS TURN TOWARD THE WINDOW, BUT WHEN THE LIGHTNING ILLUMINATES THE OUTSIDE, THERE IS NO FACE AT THE WINDOW.)

  RACHEL: So now you’re seeing things?

  CARRIE: Seeing things? You all saw the hairbrush and the mirror, right? And I saw her face.

  LAURA: The ghost.

  CARRIE: Yes, the gh—

  (THERE ARE TAPPING SOUNDS AGAIN AT THE WINDOW. THIS TIME THEY ARE EVEN LOUDER AND MORE URGENT. EVERYONE TURNS BACK TO THE WINDOW. THERE, STARING IN AT THEM FROM OUTSIDE, IS THE GHOST.)

  EVERYONE: YIIEEE!

  (THE GIRLS ALL SCREAM AND RUSH TO THE SIDE OF CARRIE’S BEDROOM OPPOSITE THE WINDOW, TRYING TO GET AS FAR AWAY AS THEY CAN FROM IT. CARRIE’S BLACK CAT ARCHES ITS BACK AND HISSES.)

  RACHEL: Who could it be? How did she get up here?

  CARRIE: Either someone is pulling a prank . . .

  RACHEL: Or?

  CARRIE: Or it’s the ghost of the girl who used to live in this house, trying to come to our sleepover!

  “And fade the lights to black,” Ms. Hollows said. “Excellent, girls. Gather around for notes. Can we have our ghost out onstage, please?”

  Tiffany came walking out from backstage, still wearing her scary pale mask with black, soulless eyes. She joined the others at center stage.

  “Nice job, Tiffany,” Melissa said as Tiffany sat down beside her. “But next time you should try the scene with the mask on.”

  “Very funny,” Tiffany replied, pulling off the mask and scowling. “Maybe you should be in a comedy instead of a scary play.”

  “The ghost is an important character,” Bree said.

  “Don’t placate me, Gabrielle,” Tiffany shot back. “I know exactly what my role is in this production. I don’t need your pity, and I don’t need your pitiful attempts to try to make me feel better.”

  Bree turned away. She had tried being friendly to Tiffany at every rehearsal, even though it seemed at times as if Tiffany was trying to scare her into leaving the show. But enough was enough. She didn’t like Tiffany. She didn’t have to be her friend. She didn’t have to make her feel better. She just had to work with her in the play.

  Ms. Hollows gave the cast their notes. She was very pleased with how the play was taking shape, but there were always things that needed to be tightened up and fine-tuned so that the play would go off without a hitch when it was performed in front of an audience.

  Following notes, Ms. Hollows dismissed the cast.

  “I think Tiffany makes a great ghost, don’t you?” Melissa asked Bree as the two left the school building.

  “Why does she have to be so snotty all the time, Lis?”

  “Hey, it just wouldn’t be Tiffany without the attitude, now would it? Forget about her. With any luck, that mask will get stuck to her face and we won’t have to listen to her whine anymore. See ya tomorrow, Bree. Gotta run.”

  “See ya.”

  Arriving at home, Bree found a note from her parents:

  Out getting groceries with Megan. We’ll be back in time for dinner. Snacks in the fridge.

  Love, M & D

  She threw open the refrigerator door and pulled out a plate filled with cut-up pieces of fruit and a few cookies, then headed for the stairs leading up to her bedroom.

  Suddenly all the lights in the house began to flicker on and off.

  What’s going on? she wondered, pausing at the bottom of the staircase.

  Again the lights flickered on and off. Then they went off and stayed off.

  Placing the plate of snacks on a small table in the hallway, Bree opened a drawer on the front of the table and pulled out a flashlight. Her family kept flashlights handy in case of power outages. But this was different.

  She noticed that although every light in the house seemed to be out, they hadn’t actually lost power. Digital clocks on the front of the coffeemaker in the kitchen and the DVR in the living room still glowed with the correct time. Only the lights seemed to be affected. Bree wondered if she somehow blew a fuse.

  She flipped the hallway light switch on and off several times, but the lights stayed dark. Switching the flashlight on, she headed upstairs, thinking that maybe the lights up there would work. Reaching her room, she stepped in and tried the overhead light.

  Nothing.

  Then her bedside lamp.

  Nothing.

  Yet the numbers on her alarm clock still shone brightly.

  Walking around her bedroom in the dark, carrying a flashlight, gave Bree a very creeped-out feeling. It was as if she were still walking around the stage in the dark, searching Carrie’s bedroom with only a flashlight.

  This is way too close to the play, she thought.

  Bree swept the flashlight’s beam across her wall. As the light passed the window, she spotted a face staring at her from outside. It had dark, sunken eyes.

  CHAPTER 10

  Moving exactly as she had just an hour earlier at rehearsal, Bree raced across the room, yanked the window open, and stuck her head out. But just as in the play, the face had vanished. Bree swept her flashlight down to the street. She leaned out the window and shone the beam left, right, down, even up, searching for that haunting face. But it was officially gone.

  All right. This is going too far, Bree thought. Maybe I’m really Carrie, and this whole Bree thing is a part in a play.

  “Bree! We’re home!” her dad called from downstairs.

  “Pull yourself together,” she murmured to herself as she raced from her room and bounded down the stairs, following the beam of her flashlight. As she ran, a thought popped into her head. Maybe she wasn’t crazy after all.

  “Megan!” Bree shouted, storming right up to her sister, putting her face nose-to-nose with Megan’s. “Were you just outside my window? Are you trying to scare me out of doing the play?”

  “Outside your window?” Megan asked incredulously. “How would I get up there?”

  “What are you talking about?” her mother said sternly. “Your sister has been with us for the past two hours. She came into the house with us just now. And speaking of the house, why are you here in the dark?”

  “All the lights just went out at the same time,” Bree explained. “I tried—”

  Flick!

  Bree was interrupted by the sound of her mother flipping on the light switch—the same switch that Bree had flipped up and down a bunch of time just a few minutes earlier. The lights came right on.

  “The lights work just fine,” her mother said. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “I don’t know about you, Mom, but it’s clear to me that the pressure of doing this play is proving to be too much for poor Bree,” Megan said, her voice positively dripping with condescension.

  Their mother gave Megan a reproachful look, but she didn’t say anything. Maybe she was starting to think Bree was cracking under the pressure too. And if she was being perfectly honest with herself, Bree was beginning to agree with her. She must have imagined the face in the window.

  Normally she would have protested both the tone and content of Megan’s comment. She would have whined to her mother about how Megan had been against her from the start, how her sister should be more supportive, and on and on.

  But Megan was right. The pressure of the play, the weird connections between what happened in the story and what was happening in her life, were blurring the lines between where Carrie ended and where Bree began.

  And thinking that, Bree finally came to a decision. Despite the fact that they were far into the rehearsal process, she would quit the play. Tomorrow.

  Much to her surprise, she slept better that night than she had for a while. No bad dreams. No dreams of any kind that she could remember. The incident with the face in her window began to fade from her thoughts. Perhaps having made the decision to leave the play had calmed her mind, freed her from the craziness that had invaded her life ever since the moment she’d agreed to do the show. Whatever it was, she awoke the next morning rested and refreshed.

&n
bsp; “Any more scary faces at your window?” Megan asked, munching a piece of toast.

  “The only scary face I see is the one across from me now,” Bree replied, feeling much more like sparring with her sister than she had the night before.

  “Ha-ha, very funny,” Megan replied. “But I still think you should quit that show before you completely lose all your marbles.”

  Bree just shrugged casually. Although she had made her decision, something in her mind told her not to say anything to Megan until the deed was actually done.

  “Gotta run,” was all she said, tossing her napkin onto her plate and pushing her chair away from the table. “You’ll be a dear and put these in the sink for me, won’t you?”

  Before Megan could reply, Bree jumped up from the table and ran toward the door.

  “Mom!” Megan whined at the top of her voice.

  “She left already,” Bree called back to the kitchen. “Bye!” Then she scooted out the door.

  At the start of her classes, Bree felt confident about her decision. She imagined what she would say to Ms. Hollows that afternoon. But as the day wore on, she grew more and more anxious about going into rehearsal and actually saying the words “I quit” aloud. By the time classes ended and Bree was walking to the auditorium, she was practically in a state of panic. She opened the door to the auditorium, stepped inside, and knew instantly that she wasn’t going to quit the show.

  There was something different about being in that theater. As if the place, or more accurately, the play, had a life of its own. And Bree felt as if it had some influence over her life. She decided not to fight it and to simply hope things would get better. That the weird stuff would stop and that she could find a clearer line between Bree and Carrie. But at this point, could that actually happen?

  “Let’s pick up the scene, girls, just before Carrie gets the phone call, shall we?” Ms. Hollows announced as the girls all took the stage.

  RACHEL: So do you really think that was someone at your window?

  CARRIE: I don’t know what to think.

  LAURA: Let’s just try to forget about everything and go back to that Witch’s Body game.