by Andy Mientus
“After all that,” Aziz said, stunned.
“Well, if this is a decoy, where is the real Show Bible?!” Hunter asked.
As if typed by an invisible typewriter, one by one, ink letters appeared on the front page and said:
THE SHOW BIBLE IS RIGHT HERE. IN YOUR HANDS.
The Backstagers looked up from the binder, stunned.
“I think I understand,” Hunter said. He turned to the next blank page and asked, “What can the Show Bible do?”
As before, words appeared from nowhere.
THE SHOW BIBLE HOLDS ALL OF THE INFORMATION IN THE WORLD. YOU CAN ASK IT ANYTHING.
“Whoa!” Sasha said. “Cool!”
Aziz turned a page.
“How do we defeat Thiasos?!” he asked excitedly.
THE SHOW BIBLE CAN ONLY TELL YOU THINGS THAT ARE ALREADY TRUE. IT CANNOT PREDICT THE FUTURE.
“Hmm,” Aziz said, disappointed.
There was a moment of quiet consideration.
Then, Jory turned a page and asked, “What happens when all of the legendary artifacts of the theater are gathered?”
WHEN ALL SEVEN LEGENDARY ARTIFACTS OF THE THEATER ARE GATHERED, THE COLLECTOR CAN SUMMON THE CREATOR OF THE THEATER, THE BACKSTAGE, AND ALL OF THEIR POWERS: DIONYSUS.
Everyone stared at the page.
“Dionysus . . .” Beckett said. “The Greek god of theater.”
“But that’s just a myth,” Aziz said.
“Seems like it’s not,” Reo said.
Jory flipped a page and asked, “Why does Thiasos want to summon Dionysus?”
THE SHOW BIBLE CAN ONLY TELL YOU THINGS THAT ARE ALREADY TRUE. IT CANNOT READ THE MINDS OF—
Jory flipped the page again and asked, “What can Dionysus do when summoned?”
DIONYSUS CAN DO ANYTHING.
“Well, I don’t like the sound of that,” Bailey said.
“When I was captured,” Jory said, “Aleka was talking all about Thiasos wanting to make theater ‘pure.’ They think that it has come too far from what it was in the beginning.”
“So they want to summon Dionysus to . . . what?” Hunter asked. “Wipe everything clean? Start over?”
“I’m not really sure what that would mean,” Jory said. “But that’s what I’m thinking.”
“Well, at least we have this one artifact,” Beckett said. “Even if they manage to get to the tower, they’ll never find an Onstager like Bailey to reach the top of it, right? I mean, who knows more about theater than Bailey?”
Ding.
Everyone’s faces fell as the elevator doors behind them whooshed open again.
They turned and saw, to their horror, the double-faced soldier step out of the doors, flanked by Madam Thiasos, her security guards, and the five young Thiasos Backstagers, Aleka, Niko, Dia, Dimitri, and Tasia.
“We meet again,” Madam Thiasos said.
CHAPTER 19
“Mom? Dad?”
Kevin McQueen knocked tentatively on the door frame of the opulent living room where his dad and mom sat silently, their noses in a book and a newspaper, respectively.
“Yes, dear?” Mrs. McQueen said, not looking up.
“Can I talk to you about something?”
“Sure, son,” Mr. McQueen said, also hypnotized by his reading.
Kevin stood waiting for a moment before he said, “I mean, like, now.”
The elder McQueens lowered their reading and looked sleepily at their son.
“Yes?” his father said.
“Well, I wanted to talk to you about Blake. We . . . we haven’t been getting along so well lately.”
“Honey, that’s terrible,” his mother said through a yawn.
“Yeah,” Kevin continued. “So we’re actually running for Drama Club president separately this year. I wasn’t sure if you knew that.”
“No, we had no idea,” his father said, examining the contents of his glass before he drained the rest of the drink.
“Yeah . . . so, that billboard you bought for him. That was just for his campaign and not mine, so I was wondering if you might—”
“What billboard, honey?” his mother asked.
“. . . The big campaign billboard over Maple Avenue.”
His parents stared blankly.
“The one you paid for.”
Mr. McQueen looked to Mrs. McQueen and said, “We haven’t bought any billboard, son. I would never have authorized that.”
“Things are a little . . . tight . . . with the economy right now,” Mrs. McQueen added.
“But don’t worry! We’ll be fine! . . . I think.”
“Where is Blake, anyway?” Mrs. McQueen asked. “I haven’t seen him all day.”
Mr. McQueen shrugged and went back to his novel.
Kevin furrowed his brow, totally confused.
“But if you didn’t pay for it, who did?”
CHAPTER 20
As the double-faced soldier approached slowly, the Backstagers huddled around Bailey and the Show Bible, though they all knew it was futile. They were outnumbered and totally cornered.
“We have dozens more soldiers waiting downstairs,” Madam Thiasos said. “There is certainly no escape. Hand over the Show Bible. Quickly now, come on.”
The double-faced soldier extended his gloved hand.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Madam Thiasos said.
Bailey scanned the room as she clutched the Show Bible tight against her chest.
The Thiasos team at the elevator doors.
The staircase behind her.
To each side, the void of the dreamscape.
They really were cornered. But what was her goal, really? To keep the Show Bible, or to simply keep it away from Thiasos? Maybe she wasn’t totally out of options.
“Sorry, guys,” Bailey said and, with a grunt of effort, she chucked the Show Bible as hard as she could off the edge of the walkway. It flew, pages fluttering into the darkness.
“Aleka!” cried Madam Thiasos as her daughter swiftly pulled out the Designer’s Notebook and slashed her pencil across its pages.
A vast net appeared instantly below the walkway, catching the Show Bible.
Bailey gasped, but the Backstagers just sighed in defeat. They had seen the power of the Designer’s Notebook before, and they knew it was just one of the legendary artifacts Thiasos possessed. Very soon, they would have them all.
The double-faced soldier reached into his Carpenter’s Belt and pulled out a generous length of rope, which it tossed to the two security guards. One lowered the rope down to where the Show Bible rested in the net while the other began to climb down to retrieve it.
“It was a good idea, Bailey,” Beckett whispered. “But they have the other artifacts. We never stood a chance.”
Madam Thiasos chuckled.
“The hard way, then. Aleka?”
Aleka began to scribble again.
Beckett met Bailey’s eyes, looking miserable, before suddenly, ropes bound his arms and legs, and he fell to the floor.
One by one, Bailey watched her friends become ensnared until finally, she felt ropes twist around her like growing vines until she couldn’t stand anymore. The Backstagers lay in a heap, defeated.
“It’s gonna be okay. We’re all okay,” Hunter whispered over and over again.
The security guards returned from the void with the Show Bible in hand and reverently presented it to Madam Thiasos.
When she took the binder in her hands, she shuddered as if overwhelmed by it.
“We’ve . . . done it,” she breathed. “Thiasos has gathered the legendary artifacts, at long last! Soon, we will bring about the Final Blackout!”
“Final Blackout?” said Hunter.
“And you needed us to do it,” Jory said. “Don’t forget that.”
Madam Thiasos narrowed her eyes and hissed, “Throw them in the Prop Box, please.”
The double-faced soldier unclipped the box from his belt and walked over to where the Backstager
s lay bound. He set the box on the floor, opened it, and began to pick up Sasha.
“No!” Aziz cried. “Why imprison us? You got what you wanted! It’s over! We lost! Now let us go!”
“I will, I promise,” Madam Thiasos said. “After the ritual is complete. You lot have given us enough trouble. We can’t risk you interfering with our work until it is done. Then you’ll be released, safe and sound. But for now . . .”
She gestured to the Backstagers and the double-faced soldier tossed Sasha into the depths of the Prop Box. The security guards and Thiasos Backstagers joined the soldier, and one by one, they sent each of their prisoners into the darkness of the Prop Box.
When the last of them had been disposed of, the double-faced soldier bent to lower the lid of the box.
“Wait,” Madam Thiasos said, her heels clicking on the glass walkway as she strode to where the soldier stood.
“You’ve done well,” she said, “but your most important task is still ahead of you.”
The double-faced soldier cocked his head to the side in confusion.
Then with a grunt, Madam Thiasos pushed the soldier hard in the chest, sending him tumbling backward into the open Prop Box.
As he fell into the blackness, he screamed with the voice of a very frightened and confused male teenager.
CHAPTER 21
“Everyone okay?” Hunter whispered in the dark.
“Yeah,” Beckett said. “I mean, you know. But yeah.”
“Does anybody have a light?” Reo asked.
“I do,” Aziz said, “but I can’t reach.”
“I dropped a lantern down here,” said a familiar voice.
The Backstagers stopped their struggling. It was very quiet for a moment.
“Who is that?” Jory asked.
“Hang on,” said the voice. “Let me find the lantern and then I’ll untie you.”
There was some fumbling in the darkness and then an electric lantern flicked on, illuminating the space.
They were in a simple wooden room, just large enough to hold the lot of them. Standing in the corner, holding the lantern, stood the double-faced soldier.
The Backstagers cowered in fear from the masked figure.
“What?” he asked. “Oh, right! The mask.”
He reached up and removed his two-faced mask.
“Blake?!” Bailey said.
“Hey, guys,” Blake McQueen said. “I’m really sorry about all this.”
“You’d better leave me tied up,” Beckett said. “Because I’m afraid if you untie me, there might be trouble.”
“Let me explain,” Blake said. “While I untie you all. Just please let me tell you everything before you jump to conclusions.”
“Like the conclusion that you betrayed us?” Aziz said.
“Let him talk,” Hunter said.
Blake put down the lantern and set about untying each Backstager. “Thiasos contacted me just before Tammy tech and told me everything. At first, they only wanted information from me about where you might be keeping the artifacts. But Kevin was getting stranger and stranger and they warned me that soon, he’d be permanently under the spell.”
“Spell?” Reo asked as his ropes came loose.
“I tailed you during tech for Tammy. That’s how I found the Greenroom and the Arch Theater. The night of the Dance at the Gym, you were all so distracted on the dance floor, I was able to bring them in through Genesius’s own stage door and lead them to the Arch Theater. They’d already been in town for weeks. That’s how they found out Genesius was in trouble financially and decided to buy the school.”
Sasha’s ropes were next, then Aziz’s.
“Anyway, in the Arch Theater, we encountered the ghost girl, who complicated things. I thought we could get the artifacts out without having to involve you. You guys have been through enough.”
“But why?” Hunter asked as he stood and stretched. “Why would you help them?”
Blake looked at him seriously. “Because you’ve all been in incredible danger. The longer you were exposed to the artifacts, the stronger their effect on you became. And on my brother.”
“Effect?” Jory said.
“The way the artifacts hypnotized you all,” Blake said. “It was clear to me that Kevin wasn’t himself anymore. I was losing him. I didn’t understand why we were growing apart. But then, thankfully, Thiasos reached out to me. Backstagers, please understand that the Thiasos are the rightful ancestral owners of the artifacts. They know how to handle them and they were only trying to help you all by obtaining them first.”
He freed Jory, who said, “No, that’s . . . that’s a lie.”
“We weren’t hypnotized at all,” Aziz said. “We were trying to gather the artifacts to keep them safe.”
“Safe from what exactly? What are you afraid of Thiasos doing with them? You don’t even know what their motive is, but you’ve all put yourselves in grave danger trying to get them first. You’ve become obsessed. That’s their spell.”
He untied Bailey and helped her to her feet.
“Honestly, don’t you want to just give it up and let things go back to normal? Thiasos told me that when all this is over, everything at the school will get better and you’ll be free to run the theater again. You won’t be able to go into the deep backstage, obviously, but you’ll be able to crew like normal kids at a normal theater. No ghosts, no monsters, no treasure hunts for magical items, just shows. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it? Don’t you ever just want to be ordinary teenagers?”
Hunter looked to the floor. The thought had been on his mind more than ever lately.
“I mean, do you guys really think you know more about the backstage and its artifacts after a couple of years than these people do after studying it for centuries?”
He freed Beckett last, who kept his cool as best he could.
“What I do know is you’re down here with us,” Beckett said. “So it’s looking like maybe you’ve been tricked.”
“Yeah,” Blake said. “I . . . don’t know what to make of that. Where do you think they’re taking us?”
For what felt like an eternity but might have only been a few minutes in the backstage, the prisoners of the Prop Box sat in silence, too scared or angry or confused to say anything.
It was a terrifying shock, then, when the ceiling above them suddenly pulled away to reveal a giant Aleka peering down over them. The silence of the last few minutes was broken by terrified screams.
“Blake,” Aleka’s voice boomed, “come with me. It’s time.”
She reached a massive hand into the box and scooped Blake up like a toy doll as the other kids scattered to the four walls.
First Blake felt like he was being lifted, then he felt like he was falling, and then he felt his feet beneath him on the ground. He opened his eyes to find that Aleka was no longer giant-sized at all. She stood next to him, equally proportioned, holding the Prop Box.
They were standing in a twinkling void. Blake knew they were in the tunnels of the backstage, but that could mean they were anywhere.
He looked inside the Prop Box and saw tiny Backstagers shouting up to him, but he couldn’t make out what their squeaky little voices were saying. He turned to Aleka, furious.
“Just what was that little move?” he asked. “The terms of my employment were very clear, and I certainly never agreed to being chucked into a box with a bunch of angry Backstagers.”
“Oh Blake, you agreed to help us see our goal through to the end,” Aleka said. “We couldn’t have you taking off before the most exciting part.”
Two Thiasos security guards in sharp black suits rounded a starry corner at the end of the tunnel. The shorter, female guard pulled out a gleaming pair of handcuffs, and Blake knew that whatever was about to happen, there was no escaping it.
He didn’t struggle when they handcuffed him and led him through the tunnels to a stone archway. As they stepped through the arch and exited the backstage, the real world materialized around
them.
They were on a ledge of a rocky cliff that overlooked a churning, dark sea. Rows and rows of stone benches faced where they stood, and every seat on every bench was filled with a figure, their identities concealed by the dark robes and howling stone masks. Torches burned around the perimeter of the space, and somewhere off to the side, two masked figures pounded rhythmically with their hands on ancient drums. Looking down, Blake saw that the dirt floor he stood on was adorned with strange symbols, small plates of bread and fruit, goblets of wine, and bowls of swirling incense. He realized that this space was some kind of large altar and he was standing at its very center.
Ever since his earliest memories as a little boy, Blake McQueen loved being the center of attention. However, with rows and rows of lifeless, black stone eyes staring at him, he felt less like a main attraction and more like a main course.
CHAPTER 22
“Do these have to be so ill-fitting?” Dimitri asked, pulling at his black ceremonial robes in a hopeless attempt to make them flattering.
“Dude, our families have been waiting for this day for thousands of years and you’re worried about fashion?” Dia asked.
“I’m not an animal,” Dimitri replied.
“I like them!” Tasia squealed as she spun around and admired the way the robes caught the air. “I feel like the grim reaper!”
They were in their dormitory once again, but now, thankfully, the doors were unlocked, and they could come and go as they pleased.
“So . . . has anyone thought about what happens next?” Niko asked tentatively as he examined his stone mask.
“We summon Dionysus and bring about the Final Blackout, of course,” Dia said. “We’ve only meditated on it, like, every day since we were kids.”
“Well sure, but what does that actually mean?” Niko said. “Has anyone actually thought about what happens after the Final Blackout?”
“What do you mean?” Dia asked.
“I mean, if we remove all the electricity from the earth, how will people travel? Will everyone only have access to information in books we can get our actual hands on?”
“You can’t seriously be second-guessing this now,” Dimitri said, rolling his eyes. “You could have said something years ago. You could have, I don’t know, not put yourself and all of us at such risk to find the Designer’s Notebook.”