Vivien didn’t see the trunk at first, because it was tucked under the lip of the stage toward the front—behind where the conductor would stand. The chest was in a sort of crawlspace beneath the floor of the audience. From the scrapes on the floor, it appeared that the two girls had wrangled the large trunk further into the open space, so it must have been tucked quite far beneath.
Now she was even more curious.
It was what was commonly called a steamer trunk—large, old-looking, and roomy enough to carry a generous amount of clothing. It looked ancient to Vivien, and the leather straps that could be used to bind it closed were dried and curled with age. They lay where, it seemed, the teens had pulled them off. The chest’s corners were covered by tarnished brass bumpers, and whatever color the walls had originally been was now a dull, mildew-spotted dung-brown.
Despite removing the straps, Stephanie and her friend hadn’t been able to open the trunk, and Vivien shined her flashlight closely to examine the latch. There didn’t seem to be any sort of locking mechanism, and so she pushed, pried, and twisted to no avail. She was about to give up when she remembered the multitool in her pocket.
“This’ll do it,” she muttered to herself, flipping open the small pair of pliers and attacking the latch with their tiny metal teeth.
It snapped open easily after that—though not without a little scrape on her hand—and she tucked the tool away. Good thing she’d had a tetanus shot recently, she thought, and, having nothing else, resorted to wiping off the thin line of blood on her shirt.
Then she crouched in front of the trunk. “All right, let’s see what you’ve been hiding down here for who knows how—”
Her words strangled as a shadow fell over her from behind. She gasped and twisted around, losing her balance and falling on her butt as she scrambled away from—
Nothing.
There was nothing there.
No one behind her.
No movement, no sound, no subtle change in the air.
Nothing that could have caused that long, angular shadow to spill over her and onto the trunk…and then slide away.
Vivien sat there, her heart thudding so hard that she could barely breathe. Her palms were damp and her knees were so weak that she didn’t think she could pull to her feet even if she wanted to.
She hadn’t imagined it. No, she hadn’t. It had been a tall shadow—angular and straight, not soft and organic like a living being—just like before.
She sat there staring into the depths of the orchestra pit for quite a while. She shined her flashlight around, hoping to see something that could explain the shadow—a forgotten instrument that might have somehow tipped over (what instrument looked like a long, forbidding beam with a slanted end?)…a piece of wood…a chair?
But everything was silent, still, and nothing moved. Nothing breathed except for her.
After a long while, she rose to her feet. Her knees were still a little shaky. The trunk squatted there, unopened and tempting—yet she felt a sense of foreboding. Surely her joke about finding out what the trunk had been hiding had no relationship to the strange shadow fall. After all, the same thing had occurred when she was up on the stage, right above where she was now sitting.
Vivien frowned. She didn’t like that train of thought.
Part of her wanted to get outside, into the late afternoon sunshine, and forget about long, dark shadows that came from nowhere and glided over the floor…
But the bigger part of her, the stubborn part, the determined and furious part, the part that always picked herself back up when she was knocked for a loop—the assets that had brought her this far in life after so many ups and downs—insisted she not capitulate to weakness.
She would stay.
She would open the freaking trunk.
And she fully expected nothing to happen, nothing unusual or shocking to be inside. It was the atmosphere that put those thoughts into her head. There was simply no reason for her to be nervous about opening the trunk. It would be anticlimactic.
Thud-squeak…thud-creak…thud-squeak…
Footsteps. On the stage, directly above her.
Chapter Eight
The theater was empty and silent, but Jake knew Vivien had to be there. Her car was in the parking lot, and he’d walked in through the unlocked side door.
“Vivien?” he called, and then he saw her purse on the edge of the stage. So she was definitely somewhere around. He just hoped everything was all right, considering. “Vivien! Where are you?”
Then he heard a muffled reply. “Jake? Is that you? I’m down here.”
Sounded like she was right below his feet…? Oh, she was in the orchestra pit.
Not that he had any idea how to get there…
“I’m in the pit. Stairs are off stage right,” she called up from right beneath his feet.
Moments later, he was pushing away a swath of cobwebs as he descended into the dimly lit, shadowy place. There was only one light bulb working, but it was enough. Vivien was standing near the bottom of the steps, eyeing a large antique steamer trunk.
To his surprise, she greeted him with neither “What are you doing here?” nor “What do you want?” Instead, she said, “I’ve been working on getting this trunk open—it was locked and I broke off the hasp. I have no idea why it was shoved way under here, beneath that crawlspace.”
Her words sounded normal, but there was something in her eyes that seemed…off. It was probably him. She’d made it abundantly clear that she didn’t want him around.
And that was part of the reason he’d come back to the theater once everyone was gone. They needed to talk—to clear the air or something. He knew he had things that needed to be said.
And aside from that, he wanted to make sure she was all right.
“All right. Well, let’s open it,” he suggested. He sensed a slight hesitation in her manner and wondered about it.
Just open the trunk. Right?
“All right.”
No, he wasn’t imagining her reluctance. There was a strange look on her face. “Want me to do it?” he asked.
“No,” she said, suddenly firm. “I’m just not sure what to expect.”
“What do you think is in there? A dead body?” He laughed a little, and when she scoffed and reached for the lid to raise it, he felt a sudden prickle over the back of his neck. A little rush of cool air—no, cold air. Frigid, even. Icy.
She stopped with her hand on the trunk and looked up at him with serious brown eyes. “Do you feel that?”
“No,” he replied too quickly, resisting the urge to touch the back of his suddenly freezing neck. And he ignored, absolutely ignored, the fact that his breath suddenly looked like little puffs of fog.
She glowered at him. “No? But you didn’t even ask me what I meant before you answered. How do you know what I was talking about?”
“Fine. I guess there’s a little bit of a draft somewhere down—”
“A very cold, freezing draft,” she said. “In the middle of July? When I can see your—”
“Fine. It’s cold. So what? Will you open the trunk already, or are we going to stand here—”
She flipped it open.
They bumped shoulders as they moved to look down into the chest. Their shadows obstructed the contents, so he moved back a little to let the stingy light better illuminate it.
“Well, it’s not a body,” Jake said with forced jocularity. That frigid chill still burned the back of his neck, and he could still see his breath, dammit. He didn’t know whether he believed in ghosts, but he knew this sort of thing supposedly portended supernatural activity.
And there was a stillness that had settled around them, there in the dim belowground pit. Like a sudden absence of sensation and movement—it was like being in a vacuum.
Just…nothing.
Or like everything was holding its breath.
Vivien spoke first. Her voice sounded artificially bright. “Looks like a bunch of costumes.”
Yes, the trunk was filled with old clothing, and it all appeared fairly well preserved. Jake saw a jumble of shiny fabrics like satin—black, pink, yellow—as she began to pull items out in wads. And there was a scrap of bright purple velvet just beneath that, then something shiny and green, and then the tangle of fabric gave way to something recognizable: a military sort of coat in bright red with black cuffs and a white patch down the front. It had two rows of large brass buttons fastened with black loops across the white front.
She pulled out the coat, and what was left beneath gave him a start at first. A huge, eerie, doll-like face looked up at them with unseeing eyes. It sported an obscenely large mouth with massive white teeth, both upper and lower, in a really creepy smile. It wore a tall, cylindrical hat of dark blue with a slanted top and a short black bill in the front.
“The Nutcracker,” she said, looking down into the trunk. “These all must be costumes from The Nutcracker.”
“I don’t ever remember the Nutcracker looking so unpleasant,” he said, suppressing a shiver. The freezing air was still brushing over the back of his neck. “Isn’t it a kids’ show? Something like that would give my nephew nightmares. That mask looks way creepier than any clown I’ve ever seen.”
He noticed she didn’t pull out the Nutcracker mask—which wasn’t a mask so much as a huge, false head that would rise several feet above one’s shoulders. He didn’t blame her. There was something unsettling about looking down at that face.
“It might be enjoyed by children, but it’s got a lot of adult elements. This headpiece is from when the Nutcracker—which is given to Clara on Christmas Eve—first becomes animated. He starts off as a regular-sized nutcracker, and then, when she falls asleep, she dreams about him. He becomes human-size in her dreams—larger than human, which is why the piece is so big—and then eventually the head goes away and he becomes fully human as the ballet goes on.”
Jake was still looking down in distaste. “If that showed up in my dreams, I think I’d wake myself up right away. Look at those chompers! Forget about cracking a walnut—they’re big enough to crack a skull.”
She gave a little snort and pulled out the ugly-as-hell fake head. “The back’s all crushed,” she said, turning the thing around in her hands. Despite its ungainly size, it seemed light. It was probably made from papier-mâché. “Maybe that’s why they—”
The light went out with a decisive pop! She made a little gasp, and, admittedly, he did too—for suddenly they were in the dark with the blazing chill still raising goosebumps on his neck…and a big, ugly, creepy mask. She moved, bumping into him sharply, then jerking away. He could hear her rough, unsteady breathing.
“Vivien, are you all right?” He felt around for her instead of digging out his cell phone with its flashlight—and that was a simple indulgence because he just wanted an excuse to touch her.
“Yes,” she said—but her voice sounded as unsteady as her breathing. “Of course.”
And then he found her—his hands brushing against a warm arm, which he took gently and somehow managed to tug her up against him. He folded her in his arms like it was the most natural thing to do—and, oh man, he realized suddenly it was. It felt right, comfortable, natural…and then there was her scent. It was so familiar, rising over the age and mustiness surrounding them in the old theater. He felt a pang of grief ring deep inside.
“I’m fine,” she said, but she wasn’t pulling away. She wasn’t exactly embracing him back, but she wasn’t pulling away.
It was so strange, standing there in a decrepit old orchestra pit holding the woman he’d loved eleven years ago as if those eleven years—and their unpleasant breakup—had never happened.
Then she seemed to regain her presence of mind, for she pulled back, and he heard her fumbling around—
“Don’t know what happened,” she said, and a light beamed into the darkness from her cell phone. “I’m not usually that skittish. Geez. Frigging light bulb goes out and I go to pieces? I don’t know why I reacted that way.”
He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He just knew he was already missing her being close to him.
“What do you want to do about the, uh, headpiece?” he asked. “If it’s ruined, you might as well toss it.”
“Let’s take it up and look at it in better light. Maybe I can display it in the lobby with some of the other mementos we’ve found here. Preserve some of the theater’s history. Liv would like that. I think The Nutcracker was the last show performed here.”
He didn’t know why she’d choose to keep that creeper of a mask, but he picked it up and carried it as they made their way up the steps with the aid of her cell phone flashlight.
“All the lights are out,” she said in surprise as they got to the top of the stairs and stepped into the back stage area. “Not just the ones in the—”
She froze and grabbed blindly for him as her light tumbled to the ground. Her fingers curled painfully around his forearm as they stared at the rippling red…something…that undulated on the stage.
It twisted and writhed in the darkness, a glowing, screaming red…a sort of spiral, whipping and buffeting about as if it were trapped in a gale-force wind.
Her fingers were digging holes into Jake’s arm, but the discomfort was hardly noticeable as he stared at the vision before them. Then, all at once, it was gone. The light went out and they were swathed in darkness once more…
Except for angry scarlet letters burning and rippling in the air, high above the audience seats in the middle of the theater:
DEATH
Chapter Nine
When Vivien dropped her phone, it landed light-side down—effectively smothering its illumination.
By the time everything was over and she lunged to the floor to snatch it back up—guided by the faintest bit of glow around the edges of the phone—Jake was already moving toward the stage.
She followed, right on his heels, brandishing the light like a weapon.
“They didn’t even try to hide it this time,” she said, shining her phone up and out over the house. The sheer fabric—smoke-gray; barely distinguishable even in the light—rippled gently, causing the glow-in-the-dark red letters spelling DEATH to shimmy as if alive.
“No, they didn’t,” he said grimly. “But it was a clever performance.”
“If I’d been here alone, it might have been more effective as a scare tactic,” Vivien admitted. “Not much more—now that I’m onto him—her—them—whoever—but it might have given me more of a shock.”
“The lights going out first was a dead giveaway,” Jake said. “Did they know you were in the pit?”
His voice was steady, but she sensed the tension vibrating from him. And for the moment, Vivien was okay with putting aside their past and dealing with what had just happened.
Because what had just happened opened up a whole bunch of questions and problems.
“If I hadn’t dropped my phone, we might have seen more,” she said, disgusted with herself.
“I don’t know,” Jake said, looking at the center of the stage—right where the twisting, undulating, cyclonic thing had been. “I don’t know that there would be much to see. Obviously, it was some sort of silky scarf thing, lit from inside, maybe a fan blowing down on it? You’d know more about that kind of stuff—stage theatrics—than me. Probably dropped the red cloth from above, then whisked it back up when the little show was over. And then, in the meantime, whoever it was dropped that friendly little sign into place right over here.”
“Distraction and misdirection. Oldest trick in the book,” Vivien said. “There must be some sort of black light shining on the scrim to make the letters glow like that.”
“Scrim?”
“That’s what that is—a nearly transparent piece of fabric that you can shine light on or through for scenery or to create shadows or various other effects. It’s a common theatrical technique.”
“So whoever is doing this has a familiarity with the theater.�
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Whoever is doing this.
The words shook her…but they were true.
He was right—someone was doing it. Purposely. What a horrific, terrible realization.
“I suppose you could draw that conclusion—that whoever has a background in theatrics. But it’s not like these techniques can’t be looked up on the internet.”
“Right.” His face was shadowed and stark in the bright cone of light from her phone. “Well, we should probably try to get the lights on so we can look around to see whether there’s any sign of who did this.”
“All right, Detective DeRiccio,” she replied dryly. It was easier to cling to a bit of humor, and then to focus on things to do, than to dwell on the reality that someone was trying to drive her away from her theater. “The fuse box is back here. He—or she, or they—probably just flipped the main.”
“They probably thought you were here alone—just like the last time,” he said as she opened the door to the fuse box.
Sure enough—the main breaker was off, and when Vivien flipped it back into place, the lights came back up.
“Either they have some sort of nanny-cam here or they’re watching the parking lot and saw only your car,” he went on. “Or watched everyone else leave.”
“What about your car?” she replied. The idea of any sort of surveillance—via camera or live eyeball—on her and the theater made her feel sick. She was going to have to call the police and make a report. Helga was going to be very upset.
“I walked. I only live up that way,” he said, gesturing vaguely to the west. Then he gave her a knowing look. “So are you going to tell me what happened the last time or not?”
She pursed her lips then shrugged. “Fine. It was basically the same sort of thing as happened today. Different color lights—bluish—but in the same basic location on the stage, and last time it was just lights, not the gyrating cloth sort of thing. I don’t know, maybe this time he—she—whoever—was trying to evoke a ghost or something with the fluttery fabric. And there was a different warning the first time, but you already know that. When it happened before, I, uh, left in a hurry, and when I came back in—”
Sinister Stage: A Ghost Story Romance and Mystery (Wicks Hollow Book 5) Page 10