Authors: Jamie Wahl
He looked into the apartment at his friends. A gale of laughter escaped the gap in the window as Randy did a Minister of Silly Walks bit toward the fire escape. Not even one of them could understand the choice Michael had just had to make. He knew the answer to Bell’s question from the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Randy knocked loudly on the window. “They want to kill more stuff!”
Bell flashed her gorgeous smile and indicated they’d be right there.
“You need to start thinking long term, Michael. You need to walk away from this,” she gestured inside as she spoke, “this nonsense.” She opened the window and left him standing there on the cold balcony.
Michael ran his hands through his hair and followed her inside. She stopped suddenly halfway to the table and he nearly ran into her.
“What is this?” Bell asked. She bent to pick something up from beside his bed, and turned around holding a large gift basket packed full of his favorite sodas, chips and candies.
“I don’t know. I’ve been gone all day.”
Bell pulled a folded note from in between two bags of chips and read it, her lips moving silently. Michael did not like the way her posture changed. Her green eyes turned cold as she scanned the writing.
“What’s wrong?” he asked hesitantly.
She offered him the note with a dark smirk.
Michael unfolded it. It was handwritten in a gorgeous sloping cursive.
Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness. You aren’t alone. We hope to meet you soon. –Your new friends
“Who are they?” he asked.
Bell glanced at Randy and the others.
They are the only things in this town that can give us any kind of a fight.
He glanced at the gift basket. “They don’t seem that bad….”
“Not that bad,” she repeated angrily. Her eyes flashed silver.
“Well, what are they?”
Bell didn’t reply, but turned on her heel to face the rest of the room. “Hey guys, thanks for the game.”
“I told you not to scare her away!” Randy protested.
Michael threw up his hands.
I didn’t do it!
“No, it’s not that,” Bell said, placing an affectionate hand on Michael’s skinny bicep. “I’ve just realized what time it is, and I need to get some things done.” She glanced at Michael purposefully on the word ‘things’.
“Come back any time!” Brian said, smiling.
There was a murmur of agreement from the room, and a volley of “thanks for playing” and “It was fun” on her way to the door. She left without another word to Michael.
“What the hell?” he said, staring after her. He glanced again at the gift basket, “
What
the hell
?”
“Yeah, man,” Randy said, “That’s what we were thinking.”
Michael turned his attention to Randy. “What do you mean?”
“How come you get a neighbor who looks like that? I have a blind old anti-Semitic and a man who I’m pretty sure I saw come home dressed as Barney the other night. No fair.”
No fair at all.
“Prophet! Thing of evil!” Tom pointed a shaking finger at the dark shadow-figure of a raven, cast on the pristine white trim above the tallest bookcase. “Prophet still if bird or devil!”
Michael stood as still as he could on his marker behind the ornate headboard of the bed. He was meant to take a step toward Tom at the end of each stanza, but he was having an enormous amount of trouble focusing on the play.
“Really? An actual prostitute?”
It was Sarah, whispering to her friend behind the curtain.
Charlotte stood on the very edge of the stage, dressed in a delicate lace dress soiled to the knees with mud and dirt.
“By that heaven that bends above us, by that God we both adore—” Tears threatened to spill down Tom’s tortured face. “Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, it shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore!”
“That’s what Brad said! The cop guy thought he might’ve been protecting Charlotte or something. He asked Brad if he had an alibi!” she insisted from the darkness.
Michael took his step. He wanted to run to Charlotte, to warn her of the gossip before she got backstage and faced it, but there was nothing he could do without ruining the play.
Tom fell to his knees. “Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore.”
“Wasn’t she your roommate freshman year? Did she say anything?”
“No. She didn’t really talk that much, though. I made her leave the dorm and make friends. I thought she was just shy!”
The pre-recorded voice of “The Raven” sounded low and grave from the speakers they had rigged along the aisle of the theater. “Nevermore.”
Charlotte stepped off the stage. The audience gasped as she floated, perfectly still, three feet off the floor. The inconspicuous rigging pulled her slowly up into the rafters. Her face was a mask of emptiness as she was pulled up into the shadows. Michael watched her climb quickly onto the catwalk and run behind the set toward the stairs that ended in the prop room. Michael wouldn’t get off the stage until the curtain closed, and by then she’d be surrounded by gossipers without any warning. Michael took another measured, frustrated step toward Tom.
“Out—out are the lights—out all!” A candleholder shouted from the left side of the aisle. The candles went out in unison.
“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” Tom pulled himself up on the velvet chaise that rested in front of the bookcase. “Get thee back into the tempest and the night’s plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of the lie thy soul has spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken! Quit the bust above my door!” The raven remained. “Take thy beak from out my heart! Take thy form from off my door!”
“Nevermore,” the speakers shook low and ominous.
“I can’t believe it,” Sarah whispered, though it sounded like she was thrilled to believe it.
“Do you think she did it? Do you think she killed that woman?”
“She’s obviously an excellent liar...”
Michael clenched his teeth so hard his jaw hurt. He took another painfully slow step toward Tom to stand over his sobbing form.
“And a juvie record?”
“Apparently!”
The candleholders began their slow march to the stage as Tom wept into the velvet. “And, over each quivering form, the curtain a funeral pall.”
Come on, come on!
The tallest of the candleholders turned to face the audience just as the black-clad group reached the stage. “And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting. Still is sitting. And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming, and the lamplight o’er him streaming casts his shadow on the floor.” He turned slowly to face Tom. “And his soul, from out that shadow, shall be lifted…”
The candleholders interrupted in perfect unison: “The play is the tragedy ‘man’ and its hero: the conqueror worm.”
The only light on the stage shone brightly on Tom’s weeping form. Michael placed a skeletal hand on his shoulder and the light left him, moving to shine on Michael’s flowing black robes. The same stealthy rigging that lifted Charlotte into the rafters pulled him into the heights as well, just as the Raven echoed through the theater: “Nevermore.”
The bell tolled again, startling some of the more mesmerized audience members.
The moment his feet touched the platform, he held out his arms for Dan, the techie, to take off his harness. But no one was there.
Are you kidding me
? Michael began unbuttoning as fast as he could, extracting one arm from the entangling fabric. He reached around and felt for the buckles. He spotted Charlotte slip out of the prop room door and head toward the lobby.
Wait!
He tried to yank the harness off, but it was still tightly fastened. The bells faded with the stage lights, abandoning Tom’s wide-eyed misery to the darkness. The audience would move soon, and he wouldn’t be able to get to her.
“Come on!” he whispered. He found the last strap and loosened it enough to wriggle free, abandoning the harness on the catwalk and fighting the billowing costume as he ran down the narrow walkway. The hem of Charlotte’s dress whipped out of sight as she rounded the corner. He hoped she was going out to the lobby and not straight to the dressing room.
Michael hopped from the catwalk to the sound booth. Randy jumped in his chair behind the control board. “Woah!” he said in alarm, “Where are you running?” Michael ignored him, taking the rungs of the silver ladder as quickly as he could and jumping the last half. He landed on his feet behind the seats, tore off the mesh headpiece, and wove his way between the first of the patrons to get out of their seats, running toward the lobby.
He scanned the room for Charlotte, but she wasn’t there. Some of the ushers were standing together in a little group on the far side of the room, whispering. Brad was among them.
“I kissed her!” He shivered theatrically.
Michael was across the room. And Brad’s collar was in his fist. And Brad’s feet were dangling six inches off the carpet. Several girls screamed.
Michael was as surprised as the rest of them.
“Hey! What the hell!” Brad wriggled free and fell to the floor.
Michael blinked, trying to understand what had just happened.
Brad didn’t need to understand, and it didn’t take him long to get up.
The doors from the auditorium opened and the first of the audience stepped out, just in time to see Brad punch Michael squarely in the face. A sharp crack and a piercing pain let him know his nose was cleanly broken. A punch in the gut sent Michael to the floor.
For several moments, chaos reigned. People were everywhere. Several cell phones were dialing the police, several more were filming the encounter. All Michael could see was Brad’s fists, and the feet of surprised patrons.
“What is this?” Randy’s voice broke through the crowd’s noise. “Michael? I wondered where you ran off to! Are you the guy Brad is beating up?”
A couple of men from the crowd grabbed Brad by the arms, but not before he got a few more swings at Michael, who had assumed a fetal position, trying to protect his face. He couldn’t let anyone see his nose. It would heal moments after being set, and he would have no explanation for it.
As they pulled him backwards away from Michael, Charlotte appeared at the front of the crowd. She was still in costume. Her face and arms were painted white, and heavy black makeup made her face into a grim skeleton. She pushed past her boyfriend. “Oh, my God, Michael!” She knelt next to him and glared at Brad. “What did you do?”
“Whatever!” Brad said angrily, shaking off his captors.
Charlotte gasped at the sight of blood on Michael’s shirt. “I’m fine,” Michael said, trying to block his broken nose from view. He spat a mouthful of blood onto the carpet. “Charlotte, he knows about your mother,” Michael choked out. “He was telling everyone.”
“I don’t need this!” Brad yelled, straightening his baseball cap, “I just got back from the police station, Charlotte. That detective told me everything. You really are a great actress.”
Charlotte’s eyes did not fill with tears the way they had before. Her jaw was set, and her blue eyes were colder even than Bell’s. “It’s not my fault you never once actually asked your girlfriend about her childhood. And it didn’t even occur to you to wonder why I never went home for the holidays.”
“So it’s my fault your mother is a whore?”
Several people in the lobby gasped. Michael rolled onto his hands and knees and used the unfolding drama as a cover to set his badly broken nose.
He took three quick deep breaths, reached up and wrenched his nose sideways. The bones made a sickening scraping noise as they slid over one another.
“My mother is an adult and responsible for her choices. As am I.” She unhooked the fine silver chain that hung around her neck and tossed it at Brad.
Brad let the necklace fall to the floor. “Whatever,” he scoffed, “It was fake anyway.”
“Shocking.” She feigned surprise and turned back to Michael.
Michael groaned and flopped onto his back in time to see Brad shoot them a look of disgust before turning and walking out the door.
Randy appeared over Charlotte’s shoulder. They both reeled at how much blood had soaked into his under shirt.
“Yikes!” Randy said.
“I am so, so sorry!” Charlotte said, working with Randy to help lift Michael off the carpet.
His head swam for a moment when he stood, but the pain was already all but gone. He would have to pretend. He held his face and his side and staggered over to an armchair.
“There’s a first aid kit in the prop room,” Charlotte said once Michael was seated. “Randy, could you?” Randy jogged back into the theatre.
“I’m really okay!” Michael called after him, but he was gone.
“Oh my goodness, there’s so much blood,” she knelt in front of him on the carpet, her heavily made-up face full of concern. “I am so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Michael said. “I tried to get down here to warn you. I heard Sarah whispering about it backstage.“
“You shouldn’t have confronted him. Look at you.”
“It’s okay,” Michael said, as she wiped blood off his chin. “I learned a lot.” He caught her wrists to stop her fussing. “The next time I get into a fight, I’ll get at least one punch in.”
She smiled at him. Against the ghostly black stage makeup, her eyes were startlingly blue. Michael could feel her pulse quicken in his hands.
Randy cleared his throat, the first aid kit in hand.
“Thank you!” Charlotte jumped up and took the plastic box from him. “Okay,” Charlotte said breathlessly, “What do you need?”
“Oh,” Michael fidgeted, “I think the bleeding has stopped, actually.
“Dude, look at the carpet. There’s no way.”
Michael glanced at the green and purple floral carpet where he had been laying. There was a red splotch half as big as Michael’s torso.
“Let me see,” Charlotte touched his jaw lightly, turning his face to the side as she inspected his nose. “Huh. He’s right. The bleeding has stopped.” Their eyes met again. Now Michael felt his own heart thump madly in his chest. Heat rose in his cheeks.
“He’s ruined the costume, though,” Randy said, pulling at the wet sleeve.
“I am so sorry.” Michael stood and undid the last remaining button. He stepped out of it and picked it up off the carpet. He held it out apologetically. “Is it ruined?”
“It’ll be fine. At least it’s black. I’ll run it to the laundry in the basement.” She held it out at arm’s length, to keep it away from the white costume she wore, and ran off.
Randy smirked.
“What?”
“Wouldn’t it have been easier to just punch
me
?”
“Shut up.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. He was over there,” Michael gestured, “telling everyone about Charlotte.”
“Yeah, how about that?” Randy said, surprised.
“You already heard?”
“Yeah, Charlotte told me up in the sound booth before the show. She seemed surprised I didn’t already know. I guess she figured you would have already told me.”
“I promised her I wouldn’t.”
Randy shrugged. “You should have just hit me. So much less bleeding,” he added in a whisper.
An all-too-familiar red and blue light began playing on the walls and ceiling. A marked sedan pulled to a stop outside the open front doors. Two uniformed men got out of the patrol car. The static from their radio nearly deafened Michael as they started up the steps.
“Is there a problem, officers?” Randy started toward them.
“We got a call that—” the older officer started, but he was interrupted by a woman with a long blonde braid wearing a slinky black dress. She didn’t say a word, but when she walked in front of them, they followed her. She pointed to the squad car. They got back in. She waved. They drove off.