Chet Williamson - Reign

"How do they get anything up and down this way?" Evan said.

"They don't. Part of the stage floor drops to cellar level."

Curt hid a grimace as the sour smell of dampness struck him. Although the pool and activities rooms were on the same level as the storage area, the huge space under the theatre, except for a room directly beneath the stage that had served as an orchestra green room, was unheated and had only a dirt floor. Although there was never standing water, the scenery materials were all stored on wooden skids, the bottoms of which were filmed with a pale green mildew that caused the musty odor. They had already decided to install a dehumidifying system the following spring.

At the bottom of the stairs Curt flipped a switch that gave a feeble light to the brick and timber walls and the gray dirt under their feet. A walk of twenty yards brought them to the mouth of a central tunnel from which they could see bays on either side. Pieces of yellowed stage flats and 1x4's protruded from the darkness like massive, webbed fingers.

"The lights are just in the center corridor," Curt said. "Here." He handed Evan a flashlight and a clipboard, to which a legal pad and a pen were clipped. "Just write down what I tell you. Single columns."

They made their way down the right hand side, and by ten-thirty had catalogued the contents of seven bays. As they were about to start on the eighth, the last one on that side, Evan cleared his throat. "Hey," he said, "is there a john down here?"

Curt shook his head. "Upstairs. Go ahead, I'll wait."

Absurd as he knew it was, his ability to control his urination was a point of pride with him. He would go before he went to the theatre to call a show, and would only seek a bathroom again after the show was over and the prompt book safely stowed away. When asked by a musical director if he had a cast iron bladder, Curt had replied, "Someone goes to take a piss, that's when things fuck up." Struck by the sprightly rhythm of this response, the musician had used it as the lyrics to a canon, performed with great fervor at the opening night party.

"Want anything?" Evan asked. "Coke?"

"All right," Curt said, taking fifty cents from his pocket and handing it to Evan. "A Coke."

Evan turned and trotted down the corridor toward the stairway, leaving Curt alone. He took a deep breath, wishing that he would have gone above if only to breathe some air that didn't smell like mildew, then walked into the eighth bay, shining his light up and around.

The bay was much like the others. A few pieces of old furniture used long years before as set dressing were piled atop each other, their stuffing rotting away. Odd lengths of lumber leaned against the outer wall, their bases green with mold. In one corner a steamer trunk sat as it must have sat for decades, the once bright stickers pasted to it now dulled to a flat and obscure gray. Curt allowed his controlled imagination to roam just far enough to consider what itinerant showman might have left it behind and why – a failure to appear due to drink, and a convenient escape from town before the management could prosecute him? Or something else – perhaps the owner's death, no next of kin, no one to send the trunk to, so it came down below, as buried as surely as its owner.

The thought was morbid, unlike him, and he tried to dismiss it, thinking instead about the tremendous trash bill the removal of all the ruined materials would bring, not a pleasant thought either, but one closer to realities, intended to help him drive back the discomfort that seemed to be entering his brain through the mold-coated channels of his nostrils. If only, he thought, I could smell something else. The scent of the mold seemed redolent of death and decay.

But Evan would be back soon. The kid seemed pleasant enough, and, like Tommy, eager to please. Now if only he didn't take so damn long on the crapper…

Curt had just about made up his mind to go above, when he heard footsteps from the direction of the stage. He was about to breathe a sigh of relief that Evan was returning, when he realized that the steps were not Evan's. Instead of a brisk clatter, like those of someone returning to their task, they were instead a slow and ponderous shuffling, not so much the sound of walking as that of something being dragged along in the dirt.

It was possible, wasn't it? Maybe Evan had glanced into one of the bays on the left and found something heavy that he wanted Curt to see. Wasn't that possible?

No. That was stupid. There was someone out in the main tunnel, and it wasn't Evan. So what? So fucking what? It sure as hell wasn't a ghost. It could be Abe Kipp or Harry Ruhl or a goddam electrician, and to learn who it was, all he had to do was look – just take a few steps to the main tunnel, turn, and look.

Then do it, damn it. Just do it.

He hissed air through his teeth in self-disgust, twisted about, and stepped into the corridor.

It wasn't Evan. And it wasn't Abe Kipp or Harry Ruhl or some goddam electrician.

Electricians didn't wear long black robes with hoods that covered their faces.

Electricians didn't move along tunnels like this thing did, half-floating so that Curt could see the toes of its bare feet, the dirty yellow-white of old bones, dragging through the dust, plowing thin furrows as it came toward him.

Electricians, or Abe Kipp, or Harry Ruhl, didn't drive a wedge of ice down Curt's throat, didn't make him feel that at any second his carefully controlled bladder might burst in wet fear.

Electricians and plumbers and janitors didn't, goddammit, do those things, and Curt could only stand and watch as this absurdly medieval apparition, this terrifying and imbecilic anachronism drifted closer and closer, the light behind it growing brighter, the dark oval within the cowl becoming blacker, an ultimate blackness that would drown him if he did not move, or yell, or look away…

And then, in the blackness, he saw its eyes.

"Hope Sprite's okay!"

It was gone as quickly as Evan's words had come, just vanished, as if it had never been there, and instead he was looking at Evan bouncing down the tunnel, a green can in each hand, a smile on his face, a face mercifully normal, eyes, nose, mouth, all in the proper place and in the proper relief.

"The machine's out of Coke," he went on, holding out a can for Curt to take.

Although Curt felt incapable of motion, he saw his hand reach out and grasp the can, and felt the cold. The sensation steadied him, and he nodded at Evan. "Thanks," he heard himself say harshly, and cleared his throat.

"Pretty dusty down here," Evan said, acknowledging Curt's roughness of voice.

"Yes… it is. Maybe we've been down here long enough. We can finish this next week." He tucked the clipboard under his arm and let a cold jolt of the soda sear his throat. "Have you seen our recreation area?" he asked Evan, thinking that an exit from the tunnel in that direction would keep him from once more passing the dark mouths of the bays.

"Not yet."

"Come on then, I'll show you," he said, and led the way out of the tunnel.

What he had seen, he told himself, had to be an hallucination. He had been working too long without a break, maybe thinking too much about Tommy Werton's death, and, finding himself alone in a particularly eerie place, and in a morbid state of mind, that mind had just overloaded its circuits and shown him something that did not, could not exist outside the network of ganglions in his brain. Simple as that.

The only alternative was that there were ghosts, and Curtis Wynn had never believed in ghosts. He had spent over half of the thirty-eight years of his life in theatres, a good many of which were reputed to be haunted, and not once had he ever seen anything inexplicable by natural means, not once had he felt the presence of any creatures other than human.