Lies. Lies and truth. Acting and reality. Artifice and emotion. Had he gone too far down the former path? Had he, by ignoring his true emotions and living false ones, lost his soul?
He rose unsteadily to his feet and started the long walk to his suite, his head full of thoughts and contradictions.
He wanted to tell someone, wanted to talk. But to whom? Sid, his sole confidant, was in jail, permitted no visitors except his attorney, and Steinberg was too practical to ever believe such a story. Then Ann? But even Ann, who he loved, and who loved him, might not believe him, might even think that he had constructed a vast charade to disguise his own guilt. He did not think he could bear to see disbelief and doubt in her eyes.
He pushed open the door of his suite and entered, his mind on Ann. He decided that he must be the one to tell her about Whitney. It had been his fault, and was his responsibility. He picked up the phone.
"John – when Ann comes in, tell her to come up here right away. Don't tell her about Whitney. I want to do it… yes. Thanks."
He would tell her about what had happened to the little girl, but that was all. He would say nothing more. And then he would take her away from this theatre. He would take everyone away from this theatre, this place of death and terror, this terrible, dreadful empire that he had unwittingly and unwillingly created. And maybe, just maybe, the thing could not follow him.
The thought held him for a moment, and he explored its possibilities. It had said that its strength came partly from Dennis and partly from the energy stored in the theatre. What then if he left the theatre? Might it not wither away? Fade away into nothingness? If it had nothing on which to feed, Dennis thought, might it not starve to death?
"Hardly likely, my dear fellow."
~* ~
(THE EMPEROR stands as before, by the fireplace, his arm resting on the mantel. He wears his full dress uniform.)
THE EMPEROR
My demise is not so easily accomplished as you think, Dennis.
DENNIS
You monster…
THE EMPEROR
I am what you made me.
DENNIS
How could you do that? Kill that little girl?
THE EMPEROR
You did not believe in my reality. I had to prove it to you.
DENNIS
But not that way! Killing a child? No one human could do that.. . (He stops, as if suddenly realizing.) The Emperor couldn't have done that. That character… he became imperial, commanding, yes, but never cruel, never… evil. (DENNIS shakes his head.) You're not the Emperor at all. Are you? You're something else.
THE EMPEROR
(Magisterially) I am the Emperor Karl Frederick Augustus.
DENNIS
No. No, you're not. You're the cruel and selfish parts of him.. . of me. That's all you are. You took the hatred and anger from my heart, didn't you? That's what gives you life, that and the energy in this theatre, energy from years and years of emotion.
THE EMPEROR
I am the Emperor Karl Frederick Augustus.
DENNIS
You're a liar. You're a proud and cruel bastard is what you are. But no more of you. I'm going to leave this place. Everyone is. And we'll see how strong you are then.
THE EMPEROR
Leave. You'll return soon enough. Return or die.
DENNIS
(A pause) What do you mean?
THE EMPEROR
I mean I have too much of you already. You're withering away, my friend. And you'll continue to do so. You see, something's been taken from you, something that you cannot live without. But you no longer have the strength to take it back. So I shall simply take more, and more, until there is nothing left. As they say, you can run, but you cannot hide.
DENNIS
I'll destroy you. I'll destroy you yet.
THE EMPEROR
No. On the contrary, I shall destroy you. And everyone you love. .. who remains alive, of course.
DENNIS
You're insane…
THE EMPEROR
No. Just different. Superior. Unlike you, I have no false morality to prevent me from reaching my goal. And my goal… is your soul. Davis and Ensley could have made a lovely lyric out of that, couldn't they? But run, Dennis, if you like, if you feel it can do you good.
DENNIS
I will. For all I know, you're lying now, telling me that it'll do no good so I'll stay. But I won't. I'm leaving, and everyone else will leave with me. You'll be here alone. All alone.
When Ann Deems came up to Dennis's door, she raised her hand to knock, then decided to simply walk in if the door was unlocked. She had been crying in John Steinberg's office for some time.
When he had told her to go up to Dennis's suite right away, she knew there was something wrong from the expression on his face, the pinched quality of his words, as though he was holding something back. She asked him what had happened, and he just shook his head. But she asked again, and he told her that Whitney had been smothered in a pile of clothes. She gasped in horror, and then began to cry. "I don't know how it happened," Steinberg said. "No one does. But Dan Munro thinks it was murder, that there's someone… stalking us." She shook her head, not knowing what to believe, only knowing that she had to see Dennis, had to be with him.
And now she pushed open the door of his suite, and heard voices, both of which she identified as Dennis's. What was he doing? Talking to himself? Acting? Reading a script aloud? One of the voices was sneering and silky, the other louder, angry, and then she began to hear the words, and when she grasped their import, a flame of steel swept through her with the searing knowledge that Dennis was mad.
Ann stepped across the foyer and into the living room. Dennis turned to look at her, and his eyes went wide with surprise, as did Ann's a moment later when she saw the other person in the room.
Dennis's exact duplicate was standing by the fireplace. He was wearing the same costume that Dennis had worn in A Private Empire, but his face had none of the warm kindness of Dennis Hamilton. Instead he stared at her with undisguised loathing. Never before had she felt such malignancy from another being, and the force of it made her incapable of motion, unable to back away from him as he started to slowly walk toward her, as his hands came up, reaching for her. She could neither move nor speak nor scream, but only watch as if in a dream, as this nightmare, this Dennis yet not Dennis, advanced upon her.
" No," said a voice that she knew belonged to Dennis, the real Dennis, her Dennis, and she felt his arms around her, and now he was standing between her and the thing that wanted to harm her. "No, damn you. No."
The features of the Dennis-thing quivered, but whether in rage at being thwarted, in fear of Dennis, or something else entirely, Ann did not know. "You'll see me again," it spat, and then vanished as quickly as a light bulb turning off.
Ann buried her face in Dennis's chest then, afraid to look up, and felt his arms holding her to him. "It's all right," he whispered. "It's gone now. It's gone."
"Oh, Dennis," she said, looking up at him, "what was it? Was it you?"
"I think it's… a part of me. A part that got away somehow."
Then he told her all about the Emperor, about its appearing to him for the first time and the times since, about its confessions and explanations of how it had killed, about its seduction of Terri, and finally, about its disappearance of the night before and Whitney's subsequent death.
"It killed her," Dennis concluded, "just to prove to me that it was real. I can't comprehend that. Killing a child to prove a point. And not even that, really. It knew that I believed in its existence, even though I tried to deny it. It just killed her because… because it likes it, and because it took one more person away from me and made me that much weaker. It's… a monster. As far as it's concerned the only thing human lives are – all Whitney was, all Robin was – are just ways to whittle me down…"