And Dennis Hamilton had faltered at the exact moment Abe Kipp had seen the first ghost in the cellar.
He had walked halfway down the dusty corridor when she stepped out of one of the bays, just a few yards away from him. At first he was startled, and his heart pounded hard, but then he saw that it was just a little girl, with empty blue eyes that looked lost, and he thought for a moment that she must have gone to the men's room in the lower level by mistake, then found the door to the tunnel and gone exploring. But as she walked trustingly toward him, as though he was the only one in the world who could help her, he saw that not only her eyes were blue. So was her dress. And her lips.
He knew now that he was seeing the Blue Darling. When she reached out her hand and put it in his, the coldness of it only reinforced his knowledge. Abe felt as though branches of ice had been placed in his hand, and that if he squeezed the fingers they would shatter.
He tried to jerk his hand back, but his fingers stuck to hers as tightly as his lips had stuck to the spout of his grandmother's pump one winter when he had been a boy. But now there was no grandma to come out with a kettle full of warm water to save him. The Blue Darling smiled at him then, and her blue lips cracked and showed teeth as sharp and pointed as icicles, and words came out, words in Harry Ruhl's voice that struck his ears like pellets of cold.
"Payback time, Abe…"
The Blue Darling grasped his other hand, lifted him up, impossibly, above her head, and dashed him to the ground. Though he fell less than four feet, the power with which he was hurled splintered bones and bruised muscles, and Abe cried out, and remembered what Billy Potts had said – come to see a Vaudeville 'n fell offa the balcony…
Abe whined and twisted his body around, the pain shooting through him like fire now, not ice, and as he put his hands up to ward her off, he saw his left hand hang limp and knew his wrist was broken even before he felt the pain there.
The little girl was gone, fled back, Abe thought, to whatever cold hell she came from, and he sobbed and tried to stand up, but his left leg would not hold him, sliding out from under him whenever he tried to put any weight on it. Blubbering, he began to scuttle down the corridor back toward the stage, pushing with his right leg, dragging himself with his right arm. He had gone only a few feet when he heard laughter, deep and booming, from above. It was a voice he had never heard before, and it could almost have come from the stage above and ahead.
Abe automatically looked up, and his neck and spine throbbed with the agony. Directly above him he saw, clinging from one arm to the top of one of the stanchions that made up the bays, a huge creature that looked more like an ape than a man. What he could see of its hair was blond and clotted with blood. Half of its face was a gray-red ruin, but the half that was left grinned down with splintered teeth. Its free arm held a hundred-pound sandbag such as had not been used in the Venetian Theatre for many years. It held it right above Abe Kipp's upturned face.
"Payback time, Abe…" said the Big Swede with Harry Ruhl's soft and gentle voice, and dropped the sandbag.
Abe threw his body to the side with all the power left in him, so that even ripped muscles helped shriekingly to drag him away from the plummeting weight.
The bag hit him in the back of the right shoulder, crushing every bone it contacted, and driving sharp splinters into Abe's right lung, although his heart was not pierced. He tried to scream, but the spray of blood from his windpipe choked his mouth, and he could only lay and pant for breath.
"Harry," at last he bubbled through his blood. "Harry, please.. ."
Then he felt what seemed like fingers of fire grasp his crushed shoulder and turn him over. The pain was too great to be voiced, and he kept it inside him, letting it scream within. It kept screaming when he opened his eyes and saw Mad Mary bending over him, an open noose in her clawed hand, her white hair shading her face like a filthy, tattered veil. It was only when she put her head back that he saw the face, and then, in the split second before he lost his sanity, burned to a crisp by the fires in her bulging eyes, he remembered – she's the only one who can really scare ya t'death…
Abe Kipp didn't see her put the noose around his neck, didn't see her haul on the other end of the rope until he stood on the dirt floor, only his toes against the dust, barely felt himself slowly strangling. He didn't see Mad Mary whisper "Payback time, Abe…" in Harry Ruhl's voice, didn't see Mad Mary melt into Harry just as he looked when they found him dead, but now holding his imitation Swiss Army knife. He didn't hear Harry whisper the words one last time, or make the first cut. He felt the knife go in, but to Abe, nearly dead, it felt like a warm finger across his flesh, it felt good, because everything else was growing so cold…
And he didn't see, as he hung from the rope and his life finally leaked away, Harry Ruhl's face change into a face he would have recognized as only Dennis Hamilton's.
"Not bad for a pussy boy," the face said, and smiled. "Was it, Abe?"
Scene 10
"I just felt… like I was lost somehow," Dennis said.
He, Quentin, and Ann were in his dressing room at intermission. Quentin had placed a guard at the door with orders to allow no one else to enter or even knock.
"Yes, but you recovered," Quentin said. "The quintet… the quintet was good."
"It wasn't good, Quent. It was passable. Which was more than I can say for my scene with Kelly." Dennis shook his head and drank half a glass of water. "It was like I was sleepwalking through it."
"But you recovered," Quentin said again. "You got through it, you got your head together, and you got back into the role. Jesus, Dennis, up till then it was brilliant, you know it was, wasn't it, Ann?"
Ann nodded. "Yes. It was perfect."
"Now you just stay here and you rest. You've got twenty minutes. Rest for as long as you need – we can hold the curtain a little longer – and use the rest of the time to work yourself back into that role. Come on, Dennis, be the Emperor again."
Dennis smiled. Ann thought it looked forced. "I will," he said. "I will, Quent. Leave me alone with Ann for a minute, will you?"
"Of course." He gave Dennis a gentle embrace, as though he were afraid he might hurt him. "Do it, my friend. You go out there and do it."
When they were alone, Ann looked into Dennis's eyes and saw the tenor there. "He's back," Dennis said, his voice shaking.
"I know."
"I felt him. I felt him draw strength from me like he was ripping out pieces of my flesh." Dennis's lips drew back, his teeth clenched, and he began to shudder as tears came to his eyes. "I thought he was gone. I really did. I thought and I prayed so hard that he was gone."
"But he's not," Ann said firmly, refusing to break down as well. She wanted to.
She wanted to run sobbing out the stage door and get into a car and just keep driving into the night until she was as far away from the Venetian Theatre as she could possibly be.
But that meant that she would have to flee Dennis Hamilton too, and she would not, could not do that.
"He's still here, Dennis. And you came back thinking that he would still be here. If he was, if you had known it right away, you would have stayed just the same. You would have stayed and fought him." She put a hand on his arm to give him strength. "That's why we came back – to fight him. He let us think he was already beat, and we let down our guard. We wanted to believe he was dead – or dying. And he wanted us to believe it too. We played right into his hands. That was our mistake.
"But he's not infallible, Dennis. As powerful as he is, he's got a plan of some kind. And if he's got a plan, we can ruin it. We just have to figure out how."
Dennis peered into the mirror, as if trying to find the secret in the lineaments of his own, and the Emperor's, face. "I have to be strong." he said slowly. "Even when he tries to draw strength from me, I have to… to feel so much that it doesn't diminish me. I have to be stronger than he is. That's the only way I'll be rid of him. The only way to get back what I need… is to take it back." He looked away from his face now, and into hers. "And I will. I will, Ann."