The Ghost's Theatre

The playwright gave his everything. Now his phantom demands the same of his actors.

The play was called The Tragedie of Caligar d’Montreno, and it was said to be cursed. The completed manuscript was found lying next to its author, the late renowned playwright Eugel Menninwise, who had written the final monologue then driven his dirk into his eye and all the way to the hilt. His whole self he bled onto those pages… in more ways than one, they said.

In the following years, Caligar grew in popularity as well as notoriety. Troupe managers would report strange occurrences and mysterious accidents attending its productions: a carpenter’s hand mangled, a collapsed stage canopy, mysterious playhouse fires. Menninwise’s own playhouse, The Bulwark Theatre, had remained shuttered from the time of his passing to that one dark and bloody night.

On the fifth anniversary of the playwright’s death, Thrisland’s king commissioned a new production of Caligar to be performed in The Bulwark Theatre itself, and hired a troupe of rising stars: The Lord Duke’s Men.

The elderly manager delivered the news to his actors while sweating profusely and staring at the rafters to contain his emotions. He hadn’t finished speaking before the group erupted into cheers. They celebrated the rest of the day at every tavern along the bank of the Gafflyn River, singing and dancing, laughing and crying, praising God for their fortune and cursing the naysayers. By nightfall the same manager found his crew soused almost beyond speech. He called them together in the dusty street and read the casting sheet he’d prepared. His actors gathered around with as much sobriety as they could collect, leaning upon one another with eyes out of focus.

The role of deuteragonist — the eponymous Caligar’s loyal brother — would go to Jamis Baver. The damsel would be played by Anny Tewers. And the leading part of Caligar himself would go to Normond Kit.

Nomond was a sanguine fellow. Everyone expected him to cry victory, but he didn’t. Instead, he was uncharacteristically solemn, the only change to his tall and lank complexion being a widening of his eyes, a tightening of his thin lips, a quivering to his hand.

Anny understood. She waited for the announcement to end, then quietly followed Normond out to where the street met the Gafflyn River. There Normond climbed onto one of the breaker stones and looked across the waters at the other half of the awesome city gleaming on the opposite bank, then screamed thrice as though to shake the very dust from which the world was wrought:

“So it shall be! So it shall be! So it shall be!”

Anny climbed up next to him and slipped her hand in his. Together they stared at the city, the water, and the future glimpsed in the myriad reflections.

“I shall be the greatest, Anny! Menninwise’s final play… and we! ‘Tis our happy number that shall perform it for the King!” He looked at her, and in one another’s eyes they saw the endless burning opportunity. “I shall be the greatest!”

“Aye Normond. The greatest.” She turned toward the waters and a nocturnal scow passing beneath one of the stone bridges. “And Doveham shall never forget!”

“When this is finished, I would wed you, Anny.”

“Aye. And I would have you, Normond. Here and anon.”

They kissed, and kissed again. And on the third pass his hand traveled down her side toward more adventurous regions, and for their wanton they nearly toppled off and into the water but caught one another in a drunken tangle. They laughed and kissed again.

“Normond,” someone called from the street.

They turned as Jamis approached, his countenance as dour as ever. Normond couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen his rival smile. “What do you want, Jamis?”

“To congratulate you.”

Normond hesitated. He’d expected some word of spite or envy, but so complete was his victory that Jamis approached him as a man defeated. Normond nodded. “Aye, I thank you.”

Jamis looked at Anny, the woman both he and Normond loved. “Anny.”

“Jamis.”

Normond saw his gaze, and couldn’t resist drawing her closer. Jamis turned away.

The troupe musician played faster and faster as a large crowd joined her in dance. The troupe’s young apprentice had drunkenly scaled the tavern’s exterior and swung laughing from the eaves. Jamis went looking for a stronger drink. Normond and Anny kissed again.

Down the bank from them stood the dark shape of The Bulwark Theatre, the three-story structure interrupting the horizon like an outsized specter of Menninwise himself.

***

On the day of the performance, rosy evening light collected on the restored and finely painted lath and plaster adorning the theatre’s upper floors in a three-quarter circle. The stage extruded into the standing-room gallery already surging with Doveham’s choicest citizens while the royals and nobles occupied the boxes along the upper floors in their finest costumes.

A decorated canopy stretched over the stage, and the supporting columns held candles in their niches to illuminate the stage. Into this pool of light strutted the apprentice, who stood erect and gathered the audience’s attention with his gaze. One-by-one they fell silent and rapt, and thus began The Tragedie of Caligar d’Montreno:

“Grim tidings, dear arrayed, have I to bear / Regarding houses noble and mature, / For on this gloam that I could kill this fare / And thereby spare my master to endure!”

Anny listened from behind stage. The apprentice embodied the tormented courier well. “He’s doing wonderfully.”

Suddenly the apprentice saw something in the crowd and momentarily stammered, but caught himself and continued.

Normond clacked his tongue nearby. “You spoke too soon, love!”

“Hush!” whispered the manager. “Screw your head on! This is our moment!”

“My head’s never on right,” Normond shot back, then looked at Anny: ”Watch me, love.”

Then his cue came, and out onto the stage he and a fellow actor strutted.

The audience cheered as he emerged. The apprentice bowed and took his leave. Normond stood to the right, and the other actor to his left. He took a deep breath, and began.

Words flowed like a mellifluous stream. Normond could practice endlessly, but a crowd’s attention evoked something new. He verily danced across the syllables. He spoke, his opposite answered, and Normond recovered the meter like a juggler with a ball. He turned to the crowd and met their gazes: there was the Duke of Rancroft, their shareholder. In the center was young King Eliam Evmunton. Down below was Shay Billie, producer of a rival troupe, watching his aspirations blown away by Normond’s grace. He saw the Count of Umfrey, the Earl of Fyse, the Baroness of Glackanby…

His eyes graced the gallery below him, and there he saw him.

A single figure among the crowd, a light blue doublet to match his pallid face. A single golden earring. The figure stared at him through only one eye — the other was a gaping hole from which blood dribbled down his face and stained his white ruff.

Normond was a professional. His prose never faltered, but as he delivered his lines his vision doubled back again and again. ‘Twas a jest to be sure, for the man was the exact image of Eugel Menniwise as he was described in death! This was a distraction laid by a rival troupe, capitalizing on the play’s cursed reputation. Was this what the apprentice had seen in the crowd that had upset his introduction?

Whatever it be, Normond Kit would not be snared. Any Dovish actor worth his salt could perform amid rain or sleet, flying fruit or jeers. This puerile antic would be worse than scorned — it would be ignored.

“Lo, Caligar!” cried the other actor, turning toward the back of the stage, “What do I see?”

“Aye me!” Normond completed the line and turned with him, “It is the courier hanging from yon tree!”

Normond turned his back on the crowd and stopped. Just within the shadows at the back of the stage, something hung.

It was the apprentice, dangling from a rafter beam by a noose around his neck.

Now the audience saw it too. The crowd assumed it wasn’t real, but nonetheless a disturbance rippled through the house. In typical Dovish theatre, stage props were used only sparingly, but here was what must be a full impression of a hanged man: a bold, irreverent creative choice, wholly unexpected though arguably in keeping with the late playwright’s own unorthodox vision. The reception was decidedly mixed.

The manager saw the shift in the crowd, and noticed especially his dear shareholder’s furrowed brow. “Keep playing!” he hissed at the stage.

Normond was still staring at the dead man turning slowly in his noose: distended white eyes stained with brightest red from the capillaries breaking therein; livid welts where rope bit skin; unnatural extension of neck. Normond had seen hanged men before — they all had — but was this lad not on stage a moment ago? How could he have gotten here unreckoned?

“Keep playing!” hissed the manager. “Keep playing, you fools!”

By force of will alone Normond stepped toward the hanging figure. His lines fortuitously endorsed the action: “Look how he swings; come, let’s take him down, / And not be called unmanned by this offense!”

They struggled with the ropes for a minute. The audience watched in fascination and perplexity. No lines were spoken. Halfway through the manager shoved the musician out on stage with her lute, and she improvised a lamenting melody. True tears in her eyes.

Normond dropped the dead apprentice backstage and gasped. “What in God’s name is this?!”

The rest of the production gathered in shared horror.

“He was hanging! None of you thought to stop him?!”

“We never saw him leave the stage,” said the manager, “nor climb the canopy.”

“This… this is sabotage. Someone paid this cur to do this.”

“Paid him to off himself, Normond?” Jamis said. “Nonsense.”

“Why else would he do this, then?!”

“Lower your voice, they’ll hear you out there!” Anny whispered.

“What does that matter? An actor is dead!”

“... An apprentice.”

“We can continue,” said the manager.

“This is lunacy.”

“I have worked too long to miss this moment!” the manager hissed through gritted teeth, bringing the group to silence. The gentle lute carried over the air. “Mister Kit, did you see anything else out there?”

Normond described the man with the missing eye. Dread rose in the group, but the manager remained stony.

“Was that what caused this fellow to fumble his line?”

“Aye, I should guess so.”

“It’s Menninwise’s ghost,” said an usher.

“Again about the curse? Absurdity.”

“I’ve seen him! I put the lights out here at night after rehearsals! I’ve seen him!”

“Keep your wits!” said the manager. “I won’t be cowed by this. We can find out what happened after the performance. Send the ushers to find this bastard. I want him floating down the Gafflyn face-down afore the intermission. You three,” he nodded to the leads: Normond, Anny, and Jamis, “you’re willing to continue?”

They were.

“Then let’s be on with it. Hie off, pip pip!”

***

They finished the first act, then the second. Anny entered the stage, and she and Normond exchanged sweet words written by a dead man. The ushers more than once passed through the audience, but found no one-eyed man, even as the actors gave direction: he’s in the gallery, stage right; no no, he’s in the second-floor box next to the mayor’s booth; but wait, he’s moved! Odart’s Bones, now he’s on the roof!

Wherever he spirited, he watched them fixedly. He mouthed lines, nodded along with meters.

If he was a saboteur, he was nonetheless a lover of theatre.

He seemed to especially fancy Jamis, who played Caligar’s brooding brother. Indeed, Jamis glanced up often and spied admiration in that one grim eye. Jamis was used to the devotion of the crowd. Indeed, many preferred his more melancholic, authentic style to Normond’s pomposity. Jamis himself had to admit that this role better suited him than Caligar.

He delivered another stanza with cool verve. The crowd shuddered. The apparition grinned. Normond may have won the war for Anny’s heart, but perhaps Jamis could win the crowd tonight. And the ghost. “There’s nothing here,” he cried, standing next to the prop table set with an empty wooden cup, “no joys — how fleeting — could for me outweigh / a single grain of woes for which I bear.”

He lifted the cup. In another moment he’d put it to his lips and drink the imaginary poison therein, ending his character’s life just before the intermission and precipitating much of the tragedy in the play’s second half. He held the cup high.

“No anguish do I feel upon this act…”

Something changed. The slightest increase in gravity. He lowered the cup but the weight remained. He glanced inside and it was now half-full. A pungent liquid black as tar swirled therein.

Jamis nearly dropped it. In his next line he drew the vessel beneath his nose for a sniff — a gesture the troupe noted he’d not done in any rehearsal. Stinging and bitter. Poison indeed.

So the play was cursed. But now he’d almost cause to laugh, for unlike the apprentice he could simply pretend to drink and take his leave.

He glanced up at the one-eyed man — truly the ghost of Eugel Menninwise — but the look the dead man gave back was not one of malice or conceit. It was respect.

Jamis’ associates backstage noticed a change in his demeanor, and the subtlest pause between his lines as if he was coming to a decision. The edges of his mouth quivered.

“This medicine of mine; ‘twill be my knell,” he intoned, and threw the liquid back into his throat. Both the audience and those backstage saw the black dribbles run along his cheeks. He swallowed with difficulty, shook, then fell to his knees as blood ejected from his mouth. The crowd screamed, but he looked up at the smiling Menninwise and finished: “It beckons me to Caelum… or to Hel.”

Jamis Baver collapsed. The audience, now prepared for such bloodshed, hesitated only a moment. Then erupted into applause.

It was the greatest performance Normond had ever seen.

***

The ushers insisted that the crowd leave for the intermission, another oddity among oddities.

The sky had fully cooled. The only remaining lights in The Bulwark were those around the stage which made shadows of Jamis Baver lying dead in a pool of his own blood, his mouth cracked into a manic and satisfied grin. He looked a tippler who’d finally found the bottom to every bottle.

The troupe gathered around as the manager bent to inspect. Shadows moved in the wings. Anny shed soft tears of not only fear but grief.

“He’ll kill us all,” whispered someone.

“Aye, this place is cursed. We are cursed.”

“I’m leaving. I’ll not die here.”

“Nor I!”

One by one they expressed their intent.

“So that’s it, then?” said the manager in quiet, almost pensive anger. “The Lord Duke’s Men, on the night of their ascendancy, shall suspend… for fear of phantoms.”

“Jamis is dead!” cried Anny. “Do you not care?”

“Aye, I care. I care as much as he did.” He picked up the cup lying nearby, sniffed its putrid, execrable residue. “He drank this.”

“It was empty when I brought it out!” cried a fellow actor. “I swear!”

“I know. I saw.”

“The ghost forced him.”

“The ghost forced naught. A phantom may have placed this, but Jamis drank. I know my actors.”

“Insanity,” said Normond, “why would he do that?”

The manager sighed and stared at Jamis. “Perhaps I chose the wrong lead.”

“Excuse me?...”

“Fine then. All of you can leave.” The manager sat down at the edge of Jamis’ blood puddle.

Anny looked around. “That is… do we know if we safely can?”

***

They gathered at the back entrance of The Bulwark where it opened onto the dusty square. The tavern some fifty paces across the way was swollen with their audience, an alcove of life in the night.

The musician volunteered. She held her lute to her chest insisting if she die, that it be with her beloved instrument in hand.

She stepped out.

Ten feet. Twenty.

She stopped before thirty. Something was wrong.

“Come back!” they hissed. “Come back!”

She turned back toward the theatre, beginning at a trot then ending at a run, crashing into her associates.

“I couldn’t breathe!” she gasped. “Hands… around my throat!”

“Dear God…”

“And a voice… a voice spoke to me. It said, finish it.”

Someone speculated that perhaps the ghost would release those whose roles were completed. They tried, and got the same effect. Normond and an usher had to venture out into the street and drag the fellow back. Resuscitation took a moment.

“Help!” cried one of them from the doorway. “Somebody help us! We’re trapped in th—”

FINISH IT!

They all heard it. They all felt it. It rang like a gong between their ears. The lanterns faltered and the theatre went dark as a tunnel, then slowly glowed again.

Thus they cowered helplessly at the exit, the tavern as remote as a distant port from a foundering ship.

With ten minutes left, they met backstage. Since the play began The Bulwark seemed to have grown new sets of shadows – the hallways were tighter, the rafters more angled, the gallery more wide and empty like a public square the night before an execution. The Lord Duke’s Men entertained dismissing the audience, cancelling the play, setting fire to The Bulwark. But if they could not leave, none of these would save them.

“Only two have died thus far,” said the manager, “and those deaths were written into Caligar itself. In the second half, there are only two more deaths…”

Everyone looked at Normond and Anny.

“I have no wish to die,” said Normond.

“There may be another way,” said the manager. “I could alter the script.”

“Alter Caligar?...” the musician exclaimed.

“Purge your tone of that, I could do it! I’ve been a playwright since before you lot came to this city.”

“It’s not that… do you think the ghost would tolerate it?”

“We must find out. Now, I must be to my office. We’ve precious few minutes left.”

The audience returned slowly. Candles were relit on the upper floors. The moon came out to watch just above the roof’s awning.

Anny knocked on the manager’s office door. “Sir? Sir?”

She found him slumped over his desk wearing a rictus of horror. His one hand grasped his chest and the other held the wet ink quill. Lying next to him were the pages he’d worked on. Where should have been his revisions sat the original script, wholly unaltered save for two words at the bottom of the last page:

FINISH IT.

***

‘Twas different this time. The audience could sense it. A pall lay over the place. The actors in their lines passed solemnly through some dimly perceivable ether, stepping through a fog, dispelling it with their gestures. As if some monster slumbered between each word which they collectively wished not to wake. This was no play. This was a ritual.

The mood complemented the production perfectly, and those actors who spied Menninwise read the approval on his pallid face.

Deeper the audience descended, bewitched by the poetry and delivery. Not a sound could be heard among them. They scarcely seemed to breathe, and even the Duke of Rancroft who was the troupe’s shareholder lost track of watching the King’s box and had eyes only for the stage.

Normond’s role, having a levity in the first half, was now furled in a way the audience had not seen nor predicted. Caligar’s brother was a suicide, and Caligar himself was infected with a deeper darkness than he’d ever realized.

If all went perfectly, then by night’s end, Normond and Anny would be dead.

His eyes were red and desperate. When his gaze visited any specific audience member they could not help but shudder. Many who’d seen the play before now perceived it in a new light, and wondered if what they saw matched Menninwise’s original intent. Indeed, although The Lord Duke’s Men themselves had made their own artistic choices regarding tone or delivery, Normond found a better way in the moment. He would glance at Menninwise, and could read instructions on the ghost’s face. Thus for two lines he’d always shouted, Normond looked at Menninwise and saw the pale ghost raise a finger and touch his lips.

Instead of a cry, Caligar made a quieter, sinister utterance:

“If in men’s books my number be not found, / Then my own name I’ll mark, or carve myself / The note with bloody nails for want of pen!”

He smiled at the end – even Anny, to whom he spoke, was given pause.

Anny herself did splendidly. They watched her pour her love over Caligar like a balm, only for it to slide off his ossifying heart. Over the next hour as the stars came out they witnessed the taint on Caligar’s soul infect her too. Her light grew fainter, the world colder. But some other latent force dyed her performance, some ugly advent.

The play spun on like a dancer’s phantom in a ruined hall. The audience sensed a peculiar melancholy in each actor as they delivered their last lines to Normond and Anny. They were saying farewell.

***

The play was timed to finish at midnight. The musician delivered her departing speech before the conclusion and final monologue. Her character spoke of how she knew what was coming, and could not bear to watch it unfold. The audience believed her.

Normond and Anny sat side-by-side backstage, listening. The others gave them a wide berth. As soon as the musician finished, their moment would arrive.

Her head rested on his shoulder and their fingers entwined. “The manager said that Jamis drank on purpose.”

“Aye.”

“Why would Jamis have done it?”

“Menninwise forced him.”

“What if Menninwise didn’t?”

“Hush, dove. Why would Jamis kill himself?”

“I don’t know why… but if he did drink the poison on purpose, then that means we might have a choice.” She lifted her head and looked at him. “A choice, Normond. We could still escape. We could still be together. If not both of us, then perhaps one of us.”

He looked at her and squeezed her hand tighter. “It must be both of us, Anny. I do not wish to see the next sunrise without you. If you die out there, then may Menninwise slay me, too.”

She looked down, almost in shame.

The audience cheered. The musician had finished her speech.

“Our cue,” she said quickly.

They got up and made for the stage. As they passed the musician she stopped them briefly. “I must thank you,” she whispered. “If you pair hadn’t elected to finish this, who knows what would have become of the rest of us.”

Normond grinned wryly. “We’d small choice.”

“Even so… thank you.”

They parted. Normond and Anny took the stage. They stood apart, and turned toward one another like duelists.

She began. He riposted. They made more pauses in their speech, savoring what may have been their last moments. Normond found the play of light upon her face a lovely thing indeed. They stepped toward each other. Fingers touched, then tore away. Caligar was too far gone for his lover. She saw now that he was more shadow than man, and that his love could only lead to ruin.

“But far too late I learn of this malaise,” she said, “my heart’s already forfeit, here and on.”

Now there were tears in her eyes, and Normond too felt their sting. She continued:

“If Fierstorr with his magic had made fates / Our own to tame, then would I, your eternal / Love, have charted different courses?”

“Nay, dove,” answered Normond, “Our lodes were shaped by greater brooks than that. / Not Fierstorr nor the Halloweds could avert the ways / That wend through our sad lives. These ley lines cut / Betwixt our birth and grave, with naught outside / But dreams and voiceless cries.”

“Then I shall seek,” she said, “Some quietus, like your kin, beyond that stile.”

She lifted the cup, which she’d known was empty, and to none’s surprise she found it full.

She paused there, staring into its murk, her expression unreadable.

Normond watched. He wished to slap the cup away. He wished to scream. But his instincts and the crowd’s enthrallment pinned him in place, watching the woman he loved dandle death in her palm.

Finish it.

She lifted the cup, then at the last minute tilted it outward, spilling the poison across the stage in a feigned vomit. She did not drink it.

She did not drink it.

Her hand went to her head, dramatizing death, then she stole offstage.

No applause. The crowd had expected a death as gruesome as the others with a body left on the floor. A general grumble — almost a concern — passed among them.

Normond could hardly speak, such relief he felt. He turned and raised his voice, beginning his final monologue. He spoke of death and the transience of existence. He bemoaned the sad pursuit of immortality through words and art. He cried out to the stars above to only come a bit closer, that he might clutch a few and move them where he willed, or at least allow their heat to burn his hands.

But all the while, he thought of Jamis. Anny had received a choice. If Jamis got the same, why choose death?

Jamis’ performance had been sublime. The best Normond had ever seen. Tomorrow when the audience learned what had happened Jamis would be immortalized for his sacrifice, just like Menninwise. Normond himself would be an afterthought… the true deuteragonist. Was this why, Jamis? Was this why you allowed the ghost to kill you? Was it to defeat me? Well, I’ve still won. I still have the damsel, whom I’ve saved from this foul trap.

The moment of truth was nigh. Normond glanced at the ghost, who was now in the gallery and positively quivering with anticipation. His empty socket had begun bleeding again, for now it coated the whole half of his costume. He was smiling at Normond with a terrific giddiness.

Here it came. Earlier in the play the grieving Caligar had refused to read his brother’s suicide note. But now that Caligar had decided upon death he would take it out, read it, but would not tell the audience what the pages contained. Instead he would drive a dirk into his eye, perishing as Menninwise did. Normond unfolded the blank prop pages.

They were not blank.

They were letters. Love letters. Written from Anny to Jamis.

The play stopped for Normond. He read silently, praying he was wrong, praying it was a ghostly trick. He was not, and it was not — the handwriting and accounts were unmistakable. The first letter was filled with affections, and carnal details. The crowd watched as he searched the text again for some evidence of forgery, but every word only corroborated the awful truth. This one mentioned Anny and Jamis’ dalliance in the other playhouse’s loft after a production of Bairon II… how long ago was that? Two years? Three? The next note was from seasons later. The most recent was from three weeks ago! Three weeks ago!

Normond looked up and could hardly see. He nearly ripped the letters so tightly did he cling to them.

His vision sought about the house as if looking for some reprieve or escape. They settled on Menninwise, the one who had planted the letter. And Normond understood. This was why Jamis had chosen an immortal death: it was all he’d had left.

Jamis had bested Normond onstage. Anny had stolen and discarded Normond’s heart. But Normond could still beat them both.

Menninwise grinned through his yellow teeth and goaded him with nods. Verily, these letters were a gift. Even the curse was a gift. Normond would not throw this opportunity away.

He took up the dirk, and his voice climbed to a scream that could be heard from the street outside:

“What make is man, that can’t be shaped in mud? / What scrawled in ink cannot be writ with blood?”

He plunged the dirk into his eyesocket. The crowd gasped as the blood ran out and his intact eye rose to white and his lid quivered.

Normond Kit fell to the stage with a thud, driving the blade home like a nail.

A small exclamation, then deathly, uncertain silence upon the house. Not a soul spoke. None came forward to signal the play’s end, for all were ensnared by shock.

Then, from the middle of the gallery, one man broke into effusive applause and exclamation.

“Bravo!” screamed the ghost of Eugel Menninwise, now visible to all. “Bravo! Magnificent! Here is my play! Here is my vision! The truest work of art!”

Thanks for reading! If you liked this, here’s another story of mine you might enjoy:

Subscribe for more lurid fantasy stories, in whose making I guarantee no humans were harmed!