The Understudy

by David W. Landrum

part 2

Back at her apartment, she got down her old copy of Hamlet and read from the intense “closet” scene, between Gertrude and Hamlet:

My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music: it is not madness
That I have uttered.

And she recalled another scene — one she was not in — where the King comments:

What he spoke, though it lacked form a little
Was not like madness.

She knew she was sane. Whatever she had seen had an explanation and she meant to find it.

She came early to rehearsal, went backstage, and looked around. Sure enough, she saw the apparition: pale blue, transparent, but not frightening, not monstrous, looking at her with imploring eyes. She took a step toward her.

“Elaine. Elaine Boswell. I know who you are. I know you’re a ghost. I’m not afraid of you.” She paused. The woman gazed at her. “If you want something, tell me. I want to help you.”

Elaine started to speak. The sound of near-by voices came.

“Midnight,” she whispered. “Come here at midnight.” And she vanished.

Selene and Adrienne came up on stage. They were still arguing about Adrienne’s elimination of two characters, a thing that seemed a particularly sore point with Selene.

The rehearsal went well. Sossity had learned her lines and the songs. Adrienne was pleased with her performance. She gave keys to all the players and some of the crew. “In case you have to get in the building early in the morning or late at night.”

After rehearsal, Adrienne invited everyone to her apartment for drinks. While chatting with Adrienne Sossity mentioned her boyfriend.

“I hope you and your boyfriend have more luck than I’ve had with relationships,” she was saying. “I just went through a second divorce.” She gulped down her drink and snagged another. “And you told me you’re a musician. How is that going?”

“Not well, to tell you the absolute truth. I’m barely getting by now. But who knows? Maybe something magic will happen.”

She stayed at the party until 11:30 and then headed for the theater. Small, shiny snowflakes floated down as she walked down to Library Drive and on to Sheldon Street. Opening the back door to City Theatre with her new key, she went in, shaking the snow from her hair and shoulders.

Darkness engulfed the interior of the theater. She could only see the red exit lights. Then she saw Elaine, her back turned. She called to her.

“Elaine!”

She turned. Sossity shrieked. Before her stood the apparition she had seen earlier in the day. Her hands and hair were splattered with blood, her arms bound with bloody chains. She wore a white smock, also bloodstained. Her eyes glowed with the same ferocious, evil light and her mouth, livid red, opened to reveal fangs and a long, snake-like tongue that flicked at her. Too terrified to scream or move, she sank to her knees in a half-swoon.

“Sossity, it’s all right,” Elaine said, rushing up to her.

Sossity recovered her senses. “What in God’s name did I just see?” she asked.

“You saw me,” Elaine said.

“You. That was you?”

“Yes. I... was in sort of a bad mood.”

“Bad mood?! I almost pissed my pants!”

“That’s how I get when I’m angry or upset.”

“What are you upset about?”

She hesitated, her lips trembled, and then she spoke. “You, I suppose.”

“Me? You’ll have to explain that.”

“I’m not used to having people tell me what to do. I’m not used to being dependent on someone. I’m sorry I frightened you. Really, I am. I didn’t mean to. I am so very sorry. And if I’ve felt that way toward you... well, I’m not perfect.”

“Elaine, I’ve come here because I want to help you. But I swear to God, if you scare me like that again, we’ll forget the whole thing.”

“Please give me another chance. I promise I’ll be more careful.”

She was not transparent but looked solid as she had when Sossity first saw her. She glowed enough for them to see her. “Thank you for coming,” she said after a moment.

Sossity studied the pale woman’s face. “You really are Elaine Boswell.”

“Yes. I am. I’m dead. I am a ghost.”

“I was scared when you looked... well, transparent and all bloody and everything. You don’t look that way now.”

“No. I’m more substantial at midnight, and then I fade as the day goes on. You first saw me just before dawn, when I’m hardly visible at all. During the day I become invisible. And just now you saw me at my worst. Let’s sit. I don’t have a whole lot of time. After midnight I start to get less substantial. And I only look scary when things aren’t going well. If we can sit down I’ll try to explain everything to you.”

They crossed the stage and sat down on the steps that led up to it from the auditorium. Elaine Boswell had a classical oval face, brown hair, green eyes, and she was tall. She was not exactly slender. That was not the right word for the look popular at that time. She was fit, trim, and healthy and she moved with grace and poise. They sat in awkward silence as long as a full minute.

“Did I frighten you badly?” she asked.

Sossity nodded.

“I can’t say how sorry I am. But sometimes I get angry and when I’m angry I turn into what you saw there.”

“Why are you here, Elaine? Why do you haunt the theater?”

“I’ve been here ever since I died. I’ve never left. I can’t leave.”

“Someone told me people saw you, but that was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”

“People saw me back in the twenties. Then I faded away. I came back for the first time just yesterday. You were the first person I had seen or talked with in years.”

“How’s that?”

“I faded away completely because of the stage light. They installed one back then and it’s been burning all these years. I couldn’t make myself seen because it was a light that burned perpetually, like the sun. And of course I’m not visible during the day. Now that the light is gone, I can appear.”

Another short silence followed.

“What do you want?” Sossity asked. “I’ve been told a ghost wants something. There is some reason you’re here. Otherwise you would have gone on.”

“I’ll have to think about it. Maybe I came back here because I was murdered.”

“Maybe. But you weren’t murdered here. It happened in a room over on LaGrave Street, didn’t it?”

“How did you know that?”

“I read about it.”

“Have people written about it in books?” She looked aghast.

Sossity decided not to try to explain the Internet. “Yes. I read about it in a book.”

Elaine put her hands on in her lap. She wore the same white eyelet dress Sossity had seen her in all the other nights and in her pictures.

“The whole town mourned,” she said. “Over a thousand people showed up for my funeral. The theater here was closed a month. They hung black crepe over the doors and in all the windows. They took Paul to a jail over in Holland because they were afraid the people here might try to lynch him.”

“That was your boyfriend?”

“Yes. We’d come home from a party. Prohibition had taken effect the year before and the result was that everyone got as drunk as they could on those occasions when they could get liquor. Paul got pretty drunk. I was a little drunk myself. At his place we got in a silly fight. I don’t even remember what it was over. We snipped and shouted at each other. I sat down in a chair and refused to speak to him. After a while he came up behind me and put his arm around my neck with the crook of his elbow over my throat.

“He was just teasing and I knew it. For a long time — as long as two minutes, I’d say — I didn’t protest or struggle, even though he was choking me and I couldn’t breathe. I was going to hold out until he let go and not break my silence.

“Then I started to get uncomfortable and told him to let go. He laughed and gripped me tighter. I hit at his arm and squirmed. He thought I was acting and put more pressure on my neck. Now I began to panic.

“I wanted to claw his face but I couldn’t lift my arms and couldn’t feel my legs and feet. I saw green spots in front of my eyes. My ears buzzed and it got dark. Then I was suddenly here.”

“That was how you died?”

“Yes. Paul pleaded guilty to murder. His lawyers tried to defend him as best they could but he wouldn’t cooperate with them and didn’t do much to make the jury sympathetic. He wanted to die. They convicted him and he was electrocuted. But you probably know that.”

Silence came once more. Sossity looked at her watch. One a.m. had just passed. She glanced over and saw the sadness in Elaine’s eyes.

“You died in 1921,” she said. “That means you’ve been here over seventy years.”

Elaine smiled. “Well, yes, but it’s not as bad it seems. When you are on the other side, time is not about duration. It’s more simply existing. It’s not as though I’ve been trying to fill up the boring hours all these years. I’ve mainly spent the equivalent of my ‘time’ adjusting to being a ghost.”

“You’re not a scary ghost. I mean, not now. But you scared me half to death a minute ago.”

“I got to thinking about how I died. I went back and forth between thinking it was an accident and thinking he did it on purpose. I get enraged sometimes and want revenge. When that happens I become just what people think of when they think of ghosts. I must look rather hideous.”

“That’s not the word for it.”

“When I think what Paul did was simply a mad, insane accident, I’m okay. But then when I think about having my whole future taken from me, dying in terror and agony... Well, I become a monster.”

“And you’re not sure how to get out of here?” Sossity asked.

Elaine spread her long, pretty fingers on her knees. “No. I was lying to you when I said I’d have to think about it. I know what I have to do to get out. I know exactly what I have to do.”

“Can you tell me?”

“I suppose I must. I died three days before I was scheduled to act here. They had just re-done the building. Everything was in preparation for the opening. I was so excited about it all. I got my start here at City, and even though it was not the most prestigious venue in the world, it meant a lot to me. That expectation was torn from me at the last minute. That’s what it is, Sossity. Unless I get to act on this stage in a bona fide production, I won’t go to my rest. That is impossible. I guess I’ll never get out of here.”

Elaine paused and then went on more thoughtfully. “I also feel if I could get out of here, I could see Paul and I would know the truth about how I died. I’ve been confined to these premises all this time, but I get the idea if I could be free I could see him and I would know.”

“Would you want that?”

“I won’t be at peace until I know.”

Sossity looked over at Elaine. She seemed less solid now.

“I’m fading,” she said.

“Let me think about this, Elaine.”

“Think about it?”

“I don’t believe we were brought together for no reason. Maybe I can come up with a way to get you out on stage.”

“How?” She laughed, and not bitterly. “Will you get your director to give me a minor role in the play you’re doing? The Chinese woman? Adrienne? Is that her name?”

“Yes.”

“She’s a very embittered woman.”

“She is.”

“That’s too bad.”

“I agree. But now let’s think about you. Can you meet me here tomorrow?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Elaine joked.

Sossity laughed. “I’ll always know where to find you, at least. Let’s get together. Maybe by midnight tomorrow I’ll have thought of something.”

Sossity could see through Elaine by now. She went back to her apartment and fell into an exhausted sleep. When she woke up that morning she knew what she would do.

* * *

Proceed to part 3...