by Sarah Lofgren
LB: Light board on headset.
SB: Sound board on headset.
ASM: Assistant stage manager is here!
SM: Hi everyone. Stage manager here—we’ve got seven minutes till curtain. Assistant stage manager, do you have eyes on our star?
ASM: Shit—he was here two seconds ago. Hang on, I’m going off headset.
bzzzzzzzzzz; SKREEK!!
SM: And, just a reminder to turn your mics off, everyone, before you remove your headsets.
SM: Gee, that’s a big audience. I can’t remember the last time so many people showed up for a Spotlight Brigade production. Looks like three times as many as we had for Cats.
LB: Oh, you don’t know? They’re all here, because they’re hoping something happens.
SM: What do you-
bzzzzzzzzzz; SKREEK!!
ASM: Got the star!
SM: Headset etiquette, please!
ASM: Oops, sorry. I’m back, I’ve got the star, and he’s all ready to go. So, everything’s great at stage right.
SM: Five minutes.
SM: Two minutes.
SM: Standby for curtain, stage right.
ASM: Ready.
SM: Curtain go.
ASM: Bam!
SM: Standby for lights and sound.
LB: Lights standing by.
SB: Sound standing by.
SM: Go.
SM: Ah, perfect. Looks great. Alright, take a breath everyone—we’ve got some time while he gets through this scene.
SM: So…
SM: Light booth, what did you mean by “they’re hoping something happens”?
LB: Well… surely you’ve heard some of the rumors about this play.
SM: Nothing that makes any kind of sense—just superstitious gossip. It is a weird play—I’ll give it that.
LB: Oh, it’s a lot more than weird. The people who attended the first opening night in 1989 don’t talk about it, but some half lies and conjecture still got out. There’s even a website about what happened, but you won’t find anything useful there. But, I know the guy who ran lightboard way back then, and he saw everything with his own eyes. According to him, the show is cursed.
ASM: Badass!
LB: When he heard it was being revived, he booked a plane ticket to Oregon—didn’t want to be around while the show was playing.
SB: Shows can’t be cursed.
SM: Shows can’t be cursed, and theaters can’t have ghosts, yet we always keep the ghost light turned on, don’t we?
LB: So, to understand what happened on that night, you have to put yourself back in the 80s. There was this whole wave of superstition that you couldn’t get away from. It was in the news, the bookstores, the talk shows, and even the pulpits. People believed that evil cultists were hiding everywhere in plain sight, kidnapping kids, painting themselves with goats’ intestines, and doing all kinds of bizarre ritualistic shit. A person couldn’t even wear a death metal T-shirt without someone eyeballing them like they were aiming to carve sigils into innocent children. The wave got big around here, because there wasn’t much to do, outside going to church, the theater, and the pinball parlor. People needed excitement in their lives, and-
SM: Standby lights for cue 26.
LB: Lights standing.
SM: Go.
SM: Good.
LB: Most people need a villain in their lives to help them feel like heroes. And, it’s never the worship leader, or the cheerleading captain who’s supposedly getting drunk on blood at midnight. The villain is always the awkward kid who is a little too into roleplaying games, or the single mom with the shaggy hair who knows an awful lot about classic horror films. This allows all the nice, normal people to get some thrills, while keeping the status quo comfortably intact.
LB: Our town jumped into the finger pointing with both feet, or both fingers, if you prefer. Heh. There were a few oddballs around town, but the one with the most fingers pointed in his direction was this guy named Joseph. The weird thing about Joseph wasn’t that he was into graveyards, or carrion-eating birds. He didn’t paint his nails, or play records backward. The weird thing about Joseph was that he simply didn’t care.
LB: Everyone in town would be buzzing with tales of a hypnotist who had unlocked traumatic, brimstone-scented memories in the minds of her patients, and Joseph would shrug, calling the whole thing, “improbable.” Joseph refused to join any of the anti-pentagram clubs, and whenever the PTA started theorizing about possessions at their monthly meeting, Joseph’s eyes glazed over. Some people found this behavior extremely suspicious.
LB: Cue 27 going now.
SM: Fuck, sorry, thanks for catching that.
LB: There were towns where outcasts lost their jobs when they were suspected of serving evil forces. Some people even found themselves in court, arguing they would never cast a curse, and didn’t even know how. But, what happened to Joseph was a specific kind of cruelty—one he couldn’t bear.
LB: First he noticed that his daily cup of coffee at the diner tasted a little off. Then the movie theater was always sold out of tickets, right when he arrived. His favorite pew at church was taken when he walked in, and the grocery store clerk was always going on a fifteen-minute break right when he needed to pick up milk. Unfair parking tickets showed up like clockwork, and people stopped inviting him to their weddings and birthday parties. Everyone in town still smiled and shook Joseph’s hand, but he knew the moment his back was turned, they were conspiring about small steps they could take to make his life miserable. When Joseph got an oil change for his car, the lid wasn’t screwed back on properly. When he brought his dog to the groomer, the poor creature came out looking like it had lost a battle with a vacuum cleaner. For Joseph, that was the final straw.
SB: Cue 28, going now.
LB: So, Joseph happened to be a writer, and if there’s one rule in this world you should keep in mind, it’s not to piss off writers. You all hear that?
ASM: Don’t piss off writers.
LB: Exactly right. They might seem like harmless nerds, consumed by moving words around, but no one can fuck you up like a writer. They have every tool they need to bend reality to their wills.
LB: Cue 29, now.
LB: So, Joseph took all his anger, got to work, and wrote a play. This play, in fact. When he mailed it to Spotlight Brigade for consideration, he used a pen name—otherwise the company never would have considered producing it. But, when they received a brilliant play written by unknown playwright “Bernard Pill”, they couldn’t resist fitting it into their season. The dialogue was snappy, the roles juicy, and the plot unique. Yes, it was a little weird, but they were theater people. Weird was a given.
LB: Cue 30, now.
LB: Rehearsals commenced. The process went smoothly, though a few actors questioned whether it was a wise idea, with everyone so riled up about evil forces, to stage a play with an evocative summoning scene in it. But the director assured the cast that the summoning was a metaphor. The audience was sure to understand this, she explained. The director, if I recall correctly, was an optimist, and had the tendency to overestimate her audiences.
LB: Cue 31.
LB: Word spread about the exciting new play. When the curtain rose on opening night, the theater was packed.
LB: Cue 32.
LB: There was a nervous energy throughout the theater. The actors picked up on it, speaking faster than usual, and making each gesture larger than the last. As the summoning scene approached, everyone in the audience seemed to sense that something special was about to occur. The stage lights dimmed. The music grew in intensity. The whole cast moved with purpose. They lit three candles and knelt before them. Each person watching leaned forward, wondering what wonders they’d been called forth to witness, what glimpses of an imagined world would reside forever in the recesses of their minds.
LB: Cue 33, and sound needs to go.
SB: Cue 34.
LB: There’s no magic more powerful than wrathful words carefully written. There’s no curse stronger than one that’s cast by actors living in the skins of their characters. Each utterance filled the air like a ringing church bell on a clear morning. The audience was dead silent. Then, the sound of whistling. And Joseph had his revenge.
LB: When something goes wrong in a theater, normally it takes a few minutes for everyone to step back into reality. This was not the case when the Spotlight Brigade players inadvertently reached into the earth with their summoning and pulled out a beast of the underground. No puppet ever smelled so strongly of brimstone, and no special effect’s breath could spark like that, or set the curtains alight. Everyone knew immediately that the intangible dread they’d been nursing in their minds for years had come to life and now paced the crowded aisles, wearing bat wings and a toothy smirk.
LB: The resulting stampede was entirely predictable. Flames spread, and the monster ran his claws through people’s hair as they pushed and shoved to get away. It laughed, and embers burned holes in the carpet. It beat its wings, and the fire burned brighter. The beast grew larger with every shriek, and those with the misfortune to look it in the eye found themselves peering through a portal, where every nightmare they’d ever imagined was reflected back at them—twice as big, and in full color. They felt the horrors they’d whispered echo through their bones, and the malevolence they’d envisioned running through their veins. They were the terror, and the terror lived in them.
LB: It’s kind of funny—the curse Joseph wove into the script wasn’t one of the bad ones. It wasn’t nasty, or cruel. The way he scripted the dialogue, any number of things could have showed up on that night in 89. He left plenty of wiggle room. The summoning wasn’t meant to specifically pull forth a monster—instead, the actors called for, “the one who is loved most.”
LB: The people in this town would have told you they loved their kids more than anything. They loved their families, their friends, their good deeds, and their sacred books. But Joseph suspected the truth might be a little different.
LB: What is all-consuming fear, but love? It’s one thing to be on guard, but if you spend all your time searching for devils, scanning for degeneracy in the eyes of your neighbors, and setting up safeguards against unholy forces—that’s what you love most. That’s what you’re hoping to find.
LB: There were a lot of injuries, a couple people got trampled to death, and in the end there was a conspiracy of silence. I think folks understood that the monster was their monster. They recognized it somehow, and with that recognition came weariness and shame. The lit candles were blamed for the fire, the theater was repaired, and no one said a word about the beast who walked among them for an evening. But, they all bore the marks forever of the things they’d seen and felt. They bore the weight of the things they’d hoped for and done. It’s no more than they deserved, if you ask me. Everyone could stand to look in a mirror from time to time.
LB: Cue 35
SM: How does your lighting friend know so many details about all of this? How can you possibly know so much? Who are you?
LB: Shhhh... It’s happening. You won’t want to miss the next scene.
Sarah Lofgren lives in Seattle where she writes speculative fiction and humor. Her work has appeared in Human Parts, Wrong Publishing, Jane Austen’s Wastebasket, and other publications. She’s also a GOLD Comedy member. For more information, visit her website at sarahlofgren.com.
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