Theaters and Threats: An Isle of Man Ghostly Cozy by Xarissa Diana

Author:Xarissa, Diana
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-11-18T16:00:00+00:00

9

Fenella spun around. The sound was coming from backstage. Without stopping to think, she ran up the stairs and onto the stage. Ducking behind the curtain, she kept following the screams, which were getting increasingly shrill. As she pushed aside the second set of curtains, a police constable rushed past her.

Just inside the backstage area, Fenella stopped and looked around. Everyone seemed to be staring at Brooke who was standing near the center of the space. She was pointing at something in the shadows off to the side and screaming.

“Brooke, stop,” Josh said loudly, stepping between her and whatever she’d seen in the wings.

After one additional loud scream, Brooke took a shaky breath and then burst into tears.

“That’s quite enough,” Josh told her. “You’re chasing away the audience.”

“The play already did that,” Susan said.

Josh frowned at her and then looked back at Brooke. “What is wrong with you?” he demanded.

“There was a mouse,” she told him. “It was huge.”

“Maybe it was a longtail,” Adam suggested.

Fenella knew that, according to Manx folklore, it was bad luck to use the word rat, but she was sure she’d been told that the superstition only applied on boats.

“It was neither,” Harry snapped as he strode into the room. “We’ve never had a mouse or a rat in the theater. I don’t know what you saw, young lady, but it wasn’t either of those.”

Brooke shook her head. “I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “I haven’t slept properly since our show was interrupted on Friday and, I’m afraid my imagination got away from me. I swear I saw something moving. Something small and furry with horrible pointy teeth.”

One of the uniformed constables walked in the direction that Brooke had been pointing. “Where did you see it?” he asked.

“Right against the wall,” she told him. “At the edge of the curtain.”

The man used the flashlight on his phone to illuminate the area. There was clearly nothing there but a bit of dust. He moved the curtain sideways and then let it fall back into place. “Nothing here now,” he said.

Brooke sighed. “I didn’t mean to scream. I was trying to find my focus again, to get back into character. I had my eyes closed and I was rerunning the first act in my head when I heard a strange noise. When I opened my eyes, all I could see was this large furry creature running along the wall. I, well, I shouldn’t have screamed. I’m really sorry.”

“And now you’ve ruined the show,” Dorothy said flatly. She’d walked up behind Fenella at some point. Now she strode into the center of the room. “You’ve driven away all of the audience,” she told Brooke angrily. “There’s no one left to watch the second act.”

“That’s just as well, as the second act is even more of a mess than the first,” Adam said.

Dorothy turned toward him. “If you’d done your part the way it was written, instead of changing things, the first act would have been a good deal better.”

“I did my best.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.