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What had she done?
Her arm throbbed in a visceral reminder. She clicked on her bedside lamp. Four distinct puncture wounds had raised, swollen edges and looked much larger than yesterday. They throbbed like a son of a bitch, and bruising circled the holes. It looked like the bite from a much larger beastie, like a dog.
She padded into her bathroom and unearthed the Polysporin from beneath the sink. Her bathroom was one of her favorite parts of living in the old playhouse. Tiny black and white octagonal tiles made floral patterns on the floor and harkened back to the theatre’s turn of the twentieth century origins. A cast-iron claw-foot tub and shower combo lent itself to quick cleanups and long, bubble scented soaks equally. She’d liberated the large, ornate oval mirror above her sink from props storage, and was not giving it back. Her vanity she’d converted herself from an antique washstand.
She gave her bite a thorough wash with her antibacterial chain store face wash and slathered it with the poly. It took an opera of hisses, whimpers, and squeaks to get through the process, but she was satisfied she’d done the business.
Dressing for the day in her standard black leggings and long-sleeve T-shirt, she grabbed a quick toast and coffee breakfast in the kitchen she and Dee shared and took the dingy, dank back stairway down to the theatre.
Theatres could be creepy places when they were empty, like the echoes of countless people and plays still clung to the air. In these spaces, kings had lost their heads, people had lost their hearts, dreams had died or been fulfilled, and the magic of creation lingered in the walls and floors.
Eddie loved the laden solitude of the Paradise Theatre, and she found her way by memory through the windowless backstage spaces. Macbeth callbacks were scheduled for evening, and until then, she had the place to herself. As a child, she’d clambered after Dee into all the magical spaces the theatre offered. The wardrobe room bursting with the colors and textures of costumes. The props room housing a treasure chest of bottles, hatboxes, weapons, music boxes, pictures, and anything else that had been used on stage. The furniture storage resembling a dusty bric a brac store.
In the fall, she and Dee would haul everything out and clean it all before organizing and putting it all back in time for the winter play season to begin and the community volunteers to scamper through it like destructive toddlers in their special playground.
After yesterdays’ excitement, her first job this morning was to check the basement, especially the room only she and Dee knew about. A quick check on the app confirmed that the hell gate was still stable and got her wondering again what all the Macbeth fuss had been about.
Her dream nagged at her as she flipped the lights on in the workshop. Theatres could also be dangerous places, and Dee had drummed safety into her from her first memory. Soon the workshop would get busy with set builders and painters as they prepared the backdrop for Macbeth, and then Eddie would be run off her feet trying to manage them all and keep everyone’s limbs attached to the appropriate body, but for now it was peaceful, and sleepy dust motes danced in the air beneath the benign hum of fluorescent lighting.
The room with the hell gate looked pretty much the same as it had yesterday, the gray-black smoky rings within rings languidly twirling around and through each other. No sign of her nasty little bug either.
In the dream, Shade had asked her what she’d done, and the only thing that came to mind was the auditions for the dreaded Scottish play. But what Shade had to do with that, she couldn’t fathom. Still, she checked the room one more time before closing it and making her way upstairs. She needed to repair the tread on the stairs leading to the auditorium before an aging audience member took a header.
As a resident stage manager to a community theatre group, Eddie should have known better than to relax and think the trite old how bad can it get?
Answer: really fucking bad.
The callbacks had gotten to the appearance of Hecate when all hell—or the part that was coming through the theatre basement—broke loose.
“Get it. Kill it!” Whitney screamed from her onstage perch on a chair.
Armed with a bucket, Eddie darted around and through the actors on stage. Her target, a rather large and warty toad-like creature that ran instead of hopped and got some serious speed from its meaty thighs.
Right on Eddie’s heels, Trina had tears streaming down her face as she begged, “Please don’t kill it. Everything deserves to live.”
Barrie had dived off stage and into the auditorium at the thing’s first appearance and was currently cowering between rows C and D. “Don’t be ridiculous, Trina. It’s vermin.”
“Really, Eddie darling.” Peter stood atop his table, which was precariously perched atop the seatbacks in the middle of the auditorium. “We cannot have these sorts of disruptions to the creative process.”
“Weird looking toad.” Patty peered over her crocheting from the first row. “Never seen a toad book it like that.”
The toad shot under Whitney’s chair and elicited a fresh round of screams and exhortations for Eddie to end its life.
Eddie dashed around the other side of Whitney’s chair, ready to snare it when it emerged.
“Toads are very important to the ecosystem.” Trina sobbed as she crouched behind Eddie with her hands cupped to catch.
“I don’t care,” Whitney shrieked. “Don’t let it touch me.”
From where she stood on seat E11, Lillian raised her hands like their resident prophet. “Everyone calm down. Edsie will deal with the nasty creature.”
“It’s not nasty.” Trina dropped to her knees. “It’s part of the living wonder.”
“It’s a bloody toad,” Peter bellowed.
“Loving space, babe,” Lillian called. “We create positive spaces.”
Kathryn ducked into the wings on stage left and clambered onto the stage manager’s desk. “Are we still going to have callbacks?”
