Grimoire: Tracked by Terror

Hours of searching led Jarvey to only one discovery. He opened a door backstage and found himself in the same corridor he and Betsy had started in. There was the door to the loo, just opposite. If Betsy had stumbled onto this doorway, she had stepped right into the shadows behind the stage. And what had happened to her?

Jarvey knew she was resourceful, quick and smart. He told himself she could get out of any trouble, that she could handle danger. He couldn’t help smiling when he remembered how, back in Lunnon, Betsy was such an expert thief that she could steal food right off the table without anyone’s noticing. She’d be all right on her own. She didn’t really need him to help her survive. Still, he needed her, and he didn’t know what he would do if he couldn’t find her again.

“No,” he said to himself, not to the Grimoire. That was one thing he couldn’t do. But he was tired. He found a place to hide, crept into it, and curled up to grab what sleep he could.

A stranger haunted his dreams, a man with thin arms and a bloated face, an evil face. In all the dreams, Jarvey hid from the man, and the stranger searched for him, swiveling his head, his eyes glaring. The dreams took place nowhere that Jarvey could identify, just shadowy landscapes. And in each dream, the evil man seemed to come a little closer. In the last, Jarvey seemed to be standing behind a tall chain-link fence, like the one on the baseball field where his team played. He heard the links jangling, and looked off into the distance to see the dark-suited man clinging to the opposite side of the fence, creeping along like a human spider, his white face turning from side to side as he looked for Jarvey.

Jarvey woke with a gasp and then realized it was just another nightmare. He took a few deep breaths, turned on his side, and hung in that warm, drowsy place between sleep and awareness, wondering who the man in those disturbing dreams could be. He had the strangest feeling that he should have recognized the face, yet—

A voice from outside his hiding place broke into his thoughts: “Now remember, all, the key with comedy is to keep it moving fast and believe in your parts. You must never show that you think the play is funny. Leave that to the audience.”

Jarvey crawled out from where he had dozed, beneath a row of seats halfway back from the stage, and risked a peek. The Roman street had vanished, and in its place was a set that looked like the deck of a sailing ship. At this distance the illusion struck Jarvey as uncannily real: The masts reared up, the ropes and shrouds ran up to the yardarms, and the sails billowed and fluttered in what seemed like a salty ocean breeze.

More than a dozen people stood on the deck. The leader seemed to be a tall, strongly built man in the uniform of a sea captain. He was talking to the others: a woman who looked as if she were about the man’s age, forty or so, a young man of about eighteen and a girl who might have been a year or so younger, and a semicircle of men and women who seemed strangely quiet and motionless, like a row of department-store dummies. The man said, “Very well. Let us begin with the first scene of Act Two. Floriel and Yolanda have taken passage upon my ship, not realizing that I am the father of Isidor. Isidor has disguised his sweetheart Mariane as a young sailor, and no one knows this except for the countess. Places, please.”

The semicircle of immobile actors came to life then, moving across the stage, some going into the wings, others taking their places at the ship’s wheel or on the deck. A couple climbed up into the rigging. Peering through the crack between two seats, Jarvey watched the rehearsal with a growing sense of puzzlement. The actors seemed to anticipate laughter from their audience because they often paused in their lines or in their actions, but as far as Jarvey was concerned, nothing was terribly funny.

Finally, the captain said, “And then curtain, the interval, and we’re into Act Three. Very good. It is time for lunch, and after lunch we shall finish Acts Three and Four. Thank you, all.” He put his arm around the waist of the woman who had played the part of the countess. “A grand performance, as usual, my dear,” he said.

Jarvey gasped at the name and felt like drawing his head back, like a turtle retreating into its shell. If the actor was a Midion, then this strange theater must be his creation, from his part of the book. As the cast all trooped offstage, Jarvey slipped out of his hiding place and hurried down to the front. The last thing he wanted was to follow the actors, but that was exactly what he had to do.

He dropped into the orchestra pit as quietly as he could manage, then climbed the metal ladder onto the stage. The actors had gone off in the direction of the dressing rooms. He stepped into the dark wings of the theater and heard a loud laugh coming from the last dressing room, the one down on the far end of the row.

Jarvey ducked sideways through another open doorway just in time. The young man who had played the role of Floriel came out of and walked away from the last dressing room and disappeared down a hallway. Jarvey sighed in relief at not having been noticed.

And then he turned around and almost yelped in surprise. Six women sat rigidly in six chairs at the makeup table, all of them staring silently at their reflections. “I’m sorry,” Jarvey said in a hoarse voice. “I didn’t know—” he broke off. Not one of the actresses had turned to look at him, had even seemed to notice him. The one nearest him had played the role of Yolanda. She sat like a statue, as did the others. Jarvey couldn’t even see them breathe.

He cautiously approached Yolanda. She didn’t stir, didn’t move a muscle, didn’t even turn toward him when he stood at her shoulder. “Hello?” he said. He waved his hand in front of her face. She did not even blink. Jarvey gulped and thought back to the rehearsal, remembering one of the many unfunny jokes. He gave the actress her cue: “Oh, Yolanda! Your father is a hard man!”

Immediately her dead face came to life in a simpering smile, and in exactly the same tone she had used earlier onstage, she said, “No wonder, for in his youth he was a stone mason.” That said, she froze again, placidly staring at her own face in the mirror.

Close up, Jarvey could see there was something not right about her. Her skin was too smooth, too pink at the cheeks. She looked more like a life-sized doll than a person. She was like a newer version of the terrible crumbling, creeping thing that he had mistaken for Betsy. “Are you some kind of robot?” Jarvey asked.

Jarvey backed away. He checked to make sure the coast was clear and slipped into the next dressing room, where half a dozen men sat staring into their own mirror. Jarvey could recognize them from the rehearsal. One was young Isidor, the sweetheart of Mariane. Another was old Bellibone, Yolanda’s father. They were just as lifeless as Yolanda had been.

But in the last dressing room, matters were different. Jarvey didn’t dare get close enough to peek in, but the door stood ajar and he could hear voices.

“He’s always such a slowpoke, Father. I don’t see why we can’t have a nice little place for making tea right here in our dressing room.”

“Honoria, you know quite well that a home is a home,” the woman who had played the countess said in a firm voice, “and the theater is the theater. We do not perform in our living room, and so we shall not cook in our dressing room.”

Honoria grumbled that tea wasn’t really cooking, but Jarvey heard only a little of her complaint, because he had retreated into the men’s dressing room, where he could peek out from reasonably good concealment, and before long he saw the younger man returning, carrying a teapot and a basket. “Father,” he said as he entered the last dressing room, “I have the strangest feeling that someone has been in our kitchen.”

The older man’s voice broke into a laugh. “Hardly any chance of that, Augustus! Now, boy, you can get a much bigger laugh on your exit line—yes, pour the tea, do.”

Jarvey bit his lip to keep himself from laughing in relief. He could guess who had been in their kitchen, all right. Someone who was an expert at snitching food right out from under the noses of its proper owner.