The hallways between the main entrance and the Ashcroft-Tate Auditorium were strewn with leaflets. Paul glanced down a side hallway and saw Jerry Noonan, the caretaker, pushing a broom with a hundred pounds of paper in front of it.
Sylvia put a hand over her mouth. “I can’t believe this. That poor caretaker.”
Paul sighed. “Students pull stunts like this all the time. It takes an exceptional parent to outdo them.”
“Parent? You mean Mrs. Cadwell? Where did she get all the paper?”
“I hope she bought it, and the printing, with PTA funds.” Paul grimaced. “If she used school supplies, we’ll be printing our play programs on toilet paper.”
When they arrived at the auditorium, Paul expected to find a truckload of paper blocking the stage area and possibly the theatre seating as well. The play could well be cancelled by the simple expedient that the Ashcroft-Tate Auditorium would be closed for cleaning. But the stage and seating were untouched.
Sylvia must have had the same expectation. “Has the caretaker been here already?”
Paul shook his head. “No point leaving leaflets here. It would be like singing at deaf people.”
The students began arriving after the second-period bell, and Paul was surprised to see many of them clutching familiar leaflets.
“Gemma?” he asked. “What are those papers stuffed between the pages of your script?”
Paul’s Witch Number Three grabbed a fistful of leaflets and fanned herself. “Souvenirs, Mr. Samson. I’m going to take some home for my hope chest.”
Paul couldn’t argue with that. He had three souvenirs of his own, though he preferred to think of them as evidence.
Sylvia murmured to him in a low voice, “If that’s what Gemma keeps in her hope chest, I pity her future husband.”
“I suspect she meant something else. A scrap box, perhaps.”
His wife looked at him, so Paul clarified. “A three-dimensional scrap book? I don’t know what kids call things these days.”
Lenny Cadwell slouched into the auditorium with more than just his usual disinterest on his face. Paul had expected embarrassment, but what he saw was anger. He tried and failed to imagine what Lenny’s next conversation with his mother would look like.
Then Paul found himself feeling an unexpected emotion of his own: guilt. Susie’s passion for the play had brought them closer than they had been in years, while Lenny’s passion alienated him from his mother. He briefly wondered if there was some sort of relationship karma whose balance had to be maintained.
Since there was nothing he could say or do that would be helpful, he started the class. “I don’t see anyone with their prop bags. Please go and get them.”
While the students wandered off backstage, Paul continued speaking through the megaphone so they could hear him. “Dress rehearsals won’t begin for a while yet, so you don’t have to get into costume, but I do want you to get into the habit of keeping tabs on your costumes and props.” Secretly, though, Paul just wanted his students to feel embarrassed about hauling out an empty bag each morning and remind them to think about their costumes and personal props.
When the students returned to the front of the stage area, Lenny carried a torn bag in one hand and his prop sword in the other. His anger from earlier had been replaced by astonishment.
“What is it, Lenny?”
Lenny let the ripped bag containing his Macbeth costume fall to the floor and held the sword by the pommel with both hands. “I think this is a real sword.”
Paul couldn’t help but be amused. This was the best acting he had ever seen from Lenny. “Why would you think it’s a real sword?”
“It weighs a ton,” Lenny said. “And it cut my finger.”
Paul leaped off his director’s chair. Even before he was close enough to confiscate the sword, he could see that the blade wasn’t hollow plastic. The weapon’s design was identical to the silver sword Lenny had bought with his costume, but it lacked the waxy look of plastic.
Sure enough, when Lenny let him take the sword, Paul guessed that it weighed at least two and a half pounds. There was a splash of red along one edge—blood.
He stared at the boy but couldn’t see where Lenny had hurt himself. He hoped that meant that it wasn’t much worse than a paper cut. “Lenny, please report to the nurse. You’ll need disinfectant and a bandage.”
Lenny gawked at him. “It’s just a flesh wound.” Then he smiled as if at a secret joke.
Hardly secret, Paul thought. What drama teacher doesn’t recognize Monty Python when he hears it? “Even so,” he said, “school policy.”
As Lenny wandered off, Paul tried to think of what he should do with the sword. He didn’t know if his heart could take two stunts in one morning. But who would do something as dangerous as replacing a plastic prop with a real sword? Someone could have gotten hurt.
The obvious candidate was the same woman who had printed the leaflets. The students getting hold of a real sword could get the play cancelled, especially if someone got hurt. Still . . . the gorgon lady might be two geese short of a gaggle, but Paul couldn’t imagine her endangering any student, never mind her own son.
He turned to Sylvia. “Get the kids started with the cauldron scene. I’ll be back after I lock this in the trunk of my car.”
“You’re what?” Paul’s wife pressed up close and hissed into his ear. “You have to turn this over to the school. I’m not a teacher, but even I know that.”
“Technically,” Paul whispered back. “But Winston is looking for any excuse to cancel this play. He’ll have a heyday with a real sword being found in the auditorium.”
“How are you going to keep it from him?” Sylvia demanded.
Paul shrugged. “One problem at a time.”
Sylvia was shaking her head in disbelief as Paul turned away. He knew she was right but refused to let the gorgon lady win so easily. Cadwell had to be behind the sword, and if he could prove it, Winston could hardly reward her by cancelling the play.
As he walked down a leaflet-strewn hallway toward the main doors and the parking lot, it occurred to Paul that the sword prank had effected one good thing: it had put a smile on Lenny’s face.
“It’s hardly a decent likeness,” suggested Gertrude. “Heh. Though the artist has captured your eyes.”
Agatha twisted her upper lip. “That isn’t me. And the eyes are just dots.”
Gertrude looked up at the tall witch and smiled. “Your point?”
“My point,” said Agatha, “is that I don’t wear hats. My hair won’t allow it. Netty wears a hat.”
Netty snorted, spitting soda across the table. “When I pose for a picture, all they get is my hat.”
Agatha further curled her lip into a full-fledged scowl. “You were supposed to give Macbeth a sword. Not leave these . . . unwanted posters all over the school.”
Netty picked up the leaflet they had been studying and chewed on a corner of it. “Bah! Tastes terrible. I didn’t leave these. I just brought one back with me. Although . . . the likeness does look like Agatha when she was younger. Didn’t you used to wear a hat?”
“Well, I didn’t make these posters.” Agatha looked at Gertrude.
“Not me. It was Netty’s turn to curse.”
“I did the sword,” Netty said. She reached beneath the table and held up a plastic silver sword. She waggled her hand, and the blade blurred with movement.
“I didn’t realize you were good with a sword,” said Agatha. “I’ve never seen a blade move that fast.”
“That’s because it’s hollow.” Netty stopped waggling her hand and smacked Gertrude on the top of the head with the blade.
Gertrude tensed then frowned. “You couldn’t cut water with that sword.”
Netty tossed the plastic sword into the air and it vanished. “Weighs less than water too.”
Agatha looked thoughtful. “The real sword you left in its place. Does it weigh less than water?”
Netty opened her mouth then closed it. Her eyes wandered around in their sockets and rolled like marbles settling in a roulette wheel. “Shouldn’t we order some food?”
Agatha glared at her.
“I’ve always preferred daggers over swords.” Gertrude chuckled. “Easier to conceal about your person, and they get the job done.”
“Daggers have been done to death,” said Agatha. She picked up the leaflet and scowled. “I did have a hat like this once. ‘Witches are not welcome at Ashcroft High.’ Sisters, I think we need to find out who it is who doesn’t welcome us . . . and say hello.”
Paul had been so distracted by the real sword in Lenny’s prop bag that he had forgotten to drop by Winston’s office and mention the parking problem. As a result, the following morning, he and Sylvia had been forced to park both cars in front of someone’s house two blocks from the school and walk in.
“Are you sure it was a good idea to bring that sword home?” Sylvia asked. “I thought the school kept a closet full of confiscated items.”
“Water pistols and bubblegum,” Paul said. “If I turn in a sword, Winston’s going to want to know where I got it.”
“Won’t Winston hear about it, anyway? That’s not the kind of thing that principals don’t hear about.”
“The sword will be less real if I describe it rather than let Winston wield it about his office.” An image of Winston doing just that flashed through Paul’s thoughts. The stout man was laughing manically as he spun the sword, double fisted, around the office, smashing furniture and slicing the wallpaper to ribbons.
“Good luck explaining why you took it home,” Sylvia said.
Outside the main doors to the school, Paul stooped to pick up a piece of paper. It sported a cartoon drawing stamped over by a red circle with a diagonal line running through it.
Sylvia looked over his shoulder and read the caption: PTA is not welkom at Ashkroft High.
Paul ignored the spelling mistakes and stared at the cartoon.
“Hmm,” said Sylvia. “Mrs. Cadwell appears to be having a bad hair day.”
“That is Mrs. Cadwell, isn’t it?” Paul groaned and stuffed the leaflet into a coat pocket. “I thought it might be one of the antiwitch leaflets. With what we saw yesterday, they’ll be popping up for weeks. I can’t imagine where this one came from. I hope not many were printed.”
Paul’s hopes were dashed when he opened the door to the school.
Sylvia gasped.
The hallways were a sea of paper, the polished linoleum floor visible only where the tramping of students’ feet had cleared a path. The walls were papered with leaflets. As was the ceiling. Amidst the carnage stood a lone student whose expression indicated he had been waiting for Paul to arrive.
“I have a note for you, Mr. Samson.”
“Of course you do,” Paul said. “Sylvia, please manage the class for me until I get there.”
Paul had to guess that the rest of the school fared no better than the entrance. He saw nothing but paper the entire way toward Winston’s wrath. As he neared the principal’s office, he spotted Jerry the caretaker shaking a broom at a hallway ceiling. Leaflets rained down on him wherever the broom touched.
“Thank God the students didn’t use glue,” Jerry said. “I don’t know what’s causing them to stick, but they let go easy enough.”
Paul pulled one of the leaflets off the wall, and it virtually fell into his hand. He ran his thumb across the back of the paper and against the wall but found nothing. “Static?”
“Beats me,” Jerry said.
Paul had never known Mrs. Kennedy not to have a smile, but as he approached the secretary’s desk, he saw that today was an exception.
“This has gone too far,” the fifty-something woman said. “Yesterday was too far, and today is farther.”
“I agree completely,” Paul said, pausing by her desk and nodding vigorously. Agreeing with the school secretary was never a bad idea. “The sooner we find out who is responsible, the sooner that student and Mrs. Cadwell can spend a month in detention.”
“Mrs. Cadwell?” Mrs. Kennedy cast Paul a perplexed stare. “But she’s the victim.”
“She’s today’s victim,” Paul agreed. “But she’s yesterday’s prankster.”
Mrs. Kennedy ground her teeth. “Apparently there are no regulations prohibiting the PTA from distributing leaflets.”
Paul snorted. “Distributing leaflets? Is that what that was?”
“You’d better go in,” Mrs. Kennedy said. “Mr. Winston is waiting for you.”
Winston’s face was stormier than Mrs. Kennedy’s. And it was only Wednesday.
“Please tell me,” Winston bellowed, “that you are not responsible for this fiasco!”
“Okay,” Paul said. “I am not responsible for this fiasco.”
“I’m being serious!”
“So am I.” Paul shook his head. “I was more surprised by today’s leaflets than I was by yesterday’s.”
Winston sighed and leaned back into his chair. “Mrs. Cadwell was responsible for yesterday’s leaflets.”
“Of course she was. She’s the only person in this school who spends more than five seconds thinking about witches. And she’s probably the only one who might think that littering the hallways with leaflets will convince anyone of anything.”
Winston wiped his face with a handkerchief and frowned. “There’s at least one other person who believes in leaflets. The person who retaliated this morning. It wasn’t you?”
Paul couldn’t believe that Winston regarded him as a suspect. “I consider myself fortunate that I know how to spell welcome and the name of the school.”
Winston shook his head. “I can only assume that the misspellings are intentional, but for the life of me, I can’t imagine why.”
Paul had to agree. Not even the worst student’s spelling was that bad. “They do make the anti-PTA prankster seem illiterate. Unless . . .” No, it was just too insane to be true.
“Unless what?” asked Winston.
“Unless the anti-PTA prankster is the PTA.”
“What?”
“Think about it,” Paul said. “If illiterate kids oppose the PTA, that only strengthens the PTA’s position.”
Winston worked his jaw. “No, I don’t buy it. And Mrs. Cadwell was scandalized by the cartoon. None of her people would risk that. Did you notice the hair?”
Paul had to admit that Winston had a point. “Where is Mrs. Cadwell, anyway? I expected her to be here with two beams of wood, several nails, and a hammer.”
“Gone home.” A twisted smile worked its way across the principal’s face. “Said the embarrassment was more than she could endure and that she wasn’t coming back until every last leaflet was destroyed.” He raised a hand to prevent Paul from commenting. “I know. It’s tempting to put a few out each day for the rest of the year. Don’t think I haven’t considered it.”
That was exactly what Paul was going to suggest.
Winston shook his head. “Cadwell may be embarrassed now, but she’s not stupid. She’ll be in my office by Friday, laying an egg.”
Paul sighed. “Yes, she will. I’ll ask my students what they know about today’s leaflets, but I don’t expect a confession.” He turned to leave.
“Samson. Cadwell hasn’t mentioned anything yet about a real sword showing up in your drama class.”
Paul’s hand froze on the doorknob. “Right.” Paul turned around. “Leaflets aren’t this week’s only prank.”
The principal continued. “A weapon on school property is hardly a prank. I suspect that she will mention it, rather loudly, the next time she barges into my office.”
“Perhaps . . .” Paul decided to take a gamble. “Could you mention it before she does?”
Winston’s eyes narrowed.
“I didn’t come to you yesterday to complain about Cadwell’s leaflets. And I didn’t come and complain about the sword she sabotaged—”
“Cadwell? She may be crazier than a sack of rabid weasels, but she’d never endanger a student.”
Paul made his play. “If it wasn’t her, it was one of Cadwell’s PTA sycophants. Or a student who helped with her leaflets. I find it more than coincidental that the sword was planted at the same time that the PTA was littering the hallways. Regardless, it was an obvious attempt to sabotage the play, and I hold Cadwell personally responsible. She’s the one leading the charge.”
Again, Winston worked his jaw. “You want me to tell Cadwell that you hold her responsible for a sword showing up in your drama class? I’m not your bloody mother!”
Damn. Paul had never been much good at gambling. “Just let her know that I complained to you about the prank before she did.”
Winston shook his head. “That woman has never taken responsibility for anything, and your accusation is just that, an accusation. She’s going to make a counteraccusation that one of your students played a dangerous prank on her son. Oh, yes, I know it was Lenny Cadwell whose plastic sword was switched. I’m not an idiot.”
Double damn. Paul shrugged. “It was hardly dangerous. The metal sword must have weighed five pounds.” Just a slight exaggeration. “Lenny knew instantly that it wasn’t plastic. His prop bag ripped from the weight before he even touched the sword.”
“I was told that Lenny cut himself.”
Paul’s heart lurched and he made a decision. He had never lied to Winston, not in fifteen years. He’d bent the truth more times than he could count, but he’d never outright lied. Today would be a first. “Paper cut,” he said, “from the torn bag. The sword was just a big butter knife.”
Winston stared at him, and Paul knew that he was going to demand to see the sword. Paul would have to compound his lie by going out and finding a different sword. One that really was a giant butter knife.
But then the principal shook his head and leaned back in his chair. “Get out of here.”
It was Two-for-One Sundae Day at the Dairy Queen. Business was brisker than normal, and nowhere more so than at the booth at the far end of the seating area. Three hags sat at a table crowded with sundaes, each one with a different combination of ingredients.
“Isn’t today Thursday?” Agatha asked.
Gertrude pulled a disk from a ragged pocket and glared at it. “Thursday. Seventeenth day of September. Quarter moon. Humidity twenty percent.” Then she put the disk away.
“Wasn’t that a sundial?” asked Netty.
Gertrude squinted at her. “What if it was?”
“Sundials are supposed to tell you the time. Not . . .” Netty waved pudgy fingers in the air. “All that other stuff.”
Gertrude smirked. “Agatha didn’t ask for the time.”
“Yes, but . . . it’s a sundial.”
A wicked smiled creased Gertrude’s face. “Heh. I threatened it into revealing more information.”
“My point being,” said Agatha, waving a gnarled hand over the table, “why aren’t these ice cream treats called Thursdays? Why are they called Sundays?”
“Perhaps they make them on Sunday,” Netty said, “then put them on clearance on Thursday before they go bad.”
The other two witches stared at her.
Then Agatha let out a chest full of air. “That’s the first thing you’ve said this week that made any sense.”
Netty offered a wide, nearly toothless grin, and all three witches cackled.
“I hope,” said Hecate, appearing on the bench next to Netty and taking in the array of ice cream, “that you are celebrating the destruction of The Bard’s Play.”
“What’s with the uniform?” asked Agatha. The senior witch was dressed in stiff white linen that included an odd-looking starched hat.
Gertrude peered up at Hecate with a crooked smirk. “Heh. Are you going to serve ice cream Sundays behind the counter? I didn’t realize the witching business was ailing so badly.”
Hecate raised an eyebrow at Gertrude and eventually understood the deformed witch’s implication. “This is not a server’s uniform. It is a nurse uniform. I’m off to Hinton Valley Hospital.”
Gertrude nodded her hunched head. “Pays better than waiting tables.”
The three sisters exploded into cackles.
Hecate did not join them. “The only place the witch business is ailing is right here. Tell me that you’ve cursed the play.”
Agatha licked ice cream off a gnarled finger. “Netty gave a murderous student a sword.”
Hecate appeared confused. “Shouldn’t they already have swords? This is Macbeth.”
“They have prop swords,” Gertrude said. “Fakes. Netty gave our Macbeth a real sword.”
“I see,” said Hecate. “And how many of his fellow actors did your Macbeth cut to ribbons before realizing that his prop sword was real?”
The three witches looked at each other.
Hecate frowned. “Blood did flow?”
Agatha moved her lips. “There was blood, yes.”
Hecate frowned further. “Any fatalities at all?”
“Our Macbeth is a ponce with a sword,” Netty said. “He was his own first casualty.”
“Well,” Hecate admitted. “That’s better than nothing. Without Macbeth, the show can’t go on.”
“He, uhrm, recovered,” said Agatha.
“The resilience of youth,” added Gertrude.
“It was just a flesh wound,” said Netty.
Hecate’s nostrils flared.
Netty busied herself with examining the ice cream. “Or so I heard.”
“The hospital,” said Agatha. “What do you plan to do there?”
Loath to miss an opportunity to talk about herself, the senior witch smiled. “I’m going to swap some medications. Then perhaps I’ll spend some time in the maternity ward watching colicky babies.” She rubbed her hands together. “I never grow tired of the wailing of children.” Then she was gone.
“Raspberry,” said Netty.
Agatha looked at her. “What?”
Netty grinned. “I think I like the raspberry Sunday best.”
“I agree,” said Gertrude. “Let’s throw out these other ones and order a dozen raspberry.”
“That would be a waste,” said Agatha. “I’ll eat the other ones.”
“Even the caramel?” asked Netty. “It tastes like burnt sugar.”
Agatha drew a deep breath through one nostril. “Perhaps I’ll pass on the caramel.”
On Friday, after a week of running through lines, a few of the students actually knew theirs and could repeat them off book. Of the major roles, Lenny was coming along, as was Susie. Paul could hear Susie each evening in her room, enunciating eloquently and swearing each time she missed a word. William was doing surprisingly well as Macduff, and John Freedman kept stumbling over Banquo’s lines. Fortunately Banquo spent more time standing around, listening to Macbeth, than he did talking, so Freedman would probably be okay in the end.
Paul owed much of the students’ progress to Sylvia, who, with little to do yet in the way of sets and props, spent each second period helping any students who were struggling with their lines.
Watching Sylvia reminded Paul that his students were just kids. Seventeen or eighteen years old. Younger in his other classes. Paul couldn’t remember being that young and, like the rest of the teachers at Ashcroft Senior High, followed a policy that expected the students to behave like adults. It was hardly surprising that teenagers frequently failed to meet that expectation. After fifteen years, Paul still didn’t know if the approach was good or bad.
“Who’s ready to paint?” Sylvia asked, looking for hands.
Five hands went up.
Paul smiled inwardly while his wife sighed.
“Well,” she said. “We may not finish today. We’ll start with the castle walls. They should go quickly. Painters, come with me.”
Paul made a mental note to give each of the volunteers extra credit then watched the small band troop out of the auditorium toward the arts and crafts room, where Clyde Goodall, the art teacher, had cleared space and set out supplies. During first period, he had enlisted Jerry the caretaker to help him move the third-year scenery flats from backstage, where they had sat all summer, to the art room.
Gemma Henderson, who was not one of the five volunteers, carried a big box over to Paul.
“What do we have here?”
As Gemma set the box down, Paul saw the word Macbeth written on one side in felt pen.
“My dad told me to bring this to class. He said it’s a box of Macbeth props he got from his cousin who used to be an actress.”
Paul poked around in the box and found a decent-looking crown, a couple of collapsible bloody daggers, a chalice, a fantastic-looking battery-operated lamp for hanging on a castle wall scenery flat, and a plastic skull.
“I think the skull is from Hamlet,” he said.
Gemma rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
“Thank your dad for me,” Paul said. “These will come in handy.” He picked up the box and took it to a shelf in the backstage storage area. The cousin must have been in amateur theatre to have such relatively inexpensive props. But they were perfect for a school play.
“All right, students,” he said after returning downstage. “Since you’re not painting, you’re going to walk through lines.”
Groans.
“And I really do mean walk. Read-throughs are over. From now on, it’s time to act. Leave your script in your bag; you won’t need it. If you can’t remember your lines, approximate them. If I need to cue you, I will. Let’s put some body language behind your words.”
“What about those who left with Mrs. Samson?” asked Trevor. “Who’s going to say their lines?”
“That would be me, Trevor.” To the class, Paul said, “Let’s start from the top. Enter three witches.”
Second period ended and Paul made his way through the sea of students toward the arts and crafts room to inspect the painted scenery flats and to have lunch with Sylvia before his first-year class in fourth period. He had almost arrived when the students parted to reveal the gorgon lady in all her frightful glory. Paul hadn’t crossed paths with Elizabeth Cadwell since her PTA had taken over his auditorium two Tuesdays ago. It had been a blissful two weeks.
“Mr. Samson,” the gorgon lady greeted him in dark, icy tones.
“Mrs. Cadwell,” Paul returned brightly. “I must say that your son, Lenny, outdid himself turning out a costume for this term’s play. He’s the talk of the class.”
Paul then braced himself for whatever bullets the gorgon planned to shoot him with. Would she accuse him of defamation by means of illiterate leaflet? Or threaten to get him arrested for attempting to murder her son with a sword? When she did neither, Paul’s good mood returned instantly.
“Let’s cut the pleasantries,” said Mrs. Cadwell. “I ran into Gemma Henderson and two of your other students last evening.”
“I hope no one was hurt,” Paul said.
“What?”
“When you ran into the girls. The last thing we need around here are more injuries.”
“Oh no.” The gorgon lady wagged her finger at him. “You are not distracting me that easily. They were at Value Village, shopping for costumes.”
“Really?” said Paul. “You don’t strike me as the Value Village type. What were you doing there?”
The gorgon lady added a sneer to her finger wagging. “I won’t be distracted. They were shopping for witch costumes.”
Paul put on his best puzzled look. “Halloween is still six weeks off. A bit early to be looking for witch costumes. I’ll have a word with them.”
Mrs. Cadwell almost screamed. “They weren’t shopping for Halloween. They were looking for costumes for your play!”
“Then I must have a word with them,” Paul said. “Witch costumes are entirely inappropriate. Pointy hats and warty noses won’t do.”
“They won’t?” said the gorgon lady, looking crestfallen.
“Of course not. Broom-riding witches have no place in Macbeth. These are hags we want. Crones. Yes, a difficult thing for seventeen-year-old girls to pull off, but that’s what acting is all about. What they want for costumes are rags and heavy makeup. They can probably find these at home. No trips to Value Village required.”
The gorgon lady looked like something she rarely was—speechless. If only they could have had this discussion in front of the entire PTA. That would be three public embarrassments in two weeks. What a coup!
Paul stepped around her and continued on his way.
“Well,” said Sylvia. “What do you think?”
One entire wall of the art room was lined with painted scenery flats, eight feet tall and four feet wide. Most of them were granite grey, while several were painted with fields and trees. Three of the granite walls had battlements along the top with a stormy sky peering between the stones.
Paul was near speechless. “You finished them all in one hour?” When he had his students paint, they were lucky to finish three flats.
Sylvia’s face glowed. “Once we got started, it went fairly quickly. I don’t know what would have happened with thirty students in here. I’m glad most weren’t prepared.”
“Yes.” Paul was still trying to comprehend what he was seeing. “There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.”
“What shall we do for lunch?” Sylvia asked.
“I’m not sure,” Paul said. “I usually bring my lunch and recover from the morning in the teachers’ lounge. There’s always the Dairy Queen across the street that some of the students go to.”
Sylvia’s face brightened even more. “I haven’t been to a Dairy Queen in years. Not since we took Susie to one for her tenth birthday. I wonder if they still have chocolate-dipped cones.”
With third period well under way, the walk through the school was an uneventful one. The gorgon lady had made herself scarce, and they were outside and across the street without interruption.
At the Dairy Queen, the staff were quietly preparing for the lunch hour rush. The only other customers were three odd-looking women sitting at a booth in the far corner. Paul took out his cell phone and took a picture.
“What are you doing?” Sylvia whispered, quickly dragging him toward the order counter. “You can’t just take pictures of random strangers.”
“Of course, you’re right,” Paul said, tucking the phone back into his sport coat pocket. “It’s just that, the gorgon lady—”
“Who?” interrupted Sylvia.
“Mrs. Cadwell, resident PTA president and royal pain in the neck.”
“You call Elizabeth Cadwell the gorgon lady?”
“Not just me. Pretty much everyone does.”
“Continue.”
“Anyway,” Paul said, “I ran into her in the hallway on the way to see you, and she was at it again about witches—”
“Witches?” said Sylvia. “Not swords or those leaflets?”
Paul let out a sigh. “She didn’t mention either. Perhaps Winston talked to her. Maybe she’s calling the two sets of leaflets a draw.”
“That doesn’t explain the sword.”
“I can only imagine that Lenny talked her down about the sword. If he’s willing to say it was nothing, it will be difficult for his mother to claim otherwise. Anyway, she was complaining about the three witches in the cast.”
“Four,” said Sylvia. “Don’t forget about Hecate.”
“I don’t think she realizes there are four. The gor—Mrs. Cadwell—said that she saw our three young witches at Value Village, shopping for witch costumes.”
“Mrs. Cadwell shops at Value Village?” Sylvia’s expression was priceless.
“That’s what I said.” Paul couldn’t stop himself from laughing. “Anyway, I told her that our witches aren’t witches; they are hags and witch costumes are completely inappropriate.”
Sylvia nodded. “I agree with you about the costumes. Pointy hats won’t do. But they are witches.”
Paul spoke in a hushed voice. “The gorgon lady doesn’t need to know that.”
“I see. I’ll have the FlameThrower GrillBurger and a Diet Coke.”
“What?” Then Paul noticed the wizened, older woman waiting patiently to take his order. “I’ll have the same.”
“And we’ll both have chocolate-dipped cones on the way out,” Sylvia added.
Paul paid and they found a table near the door to wait for their order.
“None of this explains you taking that picture,” said Sylvia.
“Oh, right. Well, those women at the booth are more like what my students should be going for. See the shawls and the haystack hair and the frumpy hat the short woman is wearing.”
“You’re saying they look like hags?” said Sylvia.
“I bet they’re wearing boots,” Paul said. “Those short rubber ones. And baggy pants.”
“Well, of course we wear boots,” Gertrude said. “We spend so much time on the heath.”
“And our pants are baggy,” Netty added. “Pants aren’t comfortable unless they’re baggy. I’d hardly call my hat frumpy, though. I think it has style.”
“Of course is does,” said Gertrude. “I’d wear a hat just like it if I could hold my head up straight.”
“What does he mean we don’t look like witches?” Agatha ground her teeth as she spoke. “We are witches. We’re exactly what witches look like. Hags! Hags, he called us. I’ve half a mind to make him choke on his GrillBurger.”
“Don’t do that,” cautioned Gertrude. “He’s the director. They may cancel the play if something happens to him.”
“You’re right, of course,” said Agatha. “Curses get no respect when they happen behind the scenes.”
“His wife, then,” suggested Netty. “Let’s give her a blast of salmonella. See how she looks with fins!”
“Eh?” said Gertrude. “I don’t think that means what you think it means.”
Agatha slammed a gnarled hand on the table. “But the woman hasn’t said an unkind word about us. What would you want to go curse her for?”
“The play itself is cursed,” Gertrude said. “And who do you think is going to get all the blame? The director. Heh? Consider the man cursed and enjoy your Turtle Waffle Bowl.”
“What? This?” Netty pointed at a chocolate-tipped waffle bowl half emptied of ice milk and caramel sauce. “There’s not a single turtle in here. False advertising, that’s what it is.”
The three witches looked to where Netty pointed and saw a small green turtle pushing its flippers through the melting ice milk.
“Humph,” said Netty. “That wasn’t there a moment ago.”
Suddenly a fourth hag was sitting with them in the booth, only this hag looked like she had just stepped off the cover of a Victoria’s Secret magazine, wearing a skin-tight black outfit that revealed more than it hid and all but shouted cleavage.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” said Hecate. “You should never mix turtles and ice cream. It’s bad for the indigestion.”
“You can’t dress like that here,” Agatha scolded, looking the senior witch up and down. “They’ll think you’re a hooker.”
Hecate let out a delicate laugh. “My hooker outfit is much brassier than this. For hookers, you want sleaze. This is my bedroom-eyes look. I just dropped in on my way to a photo shoot to get a status report on your Macbeth project.”
“A photo shoot?” Gertrude grinned. “Updating your résumé? Still seeking a change of employment, perhaps?”
“You wish.” Hecate tossed her hair. “Why would I do that when I have the greatest job in the world?”
“Yes,” said Netty. “Why would you?”
“What are you up to at this photo shoot?” Agatha asked. “You going to make it a real shoot and add guns?”
Hecate shook her head. “Bor-ring. Models are shot by ex-boyfriends all the time. No, the shoot is happening at a hotel swimming pool. I thought I’d work up a little gas line explosion on the tenth floor and rain broken windows down on our gaggle of supermodels. Nothing like a few nasty scars to ruin a young glamour girl’s career. But I’m not here to talk about me. I hope you have better news for me today than yesterday?”
Agatha fondled her silver pendant. “We’ve been stirring up the natives.”
Hecate stared at her. “Stirring up the natives? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Sowing discord,” Gertrude said.
“Causing general unrest,” added Agatha.
Hecate looked at Netty.
“Ooooh.” Netty’s eyes bounced in their sockets. “Uh, like they said. Stirring up a cauldron of discord and sowing the natives.”
“I see,” said Hecate. “In other words, nothing.”
Netty’s lips sputtered. “We have big plans for next week.”
“Next week?” Hecate’s beauty-queen face held an expression of horror. “What is wrong with right now? Why do you have to wait until next week?”
“Drama class is over for today,” Agatha said. “School is out until Monday.”
“We can’t do anything until Monday second period,” Gertrude added. “Heh. That’s the downside of dealing with schools.”
“Sounds fishy to me.” Hecate’s flawless face darkened. “I think you’re all just a bit lazy. Sitting here all day, getting fat on ice cream while the world strolls merrily past the window.”
“Then perhaps you’ll invite us to help with your broken-window caper?” Agatha suggested. “It’s been ages since I wore a bikini.”
Netty chortled. “You’ve never worn a bikini. None of us have. Weren’t popular in the eleventh century. They wouldn’t know what to think of a woman in a bikini back then. Women wore more than that when they were in private, never mind public.”
“I think they’re getting ready to leave,” Gertrude said.
“Who is?” asked Hecate.
Agatha pointed with her extensive chin. “The director and his wife. They’ve been having a spot of lunch over there.”
Hecate rose up out of the booth and turned around to discover a forty-something couple collecting chocolate-dipped cones from the counter. The man nearly dropped his ice cream as his eyes bulged in their sockets. Hecate put on her best bedroom-eyes smile.
The man did a double take then pulled a cell phone out of a coat pocket and took a picture. His wife whispered something nasty to him, and he put the phone away, shaking his head and obviously trying to justify his actions. They left the Dairy Queen rather more quickly than was natural.
Hecate swept back her hair and sat down again.
“What’d you go and do that for?” Agatha demanded. “They’re not supposed to be fighting. Not yet, anyway. You could have ruined our plan.”
A light chuckle escaped Hecate’s lips. “Just having a bit of fun. No harm done. Husbands and wives fight all the time. Now I’m off to have more than just a bit of fun.” Her expression grew serious. “I expect next week that you’ll be highly productive.” Then she was gone.
“‘I expect next week that you’ll be highly productive,’” Agatha repeated in an unconvincing imitation of the senior witch.
“Speaking of next week.” Gertrude looked pointedly at Netty. “Perhaps you’d like to share with your sisters these big plans you mentioned.”
Netty shook and waggled her fingers in the air. “Big plans? Of course I haven’t got any big plans. I couldn’t very well tell her that we’ve no idea what to do next, now could I?”
“Well,” said Agatha. “Looks like we’ve got the weekend to come up with something. In the meantime, I think I’ll have an extra-large Cappuccino MooLatté. I could use a caffeine fix about now.”
“Make it three,” suggested Gertrude. “Heh. Time to storm some brains.”
Paul downloaded the photos from his phone to his Mac mini, and stared at them on his computer screen. No, he hadn’t dreamed it. Three of the haggiest hags he had ever seen. Perfect looks for the play. He would show this photo to Gemma and his other witches. But the second photo? That one he wouldn’t show to anyone. Who would believe it?
There was no way a beautiful woman wearing nothing but lingerie could have walked into Dairy Queen without his noticing. He and Sylvia were sitting right by the door! And why would such a woman go and sit with the hags? It wasn’t because opposites attract. The woman hadn’t ordered any food, not that they would have served her, dressed as she was. But the clincher, the real thing that made this so unreal, was the smile she had flashed at him. No woman had ever looked at Paul that way.
It had to be a joke. Someone had set him up. But who? This wasn’t Winston’s style. Or the gorgon lady’s. Elizabeth Cadwell wouldn’t even conceive of anything so . . . risqué.
The woman had to have been hiding in the washroom. She probably wore a long coat and only took it off when she stood up to cast him that smile. But why? What did it accomplish? If it was designed to help kill the play, he was lost as to how.
Unable to draw any conclusion, Paul closed the photo viewer and turned his attention to the prop box Gemma had brought to school, which he had brought home to inspect properly. Anything to get his mind off that photo.
Yorick’s skull would be unusable, of course, except as a Halloween ornament. It was a standard plastic skull you could buy at any costume shop. The only label on it read, Made In China.
The crown was also cheap plastic from China. The aluminum one Lenny had brought was better. Perhaps Siward could wear this one. Earls didn’t wear crowns, but it would help differentiate the British allies from the Scots supporters, especially as none of his actors would incorporate accents to help determine who was who.
The chalice would be perfect for the banquet scene, when Macbeth drinks himself stupid while seeing Banquo’s ghost. It, too, was plastic but large and bright gold. It would catch the eye as Macbeth staggered about the stage, arguing about a ghost none of his guests could see.
The daggers must have been made for the play. They had rubber retracting blades, with one side painted silver to catch the stage lights and the other side silver stained with rusty red. Before murder and after murder. Paul couldn’t see a manufacturer’s mark, but initials had been scratched at the tip of each hilt: S. R.
The final prop was an ornamental lamp, aluminum painted bright silver, with plastic instead of glass so it weighed almost nothing. There was what looked like a Christmas bulb inside shaped like a flame and a place at the back for a AAA battery. Paul flicked the on/off switch and discovered that either the battery was dead or the bulb was burned out. After replacing the battery with one he found loose in his desk drawer, the lamp came on and he was delighted to see the bulb was the flickering kind meant to imitate a flame.
He turned the lamp off and examined the coat hanger wire that had been glued onto the back and bent so the lamp would hang off the top of a scenery flat. Ingenious. Paul would have to send a thank-you note back with Gemma to give to her dad.
He was about to put the props, all but the skull, back into the box, when he noticed a white slip of paper lying at the bottom. He picked it up and turned it over then gawked as he read the words typed on it in faded ink: Property of Simon Riordan.
How could that be? Simon Riordan was Paul’s old drama teacher from back when Paul was in high school. What were the odds that this box would make its way through two decades and into Paul’s hands?
He let the slip of paper flutter back to the bottom of the box and leaned back in his chair, memories flooding his thoughts of his old mentor, larger than life, swaggering across the stage like a human blimp, flourishing his arms and grinning like a madman. A grin crossed Paul’s own lips as he shook his head. He remembered the first day he had seen Mr. Riordan. Six foot five, a lion’s mane of hair on an oversized head, broad shoulders, a capacious gut, narrow hips and legs, and tiny feet. How the man walked without falling over was a miracle of science.
Drama had held no interest for Paul before that first day. Like many of his own students, Paul had taken the elective for what he hoped would be an easy pass. But Simon Riordan had changed all that, opening Paul’s eyes to a whole new world where you could pretend to be another person and people would applaud you for it. The only limits were your imagination and, as Paul discovered when he began working as a teacher himself, the intolerance of the school and the parents.
He lost his grin as he remembered that third and final year, when Riordan failed to show up for class and a few days later was replaced by a phys ed teacher who showed zero interest in being there. No explanation was given except that Mr. Riordan had suddenly decided to retire from teaching. Overnight, drama lost its magic, and Paul had never pursued acting as a career.
Only later, when Paul earned his teaching degree with no specialty, had he decided to accept his first job teaching as a drama instructor. It was the only position available. It could as easily have been home economics. Paul discovered that he was good at teaching drama, though not as good as Simon Riordan, and never looked back.
Paul turned his gaze back to the box. He was certain he had never seen these props before. Simon Riordan had loved Shakespeare, and Paul remembered playing the part of Verges in Riordan’s high school production of Much Ado about Nothing. But there had been no Macbeth. No Hamlet either.
Turning madly to his computer, Paul called up Google and entered Macbeth and Simon Riordan. Several hundred hits came up, many of them nothing to do with either search term. After scrolling through quite a few useless pages, he kicked himself for being so clumsy with computers. He tried again, adding the term retired.
Fewer hits came up, and the fourteenth was what he was looking for. It showed a photo of Simon Riordan and several other actors in full costume, posing in front of a marquee proclaiming The Tragedy of Macbeth.
Riordan was an actor? He’d never once mentioned it in class. Paul had always assumed that his mentor was much like himself, opting to teach rather than face the treadmill of auditions, learning parts, and suffering the abuse of prima donna directors as well as the criticism of an impossible-to-please public. But here he was proved wrong. Apparently when the school day was done, Simon Riordan had taken to the stage.
Paul began scanning the article for a date but stopped when he realized that the short write-up wasn’t a review, but an article describing how the community theatre production had been cancelled due to the death of one of the actors during rehearsal. Scarlet Walker was rehearsing the role of Lady Macbeth when a box of tools that had been left on the scaffolding above the stage somehow fell, striking Scarlet on the head, killing her instantly.
Paul looked up to the page banner to see where this article came from and was dismayed to see that it was an entry in a blog discussing The Cursed Play, apparently listing examples of the curse. He continued reading the article and saw Simon Riordan’s name and a statement where Riordan swore that the play was cursed and that he was retiring from acting as well as his teaching position. A little farther down was the date when this had happened. It was the same date that Simon Riordan had quit teaching Paul’s class.
Riordan must have contributed the props for the play then abandoned them when he quit. A quarter century later, after being passed hand to hand, they had miraculously arrived in Paul’s study. Recalling the photos on his computer, Paul counted that as two impossible things in one day.