CHAPTER TWELVE

The man stood in the doorway, a wild look in his dark, flashing eyes. He paused for a moment and then spoke.

“Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? COME, LET ME CLUTCH THEE!” He thrust out his arm. The dagger got caught up in his cloak and there was a loud ripping sound. Ignoring this, the man threw the dagger to the ground with a clatter and fell to his knees. “OUT, OUT, BRIEF CANDLE!” he yelled, and then clutched at his chest again, gurgling loudly and writhing on the floor, until, after what felt like quite a long time, he gave one last enormous moan and lay still.

There was a long pause but finally someone started clapping. Letty stepped forward, her face shining. “Bravo!” she shouted, and others joined in her applause. “Now that’s what I call acting!” I heard Letty crow to the girl next to her.

“WHO. . .” asked Kip, his face scrunched in an expression of disgust generally saved for when he was told there was no pudding, “is THAT?!”

“Ooh, don’t you know?” Penny giggled girlishly. “It’s Maxwell Dangerfield, the director.”

“What a hunk!” said Magda in a moony voice. “He used to play Hector Fink-Barton in All Tomorrow’s Yesterdays until his character was thrown out of a window by his evil, blind, long-lost half-cousin, Maurice.” She sighed. “Show business can be so fickle. If you ask me, he’s the real star here. Still, at least he’s found a second career as a director.”

Maxwell Dangerfield had struggled to his feet and was bowing to the appreciative audience “Thank you, thank you,” he intoned in a voice as slippery as a banana peel. “It is a thrill to be here, on this creative journey with all of you. I so admire your dedication to the craft, particularly after the tragedy of the recent fire, and I look forward to continuing our work on the Scottish Play in this new theatre.” He beamed around at the crowd.

“The Scottish Play? Isn’t that what Magda was going on about earlier?” Kip’s loud voice echoed around the room. “I thought we were doing Macbeth?” Several people gasped and Maxwell Dangerfield clutched his chest so hard that I was worried that he was going to pretend to die again. “What did I say?” asked Kip, confused. “Macbeth? Aren’t we doing Macbeth? That’s what it says here on front of the Macbeth script. See? MACBETH.”

The crowd of people were flinching and Ingrid had her hand pressed to her head.

“Stop saying that word!” she whispered.

“What word?” Kip was baffled, and so was I.

“THE M WORD!” Letty yelled.

“What? Macbeth?” Kip asked, bemused.

A hiss escaped from Maxwell Dangerfield. “My young friend!” he cried, pointing an accusing finger at Kip. “Can it be possible that you do not know about the Scottish curse?!”

Kip paled at that. “A c-c-curse?” he stuttered. “What is it with us and curses?!”

Kip certainly had a point there; after all it hadn’t been long since we had been face to face with a seriously spooky ancient Egyptian curse. (If you want to know more about that I actually wrote a whole book about it, and if I wasn’t being so polite and modest I would say it was maybe the greatest book of our time, so you might want to check it out.) I felt a chill spreading through me that was probably only partly related to the fact I had left my jumper back in the dorms. Curses, I knew, meant trouble.

Ingrid, however, was nodding. “It’s a famous superstition in the theatre,” she said, “I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it.”

“Superstition?!” snapped Maxwell. “It is no such thing. There is documented evidence of the Scottish curse. Everybody knows that speaking the name of this play while inside the theatre – unless you are reading from the actual script itself – spells disaster for the production.” He paused ominously. “And we certainly don’t need any more of that, do we?” The crowd murmured in agreement at this.

“I heard,” chimed in Letty gleefully, “that the curse began because Shakespeare borrowed lines for the characters of the three witches from an actual coven of witches – and when they found out they were so angry they jinxed all future performances, and any actor who took part.” A shudder ran through the room.

“Do you hear that?” cried Maxwell, “a jinx, young man, a jinx!”

“S-sorry,” stammered Kip.

“And I heard,” broke in Lucas Quest, “that at the very first performance of the play the prop dagger got swapped for a real dagger and the man playing King Duncan was actually killed.” Everyone looked uneasily at the dagger lying on the ground by Maxwell’s feet and over at Derek Dweebles, who wasn’t looking as if the role of King Duncan was such a dream come true any more.

“And,” continued Lucas, “in 1937 the tip came off one of the prop swords during the performance, flew into the audience and hit a man who had a heart attack.” Lucas put his hand to his own chest before continuing. “In 1942 three actors in the production DIED . . . I could go on, the list is endless.”

“You see!” Maxwell exclaimed. “This production has already had a bad start thanks to the fire and we certainly don’t need any more accidents. You must perform the cleansing rituals.”

“Cleansing rituals?” Kip repeated, a worried frown puckering his forehead. “What are those?”

“You must go outside, spin around three times and spit over your left shoulder,” said Maxwell authoritatively.

“And then hop on your right leg for thirty seconds while clapping your hands and singing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’,” added Letty. “Otherwise, the ghosts of the witches will come and haunt us.”

Kip looked torn between disbelief and fear, but seeing all the solemn faces around him he stomped off out of the door without another word. Through the open window we heard a loud and tuneless version of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and eventually Kip stomped back in again. “Happy now?!” he muttered, folding his arms sulkily across his chest.

“Wonderful!” Maxwell sang out, radiant once more. “Now, open the curtains and let’s get on this stage – it’s time to begin the rehearsal!” With a flourish he tugged on the rope that pulled back the heavy red drapes.

A collective gasp knocked the air out of all of us, and someone let out a small scream of terror.

A large white sheet was hanging above the stage and on it, in jagged, dripping red letters was written:

Something Wicked This Way Comes. . .