Reign, p.36
Reign, page 36
"The killings."
She paused. Had she said too much? John was such a materialist, how could he believe in the reality of the Emperor?
"Is he trying to . . . draw this person out?"
"In a way," she said. "Or maybe drive him away."
"If what Chief Munro thinks is true, that could be very dangerous.”
“It could be more dangerous for Dennis to do nothing."
"Ann, I want to know —"
"John," she said, interrupting him, "please. I can't tell you any more." And she did not.
~ * ~
In the middle of the last week in New York, Sybil Creed dropped in to the rehearsal. By now, the chorus was working together with the principals, and Quentin was directing Act II, Scene 7, the last scene, in which the Emperor Frederick, having slain Kronstein in a duel, speaks to his people, telling them that if he is killed leading his army against Wohlstein to restore the usurped King Fritz to the throne, the people of Waldmont should be his heirs and rule through a democracy.
When the speech was over and a five was called, Sybil walked up to Dennis, who smiled and dutifully kissed her cheek. He had not seen her since the night of Tommy Werton's death, as she had been in Europe for several months running an acting seminar.
"That was shit, son," were the first words out of her mouth. Dennis gave a small laugh. "And that laugh," she went on, "should be called self-deprecating, because if I've ever seen an actor with a reason to deprecate himself, it's you today."
"Do you want to continue to lambast me here in front of my cast," Dennis said, "or would you rather take me outside to the woodshed?"
"How long is your break?"
"Only five, but they're doing a scene I'm not in."
"Fine," said Sybil. "Take me out for a drink. After seeing the garbage you were just spewing, I need one."
"All right," Dennis said, taking his jacket from the back of a chair and waving to Curt to let him know he was leaving. "But please don't hesitate to tell me what you really think."
Sybil's sharp line of a mouth curled. "Very good. Was that irony? God knows there was more spark in it than in that watery speech you just gave." She offered her arm, Dennis took it, and they walked out.
When they were comfortably settled in a booth at Joe Allen's, with drinks in front of them, Sybil took Dennis's right hand in both of hers and squeezed it. "I heard about you," she said, "but I didn't believe it. You're the talk of Broadway, Dennis dear. The only performer living whose talent has not only deserted him, but has apparently sued for alimony as well. Rumor has it that you've had to sign over half your brain cells. True?"
"What does it look like?"
"It looks like you're some goddamned apprentice at the worst non-Equity dinner theatre in South Dakota, for Christ's sake. What is the matter with you? Did you forget how to fool the nice people?"
He shrugged. "Did I ever know?"
"Of course you knew, don't be fatuous. You could never fool me, but you fooled the others well enough. And I hate to see a charlatan lose his skill. You may have to actually learn to act, Dennis." She threw back half her drink and shuddered. "Now that I've bawled you out for no longer being able to do what I always felt you shouldn't anyway, let me tell you how sorry I am over everything that's happened. You have had a hill full of crosses to bear." She put back her head and looked down the long bridge of her nose at him. "I assume that's what's been the cause of this . . . performing debacle?"
"In a way."
"Well, what are you going to do about it?"
"Try to . . . find it again. The performance."
"And where might you be looking? Outside? All around? In the movies? Under cabbage leaves?"
He shook his head. "Inside."
"Inside. Will wonders never cease." She shook her head in mock amazement, then plunged it toward him like a hawk attacking a vole. "Well, you'd damn well better find it, my friend. Because you are no more than an object of pity right now. You've got how long till the big night?"
"A little over two weeks."
"I'd recommend some sessions, but I don't think you'll have time. So perhaps you wouldn't mind if I gave you some advice?"
"Sybil, at this point I'd take acting advice from Vanna White."
"Oh, thank you so much for the compliment."
"You know what I mean. I've always admired your work, even when I haven't agreed with the principles behind it."
"Meaning that you do now?"
His only reaction was a shrug.
"It's hard for an old dog to learn new tricks, isn't it, Dennis? But I'll tell you what I think, and you can take it for what it's worth. Maybe it'll help you. Maybe you'll decide that you do want to try being a tree and letting your branches blow in the fucking wind." She took another sip of her drink. "I've said it before and I'll say it again. All your life you've been afraid to drop the mask and confront yourself. You've worked with technique alone, and in that way you've protected yourself from the truth — both bad and good — about Dennis Hamilton. Your emotions have been only constructed artifice, and it's only when you confront your true emotions, emotions expressed sincerely, that you will give a truly great performance. Working with a series of constructs, as you've been doing for your entire career, is not the way to bring real life to a character."
Dennis began to laugh. It started out slow and soft and gentle, then increased in volume and became a series of rattling bursts that filled the room. His eyes squeezed shut and tears emerged from their inner corners. The attack slowly diminished to weak, panting sobs, and he waved his hands in the air feebly in apology.
"Well," Sybil said in a voice as chilled and dry as her martini, "I'm glad you still find my beliefs so amusing."
"It's . . . I'm sorry, it's not that, Sybil, I just . . . things have been stranger than you can imagine, and . . .”He paused. There was no way he could tell her the truth. "I'm sorry. Really. I won't laugh again."
"Do," she said, getting stiffly to her feet. "At least it's an emotion, and it's real." She spat her curtain line, "And that's more than I've seen from you in years," and left him sitting alone.
God damn it, he thought. She was so close in one way, so far in another. Despite what Sybil said, it was precisely the strength of his dramatic constructions that had brought his character to life, and to a hateful, violent life at that. But she was right in that it was only by the strength of his own emotions, at least those he still had left, that he would bring those he had lost to the Emperor back again.
And make his soul complete.
Scene 6
That night, after his calamitous discussion with Sybil Creed, Dennis had a variant of the Actor's Nightmare. He was standing on the stage of the Venetian Theatre, dressed in the full regalia of the Emperor Frederick. Richard Reynolds, the actor who played the role of the Peasant Leader in the 1966 production of A Private Empire, was with him on stage. Dennis knew that he had just pardoned the man from being a spy and made him a retainer, for Richard said:
— Would to God my Emperor were as decent as you. I'll serve you well, majesty. My life for yours —
And then he turned and left the stage, leaving Dennis with the knowledge that he was in a dream, for Richard had been dead for fifteen years, beaten to death by a burglar.
In reality, Dennis would have known his lines, his lyrics, his movements, but in the dream, and knowing that it was a dream, he did not. That knowledge did nothing, however, to lessen his panic. All he knew beyond the fact of the dream was that he did not know. He heard the music begin, and remembered dimly that the song was called "A Land Where We Can Love," but could recall none of the lyrics, did not remember how the song began, where he should be on the stage.
The introduction seemed to bubble on forever, pushing him closer to that moment when he would be expected to open his mouth and sing, and in desperation he crossed the stage, slapping his hands behind his back, wondering if he was past the point in the show where that gesture was first used. Striding to the stage right curtains he peered into the wings in hopes of seeing the prompter, but saw not even the dim light that guided the actors off stage. There was nothing there but darkness, a thick, inky blackness that seemed even more terrible than his fate were he to remain on stage until the time came for him to sing the song he did not know.
The introduction was finally coming to its end, and Dennis turned back toward the audience, his dream-self trembling. The upbeat was coming, and he opened his mouth, thinking that perhaps if he just began to sing, the right words would come out. After all, he had sung them thousands of times, they should, damn it, be there. They were not. The accompaniment of the unseen orchestra below him in the pit droned on, and he stood there, his mouth opening and closing, no words coming out, no song filling the air. The music got softer and softer, making his failure all the more obvious. What must they think of him? he wondered. They must think him a fool. And then, as if in universal agreement, they started to laugh.
Dennis recognized the laughter. It was the laughter of thousands laughing with one voice.
And the voice was that of the Emperor.
Then all the stage lights exploded into brightness, and in their glow Dennis saw row upon row of Dennis Hamiltons, of Emperors, of himself and of the beast, going back and out and up into the air, and the rows had no end, the theatre had no ceiling, and the world was girdled with images of himself, images with madness in their eyes, madness that seeped into his soul even as they stole that same soul away.
He woke up sweating, his stomach a churning pit of fire, his spine a rope of ice, and remembered waking up next to Robin after the other nightmares. But he wasn't next to Robin now. He was next to Ann, and the sounds of his awakening had not pierced the armor of her sleep. He listened to her breathing softly in the dark, the sound coming around the edges of the pounding of his own heart.
He thought he must have woken up quietly then, without a cry or a sudden motion. Of course. A cry would have taken emotion, wouldn't it? And though he felt it, it seemed as though his days of expressing it were far behind.
Lying in bed then, after the nightmare, he decided to call Ally Terrazin. She was the only person he knew who was serious about what the rest of his friends and acquaintances had regarded as silly. Perhaps, he thought, smiling inwardly as his self-perceived foolishness, Ranthu or Ramcharger, or whatever that damn thing's name was, could help. Dennis's skepticism toward the occult had taken a terrific beating.
He called her the next day at the lunch break, hoping she would be up by nine o'clock Pacific time. She was.
"Hello, Ally?"
"Dennis? Is that you?" Ally sounded, Dennis thought, just as perky and bouncy and unrelievedly west coast as she always did.
"Yes."
"God, how are you?"
"I'm . . . all right."
"Dennis, I'm so sorry about everything. I sent you cards, did you get them?"
He didn't know whether he had or not. "Yes. Thank you."
"I would've written, but I had two films back to back, just finished the second one. It shot in Spain. So how are you?" she asked for the second time.
"Fine, Ally. Listen, I wonder if you could give me some help."
"Sure. Oh, hey, I can't come to your show, though. I start another movie on the 24th, isn't that great?"
"I'm glad to hear you're keeping busy. But look, you remember when we talked about . . . was it Ranthu? The night . . . Tommy Werton was killed?"
"Ranthu, yeah?"
"Well, I might have a job for . . . Ranthu. I want him to find out if, well, if there's anything in the theatre when we go back next week."
"Anything. What, you mean like a presence? Like energy?"
"Yes. I guess so."
"Well, that's really not something that Ranthu handles. I mean you need like a psychic for that. And Bob — he's Ranthu's channeler — he doesn't really do that sort of thing. I think you'd want somebody like Bebe Gonsalves."
"Who's Bebe Gonsalves?"
"Just the best damn psychic in L.A. You want her number?"
"You know her?"
"Oh yeah."
"Are you busy next week?"
"No, why?"
"Would you be willing to bring her to the theatre? Saturday's our last day of rehearsal here before we go back to Kirkland. I could meet you at the theatre on Sunday before rehearsals start down there. Could you fly Ms. Gonsalves out here and stay with her? I'll pay you all expenses plus whatever you want."
"Expenses are fine, but I'll come just to see you again. Besides, you're gonna pay through the nose for Bebe. She doesn't come cheap." She paused for a moment. "Dennis, what is it? What do you think is there?"
He lied. "I don't know, Ally. But I've exhausted all human explanations. So maybe there's a supernatural one."
They talked for a while longer, and then hung up. Dennis felt stupid speaking seriously of psychics, and particularly of Ranthu, but a year ago he would have felt stupid speaking of doppelgangers. He just didn't want to go back into the theatre blind. He had no idea what the Emperor had in store for him. Would it be stronger now? Or would all human absence from the building have weakened it, perhaps even to the point of nonexistence? Was his inability to act the result of the Emperor's draining away his strength, or was it purely psychological?
They were questions that had to be answered, questions that were plaguing him now even in his sleep. "Inquiring minds want to know," he said softly to himself, then headed back into the studio.
~ * ~
The Kirkland Hotel was barely prepared for the onslaught. Fifty cast members, fifteen crew people, and assorted spouses and lovers began to check in on Saturday evening and continued to do so until after midnight on Sunday. The original thought of lodging them in the Venetian Theatre building had been abandoned, as there was no time to prepare the largely unfurnished rooms and suites for occupancy, and, even if there had been, many of the party were nervous enough about rehearsing and performing in what they held to be, if not cursed, then at least a haunted theatre.
Dennis, Ann, Evan, and Terri drove down together Saturday after the last New York rehearsal. The route to the Kirkland Hotel did not pass the theatre building, for which all four were grateful. It was dark by the time they drove up the winding road to the hotel, a large Victorian hulk of a building that had originally been a sanitarium where David Kirk's mineral water was the main remedy. It sat on a hill overlooking the town, and when Dennis got out of the car he could not help but look down and see the complex that housed the Venetian Theatre. The lamps that lit the parking lot tinted the building with red, so that its dark spine of a roof shone through the evening mist like that of some giant, gleaming beast waiting to come to life, to rise and to strike.
When they entered the hotel, there was a message from Ally Terrazin at the front desk. She and Bebe Gonsalves would arrive at the theatre at eleven o'clock the next morning, and hoped Dennis could meet them there. Exhausted and apprehensive, he fell asleep in Ann's arms. If he had dreams, he could not remember them in the morning.
By the time he and Ann had a small room service breakfast and read the Sunday Times, it was time to meet Ally and Bebe Gonsalves. On their way through the lobby, they ran into John Steinberg, who asked them where they were off to. When they told him they were going to the theatre, he frowned.
"Do you think that's wise? No one's there yet. The crew doesn't go in until one this afternoon."
"We're meeting someone there, John," said Dennis. "An investigator.”
“Oh. Now a detective. Don't you think you could have told me?"
"It isn't a detective, John. It's . . .” Dennis cleared his throat. "It's a psychic investigator."
John did not respond. He only stood there looking at Dennis, his expression as unreadable as granite. "Psychic," he said at last, then nodded gravely, and continued on his way.
"I've been working with him for months now," Ann said, "and I've never seen that reaction."
"I have. It's meant to imply utter contempt." Dennis smiled in spite of himself. "When someone brings up something which John thinks isn't even worth discussing, since talking about it would mean that he's actually taking it seriously, he merely grunts a repetition, like, 'flying saucers,' or 'séances,' and then walks away." He took Ann's hand and gave it a squeeze. "You see now why I didn't want to tell him about the Emperor without having physical proof to show him. I swear to God, he'd have me committed."
"Maybe we'll have proof," Ann said.
"I hope not," said Dennis, leading her outside. "The thing I'd really like is to have that damned theatre as empty as an ingenue's head."
Bebe Gonsalves was not at all what Dennis had expected. He had thought to find a short and wide woman bedecked with eyeblinding prints and gaudy if authentic jewelry. But the woman who stood next to Ally Terrazin under the Venetian Theatre marquee was as striking as any actress he had ever met. It was only when he came near enough to see the thin web of wrinkles in the corners of her eyes that he knew she was, like himself, over forty. She wore a beautifully tailored top coat that was opened to display an even more perfectly cut suit beneath. She looked more like the owner of an upscale cosmetics firm than a psychic. Her hair was the blue-black of dark nights, and her skin a rich olive shade. Her only jewelry consisted of two small diamond earrings that seemed to catch the sun even on such a cloudy day.
Ally introduced Bebe Gonsalves, and Dennis introduced Ann, and together they walked to the theatre door, which he unlocked.
"Your hand is shaking, Mr. Hamilton," Bebe Gonsalves said. "It is a cold morning."
"I'm afraid I'm a little nervous," Dennis said.
"At what you may find? Or what you may not?"
Now what in the hell, Dennis thought, did she mean by that? At last the recalcitrant lock clicked, and Dennis ushered the others inside.
"Before we proceed," Bebe Gonsalves said, "I think it would be best if you tell me what it is that you think is here. I know of the things that have happened here, so you need not tell me of them, or if you think that what we are in search of has caused them. Just tell me what you think is here."
