The audience laughs again. I look out into the theater, but I can’t see their faces because of the light. I look back at Grace. She hasn’t moved. Still staring straight ahead. Sort of smiling.
“Grace?” I shake her.
Nothing. Still that smile. Those open eyes.
“Grace, say something, please. Are you asleep? Please wake up, is this a joke?”
The audience laughs uproariously at this. I touch her forehead. Cold skin. It’s not real, I tell myself. Can’t be real. I stare at her face, so pale. Her eyes unblinking.
“Someone please get help,” I shout. “Please!”
I look out in the dark. No one seems to stir.
“Hello? Did you hear me? I said someone please get help!”
Still no movement. A throat cleared. I feel their eyes staring at me in the dark.
“What are you all doing? Why are you just sitting there?”
Run, I tell myself. Get help. But I don’t move either. I’m frozen in place, in this kneeling position by Grace’s side. Like the spotlight itself, the light itself, is holding me down, pinning me here on the floor by Grace’s body, my knees right on another taped X.
My heart starts drumming now, knocking against my ribs like a fist on a door.
“Please,” I say. “Please, help. I think she’s…”
No. I shake my head. Not dead. Not even dying. Just unwell, under the weather. Very under the weather. Ambulance. She needs an ambulance. I reach for my phone in my pocket, but all I pull out is seaweed. I look at the wet, mulchy web in my fingers while everyone claps.
“Stop clapping! Someone call for help now!”
I feel someone shaking their head in the dark. A mouth grinning behind a fist. Pain shoots down my leg. A bolt of bright fire. For a moment, I think I glimpse them in the back row. All three. Sitting back comfortably. Enjoying the show.
“Oh god,” I whisper. “What have you done to her?”
Silence. I feel them smiling sadly at me beyond the lights. I flash back to me and Grace in the dark parking lot of the Canny Man. Grace crawling backward on her hands and feet. Backward to get away from me. Me taking slow steps toward her. Reaching out my hand.
“I just helped her up,” I say, shaking my head. “I just helped her up, that’s all. I would never hurt Grace. Never.”
I take her hand. Cold like her forehead. Suddenly I can’t breathe. Tears flood my eyes. I feel them hot on my skin, sizzling under the lights.
“I thought she could take it! I thought she was hardy! She’s from Plymouth, for fuck’s sake, aren’t you, Grace? Tell them how you’re from Plymouth!”
I grab her shoulder, which is so very cold, and I shake it. “Come on, Grace, please. Puritan stock. The Pilgrims, remember? So strong the Pilgrims are. Resilient. Unkillable, remember? Please remember you’re supposed to be unkillable!”
The audience laughs and laughs. Doesn’t look like it now. And I shake and shake Grace, who just lies there like nothing.
“Grace, listen to me, please. I take it back, okay? I take it back! I would if I could, I would, I would. I wish I could. If I’d known this was going to happen, I would have never done it.” More tears fall, making Grace blur around the edges, making her body mix with the laughing dark beyond the lights. I shake my head at the dark. “I’m not going to just let you die like this.”
I try to rise, and this time the light doesn’t hold me down. Now the light is just light. The audience gasps as I run down the aisle toward the exit door. They’re watching me. Smiling. All those teeth and eyes on me, I feel them. And then I see them, the three men. Sitting toward the back. Taking up a whole row. Their large silhouettes leaning back in their chairs. Their feet propped up on the seats in front of them. Smiling at me running in the dark, smiling at Grace dying on the stage—making my heart drum and drum. Oh god, don’t look, just run, go, go, go, get help for Grace. Keep your eyes on the EXIT sign. Keep your eyes on—
The lights go black again. I’m in complete darkness.
Oh god.
What is this?
* * *
Music again. Everywhere. All around me like the dark. That same swell of strings.
The light is back. Faint. Red now. Coming from the stage behind me.
I turn around to find the set’s changed. Gone is Grace’s living room. Gone is Grace.
Now under the dim red light there’s a group of men on the stage. Men in blue hospital scrubs. Men in white lab coats. Men in polo shirts. The men are gathered around a long medical table.
“What’s this?” I say. The men onstage ignore me. So busy they are with whatever’s on the medical table.