by Louise Beech
‘What’s Chester going on about?’ asks Paige. She’s nineteen and a drama student, like most of the ushers here.
‘What do you mean?’ asks Nina. She’s forty-two and an out-of-work actress who also waitresses and walks dogs.
‘He’s been going on about something coming back.’
‘Bloody drama queen,’ cries Chloe.
‘Aren’t we all?’ laughs Nina.
‘Wonder what he meant though.’ Paige puts a coffee cup into the bin bag.
‘You know Chester,’ says Chloe. ‘It’ll be something and nothing.’
She takes the rubbish bags out to the skip at the rear of the building. To get there, she has to go backstage – an area reserved for authorised people; access is via a door with a keypad. It’s Chloe’s favourite part of the theatre. Here there are the four large dressing rooms. Here the actors bustle back and forth, speedily changing attire, hovering in the shadows until their cue. Here it smells of hot lights and sweat and old costumes.
Now the actors are removing make-up, enjoying after-show drinks and rushing off to greet families who have come to see the musical. Squeezing past the racks of costumes in the corridor, Chloe glances at the only dressing-room door with a name on it. The two words are etched inside a gold star; Morgan Miller. The room has been occupied by lead actor George Dewitt and as far as Chloe knows he hasn’t made any complaints about it.
‘Give him time,’ Chester said at the start of the run.
But clearly the dressing room that has had so many other actors requesting a different one over the years doesn’t faze George. He sneezes heartily as Chloe passes on her way back to the box office.
Cynthia asks the ushers how things were. Paige reports the comments she overheard. Chloe makes something up, since she has forgotten hers. Cynthia reminds them that they must check all the fire exits every single shift and says that there will be a big announcement next week.
Behind her back, Chester arches his eyebrows knowingly at them.
Chloe shakes her head at him.
She heads into the main foyer to escape. The red carpet is a little tired and the O on the Box Office sign keeps going out, but the pictures of the big actors who have been in shows here line the walls, fingerprints blurring their faces. Chloe recalls her first day, looking around at the posters and drinking in the atmosphere. She couldn’t believe that she would be working at the iconic DW theatre. That was six years ago. It doesn’t command quite the same respect today. Slumping sales and badly received shows mean audiences have dwindled and the décor needs a touch-up.
Chester grabs Chloe’s arm, pulling her from her reverie.
‘It’s—’
‘Don’t tell me,’ she laughs. ‘It’s coming back! OK, what is? Your sex drive? Your memory?’ She shakes her head. ‘Sorry, Ches. I’m just tired tonight.’
And a bit spooked, she wants to add.
‘I never thought they’d do it,’ whispers Chester.
‘Do what?’
‘Have it here again.’
‘Have what?’
‘Dust.’
‘Dust…?’ Chloe frowns. ‘You mean…?’
‘Yes, the musical,’ he says, squeezing her arm.
‘Here again?’ A shiver runs up Chloe’s back. She looks around, but the main doors are closed.
‘Yes. It’s coming in September.’
‘Surely not? Isn’t that … well, bad taste or something?’
‘How can they not?’ demands Chester. ‘Ticket sales have slumped so much recently. And how shit is Forget Everything You Know? How shit was that one last month? This will be a sensation!’
‘I suppose. But…’
‘What?’ he asks.
‘Well, look what happened last time…’
‘That’s why they’ll all flock to it again, won’t they? That show made this place.’
‘For all the wrong reasons,’ says Chloe, still cold despite a glimmer of excitement at the thought of maybe seeing Dust again.
‘Who gives a crap about that. It was our first, our best, and if you think about it, it never finished its run.’
‘Because someone died,’ cries Chloe.
‘Well, I can’t bloody wait!’
‘Is it really coming, Ches, or is it just gossip?’
‘I saw it on Cynthia’s computer,’ he insists. Then more unsure, he adds, ‘I think. But you heard what she said about a big announcement. The press will go fucking wild. I bet we sell out in an hour. And we work here. We’ll see it all – be part of it.’
‘It just feels so … I don’t know…’
‘Oh, you’ll change your mind when the atmosphere in here is electric again.’ He pauses. ‘You’re so lucky – you saw the original.’
‘So did you. You’ve worked here since the beginning.’
‘I was ill that week.’
‘Of course you were.’ Chloe recalls his often-shared tale of woe, of how he had flu when Dust opened the theatre.
‘You’re one of the few here who saw it. Aren’t you excited?’
Chloe isn’t sure. She should be.
The songs have haunted her ever since.
But she can’t help thinking that those lyrics belong only in her head now.
3
The Dean Wilson Theatre
January 2019
When Chester has gone, Chloe heads backstage. She keys in the door code and then stands in the chilly concrete space between the dressing rooms; it’s eerily quiet now the actors have departed. She fingers the row of costumes on the rack in the corridor, imagines them coming to life when no one is around, like the dolls in The Nutcracker.
Chloe smiles and shakes her head. An overactive imagination is a blessing when it comes to trying to write scenes in her room – here, it is a curse. And, oh, is she cursed with it. Her mum used to tell her frequently that she was born for the theatre – she used to say, when Chloe was younger and passionately performed her own little songs or skits, that she ‘glowed’. She would applaud vivaciously; smile proudly.
Now Chloe glances at the Morgan Miller dressing-room door. She can never help but look at it. It is shut now and the lower points of the gold star are tarnished, as if it has fallen from grace. Over the years, many ushers have reported seeing curious shadows moving on the stairs; exchanged frenzied tales of sounds coming from inside this dressing room.
Singing.
Crying.
Shrieking.
Chester loves to spook everyone with the story of how he definitely saw Morgan’s ghost here, dressed as the ethereal Esme, waiting to go on stage one last time. Some of the ushers don’t like to come back here when it’s empty, and persuade someone else to go with them. Chloe has no choice. Her bike is around the back. She makes hearty fun of those who need to pair up, but she can’t say she hasn’t felt things too: goose bumps when she looks at the Morgan Miller star; an icy draught on her neck when she passes this door; a soft rustle of movement that she can’t be sure she has imagined.
The voice on the radio earlier was spooky. The words about being under a roof unnerved her. Thoughts of the incident that occurred in Morgan Miller’s dressing room creep into her mind. She shakes her head to get rid of them.
She’s about to hurry down the stone steps to the fire exit where her bike is chained when she hears it.
The creak of a door opening.
Chloe frowns. Stiffens. Waits. She is too scared to turn around and look back.
So don’t, she thinks. Don’t.
But she does.
The Morgan Miller dressing-room door is open. Chloe blinks, hoping that when she opens her eyes again it will be shut, just as she knows for certain it was earlier. No. It is wide open. Inviting. Gaping like the mouth in the famous Scream painting. She should run, but her feet are made of stone.
Another sound. A voice? Her name? Sung like the line from a musical? Why does the lilt of it stir something in her stomach? Some memory long gone.
No. She’s hearing things.
But the door is real. Still open.
She goes towards it, her heart screaming not to.
The dressing room is empty. George Dewitt’s things are scattered across the surfaces; ostentatious spectacles and scarves and make-up pots. The grey wig he wears in the show is perched on a mannequin’s head. Someone has drawn black eyes on its face, giving it an evil look.
Chloe steps inside.
She never comes into this dressing room to stare in the mirror and imagine being on stage. She can’t remember the last time she was in here.
Yes, you can, she thinks.
No. I can’t.
The original poster for Dust hangs on the wall. It’s yellowed at the edges and torn where its weight has pulled it free from drawing pins. It’s forbidden for anyone to take it down. Chloe moves closer to it. A coating of dust on the surface traps the light, so it looks like it’s sprinkled with glitter.
‘I am Dust,’ she whispers.
Surely it isn’t really coming back. Chester has got things wrong before, like the time he told them all that Tom Hardy was going to be in a show and it turned out it was local actor Tom Hardling.
Dean Wilson wrote the show to open the brand-new theatre twenty years ago. It sold out in minutes. The lavish musical set in Victorian England told the story of Esme Black, a housemaid who fell for her employer, wealthy doctor Gerard Chevalier. But he loved Lady Louisa Pearse, a vivacious and flighty creature. While Chevalier and Louisa were kissing at a garden party in his house, Esme hurled herself from the balcony and died at his feet. After that, she haunted Chevalier day and night, until he succumbed, fell in love with her ghost and committed suicide to be with her.
There was a huge battle for the role of Esme; actresses slept with producers; agents paid money to those who might sway the decision; actresses made recordings of themselves crooning the melancholic songs and sent them to anyone who mattered. But after a two-minute, breath-taking audition that silenced the room, Morgan Miller won the role.
Chloe saw it the night it opened, snuggled up to her mum.
During the interval on the fourth night of the run – press night – Morgan Miller was found dead in her dressing room.
Hit over the head repeatedly with a heavy object.
The show shut down.
The killer was never caught.
The theatre stayed open, though, and became a place of macabre interest. Ticket sales flourished, and stayed high for a long time, even if the quality of the productions declined. Now though, nothing seems to bring audiences in, not even the exaggerated tales of how Morgan Miller haunts the shadowy passages backstage.
But Chester thinks it’s coming back.
Dust.
If it did, who would play Esme Black? Does Chloe have the versatility, the passion, or the ability to do it? Could she portray shy, desperate Esme; and could she evoke the ghostly enchantress Esme, on the other side? Even if she could … her body. Her damaged body. No. There’s no chance. But how amazing it would be to become Esme Black. To be part of the show that made her fall in love with the theatre.
Chloe looks at the two faces on the poster.
A lank-haired Morgan Miller looks into a mirror as the nondescript living Esme; but the reflection is the russet-lipped, golden-haired ghost who teases and taunts poor Dr Chevalier until he joins her in death. Chloe turns to the dressing-room mirror. She is also two opposing women. The one in the glass, with raven hair and neat eyebrows, smiles warmly and gives nothing away; the one with a heart beating too fast is afraid she will never be a success in the theatre.
But there is something else in the mirror.
On the mirror.
Small.
In the top corner of the glass, half hidden by one of the lights. How did she not notice before? Were they even there then? Chloe frowns at her own questions, wondering where they came from. They look like words written in black eye pencil. She moves closer, squints at the tiny capital letters. Then she gasps and leaps back:
YOU THREE NEVER BE UNDER ONE ROOF
What the hell? What three? It’s just her.
But isn’t that what someone whispered on the radio earlier?
Yes.
Again, a dark memory uncoils in her gut like a black ghost rising from a grave.
When did she last see those words?
Somewhere…
But how are they here on this mirror? Chloe looks wildly around. Who wrote them? When? She suddenly sees her friends from the youth theatre. Jess and Ryan. Jess Swanson and Ryan … She can’t remember. But she hasn’t spoken to either of them for at least fourteen years. And why have they popped into her head? Why here? Now? What is it about these words?
YOU THREE NEVER BE UNDER ONE ROOF
Chloe has no clue what they mean.
You do, you just don’t want to remember…
4
The Dean Wilson Theatre
January 2019
Chloe opens her eyes.
Where is she? A floor, hard, cold. What’s that? A dark shadow shimmers, moves closer. Someone leans over her, their face elongated, ghostly, menacing; their mouth moves around some words, a song, one she knows; a hand reaches for her throat.
No. It’s just … just Chester. Reaching to help her sit up.
‘What are you doing down there?’ he asks.
Chloe looks around. She’s in the Morgan Miller dressing room.
‘Must have been one of my blackouts.’ She rubs the back of her head.
‘Again?’ Chester’s face comes into full focus, his forehead creased with concern. ‘You’ve had two this month. Shouldn’t you see someone?’
‘Ches, I have. They can’t figure it out; said it’s not gonna hurt me.’
‘Unless it happens when you’re high up somewhere … or in water.’
‘I never swim. And I hate heights.’
Chloe gets up, wipes herself down. She has been having blackouts for as long as she can remember. She thinks since she was a teenager, though she can’t be sure. Experts call it syncope – a temporary loss of consciousness caused by a sudden lack of blood flowing to the brain. Chloe has had all kinds of tests to ascertain what causes it in her case – including an ECG – but the doctor say she’s perfectly healthy aside from slightly low blood pressure. She can go months without passing out; then it can happen three times in a week. She’s never out for longer than a minute or two.
‘I’m fine,’ she insists to appease Chester.
Then she remembers.
The mirror.
The words.
YOU THREE NEVER BE UNDER ONE ROOF.
Again, the sickly feeling of something she can’t quite explain engulfs her. She pushes Chester aside and approaches the mirror. Leans closer and squints at the top corner. Nothing there.
‘What are you looking for?’ asks Chester.
‘I…’ Chloe doesn’t know what to say. She definitely doesn’t want to say those creepy words aloud. Did she imagine them? Did she imagine the door being open? No. That was real. But the words? Can she be absolutely sure?
‘Chloe?’ Chester is studying her.
‘What are you doing here anyway?’ she asks, shaking her head.
‘I forgot my headphones and the front doors are locked now. Let me get them and we should go. It’s late.’
They leave the dressing room together. Chloe looks back one last time. For a fleeting moment she is sure the words are there again, in the top corner of the mirror, the small letters as menacing as tiny drops of blood leading to a body.
But she blinks, and they are gone.
5
The Dean Wilson Theatre
January 2019
The following evening Chloe finds herself at the Morgan Miller dressing-room door again, fingers around the handle, as if she might go inside. With a gasp, she pulls her hand away, shaking it as though to waft away a fly.
It’s deathly quiet. The show must be over. She looks behind her and cries out: something ghostlike is floa
ting mid-air at the end of the corridor.
But it’s just a white dress hanging from the costume rail.
What the hell is she doing here?
She came to get her bike. Yes, that’s it. But she must have been standing here for twenty minutes. She looks at her watch. 11.15. How did she lose track of time like this? It makes no sense. The shift earlier was an easy one. Chester was quiet; no more mention of Dust. The audience was small, as usual. And the radios only broadcast messages about the intervals and latecomers. Nothing out of the ordinary and yet, standing here alone, Chloe feels fingers of icy dread scrape sharp nails down her spine.
No; the cold is real. The air is as chill as when she opens the upstairs freezer to get ice creams for the interval. Her breath mists the air like the effects in a bad horror film. She needs to get a grip.
And then she hears it.
Footsteps on the stairs.
Someone is coming down from the rehearsal room.
An actor?
‘Who’s there?’ Chloe calls, still unable to move.
The sound stops.
‘Is that you, Chester?’ she cries, sure he’s left already.
Are you though? You don’t even know how long you’ve been here.
Silence.
Chloe moves away from the dressing-room door, towards the stairs. As she does, the footsteps begin again, this time hastily retreating.
Angry that someone is taunting her, Chloe chases them. But as she ascends the concrete steps, a choking cloud of pungent, lavender perfume engulfs her. Launching into a coughing fit, she has to grip the metal rail until she can breathe properly again.
When she finally reaches the top of the stairs, the corridor is empty. The nearby green room and rehearsal space are dark. But the essence of lavender lingers.
