“Where to next?” Annette asked.
I jumped at the sound of her loud whisper.
“It would be a lot more comforting if you weren’t so damned jumpy,” Annette commented. “Just a suggestion.”
“I’ll work on that. Let’s go.”
“Hold on,” Annette said, following me down the stairs to the lobby. “I thought you saw Isadora onstage? Shouldn’t we check out the main theater? Since we’re here, I mean.”
“I’d rather keep that for later.”
“Why?”
“Just in case.”
“Just in case of what?”
In case we’re scared and run, screaming, out into the night.
In case there’s another body draped over the Mighty Wurlitzer.
In case that creepy ghostly audience does more than jeer.
“Just . . . in case. The SFPD searched everywhere, right?”
“Yes, of course. We searched the entire theater. Nothing particularly pertinent was discovered.”
I led the way down the side corridor. “I can’t get over this pink paint. Can’t you just imagine what must be underneath?”
“Yeah, sure. Dying to know.” Annette did not sound sincere. She turned her head this way and that, constantly scanning the surroundings.
There wasn’t much to see in this hallway, though: Everything, from the baseboard, to the walls, to the ceiling, was painted that same shade of icky pink. Only the worn, decaying carpet on the floor broke the chromatic monotony. “Anyway, where are we going now?”
“The ladies’ lounge. That’s where Isadora was living. She told Skeet she had something to show him, and later that same day she was murdered.”
“Post hoc, ergo propter hoc?”
“I’m sorry?” Was Annette speaking in tongues now?
“It’s Latin. ‘After, therefore because of.’ It’s an assumption that because something came after something else it was caused by that something else. It’s a logical fallacy.”
“First Japanese and now Latin?”
“What can I say? I went to a rigorous high school. In other words, just because Isadora told Skeet before she died that she had something to show him doesn’t mean it was connected to her death, much less causally connected.”
“Can’t argue with that, in English or Latin. Anyway, we’re here.”
We stood in the mirrored vestibule that led to the ladies’ lounge.
There were the handprints in red paint on the mirror that I remembered seeing the last time I was here. But now there were others, the kind of heat imprints from hands that had just been there. As I watched, more appeared, then faded away, almost as though there were someone on the other side of the mirror, trying to get through. I felt a shiver on the back of my neck. The backwards world?
I turned to Annette. She was watching them as well.
“Art installation?” she suggested in a whisper.
“So you can see them, too?”
She nodded. “Art installation referencing the temporary nature of human life on Earth, perhaps?”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah. That’s probably what it is.”
The needle on the EMF reader hadn’t budged out of the red zone. I snapped more photos with the thermal camera, and checked the EVP recorder. It still hummed—recording something, I hoped.
I opened the door to the outer room of the ladies’ lounge, and we walked into chaos.
Isadora’s desk had been flipped on its side and ransacked, the drawers removed and flung on the floor. Papers, pens, paper clips, staplers, and vintage candy wrappers were strewn all across the threadbare carpet. The ancient divans and chaises longues had been sliced open with a knife and their stuffing ripped out. A ventilation grate had been pulled out of the floor and lay on its side.
“This is new,” Annette said. “It wasn’t like this when we searched the place. Somebody’s been busy.”
“Maybe a poltergeist?”
“More likely someone looking for something. What’s with all the old candy wrappers?”
“Tierney mentioned those. They’re not old. They’re vintage. Apparently, Isadora found them under the balcony seats.”
Annette stepped into the inner washroom, and I followed. Inside, I noted that the original marble toilet partitions were still intact, but most of the sinks had been pulled out. That would be why the taps were collected in the storage room I saw when here with Gregory, I supposed. Less clear was why they would have been pulled out.
Suddenly we heard the loud whir of a motor running and the strains of an organ playing. It sounded as if it were in the lounge with us, rather than all the way in the main theater.
“That’s not good,” I said.
“What the hell is that?” Annette whispered.
“The Mighty Wurlitzer.”
“Damn it. No one’s supposed to be in here.” She stopped and fixed me with a look. “Or are you saying the ghosts are doing this?”
“I’m not saying anything, at the moment.” I was fiddling with the EVP, which didn’t seem to be working anymore; then I realized the camera was also dead. I set the backpack on the ruined divan, took out some fresh batteries, and replaced the ones in the camera and recorder.
“What’s with you and that equipment?”
“The camera can sometimes capture things too fast for the human eye,” I said, “and the recorder—”
“Captures things too fast for the human ear?” Annette guessed.
“That’s what they say. Or on frequencies the naked ear can’t hear, I guess.”
“You believe that?” Annette raised one eyebrow, which always intimidated me. Luz could do it, as well. I was very jealous of this skill.
I shrugged. “We’ll check the results later, see if they show any—”
The overhead lights went off.
Annette switched on her flashlight, but it was dead, too. I was reaching for more batteries when a movie started to project onto the screen on the lounge’s far wall. It was in black and white and starred Isadora. It was a “silent” movie, and her lips moved without any sound.
“What the hell is going on?” asked Annette.
“There is a series of mirrors that projects the films in here so women wouldn’t miss anything while they were in the lounge.”
On-screen, Isadora began to dance. Her legs and arms moved to the music from the Wurlitzer, her long scarves fluttering gracefully behind her.
“So someone’s in the projection room right now? And why the hell is nothing working?” Annette was checking her phone and police radio, but in this energy hotbox, nothing worked.
“Batteries drain quickly in here,” I said, handing her fresh batteries for her flashlight. “I blame the ghosts.”
“Yeah, well, I’m in the mood to kick some spectral butt,” Annette said. “Let’s go see who we’re dealing with.”
“Wait. Look.” I gestured to the screen. Isadora had stopped dancing, and was laughing and speaking to the person behind the camera. The camera pulled in for a close-up, and the look on Isadora’s face turned from joy to anger, and then fear.
Gloved hands reached out, grabbed the ends of her long scarf, and pulled it tightly around her neck.
Chapter Eighteen
Isadora’s hands reached up, clawing at the scarf to loosen it, but the gloved hands kept pulling. Her head fell back, her mouth gaped open, her eyes bulged . . .
I couldn’t watch any more.
Annette ran out of the lounge, leaving me in the flickering light of the horrifying silent movie.
I scrounged in my backpack for my own flashlight and chased after Annette. The beam of my flashlight bounced as I ran down the pink hallway toward the main lobby, up the stairs past the mezzanine and balcony, then up the final flight of stairs to the small projection booth.
I
found Annette there, panting. She was alone.
Whoever—or whatever—had started the film projector was long gone. The movie was still playing, projecting on the raggedy curtain in the main theater below.
I glanced down. The image was distorted by the folds of the drapery, yet horrifyingly clear. Isadora was still dying, still being strangled. I looked away.
“Why does it smell like popcorn in here?” Annette said softly. “Is that just the power of suggestion?”
“I’m afraid not.” Above the strains of the Mighty Wurlitzer, I could now hear the audience. “Do you hear anything?”
“I hear the organ. It’s like a player piano, I presume? Or wait a minute—do you ‘see’ someone playing? Also . . . how is it that there’s power for the projector, but not for the overhead lights?”
I peered out the small project room window. The Wurlitzer did seem to be playing itself, but the balcony was now full of ghosts.
One man turned his vacant-looking face toward me. Then the woman beside him, and then another and another. They began to yell and jeer as the film came to an end, leaving only the bright white light projected onto the curtain.
I blew out a breath and remembered to ground myself.
What did they want? What did they need? Who was this phantom audience, and could they tell me anything?
“Mel?” Annette asked. “You still with me?”
I nodded. “I’m going to check out the balcony.”
“I don’t think so. Time for us to go, Mel. My radio and phone aren’t working, and I need to call in some uniforms to go over this place, inch by inch.”
“I get it, Annette. But I promise you, we’re dealing with ghosts here.”
“It was a flesh-and-blood person who put this film on. Someone who likes Good and Plenty.” She pointed at a movie-theater-sized box of candy on the floor. “Likely the same someone who made this grotesque film in the first place.”
She pulled on a pair of gloves, removed the film reel from the projector, and put it into an evidence bag, along with the box of Good & Plenty. “Put these in your backpack, will you? Let’s go.”
We headed out of the projection room and made our way down the steep stairs, the pitch-blackness interrupted only by the increasingly dim beams of our flashlights. I switched mine off to preserve what was left of the battery and followed Annette closely, holding tight to the railing.
We reached the balcony landing and started down to the mezzanine, where we saw light peeking out from below the double doors to the main theater and heard the organ and the sounds of laughter.
“This is bizarre,” Annette said. She sounded angry.
“I have to agree with you there,” I said. The trip down the stairs seemed to take forever.
At the mezzanine level, we came face-to-face with the ghostly usher.
“May I help you to your seats?”
As before, his voice was out of sync with the movement of his mouth.
I ignored him.
By now we had reached the small seating area of the mezzanine. One more flight to the lobby. The fire doors were closed; they had been open when we went up.
Annette pushed on one of the doors. “This isn’t good.”
“What?” I asked. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“You’re going to like this even less. The fire door is locked.”
“What? How is that possible? There aren’t supposed to be locks on fire doors.”
“Beats me. Where’s the emergency exit?”
“This way.”
But the emergency exit door was also locked. Considering the rusty condition of the bolts on the fire escape outside that might have been just as well.
“Now what?” I asked Annette.
She was looking around and sniffing. “Do you smell smoke?”
My heart raced for a moment; then I sniffed and relaxed.
“That’s cigarette smoke. Back in the day, people were allowed to smoke in the theater.”
“But who’s smoking those cigarettes?” Annette demanded. The idea that what we were hearing and smelling had a ghostly origin was not in any way comforting to her.
“Let’s keep looking,” I said. “Surely there’s another way out.”
Wait a minute. I thought back to the original floor plans Baldwin had shown me earlier in the day. There should have been a door to the service stairs somewhere.
“Check the paneling,” I said.
“Okay. What are we looking for?”
“A raised panel of some kind. There should be a door to the stairs used by the staff during performances.”
Annette and I began feeling around, the flashlight growing dimmer every moment.
“Found it!” Annette said, and a panel opened to a narrow passageway with stairs leading down. “Follow me.”
At the bottom of the stairs, there was a door that led onto an alcove in the main theater. Annette pushed it open.
The phantom usher stood there, right in front of us.
“Ma’am, I must insist you show your ticket stub.”
Annette slammed the door in his face and leaned back against it.
“I don’t think he can actually do anything to us,” I said.
“He? He who?”
“The usher. You didn’t see him?”
“I didn’t see a damned thing, but I smell that smoke and hear people laughing. That’s not another art installation, is it?”
“Let’s put a pin in that for the moment and see if this leads to an exit.”
We continued down the corridor, which led backstage. I was reminded that the Crockett had not only been a movie theater, but had had vaudeville shows requiring makeup rooms and changing rooms for the actors.
In one room a woman in silk pants and a teddy was sitting in front of a mirror. Her spectral head swiveled toward us as we passed.
In another, a man in short pants and suspenders waggled his eyebrows and leered.
“Just keep walking,” I said, not sure how much Annette could see or hear, but knowing now was not the time to discuss it.
The flashlight was growing dimmer, but our way was lit by the light from the makeup tables.
We kept going, checking anything that looked like an exit, but they were all locked.
“Can’t you find another secret door?” Annette said, pushing all the panels she could find, just in case.
“I’m working on it,” I said.
Finally, one opened, and we peered inside. A set of metal stairs led down into a dank, dark space. The basement, I presumed.
Annette directed the fading flashlight beam down the stairs. “Do you see anything—”
“Ahhhh!” I screamed.
Annette pulled out her gun in one swift move, shoved me behind her, and crouched into a shooter’s stance, scanning for an attacker.
“Police!” she called out. “Freeze!”
“Sorry,” I said, chagrined, as I frantically wiped at my cheeks and forehead. “Spiderweb, right in the face. Don’t you just hate that?”
Annette glared. “If I drop dead of a heart attack, you’re going to be here all alone. You know that, right?”
“I’ll get a grip.”
“See that you do.” Annette started down the stairs.
I took a moment to repeat my mantra, held tight to the handrail, and followed. Vertigo began to set in, and I tried to turn back, but the door banged shut behind me. I tried the handle. It was locked. I swore under my breath, and I heard Annette do the same.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” I said, but I slowly progressed down farther into the belly of the beast.
“Of course it isn’t. It’s a terrible idea. But what other options do we have? We were locked in up there, and personally I don’t fancy the idea of spending the night in this hellh
ole.”
We paused near the bottom of the stairs.
“Do you hear that?” I asked.
“Now what?” Annette said. “Another ghostly usher?”
“Water.”
There was a dripping sound and a trickling.
“We must be in the caverns,” I said.
“Is that bad or good?”
“It depends. If there’s a siege, we’re all good.”
“This is spooky as hell,” Annette whispered, her voice reverberating off the rock walls. “And my flashlight’s going out again.”
Just then it went from dim to dead. I tried mine, but it was the same story.
We both stood stock-still. It was pitch-black, uninterrupted by the slightest light. We were, indeed, in the belly of the beast.
“Wait. My camera has an infrared lens,” I said, feeling for it in the backpack.
“Give it here,” said Annette.
I couldn’t see a damned thing, but I assumed she was looking through it. I heard her gasp.
And at the top of the stairs, the door flew open.
A man loomed there, backlit by light. I blinked, blinded by the sudden brightness after the black of the underground caverns.
Before I had time to react, Annette had her gun out and was holding it in front of her.
Unfortunately, the man at the top of the stairs had a gun pointed at us, as well.
Chapter Nineteen
You scared the living bejesus out of me!” said Skeet the security guard, holstering his weapon and illuminating the steps with a large flashlight. “Pardon my language, ladies. Are you all right? What’s going on?”
Annette and I hurried up the stairs to join him, our footsteps clanging on the metal steps, ringing out in the underground cavern. I hardly felt any vertigo this time, anxious as I was to leave this sepulchre.
“We’re fine,” I said with a nod. “But glad to see you. We seemed to be locked in.”
“You’re fine, good,” he said, then glanced at Annette. “Inspector, are you okay?”
The Last Curtain Call Page 18
