In the hallway, he almost immediately ran into the gorgon lady.
“Mrs. Cadwell,” he said. “Do you teach here?”
“What?” said the gorgon. “Of course I don’t.”
“Then why,” Paul asked, “can’t I take ten steps outside the Ashcroft-Tate Auditorium without running into you?”
The gorgon’s eyebrows rose against her forehead. “Mr. Samson, I have no idea what your problems are today, but I’ll thank you not to take them out on me.”
“Then you’d have no idea what I was talking about if I asked you if you happened to have a radio transmitter concealed about your person? Or if one of your PTA members has a thing for lingerie?”
Mrs. Cadwell stared at him. “No, I most certainly would not. But this sounds like something I should bring up with Mr. Winston.”
“You go ahead,” Paul said. “The sooner I get an explanation, the better.”
Then he stormed off before he stuck his foot any deeper into his mouth. As soon as he had spoken the words, Paul realized what they must sound like. And how would the gorgon sneak a tiny receiver and speaker into the lamp, anyway? James Bond would have difficulty pulling that off. Had she hired a spy? Or enlisted the services of the NSA? He’d be lucky if the gorgon only accused him of harassment, rather than of having lost his mind.
Sure enough, he hadn’t made it to the teachers’ lounge before Mrs. Kennedy was calling him on his cell phone. That, in itself, was unusual. Winston must have run out of runners in detention. The week was young, after all.
“I had a very interesting chat with Mrs. Cadwell just now,” Winston mentioned casually once Paul had entered his office and taken position standing behind one of the visitor chairs. “She suggested that you were acting peculiar towards her in the hallway.”
“Yes,” Paul admitted. “It may have seemed that way. I’ll have to apologize to her.” How it galled him to say that. “Someone has been playing tricks on me. I ran into Mrs. Cadwell so quickly after the last one that I accused her without thinking things through.”
“Tricks?” said Winston. “Students play tricks on their teachers all the time. Last week provided ample evidence of that. Why would you accuse the head of the PTA?”
Paul wasn’t convinced that students had anything to do with the previous week’s shenanigans but was just as happy that Winston appeared to be putting them behind him. “Like I said, I wasn’t thinking. Of course Mrs. Cadwell isn’t responsible. It just seems odd that she is always hanging around the school.”
Winston nodded and Paul could see that this bothered the principal as well. Perhaps he’d found an ally. The administrator added, “Mrs. Cadwell takes her job perhaps too seriously. The woman has too much time on her hands and is always looking for trouble, even when there is none to be found. And sometimes she makes her own trouble.”
Opening a drawer of his desk, Winston pulled out a framed picture and set it out so Paul could see. It was one of the leaflets with the cartoon gorgon lady. “Jerry Noonan is still finding these leaflets around the school.”
“Still no word on who made them?” Paul asked.
Winston shook his head. “They’ve left Mrs. Cadwell on a hair trigger. I suggest you steer clear of her.”
“Sage advice,” Paul said. Winston really was in a good mood. Nothing earth shattering must have happened this week . . . yet.
“That is all,” Winston said.
Paul slowly made his way to the door. It didn’t feel like that was all. As his hand touched the doorknob, Winston coughed. “Oh, by the way, how’s that play of yours coming?”
Winston didn’t have to say which play. Paul had three classes, but he meant the senior class. Macbeth.
Paul turned and leaned back against the door. “It’s coming along nicely. Some of the students are even surprising me. They’ve really taken to it.”
Winston frowned. “Have they?”
“Oh, yes.” Paul nodded.
The principal pursed his lips. “Kim Greyson will be back in class tomorrow.”
“Good,” Paul said.
Winston leaned back into his chair. “I understand that Kim has a full leg cast. And crutches. You’ll see that you don’t put too much strain on him, will you?”
“Of course,” Paul said. And he fled the principal’s office.
Scene 4: Come, You Spirits
Dwelling on the mystery of the lingerie lady and the voice in the lamp, Paul swallowed a lunch he didn’t taste then went shopping, something he abhorred because he was so lousy at it. But what increasingly worried him was Winston’s less-than-subtle instructions to leave Mrs. Cadwell alone while she quietly plotted the destruction of his play.
He may have told Winston what he wanted to hear, that the gorgon lady couldn’t be responsible for any of the weird goings-on, things that could only get the play cancelled. But who else would bother? Mrs. Cadwell wasn’t just his prime suspect; she was his only suspect. And now he couldn’t even point a finger.
Winston was laughing at him. He could sit there behind his desk, wiping sweat from his face, and pretend he was on Paul’s side. Meanwhile, he was stacking the deck in the gorgon’s favour. When the play failed, Winston would shrug and tell Paul that he tried but that Cadwell was too much for the both of them.
By the time Paul returned to the school, he had decided to just focus on his students and ignore the gorgon lady and her tricks. Maybe whoever had retaliated for the leaflets would continue to deal with Mrs. Cadwell. Paul just had to keep his nose clean. Sometimes the best offense really was a good defense.
Ten minutes before the bell for his fourth-period class, Paul hovered over a table in the backstage storage area of the Ashcroft-Tate Auditorium. He screwed the new bulb into the lamp and turned it on. The lamp came to life, flickering like a burning candle. Then the bulb went pop and let out an acrid smell.
Which was why Paul hated shopping.
He unscrewed the new bulb and compared it to the old one. “It’s the right bulb,” he said aloud.
“Yes, it is,” said a pleasant female voice. “That was me, I’m afraid. Sorry about that.”
Paul lifted his head and looked around. Apart from boxes, tables, closets, and scenery flats, the storage area was empty. But the voice no longer sounded like it came from a tiny speaker in the lamp, a speaker he had never found. This voice was full and rich, as though its source were standing right in front of him.
Then it hit him. He wasn’t being tricked. He was going insane.
In a strange way, he felt relief. The gorgon lady hadn’t employed the services of secret agents or the NSA. Her attacks had simply driven him mad. Then he frowned as he wondered if insanity might be worse than the gorgon lady upping her game.
“I suppose I should explain,” said the voice.
Paul was surprised that the voice didn’t feel as if it were in his head. He was definitely hearing it though his ears. He didn’t think insanity worked that way. The school library should have some books—
“You can hear me, can’t you?” A note of fear touched the voice.
Paul turned his head, trying to focus his eyes instead of his ears on the source. Maybe there was a second speaker, in addition to the one he hadn’t found in the lamp. The voice seemed to be coming from an empty space between two costume racks.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Oh!” said the voice, excited this time. “You can hear me. It feels like forever since anyone has heard me.”
“Who are you?” Paul repeated.
“How rude of me. I’m Scarlet. And you’re Paul Samson. I’ve overheard your wife and the students call you that. Oh. That’s rude too. Overhearing, I mean. I had no control over that. Though that’s all I’ve pretty much been able to do for years. Of course, I’ve spent most of my time in a basement, under the stairs, I think, and there wasn’t much to hear. I thought I’d go mad. What year is it, anyway? I miss having a watch.”
The words had come as a torrent, and it took Paul a
moment to realize they included a question. “What year is it?”
“It’s not important, I suppose,” said the voice. Scarlet. “But I am curious.”
Paul didn’t see anything wrong with telling her. “Twenty-fifteen.”
“Oh,” Scarlet said. “I thought it would be later. I guess time moves more slowly when you don’t sleep.”
“Could you answer one of my questions?” Paul asked.
“Of course!”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Scarlet. I thought I mentioned that. Scarlet Walker.”
Paul had the odd feeling he should know that name. It was at the tip of his thoughts. “Okay, Scarlet. Perhaps you could tell me where you are.”
“But you’re looking right— Oh, you can’t see me, can you? Let me try something.”
As Paul watched, a twenty-something Lady Macbeth, decked out in a flowing crimson dress with Celtic-patterned trim and long, black, braided hair, materialized into view. Paul recognized her instantly. “You’re the actress who died!”
“Oh!” said Scarlet, her expression brightening. “Am I famous?”
Paul wasn’t sure how to answer that. Fame held deeper meaning for actors than for other people. Then he realized what he had just said.
“You’re dead! How can you be talking to me?”
Scarlet turned her head slightly as she thought about that. “I’m pretty sure that I’m a ghost. I remember dying and everyone gathered ’round, crying and wringing their hands. It was touching, really. Bill was a little over the top, but he always did overdo things. Then I remember paramedics arriving and shaking their heads and carrying my body away. Oh, and Simon! Simon looked devastated. He kept saying that it was his fault. I stayed near Simon, trying to calm him down and getting exactly nowhere. He was weeping as he packed up his box of props. And then, when he turned off his wall lamp, I found myself inside it. I remember thinking it was like a genie in a bottle. But I knew I wasn’t a genie. I was a ghost. I think that my breaking the replacement bulb let me out.”
Throughout this explanation, Paul’s mind ran a mile a minute. There were two possible explanations here, three if you included insanity. Either ghosts were real, and everything Scarlet was saying was true. Or the gorgon’s convoluted, secret agent plot to cancel Macbeth had attained a completely new level of complication.
Paul could only think of one way to find out. “Do you think you died because the play is cursed?”
“Cursed?” Scarlet’s eyes widened. “I never believed in those stories. I wouldn’t have tried out for the part if I had.” She touched the folds of her long, red dress with delicate fingers. “Of course, I never believed in ghosts either. So I don’t know if the play is cursed. I do think that, knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t disbelieve in curses.”
Paul rubbed his eyes. Could her answer be more vague?
Scarlet wasn’t finished, however. “I don’t think that you should disbelieve in curses either. As much as Macbeth is my favourite Shakespeare play, it may not be worth the risk of continuing.”
Paul gave no warning as he lunged forward to touch Scarlet’s arm. The woman’s jaw dropped even as she let out a loud gasp and took an involuntary couple of steps backward. Paul succeeded in merely brushing his fingers through an intangible sleeve. Not that he had expected to touch a flesh-and-blood person.
“What are you doing?” Scarlet shrieked. She backed even farther away.
Rather than try to touch her again, Paul dashed to one side, running as much of a circle around the young woman as the costume racks would allow. Scarlet spun in place, watching him with a mix of fear and curiosity. At no time did her image falter due to Paul’s passing in front of a projector.
Paul was no technical whiz, but he had watched enough television to know about 3-D projection systems and the possibilities of holographic representations. When he failed to disrupt Scarlet’s image, he looked up toward the ceiling, the perfect place for such a system. But the only lights he saw were the normal backstage lighting.
“A gentleman,” Scarlet said, her voice frosty, “would have asked to touch me. I would have agreed.”
Paul let out a pent-up breath. “I don’t believe in ghosts. This is a trick. You’re just helping the gorgon lady to cancel the play.”
Scarlet stared at him. “You don’t believe in ghosts, but you believe in gorgons?”
Paul was about to answer when the fourth-period bell rang. His first-year students would be arriving.
Scarlet cocked an ear and began fading away.
“Wait!” Paul cried. But she was gone.
Scene 5: Rest, Rest, Perturbed Spirit!
Paul, Sylvia, and Susie sat at the supper table, enjoying a pot roast, carrots, potatoes, and gravy. Everything was perfect, and Paul was loath to destroy it all by bringing up the subject of ghosts. But he had been agonizing about it all afternoon and was at his wit’s end.
If he was being tricked, he had been unable to reveal the trick or even identify the trickster. While he wouldn’t put it past Mrs. Cadwell to go to any extreme to get her way, enlisting the NSA or some other black ops agency with the know-how to pull this off, it just wasn’t her style. And why would such people help her? It was a high school play, not some plot for world domination.
And if the ghost was real, perhaps so was the curse.
He couldn’t decide which explanation scared him more.
“I encountered a ghost today,” he said then waited for the laughter.
“Someone from your past?” asked Sylvia. She was smiling but not laughing. Susie was texting on her phone and probably hadn’t even heard him.
“Ah,” Paul said. “Not my past. Simon Riordan’s.”
“Who?”
“My high school drama teacher.”
“Of course,” said Sylvia. “You haven’t mentioned him in years. You saw Mr. Riordan?”
“Not Riordan, no.” Paul realized he was messing this up. “A friend of his. They both performed in a community theatre production of Macbeth.”
Sylvia frowned. “I thought you said Mr. Riordan was just a teacher. Like you. Did he act before becoming a high school teacher?”
The phrase just a teacher grated on Paul’s nerves. He knew Sylvia didn’t mean anything by it, but it grated just the same. “That’s what I thought. Apparently he was leading a double life and performing in plays after school.”
“Mr. Riordan’s friend told you this?” Sylvia asked.
Paul realized he needed to set the conversation back on course. “If only it was that simple. When I said I saw a ghost, I meant a real ghost.”
Sylvia smiled again. “As in walking through walls and rattling chains?”
Susie had put down her phone and was now paying attention. She, too, allowed a smile to bend her lips.
“No rattling,” Paul said. “But she did talk a lot. I suppose it’s because she’d had no one to talk to in twenty years.”
A short “Ha!” escaped Susie’s mouth.
“She?” Sylvia’s expression said the rest.
“Twenty-something,” Paul said, creating some distance. “Dressed as Lady Macbeth. She died. It was Simon Riordan’s last play. He quit acting and teaching when it happened.”
“Lady Macbeth!” said Susie.
“And where,” asked Sylvia, “did you meet this ghost?”
“She was trapped inside a prop.” Paul looked at Susie. “That lamp that broke today. It belonged to Riordan and was part of the set when Scarlet died.”
“So your ghost has a name?” said Sylvia.
“Everyone has a name, Mother,” Susie said. She looked at Paul. “Scarlet was playing the part of Lady Macbeth when she died? That’s my part.”
“Surely there are no such things as ghosts,” said Sylvia. “Who is this woman?”
“That’s just it.” Paul sagged in his chair. “Of course I don’t believe in ghosts. But she appeared and disappeared, just like a ghost. And my hand went right through her.”
> “You touched this woman?” asked Sylvia.
“Let it go,” Susie said, looking sharply at her mother. “Jealousy doesn’t become you.”
“I’m not jealous,” Sylvia said, perhaps a bit too loudly. “I’m just concerned that your father is being played.”
“As am I,” Paul said. “All the evidence says that this woman is a ghost, which is impossible. And if she is not a ghost, why is she pretending to be one?”
“What does she want?” Susie asked.
Paul thought for a moment. Scarlet hadn’t asked for anything, except for him to believe her. But that wasn’t quite true. “She suggested that Macbeth may really be cursed and that I might want to cancel the play.”
“Not that lame curse.” Paul’s daughter rolled her eyes.
“You know about the curse?” Paul asked.
“Well, duh!” said Susie. “Who doesn’t?”
“There you have it,” said Sylvia. “Mrs. Cadwell put her up to it. Did you know that since her leaflet stunt failed, she’s passing around a petition to cancel the play?”
“What!” said Susie, echoing Paul’s unspoken reaction. “That bitch!”
Sylvia slapped her hand on the table. “Language, young lady.”
Susie glared at her mother, unrepentant. “It’s a heartfelt response. No gratuitousness included.”
Sylvia glared back. “We all know what Mrs. Cadwell is. It doesn’t bear repeating.”
“Ladies,” said Paul, a little surprised that his wife and daughter had stronger feelings regarding the gorgon lady than he did. “You’re not helping my dilemma. What should I do about the ghost?”
“Well, you’re not going to cancel the play,” said Susie. “It’s the most fun I’ve had at school since . . . ever.”
“Susie’s right,” Sylvia said. “You don’t know this woman. And she’s certainly no ghost.”
“But what should I do?”
“Play along,” said Sylvia. “She’ll slip up. I’ll be in class again tomorrow, and the three of us can keep an eye out.”
Scene 6: Here Comes the Good Macduff
Much Ado about Macbeth Page 10
