The invisible orchestra honked and sputtered to a halt, Knuckles’s hands stubbornly jabbing out one or two more disjointed chords. Olive heard a few noises from the cast behind her—a cry, a thud, a surprised curse—but she did not turn to look. Her eyes were locked on Felix’s. He didn’t look amazed or even embarrassed that he’d just brought Eidola to a screeching halt.
He looked like he pitied her.
“Turn around, Olive,” he said quietly.
Just as on the other night out on the street, a feeling of dread slithered up Olive’s spine. It was going to happen again. Her mind was going to trick her into seeing something else. Something wrong.
She vowed not to believe whatever she saw, and slowly turned around.
The rest of the cast stared at her blankly. Their costumes, so resplendent moments earlier, were tattered and dirty. Their props were just junk from the dumpster: rusted hoops, a scorched tiki torch, an old wardrobe with the left door missing. They blinked heavily, disoriented, squinting at one another and out at the empty seats, many of which were broken or torn. Olive looked down at herself in her mended but grimy nightgown, then back at the cast.
But they weren’t a cast at all. Just a group of sad runaways with no home. Tramps playing make-believe onstage in a seedy, dilapidated hall. The truth sank into Olive as sharp as fangs.
This was the reality. Eidola had always been the illusion.
“You were right,” she whispered. Her throat ached as she faced Felix again. “None of it was real.”
Felix smiled in relief, but only for a second. Olive had the briefest glimpse of his eyes widening in horror before some invisible force yanked him, dragged him—not just away but up.
He flew higher and higher like a rag doll thrown by an angry toddler, all the way into the dome. Screams and shouts filled the air as the others watched, horrified, while Felix flailed and kicked. For a heart-stopping moment, they waited for him to plummet.
But his hands gripped the chipped bronze edge, and he dangled from the dome, legs pumping uselessly. Then the other cast members were yelling, moving, jumping off the stage, positioning themselves beneath Felix as if to catch him.
He’s going to fall, Olive.
Something was prying its way out of the hole in Olive’s chest, deliberately popping her careful stitches one by one with its claws, exposing the infected wound. Something with a deep, soothing voice. But its words were anything but a comfort.
He’s going to fall, and there’s nothing you can do.
Nothing she could do. Felix scrambled for a better grip. The others were screaming, sobbing. Nothing she could do.
Just like last time. Isn’t that right, Olive?
Olive turned around. She couldn’t bear to watch it happen. The seamstresses had floated onto the stage and were gazing up at Felix in horror. Two covered her eyes with her hands. Olive could see the cocoon straight through her.
She’d been so sure the ghosts had been her invisible strings, helping her and Astaire and Eli to fly. But she’d fallen right through the seamstresses. They couldn’t touch humans; they could only touch needle and thread.
Thread.
Olive cried out as if the idea had physically hit her. “The thread!” she screamed, sprinting to the cocoon. The seamstresses stared in confusion as she picked off a strand and ran toward them. “The cocoon is made of thread!” Olive thrust it at One, who took it with wide eyes. “There’s tons of it—bring it up there, and…and wrap him up, carry him down!”
One’s face lit up, and she zoomed off without hesitation. Two and Three followed, the thread unraveling from around the massive cocoon behind them. Olive hurried to the edge of the stage, hands pressed to her mouth. Nausea rolled over her as she watched Felix writhing so high above the ground, struggling to keep his grip. The seamstresses zipped around him, wrapping him like spiders would a fly. But not fast enough. The voice inside her chuckled.
He’s going to fall, Olive. Just like your father.
The stitches were popping fast, the hole ripping open. Unraveling just like the cocoon.
It was a long, long way down, wasn’t it? Nine floors.
“Stop,” whispered Olive. The voice was familiar now, deep and soothing. She didn’t want to hear this voice say these things.
Right off the fire escape, splat on the street.
She couldn’t see Felix’s face from here, but she could hear his terrified screams. He was going to fall, just like her father.
But your father didn’t fall. Did he? Did he, darling? No.
He
jumped.
There was a desperate cry when Felix plummeted, surrounded by the frantic seamstresses. They yanked at the threads, tugging him into a spread-eagle position, straining to keep him in the air. But their efforts only slowed his fall. He landed with a sickening crunch somewhere in the middle of the sea of seats, and the other cast members scrambled to reach him. Olive remained onstage, paralyzed with fear and dread until someone shouted:
“He’s okay!”
The auditorium went black.
A split second later, the spotlight blazed on Olive. She covered her eyes, tears mixing with sweat on her palms. A noise began behind her. A soft but powerful noise, like something very, very big trying to be very, very quiet. Lowering her hands, Olive turned around.
The great white cocoon was shifting, quivering. As Olive stared, the tremble turned to a shudder, and then it was thrashing violently. Run, run, run! her brain screamed, but when she turned and stepped out of the spotlight, she froze.
Shapes filled the seats, wisps of people with hollow eyes and black mouths stretched in silent screams of terror. When the massive cocoon fell to the stage with a boom, the shapes rose from their seats as one, soaring up and vanishing into the darkness of the dome.
Olive staggered away as the threads began to split, faster and faster until the cocoon ruptured and the thing inside burst free. But this was not a butterfly. Like the rest of the once-beautiful theater, this was wrong. Something with a gaping, toothless maw and no eyes. Something coated in darkly glittering grime and radiating the smell of earth and decay.
A colossal worm rose high above Olive, thread pooling around its slimy body. Then it dove, and she was swallowed in darkness.
Death felt like a hug.
Olive lay very still, listening to the muffled shifty sounds and distant screams of terror. She knew she must be in the worm, but it didn’t feel unpleasant. It felt like someone had wrapped a pair of arms around her and was squeezing tightly. Also, there was no slime. She was bone-dry.
“That’s odd,” she said out loud. And someone’s breath tickled her ear.
“Shh!”
Olive gasped and lurched away, but the arms—real arms, human arms—only tightened around her.
“Don’t move,” Felix whispered. So Olive did not. The darkness was still absolute, but she realized they were lying on the stage. The worm was not. It was thrashing blindly around the auditorium, uprooting seats and smashing into walls. The screams had faded, and Olive could only hope the other cast members had made it to the lobby.
A sudden soft light made her blink. Quietly, carefully, Olive and Felix pulled themselves apart and sat up. A lamp had appeared just over the trap-room door, illuminating the piles of thread. And floating faintly next to the lamp was Finley.
He smiled a wobbly smile at his brother. “Hi.”
Olive glanced at Felix and then quickly looked away. It was too painful, his expression. As if a hole he’d stitched up inside himself was unraveling too.
Gong!
The worm crashed through the orchestra pit right behind them, and Olive tensed, ready to run. They made an easy target here on the stage in the light. But Finley held his hands out to stop her.
“It’s blind,” he whispered. “And deaf. It senses movement. Don’t move.”
So Olive stood still. The worm slithered slowly, pressing its massive body against the stage, close enough that she could smell the
stench of decay again. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, Olive noticed that the piles of thread weren’t all that was left of the cocoon. Other objects littered the stage.
Bones. Skulls.
“You were right,” Finley told his brother, and Olive forced herself to focus. “You were right the whole time about this place. It’s all my fault for bringing us here.”
“No.” Felix’s voice was fierce. Olive flinched—what if Finley was wrong about the worm being deaf?—but the thing just continued to slide behind them at a glacial pace. “It’s my fault. I’m the oldest. I should have—” His voice broke. “It’s my fault.”
“It’s not,” Finley insisted. “When I was watching the show, I remembered everything that happened during my finale. I was singing, and all of a sudden you were there in the aisle. And when I saw you, the theater…it changed. All the magic was gone.”
Olive shifted, and the worm paused. The three of them fell silent, still as statues, until it began to crawl again.
“Then she grabbed you and dragged you away,” Finley went on in a hushed voice. “So I started screaming and screaming, and then that thing…” He gestured to the piles of thread that remained of the giant cocoon. “It fell on me.” Finley floated closer, his expression earnest. “It wasn’t your fault, Felix. It really wasn’t. It was hers. But when I woke up in the trap room, I’d forgotten. My memories were invisible, like the rest of me.”
Olive wanted to ask who she was, but didn’t. Because she knew.
“She saw you coming tonight,” Finley told Felix, his mouth trembling again. “And she—she took Juliana. I was looking for her when I heard the worm.”
“What?” Felix stepped forward, and Olive grabbed his arm. Her pulse raced out of control. “Juliana—is she…”
“In the trap room.” Finley pointed at the door beneath his floating feet. “Alive,” he added quickly. Olive’s shoulders slumped with relief. “That’s where she goes when she gets in Val’s vanishing cabinet.”
Felix shook his wrist from Olive’s grip. “We have to get her out of here.” He knelt down and began feeling around the edges of the door, looking for the latch. Olive moved over—cautiously, quietly—to help, and Finley joined them. His transparent fingers found the latch first, and soon they’d pried the door open. Below was nothing but black. Olive’s heart ached as she thought of Juliana stuck down there in the dark with her brother’s grave.
“Hurry,” Finley said, before drifting through the stage. Felix and Olive looked at each other. Neither made a move.
The slithering had stopped.
Frozen in fear, Olive kept her eyes locked on Felix’s. For a few painful seconds, everything was mute. Then:
Crash!
The massive thing slammed down inches from them, smashing the lamp, sending the bones of its previous meals flying, and plunging the auditorium into darkness. Olive groped blindly until her hands found Felix, and she shoved him through the trap-room door. She had just flung her legs over the side to follow when the worm’s slick, slimy mouth closed around her. There was a tug on her feet, the world tilted, and Olive fell.
The impact of the landing knocked the wind out of her. She gasped for breath, too terrified to open her eyes.
“It can’t get down here,” came Finley’s voice. “It won’t fit.” Olive heard the worm slam down on the stage overhead. She sat up, her head spinning. Next to her, Felix struggled to get to his feet. Olive used the ladder to pull herself upright. She felt eyes watching her from the shadows.
“Felix?”
Felix’s head snapped up, and he and Olive glanced around for the source of this new voice. Olive saw her eyes first, shiny and scared. Juliana stepped forward with her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Strands of hair had come loose from her ponytail, and they clung to her sweaty, dirt-streaked face. For a moment, she and Felix simply stared at each other with mirrored expressions of fear and relief. Then Juliana launched herself at her brother.
They clung to each other, sobbing and choking out apologies while the ghost of their younger brother watched with the smallest, saddest smile Olive had ever seen. She turned away because this was a private family moment. But for another reason too. Right now, the Morellas only had eyes for each other.
But Olive still felt eyes watching her.
She turned slowly on the spot, looking, listening. The thrashing above had stopped. But something—someone—was down here with them. Olive searched the surrounding gloom for the source of the prickling on her neck. There, in the far left corner.
A glint of white teeth.
“Hello, darling.”
Her husky voice seemed to come from all directions. She didn’t move, but her other features gradually became more visible in the shadows. Glittering eyes, scalpel-sharp cheekbones, red lips stretched wide to reveal so many teeth. Olive heard Juliana gasp behind her, and Felix made a noise like an angry dog.
“That really was quite a show,” Maude Devore said admiringly. “You were so perfect for Eidola, Olive. Just as I knew you would be.”
She moved forward noiselessly. Fear ripped through Olive, but she planted her feet and spread her arms like a barricade to protect the Morellas. Maude had damaged their family enough. Olive would not let her hurt them again.
“I told you this theater burned once,” Maude said, gesturing up at the stage. “The fire began during the first act. I climbed down here to escape the smoke.”
She stopped steps from Olive. The scent of dirt and decay hung between them, heavy and stifling.
“You remember how I discovered Eidola, don’t you?” she asked quietly. “All those lonely hours I spent as a child, locked away. I created an escape. And once again I needed that fantasy. Because the theater trapped me down here, kept me safe from the fire.” Maude paused, her gaze never leaving Olive’s. “And I never left.”
Olive shivered as Maude drew closer, inch by inch, and then
passed
through
her.
Heart hammering in her ears, Olive spun around and met the wide-eyed, frightened faces of the Morellas. No Maude.
“My apologies.” Maude had reappeared next to Finley’s grave. She brushed her skirt off. “I usually find such tricks rather juvenile, but they are hard to resist sometimes.”
“Go,” Olive breathed, pushing Juliana toward the ladder. “Go, we need to go….”
Tears streaming down her face, Juliana began to climb. Finley floated up at her side, but Felix hesitated.
“Hurry,” Olive whispered, and after a moment, he followed his sister.
Olive kept her eyes on Maude as the others made their way up slowly in the dark. She put her hand on the rung the moment Felix’s feet cleared it. Maude shook her head.
“Oh, Olive, sweetheart,” she said. “Do you really think you can leave?”
“Yes.” Olive tried to keep her voice steady. “You said so. You said everyone is here because they choose to be. And I—I don’t choose to be here anymore.”
For the first time, anger flashed across Maude’s face.
“And why is that?” She didn’t move as Olive started to climb. “What have I done wrong? I took in unfortunate souls like myself—others who needed an escape. I created Eidola when I was most alone, so that I wouldn’t be alone anymore. I let you all in because Eidola needs life to be real. And you know what’s waiting for you up there if you try to leave. You saw my audience flee, and the rest of my cast as well. Because each of them looked it in the face once long ago, and they did not wish to do it again tonight. You saw it for yourself, and you barely got away. Death.”
Olive’s foot slipped, but she regained her balance and kept climbing. The rest of the cast had seen the worm before? But that couldn’t be right; they’d all insisted the cocoon held a butterfly….
Maude’s voice rose in anger. “Death is what brought you here, Olive Preiss. And Death is why you stayed. It’s why you never wanted to leave. And you won’t. Because I will not be aban
doned again.”
Her words reverberated around the trap room. Olive’s hands shook, and she gripped the rungs harder.
“I’m not abandoning you. I’m saving myself.”
Maude smiled wide. Wider. Impossibly wide, her lips stretching and stretching until all Olive saw below her was a gaping mouth filled with shining teeth ready to devour her whole.
Fingers gripped her arms, and she shrieked. Felix and Juliana heaved Olive up and onto the stage. Juliana kicked the door shut, the sound echoing through the dark auditorium.
“Don’t move,” Felix said tersely. Juliana looked confused but did not argue, and Felix and Olive listened hard. Nothing. No sounds of Maude below. No slithering between the seats.
The rest of the cast was onstage. As Olive got to her feet, Aidan ran to her, Nadia in tow. The others stood still, their expressions ranging from confused to devastated.
“Five,” Tanisha said softly, kneeling down by the remains of the cocoon. “Five skulls.”
“I don’t understand,” said Mickey, and Val closed their eyes.
“Our first finales. When all our acts got so much better. Because…”
Astaire covered his face with his hands. Eli glanced at Felix, but he didn’t look angry anymore. He looked defeated.
“Because we died.”
At those words, a great flame burst from Mickey’s torch. He held it at arm’s length, startled. Then, quite suddenly, he flickered and faded, and the torch fell through his hand. Everyone watched in stunned silence as it hit the stage and rolled a few feet away.
And the laughter began.
A deep, rumbling laughter that shook the stage and dislodged one of the light fixtures. It smashed just feet from where they were huddled, spraying them with glass.
“It’s Maude.” Finley sounded as though he might cry. “She does all of it, all the magic.”
And finally Olive understood. It hadn’t been ghosts manipulating the silver rings, creating snow showers and fiery tornadoes. It had been one ghost. Maude.
Olive and the Backstage Ghost Page 13
