***
“I have to tell you, Daniel,” Elise said, looking around backstage. “This place is pretty metal.”
In the red light, Daniel smiled. “Isn’t it though? Well, the place is called Hell’s Gate. Alice wanted it as metal as possible.”
The floor lit up red with neon tubing forming a large pentacle. Candles lined the walls, and an ominous iron maiden stood in the corner of the room. Black mesh covered the ground, giving it an unsettling springy feel.
There was still something bothering Ian. He didn’t like the way all gazillion of the candles were lit when they’d entered the room, as if one of the workers had spent hours lighting each and every one. He didn’t like the weird white wires coming out of the iron maiden that seemed to be carrying fluids into the walls.
“It’s all very impressive, Daniel,” Elise said, “but enough’s enough.”
Daniel looked up at her blankly. “Sorry?”
“It’s time to come clean.”
“Come clean?”
A sudden viciousness sharpened her voice. “Don’t give me this bullshit, Daniel! You’re gone for, like, a million years, not talking to me or Mom or anybody, and then you show up here, working for weird-wing-lady—when’s the other shoe going to drop? No more surprises; why have you decided to talk to me now, here, in this place, at this time? What’s your angle?”
Ian noticed that the lighting in the room was dimming.
The flickering of the candles cast Daniel’s face into blackness as he asked, “What do you think my angle is?”
Elise shook her head. “I have no idea. If I were feeling generous, I’d guess that you remembered that my birthday is in a few days. Maybe all this—“ She waved her hands in the air. “—mystique has something to do with that.”
“Your birthday?”
Ian couldn’t ignore it any more. The room was darkening, the candles subtly dimming. He began to look around for an exit, just in case things got weird.
“I’m sorry, Elise,” Daniel said. “I forgot about your birthday.”
Ian heard Elise cry out, as he felt cold hands grab him tightly around the arms. The last bit of light winked out, and they plunged into blackness.
He wrenched away, but whoever had grabbed him had some kind of superhuman grip. In the darkness, he heard soft weeping. Behind him, he could make out a sound that he could only describe as giggling.
“Daniel!” Elise shouted. “What the hell—“
Whump. Lights from beneath the mesh floor snapped on, flooding a chamber beneath their feet with white brightness.
Ian shrieked. He couldn’t help it. This whole time they’d been standing over a sea of swarming, reaching hands. The shadowy faces of the living dead gaped up at them.
Daniel said, “We got them from the graveyard, but they’re incomplete. They don’t listen to Alice or me. It’s amazing how hard it is to get an army of the dead to work properly.”
In the half-light, Ian could see what had grabbed them—tall figures wearing white masks. The one holding Elise had a tragic frown molded into the mask, and the one holding him had an insane grin. Their presence was making the room deathly cold. Ian wondered if it had been their approach alone that had drowned the candles.
“Daniel!” Elise snapped, the full force of her anger pouring up her loud, punk rocker pipes. “What the fuck is this bullshit?!”
“We’re using you two as bait, Elise,” Daniel said.
“Bait?”
A sudden noise in the darkness, a high-pitched ringing. It was Elise’s phone.
Daniel stepped forward, plucked it from her pocket and answered it. “Hello?”
“Hello?”
A smile spread across Daniel’s face. “James.”
“Daniel?”
“You’re late to the show, James. The Heedless aren’t anyone to screw around with, so you better come soon. I hope you know by now that Elise and Ian are depending on you.” With that, he snapped the phone shut.
Elise sputtered, “Daniel, what—?”
“I never wanted to involve James,” Daniel replied. “But of all of us, James was always the best at communicating with the dead.”
With another whump, the lights below shut off. In the deep blackness that remained, Ian heard Daniel say, “He’ll help bring us up to speed. And then we’ll all be rewarded for our troubles.”
New Wave Detectives 01: Punk Rock Theatre Page 4
