CHAPTER SEVEN #2
Emboldened when Jago didn’t let go, Alex allowed him to take them across the threshold together.
For some reason, he’d expected their shoes to clip loudly on the dark wooden floor, but he could barely hear them at all.
What he could hear instead now, was music.
Soft music beholden to no discernible rules but its own, like jazz or some Eastern genre he didn’t understand.
Of course, people said the same thing about flamenco, and probably about whatever Alaska and her band were doing.
In another setting, it might have repelled him, made him question his choice to be here so late at night with a man he barely knew.
A witch he barely knew. ‘I honestly don’t know.
’ The confession comforted him more than it probably should.
They emerged in a tiny theatre, which for reasons he couldn’t explain, had been exactly what Alex had expected.
As they took their seats in the second last row, Alex stared agog the disaster strewn across the stage.
It was as if the theatre itself had flooded.
Sections of boards floated an inch above the black water surface, islands of normality nonetheless ripped apart.
Boxes added dimension to the milieu. Scraps of burlap sack hung from the ceiling like the boughs of swamp-dwelling trees.
In lieu of a curtain, another creek of dark water separated the audience from the grim diorama.
They weren’t alone in the theatre. He saw the back of an old woman’s head with hair tied in a grey bun. Two younger men sat a few rows down, and near the front, a couple with a small child at their side. What family brought a child of nine or ten to the theatre in the wee hours of the morning?
“How do you know this place? What is it?”
When Jago showed no sign of having heard him, he let his other questions go.
Why was the theatre full of water? Was it a flooding accident, or an extremely sophisticated set?
Why was a show starting so late? Why had nobody asked them for admission or tickets?
What had become of the man who’d granted them entry in such cryptic tongue?
One futile question followed the next. Jago’s only answer was to place a solitary hand on Alex’s thigh.
The house lights dimmed.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” purred a distinguished voice in English. “We welcome, for your consideration and delectation, Jacqueline.”
Alex had already placed a hand over Jago’s.
It tightened as a barefoot woman in a flowing white dress followed the dry patches to centre stage.
The long black hair that hung in front of her eyes made her look like a ghost from a Japanese horror film.
Admittedly, Alex had only seen two, but that image had stayed with him, just as it had clearly influenced the director of whatever opus had just begun.
A song accompanied the woman’s steps, the indiscernible words mere additions to the effect being created as she kneeled at the water, reached her fingers into it and dragged them across, sending a ripple that seemed to heighten the music throughout the theatre.
Alex shivered. She did it again, with smooth, gentle confidence.
There was no aggression, not that it was easy to see any emotion as her hair continued to obscure her face.
The song’s beautiful gibberish grew lounder as she began reaching deeper into the water.
It dampened the sleeves of her dress, but didn’t deter her as she reached deeper, deeper still, allowing the waters to reach almost to her shoulders.
She dipped her hair in them, soaking her tresses before whipping hem around like a weapon, sprinkling the set and the sparse crowd.
Alex stole a glance at Jago’s expression.
It was anxious, almost fearful, even as he bit his lip, obviously enthralled.
For the briefest second, Alex thought he could make out the woman’s face, but it was gone behind a curtain of damp hair before he could be sure. Then, the entire head was gone, dunked beneath the waters with a loud, solid ke-plonk.
They tensed their mutual grip with anticipation, waiting for her to surface.
The water must have been deep for the actor to submerge her head entirely.
How long could she hold her breath? The music had taken on a dull, stifled quality, its rhythm breaking with irregular syncopation, as if it too, were struggling to breathe underwater.
Seconds later, she began beating her hands and feet against the stage as if trying to push herself free.
“Jago?” Alex’s voice was barely a whisper. He doubted Jago had heard it at all.
They both jumped in their seats as she pulled her head abruptly from the water, dragging with it the shape of a man who’d pressed his fingers around her neck. Beyond his damp blonde hair and broad, athletic shoulders, Alex could at last make out the woman’s face.
“Joanna!” he cried out.
Jago clapped his hand over Alex’s mouth. He watched helplessly as the actors struggled, and Joanna rolled over on her back, only to be pulled towards the water again.
“Stop!” Jago hissed in his ear. “You must stop!”
Joanna struggled against the grip of the blond man, who’d slipped beneath the waters once more with only a firm hand gripping Joanna’s hair and another on her throat to announce his presence.
Alex pushed Jago away just as Joanna broke free of the assault, retreating upstage and assuming a defensive posture on her haunches, hands outstretched like claws, keeping the man at bay.
He slid smoothly from the waters, his naked body flopping at her side like a seal.
She repositioned herself to give him space, but on dry land, some unseen force had sapped him of all energy.
He dragged himself along the stage, willing each arm to pull and each foot to push him along like some ancient fish learning to use evolution’s first feeble attempt at limbs.
When he at last flopped over on his back, his face was filled with pain.
It was another face Alex knew. A body he’d held. A dick he’d sucked.
“Vicente,” he whispered. “Jago, we have to—"
“Alex, I beg you.” Jago grasped his hand again.
His mind raced, not knowing what to believe. In no universe would sweet Vicente ever do intentional harm to Joanna, or anyone, for that matter. He also wasn’t an actor, which meant that the awful rasping sounds now coming from his throat had to be real.
“We have to help him.” Alex didn’t know why he was still whispering.
What was wrong with the rest of them? Not a gasp.
Not a cry. Not one voice had been raised in compassion or concern.
No reaction at all. He winced as Jago pressed hard into a tender spot on his wrist, silently shaking his head.
On stage, he saw Joanna hovering over Vicente’s body as it gasped for breath.
She gently rolled him to the water’s edge, where she dipped her hair, squeezing the liquid over Vicente’s body as if bathing unseen wounds.
The movement seemed to steady his breath as she washed his chest, stomach, legs and exposed cock with her hair, dipping it in the water as she needed.
When she was done, she rested one hand at the centre of his chest, the other between his legs.
“Doch mat. Kahven leth?”
Vicente’s lips were moving, but the voice was the one that had admitted them to the club.
“Gel-VASHtuq sverehistei. How does it taste now?”
That last part had been in English, which Vis also didn’t speak.
Joanna lowered her mouth to Vicente’s chest, dotting it with kisses that slowly made their way from its centre to one of his nipples.
She bit him so hard, blood flowed. Vicente screamed.
Alex was up from his seat and running toward the stage before Jago could stop him.
A glimpse of the old woman sitting two rows down from them startled him so hard, he tripped down the stairs.
Staring at him from her seat was a skeletal, rictus grin of approval, matched in death on the faces of the couple further down, and in the parents with their child.
Six souls, long dead, skin shrunken to bones, organs long melted.
“Alex,” Vicente sobbed, reaching out to him. “Alex!”
“I’m coming, Vis!”
“Alex, you mustn’t!” Jago’s plea fell on deaf ears as Alex used a chair to pull himself to his feet.
“Joanna, what are you do—” He stumbled forward to the stage and plunged headlong into the water, going in over his head before he had time to draw breath.
He dispelled his disbelief long enough to kick off his shoes and try to tread the strangely warm waters.
Alex tumbled over and over in the dark, until he’d lost any sense of buoyancy, neither sinking, nor floating.
He had to get to the surface. For Vis. For himself.
Could he stand up? The waters couldn’t possibly be so deep that—
The sensation of hard stone on his bare feet jarred him.
Standing up, he burst from the water, which now reached only to his knees.
He flailed like a madman in the dry night air, mopping water from his face and eyes, looking down at his soaked clothes.
He was standing knee-deep in the waters of the fountain, with the bronze image of the fallen Lucifer towering over him, a hive of daemonic faces laughing in unison. Otherwise, he was alone.
Dawn’s first rays reflected a glint of gold in the water. It was the ping pong ball Jago had tossed away earlier. Alex watched it abruptly sink to the bottom, releasing a small bubble as it went.