Town in a Blueberry Jam

“But isn’t that where Bertha was taking us?”

“Just get going!” Maggie pushed Candy in the back, and together they ran through the seats toward the center aisle. When they reached it, they angled forward toward the stage, then dashed back into the rows of seats on the far side of the auditorium, trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the door through which they had entered.

As she ran, Candy kept looking back over her shoulder, expecting Bertha to burst through the door at any moment. But Bertha fooled them. A creaking sound from another direction drew Candy’s attention. She slowed, turned to look, and through a door behind them but closer to the front of the stage came Bertha.

“She’s trying to cut us off!” Candy yelled, just as a shot rang out. Yelping in terror, Maggie dropped to her knees between the rows of seats. Candy crouched down beside her.

“You can’t escape!” Bertha called out. “Give it up!”

“What should we do?” Maggie asked, near tears.

Candy looked around hurriedly. They weren’t trapped yet, but their options were narrowing. “Back that way.” She pointed up the aisle on the far side of the auditorium. “Stay low. Try to get back to the lobby, and we’ll get outside from there.”

Maggie nodded, her eyes wild, but keeping her fear tamped down, she crept to the end of the row, then started up the far aisle as Bertha closed in on them.

“Move! Quicker!” Candy encouraged in a low, urgent voice.

As she ran, she glanced back over her shoulder. Bertha was running parallel to them, up the center aisle. She was moving sideways like a crab, her eyes holding tight to them, holding the gun low.

She’s herding us, Candy thought with a chill as she shifted her gaze forward again. She came to a quick conclusion. “She wants us to go in this direction,” she said to Maggie as she rested a hand on her friend’s shoulder, slowing her. She knew they had to find another way out.

Maggie looked around, falling to her hands and knees, her gaze pleading. “What should we do?”

Candy urged her friend up and forward again as she tried to figure out their next move. Her gaze swept the auditorium, searching. And then she saw it, almost right in front of them — an alcove to their right, opening off the side aisle, with a narrow carpeted stairway going upward.

Candy’s gaze followed it up, her eyes rising... to the balcony.

“In here!” She dashed into the alcove, pulling Maggie with her as she heard Bertha shout in frustration.

Up the staircase they thundered, panting now, knowing they were running for their lives. At the top they turned left, into the balcony itself, then right, running up a set of shallow stairs that ran along the rows of seats, heading toward the back row where they saw another set of doors. “We can go through there,” Candy said, pointing. “It should take us back down to the lobby.”

“Think we can make it in time?”

“We’ll have to, won’t we?” Candy pushed through the door. They emerged on a long landing with wide curving stairways on either side that lead down to the lobby below. Candy angled right, grabbed the railing, and started quickly down the stairs, but stopped midway when she heard footsteps below. Candy and Maggie both pressed back against the wall as a shadow emerged below them, turned, and looked up in their direction.

“You didn’t think you were going to get past me, did you?” Bertha said in a low, menacing tone. She waved the gun at them in a threatening manner. “Now get down here.”

Candy cursed. Maggie grabbed her arm. “What should we do?”

Instinctively, Candy pushed her back up the stairs. “We’re not giving up yet. Back the way we came. And stay down!”

They both fell into a crouch, the better to avoid Bertha’s line of sight, and retraced their steps, heading back up the staircase and through the doors into the balcony. “We’re trapped!” Maggie said hysterically as they closed and leaned against the door behind them. Candy turned left, then right, trying to figure out what to do next, when she spotted another narrow staircase, heading up. “Not yet,” she said. “There must be another floor. Maybe we can get up to the roof and find a way down from there.”

“The roof?” The words practically exploded from Maggie. “Oh my God! I wish I still had my umbrella!”

The stairs led up to the control booth, a small, dingy workspace with sliding windows along the entire interior wall, overlooking the auditorium and stage below. A trio of ancient arc spotlights, sitting atop their three-legged stands, were spaced evenly across the room. Centered in front of the window were light and sound boards, and sitting on a table nearby was a fairly new laptop computer. Folding chairs, empty coffee cups and soda cans, abandoned jackets, and even a moldy old pair of sneakers were scattered about the room. A bank of lockers had been pushed up against one wall, and narrow shelves, overloaded with assorted equipment, hung from another.

Candy looked up. In the ceiling she saw a hatch, and leading up to it, a black-runged steel ladder, set into the back wall. “That’s where we’re going,” Candy said, dashing to the rungs and taking them quickly.

Maggie stood in the center of the room with a confused look on her face. “Where?”

“The widow’s walk.”

“But...”

Candy gave her a fierce look. “No buts. Bertha will be here any minute. Now come on!”

So Maggie went. It took Candy a few moments to figure out how to unlatch the hatch, but finally she threw it open, letting in wind and rain. Tilting her head down and squinting her eyes against the storm, she pushed up through the opening.

Thirty-Seven

The widow’s walk of the Pruitt Opera House was a small, octagonal space, about six or eight feet across. Candy emerged into the middle of it and was immediately assailed by the raging wind, which carried with it the remnants of the storm that, for the most part, had passed over them. Though the dome over their heads sheltered them from the worst of the rain, the raw wind tore at her as she bent to help up Maggie, who complained the entire time. “I can’t believe you brought us up here,” she huffed as she planted her feet beneath her and stood unsteadily. “When I said I wanted to escape, this wasn’t what I had in mind.”

Candy barely heard her. She turned completely around, looking down over the waist-high stone walls of the widow’s walk, down at the sloping slate roof, slick with rain, and down over the side of the building to the ground far below. “Whoa. I didn’t realize we’d be up so high.”

“How are we going to get down?” Maggie whined, looking out over the roof. “I don’t see a ladder or anything.”

Candy felt her stomach tighten. “I don’t know but...”

That’s when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye... and turned to see Bertha emerging from the hatch behind them.

In one hand Bertha held the gun, wielding it like a spatula at a church social dinner. With the other hand she pulled herself up into the widow’s walk, grunting just a bit, all the while keeping a wary eye on Candy and Maggie.

For one wild moment Candy was tempted to dash forward to try to kick the gun from Bertha’s hand, as she had seen done so often in the movies and on TV. But this wasn’t a movie, she quickly reminded herself, and she knew she couldn’t move faster than a bullet. So she and Maggie backed away, to the far side of the widow’s walk, as Bertha stood on shaky legs.

She was huffing heavily. It was clear the chase through the opera house had winded her. But she looked no less angry. If anything, she looked more furious than before. She was seething, literally shaking with fury.

“That was a stupid, stupid thing to do,” she spat as she backed to the opposite side of the widow’s walk, keeping the gun pointed steadily at Candy and Maggie. “I’ve got better things to do than chase you two through a building. I should have shot you in the basement when I had the chance. But you won’t get away again. It’s time to end this... now.”

Candy and Maggie both yelped and shut their eyes as Bertha pushed the gun toward them, about to fire, but