I mean I have too much of you already. You're withering away, my friend. And you'll continue to do so. You see, something's been taken from you, something that you cannot live without. But you no longer have the strength to take it back. So I shall simply take more, and more, until there is nothing left. As they say, you can run, but you cannot hide.
DENNIS
I'll destroy you. I'll destroy you yet.
THE EMPEROR
No. On the contrary, I shall destroy you. And everyone you love. .. who remains alive, of course.
DENNIS
You're insane…
THE EMPEROR
No. Just different. Superior. Unlike you, I have no false morality to prevent me from reaching my goal. And my goal… is your soul. Davis and Ensley could have made a lovely lyric out of that, couldn't they? But run, Dennis, if you like, if you feel it can do you good.
DENNIS
I will. For all I know, you're lying now, telling me that it'll do no good so I'll stay. But I won't. I'm leaving, and everyone else will leave with me. You'll be here alone. All alone.
When Ann Deems came up to Dennis's door, she raised her hand to knock, then decided to simply walk in if the door was unlocked. She had been crying in John Steinberg's office for some time.
When he had told her to go up to Dennis's suite right away, she knew there was something wrong from the expression on his face, the pinched quality of his words, as though he was holding something back. She asked him what had happened, and he just shook his head. But she asked again, and he told her that Whitney had been smothered in a pile of clothes. She gasped in horror, and then began to cry. 'I don't know how it happened,' Steinberg said. 'No one does. But Dan Munro thinks it was murder, that there's someone… stalking us.' She shook her head, not knowing what to believe, only knowing that she had to see Dennis, had to be with him.
And now she pushed open the door of his suite, and heard voices, both of which she identified as Dennis's. What was he doing? Talking to himself? Acting? Reading a script aloud? One of the voices was sneering and silky, the other louder, angry, and then she began to hear the words, and when she grasped their import, a flame of steel swept through her with the searing knowledge that Dennis was mad.
Ann stepped across the foyer and into the living room. Dennis turned to look at her, and his eyes went wide with surprise, as did Ann's a moment later when she saw the other person in the room.
Dennis's exact duplicate was standing by the fireplace. He was wearing the same costume that Dennis had worn in A Private Empire, but his face had none of the warm kindness of Dennis Hamilton. Instead he stared at her with undisguised loathing. Never before had she felt such malignancy from another being, and the force of it made her incapable of motion, unable to back away from him as he started to slowly walk toward her, as his hands came up, reaching for her. She could neither move nor speak nor scream, but only watch as if in a dream, as this nightmare, this Dennis yet not Dennis, advanced upon her.
' No,' said a voice that she knew belonged to Dennis, the real Dennis, her Dennis, and she felt his arms around her, and now he was standing between her and the thing that wanted to harm her. 'No, damn you. No.'
The features of the Dennis-thing quivered, but whether in rage at being thwarted, in fear of Dennis, or something else entirely, Ann did not know. 'You'll see me again,' it spat, and then vanished as quickly as a light bulb turning off.
Ann buried her face in Dennis's chest then, afraid to look up, and felt his arms holding her to him. 'It's all right,' he whispered. 'It's gone now. It's gone.'
'Oh, Dennis,' she said, looking up at him, 'what was it? Was it you?'
'I think it's… a part of me. A part that got away somehow.'
Then he told her all about the Emperor, about its appearing to him for the first time and the times since, about its confessions and explanations of how it had killed, about its seduction of Terri, and finally, about its disappearance of the night before and Whitney's subsequent death.
'It killed her,' Dennis concluded, 'just to prove to me that it was real. I can't comprehend that. Killing a child to prove a point. And not even that, really. It knew that I believed in its existence, even though I tried to deny it. It just killed her because… because it likes it, and because it took one more person away from me and made me that much weaker. It's… a monster. As far as it's concerned the only thing human lives are – all Whitney was, all Robin was – are just ways to whittle me down…'
Then the thought occurred to him at last, and it was so overwhelming that he voiced it. 'All those lives might have been spared… if mine had ended. And how many more might be spared now
… if I would die?'
'Stop it, Dennis,' Ann said, and her voice was low and steady. 'Don't even think about that. For all you know, that could be just what it wants – your death.'
He had been so lost in his thoughts that he had almost forgotten she was there. Now he looked at her gratefully. 'You believe me.'
'Of course I believe you. My God, I saw it. It may be something born of your mind, but it's not an hallucination. Hallucinations can't kill.' She clutched his arm. 'What are we going to do?'
'We're going to do what I said I would. We're going to leave.'
'But, Dennis,' John Steinberg said, 'Munro said that it wouldn't do any good to go away, that this… person would just follow us.'
'Munro's wrong.'
'How do you know that?'
'I just do. We're putting the show in mothballs, John. The show and the theatre. I want everyone out of here. We'll stay elsewhere tonight. Try to make reservations at the Kirkland Hotel. And tomorrow we'll go back to New York.'
'And what do I tell the investors?'
'You won't have to tell them much at all. They read the newspapers. Call it a production delay, I don't care. If anyone wants their investment back, give it to them.'
Steinberg scratched his head. 'Marvella's gone back already with Whitney's body, so there's only you and I, Evan, and Curt. What shall we do about Ann and Terri? Let them go?
'Just Terri. Keep her on the payroll, but there's nothing for her to do until we get underway again. Ann's coming to New York with us. I've already asked her and she's accepted, if that's all right with you.'
'Of course.' Steinberg cocked his head and looked deeply at Dennis. 'Will we get underway again?'
Dennis stood up and looked out the window of Steinberg's office. 'Yes. This is only a truce, John, not a surrender. This project has been my dream for a long time, and I'm not going to give it up.' He turned back to his friend. 'But for now I want us all to pack today – get everything out of the suites we'll need in the city. Curt and Evan can finish doing whatever they need to do on the stage – pull the electrics, whatever's necessary – but I don't want either of them alone down there at any time. Understood?'
'I'll take care of it. By the way, Leibowitz just called. He's arranged it so that you can get in to visit Sid now. You may want to do that before you go.”
“I will this afternoon. I'll take Ann with me, if that's all right.'
'Go ahead. I can get everything thrown together here. Most of it's on disk anyway. When are you going to pack?'
'I'm already packed. It didn't take long, because I didn't take much.' Dennis smiled grimly. 'I'm planning on coming back.'
Scene 2
Sid Harper was of two minds about seeing Dennis Hamilton. Dennis had been his friend for many years, but at the same time, Sid had come to the conclusion that it was Dennis who had killed Donna Franklin and possibly the others in the theatre. He had thought about little else in the few days he had been incarcerated, and could come up with no other conclusion. As unlikely as it seemed, Dennis was the only one who was not accounted for during
