Reign

ahead.

Abe automatically looked up, and his neck and spine throbbed with the agony. Directly above him he saw, clinging from one arm to the top of one of the stanchions that made up the bays, a huge creature that looked more like an ape than a man. What he could see of its hair was blond and clotted with blood. Half of its face was a gray- red ruin, but the half that was left grinned down with splintered teeth. Its free arm held a hundred-pound sandbag such as had not been used in the Venetian Theatre for many years. It held it right above Abe Kipp's upturned face.

'Payback time, Abe…' said the Big Swede with Harry Ruhl's soft and gentle voice, and dropped the sandbag.

Abe threw his body to the side with all the power left in him, so that even ripped muscles helped shriekingly to drag him away from the plummeting weight.

The bag hit him in the back of the right shoulder, crushing every bone it contacted, and driving sharp splinters into Abe's right lung, although his heart was not pierced. He tried to scream, but the spray of blood from his windpipe choked his mouth, and he could only lay and pant for breath.

'Harry,' at last he bubbled through his blood. 'Harry, please.. .'

Then he felt what seemed like fingers of fire grasp his crushed shoulder and turn him over. The pain was too great to be voiced, and he kept it inside him, letting it scream within. It kept screaming when he opened his eyes and saw Mad Mary bending over him, an open noose in her clawed hand, her white hair shading her face like a filthy, tattered veil. It was only when she put her head back that he saw the face, and then, in the split second before he lost his sanity, burned to a crisp by the fires in her bulging eyes, he remembered – she's the only one who can really scare ya t'death…

Abe Kipp didn't see her put the noose around his neck, didn't see her haul on the other end of the rope until he stood on the dirt floor, only his toes against the dust, barely felt himself slowly strangling. He didn't see Mad Mary whisper 'Payback time, Abe…' in Harry Ruhl's voice, didn't see Mad Mary melt into Harry just as he looked when they found him dead, but now holding his imitation Swiss Army knife. He didn't hear Harry whisper the words one last time, or make the first cut. He felt the knife go in, but to Abe, nearly dead, it felt like a warm finger across his flesh, it felt good, because everything else was growing so cold…

And he didn't see, as he hung from the rope and his life finally leaked away, Harry Ruhl's face change into a face he would have recognized as only Dennis Hamilton's.

'Not bad for a pussy boy,' the face said, and smiled. 'Was it, Abe?'

Scene 10

'I just felt… like I was lost somehow,' Dennis said.

He, Quentin, and Ann were in his dressing room at intermission. Quentin had placed a guard at the door with orders to allow no one else to enter or even knock.

'Yes, but you recovered,' Quentin said. 'The quintet… the quintet was good.'

'It wasn't good, Quent. It was passable. Which was more than I can say for my scene with Kelly.' Dennis shook his head and drank half a glass of water. 'It was like I was sleepwalking through it.'

'But you recovered,' Quentin said again. 'You got through it, you got your head together, and you got back into the role. Jesus, Dennis, up till then it was brilliant, you know it was, wasn't it, Ann?'

Ann nodded. 'Yes. It was perfect.'

'Now you just stay here and you rest. You've got twenty minutes. Rest for as long as you need – we can hold the curtain a little longer – and use the rest of the time to work yourself back into that role. Come on, Dennis, be the Emperor again.'

Dennis smiled. Ann thought it looked forced. 'I will,' he said. 'I will, Quent. Leave me alone with Ann for a minute, will you?'

'Of course.' He gave Dennis a gentle embrace, as though he were afraid he might hurt him. 'Do it, my friend. You go out there and do it.'

When they were alone, Ann looked into Dennis's eyes and saw the tenor there. 'He's back,' Dennis said, his voice shaking.

'I know.'

'I felt him. I felt him draw strength from me like he was ripping out pieces of my flesh.' Dennis's lips drew back, his teeth clenched, and he began to shudder as tears came to his eyes. 'I thought he was gone. I really did. I thought and I prayed so hard that he was gone.'

'But he's not,' Ann said firmly, refusing to break down as well. She wanted to.

She wanted to run sobbing out the stage door and get into a car and just keep driving into the night until she was as far away from the Venetian Theatre as she could possibly be.

But that meant that she would have to flee Dennis Hamilton too, and she would not, could not do that.

'He's still here, Dennis. And you came back thinking that he would still be here. If he was, if you had known it right away, you would have stayed just the same. You would have stayed and fought him.' She put a hand on his arm to give him strength. 'That's why we came back – to fight him. He let us think he was already beat, and we let down our guard. We wanted to believe he was dead – or dying. And he wanted us to believe it too. We played right into his hands. That was our mistake.

'But he's not infallible, Dennis. As powerful as he is, he's got a plan of some kind. And if he's got a plan, we can ruin it. We just have to figure out how.'

Dennis peered into the mirror, as if trying to find the secret in the lineaments of his own, and the Emperor's, face. 'I have to be strong.' he said slowly. 'Even when he tries to draw strength from me, I have to… to feel so much that it doesn't diminish me. I have to be stronger than he is. That's the only way I'll be rid of him. The only way to get back what I need… is to take it back.' He looked away from his face now, and into hers. 'And I will. I will, Ann.'

She put her arms around his neck and drew him to her. 'I know you will, Dennis. I believe you.' She held him for a time, then drew back and looked at him. His expression was firm, the tears were gone. 'Forget the audience,' she told him. 'Forget everything else but you and him. And me,' she added. 'Remember how much I love you. I'll be here, backstage, whenever you need me.'

~* ~

And backstage the word was passed from mouth to mouth -'Dennis is slipping. Be ready to carry him.' The performers consulted their scripts as they drank their intermission coffee or smoked their cigarettes, going over their lines with the Emperor, trying to figure out ways to save the scene, steer the dialogue to the required end, should Dennis forget or 'go up' on his lines to them.

Wallace Drummond felt most affected of all. His final scene, the climactic duel with the Emperor, was the final scene of the show, and Drummond, shaken from the feeble caliber of the work Dennis had evinced in the first act finale quintet with him, pored over his lines, trying to prepare himself for any eventuality. His usual levity was nowhere in evidence as he discarded his set of sides and buried his head in a full script, trying to memorize those few of Dennis's lines that did not cue his own. When the five minute bell rang, he jumped, then relaxed. His first scene was with Lise and Kruger, so at least that would go well. And there were six long scenes before he and Dennis appeared on stage together. Six scenes were surely enough for Dennis to reclaim his lost character, he thought, and did a few minutes of deep breathing exercises to relax him. Only this time, they did not work.

Out in the lobby, the air was filled with the kind of chatter that goes on, not at theatrical intermissions, but in air terminals after plane crashes. Talk was subdued but animated, and there were lines of reporters seven deep for the two phone booths situated on the stairway to the lower lobby. Several television personalities had gone outside to join their remote crews and report on the first act. A bespectacled blonde with a talk show out of L.A. made a particularly pithy comment – 'The last scene has been like watching a beautiful train derail.'

Cissy Morrison had clutched Evan's hand tightly when Dennis had gone up on his line, and they had come into the lobby with a pall hanging over them. Evan felt more sympathy for his father than he ever had before. The look of sudden terror on the man's face convinced Evan that his father was finally feeling what Evan had felt, seeing what he had seen – the true face of the audience, that snarling mob with one pair of hungry eyes, yearning to see failure in whatever form it might present itself. He prayed his father could survive the knowledge of twenty-five years of self-delusion revealed in one night.

After Quentin left Dennis backstage, John Steinberg cornered him in the lobby. 'Can he finish?' he asked, his face pale.