The Curse of the Scottish Play

Chapter 7: Mac the Thane-let ......

Still don't own Macbeth. ......

Macamfearnachtill lay on his back on the theater roof, staring up at the dark swirling rainclouds. The rehearsals had already ended for the day without him doing anything. It almost bothered him, but he didn't have the will to move. The long weeks since their encounter with Mr. McCorrey were hard and sleepless, spent wandering along, searching for the next production of the damned play. They'd finally found this one, and had decided to stay in the building itself until they were rested. Gruoch had led him up the stairs to hide on the roof, and he'd laid down were he was and didn't move since then.

Mist hung around them like a cold, damp blanket, twisting around the icy wind. The theater roof was freezing, but his tired body couldn't feel it, except for where the ground felt cool against his stinging burns. Gruoch lay asleep in a pile of old rags she'd gathered from somewhere. He was glad. She deserved to sleep. The joy they'd felt after Mr. McCorrey's blessing didn't last long, and it's going left him lost and more depressed than ever. If it weren't for his sister, he realised he'd probably be dead, or worse. She had ended up leading him by the hand most of the way as he stumbled behind her in a daze, and when they'd arrived at the theater the night before, she had watched over him for a few hours as he collapsed into a kind of half-consciousness, the nightmares from which had haunted him for the rest of the time he'd lain there. Now finally got up and dragged himself over to where Gruoch slept to return the favor.

She lay on old costumes stolen from the theatre, curled up cat-like on her side, her back against the walls of the little brick room containing the stairs to the roof. Her breathing was deep and slow and gentle, and he wondered how she could seem so fair and angelic when he felt more like a loathsome, unholy demon than ever. He slipped out of ragged old flannel jacket and laid it over her for a blanket. He wanted to keep her warm, and the cold didn't bother him any. He felt numb all over anyway. Looking down, he noticed that the bandages covering his burns were coming off. It was healing fairly quickly, but was still painful when something brushed against his arm. He readjusted the dangling rags, and then let his hands lay still at his sides as he slumped against the brick wall.

As he sat at his sister's side, his thoughts turned back to the priest and his blessing. He remembered the searing pain at first, the euphoria it had brought, the rapping in the theater walls announcing their father's proud approval. He had carried that glowing joy with him for almost a week before it turned bitter. It wrapped its warm golden self around his heart, sharing with him endless strength and comfort. For that time he slept a lot more than usual, and felt better. Gruoch seemed happy, too. She still seemed happy, except that she was concerned about him. It made him feel all the worse to know he was stealing the blessing away from her, too. He tried to remember what exactly had killed it, but could only remember realising something suddenly. Something that changed everything, that killed everything, that killed him. Countless victims he'd butchered over the years hurled themselves from his imagination to confront him again. Mr. McCorrey was with them, blood gushing from the deadly wound Mac had intended to make, but never did, and voices he had never heard in his life but knew instictively belonged to his mother and father called out to him for help. He hadn't slept since then; he'd only sunk into trances, Gruoch told him, which she always shook him out of with fear in her voice and tears in her eyes.

He was glad his sister could sleep, though. She deserved it. Before, during sleepless nights, he'd often have to lead her back to bed when she walked in her sleep, reassuring her with whispers he doubted she could hear, so it was comforting to him that as far as he'd ruined her happiness, she could at least sleep soundly still. She would not have to feel that she was already dead and not able to stop and die, like he did, or feel the stiffness in her joints and the cold in her breast that had made his own body a dungeon from which his soul could not escape, assuming he had a soul. He closed his eyes, trying to remember what it was he had thought of that had brought such pain upon him.

"Hush, my little thane-let, " a hoarse voice whispered in his ear and he felt the touch of a dry, withered hand on his head, exactly where the priests' blessing, damning palm had touched him. "My little killer of actors."

Mac's tired eyes snapped open. There was nothing there. The only thing that brushed his dark unruly hair was the cold wind, which most certainly hadn't called him its little murderer. The roof was still and empty except for the fluttering tidbits of paper and garbage that had been left there and the dancing fog. He eyed the area warily all the same for several minutes, before he leaned back against the wall again, still looking, but doubting that it was anything but another hallucination. Suddenly, invisible fingers rested on his uninjured arm, the way a man might show sympathy to his friend. He tensed against the touch, pressing his back against the wall. "It's alright, little thane-let," a new voice crooned by his side, " murderer for your father."

The transparent hand fell away, and Mac scrambled to his feet. He forced his tired body into a fighting stance in front of his sister and reached behind his back for the dagger he usually kept tucked in his belt. It wasn't there. He couldn't remember what had happened to it. Then he saw it hovering in front of him, as if held the grasp of some invisible creature. The lines from the play, "Is this a dagger I see before me, the handle towards my hand?" echoed through his head as he reached almost involuntarily towards the rusty weapon. His trembling fingers hovered over the wooden hilt, carved with worn and faded Celtic symbols, until a hand he could not see snatched his wrist and thrust the dagger into his grasp. " Don't worry, poor thane-let, " the voice hissed as his fingers closed around it, "Unhappy breaker of curses. "

The hand still closed around his wrist pushed back, pinning his hand and the dagger against his chest and throwing him back sprawling on the rooftop. He lifted his head enough to look where he had just been standing, but he saw nothing but swirling mist.

He lay there, propped up a little on the elbow of his left arm, staring into the empty space.

Gruoch awoke slowly, edging slowly back to consciousness. She thought she heard the thud of a falling body and voices talking. They were not the same hideous and accusing cries that used to haunt her nightmares, rather a familiar one, peircing the muffling shroud of sleep from the waking world outside. As she began to come alive, she recognized the speaker as her brother.

Worried, she sat up on her improvised bed, his ragged coat sliding off her side as she rose. She found Mac lying on the cold rooftop, his left arm against the cold cement raised his boney shoulders off the ground, and his dagger clutched in his burned right hand. His face was away from her, but she could tell he was facing straight ahead over the edge of the builting and into the mist, and he spoke in a low steady voice. "..the handle towards my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see the still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? Or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation proceding from the heat oppressed brain..."

"Mac!" she cried in alarm. She got to her hands and knees and scrambled out of the pile of old costumes to her brother's side. His golden-yellow eyes stared unseeingly away. He didn't move, didn't stop speaking, didn't even realise she was there. It was another trance. "Mac, stop. Snap out of it. Mac!"

" There's no such thing. It is the bloody business that informs thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one half world nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse the curtained sleep. Witchcraft celebrates pale Hecates offerings, and withered murder alarumed by his sentinel the wolf, whose howls his watch.."

She grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him. "Mac! Wake up, come on! Mac!" He did not pause his eerie speech or change the direction of his empty stare.

"Thou sure and firmset earth, hear not my steps which way they walk, for fear thy very stones prate of my whereabouts and take the present horror of the time which now suits with it. While I threat he lives, words to heat of deeds too cold breath gives..."

"Macamfearnachtill, stop it!" Gruoch finally cried. She knew her brother hated his real name, but after waiting out the first few terrifying trances, she'd discovered that it would more often than not bring him back. Even so, she was reluctant to use it, since for the past eight and a quarter centuries she'd become accustomed to avoiding it. He suddenly fell silent, his eyes dropping down to his chest and then looking back up at her fearfully. She still had him by his shoulders, and bent down, pressing her face against the fabric of his old t-shirt as her clear blue eyes began to fill with tears of relief. "You did it again," she cried into his skeletal chest.

" Gruoch," he gasped, beginning to shudder as he remembered the events leading up to the trance, "There where voices, and they called me a thane-let, and then the took my dagger and help it up like in the play and then when they gave it back they pushed me and you woke up. I'm so sorry, Gruoch, I didn't mean to wake you. Go back to sleep and I'll watch you to make sure nothing else wakes you up. "

"Mac, you were only hallucinating again," she told him, anxiously, raising her head to look him in the face. "You do it all the time. "

"No, Gruoch, they touched me! Here." He lifted his hand and set it on it forhead, his long pale fingers sliding into his dark red hair. Then he let it drop across his chest to his other arm. "And thn here, and she grabbed my hand...." His trembling voice trailed off.

" You imagined it," she said gently. " Jesus, Mac, you're so cold. Here, lie down." She attempted to set him back against the roof while she reached over for his jacket, but he wouldn't stay. He sat bolt upright again as she laid it over him.

"No! You have to keep that and stay warm and sleep! I'm fine!"

"You are not fine, you're freezing. And if you can't feel it, it's because you're half-dead already, now lay still!" She pushed him down again, and draped the coat over him as far as she could without moving her hand. "Will you stay or do I have to sit on you all night?"

" I want you to be warm," he whispered.

" Do you see that pile of old clothes I've been sleeping on? I don't need your damn shirt. Now hush. " She lifted her hand. Mac didn't move. She took some costumes of the pile and covered herself with them as she lay down next to him. "There, see? I'm fine."

"Gruoch, they called me a thane-let. And a killer of my father and a murderer for actors and a cursed breaker of happiness. "

"Hush. They did not. They only exist in your head. Try and go to sleep, Mac."

They sat silently for a while, listening to the sounds of the night. Suddenly, Gruoch sat up, her head cocked to hear some distant sound.

"You heard it, too," Mac said.

"Shut up, Mac," she said, lying down. " It was only a bird. " She fell asleep telling herself she hadn't heard a wild and eerie cackling.