Chapter Eight
Apologies for the huge delay, but that pesky final exams for college game had to be played to the best of my ability, but now it's over and I my time is mine own again and I can do as I please. And what I please happens to be (finally) posting the next chapter to this wonderful story. However, I have a question for you readers: The way this is progressing, it may have a few similarities to one of the lower budget slasher movies of the early nineties. Not a lot of similarities, but they are there. The question to you, then, is what to do. Should I just write it as it stands or should I rework the end? The benefit to the former is that I have it most of the way done so the posts will be coming closer together than they have in the past. The benefit to the later is that it may end up being a better story. Or it may not; that remains to be seen. In any event, dear readers, I should like your opinions. On with the show!
We had two weeks. The show opened in two weeks. Rehearsals were running 'til midnight or later every night, so it was a good thing that the show was going up over Christmas break or none of us would be going to any of the morning classes we'd signed up for. I fell asleep in the audience with Liz more than once, to be rudely awoken by Matt screaming for one or both of us to fix things that went wrong. And a lot of things were going wrong. If I didn't know better, I'd say we had an Opera Ghost waiting in the wings wreaking havoc on an unsuspecting cast. And in some ways, we did.
Flats had a tendency to fall over, as though they had been unbolted from the floor (and it was later found out that they had). One of the scrims caught fire and had to be ripped down to be extinguished and the light bar almost came down with it. Costumes disappeared, both entirely and just in pieces, which made my life more difficult because I had to replace everything that went missing, and a lot of the time that meant making an entirely new piece of clothing. The cast, of course, blamed it on bad luck.
The cast as an entity did not know the cause of Sam's death; they had been told it was an accident. They didn't know that there was some vindictive person prowling around campus, with a vendetta against our little group. Matt knew, of course, as did Holmes and I, and I'd told Liz, but the rest of the cast thought the show was unlucky or something. Superstition runs high in the theatre anyway, and this show bread even more. No one so much as whispered the title of any of Shakespeare's works in the wings, though it was only the Scottish tragedy that was considered unlucky to utter backstage. All ladders were folded up and put away as soon as they were no longer needed, strictly as a precaution, and the words 'good' and 'luck' were not ever mentioned in the same sentence. We certainly had the right mood going for a murder mystery; I had never seen a cast so jumpy.
Of course, they didn't have any reason to be nervous (baring the psychopath who had it in for the department, but as I said, they didn't know about that). The actual lines were going very smoothly. Holmes had picked up his part alarmingly quickly, even for him. We had drilled lines every chance we had for nearly two weeks, which meant I knew just about everyone else's lines by rote as well. I ended up being drafted for prompter and half the time I didn't even need the script.
The cast worked very well together; they had no problems improvising when someone dropped a line or missed a cue. If Liz or I happened to jump at sudden movements or moving shadows back stage it could just be blamed on a broken coffee maker on my part and lack of sleep on Liz's.
Throughout all of this, Holmes was, predictably enough, a rock. He never showed so much as a flicker of surprise when a flat fell, and he was right there beside Matt pulling down the scrim as Sean, the guy playing Marston of the plastic chicken fame, worked the fire extinguisher on it. Being the typical Victorian male, he didn't want me going anywhere in the theatre alone and I got more than one stern lecture when he looked out on the audience and didn't see me in my customary place next to Liz. He insisted upon walking me home at night (it wasn't far enough to make a cab worthwhile, and walking is good exercise), but that meant that I would have to stay until Matt let cast go rather than when he let everyone else go, so Holmes ended up waking me up more than once when it was time to go.
I started having nightmares a week before opening night. It was probably just a combination of all the little things that were going wrong getting to me in the five or six hours a night that I did manage to sleep. I managed to wake myself up twice before I actually made any kind of commotion . I was dreaming about, predictably enough, opening night and all the things that could go wrong. The first dream featured Matt being pushed from the loft. The second featured Amber, the girl playing Vera, actually being strangled by the noose in the end scene. Of course, the third time I was not able to keep myself quiet. The third dream was about Holmes.
In the end of our show, Captain Lombard, the main character, is shot by Vera because she think's he's the murderer. We'd practiced every day, sometimes twice a day, with our starter pistol so everyone was used to the sound by opening night and no one did anything unfortunate like drop a glass and break it backstage and make an ill-timed noise and confuse the audience. It was my ultimate fear that someone would switch out the fake gun for a real one and Amber wouldn't know the difference. Apparently, it was Matt and Liz's biggest fear as well, because they started taking the pistol home with them every night instead of just leaving it on the props table like they used to. In my dream, that's exactly what happened: the murderer switched guns and no one noticed but me sitting in the audience. So I had to watch as Amber shot Holmes and he bled to death on stage. I was screaming in the dream, and I was later told I was screaming in real life. I woke up to Holmes looking down on me and shouting my name. As soon as he saw I was awake, he grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me up to a sitting position, letting me sob into his shoulder. He didn't say anything until I was rational again.
"Are you alright?" I nodded against his shoulder; I couldn't quite bring myself to move and he didn't seem to be in any kind of hurry to make me.
"Just a bad dream, I guess." I took several deep breaths before I continued. "Could you, maybe, hang out in here for a bit?" I knew it was a stretch. Having to live in the present year or not, Sherlock Holmes was a Victorian male who would find the idea of spending any more time than strictly necessary un-chaperoned in a woman's rooms very inappropriate and probably offensive. But I had to give it a shot.
He paused a moment before answering, "If you wish." I smiled at him, greatly appreciating the fact that he would set aside his preexisting values to make me more comfortable. Throwing any notions of propriety I had to the wind (and I didn't have many), I settled myself against him as we both leaned back into the cushioned headboard, my head again finding his shoulder and my left hand settling over his heart to reassure myself that it was still beating. For his part, he showed little to no hesitation when he wrapped his long skinny arms around my shoulders and waist and drew me closer.
I was very nearly asleep when I thought I heard him speak again. "I would that you had no need to be frightened. I would that I could keep you safe, always." As I said, I was very nearly asleep when I thought I heard this, so it was even odds that it never happened. I also could have sword I felt something soft, rather like a pair of lips, brush over my forehead, but it was just as likely that I was dreaming again.
When I woke up the next afternoon, he was already dressed and watching some stupid sitcom that he flicked off before I could get a good look at it (but I would swear that it was a rerun of Dawson's Creek). He fixed me with his trademark assessing look and asked, "Are you alright Elizabeth?"
"It was just a bad dream, Holmes. I'll be fine." I glanced at the microwave clock and frowned. "We should have lunch and go. Matt wants to have some sort of "talk" with the cast and stuff before we start for the day. I'm sure it's about Sam and…what happened to him. He said he was going to talk to them before the show went up, and as we only have five days, he is fast running out of time." I turned away from his endless gaze and began to fix sandwiches for the two of us. I saw that he already had the coffee on, so that was one less thing I had to do.
"Elizabeth." I didn't turn around, afraid of what I'd see in his face. I made some sort of noise to show that I was listening, which was apparently enough for him as he went on. "I wish you'd stop coming to these rehearsals. I could bring things that needed repair home for you to work on. I know you can be in touch with Matt and Liz without actually being there. You would be safe here. It is for your own good."
I turned around to find him quite a bit closer behind me that I thought he was. I swallowed and met his eyes. "While I appreciate the fact that you care about my wellbeing, I'm going to tell you the same thing I told my brother. I am not going to let some psychopath alter the way I live my life. If it actually comes down to it, this person has a vendetta against actors, and I am no actor so he or she wouldn't come after me anyway. I'm not a target and I am needed. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to stay away just because some person is having an extreme hissy fit."
"I wish you would reconsider," he said with a sigh. I knew I was aggravating him with my refusal to do the 'smart' thing, but if I altered the way I lived my life, the psychopath won right? And that's what we were trying to avoid. I'd told my brother as much when he called to yell at me for being an idiot. When he didn't back off, I just hung up on him. I hadn't heard from him since.
"Yeah, well, I'm not going to so you may as well get over it now." I grinned up at him and froze. The look in his eyes nearly stopped my heart and I couldn't have moved if I wanted to. In a detached sort of way, I felt his hands slide up my arms to rest on either side of my throat. I'm sure he felt my pulse racing under his fingers but he didn't seem to take any notice of it. I saw a flicker of something that may or may not have been uncertainty flicker through his eyes, but a moment later, he bent his head and touched his mouth tentatively to mine. He gained confidence when I didn't push him away or slap him and a nice grey fog descended on my brain, leaving all my energy focused on touch. He took another step back, pushing me into the counter. I wasn't one to complain at that particular moment in time; in point of fact, I didn't even notice that I had a bit of wood digging into my back. I couldn't have cared less.
Of course, reality saw the need to kick in right at that moment. I heard the phone ringing and considering what was going on, I figured I ought to answer it. Holmes apparently thought the same thing, as he let me go about a second after I registered that the ringing wasn't just in my ears. His breathing was ragged and there were two spots of color riding high on his pale cheekbones. I cleared my throat and answered the phone.
"Lizzy, it's Liz. Get down here now. It's important." She hung up. I looked up at Holmes. "We have to go." He nodded and followed me to the door. He helped me on with my coat and threaded my arm through his, settling my hand in the crook of his elbow and covering it with one of his. We walked to the theater in near silence, both of us wondering what had happened now.
I'm not one hundred percent happy with the flow of this one, but I figured I'd put it up anyway because I haven't updated in a million years. Reviews, as always, are welcome. Holmes is public property, Ten Little Indians belongs to the Agatha Christy estate and I have no idea who claims the right to Dawson's Creek, but it isn't me.