Reign (46 page)

Evan shivered as he thought about audiences, those vast, featureless masses of people with one great, demanding face. With the thought alone came the first drowning sensations of his asthma, constricting his windpipe. He forced the thoughts away, made himself relax, and soon he was breathing easily again. He chuckled bitterly as he thought about the Marines and his feeble attempts at command. All he had needed was for a squad to look at him, and the nightmare began. How could you command when you couldn't even breathe?

No, it was the west coast for him, maybe up on the coast of northern California. He had visited school friends there his senior year, and had been impressed with the life style. Maybe he could become a carpenter. He liked working with his hands. Hell, he thought, even a house painter would be fine. Something to get him out in the weather, away from theatres, from the memories of all the faces . . .

Then the lights went out.

He felt panic for only a moment, then realized that the darkness had a natural explanation. After all, they had pulled electrics all morning. Perhaps the circuit that the remaining lights were on
had
overloaded. Or a fuse had burned out, that was all. In a minute Curt would be back, would see what had happened, and would come on stage with a flashlight. Everything would be fine.

Still, Evan was uncomfortable enough to pull his feet back from over the edge of the pit. He didn't like the idea of them dangling into darkness.

But was it completely dark? Usually a theatre's darkness was like that of caves —
 
total and unrelenting. You could not even see the deeper darkness of your hand in front of your face. But Evan thought that there was light coming from somewhere, and he called out.

"Hello? . . . Hello, is anyone there?"

There was just enough light now to make out the great curves of the loge and balconies above. But where was it coming from?

Then he became aware of a sound he had not heard in years, a dull drone, as of some giant hive filled with huge bees, punctuated by an occasional higher-pitched tone. When he realized what it was, his bowels turned to water.

An audience.

The murmur went on and on, its sound terrifying him with the knowledge that out there in the dark were people, people sitting and facing him, and only that blackness, once feared, was what kept their eyes from him. He wanted to get up, to run off the stage, but his legs refused to move, his arms would not push him erect. And then, from high up in the booth, the light started to grow, one light, bright as flame, blinding him as it must have blinded Tommy
Werton
before the curtain fell on him, but Evan would not step back, even if he had wanted to. He was incapable of motion.

And now the sound, that doleful buzzing of the hive, diminished slowly into a
flat silence, and he knew they were looking at him, at him alone, staring with their
thousand eyes, listening with their thousand ears, waiting for him to speak or scream.

But he could not scream. Only a thin whistling sound escaped from his throat as
he struggled to take in the air that refused to enter his terror-filled lungs, the air that
would not go to his screaming brain, the air whose absence brought a dark and blessed curtain down over Evan's consciousness, but not before the light began to grow on the audience as well, and he could see them, thousands of them, filling every seat in the vast theatre, from the first row not ten feet away up, up to the soaring reaches of the balcony where they became lost, coalesced into a single distant mass of flesh and clothes and eyes, for that was all there was to their faces — no mouths, noses, cheeks — only eyes, staring, waiting. And the horrible buzzing began again, and he wondered, just before he fell into the pit of their need, how can they speak without mouths?

Dan Munro, with three of his officers, had come to the Venetian Theatre to perform their search of the premises. When they entered the auditorium, they found the work lights on and Evan Hamilton lying unconscious on the floor of the stage. The officers, all of whom were trained in CPR, immediately went to work on the boy, while Munro ran to the backstage phone and called 911 for an ambulance, which arrived only five minutes later. The medics found Evan breathing, and correctly diagnosed his condition as a severe asthmatic attack accompanied by a state of shock. They lost no time in bundling him into the ambulance and transporting him to the Kirkland Medical Center.

While the ambulance pulled away from the theatre, sirens screaming and lights ablaze, Dan Munro talked to Curt, who had returned with his lunch as the officers were laboring to keep Evan's breath flowing. "I couldn't have been away for three minutes," he said. "I don't know
what
the hell happened. He was fine when I left. And now . . . oh Christ . . . is he going to be okay?"

"I think so. Unless there's something else wrong they didn't spot," said Munro. "You didn't see anybody in here?"

"No, no one." Curt gave a bitter laugh. "There aren't that many of us left."

~ * ~

John Steinberg called the prison before Dennis's visit with Sid was over, and informed Ann about Evan's attack. When Dennis came out of the visiting area, she took his hand and told him that Evan had been taken to the medical center. "John said not to worry. They think he'll be fine."

"What was it?" Dennis asked, his face drawn.

"An asthma attack. Pretty bad. He said he was in shock too." They drove, neither one of them speaking, to the hospital. Dennis pulled the car up to the front entrance, and ran into the waiting area, where Curt and John were sitting.

"I want to see him. Now," Dennis said.

Steinberg collared a nurse, and in another ten minutes Dennis was in Evan's room. The boy was breathing quickly and shallowly, his eyes closed, but his brows were pressing down in an uneven tempo, as though he was trying to block something from his mind's eye. Dennis pulled up a black plastic and metal chair and sat next to him, taking his moist and clammy hand in his own.

"Evan," he said softly. "Evan."

But the boy neither opened his eyes nor spoke. He only panted like a dog on a hot day, his eyes jerking convulsively behind their lids.

"Evan," Dennis said again, and continued to say the name, a litany, a prayer to bring his son back to him. "Evan."

He sat there for an hour, ignoring the visits of the doctors and nurses, sat there until, just before four o'clock in the afternoon, the boy opened his eyes with a start, looked about him, and saw his father sitting by him, holding his hand. "Dad?" he said weakly.

"Evan. Hello." He knew it sounded foolish, but after chanting the boy's name for so long, he did not know what else to say. "Are you . . . all right?"

Evan took several deep, shuddering breaths, then closed his eyes again. Dennis was afraid the memory of what he had seen, for he was sure that the attack was the Emperor's doing, was driving his son back into the mercies of unconsciousness, but Evan opened his eyes again and stared at the ceiling.

"Did you see something?" Dennis asked. "Something in the theatre?"

Evan nodded slowly. His mouth was open, and he was breathing loudly through it.

"What was it? Was it . . . me? Some one that looked like me?"

He shook his head. “. . . people," he whispered. "Full of . . . people . . . all eyes . . . watching me . . ."

"The auditorium," Dennis ventured, "was filled with
people
?"

"Yes." Evan closed his eyes and began to cry, a terrible, silent crying that made Dennis fear he had lost his breath once more, but in another second the boy sucked in air and let it out again with a wet, bubbling sound that made Dennis picture boiling wells in hell.

"It's going to be all right," Dennis said. "You don't have to go back there. You don't ever have to go back. We'll go to New York. I'll take you to New York. You sleep now, just sleep."

Dennis placed his hand upon his son's forehead, and Evan closed his eyes. In time, his breathing grew less frenzied, and in a while he slept. When Dennis was sure the boy could no longer hear him, he said, "I love you, Evan," and left the room.

He did not rejoin his friends immediately. Instead he stepped into a dimly lit stairwell, sat on a step, and thought for a long time about what to do next. Then, when he had made up his mind, he walked to the waiting area.

Steinberg, Curt, and Ann were still there. "He'll be all right," Dennis told them. "He's sleeping now. John, Curt, are you both packed?" They nodded. "Good. I don't want anyone to go back to the theatre today, but tomorrow Abe
Kipp
can get our bags. You'll leave Kirkland first thing in the morning. Ann and I will follow you when Evan is fit enough to travel. But we'll come back. We'll come back to do a show."

Steinberg nodded. "
Craddock
."

"Yes,
Craddock
. But another show before that. I'm going to take your advice, John. We're going to do
A Private Empire
. One performance. The final performance."

Steinberg frowned. "I thought you didn't want to —"

"I changed my mind. I want to do it. In the Venetian Theatre. As quickly as we can put it together."

"It'll take time," Steinberg said. "Three months, maybe."

"No. That's too long. Half of that, if not sooner."

"My God, Dennis, you're talking about staging a major production.”

“You said before that it would be easy."

"With
time
, yes. But doing it so quickly — it would cost twice, three times as much as it would otherwise."

"I have the money. I'm not concerned."

"There's not much room for profit."

"I don't care about profit, I just want to
do
it." Dennis spat the words out, and Steinberg seemed to recoil before them. "Do I still run this business, John?”

“Of course you do."

"Then don't fight me. Just do what I ask." He turned to Ann. "I'll take you back to your car, Ann." He turned and walked down the hall. Ann followed.

"Why, Dennis?" she asked him on the way to the parking lot. "I know there must be a reason."

"There's a reason," he said. "It's killed the people I love, and it showed Evan something, something that terrified him, that nearly killed him. I have to destroy it, Ann. If not destroy it, then bring it back into me, at least those parts that it stole from me. I have to fight it. It's the only way to stop it, the only way to . . . to get back my soul."

"But doing the show —
A Private Empire?
. . ."

"I lost myself playing the Emperor. And I think that playing the Emperor again is the only way I can get myself back. If I can somehow . . . revive those emotions, maybe I can weaken
him
instead of his weakening me."

"But you don't know," she said, standing by his car. "It could be just what he wants — for you to be the Emperor again. Maybe there's some sort of psychic link there. Maybe, if you become the Emperor again, he'll just become stronger as a result."

Dennis sighed, and pulled up the collar of his coat against a light rain that had just begun to fall. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm playing right into its hands. But it's the only thing I can think of. All I know is that it came out of me, and that it's part of me, and that this is what I think is the right thing to do. I think my strength can destroy it. And I think I can be strong again." They got into the car and sat there for a moment, the only sound the patter of raindrops on the roof.

"My outburst at John just now," Dennis finally said. "I'm not proud of it, but I haven't gotten angry at him for a long time, not him or anyone. And maybe that's a sign, an indication that I still have the emotions that fuel the Emperor. Or that I can get them back from time to time."

He thought for a moment. "I wonder," he said quietly, "if when I get angry, or when I feel deep emotion, he loses something." The tempo of the rain had gradually increased until Ann could barely hear him as he said, "I wonder, if I felt
enough
, if he would lose . . . everything."

When they arrived back at the theatre, the rain was driving down. Dennis drove next to Ann's car so that she was able to step directly from one to another. She had promised to go to New York with him, and he told her he would call her the next day to make arrangements.

He didn't want her to see him go back into the theatre, so he waited until she had driven away before he pulled his car up in front of the main entrance. As he did, Dan Munro and his men came out the door. Dennis joined them under the marquee. Rain spat down around them, and Munro nodded in greeting.

"How's your son?"

"He'll be all right," Dennis said. "A severe asthma attack. I'm glad you were there to help. Thank you."

"I'm glad we were there too." He gestured toward the theatre. "We've been through the whole place, top to bottom. All the suites, all the rooms upstairs, even the closets. We went into the ceiling, down in the cellars, everywhere, and the only thing alive in there was the cat. I think if you change those locks you'll be a lot safer."

"Thanks, Chief," Dennis said. "I appreciate the search, and I will have the locks changed. While we're away."