Читать книгу The Impaler - Gregory Funaro - Страница 18

Edmund Lambert watched the final scene of Macbeth from the wings. He stood just far enough offstage to stay out of sightlines and still get a good view of the trap. He didn’t care about the sword fight, and when it came right down to it, thought the whole climax of the play to be quite silly. He didn’t understand why the director had Banquo’s ghost come up from Hell, from underneath the stage to blow dust in Macbeth’s eyes as he was about to kill Macduff. That wasn’t in Shakespeare’s original—contradicted the very nature of fate, Edmund thought.

Then again, what could the director possibly know about fate? About ghosts and killing and witches and Hell?

The clang of swords rang out as Macbeth bellowed his final words: “Lay on, Macduff; and damned be him who first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’”

The trap had worked perfectly from day one. Edmund had designed the mechanism and built it himself: a three-stepped platform on casters that split open down the middle to reveal a stair unit that allowed the actors to disappear into the electrics shop beneath the stage. A nice effect, Edmund thought. He especially liked how, when someone died, the Witches would rise up to take the dead person’s spirit down “to Hell.”

Then again, he thought, getting into Hell was easy. It’s getting out that’s the tricky part.

Edmund also liked the design of the set very much: a two-tiered horseshoe with multiple entrances and a tall set of double doors upstage center that were intended to mimic the pattern on the oven doors at Auschwitz. However, instead of setting the play in Nazi Germany (which would’ve been perfect, he thought) the director had chosen to portray Mac-beth’s kingdom as a burned-out, post-apocalyptic fantasy world. Edmund thought this trite and juvenile—a poor man’s Road Warrior or something—but no matter. No, as long as the trap worked smoothly, that’s all he cared about.

And once the platform came apart and Banquo blew the dust in Macbeth’s eyes, Edmund stepped back into the offstage shadows feeling satisfied.

“You don’t want to see him get his head cut off?” asked the girl playing Lady Macbeth.

Edmund shrugged and took his seat by the pin rail. He’d never really spoken to her—only a few words here and there over the past year—but knew her name was Cindy Smith. She was in her rehearsal clothes, but had taken it upon herself to dress like the Witches—like a spirit to represent her descent into Hell. Edmund had overheard her during crew complaining about not being able to take her bow in her queen costume, and had thought her petty and as common as her last name for bitching about such nonsense.

Then came the cheer onstage signaling Macbeth’s beheading, and Cindy whispered, “There isn’t a sword in the world big enough to cut that guy’s head off.”

Edmund smiled and all at once thought better of her.

“Are you planning on going to the cast party?” she asked. “I don’t know if you know, but it’s after the show next Friday. Don’t remember ever seeing you at any of the other ones this year. But anyway, you should come.”

“Not sure if I can,” Edmund said in his thick Southern drawl. “Gotten behind on things at home because of all the work here.”

“Well, I hope to see you there. I know you’re a little older, but the cast parties are pretty chill—not a bunch of drunk freshmen making fools of themselves if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Edmund nodded vaguely. A flourish was heard onstage, the signal that the newly crowned king of Scotland was about to give his final speech.

“Cindy!” hissed an assistant stage manager. “Get your ass to places!”

But Edmund knew the actress had a little more time; would only have to run down the vom stairs and into the electrics shop to get under the trap, from where she’d rise to take Macbeth’s spirit into Hell. In fact, she still had to wait for the end of that stupid dance number with the Witches—something the director had inserted at the last minute so that the actor playing Macbeth would have enough time to get back onstage in his spirit costume. And although Edmund hadn’t been around to hear it, word on the street was that Macbeth had put up even more of a stink about his bow than Cindy had.

“I gotta get moving,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll talk to you before then, but think about coming to the cast party next Friday, okay, Edmund?”

“Okay.”

Cindy smiled and disappeared into the darkness of the vom.

A short time later, Edmund caught her eye when she stepped out of the pit to meet the spirit of her dead husband. And whereas the young actress most certainly must have thought he was watching in the wings for her, all Edmund Lambert really cared about was that the trap was working properly.

It was just after midnight when Edmund turned his old Ford F-150 down the long dirt driveway that led to his grandfather’s farmhouse. The sprawling, two-story rambler with the dilapidated front porch was set back about two hundred yards off a country road on the outskirts of Wilson, almost exactly halfway between the Harriot campus and downtown Raleigh.

Edmund’s grandfather had once grown tobacco here; had taken over the family business from Edmund’s great grandfather and made himself quite a killing in the sixties and seventies. And even though the tobacco fields had been barren and brown for a long time now, Edmund was glad his grandfather never caved in and sold the farm.

For now Edmund understood why.

He had lived with his grandfather all his life, but the house had only officially become his when he returned from Iraq, after his grandfather died and left him everything. That had been over two years ago now, but even then Edmund had understood that the timing was no accident.

It was just part of the equation. Everything connected.

And once he was safely past the stone pillars at the foot of his driveway Edmund Lambert was the General again.

He cut off the pickup’s headlights. He liked to return home this way—the crumbling silhouettes of the old tobacco sheds passing by him like a grim honor guard as his eyes adjusted to the dark. He parked the truck by the front porch and stepped out—took a deep breath and headed for the field behind the old horse barn. There hadn’t been horses in the barn for almost fifty years—only his van and his chin-up bar now.

The General wandered out to the middle of the field and stopped—the moonlight, a wrinkled blanket of silver beneath his feet; the stars, a bag of scattered diamonds above his head. It hurt his neck to look at them tonight. He was tired, but anxious, too; felt that the crews and the building of the trap during the past few days had put him behind schedule. And then there were all the technical rehearsals coming this weekend. True, he’d called in sick a couple of days the week before—that had given him ample opportunity to take care of the lawyer—but little time to figure out who was to be next. Of course, the Prince wanted him to rest, but still …

Sighing, the General walked back to the house. Once inside he turned off the alarm and immediately reset it to STAY/ INSTANT. He’d had the alarm installed after his grandfather’s death just in case anyone should ever come snooping while he was busy in the cellar. But no one ever came snooping anymore. No relatives, no friends, no more men from Big Tobacco offering to buy the farm.

Then again, that was all part of the equation, too.

He took off his shirt in the front hall and smelled his armpits. He needed a shower, needed to wash off the residue of his day-life before got into bed. If the Prince wanted him to sleep, then he would sleep as the General

The General finished undressing in the upstairs bathroom and turned on the shower. He stared at himself for a long time in the full-length mirror until the steam billowed out from behind the curtain and made his reflection disappear. He understood the message—knew that he had watched himself become smoke, become spirit.

The General smiled and stepped into the shower.

He stood there for a long time staring down at his chest, watching with the eyes of a child as the scalding hot water reddened his flesh.