The Ghost Story - From The Madness Of The Number Man

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Part Eight

“So you’re wanting a ghost story huh?” The bearded man was sitting on top of the bar looking down at Richard and Petunia while he spoke. He was already smoking his second cigarette within ten minutes of sitting down with them, and each time he went to flick his ashes into the ashtray sitting next to him, they instead would fall all over the bar, and Petunia would watch in amazement every time, as not a single ash ever made it into the tray. Marty was wearing a baseball cap on the top of his head that had a picture of a compass stitched into its black canvas, and his sweaty brown hair was creeping out the bottom of it. He was wearing a flannel shirt that was missing the top and bottom buttons, and a pair of faded bootcut blue jeans that flared out over his beaten brown cowboy boots. 

He had a confident air about him that was magnified with every step of those heavy soled boots whether they were on the concrete floor of the auditorium or the wooden stage that rose from it. He would always tell people that he had been meaning to lose a few pounds, but Marty Cayer was just one of those people that was large in every way. He was heavy and he was tall, he was loud and he was funny, he was energetic and he was kind; generally the type of person that everyone likes to be around, even Richard, as much as he hated being in this place, felt better when Marty was around. Petunia felt herself drawn into his slight mellow drawl, an accent that defied all efforts to pinpoint its origin.

“She does, I don’t.”

“You guys want some popcorn? I can make us up some real quick.”

“No thanks.”

“So, how’s your mom doing?” Marty Cayer was also a man who could wander in conversation. Richard was aware of his fondness of jumping from subject to subject; a conversation with Marty Cayer could be an endless verbal labyrinth that if not properly managed, could spiral out of control rather quickly, much like the theatre could be an endless labyrinth that if not properly managed, could spiral out of control rather quickly.

“She’s doing alright. Really though, she wants to hear it.”

“Hear what?” Petunia cleared her throat before she gave him an answer.

“I’d like to hear everything you know about the building. I’ve been fascinated with it ever since I moved here a few months ago.”

“Well of course you have, young lady. There’s not many places you can go in town and not be within eye shot of it. Eyeshot; is that even a word?”

“Yes, it is.”

“I’ve always heard the term earshot, but never eyeshot. I can remember my high school English teacher…”

“Mr. Cayer, I’d love to hear about your teacher, but I really need to ask you some questions. It’s for a report I’m doing at school.”

“Oh sure, I’m sorry. What’s your questions?” Petunia pulled out a small notebook and opened it up and positioned her pencil above a fresh page.

“Do you know when this place was built?”

“I do. I tell you what, why don’t I just give you everything I know with as much flavor as I can give it for the next ten minutes, fair enough?”

“Absolutely.”

“I’m a little behind on the set, and if I don’t get her done, the folks on the board might make sure I become one of the ghosts around here.”

“Ten minutes is fine.” It wasn’t. Petunia had many questions, but she thought that if she was friendly enough, this man might agree to meet with her again at a later time.

“Okay then. Let me get into character.” Marty threw his legs over the backside of the bar and vaulted behind it. Petunia looked to Richard with a question in her eyes, to which Richard only shrugged; this was just Marty being Marty as far as he was concerned. Marty loved three things, the theatre, telling stories, and telling dirty jokes.

Richard had heard a hybrid of the latter two concerning a rooster and a box of crackers over ten times; it’s not that the joke was bad, it’s that it always took Marty almost nine minutes every time he told it. The two children watched Marty pull a cloudy mug from the back wall and fill it up with an even cloudier beer. Richard looked down at his new Swatch watch; nine twenty-one in the morning. Marty was starting early today.

After Marty had filled his glass, he walked slowly around the bar, grabbed the ashtray with nary an ash in it, and sat down at a table right next to Richard and Petunia. He smiled at them and pulled out another cigarette. Petunia couldn’t stand the smell, but this man had information she desperately needed, so she had no choice but to sit in front of Marty while he lit one after another, and slowly drank his beer; each sip a carefully orchestrated pause to give weight to his words.

“Alright. I don’t tell these stories to too many people, so you guys should feel very special right now. I’m not sure when the building was built, but I do know who built it, and what it was originally. Sinclair Daniels was a doctor from back east, New Orleans to be exact. For some reason, he decided that the hill this building is sitting on now was a good place for a house. Back then, there was nothing out here. So he builds it just like buildings he knows from his home. A big old square house that took seven years to finish.

Towns grew up around men like that back in those days, so Wicker Bush came into being. Anyway, Daniels has got a kid, but no wife. I think she died right after the boy was born. Well, that kid gets to be a young teenager, and he goes missing. Wicker Bush was a little bigger by then, and everybody is looking up and down for this damn kid, but nobody can find him. A couple of years go by and Daniels starts going crazy.

One day, people start hearing all this noise from the fancy house up on the hill; this building. Daniels starts pulling his house apart from the inside out. After about a week, nobody sees him, so someone gets brave enough to come on up here, and sees that all the doors locked and all the windows have been boarded shut from the inside. That person calls out for another person, and before you know it, the entire town is standing up here on this hill, looking at this building and all of them start calling out for Daniels, but no one answers.

Finally, they get the nerve to break the door down. Now the door doesn’t give easy, because Daniels not only locked the damn thing, he chained them closed from the inside and put a big ole iron lock through the chains. Finally, the door gives way, and what they find inside is confusing, and a little irksome. Daniels had gutted the whole house. Sure, from the outside, it looked like it should be so fine. He never touched anything on the outside. But the inside, nothing but studs and one curious thing that’s still here to this day. You want to see what Sinclaire Daniels built?”

“No.” Richard’s answer was quick and not at all intended; it just fell from his mouth through his slightly trembling lips. Richard never had a problem with ghost stories until this place. “I’m sorry.”

“Yes Mr. Cayer, I’d love to.”

“Come here!” Marty jumped out of his chair and trotted out of the bar leaving a small thin line of smoke behind him. Petunia was quick to follow, but Richard was just a bit slower in his willingness to see what the first creepy owner of this creepy building left behind. Marty walked back through the auditorium doors, and Petunia walked right through after him. Richard hovered on the other side of the doors on the lobby side, hearing every single word, but not wanting to be shown anything. Marty pointed down towards the stage and lowered his voice.

“He left that.”

“What?”

“He left that stage.” Petunia stared down at the stage with the set of nineteenth century London sitting on top of it. The single overhead spot beamed down onto center stage, only illuminating the very middle of it, casting long shadows over everything else behind that arch.

“What do you mean, he left the stage?”

“What Sinclair Daniels did, for a reason only God himself knows, was to tear apart every piece of wood in his house, whether it be a nightstand, or a bedpost, or the walls from his study, Sinclair Daniels took pieces from all of it to make a stage in the middle of his house, a house that now had nothing in it but the wood that was holding the frame and the roof together. It took a small army of people seven years to build this house. It took Sinclair Daniels two weeks to gut the insides and build that thing right down there.”

“What happened to him?”

“Gone.” Marty snapped his fingers.  “Just like that. No one ever saw him or his son again. Anyway, the house sat vacant until the early nineteen hundreds and then someone in town got the bright idea to turn it into a theatre. It was quite the place for almost thirty years, they did it all really nice inside. The outside has pretty much been the same since it was built, but the inside, well let’s just say those professional actors made some money, so this place was done up to the nines. Chandeliers, red carpets, finished wood all over the place, but after a while it all went south and shut down.

Then in the sixties, a few of us got together and bought it and started it as a community theatre. Of course, money was tight, so a lot of the furnishings inside were sold off, and now you’re looking at what we’ve been building up since then. Hard to keep this place afloat, but we make it happen every year.”

“So, the only thing that’s original on the inside is the stage?”

“Just that and the guts of the place. The only thing that looks the same as it did the day Sinclaire disappeared is the prop room. Nothing but naked studs and rafters. You want to go up and take a look?” Richard stepped into the auditorium and stood at Petunia’s side.

‘That’s ok Marty, I think we need to get going.” Before Richard could even finish the sentence, Petunia had already started moving down towards the stage letting her hands hit the back of the wooden chairs as she walked. Richard couldn’t move; he didn’t want to go any further into the bowels of the building than he had to. Marty pulled yet another cigarette out of his pocket and set fire to the end of it.

“She’s a bit of an odd duck isn’t she Richard?”

“You have no idea.” Petunia didn’t hear Marty’s question, and even if she had, it wouldn’t have pulled her attention away from the stage. It rose four feet and six inches from the level of the floor. Petunia had been standing on the stage a few weeks earlier, but now that she was here on purpose, she found herself hesitant to walk on it again.

“Anybody ever teach you anything about the stage Ms. Gip?” Marty’s voice had begun to be somewhat of a strange comfort to Petunia, and as it came up behind her now, she didn’t startle, but rather welcomed its warm drawl.

“Not really, no.”

“This is the apron.” Marty pointed to the seven-foot-wide section that spanned the length of the front of the stage in front of the proscenium arch, and as Petunia walked closer, she noticed that it was not painted, and the raw wood gave a small bit of reflection from the single overhead light.

“How come this part isn’t painted?”

“I only lacquer that part. Paint gets in the way of the sound for tap dancing, so all the dancing in the theatre is done in front of the arch. That’s called the proscenium arch. That there is the gateway to make believe; a window into all the action.”

“Can I go up there?”

“Of course you can, but I gotta give you a warning. Once people walk on this stage, they tend to get lost in it. Have a lot of people here who’ve never made it back to normal life, if you know what I mean.” Petunia had no idea what Marty meant, but she moved toward a small but wide staircase coming off of the middle of the stage down to the level of the floor, and as Petunia walked up the creaky steps, the whole stage lit up in front of her. “Well look at that?”

“What just happened? Who turned the lights on?” Richard was still standing at the back of the auditorium, and the sound of his question had an urgency and fear about it that Petunia was beginning to feel herself.

“Who indeed Richard? I think the ghosts like you, Petunia.” She looked back down to Marty who was smiling back at her. “I’m just kidding. It’s nothing. I’ve got some exposed wires underneath those stairs that I’ve been working on. The electrical in this place does some weird things from time to time. There’re so many wires going through this place, it’s almost impossible to fix it all in a single lifetime. No big deal.” The London street was now brightly lit in front of Petunia, and although she took notice of it for a matter of seven seconds, she couldn’t take her eyes off of what Marty had called the apron. This close, it was possible to tell that the wood, although tightly fit, had been cobbled together from a variety of different sources. It had obviously been sanded and brushed over with layer upon layer of lacquer, but no amount of maintenance could hide the fact that it had been made in haste. She stepped off of the small staircase and onto the apron.

A small shiver made its way slowly up her back. Most shivers run quickly; a fleeting feeling of unease that is gone almost before it is felt, but this shiver was unlike anything Petunia had ever felt in her young life. It was creeping up from the small of her back, like some multi-legged insect that was working its way up to her neck, and just as it reached the back of her head, that warm voice coughed out a great puff of smoke behind her.

“I hate to cut this short guys, but I’ve gotta get back to work on the set. We open this weekend.” Richard finally ran from his spot at the back of the auditorium down to Marty.

“Thanks Marty! We’ll get going!”

“I tell you what, if you guys want to come by sometime tomorrow afternoon, I can give you the entire tour, how’s that?” Petunia gritted her teeth, but tried her best not to look annoyed as she turned back towards Marty.

“That would be great.”

“I’ll even tell ya about the ghost and the murder that most people will tell you never happened.”

It did happen.

“Thanks Marty, come on Petunia.”