In the Court of the Yellow King Page 6

  “What are you doing?”

  Jayda was looking at her, one eyebrow raised. Kathryn realized one finger was tracing a pattern on the table and had twisted a portion of the tablecloth into a knotted mass. She’d had no idea she was doing it.

  A chilly worm slid down the back of her neck. “I’m done,” she said, pushing away her half-eaten croissant. “Not hungry. And I gotta get back to work.”

  “You really are nervous.”

  “Something about being poor as dirt, I guess. I need this play to fly, and I’m not sure it’s going to.”

  “If it doesn’t, it won’t be on your account.”

  “Well, thanks for that.”

  They settled their bills and headed out of the café into the afternoon sunshine. Lunchtime pedestrians and traffic choked West 47th Street, the usual barely controlled chaos. For the moment, the aroma of cooking meat from a dozen nearby eateries overwhelmed the exhaust fumes, just barely.

  “Till tonight, then,” Kathryn said. She gave the younger woman a little wink. “If you see crowds of people running away, it’s because I’m practicing my song in the streets.”

  “Now, that I believe.”

  “Oh, and Jayda?”

  “Hmm?”

  “It’s a little boy.”

  Jayda returned an exaggerated sneer. “Yes, Mother.”

  Dark, dark theater.

  The cavernous space beyond the stage might as well be outer space, Kathryn thought, the only illumination out there the murky red glow from a pair of exit signs over the far doors, like ancient, dying suns floating in the void. The Frontiere, once a posh venue for first-run shows, had decayed as old buildings will decay over the course of a century, and nowadays audiences rarely filled more than half the seats, even for its biggest shows. Still, its acoustics were phenomenal, the ceiling rising to dizzying heights, the spacious stage framed by columns and faux-Greek sculptures.

  The cast had assembled within a warm island of light on the otherwise barren stage, and director Broach was in a corner conversing with Joseph Morheim, the orchestra conductor. Down in the pit, the musicians were tuning their instruments, producing a stream of background noise that alternated between soothing and jarring. This felt almost like a normal production, Kathryn thought, which in itself seemed bizarre, since little about The King in Yellow had so far been “normal.” She had no understudy; no one did. At their read-throughs, the director stopped them at varying points before the non-existent ending. It wasn’t only her script that was incomplete. Broach — or perhaps the anonymous playwright — had excised those portions of the play, the director’s explanation being that “Spontaneity, my children, will have its day, and your reactions will be as authentic as the audiences’.” Three actors — none, thankfully, in major roles — had dropped out after only a few rehearsals, claiming the play was causing them “psychological distress.” While Kathryn and Jayda Rivera had hit it off from the start, the actors who played Cassilda’s sons, Uoht and Thale, never associated with the rest of the cast. The former, a handsome, chisel-faced youngster named Les Perrin, always appeared sullen and withdrawn, his every free moment spent with his face stuck to his iPhone. The latter was a chunky, bearded gentleman named Kenton Peach who had starred in several noteworthy shows, including I’m Not Rappaport and The Odd Couple; ironically, he was old enough to be Kathryn’s father. He seemed polite enough but frequently faded into the shadows as if performing a soliloquy for no one.

  Labeling Broach an ‘eccentric’ was like saying Jenna Jameson was a little audacious. The director’s moods swung between exuberance and depression, sometimes within minutes of each other. At least he seemed taken with Kathryn’s portrayal of the moody Cassilda. “You give her life,” he told her, “which is more than she ever knew before.”

  To date, the “Yellow Sign” had been represented by an “X” rendered in yellow paint. Why, she wondered, did that bother her so? Not to mention the fact the King in Yellow himself was played by some anonymous actor, whose identity only Broach knew.

  Kathryn’s roommate, Yumiko, after one read-through, refused to practice with her any further. “This play is not happy for me,” she had said. “It feels bad.”

  Two weeks remained before the opening. Broach had promised the sets would be “phenomenal,” and the stage crew had their work cut out for them. Until then, there would be rehearsals every night, but they still had no inkling of how the play would actually end.

  However, as Kathryn had hoped, the first stage rehearsal felt different. Good different. Even without the sets in place, the theater aura bolstered her confidence, and as Cassilda slipped inside her, the two of them breathing together as one, the orchestra sent up swirling, mystical strains from woodwinds and strings, weaving an otherworldly atmosphere that was at once dark and lovely. As Scene 2 of Act 1 — Cassilda’s song — loomed nearer, the music became more intense, the brooding bass deeper and more ominous, the ethereal flutes more melodic.

  The introduction to the song began. Weird and wistful, the instruments assumed the quality of human voices, humming and warbling in an eerie melody that gave Kathryn a chill.

  She needed no cue to begin.

  “‘Along the shore the cloud waves break,

  The twin suns sink beneath the lake,

  The shadows lengthen

  In Carcosa.’”

  Her voice was not hers. Alien, it seemed, more assured and more beautiful than any her vocal cords could produce. She felt herself diminishing. All she could perceive — all that was left of her — was her voice.

  “‘Strange is the night where black stars rise,

  And strange moons circle through the skies

  But stranger still is

  Lost Carcosa.’”

  “‘Songs that the Hyades shall sing,

  Where flap the tatters of the King,

  Must die unheard in

  Dim Carcosa.’”

  Her heart swelled, and her feet seemed to leave the floor, her body as light as a dust mote, her emotions overflowing, spilling into all those within her presence.

  “‘Song of my soul, my voice is dead;

  Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed

  Shall dry and die in

  Lost Carcosa.’”

  The last syllable echoed away into pure, empty silence. She had no breath left in her lungs.

  Camilla — no, Jayda — stood nearby, her eyes bright jewels, tears glistening on her cheeks. Kenton Peach lifted an arm and propped himself on Les Perrin’s shoulder, as if to keep from toppling. Somewhere beyond the island of light, a soft female voice breathed, “Oh, my.”

  At the edge of darkness, stage left, Vernard Broach stood with his hands folded together as if in prayer, knees slightly bent, face to the heavens, eyes closed. After a moment, he began to shiver as if clutched by bone-numbing cold. Then he was not shivering but vibrating, his entire body quivering in a way no human body could or should move.

  Behind Broach, a shadow stirred, and the reed-thin voice Kathryn had heard in her dream sang out: “Aldebaran.”

  Sometime in the night, she woke to an odd flapping noise, unlike anything she had ever heard in her apartment. She rose and peeked into the darkened living room. Yumiko was not on the pullout sofa bed, and she didn’t see Koki anywhere. The heavy flapping came again, and she now determined it originated outside her window, which overlooked the narrow alley. She drew up the venetian blinds and then staggered backward with the realization that she was not awake but dreaming.

  Where the opposite brick wall should have been there was vast, dizzying space: a midnight blue sky lit by alien stars over an endless body of inky water. High above and to the right, a huge, blood-red star lit the night sky, and she knew this was Aldebaran, the sun that blazed above the city of Alar. Around it, a cluster of stars — the Hyades — glittered like the jewels adorning Cass
ilda’s diadem. And now, slowly, the rim of the silver moon breached the farthest edge of the Lake of Hali and rose until it resembled a cyclopean eye, its gaze burning through her body straight to her hammering heart.

  Then, on the horizon: an impossible array of gleaming, dizzying spires that wavered like ghostly tendrils before taking solid form behind the bright, full moon.

  Carcosa.

  Moments later, it came: the thin, childlike dream voice she had heard before; distant, barely comprehensible.

  “Doggy!”

  No. The word only sounded like “doggy.” That wasn’t what it had really said.

  “Joggy!”

  It was still too far away, too difficult to understand. The flapping sound came again, and now, in front of those distant, luminous spires, a silhouette appeared in the sky, its contours vague, imprecise. It was coming toward her, trailing black smoke, as if it were on fire.

  “Bloggy!”

  A little clearer now, the reedy voice sounded excited. The shape in the sky was no clearer to her eye than the voice was to her ear. It seemed ghostly in its way, surrounded by an aura of indeterminate color. Was this what it was like to be color blind? It was neither gray, nor silver, nor white, nor violet. But it was color.

  “Byakhee!”

  Now the thing was rushing toward her, and she could see its eyes, burning with that indefinable, radiant gleam. She backed away from the window, knowing the thing was aware of her, had targeted her.

  Then a hand touched the small of her back. She spun around and looked down. Standing before her was the child she had seen at rehearsals. Even now, she couldn’t tell whether it was a boy or a girl. Curly dark hair hung low over big blue eyes, its short, slightly pudgy frame garbed in a pale blue robe, a tiny replica of Cassilda’s jeweled diadem adorning its oversize head. Those eyes were too mature to belong to a child.

  The tiny, cherubic mouth spread into an overly huge grin, revealing two rows of polished, very large, very adult teeth.

  “Grandmother!” it said.

  “I want out of this,” she said, and from the long silence, she didn’t know whether Bryon had even been listening to her. “I can’t do this play.”

  The low voice that finally replied was disbelieving. “You signed a contract.”

  “Screw the contract.”

  “You do not back out on Vernard Broach. Are you fucking serious?”

  “There’s something wrong with him. He’s not right.”

  “What’s he done? Tried to rape you or something?”

  “No, of course not. But I can’t eat anymore. I can’t sleep — not without these nightmares. I see things that can’t be real. Bryon, no play is worth my health.” Then she whispered, “Or my mind.”

  “You break this contract, you’ll be temping and waiting tables till that drama mask tattoo on your ass is sagging to your knees. Are you that damned stupid?”

  “This is not negotiable. Call. Him.”

  “You’re not my client anymore. I’m done with you. You tell Broach yourself.”

  Bryon Florey hung up on her.

  Her eyes were swollen from crying, and her throat felt as if she had swallowed razor blades. She’d had to call in sick at the temp agency, and they were hardly any happier with her than Bryon was. For that brief moment, when she had sung Cassilda’s song on stage, there seemed a chance that everything might yet turn out as she had hoped. But then came the aftermath, so repulsive, so full of unendurable dread.

  She had barely put her phone down on the nightstand when it began to vibrate. It was not a number she recognized. “Hello?”

  Director Vernard Broach’s voice. “I know you wish to leave the play.”

  “How did you—?”

  “If you stay, I promise something wonderful will happen. Kathryn, you are our shining star.”

  “Mr. Broach, this is taking too much out of me. I feel awful, physically and mentally. I just can’t do this.”

  “I will double your pay. No. Triple it. Kathryn, you are Cassilda. Trust me when I say that, after the first performance, things will be very different.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “I’ve treated you well, have I not?”

  She had to concede that, personally, Broach had shown her only respect. What if she were to face her fears and finish out this play? All kinds of new doors would open to her. And this bullshit would be behind her.

  “When you wake up in the morning, the money will be in your account. And you will have a new agent. A real agent.”

  “Mr. Broach, I—”

  “Kathryn. Please?”

  “All right. All right. I’ll sleep on it and call you in the morning. I promise.”

  There was a long silence. “I trust you, my good friend Kathryn. Now I ask you to trust me. Tomorrow morning, call me and say you will stay. I will honor my word to you.”

  “I’ll call.”

  “Until then, Kathryn.”

  Opening night:

  Upon her arrival, her first reaction had been to the brilliant sets. Everything looked as it had during the final dress rehearsal, but nothing felt like it. The balconies of the palace rose almost to the ceiling, and — more disturbing to her — the backdrop of the Lake of Hali uncannily resembled her vision from that night. The lavish interior sets were modular and could be moved by stagehands to their designated marks almost instantaneously. She had seen all these during their construction, but now she felt as if she were viewing for the first time a realm that actually existed.

  Vernard Broach had been true to his word. By any standard she could measure, she was now a wealthy woman, about to sign a contract with a brand new, very reputable agent.

  The King in Yellow opened with an overture: a haunting, wistful composition built on the melody of “Song of Cassilda,” but that ended on a series of harsh, dissonant notes that set her teeth on edge. As she took her place on the palace balcony, she felt a moment of vertigo, and just for an instant, an image of that black, smoking silhouette with burning eyes flashed in her mind’s eye.

  There was a rumble as the curtains separated and spread wide, and then the spotlights were on her, and beyond those lights, there was nothing — only a gaping abyss, blacker than the sky over the city of Alar. Behind her, Jayda spoke her lines, and the play commenced. Uoht and Thale argued over which of them would take their sister’s hand in marriage. Cassilda turned thoughtful as she decided that one of the brothers would succeed her and that Camilla would inherit the royal diadem.

  Something seemed wrong. The space beyond the stage was too silent, too still. She felt as if she were trapped within a sealed sphere of light, barely able to breathe. But it was when she was supposed to describe to Camilla the four singularities of Carcosa that she received her first shock.

  It wasn’t Jayda who knelt before her to listen. It was the child.

  “Grandmother!” it said. “Tell me of Carcosa.”

  Deaf and blind, existing somewhere apart from herself, her body continued to play her part, speaking the lines she was meant to speak. When awareness returned to her, the music told her it was almost time to begin her song. For a moment, the spotlights were turned away from her, and she chanced a look out at the darkened chamber.

  It was empty. No living soul occupied a single seat.

  She stepped in front of Brad Silva, who played Naotalba, the priest, her disbelieving eyes sweeping the empty space. “There’s no one there. There’s no one out there!”

  She felt something tugging at her long, crimson skirt, and she looked down to see the child’s huge blue eyes peering up at her.

  “There is an audience, Grandmother. But sensible souls in Hastur hide their faces.”

  Inside, she began to scream. She tried to leave the stage. She pleaded, cajoled, threatened Cassilda, but the character refused her, and Ka
thryn played on.

  The masked figure — the Phantom of Truth, played by a young man named Zack Cheauvront — appeared before her, and for the first time, she saw it. Not a crude, painted “X” but a blazing, yellow-gold sigil, simultaneously adorning the character’s robe while floating in some dimension in front of it. She could not have found words to describe the Yellow Sign, for it was rendered by no human hand.

  The masked stranger was full head taller than Zack Cheauvront.

  Kathryn sang “The Song of Cassilda.” And the empty, soulless auditorium erupted with thunderous applause.

  This was all in her mind.

  She agreed to the stranger’s proposal, and the curtain came down on Act 1. She fell to her knees, sobbing, barely aware of tiny hands pulling the pallid mask down over her head.

  The child took the stage and spoke to the emptiness.

  “‘Your chance to escape has passed. Bound to us, at last.

  No harm can come to you in fantasy, and this is not reality.

  No sensibilities offended, no immorality decried.

  But ’tis now too late, for your sin is complete.

  You have crossed the threshold and the door is barred.

  Lament what you will, but here you abide;

  Sit and listen, for you are ours forever,

  And until the end of time, we are also yours.’”

  The gong sounded.

  Zack Cheauvront — it had to be Zack — as the Phantom of Truth stood before her, pointing to her face. She was supposed to remove her mask, but as long as she wore it, she couldn’t be seen. She did not want to be seen.

  But she tore the mask from her face and regarded the horrid Yellow Sign on the stranger’s robe. She heard Camilla say, “You, sir, should unmask.”

  “Indeed?”

  That was not Zack’s voice.

  “It is time. We have laid aside our disguises. All but you.”

  “But I wear no mask.”

  “No mask!” Camilla’s eyes turned to Cassilda’s, bright and bulging with horror.

  “‘Yhtill! Yhtill! Yhtill!’”