awful… I was going to burn the whole place down if you didn’t leave—but this will be better. Much better. Less risky. A terrible accident.”
Vivien felt the air stirring more now. It was getting cooler, and she could sense the spirits gathering their strength…and she felt Liv, right next to her, telling her to climb.
She got to the top just as all hell broke loose.
If she’d thought the scene Friday when Jake was here was crazy, what happened now was unfathomable—but at least she’d been expecting it.
A loud roaring filled the air, making her wrap her arm around one of the bars of the landing so she could cover both ears with her hands and remain safe.
The roaring swelled, expanding and echoing like a furious freight train, and Vivien heard Melody scream from somewhere below. But she couldn’t look, for the shaking had begun, so wildly, so violently, that she was afraid the whole structure was going to collapse.
Lights flashed everywhere, blinking like strobes, blinding her as she clung for her life to the metal rods that held up the ladder and its landing.
The shaking continued, the roaring, the lights, the screaming…and the sudden, frigid wind that made her fingers want to peel away from the burning cold metal she was holding on to.
And then suddenly, everything collapsed. She felt the floor beneath her feet give away, and her ears were filled with screams as she fell.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Liv was there.
Vivien saw her sister—her face as she would be now, at thirty-one, and recognized her.
You’re safe, said Liv.
And then Vivien felt the ground beneath her.
Vivien opened her eyes. She had no idea how long she’d been lying there—in the middle of the stage.
Everything was silent.
Melody Carlson was in a broken heap on stage left at the base of the shattered ladder, the gun still gripped in her fingers.
Mr. Carlson must have stood—or been dragged—from where he’d been sitting, for he was no longer in his chair, or anywhere near it.
Then she saw him—looking no more substantial than a rag doll thrown to the ground, lying on stage right.
She doubted he could have climbed onto the stage, or that he would have done anything but try to run out of the place if he were able.
He looked as if he might have been tossed there.
Shuddering, fighting the urge to puke, Vivien dragged herself to her feet and stood on trembling knees. Good God.
“That was a little too close for comfort,” she shouted in a shaky voice to the place at large.
The scaffolding clattered above her, the stage lights flashed on, and then off. Everything quieted.
She guessed—she hoped—that was the pair of unhappy ghosts, turning out the lights and going to their rest at last.
Jake came as soon as he got her text, and unfortunately, he had no choice but to bring Pop with him. He didn’t want to take the time to argue about it, and his dad wasn’t about to stay home.
“Vivien,” Jake said as he pulled her into his arms. He was never going to let her go.
Helga and Joe Cap had arrived only moments before him, and so Vivien had to extract herself from his embrace to finish telling her story.
She seemed relatively calm, all things considered.
Jake was also relieved that neither Joe Cap nor Helga seemed the least bit shocked or disbelieving about the story—which, if Jake hadn’t been a witness to the ghostly tantrums, he would never have believed…even coming from Vivien.
“I’m certain you’ll find that the man standing in the Nutcracker cast photo without a costume is Mr. Carlson, and that one of the little girls who were extras was Melody,” Vivien said. “She must have come up to the theater with her mother, and was there when Mr. Carlson murdered his wife and her lover.”
“And one would assume, since she was friends with your realtor, that Melody somehow got a copy of the key so she could come in and set up all of her theatrical warnings,” Jake said.
“Exactly. She would have known about the sale probably from the beginning, and would have had plenty of time to plan.”
“All right, then. So, uh,” said Joe Cap, scratching his head and looking up into the rafters. “You said you were up there when all this happened?”
“Yes, when the ghosts started getting wild and violent, I was standing at the top of the ladder on the landing.”
Jake looked at the jumble of metal that had been the ladder and landing—which had been thirty feet above the ground—and