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He positioned the final figure on his chest. Nothing happened for a moment. Then, suddenly, his hatred was gone, replaced by something like contentment, and in the silence of the theater he thought he heard an echo of singing.

He wanted to sit up, wanted to see if anything was happening, but he was enjoying it all too much, and he remained prone, still. The singing grew louder.

He closed his eyes, waiting.

And on his body, in the dark, the dolls began to move.

Thomas F. Monteleone

REHEARSALS

Tom Monteleone’s breakout novel
, The Blood of the Lamb,
deservedly won 1993’s Stoker Award for best novel. He followed it up with
Night of Broken Souls
and
The Resurrectionist.
He’s also known for his early science fiction work (he was another writer willing to make the jump from sf to horror, with successful results) and as the publisher of Borderlands Press, as well as the editor of the excellent Borderlands anthologies
.

“Rehearsals” is a
Twilight Zone
story all the way; if Rod Serling were still around I think he would snap this one up in a second. In fact, it’s so much of a
TZ
story that I’ve had a hard time since reading it believing that I
didn’t
see it as one of the show’s episodes. Quite an homage, I’d say—as well as a testament to Monteleone’s ability
.

D
ominic Kazan walked through the darkness, convinced he was not alone.

The idea cut through him like a razor as he fumbled for the light switch. Where was the damned thing? A sense of panic rose in him like a hot column of vomit in his throat, but he fought it down as his fingers tripped across the switch.

Abruptly, the lobby took shape in the dim light.

It, like the rest of the Barclay Theatre, was deserted. Crowds, actors, stagehands—everyone except for Dominic—had left hours ago. And he knew he should be alone. He was the janitor/night watchman for the Barclay, accustomed to, and actually comfortable with, the solitude. But for the last few nights, he could not escape the sensation there was something else lurking in the darkness of the big building.

Something that seemed to be waiting for him.

He enjoyed working alone; he had been alone most of his life. He did not mind working in almost total darkness; he had lived in a different kind of darkness most of his life.

But this feeling that he was not alone was beginning to bother him, actually frighten him. And he didn’t want to have any bad feelings about the Barclay. It was his only true home, and he loved his job there. There was something special about being intimate with the magic of the theater—the props and costumes, the make-believe world of sets and flats. Sometimes he would come to work early, just to watch the hive-like activity of the stagehands and actors, feeling the magic-world come to life.

All his life, there seemed to be something stalking him. A mindless kind of thing, a thing of failure and despair. Somehow, it always caught up with him, and threw his life into chaos. He wondered if it was on his trail again.

Tonight. Trying to make him run away again.

And he was so tired, tired of running away …

… Away from the fragile dreams of his childhood, the traumas of adolescence, and the failures of manhood. His father used to tell him there were only two kinds of people in the world: Winners and Losers—and his son was definitely in the second group.

Thirty-two years old, and it looked like the old man had been right. His life already a worn-out patchquilt of pain and defeat. After pulling a stint in the army, he had drifted all over the country taking any unskilled job he could find.

Seasonal, mindless work in Lubbock oil fields, Biloxi docks, Birmingham factories. Ten years of nomad-living and nomad-losing.

When he had been much younger, he had tried to figure out why things never worked out for him. Physically, Dominic was almost handsome with his thick dark hair and bright blue eyes.

And mentally, he could always hold his own. He used to read lots of comics and books and never missed a Saturday afternoon double-feature. He even watched a play now and then, back when they used to run them on live television.

But after he left home and never looked back, things seemed to just get worse. After ten years, he started getting the idea that maybe he should go home and try to start over. The letter telling him that his father had died was now five years old, and he had not gone back then. He had not even contacted his mother about it, and that always bothered him.

Something gnawed at his memories and his guilt, and he had finally quit his rigging job and started hitching east through the South—Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia.

One night, he was sitting in a roadhouse outside of Atlanta, drinking Bud on tap, watching a well-dressed guy next to him trying to drown himself in dry martinis. They had started talking, as lonely drinkers often will. The guy was obviously successful, middle-aged, and out-of-place in the roadside bar.

At one point, Dominic had mentioned that he was going home, back to the city of his birth. The stylish man laughed and slurred something about Thomas Wolfe. When Dominic questioned the response, the man said, “Don’t you remember him? He’s the guy who said ‘You can’t go home again,’ and then he wrote a long, god-awful boring book to prove it.”

Dominic never understood what the man was talking about until he reached his hometown. It was a large East Coast city, and it had changed drastically in his absence. Lots of remembered landmarks had vanished; the streets seemed cold, alien.

For several days, he gathered the courage to return to his old neighborhood, to face his mother after so many years.

When he was finally ready, arriving at the corner street, the correct address, he found his house was
gone
.

The entire street, which had once been a cramped, stifling heap of tenements, row houses, and basement shops, had been wiped out of existence. Urban renewal had invaded the neighborhood, grinding into dust all the bricks and mortar, all the memories.

In its place stood a monstrous building—a monolith of glass and steel and shaped concrete called the Barclay Theatre. At first he saw it as an intruder, a silent, hulking thing which had utterly destroyed his past, occupying the space where his little house had once stood. Perhaps Thomas Wolfe knew what he was talking about.

But after thinking about it, he thought it was ironic that it was, of all things, a theater that wiped out his memories.

Ironic indeed.

In the days that followed, he tried to locate his mother, but with no success. She had vanished, and a part of him was glad. It would have been difficult to face her as a man with no future, and now, not even a past. For no good reason, he decided to stay on in the city, taking day-labor jobs and a room at the YMCA.

As Dominic drifted into summer, he had made no friends, had not found a steady job, and had given up finding his mother. He read books from the library, went to matinee movies, and lived alone with his broken dreams. Occasionally he would walk back to his old neighborhood, as though hoping to see his house one final time. And on each visit, he would stand in the light-pool of a street lamp to stare at the elegant presence of the Barclay.

He seemed to feel an attraction to the place, old dreams stirring in a locked room of his mind. One day, when he saw an ad in the paper for a janitor/night watchman at the theater, he ran all the way to apply.

They hired him on a probational basis, but Dominic didn’t mind the qualification. He made a point of being on time and very meticulous in his work. As the weeks passed, he felt a growing warmth in his heart for the Barclay; it became a haven of safety and security—a place where he could live with the old dreams.

When his diligence was rewarded with a permanent position and a raise in salary, he was very happy. He began coming early to watch current productions, and he learned the theater jargon of the stagehands, actors, and directors. The dreamscapes of the theater became real to him, and he absorbed the great tragedies, laughed at clever comedies.

But late at night, when the crowds had dispersed, was the time he loved the best. He would go into the main auditorium and listen to the lights cooling and crackling behind their gels, and think about that night’s performance—comparing to past nights, to what he figured were the playwright’s intentions. For the first time in his life, he was happy.

But then something changed. The feelings of not being alone started to grow out of the shadows, growing more intense …

… until tonight, and he felt that he could bear it no longer. There was a small voice in his mind telling him to run from the place and never return.

No, he thought calmly. No more running. Not ever again.

Above his head, the cantilevered balcony hung like a giant hammer ready to fall. He stepped into the main auditorium and listened to the darkness. The aisle swept down towards the stage where the grand drape and act curtain pulled back to reveal the set of the current play. Pushing a carpet sweeper slowly over the thick pile, Dominic noticed how truly dark the theater was. The exit light seemed dim and distant. Row upon row of seats surrounded him, like a herd of round-shouldered creatures huddled in deep shadows.

The entire theater seemed to be enclosing him like an immense vault, a dark hollow tomb. He knew there was something there with him. Acid boiled in his stomach, his throat caked with chalk.

Looking away from the empty seats back to the stage, he noticed that something had changed. Something was wrong.

The set for the currently running production was Nick’s Place—a San Francisco saloon described in Saroyan’s
The Time of Your Life
. But that set was gone. Somehow, it had been struck and changed overnight. An impossibility, Dominic knew, yet he stared into the darkness and could make out the configurations of a totally different set.

Walking closer, his eyes adjusting to the dim illumination of the Exit signs, Dominic picked up the details of the set—a shabby, gray-walled living room with a kitchenette to the right.

Dumpy green chain with doilies on the arms, a couch with maroon and silver stripes, end tables with glass tops and a mahogany liquor cabinet with a tiny-screened Emerson television on top.

It was a spare, simple room.

A familiar room.

For an instant, Dominic recoiled at the thought. It couldn’t
be
. It wasn’t possible. But he recognized the room, down to its smallest details. As if the set designer had invaded a private memory, the set was a perfect replica of his parents’ house. The house which had been located where the theater now stood. As Dominic stared in awe and disbelief, he could see that there was nothing dreamy and out-of-focus about the set. He stood before something with hard edges and substance, something real, and not distorted by the lens of memory.

Without thinking, he stepped closer and suddenly the stage lights heated up. The fixtures on the set cast off their grayish hues and burst into full color. An odd swelling sensation filled Dominic’s chest, almost becoming a distinct pain. The pain of many years and many emotions. The thought occurred to him that someone might be playing a very cruel joke on him, and he turned to check the light booth up above and beyond the balcony. But it was dark and empty.

The sound of a door opening jarred him.

Turning back to the stage he saw a woman wearing a turquoise housedress and beige slippers enter the room from stage left.

She had a roundish face going towards plump and her eyes were flat and lackluster. There was an essential weariness about her.

Dominic felt tears growing in his eyes, a tightness in his throat, as he looked, stunned, at his
mother
.

“Mom! Mom, what’re you doing here? Hey, Mom!”

But she did not hear him. Mechanically, his mother began setting a simple table with paper napkins, Melmac plates, and plain utensils. Dominic ran up to the edge of the stage and yelled at her but she ignored him. It became clear that she could neither see nor hear him—as though they were dimensions apart, as though he saw everything through a one-way mirror.

What the hell was going on?