24 - Phantom of the Auditorium Read online

  This is excellent! I thought. I was excited without being nervous. I was enjoying every minute of the performance.

  And as the first act drew near its end, I knew the real highlight of the show was coming. A fog of dry ice swept slowly over the stage. Blue lights swirled through the twisting fog, making it appear eerie and unreal.

  I heard the clank of the trapdoor. I knew it was carrying Zeke in his Phantom costume up from down below.

  In seconds, the Phantom would make his big entrance, rising up in the blue fog.

  The audience will love it, I thought, watching the fog billow up over my long, yellow dress.

  “Phantom, is that you?” I called. “Are you coming to see me?”

  The Phantom’s blue-and-green mask floated up in the fog. Then his black-caped shoulders hovered into view.

  The audience gasped and then cheered as the Phantom rose, standing stiffly in the fog, his black cape billowing out behind him.

  And then he stepped toward me, walking slowly, majestically.

  “Oh, Phantom! We are together at last!” I cried with all the emotion I could put into it. “I have dreamed of this moment for so long!”

  I took his gloved hand and led him through the swirls of blue fog to the front of the stage.

  A white spotlight captured us both.

  I turned to face him. Stared into his eyes behind the blue-and-green mask.

  And realized instantly that it wasn’t Zeke!

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  I started to cry out. But he squeezed my hand.

  His eyes burned into mine. He seemed to be begging me with his eyes, begging me not to say anything, not to give him away.

  Who is he? I wondered, frozen in the bright spotlight. Why does he look familiar?

  I turned back to the audience. Silent. Waiting for me to speak.

  I took a deep breath and said Esmerelda’s next line. “Phantom, why do you haunt this theater? Please tell me your story. I will not be afraid.”

  The Phantom swept his cape behind him. His eyes were still locked on mine. His gloved hand still squeezed mine tightly, as if to keep me from escaping.

  “I have lived under this theater for more than seventy years,” he declared. “My story is a sad one. You might even call it tragic, my fair Esmerelda.”

  “Please continue!” I exclaimed.

  Who is he? I asked myself. Who?

  “I was chosen to star in a play,” the Phantom revealed. “A play in this very theater. It was to be the greatest night of my life!”

  He paused to take a long, deep breath.

  My heart skipped a beat. He isn’t reciting the script, I realized. Those aren’t the right words.

  What is he saying?

  “But my great night was never to be!” the Phantom continued, still gripping my hand. “You see, my dear Esmerelda, an hour before the play was to begin, I fell. I plunged to my death!”

  I gasped. He was pointing to the trapdoor.

  I realized who he was now. He was the boy who had disappeared. The boy, seventy-two years ago, who was to star as the Phantom. But disappeared and was never found.

  Here he was, standing beside me on the same stage. Here he was, revealing to us all how he had disappeared, why the play was never performed.

  “There!” he cried, pointing to the opening in the stage floor. “That’s where I fell! There! I fell to my death. I became a real phantom. And I’ve waited down there ever since, waiting, waiting. Hoping for a night like tonight where I could finally play my greatest role!”

  As he finished this speech, the audience burst into cheers and loud applause.

  They think it’s part of the play, I realized. They don’t know the true pain behind his words. They don’t know that he’s revealing his true story to them.

  The Phantom took a deep bow. The applause grew even louder.

  The fog billowed over us both.

  Who is he? Who?

  The question repeated in my mind.

  I had to know the answer. I had to know who the Phantom was.

  As he stood up from his bow, I pulled my hand free of his.

  Then I reached up—and tugged off his mask!

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  I squinted into the thick, blue fog, desperate to see his face.

  The bright spotlight flashed in my eyes, blinding me for a moment.

  In that moment, the Phantom covered his face with both hands.

  I reached to pull away his hands.

  “No!” he screamed. “No—you can’t!”

  He staggered back, away from me.

  Staggered and lost his balance.

  “No! No!” he cried. “You can’t! You can’t!”

  And toppled backwards.

  Into the open trapdoor.

  And vanished in the swirling blue fog.

  I heard his scream all the way down.

  Then silence.

  A horrible, still silence.

  The audience rose to its feet and burst into loud applause and cries of “Bravo!”

  They all thought it was part of the play.

  But I knew better. I knew that the Phantom had finally revealed himself after seventy-two years. That he had finally had his moment on the stage.

  And that he had died all over again.

  As the curtain closed, muffling the excited cheers of the audience, I stood at the opening in the floor, my hands pressed to my face.

  I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move.

  I stared down into the hole in the floor and saw only blackness.

  Then, raising my eyes, I saw Zeke running across the stage to me. Wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, he lurched toward me, his expression dazed.

  “Zeke!” I cried.

  “Ow. Someone hit me, I think,” he moaned, rubbing the back of his head. “I’ve been out cold.” He raised his eyes to mine. “Brooke, are you okay? Did—?”

  “The Phantom!” I cried. “He took your part, Zeke. He—he’s down there!” I pointed into the opening. “We’ve got to find him!”

  I stepped on the peg. The trapdoor clanked and groaned. The platform returned to the top.

  Zeke and I climbed aboard.

  We rode it down, down to the dark chamber below.

  We searched every corner. We didn’t find him. We didn’t find the mask. Or the costume. Or anything. Somehow I knew we wouldn’t. Somehow I knew we would never see him again.

  “Great job, people! Great job!” Ms. Walker called to us as we trooped offstage. “Phantom, I liked the new lines you added! Great job! See you all at the cast party!”

  Zeke and I struggled to get to the dressing room so we could get changed. But we were mobbed by people who wanted to congratulate us and tell us how talented and terrific we were.

  The play was a major success!

  I searched for Brian. I wanted to tell him all about the Phantom. But I couldn’t see him in the excited crowd of friends and parents.

  “Come on—let’s get out of here!” Zeke cried. He pulled me by the hand out of the auditorium and into the hall.

  “Wow! We’re a hit!” I exclaimed, feeling totally wrecked and pumped and dazed and crazed, all at the same time.

  “Let’s just get our coats and get changed at home,” Zeke suggested. “We can try to figure out who played my part on the way. Then we can meet at my house to go to the party.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “But we have to hurry. My parents are waiting to tell me what a fabulous star I am!”

  The sound of excited chattering and laughter drifted from the auditorium and followed us as we made our way to our lockers.

  “Hey—” I stopped in front of my locker. “Look, Zeke—the door is open. I didn’t leave it unlocked.”

  “Weird,” Zeke murmured.

  I pulled the door all the way open, and a book toppled out onto the floor.

  I bent to pick it up. It was an old book, its brown cover worn and dusty. I turned it around, squinting to read the cover in the dim hall light.

  “It�
�s a really old yearbook,” I told Zeke. “Look. It’s from this school. Woods Mill. But it’s from the 1920s.”

  “Huh? How’d it get in your locker?” Zeke asked, staring down at it.

  My eyes fell on a torn sheet of paper tucked inside. A bookmark.

  Gripping the heavy, old book in both hands, I opened to the pages marked by the bookmark.

  “Wow!” Zeke cried. “I don’t believe it!”

  We were staring at a yearbook article about the play we had just performed. “The Phantom To Be Performed in the Spring,” read the headline at the top.

  “This must have been written early that school year,” I said. “We know the play was never performed. We know the whole story of what happened back then.”

  “Hold the book up to the light,” Zeke instructed. “Let’s check out the pictures.”

  I raised the book, and we both stared down at the small photographs that covered the two pages.

  Then we saw it.

  A small, blurred black-and-white photo of the boy who had won the starring role, the boy who was to play the Phantom. The boy who had disappeared.

  The boy was Brian.

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