Page 10

Story: Welcome to Gothic

Wendy opened her eyes. She lifted her head. She was sprawled facedown in a theater trunk.

Right. She’d been rummaging in this theater trunk when something hit her in the back of the head and sent her back to . . .

Fists up, she leaped out of the trunk onto her feet. Had someone hit her? She stood, stance firm, breathing hard, ready to counterattack . . . whoever.

Yet she was alone behind the plywood wall that separated the stage from Minnie and Mabel’s shop. The only sound was the creaking of a heavy-duty sisal rope with a knot tied at the end . . . Like the one she’d used to swing across the stage and into Hugh’s arms.

She put her hand to the back of her head and found the giant lump. Sure. Something had hit her. The rope had broken free from the restraints that, for seventy-some-odd years, held it above the stage. The knot smacked her, knocked her unconscious, and ever since, she’d been having a dream about this place, this theater, in 1940, and an actor who was her dream lover.

Only . . . it hadn’t felt like a dream.

Wendy closed her eyes against the crushing sense of loss. Tears leaked out.

Hugh. Hugh Capel.

She had met him. They talked. She discovered he had suffered pain, like her. He said they were soul mates. And he died.

Great story, Wendy. You made it all up out of some fantasy you wished would come true. How sad was that, that the life you’ve built in Gothic is so barren of love you have to dream a man who is strong and brave and wounded enough to understand your own broken bits?

More—she spread her hands and looked down at herself—how had she managed to get into this outfit? This cream silk with its soiled hem and the wrinkled marks where she’d held a child called Hazel?

She had to get out of here, get back to real life. She needed to be back in the Vintage Gothic Encore Clothing Shop with Minnie and Mabel, showing them the props she’d found and bargaining with them for the cheapest price. When she’d come backstage, she’d been Bendy Wendy, business owner. Now she was brokenhearted because a man who she loved, a man who never existed . . . had died in her arms.

She gathered her full shopping bag and dragged it toward the stairs that led down into the shop. At the bottom of the steps, she found the door closed with the giant iron key in the lock. She turned the key, opened the door and stepped out into the shop—and blinked. The big room was bright with sunshine and reality.

Painful, boring, loveless reality.

The last of the tourists shuffled out of the shop, laughing and comparing their purchases, heading for the tour bus, not knowing how Wendy had found love in what seemed like a few hours.

“That was quick. Very efficient!” Minnie bustled over. “I see you found an outfit to play with. It looks good on you.”

Wendy rubbed her forehead. “The fog . . .”

“Is gone.” Mabel stood beaming. “It’s turned into a lovely day. And look at you. That outfit was custom made for you!”

Remembering Beatrice and her needle and thread, Wendy wanted to say, If you only knew.

“But what’s that on your skirt, dear?” Mabel asked.

Wendy glanced down and realized those brown smears were . . . blood. Hugh’s blood.

For the second time that day, Wendy was unconscious.

When she came to, Minnie and Mabel knelt beside her.

Minnie placed a cool wet cloth on her forehead.

Mabel patted her wrist.

“You had to ask,” Minnie was saying to Mabel.

In a low, sad voice, Mabel said, “I didn’t realize what . . .”

“Shh. She’s coming around.” Minnie flipped the cloth to the cooler side and put it back on Wendy’s forehead. “Stay down, dear. If you try to get up now, you’ll faint again.”

Wendy took a quivering breath to argue, and let it out. “Okay.”

Mabel got up and came back with a purple velvet pillow decorated with tassels. She lifted Wendy’s head and placed the pillow, then handed Wendy a paper cone filled with caramel corn. “For the carbs,” she said.

Wendy laughed weakly, took the cone and ate the popcorn one kernel at a time. It must have been magic, because bite by bite, she felt better. “You know I can’t resist your caramel corn,” she said.

Mabel sat back on her heels. “My evil plan is working.”

“I left my leotard back there somewhere. And my shoes.” Wendy waved a hand, indicating a back there that meant a different era and a different life. “Do you have anything I can wear on the job? I mean, my job? My current job?” Not my job as a stuntwoman in a theater that doesn’t exist.

Minnie gestured toward the back wall of the shop. “Yesterday we got a shipment of last year’s designer workout clothing. I didn’t know what we were going to do with them, but they were made for you.”

Wendy slowly levered herself up. “Where do you come up with the designer labels? And the antique clothing?”

“There’s a magnetism to this place that brings them here.”

“Right.” Wendy got to her feet.

Minnie and Mabel hovered close.

She took a breath. She felt fine. She nodded, reassuring them, and went to the neatly folded piles of spandex. Wendy found a matching aqua outfit with all the right markings, slipped into the Vintage Gothic dressing room, changed, wadded up the cream silk outfit that had seen so much imaginary action and dumped it in the trash behind the checkout stand when she came out.

She found a pair of training shoes that fit like a dream, a solid pair of socks . . . and just like that, she was back to being the real Bendy Wendy, no stunts, no silk, no heels, no lost loves. She looked like herself again, and she was happy about that. Happy.

Except . . . she went back to the checkout stand and plucked the cream outfit out of the trash. Without looking at them, she called to Minnie and Mabel, “Have you figured out what to charge me for the props?”

“Bring it all back tomorrow,” Minnie said. “We’ll figure it out then.”

“Actually—” Mabel went to the door and looked toward the ocean “—why don’t you have your party here?”

“Here? You don’t mean backstage?” Because Wendy was never going backstage ever again. “I mean . . . why?”

“The fog’s coming in again.”

Wendy felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather.

“If you hosted the party in your backyard, that would be a damp and dismal celebration. Why not have it inside? Here, on the other side of the theater? Where we’re putting the bookshop?” Mabel looked at Minnie. “We could rearrange the book boxes so the children would have to jump them. They could run the bookshelves like a maze.”

Wendy felt the tightness in her chest loosen. “They could do somersaults across the floor.”

Minnie was looking at Mabel as if to say, What the hell?

Minnie was not known to be fond of children.

Which sent Wendy back to being anxious. “Are you sure? You’re willing to do that? Because you don’t have to—”

Wendy didn’t know what kind of signal passed between the sisters, but Minnie stepped right up to the plate with an apparently sincere, “We’re delighted, and we close at six anyway. We can put the props into the bags, too. It’ll save us from another evening’s showing of Mabel’s favorite series, Good Omens.” Her voice contained all the elements of deep loathing.

“Thanks. That is great because I am so late. This took longer than I expected, and I need to get back to my studio and get ready for my next class . . .” A poster caught Wendy’s eye. One of the really old, faded ones, preserved in a frame behind a glass. She paced slowly toward it.

There he was. Hugh Capel, in a suit and tie, his intent face superimposed on a desert background. Not a jungle. A desert.

Wendy stared, soaking up the sight of him. She told herself she hadn’t noticed this poster before, but her subconscious had been on the job and that was why she’d dreamed him.

Hugh.

Hugh, alive, strong, vital.

Hugh, catching her as she swung down to him and recognizing her as his mate.

Hugh, broken and shattered by a bullet, killed for his part in saving a child from treachery.

Wendy jumped when Minnie spoke beside her. “I’m not surprised he caught your eye. Have you seen his old movies? He had a magnetism about him.”

“No, I never . . . What happened to him?”

“Don’t you know?” Minnie sounded astonished.

On the other side of Wendy, Mabel spoke. “No, dear, why would she?”

“Right. Well . . .” Minnie stared at the poster as if saddened. “He saved Maeve Lindholm’s two-year-old daughter from a kidnapper, and the kidnapper killed Hugh. Shot him. His career was headed to the tip-top. They called him the next Cary Grant . . . such a tragedy.”

“There was a woman who helped him,” Mabel said. “Gossip said it was love at first sight, but after he died she disappeared. The histories don’t tell what happened to her.”

How did a woman come back to dull reality when, in another life, she had found her soul mate? How did she pretend her heart was whole when for a brief moment, a man appeared who recognized who she was and what she wanted, and wanted that with her?

“I imagine,” Wendy said, “she went back to work and lived her life and tried not to think about what she’d lost.”

That was what she intended to do.