‘Olive? Is this you? Is this some kind of joke?’ He tried to scoff.
‘Oscar? What’s going on? Please don’t make me climb that death trap of a ladder!’ Olive’s voicewas still far away, yet solid and warm. The voice he’d heard call out his name seemed hollow and whispered and yet close enough to make every hair follicle on his body prickle.
‘Who’s there? This isn’t funny any more.’ Oscar said in a hushed tone. There was a crackling noise, like the sound of a distant firework, and little warm, yellow flames burst into the air before him, enveloping thedress. They fizzled and came together and slowly, the outline of a woman formed within the dress. She appeared to be made up of fire, hissing and burning, causing smoke to rise from her shoulders and the loose ends of her pinned-up hair. Oscar could see clean through her, but her face looked soft and felt so familiar that Oscar’s feeling of fear crackled itself. He went to ask her who she was,or rather, what she was, but the woman raised a finger to her flaming lips and as she shushed him, black smoke billowed out of her mouth. In quick and fluid motions, the woman whipped her finger through the air and behind it she left a trail of warm sparkling light that lingered for a moment before it disappeared. She wrote one word quickly before it fizzled out: DANGER.
‘Danger?’ Oscarwhispered, trying to be soothing through his terror. ‘What danger? Who?’ Again, the woman’s hands moved quickly but this time as she wrote Oscar’s heart thumped a little bit harder as he read each of the letters. OLIVE.
‘Olive? Why? Why is she in danger? What kind of trick is this?’
GET HELP
‘From who? What are you talking about?’
WALTER
‘Walter? Who the hellis Walter?’ The woman’s eyes flared, and Oscar’s dissipating fear quickly returned, burning hotter than the woman’s skin. ‘The stage door guy?’
She nodded vigorously, her skin crackling louder.
HE’S COMING FOR HER
The woman rose a flaming hand and her fingers fizzled in the direction of the wooden plaque on the wall. Oscar backtracked a couple of steps so he could get a betterlook and there in the glass was nothing but his own reflection. The revolver was gone.
‘Oscar!’ Olive called from below, and before he could ask the woman anything else, she went up in smoke and the dress fell to the floor, back into a crumpled heap. Oscar picked it up, dusted it off and checked it over. No wires, no strings, nothing out of the ordinary. It was just a dress that now smelledfaintly of smoke.
‘What took you a million years?’ Olive asked when he finally returned back to the wing, her arms hugged tightly around her.
‘Nothing. Here’s your dress.’ He handed it to her by the straps, hoping it didn’t look too creased but instantly she sniffed the fabric.
‘Were you smoking up there? Is that what took you so long?’
‘What? No of course not! Whatmakes you say that?’ he asked, opening the door into the corridor, wanting to get away from the stage as quickly as possible.
‘This stinks of smoke,’ she said, still clutching it to her nose.
‘Then I’ll go to wardrobe and grab some Febreze or something.’
‘Oscar,’ she caught him by the arm before he could bolt up the stairs, ‘is everything okay? You went up that ladder as Oscarand now you’ve come down as… I don’t know, some sort of zombie version of him.’
‘No, I’m fine, honestly. It was just a bit… spooky up there, that’s all.’ He shrugged and carried on walking, but Olive skittered up beside him.
‘Ohhh, coming from the man that was so offended at the idea of anyone believing in ghosts!’
‘I wasn’t offended! And whether they exist or not, theatresare creepy!’ A shiver ran through him at the thought of the woman calling his name.
‘Oscar believes in ghosts! Oscar believes in ghosts!’ Olive chanted, but as they walked back to their dressing rooms together a new sense of dread loomed over Oscar like the smoke that had billowed from the woman’s mouth.
