The Ghosts of the Living

Riley felt as though he was walking into a museum of memories stepping through the entrance of the Little Lambs Theater on Foothill Avenue. Nostalgia washed over him like warm water from a shower. Every inch and corner of this building held an exhibit from his first 15 years as a performer. The lobby was just as grand as he remembered it, or at least grand in the eyes of a Woodborough native. He stepped up to the woman sitting at the box office and handed her his ticket. A large sign sitting next to the booth advertised the production of Ballad of the Willows. Riley was interested to see this show because Ballad of the Willows was the last show he ever performed with this theater. He was surprised to see they were doing it again. Although, he supposed enough years had passed. He was also interested to see if the performance of the lead, Oleander Silverleaf, matched his. After stamping his ticket, the woman gestured to the pair of doors to the right.

Riley stepped into the proscenium theater, which held the kind of grandeur and elegance that only a place of worship of the performing arts could achieve. A pair of enormous burgundy curtains draped from the ceiling concealed the stage. Bright golden lights shone down on the rows of maroon auditorium seats. Pleasant fantastical music played over the speakers to fill the silence while everyone found their seats and chatted amongst themselves. Riley could have sworn he recognized a few people in the audience, however, he could not remember where from.

He found his seat in the 3rd row. The front row is far overrated. You can never hear or see the show over the orchestra. Riley passed the time consuming the aura of the proscenium like a full-course meal. The greenrooms were underground hidden beneath the stage. Riley remembered how he lost his virginity in one of the changing rooms; Skyler Sullivan, his wife of almost three years. He glanced in the directions of where he knew the stairs leading up to the wings were. He remembered when poor Paxton fell nose-first down those stairs during a rehearsal. Despite being a little frazzled, he couldn’t stop laughing when he stood up. Riley looked around at all the seats. He remembered all those tech rehearsals spent doing his homework in the audience while he wasn’t on stage. He remembered not just making friends in this theater, but a second family. He imagined ghosts of those friends before his eyes.

The lights dimmed and the entire auditorium descended into tomb-like darkness. The chatter of the audience silenced along with it. A singular spotlight came on with a flash, illuminating a large circle upon the split in the curtains. The audience began to applaud as the directors emerged and were bathed in the golden light. That must have been when things took an unusual turn. Standing there in the spotlight were Mr. Oliver and Willow Pascal looking not even a day older than when Riley had last seen them so long ago. Even their clothes were the same. Oliver wore the exact same kilt and Willow the exact same sweater. Riley almost positively remembered hearing that Mr. Oliver had moved to Texas and was now a drama teacher at a local community college. Riley could also remember hearing that Willow moved to Southern California to teach choir and singing lessons at UCLA. What on earth were they doing back here? They gave their pre-show speech which had all the usual expressions of gratitude to the audience for coming here tonight, the introductions of who they were, and the disclaimers of where the emergency exits were “In the unlikely event of an emergency.” An almost cringy sense of Deja Vu came over Riley when Mr. Oliver had mistakenly said a word wrong which both he and Willow shared a laugh with the audience. Riley had a strange feeling Oliver had made the exact same mistake during the pre-show speech of the last performance he had done here. Has that just become a ritual to charm the audience?

Finally, they wished the audience to enjoy the show and retreated behind the burgundy curtains. They applauded their exit and for a moment there was only darkness and silence, which Riley had enough experience to know was the moment of peak intensity for the performers, before the orchestra began its opening number. Eventually, the music went into an intense uproar, the curtains ascended and the stage was revealed through the picture-frame-like opening. Riley shuddered in bewilderment when he saw how the set looked exactly how it had when he had done this exact show many years before. Did they really just copy and paste the show a decade and a half or so before?

But then the spotlight came into focus and Riley took in the face of the lead performer on stage for the first time. A loud and audible inhaling gasp escaped his mouth and echoed through the proscenium, just barely flushed out by the orchestra. Standing there in the spotlight, facing the audience with great confidence was a boy who wore Riley’s face behind a full mask of makeup exactly like he had on the night of his final performance in this theater. Staring at that boy, it was like gazing into a mirror of his youth. Riley remembered this moment vividly, the way the spotlight warmed his made up face, the way his tap shoes were placed upon the floor, the way he transformed himself into Oleander Silverleaf. Riley’s younger self began the opening monologue.

Soon he was joined on stage by a fairy who Riley also recognized. Last time he checked LinkedIn, Halia Carthright was now working at SpaceX as an engineer and as old as Riley was now. But yet there she was, 16 years old all over again performing as Aeloria Winterbrook. This unexplainable phenomenon only escalated from there. As the musical progressed, Riley recognized every single performer on stage. What he was watching was an exact recollection of his final performance. It was like they never left.

Travis Lamb, he’s in prison now, Toderick Jones, he came out and married his husband right out of high school and they moved to Switzerland, Matilda Peterson, she changed majors three times and has been divorced twice and Jonah Woodrow, he became an international airline pilot. None of them should be here. A sudden sickness rushed over Riley by the third number. He got up from his seat and retreated to the door in a near-sprint, but when he tried the handle it was locked. This didn’t make any sense. They don’t lock the doors during the performance. That’s a fire hazard. He would be sure to put that in the suggestion box. Seeing that he had no means of escape, Riley apprehensively returned to his seat and continued to watch the performance. Every detail was the exact same. Willow Pascal always told them that theater is the most ephemeral artform in existence yet here Riley was, watching his own final performance from the audience point of view as a grown man. Once the initial waves of fear and agitation seemed to have receded into low tide, Riley shifted into a feeling of both appreciation and dread for what a different man he is versus the boy performing on that stage. The years that have passed since he took his final bow in this theater have carried with them ups and downs, wins and losses, euphoria and trauma, failure and triumph that checked and balanced each other. He could imagine the story was the same for every performer. Come to think of it, perhaps everyone on this stage has died. Not because their hearts stopped beating, but because the people they were in this ephemeral moment were never coming back. They truly are gone. They are left here to forever haunt the theater. They are alive in memories, much like the dead. Maybe Riley died on this stage and the person who came after him who now sat in his seat with the audience was someone else entirely. “Maybe I never truly left,” he thought. “Part of me is forever roaming this place.”

Riley cringed, rewatching the moment when he had briefly forgotten his line and there was a painful and awkward silence as a consequence. But he also laughed when he watched his favorite number and realized how funny it looked from the audience. Then he smiled when he and Halia shared a kiss on stage. He remembered later asking her who was a better kisser, him or the girl she kissed in the prior performance of the musical, The L Word.

Finally, the show reached its resolution and the younger Riley began his final monologue. But just before he could give the line that would cue the music of the closing number, he stopped mid-sentence. It was like the television had froze or someone had pressed pause on the remote. Somehow through the blinding spotlight of the stage and the darkness of the auditorium, younger Riley captured the eyes of his older self sitting in the third row of the audience. A loud silence echoed through the proscenium as the boy and the man shared a moment of empathetic, but almost cruel connection that neither could explain. Older Riley just couldn’t figure out what to make of the look on his younger self’s made-up face. Some unexplored realm between wonder, consternation, curiosity and empathy. Older Riley grew concerned that the boy would become solemn with disappointment. But the way in which the boy’s expression landed could only be expressed with one word, love. A singular tear leaked from each eye and slid down his cheeks. A happy sigh could be heard on his microphone. Older Riley streaked a few tears of his own as he held a hand gently over his heart. Off-script, younger Riley did the same. It felt as though through the gaze, their souls were reaching out, crossing the threshold to hold each other. Then, younger Riley shouted the cue line from the pit of his soul and the orchestra began the opening of the final number. The moment was gone as soon as it had come. It was as ephemeral as the performance, as much as every moment in life itself.

When the closing number concluded and the performers receded into the wings, the audience rose to their feet in applause, older Riley joining them. He watched as the tech kids came out and bowed first. Then Riley was the first performer to come out and give a solo bow for which the audience erupted and roared in applause. When he came back up from his bow, younger Riley made eye contact again with older Riley, to which he responded with the blow of a kiss.

When the burgundy curtains descended and the applause was finished, the audience started funneling towards the doors. Riley had been moved by the experience but was also excited to be in his hotel room where he could drown himself in the minibar, watch a movie and wake up tomorrow morning pretending this was all a crazy dream. He moved with the audience and managed to make it to the lobby where he made a break for the doors, pitch dark night outside. But before he could reach for the handles, someone called his name behind him and he froze where he stood as though someone had pointed a gun at him. “Hey sport!” said a disturbingly familiar voice. Riley slowly turned his head and made eye contact with his father. “Dad?” Riley asked. But it wasn’t Dad. Not anymore at least. Dad was completely senile and in assisted living now. The man that Riley was looking at was dad long before two strokes had exiled him to bed. He stood on his own two feet in a pair of white khakis and a light blue polo shirt with a smile on his face and eyes full of life that would later be torturously drained from him. “How do you…” Riley looked toward his own reflection in the night-backlit glass doors. Looking back at him was the same young boy who had performed on stage that night in full Oleander Silverleaf costume and makeup. The same boy who had caught his gaze. Riley held a hand to his face, the reflection doing the same. “What?” Riley asked himself. A hand clasped his shoulder, forcing him to look back.

“You did great tonight, bud!” said Riley’s older…sister?

“Jake, I…”

“Jake?” Lily laughed, “Whose Jake?” There Lily stood with her long, blonde hair and moon-shaped glasses perched on a very narrow nose. A long-sleeved, red and yellow shirt and bedazzled jeans. This was Lily before her ambitious, although exploitative, modeling career drove her into rehab with anorexia. This was Lily before she lost everything after coming out as Jake. Lily pulled Riley into a tight embrace. “I told you you would nail that closing monologue. You were so worried.” She wrapped a hand around his neck and bore into him with a warm smile and tear-filled eyes, “I love you. We’re proud of you,” something about her warm grasp was very comforting to Riley. He remembered this moment as more rewarding than even playing the lead in the musical. Previously, he and Lily had gone through a stretch of emotional discourse. Riley could never have guessed that it would be his performing that would bring them back together. Riley gazed back at his reflection in the doors. The reflection was now standing there independently and, at its own will, smiled and held his hand over his heart.

“That was incredible, Riley.” Riley turned to see the face of his mother with long, curly hair and a faded sundress. Riley missed how much his mother smiled before working multiple jobs to pay for both Lily and Dad’s rehab burned her out. Riley was surrounded by manifested memories of his past. This theater was haunted. Haunted by ghosts of people who have not died.

“I…I gotta go,” Riley turned and charged out the front doors, leaving the ghosts of his living family in the theater lobby.

He ran to his yellow Chevrolet Camaro like he had just committed an armed robbery and sped off into the night, watching the Little Lambs Theater as it shrank in his rear-view mirror. He didn’t take his foot off the gas for miles.

Once he was certain that the theater was a good distance away, he pulled over into a small off-the-road diner with a tacky neon sign.

He took a stool at the counter where the waitress greeted him and he ordered a burger, fries and a Coke. A man in a baby-blue shirt and dirty white apron with a chevron mustache who seemed to be the owner was wiping down the counters. He threw a friendly gaze in Riley’s direction before asking, “You coming from out of town?”

“Is it that obvious?” asked Riley, “I grew up here.”

“Is that right? Why did you leave?”

“I could hear Hollywood calling my name all the way from here.”

“Ah, I thought you had that movie star look. Anyways, why do you look dressed for the opera?”

“I just went to see Ballad of the Willows in the theater.”

The owner gave Riley a look of confusion as though he had just told him he had gone to see a unicorn fly a kite, “The theater? What theater?”

“The Little Lambs Theater on Foothill Avenue. I performed there for 15 years.”

“I’m afraid you are mistaken, sir. That theater was demolished 5 years ago. It didn’t survive Covid.”

There were a few seconds of silence, during which Riley was waiting for the man to crack a smile, laugh and say he was messing with him. When he said nothing, Riley questioned, “That’s impossible, I was just there 15 minutes ago.”

“Then I would like to know what kind of magic you’re on, son. There’s no one there. Nothing but dirt, weeds and a chain-link fence there now.”

“Bullshit, I know what I saw! There’s a theater there, they just had a performance tonight!” Riley shouted, louder than he meant to, rising from his stool.

Riley threw cash on the counter and left the diner in a dash, never even seeing his food. He jumped back in the Camaro and drove miles back to where he had just come faster than he had escaped it, never going below the speed limit. But what he found upon arrival, in the exact place where the theater stood not even an hour earlier, there was nothing but an empty vacant lot of dry, cracked mud overgrown by a jungle of weeds bordered by a rusting chain-linked fence behind the church and the school. The lot looked like a scab that had grown over the open wound where the theater had been violently ripped from the earth. He leaned back in his car and bathed in the horrific, supernatural silence.

That night, Riley learned that the ghosts of those who are still living are far more haunting than the ghosts of the dead.