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Chapter Three

Chapter Three:

Harry

The Electra Palace Theatre stood still on Sixth Avenue, planks of crooked wood bordering up the windows, declaring it permanently closed. Theo came to a dramatic halt in the sealed entrance and I made a disgruntled noise in the back of my throat.

            “You met her in a grimy old theatre?”

            Theo laughed. “This is not just any old grimy theatre. Electra Palace is cool as hell.”

            “Is hell cool?” I quirked an eyebrow “You didn’t actually meet here, did you?”

            “Yes,” Theo answered very seriously. “Now let me tell you why Electra Palace is, in fact, cool as hell.” He pronounced Electra with prolonged vowels, like it was aristocratic, and I took another look at the abandoned building to check that we were talking about the same place. Old cobwebs billowed in the draft.

“In the early 1900s, John Boston opened this place. It was an instant success. All the best of Broadway performed here; Shakespeare and Royal Ballet companies kissed its ass, so to speak. But our John was a naughty man, my friend.” He lifted a finger, like he was about to reveal something sacred. “The basement was where he kept the drugs, the prostitutes, and during prohibition it was where he kept the alcohol. So that brings us to1929: Boston is sitting in the box during Hamlet while his little elves are working their magic downstairs, and suddenly all of the actors start dropping dead. Every single one of them. Nobody knows what happened, but a week later the place closed down and Boston wasn’t seen again. It hasn’t been touched since.”

 Theo’s eyes were as intense as flames. Silence hung like a cloak around the airless building, unnaturally still. My laughter invaded the quiet.

            “Right, I completely understand why you felt the need to break into a weird old building where a lot of people died.” I felt a smile tug at my lips, and Theo’s footsteps guided me around to the back of the theatre, onto a dead car park. He scanned the area for company, and I did the same, mainly out of paranoia than a genuine concern that somebody would be around. It didn’t look like anybody had bothered for years. The only sign that Theo had was the smashed through stained glass window he jumped through, one leg at a time. “Did you do this?” A hollow thud bumped beneath my feet when I landed inside.

            Theo grinned roguishly. “I didn’t do this,” he gestured to the broken window. “Hope did.”

+++

The stagnant air inside the theatre smelled like dust and mildew, and my lungs instantly rejected it. I coughed and spluttered and followed him into the stalls. The floor sloped gently from the back of the room down to the stage, dust carpeting the once pristine ground like dirty snow without a footprint. The theatre looked as it had been left eighty years ago, but the glamour and prestige had been drained out of it by years of neglect and a fine layer of dirt. The grand red curtains thickly encrusted with dried up mould; finely carved golden walls scarred with vandalism. Two red crosses cancelled out the watching eyes of John Boston in a photograph hanging above the double doors. THIS IS NOT ART screamed red spray painted letters across an intricately painted canvas.

            “Sad really, isn’t it?” Theo slumped down into a seat on the front row. A cloud of dust enveloped around him, but he didn’t seem to notice.

            “Are we talking about the neglect or the fact that you spend your free time here?” A chuckle rumbled in my throat, but I understood. It felt like we were in the dead stomach of something which was once so alive, and you could feel its faded importance hanging in the air.