Chapter Text
When Christine's dad died, she went to a medium.
Meg and Raoul both told her that she was wasting her money, that she was letting herself be taken advantage of by a con artist. She couldn't really tell herself whether the woman had been legitimate or not but she came out with some amount of closure and she felt like that alone was worth every dollar she spent. No amount of sitting at his grave or staring at pictures gave her the feeling that she had when the stranger claimed to be contacting her father.
It also gave her a new fixation. Her friends didn't really approve of that either.
They tried really hard to be supportive of Christine, she knew that they did, but one night Meg drunkenly called her crazy and Christine never really brought any of it up after that. She understood that it was a little crazy. She used to say the same thing about people that wore crystals and burned incense.
Her friends hadn't had her experience and she couldn't expect them to understand any of it without it.
From the moment she left that medium's apartment, Christine was fixated on finding some tangible proof of an afterlife. Ghosts, energy, anything at all to prove that there really was something there for that woman to contact.
So she collected some mid-market equipment and moved forward with her goals.
Christine wasn't really sure why she picked the old theater. Looking at it from the outside, she was almost certain that at least a handful of people had called it home at some point. The windows were boarded and the stone was littered with all manner of graffiti, from innocent to truly vulgar.
It was sad. It was a beautiful old building and Christine was absolutely certain that it was full of history and all sorts of stories.
Meg and Raoul would have berated her for coming to a place like this alone at night if they knew, and she really did wish she had one of them with her, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to even tell them what she was doing. It was embarrassing. If she could just get one decent audio clip she was sure she could get them to buy into it just enough to come with her.
But she had to get the clip before she could ask them, so she was alone in baggy black clothes with her blonde hair tied up tight, sure that she was trespassing and wandering into some sort of homeless camp or drug den. She wouldn't have been so worried about it if the first thing she saw when she squeezed through the gap in the door wasn't a littering of uncapped needles.
"Hello?" she called, lingering by the exit.
The only thing that answered her was a skittering sound. Whatever it was was definitely an animal. That didn't concern her too much. It was people that really scared her.
The click of the switch on her flashlight was louder than she thought it was. She moved the beam of it slowly along the walls, looking for signs of recent life more than she was for anything paranormal.
There was a shoe over by what used to be a ticket booth but was now just a crooked stand of rotting wood, but it was covered almost completely in cobwebs. Whoever left it was long gone.
For a moment, Christine wondered why they never came back for it. Then she realized that maybe she didn't want to know. She was already feeling a little more than paranoid.
So instead of dwelling on it, she made her way further into the theater, sweeping her flashlight from left to right, peeking around every corner before she actually rounded them.
There were remnants of life everywhere, clothing and busted lighters, empty cans, but the only living creatures she stumbled onto were mice and spiders. They weren't her favorite companions, but she definitely preferred them to some of the alternatives.
The double doors into the actual auditorium were wrapped twice with a chain and padlocked. Christine frowned, pulling on the handles anyway. The rattle was loud, uncomfortably loud, and she paused where she stood, holding her breath and listening for any type of footsteps. None came and she let out a sigh of relief.
There had to be a way around it. No auditorium had only one entrance and exit. She simply had to find it. Her mind was set; the stage was where she absolutely needed to start. It made sense to her. It was the room that would have held the most life. No one came to a theater to mill about in the hallways and bathrooms. It made sense, in Christine's head, that if she was going to find anything at all it would be in that room.
So she went around to the left, and that was when she was suddenly struck by the feeling of being watched. The hair on the back of her neck was standing straight up and she shivered, turning completely and letting the beam of her flashlight touch every little crevice it could find. There was nothing. No one hidden away in a corner, no furniture for anyone to hide behind, it was a long, empty hallway and as far as she could tell, she was completely alone aside from the spiders hanging from the webs in the corners.
Everything seemed so much louder than it should be. She slid her satchel in front of her and held her flashlight with her chin, digging for her little electronic recorder. It was nothing special but it had been affordable and the reviews on it were good. She could also hold it completely in one hand. She clicked the button on the side of it to start her recording and took her flashlight back into her other hand, scanning along the walls.
"Is there someone there?" she asked the empty space around her, trailing her light everywhere she could. She hadn't realized how dark it actually was in the building until then.
She couldn't hear anything, not even a squeak from a mouse or a creak from the building settling. It was uncomfortably quiet.
"My name is Christine," she said, keeping her voice as steady as she could manage to. "Will you tell me your name?"
She felt like an idiot. She had no idea what she was doing. There wasn't really a way to actually research what she was doing, so she had watched a handful of television shows and decided it didn't look that difficult. It was a lot less unsettling, watching someone else do it.
"If there is anything you want people to know, I want you to say it. Talk directly into this little device in my hand."
She gave a good, long pause before she spoke again. "I'm going to find a way into the auditorium. If you have anything else to say, that's where I'll be. I'll listen."
With that, she clicked off her recorder and continued on down the hallway. She felt a little more at ease than she had. Even staying still and speaking loudly, she hadn't heard any indication that anyone else might have been in the building.
The dressing room she found her way into made her linger. There were still costumes honing on the hooks and she ran her fingers over the dust-covered fabrics. It was almost like everything had simply paused when the building was abandoned. There was still a powder-puff and an uncapped lipstick on the counter in front of the foggy mirrors. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine the hustle and bustle of an opening night going on around her.
Christine had managed to land a job one summer as a stagehand her senior year of high school. She had always wanted to be on stage, but she missed being a part of it at all. Some part of her thought maybe that was what drew her to this particular building. She was sensitive to the type of energy that thrummed in performance venues. She had grown up in theater, following her dad as he moved from orchestra to orchestra. She remembered curling up under a makeup table just like the one she found in the abandoned theater to do her homework and being lured out with candy by one of the leads. They used to make her sing.
Something about her memories was bittersweet. She hadn't sang a note since her father died. Some integral piece of her died with him; every time she opened her mouth to try, she just found herself crying instead.
The entrance she found into the theater was through the backstage. It had been locked up just like the front entrance at some point; the chain still remained as evidence and she paused to look at it. Someone had taken bolt cutters to it. The padlock was still completely intact, uselessly holding two ends of the broken, rusted chain together.
The black-painted floor of the stage was also covered in a layer of dust, just like the rest of the building. There were deep gouges in the floor, familiar damage from set pieces dragged over the same spot again and again.
Nothing appeared to be disturbed. Set pieces still sat in their final resting places, abandoned center stage. Christine wondered when the chain had been cut. Judging by the state of things, whoever had done it was long gone.
It had been a really long time since Christine had actually walked on a stage. She shone the flashlight out and over the seats, finding nothing but moth-eaten fabric and rotting wood.
It had been a beautiful theater once, she was sure of it. Lively and bustling. Something about it felt right to her; dead, decaying. Something in her grief identified with it.
So when the urge to sing came, she didn't push it down. There was no reason to; there was no-one there to hear it and there was no-one to witness the terrible crack in her voice when she started to cry, no-one to see the way she collapsed down onto the dirty, dusty floor of the stage. There were no neighbors to hear her muffled grief through the thin walls of her nearly empty apartment.
And she thought, for a moment while she sat on the dusty stage and dug through her bag to find her recorder again, maybe it didn't matter if she actually got anything on tape. The fist-shaped lump in her chest had finally broken loose for the first time in months, and maybe that was what really mattered.
She played back the recording she had taken a few minutes before and was only mildly disappointed when she realized there was nothing on it at all other than her own voice.
Christine hit the record button and then sat back in silence for a long moment while she thought. She didn't feel the active presence that she had felt out in the hallway, but there was definitely an unsettling air about.
"Does the recorder make you uncomfortable?" she finally asked the still air. "I can turn it off if you'd like. I'd really like someone else to hear you too, but I'd be happy even if just I did. Just to know that I'm not crazy."
Silence answered her and she shone her flashlight out over the disrepaired seats again, scanning slowly over the room.
"Boo."
The word was a puff of air and she jumped, turning quickly to look behind her. It came from her left side, but there was nothing there, not even a rogue set piece someone could hide behind. Her hands were shaking and she couldn't hold the light steady.
"Hello?" she called again, embarrassed by the way her voice wavered. "If someone is there - I don't mean any harm. The theater is lovely."
Silence was her answer and she swallowed hard. "I heard you," she said, her words wavering and quaking. "Can you please do that again?"
"My name is Christine."
It was a faint whisper, just near her ear. This time, she didn't jump. The Voice was mocking her. The words it spoke were sing-song. It was just a little too deep to actually mimic her entirely.
"It is," she answered, turning a circle and looking in every corner that her light could reach. "Will you tell me yours?"
A quiet, eerie chuckle answered her from somewhere over her head in the flies. She couldn't see anything up there. None of the suspended walkways even swayed. If anything was up there they certainly would be - most of them looked like they were hardly even hanging on.
"Sing."
Christine frowned. She gave up on searching the room. No-one was there. "Did you like my singing?"
"Yes," the Voice answered simply. It was practically in her ear and she shivered, pulling her sleeves down so that they covered her arms entirely.
"What would you like me to sing?"
There was a long silence and for a moment, Christine thought it was over. Her heart was pounding wildly in her chest; it was absolutely exhilarating. She hoped that her recorder was managing to pick up the faint voice; her ears hardly were.
"Sing," the Voice insisted. "I will play."
She was confused for a moment, until she heard the loud clash of a piano. It was like a child bashed it's hand randomly against the keys, and she would be lying if she said she didn't let out half a scream before she shone her flashlight down on the piano set in the pit.
There was no-one there. Just the piano, covered in a thick and untouched layer of dust. She leaned over the edge of the stage and stared in fascinated horror as it began to play itself; the keys were moving, but there was nothing, no reasonable explanation as it played a simple scale all on its own.
It wasn't even out of tune.
"Sing," the Voice repeated, and then, in a high-pitched sing-song, it repeated her words once again. "The theater is lovely."
She sat on the edge of the stage, watching the piano play the same scale again and again, and she wondered if there was really any harm in it at all. Finding no reason not to, she relaxed as much as she was able and joined in with her voice once the piano hit the bottom of the scale again.
Slowly, the piano began to alter the notes it played. She followed the shifts with her voice as best as she could. Finally, on one jump from her chest voice to her head, her voice cracked terribly. The piano suddenly fell silent and she frowned, staring at the stationary keys.
Maybe she really was crazy. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility.
"I'm sorry," she said softly. "It's been a few months. My father died and since - I don't know why I'm saying any of this."
"Listening," the Voice said, emanating from somewhere near the piano now. "It's a lovely voice."
Christine ran her thumb over the rounded edge of her recorder slowly. "That's the first time I've sang without crying since he died. That's why I'm here tonight. I needed to know - know that there was something else. Know that he didn't just vanish when his heart stopped. Thank you for giving that to me."
"Come back," the Voice whispered, the words sounding strangely like a plea. "And sing."
Her smile was watery and weak. "I will come back and sing for you," she promised softly. "Does it bring you peace?"
"Yes."
She stood slowly on the edge of the stage, staring out at the empty, decaying seats. "Will you tell me your name?"
There was a long pause, almost like the entity had to weigh its options carefully.
In that same high-pitched sing-song, it repeated her own words back to her for the last time that night. "My name is Christine."
She wasn't sure why she laughed.