Capeworld Comics

Mr. Carter, true to his word, gave Ernst, Morton, and Glass free passes to the Gnome theater for life, and the manesologists were never ones to turn away gifts from their clients, be it the promise of supernatural aid or the promise of a night of entertainment.

Their unannounced arrival to a presentation of select scenes from Shakespeare caused a commotion in the attendance lined up outside the Gnome theater, especially when it was revealed they brought Nick and Esmee along.

Joseph was in his element. The crowd surrounded him like children around a maypole asking him questions about the ghost performer they were about to see. Joseph talked up Thomas’ skills and promised those in attendance that they were in for a real treat. Thomas was, in Joseph’s words, “Every hero, all at once,” and when Mr. Carter overheard the phrase, he made a mental note to print it on the new handbills.

While Joseph worked the crowd, his friends were greeted by Mr. Carter at the door, who shook Matthew and Martin’s hands, kissed Esmee’s hand, awkwardly, as it was like kissing a cloud, and looked a little confused over what he should do with Nick but settled on saying “Hello!”

Nick took the form of a bright green rose in Esmee’s hat. It was his form of dressing up, and it only looked like a ball of fire if one looked at it long enough to see the petals flare and shift.

“Welcome, welcome, my friends!” Mr. Carter said. “How’s Tybalt?”

“He’s doing fine.” Joseph said. “The little girl that lives in our walls adopted him as one of her pets.”

“I can’t thank you all enough.” Mr. Carter said. “We’ve had so much success with Thomas, he’s doing things human actors could never dream of doing. You know how in Julius Caesar there’s the scene where Caesar’s ghost confronts Brutus? Thomas plays them both–at the same time. He starts playing Brutus, and then he extends his ectoplasm like a curtain above himself and the curtain turns into the ghost of Julius Caesar. It’s so artistic, and it so demonstrates what I feel the Bard intended. You’ll see what I mean tonight when he gets to that part.”

“Looking forward to seeing it.” Matthew said. “I hope your other actors aren’t distressed by how much attention Thomas is getting?”

“Oh, some of them are.” Mr. Carter said. “They’re actors. They’re emotional by nature. But it’s not a major problem. I gave everyone a raise, and told them the money came from Thomas’ success. More money, less work, what employee doesn’t like that?”

“Have you given any thought to combining Thomas with human actors?” Esmee asked.

“We’re trying to avoid doing that, actually. It’s just economics. The Centennial theater up in Scotland does a lot of “the ghost is real” plays, and Thomas’ range is his greatest asset. The Centennial can’t pull off Thomas’ one-man plays, so that’s what we’re offering people.”

“Ah, the Centennial. So that’s what the theater was called.” Joseph said. “I never could place the name…”

“Maybe you can try plays where Thomas plays everyone but the ghost?” Esmee suggested.

“I thought about that, but the Centennial already did that.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Those Scots are pretty crafty.”

“It’s amazing how fast things like manes actors can go from being novel to struggling to be novel.” Matthew said.

“I think that’s a good thing.” Esmee said. “I’d rather a world so full of strangeness that strangeness itself becomes common than a world where strangeness is rarely seen.”

“But if something strange becomes common doesn’t it cease to be strange?” Mr. Carter asked.

“I don’t think so.” Esmee replied. “Because something that’s strange can always become stranger.”

‘Hm.’ Mr. Carter pondered Esmee’s response. “I think you’re right. I started with a strange theater haunted by a strange performance every night. Now, it’s stranger. Now, I’m stranger. I direct one man across several plays worth of roles. Has any director in all of history done that? I must wonder. And scores come to my theater to watch the fruits of my labor! I wonder, do they find it strange to come watch a ghost perform for them?”

“Well put, Mr. Carter.” Joseph said as he rejoined his friends. “Well, let us to our seats. We shouldn’t hog the people from Mr. Carter! I’m sure there are things he wants to share with them about working with Thomas.”

“Indeed I do!” Mr. Carter shook Joseph’s hand. “It’s been an experience like no other.”

“Well don’t tell me, tell the people!”

“I will, I will! You all enjoy the show, and here’s to a world of increasing strangeness!”

“Here here!” Joseph cheered.

As people took their seats, a band on stage played Medelssohn’s overture for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which Martin identified and Joseph pretended to have identified.

“Do you think he’ll do a scene from Midsummer Night’s Dream?” Esmee asked.

“I want to see him do the entire fairy train.” Joseph said as the group moved through the aisles of chairs. I want to see him do Oberon and Puck and as many other fairies as will fit on that stage and the sky above it!”

“You would be focused on spectacle.” Martin said. “But try and remember this isn’t the Urizen theater back in Blackwall. This is a real theater, and we’ll be watching real acting, not people throwing fake blood at each other like rice at a wedding.”

“I wish they’d let us bring in snacks.” Joseph mumbled as he scrunched himself into his seat. “You can bring snacks to the Urizen, so long as you buy them from the stalls outside.”

“The Urizen is a penny gaff.” Martin snapped. “People throw their snacks at the actors.”

“Only when they’re awful.” Joseph said.

“Joseph, they perform Jack Sheppard four times every day. They’re always awful.”

“Oh, you exaggerate. It’s more like three. And I thought the man they got to portray Honest Jack was pretty good. He made a neat gurgling sound during the hanging scene, very true to life.”

“I still hold that the actress they got to play Edgeworth Bess was really a boy.”

“You’re just holding a grudge because that brandy ball didn’t agree with you.”

“Well if the food was good, they wouldn’t be throwing it at the actors now, would they?”

Matthew nudged Joseph. “Speaking of snacks…” he said.

Joseph gave a knowing nod and produced a little tin of jellied eels from his pockets. Having a giant for a friend came with the benefit of the giant having large pockets.

“Dr. Ernst!” Martin gasped at his friends’ flagrant disregard for the rules.

Matthew smiled. “You want one? Joseph brought enough for all of us.”

“You two are going to get eel bits on poor Mr. Carter’s floors.”

“Perhaps, but do you want a snack?” Matthew asked.

Martin looked around. The audience didn’t seem to be watching him. “I’ll have a tin…later.”

“Hm. Food.” Esmee smiled. “I never realized how dirty it all was until I stopped eating and started watching others eat.”

The band finished playing. The footlights came on while the lights on the walls dimmed. A hush fell over the audience.

There were gasps as Thomas materialized out of thin air in the form of two slovenly dressed men. Their ectoplasmic shovels dug at the stage floor, pulling up clumps of blue dirt and depositing them in piles.

“Ah, Hamlet.” Joseph whispered.

“Is she to be buried in Christian burial, when she willfully seeks her own salvation?” Thomas asked himself.

“I tell thee she is, therefore, make her grave straight. The crowner has set on her and finds it Christian burial.” Thomas answered himself.

Following the gravediggers’ scene from Hamlet came the titular prince’s famous soliloquy, because the audience expected and demanded the “skull scene,” but Thomas added a twist–the skull floated from his hand and the body of Horatio slowly recomposed itself around the skull. Slowly, little by little, Horatio materialized, gaining substance with every word Hamlet spoke.

This was followed by the scene from Julius Caesar as Mr. Carter had described, and that was followed by a fencing match between Tybalt and Mercutio, and that by a scene from The Tempest featuring Prospero and an Ariel that shared his face and rose from his body as if he were Prospero’s very soul. And as Joseph wished, the grand finale featured Oberon’s argument with Titania from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the stage overflowed with all sorts of elves, goblins, bugbears, sprites, pixies, and faeries.

There were little insectoid humanoids with wings like wasps that darted so fast from place to place they seemed to be in two places at once, long-bearded short-statured men wised with wrinkles who lounged on toadstools, regal attendants with faces like angels whose eyes were turned to Oberon and Titania like flowers to the sun, and squat, furry monsters with beady red eyes whose long claws dragged in the dirt.

All were the same man.

Joseph poked Martin when he saw him smiling while eating from a tin of jellied eels.

“I’ve seen the real thing.” Martin whispered. “And this comes very close for a man that’s never seen it.”

After the performance, and the standing ovation that followed, Ernst, Morton, and Glass were invited backstage to meet with Thomas. The ghost performer appeared to them in his featureless blue silhouette form, his “doll” form as Joseph called it.

“Ah, my friends! Did you enjoy the show?” Thomas asked.

“Loved it!” Joseph said. “It’s brilliant what you’re doing. You’re showing people Shakespeare in a way they’ve never seen before!”

“I owe it all to you. If not for you, I’d still be nothing more than a band of incoherent performers.”

“The faeries were the best part.” Joseph said.

“That was a good performance.” Martin said. “But my favorite was your Ariel. Putting Prospero’s face on Ariel, implying that Ariel was in some way Prospero himself. That adds an additional layer of meaning to the play. Did you intend to imply that Ariel was Prospero’s soul?”

“Yes, Dr. Glass. I was hoping you’d pick up on that. I felt like I could modernize Prospero a little. Nowadays, sorcerers achieve knowledge and power by awakening and communicating with their souls. It seemed natural to me that Ariel would be Prospero’s soul, and the longing Ariel has for his freedom an impression of Prospero’s subconscious desire to be done with his island and his magic.”

“It was a great choice.’ Martin said.

“I just hope the critics don’t savage me too brutally for adding a twist to the scene.”

“They’re fools if they do. I learned a very important truth from my thaumaturgical teachers–true mastery of an art comes when one can innovate upon the art, and from what I’ve just seen, you, my friend, are a master.”

“You flatter me, Dr. Glass!”

Thomas turned his blank face to Esmee. “One ghost to another, what did you think about my performance?”

“My favorite part of your performance is the part we haven’t seen yet.” Esmee answered. “It’s the part that’ll come in the future.”

“I appreciate that you look upon my performance positively, Ms. Walker. But I’m not quite sure what you mean.”

“One day, you’ll teach your skills to other ghosts, and there will be a flourishing of ghost performers. That, I feel, will be your best performance–as a teacher.”

“You must be looking far into the future, Ms. Walker. Currently, I have no thoughts but for the stage.”

“Give it time. That’s something we both have plenty of.”

2025, Late August

And with that, the curtain fell to thunderous applause.

“That’s it?” Jack asked. “That’s how it ends?”

“No. It’s just starting.” Clarence, Jack’s senior partner and mentor at EMG, replied. “That’s why the curtain is coming down, Jack.”

Jack looked up from his handheld noosphere terminal. He had been checking the public telepathic network off-and-on since the play started. “Chill, Clarence. I know this is one of those things from your time, but man, it just didn’t age well. They should have ended it right after Mr. Carter shook hands with Thomas.”

Clarence was an old ghost, though to Jack, anyone over thirty was old. He died in the Victorian era, and so he was born in it, and always shared an affinity for it.

“The whole play-within-a-play thing, I guess that was kind of novel for its day, but man, you get that meta-stuff so often nowadays…” Jack said.

“Shakespeare did it first.” Clarence said. “As with many things. Hamlet had The Mousetrap.”

“Yeah, well, I still didn’t like the ending. Rest was pretty okay, kind of dragged in a few places.”

The curtain rose. It and the stage itself became like mist and flowed to a central point. The sole performer of the evening formed from the mist and took her bow.

“It’s your generation that’s the problem.” Clarence said. “You want everything fast, everything instant.”

“Hey, time is money, Clarence, now as it’s ever been, we’ve just gotten really good at making time and making money!”

“The slowness is a feature, not a bug. In a play, action builds, and then it disperses–disperse, not end abruptly.”

“Whatever. I guess it was worth coming to see. The Ghost Of The Gnome has historical significance if nothing else, I read about it in my textbook. First play written by a ghost about a ghost, something like that, right? That’s what’s important about it, right?”

Clarence sighed. “Ah, you just don’t get it.”