Horror

by Scribe Leaf Library · 1 min read · 1 view

Every theater has an understudy story, and the Regal's is this one: a role, dating back to a 1931 production, that has never once been played by the same actor twice, not by choice but by a pattern of illness, accident, and one unexplained disappearance that closes the show early every single time it's attempted. The current cast calls it "the cursed part" as a joke, mostly, until the actor playing it this season started hearing, from the wings, someone reciting his own lines a half-second before he said them, in a voice pitched exactly like his but older, wearier, like a man who'd played the part far too many times to still find it fresh. He finished the run. He always finishes the run — that part of the pattern never breaks. But he hasn't opened the script since, and he says, if you ask carefully, that on his last night, backstage, the mirror gave his reflection back to him one full second late, as if it, too, had been rehearsing the role, somewhere behind the glass, far longer than he had.