Doors crashed open. A long thin rectangle of daylight lay halfway down the center aisle of the theater. Men came in, hustling, breathing hard, shouting to one another. Somebody shouted to others outside, “Watch all the doors, watch them all!” Somebody else shouted, “Get the lights on! Where the hell do you switch the lights on?”
“Up on stage,” somebody called. “Left side of the stage, there’s a big control panel there.”
Flashlights came bobbing, the men vague shapes behind them. Half a dozen, maybe more. They came up and milled around onstage, shouting to each other to get the damn lights on, somebody shouting he was on his way to do it.
Parker raced along the catwalk, kicking off the iron weights and yanking the slipknots on the ropes. He didn’t know if anybody was directly under the catwalk or not, but if they were, a twenty-pound weight dropping on their heads would put them out of action for a while. In any case, there were three or tour of them standing around onstage, and the backdrops with their weighted bottoms to keep them straight weighed hundreds of pounds, and they were dropping toward the stage like huge guillotines, one after the other, from the front to the rear, slicing down through the air with loud shushes, the weighted bottoms crashing onto the stage, the drops continuing to fall, the canvas piling up like starched laundry, finally the metal pipes, as long as the stage was wide and very heavy, i budding down, the ropes whistling through the pulleys under i lie theater roof, the rope ends released from the weight cages over at the catwalk, the ropes pulling completely through and I ailing to the stage like dead brown snakes. And under them all, there would have to be a couple of bodies.
Parker grabbed the ropes on the last two, yanked the slipknots free and held onto the ropes, and was yanked up into live air, rode up through darkness toward the ceiling, his shoulders and back grinding with pain, not wanting to be forced through this. He heard the pulleys whining and spinning over his head, coming quickly closer, and he knew he had to let go in time or the ropes would pull his hands into the pulleys, maybe break his fingers.
It was all very fast. Up into the air, shooting upward as though out of a cannon, hearing the pulleys, letting go, flailing in darkness as his momentum continued upward, pausing in midair, in darkness, arms waving desperately around, because if they didn’t touch something solid within the next two seconds he would fall thirty-six feet to the stage floor and die, and then his left forearm hitting metal, sliding down it, his hand touching the metal, palm of his hand, fingers closing on it, grabbing it as though it were trying to get away. A metal bar. His other hand lunged over, latched on, and he hung there, swaying.
There was commotion far below him, shouting and shrieking and moaning and confusion. Through it all, people screamed, “Lights! Lights!” and Parker almost screamed the same thing with them. Because now he wanted some light of his own, he needed light even more than they did down there on the stage.
The light came at last, in waves. They turned on the power, then brought up each bank of lights in turn, the footlights at the front of the stage, the rows of spotlights above the stage, the rows across the front of the small balcony out front. And work lights, house lights, lights in the wings. Every light in the theater was turned on, and Parker looked up over his head to see where he was.
There was an open grillwork up here, suspended about two feet below the ceiling. The pulleys were all lined up on this grillwork, made of black metal pipes. It was to one of these pipes that Parker was clinging.
He didn’t have his usual strength, and he kept forgetting that and then being annoyed at it all over again. He tried to pull himself up, chin himself and then get up on top of the grid, but his arms wouldn’t do it. He strained, pulling, feeling the pressure in his shoulders and forearms, and he just couldn’t do it. His body hung there from his arms, and he couldn’t make it move upward an inch.
But he couldn’t just hang here. In the first place, this too was draining his strength, it wouldn’t be too long before his hands wouldn’t be able to hold on any longer, and that would be the end. And in the second place, even if he could hold on, sooner or later somebody down below would look up and see him. What great target practice he’d make, hanging up here like mistletoe. They could shoot him down one toe at a time. That old man, that Lozini with the loud-hailer, that might be just what he’d want to do.
He hung there half a minute longer, and then began to move. By kicking his feet forward and back, he could make himself swing. It increased the strain on his hands and forearms and shoulders, but he could hold on for a little while, and he was hoping that was all he’d need.
He kept kicking his feet out in front of him, then doubling them up behind, then kicking out front again, and the swing got wider and wider, and at last on one swing forward his feet kicked out and hit metal. He swung back harder, forward harder, touched metal again, bent his knees, kicked, swung back the other way so far he rapped his ankles against a crossbar back there, swung forward again, this time held his feet higher so they wouldn’t hit the metal bar in front, stretched full-length at the top of the swing, and his ankles landed on the bar and stayed there.
Now he was horizontal under the grid, his hands holding to one crosspiece and his ankles hooked over another. Another one pressed down across his waist.
He rested a minute, grateful to have his ankles take some of the weight, and then began to move his hands slowly to the left. He inched his way until his left hand touched the bar that ran perpendicular to that one, coming along beside him on the left. He transferred his hands to that one, slid them forward a bit at a time, bowing in the middle as his hands came closer to his feet. He paused at one point to inch his feet farther up onto the bar, moving one foot at a time, until the bar was no longer across his ankles but almost up to his knees. Then he inched his hands along the other bar some more.
It took another couple of minutes, but finally he got himself up on top of the grid, sitting there, his feet dangling, leaning forward on his hands, resting on the next bar over. He felt worn out, he felt as though he’d been running on a treadmill for a week straight.
He looked down, and it looked as though he’d done pretty well. There were two guys lying on the stage, one face-up and one facedown. The one facedown seemed to be dead. At any rate, they hadn’t cleared the backdrops off him, they were still covering his head and part of his back. His legs were bent in odd ways, not the way living bodies bend.
The other one, face-up, was lying near the front of the stage. They’d cleared the stuff off him and moved him, that was obvious. It looked as though his eyes were shut, and they’d put him with his legs together and his arms at his sides. He was lying at attention down there.
There were two more men onstage, both of them standing and moving around. They were shouting orders, sometimes both at the same time, and they sounded angry and upset. Parker heard them yelling over and over that the bastard was still in the theater someplace, so find him. Shouts occasionally came back from other parts of the theater, so people were out there looking.
Parker didn’t notice him at first, but there was also somebody on the catwalk. He finally called attention to himself by leaning over the railing and calling down to the two guys onstage, shouting, “He was up here, but he ain’t here now!”
One of the guys onstage yelled to him, “What are your exits from there?”
“None. Just that ladder I came up.”
“There’s gotta be something else!”
“There isn’t. Marty, I looked all over here, and there’s nothing.”
“What about up above you?”
They both looked up, but there was nothing to be seen. Then-were no lights way up under the ceiling, only dim illumination upward from the stage. Parker was in dark clothing, he blended with the shadows above the grid.