HP Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror - Weird Tales

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“Isn’t he one o’ they gangsta rappers?” Jonah whispered.
“That’s Doctor Dre, ya bam,” Malky told him. “John Dee
was an Elizabethan wizard.”
“Thank you, Malcolm,” Miss Sim said pointedly, “I hope
you’ll be as eager to contribute in rehearsals.”
We were given poorly Xeroxed copies of a handwritten
folio entitled: Al-Hazred, the Tragedie of the Mad Moor, A Play in
Five Unnatural Acts and Many Unfavoury Scenes
“To be frank, Doctor Dee’s script is rather badly written,”
Miss Sim told us, “but I’m reliably informed that there’s an
audience for it . . .”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention as I
flicked through the pages. Our coach was right—it wasn’t the
most elegant piece of writing in the world, but as far as I could
see, all the spells worked. “Corpsing” on stage had just taken
on a new and deadlier meaning.
$id ye hear aboot the time they staged Mac—”
Someone managed to smother Poor Wullie’s mouth
just in time.
“You mean the Scottish play . . .” little Spud McFee hissed.
He was one of the new boys, but he learned fast.
“Aye, right—sorry, Ah forgot!” Wullie apologized.
Shakespeare’s Caledonian tragedy may have an unlucky
reputation among theatrical folk, but the one and only performance
at Boleskin House had been downright apocalyptic.
“They had real witches in it . . .” Jonah whispered, “including
a wee cameo frae Hecate, the witch-goddess hersel’!”
“Yer no gonnae tell me Banquo’s ghost was real an’ all?”
Malky asked shaking his head.
“Well . . . Ah’m nae sure aboot Banquo, but there was one
actual spook.”
“What happened?” Spud asked, the appalled expression
making his face look even more like an unwashed potato.
“The real Macbeth turned up,” I told them, “in spirit if not
in person.” Everybody tried to shush me for uttering the sinister
name. “Look, it’s OK! The play’s only unlucky because the
genuine King Macbeth was slandered by Shakespeare. You can
mention his name safely as long as you don’t make out he was
a bad guy . . . ”
“Ah heard he possessed the audience,” Wullie said.
“Naw, it was more a Birnam wood comes to Dunsinane
kindae thing,” Malky replied. “The auld King set all the trees in
the local pine nursery on the audience and cast. I think almost
everyone survived.”
“Except the director . . .” I pointed out.
“Aye,” Malky agreed, shivering, “he ended up as the fairy
oan top o’ the Christmas tree that year!”
It was after “lights out” and we were all huddled together
round the one wheezing radiator in the dorm. What with being
wrapped in blankets to keep out the December cold, we looked
like low-budget Bedouin, which was pretty appropriate considering
most of us were going to be playing Arabs in The
Tragedie of the Mad Moor. Anybody not cast as a desert
nomad was going to be acting as a jinn or dressing up as some
sort of buzzing insect.
“D’ye reckon this thing’s gonnae be any safer than the
Scottish play?” Jonah asked.
“The only thing you’d feel safe in is a musical version of
The Creature from the Black Lagoon,” Malky sneered.
Jonah lunged for him, webbed fingers reaching for Malky’s
fat neck, and bellowed, “Ah’ve telt ye afore—Ah’m nae an
amphibian!”
Our blankets flapped like superhero capes as we desperately
struggled to separate Jonah and Malky before they graduated
from throwing punches to casting spells on each other. We had
all been locked up for being “dangers to ourselves and others”,
and I think the state hoped we would save them money by wiping
each other out.
Spud’s eyes rolled back into his head and their whites
began to glow. His little body quivered and I thought he was
going to throw a fit. Malky and Jonah froze.
“So sorry, Malcolm,” Jonah said, offering a shaking hand.
“And I’m sorry too,” Malky replied, taking it.
Both boy’s voices sounded weird and sweat trickled down
their foreheads. I realized that wee Spud was making them do
this. Then the new boy stopped his mental puppetry, and we all
edged away from him.
“Thanks, Spud,” I said, shaken by this display of power.
He had never told us what he had done to get set down to
Boleskin and now I didn’t want to know.
“Look, you lot,” I went on nervously. “I keep telling you,
we’ve got to look out for each other. Have any of you actually
read the play yet?” Everyone looked so blank you could have
used them as shop-window dummies. “It’s dynamite—no, not
dynamite—it’s a theatrical H-bomb. Doctor Dee wasn’t writing
a crowd-pleaser, he was scripting a summoning ceremony—”
“Whit was he trying to conjure up, then?”
“I don’t think anybody knows, Wullie. I did a little bit of
research in the library and I didn’t like what I found.” I had
everyone’s attention now. “Dee didn’t want it performed in his
lifetime . . . The manuscript turned up in his effects. He didn’t
exactly die a happy man, so I think the play was supposed to be
some kind of act of posthumous revenge—”
“Haud on, haud on!” Jonah interrupted. “Slow doon there,
Tinker-boy. Are ye tellin’ us this thing’s nivver been put on
before?”
H . P . L O V E C R A F T ’S M A G A Z IN E O F H O R R O R 27