The Last House Light

By the time the power surge hit, the old Riverview Playhouse had already swallowed the last of the afternoon sun. I was up in the catwalk, adjusting the barn doors on a leko that had been flickering like a dying moth for three days. Below, the stage was a hollow mouth, draped in dusty velvet, waiting for the night’s performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

I’d been a lighting tech here for eight years, ever since the theater’s glory days when it hosted touring companies and government galas. Now it was just me and the ghost of my father’s stories. He used to tell me about his time as a lighting man in the old Cultural Center, before the revolution, when the First Lady would descend with her entourage and the whole place would hum with a nervous electricity. He never told me what happened that last night, only that he hung up his cables the next day and never looked back.

My name is Leo. And tonight, I was about to learn why.

The play was a community production, all local actors and borrowed costumes. As the house lights dimmed, I settled into my booth at the back of the auditorium, a glass-walled box that looked down on the stage. Beside me, the sound board blinked with a steady rhythm, and through the intercom, I could hear the stage manager’s breathy countdown. At eight o’clock sharp, the curtain rose.

Everything started normally. The fairies flitted, the lovers bickered, and the audience laughed in all the right places. But then, midway through Act Two, the lights began to falter. A strip of warmers on the left side buzzed, then cut out entirely. I frowned, flipping switches and checking fuses, but the board showed no fault. The lights were responding to something else.

I looked up. Through the glass, I saw the stage, but it wasn’t the stage I knew. The set had changed. The painted forest was gone, replaced by a long, dark hallway lined with doors. The actors had frozen mid-motion, their faces turned toward me with empty, staring eyes. And in the center of the stage, a figure in a tattered evening gown stood motionless, her back to me.

My heart hammered. I reached for the intercom, but the line was dead. The sound system crackled, then let out a faint, warbling hum, like an old phonograph. The figure began to turn, and I saw her face: it was my mother, who had died when I was twelve. She smiled, but her eyes were black, and her mouth opened wide to reveal a darkness that spilled out like smoke.

I stumbled backward, knocking over a chair. The glass panel between me and the stage fogged over, and through it, I saw the hallway solidify. The doors began to open one by one, each revealing a different scene: a dressing room with a noose, a backstage corridor slick with blood, a control room where a man screamed as his hands melted on the faders.

I knew I had to leave. I grabbed my flashlight and yanked open the booth door. The corridor outside was not the familiar painted concrete. It was the hallway from the stage, with the same doors, now silent and closed. The air was cold, and each breath crystallized in front of me.

I ran. I passed doors labeled ‘Props,’ ‘Costumes,’ and ‘Green Room,’ but each had a number instead of a name: 1, 2, 3, all the way to 13. At the end, a door glowed faintly, a sickly yellow. I felt drawn to it, my feet moving on their own. My hand reached for the knob.

A sound stopped me. A child’s laugh, echoing from behind. I spun, and saw the figure from the stage, now standing at the opposite end. She was closer, her gown dragging on the floor, leaving a trail of black water. Her head tilted at an unnatural angle, and her mouth moved, but the voice that came out was my father’s.

‘You should have listened, Leo. You should have gone home.’

I screamed, and threw open the door. The room inside was a replica of my childhood bedroom, but bathed in a red glow. A music box sat on the dresser, winding itself down, playing a tinny lullaby. On the bed lay a photograph, of my father and a young woman with him at a theater party. Her face had been scratched out.

I heard footsteps behind me. I turned, but the hallway was gone. I was back on the stage, under the lights, with the audience applauding. The actors were taking their bows, but their faces were all the same: blank, with black voids for eyes. The woman in the gown stood at the front, staring up at the control booth. She pointed.

A spotlight clicked on, shining straight at me. The glare blinded me, and in that blinding light, I saw the truth: my father had not simply quit. On that last night, he had seen something in the booth, something that had followed him home. And now, it had found me.

The lights flickered and failed. In the darkness, I felt cold hands on my shoulders, and a voice in my ear, soft as silk: ‘You’ll be my new light.’

I woke up in a hospital, three days later, with no memory of how I got there. The theater was condemned after a fire, they said, and I was lucky to be alive. But I didn’t tell them what I saw. I didn’t tell them that every time I close my eyes, I see that hallway, and the doors, and the woman in the gown, waiting for me to open the next one.

I moved away, changed my name, and took a job in a warehouse, away from lights and stages. But last night, I was walking past a shuttered cinema, and I saw a flicker in the window. A single bulb, swinging on a wire. And in the reflection, I saw her smile.

She’s always there, in the dark, waiting for a stagehand to bring the lights back up. But I’m not going back. I’m not going back. The last house light is out, and I intend to keep it that way.