The Last Set

I’ve played guitar for over a decade, but the gig at the old Mercury Theatre in Manchester was supposed to be a one-off. My band, The Hollow Frequencies, usually stuck to smoky basements and sticky-floored pubs, but this place was a crumbling Victorian relic with a stage that creaked like a coffin lid. The promoter was a shifty-eyed bloke named Gerald who paid us in cash and warned us not to touch anything backstage. He said the theatre had a history, but all old buildings do, right? We set up our gear, ran through our soundcheck, and the place felt empty, hollow, like the silence was waiting for something.

The show itself was electric. The crowd was small but feverish, their applause echoing off the peeling wallpaper. I remember feeling a surge of energy, something almost supernatural, as if the music was being pulled out of me rather than played. Midway through our set, I felt a cold draft on my neck, like someone had breathed on me. I turned, but there was no one there. My bandmates later said they felt it too, a presence watching us from the wings. We finished our last song, and the lights flickered. The audience didn’t seem to notice, but my skin crawled.

Afterwards, we packed up in a hurry. Gerald disappeared without paying us the full amount, leaving a note that said ‘Find the dressing room mirror.’ We shrugged it off, figuring it was a prank, but curiosity got the better of us. The dressing room was at the end of a narrow, dust-choked corridor. The door was unlocked, and inside, a huge, tarnished mirror dominated the far wall. Written in the grime were the words: ‘Help me.’ I wiped my hand across it, and the glass turned cold as ice. In the reflection, I saw not my own face, but the face of a woman, gaunt and weeping, her lips moving silently. I stumbled back, and my friends saw her too, shrieking as she faded.

We fled the theatre, but the memory clung to us like a bad fever. I started having nightmares, the woman’s face appearing in every reflective surface, my mirror, my phone screen, even a spoon. She was always mouthing something, and I couldn’t decipher it. Desperate, I returned to the theatre alone, this time during the day. The sunlight did nothing to dispel the gloom. I found the mirror again, and this time I touched it. The surface rippled like water, and I saw a younger man, a performer in an old-fashioned suit, his throat cut ear to ear. He pointed at a corner of the room, where a trapdoor was half-hidden under a dirty rug.

Under that trapdoor, I found a hidden basement. The stairs were slick with moisture, and the air smelled of decay. In the dim light, I saw dozens of mannequins, their faces painted to look like the woman from the mirror. They were arranged in a circle, and in the center was an old gramophone with a single vinyl record. I put it on, and the needle crackled to life with a song I didn’t recognize, but my fingers tingled, as if remembering it. That’s when I heard a voice behind me, a rasping whisper: ‘You came. Now you must play on.’

The mannequins turned their heads, all at once, their painted eyes fixing on me. The woman from the mirror appeared among them, solid now, her throat slit too. She spoke, her voice like the rustling of dead leaves: ‘We are the forgotten acts. Bound here by a curse. When a new performer comes, they must take our place. You played so beautifully. You’ll do.’ I tried to run, but the doors had vanished. The gramophone began to play my song, the one we had just performed. As the music swelled, the mannequins shuffled closer, their joints grinding. The woman raised a cold, bony hand to my throat, and I felt the ghostly blade press, but not break the skin. She leaned in and whispered, ‘Your voice belongs to us now.’

I woke up in the theatre’s main hall, my guitar in my lap, the place empty. My bandmates were gone, and my phone had a new song saved in our setlist, one I had never written. The title was ‘The Last Set.’ When I played it, every reflection shimmered, and I saw the woman smiling. Now, wherever I go, I see her in windows and screens, waiting. And every time I perform, I can feel the audience lean in, not for me, but for the ghostly chorus of the damned that I’m now a part of. I know one day, I’ll fade completely, becoming just another forgotten act in that cursed theatre, and someone else will find the mirror and begin the cycle anew. Until then, I play on, because that’s all I can do, and the music never stops.