The Understage Gap

The old Opera House had been converted into a school auditorium decades ago, but it still smelled of dust, aged wood, and lingering cologne from forgotten performances. Our drama teacher, Mr. Albright, insisted we call it the ‘theater’ because high school drama deserved dignity, even if the building itself was falling apart. The stage, a relic from the 1920s, was a multi-tiered platform with a crawlspace beneath, accessable through a small door at the back. The front sections were too low for anyone to enter, only a few inches off the ground, but the deeper parts opened up to about three feet, enough to crouch and set props.

In the fall of my sophomore year, we were painting for ‘Alice in Wonderland’. I was with two friends: Marcus, a senior with a knack for set design, and Lena, a junior who could turn any piece of wood into a whimsical prop. We had the theater to ourselves, or so we believed. The fire exits were push-bar only from the inside, and the main entrance was locked with a chain and padlock, one of those ‘you can only get out’ situations. We had a bucket of black paint, thick and glossy, and we were using it to detail the edges of the three main levels, trying to give them a depth that would pop under the stage lights.

Marcus was up on the highest level, painting the back wall, while Lena and I worked on the lower steps. I was kneeling, brush in hand, when I heard a sound from underneath the stage. It was a soft, rhythmic scraping, like a piece of metal being dragged across concrete. I paused, listening. ‘You hear that?’ I asked, turning to Lena. She stopped, her brush hovering, and tilted her head. ‘Hear what?’ she said. The scraping stopped. I shrugged, convincing myself it was just the old building settling. We went back to work.

An hour later, Lena needed to get back her jacket from the costume rack near the understage entrance. She walked to the back of the stage, her footsteps echoing in the dusty space. As she reached the small door, she froze. ‘There’s something in there,’ she said, her voice barely a whisper. Marcus and I joined her, peering into the dim crawlspace. The only light came from the work lamps, casting long shadows. We saw nothing, but the air was cold and stale, and a faint smell of something organic, like damp earth and copper, wafted out. Marcus laughed nervously. ‘Probably a rat,’ he said. But rats don’t make noises like that.

We went back to painting, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched. The scrape came again, louder this time, and it seemed to move from underneath us toward the front of the stage. I looked at the two of them, and I could see the fear in their eyes. We decided to investigate, but carefully. We took a flashlight and crouched at the entrance, shining the beam into the darkness. The crawlspace was empty as far as the light reached, but the back was a black void. ‘Hello?’ Lena called out, her voice trembling. No response. Then, a faint, high-pitched giggle echoed from the void, and the scraping intensified, like something was scurrying toward us. We scrambled back, slamming the small door shut and locking it.

We didn’t want to be alone anymore. We gathered our things and headed for the main exit, but the door was stuck. We jiggled the handle, pushed against it, but it wouldn’t budge. We were trapped. Marcus pulled out his phone to call the janitor, but the signal was dead. Panic began to set in. We turned back to the theater, and that’s when we saw them: footprints in the paint around the stage, small, barefoot prints leading from the understage door to the center of the stage. But that door was locked. And no one could have entered without us seeing.

The lights flickered. A cold draft swept through the theater, carrying that same metallic odor. We huddled together, back to back, as the scraping sound grew louder, circling around us. Then, from the understage, we heard a child’s voice, singsong, ‘I want to play too.’ The door burst open, and something moved in the shadows—something with long, spindly limbs and a head that tilted too far to one side. It crawled out, its skin pale and slick, and it moved with an unnatural speed. We ran, but there was nowhere to go. It herded us toward the stage, and suddenly the trapdoor in the center opened, revealing a pitch-black pit leading down to the crawlspace.

The last thing I remember is the thing’s face, a grotesque smile, and its hand reaching out to push us into the darkness. We fell, screaming, into the cold, wet void. The trapdoor slammed shut above us, and we were left in absolute blackness, the scraping all around, and the faint giggle echoing in our ears. I woke up in a hospital bed three days later. They found us unconscious under the stage, covered in black paint and dirt, but alive. The police said it was a prank, maybe an intruder, but they found no intruder. The theater was inspected, and in the crawlspace they found a child-sized door, bricked up from the other side, and behind it, a small room with old theater props and a faded photograph of a girl who had gone missing in 1924, the year the school opened. They never explained how we got out, or what we saw. But ever since, I can’t be near a crawlspace without hearing that scraping, and I know that something still waits under that stage, waiting for its next playmates.