Read Online In This Skin by Simon Clark - Free Book Online Page B

had artistes entrance painted next to it. Here there were signs saying this way and no admittance and security and janitor. That's all. There were also wall brackets where fire extinguishers had once hung. But no posters blazing out tonite! one nite only! buddy holly and the crickets. Not even one lonesome flyer for Barry Manilow.
        Sweeping the lights through the darkened building, they ventured deeper.
        Kay glimpsed doors leading to artists' dressing rooms. She marveled at how clean the place was after all these years of abandonment. The drab green walls were unmarked. No graffiti. No sign of drunks appropriating the joint as a shelter. No urine splash marks on walls. No spider webs.
        No junk strewn on the concrete floor. Eager now, they surged down the tunnel-like corridor that (according to signs) connected with the backstage area. The place had only been stripped clean of furniture, not trashed. The air didn't even smell stale. It was as if a through draft continually refreshed the atmosphere of the Luxor.
        Kay's heart beat faster. This place excited her. She felt the old buzz come back to tingle through her blood to her fingertips. It was especially exciting to be here alone with Leon. His athletic body loped along the corridor with the grace of a panther. The shadow he cast revealed itself as a giant form that ran alongside him. She followed him through a wide pair of doors into the backstage area, then onto the stage itself. The boards creaked with mousy squeaks beneath her feet.
        She was treading in the footsteps of musical giants.
        In the middle of the stage stood a simple wooden table, perhaps from one of the back offices. Someone had brought it so far, then couldn't be bothered to heft the thing any farther.
        ”Wow, what a place,”Leon breathed, while shining the flashlight around the cavernous interior of the auditorium.
        Kay shone her flashlight onto the dance floor. In the darkness it appeared as a vast plain stretching far away to entrance doors that must lead to the box office and lobby beyond. The dance floor itself was featureless save for a single armchair dead center. She held the light on it for a moment. It was a comfortable club armchair, the kind you might have in an ordinary domestic living room. Why someone had gone to the trouble to position it there, facing the stage, as if ready for some phantom show to start, God alone knew.
        Leon whistled. ”Some place. I wonder why they don't reopen? It would make a great club.”
        ”Too far from town.”Her voice sounded small in the vastness. ”There's nothing here. All the factories have closed down.”
        ”You stay here. I'll check the lobby If there're any posters they'll be there.”
        ”Leon-”She wanted to add, Don't leave me alone here. But that would have sounded girly Instead, she added, ”If you need a hand, give me a shout.”
        Still running, he turned back. ”Sure.”A second later he vanished through the doors. There was no glass in them so she couldn't even see the flashlight anymore. Come to think of it, she couldn't hear his footsteps. The doors are soundproofed, she reassured herself. They'd have to be to stop the people in the box office from being deafened by the music that once rocked these walls all those years ago.
        Now there were no deafening guitar riffs, no bass, no drums to pound the air. A silence settled, the kind she'd never experienced before. All her life she'd lived in the shadow of an overpass that carried an eight-lane highway. Motor noise had seeped into the very molecules of her body. Now this kind of silence… Whoooo… this was something else. Sweeping the beam searchlightstyle, she scanned the void above her head, picking out the lighting gantry, and even the twinkling remnants of foil Christmas decorations from decades ago. In her imagination she could conjure the ghosts of men and women dancing out