Glossy

Short Fiction - Supernatural

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Photo by Maksym Diachenko on Unsplash

“When we our betters see bearing our woes…”

Hector Torres paused patiently as Benedict, his pug, jerked the leash hard to the right to investigate the scent of a particularly compelling patch of salal. The small dog sniffed intently for a few moments, and Hector used the time to readjust the folder under his arm and zip his raincoat up to his chin. 

Though it was cold, he was grateful for the inclement weather, threatening rain, a crisp wind scattering dead alder leaves across the path. There were no other visitors to the Fort Ferris State Park. Not today, on a chilly Friday evening in October with rain in the forecast. These paths were usually swarming with cyclists, other walkers with their dogs, and kids running around the woods. But this evening, he and Benedict had it all to themselves. 

“Let’s go, Benny,” he said, quietly. The pug lifted his leg on the salal and then continued on, satisfied. 

“When we our betters see bearing our woes, we scarcely think our miseries our foes,” Hector murmured. “Who alone suffers suffers most i’ the mind…”

He grunted a humorless laugh. Suffers most in the mind, yeah, that sounded about right. 

At a fork in the path, he quickly looked all around and behind him to make sure he was well and truly alone. And then, he veered sharply to the left at the place where a large wild Nootka rosebush, heavy with rust-red hips, was stretching over a gap barely recognizable as a trail. Benny slipped easily through the gap but Hector needed to push at the overgrowth of rose, bramble, and salmonberry canes, knocking his glasses askew as he went. 

Once through the thick hedgerow, Hector and Benny stepped out into a cleared area, a bowl of meadow, and down into the treasure he knew was hidden there. 

It was an old outdoor theater, concentric half-circles of stone like great stairs built down and down until they reached the flat floor, what once had been the stage. Behind this was an overgrown backdrop of wild rosebushes, where sets had once been constructed and trails had been cleared for the actors to enter and exit. An old ramshackle wooden building, merely a shack, was tucked behind in the woods, where props had been stored and the actors might have dressed and readied themselves between their scenes.

Hector surveyed the old theater with reverence. Then, he bent down to let Benny off the leash. The pug immediately raced around the space, sniffing with wild abandon, and Hector walked around the outside of the old stone seating, heading down to the stage level. 

Once he was standing on the floor-level looking up, imagining people in the seats, Hector felt his heart thundering in his chest. 

You can do this, Torres, he thought to himself, pulling the folder out from under his arm and setting it on the lowest level of seating nearby, just in case he needed it. He took the antique pocketwatch out of his trouser pocket, gave it a quick frown, and set it beside the folder. 

Benny was happily occupied, so Hector unzipped his coat a little to relieve the sudden feeling of claustrophobia, took center-stage, closed his eyes, and breathed. 

When he opened his mouth to speak, it came out squeaky. He cleared his throat, shook out his hands, then started again:

“When we our betters see bearing our woes, we scarcely think our miseries our foes. Who alone suffers suffers most i’ the mind, leaving free things and happy shows behind. But then the mind much sufferance doth o’erskip when…when…”

Hector sighed. “Dammit,” he said. 

He stepped forward to the folder, flipped it open to where the monologue sat neatly printed, highlighted and pockmarked with his notes. 

But while he studied the lines, Benny began to growl, somewhere behind him. 

“Cool it, boy,” Hector said, not looking up. 

Benny began to bark. 

“Benny, what the—”

But when Hector looked up, he startled. There was a man in coveralls standing just behind the rosebushes at the back of the stage, hands up in a defensive posture, while Benny yapped so hard at him that his entire little body shook with the effort.

“Avaunt, you cur!” the man said, then looked up at Hector and laughed. “You’ve got quite the little bodyguard, here.”

Hector’s mouth had gone dry and his heart was still pounding. “Benny doesn’t like strangers,” he said, quietly. 

“The little dogs and all,” said the man in the coveralls, smiling nervously. “I didn’t mean to startle you, I was trying to figure out how to get out of here without making you self-conscious. Didn’t do a very good job. I’m just the groundskeeper. Name’s Tom.”

Hector nodded, but turned to the dog. “Come on, Benny. Heel. Come on.”

Reluctantly, Benny trotted a little ways off, hackles still raised. 

“Sounded good, so far,” Tom said, emerging fully from the bushes. He was young-ish, perhaps in his thirties, with dark curls peeking out from under his baseball cap and the sort of eager, outgoing, extroverted gaze that made Hector nervous. “You in a play?”

Hector shook his head. “No, I…no, not yet. I mean…there’s an audition tomorrow. I’m just…practicing.”

Tom nodded. “With a monologue from Lear, to boot. A bold choice, especially here.”

“Why?” 

“Glossy. You know about Glossy?”

Glossy. Hector hadn’t heard that name in years. “Oh. Yeah, Glossy. That’s, I mean, that’s just a story, though.”

“Is it?” Tom smiled. “The history is real enough. Back in the 30s, during a community production of King Lear. The guy playing Lear murdered the guy playing Gloucester backstage in that little shack, tried to use the remainder of the play as his alibi. You never heard that one? Glossy, with the missing eyes?”

“I’ve heard it,” Hector said. “I just don’t believe the…ghost stories. And the missing eyes thing is just because Gloucester gets his eyes gouged out in Act Three. It’s tragedy, not horror.” 

“You know your Shakespeare,” Tom said with approval. “The kids don’t, though. They still come out here, looking for him. Glossy, cuz they don’t have the decency to call him Gloucester and no one remembers the actor’s name. It’s tradition, you know?”

Hector was faintly aware that this was potentially still a rite of passage, the way it was when he was in high school. He had never been invited to come out here looking for Glossy, and the very idea would have sent his mother into a fabulous rant about messing with the occult. 

His students probably got up to all kinds of shenanigans, posting it to their TikTok pages and such, but they never talked about it in front of him. Then again, he wasn’t considered one of the “cool” teachers. He enjoyed teaching high school biology because he had a portable all to himself and everyone mostly left him alone.  

It was a good, solid, practical job. The way jobs were meant to be.  

Tom was already moving away, heading back around the edge of the seating. Benny growled quietly as he went. 

“I’ll get out of your hair,” the groundskeeper said, smiling. “Good luck on your audition. Or, sorry, not good luck. You showbiz types prefer break a leg, right?”

Tom laughed. Hector didn’t. 

At the top of the theater, standing at the entrance to the trail back to the rest of the park, Tom spread his arms wide. 

“I have a journey, sir, shortly to go. My master calls me, I must not say no!”

The words rang out in the amphitheater, and there was something in them that Hector did not like. He shivered.

In the silence that followed, Tom smiled ruefully, letting his arms drop to his side. 

“All’s cheerless, dark, and deadly,” he said. “Oh, well. Tough crowd.”

He took a deep bow, then slipped through the gap in the hedge and disappeared. 

Hector breathed out. He had been feeling pretty good about this time to practice on an actual stage, to get his bearings without anyone around to hear him except Benny. But that feeling was slowly slipping away. He didn’t like talking to strangers, even at the best of times. And something about Tom the Groundskeeper had left him feeling deeply unsettled.  

But I’m here, and it’ll be dark soon, he thought. It’s now or never. 

He walked back over to the folder again, studied the lines of the monologue. The pocketwatch glared up at him, seconds-hand ticking quietly, like the impatient tapping of a toe. Benny had found a patch of soft moss growing on the stone seats and curled himself up on it, giving himself a well-deserved grooming session. 

“Okay,” Hector said, stepping back again and trying to find his focus once more. He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth, like he had heard people online say to do. 

Then, he tried again:

“When we our betters see bearing our woes, we scarcely think our miseries our foes. Who alone suffers suffers most i’ the mind, leaving free things and happy shows behind. But then the mind much sufferance doth o’erskip when grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship. How light and portable my pain seems now…”

Hector paused, looked over his shoulder. The patch of rosebushes was still, and the old shack beyond them dark and empty. But his neck still felt cold from the quick flash of fear that had flickered through it, without obvious cause. 

He began, “How light and portable my pain seems now…”

There. Again. Someone else had spoken. Just underneath his words, another voice.  

Hector looked around, goosebumps rising on his arms. If that groundskeeper was hiding somewhere, messing with him…

“Hey!” Hector called out. “Who’s out there?”

Silence. Nothing in reply. Only the jingling of tags on Benny’s collar as the dog scratched behind his ear with a rear foot. 

Hector sighed. “You’re so close,” he said, softly. “Just run it through a few times, and we can go. Remember to project your voice, put some meaning into the lines. You’ve got this.”

His own words felt hollow. The pocketwatch sat nearby, marking the time, precious minutes ticking away. He could still see it: the pocketwatch cold in a small box wrapped in white tissue paper, a gift on his eighteenth birthday. His father’s father’s father’s watch, a long line of practical, pragmatic Torres men. Businessmen, shopkeepers, farmers, teachers. Not one dreamer among them, if his father was to be believed. Not one painter, writer, sculptor, and certainly no actors to be found. No time for such things.  

Tick. Tick. Tick.  

Hector cleared his throat and opened his mouth to try the monologue again, but the ticking of the pocketwatch was like a drumbeat in his head. Impatient tapping. Time is fleeting, no time for things like this. Things like acting. 

“No,” Hector said. “No, this is stupid. I can’t do this.”

He moved to pick up the folder and the watch, but that’s when he heard it, clear as a bell. A man’s voice, faint but deep, somewhere in the trees behind the stage. 

“Give me some help! Oh, cruel! Oh, you gods!”

Hector froze. Benny had sat up, dark ears pricked, whining softly.

“Tom?” Hector called out, braver than he felt, turning around to see if he could find the source of the voice. But he was rewarded, instead, with a terrible cry, a man’s scream as if in pain, and he stumbled backward, hard, on his tailbone. 

“All dark and comfortless!” the voice cried. “Where is my son? Enkindle all the sparks of nature to quit this horrid act!”

A wailing, the most grief-stricken sound that Hector had ever heard, rippled out from the shack at the back of the stage. 

And as Hector watched in horror, a figure emerged, misty and immaterial, bent-backed, limping, jerking on unsteady feet that were invisible below ghostly calves. An old man with a long white beard, and nothing but crimson, dripping holes where his eyes should be. 

Glossy. All the stories ran through Hector’s mind in a tangle, and he felt his throat constrict in panic. Benny was eerily quiet behind him, as if the dog knew enough not to antagonize the spirit by barking. 

The ghost limped closer, and Hector could hear rattling breath. 

“Away, get thee away!” the ghost said, sorrow ringing in its quiet, moaning voice. 

And then, it disappeared. 

Hector blinked. The ghost was gone. 

He scrambled to his feet, grabbing the folder, the pocketwatch, Benny’s leash. 

“Come here, Benny,” he said. “We gotta go, we…”

But Benny was whining at something behind Hector. 

He turned, and the eyeless, bearded face was at his shoulder, breath cold on his ear. 

Hector shrieked, stumbled, tripped, everything in his hands tumbling out onto the floor of the theater. 

He scrambled away, behind him the ghost murmured:

“Tis the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind. Do as I bid thee, or rather do thy pleasure. Above the rest, BE GONE.”

These last words, shouted, wailed, the voice rising tremulous in the old theater, and Hector finally pushed himself to his feet to run, calling for Benny to follow. 

Hector rounded the edge of the seating and the trailhead appeared above, tucked into the hedgerow. But yards from it he stopped. The ghost was there, standing between him and the trail, raising its arms, eyeless face tipped to heaven, the blood visible on its bearded cheeks. 

“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport!”

Hector cowered, then, before the ghost. 

“Please stop!” Hector pleaded, his voice sounding small in the grand space. “Please let me go! I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have come here, I’ll go now...”

But the ghost simply dropped its arms and looked down at Hector. 

“You ever-gentle gods, take my breath from me. Let not my worser spirit tempt me again to die before you please,” it said. Then it waited. 

Hector considered the words. He knew them, with a confidence he was unable to explain, and he felt the reply on his lips before he gave it much thought. 

“Well pray you, Father,” he said. 

The ghost tipped its head, mouth twitching with something like approval. “Now, good sir, what are you?”

“A most poor man, made tame to fortune’s blows,” Hector replied, as though the script was printed on the inside of his skull and he was merely reading it. “Who, by the art of known and feeling sorrows, am pregnant to good pity.”

He stepped forward, feeling beyond reason that he should. “Give me your hand. I’ll lead you to some biding.”

As he drew closer to the ghost, it reached out for him, like a child might. He felt the cold on his arm, phantom hands clutching him tightly. 

“Hearty thanks,” the ghost said, almost in a whisper. 

And then, before he could think too much about how strange it was to do so, Hector led the ghost down, around the edge of the seating, down again to the stage level. As they went, Hector considered the old ghost: an actor, murdered backstage after his final scene. Not Glossy, no, but Gloucester, a tragic character, eyes gouged out and cursed to wander the heath blinded. Cursed to never know that his own exiled son was keeping watch over him.  

What had seemed frightening before seemed now only sorrowful. Tragedy, not horror.

At the stage, the ghost dropped his hands from Hector’s arm and waited. Expecting. 

Hector didn’t know how he knew it, but he knew exactly what the ghost was waiting for. 

He stood center-stage, breathed deeply, and began: 

“When we our betters see bearing our woes, 
we scarcely think our miseries our foes. 
Who alone suffers suffers most i’ the mind, 
leaving free things and happy shows behind.
But then the mind much sufferance doth o’erskip 
when grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship. 
How light and portable my pain seems now
When that which makes me bend makes the King bow.
When false opinion, whose wrong thought defiles thee,
In thy just proof repeals and reconciles thee.”

He listened to his own words die away in the old amphitheater as the twilight began to fail, the cloud-shrouded sun setting somewhere in the autumn west, and he turned. The eyeless ghost had a faint smile on its lips, an old actor to the last. 

“Grace go with you, sir,” the ghost said. And then it limped away, through the leafless tangle of rosebushes to the shack where it had once—long ago—met its untimely end. 

And it was gone. 

Hector stood for a long time as the darkness rolled in, just thinking. Finally, he called Benny to his side, clipped the pug’s collar to the leash. He collected up the folder with the script in it, feeling—for the first time—that he might no longer need to look at it. Feeling a sense of readiness he had not expected to feel. He held the pocketwatch in his hand for a long moment, weighing it out, sensing the ticking through his palm. Seconds passing. 

Tick. Tick. Tick. 

Hector Torres and Benny the pug left the old theater, then, passing through the hedgerow and emerging into the cold night before a new dawn. He held the folder under his arm, as he had when he had arrived. 

But the pocketwatch? It was no longer in his trouser pocket. 

No. The pocketwatch he left behind. His father’s father’s father’s pocketwatch lay at the doorway of the old shack behind the stage, a place fitting only for ghosts. 

Thank you for reading!

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