The Hanging Hill

4

At seven-thirty p.m., Kelly Fagan was sitting in front of her makeup mirror in a dressing room backstage at the Hanging Hill Playhouse, getting ready for the Saturday-evening performance of Bats in Her Belfry, a Broadway musical from the 1950s about Dracula and the women who loved him.

The summer stock revival was a smash hit—just like all of Reginald Grimes’s productions at the Hanging Hill.

The man was a genius. Dark, brooding, mysterious.

Kelly couldn’t wait to introduce her famous director to her parents, who had driven all the way from Canton, Ohio, to Chatham, Connecticut, just to see her sing and dance in her first big show. She was one of the dancing bats. All the chorus girls were bats. The guys were werewolves.

She leaned in closer to the mirror. Becoming a bat involved applying a great deal of black and red greasepaint to her face, especially around the eyes.

She dabbed on a dollop of makeup and felt a chill tingle down her spine.

Goose bumps sprouted on both arms.

The pretty face smiling back at her from the mirror wasn’t her own.

Kelly gasped.

The face disappeared.

“Everything okay, Kelly?”

It was Vickie, another chorus girl, who had just stepped into the dressing room.

“Yeah.”

Vickie was carrying an old record album.

“What’s that?” Kelly asked.

“Bats in Her Belfry. Original 1955 cast recording. Vinyl. Thought it might be cool to listen to it later, if, you know, we can dig up an old-fashioned record player.”

“Who’s she?” Kelly asked, pointing at the woman swooning in Dracula’s arms on the cover.

“Kathleen Williams. She played Lucy. Sang ‘Bitten and Smitten.’”

Kelly nodded.

Now she had a name to go with the face.

Kathleen Williams had been the pretty woman staring at her from inside the mirror.