Chapter 10: Nodens: A Comedy

Chapter 10: Nodens: A Comedy

The Albright Experimental Theatre was a small, suffocating black box that smelled of dust, old paint, and the faint, lingering sweat of a dozen other desperate productions. To Liam, every molecule of air felt charged with a pretentious energy he couldn't stand. He sat on a hard, rickety chair, his broad shoulders squeezed between a gushing drama student and the wall, feeling as out of place as a V8 engine in a bicycle. He wasn't here for the art. He was here for Chloe.

She stood in the aisle, a clipboard clutched in her hands, directing a lanky tech student with a hushed, frantic intensity. In the six months since they’d fled the un-place, this play had become her entire world. It was her penance, her memorial, her desperate attempt to build something beautiful from the wreckage. She had poured every last cent of the Patron’s blood money into it—renting the space, building the sets, paying the actors. She was trying to launder the cash, to sanctify it through art, to transform its tainted source into a worthy tribute to Kian’s genius.

Liam watched her, a familiar ache in his chest. She was functional, but fragile, like a porcelain doll that had been meticulously glued back together. The cracks were still visible if you looked too closely.

Elara sat beside him, a still, silent presence. She hadn't picked up her camera once since that night. She had agreed to come tonight for the same reason he had: for Chloe. But as the house lights dimmed, Liam saw her hand come up in the darkness, her thumb and forefinger forming a small, empty frame, a ghost of an old habit she couldn't break. She was watching the stage, but her gaze seemed to be looking through it, at something else.

The play began.

Nodens: A Comedy, Kian’s supposed masterpiece, was as arrogant and incomprehensible as he had been. The set was a sparse, minimalist collection of white boxes and a single, dead tree. The actors spoke in a heightened, unnatural cadence, their dialogue a tangled knot of philosophical non-sequiturs and bizarre, jarring imagery. The small audience, mostly Kian’s acolytes from the drama department, watched with rapt attention, occasionally letting out a thoughtful "hmmm" or a small, knowing chuckle at lines Liam couldn't make sense of.

He was just about to let his mind drift to the failing transmission on a ’98 Civic when a line from the lead actor, a man playing a character called the ‘Janitor of Forms’, snagged his attention.

“The Solar Pontiff decreed that shadow is merely light that has forgotten its own name!” the actor declared, striking a dramatic pose.

Liam’s blood went cold. A Priest of the Sun. The first joke. His joke. The one that had made the shadows dance and birthed the thirteenth house. He shot a glance at Elara. In the dim glow from the stage, he could see that her face was a pale, rigid mask. She had heard it too.

The play continued, a slow, mounting fever dream. It wasn't a story; it was a series of linguistic traps, a collection of statements that felt profound but crumbled into dust upon examination. It was an assault on meaning itself. Liam felt a familiar pressure building behind his eyes, the same disorientation he’d felt when staring at the impossible owner’s manual for the Ford Chimera.

Then, a new character entered, a woman in a grey dress with her hair pulled back so tightly it seemed to stretch the skin of her face. She began a long, rambling monologue.

“This house is a body,” she said, her voice a monotone drone. “Its windows are old bruises that can’t quite remember the blow. My thoughts are tenants who come and go, come and go, their muddy boots tracking dirt through the halls. My mind is a revolving door… Things in, things out.”

Elara made a small, choked sound, a sharp intake of breath like a gasp of pain. She grabbed Liam’s forearm, her grip surprisingly strong, her knuckles white. He didn’t need to ask. It was her card. The words that had broken Kian, that had sent him into his spastic, jerking dance, were being spoken from the stage as if they were just another piece of dialogue. The audience shifted, some of them nodding as if they understood. But Elara understood better. She knew these weren't just words. They were keys. They were triggers. They were the lyrics to a song that ended in madness.

She leaned in, her voice a raw, terrified whisper in his ear. “She said he was hired, Liam. The Patron. She said he’d moved on to a grander stage.”

Liam stared at the stage, at the actors moving under the carefully arranged lights, and a horrifying realization began to dawn. This wasn’t a memorial. It was a continuation. Chloe hadn’t resurrected Kian’s art; she had unwittingly built a new stage for the show they’d never escaped. They were all participating. The actors speaking the lines, Chloe directing from the wings, the audience listening, and them—the two of them, the only ones who knew the real context, bearing witness.

The final act began. The stage was empty except for a single actor standing center stage, by the dead tree. The script called for a final, climactic monologue.

Then the lights changed.

They didn’t dim or fade. They snapped. One moment, the stage was bathed in a sterile, artistic white. The next, it was flooded with a single, putrid, sickly yellow light.

It was the color of the light on the fifteenth house.

The audience murmured in appreciation at the "bold lighting choice." But for Liam and Elara, it was the color of a nightmare. It was the color of a wound in reality, the color of a doorway that opened into a squirming, geometric hell. It was the color of Kian’s final performance.

On stage, the actor, bathed in the jaundiced glow, looked down as if reading a final, devastating line from the palm of his hand. He looked out at the audience, but his eyes were unfocused, as if he were merely a vessel for the words.

“The play is the world,” he said, his voice suddenly hollow, echoing with an unnatural resonance. “And the world is a beautiful painting. The critic asked the artist, ‘Where is the punchline?’ The artist smiled and said…”

The actor paused. A deep, profound silence fell over the small theater, a silence that felt heavy, ancient, and expectant. It was the same silence that had fallen after Kian had read his last card. Liam’s hand tightened over Elara’s, his body tensing, bracing for an impact he knew was coming.

From the darkness of the wings, just offstage, came a sound.

It was not one of the actors. It was not a sound cue. It was a high, unhinged giggle. A sound of pure, liberated madness and ecstatic, agonizing joy. A sound that tore through the months of grief and denial and plunged them right back into the cold, damp woods of that impossible court.

It was Kian’s laugh.

Chloe, standing in the aisle, froze, her clipboard slipping from her numb fingers and clattering to the floor. Her head turned slowly towards the sound, her eyes wide with a dawning, uncomprehending horror.

On stage, the actor’s head snapped up, his face a mask of confusion. The line wasn't his. The laugh wasn’t in the script. He was no longer in control.

The high, unhinged giggle echoed again from the wings, closer this time, a prompter giving the actor his forgotten line.

The curtain was rising again. And they were all still on the stage.