CHAPTER IX Into the Mist
“Isn’t it spooky?” Pauline whispered, breaking the spell that was uponJudy. The theater was so dark she couldn’t see her friend, but she couldhear her voice. She was about to answer when the sound of a wailingsiren reached her ears.
“What’s _that_?” she questioned fearfully.
Pauline touched her arm. “Judy! You’re all goose-flesh,” she whispered.“It’s only an ambulance. Probably there was an accident outside. Butdon’t worry about it. We’re safe enough in here.”
“I hope we are.” Judy had thought, for just a fleeting moment, thatsomething might have happened back in the film room. Maybe an explosionor a fire. But common sense told her Pauline was right. Her attentionwas drawn back to the set where the fairies were now singing:
“_The witch! The witch! Her curse came true. Pray tell us, what can fairies do?_”
“Nothing, my pretties!” chuckled the witch. She nodded her head so thatthe green hair fell in straggly wisps across her ugly face and repeated,“Nothing, my pretties. You can do nothing at all.”
“Not so! Not so!” cried all the fairies, rushing at her in a wild dance,their feet flying faster and faster as the music increased in tempo.
Judy and her friends sat in rapt attention as did the entire audience.The siren outside could still be heard wailing above the music, butnobody paid much attention to it. Irene, leading her train of fairies,drove the witch into the wings and returned to where the princess hadfallen.
“_She only sleeps. She is not dead. We’ll take her to her royal bed_,”
the fairies sang softly. Making cradles of their arms, they lifted thesleeping princess and carried her to another set where she was placed ina canopied bed to sleep for a hundred years.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” Judy whispered. “She looks—”
“Watch!” Pauline interrupted as the cameras turned quickly on anotherset showing the kitchen of the castle. Here the cook fell asleep just asshe was raising her hand to box the ears of the kitchen boy. In stillanother room the king and queen fell asleep on their thrones. Finallythe audience was given a glimpse of the castle itself. It was only abackground painting pulled down to hide the various sets, but it lookedreal enough on the television screen. Irene, standing in front of it,waved her wand and began to chant:
“_Arise, oh misty vapors, rise To hide from all beneath the skies The place where Sleeping Beauty lies._”
“Look!” whispered Judy. “Now I know why everything is so misty. Steam isbeing blown from a big black kettle over there to the right.”
The mist was now very dense. A fan was blowing it across the set. Whenit cleared away the castle had changed. A thick growth of weeds andbrush made it seem as if a hundred years had passed during the briefpause for the commercial.
All this time Irene had been standing to the left of the set. Sheintroduced the prince, now seen in a puzzled pose before the forsakencastle.
“_What’s this?” he cried. “A lovely castle now appears. The mist has hidden it for years._”
Parting the thorny bushes, he made his way toward it. Suddenly, toJudy’s surprise, the whole background scene went up like a window shade,revealing the rooms inside the castle.
“There’s Sleeping Beauty again! Isn’t she lovely?” a voice behind Judywhispered.
“And so young looking!” another whispered. “Isn’t it wonderful thatFrancine Dow can still play the part of a fifteen-year-old girl?”
The face of the actress was turned a little away from the viewers. Aveil covered it. She lay as still as death until the prince lifted theveil and kissed her. Then quickly, almost too quickly, it seemed toJudy, the play ended and Irene was before the cameras singing herclosing song. She sang it all the way through. When it was finished, sheblew a kiss to the children in the audience, adding, “And here’s one foryou, Judykins.” Little Judy was always Judykins to her adoring youngmother.
“Francine Dow wasn’t really the star. Irene was,” declared Judy as thered lights flashed off. Almost immediately the prop men begandismantling the set. Fairyland backgrounds disappeared. Cameras werepushed aside. The magic spell that had held the audience was over.
“Where’s Clarissa?” Pauline Faulkner asked suddenly.
Judy looked around for the girl they had met in the restaurant, but shewas nowhere in sight. The seat next to Flo was vacant. Judy tried tothink when she had last seen Clarissa or heard her speak. A shiveryfeeling came over her.
“Didn’t you see her leave?” Pauline was asking Florence Garner.
Flo shook her head. “I wasn’t looking at anything except the play,” shereplied. “Wasn’t it beautiful when that fairy mist covered the castleand made it vanish?”
Judy waved her hand in front of Flo’s eyes. “The play’s over. Come backfrom fairyland,” she told her. “Clarissa has vanished. You were sittingright beside her. You must have seen her when she left her seat.”
“She didn’t leave it. Anyway, not that I noticed,” Flo protested. “Maybeshe was a phantom after all. Maybe she disappeared into the mist.”
“If she did, she disappeared with the money we lent her,” Paulinedeclared.
“Good heavens!” This statement brought Flo out of her trancelike state.She stared at the empty seat and then at Pauline. “Well, what do youknow?” she said at last. “I think all four of us, including Irene, havebeen played for suckers. We should have known better than to trust astranger. We don’t even know where she lives.”
“I thought she was a phony. What do you think, Judy?” asked Pauline.
“I still can’t believe it,” Judy declared. “Clarissa was our friend.”
“Our phantom friend,” Pauline reminded her.
“It is sort of weird, isn’t it?” agreed Judy. “We called her a phantomand then she—well, she just vanished. I can’t think how or where. Wasshe there when we heard that siren, Flo?”
“What siren?”
Apparently Flo had been so engrossed in the show that she hadn’t heardit.
“It was an ambulance we heard outside the theater right after the witchput her curse on Sleeping Beauty. An ambulance!” Judy exclaimed, a newpossibility dawning upon her. “Do you suppose Clarissa—”
“Of course not,” Pauline interrupted. “She was in here watching theshow, not outside on the street.”
“Who was in that ambulance?” Judy inquired]
“We don’t know that,” Judy objected. “We don’t know how long her seathas been vacant. She could have slipped outside, for some reason, andbeen hurt in an accident. Come on, girls! We have to find out for sure.”
Grabbing their coats, they hurried outside to see what had happened.They were just too late. The ambulance with its wailing siren hadalready disappeared down the street. At the curb a taxicab with its rearfender smashed in was waiting to be towed away. The crowd that hadgathered around the scene of the accident was beginning to thin. Judyspied a policeman and rushed over to him.
“We can’t find our friend. We think she may have left the theater andbeen hurt or something. Who was in that ambulance?” she inquired all inone breath.