(Lights up on The Library Basement Stacks at Dead Lake Community College a mini set with bookcase and elderly woman – MRS PREECE – wearing coke bottle glasses perched atop library ladder, putting books away. )
MRS PREECE
Why are all these students so freakishly tall? I’m going to kill myself, one of those days, trying to approximate the eye line of some basketball-playing mutant.
(WHITNEY appears shyly around the bookcase.)
WHITNEY
Are you Mrs. Preece?
MRS. PREECE
No need to shout. I’m half-blind, not deaf. Depends who’s asking.
WHITNEY
I’ve been researching past Dead Lake students and the girl at the front desk said you know everything.
MRS. PREECE
(Coming down the ladder)
Then I’m that Mrs. Preece. For all I knew you were looking for my mother in law and she’s been dead these forty years. And believe you me, she was no picnic when she was alive, and now that she’s dead she’s been particularly troublesome.
(Looks WHITNEY up & down)
Aren’t you a nice young lady! Most girls these days look so terrible I pity them. They want to look terrible is what I conclude. It’s all I can do to keep from jumping back and gagging when I see one coming – it’s like some vision of the Apocalypse. They’re arming up for something – God knows what.
(Crosses herself)
You look like a strong healthy girl. Not like those female zombies.
WHITNEY
I missed a lot. I guess I’ve been… held back.
MRS. PREECE
Well, stay in school forever, that’s my advice. You, – you play hockey? What’s your sport?
WHITNEY
God no. I hate sports.
MRS. PREECE
Don’t say that, girl. Games are all we have to look forward to. The only time we get to win. I was a left wing in my time. But you can’t even say “left-wing” these days.
Teatime!
(She swivels the ladder & bookcase to reveal two basket chairs and a squat bookcase holding a smoking kettle, which she unplugs. She pours two mugs of tea and settles into chair with a sigh.)
WHITNEY
(Accepting a mug)
Do you live down here?
MRS. PREECE
Might as well. They’ve got facilities, haven’t they? Heat, light, the whole ball of wax. I’ve got a home but why go there? The spirit of my dead mother-in-law makes it clear she doesn’t approve of my housekeeping. No, libraries are where it’s at! Temples of learning, sanctuaries of knowledge. And they’re too cheap to hire a security guard for all this treasure. Scary. All they’ve got is little old me. When I go, it’s “poof” for all these memories. If I’m going to be haunted by somebody, I choose Emerson. Or any of the Transcendentalists, really.
(Waves a hand)
Education is SO wasted on the young. And it don’t stick long on the old folks, neither. People remember the way things SHOULD have happened. But I –
(Taps her head)
Been blessed in the brain-basket. I like the past. I remember the way things REALLY happened. So, long story short, you’ve come to the right place. Sit down and make yourself to home.
(Long sip)
Such a pleasure having company I’d smoke if I thought I could get away with it, but they’ve got them damn detectors. Interested in the Lake, you say? Good riddance to it! The Black Lagoon, we used to call it! Oh, it was a pile of muck after all the frogs died. You one of those conservation nuts? An echo-terrorist?
WHITNEY
Eco-terrorist? No. Actually I’m looking for a person. I’m Whitney Quantreau, and I’m looking for Charmayne Carr. She claims she attended this school. Charmayne Carr?
MRS. PREECE
I should have guessed right away that’s what you wanted! EVERYBODY’S looking for that one. Nobody knows what became of her. She just abandoned her house and walked away! But she wasn’t a student, she was a teacher. Health Ed.
WHITNEY
She was? Who – who’s looking for her?
MRS. PREECE
Her family. They need to know where she’s at! Got no idea in hell what’s become of her! And she used to support the lot of them. So it came as a shock. Does make a motive for sneaking away, having that pack hounding after you, I’d be thinking. And the cops say adults can go where they please. It’s a free country. You know what became of her?
WHITNEY
Well – she got married. That’s all.
MRS. PREECE
Married? To a MAN?
WHITNEY
(Flustered)
To my father, actually. What did you think?
MRS. PREECE
Well, I’m not sure what’s the PC word for it, but she was one of them long-time dykes. Dressed like a man most of the time! Oh she was miserable when they tried to get her up into any sort of skirt. Nowadays she’d just go and get her sex fixed to something matching her desires.
WHITNEY
(Shows her phone)
Is this her?
MRS. PREECE
(Clutches her heart like she’s seen a ghost)
Oh my goodness!
(Takes the phone)
Never thought I’d see HER again. So she’s a blonde now? She was a redhead when I knew her.
WHITNEY
Isn’t that Charmayne Carr?
MRS. PREECE
No, it most certainly isn’t! That’s Pearleen Purdy – Charmayne’s – I don’t know WHAT you’d call her. Doctor Carr’s girlfriend.
WHITNEY
Are you certain?
MRS. PREECE
How could a body be wrong about a thing like that? Nobody ever forgot Pearleen once they saw her. I’ve even got a picture of them together here somewhere.
(Produces a pile of college yearbooks from squat bookcase and shuffles through them)
These are my own personal Firewalkers. I don’t let them out of my hands.
WHITNEY
Firewalkers!
MRS. PREECE
Name of our basketball team, you know, the Firewalkers. Ought to be Airwalkers, but that was taken and we’re obligated to honor the Indians since we took their land whether they like it or not. Everyone walks through fire around here. Burning up the countryside’s practically a ritual. Let’s see, fourteen years ago, wasn’t it? The two of them were in a play together. “The Real Inspector Hound.”
(Offers the book)
Charmayne’s the one with the moustache. She was playing a man of course. Inspector Foot of the Yard.
(Agitated)
Now don’t you get stains on that!
WHITNEY
(Puts mug down respectfully)
She – Pearleen looks so different!
MRS. PREECE
Pearleen was older than most of the students. Word was she’d been a stripper out of Branson, Missouri. You’ve heard of Branson, Missouri? At The Gentleman’s Secret.
Well, Dr. Carr had a nice big house out on the Heights and poor Pearleen grew up on that sorry lake. She came home when the developers passed out education money. Dr. Carr liked to invite girl students – poor students – I should say PRETTY students out to the Heights to live with her. She “helped” them. Folks around here called her place “The Opium Den” because it was so – I don’t know what you’d call it. Eastern-like. Cultish. With draperies and bronzes and incense. The works.
WHITNEY
Cult-ish?
MRS. PREECE
Yeah, Dr. Carr had one of them goddess religions she was the queen of. To each her own, I say. Live and let live.
WHITNEY
Isis? TAROT? Let me guess, was she…the Queen of Swords?
MRS. PREECE
Bingo. That’s it exactly. She played the cards and Pearleen played her. Dr. Carr made a pot of money with one of them role-playing games. Dr. Carr was the Queen and Pearleen was supposed to be a Princess, I think that’s the way it went. But Pearleen got rid of all those other girls one by one. Reminds me of a cat I used to have. He just couldn’t share. He chased all the other cats right off my bed. Couldn’t abide the competition. We try to turn the other cheek to promote a professional atmosphere but I‘m telling you, it was the scandal of the campus!
WHITNEY
(Produces phone, uses zoom)
Did Charmayne Carr – Dr Carr – ever wear this necklace?
MRS. PREECE
That dagger there? Well, it looks familiar. She had lots of totem like materials. But Dr. Carr had all these folds around her neck, you see… No one wants to gaze at that too closely! No, she was never one of the “pretty ones!”
WHITNEY
And then she disappeared! Didn’t anybody find it suspicious?
MRS PREECE
Suspicious! Wasn’t I telling you her family had a meltdown! They came out here screaming like banshees! Finally declared her legally dead so they could sell her property!
WHITNEY
Do you remember any of their names?
MRS PREECE
Her brother had some very ordinary name. Like John. But I’m telling you, they don’t care anymore. The estate’s settled! They’ve even got a fake gravesite established somewhere – had a service with shrieking and wailing. Be quite a shock to them when she comes back. They’re not wanting to resurrect the dead. You’ve got a different problem than that.
WHITNEY
My stepmom’s an identity thief!
MRS. PREECE
Your poor dad’s the one got trouble, bless his heart. Play and then pay, I say! Usually through the nose. I demand all my bills up front.
WHITNEY
Too late for that. He’s dead, too.
(MRS PREECE drops her Firewalker with a resounding bang. Lights out.)
Alysse Aallyn 