A figure moved away. The floorboards creaked. There was something wrong with Emma’s vision. Someone loomed nearby, but all she could see was a black blob. She heard squeaking sounds, smelled chalk dust. What was going on?

A few seconds later, her vision focused. The blob was gone. Sitting in front of her was a large upright chalkboard from an old set. Emma had passed it countless times during the party preparations today, noting that someone had written a quote from The Glass Menagerie on it: “Things have a way of turning out so badly.” Those words had been wiped away now, and a new message had taken its place. As soon as Emma read the slanted handwriting, her blood went cold.

Stop digging, or next time I’ll hurt you for real.

Emma gasped. “Who’s there?” she screamed. “Come out!”

“Say something!” I yelled, too, as blind as she was. “We know you’re there!”

But whoever had written the note didn’t answer. And then the warm, throbbing darkness began to take hold of Emma once more. Her eyes fluttered, and she fought to keep them open. Just before she passed out again, she caught sight of the same blurry figure—or maybe two blurry figures—swirling their hands over the chalkboard, wiping the words clean.

The next time Emma opened her eyes, she was lying on a bed in a small white room. An instructional sheet on how to properly wash one’s hands hung on the opposite wall. Another poster for how to administer the Heimlich maneuver hung over a small table that contained jars of cotton swabs and boxes of latex gloves.

“Sutton?”

Emma turned toward the voice. Madeline sat on an office chair next to the cot, her knees pressed tightly together, her fingers knotted in her lap. When she saw that Emma was awake, relief flooded her face. “Thank God! Are you okay?”

Emma lifted her arm and pressed it to her forehead. Her limbs felt normal again, not filled with sand like they had as she lay on the stage floor. “What happened?” she croaked. “Where am I?”

“It’s all right, dear,” said another voice. A lanky woman with dishwater-blond hair cut bluntly to her chin and a pair of tortoiseshell glasses perched on her nose swam into view. She wore a white lab coat that had the words T. GROVE and NURSE stitched on the breast. “It appears you fainted. It was probably from low blood sugar. Have you had anything to eat today?”

“A light fell from the rafters and almost hit you,” Madeline said in a shaking voice. “It was crazy—it almost landed on your head!”