Short Story: Rachael Part 1 of 5

At a private girls school, an English teacher fond of shoplifting and married men stages a cursed play linked to a centuries-old ghost story

Photo by Fabian Centeno on Unsplash

Part One

Present Day

My regret at giving Nicole Ingram the lead in The Witch of Abbendon had reached hair-clutching levels. During that first dress rehearsal, a mere week before the first performance, her final monologue sounded as wooden as it had during our initial readthrough. Casting Nicole had been a concession to headmistress Mrs Harrison over concerns about performing the notorious play, but schmoozing the rich Ingram family was about to torpedo any sense of dramatic fire in what ought to be a tremendous climax. With a sigh, I launched into yet another attempt at direction.

‘Nicole, this is the critical scene. Agnes is persuading all the characters in the play — and everyone in the audience — to join in the banishment of Rachael.’

Nicole let out a nervous laugh. ‘I know, Miss Ellis. I’m just trying to get the words right.’

‘Well, that won’t be good enough on the night. You need to act, not just recite a load of sentences.’

‘I’m doing my best.’

‘Try to imagine yourself in Agnes’s shoes. The vengeful spirit of this dead witch has laid waste to her entire family. Her mother, father, and brothers are all dead. Now she begs for all to stand against Rachael; to cast her out once and for all, and in doing so, protect her younger sister from becoming possessed by her. Remember: There are only seven days before Rachael will choose a human vessel to inhabit, and she has her eye on little Beatrice. Imagine if it was your little sister.’

Nicole shrugged. ‘If the ghost of a dead witch wanted to possess my little sister, she’d be welcome to her. It might give her some personality.’

The rest of the cast — including the boys we’d borrowed from Abingdon School — all laughed. Nicole ran a hand through her long blonde hair and shot a glance at Tom Wallace, a handsome, curly-haired seventeen-year-old who played the magistrate Philip in the play. Their flirtatious stare told me all I needed to know about the off-stage antics I’d suspected from them. Well, what can you do? Inevitable, when you mix single-sex private schools. All that pent-up teenage frustration is bound to overspill. Personally, I think Tom could do better. I just hope he doesn’t get Nicole pregnant. The last thing I need is a scandal of those proportions on my hands.

‘Might I suggest you channel a little personality into your performance as well,’ I said, once the laughter died down. ‘Let’s go again from the start of the speech.’

Nicole performed the scene with a mite less self-consciousness. Afterwards, we rehearsed the very last scene: The banishment ritual. This is the point when the audience is invited to join in, stating the words as they will appear on projected screens at either side of the stage; a modern innovation, as doubtless Christopher Marlowe would have handled the scene within the technological limitations of Elizabethan England.

Marlowe’s authorship is contested, of course. In truth, no one is quite sure who wrote The Witch of Abbendon. What’s more, my research couldn’t find a single record of the play being performed, except the notorious 1924 production.