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"Cast Spell Part2" by SinonLife
Page 1 of 50
Cast Spell
VERNA: You might be surprised.
RICH: Aha! This may be a first. Look carefully there, at least on one side there's a bulge--
VERNA: Many signs have more than one interpretation--
Page 2 of 50
GREG: Didn't you read your reviews, Rich? You haven't got it!
RICH: Look who's talking! Maestro "Vapid"!
GREG: "Vapid" and "tinkling"! Please!
VERNA: If you concentrate on the whole, on the energy flow--
Page 3 of 50
RICH: When you disagree, will you and Paula shoot fireballs at each other? I always loved that part!
ELAINE: Gather round, everybody.
RICH: Get out of here. I want privacy to hear what Paula has to say about my love life-
Page 4 of 50
ELAINE: Time for the cake!
(brings in heart shaped cake with candle,lit)
MICKY: Make a wish!
GREG: Don't tempt me! Who wants a piece?
ELAINE: I'm on a diet, but this is a special occasion.
Page 5 of 50
BECKY: No cake for me. If I can believe what Paula said when she read my palm, I may need to fit into something in the near future.
MICKY: I'll take a piece. Later, though. I think the cake should just sit there and be admired for a while.
Page 6 of 50
BECKY: What an amazing creation! Who did it?
ELAINE: I did. Greg bought the ingredients. Applause, please. If I could sing as well as I cook-
GREG: Or as well as you dance-
BECKY: It seems a shame to cut it.
Page 7 of 50
GREG: What will I do with it? What will I do with all of this? I could feed the cast of OKLAHOMA on our leftovers.
ELAINE: Not many people have an appetite at a wake.
GREG: Wasn't there some kind of sauce stuff to go with this?
Page 8 of 50
ELAINE: I think there was. Maybe it was left at the box office.
(ELAINE exits)
BECKY: Whose turn is it for a reading?
RICH: Just a minute. Paula's told me I'll have two wives, at least one of them rich--.
Page 9 of 50
BECKY: She told me six! I don't know how to break it to Ben that he's not going to be my final husband--
MICKY: But Ben's number four.
Page 10 of 50
BECKY: Number five, actually. Number two only lasted three weeks. I don't usually bring him up, but it's not a secret.
You were too young to remember, but I must have mentioned him-
RICH: Now I want to hear how I'm gonna die-
Page 11 of 50
BECKY: No, you don't.
PAULA: Of syphilis.
RICH: Jesus! Where'da ya get that?
PAULA: Not off toilet seats
MICKY: Read my palm now, Paula.
Page 12 of 50
BECKY: I don't think she should, Micky dear. What Paula said about Ben upset you.
MICKY: It just surprised me, mother. I'd forgotten Ben was an orphan.
Page 13 of 50
BECKY : I think most of the time he forgets it himself. The Farrells raised him, he thinks of them as his parents. But they're cousins, actually.
MICKY: Paula knew! If she reads for me--
Page 14 of 50
PAULA: Not now, Micky. I'm tired. After 11 pm, all the hands begin to look alike.
MICKY: Please! I have a premonition.
PAULA: I'm not up to it. I can see it's complicated-
Page 15 of 50
MICKY: It's bad, isn't it? So you won't tell me.
BECKY: Don't be a pest.
PAULA: Not bad, just complicated. I'll do it another time, I promise.
Page 16 of 50
MICKY: There won't be another time! When would I see you, now that the show's over? You heard what Greg said: while a turkey's running it's us against the world. But once it closes, nobody wants to be reminded. You'll avoid us-
Page 17 of 50
VERNA: I'll read your palm, Micaela. You'll see me.
PAULA: I wanted to ask you, Verna-- What method do you use? Cheiro? Have you ever seen a mark like this?(PAULA holds up her own hand)
Page 18 of 50
BECKY: Are you going to hold a convention?
PAULA: I tried to look it up--
VERNA: That's not how I do it.
PAULA: Huh?
VERNA: I don't use any book. I hold the hand, and I know.
Page 19 of 50
BECKY: You mean you're clairvoyant?
VERNA: Like Paula.
PAULA: Not me! I just tell people what the book says, and advise taking it with a grain of salt-
VERNA: You knew that Mr. Farrell's an orphan.
Page 20 of 50
PAULA: His life line was-- well, I guess I guessed.
VERNA: The truth. Very often, the truth.
MICKY: What can you tell me, Verna?
(MICKY holds up her hand. VERNA takes it)
Page 21 of 50
VERNA: Now? Not much. You like to have your hand held. You are drawn to the unseen. (MICKY'S hand shakes)
MICKY: Look!- It's shaking. My hand knows you know-
VERNA: Silly.
Page 22 of 50
PAULA: Everybody loves a reading. Finally, somebody's interested in the subject that's always fascinated them- themselves.
VERNA: So why do you do it?
Page 23 of 50
PAULA: The hands. They're so different from faces. And when you say what you see, perfect strangers will tell you things that even their best friends don't know.
BECKY: What if you saw a murder?
MICKY: Can you tell a person's sign?
Page 24 of 50
PAULA: I don't know much astrology.
VERNA: I can.
PAULA: From hands?
MICKY: I bet you just sense it.
VERNA: Your mother's a Leo, Micky. And you're Pisces. Greg, there, is a Virgo.
Page 25 of 50
GREG: You're right!
BECKY: How do you do that?
PAULA: ESP?
Page 26 of 50
MICKY: I dream about things before they happen, sometimes. I had a dream about you, Verna. With a star on your forehead. All around you there were spirits-
BECKY: You mean ghosts?
MICKY: Not ghosts. I've seen ghosts, too, but-
Page 27 of 50
BECKY: In your dreams? Or awake? I saw a ghost once. Or at least I thought I did. I'm cursed with a vivid imagination.
MICKY: You never told me.
Page 28 of 50
PAULA: Tell us all! Gather round, everybody. It's a ghost story!
I love ghost stories, I collect them.
ELAINE: I can't find the sauce.
GREG: Never mind. Sit down. Mrs. Farrell's telling a ghost story.
Page 29 of 50
MICKY: How'd you know it was a ghost, Mom?
GREG: What'd it look like?
Page 30 of 50
BECKY: He looked like his pictures. This was a rather famous ghost, which is why I can't be sure -- Anyway, he was Charlie the stunt man, killed in a fall. Charlie was supposed to haunt the studio where he died, and show up sometimes in the rushes.
Page 31 of 50
One of the crew showed me, this kind of transparent gunman--,
RICH: Is that all? Trick photography? I thought you'd had an experience--
Page 32 of 50
BECKY: I did. I was late changing, most of the lights were out, and on the way to the exit I walked past a man in costume, standing in the shadow, familiar but-- Then I realized where I'd seen him. Charlie.I stopped dead, I couldn't move;
Page 33 of 50
I swear my hair stood straight up on my head. Of course, by the time I'd recovered enough to turn around, there was nothing there.
MICKY: Why did he come to you? Did he have a message?
Page 34 of 50
BECKY: If he did, he didn't deliver it.
PAULA: Did you feel threatened?
BECKY: Not personally. It was just eerie. Uncanny. I never thought I was in physical danger.
RICH: Boy. I did!
Page 35 of 50
ELAINE: Another ghost?
PAULA: Tell it.
RICH: Do I have to? You'll just laugh.
GREG: How many promise not to laugh?
(they raise hands)
Page 36 of 50
VERNA: It's not a shame. To be visited, you must be in some way a special person. I'll bet for all her collecting, Paula's never seen a ghost. Have you?
Page 37 of 50
PAULA: No. But it's not for lack of trying. Haunted houses, graveyards, you name it. But if I'm there, the most dependable ghost pulls a no-show. I've collected a journal full of first-person stories though --
Page 38 of 50
VERNA: We're not interested in hearsay. Not when we have eyewitnesses.
BECKY: I told mine, Rich.
Page 39 of 50
RICH: All right. I was just a kid. Staying at my cousin Didi's. Her mom believed in all that stuff. The family had charms and rhymes and gizmos to ward off the spooks. But they didn't work,
Page 40 of 50
cause I woke up in her attic room with something pulling off my bed covers. I jerked them back up, and this thing pulled them back down again.We played tug-o-war till I let go to scream and the covers went flying. And then my whole family ran up.
Page 41 of 50
BECKY: Did they see anything?
RICH: Nah. I didn't either. Just a shape.
BECKY: But it moved the covers. It had material-- power?
GREG: I saw one like that too!
VERNA: You see? Talent and sensitivity to the paranormal usually go together.
Page 42 of 50
ELAINE: What was it like, Greg?
GREG: Like Rich's. It could move things.
BECKY: What'd he do?
GREG: She. It was a she. But she wasn't really my ghost. She belonged to a friend of mine. I warn you--it's a long story.
(BECKY rises to leave)
Page 43 of 50
BECKY: It's late. Ben may begin to worry.
(RICH pulls BECKY down)
RICH: Don't you want to hear this? Stick around, Becky.
BECKY: I'm getting scared, like a kid.
(RICH puts his arm around BECKY)
RICH : Don't worry. You're in good hands.
Page 44 of 50
PAULA: So what happened?
GREG: Well... About three years ago I went up to new Hampshire to stay with this friend of mine, William Deems. When he picked me up at the bus station Will looked kinda funny,
Page 45 of 50
like there was something wrong but he didn't want to tell me.I thought maybe his girlfriend had showed up and he wanted to get rid of me.But when I asked him, Will just laughed and said he didn't know how to explain it,
Page 46 of 50
but there was something weird about his cabin.
MICKY: It was haunted!
Page 47 of 50
GREG: Right. It'd belonged to this little old lady, maybe 85. She lived out there all alone, doing the chores all herself, right up to the winter she died. After that, she seemed to stick around the place.
Page 48 of 50
Dick'd go out in the morning and come back to find a fire lit in the stove, or the lamp on if he got home after dark. After a while he just got used to it.
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Granny'd do up the dishes, or leave out a cup of hot tea for him. He'd be reading or working while the old lady's rocker would go gently back and forth like she was sitting there knitting.
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But if he made a mess, or left his gear around, she'd bang drawers at or clash the pots and pans.
ELAINE: So did you ever see her?