A two-faced moon hung over the black-and-white city, in turns shining as bold as the sun and hiding, shamed, behind the veil of cirrus clouds. The stars were either invisible or as obvious as pinpricks. Beside the city ran the Hudson River estuary, where fresh water crashed into the salty ocean and made a new mixture. The windows of the skyline alternated on and off. The people inside were sometimes both.
On the streets of the Upper East Side (where it was crowded and lonely at the same time), a mousy, unkempt school nurse scuttled across an avenue unnoticed. With one hand, she held a tissue in front of her mouth, to catch the occasional sickly cough. When a poodle barked at her, she shrank back, as though it might attack her. The owner of the poodle waved a casual apology and went back to his phone call. He couldn’t have seen the hate in her right eye. Or the branded cross in her left.
As she turned the corner on a wealthy residential block, her stride began to steady, her posture to straighten. She looked to her left and right, then pulled the clips from her blond hair, which became more lustrous as it fell over her shoulders. The nurse ascended the stairs of a historical brownstone, and with each step, her form seemed to alter. Her indistinct features became more pronounced, elegant and classic. All except the burn of her left eye.
She swept past the vestibule and the mailbox that said FAUST RESIDENCE. The doors retreated as she approached. The viscous gloom within the house threatened to ooze out into the world. The space inside did not match the shape of the building from the outside. Through a silent hall, a center room appeared, and from there, a dozen other halls branched out, like the spokes of a torture wheel. In the central chamber, a wooden table sat heavily on dead legs. Above it, a chandelier made of a thousand tangled stalks held candles as varied in size and color as all the fingers in the world.
As she stepped into the center of the room, the nurse didn’t seem to notice the two figures, standing with their backs pressed to the wall on either side of the entrance. The light of the candles flickered on their faces, both in a grimace, as though it was painful to exist in such a place. When the nurse reached the table, she began to peel away her jacket and said, “Children? Where are you, darlings?”
The two figures, one a boy and one a girl, stiffened in their hiding places. They had the rabid look of prisoners, victims of countless harms. The girl was squinting, either because of the swollen bruises on her cheeks or because she needed glasses. She held a shard of mirror like a knife, though it cut into her palm. If you listened very closely, you could hear the drops of blood drip onto the ground. The boy’s blond curls were matted to his head with sweat and scabbing cuts. If he continued gnashing his teeth, the nurse would easily hear them.
She kept her back to the entrance as she continued to put on a long black dress. As soon as she lifted her arms and let the fabric fall over her face, the children sprang — not toward their nurse but away. They swung around the corner and sprinted, both of them limping, back toward the entrance of the house. The noise of their escape didn’t bother the nurse.
The two ran, with bare feet, on a floor that seemed to break into jagged gravel with every step. The walls stretched to keep the exit from their reach, but finally, the girl collided with the door and began yanking on the doorknob. When the boy reached her, he tried to help, both of them frantic.
The voice of the nurse in the center room was calm, even pleasant, as she said, “How was your day?”
Finally, the door relented and swung open. Behind it was a brick wall. The girl was tempted to stab at it with her jagged shard of glass or smash into it with her shoulder, in the hope that she could crash through to the other side. But she knew there was no other side. There was no escape.
The boy turned and slunk back to the room. By then, the nurse had fully transformed into the beautiful governess she once was. Her blond hair was pinned up with a brooch the shape of a moth. “Hello, Madame Vileroy,” said the boy, leaning on the wall. He winced and stepped away, as if the wall had pierced his shoulder.
“What was that, Valentin?”
“I mean . . . hello, Mother,” said Valentin as he doubled over in pain.
The governess’s gaze moved to the girl. “Victoria, come here and help.” Begrudgingly, Victoria limped toward Madame Vileroy and held up the broken mirror, streaked with blood. Madame Vileroy looked into the mirror and pushed a stray hair behind her ear. With a pinkie, she perfected the outline of her lipstick. Victoria’s arm shook with the exertion of holding the glass out straight, but she didn’t dare bring it down.
Madame Vileroy straightened and patted down the creases of her dress. “There,” she said. “Thank you, sweetheart.” Victoria dropped the mirror and let her arm fall to her side in exhaustion.
“Now,” said Madame Vileroy, “how was your day?”
Valentin couldn’t hide his disgust. He was never very good at making stuff up.
“How was our day?” he said. “Are you joking?”
“Shut up, Valentin,” Victoria warned. Even in their constant punishment, Victoria managed to keep a cool exterior, or at least a superior one.
“What do you want us to say?” said Valentin.
Madame Vileroy raised a bemused eyebrow. “You think I don’t love you anymore?”
“Love us?” said Valentin. “We’re prisoners.”
Madame Vileroy turned and walked to a full-length mirror mounted on the wall between two hallways. She was already bored. Somehow, she had hoped Valentin could have come up with something better than the obvious. Ever since the other three children had escaped, the Faust family had had to contrive a plausible story for New York society. Currently, they were the envy of the Marlowe School, taking a full year to study abroad in Geneva. All five overachievers were conquering an international school — their exploits making it back to New York in the form of status updates and unverified gossip. High-altitude Olympic training in the Alps, Model UN, the runways of Milan — the five Faust kids were taking Europe by storm. It was as though New York hadn’t measured up, the competition being just too easy, the pond too small.
But Valentin and Victoria had no idea where Christian, Belle, and Bicé had gone. And — they suspected — neither did Madame Vileroy.
She had only recently gained back some of her former self. Every day she scurried around Marlowe in the form of the nondescript nurse, playing some game with some professor’s kids whom they’d never known and never thought worth knowing. Slowly, Vileroy was getting back her strength. And every night, she snuck home to check on her remaining children, trapped in the hellish house by their own cover story. They knew Madame Vileroy blamed them for the others’ escape, or else their stay might have been remotely comfortable.
Instead, they spent every moment awake, tortured by the medieval horrors of the living prison — Victoria cursing the ones who escaped and Valentin cursing himself for not having joined them.
Madame Vileroy stared at herself in the mirror — just off perfection. She frowned and tried to figure out what it was. With two fingers, she pulled the skin at her temples. She turned to see her profile: left, then right. For now, she could keep the form for only a few hours a night, and she had to use her time well. While she searched for her lost darlings, she would need another story to tell the families of Marlowe. There was so much yet to do at the school. And so she was going on a date. But like Cinderella, she would need to run home before midnight.
Aside from a new mission here in New York, Madame Vileroy had more urgent worries. She had dallied in this vast metropolitan playground unchecked, because in the sleepless city, she was the one creature who was unencumbered by time. She had been immortal, but now time was running out for her, too, and she was forced to consider anc
ient provisions she had made for herself centuries before — the source of her immortality divided up into three distinct forms.
She would have to take inventory once more.
“So, after you seduce the widower, what will you say about us?” said Victoria.
“Nothing,” said Madame Vileroy.
“You’re never going to bring him here?”
“No.”
“What happens when our ‘year abroad’ is over?” said Valentin.
“Figure it out, Valentin. The banker’s just a temporary solution,” said Victoria.
“That’s right,” said Madame Vileroy, finished with her inspection.
Madame Vileroy didn’t seem bothered by the idea that her solution was temporary. To her, almost everything was. The only permanent concern was her lifeline, and that was something to which these children would never be privy. To them, she had the task of collecting souls. She would seduce the richest man at Marlowe, become a mother to his son, and, as always, move along once the story was finished. She added, “And with all the plane crashes these days, maybe you won’t need a way back from Switzerland. Maybe there won’t ever be another Faust.”
The thought occurred to both Valentin and Victoria at the same time, just as Madame Vileroy wrapped a sable fur coat around her exquisite form and glided down a random passage in the endless spokes of hallways. As she opened the door — this one a true exit — and bid her children good-bye, it occurred to them that they, too, might have been a temporary solution.
“You’re Dr. Alma? OK . . . So do I just . . . talk for an hour?”
“Yes. You can talk about anything you like, Thomas. This is a safe space.”
“Should I lie on the couch, or can you just shrink my head from over there?”
“Sit wherever you like.”
“Because, you know, this wouldn’t be the first time someone’s poked around in my head. There was this crazy witch last year . . .”
“Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“Never mind. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“OK, so tell me something I would believe. Your father says your girlfriend ran off to boarding school without saying good-bye. Tell me about this Belle.”
“No, thanks.”
“Thomas, might I make a suggestion?”
“I’m guessing you’re going to whether I agree or not. I mean, that’s why the Parents’ Association hires ladies like you, right? To crack into our heads?”
“I may be employed by Marlowe, but I’m on your side, Thomas.”
“That’s rich. Even for this place. . . . You know, you look familiar. Have we met before?”
“No. Now, don’t change the subject. Let me suggest this: if you don’t want to talk to me, why don’t you try keeping a journal? You can write in it privately. No one would read it. I think it would help.”
“Whatever you say, Doc.”
“A Halloween wedding? How gauche,” said Mrs. Spencer as she plucked a single unruly hair out of her own head. She was sitting in the ballroom of New York’s Four Seasons Hotel, straining to see the floral wedding arch from her seat in the thirtieth row. “Are those black roses? And what’s the idea, sitting us all the way back here? She’s learned nothing in her time here, Genevieve. Nothing!”
“The roses are crimson. And I think it’s beautiful,” said Mrs. Wirth — Mrs. Spencer’s oblivious best friend and a lover of all social opportunities. “I love the fall.”
“Charles looks scrumptious, though, doesn’t he?” Mrs. Spencer sighed. Now that Charles Goodman-Brown, the most prominent banker in the city, was no longer a bachelor, there was little strategic reason to play coy. He was taken now; might as well salivate freely.
“What do you think she’ll wear?” Mrs. Wirth asked as she surveyed the room. It was midday, but thick curtains were drawn all around the ballroom to create a heavy darkness. Instead of sunlight, thousands of mismatched, misshapen candles lined the walls and crevices of the room, creating an illusion that the ballroom was on fire. Even the light fixtures above their heads had been replaced with four specially imported antique candle chandeliers. The effect was nothing short of spectacular. “She has wonderful taste,” Mrs. Wirth droned on. And Mrs. Spencer had to admit, she would never have thought to mismatch the candles to mask the artificiality of it, or to challenge every fire code ordinance for the sake of ambiance, or to create an ancient feeling by blowing gentle streams of cold wind into the room, antiquing the chairs with rust, making the chandelier swing just slightly every few minutes as if it might be trying to run away . . . and what a clever idea, singeing the edges of the curtains. Wait, were the curtains singed before?
“If she pulls a Miss Havisham, comes out here all cobwebs and dust, I’m leaving,” said Mrs. Spencer. “The woman is bizarre.”
“She won’t,” said Mrs. Wirth. “Trust me. She likes to get a reaction with this stuff, but I’ve never seen her looking anything but impeccable.”
Across the room, Mrs. Wirth’s son, Connor, sat with his lacrosse friends and pretended not to notice the spitballs hitting the back of his head courtesy of Marlowe’s resident nerdling, John Darling. Connor’s best friend, Thomas Goodman-Brown, was standing next to his father, the groom, under the crimson-flowered arch. Thomas’s eyes were bloodshot, as usual, and he was fidgeting. He kept pulling at his bow tie as if it were choking him. A few drops of sweat dotted his hairline, and he wiped them away with his sleeve.
“I can’t believe he didn’t sober up for his dad’s wedding,” Connor muttered.
“I can,” Wendy Darling said, and then turned to her brother. “Enough with the spitballs.” Connor ignored her. He hadn’t forgiven his ex-girlfriend for last month’s incident with the resident adviser, even though Peter was fired and long gone.
“Fine,” muttered John, and he went back to tweeting on his phone.
@SciFiClub @FutureCEOs @Page6News Thomas baked at own dad’s wedding. (Goodman-Brown shindig. Whatevs. I was invited ages ago) #MyAwesomeLife
“Hah! 140 characters exactly on the first try! Suck it, psssh.”
“John!” Wendy turned around again. “Shut up!”
“It’s OK, Wendy.” Connor sighed. Since last year, he knew less than anyone about his supposed best friend, Thomas, who was hanging out less and less with Connor and the other athletes and had begun going out to clubs, sometimes with the boarding-school kids, sometimes alone. Once in a while Thomas made time for Annie Longborn, who sparked some interest in him and seemed to be the only person who could summon the old Thomas back, even for a few seconds. If Connor asked her, Annie would tell him how Thomas was doing. But Connor didn’t ask. Annie and her best friend, Roger, weren’t in his circle of friends. And Connor didn’t want anyone to know that Thomas barely had time for him anymore.
A boarding-school boy with white-blond cornrows, a fifth-year super-senior who was probably already twenty, leaned over and said, “Got a lighter?”
“You can’t smoke here, stupid,” said Connor.
“Why not?” said Cornrow. “The best man is as high as a bird over Amsterdam.”
Overwhelmed by eager guests, Charles Goodman-Brown didn’t have time to notice his son’s agitation, or his bloodshot eyes, or the fact that he seemed to have drowned (or smoked out) his sorrows by himself all morning long. In the months since Thomas’s first real girlfriend had left, there were a lot of mornings when people couldn’t say where Thomas was or why he had committed this reckless act or skipped out on that midterm exam. In just a few short months since last spring, Thomas had transformed into a sad, brooding creature. Though he wasn’t so far gone that he didn’t keep up a good charade. Thomas was still the most popular boy in school, still a debate team champion and future lawyer, and even now he was the quiet eye of a hurricane of high-school girls.
“He’s just growing up,” Mrs. Wirth liked to assure Thomas’s father. “Just send him to the school counselor.” But ever since Belle Faust moved to that boarding school i
n Switzerland, Thomas’s “growing up” had taken a turn for the scary.
The string quartet, featuring only cellos and basses, began to play an eerie version of Bach’s Sleepers, Awake!
A gust of wind blew through the room. A few candles went out.
From the shadows in the back, a regal figure stood shrouded in silhouettes.
And then Nicola Vileroy, unaccompanied, unrepentant, began her slow procession toward Charles Goodman-Brown, her future husband. Maybe it would be more accurate to call him her next husband. None of the guests knew, because no one dared to ask anything about this woman’s history. Had she been married? How many times? What had happened to the other men? Did she have children of her own? No one asked why the five orphans she had adopted were absent from the wedding. Yes, they had moved to Switzerland for boarding school, but could they not take a weekend off for such an important occasion? Did they not miss their surrogate mother?
As the beautiful governess walked down the aisle, no one thought these things. They were busy taking in all that surrounded them — all the old and the new — because unlike the aged fabrics, the amorphous piles of wax that were the candles, and the rusted chairs adorning the room in an old-world splendor, Madame Vileroy looked fresh and mesmerizing and in every way an incoming queen. She wore a long-sleeved dress made of ivory silk that elongated her figure and flared out like a mermaid’s tail at her feet, then stretched and dragged behind her, gathering dust and insects with its heavy creep. She was a vision, not of a governess but of someone better. Someone a step above who answers to no one.
Not a wily governess nor a mousy nurse.
A stepmother.
The trouble with having a stepson like Thomas was that he had experienced way too much of the uglier side of Madame Vileroy. He had been the victim of Victoria’s Sunday dinner games. And he had watched Belle transform before his eyes at a school dance. Did he really see what he thought he saw? Did Belle become ugly? Did her face change and crumble onto itself like a wax doll? It’s so easy to convince oneself that the mind is playing tricks. It’s easier to question your own sanity than to give way to the supernatural — the devil, hellish faces, and other worlds.
Another Jekyll, Another Hyde Page 1
