A Drop of Night

by Stefan Bachmann

  I blink. That was a lot of sentences at once.

  “What’s at the tip?” Lilly asks. “What’s your theory there?”

  “I don’t know.” He starts rubbing his thumb furiously along the leather hilt of his sword, as if the fact that he hasn’t figured this whole place out yet is mildly embarrassing. “The thing that got Perdu. The thing that killed those trackers and wrote on the wall. I don’t know.” He looks away, and his voice becomes even quieter. “But whatever it is, it’s bad enough that the Sapanis are afraid of it. And they keep it locked underground behind traps and blast doors. It’s out of their control.”

  “And they threw us into the middle of this, because why?” Jules asks. “Just for kicks?”

  “No,” Will says. “They brought us down for something, but it wasn’t so that we’d lock ourselves in their palace and end up as food for whatever they keep down here. I think we screwed up their plans. A lot.”

  A chill runs down my spine. I glance up at the ceiling, plaster moldings, arched like the top of a pale, sickly mouth.

  “Well, the enemy of our enemy is our friend, right?” Jules asks.

  “No, Jules,” I say. “Something that can kill a room full of superhuman soldiers without making a sound: not our friend.”

  I’m suddenly afraid to look back, to look anywhere except straight ahead. I think of Perdu cowering behind the chair in the library, his trembling finger extended toward the doors. L’homme papillon.

  “The butterfly man,” I say quietly. No one hears me. The gallery seems to lick up the words and swallow them whole.

  27

  We’re climbing a wide marble staircase. I’m thrilled, because anything leading upward is good. Means we’re getting closer to the surface, Wi-Fi, police stations, sanity. . . . We reach a landing. The stone balustrade is carved with writhing, white marble sea creatures, twisting around one another like they’re in the process of devouring themselves. I glance back over the huge hall we just crossed, an empty expanse of diamond-shaped tile, dozens of square yards of fresco paintings. The staircase splits in two after the landing, jutting out at right angles. We take the left one, and I get this irrational hope that there will be doors at the top, maybe the exit Perdu was talking about—

  Nope. We reach the top and we’re looking down an exhibition hall. Glass cases stand in rows down either side. Hundreds of feet away, at the end, a pair of double doors, flung wide. I can see more rooms through them, gold and paintings and decadence, stretching away. The palace just keeps going.

  “How many floors d’you think this place has?” Jules asks Lilly.

  She shrugs. “Will?” He doesn’t answer. “Will?” Nope. “Wi-ill!”

  At the third “Will,” he finally looks over, like she’d just rudely woken him up from a nap.

  “You study architecture,” Lilly says, the way dumb people say “You’re American” when wondering about hamburger recipes or how to do a rodeo. “D’you have any idea how this place is designed?”

  Will shakes his head. “I thought maybe it was based on Versailles, but . . . it’s not. It’s like they just kept building in every direction. If the folder was right about this place being inside natural caverns, they probably just built until they ran out of space.”

  I watch the needle jiggling inside the compass. Listen to Jules and Lilly murmuring behind me. We’ve slowed down a lot.

  “Maybe this whole thing is an experiment,” Lilly says. “Like, maybe they’re total GMO pushers, and they’re testing a virus on us. We had to send in medical documents and get checked for Ebola. That could have been part of the requirements. Maybe they shot us up with something.” She pauses, says thoughtfully: “Or there’s something else, something we don’t know about.”

  “Could be psychological,” I say, turning and walking backward a few steps. “They do it all the time with rats. Get control groups with animals from different environments. Put them in a labyrinth and see what happens.”

  “I’m not an animal,” Jules says.

  “Could have fooled me. Look, maybe Perdu was from a previous group. And maybe we all come from terrible families and they’re seeing how we react to trauma, who survives and who goes insane.”

  Crickets. Jules looks like he’s about to laugh. Lilly is peering at me curiously. It sounded reasonable in my head.

  “I have an awesome family,” Lilly says.

  I turn quickly and keep walking. “Oh. Cool.” Awkward.

  “It could also be hallucinogens,” Jules says, and his voice is quiet, because he’s only talking to Lilly now. The conversation moves on to zombies. The apocalypse. Time travel and aliens and elaborate retreats for wealthy serial killers. I liked my theory better. I glance around at the gallery.

  Behind the display cases, the wallpaper shimmers royal blue, studded every few yards with silver wall sconces. Dark, heavily carved wooden beams rise to the ceiling, twining overhead like branches. Between them, in alcoves or hanging on the walls are sculptures, portraits, still lifes.

  I pause, leaning down next to one of the displays. Inside is an antique pendulum clock. The face is alabaster, the color of bad teeth, cut so thin I can see the tangle of gears and sprockets behind it. It looks ancient. Seventeenth century at least. The next case holds a wire-spewing device that I think is a telegram machine. Then an old telephone. I get excited for a second, wonder if we could use it to call someone. Nope. The cable snaking out of its base is rolled up and zip-tied. I highly doubt we’ll find a hookup to a landline down here.

  The displays seem to be organized chronologically, by type. I’m in front of weapons now. Some weird, medieval-looking stone cannon. Now flintlocks. Revolvers. I stop in front of an ammunition shell. Blunt, dark metal with a brassy tip—the kind they shot in the First World War when the whole “noble heroes” illusion broke down and it was all bloody tussles in trenches, corpses stuck in the mud, and gas masks.

  I squint at the little brass plaque below the box.

  First mass-produced shrapnel shell, 1912, by H. B.

  Like it’s a work of art. Like it’s something beautiful, not something that eviscerated people in bursts of fire, something some human designed to destroy other humans.

  I turn and stare down the row of glass cases. My heart does a clumsy, reverberating beat. From here on it’s all weapons. Grenades. Missiles. Guns poised on tripods, like spiny black insects.

  Seriously?

  Lilly’s ahead of me, inspecting an exhibit of bright red canisters stamped with biohazard symbols. “By H.B,” she reads out loud, and cuts her eyes toward me.

  “This one’s marked with insignias,” Jules says from the other side of the hall. “Red Army, Khmer.”

  I start walking again. The guns stare out, lifeless but still somehow watchful. I imagine one of those black-eyed barrels winking suddenly, a bullet ripping through me—

  “This is their stuff,” I say. “Their hall of fame or something. Maybe they invented all this.”

  “That would explain why they’re so rich,” Lilly says, crossing to the other side of the gallery. “If they’re weapons manufacturers. I mean, you’re never going to go out of business.”

  I pass Will standing in front of a case containing the black carapace-like armor of a tracker. He’s frowning at it.

  “You know what’s funny?” Jules calls over his shoulder. He’s in front of what looks like a giant iron sea urchin. “Those blue folders we got. All that stuff about parts of the palace maybe being underwater, that we might have to dive, that they had no clue how big this place was, yadda yadda. They knew exactly what was down here. We were never supposed to live long enough to see any of it.”

  “And we believed them,” I say as I pass him. “That’s the funniest part.”

  We barely even questioned anything until it was too late. We saw their snazzy names, looked up their snazzy websites. It was all just paper and internet stuff, stuff that’s so easy to fake and lie about.

  Selective Perception n.—The t
endency to disregard or more quickly forget stimuli that causes emotional discomfort or contradicts prior beliefs.

  Aka, if you don’t want to see it you won’t.

  I can’t even fathom myself from twenty-four hours ago. I was so busy following my rotten little heart, Disney princess–style. I did end up in a palace, so that’s cool.

  I slow down, because the others are still milling around the weapons. I wish they’d hurry up. “If we get out of here, these people are done for,” Lilly’s saying. “Can you imagine the court cases? I mean, even if we don’t get out, something’s going to happen. Our parents will go to the cops.”

  Something about Lilly’s words gives me a sinking feeling. She’s still banking on her parents, still thinks they might rescue us. And it’s not just because I’m bitter and my parents don’t have a clue where I am that I’m worried. (Also, if they knew, they would probably be planning a celebratory lobster brunch right now.) Down here, in this huge, fake, beautiful alternate universe, words like cops and court cases sound ridiculous. The Sapanis flew us on a private jet out of JFK. They marched us over international borders without us ever showing our passports. I doubt they care at all about cops and court cases.

  I’m passing more modern weapons now. Mortars and shells morph into high-tech warheads, night-vision helmets, body armor. Body armor like the trackers wore. Sleek and angular. A helmet stands on a display arm like a severed head.

  I focus on the pictures on the walls. At least they’re gorgeous. The one nearest me shows a woodland clearing full of people having a country lunch. The sky is almost completely blocked out by leaves, but the light’s finding a way through anyway, dappling everything in mottled gold. The people in the painting are draped artfully over a blanket, plucking things from a woven basket. They’re dressed in late eighteenth-century costumes, obviously wealthy, but with little hints of carefully tailored farmer chic. A straw hat here. A striped apron there. It looks like a family. A really beautiful, happy family.

  I take a step toward it and I feel something like nostalgia, which is strange because God knows I’ve never been on a picnic like that. I catch details: the wine, glossy red inside crystal goblets. A spot of sunlight on a silver fork, almost hidden inside a fold in the blanket. The smiling lips of the woman holding the cake. There’s a glow to her, like the painter wanted to make her look even more beautiful than she already was—

  Her teeth are bloody red, her smile stained.

  I blink.

  No. Her teeth are normal. White and small and delicate, like chips of bone.

  I tear myself away from the painting. What is wrong with you, Ooky? The others are ahead of me now. I hurry to catch up. They’ve congregated around a painting of a rabbit. We should be moving, running, not hanging around, browsing art. I reach them. Jules is right in front of the painting, staring up.

  “Are you sure?” Lilly’s saying, incredulous. “It could be a copy.”

  “It’s not a copy; look at the brushstrokes,” Jules says. He’s doing some sort of indignant, expressive hand gestures up at the canvas. “You can’t copy that kind of motion. I know this one. I know it!”

  I look up at the painting. It’s not even that interesting. Definitely doesn’t grab me and shake my brain around like the meadow scene did. The rabbit is standing against a brown background, draped silk, I think. Its back is to the viewer, its head turned over its shoulder. It’s looking at me.

  Okay, maybe it’s a little bit interesting. Something about the rabbit’s gaze is heartbreaking, a sort of reproach in its almond eyes, maybe inevitability, like the rabbit is going to a horrible fate and it’s partially my fault.

  “What is it?” I ask. It’s awkward that I don’t know.

  “It’s lost is what it is.” He looks over his shoulder at us, eyes wide. “Or it should be. It’s by Kanachev. The Russian master? They only have black-and-white photographs of it, and his pictures were stolen during the siege of Leningrad. He disappeared during World War II, died in a concentration camp or something. This was his masterpiece.”

  “So what’s it doing here?” Lilly asks.

  What is it doing here? I don’t even want to know. I don’t want any more revelations and I don’t want to know who these people are, because every time we get another inkling, they get more nightmarishly awful. I start walking toward the doors at the end of the exhibit hall, fast.

  “Oh wow,” Lilly whispers behind me. “Anouk, wait. Look.”

  I glance back. She’s pointing up at another painting, a small gilt frame high on the wall. I stop dead in my tracks.

  The painting is of a girl. She’s wearing a gray silk gown with a blue sash, and she’s standing, one arm resting on a marble bust. Her fingers are curled around a key and a sprig of something, a daisy maybe. A gauzy shawl hangs from her bare shoulders. Her hair is dark. Her eyes are piercing blue. Her face is sharp, angry.

  It’s a portrait of me.

  28

  I hear the others congregating behind me, rustling like birds. I feel my face rearranging itself into an expression of abject horror. “What’s that?” I squeak. “What—?”

  Jules breathes out: “Whoa.”

  My knuckles go white. I want to hold my skull, squeeze it like a lemon and feel the craziness drip out, bitter and golden between my fingers. I’m hallucinating again. Microbes. Bad air. It’s been happening a lot lately.

  I drop my head, breathe.

  I look back at the portrait. Still me. Still my thin arms protruding from the dress, snaking around the bust. Still my angular, closed-up face, looking miffed even when I’m not. My eyes are narrowed, a spark of rebellion in them, as if I was angry at the person painting me, and now I’m angry at the person watching me, I’m angry at me—

  I shake my head violently. Turn away. We’re in the underground palace of a criminal, weapons-dealer family. There’s a portrait of me on their wall. It didn’t make sense before, it doesn’t have to now—

  I start running. But what if it does make sense? A sick, guilty feeling slithers into my stomach, the one that comes every time I win an award and no one cares, every time I learn a language and I don’t have anyone to speak it with, the one that was there when I was standing in the airport and my mom was chewing gum and Penny was hiding her scarred face behind her hair and they wouldn’t look at me; they didn’t want to. You’re hanging on that wall like a prize buck because that’s where you belong, Anouk. You’re a bad kid. A bad person.

  I hear the others coming after me. Lilly tries to grab my arm. I shove her off. She grabs me again and jerks me around. “Hey,” she says. “Anouk, stop.”

  I can’t look at her.

  She keeps walking with me toward the doors, but she doesn’t let go. I have a flash of fear that she’s going to turn on me now. They all are. They’re going to bash my head in and leave me for dead, a psycho daughter, bleeding out on a psycho’s floor. I would if I were them. If it were Jules or Will or Lilly inside that gilt frame, I would go ballistic.

  I feel something welling up inside me, rage at myself, but also hurt and fear, and I feel like I’m slipping—losing control.

  Lilly pushes open the double doors at the end of the gallery. Jules closes them behind us.

  You’re not going to cry, Ooky. You’ve gone eight years without crying. It was just a picture, and you have to think—

  I let out a long, grating sob. The sensation is so bizarre I kind of wonder if it came from someone else. I spin away from Lilly, try to hide my face. She’s staring at me. “Go away,” I say, stupidly. I want to make them all turn their backs, but they don’t, and I’m crying now. And for some reason the others don’t look like they want to bash my head in.

  They look worried. They’re huddling around me, and now Lilly grabs my hand and knots her fingers through mine. “It’s okay, Anouk. It’s okay.”

  How is this okay? I want to shriek. How is any of this okay?

  But I feel Lilly’s hand in mine, and Jules and Will—the warmth of the
m and the weight of them beside me—and I hear myself wail, loud and long like a newborn baby.

  Palais du Papillon—Chambres Jacinthe—112 feet below, 1790

  “Aurélie? Aurélie, I must speak with you!”

  Jacques comes tearing into the boudoir. I leap to my feet, smiling, straightening my sleeves—his visits are becoming ever more seldom—but now I see him and the smile drops from my face. He is gasping, his shirt drenched with sweat. His eyes are wild.

  “Jacques, what’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps nothing. I don’t know!” He begins pacing, his hands raking through his hair.

  I grip his arm, guiding him quickly toward a chair. “Jacques, stop this. What has happened?”

  He collapses into the chair and stares at me, and something odd and fearful passes behind his eyes. Now he blinks, and he is himself again. “I have seen something, I—”

  “What. Tell me.” I say it as gently as I can, but I want to scream and shake him.

  “One of the cooks,” Jacques says, and his breathing begins to slow, his posture dropping deep into the chair. “Madame Boucheron. She was a saucier in the château’s kitchen, Parisian, very good and well paid. But they do not need sauces here. The marquis eats only biscuits and boiled mutton, day in and day out, and she is left stirring bouillon for the servants—”

  “I do not see how this is so alarming.”

  “Aurélie, listen! The servants are all discontented. Everyone is. There are no parties to cook for, nothing to look forward to. And she was saying so. She was demanding to be let back up, to be allowed to return to Paris. And now . . .”

  “Now what?”

  He turns his head away, his eyes pinched shut.

  “Jacques, tell me! What is it?”

  “I will not go down there,” I hear Mama whisper, framed in the open window to the park. “Do not ask me to.”