A Drop of Night

by Stefan Bachmann

  “I found her today,” Jacques says. “I was cleaning the marquis’s private apartments above the salle de Jupiter. The marquis did not know, he was busy elsewhere, but Monsieur Vallé gave me the key and told me to hurry. I went in with brushes and buckets. There was something on a table. I thought it was an animal at first, I thought—”

  His hands go to his face.

  I stare at him, uncomprehending.

  “They had been working on her,” Jacques says. “They had opened the skin of her arms, and . . . there were diagrams everywhere, and books and papers and cisterns filled with water, large enough to hold a human body, and vials of blood, and in the corner was a man. At least, I think it was a man. I do not know. He was seated like a sculpture, and he was marble white, and his face, his face, Aurélie.”

  He grips my hands and peers at me beseechingly, searching my countenance as if it holds some secret he is desperate to know. “He spoke to me,” Jacques whispers. “He asked me to come closer and sit with him awhile. He asked me if I was afraid. He said everyone else was afraid of him—his parents, and the servants—and that all he wanted to do was to make them happy. I ran from there, but I can still smell the blood and the stench of decay. It was like a charnel house. They have been murdering us, Aurélie! Your father and that thing they killed, the servants that went away, the ones we thought had been released—they have been butchering them.”

  I tear my hands out of Jacques’s grasp. “I refuse to believe this. My father is mad, but he is no murderer. What would he have to gain from this? He is a man of reason, a philosopher and a scientist—”

  “I am afraid to return to the kitchens,” Jacques says, as if he did not hear me at all. “I am afraid to speak to anyone. What if the marquis were to find out what I saw? What if that thing tells him—?”

  I cannot breathe. It is too warm in this chamber. The air feels thick and silky, like hot steam.

  “What if they kill me?” Jacques’s voice is pitiful, a little boy’s keen, and it pierces my heart to its core, because I know it is not fear of pain or death that drives him. He fears what will become of the ones who depend on him. His siblings and his mother, my sisters and me.

  I grip my skirts in my fists, so tightly it hurts. “There is a logical explanation to this. I know there is. Ask the head butler to come to me. Better yet, tell him I demand to speak to Father. Tell anyone. Tell them I left a note for you. They have nothing to gain from murder. Perhaps it was the carcass of an animal you saw, or perhaps Madame Boucheron was already dead. It is not unheard of, the study of corpses for medicine and the betterment of human knowledge; it is not impossible—”

  “And what if he tells you the truth? What if he says he is killing us?”

  I go very still and release the skirts from my hands. “Have you found the way out?”

  “I’m close, I—”

  “Then bring me a key, Jacques. Bring me a pistol, bring me something!” I feel the tears pricking behind my eyes, a hot, painful pressure. “If they catch you, I will have nothing, do you understand? My sisters are lost!”

  And suddenly we collapse into each other, and his arms are tight and fierce around me. We cling to each other like drowning people, part in fear, part in desperation.

  “I will come back, Aurélie. I promise. They will not kill me, not before I’ve found a way. I will return as soon as I possibly can, and when I do, we are leaving. We will go back to the surface. Home.”

  When he is gone, and I am alone again in the beautiful room, I lay my head against the wall and weep.

  Come back, I pray. Come back before it is too late.

  29

  The announcements start about twenty minutes after my feelings-vomit outside Rabbit Gallery. We’re moving through a suite of warm-toned, curlicue-filled rooms, all idyllic landscape paintings and satin wall coverings glittering like insect wings. Jules is ripping a strand of thread from the frayed edge of his pocket. I’m feeling like a car ran over me. And now Lilly freezes, one hand raised.

  “Guys?” she says.

  “What?” Jules pauses, looking back at her.

  “D’you hear that?”

  Will and Jules hurry over to her. I don’t. I don’t hear anything. Honestly, I can’t even bring myself to care right now. All I can think about is the picture hanging in the gallery and me bawling. I try to listen for whatever Lilly is talking about. All I hear are the lights. Maybe the whirr of an air vent—

  “. . . is being transmitted . . .”

  There it is. A single spike of sound, and now it’s faded back into a distant, indistinct line. Deep in the palace, a voice is droning.

  “Trackers?” Jules asks.

  “I don’t think trackers talk,” Will says.

  I don’t think so, either. Those things were massacred right outside the library doors and we didn’t hear a sound. Something tells me they weren’t made to vocalize their feelings.

  “I think it’s a recording,” Lilly says. “I think it’s Dorf.”

  On some unspoken command, the others break into a jog. I follow, making a point to run a little behind them. I know this is pathetic junior high–type behavior, but I’m emotionally stunted and this is how I deal, okay? We’re heading north like Perdu told us to. The voice seems to be on a loop, sometimes closer, sometimes farther away. The cut in my foot starts to throb again. I want to eat everything—painted fruit, stone grapes, the wallpaper. I want to hide behind my hair.

  I swipe it out of my face so I can’t. I cried. I got it out of my system. It’s done.

  But it doesn’t feel done. Once people see you cry, it’s like they own part of you. It’s like you ripped a hole in yourself, and they saw through whatever armor you had on, got a good long view of all the screaming alien goop underneath. I definitely think Will and Jules are being quieter now. Like they’re worried the crying might become a regular thing.

  Lilly notices I’m not jogging with the rest of them. She slows down until she’s right beside me. Will and Jules do, too.

  “I’m not an invalid,” I snap, but Lilly just keeps jogging next to me, and it makes me feel worse, because it means she knows I’m full of crap.

  We’re passing through a room that looks like the residence of an upper-class goldfish: aquamarine silks, the chandelier dripping with silver-plated seashells and crystal. Behind us the voice is echoing, fading into the distance. I’m guessing it will be piped into where we are, eventually. The fact that it hasn’t yet might be a good sign. Maybe it means the Sapanis don’t know where we are.

  Except we don’t know where we are, either. We slow down.

  “What if we die down here?” Jules mutters. He’s breathing hard.

  No one answers.

  “I’m serious, what if we don’t get out? Hayden didn’t make it. We knew him for exactly twenty-four hours and then he was dead, and we didn’t even . . . we didn’t even like him. I don’t want to be—”

  The doorways stretch ahead of us like a fun-house infinity mirror. Our feet are loud on the parquet, rubber soles squeaking. I wonder what Jules was going to say: I don’t want to be forgotten. I don’t want to die surrounded by people who hate me.

  “We’re not going to die,” I say, and I make sure it comes out loud and clear.

  “Says who?” Jules says, slightly surprised that I’m speaking again. “If we run into those trackers again, I’m the first to go. Shouldn’t we . . . shouldn’t we know something about each other?”

  “No,” I say. “Because, what if we all survive? Then we know things about each other.”

  “So?” Jules says.

  “So no.” I flip out the compass again.

  “I think we should,” Lilly says.

  Oh great. I don’t know what it is with Lilly. I remember the sharp look she gave me on the airplane, her lifting that chair in Razor Hall even though she’s tiny, and stopping Jules and me from fighting, and I have a hunch that under those blond ringlets and hippie vibes, she’s something else entirely. Possibly
an annoyingly determined boss.

  Will glances over his shoulder at us. “We need to keep it down,” he says in that mellow voice of his, when really he should be snapping: Shut up, or we will be murdered. “Sound carries down here.”

  Jules ignores him. “You want to start?” he says to Lilly.

  She looks worried for a second. Starts playing with her hair feathers again. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. I want you guys to know that I lied.” We step through the last doorway of the corridor, into a room like a checkerboard. Black furniture, white marble walls, onyx-framed mirrors, blinding-white sheepskin rugs. “About my aunt in Wisconsin and the tattoos. About a lot of things. I don’t actually have any tattoos and there is no town called Flemings in Wisconsin, and I’m not actually nice. I act nice because I don’t want people to hate me, but . . . Also, I’m not really smart. I don’t know how I got on this trip. It took me two years to repeat eighth grade and I have dyslexia pretty bad, and when I got the letter that said I made it onto the expedition, I was super proud because I thought I was actually good at something besides being a weirdo. But I’m not.”

  Nobody says anything for a full ten seconds. We’ve all stopped, pooling in the black-and-white room. I think Lilly’s joking. Until she starts crying.

  “You’re not a weirdo,” Jules says quietly. “You had the idea with the chair. Jamming the wires? That was smart. That was awesome.”

  What is this, therapy round? But Lilly doesn’t stop crying. So maybe she has a limited vocabulary and bad taste in fashion, but I don’t know whether she should be crying like that, like she’s a terrible person. I could count all the genuinely nice people I know on one hand. Actually I could count them without any hands, and Lilly’s definitely one of them.

  “You should stop,” I say. “Stop crying. You’re nice. Not that many people are actually nice.”

  Stunned silence.

  Was that the wrong thing to say?

  And now Jules smacks both hands to his cheeks and says: “Awwwww! Nukey!” muted and whispery, and in my mind I tip him into a brush cutter and watch stoically as his shoes disappear down the chute.

  He sees my expression. Laughs. Lilly laughs, too, a little shakily.

  “I’m serious, Lilly, it doesn’t matter why you’re here; they clearly didn’t invite us for our brain power anyway. It just matters that we get out. So let’s keep going.”

  We start walking again and Will smiles at me, quick and cautious. I see it, but I keep my gaze fixed straight ahead.

  The next chamber looks like a children’s playroom. Rocking horses. Painted wooden blocks arranged in precarious towers across the carpet. There’s even a miniature stone castle built into one wall, complete with kid-sized portcullis and glass windows. Jules starts telling his story. Something about growing up in small-town Nebraska and being picked on all the way through middle school for being the only kid in town with a Middle Eastern dad, and then being picked on all the way through high school because kids didn’t like kids who stuck out like gangly scarecrows, who had purple hair and weren’t interested in football. He starts talking about how he got expelled for breaking someone’s nose, even though it was seven to one and the person he punched had just pulled a knife. How he ran away to San Diego to art school two years early because if he stayed, he’d end up exactly like his tormentors, flipping burgers at Benny-O’s for all of eternity in his own personal minimum-wage hell. He tries to make it sound funny, like he’s recounting a vignette from a hilarious coming-of-age movie, but it’s not funny. It’s awkward to listen to, and I want someone to take him away and pat his hand or something.

  He delivers his clincher in a bitter, irony-dripping newscaster’s voice: “But look at me now, Stainfield, Nebraska. Chilling in a French palace. More gold than I know what to do with. Living the dream.”

  He swings around to me. “Anouk. Your turn.”

  “I’m not telling you anything. This is stupid.”

  “Just talk to us! Tell us why you came to the airport dressed like a bag lady.”

  “No.”

  It would be cool to hear Will speak. I would like to listen to his drawly accent, figure out if his house is nice, if his parents do dishes together while listening to Greatest Country Hits of the ’70s, whether he likes William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair or if he’s more of a Joyce kind of guy. Except maybe he likes neither. Maybe he likes loud baseball games and corn dogs, in which case he should just continue not-speaking forever and let me live in my delusion.

  “Why?” Jules asks.

  “Because. I don’t need to give you reasons.”

  There aren’t any doors in the north wall. We’re still heading east, and I feel like we’re getting more off track by the second.

  “Come on, Anouk. Maybe I won’t be next. Maybe you’ll be.”

  “Psh. Please . . .” My voice is caustic enough to burn metal. “I’m the Final Girl. Gaze upon my wholesome innocence and despair.”

  Will has maneuvered to the front of the pack, either completely oblivious to the jabber or pointedly ignoring it. I hurry after him. I think of the little smile he gave me. Maybe I can talk to him alone, without doing this awful group storytelling thing. He’s moving pretty fast.

  “Will?”

  He stops in the doorway three steps ahead of me, shoulders tense. I scuffle up behind him.

  I freeze. We’re looking into a vestibule. An alabaster vase of red roses, petals thick and velvety, stands on a table in the center.

  “Uh-oh,” Will says.

  The buzzing is back—a high whine, shimmering in the air. I put my hands to my head.

  I think I hear the announcements, only it’s a new voice now, a thin, indistinct whisper, murmuring in French, almost like another frequency overlapping with the first. And in the background, barely, barely audible, someone is singing.

  “Four blind mice. Four blind mice. See how they run,

  oh . . .

  . . . see how they run.”

  The buzzing spikes suddenly, piercing, sliding red-hot into my ear—

  30

  Everything stops. Sound. Time. Will, Jules, and Lilly seem to be floating mid-stride a few feet ahead of me. I’m paralyzed, one hand raised.

  I see the figure out of the corner of my eye. About ten feet to my left. A woman.

  Fear slams my veins, a ten-milligram morphine drip shutting me down. My eyes swivel. The woman is standing, staring at me. She’s wearing an elaborate gown, deep red. Makes me think of slaughterhouses in dim light, raw carcasses hanging in the shadows. The skirts seem to be drenched, dripping dark water onto the floor. Her hair is powdered gray, piled up on her head, but her face is young. Flawless. Beautiful. Creamy white, no wrinkles. Her eyes are wet black.

  “Fuyez,” she says to me, and the word is like the tinkle of a bell, pure and dainty. “Enfuyez-vous d’ici.” She extends a hand toward me. She has something on her wrist, a knobble of veins, pulsing under her skin. She opens her mouth and I don’t know what it is—a smile, a grimace?—but the teeth behind those delicate lips are crazy, every which way. “Enfuyez-vous d’ici!”

  Flee from here.

  “Anouk?”

  I spin. Jules is beside me. I feel like I’ve just been electrocuted, like I grabbed an exposed wire. Will and Lilly are turning to me, wondering what’s going on.

  “You okay?” Lilly asks.

  I look back over my shoulder. The woman is gone. The floor where she was standing is gleaming, spotless.

  “I’m fine.” I move past Jules. My brain is breaking. Cracking up like a mirror.

  The announcements are coming closer.

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

  We went on a journey once, to visit an old duke, a relative of Father’s from the Bordeaux region. It is the custom with noble children, once they have been born, to send them away. An aristocratic child’s life is a parade of wet nurses, governesses, maiden aunts, and gloomy tutors, children’s apartments in the
high floors of the family château if you were fortunate, convent schools and distant relations if you were not. I was packed off at seven years old. Father accompanied me, though he rode in a different carriage, hiding behind his scented handkerchiefs and that tin mask full of herbs for fear of the plague, or fevers, or whatever diseases were crawling through the towns and byways that year. When we stopped at inns for dinner or to exchange the horses, he always looked at me nervously when my governess brought me too close, as if I were a feral little lapdog contemplating opportunities to gnaw on his leg.

  My memory of the duke’s house is dim. It was a drafty old fortress, a precarious and ancient heap rising from the middle of a great forest, like a castle from a fairy tale. The duke’s children and the servant’s children were indistinguishable from one another and seemed terribly frightening to me, scarecrow creatures drinking ale in the kitchens and playing wild gambling games with the guards. But there is one scene that stands out clearly: I am kneeling next to a great bed, surrounded by many people, and I am peering at the cankerous old duke. He died only days after Father and I arrived at his house. His body lay curiously solid and forsaken, his belly a vast snowy hill beneath the sheets. His face was covered in sores, and his wife and children, even the guards, were all weeping quietly into their sleeves and beards and lace handkerchiefs.

  Father had not yet begun the return journey. He was in the chamber, too, and I remember his expression as he looked upon the figure in the bed. It was an expression of animal terror, a condemned man looking upon the black mask of his executioner. And I could not understand why, for to me the duke’s silent, oozing face looked perfectly at peace.

  31

  The announcement finally reaches us in a room that looks like a candy box. Pillows in powdery pink and mint and blue, fat as marshmallows. White furniture. Everything soft and pastel. Everything except Dorf’s voice, which comes scratching through the ceiling like the rusty prongs of a fork.