Mariah Mundi

by G. P. Taylor

  Outside, in the brightly lit corridor, Sacha sobbed, mourning her friend, the sight of his deathly white skin and cold red lips filling her mind. In anger, she pulled at her hair and banged her tight fists against the floor. Inside the room, Mariah stepped closer to the body. He looked at its face, knowing something was not right.

  It was then that he reached out and touched Felix’s skin, and felt its soft warm smoothness. With a fingernail he scraped the skin, peeling from it a long curl of fine pale wax. He took a farthing coin from his pocket and pulled it along Felix’s bright red bottom lip. A furrow of red wax oozed against the side of the coin. Whatever Felix was, he wasn’t dead.

  ‘A waxwork, a double!’ Mariah exclaimed as he wiped the wax against his finger. ‘It’s not Felix but a wax doll, a manikin …’

  Sacha didn’t hear. She had pushed herself against the wall, pulling the collar of her jacket around her head and pressing her face into the carpet to keep out the light.

  ‘Sacha, it’s not him,’ Mariah insisted as he examined the wax manikin, pulling out a strand of neatly combed hair from its head. ‘Listen to me – it’s not him, it’s a waxwork.’

  For a moment she stopped sobbing and looked up in disbelief. She got to her feet and stumbled towards Mariah in the light from the corridor that flooded the dim room. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked as she took hold of the doorframe and slowly edged her way closer.

  ‘It’s not him,’ Mariah insisted. He dragged Sacha into the room and pushed her towards the resemblance of Felix.

  The manikin stared at them through its sorrowful blue glass eyes that looked as though they welled up with crystal tears. ‘But it looks like Felix,’ she said. She stepped warily towards the figure, reaching out with a worried hand to touch the lifeless skin. ‘He’s warm,’ she exclaimed as her fingers smoothed themselves against the soft wax. ‘Who did this?’

  ‘Luger, who else?’ Mariah snapped back as he looked about the room. ‘Maybe that’s why Felix went missing. I don’t think he’s run away at all. I bet you he’s still here … somewhere.’ As he spoke he looked to the door by the hearth. It had a solid brass handle that was so polished that it reflected the whole room in an upturned universe. To one side was a key, set into a brass ring within the door. Moved by something within him, Mariah strode across the room, leaving Sacha staring at the waxwork. ‘Can’t have them coming in,’ he said, about to turn the key, not daring to look to see what was beyond the door. Mariah stopped and listened. Coming through the dark oak panel was the gentle whirring of a steam wheel.

  ‘What is it?’ Sacha asked as she saw Mariah listening intently to the sound that whispered beyond the door. ‘Take a look – it could be another way out.’

  Mariah slid the two brass bolts and twisted the handle at the same time as he turned the key. It gave a sudden and forceful clunk as it jumped home. He slowly and carefully opened the door to a hair’s breadth and with one eye peered into the other room. There was total and absolute blackness, not a single ounce of light; all was pitch bar the narrow chink that cut into the darkness like a silver blade. He sniffed the air; the smell of the sea greeted his lips and he breathed in the salt. Far away he could hear the lapping of echoing water. In the darkness to his right he could hear the humming of the steam wheel. It was then that a barb of light pierced the pitch black. It reflected like a sharp spiked arrow from wall to wall as it jumped back and forth as if carried by an unsteady hand. The sound of scraping wet steps sludged from far away – pace by pace, footsteps were coming towards them.

  Mariah closed the door, just as it was snatched from his fingers by a sudden draught that slammed it firmly shut. The sound thundered through the darkened room and along the passageway, deeper and deeper, to the depths of the lapping waters.

  ‘They’re coming!’ he shouted as he turned to Sacha. ‘To the tunnel!’ Mariah screamed as he ran across the room, knocking from the small table a tall plaster statue that smashed to the floor.

  [ 10 ]

  Quare Impedit

  SEVERAL lingering moments later, the shining brass handle turned slowly and the oak door was pushed open. A thin black-gloved hand with long fingers and bright red fingernails that stuck through the dark silk curled itself slowly around the handle. A feather from a black boa dropped to the floor. It was blown lightly across the wooden tiles until it rested in the faraway corner in the strands of a large spider’s web.

  The door opened reluctantly, creaking on its hinges as a burnished, black-pointed shoe pushed against it. From the darkness, a thin face peered out, the bright eyes circled in thick dark kohl. Flakes of shiny pallid powder fell like minute snow flecks of silky dust as the woman scratched her chin.

  ‘Quietly,’ Luger said as he hid in the darkened room. ‘They could still be there. I heard him shout as he slammed the door.’

  ‘Why am I before you?’ his companion asked in a whisper as a sharp hand pushed her forward.

  ‘To see what I cannot,’ he said curtly. ‘A good thief would never hit a woman who disturbed him.’

  Monica rustled like a large turkey. She walked slowly into the room, pulling the feather dress around her shoulders and shuddering as she looked about her.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ she said calmly. She flopped into the chair by the fire and squeezed the shoes from her feet one by one, then wrinkled her bulbous toes. ‘Who do you think they were?’

  Luger didn’t speak. With his hand firmly gripping the hilt of his cane he stared at the sarcophagus, the monocular spectacle quivering in his eye socket. He paced the room, back and forth, looking at the floor and then to the decorated ceiling, scoping out all that had gone on and filling the gaps with morsels from his imagination. Stopping by the sarcophagus, he bent down and picked up a handful of black dust and let it dribble through his fingers.

  ‘We have been meddled with,’ he said coldly, watching the small black particles fall to the floor. ‘Could it be –?’ Luger stopped speaking, not wanting to say the word.

  ‘In the hotel – here?’ Monica said nervously, sitting up for a moment then sliding back into the chair. ‘That’d be too close for any kind of comfort.’ She drawled dozily by the lingering flames that broke suddenly from the hearth like the breath of a sleeping dragon.

  ‘He could be here, searching for it too. Maybe someone told him it was here?’

  ‘Maybe you’re dreaming,’ Monica moaned as she rubbed her feet together, watching them slowly turn from pallid white as the fire warmed her bones.

  ‘Then who did this?’ Luger asked quickly as he flung the last pieces of sand at the wall, crackling it against the wood panelling. ‘This didn’t just happen. Someone broke into my private suite and opened the box and found the manikin. What were they looking for? The Easter bunny?’

  ‘Did they find your magic box?’ she laughed as she idly toyed with the pieces of the broken statue that were strewn across the floor beside her.

  ‘I wouldn’t leave it here. Not here – it has to be kept in the dark, locked away … far away,’ Luger mumbled as he walked from the room and into the corridor. To his right the window that led to the tunnel was tightly shut and covered by the swan curtains that draped down to the floor. The monocle dropped from his eye as he twitched his moustache from side to side. He reached out and checked the brass handle. ‘They didn’t go this way,’ he said as he turned and leant into the room to see Monica stretched out like a long sleeping cat over the arm of the chair. ‘Comfortable?’ he asked cantankerously as he looked along the passageway to the steam elevator.

  Monica snored in reply, snuggled in a nest of black feathers that ruffed around her neck and blew back and forth with every deep breath.

  ‘Do it myself …’ Luger chuntered as he strode along the passageway to the door of the steam elevator. The hands of the clock whirred beside him, flashing and glinting in the bright lights of the corridor. In the gate to the elevator was the black umbrella, wedged in the track to stop the door from closing. ‘Hey, Monica,’ he sho
uted as he pulled the umbrella from the track and closely examined each fold of the shiny black fabric. ‘He left something behind, one of them fancy rain shields, and look, it even has his initials on the handle.’ Luger traced his fat finger around the neat lettering. ‘P … A …’ he said slowly. ‘At least we know who we are looking for, Monica. Check the guest ledger for a P.A. and if there’s one in the hotel then he’s the man.’

  Monica stumbled from the room, shielding her eyes from the bright lights that glared down from high above her head. ‘How do you know it’s his?’ she asked in a drawl as she juddered on the thin heels of her shoes. ‘There are a thousand of those things left all over the place. He could have picked up any one of them and brought it up here. Stick it in the cellar with everything else that gets left behind.’

  ‘I still think it’s his and he had come for the box. I know it, Monica.’ Luger pulled the dyed hair of his moustache. ‘He knows it’s here. Mister Grimm said the man had followed it across Europe and wouldn’t stop until he got it back.’

  ‘Then let him have it. It’s just a tin box.’

  ‘It’s the Midas Box, Monica. There’s nothing like it in the whole world. Soon I can sell this place and just sit and make money, time and time again. As much gold as you could ever dream of having.’

  ‘All I want is my name in lights – gold comes well down the wish list. If you’d ever gotten on that stage you’d know that. It’s not the money that does it for me. It’s seeing their faces, knowing you’ve had them in the palm of your hand. That you cast a spell on their hearts that’ll never be broken. That’s magic, and not the stuff Bizmillah turns out. He’s just a cheap trick, just like your umbrella.’ Monica leant back against the wall and put her silk-gloved hand towards the blades of the clock. ‘This is what I want to do,’ she said as she pushed her hand towards the blades. ‘Watch this, Otto. Do you think Bizmillah could do this?’

  Monica reached out her gloved hand towards the second blade that flashed by like a steel whip. She held up her palm, waiting expectantly for the blade to crash through the silk covered skin. There was a sudden snap as the blade cut through the bone, slicing the skin straight through. Monica giggled as she waited for it to come again and again, each time slicing through the palm. Luger covered his face with his hands, not wanting to see what obliteration went on before him.

  ‘NNNNNO!’ he screamed, frozen to the floor and unable to move.

  ‘Look, Otto – clean through and no blood.’ Monica was thrilled by the spinning blade that passed through her hand again and again as if she were but a phantasm.

  Luger peeked through his fingers, then dropped his hands limply and gawped at what he saw. ‘How?’ he asked quietly as his eyes bulged from his face, unsure if this was a dream.

  ‘Magic.’ Monica giggled as she moved her palm in and out of the speeding hands of the clock. ‘You spend so much time away from me that you don’t know what I can do.’

  ‘Where did you …?’

  ‘That’d be telling, Otto.’ She pulled a cigar from his top pocket. ‘And just to prove this was no illusion, watch this.’ Monica thrust the cigar into the path of the blade, which quickly shredded the tobacco into a thousand tiny strands of Cuban Partagas as it spun around the clock face. ‘See, no trick, Otto. Try putting that back together again.’

  ‘But your hand, it never damaged your hand.’ Luger dribbled as he looked at the gloved and perfectly formed hand.

  ‘That’s what I want to do – real magic. Just like your tin box. Lead to gold, cutting people in half. It’s all the same to me.’

  ‘It was a trick, a sleight of hand, something that old conjurer taught you to do between shows. No one could do that if it wasn’t a trick.’

  Monica grabbed his hand and thrust it towards the spinning blades that droned about the clock face. ‘Then you do it, Otto. Get your hand and put it in the blade of the clock and we’ll see if it’s a trick.’

  Caught in her glare, Luger strained to pull his hand back. ‘No, Monica,’ he said as he struggled to free himself from her tight grip. ‘I believe you. It wasn’t a trick it was … magic.’

  ‘That’s right, Otto,’ she repeated slowly, ‘it was magic and the sooner you get rid of that old duffer and let it be my show, the better.’

  ‘I’ve told you before, Monica. He has to stay around here – there is a reason.’

  ‘Then tell me the reason. What does he have on you that he can do what he wants?’

  ‘He’s …’ Luger tried to think of what to say, not knowing really why Bizmillah was the highlight of the Prince Regent. ‘He’s … unusual.’

  ‘Unusual? So is a one-legged monkey, but we don’t have one of them top of the bill.’

  Luger strained to think. Somewhere in his near past there was a gap in his memory, a brief moment in time that had been lifted from him and taken away. He could sense back to just before the moment started and then all was gone. He could remember everything up to that time and then it blurred and fudged as if a gate had been closed upon the memory.

  ‘I know why,’ he muttered as he walked away from her to the far end of the corridor, his mind trying to understand what he had just seen. ‘But I just can’t remember.’

  ‘Well,’ said Monica as she followed on behind him, balancing on her the tips of her bare feet. ‘If you ask me, it could have been Bizmillah who was in here. If anyone wants your magic box, then why not a magician? It could be him, he could be the man that Mister Grimm told you about.’

  Luger considered for a moment. His mind was being split in two by the thought of Bizmillah being the one who would take the Midas Box from him. ‘I never thought, Monica. He could have followed me to London and then I gave him the job here. I could have brought my enemy right into my castle …’ He held on to his moustache with both hands, biting his bottom lip and staring at her like a huge walrus with an umbrella curled over his arm. He thought to himself again, shaking his head as if to rid his mind of the thought of Bizmillah doing anything against him. ‘I know the man,’ he muttered. ‘He has been a companion, here a long time, never a day off. He found you, brought you here …’

  ‘He could just be being patient, waiting his time for you to make one slip and then he’ll find your little magic box and disappear into the night.’ Monica tapped him on the shoulder as he stared at the wall. ‘Listen, buddy. You tell me about this box every day and yet you never let me see it. How do I know it’s real?’

  ‘Believe me, Monica, it’s real and it’s in the hotel.’

  ‘Baloney, Ott. It’s in your head and until I see it I’ll never believe.’ Monica thought for a moment as she scratched the back of his neck with a long fingernail. ‘Take me to it,’ she said sweetly. ‘I’ll close my eyes, wear a blindfold, anything, but I wanna see it.’

  Luger scratched his face, then plucked a long, wiry grey hair from his nostrils as he thought of what to say. ‘Sunday,’ he replied quickly. ‘I’ll show you Sunday, but look at this.’ He grovelled in his pocket. Carefully and slowly he pulled out a tiny golden moth, its thin antennae sticking from its head like two tiny golden wands, its wings outstretched as if caught in flight. ‘This was the first thing I ever transformed. Found it in my office fluttering about the lamp. I picked it from the air and put it in the box. When I opened the lid it was pure gold.’

  Monica snatched it from his hand, plucking the stems from its head and holding them to the light. ‘Looks like you made it, Otto. You could’ve bought this from any trinket shop, but you want to tell me it was transformed?’

  ‘It flew, was a real moth with brown wings, drawn to crisp itself within the flame. I put it in the Midas Box and it came out gold. That’s not all. I have this,’ he said eagerly as he dived his hand into his pocket and pulled out a rolled strand of gold, tapered at each end and wrinkled in several places. ‘A worm,’ he said proudly as he held it in the palm of his hand. ‘A glorious worm, picked from the mud of Saint Sepulchre Street. I put it in the box as a writhing creature a
nd then with the close of the lid it was stiffened by molecules of finest gold as if it were in the grip of King Midas himself.’

  ‘Then where is the rest of the gold? If I had such a magical box I would sweat over it every minute of every day until I had enough, if you can ever have enough,’ Monica said as she slobbered each word.

  ‘That is the problem,’ he said as he put the worm back in his pocket. He turned to walk into the room and stared at the sarcophagus. ‘There is only one minute in every day when this can be achieved. The rest of the hours it sits there, useless. I was convinced that if I could speed up the clock it would increase the time, give me a minute every hour to do the transformations, but so far nothing has worked.’

  ‘So you get one chance every day, one measly opportunity?’ Monica sniggered.

  ‘There is always the possibility that one day I will break the secret of what makes the trans-golding of matter. Then, Monica, then …’

  ‘You’ll be very old and I’ll be back in a walk-up in the Bronx and working for Putnam’s Sanatorium,’ she mocked as she pretended to sweep the floor around him. ‘So what about the kid? When will he be ready for shipment?’

  Luger gasped with pride as he looked at the waxen image of the boy. ‘The best one yet. The finest image I have created, a new process with the finest quality wax. The dust keeps them from drying out, but there is always the chance that they will break during shipment.’ He brushed dust from the neat black jacket and examined the manikin’s face, his eyes clearly seeing the gouge on the lips.

  ‘So where do they go, Otto?’ Monica asked as she stepped in the black dust about her feet.

  ‘That no one must know, not even you, not yet. My waxworks are the finest in Europe and their destination is a deeply guarded secret.’ Luger brushed Felix’s hair and, taking a cigar lighter from his jacket pocket, quickly rasped the flint and brushed the burning wick across the waxen lips. With his thumb he smoothed the mark from sight, then, with the edge of a sharp fingernail, pushed the lip back into shape. ‘There,’ he said quietly as if to himself. ‘All better.’