by Andy Marino
At Cliff House, ice hung from the eaves in thick slabs. Two winters ago Hannah had won fourteen Monopoly games in a row, then her mother had won the next eleven. Moods ebbed and flowed, the two of them circling each other like wolves, not talking at all or talking nonstop. Habits formed and were forgotten. Last year her mother would not stop chewing spearmint gum. Hannah tiptoed around the traps, whispering to Nancy and rolling her eyes at Belinda.
The fireplace in the Camp Room got so hot that her mother would put on her bathing suit and read, as if she were on some tropical beach rather than cooped up in a snowbound house on a cliff. Hannah would pig out on homemade ice cream. She was always so much hungrier in the winter. Scarfing mint chocolate chip too fast gave her a dull ache just above her eyelids. It happened every time. She never learned her lesson. Never heeded Belinda’s warning to slow down.
* * *
Hannah blinked Stefan’s room back into place. Her temples throbbed with pain like an ice cream headache with the volume turned up. Belinda and Nancy were gone. Stefan was peering intently at her forehead. Behind him, Charlemagne skulked past the dresser with a woodsy shimmer.
“Do you believe me now?” she asked.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Stefan said. “They just sort of …” He moved his hands to demonstrate, his thin paintbrush darting about. It looked as if he were conducting an orchestra. “No, scratch that,” he said. “It was more like this.” He mimed gathering things together and crumpling them up like an invisible piece of paper, which he flicked at the center of Hannah’s forehead.
“Ow!” She could feel Nancy and Belinda scurrying about like mice in her brain. It had never been like this before. If she hadn’t felt so achy, it would have been funny — Stefan was watching her with a newfound wariness. She tilted her head at the brush in his hand. “You wanna get to it, then?”
He jolted to life. “Right, yeah.” He took off his army jacket, which seemed to whisk itself from his skinny frame, and hung it on the doorknob. Then he produced a palette from the drawer and began dolloping paint from the plastic tubes onto its oval surface. “I’ll leave your mouth for last so we can talk.” He began attacking the palette with his brush, deftly mixing a range of flesh tones. “Now hold still, unless you really do want to look like the face I made in the solarium.”
Hannah thought of the moth-nibbled smiley and held herself as still as a mannequin. The first brushstrokes felt cool against her skin, with an after-tingle like the mentholated stuff her mother rubbed on her chest when she had a cough. “Feels weird,” she said.
“Just wait until it comes off.” He was gripping his brush down close to the bristles as he worked on her eyelids. “Hold reeeeaaaaal still.” Satisfied, he moved on to the skin around her cheekbones.
“You know,” he said after working silently for a bit, “you’re lucky. You have automatic friends that are always with you. I wouldn’t mind that.”
“But I never actually saw them before I came to the city. Have you ever heard of that happening?”
“Imaginary friends bursting into life? No, but that doesn’t mean anything. In the handbook they say to think of the city as a beach, and each neighborhood like Nusle Kruselskaya is a grain of sand. Things are so different in other places. Like, you wouldn’t even believe it’s the same city. But if you’re really not dead, maybe the rules are different for you.”
He began working on her nose, outlining it first in sketchy downward strokes, then switching to an even smaller brush when he got to her nostrils. “Want some nose hair?”
“Don’t even think about it.”
“There’s a bunch of handbooks on my desk, if you want one. They have illustration contests for the new editions, so I’ve been collecting old ones for research.”
“Have you won any contests?”
“Not yet.”
Hannah’s headache flared. Belinda and Nancy were arguing, but all Hannah could hear was a distant mumbling. It was a maddening sensation, an itch inside her mind she couldn’t scratch. Stefan shaded in the contours of her jaw.
“Keep your mouth closed.”
The brush tickled her lips. He was moving quickly now, switching to a fat, stumpy brush to shade in her neck, all the way down to the collar of her flannel. Then he stepped back and regarded his work. After squinting at her for a while, he set the brushes on the palette and turned to the dresser. Hannah caught a glimpse of Charlemagne sliding through the bright cone of light beneath the lamp, but then he was gone.
“I don’t see any moths,” she said. “That’s good, right?”
“Of course. They have a saying around here: When Stefan Weisz is painting …”
While he tried to make up the saying they had around here, Hannah practiced moving the muscles in her face. She cycled through smiles and frowns, testing different expressions. The drying paint didn’t feel like heavy, caked-on makeup. There was a lightness to it, as if the paint wanted to be skin, and Stefan had simply granted its wish.
Meanwhile, Stefan had assembled a small machine on top of the dresser. It looked like the old-fashioned pencil sharpener at the Carbine Pass library, the kind that you worked by turning a crank. A long tube dangled off the edge of the dresser to end about a foot above the floor.
He whistled. “Here, boy!”
Charlemagne bounded out from beneath the rag pile like an eager puppy, shedding gobs of paint. He puddled himself beneath the tube and burbled happily as Stefan inserted his brushes into the machine, one at a time. There was a faint hum. When he removed each brush, it was clean and dry. Excess paint crept down through the tube like a thick milk shake, bathing Charlemagne in peach-colored slop.
“Can I see my face?” Hannah asked.
Stefan knelt down and opened the bottom drawer just a crack, taking care not to disrupt the flow of the paint from the tube, and came up with a round hand mirror.
Hannah took it, but didn’t look right away. For some reason, the image of a dolled-up pageant queen popped into her head. She prepared herself for rosy cheeks, pouty lips, pale blue eye shadow. She told herself it was a necessary disguise. The less she looked like Hannah Silver, the better. She held the mirror up to her face and gasped. Stefan had done a remarkable job.
He had turned her into a boy.
“You like it?” Stefan asked.
Hannah was speechless. It was as if he had taken the features from a dozen average boys and combined them into an instantly forgettable whole. She opened her mouth to answer him, but was cut off by scuttling feet just outside the door. Castle-dwellers hurried past, chattering excitedly. Hannah couldn’t make sense of their voices until she picked out one word that kept repeating, over and over again in a breathless refrain.
Watchers!
She jumped up from the stool and tossed the mirror on the desk. “We have to get out of this castle.”
“We?” He cocked his head. “I live in this castle. And anyway, how do you know they’re here for you?”
“You still don’t believe me. You think they’re about to take everybody to heaven.”
“Ascension.” His eye twitched. “What if they are? This could be it.”
“Well, good luck.” She turned to the door. “Thank you for the new face.”
“Wait!” He took a step, which nearly brought him all the way across the room. “There’s a subway. It’ll take you far away from here, fast, if that’s what you want. Follow the signs to the exhibition hall. Go through the glass doors and out to the concourse. That’s where the station is.”
“Exhibition hall to the concourse to the station,” she said. “Got it.”
“After I leave, count to a hundred before you open the door.” Stefan was trembling with excitement. “You should wear something different…. I guess you can help yourself to my clothes. Don’t talk to anybody. It was nice to meet you, Hannah. Good luck. It’ll get easier, I promise. Do I look okay?” He shifted his weight nervously. “Never mind. See you around.”
With that,
Stefan joined the crowd in the hallway. His army jacket fell from the knob as the door slammed behind him.
Hannah held one of Stefan’s handbooks open to the first page and watched as it revised itself. Words appeared and disappeared before her eyes. Snarky notes popped up in the margins. Before she was even done with the first paragraph, the words IRRELEVANT and AWKWARD scrawled themselves in red between the lines. This comment vanished, only to reappear as a footnote at the bottom of the page. It was as if the handbook were arguing with itself. She flipped to a glossary page near the back and found the entry for FAUCET, which had dozens of sub-entries. She skimmed a finger down the tiny print: FAUCET, ALBATROSS. FAUCET, BREAKFAST. FAUCET, CRYPTO-. This was impossible. The entry for Albatross Faucet, for example, crossed itself out as she read it.
She slammed the tattered paperback shut and stuffed it into Stefan’s army jacket, which was far too big but completed her disguise (red shorts pulled over her jeans and a single yellow leg warmer that sagged beneath her left knee — the mismatched style of the Painters Guild). She’d cleared out the pocket, keeping only the handbook, a tube of paint, and a single paintbrush.
Hannah closed her eyes against the swelling ache in her head. She wondered what it was like for Nancy and Belinda in there. Had they built a kingdom of her memories, some twisting echo of Cliff House? Or was it simply a dark void? She implored them to stay calm and hidden away until she reached the subway. Then she opened her eyes and stepped out into the hall.
The stampede of castle-dwellers was orderly: urgent, but not hysterical. The whirlwind of dreadful outfits assaulted her senses. Orange tracksuits were paired with flowery sashes, kilts with striped tank tops. There were purple cardigans and neon skirts, flip-flops and formal gowns. She recognized the Guild’s insignia sewn into everything, paintbrushes crossed like bones.
It was a heartening scene. Hannah could slip into the crowd and let it carry her down the hall, one more anonymous student among thousands. Dressed in her own disastrous outfit, she felt an odd twinge of belonging. She hunched her shoulders, disappearing as best she could into the folds of the army jacket, and darted behind a group of older girls with galaxies painted on their shaved heads.
“Do you think this is it? Do you think we’re really going?”
The voice belonged to a middle-aged woman whose shirt had one long sleeve and one short. Her bare arm rattled with loose, jangly bracelets. It took Hannah a moment to realize the woman was talking to her, specifically.
She tried to respond, but gritted her teeth instead. There was a jackhammer inside her brain. She was seriously going to kill Nancy and Belinda. Why were they doing this to her? Didn’t they understand the danger she was in? She concentrated on staying upright, putting one foot in front of the other.
“It’s okay to be nervous,” the woman said. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t.”
The pressure was unbearable. Hannah thought she heard herself make a strange noise. Now the woman was giving her a puzzled sidelong glance.
“You know, you don’t look so good….”
Hannah reached for her face and had to force herself not to touch it. Was her deception crude and obvious? What had seemed foolproof in the privacy of Stefan’s room now struck her as a terrible mistake. She willed herself to ignore the pounding in her head and smiled as best she could.
“I’m just excited,” Hannah said. “I feel like I’ve been waiting forever.”
* * *
The ceiling of the exhibition hall was the pale blue of a midsummer day, blotched at the edges by wisps of clouds that swirled inward toward the vaulted center. Beyond the clouds, millions of glass eyes formed a glittering mosaic.
Castle-dwellers streamed past her into the hall, chattering excitedly, a procession of tube socks and argyle cardigans. Hannah wondered how long the Painters Guild had existed, in earth time. Hundreds of years? Thousands? She couldn’t help but feel a little guilty that the Watchers were coming to take her back to prison, not to escort these people to Ascension. False alarm. Sorry about that!
The pounding in her head became more acute, as if Nancy and Belinda were equipped with an actual jackhammer, and using it to blast through layers of brain and skull. Stop, Hannah thought, over and over again. Please stop. She didn’t know how much more she could take.
Ahead of her, a wide dirt road formed a sort of Main Street, sloping gently down the center of the hall to a horizon line of glass doors in the distance. She had entered through the back entrance, along with the painters. The glass doors at the far end of the street were for the tourists spilling in from the concourse. According to Stefan, the subway station was out there.
Main Street was lined on either side by mud huts and prehistoric shelters made of tanned hides and sticks. Watchers dotted the landscape like blemishes, their faces churning with beastly fur. Humidity settled over the hall like a sweaty blanket. Hannah kept her eyes down and picked up the pace, walking past a row of slightly more elaborate houses. As she suspected, they were gorgeously detailed paintings, three-dimensional and perfectly lifelike. Soon the dirt became gravel, the gravel turned to pavement, and she passed a country cottage with a shingled roof and banana-colored siding. Azaleas and peonies sprouted next to the porch.
She slowed long enough to stare into the depths of the exhibit. In a moment the dual images appeared: a painted house and a real house, jockeying for position. Her ears began to pick up the voices of the surrounding crowd as snippets of conversation rather than a dull murmur.
— waited so long —
— I’ve always heard we’ll be able to sleep again —
— don’t even remember what sleep is like —
— Uncle Charles and Aunt Sue and Mom and Dad and Ursula —
— can’t believe it’s happening —
Hannah began to perceive a third layer of the exhibit, an inner clockwork, as if the cottage were teaching her how to see it as it really was.
— I’ll look for you up there, Benny —
— gonna miss this place —
— You’re nuts —
This innermost layer of paint was like the strands of DNA she’d learned about in her mother’s biology class. Except the DNA of the cottage was much more beautiful. Splashes of primary colors wove and unwove themselves. There was a rhythm to the churning. She had the feeling that if it were to stop, the whole illusion of the cottage — and, perhaps, the castle itself — would simply collapse.
— I love you —
The pain in her head expanded to her stomach. She closed her eyes to fight a wave of nausea. When she opened them, the third layer was gone. The cottage was its charming, innocent, solid self — but the flowers had begun to wilt in the rank humidity. Her temples throbbed in time with the sickness in her belly.
“Stop it,” she muttered, moving along, wondering what would happen if she puked in this place. “We’re almost there.”
She hurried past a low-slung apartment block that seemed to be made entirely of archways and iron lamps — one of the buildings of Nusle Kruselskaya.
They’ve painted the city, she realized. This vast exhibit — the Guild’s masterpiece — was made from samples of each neighborhood, rendered in great detail.
She picked her way beneath a treehouse of many rooms, catching the haze of a Watcher in one of the bark-lined windows. The hall was crawling with them. She had the distinct impression that they could see right through her disguise, and were simply toying with her. Who knew what they were thinking?
Main Street became a cement thoroughfare. Her vision swam. She clutched her stomach. She was definitely about to puke. She couldn’t help it. Screaming at Belinda and Nancy to calm down, she began to run. Past a ranch house, a temple, the outside of a shopping mall, the road stopped at the glass doors. She was almost there when she felt herself stumble.
The pressure in her head was enormous. Her knees hit the cement. Her hands pushed on her face and the back of her head, trying to hold her skull together. It
was going to crack open. The pain intensified so quickly, all she could do was give up.
The exhibition hall went dark. The jackhammer ceased. There was nothing but merciful silence and the absence of hurt.
She opened her eyes. Sprawled on the ground across from her, looking dazed and sick, were Nancy and Belinda.
Uneasy Guild members edged away from the scene, while others looked on in shock from the benches in front of the mall painting. For Hannah, any hope that she might still be able to blend in to the crowd died with the look of horror on Nancy’s face.
“Bad, bad, bad!” Nancy exclaimed, scrambling up and helping Belinda creak to her feet. “This is really bad.”
Hannah pushed herself up off the ground and risked a look over her shoulder. A small army of Watchers was gliding up the path; several more had emerged from the mall. The air was a sauna. Hannah got the fleeting impression that paint was beginning to drip. Three boys leapt from a bench that had gone soft and runny. Their boots sloshed in the soupy muck of the sidewalk.
The exhibit was coming undone.
The heat shimmer was making Hannah woozy, but she could still make out the figure at the head of the pack. The Watcher’s face stole its tattooed glimmer from a neon sign in one of the mall’s windows, and the hot-pink glow bled down into the sequins of her evening gown.
It was the interrogator from the prison. The woman raised an arm and pointed straight at Hannah, Nancy, and Belinda.
“Concourse!” Hannah said, urging Nancy and Belinda forward. She clutched at her face. Had the mask slipped? Melted in the heat? She supposed it didn’t matter: Her disguise was useless as long as Nancy was at her side, looking just like her.
Some cruel, selfish part of her wanted to take off in a different direction, hide among the exhibits and sneak out through the castle while the Watchers chased Nancy and Belinda into the subway. How long before they realized their mistake?
