All I knew was that I was grateful not to have had to walk those few blocks back to the hotel on my own.
Dante was working late at the Vault again, but within fifteen minutes of my arriving back in my room, Lance was knocking on my door—loud, urgent knocks. I opened it and he started talking before I could say hello.
“You probably thought I was just making conversation when I said, Please let me know when you get back, but actually, just so you know, I was serious. So, anyway, glad you’re home.” He began to stalk away, offended, it seemed.
“I only just got back,” I said to his back. He stopped and turned around. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long night.”
“Yeah, I know. I left you almost two hours ago. Where’ve you been?” I could tell he was sincerely worried, which I was touched and surprised by. It helped begin to settle my own rattled nerves.
“I’m sorry, but I—”
“What’s going on here?” He cut me off and leaned in toward my face for a closer look.
“A souvenir from . . . some excitement at the drugstore.” I sighed. His face fell. I went ahead and gave Lance the condensed version of what had happened. He stood there in the doorway, listening. “So, at least I got to ride back here in style.” I tried to end on an upbeat note, but my attempt at humor did nothing to disguise the underlying tremor in my voice.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I sighed again. “Just really worn out.”
“I bet. Well, that’s the last time I let you convince me you’re fine to go on a solo expedition after dark.” His voice was tinged with guilt.
“I guess you’re entitled to one ‘I told you so.’”
“Just be careful.”
I nodded and then remembered: “So did our bosses even notice that we were gone so long?”
“Nope. When I got back, there was no sign of anyone anywhere.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Yeah.” We were both silent a few long seconds. The evening had sapped all my strength. I think he could tell. “Well, I guess I’ll let you get some rest,” he said, but lingered another second or two, as though deciding whether he wanted to say something that was on his mind. Instead, he just looked at the ground and shook his head and then looked back at me. “G’ night.”
“Night,” I said, swinging the door shut.
I shoved all of my new purchases in the closet to get them out of the way, and then remembered: I had been instructed to read the book tonight. Queasiness set in, which was my involuntary response every time I picked up that black leather-bound tormentor. Before tackling it though, I ran cold water on a washcloth, rung it out and folded it, making a compress. I lay on my back, the washcloth over my eye, and held the book above me, slowly turning the fragile pages one by one. Sure enough, a new page had been filled in.
Perhaps today proved that it behooves you to follow closely what is asked of you in these pages, when it is asked. There is a reason behind every task you will be required to perform; you need to trust implicitly in this book. If you fail to adhere to each task, you will only hurt yourself. There are opportunities every day to be killed.
That line set me shuddering. I read it three times before I could go on. Who was writing this to me?
But if you do heed these words, you won‘t be. There is much you don‘t know. Be patient and it will be revealed to you in due time.
I had to stop for a moment to let it sink in: that man who pushed me could have killed me if he wanted to. Something had kept that from happening. And the book wanted me to know that this near miss had occurred because I hadn’t carried out this most mundane-seeming shopping trip in the morning. Well, I had tested what happened when I didn’t precisely follow what it said. Now I supposed it was worth seeing what might be different if I did go along with it.
Consider evening engagements canceled for tonight.
What was I supposed to be doing? I searched my mind and then fastened on it: Aurelia wanted me to take photos at the Vault. It twisted my stomach into knots imagining the scene in her office tomorrow morning, when I would have exactly zero photos to show her, but it didn’t seem I had much choice. The Vault would be there tomorrow night too, and the next night, and the next . . .
Tonight, please explore what‘s beyond that opening you found in the closet floor. Descend until you hit solid ground. There will be one direction to go in for quite some time. When it opens up, pursue all paths until you begin to understand the layout. Get comfortable, for you will be spending a good deal of time there.
Before the end of the day tomorrow, repair the closet light. Then return here for further instruction.
I closed the book but didn’t move. I didn’t want to go. But finally I laced my sneakers back up and loaded batteries into the new flashlight. Then I dragged everything back out of the closet: my duffel bags and coat, my supplies from the drugstore. I found that seam on the floor again and, this time, wedged the pocketknife in there and pulled up the door. Musty, stale air wafted out at me. I thought of Lance. He wouldn’t like this at all—not that I planned to tell him—but just the idea of it made me laugh to myself. Scared as I was.
I couldn’t believe I was actually going to do this.
I shined the light down into the narrow black pit, but it was to get swallowed by folds of darkness. All I could see were thick wooden slats nailed into one side of the passageway to be used as a ladder. But everything below a certain point disappeared into this murky abyss. It was impossible to tell how far down it went. I would just have to investigate on foot.
I looped the flashlight around my wrist and tucked the mace key chain into my pocket (hoping with every bone in my body that I wouldn’t have a reason to use it) and lowered myself down into the pit’s clutches, one foot then the other feeling around in the darkness until each united with one of the planks. With every slow step down, the thick, stagnant air got warmer, as though I were crawling deeper into the bottom of a sleeping bag. My nervous hands left the floor of the closet and searched for a secure spot on the first rung—it was mostly sanded and smooth, with just a few errant, jagged patches here and there. Hopefully I could avoid too many splinters. The wood was several inches thick, giving me a little room to hang on; I dug my short, stubby nails in as best I could. The flashlight hung straight down from my wrist illuminating to some degree the darkness below. I could feel the brick walls of the passage close in around me. I had about a foot of space on each side.
After what felt like years, I ran out of planks and my foot poked around and found, at last, the bottom. I looked back up, longingly, toward the door in my closet floor, but I couldn’t see any trace of light from up top anymore.
I breathed in the heavy air, thick with decaying brick and mortar dust. I was at the end of some sort of hallway. I walked along, the flashlight beam shaking in front of me, until I reached an open doorway with a hazy light leaking out. I stepped through, into yet another corridor, this one at least ten feet wide, its concrete walls and the ceiling lined with long snaking pipes. I felt swallowed up. The only sound came from the hushed crunch of my feet over decades of dirt and crumble. The silence echoed deep into my bones.
Finally the pathway opened up into a fork, both sides lit dimly, but lit nonetheless, with bare bulbs dotting the ceiling amid endless wispy, cottony cobwebs. I stuck to the path on the right—remembering that old trick from cornstalk mazes as a kid that if you’re in a maze and you place your right hand on the right wall eventually you will always be led out, even if it takes eons—and followed it until it spilled into a space that looked like it had once been a room. Parts of the walls were stripped away, leaving wooden beams exposed behind sections of plaster. Some spots were pockmarked with gaping boulder-size holes running straight through them, while other sections remained nearly intact, even displaying traces of peeling, faded wallpaper that matched my room. At the very back was a red-painted door, with a single steel security bar horizontally set across it.
Outside
the room, I turned a sharp corner and found nothing but a few boarded-up spots where there used to be doorways. Now I was sweating too. It had to be over 85 degrees. I unbuttoned my cardigan so I was just in my T-shirt and was tying it around my waist when I hit what appeared to be a dead end with a boarded-up wall. Beyond it I could hear the faint twang and thump of muffled music, like something brought forth from a crackly record player.
I put my hands to the boards and one swung open a sliver, creaking as it did. I had to squeeze in between freestanding shelves to get in—it seemed as if the people who owned this place didn’t know they had this passageway. Now the music poured out at me, horns and bass and drums and piano, and the murmur of voices and clink of glasses and bottles. The space was hardly bigger than the size of my room, and stacked floor to ceiling with boxes labeled with brands of alcohol and shelves full of more boxes marked from a food supply company, bulk quantities of chips and peanuts. A fridge stood in one corner. A rickety wooden staircase poked up toward the source of the music. I ascended only a few steps, enough to spot glasses stacked on low shelves behind a bar. A pair of sneakered feet walked near the mouth of the stairs and I clicked off my light and crept back down. Lance and I had passed a couple of ramshackle-looking bars on our walk to the L earlier. I wondered if this was one of those. I couldn’t quite get myself oriented to where I might be in relation to the street above; it had been too much of a labyrinth getting here. I slithered back out of the storage room and pulled the board shut behind me.
Then I heard it: a soft shuffle, footsteps echoing, like muted gunshots to my heart. I couldn’t even tell what direction they had come from. The acoustics sent each one bouncing off a different wall or spot on the floor or part of the ceiling.
Paralyzed, except for the quaking of my nerves, I gathered myself enough to head back the way I’d come. As I neared that room with the red door, the footsteps got louder. I crouched to the floor, keeping low, crawling to that wall with the chunks missing. My knees seemed to shatter against the heavy concrete. The temperature, coupled with my fear, made me lightheaded and more feverish by the minute. The footsteps stopped: this person had to be inside that crumbling room.
Huddled behind the partially destroyed wall, barely breathing, I peeked between rotted wooden beams. Inside, Beckett stood in profile, choosing the proper key from the jangling key ring in his hands. He turned his back, unlocking the steel bar first, then the door. Yanking it open with both hands, he unleashed from the doorway a roar, the rushing fury of wind or fire, and, along with it, a red glow. And heat, so much that it dried out my skin, instantly coating it. He too turned away from it for just a moment, twisting in my direction. I saw it, just a glimpse: his right eye was swollen, the lid a puffy pink pillow. On reflex, my eyes shot to his feet: yes, black, shiny, and familiar. My instant nausea told me that it couldn’t be pure coincidence. Adjusting to the heat, he took a few steps into the doorway, one arm up to shield himself from the light and the blaze. In the other hand, I now noticed, a pendulum was swinging—it sparkled, catching the light. It looked like one of those amethyst necklaces. He wound up to pitch and threw it inside, then closed the door, needing all his strength, putting his body into it, and pulled the bar down across it, giving it a shake to be sure all was locked up.
He turned around.
I ducked. Just in time. He had a fifty-fifty shot of walking toward me, and if he did, I had no idea what I would possibly do or say. My heart sped so fast I thought I might pass out from the force of it beating against my chest, trying to crash through my rib cage. If he started this way and I had enough time, I could try to wedge myself through this hole in the wall, but the wooden beams would make it close. I wasn’t sure I would quite fit and if I did, I didn’t know if I could do it fast and quietly enough. So I just held my breath and prayed he wouldn’t approach.
The footsteps reached the threshold of the room. I pushed my back against the wall, wishing to melt into it. And listened. He took a step or two and then, as though remembering where he was going or changing his mind, he walked away, down the hallway I hadn’t explored yet. I waited until I couldn’t hear his footsteps and then I waited some more. Finally I crept from my spot into that room, toward that door. A column ran through the center of the horizontal bar, accepting a cylindrical key that would have to be shaped like a pentagram. On the door itself was another larger lock in the same design. I touched it and my hand flew back involuntarily. The door was stovetop hot. I shook my hand to cool it, but this did little more than make my wrist ache too. I needed to get out of here.
But there was one more path to try. I headed back the way Beckett had gone, past a few locked doors and an open one. Inside the narrow hallway, the only light came from slim strips along the tops of the walls. I followed them, feeling blindly for extra guidance. I was too scared to put the flashlight on. He could be standing here, waiting for me. But another fear propelled me, fear of what might happen if I didn’t pursue this path, if I didn’t complete my assignment tonight sufficiently enough to satisfy what this awful book expected of me. The temperature cooled off as I walked along, and my jumbled head began to clear. Just see this to the end and you can go back up to your room and your bed, back near where Dante and Lance slept just a few yards away.
I felt the bass first, beating and thumping in my chest and then my head. The volume got louder, and I could almost name the song. Then the track lighting along the ceiling stopped and so did I. In the distance, a cascading flame flickered.
I had reached the Vault. I was on the other side of that fiery wall.
I ran. I flew out of there before anyone might find me, back the way I’d come, through the dark hall, and the door and the corridor to the planks up to my room. I fumbled on the first few planks, my palms so sweaty I couldn’t grip them; my feet slipped and slid. But I had something going up that I didn’t quite have on my way down: a rush of adrenaline. I couldn’t bear another minute down there. My skin crawled, every ounce of me burned to get back up to my room, to close up this portal. I made it up a few of the planks and got into a groove. I went as fast as I could, finding that if I just kept in motion not trying to get perfect footing, I could keep ascending. Sweat slicked up every inch of my skin, making my T-shirt stick to me, and my hair stick against my face. Finally I saw the light from my room. I pulled myself up with the last bit of strength I had and crawled onto the floor of the closet, slamming the door down with my foot. I couldn’t move. My chest heaved. I closed my eyes; everything ached. Muscles I didn’t even know I had cried out in pain.
I fell asleep on the floor.
And of all the competing images and horrific scenes I’d witnessed that day, the one thing that flashed like a strobe light in my mind as I dozed was the last thing I would have expected: I kept seeing that painting, La Jeune Martyre.
11. Tell Me You Forgive Me or I Won’t Let You Go
I woke up on the floor—my first clue that last night had really happened. I had hoped it was a dream, another bad one, but no, I was on that worn, matted-down carpet in my T-shirt and jeans. The only pleasant surprise: the swelling above my eyebrow had miraculously managed to deflate. At least my face had returned to a relatively normal state, even if my mind was as scrambled as ever. I got myself showered and dressed and then, hand to my stomach to quiet the queasiness, I slunk toward Aurelia’s office for our morning meeting, still constructing an adequate defense for why I had failed to take photos at the Vault. I was nervous, and also in pain. It took great effort to move my legs after all that climbing last night. Simply lifting my arm up to rap on the door of her office strained my weary muscles.
“Yes, come.” I heard her beckon. I opened the door and found her seated at her desk, papers in her hand. She barely let me take one step before asking, “Are you finished painting that mural?”
“Um, definitely not.”
“Good, don’t come back until you are.”
I nodded and pulled the door shut again. I had gotten lucky. As s
oon as I was alone in the darkened hallway, my stomach steadied and I discovered I was starving. Ravenous. I needed to eat immediately. The mural could surely wait a few minutes.
Lance, it appeared, had had the same idea. I found him already seated at the butcher-block island of the Parlor’s kitchen, hunched over a bowl of cereal.
“Hey,” he said.
“Morning,” I said as he pushed a box of Lucky Charms toward me. “Thanks. We need our strength to channel Hieronymus Bosch.” I pulled a bowl down from the cupboard, grabbed a spoon, and took the seat next to him, pouring my cereal.
“No kidding.” After a moment, he asked, “So what were you up to last night?”
“I pretty much just passed out. I was so tired after, you know, everything.” Not a lie necessarily, I just omitted a few details.
“I came by. I couldn’t sleep. I thought I saw your light on under the door, but you didn’t answer.”
“I must’ve been asleep already.”
“I guess.” He wasn’t satisfied. I could tell by the way he poked at his cereal with his spoon. He tried again: “Should I ask if you want to, you know, talk about last night?”
“Um—”
“Fine, no problem, we can change the subject.”
Illuminate: A Gilded Wings Novel, Book One Page 13
