by Kelly Creagh
“Astral projection,” Rastin replied when Wes had asked what he had meant by “remote.”
“Huh,” Patrick said. “So that’s really a thing.”
“A thing that allows me to enter his Moldavia,” Rastin said. “As he is the only one who possesses the ability to open doors between the two sides.”
From there, Rastin went on to tell us about his long-standing agreement with Erik that he would leave him be so long as Erik kept people out of the house. Rastin had also described his habit of dropping in on Erik intermittently to be sure he was holding up his end of the bargain.
“Normally during my past check-ins with Erik,” he said, “I’ve found him in some unreasonable state. If we conversed, it was never for long. Always, I would leave before I could be trapped again.”
“Trapped?” asked Charlotte.
“The documentary,” Rastin replied, his eyes going far off. “I trust you’ve all seen it.”
“Oh yeah,” Patrick said, stuffing another candy bar into his mouth. “Ar yu ckhidding?”
“We replay the moth-barfing part every time,” Wes added. “Your tonsils are huge, by the way.”
When I asked what really happened during that episode, Rastin told us how, after mistaking Erik for a malevolent entity—a mistake I couldn’t blame him for since I’d been guilty of making the same one—he’d immediately tried to exorcise him. An action that had resulted in disaster, as evidenced by the documentary.
“I didn’t know what I was dealing with,” said Rastin.
“You mean you didn’t know he was actually human,” guessed Charlotte as she shot me a pointed look that I ignored, in spite of deserving it.
“Exactly,” said Rastin.
And, according to Rastin, it was Erik’s humanness that changed the whole game.
“Erik believes it is the curse that binds him to this world,” said Rastin. “But, over time, I have become increasingly convinced it is his shattered state.”
In the past, Erik had apparently used various objects as stand-in hearts since, for a time, the substitutes focused his soul, allowing him to play music. But the hearts never lasted. Eventually, they gave out, resulting in chaos for Erik.
“Wait, though,” said Charlotte. “The fake hearts restore his spirit? Before, you said you thought Erik’s soul was stuck here because of its splintered state. So that’s the answer right there. That’s what needs to happen.”
It was then that Rastin revealed how Charlotte had guessed his plans exactly, and that he’d proposed this very solution to Erik multiple times, offering to perform the ritual again except, this time, with his soul focused.
Erik had always refused. At least until Rastin’s last remote visit, the very drop-in that had been prompted by my email.
“Not only did he agree,” Rastin said, “but it was his idea.”
I didn’t like this detail. Because it meshed with what Stephanie had told me about the masked Erik she had encountered on the “other side” of her house that night after the dance. And because I didn’t like that it proved she’d been right about Erik wanting to protect her—that he truly did care about Stephanie. Not when hating him outright gave me strength. And a target.
“So it comes down to that, doesn’t it?” I asked. “He needs a heart.”
“That is just one of the things that would need to happen for us to have any chance at success,” said Rastin.
“You’ll have to perform the exorcism again,” guessed Patrick.
“A cleansing this time,” corrected Rastin.
“Soooo,” said Wes, “call it a hunch, but I don’t see ole Nosferatu sitting very still for any of this.”
“We’d have to get him to come to us, too,” said Charlotte.
At that, Rastin became very still and silent.
“What?” I asked him. “There’s something else. Isn’t there?”
“He does not know this,” said the medium, speaking quietly. “In fact, no one does. But I believe that I harbor within me . . . a fraction of Erik’s own spirit. A mask. One that I unwittingly absorbed that night I attempted the exorcism.”
Silence reverberated after that revelation—the biggest we’d been given so far. Because, yeah. Dust from bombs that big took a while to settle.
“Hope,” Rastin said when none of us spoke. “That is the ‘mask’ I carry. Ironically, I now think that his hope has become ours. For my possession of it has already once bridged our two worlds.”
“That moth,” I said. “The one from the documentary.”
Rastin nodded. And then he said something that changed everything.
“That link between us might . . . just enable me to open a door to his side.”
At that point, everyone in the room had erupted into dissent—everyone except me.
“I’ll go with you,” I volunteered, and even though my voice was quiet, it had been loud enough, apparently, for everyone to hear. Simultaneously, Patrick, Wes, and Charlotte went silent. All eyes, including Rastin’s, turned to me.
“A cleansing occurs when I open a portal for spirits to pass on,” said Rastin. “Yet the opening of a portal to the afterlife always requires all of my faculties as a medium and most of my strength. Even when dealing with normal spirits. This means that, once we are on Erik’s side—if the shard of his soul I carry does indeed enable us to cross to him—I will be absorbed in that task utterly when the time comes. In fact, the reason for my delay in meeting Erik was that I could not convince a friend of mine to perform the darkest part of the task, which neither Erik nor myself would be capable of.”
“You need someone to destroy the heart,” I said.
“Precisely,” Rastin affirmed with a nod, which resulted in a second barrage of balking remarks from my friends.
It was at that point that Rastin had stood, collecting his things. He had a plan, he said. One that we could begin to enact as soon as tomorrow. But one that he advised us against deciding to take part in tonight.
The conversation had ended shortly after, with Rastin telling us about tomorrow’s rendezvous.
All night, the whole meeting had played on a loop in my head. Certain I couldn’t be the only one not sleeping, I contemplated calling Charlotte. Mostly to see if she’d decided to go with me and Rastin or not. Could I blame her, though—or any of them—if they said no this time?
And Erik. What would I do when I saw him? And I would see him, because I had already. That slice of moving darkness visible through the cracked basement door.
My gut twisted with the thought of meeting him eye-to-eye. Face-to-mask.
Sitting up, I pushed off from the bed and rushed to my closet, pulling down the camera I’d taken to Stephanie’s house that day I’d first entered Moldavia. Flipping through photos, I slowed when I got to the ones I’d snapped after opening Charlie’s door to that empty hallway. The hallway I’d perceived as empty.
I’d already viewed these pictures once and found nothing.
Hands shaking, I clicked forward.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
And then.
Midway up the flash-darkened backdrop of the hall, near Stephanie’s room, a blurry, disembodied, and transparent face. Set right at a man’s height.
Except, as I studied the photo harder, scrutinizing the blue-white negative-like image, I realized I hadn’t captured a face.
I’d captured a mask.
SIXTY-ONE
Stephanie
Say that you will you marry me.
The force—the whole notion—of his words caused an atom bomb to detonate in my gut.
I didn’t get it.
I didn’t get him.
Nor this pair of bug-faced, serpent-tongued gossips. The ones who called each other Spite and Envy.
No wonder they were so insufferable.
Ever since
the previous evening’s disastrous conversation with Erik, the two masked figures had followed me everywhere. If I shut the door in their faces, I would turn to find them inside the room with me, seated on the settee like they’d been there the whole time. Not only that, but they’d glance up at me from behind their fans as if I was somehow interrupting them.
I’d already tried telling them to shut it when their constant bickering, along with the nagging presence of Erik’s sheet music on Myriam’s dresser, had made sleep impossible.
Eventually, they did pipe down. Despite my utter exhaustion, though, I’d still gotten zero rest that night. This time, however, it hadn’t been because I was afraid.
If my dip in the lake had accomplished one good thing, it had been the significant diminishing of my overall fear of this place. And, perhaps, him.
Zedok had fished me out of that lake, after all. Saved my life. Made me an offer of marriage.
Not exactly the behavior of someone planning to murder me in the night.
Now, seated in Myriam’s canopied bed, I ignored the sheet music that remained permanently on her vanity, the white papers waiting, obstinate and unrelenting, convinced that I wouldn’t be able to resist them indefinitely.
Firm in my resolve that I would not indulge Erik’s demands—any of them—I’d refrained from so much as looking at the papers. Which only led me to study the flawlessly wrapped bandages encasing my sliced and burning, frostbitten hands. And, for the first time, I found myself believing that Erik and Zedok were the same.
Last night, hadn’t he exhibited some of that tenderness he’d shown in that dream in the conservatory? There’d been cruelty and coldness, too, though.
The monster and the angel. They were one and the same. Yet possibly, even with me here, still at war.
Eventually, unable to withstand my own curiosity, I gathered up Erik’s music and retreated with it to the bed, telling myself I only wanted to sort through it in case the lyrics might hold some key to understanding him.
By his own testament, the words that looped along beneath the notes had been written by Wrath’s hand. Yet there wasn’t so much as an ounce of anger in any of them. Beauty and sorrow infused in the melody instead.
My heart twisted at the words that demanded careful reading. Simple and elegant, they painted his feelings in stark black and white, and like a spell, they drew me in.
He’d written a love song.
First my abduction and then his proposal. And now this?
What else could it mean, except that Erik had somehow, some way, fallen in love with me? And if that were the case, did that mean he had, too? Zedok?
“It is rather confusing, isn’t it?” said Envy.
The retort caused my head to jerk in the direction of my wardens. Because I hadn’t spoken my inquiry aloud. Was it possible she had heard my thoughts? The way Envy now stared at me, as though she was waiting for an answer, suggested she had.
“Yes, dear Envy,” said Spite, her voice tight and full of warning. She gave Envy a thwap with her fan. “Your asking random questions is rather confusing.”
They bowed their heads together and raised their fans again, as if they had lips I could read, and returned to their viper hissing.
Setting the music aside, I rolled over in the bed, giving them my back, but then the spot next to me, empty of my little sister’s sleeping form, became just another torture. It was then that I gave up on sleep. Abandoning Myriam’s room and Erik’s music, I went to roam the house, going from room to room, telling myself I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. That wasn’t entirely true, though.
After scouring the house and finding no trace of him—well, other than his masks, which refused to interact with me—I started checking the windows and the grounds. That was just an act of avoidance, though. Because I already knew where he had to be hiding.
When I began to make my way toward the kitchen, however, my masked companions took pains to obstruct my way. Pushing past them, I found myself standing just outside the closed basement door.
The very last door I’d yet to try.
He was down there. He had to be.
Stalled outside the basement, I focused on the door handle and willed myself both to concentrate on the list of things I needed to address with him and to just do it already.
Don’t knock. Don’t deliberate. Just go.
“Do tell her the basement is forbidden,” hissed Envy, elbowing Spite.
“We’re not to speak to her, you ninny,” said Spite. “Really, is it that hard to remember?”
“She’s the one who can’t seem to remember anything!”
Geez. Did he ever have to put up with this? The snapping back and forth and the passive-aggressive potshots? If they behaved this way around him, it was a wonder he wasn’t more unhinged than he already was.
“Look!” said Envy. “She’s opened the door. What are we to do now? We certainly can’t follow her there.”
“Well, he didn’t tell us to stop her from going into the basement,” reasoned Spite, whose tone now gave me the impression she’d be all too happy to see me come up against whatever consequences Envy feared.
“Yes, but he does not wish to see her.”
To this, Spite gave a snorting laugh. “Only as much as he does.”
Suddenly, with the door half open to the darkened stairway, I stopped dead, though not because of the conflicting words of the masks. Rather, it was due to the sound that issued from the bowels of the house.
Soft and mournful, the heartrending cry of a violin strained to split the silence.
The same note came a second time, followed by an awful teeth-ringing screech from the instrument.
Another fluid note beckoned me a step closer. The notes that followed, though, came like screams of pain, loud enough to cover the sound of my feet on the stairs until he came into view.
With his back to me, he didn’t see me coming.
He stood at the far end of the shadowy room, his angular form thrown into relief by a single candelabrum that stood atop a simple wooden table—which counted as the only simple object in the room. A horde of priceless artifacts lined the walls and crammed the corners. A small chest of polished silverware sat next to a crate of fine china, and propped against the far wall, the eyes of Erik’s long-dead family members watched me from their portraits.
So. Here was the fortune Erik was rumored to have taken.
The violin screamed again, warning me to stop, to go back, and that I shouldn’t be here. And it was true. I shouldn’t. I should be at home. In front of the TV with Charlie in my lap. Or with Lucas in his car.
He had brought me here, though. And so he could deal with having me here.
Slowly, as the steps in front of me became fewer, the sour notes began to lessen in frequency and the beautiful ones began to link together. As they did, my trepidation morphed into grim fascination. In the darkness, he moved like a flame—a wavering pillar of red in the gloom. And like one of his moths, I kept coming . . . enthralled by the sight. By the music.
It swirled around me. Through me. Making something inside me sing with it, like my soul had no hope but to resonate right along with the melody.
I paused only when I reached the final step.
As the song slowed, I marveled at the fluidity of the arm that controlled the bow, and of the figure’s slight frame as it swayed with subtle motion.
And the way he cradled the violin . . . There was that tenderness again.
The last step creaked as I left it, and with an abrupt and horrible shriek of strings, he whirled on me, slashing the bow downward like a sword, causing it to whistle.
His twin light eyes focused on me and I froze, half expecting to drop dead right then and there.
My face began to burn. And the longer the silence continued with that pointed stare aimed straight a
t me, the higher the heat in my cheeks grew.
That’s when I reminded myself it had been my intention to interrupt him.
“I’m . . .” I began, but trailed off, nixing the impulse to apologize.
Tensing, I braced myself for his reaction.
He spoke then, and his voice—almost a deeper, more distorted version of the violin’s—held no trace of outrage.
“My playing disturbed you,” he said, and it took me a moment to process his words.
Truth was, a lot of things here “disturbed” me.
But his playing, unearthly as it had been, might have been the one and only thing that had not.
“You’ll forgive me if . . . I lost myself,” he said. “I’ve not been able to play for so long. As you know, I should not be able to now.”
I wavered in place, so much less certain about what to say now than when I’d made the decision to come down here.
“The curse is supposed to keep you from playing,” I said, keeping my voice even while, beneath me, my feet itched to take me back up the stairs.
“Playing . . .” he said. “In the past, it has always required a heart.”
I waited through another horrible patch of silence for him to explain further. When he didn’t, I went ahead and pressed.
“So, that’s true, too. You lost your heart.”
“I have lost them all,” he said. “I am as hollow as this instrument.”
A beat passed in which I tried to make sense of that statement.
“Like so much else, it is a mystery,” he said. “But mark my words. In another hour, the ability will be lost to me again.”
Turning toward the table, he laid the violin in its case and then secured the bow in its slot.