by Alex P. Berg
She blinked again, her brow furrowing. “It…does seem I’ve been here a long time.”
“How did you get here?”
“I…don’t remember. It doesn’t seem so long ago, but at the same time it does.” She stared into the trees. “I remember the fire. Everyone was scared, and sad. I was sad, too. Then I was with Angela. She told me it would be okay. She wanted to cheer me up, show me something. Something beautiful. Something for the two of us. She brought me here, but the journey? It wasn’t beautiful.” She shuddered.
“And you’ve been here? That whole time since the fire? By yourself?”
She nodded.
“Nell, people have been looking for you. For seven years. Everyone thought you were dead.”
She brought her eyes back to me. “Seven years? Why do you keep saying that? I’ve been here a while, but not years. No one has ever come looking for me. It’s only ever been me and Angela. Until…”
“Until, what?”
Nell’s face paled. “I know why you’re here. I can show you. But it wasn’t me.”
“Show me? What are you talking about?”
She took a deep breath, for the first time sounding tired. “Perhaps you should come with me.”
She turned and headed into the woods. I followed, my panic momentarily displaced by utter confusion. After discovering the drug connection between Fezig, Simon, Lothorien, and Sydney and hearing about the presence of Bertrand in the basement, I’d started to develop a glimmer of an idea to explain Clarice Vanderfeller’s disappearance, but now? My world, almost literally, had been upended. I didn’t know what to think. Could I possibly have found Nell, the real Nell, suspended in time in a magical purgatory? Or was she a construct, a figment of Angela’s imagination? She’d clearly displayed an obsession with her younger sister as evidenced by the multitude of portraits she’d painted. But to create a simulacrum? That had to be beyond anyone’s power.
“Nell?” I asked as we walked. “What is this place?”
“The grounds,” she said without looking back. “My home.”
She seemed to have a hard time grasping that we weren’t in the same reality as we were used to, or at least I was used to. Then again, if she’d been caught in time for seven years, this world might seem normal to her, especially if she’d gotten stuck inside it at the tender age of eight. How much did children remember before their eighth birthday? A few years of childhood, perhaps.
As disturbing as it might be, even I had to admit how utterly perfect everything looked. As picturesque as Angela’s paintings had been, the world around me was real. I trailed my hand over a tree trunk, feeling the rough surface of the bark. Dry leaves crunched underfoot, and sunshine darted through the canopy above to dance with shadows on the forest floor.
And yet…there was a flatness about it. It lacked birdsong and chirping insects and the rustle of wind through the branches above. The pond smelled not of damp earth and rotting organic matter but rather nothing at all, and in the distance loomed the undeniable horizon of purest white.
“Nell, can I ask where we’re going?”
The young girl looked over her shoulder. “We’re almost there. I found it. Recently.”
We exited the trees into the space where the clearing would’ve been in the real world. The charred, rotting remains of the servants’ home had been replaced with a manicured, bright green lawn. Hovering over the grass not twenty feet from us was another painting, this one depicting part of the manor’s interior.
Nell walked up to it and grasped its side.
“Whoa.” I held out a hand. “Hold on. How’d you do that?”
“This is one of the regular portals,” she said. “We can walk though them, not like the others. I watched you try. You saw the colors, didn’t you?”
Come to think of it, the painting’s contents shone clearly. The haze that lingered over the painting of Angela’s studio didn’t exist over this one, the air calm and clear and transparent as it should be.
“Come on.” Nell pulled her leg over the side. “It’s just inside.”
Nell hopped through the frame, stepping onto the hardwood floor within. A staircase stretched behind her, as did a pair of corridors, fading into darkness.
I neared the painting and extended a hand. It went through, as if nothing were there. I pulled it back. “Has this always been here?”
“No. Angela crafted it. She’s made many of them, going different places.”
“Angela came here? Painted this?”
“Yes.”
Finally, good news. I skirted the edge of the frame. The backside hovered there, a flat piece of canvas held together by wooden slats. No stairs or corridors punched through.
I ducked back around and massaged my forehead.
Nell looked at me, confused. “Are you coming?”
“Sure. Not like this can get any weirder.”
I grabbed the frame and hopped through, same as Nell had. She kept walking, and I followed, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. We passed an intersection. At the end stood a window. Blank whiteness filled the view.
Nell stopped and pointed. “There. Around that corner. But promise me, you won’t be mad. It wasn’t me.”
“What wasn’t you?”
I turned the corner and halted in mid stride.
I’d been wrong about things not getting any weirder. On the floor, face up with blood matting her hair and streaking her face, lay the form of someone I’d thus far only seen in paintings.
Clarice Vanderfeller.
32
I knelt next to her, brushing the pale hair out of her face. The features captured by the artist in the family portrait were all there: the pale blonde hair, the cool eyes, the curvature of her nose, the arch of her eyebrows. The past seven years hadn’t been kind to her, however. Her dress hung loosely from her frame, and I’d wager she’d lost a good twenty pounds since the artist wielded his brush. Wrinkles creased her brow. Dark circles ringed her now-sunken eyes, with crow’s-feet sprouting from the corners. Though her hair retained its color, it had lost its luster, appearing as if it might crumble to dust if I pinched it between my fingers.
I pressed a digit against her neck, but I already knew what I’d sense. Cold flesh, with nary a pulse to be found.
I leaned close to get a better look. Blood stained her hair and crusted her face, not to mention her dress, which sported several dark splotches across the sides. Another huge stain seemed to spread from her neck onto her back, though I couldn’t see clearly from her current position.
I checked her for incisions, cuts, and bruises before grasping her arm and tilting her onto her side, though not without effort. The body had stiffened, but unless my nose had failed me, it hadn’t started to decay. A byproduct of the magical environs, perhaps?
I settled her onto her stomach. The stain I’d spotted now showed its true extent, stretching from her collar all the way to her waist. Given its size and position, not to mention the blood soaking the back of her head, Clarice’s death wound wasn’t hard to identify. Her skull caved in unnaturally, right at the base where the bones would normally come to a point. I didn’t want to poke and prod with my bare fingers, but a visual inspection suggested the indentation was at least an inch or two deep. Round from the looks of it. Someone had bashed her skull with a blunt object from behind, probably with a downward blow given the trauma to the neck and spine underneath. Given the amount of blood, the blow had likely severed a major artery, though I’d leave it to Cairny to figure out which one—assuming I could get the body to Cairny. At the moment, transporting Clarice’s body to the precinct paled in importance to getting myself back there…
Bile rose in my throat at the thought of being forever stranded in a figment of Angela’s imagination, in some place between worlds born of magic and paint and incomprehensible physics, but I swallowed, forcing it back down.
I wasn’t stranded. Multiple witnesses placed Clarice withi
n the Aldermont’s walls days prior. With her body before me, I could finally confirm she’d been murdered, which meant someone had entered Angela’s painting and ditched Clarice’s body there within the last hundred hours. That same someone had skedaddled back to the estate, and if they could do so, then so could I. The only alternative was that Angela had banished her mother to the confines of her artwork the same way she had me, but that seemed unlikely. For one thing, if Clarice was the recluse everyone made her out to be, she wouldn’t have taken casual jaunts to Angela’s art studio, certainly not while Angela was there. For another, it would mean Clarice had been murdered by someone within the painting world, and the only person here was Nell. I couldn’t believe she was capable of such a thing, even after accounting for the effects seven years of isolation in this place might’ve had on her.
I felt an itchy sensation upon the back of my neck and looked up. Nell had turned the corner. She stood at the edge of the wall, staring at her mother’s still form. Except for the barest glimmer of sadness in her eyes, her face betrayed nothing.
“You shouldn’t be looking at this,” I said. “You’re too young, too innocent to experience something this visceral. Never mind that she’s your…”
“Mother?”
“Yes.”
Nell nodded. “I thought so, but I wasn’t sure. My memories of mother are fuzzy, but they’re not of this woman. Mother was more vibrant, more full, more alive, if that makes sense.” Nell shrugged, her face still a mask. “I know I should feel more upset about seeing her like this, but…I don’t.”
“Your mother indeed changed since you last saw her, but what you’re feeling is natural. You’re in shock. It’ll take time for reality to set in, for you to be able to come to grips with it. With losing her. It won’t be an easy journey. I’m sorry, Nell.”
“Why would you be sorry? You weren’t responsible for her death. Were you?”
“Of course not,” I said. “I’m here to discover who was. I was simply extending my condolences.”
“That’s not necessary. As I said, I’m quite alright. Despite her being here, her death seems…distant. Unreal. Then again, so many things that used to feel close to me now feel that way. Father. Simon. Sydney. Thaddy and Mrs. Opal. It feels like I haven’t seen them in ages.”
Nell spoke calmly, her high-pitched voice never wavering. Despite her outward appearance, it was obvious the years in purgatory had seasoned her. No seven-year-old girl spoke the way she spoke, or would’ve dealt with her mother’s death so stoically. Then again, few fourteen-year-old girls would’ve either. The young lady’s heart had been turned to ice.
Given Nell’s admission of distance from her family, it seemed as good a time as any to try and break through to her again. “Nell, you do realize it’s been seven years since you entered this place, don’t you?”
She blinked, her eyes focusing into the distance. “There you go saying that again. It…does feel like I’ve been here some time. But seven years? It’s hard to tell. Everything is different here.”
“Such as?”
“It’s hard for me to say. This is all I remember. Everything else is fuzzy. Like the memories of her.” She gestured toward Clarice.
She made the statement with such nonchalance, but I knew inside she must be breaking. Either that, or her experiences had broken her long ago. I made a mental note to escort her to the precinct’s grief counselor and shrink when we were done—after escaping the dream world, retrieving Clarice Vanderfeller’s corpse, and tracking down her murderer, of course. My cup veritably overflowed.
I turned my eyes back toward the deceased, seeing if I could discern any other important clues from her person. Normally, I’d check pockets for personal identifying information, but not only did I already know who Mrs. Vanderfeller was, but her dress didn’t appear to have pockets. I briefly considered checking underneath it to see if she hid anything of import in her bosom or undergarments, but I couldn’t do so in Nell’s company. The sight of her dead mother was undoubtedly traumatic enough without me undressing her. Besides, the weave of the woman’s gown was light enough that she wouldn’t have been able to hide much more than a few bobby pins and a cigarette amid its folds.
Speaking of Clarice’s gown, the blood stain that soaked the fabric wasn’t confined to the upper half of her back. Streaks trailed all the way to the dress’s hem. Grime coated the edge, as it did the woman’s posterior. That combined with a lack of pooled blood at the scene bolstered my suspicion that she’d been dragged here rather than killed onsite.
I looked up at Nell. She hadn’t moved, nor had her disposition changed. Still, I’d have to be careful. She was my only witness. Perhaps the only other person besides me in the magical art world. I needed her on my side.
I rose to my feet. “Nell? You mind coming with me for a moment?”
She cocked her head. “Where are we going?”
“Around the corner. Out of view.”
I headed back into the adjoining hallway, bringing Nell with me. I wanted to clap her on the shoulder, reach out to her, share a friendly touch, but I didn’t. “Nell. You found the body. Did you see who did it? Who brought it here?”
She shook her head. “No. But I know who must’ve done it. I wish it weren’t so…but it has to be.”
“Who?”
“Angela.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because she’s the only one who can come in and out, Mr. Daggers.”
I felt that twinge of panic grip my chest again, but I swatted it away. There was a way out. I knew it. “But you didn’t see her bring the body?”
“I didn’t.”
“Have you ever seen anyone else here? Or suspected you weren’t alone? Found things out of place, heard unfamiliar sounds, felt like you were being watched?”
Eyes like ice. Unwavering. “You’re not listening to me, Mr. Daggers. I’m alone here. I always have been—or I had been until mother arrived. And then you.”
“But Angela can come in and out. She’s visited you?”
“Sometimes, but only her. No one else.”
“When was the last time you remember seeing her?”
Nell shrugged. “It’s…hard to say. It’s so hard to judge.”
“But she comes by sometimes? To visit you? To…take care of you?” The last thought sprung to mind unprompted.
Nell nodded.
I risked losing her, but I had to ask. “Nell…why are you here? Why did Angela put you here?”
Nell frowned and shook her head. I wasn’t sure if that was her way of saying she didn’t remember or that she didn’t want to. Was her memory dulled by one of Angela’s spells or by a self-imposed block? Either way, I couldn’t push my luck. Not yet.
“It’s okay, Nell. Don’t worry about it. But perhaps you could tell me more about Angela. Timing doesn’t matter. Anything about her visits could help. What activities she engages in while she’s here. Where she shows up, where she disappears to, and how. That last part I’m particularly curious about. What she does with her hands, what she says, carries, anything could be helpful.”
Nell looked at me with more sorrow than she’d afforded her dead mother. “You really think you can leave, don’t you?”
“I’m not willing to give up hope just yet. Now, please. Tell me everything you know.”
33
I sat with my back to the tree that stood at the edge of the pond, the one under whose real world counterpart I’d smooched Shay an endless day ago. The grass felt cool underneath me, the tree’s bark rough as it pressed through my leather jacket. I stared at the watery mass that surrounded the floating painting of Angela’s studio, twirling the pencil from my notepad between my fingers for want of anything else to occupy my hands.
So far I’d tried everything I could think of to get through the colorful, shimmering haze, but all my efforts had been spectacularly rebuffed. I’d walked up to the painting, of course, hoping th
e miasma might part in deference to my awesomeness, but sadly it didn’t. Rather, it behaved the same way it had the first time I’d tested it. While the furthest reaches of the colorful cloud felt like an airy syrup, the further into it I progressed and the harder I pushed the more solid the haze became, much like the mixture of corn starch and water every child is allowed to play with in school under the guise of learning basic physics. Thinking myself smart, I tried extending the metaphor, slowing my entry into the haze to a crawl in an attempt to slip through, but whatever similarities the magical barrier held with actual fluids ended short of allowing me through while enacting my best slug imitation. Undeterred, I tried the exact opposite, pacing out forty meters along the path away from the painting before turning, taking a few deeps breaths, and testing my track skills.
That turned out to be a terrible idea. I woke up in front of the shimmering haze after who knows how long, with only a pounding headache and a serious case of whiplash to point to for my efforts.
I took a more cerebral approach from then on, attempting to make contact with the painting through a host of time-honored staples, including throwing rocks at it and poking it with a long stick. The colorful haze laughed at my efforts, snatching my rocks out of mid-air before dropping them to the ground and breaking my carefully selected stick in half as I pushed on it.
So it was I found myself with my back against the tree, my neck and head still pounding and the rest of me no closer to climbing through the painting to freedom. I’d considered attacking the haze from above or below, but the painting already hovered a good three and a half feet over the ground, and although I might be able to climb the tree behind me, there was no way I could leap from its top-most boughs to the peak of the protective cloud. Besides, I suspected I’d be rebuffed in similar fashion to my running start. From such a height, the results could be deadly.
I’d also tried to approach the painting from behind, but the fog persisted there, too, though it wasn’t as thick as on the front—perhaps a few feet, at most. I considered trying my running start on the backside of the painting, or jabbing it fiercely with a poker stolen from the confines of the manor, but I feared what might happen if I somehow made it through the barrier. If I punctured the back of the painting, would the portal to the real world remain intact? I couldn’t risk it, certainly not without harboring more than a hope and a prayer that it might send me back to my home, my job, my son, and to Shay.