“And no police investigation?”
“Julius tried. But he couldn’t get anywhere. Carneys aren’t particularly fond of the police. Nor do the police care for vagabonds.” The professor tapped her desk. “So Lucinda vanished, and Sydney left the Midwest for the West Coast. That’s as much as we knew when the articles started appearing about Fitzmaurice’s terror films. His nightmares on the silver screen.”
“He started making movies in November 1918,” I said, wondering who the “we” was in her story. Florie, certainly, and Mister Claude, but could there be more people investigating the arcane events of Arkham? “At least that’s when we met Sydney.” However I didn’t explain that my “we” meant my orphaned sister and I, either. “He’d married a woman in San Francisco. She gave him the money to start out as director. Then the studio recruited all of us.”
“What happened to the wife?”
I shrugged. “Nothing much. A divorce. She wasn’t interested in performing and she did have lots of family, wealthy family back in San Francisco.”
“So, not the perfect victim,” said the professor. “At least not the way that I think he picks his victims.”
“No,” I said. But Renee did fit that pattern. A woman alone, as far as Sydney knew, with no visible family. A woman who was grateful to him for her artistic career and passionate enough about making that career to overlook Sydney’s more obvious flaws. And a sister who was going to save her, I kept telling myself, despite all the mistakes that we had made. “But our leading lady, Renee Love, she’s much like the others that you describe.”
“Julius said that there were two women playing the sisters.”
“Lulu McIntyre. But Lulu has Eleanor, and Eleanor would kill Sydney before she would let anything happen to Lulu,” I said. “Possibly with magic.”
The professor raised her eyebrows. “Interesting.”
“Except,” I said, thinking back over our conversations at the house, “Sydney wanted them here. He recruited Lulu, for her scream, and Eleanor, for her witch ancestors. At least, that’s the gossip. Eleanor might even know more about Sydney’s manuscript. He keeps giving her quotes from it for her scenarios.”
“Having a woman of magic translating his work into his current art form,” the professor nodded. “That might be the key. Things have never quite aligned for the Fitzmaurice men. Saturnin had the comets and his priestess. But he failed.”
“How?” I said, because this was important. I needed to know how to stop Sydney.
“Arkham has its protections. In the first case, Saturnin Fitzmaurice was opposed by a woman of magic, a maid in the house who got the children out. But she kept the terror in.”
“That ancestor of Florie and Humbert?” This town, with its secrets and its families, we didn’t need to be in such a town, I thought. We needed to be heading home to California, where everyone could reinvent themselves and become what they wanted to be. Not where they were caught up in family stories more than century old.
The professor nodded again. “A useful woman. Also, Saturnin lacked a mask. At least according to what Neely learned from Sydney’s grandfather. For that old man, the explanation was the ritual had gone wrong because the priestess was improperly presented. She needed to be masked in silver, according to his notes. But Sydney’s grandfather found a mask somewhere.”
I didn’t tell her that I’d found that mask. That it was sitting on a table in my bedroom, waiting for Sydney to find it and use it.
“But not just the mask, it can’t be that simple,” I said. I was arguing mystic rituals in a broom closet with a woman who taught poetry and collected occult texts. How had I gotten to this place? And what could I do to save Renee?
“No,” said the professor. “We’re sure that there is more to it than that. Every time, Sydney has tried this and failed, because he was missing some element. Every time was an experiment in magic, an experiment in opening a door for the Hooded Man. If he fails again, he’ll have another chance in 1928, then the comets will be gone. Stop him now, and save your friends.”
“But why me?” I said out loud, finally, the cry that was echoing through my head.
“Because you can,” said the professor. “You can enter the house. You can pull the others out, like Rebecca Baker.”
“But why can’t you help me?” I said. “Come to the house. Explain to the others.”
She shook her head. “Sydney dislikes me intensely. So the house will keep me out. It barely lets Ashcan Pete and Duke walk across the lawn, and you were with them, an invited guest. Julius made it onto the grounds, again as an invited guest, but he said that he could feel the house pushing him away the entire time. And as for poor Darrell, I understand it bruised his leg. I’ve tried three times to go up that drive and once through the woods. Neither path would open for me. Turned me right around and left me somewhere that I didn’t want to be.”
A house that pushed people away. A house that was waiting to devour us. I believed her but I couldn’t say why.
I stood up. “I’ll go back now,” I said. “I still have time to get rid of the mask and get Renee out of the house. All of them.” Fred, Betsy, Max, Eleanor, and Lulu. None of them should be hurt because of Sydney’s strange obsession. But how was I going to make them believe me? When I barely believed it myself.
As I walked back to the car, I tried different arguments in my head. None of my arguments convinced me. It all sounded like one of Eleanor’s scenarios. Only more overwrought and underthought, as Renee had said once about a film that we’d both wanted to like more than we did.
But the mask. The mask was still up in my room. The mask and my paper copy. I could destroy the paper one easily. I could get rid of the other. Bury it, drown it, blow it up with Fred’s flash powder. That might make Sydney pause. That could give me time to get the others out of the house.
During the ride back to the Fitzmaurice house, Fred kept talking about the microphone and recording device that he’d borrowed from the University. As well as the size of the Miskatonic laboratory that he’d seen. Apparently the engineering students and their professors had impressed him. Or at least given him ideas.
“Sound as a weapon,” he said. “That’s one of their ideas. Imagine, a shout that breaks a piece of glass and, if amplified, could crack a battleship.”
“I think we don’t need any more weapons in the world,” I said. “Certainly no more noise.”
“Well, just a scream or two,” said Fred. “Luckily the professors were interested in what Sydney was trying to do. They want a copy of the recording and the film. One of them has an idea for synching film and sound. And then broadcasting it like radio.”
“That sounds…” I was going to say “impossible.” But was anything impossible in Arkham?
“It’s a big leap,” said Fred. “But there’s others talking about it. Electric telescopes. But nothing like films. Just a simple image. But somebody will figure it out. There’s an invention a minute, big stuff, little stuff.”
“Maybe it will be you,” I said.
Fred grinned. “Wouldn’t it be great? To show films all around the world anywhere you want to watch them? The studio would love that. I can see Max totaling up the dollars.”
“Except, how do you sell tickets? Wouldn’t you need it to be in a theater?” I said. Because making money, that’s all the studio cared about. At least, that’s what Max usually said.
“Subscriptions. Like a magazine,” Fred said. “Pay so much and get so many movies broadcast to your box. Max would figure something out. He likes money.”
Max was smart with money. Max was smart. Fred was right when he suggested earlier that I go to Max. The studio had hired Max to control Sydney. So all I needed to do was to go to Max.
“How did your meeting go?” asked Fred, finally coming down from the clouds of contemplating all the ways that sound and pictures could be
broadcast.
“She’s an interesting woman,” I said. “And Florie was right. The professor is worried about people getting hurt on the set. She said one of Sydney’s plays started a fire at a theater here. And there was another at a circus where Sydney worked.”
“He’s careless,” said Fred. “Sydney’s always thinking about how something’s going to look to the audience. He forgets that there are people on the set. Like his exploding mirrors. But was there really a murder?”
“Nobody knows,” I hedged. I wanted to talk to Max before I tried to get Fred to believe in magic. Fred was just too practical for talk of rituals and other worlds. Max probably wouldn’t believe it either, but he’d be worried about how such stories would impact the studio. This was much more serious than Sydney’s known dabbling with the occult. “They never found any bodies, but two women did disappear.”
Fred looked troubled as he turned the wheel and started to drive past the Fitzmaurice gates up to the house. “Maybe you’re right, Jeany,” he said. “Maybe this is the last film that we should make with Sydney. Hal shouldn’t have been hurt like that. Paul had the right idea.”
“So you think Paul went to California?”
Fred stopped the car in front of the house. He walked around it to open my door. “Where else could he have gone? But I’ll look in the attic. After we record Lulu. If his trunk is there, we can investigate further.”
“I’ll go look in the attic,” I said. After all, I had to pick up the mask in my room. Destroy it, hide it, do something with it. The solstice was almost on us.
As soon as we entered the house, Max and Sydney came popping out of the library. Soon all three men were in a deep discussion about the placement of the camera, the placement of the microphone, the recording equipment, the cords needed, and the sequence of events. Fred thought it best to record Lulu first, that would take the longest to do, then shut off the microphone and film the scene.
Lulu and Eleanor heard the talk and came out of the parlor to investigate. Neither Betsy nor Renee were downstairs. I ran upstairs looking for them, determined to talk to Max later, when I could get him away from the rest. If he listened, we could stop the filming today and all be on the train to California tomorrow.
Renee was in her room, looking much more rested than she had for days. She was looking at a magazine and eating strawberries. When she saw me, she waved me toward the bowl.
“They’re delicious. Mrs Mayhew brought them from her garden. Wasn’t that kind?”
I nodded, thought about discussing what I learned from the professor, and then remembered all Renee’s objections the night before. Better talk to Max first, I decided. I grabbed a strawberry from the bowl, kissed her cheek, and told her that I had things to do.
“Helping Fred record Lulu’s screams?” Renee said.
“Something like that,” I said. “Looking for Betsy.”
“She’s out. She’s packed a bag for Pola, who is staying near the hospital. Betsy said that she’d take it to her. She called for a taxi an hour or so ago.”
“I’m sorry we didn’t know,” I said. “Fred and I could have taken her.”
“Pola rang after you left. Hal’s sitting up and talking a little.”
“That’s a relief.”
Renee nodded. She kept looking down at the papers in her lap. What I’d taken for a magazine at first glance was a colored folder containing a few loose sheets of paper, densely written in Sydney’s flamboyant handwriting.
“What’s that?” I said.
“Camilla’s ritual,” said Renee. I started, but my sister didn’t notice. “It’s lovely. All about welcoming the hooded stranger into the world. To make the world anew. It’s lovely.” She murmured in a lower voice. “To open the way is simple – and the Hooded Man will stride the world in a moment of light.”
The mirror behind her was full of shadows, shadows of women lost in smoke and fire, and I almost cried out. I wanted to spin her around on her chair and tell her to look at what Sydney was doing. But she was the elder, and I was the younger, and when had Renee ever done what I had asked? I needed help.
So I ran out of the room and down the hall. In my room, I pulled the mask off my desk and thought about how I could destroy it. But then I stopped. Sydney wanted the mask. He had made that clear. Maybe I could bargain with him. Give Sydney the mask, take Renee and the rest out of Arkham. He could try again in 1928. That’s what the professor had said.
It was a terrible, cowardly thought. I was ashamed as soon as that idea came to mind. But I couldn’t destroy the mask. The more I looked at it, that simple silver mask, the heavier the air became. It was as if the house was pressing down on me, stopping me from moving, preventing me from doing anything.
“No!” I said and lunged under my bed for my suitcase. I threw it open and tossed the mask into it. I slammed down the lid then I shoved the suitcase back under the bed.
Then the screams began, horrible, terrible shrieks, that rang through the house. Startled, I went out the hallway. What were they doing? We weren’t supposed to film Lulu’s screaming until tomorrow. Her cries continued. Screams that could break glass, sink a battleship, that could tear your heart from your breast. Lulu was screaming. And she wasn’t stopping.
Chapter Twenty-One
At the top of the stairs, looking down the long hallway, I saw the mirrors. I saw the mirrors more clearly than I should. They reflected a hallway twice as long as it really was. The mirrors reflected images that shouldn’t be there. Not when I could see where people were standing. But, as usual, the mirrors caught and bent and reflected around corners all that was happening in that long hallway.
The reflections showed Eleanor, struggling in Max’s arms, as he held her back from Lulu. Fred crouched over a recording machine, a statue of a man, responding to nothing but the whirling gadget before him. Sydney was to one side, watching, just watching.
Then I spotted Jim playing the hooded man. At least it should have been Jim. A tall gaunt figure in a hooded cloak, standing in the doorway, opposite Lulu. But the door was at an impossible, wrong angle to the hallway. The reflected hooded man in the doorway was too tall, too thin, elongated and stretched beyond ordinary human size. Everything was wrong, crooked, and out of true alignment. Everything that I saw was a trick of those mirrors and a deception of the reflections.
In the depths of the mirrors, another house stood, with hallways that opened onto rooms with windows full of alien landscapes. Burning suns and lavender skies, twisted trees and birds with impossible razor beaks, dog men scrambling over the window sills and loping down the hallways, closer and closer, to a hooded man who raised a fist to hammer on the mirror glass.
I froze. Terror held me still. Then I forced myself to take another step down the stairs. The world slid back to a wooden hallway filled with cables and a shiny metal microphone. The tall figure in the hood, the real man standing in the hallway, turned with an uncertain step. It was just Jim, a baffled looking Jim.
“Sydney,” said Jim, pushing the hood off his face. “What now? Do we need to keep rehearsing?”
Sydney didn’t respond. He seemed fascinated by something outside of our view, something reflected in the mirrors.
Lulu’s scream dropped to a whisper as she shredded her voice in terror. Then she crumpled to the ground. Eleanor, with one last vicious kick at Max, broke free and ran to her, sobbing. I hurried down the stairs as Eleanor shook Lulu, trying to wake her.
“What’s wrong with her?” Eleanor said. “I never wrote this. I never wanted this.”
I turned to Fred, yelling at him, “What are you doing? Help us.”
Fred shook himself free of the recording equipment. Blinking like a man who had just woken up, he ran to us. “What is it? Did she shock herself on the mike?”
Eleanor said, “She fainted.”
“What happened?” I asked Fred.
“We started recording. Then silence.”
“Silence? She screamed forever.”
Fred shook his head at me. “I couldn’t hear anything.”
“What were you doing?” I said. “You weren’t filming this scene until tomorrow.”
“Max wanted to test the equipment. So no more accidents,” said Fred, who still seemed uncertain, almost as if he was sleepwalking through his responses. “This was just a test.”
“I could hear Lulu all through the house,” I snapped at him. “Eleanor, Eleanor, let go.” I pulled at her hands, worried at how tightly she was clutching Lulu. “Let’s move her into the parlor and onto the couch.”
Lulu’s eyelids fluttered and then she opened her eyes. She started to speak, but the only sound that she could produce was a reptilian croaking that clearly frightened her as much as it disturbed the rest of us.
Fred fetched Mrs Mayhew from the kitchen, who listened to our sputtered explanations.
“Hot water, lemon, black pepper, and mustard,” she said. “Best cure for a strained voice.”
The revolting beverage produced, Lulu sipped it with grimaces. Eleanor watched her with a forced smiled and reassuring comments.
Jim pulled off the hooded robe with a look of near loathing, announcing that he would be smoking in the garden. He pulled a hip flask out of his pocket as he exited through the kitchen.
I dragged Fred back into the hallway. The mirrors, when I glanced at them, were quiet, reflecting only ordinary things. Reflecting us standing there with a silver microphone between us.
“Now,” I said again, wanting to understand what had happened. The professor, Julius, everyone seemed certain that we had until the summer solstice to stop Sydney. “What went wrong?”
“Nothing,” said Fred. “Lulu started to scream, in fact she kind of played it up, like she does. Showing off. The microphone and recorder worked. But…”
“But what?”
He started moving down the hallway, unplugging cords and winding them neatly over his arm. Deliberate slow moves, like he did when he was worried, and then Fred said, “I couldn’t hear anything. Not Lulu, not anyone else. Not you, not until you started shouting my name. It was as if…”
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