Kate, on the other hand, remained at the house, on a leave of absence from her work. Alex caught sight of her every morning as she sat by the kitchen table, smoking—she had started a year after Ellie had disappeared—and facing the wall. On the nights when Alex came back, she was either in bed asleep or still on that chair, with the same mechanical rote responses and wooden, soporific demeanor. She didn’t put the light on in the kitchen, even when it was pitch-dark. She had aged ten years in a matter of a few weeks. Instead of bringing husband and wife closer together, grief for their missing daughter had torn them apart, leaving them with muted conversations and an inability and unwillingness to communicate.
The police had dropped the case of the missing child. No more children had been reported missing, giving no further clues to a trail that had since gone cold.
One day he heard noises coming from Ellie’s bedroom. Kate had stuffed everything that evoked their daughter—the dolls, the toys, the horsies and the ponies, the clothes, the bedsheets, the pictures Ellie had drawn that they had placed on the refrigerator door—into black plastic bags. That was what was left of their daughter now: two bulky, impersonal, disposable garbage bags outside of an empty room. He abhorred and felt ashamed of his wife for giving up like that. He confronted her outside their daughter’s room. There were accusations thrown, and there was shouting—things that had remained unspoken until that point, perhaps things that needed to be said. After that day their suffering continued separately.
The bench in the Meadows became his favorite spot; it was what he wanted to see when he closed his eyes. He sat there looking out upon the green-laden strips of land, his right hand drumming the splintered slats, the other tightly clasping the notebooks of research. He watched the Meadows as afternoons washed over the city like blood in water.
One day he came back home and saw that Kate had placed her clothes in a suitcase. He went into the bedroom and sat on the bed as she finished packing her things. He stared at the blouses, the skirts, the underwear, the socks. “I’m leaving you,” she said. She left all the photos, because they were a reminder of the child. She opened the door and carried her stuff out. Alex remained there for a while, looking at the closed flat door. He listened to the main door of the building downstairs open and close with a thud. He continued staring at it, long after the sounds below had waned.
Film became a sedative. He found things he expected a home to offer him: answers, and the immediate, insistent sense of belonging that went with family. He continued his visits to the Meadows, only he needed to work faster, search further, include more places of interest, spend less time smoking and drinking, and cover more ground. But there came a point at which he didn’t know if he was searching for a missing daughter or for a missing film. He was too brutalized by the loss to care about the fine shadings of injustice or unfairness or, especially, rage; rather, the loss set him on a course for his next find, whatever that might be, wherever it may take him.
Through half-closed eyelids, Whitman stared at his ex-wife’s wedding ring, his vision blurry from the slow onset of sleep. His last thoughts before surrendering to Morpheus were of hindsight. All the nights his wife had been sitting in the darkness of the kitchen, the muted conversations, the grief; things had worked out for the better. She had a life now, a family, a purpose.
—
He couldn’t recall why he awoke, but it was to the darkness of the room. There was a glimmer from the window as the streetlamps outside lit the curtains with a streak of shimmering light. There was an unusual stillness and quiet, as if the universe had paused to inhale in preparation for the squalls of wind that would roar through the black clouds. The rain seemed to have stopped; not a whisper escaped from its wake.
From somewhere in the house came the creaking of floorboards. The dragging sound of feet scraping across the floor. Whitman rose from his pillow into an almost sitting position and looked around the room, taking in his surroundings. He listened for a sound. There was none except his breathing.
Someone was with him in the room…
16
He didn’t know when he had realized he was not alone; it was a gradual realization, as if something had gently brushed by him and eased into his field of vision. In the dim light of the window, he looked at the foot of his bed. Someone was there.
As his eyes adjusted to its presence, he saw it had the shape of a little girl, staring at him. Not a sound escaped from her.
“Ellie?”
He flinched as a sharp gust of wind rattled the windowpanes and the curtains swayed. He scanned around the room. Even before turning his gaze, he knew the shadowy figure would not still be sitting at the foot of the bed. The room was empty.
It has been like this for a long time.
The wind howled once, shaking the windowpanes, planting droplets of rain against the glass. He heard the shuffling of feet again. It could be the noises of the old house.
He got out of bed and stood against the window. The wind was shaking the streetlamp below in a violent dance, as if it were going to break it off its hinges. He tucked himself back in between the covers.
He rolled over to his other side on the bed, and he saw her. She was lying next to him, facing him. The image gave him a sheer jolt, sending him flying back until he almost fell from the bed. He looked again and she had somehow changed position to the opposite side, standing up, facing him. She stood unmoving, a shadow obscuring most of her face. Her eyes were full of blood.
She raised her hand and pointed a finger at him.
My little girl. What are you trying to tell me?
With her finger still locked on him, she opened her mouth. But instead of words, smoke began to course from her lips.
He wanted to turn away, but he could only stare at her. Smoke was gushing out of her now, from her nose, her eyes, her mouth, cascades of thick smoke enveloping everything, until he could see her no more. He could smell her; she was burning alive. There were no flames; only smoke. He knew he had to help her, because she was just a little girl, burning alive.
He shut his eyes, forcing himself to wake up, but it did no good; he could smell smoke blanketing everything in the room—the childlike whispers, they were real, and the cold floor, everything was real, and the smoke…
Daddy.
How many times had he heard that voice whispering to him? He could hear her amid the smoke, but he could no longer see her.
He moved forward to get to her, and he heard movement behind him. A hand grabbed his shoulder. The back of his neck froze. He began to turn, but the grip on his shoulder became firmer and he stopped. He knew he did not want to turn, that if he did he would regret seeing who or what was behind him.
—
His cell phone woke him up sometime before 4 a.m. He wiped the sleep from his eyes, his nose wrinkling from the smell of the cigarettes.
“The film’s been tampered with,” Nestor’s voice said from the other end of the line. He breathed the words in a sore voice, roughened by coffee and lack of sleep. “Sorry, getting way ahead of myself there,” Nestor continued. He coughed into the receiver and began speaking with no full stops. He must have been speaking for two whole minutes, without any pause, but not really speaking, just blurting out words about the basic tools used in the film conversion.
“Nestor,” Whitman said.
“Oh, right. Sorry. Right, then. The film transfer is going fairly smoothly. Most of it is already on thirty-five millimeter, and it’s transferring to digital as we speak.”
“Just what I wanted to hear.”
“I’m keeping backups at the same time on my memory stick. But there’s something weird about this footage.”
“You mean it’s not original?” Whitman asked.
“It’s original, all right…There’s something about it you’ll want to see.”
“What do you mean? What’s happened to the film?” He heard a noise on the other end.
“Security guard. Comes once during the night. Hav
e to go now. I can’t say anything more. Come over in twenty minutes. I’m setting up the projector for us now. I’ll leave the main door unlocked.”
“How do you—”
The line went dead.
“Hello?” Whitman breathed into the receiver. There was no response.
Part IV
December 5
17
A baronial nightmare, the Archive stood in the thick of the lingering fog. Charlie huddled in his coat as the wind lashed at them from all sides. Whitman threw away his cigarette; it kept going out in the fierce wind. His coat was wrapped around him like tissue paper around an open wound.
They climbed the stone steps. As Nestor had promised, the door was unlocked. They entered, welcoming the warmth that came from inside.
A dim light burned in the corner of the hall. They headed for the staircase, barely making out the outline of the handrail. Whitman could feel the winged Pan staring at them in recognition.
In the dreary light, they climbed the winding staircase. They were one flight away from the top when Whitman felt a sudden alarm. The chill that ran through him was unrelated to the wind outside. He stopped short so abruptly that Charlie almost fell into him. He turned around, thinking he’d never seen Charlie flustered before. This was the man who had swallowed sixteen chicken wings in four minutes; that was four wings a minute, Charlie had reminded him.
On the steps was a pool of dark coagulating blood, the edges spreading in rivulets that dropped from one step to the next.
Whitman quickly read the scene. Someone had stumbled here, struggling to get up, smearing blood as he tried to escape. They gave each other a look. They didn’t speak as they carefully stepped over the puddle. Whitman kept his hand on the rail, his eyes and ears on alert.
At the top of the stairs, the door to Nestor’s workroom was ajar.
Whitman felt the surface of the floor change texture and he looked down at his feet. He saw a thick line of liquid leading inside the room, as if someone had been dragged in or out of the room, bleeding.
Careful not to tread in it, Whitman peeked through the opening, from which a faint light glowed.
They listened. The only sound was the even whir of a clacking projector and the muffled sound of a car engine somewhere outside.
Whitman eased the door open and tiptoed in.
He realized the light was not coming from the projector after all: the room was on fire. The sight of the flames around the desk and projector sent Whitman into panic. He couldn’t hear the projector anymore; he couldn’t hear Charlie calling his name.
He was jolted back to reality by his friend shaking him.
“Alex!”
“The memory stick,” he managed to say.
“What?”
Whitman tried to speak, but his mouth could form no words.
“It’s okay,” Charlie said. “I understand. Nestor backed up his work, didn’t he?”
Charlie helped him out of the room and then ran back inside.
Whitman knelt down and tried to control his breathing. He couldn’t. He could feel the flames drawing closer. The fire was a monster, a living being that needed oxygen to survive. Whitman sat there, helpless, his knees pushing against his thorax.
It was in there. On the edge of consciousness, he could hear the fire puffing as Charlie threw stuff around the room to get to the computer.
As consciousness faded and the fire edged closer, Whitman felt a forgotten fear overtaking him. He tried to imagine verdant fields and ocean waters. But it was of no help.
In the darkness, he saw a silhouette taking form, moving along the hallway.
The horror that had plagued him since he was a kid came back into his brain.
From the shadows, the silhouette emerged on all fours.
“Pluto,” he managed to whisper, and in the last glimpse of consciousness, in the second before the lights went out, he saw the cat looking at him with eyes of incongruent color, its left ear cocked toward the commotion inside the room.
—
Alex’s mom had bought him Pluto, the cat, when his father left them. The first time he petted the cat’s head, tracing the stripes between its ears with his fingers, was the first time he made a friend.
He was twelve years old. He heard voices and running footfalls outside his house. He peered through his bedroom curtains and watched as Eric Sterger and his two buddies, Tommy and Kenny, sprinted by, laughing, hurrying down the deserted lane.
Eric’s family lived a few streets away, in a private, high-walled compound lined with trees. If you were a kid living in East L.A. in the mid-1970s, you would have heard about Eric Sterger and his famous Mississippi Bowie, a deadly steel knife with an etched hamon on the cutting edge of its blade. If he took it out of his pocket, the only thing you could do was run. His reputation for cruelty preceded him on the streets. Flanked by his eager-to-please entourage, he strolled through the neighborhood with a swagger. He was accustomed to being a king in his small realm, and in that realm his word was law.
When he saw them on that day, Alex knew there would be trouble. But he couldn’t imagine how bad. He waited for a minute, then followed the three kids as they raced to a rutted track that ran along a bush-filled ravine with a stream running through it.
He stooped behind a tree trunk. They were laughing, running around something; it was a small animal. They had formed a circle around it, taunting it, cursing at it, laughing.
He squinted in the light, and that was when he saw it.
It was Pluto.
They had tied a noose around the cat’s neck and were taking turns at kicking it and bringing it back to their feet. Pluto cried as he was propelled and back again, shutting his eyes, preparing for the next blow.
Tommy was standing on one side, Kenny on the other, and in the middle was Eric. Alex felt his body clench, and something cold rippled up his spine. Eric seemed relaxed, confident. He was playing with the Bowie, twisting it around in his hands, his fingers almost caressing the blade. There was an empty hutch to their side and a steel container next to it. Kenny and Tommy shifted nervously on their feet, looking from Eric to the cat, anticipating what their leader was going to tell them.
Alex knew he had to do something.
He knelt and picked up a rock. He shouted at them to stop it, to leave the cat alone. Eric looked at him, then yanked the rope, tightening it around the cat’s throat, and brought it upward. Pluto was choking, on his hind legs, mouth open, hissing like a teakettle.
Eric lifted the cat in the air, then suspended it over the single-story hutch. He dropped it inside and shut the top. He then motioned with his hand and the other boys separated, forming a half circle, trapping Alex in the ravine.
He told them again to leave his cat alone. They asked him what he was going to do about it. Alex didn’t reply; he just clenched his fist around the rock.
They were staring at him, inching closer all the time. This was no stalemate; it was three and a knife against one and a rock.
Alex did the only thing he could do: he aimed, and then he hurled the rock at them. It shot forward with a whoosh, grazing Tommy in the arm. Tommy yelped. The other two flung themselves at Alex, knocking him to the ground.
“What do we do?” Kenny kept asking Eric. There was a tremor in his voice. Then Alex understood: Kenny was afraid because he had no idea what sick plan Eric had in mind.
“What should we do?” Eric repeated, a wicked smile on his face. Then he told them.
Kenny and Tommy held Alex next to the hutch so that he was facing the cat.
From the other side, Eric reached for a stick. He ran it along the bars of the cage in sadistic foreplay. The cat followed the edge of the stick, in a circular motion around itself.
Eric grasped the steel container with both hands. He steadied it against his chest and unscrewed the top. The smell of gasoline drifted around them. Alex shivered. His head shook.
Eric said something soothing and quiet to the cat.
&nbs
p; Oh, my God, Alex thought. Oh, no. Please, no.
Eric flipped the container, dousing the cat with the gasoline. “You’re going to shine for me now, aren’t you, my love?”
Alex’s heart and stomach collided as Eric struck a match. He dangled it over the cage, at the same time looking into Alex’s eyes. Alex stared into the head of the match, into the center of the flame; it was dancing wildly, a rabid animal ready to be unleashed from its cage.
Then Eric dropped the match into the hutch and stepped back. The blaze swept quickly over the cage. The whoosh mixed with the cat’s screams.
With a furious hiss, the cat flung itself against the bars, mouth wide, teeth bared. He banged against them, flew back, and attacked again—and again—relentlessly, without pause, hissing, snarling.
Alex caught a glimpse of Pluto’s face just before the flames engulfed him. He saw the resignation in it. It was the look of the lamb.
He tried to shut his eyes, but Eric kept pummeling him on the head with the butt of the knife until he had opened them again.
Eric was laughing, satisfied. “Look, the cat’s running around on fire.”
The cat banged again and again; its face was starting to bleed with the repeated impacts. The heat was so intense that even the metal-wired hutch broke apart.
Alex stared in horror.
When it was all over, Pluto lay in the stream. He was barely alive, clinging to his last moments, oblivious to any surroundings. His fur coat was gone, the skin underneath livid and seeping. He kept quivering, and that made Alex shiver, too. But for the quiver, the cat did not move, did not stretch an inch. Only the eye moved—that half-burnt eye as Pluto ghost-raised his head. Some blood flowed from the hole where the other eye had been. Around the cat floated bits of clotted, half-burnt fur. A hint of the smell of burnt meat hovered in the air, and Alex felt a weight settle in his neck, just below his Adam’s apple.
Séance Infernale Page 11