by Tara Moss
‘I just need one,’ I whispered under my breath.
Barely had I uttered the words when, incredibly, a jar of BloodofYouth tumbled out of the top of the woman’s open purse. I thought the jar would break when it hit the pavement but it landed on the end of the soft red carpet, and rolled to my feet.
I blinked and looked around. No one had seen it but me.
‘Thanks,’ I murmured as I bent down and scooped up the jar. ‘Thank you.’ I didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty as I put it in my gift bag.
Phew.
By now more guests were filing out of the restaurant, the valet cars and limos were a confused tangle on the street and cabs seemed in short supply. After our conversation, I would have been a little embarrassed if Jay walked out and saw me waiting in that slow line for a cab, so despite Celia’s warning not to wander alone around New York at night, I was going to do precisely that. I broke from the queue and walked past. A couple of guests turned their heads and I felt eyes on me. One swarthy man with slicked-back hair and a white suit and shoes actually winked at me as his Porsche showed up. (No one had ever winked at me back home. Was it Celia’s outfit, or was it a New York thing?) I walked past at a brisk pace, away from the glamorous people and the taxis and the fancy cars, and right down the sidewalk. I still felt I was being watched as I walked away, and I hoped I looked confident, though I was not sure where I was headed.
About a block away from the restaurant, my adrenaline subsided and I noticed that under it all I was pretty peckish. I hadn’t eaten dinner before the launch and I’d passed up the odd-looking hors d’oeuvres they were serving. I found myself walking in the direction of an illuminated sign for a convenience store two blocks away, and by the time I got there, I noticed my feet were beginning to hurt in Celia’s shoes, and my stomach was hollow.
‘Hi there,’ I said cheerily to the man behind the counter as I entered the shop.
He looked a little startled and didn’t respond.
Figuring Harold’s Grocer might be closed, I bought myself a packet of penne pasta, a jar of pasta sauce, a wedge of parmesan sealed in plastic, a couple of slightly wrinkled ‘fresh’ tomatoes and a head of garlic. (When I asked if he carried fresh basil, the man looked at me like I was insane.) The unfriendly man rang the items through, mumbled the cost and I paid him with the cash I had.
I stepped out into the night with my bag of groceries just as a yellow cab was passing on its way to the line of people waiting outside the restaurant.
‘Hey!’ I called and threw my arm in the air. The cabbie saw me and screeched to a halt.
Amazingly, this taxi driver also needed to be convinced that Spektor actually existed.
It seemed these New York cabbies didn’t know their town very well.
It was just before nine when I stepped inside Celia’s building. The sky had turned inky, and the lobby was even darker. I found a light switch just inside the doorway and flicked it on, and the dusty chandelier came to life.
I crossed the floor with my footsteps echoing and my grocery bag rustling. The lift was waiting, and it began its ascent with the customary rattles and clicks. I watched the vacant floors pass. Click click. Rattle rattle. Ho hum. I planned to have a quick pasta dinner then spend the rest of the evening working on my piece for Pandora about the launch of BloodofYouth.
I stiffened when, from the corner of my eye, I caught movement on the third-floor landing.
What was that?
I did a double take.
Standing near the cobwebbed doorway on the landing was a young woman – a naked young woman. I was so startled that I cried out. In an instant, she was gone. The lift continued its ascent, and I dropped the groceries and crouched on the floor to peer through the ironwork, but I didn’t catch another glimpse of the nude figure I was sure I’d seen. The lift doors opened on Celia’s floor and the building grew quiet again. I stood frozen with indecision for a moment, heedless of the garlic and tomatoes rolling out of the plastic bag and across the floor of the lift.
Celia’s warning not to go wandering through the other levels of the building replayed in my mind, yet I touched the round button for level three, unable to simply walk away from what I’d seen.
Oh boy . . .
The doors closed again and the old lift rattled its way back down to the floor below. The doors opened and I stepped out cautiously. Alert to noise and movement, like an animal investigating dangerous new territory, I stood stock-still on the landing, my eyes darting in all directions. The elevator rattled closed behind me and then grew still.
‘Hello?’ I called out tentatively.
There was no reply.
I tried to recall precisely what I’d seen. There’d been a young woman, nude. She’d had light hair, I thought. Blonde and wavy. Her body had appeared pale. I thought there’d been something dark on her arm. An arm band? A tattoo? A mark?
‘Is anyone there?’ I called. I walked to the door of the apartment and tried the handle. It was cold to the touch, and it was locked.
I knocked. ‘Hello?’ All was silent.
I gave it a little push. Then a shove. No, it was definitely locked. And the cobwebs were undisturbed, suggesting that it hadn’t been opened in a long time. Yet I thought the woman had gone inside. Where else could she have gone? It wasn’t possible that she had gone through the door, was it?
I shivered.
Maybe she was a ghost. Like Lieutenant Luke. But then, he was just a dream . . . wasn’t he?
The elevator sprang to life behind me. I was startled and I ran towards it with desperate speed, as if I could somehow stop the momentum, but of course it was too late. I pressed the lift button helplessly and watched my groceries head up to the penthouse. I suddenly felt unaccountably terrified of being alone down here. And I was almost as scared of the fact that Great-Aunt Celia had probably just summoned the lift from above. What would she say if she saw me here on the third floor after she had expressly told me not to explore the other floors?
Great.
The following minute passed agonisingly slowly. I considered hiding, but where? And my shopping was on the floor of the lift. There was no getting around it – I had been caught out.
Through the panicked adrenaline pulsing in my ears, I heard the lift doors open at the floor above, then close. I heard the lift begin to descend. I braced myself to face Celia.
Sorry, Great-Aunt Celia, I thought I might πhave seen a tattooed naked chick floating around and I just had to investigate . . .
The lift arrived on the third floor. The doors opened and I drew in my breath to say—
It was empty.
Well, it was empty except for my groceries, of course. I leapt in, and pressed the button for level four. I felt relieved, of course, and guilty that I’d disobeyed Celia’s wishes, but also a little cowardly for having been scared – not to mention confused. I really thought I’d seen someone . . . or something. Was it my imagination, again? I knew what my father would have said: I’ve had enough of your tall tales, young lady. Now grow up.
I gathered my spilled groceries and stepped out of the lift.
I knocked carefully on Celia’s door and entered. ‘Celia, I’m home,’ I said from the doorway. I bit my lip. I hadn’t seen any naked woman on the third floor. Everything was fine, I told myself.
My great-aunt was in her reading chair. I could see her feet from where I stood.
‘You’re home early,’ she declared. She unlaced her ankles and placed her feet on the floor. ‘How was the launch? Did you meet anyone special?’
I thought of Jay and smiled. ‘I met some nice people,’ I said.
‘And the model, Athanasia?’
‘She was not one of them.’
There was a light chuckle in response. ‘Yes,’ she said. I heard a creak of the leather chair and saw Celia’s feet swing off the hassock.
‘I’m starved, so I’ll just put some pasta on. Can I get you anything?’
‘Oh, no, darling. Thank yo
u,’ she said. ‘You’re such a sweet girl.’
I slipped off Celia’s ruby shoes, and walked into the kitchen. I laid my groceries across the counter, got out a chopping board and knife and filled a pot with water. I turned the knob of one of the gas stove elements until the flame was nice and high. The water on the bottom of the pot sizzled for a moment as I placed it on top.
‘I’ll just go change out of this lovely dress,’ I called out. ‘Thank you so much for lending it to me! It was a real hit!’
I hung Celia’s scarlet dress carefully on a hanger on the front of the tall wardrobe. I hadn’t spilled anything on it, and the slight wrinkles that had formed along the hem in the taxi would fall out in a few hours, I figured. I was amazed by the attention it had garnered. Jay Rockwell hadn’t even recognised me as the girl he’d met in the elevator only a couple of days before. Clothes do not make the woman, but they do seem to get her noticed, I thought.
‘Oh!’ came a strangled voice outside my room. There was a thud, and the tinkle of breaking glass.
Startled, I ran towards the sound, dressed only in my underwear, and found my Great-Aunt Celia cowering against the wall in the hallway outside the kitchen. She had knocked over the vase in the hall, and the hardwood floor was covered in petals, water and shattered crystal.
‘Don’t move or you could cut yourself,’ I cried. ‘I’ll clean up the glass.’ I ran back into my room, threw a robe around myself and found the dustpan and broom in a kitchen cupboard. In a flash I was kneeling at her feet. It was then I noticed that she was wearing shoes, so was in little danger of cutting her feet. ‘Great-Aunt Celia?’
It seemed she wasn’t cowering because of the glass. There was something else. Something in the kitchen.
‘Get it out!’ Celia half growled, half screamed in a voice I did not recognise.
The sound brought me to my feet instantly, my mouth agape.
Finally Celia’s body animated again and she ran from the hallway, covering her nose and mouth with her hands.
I looked around, confused. My groceries were on the counter. The water was just starting to come to the boil on the stove. I could see nothing wrong. ‘Get what out?’
My great-aunt paused in the doorway of her bedroom. ‘The garlic! Get it out!’
She slammed the door.
It was a full thirty minutes later when Great-Aunt Celia reappeared in the hall, now unruffled. I’d cleaned up the mess and started boiling the water again. Celia’s crystal vase couldn’t be saved. She must have hit the table hard to knock it over.
‘Darling Pandora?’ she asked.
‘I got rid of the garlic,’ I responded stiffly, still utterly confused by the incident. Aunt Georgia had warned me that my great-aunt would be old, frail and possibly even a little senile, but I had not witnessed so much as a single moment of senility or even fragility from Celia until half an hour before. ‘I threw it away. It’s in the dumpster outside.’
Satisfied that the offending vegetable was gone from the apartment, she began to move slowly down the hallway, sniffing the air delicately. ‘Oh, it does linger a bit, doesn’t it?’ she complained. I had only bought one head of garlic and had not managed to cook so much as a single clove. It was absurd to imagine anyone could smell it lingering in the apartment.
Celia let out a sigh, and approached me. Her black veil was in place, and through the fine netting I could see that the usual serenity had returned to her features.
‘I’m sorry if I gave you a bit of a fright,’ she said. ‘I should have warned you that I am severely allergic to garlic.’
‘Oh, no. I’m the one who is sorry,’ I replied, trying to hide my puzzlement. I was no expert, but weren’t food allergies normally restricted to eating, not smell? ‘Are you okay? You didn’t cut yourself?’
‘I’m fine. Could you be a dear and open the kitchen window?’ she said.
I opened the window as she requested, and was hit with cold night air. When I came back to where she was standing my great-aunt gave me a reassuring pat. ‘I should have warned you,’ she repeated. ‘But never mind. Now you know.’ Then she looked down at my right hand and her eyes narrowed. Beneath the mesh of her veil I saw a strange, wild look come over her. I followed her eyes down and noticed that I had cut my index finger on the broken crystal. The tiniest smear of blood marred my pale fingertip.
I flinched instinctively and hid my hand behind my back.
‘Darling,’ Great-Aunt Celia said, her smile fixed. ‘You’d better fix that cut.’
‘Ah . . . I hadn’t realised.’
‘You’ll want a Band-Aid for that, sweetheart. They are in the spare bathroom. Top shelf,’ she said smoothly.
I heard the water boil over on the stove behind me. I ran over and turned down the heat. I had been so hungry, and now my appetite was quite gone.
‘Take a seat,’ Celia suggested when I returned from the stove. She gestured to the hassock. I sat on it, with my hands folded nervously in my lap. I pressed my cut finger hard against my palm. I’d get a Band-Aid later, if I needed one. ‘You asked me earlier about the Global Society for Psychical Research. Has anyone ever told you that you have the mind of an investigative journalist?’
I perked up a little at the compliment. Perhaps one day I really could be an investigative journalist. Perhaps I could report on important events in the world rather than skin cream launches.
‘Why don’t I tell you a bit about this building?’ Celia suggested, and it suddenly occurred to me that she was trying to distract me from the strange incident with the garlic.
‘Oh, good,’ I said a little cautiously. ‘I’ve been really curious about it.’
‘The Society for Psychical Research was first formed in Britain in Victorian days to study psychic or paranormal events.’
Paranormal.
Psychic.
My ‘public denial’ was so hard-wired that I felt myself freeze up at the mention. My hands clenched.
‘The society was established in London by a group of prominent thinkers, academics, researchers and scientists of the time,’ Celia explained. ‘And similar societies started popping up overseas. Edmund Barrett, the man who designed this building, was part of a local group. Of course, back then there were many scandalous reports of telepathy, psychic ability, ghosts and hauntings. Séances were quite popular in Victorian days. As I understand it, they formed the society to research these things and try to discover the truth. Everything has changed since, of course. The existence of paranormal activity is simply not accepted in our mainstream culture. If the society wasn’t fringe then, it certainly is now.’
‘It still exists?’ I was shocked.
‘Oh yes. The SPR does exist. They have been publishing a journal since the 1880s.’
I was so enthralled by her story that my concerns about her strange behaviour began to dissipate.
‘But it seems Edmund Barrett may have had some different ideas to his friends,’ Celia continued. ‘He was more aggressive with his experiments. Now keep in mind, he came from a very wealthy and prominent family,’ she said, leaning forward. ‘So naturally he wasn’t challenged for a while.’ She looked into the shadows thoughtfully. ‘But he ended up causing a bit of a scandal, and he fell out with the society he had founded. Some say he was banished from the group for his activities, and some say he left them over differences of opinion. Either way, it was around then that Barrett started conducting his own research here.’
Here?
By now my heart was pounding like a hammer, and my palms had begun to sweat.
‘Barrett conducted paranormal research experiments in this building?’ I gasped.
‘Well yes, darling Pandora. He did. While he was living here,’ Celia replied soberly. ‘The entire building we are sitting in right now was both his home and his paranormal testing laboratory, as I understand it. Only later was the mansion divided into separate apartments.’
I blinked, speechless. There were so many rooms. Of course a wealthy man
could afford such a palatial abode. But the research laboratory? Where was that? What did he do there?
‘Barrett, as an architect, believed that he could effectively create a structure which would encourage psychical ability in his subjects. His architectural ideas were like science projects, really. He believed that the right environment could enhance and magnify the strength of paranormal activity, and act as a sort of super-conductor for the spirits, telepathy, psychic ability and so on. He designed this building specially.’ She eyed me carefully, perhaps to gauge my response to her revelations. ‘The building we live in is a magnet of sorts for certain energies. Certain activity. Or according to Barrett it was. There are strong forces here.’
I felt the hair on the back of my neck prickle and my flesh shiver with goose pimples.
‘Of course, most people regarded him as having lost his mind,’ she added, as if to soften the blow of these disclosures. ‘History did not judge Barrett kindly.’
‘What kind of experiments did he conduct here?’ I dared to ask.
Great-Aunt Celia looked thoughtful. She laced her elegant fingers. ‘It is hard to know for certain. His personal journals weren’t found after the fire.’
Again, my heart skipped.
‘There was a fire?’ What little I’d seen of the building looked original and reasonably undamaged, apart from the wear and tear of age.
‘Barrett died in an unusual fire in . . . when was it? I think it was 1908. A case of supposed “spontaneous combustion”.’