He said something after that, but she didn’t hear him. If he noticed the tears in her eyes, she’d have blamed the sun. Fortunately an acquaintance approached him, giving her an opportunity to leave, and she didn’t have to explain.
* * *
Visually the morgue was always a screaming, macabre kaleidoscope of deaths both violent and passive. Yet the place itself was quiet—somewhere between a church and an empty restaurant. People stared at the corpses, bearing expressions of horror, and often fell silent. Sometimes they gasped or prayed; sometimes they murmured to their companions or the stranger closest to them. All in all, however, the morgue was generally a place full of thoughts and respect accompanied by little sound.
But not this day.
Eight days after the fourth victim, Charlotte Benoit, was identified, and six days after her corpse was removed from display, the morgue echoed with sobs. It was a devastating sound; Nathalie was wearing a black skirt and caught herself bunching up the fabric as the sobs intensified. The room was the fullest it had been in a while, and Nathalie couldn’t see the corpses just yet.
She did, however, see the back of a woman Maman’s age, heavy-set and wearing a hat. The woman stood near the viewing pane, face buried in her hands.
Mme. Jalbert?
Her mind started to form questions about why and what a coincidence when Nathalie’s hands, as if possessed, pushed through the crowd. She didn’t bother to apologize, because when she made her way to the glass, a piece of her soul disintegrated.
There on the slab, with a jaundiced old man on one side and a toothless woman on the other, lay a girl with sun-lightened hair and sightless blue eyes and gentle hands that would never write another word. The corpse of beautiful.
Beautiful.
Agnès.
30
No, it was a dream.
She’d had nightmare after nightmare about the morgue.
This was only a dream. The worst one yet, but a dream. Or an illusion of some sort. She’d only seen her a few days ago. Agnès was very much alive. Very much Agnès.
Then Nathalie heard Mme. Jalbert sob. Agnès’s father came out of the Medusa door and embraced his wife. The two of them stared at their bloated, dead daughter and held each other close.
It was real.
Nathalie looked at her hands. She couldn’t feel them. Couldn’t feel anything. The black-and-white striped blouse she wore seemed be on someone else’s arms. Her bones and organs melted and her body collapsed in on itself and she spilled onto the floor of the morgue like liquid.
Only when someone’s satchel brushed her elbow did Nathalie solidify into a human made of flesh and bone once again.
She’d averted her gaze from Agnès instantly but now forced herself to look again. Heart in her throat, she made the sickening observation that Agnès had the facial cuts of the others, the temple wound of the victim Mirabelle Gregoire, and something the Dark Artist hadn’t done before: two slashes ripped across the stomach.
Agnès’s father began to escort his wife toward the exit. Nathalie didn’t know whether to go after them or afford them privacy. She hesitated for a moment before deciding in favor of consolation, even though she herself had no voice, no means to verbally acknowledge what happened.
She’d just taken a step toward them when Mme. Jalbert broke away from her husband. She dashed toward the viewing pane, threw her heft against it with a thud, and bawled.
“My baby!” She pounded the glass several times, each strike weaker than the last. In a voice wrought with defeat, she leaned into the glass as if it were an ear for the dead. “You’re still radiant, Agnès.”
Acid crawled up Nathalie’s throat.
I have to. I have no choice.
Agnès’s father approached his wife, tenderly pulling her away from the viewing pane. Christophe appeared in the display room with two men. One carried a sheet, and the other, a stretcher.
“Non! Don’t take her away. Don’t!” Mme. Jalbert screamed, tears streaming down her cheeks.
For Agnès.
Christophe put his hand on the curtain, ready to close it.
You’re blessed, Nathalie.
“Why?” Agnès’s mother cried. “Why my girl?”
Nathalie did the only thing she could. She touched the viewing pane.
* * *
Something was different this time.
The vision didn’t take place in reverse, nor was it soundless like the previous ones. Everything played out as if it were a theater scene, pulling Nathalie deeper into the Dark Artist than ever before.
She felt with his hands.
Breathed his breath.
Agnès was drowsy and coming to, as if she’d fainted. “Where am I?” She mouthed the words; Nathalie couldn’t hear her.
“Somewhere safe. You had a little accident when you stepped off my carriage. Nothing serious.” That she heard; the Dark Artist’s own voice, with remarkable sharpness and nuance. Through his ears.
Agnès shook her head, confused. “I don’t remember.” Again, soundless.
She moved to get up and he pushed her down by the shoulders. Fear shone in her eyes. She screamed so hard her neck pulsed, but it was silent.
The Dark Artist straddled her, pinning her wrists with his left hand.
She squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head. Tears streamed down her face, pooling into the blood oozing from her mouth.
The Dark Artist pressed one white-gloved hand into her neck and reached behind himself with the other. The blade led his hand back into view.
“No!” she mouthed, jerking her head.
The Dark Artist snorted. “Yes, of course!”
He plunged the knife into Agnès’s throat and Nathalie snapped to the present.
She was overcome with nausea. The curtain had been drawn across the viewing pane. She braced herself against the glass and looked toward Agnès’s parents. They were gone.
“Agnès.” She said the name of her friend. Now a corpse. She knocked on the window, as if she could wake Agnès up, as if Agnès could just hop off the slab and walk out with her.
Nathalie began to shake. She might as well have been standing outside naked in the middle of winter.
No one noticed her. The rest of the crowd huddled together, strangers bound through the dramatic outburst of Agnès’s mother.
Nathalie inhaled and exhaled carefully until the pulse hammering in her neck stopped. The questions battered her from within. Why wasn’t this scene in reverse like all the others? Why could she hear the Dark Artist but not Agnès? Was this vision different because it was Agnès?
Agnès, her beautiful friend who had spent her summer near the sea, in the kitchen, in the warmth of her grandmother’s home.
And now ending it in the morgue.
Nathalie was still too shocked to cry, and she was afraid that when she did, she wouldn’t be able to stop.
Someone—not Christophe—pushed the curtain open again.She stared through the morgue glass to study the other eleven corpses, but all she saw was Agnès.
I will find him for you, Agnès. Find him and bring him to justice.
She walked over to the wooden Medusa door and knocked. One of the guards let her in, closing the door behind her. She was just about to explain her business with Christophe when he stepped out of one the rooms, removing his gloves.
Did he just handle Agnès’s body?
“That’s my friend. Agnès Jalbert.”
Christophe pointed to the room he’d just exited. “The—the victim?”
She nodded, because she’d lost the ability to speak. It felt like a sponge was in her throat, swollen with the tears she cried on the inside.
“Oh goodness. I…” He hesitated, trying several times to say something and stopping short each time. Then he cleared his throat. “I’m so very sorry, Nathalie. Shall we talk in my office?”
Again she nodded. The sponge was still too dense with sorrow to let words pass through.
The walk
along the corridor differed so much from her first time here, the day of her first vision. Back then she’d been fascinated by the workings of the morgue, intrigued by every sight and smell, devouring every detail of its antiseptic morbidity. Those things were in the periphery, and given all that had since happened, she felt almost guilty for once thinking that way. Now her life was nothing but death.
Nothing but death.
Agnès is dead. “Agnès is dead.”
And that was it. Saying those three words released the tears from the dam.
She didn’t want to cry in front of Christophe, but she couldn’t help it. Everything in her being just poured forth. He helped her to a chair and pulled his own next to it. She took the handkerchief he offered and soaked it with her tears. She cried, with shoulders shaking, as Christophe tentatively patted her hand.
Nathalie composed herself just enough to tell Christophe about Agnès. About their time together the other day, about coming into the morgue today. About her decision to touch the viewing pane and what she saw. “Could I have helped catch the Dark Artist? Could I have saved Agnès?” The questions hung there like mist; she didn’t expect Christophe to answer them. They were impossible to answer. “I will do whatever it takes to help catch him. I want to watch him march to the guillotine.”
The strength in her voice, a voice that had vanished just a short while ago, surprised even her.
“I understand,” he said, and everything from his eyes to his tone to the way he sat in the chair conveyed empathy. “That’s a selfless, meaningful way to honor Agnès’s life. If it becomes too much for you again, that’s fine, too. Whatever you’d like, Nathalie. You can come to me anytime. For help or to—to talk. And of course we’ll be keeping the patrol in place, no matter what.”
She thanked him and fell silent. It wasn’t a comfortable silence. The nagging thoughts she’d kept at bay used the quiet to break through to the forefront of her mind.
Did the Dark Artist kill Agnès because of Nathalie, or perhaps instead of her?
The query sat on Nathalie’s tongue a moment, then rolled back into herself. No. She didn’t want to say it out loud. Christophe knew the question was there; he had it, too. She was certain of it.
She thanked him for being so kind and assured him again that she would continue to help. He escorted her out, urging her to be safe, like he had the day they met. She was about to step away when Christophe put his hand on her shoulder.
Nathalie faced him, startled by the gesture.
“I’m—I’m very sorry about Agnès,” he said. He extended his arms tentatively and embraced her with strong yet tender arms.
The moment was brief, but she held it close like the cherished gift it was. She hoped that whatever was taken from her memory on this harrowing day, this alone would be spared.
31
In the days that followed, a series of emotions stormed through Nathalie like an invading army, row after row. They left behind a pitted landscape, a battle-weary spirit forever altered.
And once they passed through, these waves of sadness and anger and denial and guilt, they disappeared into a void. Alongside the intense feelings was a parallel emptiness.
Everything or nothing. Noise or silence.
The crescendo of this terrible dichotomy peaked at the funeral visitation for Agnès, where Nathalie stepped into and out of herself several times.
The Jalberts’ apartment was a boiling pot of black attire. People filtered in and out, pulling out black lace handkerchiefs and crying and bringing food. The din of whispers cut through the air like the wingbeats of a thousand birds.
Nathalie ignored all of it. She spoke to no one, not even Maman, as they stood in the parlor. Her eyes stayed on Agnès, laid out in a white silk dress trimmed with elaborate lace. Nathalie was relieved to see the death mask, cast in wax at the morgue. No cuts, no bruising, no horrible disfigurement. Agnès had dignity in death and somehow, despite all that had happened to her precious body, beauty.
Those who didn’t know she was ripped to death might have thought she’d passed in her sleep.
A horde of if only thoughts rushed Nathalie. If only Agnès had spent that night with her cousin Marie as planned. If only Marie hadn’t become ill during the music concert they attended and gone back to her apartment; if only Agnès hadn’t chosen to stay and return to her own home that evening instead. If only she had made it here.
Surely the cousin was here, in the room now. Nathalie didn’t want to know which of the morose young women lining the walls was Marie.
Nathalie and her mother approached M. and Mme. Jalbert, swathed in black wool and crêpe, and said all the things you say to those in the depths of indescribable grief. Roger stood beside them with great solemnity, staring at his older sister’s corpse. His black clothes made his white-blond hair and pale complexion seem hollow, almost ghostly.
She decided not to tell the Jalberts about her vision, not here, not ever. There was no benefit to confessing it or telling them she’d seen the moment of Agnès’s death or that she inhabited the gaze of the monster who did it.
After paying their respects, Nathalie and Maman approached the casket. Maman knelt in prayer. Nathalie did, too, and after praying to God, she spoke silently to Agnès. She’d done so many times since seeing her in the morgue, and probably would talk to her forever. The funeral was to be hundreds of kilometers away at the cathedral in Bayeux, and the burial in the yard of Agnès’s grandmother. So this, this was the last time she’d see Agnès outside of her own memories.
My Agnès.
I did this to you. Don’t forgive me, because I will never forgive myself. I promise to seek justice for you, and I promise never to cast off my gift again. All that it entails, the penalty that I pay … it’s a just reward for my guilt.
She caught sight of Roger, blinking quickly and trying so hard not to cry. I promise to keep an eye on Roger, too.
Nathalie stood up and touched Agnès’s cold hands, folded in prayer. Thank you for everything.
Maman made eye contact with her and Nathalie responded with a nod. As they made their way out of the crowded apartment, someone tapped her on the shoulder.
Simone.
She wore a black lace dress that fit her silhouette perfectly, and she smelled of rose water.
How Nathalie had missed that scent.
“I’m so very sorry,” Simone said. Louis stood at her side and somberly uttered the same.
“I—I … thank you.” She swallowed back the tears. This was too much. Simone, here, now. “Thank you both.”
Afraid that she would erupt into tears and make a fool of herself, she turned abruptly away. Maman hadn’t realized she’d stopped and had already gone out.
“I’ll be watching Céleste during the day tomorrow,” Simone called after her. “Please … please come by.”
Nathalie bit the inside of her cheek and faced Simone once more. “I will.”
* * *
After lunch the next day, Nathalie knocked on the door of the Marchands’ apartment. She reached in her dress pocket for the catacomb dirt that wasn’t there, like she had so many times since shattering it. Tomorrow she resolved to go to the Catacombs for more. She’d take comfort anywhere she could get it right now, even in the form of an earth-filled vial.
Simone answered the door quickly, almost too quickly, as if she’d been waiting with her hand on the knob. The brightness in her eyes had dimmed and her faint smile of greeting lacked the usual Simone sparkle.
Nathalie was unprepared for the grimness of the apartment as she stepped inside. Unwashed dishes, clothes strewn about the chairs and sofa, papers scattered—this in a home normally tidier than her own. Candles were lit in front of a small painting of the suffering Christ and another of the Blessed Mother, with a halo. A dark mood hung in the air, grief mixed with apprehension and dwindling hope.
The door to Céleste’s room, which Simone used to share, was open a crack. Nathalie could hear the raspy, measured br
eathing of the sleeping child within. “I’m so sorry about Céleste. My mother told me she’s even sicker than before.”
“Oui,” said Simone, her voice flat. She sat in a tapestry chair, moving a rolled-up blouse to the side. “For a while she would get better, then worse again, then better. Now it’s just worse. The doctor comes by daily, but we may need to bring her to the hospital at some point.”
Nathalie sat in the middle of the sofa. Not right next to Simone’s chair, not too far away. “I pray for her every night.”
“Thank you,” said Simone.
Uncertain silence drifted between them. Minutes passed.
Or only seconds, perhaps.
Nathalie knit her fingers together, studying them as she wound them around one another.
“So,” began Simone, “Agnès. I—I don’t even know where to begin. I didn’t know her well, only knew her through you, and yet I see her face every time I close my eyes.”
Nathalie’s throat pulsed with sorrow. “Me, too.”
“As soon as I heard about Agnès, I realized how foolish this quarrel was … and I’m ashamed it carried on as long as it did.”
“I agree.” Nathalie couldn’t bring herself to look at Simone, because she was afraid she’d cry. And she’d done too much of that in recent days. She stared straight ahead. “I didn’t touch the glass for Charlotte. I needed to clear my head. But then for Agnès…” Her voice cracked.
Simone came to her side and put her arm around her, and Nathalie rested her head on Simone’s shoulder. They were quiet for a while. A comfortable quiet. When Nathalie felt like she was able, she told Simone everything that had happened, from her day with Agnès to her vision in the morgue to her conversation with Christophe afterward.
“So much has changed this summer,” said Nathalie.
Simone undid the bottom of her braid and weaved the blond strands again. “At least I’m still me and you’re still you. We grew up together. We’re still growing up together.”
“When will we finish that?”
“Never, I hope.”
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