by Riley Sager
Le Calice D’Or.
That was the name of her group of followers.
The Golden Chalice.
I flip back a hundred pages, locating a telling passage about Marie Damyanov.
While times of strife cause many to seek solace in their faith, it also forces others to consider the option of appealing to a satanic messiah, especially during eras marked by extreme warfare or plague. Damyanov believed that after forming the heavens and the earth, God abandoned his creations, allowing chaos to reign. To endure this chaos, Damyanov advised her followers to appeal to a mightier deity—Lucifer—who could be summoned not with prayers but with blood. Thus began rituals in which young women would be cut, their blood caught in a golden chalice and poured over an open flame.
Years later, some of Damyanov’s disillusioned followers hinted at more horrific practices in letters to friends and confidantes. One wrote that Damyanov claimed the sacrifice of a young woman during a blue moon would summon Lucifer himself, where he would grant those present with gifts of good health and immense fortune. The author of the letter then went on to admit that he never witnessed such an act, saying it was most likely a tale created to sully Damyanov’s reputation.
After Damyanov was arrested for indecency in late 1930, Le Calice D’Or disbanded. Damyanov herself faded from public view. Her whereabouts after January 1931 are unknown.
I reread the passage, my sense of unease intensifying. I try to recall details of the Cornelia Swanson case. Her maid’s name was Ruby. I remember that. The Ruby Red Killing. She was cut open, her organs removed. Something like that is hard to forget. As is the fact that the murder took place on Halloween night. I can even remember the year: 1944.
I grab my phone and find a website that gives you the lunar cycle for every month in any given year. It turns out that on Halloween in 1944, the sky was brightened by the second full moon of the month.
A blue moon.
My hands start to shake, making it difficult to hold the phone as I do a new internet search, this time for a single name.
Cornelia Swanson.
A flurry of articles appears, pretty much all of them about the murder. I click on one and am greeted by a photo of the infamous Mrs. Swanson.
I stare at the picture, and the world goes sideways, as if the library has suddenly tilted. I grip the edge of the table, bracing myself.
Because the photo I’m looking at is one I’ve seen before. A sharp-featured beauty in a satin gown and silk gloves. Flawless skin. Hair as dark as a moonless night.
I saw it in the photo album in Nick’s apartment. Although he identified the woman, he never used her name.
But now I know it.
Cornelia Swanson.
And her granddaughter is none other than Greta Manville.
40
I text Dylan from inside the library.
Call me ASAP! I found something!
When five minutes tick by and he doesn’t respond, I decide to call him. A theory is forming. One I need to share with someone else, if only so they’ll tell me I’m being crazy.
But here’s the thing: I’m not being crazy.
Right now, insanity would be a blessing.
Outside, I lean against the base of one of the library’s stone lions and dial Dylan’s number. The call again goes straight to his voicemail. I leave a message, urgently whispering into the phone.
“Dylan, where are you? I’ve been looking into some of the people living at the Bartholomew. And they’re not who they say they are. I think—I think I know what’s going on, and it’s some scary shit. Please, please call me back as soon as you get this.”
I end the call and stare up at the sky. The moon is out already—full and bright and hanging so low it’s bisected by the spire of the Chrysler Building.
As kids, Jane and I loved full moons and how their light would stream in through her bedroom window. Sometimes we’d wait until my parents went to sleep and stand in the ice-white glow, as if bathing in it.
That memory is tainted now that I’ve read what members of the Golden Chalice allegedly did during full moons. Just like the Bartholomew, it’s another piece of my past with Jane sullied.
I turn around, about to head back inside the library, when a ring bleats from the phone still white-knuckled in my hand.
Dylan calling me back at last.
But when I answer the phone, it’s an unfamiliar voice I hear. A woman, her tone tentative.
“Is this Jules?”
“Yes.”
A pause.
“Jules, it’s Bobbie.”
“Who?”
“Bobbie. From the shelter.”
And then I remember. Bobbie, the kind and funny woman I spoke with two days ago.
“How are you?”
“I’m hanging in there. New day, new thoughts. All that Eleanor Roosevelt bullshit. But as much as I like to gab, this isn’t a social call.”
My pulse, which was just starting to settle down, revs up again. Excited blood pumps through my veins.
“You found Ingrid?”
“Maybe,” Bobbie says. “A girl just came in. She looks a lot like the girl in that picture you gave me. But there’s a chance it’s not her. She looks more ragged now than in the photo. In all honesty, Jules, she looks like something dead the cat just dragged in.”
“Did she say she was Ingrid?”
“She doesn’t talk much. I tried to buddy up to her, but she wanted none of it. The only thing she told me is that I could go fuck myself.”
That doesn’t sound like Ingrid. Then again, I have no idea what she’s been through in the past few days.
“What color is her hair?”
“Black,” Bobbie says. “A dye job. A crappy one, too. She missed a spot in the back.”
I grip the phone tighter. “Can you see her right now?”
“Yeah. She’s sitting on a cot, legs pulled to her chest, not talking to anyone.”
“That spot she missed in her hair—do you see any color there?”
“Let me look.” Bobbie’s voice becomes muted as she pulls away from her phone to get a better view. “Yeah, there’s some color there.”
“What is it?”
I hold my breath, preparing for disappointment. Considering the way my life has gone, I’ve come to expect it.
“It looks to me like a spot of blue,” Bobbie says.
I exhale.
It’s Ingrid.
“Bobbie, I need you to do me a favor.”
“I can try.”
“Don’t let her leave,” I say. “Not until I get there. Do anything you can to keep her there. Hold her down if necessary. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Then I’m off, rushing down the library steps and turning onto Forty-Second Street. The shelter is ten blocks north and several long cross blocks west. Through a combination of jogging, speed walking, and willfully ignoring traffic lights, I make it there in twenty minutes.
Bobbie is waiting for me outside. Still dressed in her work khakis and cardigan, she stands at a noticeable remove from the circle of smokers I saw two days ago.
“Don’t worry, she’s still inside,” she tells me.
“Has she talked more?”
Bobbie shakes her head. “Nope. Still keeps to herself. She looks scared, though.”
We enter the building, Bobbie’s familiar presence allowing me to bypass the woman at the desk behind the scuffed glass. Tonight, the converted gymnasium is far more crowded than the afternoon of my first visit. Nearly every cot has been taken. Those that aren’t occupied have been marked with suitcases, trash bags, grungy pillows.
“There she is,” Bobbie says, pointing to a cot on the far side of the gym. Sitting on top of it, knees pulled to her chest, is Ingrid.
It’s not just her hair t
hat’s changed in the past three days. Everything about her is darker, dirtier. She’s become a shadow version of her former self.
Her hair, now the color of tar save for that patch of telltale blue, hangs in greasy strings. Her shirt and jeans are the same ones she had on the last time I saw her, although they’re now stained from days of wear. Her face is cleaner but raw and weathered, as if she’s spent too much time outdoors.
Ingrid looks my way, recognition dawning in her bloodshot eyes.
“Juju?”
She leaps off the cot and runs toward me, pulling me into a strong, scared embrace.
“What are you doing here?” she says, showing no sign of letting me go.
“Looking for you.”
“You left the Bartholomew, right?”
“No.”
Ingrid breaks the embrace and backs away, eyeing me with palpable suspicion. “Tell me they didn’t get to you. Swear to me that you’re not one of them.”
“I’m not,” I say. “I’m here to help.”
“You can’t. Not anymore.” Ingrid collapses onto the nearest cot, her hands covering her face. Her left one trembles, out of control. Even when she grasps it with her right, it still shakes, her dirt-streaked fingers twitching. “Juju, you need to get out of there.”
“I plan to,” I tell her.
“No, now,” Ingrid says. “Run away as fast as you can. You don’t know what they are.”
Only, I do.
I think I’ve known for a while but wasn’t able to completely comprehend it.
But now all the information I’ve gathered in the past few days is starting to make sense. It’s like a photograph just pulled from a chemical bath. The image taking shape, emerging from the blankness, revealing the whole ghastly picture.
I know exactly what they are.
The Golden Chalice reborn.
41
At Ingrid’s insistence, we go someplace secluded to talk.
“I don’t want anyone to hear us,” she explains.
At the shelter, that means commandeering the men’s locker room of this former YMCA. Outside, Bobbie stands guard at the door, blocking anyone who might try to enter. Inside, Ingrid and I stroll past rows of empty lockers and shower stalls that have been bone dry for years.
“I haven’t showered in three days,” Ingrid says, staring with longing at one of the stalls. “The closest thing has been a whore’s bath at Port Authority, and that was yesterday morning.”
“Is that where you’ve been all this time?”
Ingrid drops onto a bench across from the showers. “I’ve been everywhere. Port Authority. Grand Central. Penn Station. Anywhere there are crowds. Because they’re looking for me, Juju. I know they are.”
“But they’re not,” I say.
“You don’t know that for certain.”
“I do, because—”
I stop myself before the rest of the sentence emerges.
Because I’m the only one who’s been looking for you.
That’s what I was about to say. But I now know that’s a lie. They’ve been looking for her, too.
Through me.
Rather than search themselves, they had me do it. It’s why Greta Manville suggested places for me to look. Why Nick lowered me down in the dumbwaiter to search 11A, hoping I’d find something of use. It’s probably even why he slept with me. To endear himself, keep me close, learn everything I had discovered.
I assume he didn’t pretend to be Ingrid via text until after they realized I knew something was amiss. By that point, they were prepared to cut their losses as far as Ingrid was concerned.
“If you were so scared of being found, why didn’t you take a bus or train out of the city?”
“That’s kind of difficult when you don’t have any money,” Ingrid says. “And I’ve got next to nothing. My meals have been fished out of trash cans. I had to shoplift this stupid hair dye. What little money I do have came from panhandling and stealing coins from fountains. So far I have, like, twelve dollars. At this rate, maybe I’ll have enough to leave the country after a decade. Because that’s what we have to do, Juju. Go someplace where they’ll never be able to find us. It’s the only way to escape them.”
“Or we could go to the police,” I suggest.
“And tell them what? That a bunch of rich bitches at the Bartholomew are worshipping the devil? Just saying it sounds ridiculous.”
As does hearing it out loud, even though it’s exactly what I think is happening. They post discreet ads in newspapers and online, luring people to the building with the promise of money and a place to stay. People like me and Ingrid and Dylan.
Each of us entered the Bartholomew willingly. But once we were there, the rules kept us trapped.
“How did you figure it all out?”
“It was Erica who started it,” Ingrid says. “We went to the park, just like you and I did, and she told me she found out that the person who was in 12A before her wasn’t dead, which is what she’d been told. That freaked her out a little. So I did some research into the Bartholomew and learned about some of the weird stuff that happened there. That freaked Erica out a lot. So when she left, I assumed it was because she felt too creeped out to stay there anymore. But then Dylan came by asking if I’d heard from her. And that’s when I suspected something else was going on.”
Her story is a lot like my own. Her new friend went missing; she started to think something weird was going on and decided to look into it. The only difference was that she learned about Greta Manville’s relationship to Cornelia Swanson much sooner than I did.
“I met Greta in the lobby during my interview with Leslie,” Ingrid says. “And I thought it was cool to be in the same building as an author, you know? At first, I thought she was nice. She even gave me a signed copy of her book. But when I read about Cornelia Swanson and noticed their resemblance, I knew what was up.”
“You asked her about it,” I say. “She told me.”
“I guess she left out the part about threatening to get me kicked out if I ever talked to her again.”
That detail went unmentioned, even when Greta told me about her life at the Bartholomew. My apartment used to be her apartment, which means that at one point it belonged to Cornelia Swanson.
It’s the same apartment where she murdered her maid.
Only it wasn’t just a murder.
It was a sacrifice.
Fulfilling the promise of the ouroboros.
Creation from destruction.
Life from death.
Ruby might have been the first, but I have a heart-sickening feeling that Erica was the last. I try not to think about how many others there have been in between then and now. There’ll be plenty of time to dwell on that later. Right now, I need to focus on one thing—extricating myself from the place in a way that will cause the least amount of suspicion.
“What happened after you talked to Greta?”
“I knew I didn’t want to stay there, that’s for damn sure.” Ingrid stands and makes her way to the row of sinks along the wall. She turns on the tap and starts splashing her face with water. “At that point, I had two thousand dollars in apartment-sitting money. Enough to get me far away from that place. But I also knew there’d be a lot more money coming if I stayed.”
The cash. Dangled in front of us at the end of each week. Yet another way the Bartholomew trapped us. It certainly kept me there another night.
“I decided to stay,” Ingrid says. “I didn’t know for how long. Maybe another week. Maybe two. But I wanted to feel safe, so I—”
“Bought a gun.”
Ingrid looks at me in the mirror above the sink, her brows arched. “So you found it. Good.”
“Why did you leave it there in the first place?”
“Because something happened,” Ingrid says, h
er voice getting quiet. “And if I tell you what it is, you’re totally going to hate me forever.”
I join her by the sink. “I won’t. I promise.”
“You will,” Ingrid says, now using a damp paper towel to clean the back of her neck. “And I totally deserve it.”
“Ingrid, just tell me.”
“That gun cost me everything I had. That two grand I had saved up? Gone, like that.” She snaps her fingers, and I can see the chipped remains of her blue nail polish. “So I asked Leslie if I could get an advance on my apartment-sitting money. Nothing huge. Just a week’s pay early. She told me that wasn’t possible. But then she said that I could have five thousand dollars—not a loan or an advance, but five grand with no strings attached—if I did one little thing.”
“What was it?”
Ingrid stalls by examining a strand of her black-as-pitch hair. When she looks in the mirror, there’s disgust in her eyes. As if she hates every single thing about herself.
“To cut you,” she says. “When we crashed in the lobby, that wasn’t an accident. Leslie paid me to do it.”
I recall that moment with vivid clarity, like it’s a movie being projected right there on the bathroom wall. Me burdened with my two grocery bags. Ingrid rushing down the stairs, her eyes on her phone. Then the collision, our bodies ricocheting, the groceries falling, me suddenly bleeding. In the chaotic aftermath, I didn’t have time to give too much thought as to how my arm had been cut.
Now I know the truth.
“I had a Swiss army knife,” Ingrid says, unable to look at me. “I held it against my phone, with just the tip of the blade exposed. And right when we crashed, I sliced your arm. Leslie told me it shouldn’t be a big cut. Just enough to draw blood.”
I back away from her. First one step. Then another.
“Why . . . why would they need you to do that?”
“I don’t know,” Ingrid says. “I didn’t ask. By then, I had my suspicions about what she was. What all of them are. And I guess I thought it was some kind of test. Like they were trying to convert me. Enticing me to join them. But at the time, I was too desperate to ask questions. All I could think about was that five thousand dollars, and how much I needed it to get away from that place.”