by Riley Sager
“You need to stop talking.”
Bernard shovels more pudding into my mouth, hoping it will shut me up. It does only for as long as it takes me to swallow.
“You’re doing it for someone,” I say. “That’s why you’re here and not at, like, a regular hospital, right? They promised to help someone you love if you work for them? Like Charlie’s doing?”
I’m given another mouthful of pudding. Rather than swallow, I let it drip from my lips, talking all the while.
“You can tell me,” I say. “I won’t judge you. When my mother was dying, I would have done anything to save her life. Anything.”
Bernard hesitates before answering in a soft murmur, “My father.”
“What does he need?”
“A liver.”
“How much time does he have left?”
“Not much.”
“That’s a shame.” The sentence comes out mushy. A single, smushed word. Thassashame. “Does your father know what you’re doing?”
Bernard scowls. “Of course not.”
“Why?”
“I’m not answering any more of your questions.”
“I don’t blame you for not wanting to give false hope. Because you might be right here one day. Someone rich and famous and important will need a kidney. Or a liver. Or a heart. And if there’s no one like me around, they’ll take it from you.”
I lift my hand and wave it around, weakly pointing in his general direction. After a second, it plops back onto the bed because I’m too weak to hold it up any longer than that.
Bernard drops the spoon on the tray and pushes it aside. “We’re done here.”
“Don’t be mad,” I say, slurring a bit. “I’m just saying. That deal you made? I don’t think it’s gonna stick.”
Bernard thrusts the tiny paper cup at me, his hands shaking. “Shut up and take your pills.”
I pop them into my mouth.
50
Hours later, I’m roused from my deep slumber by Jeannette, who unlocks the door before carrying in more food and yet more pills.
I look at her, groggy and dazed. “Where did Bernard go?”
“Home.”
“Was it something I said?”
“Yes.” Jeannette slides the tray in front of me. “You talk too much.”
Dinner is the same as lunch. More soup. More creamed spinach. More pudding. The pills have made me surly, uncooperative. Jeannette has a hard time scooping even the slightest bit of soup into my mouth. I outright refuse to open my mouth for the spinach.
It’s the rice pudding my pill-addled body craves. Willingly I open wide when Jeannette dips the spoon into it. But as she’s bringing it toward my mouth, I change my mind. My jaw clamps shut, and I suddenly turn away, pouting.
The spoon hits my cheek, sending pudding splatting onto my neck and shoulder.
“Look at this mess,” Jeannette mutters as she grabs a napkin. “Lord forgive me, but I can’t say I’ll be sad to see you go.”
I lie completely still as she leans over me to mop up the spilled pudding. Sleep is already threatening to overtake me again. I’m almost completely unconscious when Jeannette nudges my shoulder.
“You need to take your pills,” she says.
My mouth falls open, and Jeannette drops the pills into it, one at a time. Then I’m asleep, closed fists at my sides, riding the narcotic fog until my mind is empty and blissful and at peace.
When I hear the door’s lock click into place, I wait. Breathless. Counting the seconds. After a full minute has passed, I stuff my fingers into the far reaches of my mouth and fish out the pills. They emerge softened and slimy with saliva.
I sit up, wincing with pain, and lift my pillow. Beneath the case, in the pillow itself, is the small tear I created yesterday after talking to Nick. I shove the spit-slick pills into it, where they join the others. Eight of them in total. A whole day’s worth of little white pills.
I replace the pillow and lie back down. I then unclench my fist and examine the cigarette lighter I snatched after it fell from Jeannette’s cardigan pocket while she cleaned me.
It’s made of cheap plastic. The kind you can pick up at a gas station for a dollar. Jeannette probably has two more sitting in her purse.
She won’t miss this one.
51
I toss the blanket aside and slide my legs over the side of the bed, even though it hurts to move, hurts to breathe. Three sets of stitches pull at the skin of my abdomen.
Before placing my feet on the floor, I pause.
I’m not sure standing’s a good idea. Even if it is, I’m not sure I can. I am, for lack of a better word, in shambles. My legs tingle from disuse. The back of my hand is bleeding from when I plucked out the IV. Removing the catheter was even worse. Soreness pulses through my core, a counterpoint to the pain roaring along my stomach.
Yet I attempt to stand anyway, sucking in air to steel myself against the pain before pushing off the bed. Then I’m up, somehow standing on these weak, wobbling legs.
I take a step.
Then another.
And another.
Soon I’m staggering across the room, the floor seeming to rock back and forth like a ship’s deck on a stormy sea. I sway with it, lurching from one side to the other, trying to stay upright. When the floor doesn’t stop moving, I grip the wall for support.
But I keep walking, my joints crackling, as if I’m a freshly hatched chick, now shedding eggshell. The sound follows me all the way to the door, where I try the handle and discover it is indeed locked.
So it’s back to the side of the bed, where I grab the photograph of my family. I press it against my chest with one hand while gripping Jeannette’s cigarette lighter in the other.
With a flick of my thumb, there’s a flame, which I touch against the fitted sheet in the center of the bed. It ignites in an instant—a fire-ringed hole that grows exponentially. The flames soon reach the top sheet, and that, too, starts to burn. It’s the same with the mattress. Expanding circles of fire spreading into each other and then outward, all the way to the pillows, which pop into flame.
I watch, squinting against the smoke, as the entire bed is engulfed. A rectangle of fire.
Then, just as I had hoped, the fire alarm starts to blare.
52
It’s Dr. Wagner who enters the room first, drawn by the fire alarm’s literal siren’s call. Jeannette follows right behind him. They unlock the door and burst inside. Jeannette screams when she sees the flames on the bed now threatening to make the leap to the walls and ceiling.
Because they’re too focused on the fire, neither of them sees me standing just behind the recently opened door.
Nor do they see me slip out of the room.
By the time they turn around to notice me, it’s too late.
I’m already closing the door behind me and, with a quick turn of my wrist, locking them inside.
53
I walk as fast as I can, which isn’t very fast at all. Pain hobbles me—a fierce, stabbing ache that keeps me gasping. Still, slow walking is better than not being able to walk at all.
Behind me, Dr. Wagner and Jeannette pound on the door from inside my room. In between their frantic knocks I hear the sounds of Dr. Wagner coughing and Jeannette shrieking.
To my left is a darkened doorway. Inside I see Mr. Leonard, dead to the world despite the racket coming from the room next door. Surrounding him is all manner of monitoring equipment, their lights disconcertingly festive. Like a strand of Christmas bulbs.
I make my way to the nurses’ station, where I allow myself to pause for just a second to catch my breath. Just beyond it is another hospital room and the short corridor I took the first time I left this place. The corridor ends at a door that leads directly into Nick’s apartment. From there, I need to make it down th
e twelfth-floor hallway to the elevator. In my condition, taking the stairs isn’t an option.
I push off the nurses’ station and am on my way to the corridor when the door at its end starts to open. I duck into the room to my left and press myself against the wall by the open doorway, hoping I haven’t been spotted.
Outside, I hear the rapid click of heels.
Leslie Evelyn.
While waiting for her to pass, I scan the darkened room.
That’s when I see Greta.
She sits up in bed, startled, staring at me in fear.
Her mouth drops open, on the knife’s edge of a scream.
One sound from her could give me away, which is why I stare back, my eyes saucer-wide, silently begging her to stay quiet.
I mouth a single word.
Please.
Greta’s mouth stays open while Leslie hurries past the door. She waits a few more seconds before finally speaking.
“Go,” she says in a hoarse whisper. “Hurry.”
54
I wait to move until Leslie pushes open the door two rooms down. Smoke pours from the room, gray and heavy, filling the nurses’ station. I use it as cover while heading down the corridor. With each passing step, the pain seems to calm. I don’t know if it’s actually going away or if I’m just getting used to it. It doesn’t matter. I just need to keep moving.
And I do.
To the corridor’s end.
Through the door left open by Leslie.
Into Nick’s apartment.
I close the door behind me, remembering how heavy it is, using a shoulder to nudge it back into place. When the door is finally closed, I spot the deadbolt in its center.
I slide it shut.
Satisfaction swells in my chest, although I harbor no illusions that Leslie and all the rest are now trapped. Surely there’s another way out of there. But it will certainly delay them, and I need all the time I can get.
I hobble onward, exhaustion, pain, and adrenaline dancing through me. It’s a heady mix that makes me dizzy.
When I reach Nick’s kitchen, the whole place seems to be spinning. The cabinets. The counter with its wooden knife block. The doorway to the dining room and the night-darkened park outside the windows.
The only thing not spinning is the painting of the ouroboros.
It undulates.
Like it’s about to slither right off the canvas.
The snake’s flickering-flame eye watches me as I shuffle to the knife block on the counter and grab the biggest one.
Having the knife in my hand chases away some of the disorientation. Like the pain, it lingers, but at a level low enough to push through. I need to escape this place. I owe it to my family.
I look at the photograph still clutched to my chest. When faced with the decision to take those pills, I saw their faces and knew what my choice had to be.
To fight.
To live.
To be the one member of my family who doesn’t vanish forever.
I keep going, out of the kitchen, back into the hallway, where thin strands of smoke have started to make an appearance. Here the noise of the fire alarm is distant yet audible. A system separate from the rest of the building.
The sound fades slightly as I head down the hallway. At the other end is Nick’s study, the bookcase at the far wall still open. Beyond it is 12A. The study. Then the hallway. Then a way out.
Doors within doors within doors.
I stagger toward them, oblivious to the smoke, the pain, the exhaustion, the dizziness. My sole focus is the bookcase in the study. Reaching it. Passing through it. But as I approach the open bookcase, I feel a sudden heat at my back.
I whirl around to see Nick standing in a corner of the study.
In his hands is Ingrid’s gun.
He lifts it, aims it my way, and pulls the trigger.
I close my eyes, wince, try to spend my last second on earth thinking about my family and how much I miss them and how I hope there’s some way to see them in the afterlife. In that fraught, fearful darkness, I hear a metallic click.
Then another.
Then two more.
I open my eyes and see Nick continuing to pull the trigger of the unloaded gun. Like it’s a toy and he’s just a kid playing cowboy.
I don’t try to run. In my condition, I won’t get very far. All I can do is lean against the bookcase and contemplate Nick as he smiles, pleased with himself.
“Don’t worry, Jules,” he says. “I can’t shoot you. You’re too valuable.”
Nick takes several steps toward me, the gun now lowered.
“Over the years, my family has received a lot of money for people like you. It’s ironic, I know. That you, who’s so worthless on the outside, is worth so much on the inside. And that people who on the outside offer so much have inside of them things so useless that they must be replaced. You think that what we do here is murder.”
I glare at him. “Because it is.”
“No, I’m doing the world a service.”
Roughly ten feet separate us now. My grip tightens around the knife’s handle.
“Think about the people who come here,” Nick says. “Writers and artists, scientists and captains of industry. Think of all they give to the world. Now think of yourself, Jules. What are you? What do you offer? Nothing.”
He takes two more steps, closing the gap between us.
I lift the knife, barely aware of what I’m doing until it’s pressed against my neck. The blade’s edge creases the flesh beneath my chin. My pulse hammers against the steel.
“I’ll do it,” I warn Nick. “Then you’ll really be left with nothing.”
He calls my bluff.
“Go ahead,” he says with a blithe shrug. “There’ll be someone else to take your place. You’re not the only desperate person out there, Jules. There are thousands in need of shelter and money and hope. I’m sure we can find your replacement tomorrow, if need be. So go ahead. Slit your throat. It won’t stop us.”
He takes two more steps. One slow, the other a startling leap toward me.
I thrust the knife forward until it makes contact with Nick’s stomach.
There’s a pause. A breath of resistance as the blade runs up against flesh and muscle and internal organs. It passes in a flash and all that flesh, all those muscles, all those organs give way as the knife continues onward, sinking deeper into his stomach. So deep that my hand doesn’t stop moving until the edge of it is pressed against Nick’s shirt.
I gasp.
So does Nick.
The sounds are simultaneous. Two shocked, shuddering inhalations that fill the room.
I gasp again as I yank the knife away.
Nick doesn’t.
He can only moan as blood soaks his shirt, the fabric changing from white to red in seconds. Then Nick hits the floor. A swift, uninterrupted drop.
I back away from him and the blood that’s quickly spreading across the floor. That backward shuffle takes me through the bookcase passage into the study of 12A. There I do another shoulder nudge to close the bookcase. Before it lumbers into place, I take one final, fleeting glance into Nick’s apartment. He’s still on the floor, still bleeding, still alive.
But probably not for long.
I let the bookcase fall back into place without a second glance.
Almost free.
Inside 12A, all traces of my existence are gone. The apartment looks just as it did when I first set foot inside it. Uninhabited. Devoid of life.
But it’s also a trap.
I know that now.
I should have known it then.
This perfect apartment with its perfect views inside a perfect building. It was all designed to be as enticing as possible to someone like me, who started out poor and stayed that w
ay. What’s worse is that this isn’t a recent development. It’s always been the sole purpose of the Bartholomew. The only reason the building exists is to serve the rich and trap the poor.
Those servants laid out like firewood. Cornelia Swanson’s maid. Dylan and Erica and Megan and all those other men and women without families who were lured here with the promise of a reset button for their sad lives.
They deserve closure.
Even more, they deserve vengeance.
Which means only one thing.
This whole fucking place needs to be burned to the ground.
55
I start with the study, pulling books at random from the shelves to form a pile in the middle of the floor. When I’m done, I grab the copy of Heart of a Dreamer Greta signed for Erica and hold the lighter to a corner of its dust jacket.
Fire tears across the book.
I drop it onto the pile and walk away.
In the sitting room, I remove the cushions from the crimson sofa. One is shoved under the coffee table, where I use the lighter to set it ablaze.
In the dining room, I repeat the process—place a cushion under that ridiculously long table, light it, leave.
In the kitchen, I stuff the cushion into the oven and crank up the heat.
Sitting on the table in the breakfast nook is another copy of Heart of a Dreamer. I turn to the page Greta signed for me and, with a flick of my thumb, light it up. I wait for a flame to bloom before dropping it down the dumbwaiter shaft.
After that, it’s up to the bedroom, with me climbing the spiral steps as fast as my battered body will allow. On the nightstand is one final copy of Heart of a Dreamer. My real copy, first read to me by Jane as we lay on her bed.
I scoop it up and carry it back downstairs.
By the time I’ve reached the foyer, the apartment has filled with smoke. Already the fires have grown out of control. A glance down the hall reveals flames crawling across the floor of the study. In the sitting room, tongues of fire lick at the underside of the coffee table while smoke rises from its surface. A light crackling sound in the dining room tells me the table there is meeting a similar fate.