The man with the bleeding ear giggled at this remark.
“I think she is dangerous.” Mouse spoke more forcefully from behind his bandaged mustard blisters. “She has cheated life and death. She is outside the bound of justice.”
“But, surely, not outside of mercy.” Ellis turned to face the man with the burn-ravaged face and scalp. She fixed on his eyes and discovered them to be a beautiful hazel color.
“Very well, Philly,” Master Sergeant Barry called to the bed kitty-corner from his own where the burned man lay. “What do you think?”
“Who are we to measure justice—or mercy,” Philly said with slurred speech through his burned lips. “Aren’t they both infinite?”
“Neil would know,” said the swarthy man with the single leg as he nodded toward the freckle-faced young man with the bleeding ear.
Neil was gazing at the ceiling, holding both his hands out at arm’s length with their palms up and rocking from side to side.
“Mouse is right,” said the man leaning on his crutch at the foot of his bed. “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Look at what she’s done to us.”
“What I’ve done to you?” Ellis said in a voice that demanded their attention.
The Soldiers and Margaret all turned to look at her.
“All I know is that I have to find my way out of this madness and back to my own sanity,” Ellis said, her voice lowering into a quiet, restrained quiver. “I need to find my cousin Jenny and the both of us need to leave through the Gate. I think I’m beginning to understand how I can find Jenny but I need you to show me the way to the Gate.”
“And then what, Ellis,” said the blind Soldier as he sat on the edge of his bed with his shoulders slumped over. “What happens to you after that? Where do you go? What do you choose?”
Ellis opened her mouth to speak but realized she did not know.
“Ellis, don’t you remember who we are?” the blind Soldier asked in a whisper.
Ellis glanced down. Her dress was still the terrible, dull green but now she wore a nurse’s apron over it. She could feel the cap on her head as she straightened up to look again on the blind Soldier.
“I do remember,” she said in soft tones. “This was the ward I served in at Boston Memorial. This is where I first saw soldiers returning from the war.”
“That’s right.” The blind soldier nodded. “What do you remember?”
“I remember…” Ellis hesitated, her eyes narrowing. “I remember there were six of you in the ward. I remember treating each of you as calmly as I could manage but inside I was more terrified by the moment.”
“Terrified of us?” asked Philly.
“No,” Ellis said, shaking her head.
“Terrified for him,” the blind master sergeant said.
“Yes,” Ellis said. The walls of the room felt as though they were closing in on her. It was as though the room were becoming the box … the box of broken toy soldiers that she had found in the abandoned nursery.
“For Jonas,” Tinker suggested as he cocked his head to one side.
“He was still a Canadian citizen,” Ellis said, her eyes blinking back tears. “He was out of work and they drafted him. He had skills as a watchmaker and … and he left for the war.”
“And so you saw us, here in the box,” the blind soldier said and nodded, a tear of his own coursing down his cheek.
“He was so impetuous; so headstrong,” Ellis said, the memories of her feelings in the hospital ward rushing over her in waves, threatening to overwhelm her and drag her drowning beneath them. “When his uncle lost the shop to creditors, he struggled to find work but he somehow managed barely from month to month. He so very badly wanted a child and when we lost…”
She could not go on.
“When you lost your child.” The master sergeant urged her to continue.
Ellis could barely speak the words. “When I … miscarried, we were both of us devastated but somehow it broke Jonas. He grew distant and I thought, perhaps, that he blamed me. I don’t think he did, but it poisoned things between us. He stayed out late. Slept late. He seemed to lose interest in any pursuits. When the draft notice came, I wondered if it weren’t a relief to both of us to have an excuse to be apart.”
“But then you came to the soldiers’ ward,” said the man with the mustard gas burns.
Ellis nodded, her words soft. “Then I met you.”
“But was it really us?” the blind master sergeant asked.
“I … what do you mean?” Ellis stammered.
“We are not those men that you met,” said Tinker, his hands firmly wrapped against his chest but his grin wide inside the bushy beard. “We look like them because we must—because it is how you relate to us in this place.”
Margaret’s face was suddenly drained of color. She hurried over toward where Ellis stood and gripped her arm. “We have to go now.”
“I … I don’t understand,” Ellis said, shaking off Margaret’s grip. “We don’t know where the Gate is yet!”
“Do you think this person is actually a nurse?” said Mouse from deep within his bandages as he nodded his head toward Margaret. “She only appears that way because you want her to fit into your memory of this place. The world, it seems, is very much what you make it.”
“Come along, my lady,” Margaret hissed. “We have to go now or we’ll never find Jenny!”
“Stop it, Margaret!” Ellis snapped. “What do you mean I’m causing all of this? That can’t be true. I’m trying to get out of here—not make more of it!”
“And, might I add,” said the one-legged soldier, “you really should have finished your dance with Jonas.”
The soldier called Red giggled again, his hands rising into pose for a waltz.
Ellis’s jaw dropped.
“They’re lying,” Margaret said, desperation rising in her voice. “Don’t listen to them.”
Ellis stepped forward, walking slowly down the row of beds, her eyes fixed on the blind sergeant. Her words were careful and direct. “I asked you before, Sergeant—who are you?”
“You know us, Nurse Harkington, or was it Dr. Kirk?” he said with a wistful smile. “You came into the ward every day after that, sat with us and wrote our letters for us. Each time you left, you stopped at the door and turned to wave to us. We all called out to you. Do you remember what you would call back as you left?”
Ellis nodded.
“I said, ‘Good night, my angels!’”
The blind soldier smiled and stood before her. As he did, he grew taller and stronger. His tattered uniform began to gleam like polished metal. A bright aura surrounded his form as he started to rise.
Ellis stepped backward between the beds.
The soldiers on either side, each began to grow and to rise. The deformations of their war wounds melted away and their figures became whole and renewed. Each floated upward into the high ceiling space, their tattered, war-weary uniforms merging into armor so brilliant that Ellis had trouble focusing her eyes on them.
“Ellis! Please!” Margaret shouted. “We can’t stay here!”
Great wings unfolded from the backs of the soldiers, their brilliance like the sun.
Ellis could no longer see. Margaret was pulling at her, but she could no longer tell where she was in the hospital ward—if the ward still existed at all.
Her hand brushed against something solid.
Ellis grasped it.
The handle.
She pressed the latch and followed the door as it swung open, tumbling to the floor with Margaret falling next to her. She heard more than saw the door close behind them.
The painful brilliance faded from her eyes and she struggled to her knees and looked up.
She was completely unprepared for what she saw.
She was kneeling on the inlaid parquet floor in the entry of Summersend.
16
THE PLACE
Ellis stood still in the middle of the parquet floor. She
stared at the broken and faded patterns of it beneath her feet. It was entirely familiar and terrible all at once. This place belonged in Gamin … or somewhere … anywhere but here in this madness of Echo House.
The main rotunda extended overhead to the upper floors, accessed by the familiar curved staircase, but the wallpaper had mostly curled away from the curving wall except in a few of the corner spaces. The plaster on the walls was stained and had fallen away from the lathe work in several locations. The balusters of the once elegantly curved handrail were broken outward near the bottom of the stairs, causing the upper handrail to hang precariously toward the modest, web-covered chandelier overhead. Ellis was afraid to move for fear the entire crystal assembly would come loose from the ceiling and crash down on them both.
Opposite the clock and broken bench, the small side table leaned precariously against the wall. Atop it sat the bell jar, now nearly entirely obscured with dust above its weathered, wooden base. Ellis fixed her eyes on it, trying to peer through the dirty glass without success.
“It’s Summersend!” cried Margaret in genuine delight. “However did you manage it?”
Ellis turned slowly around. Behind them was the short hallway to the salon, the bookcase alcove to one side. On her right were the remains of the narrow bench, its legs broken on one end. The grandfather clock standing next to it was covered in a moldering sheet. Ellis had a sudden dread of lifting it up and seeing what remained beneath it. Before her was the entry hall with double doors on either side. The doors to the left had fallen from their hinges and sat askew in the archway. She could barely make out the dark shapes of the shuttered music room just beyond. At the end of the hall was the door through which they had just come; the front door of Summersend. Its paint had peeled away and cracks had appeared in the weathered wood but brilliant light was still streaming through its cracked frosted panes.
“Tell me how you did it,” Margaret demanded breathlessly. “So perfect; so quickly!”
“I … I don’t know,” Ellis said, gazing about her in stunned reverence. Her eyes returned to the side table against the wall near her left hand and opposite the bench. The enormous bell jar with the darkly stained and lacquered base was still sitting on its surface, but now it was almost completely filled with dead lunar moths. “I didn’t do anything!”
“But you said you created the house,” Margaret urged, the hint of desperation in her voice. “That you were still creating it! You wondered if this were still your Day!”
“But I haven’t done anything,” Ellis pleaded.
“Liar!” Margaret rushed toward her, gripping Ellis by the shoulders as she gazed purposefully into her eyes. “It isn’t your Day, it’s Merrick’s Day, yet somehow you managed to change circumstances to suit you. Where does this come from, Ellis? How do you make it real?”
“Margaret, stop!” Ellis cried out, struggling to get loose from the woman’s powerful grip. “I don’t know how it happens!”
Ellis broke free of Margaret, rushing toward the front door.
“Ellis, no!” Margaret warned, her voice harsh and menacing. “Don’t make me stop you!”
The light streaming through the frosted glass became dimmer with each step Ellis took. It had nearly vanished entirely as she grasped the door handle, turned it and pulled the door wide.
Ellis reeled back from the precipice at the doorstep.
The space beyond had changed.
She teetered on the brink of an elevator shaft. The rough, brick walls both descended into the depths and ascended into the heights beyond the limits of her vision. Doorways, patterned identically to the one in which she stood, exited the shaft at each level below her. Rusting guide rails on both sides and a set of cables running down the center of the shaft gave mind-spinning perspective to the depths beckoning her to fall into its maw.
Ellis drew back into the hall in a panic, slamming the door shut with a violent shove. She backed slowly past twisted doors to the music room until she bumped against the grandfather clock. Its chimes rattled discordantly behind her.
“So that is it.” Margaret smiled back at Ellis from the rotunda at the opposite end of the entry hall. The lady’s maid took several hesitant steps toward Ellis across the floor. “That’s how you do it!”
“Margaret,” Ellis said with quiet caution. “How I do what?”
“All this.” Margaret gestured toward the expanse of the house about them. “The house, the sky, the Day … I understand how you do it now … I understand everything.”
Ellis stood with her back against the clock, her eyes fixed on her lady’s maid. “What do you understand, Margaret?”
“The Day does not come from your thoughts, it comes from somewhere deeper within,” Margaret said with savory relish. “It’s not a rational choice of will. It comes from desire … it comes from the place of dreams!”
“Margaret, I don’t understand.”
“Yes, yes, you do!” Margaret insisted, her bright eyes burning with fanatical passion. “Think, Ellis! Out of all the possible creations you might make real in your Day … out of an infinity of possible places to fall into … why this place? Why Summersend?”
Ellis thought.
She drew in a breath.
“Why Summersend indeed?” came another, deeper voice from the direction of the broken doors of the music room.
Merrick moved slowly from the shadows, stepping carefully between the broken doors of the hall. He was in full morning dress with a coat and waistcoat that were perfectly tailored for him. The high, turndown collar capped his striped shirt and framed the knot of his silk tie in exact symmetry. The striped trousers had creases as straight and sharp as a knife.
Merrick stopped and stood just outside of the music room, cocking his head to one side as he considered the two women in the rotunda. He drew his long, delicate hands upward at his sides in a deliberate motion, flicking back the edges of his coat and slipping both into the pockets of his trousers.
“You’ve led us all a merry chase, Ellis,” Merrick said, his eyes watery and large. “I had hoped you would have at least stayed until the end of the play.”
“I didn’t think I would care for the ending.” Ellis shivered slightly.
“Well, let’s just say it’s a work in progress.” Merrick shrugged, a painful smile flitting across his lips. “But Margaret asked a most excellent question, my dear Lady Ellis: why Summersend? It was never our house in our Day, and yet here it stands around us in the Ruins, sad and forgotten.”
“It was in Gamin, too,” Ellis said as much to herself as to Merrick. “Why was it there?”
“It was for you.” Merrick took a step forward, his hands slipping from his pockets, reaching forward as though there were a present in his hands. “It was all for you. The town, the people, the mansion and even this—even Summersend—because you loved it so and I wanted to be the one who gave it back to you. Me. From me. I wanted to give it to you. It should have been from me!”
Merrick strode toward Ellis suddenly. Ellis pushed away from the clock but it was too late. Merrick’s hands reached up, gripping her face on either side so firmly that her vision blurred. He pulled her back in front of him, his terrible dark eyes burning inches from her own.
“But it wasn’t the house at all, was it?” Merrick’s lips quivered now as he spoke, his eyes fixed with a fevered stare. “It wasn’t the house or the dresses or the town or the sea or the sky! It was him, wasn’t it? He sat by the Gate and waited for you like some lovesick puppy who just wouldn’t go home. And when you came to the Gate, what did he do, Ellis? What did he do?”
“I don’t know!” Ellis cried out through her sobs. “I don’t remember!”
“I remember! I remember it all!” Merrick shouted into her face. “I remember him tearing you apart! I remember that he waited and waited and then when you came to the Gate he saw his chance and stole you away from everything we had built and loved. I remember that he would rather cripple you than let you be great with me
!”
“Merrick, don’t!” Margaret pleaded as she tried to pull his grip loose from Ellis’s face.
Merrick shifted his grip, clasping Ellis’s narrow jaw in his left hand as he snatched at Margaret’s arm. In a moment, he twisted the arm of the lady’s maid painfully around the woman’s back. Her feet were barely touching the floor when he threw her with all his force into the short hall behind her. Margaret crashed against the bookcase, the weathered tomes disintegrating with the impact as she slumped sobbing to the floor.
Merrick twisted Ellis around in his iron, unyielding grip, pushing her head against the curved wall opposite the stairs. She could feel the weight of his body pressing against hers, pinning her.
Again he gripped her on both sides of her face, holding her so that she was forced to look into his face. His lips were parted in agony, tears streaming from his eyes, but she could see no humanity, no compassion within them—only an unending void.
“I loved you so, Ellis.” Merrick shook as he spoke. “You came for me—you chose me! We left the war behind us, you and I. The others, they made their choice and the war went on without us. They sent us here, thinking it was a punishment but it wasn’t that at all. They said that we were damned—damned to be who we were and nothing more. But who we were was mighty, Ellis. Serve in heaven or serve in hell—there is no choice in that—but here we were … I made you the mistress of all the Tween. I was the one who gave you everything! I was the one who made a place where we could be!”
Ellis could barely move against the weight of him pressing her into the wall. He had raised her up, her feet no longer touching the floor and flailing about beneath her. Ellis cast her eyes frantically about her, searching for something … anything.
Her eyes fell on the large bell jar on the table next to them.
“Merrick! Please!” she begged.
The man’s lips curled back into a horrible smile, pain filling his eyes a hand’s breadth from her face. “Please? Isn’t that all I’ve ever tried to do? But you’re not pleasing me back, Ellis! You made this house for us. It was the very first house of our existence and you made this Day for me! For ME!”
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