by Sarah Langan
“Marty, did you put something in the food?” Loretta asked. “She thinks she’s so pretty but she’s not. I could dye my hair brown, too.”
Audrey shook her head. Said something that sounded like the old, high-maintenance Audrey, before The Breviary. “I don’t like Wonder Bread. It’s all corn syrup.”
Loretta narrowed her eyes. She bent down, and her dressing gown ripped along its side seam. Flesh bulged. Either she didn’t notice, or she didn’t care. “Well, la!” she said, pointing her hip to the left, “Di!” the hip went to the right, “Da!” the hip jutted back again.
They left. The sound they made as they clopped down the hall was peculiar. A clack-clacking, like their bodies were becoming harder than flesh. They were changing into something spiderlike, just like Schermerhorn.
Audrey finished the sandwich, and felt the most grounded she’d been in days. The most like herself. She waited an hour. Maybe two. She couldn’t tell. Was afraid to take Martin’s present out of her mouth. She didn’t want the apartment to see.
She limped down the hall. Her knee was better—the ligament had reattached, but it still wasn’t healed. Same dirty clothes. Hair so greasy it was wet. She spit out half her crown, along with the small brass key. It fit into a knee-height hole at the edge of the door and unsprung the lock. Then she put the key back into the side of her cheek and opened the door.
In the carpet were sandy bits of ceramic and a lampshade. Jayne’s ashes? No, Hula Girl’s remains. Tears welled. Guilt gnawed. “Jayne,” she whispered, then kept limping.
The fire door to the stairs creaked. She squinted, as if to diminish the sound, then began hopping. Cold metal against her feet. She leaped two steps with the left foot, then swung the right leg without bending it. Panting. Panting. The sound of her breath echoed in the metal chamber.
Slap-swing-slap-swing! How many floors? She didn’t know. The farther she got, the more she allowed herself to hope.
Slap-swing-slap-swing! The lobby! But then, she looked through the small wire window built into the fire door and saw the tenants. They were out there. Sitting on the antique couches in the former church altar where Schermerhorn’s body had once hung. Chatting with each other in old cocktail dresses and faded black suits. Was it Monday again already? Cocktail night for the unemployed? They were drinking Manhattans with cherries. Thirty of them. Maybe more. She was crestfallen, like needles in her stomach, poking holes in a thousand places, until she remembered: there had to be an exit through the basement.
She climbed down one more flight and shoved open the fire door. The basement stank something terrible. Red ants, everywhere. Scampering things, too. Her feet got wet on the peeling, gray-painted cement floors. But at least the lights were on. In her dark apartment, she’d missed light so much. You imagine such terrible things in the dark.
She scooted through the hall, leaning against the wall for balance. There were doors on all sides. A pile of garbage bags lay straight ahead.
She looked for EXIT signs, but didn’t see any. Ants scampered each time she stepped. In her mind she dissected them; pulled their chitin inside out, then made them disappear. Made the place smell like roses. Made the air sweet as hash. The visualization worked, and she kept moving.
She pushed open a door on the left. No window to climb through, just a cot and green wool blanket. A dresser with a photo of Edgardo and a portly, brown-haired woman. His wife? And next to that, a photo of a green-eyed brunette standing knee deep in snow. She looked like Audrey, only younger and angrier. Stephanie. So, none of it had been a lie. And where was he, Edgardo? Even if he’d been fired in a hurry, he wasn’t the type to leave his things behind.
She tried the next door. Locked. The next. Locked, too. The next, storage. Three rusted bicycles. The old-fashioned, reclining kind from the 1800s. A weathered Genus edition of Trivial Pursuit. A moldy cigar box. A pair of wooden skis. And in the corner, the trappings of the old Episcopalian Church. Crucifixes, chalices, wooden idols of Madonna and Child. Stone carved Archangels Michael and Gabriel. The former banishing Lucifer from heaven, the latter heralding the joyous news of man’s redemption. Full of cracks and missing limbs, they were heaped together like junk, and covered in more than a half century of grime.
She shut the door and kept walking to the end of the hall. The stink was overwhelming. She swallowed down her bile and gimped farther. Yes, this place was awful, but at least it wasn’t 14B.
She got to the end—the source of the stench: garbage. Grocery bags filled with kitchen offal, black Hefty bags, white toilet-room bags, and random crap piled fifteen feet high. Up above was the opening for the trash chute. A nest of red ants swarmed above the dross. Over the last few days or weeks or months, the tenants must have tossed their garbage as usual, but no one had carried it to the curb. It figured that behind the mess, she could see the red gleam of an EXIT sign.
“Oh,” she moaned. “Oh, screw you,” she said to God, or herself, or, most likely, the tenants of The Breviary. Then she did a strange jig. Her hands flailed limp wristedly, her head shook back and forth, and she hopped on her good foot. Rats! Literally!
When she was done, she sucked up her courage, along with her bile, and lifted the first bag. It made a wet, slapping sound as she separated it from the pack and flung it to the side of the hall. When she lifted the second bag, something squeaked. She would have mistaken the sound for a human scream if she hadn’t seen the big-eyed brown rodent. (Rat or mouse? She hoped the latter, but guessed the former, judging by its thick, ribbed tail.)
She scooped five more bags. She was getting there. She smiled at her accomplishment, and imaged the tenants’ faces when they discovered that she was gone. Or better yet, when the cops showed up.
But then, something brownish pink peeked out from two plastic West Side Market bags. She took a double take. A triple take. A human hand, and on its fourth finger, a copper ring.
“Oh, no,” she cried. She took a breath, turned away, then turned back and pretended that it was not Edgardo at all. It was a mannequin, the kind you use to sew clothes. But even as she lifted another bag, she remembered those tears in his eyes, and the way he’d tried to keep her from moving into 14B, all as penance for Stephanie, who would never know how much her father had loved her.
The smell was coming from him. His body had rotted. Ants chewed. Other things, too. With a few more grunts, she lifted the rest of the bags in her way. The path to the door was almost clear. Only one thing left to move.
“Sorry about this,” she said, then closed her eyes, and pretended he was a doll. Shoved him with her bare foot. His skin made a splatting sound, but didn’t give. Full of gas and rot. So she bent down and dragged him by the underarms. His neck rolled, and she gagged, then swallowed fast, because she didn’t want to lose the only lunch she’d eaten in a week.
His skull was cracked from temple to jaw. The cut was uneven, and the skin around it was torn as if by something barbed. A rebar, she guessed. Her rebar. The tenants. They’d murdered him, then tossed him in the garbage. What a bunch of shits.
She heaved him aside, then lifted one more bag. Then free! She twisted the handle. Didn’t believe it. Tried again. Had enough energy, this time, to slam herself against it. Then pulled the key out from her mouth. It didn’t fit.
The steel door was locked.
Could she go back and get the rebar, bash the dead bolt? No, the door was metal. The echo would carry through the trash chute and send the tenants charging.
The stench prevented her from wallowing. She started back. Climbed the stairs. Up one flight. Quiet as a mouse.
She considered making a run for it through the lobby, but with her weak knee she wasn’t fast enough. Better to wait until they were gone and sneak out. So she waited by the fire door as the hours passed. One? Two? No watch by which to tell. The tenants danced and drank. And drank some more. Spilled their booze on the old altar, laughing gaily, maniacally, like the lone survivors of the Third World War.
She c
ounted them: forty-seven. Wondered if any had left their apartment doors open. Remembered—yes!—some of them might have phones. She climbed the stairs. Up, up, up. Thought the best way to start would be on fourteen. Easier to hide if she heard someone coming. She crept up the stairwell to fourteen and saw that her luck was in. The doors all down the row were open.
She started with 14C—Loretta. She walked down its long hall. Slip-slide was the sound her feet made. On her way, she stopped and peered inside the master bedroom. Stacks of china dolls lay on the queen-sized, canopied bed, their cheeks dotted with red circles of blush. Period costume cowgirls, Spanish dancers, Victorians with watching eyes that might goggle closed if you laid them down to sleep. She quick counted seventy-two dolls, which probably meant that they, and not Loretta, slept on a proper bed.
She didn’t see a phone, so she kept walking. Into the den. More dolls. This time they hung from fishing-line nooses nailed to the ceiling. Their bodies made a curtain between the den and hall and she had to push them aside to get through.
In the center of the den, she found a half-built door made out of broken white porcelain that had been glued together and covered with blinking dolls’ eyes. The door was only three feet tall, and pieces of it had fallen and shattered.
Next to that was a pink princess phone. She picked it up. “Huh!” she sucked in a breath of awful surprise. No dial tone, just ringing, and then a message. “The customer needs to contact accounts payable. Thank you…. The customer needs to contact…No emergency services in this area…”
She hung up.
And then, she hadn’t seen. How hadn’t she seen? Loretta was sitting at the turret. Drool caked her chin. Her bare feet were bloody, and beneath them were the crushed porcelain faces of more dolls. “Wrong apartment,” she said, then resumed crushing, like an Italian peasant stomping grapes. “You live in 14B. Don’t forget, stupid.”
Slip-slide. Audrey headed back where she’d come. Into the main hall, the kind old doctor who’d shot her full of insulin now lay on the red carpet, nude. His hand covered his privates like a fig leaf over a statue until he waved at her and revealed the hoary mess. She looked away. Was he there at all, or was she mad?
14D. Evvie Waugh. Slip-slide! The hallway walls were mounted with dead animal heads. Only, they hadn’t been treated with chemicals, and were slowly rotting. The order went like this: moose, bear, badger, panda, bald eagle, gorilla, chimp, and the shrunken African head of a human being. Their skin had all been stuffed, and their eyes replaced with black aggie marbles.
In the middle of the den was a claw-foot tub, in which Evvie, wearing a green velvet dressing robe, reclined with a pile of pillows and a copy of Decline and Fall. The tub was Clara’s, of course. Propped against its side was Edgardo’s cane. So many trophies.
“Wrong apartment. Party isn’t until tomorrow night. 14B. You’re the host of honor,” Evvie pronounced, then returned to his book.
“Thanks,” she mumbled, then turned and started out.
14A. Slip-slide. Down the hall. All the doors open. Everything empty. Everything dingy. Dried, bloody handprints marred the hallway walls. The low ones belonged to a child, but they got bigger the higher they went. It occurred to her that the prints might all belong to the same person, over a span of fifty years.
Slip-slide. Into the den. The walls were adorned with red smiley faces, and she didn’t think it was paint. Not a stick of furniture, except for an old rotary phone. She picked it up. Heard the sound, and at first did not believe it.
A dial tone!
She reached into the pocket of her sweat suit. A piece of paper. Her instincts told her to do this: she no longer remembered why. She dialed the number on the card. An answering machine. She didn’t listen to the message, or remember why. Just spoke after the beep. “Hi. They’re trying to kill me, and I found this card. My name is Audrey Lucas.”
Hung up. Dialed a number from memory, didn’t know whose. Machine picked up. Was it late? Early morning? “Hi. They’re trying to kill me. My name is Audrey Lucas.”
Found a Post-it in her pocket. Dialed the number written there. Behind her in the hall, she heard the click-clack of high heels. Ringing, ringing. The phone picked up, but no one answered. “Hello? Hello?” she called. “Please help me. I’m—” then she remembered, “At The Breviary—510 West 110th Street, fourteenth floor. Please!”
But no one answered. Far away, two people talked on the other line. They didn’t hear her!
Behind her, the tenants had arrived. Galton, unmasked. His lone eye glared. Loretta. Marty. The naked man. Evvie. The party, too. Still holding cocktails. So drunk they swayed, staggered, and crawled.
She watched, panting. Her breath was as heavy as syrup.
On two, three, and four legs, they advanced. They clogged the hall with their bodies. Arms and legs and torsos, indistinguishable as clumped insects. Their eyes had all gone black. It was The Breviary coming for her. The Breviary never lets anyone out.
She squeezed the receiver. Someone spoke on the other line: who is this? The tenants got closer. “Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!” Loretta clapped.
This was happening…This was happening?
“Who let her out? Marty, did you let her out?” Loretta asked. Her feet were a puddle of blood. They clacked as she walked, full of doll shrapnel.
Audrey remembered the key in her mouth. They’d take it if they could. But, two inches long and jagged on one end, was it too big to swallow? Then again, if worse came to worst and she died, at least she couldn’t build their damn door.
She swallowed. It got stuck. Swallowed again. It tore her throat and lodged inside the wound. She breathed, and air whistled.
They came closer.
And then, on the phone: Tell me who you are! It was Jill. She’d called Jill!
She swallowed and lifted the phone to her ear. The key went down, cutting its jagged way along her esophagus. “Hh-hh-help!” she cried.
Loretta pulled the phone from her hand. “I’m Audrey Lucas. I need help!” she shouted, just as Loretta ripped the wire from the jack.
38
The Sound a Trap Makes as It Closes, V: Build the Door
With hands reaching high over their heads, they played light as a feather. Carried her back to 14B and in their fine, tattered clothes, filled her den.
“Build the door!” Loretta screeched. Clop-clop! Her feet were porcelain castanets.
The key cut its cold way down her throat. She coughed blood and wiped it with the back of her hand so they didn’t see, then sputtered, “Build it yourself!”
“Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!” Loretta screeched. “I’ll scratch your face!”
And then, in the den, Audrey saw what in her sleep state, she’d missed. Her work was almost done. It wasn’t shaped like a normal door anymore. Its edges were curved, and it was thicker in the center than at its base. It defied conventional engineering, but she could see that it was strong, and like The Breviary itself, so long as she built a proper frame, would hold. This time, none of the labels were hidden: PALMOLIVE, SERVITUS, PFIZER, HAMMERHEAD, UNITED CHINESE EMIRATES. They’d been cut and taped so that the entire front of the door was riddled with nonsense letters, like English converted into babble.
The hole she’d made for a handle hung only two feet off the ground, as if, when the thing on the other side finally came through, it would not walk but slither. Along the door’s perimeter, letters had been cut from the boxes to form a single, repeated phrase:
Abandon Hope. All Ye Who Enter Here
They laid her on the air mattress. “Finish it yourself,” she said.
Martin’s voice was low, but no one spoke above it. “We can’t. You’re the one who can make it sturdy enough to hold. Every time we’ve tried has been a failure.”
“What’s on the other side?”
The tenants began to chatter among themselves. Gleeful and twittering. Their time in The Breviary had made them hive-minded. A few, too drunk to stand, were crawling on their hands
and knees. Martin blinked his lashless eyes. He’d neglected his eyeliner, possibly because his Parkinson’s today was especially severe: he couldn’t stop shaking. Then she realized, it wasn’t Parkinson’s. He was terrified.
“My wife is on the other side!” Galton cried. “She says she’s coming back to me.”
“The Breviary promised me a pony,” the woman with heavy gold chains announced. “Only it’s a Pegasus and a unicorn, so I can fly and teleport.”
“You’re an asshole, Sally.” Loretta giggled.
“No, no. It’s hell that’s behind the door,” the good, naked doctor said with a smile, like he was talking about Florida.
“We have no idea what will happen when it opens,” Martin said. “But The Breviary wants it, so we want it, too.”
“And Schermerhorn, what is he?” she asked.
Marty nodded. “He died a long time ago. The Breviary wears his face.”
That was when Loretta pointed at him. “You let her out, didn’t you? Fed her that sandwich even though you know how much I like tuna fish! Oh, Martin. The simpleton redhead scrambled your brain!”
Martin looked down at his worn-out Hickey Freeman suit, circa 1975, and sighed.
“It was him!” Loretta shouted.
They rallied, and drunkenly shoved him down the hall. A slow-motion shuffle all the way out of 14B. She heard a click as they locked her inside, which was soon followed by a low-pitched scream. The sound was cut short, and she knew that Martin, her last ticket out of this madhouse, was dead.
39
Vesuvius
You don’t have an address in your files?” Jill asked. Collier Steadman’s office was a wild assortment of bat-shit nuts. He’d rummaged through street-side trash for his decorative cast-iron plates, which he’d colored over in crayon and used to adorn his file cabinets. Instead of taking photos of his prize-winning terrier poodles, he’d snapped their shadow-images, then blown them up human-sized and hung them along his office walls, so the place looked like a forest of giant poodles.