by Sarah Langan
Collier had been working at Vesuvius since he’d graduated from the Fine Arts Acting Program at Yale, and was now in his fifties. A decade ago, Jill had gone to one of his plays. Ten men who were supposed to represent different aspects of a person’s psyche had shouted at one another on a darkened stage. The denouement came when they’d hurled their own excrement in all directions, which, fortunately for the front row, had turned out to be half-cooked brownie batter.
“Fascinating,” she’d told him the following Monday. “Really brought me to a place I wasn’t expecting to go.”
His eyes got watery with crazy intensity, like he’d decided they were kindred spirits. “Most people can’t handle that kind of emotional honesty. Darling, it’s you and me against the heathens.” As he spoke, the poodles had suddenly loomed too large behind him, like he’d been about to get devoured.
Ever since, Collier had always put her requests at the top of his pile. She hadn’t worked the day after Thanksgiving in ten years. Schlock Jock or not, that secured for him a special place in her heart.
“Have you tried calling her?” he asked. This evening, Collier looked worse for wear. His skin was waxy, and when he’d leaned over to wave her into his office, he’d dipped the bottom of his pink geometric-patterned tie into his coffee. He was working on a new play set to debut in Bushwick, Brooklyn. A reimagining of Our Town with an all-midget cast.
“I’ve tried her cell, but she’s not answering. And the landline I have for her—it’s some guy’s voice on the machine. Her ex-boyfriend, I think. He hasn’t called me back, either. Is it possible she moved?”
Frowning, to let her know what he was doing was against company policy, Collier opened Audrey’s file. “It says here that she’s on 93rd and York. I’ve got the same landline number you do.”
Jill sighed. After coming home from Around the Clock this morning, she and Tom had made breakfast for the boys. Then they’d all gone to a movie, passing popcorn and large sodas down the long line. They’d even taken Markus’ boyfriend Charlie. He’d been grateful as Oliver Twist for the free popcorn, which had prompted her to do something completely un-Jill, and hug him. The slender, nervous boy had hugged her back with all his might, like it was the first time in his life anyone had ever approved of him, which had elicited something even more un-Jill. She’d broken down right in front of the Sutton Theatre. Suddenly, Tom had been holding her, and then Markus, and Clemson, while troubled Xavier had stood a little back. Group hug, they’d all cried, and then, feeling foolish, laughed. A minute or two after that, they’d let go. They went back to the apartment, feeling daunted by such gaudy emotion, but also less bereft.
A few times during the morning and afternoon, she’d called Audrey’s cell phone and office phone. Finally, she’d called Bethy in reception and learned that Audrey hadn’t been to work in over a week.
That was when she’d told Tom to hold dinner and hailed a taxi. It was after six on Tuesday by the time she got to Vesuvius, and she’d caught Collier just as he’d been putting on his coat. Perhaps even more alarming than Audrey’s disappearance, he’d also carried two small denim jackets as gifts for his poodles. Before he’d looked up Audrey’s address, he’d made her admire their fine embroidery. “Stunning,” she’d told him, and she’d meant it.
Now, Collier flipped through Audrey’s file. “No other addresses. Emergency contact is…Betty Lucas, at the Nebraska State Psychiatric Hospital.”
Jill rubbed her temples. “Psychiatric hospital? That explains a lot.”
Collier pressed his head back into his neck like a turtle, and she got the feeling she’d insulted him. “Audrey? She’s fabulous. Only one of your team who doesn’t fudge her overtime.”
Jill nodded. “She’s a lovely woman. It still explains some things. Her mother’s in a coma, though. I doubt she’ll be very helpful.”
Collier rapped his pen against Audrey’s file. “I don’t know what else to do, then.”
Jill sighed. “Something’s wrong. I’m sure of it. You should have heard her voice. She sounded so frightened. And when I saw her last week, she wasn’t herself. You know how she’s always alert, paying attention—you never have to tell her anything twice? Well, last Monday, she was a zombie. Don’t repeat this to anyone else in the office, please, but I thought she might be stoned.”
Collier looked down at the file for a long while, and Jill considered thanking him for his time, washing her hands of this strange business, and heading home, where her life had its own worries. Only, she’d failed Julian not long ago. If she lived another hundred years, she’d never forgive herself for not holding his hand as he took his last breath. If she could help it, she didn’t plan on failing anyone else.
Just then, Collier dialed the hospital in Nebraska. “I have an idea,” he said, then into the phone when the line connected, “Can I speak with the billing department?”
Jill waited, stunned by Collier’s hitherto unimagined deviousness. “Yes. Hello,” he said. “I’m Ms. Audrey Lucas’ accountant, your patient Betty Lucas’ legal guardian. I wanted to make sure you’ve got her proper address. She’ll of course pay what she owes, but she hasn’t received any bills.” He shrugged at Jill as they both waited. Then picked up a pen. “Yes, 510 West 110th Street. #14B. That’s right, just a cell phone. No landline. Exactly correct. Thanks for your time.”
What surprised Jill most after he hung up the phone was what he did next. He put his hand over hers, like he was prepared to miss the dress rehearsal for his play, prepared not to feed the dogs for another few hours, all for a woman he knew tangentially, between the hours of nine and seven. Sometimes people surprise you in good ways. “What should we do?” he asked.
She toyed with the idea. It seemed excessive. And yet.
“Call the police, yes?” Collier asked.
She nodded. “Yes.”
40
Old Scars Protect Against New Ones
Tuesday afternoon. Eight days trapped in 14B. Nobody had come to find her. Not her office, not her boss, not even Saraub. That kind of neglect leaves a girl feeling less than swell.
Schermerhorn played the piano while Audrey rested. Cocktail-hour entertainment! She’d had a long morning. Her back ached. Arms, too. She’d worked fast since they’d killed Marty. Often, her fingers had moved without her knowledge.
The tune Schermerhorn played was familiar: “Heart and Soul. I beg to be Adored…And Tumbled Overboard!” It reminded her of a Harold Arlen song, and now she remembered why his voice seemed so familiar. The accent wasn’t British—just rich WASP Connecticut, like his jaw couldn’t move more than half an inch in either direction. It was the same man who’d answered the line when she’d called to view the apartment. She’d spoken directly to the building itself.
“Build the door, Audrey!” Schermerhorn cheered. She looked over at her creation. Glued to the cardboard were the shredded trappings of her old life; clothes, the Parkside Plaza plans from the hall, and her air mattress sliced to plastic strips. They fit like flaking skin so that all that remained was the caution:
Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here
From the hole in the floor, she’d sawed two sets of two-by-four supporting beams to keep the door from tumbling over. The entire den now sagged, and pretty soon, she expected that it would collapse into 13B.
Ants swarmed the rotten hole and walls. They didn’t bite, even though she kept expecting them to. Instead, they circled in and out against the door, like an ocean tide.
“I beg to be adored!” Schermerhorn cried. His skin had sloughed from his bones, and in places, she could see his skeleton. He laughed so hard that tears fell as he sang, like maybe The Breviary itself had gone mad.
Audrey sat on the turret ledge of the empty room. Black-and-white Betty sat next to her. A trick. Not her real mother. But company, just the same. The television blared an old sitcom about single friends living in Manhattan. Betty giggled along with the canned laughter, while the ghosts of The Breviary lined the walls of
the den. Each with noose marks, or broken skulls. Bloated faces from drowning underwater. Maybe they hadn’t wanted to build doors, either.
“Finish it, my lovely!” Schermerhorn sang.
Audrey looked at the rebar, then the piano. The door needed a solid frame, of course. Something firm, like satinwood. Otherwise, it wouldn’t hold for long enough before it collapsed…Long enough for what?
She answered her own question: Silly girl. Long enough for the monsters to climb through!
At the piano, Schermerhorn cried and laughed. “I fell in love with you, MADLY!” while next to him, the ghosts of The Breviary watched. Some smiling, some seeming themselves, haunted.
What time was it? Afternoon? Morning? Her eyes were heavy, and she knew tonight, when she fell asleep, that The Breviary would consume her, and she’d finish the job.
And what then?
Saraub would come. The last piece of this puzzle. Maybe Loretta would call him and pretend to be a concerned neighbor. Maybe by then, she’d have no control, and she’d call him herself. Either way, once he heard that she needed his help, he’d come running. She would murder him. Skin his flesh from his bones. The door would open then and set something terrible free.
She stood. Thought about tearing down the door, but knew she’d only build it again tonight, and by tomorrow, she’d be too weak to resist.
She tried to push open the turret window, but it was stuck. Betty laughed while somebody on the television broke up with another boyfriend because he looked bad bald. The children howled. They’d been howling for days.
Out the window on 110th Street, groups and couples meandered, and the M60 bus cruised toward the Triborough Bridge. She wrapped the sleeve of Clara’s sweatshirt around her hand, then smashed a small, lead-fluted windowpane. “Help me! I’m in 14B!” she shouted, but her voice by now was so hoarse that no one heard.
She pulled one of the shards from the broken pane, a perfectly preserved stained-glass bird, and sat next to black-and-white Betty. She pressed the glass to her wrist. The bird’s red eyes watched. “What should I do?” she asked her mother, not mother.
Betty’s eyes moved in her direction, but the rest of her was still. On the television, the friends sang a plucky tune at a local coffee shop: isn’t life grand?
“Build the door, baby,” Betty said. Her mouth didn’t move, only her eyes.
Audrey traced her old scars with the sharp point of the bird’s beak. Schermerhorn played louder. She tried to make herself want this. For Saraub’s sake, for her own, for the innocents of The Breviary, if there were any.
She closed her eyes, remembered the last time she’d done this. That feeling of freedom, and floating. Watching yourself drift as the water turns pink. It came back to her now, that girl in tan coveralls that she used to be. She was that girl again. Greasy and hungry and useless.
Schermerhorn played louder. The ghosts moaned. The living tenants had gathered in 14A and 14C, and now banged against her walls. The sound reminded her of childhood: bill collectors; angry boyfriends; a manic mother.
The edges of her bird’s-eye glass were sharp, but she didn’t think the cut would be clean. She pushed hard and broke her callused skin. A tiny scrape. Her scars were already so thick.
“Bitch!” Schermerhorn shouted. He stopped playing and glared. The ghosts wailed. The tenants revolted, pounding so hard that the walls shook.
Her blood beaded. Small droplets thin as dew. “I never stopped bleeding,” she whispered.
“I’ll take care of you, Audrey,” black-and-white Betty crooned without moving her lips. “Trust me. Build the door.”
Audrey looked at her hands and wrists. She was sick of scars. Her body had endured so many of them. She was still that girl in coveralls, ugly and invisible. Naïve and too trusting. Easily used. But maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe that girl was the real Audrey. And all these trappings of her adult life: the cleaning, the nervousness, the hostility, the biting at people she loved most, maybe they were the scars that made the woman shine less bright.
She knew she ought to end this. Thwart The Breviary while she was still in possession of her faculties and had the chance. It would give her pleasure to see the tenants’ crestfallen faces and hear The Breviary shriek as she gasped her last breath, and the door went unopened. But neither the old Audrey nor the scarred one was the type to give up. Even in that tub more than twenty years ago, she’d not been frightened or relieved as she’d stood from the pink water and bandaged her wrists with masking tape, but disgusted: how dare she treat herself so cheaply?
She closed her eyes, and in her mind, whispered, “What do I do? Dear God, what do I do?”
Just then, her groin cramped. She doubled over from the pain and remembered that she’d swallowed the key.
41
The Breviary
No thinking creature can tolerate captivity. In the presence of just four white walls, the mind invents. Stagnant air and locked doors skew perception. Eighty-degree angles turn obtuse. Holes form between joists where bricks no longer neatly meet. Smiles become sneers; love skinned leaves the skeleton of lust; and too much sleep unmoors its dreamer. Without the possibility of freedom, the rituals of living are abandoned. Bathing, eating, cleaning, and even language are lost. Things fall apart, and in the vacuum of their absence, madness rears.
The Breviary had always known that it did not belong in this world. And yet, here it remained. Trapped. Alone.
Schermerhorn was the first casualty of The Breviary’s rage. He’d never believed in the religion he’d created and had never expected his buildings to stand for more than a few years. The Breviary changed that. Long after he cut its last ribbon and welcomed it to the world, it stayed on his mind. He could not leave the city, nor spend a day without walking by it. He could not go an afternoon without sketching its skewed curves. Eventually, he could not sleep, except in its lobby, where its soft humming soothed him. Finally, he climbed a ladder. The noose didn’t hold, and he fell thirty feet to his death. His body was graceful, like a pencil dive, and his blood flowed west.
For a while after murdering its flawed creator, and then wearing his image like skin, The Breviary was content. It played tricks on its tenants, like opening locked doors, and stealing light, and filling tap water with lead. Captains of industry slept in its bedrooms, and at night it whispered poison in their ears, so that it had a hand in the fates of nations and newspapers, Spanish wars, and lovers, young and old.
Outside, New York soared, burned, and, relentless, rose again. Horse-drawn carriages gave way to dynamite blasts through granite, then snakelike subways that screamed underground. Gold-gilded libraries and courthouses with names like Carnegie and Morgan ascended and collapsed. Wilbur Wright flew his glider over Manhattan, the Lusitania sank, flappers danced the Charleston, and ten years later men in three-piece suits broke through The Breviary’s high-floor windows like witless penguins, trying to fly. Once and future presidents were crowned and killed, fortunes lost, wars fought, spoils divided. Suspension-bridge lights brightened the nighttime Hudson River, while downtown, monoliths and spiteful planes blotted out the sun.
Seven generations came and went while it remained, rooted and unchanged. It learned to hate man for his freedom, and in its boredom it got reckless. It whispered louder and planted itself inside empty stomachs. It drove bodies out windows and heads into ovens. Arsenic into brandies, knives into throats. It haunted its inhabitants with their own dark thoughts, so that with each successive generation, the tenants became more like the building that housed them. They lost compassion for the world outside, and for each other, too.
By the final generation, both building and occupants had gone mad. Like Schermerhorn before them, the tenants, and even the building itself, began to dream. This time, of doors.
They drew pictures, they sketched. They became obsessed. The first tenant used his deceased wife’s bones. The door proved a failure, and crashed soon after opening, but in that brief time, throug
h the cracks, he saw a terrible beauty. He loved the black-eyed thing that had peered back at him, because he recognized himself in it. The Breviary recognized what waited on the other side of that door, too, and felt the first pangs of hope it had ever known: beyond that door was home.
Soon all the tenants tried and failed; and then came Clara DeLea, who understood that the price of its opening was blood. She succeeded better than the rest, but in the end, her door was not sound enough to hold and collapsed before anything could climb through. In its fury, The Breviary dragged her back to her claw-foot tub and then shrank inside of her, so that she was forced to see the wickedness she’d done to her children, unmoving as stillborns. In the hopes of safely ushering their souls from the building, she’d slit her wrists crosswise and joined them. In death, her arms were gathered around their bodies in the tub, and her jellied blood layered their skin, as if all five of them had returned to the womb.
And now, Tuesday night, Audrey Lucas shattered the bird-shaped glass meant for her wrists and decided not to go gently into that good night, even while her eyelids got heavy, and the monster inside her grew. Loretta Parker paged through Audrey’s cell-phone messages and found Saraub’s number at the hospital. She waited, and practiced her speech: “Your friend asked me to call. She’s quite ill. A terrible fever. Please, come straightaway!”
Then again, “Your pretty bitch isn’t so pretty. We cut off all her hair!” And again, “We slashed her face!” Loretta’s cataracts, like the eyes of the rest of the tenants, had gone black.
In 14B, Audrey pinched herself to keep awake, then tore the discarded cardboard boxes into small pieces, and chewed. She would get this key out, one way or another.