Betrayed

by Lynn Carthage

  “Or do we just get her the vials?” she asks.

  “Right—because that’s so easy! Because they’ve been kept hidden for hundreds of years, but we’ll just waltz in and immediately locate them!”

  “If we could direct our tripping,” she muses, “you could overhear more secrets. Or we could even see where the vials are.”

  “Athénaïs said, ‘You pray to know the answer.’ Do you think it has to do with a religious place?”

  “There’s a chapel in the palace,” she points out. “Should we go poke around?”

  “Might as well. Let’s grab Eleanor on our way.”

  I turn my attention back to Gillian. She’s stopped crying and she’s sitting there on the floor with her chin in her hands. She looks like she’s in deep thought, her eyes focused on nothing. Not necessarily bad thoughts, either.

  “New hair,” comments Phoebe.

  “New hair for a fresh start,” I say wryly.

  I’m moved by this quietude in Gillian. She was always loud, always punk rock, always sassy and funny . . . it’s different to see her sitting so quietly. Did my death steal her loudness forever? Such that she’d consider someone like Chad for a boyfriend, so lanky and such an outsider?

  It makes me think about myself, too, and what I was. The kind of person whose girlfriend had bleached punk hair and wore combat boots . . . but I shouldn’t define myself by my girlfriend. I was the kind of person who wore a thrift-store leather jacket, who drove a beat-up old Austin Mini, who hated the songs on the radio and sought out his own music. Someone who did okay in school but wasn’t averse to bunking off lessons now and then to go make out in a field on the other side of a bridge.

  It hits me that I should try to communicate with her, try to find a way to let her know it’s okay to date Chad and let me go.

  I look at her empty hands. Could I hold one? Could I put something in her hand? A pen that I’d write a message with?

  “Miles?” whispers Phoebe. “I’m going to go now. I’ll check in with Eleanor and my family. Come whenever you’re ready.”

  “Sure,” I say. I smile uncertainly at her, and she’s gone in an instant.

  I feel so lonesome suddenly. Gillian’s here but she has no idea I’m with her. I’m nothing. I’m a disturbance of the air. I wonder if I make a cold spot, like they always say about ghosts.

  I’m the effing draft in the room.

  I stand up and walk around, trying to touch stuff, unsuccessfully. I spend a while with her pencil cup. I really want to communicate. I attempt to knock it over so pencils roll, but I’m like a useless rock-and-roll star trying to kick over the guitar stand but too drunk to aim correctly.

  I crouch next to Gillian and talk right into her ear. “Can you hear me? Nod if you hear me.”

  I repeat that a few times at varying volumes.

  She doesn’t hear it.

  She’s looking at the candle, probably wishing she’d never been paired with me in chem lab, the whole reason we got together. We bonded over protons and neutrons, our elbows digging into the slightly malleable black rubber of the tabletop. She should’ve been paired up with Chad and then my death would’ve been just that kind of thing that happens to someone you know, but not someone you thought you might spend your life with.

  I remember her putting her pen in her mouth, then spitting it out with the most outraged face. She’d forgotten she’d stirred our chemical compound with it. She didn’t have laboratory-safe practices, that girl.

  “Go ahead, Gillian,” I say. “You can resume your life. This was just a blip.”

  She leans forward. She’s mesmerized by the flame of the candle. On impulse, I lean next to her and blow.

  And the flame bends for a second before returning to vertical.

  “Holy sweet Jesus!” I screech.

  And she reacts, too. “Oh my God, are you here?” she asks, her eyes wide, so wide.

  I bend over and blow again, and the flame bends.

  I get it. I’m the drafty cold-spot ghost. I can move air. It’s not much, but with a candle burning, it’s something.

  “Do that again,” she commands.

  I blow.

  “Oh man,” she says, and she jumps to her feet and runs to her door, yanking it open.

  Not cool, Gillian. I’m not some demon.

  I hear her pummeling down the hallway and down the stairs. She’s terrified.

  Of me.

  I throw my face into my hands. When is anything ever going to feel good? This is just the cretaceous layer of crap atop the sedimentary level of shite, crowned with more crap, laid on top of endless strata of bollixed-up-itude.

  Thanks, Gillian. I needed that. It wasn’t enough to bleakly contemplate my own death and your replacement of me with some dude with bad posture; now I feel so great knowing I’m an object of fear, too.

  Wonderful!

  Effin’ candle.

  Her house’ll burn down if I don’t extinguish it. So I lean over, fill my not-lungs with her air, the air she’s privileged to breathe, and blow the jones out of that candle.

  Dark.

  Buh-bye.

  Cheerio!

  Back in France, Phoebe’s family is hanging out on a blanket waiting for the fireworks display to start. Eleanor and Phoebe are talking earnestly as I arrive, and they stop mid-sentence the instant they see me.

  I’m in no mood.

  I sit with my back to them, staring out at the green lawns tinged with blue as twilight falls.

  Tabby is the only one with any energy. She’s darting out in forays from the blanket, running to a particular bush and back, over and over. Add a stick to the mix and she’d make a great puppy.

  I think about the German man hidden behind one of these bushes, waiting for the world to notice he’s gone. But I don’t see yellow police tape anywhere; there are some lonesome people in this world who can vanish without a soul paying heed.

  “Can’t you see if they’ll refund the tickets?” Phoebe’s mum is saying. “It’s hours yet and she’s already manic.”

  “It won’t hurt her to have one late night in her life,” says Steven.

  “It might hurt me,” says Phoebe’s mum. She’s joking, but she’s not.

  “Do you want me to walk you two back to the hotel? I can come back and watch the fireworks myself.”

  “Hm. That might actually . . . solve things. So long as you stay away from drunken tourists.”

  It occurs to me that when the German’s body is found, Steven might be held responsible. Won’t people show the police their phone videos of the two of them fighting? Those might be going viral already.

  If I had corporeality, I’d find the German’s discarded body and slide it into the Grand Canal where no one would find it. He might be reported as someone who didn’t show up at his next destination, but he was traveling . . . people often take detours and get waylaid.

  I turn around and look briefly at Phoebe. I don’t want to worry her so I won’t mention it. There’s nothing we can do about it. If the body’s found, it’s found. Her family will be back in England by dinnertime tomorrow anyway.

  “Should we check out the chapel?” asks Phoebe. “Like we were going to?” Her voice sounds vaguely accusatory, but I shrug it off. I’m not going to feel guilty. If she and Eleanor want to talk about me, let them. I’m not going to pretend I didn’t notice, though.

  “Is everything all right with your sweetheart?” asks Eleanor.

  My sweetheart. I make an unattractive sound from my nose.

  “She’s crossed over from sorrow to terror,” I say.

  “What?” says Phoebe.

  “I managed to blow the candle flame a little and it freaked her out. She ran away.”

  Phoebe throws her arms around me and almost knocks me over. “Sorry, Miles,” she says.

  “But how intriguing that you managed to blow the flame,” Eleanor marvels.

  “I could hire out for birthday parties,” I say. “A boon for the lazy and the as
thmatic.”

  “This has possibly important applications,” says Eleanor. “You can manipulate air.”

  “Lucky me.”

  “If you’re bent on that mood, so be it,” snaps Eleanor in a completely unexpected voice. She stalks off to the row of manicured miniature trees that frame our horizon.

  “I’m going after her,” says Phoebe. “And then, let’s hit the chapel. We have to try everything. I’m hoping Mom takes Steven up on the offer to go back to the hotel. I’ll relax once she and Tabby are away from Giraude.”

  “Sure,” I say. I sit watching with zero interest as Phoebe catches up with Eleanor and they say girl things to each other.

  I’m done.

  I’m exhausted.

  If I could wipe my hands and undo everything, go back in time and never meet Phoebe and Eleanor, to the days when I thought of the Arnaud Manor as some crazy decaying mansion I’d never set foot in . . . would I?

  I think I would.

  I’d love to return to normal.

  To return to rolling my eyes at my homework on my desk, to dinners with my parents, to the simple worries of what university I’d attend and whether my grades would get me in or not.

  To whether Gillian would go to university with me or not.

  To whether I’d care about her in another year. We’d never had our relationship tested. It was exciting and pretty new, and we never moved to the phase where it gets boring.

  I knew things got tedious. I knew I’d want to make sure I kept my options open for someone I’d meet at university.

  Someone with auburn hair, maybe. An American exchange student. A pretty girl named, oh, say, Phoebe.

  I smile at myself, in spite of myself.

  I’m tired, all right, and I’d love to exchange this strange reality for the boredom of all my yesterdays.

  But...

  But Phoebe.

  Phoebe.

  Damn, but I like that girl. I catch her eye from far away and give her a thumbs-up. Chapel it is.

  Let’s locate those vials of blood and bring them to the centuries-old immortal woman who likes to strangle tourists, shall we?

  CHAPTER NINE

  It is said that a head once severed from the body maintains awareness and consciousness for a full seven seconds. After guillotining, heads were seen to react and even to bite at others in the basket.

  —The Machine That Fueled a Revolution

  The chapel is vast, like everything else on the Versailles campus. I laugh to myself: “campus.” Right.

  A place to learn how not to treat peasants, right? A crash course in empathy for breadless folks?

  Overhead there are florid scenes painted on the ceiling with blue clouds intermittently between them. It’s like the Sistine Chapel on diamonds. Everything here is resplendently golden, amber, light-touched. High up in the rafters, rows of inset, gabled windows bring in the last bits of sun to bathe the marble below.

  Since Athénaïs said something about praying, I head first for the altar at the front. It’s cordoned off with one of the red ropes that we dead scoff at.

  “Today’s present chapel site is the fifth on the grounds of the chateau,” I overhear a tour guide say, a different person than the one who held forth in Marie-Antoinette’s chamber earlier today. “The most recent was located where today’s Salon d’Hercule exists, and previous versions have been swallowed by the queen’s salle des gardes. There were many changes, as successive kings found the chapel’s placement inconvenient and with typical monarchic whim, simply moved it.”

  Phoebe stands stock-still, looking at me, horrified. So this might not be the place Athénaïs referenced after all. We might have to conduct an archeological dig to locate the original chapel and its cupboard of blood. I raise an eyebrow at her. What can we do? It’s a silly needle-in-a-haystack mission anyway.

  Do we really think we’re going to find something that no one in hundreds of years of cleaning the palace, of restoring it, of ransacking it, for that matter—that no one else found? And, uh, also without the benefit of being able to touch stuff?

  We’re just like those cops on Law & Order who go pay the house call to the grocery clerk because they have to follow that lead, all the while knowing it’s not going to lead to anything other than a “busy” scene where a kid rolls his eyes and refuses to stop bagging groceries while chatting with the cops. (Really? They can’t get his manager to let him step away for a few minutes?)

  Oh well, it’s something to do other than endlessly regret the circumstances of my own death.

  The chapel was deconsecrated in the 1800s, the guide tells us, but it still carries an air of solemnity beyond the equally grand chambers of state. I pause before the altar.

  Does it have hidden chambers inside? Where the priests once stored their wine, wafers, and vestments, is there a deeper compartment holding glass containers of rusting blood?

  I know I can’t touch it, but just to be thorough, I extend a hand to the altar. It goes right through it. I pause and then stick my head inside. Highlighted by a shaft of light coming in from a loosely fitting cupboard door, a gray mouse pauses on its hind legs. It can’t see me, but it feels me. It squeals and rushes away almost as quickly as I withdraw.

  Next I walk the walls, looking at the wooden paneling for some interruption in the pattern, some subtle outline of a door just like the one in Marie-Antoinette’s bedroom. I see Phoebe and Eleanor making the same examination of the floor. Maybe a trapdoor will open up and show us a flight of collapsible stairs. The pews are long gone, but I use intention to move to the row of second-story tiers, where noble people could watch the religious proceedings as if they were at the theater. I look carefully but find nothing out of the ordinary.

  “In a way I’m relieved,” says Phoebe, showing up next to me. “If we don’t have the vials, we don’t have to wrestle with the ethics of turning them over to Giraude.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” says Eleanor, who appears as Phoebe speaks. “We could give her one and say the cache was depleted. Nothing compels us to give her everything. One vial could hold her over for years, until the next fearless crew comes around, hopefully with more knowledge and power than we have.”

  “True,” says Phoebe. “Or as soon as she takes a swig, we can bat it out of her hands.”

  “And be back in the same danger we are in now!” protests Eleanor.

  “Maybe we could accidentally drop it just as we hand it over to her,” I say. “They must be made of glass, right? Who could be mad at someone dropping something?”

  We all laugh.

  As I look up at the impossible height of the ceiling, as I imagine myself soaring up to the painted clouds and blue sky, I feel that weightlessness that means I’m about to go somewhere. My whole brain is awash in whistling; it feels different. It’s not that the light is changing . . . the scene is changing. I’m not indoors anymore, and I sense fresh air coming across my face. There’s a roar that’s not the quietude of hushed visitors to the chapel . . . it’s a gusty yell.

  People here are really angry.

  We’re in Paris. The unmistakable feel of that city washes over me, even though it’s not recognizable. It hasn’t been Hausmannized yet, and the tumbling, canted medieval architecture is still in place. We’re at the back of a crowd pushing through the narrow streets. Phoebe reaches out to grab my hand, and I look wildly around. No Eleanor.

  “Let’s get to the front of the mob,” I say. “And find out what’s going on.” We use intention to move, and there we see that the crowd has been following a row of horse-drawn tumbrels. Inside, people stand, trying to keep their balance as they jostle side to side on the cobblestones.

  They’re on their way to execution. The stress and panic rises off them almost like a stink.

  “No,” says Phoebe. “I can’t watch this.”

  The noblewomen wear gowns of silk with ribbons and inset panels of brocade, while the men are in fine shirts and well-made breeches, but an overla
y of dirt smudges their finery. They’ve been housed like animals in filthy cells with straw thrown on the floor for their beds. No maid has combed or powdered their hair in weeks. They’re bedraggled and flea-bitten and sleepless. Their eyes show the beaten-down acceptance of their fate.

  Still, if I were in that tumbrel, I’d jump out and see how far I’d get on foot. Those bloodthirsty crowds would doubtless give me a harder death than the clinical speed of the guillotine, but at least I’d feel that I’d tried.

  We turn the corner and enter into the square. The smell hits me like a slap. It’s blood. Thick, collected blood. The crowd erupts in cheers. “Place du Trône Renversé!” screams the woman ahead of me gleefully. It means the “place of the throne reversed.” I remember Phoebe’s stepdad talking about this town square that used to be called, simply, Place du Trône—the revolutionaries had turned the name and the concept upside down.

  I can see the guillotine elevated above even the tallest men; its platform a stage for open-air theater.

  A chilling sight. Nothing in life prepared me to see a device meant to murder as many people as possible, quickly, efficiently. It rises up, wooden and forbidding, with that large, slanted blade poised and ready to drop. A slanted board connects to it, to which one by one, the people in the tumbrels will be fastened, their clothing sticking to the blood there from the former user, and the former, and the former. They’ll be lowered into place and the blade dropped. At the base is a board-covered pit to collect blood flowing from the machine. That’s what the stench is. It’s a pit full of hundreds of people’s blood, like a butcher’s shop that never cleans its floor.

  Terrible enough, but what makes it nauseating is the crowd. They’re so happy. So high-energy that their eyes sparkle. Children are here, too, grinning and jubilant. These peasants have been hungry for so long, they’ve been made as murderous as any serial killer. They can’t wait to see these nobles face their deaths while struggling to control their bowels and keep a bit of dignity.

  A man is made to lie down on the slanted board, and before I can even blink, he’s decapitated.