There are shriveled-up bodies, but they are much smaller than those of the Grownups.
Smaller than us.
Smaller than the ones we saw in the coffins with the torn lids.
So tiny, I easily could hold them with one arm.
Babies.
Hundreds of little corpses dangle from the ceiling, so thick I almost can’t see the ceiling itself. They hang from chains that end in metal hooks slid through their rib cages. Cracked, dry skin has peeled away from their bodies, showing the bones beneath. Clumps of fallen flesh cover the floor like some horrid scattering of snow.
Seeing this makes my body rebel, makes me want to vomit. My stomach churns. I put a hand on my knee, try to catch my breath. This is wrong, so wrong.
How could people do something so evil?
“Told you,” Gaston says. “Next time I tell you something, Em, maybe you should listen.”
I nod slowly. Maybe I should.
He takes my hand and pulls me away. There is something about this boy that makes me know I can rely on him, no matter what. In that way, he reminds me of Latu.
We make the final right-hand turn. Not far ahead, the hallway ends in a white wall with a small plaque: a palm print embedded in a rectangle of dark glassy material. On the floor below it is a square of smooth, black metal.
Bishop points at the square.
“That’s the door,” he says.
I had assumed it would be stone, like every other door in this place. Unless that melted metal we saw earlier was a door, but we have no way of knowing for sure.
The handprint in the plaque, there is a golden symbol in it: the jagged circle. The same symbol that is on the foreheads of Gaston, Spingate and Beckett.
Gaston walks to the plaque. Strides to it, more accurately. He presses his palm to the handprint. The black door in the floor hums, then rises up on a hidden hinge, revealing a narrow tube leading down. A ladder runs its length, vanishing into deep shadow.
He crosses his arms. His smile is so smug it could make Aramovsky’s look humble by comparison. The time for being quiet and modest is apparently over: Gaston is back to normal.
“That’s how it goes,” he says. “It opens for me. Some people are more important than others, it seems.”
El-Saffani talks, the boy first this time, then the girl.
“Bishop tried it—”
“—then we tried—”
“—but it didn’t work for us.”
Bishop is glowering, waiting for us to finish. He doesn’t like the fact that Gaston can do something he can’t.
“What about Beckett?” I ask. “Did he try?”
Gaston nods. “It didn’t work for him, either.”
I thought perhaps the door recognized symbols, somehow, but if Beckett can’t open it, it’s not about the symbols alone. Is it something particular to Gaston? Or, maybe, particular to only certain people?
“I want to try,” I say.
Gaston again puts his hand to the print. The door closes. He gives a deep, comical bow and steps aside.
I press my hand into the depression, feel the cool material against my skin. Nothing happens.
Gaston holds the back of his hand to his forehead, pretends to be faint.
“Oh dear, our fearless leader is denied! Whatever will become of us now?”
He is so strange. We just saw butchered babies, hundreds of dead people—maybe thousands—and he’s making jokes? I want to shake some sense into him. But perhaps jokes are his way of dealing with this. It’s certainly better than how I reacted, which was to almost throw up.
Aramovsky walks to the plaque. He presses his hand to the glass.
The door hums: it opens.
Bishop laughs and shakes his bone-club. “Ha! I guess Gaston isn’t so special after all!”
Gaston’s face shifts from happy smile to glaring scowl. When he smiles, he is cute; when he looks like this, so hateful and furious, he is ugly both inside and out.
Aramovsky breathes out a sigh of delight. “The door opens for me because I am chosen. I knew it.” He looks at Gaston with an expression of deep respect, of acceptance. “As are you, Gaston. You are also chosen. I apologize if I offended you earlier, my brother.”
Gaston snarls. I would have never guessed something like this was so important to him.
I brought Aramovsky so he wouldn’t talk to the others while I was gone, so his words wouldn’t create more problems—now he has gained some kind of stature. I wonder if I will ever make the right choices.
The ladder waits for us. I want to get the bracelet and get away from this slaughterhouse, but I don’t want to rush things and make even more mistakes.
“Bishop, you said this room is haunted?”
He nods. His jaw muscles twitch. He will go down there with me, but he doesn’t try to pretend he’s not scared.
“You didn’t see ghosts or something,” I say. “Right?”
Bishop shrugs. I turn to Gaston.
“Well, Gaston? Ghosts?”