Standing in the unchanged room, I suddenly understood that I had been seeing only what I had wanted to see. The house, the strange man I’d “hired” to paint—they had all been just what I wanted. What had Michael seen when he was in the room with me? How had the house affected him?
Looking out the doors, I saw the railing from which Michael Searle had hanged himself. He’d committed suicide rather than live with what his father and Terrance had done to Olivia. Done to him. Surely I hadn’t invented that.
It was what my own mother had chosen, rather than live with me.
What sort of person was I, really?
“Help me. Someone help. Please.”
The voice came from inside the ballroom. I turned around but didn’t see anyone.
But it hadn’t been a ghostly sort of voice, and it was coming from the fireplace. Afraid, but also afraid not to respond, I went to the fireplace and saw that the flowered panel beside it was a few inches out of place.
“Who’s there? Please, help me.”
It was J.C.’s voice. The sound of it was so piteous that any animosity I had for her was completely overwhelmed. I couldn’t ignore her—and hadn’t Eva led me to find her?
Between the two of us, we got the stubborn panel open.
The woman who stumbled out of the hidden passage was nothing like the woman who had swanned into Bliss House the previous week, her clothes perfect, her confidence intimidating and annoying. Now her skirt and blouse were torn and stained brown with—dear God, it was blood. One of her eyes squinted shut, a mass of purple and black bruising. The other was blood-red, the cheek below it dramatically swollen as though badly broken. When I instinctively reached out to steady her, she flinched but didn’t turn away.
“There are rooms down there. He’s an animal.” Her shoulders hunched, her voice was a raw whisper. “It’s not Press anymore. Whatever he is, he’s going to kill me. Do you understand? We have to get away from here. I told you! Didn’t I tell you? And you wouldn’t listen, Charlotte!” She began to weep. Great, heaving sobs.
“Were you hiding? What’s in there?” Later she would describe the strange warren of rooms far beneath the house. I didn’t want to see them, but I eventually did.
Choking on her sobs, J.C. sank to the floor. I was going to have to get her to a hospital, but I couldn’t let Press know that I had seen her.
I had to think of Michael first.
Whatever I did to help her might lead to Press punishing me by keeping Michael from me forever. I knew it was a selfish thought, but I couldn’t help myself.
The sobbing suddenly abated, and she gripped my arm with fingers whose nails were torn and filthy with dirt and blood. “He told me about Eva. It wasn’t you, Charlotte. He thinks he’s going to kill me, so he told me.”
“Told you? What did he tell you?” I knelt beside her on the floor. “Tell me about Eva!” I took her by the shoulders. If her head hadn’t turned a fraction of an inch, looking past me, transfixed, I might have shaken her.
I swung around.
Terrance.
Chapter 41
Roses
“Hello, stranger.”
I heard Rachel’s voice but could only see her in my peripheral vision. Turning my head, slowly, I knew I should be afraid, knew I should be moved to action, but I couldn’t make myself do anything. My breath was short and I had the horrible feeling that I might die at any moment.
Press and Terrance and a man in a rubber clown mask had led us into the theater. I hadn’t seen Rachel at first, but there were several other women, all also wearing bizarre masks: a rabbit, a man’s mustached face (though the body below was decidedly female), a mouse, even a pig. Jack, with his silver-blond hair, was Mercury, silver wings like layered sickle blades protruding from his back. The other men were costumed as well. I was sure that the man in the featureless black gauze mask was Hugh Walters, the sheriff. Press had fitted himself with a dark mustache and tidy oiled beard. It, along with the oxblood Victorian waistcoat, proclaimed him to be Faust. When he was close enough for me to whisper, I told him he looked like a fool.
Once the doors were closed behind us, I had recklessly announced that they should look at J.C. to see what kind of man had brought them all here.
When everyone stopped to stare at us, I realized how many of them were scantily dressed. Two women, wearing only masks and swathes of pastel tulle on their rather robust bodies, had been interrupted while dancing to the waltz playing on the stereo. A Pulcinella, his blousy pants loosened, his member exposed, had turned away from a shepherdess seated on a lounge in front of one of the room’s tall windows.
The realization of what was happening—what had been happening—among these people, under the thin guise of play readings and literary conversation and, now, a funeral memorial, swept over me.
I had been the fool.
Someone laughed and the party resumed. Press held my arm, and Jack grabbed my elbow to hold me still and stuck me with a needle. Within a few agonizing minutes in which I swore at Press, calling him names I didn’t even remember knowing, I was drowsy, but fought sleep as hard as I could.