I must have slept, or at least I have no memory of someone putting me into darkness. No, not total darkness. I could see faint shapes beyond whatever piece of incense-fragrant fabric lay over me. The theater—if that was still where I was—had gone silent.
Was I afraid? I was afraid for Michael but not for myself. He was my only reason for living. My father had Nonie. I had lost Rachel, or rather I had never had Rachel. She had caused me the worst pain that I could imagine. Perhaps I should have felt some relief knowing that I hadn’t been responsible for Eva’s death, but I got no comfort from the fact. And Press. I hadn’t really had him either. He had belonged to Rachel. But a part of me didn’t wholly believe that. Rachel, in her hubris, imagined that Press would never use her in the way he had used me. Press wanted something from her, and I assume it was the same thing he wanted from me. She had given him a daughter, but maybe she would try to give him a son. Like me, Rachel was a womb.
There was too much stillness, given the number of people I knew were in the room. Would they kill me? Kill J.C.? I didn’t know where she was. It had been easy enough for Press to fake the circumstances of Eva’s death. How much easier would it be to excuse my death? Poor, mad, careless Charlotte who had let her daughter die. Did all these other people know that Rachel had killed Eva? What did Press really know?
Slowly, slowly the drape was pulled from my body.
“Charlotte.”
How often had that voice called my name? From the hallway. From the other side of my bed. Sensuous in its depth. Even now I hear it, long after I last saw Press.
“Charlotte.”
Even from the new depths of my loathing for him, my body, my treacherous body responded.
He walked into my view.
Press was naked. He seemed broader, taller than he had ever seemed before, and the black hair on his chest and groin was opaque in the dim light. I recognized my husband even though he, too, was wearing a half-mask. How foolish and strange. But my life was so strange. Why shouldn’t everyone around me have been wearing masks? Only Rachel had shown her face. That was like her. She would want everyone to see her. It was her lifeblood to be seen.
Somewhere behind Press, someone was pounding a stick, a walking stick perhaps, on the floor. Slowly, at first, but then the tempo increased.
The intense lethargy that had been like a weight over my entire body was beginning to abate. Whatever Jack had injected me with was wearing off.
I had witnessed Olivia’s rape. Her ultimate humiliation. My terror lay in wondering if Press would be the only man, the only person to use me that night. I felt the force of the masked stares. I had witnessed their debasement. But as long as they kept on their masks, I would try my hardest to forget, to erase them from my mind. If I survived.
“Charlotte.”
Three times. The third time Press spoke my name, it sounded different. Final.
The stick continued its beat, reverberating in my body. The anticipation of the circle gathered around me was a palpable, hungry thing. Rachel, however, looked unhappy. Even in my fear, I felt some small satisfaction in that.
Press climbed a stair to reach me. What was there in him that was compelling him to do this in front of all these people?
I closed my eyes, unwilling to witness my own humiliation. As he entered me, the onlookers were silent, but I’m certain I felt the house shudder beneath me.
My husband had made love to me many times, but never with such slow deliberation. His breath quickened, and the breath of the circle of people quickened along with it.
Then something in the air changed. I opened my eyes. The room turned viciously cold and one of the women cried out as the air around us crystallized into something like snow—not falling, but simply hanging midair around us. The crystals stung, clinging to our skin. Press, apparently unaffected, continued. My body was now frozen inside and out. The pounding of the stick faltered only for a moment, then also kept on.
People began to fall away, alarmed. Only Rachel stayed. Her eyes had widened in her bizarrely made-up face, and her look of displeasure had turned to fascination.
The house shuddered again with a tremendous groan, and the walls of the theater bowed inward, creating a web of cracks across the long ceiling and causing the chandeliers to swing wildly. Now there were more cries from the others in the room, frightened exclamations that the doors couldn’t be opened. Press’s breath was hot in my ear and I knew he wouldn’t last much longer. Rachel leaned forward, rapt. Over her shoulder I could see Jack, his mask insufficient to hide his crown of white hair. It was Jack who held the stick. Jack who was keeping time despite the chaos around him. The trusses above the ceiling shrieked with strain.