Nieve (22 page)

As Nieve mounted the wide, dusty stairs, following behind Weazen, the ring that Elixibyss had slipped onto her forefinger blinked in the dark. When she raised her right hand to look at it, she saw it radiating a sickly sulfur-infused light. Presumably the kind of light the Impress
could
tolerate, being a “nightborn thing,” as Lias had called her. Even shadows need some light to exist, don't they?

The instant she'd passed through the doors of the dining room, Nieve had tried to pull the ring off, but the band resisted, tightening as she tugged at it. The more she tugged, the more it tightened, squeezing her finger painfully until she gave up. It looked like the rings Sophie and Dunstan Warlock had been wearing, only this stone was even more lifelike, a moist eye with a dark, gold-flecked iris roving in its setting like a real eye in a socket. She was keenly aware of it as she climbed the stairs, cold and heavy on her finger.

Although Weazen carried a candle, and some spherals from the dining room had tagged along, she still found it difficult to make out what this part of Bone House was like. It smelled fusty and slightly rotten, like a damp and mouldering basement, and she guessed from the hollow, echoing sounds their footsteps made on the stairs that the place was empty, not much in the way of furniture or carpets. There were some portraits on the wall at least, for she saw some elaborate, gilded frames as the floating spherals crisscrossed above her head. But when she stopped to look at one in passing, holding the ring up for light, she saw that the frame contained a mirror, not a painting. The ring winked coyly at its own reflection, and gave Nieve's finger a painful pinch when she dropped her hand.

They progressed slowly upward, Weazen huffing as she mounted the steps. Observing her creaking around during dinner, Nieve wondered at her age, and thought she had to be ancient. So old that her wrinkles had wrinkles. But not so old that her wits had deserted her. She served Elixibyss, true, but Nieve got the impression that she was in no way subservient. Like Lirk, it wouldn't do to cross her. A glob of jam? Nice fate! Well, she wasn't going to shed any tears over what had happened to Murdeth.

Up to this point, Weazen hadn't uttered a word, so Nieve was surprised to hear her say, in her raspy deiler voice, “Remember, miss, she can see you, but she can't hear you.”

They had reached the landing of the second floor. Keeping her head averted from Nieve, Weazen continued, “Times she sleeps, too, while she claims not to. This way, miss.” She turned left and advanced down a narrow hallway, while the spherals, unable to tempt Nieve to take a headfirst plunge over the banisters, whirled off in the opposite direction.

Nieve, following, whispered, “Can she see everything?”

“Most everything, depends.”

“Depends on the ring?”

“Aye, take care with that. She's not to see us talking.”

They passed several closed doors before Weazen stopped at one, and, clutching the doorknob awkwardly with her bumpy, arthritic hand, gave it a twist. She entered the room ahead of Nieve, hobbling over to a nightstand, where she set the candle. Then, with what seemed like sleight-of-hand, she produced a small jar from out of her apron pocket, along with a waxed paper package, and slipped them into the nightstand's drawer.

“Salve for your neck.” She addressed this to the wall. “And summat to eat.”

Nieve continued to hover on the threshold of the room, gaping at it. She had expected to be lead into an empty cell, sterile and cheerless, without any comforts whatsoever. What she saw before her almost made her weep.

The illumination was dim, but she had no doubt that what she was seeing was
her
room, her room from home! It had been copied down to the last detail – the desk with its peeling decals, the birds' nest and fossils perched on the bookshelf, the tattered dictionary, the hooked rug on the hardwood floor (flooring complete with scorch mark), even the baseball bat leaning against the nightstand. Copied or stolen? The only thing that was different was an oddly-shaped rocking chair that had been shoved into one corner. And the window. Her window at home didn't have steel bars on it.

“I . . . thanks so much.” The deiler's offerings had been as unexpected as the room. She moved cautiously toward the bed, observing it more closely, running a hand over the comforter, her old blue dinosaur-patterned comforter from when she was little. It
shouldn't
be here, even though she was desperate to dive under it and hide.

“You're very kind, Weazen.” Unless the salve and food were poison, but she didn't think so. “I'm starving. I promise I won't let her see.”

“Don't worry, miss, this room, it's mirror-made. Except the chair, that's real enough. Good night.”

“Is it night?” Nieve sank down onto the bed, spirits, already low, sinking with her.

“Always,” Weazen responded, face still averted as she left the room and quietly closed the door behind her.

–Twenty-Six–
AFew Words from the Chairman

M
irror-made? While pretending to settle, Nieve surveyed her room, trying to see it as best she could in the scant light cast by the wavering flame of the candle. Even in the weak light there was something cockeyed about it. Her desk was the wrong way around for one thing, with the drawer on the left side, not the right. And, although it was hard to tell from her vantage on the bed, the titles of the books heaped on it appeared to be in the same kind of mirror writing she'd used in her school report on the World's Backward Walking Champion, Plennie Wingo (!TNELLECXE, Mrs. Crawford had written in the margin).

The dinosaur comforter felt oddly insubstantial, too. Hers had grown somewhat thin and worn over the years, but was still comfy and warming, while this one, when she pulled it up over her, felt as light as the meringue on a pie. Same with her sapphire blue pajamas, which she'd found folded and tucked under the pillow as they always were at home. These ones, though, weren't made of flannel, but of a lighter, silkier material. No way was she going to put them on, even though the ring repeatedly dragged her hand toward them.

She detested the thing. When she slid her hand under the covers, burying it, in order to check out unobserved what Weazen had left in the drawer, the band grew fiery hot and burned her finger, which was now as sore and puffy as the welts on her neck. She would have loved to poke the ring in its eye, but instead made a big show of yawning. She yawned and yawned until – yawning being contagious – it worked! The ring stopped bugging her, began to blink with fatigue, and even slackened its grip.

Weazen had claimed that Elixibyss would fall asleep, and the ring's glow did gradually begin to fade, like a nightlight that was losing power. Nieve stretched out and lay motionless staring up at the ceiling (the billowing cobwebs above didn't look real, either), waiting for the spying eye to glaze over completely and for its heavy golden lid to close. The trouble was, before the ring stopped watching, Nieve did too. Utterly exhausted, she closed her own eyes for the merest moment to give them a rest . . . and spiraled into sleep.

A voice woke her, a very strange voice that had drifted into the crowded darkness of her dreams in search of her. “Nieeeeve,” it creaked. “Nie-e-e-e-v-e.”

She jerked awake and sat up straight. The Impress! But no, it hadn't been her voice she'd heard. This one had been too scratchy and slight. She checked the ring. Luckily, it hadn't been roused and the eyelid remained closed.

“Weazen?” She spoke barely above a whisper, even knowing that the ring couldn't transmit sound.

No one responded.

She slowly reached for the candlestick with her free hand – the candle had burned down to a nub, how
long
had she been asleep? – and held it up to scan the room. No one. Only a dream, then? She sometimes did dream noises – a phone ringing, distant laughter, a balloon popping – noises that sounded genuine, and usually woke her up, but weren't. What if the room was haunted, she thought with a shiver? This was not something she would have believed possible a day ago, but a day ago she hadn't been imprisoned in the unbelievable, either.

Still, all was quiet. Nothing leapt out at her. Nothing was there.

Nieve cursed herself for falling asleep, yet she felt better for it, not so downhearted. She was no less famished, though. Replacing the candlestick on the nightstand, she opened the drawer and retrieved the wax paper package, which she unwrapped one-handed. It was a cheese sandwich with wilted lettuce and a bite taken out of it. The teeth marks left in it were kind of pointy. Too hungry to be squeamish about finishing what somebody else, maybe Weazen, had started, she devoured it.

When it came to the salve, that was trickier, but she managed well enough after first unscrewing the lid with her teeth. She dabbed the greasy stuff carefully on her neck and rubbed it in, breathing in its familiar, healing fragrance. What was it?

“Aloha,” the voice, squeaked. “Ve-r-r-aaaa,” Squeak,
squeak.

Nieve dropped the jar and made a grab for the baseball bat that was leaning up against the nightstand. To her amazement, the moment she seized it the bat shattered in her grip. It flew apart like some impossibly fragile Christmas ornament, its thin shards tinkling as they tumbled to the floor.

“Che-e-e-ap.” Squeak, squeak,
creak.
“Po-o-o-r quali-t-y-y merchandiiiise.”

It was the chair. The
chair
in the corner was talking!

They've rigged up this room to make me think I'm crazy, Nieve thought indignantly, or to drive me there.

“Meee? Rememmmber me? Nieeeve.”

“Oh my gosh!”

Nieve slid off the bed and again reached for the candlestick. Holding her other hand stiffly so as not to disturb the ring, she hastened to the dark corner where the chair was quietly rocking on its own. She hadn't paid it any attention before, but now, holding the candle up, she saw that it wasn't really a chair, but a man whose body had been twisted and wrenched and bent into the shape of one. If that weren't shocking enough, it was a man she knew. It was Mr. Exley, the pharmacist who had without warning sold his business and left town. Except, obviously, he hadn't. He'd been abducted, like Mayor Mary, and Alicia, and Malcolm . . . and turned into a piece of
furniture.

“Mr. Exley.” She wanted to touch his hand, but didn't dare move the ring too much. “Does it hurt badly? I mean–” She didn't know what to say!

He was cunningly made. His arms formed the arms of the chair, his lap the seat, his torso and shoulders the back, and his long legs were bent at the knee for rockers. His face was squashed almost flat, rising above the back like a headrest. Despite this, he could move his lips to speak, if at times more creakily chair-like than was easy to understand.

“My de-e-e-a-r, ohh myyy . . . don't-t-t-t waaant to compla-a-a-i—n. Cooould use a dustiiiing, mind, a bit-t-t of pol-i-s-h-h-h.”

Mr. Exley had always been fastidious in his personal upkeep.

“How did they do this to you?” She could feel herself getting angry, as though the candle she was holding was burning inside her. “Was it that serum they inject into people?”

“Thaat's it-t-t, Nieeve. You alllways we-e-e-re a smart one. Faaactories. They ha-a-v-e faactori-e-e-e-s. Twisssden does-s-s.”

Nieve hesitated. She could hardly bear to say it. “He makes things out of people? All the people who've gone missing?”

“Yes-s-s, oh yees, Nieeve, buut not all. She-e-e keeeps some herr-ss-s-e-l-f-f. A chairrrr heeears thiiings. There's a-a-a r-o-o-o-o-m.”

A room? Where the troublemakers end up. “
Where
, do you know?”

“Sorrry, Nieeeve, thaat I–”

Mr. Exley stopped rocking and his face stiffened into what could have easily passed for a wooden mask, a peculiar decoration on a most peculiar chair.

Puzzled, Nieve glanced down at her hand. The ring's eye had begun to glow. It blinked blearily a few times, but seemed unfocused, unseeing, as one often is when woken in the middle of the night. She pivoted on her heel, quickly pointing it away from Mr. Exley and toward the darker side of the room, until the eyelid, still heavy, fell shut, its watcher succumbing once more to sleep.

Nieve turned back to Mr. Exley, who'd resumed his rocking and squeaking. “She doesn't know you can talk, does she?”