Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense (191 page)

Remember the hidden latch.

Joseph Swann—dressed like his father, in full costume and makeup—emerged from a small room next to the stage. He stepped onto the stage, reached into his pocket, took out a small remote control of some kind, clicked it, then returned it to his pocket. Graciella looked across the room. She could barely make out the silhouette of a small camera on a tripod. She wondered if Karl Swann—the Great Cygne himself—was upstairs watching all of this.

His son Joseph waited a few seconds, then looked out into the darkness.

“Behold the Fire Grotto,” he said. He turned to look at Graciella. “And behold the lovely Odette.”

He reached over, opened the front of the glass-and-steel cage. He gestured to Graciella. She was supposed to get in. She looked inside, her memory overlaying the schematic drawing on the box itself. She glanced to the lower left corner. There, painted the same color as the smoked glass, was the hidden latch.

She stepped into the cage. In her hands was the item the old man had given her. She’d held on to it so long, so tightly, she’d almost forgotten she had it.

| ONE HUNDRED ONE |

| 5 : 54 AM |

T
HE ROOM WAS LARGE, HIGH-CEILINGED, CLUTTERED WITH OVERSIZED
furniture from another era. Every inch of wall space was covered with yellowed news clippings, photographs, posters. Every surface seemed to yield memories of years spent in isolation.

In the corner was a large hospital bed, covered in grimy sheets. On the dresser was an absinthe fountain with two spigots. Next to it were filmy crystal glasses, sugar cubes, tarnished silver spoons.

Jessica crossed to the window, parted the velvet curtains. There were bars on these windows too. In the moonlight she could see she was on the third floor, just above the spiked railing that led around the rear porch. Jessica glanced at the bed. Attached to each brass post were a pair of rusted handcuffs. On the nightstands were a series of easel frames, aligned like timeworn headstones. In the photographs, a young man stood in various poses, all mid-illusion—linking rings, releasing doves, fanning cards.

She crossed the room, pulled down the bed sheets. The dead man stared up at her, his eyes rolled back in their sockets, his hairless skull veined and scabbed.

Jessica touched a finger to his neck. There was no pulse.

“And now the Seventh Wonder,” a voice said. Jessica spun around, weapon raised. The television behind her was on. Ice-blue images flickered on the walls, the ceiling.

The scenario unfolding on the screen was identical to the other videos they had seen. But this time, Jessica knew who the man was. His name was Joseph Swann. The Collector. And he was somewhere in this house.

On-screen, Swann stepped to the side, and Jessica saw the steel-and-glass cage at the center of the stage. Inside sat Graciella. Swann closed the door, spun the cage twice, lifted a large conical silken drape overhead.

He then reached into his pocket, removed a small remote control, pressed a button. The camera angle widened, showing more of the stage. There was a ring of tower candles.

Swann picked up a small copper can with a spout, like a receptacle used for drizzling olive oil. He circled the silken cone, splashing the liquid from top to bottom, all the while mumbling something Jessica was unable to hear. When he finished, he placed the can on a side table, then walked behind the drape.

Jessica held her breath. For what seemed like a full minute, but was surely a much shorter period of time, there was no movement, no sound. The came a loud thud. The silken drapes billowed out, coming dangerously close to the candles. A few moments later a figure walked to center stage.

It was Graciella.

“Behold the Fire Grotto,” she said.

She raised the hoop. The cage was closed, but Jessica could see something inside. It looked like a hand pressed against the smoked glass.

“And behold Mr. Ludo,” Graciella added, gesturing to the box. “You may remember him from the Garden of Flowers, the Girl Without a Middle, and the Drowning Girl. You may remember him from the Sword Box, the Sub Trunk, and the Bridal Chamber.” Graciella picked up a candle. “I remember him for another reason.”

At this Graciella lowered the curtain, stepped behind. A few more seconds passed. The silk billowed again.

The world caught fire.

| ONE HUNDRED TWO |

| 5 : 55 AM |

B
YRNE PULLED INTO THE LONG DRIVEWAY, FOLLOWED BY
J
OSH
B
ONTRAGER
and Dre Curtis, along with seven or eight sector cars. It would only be a matter of time until every available officer in the district arrived. Jessica’s Taurus was parked halfway up the drive. She was not in it. Byrne didn’t see her anywhere.

The three detectives emerged from their cars. Byrne began to direct a perimeter. He and Josh Bontrager approached the front of the house. On the way in, Byrne had gotten on his cell phone to Hell Rohmer and gotten a brief background on the property. In the 1800s it had been known as Prescott Square. Byrne realized it was the final piece of the puzzle. He couldn’t help feeling they were too late.

Byrne drew his weapon, chambered a round. Bontrager covered him as he peered through the leaded glass. Byrne couldn’t see anything except the distorted flames of a hundred candles. Music came from inside. Byrne reached out, tried the knob. Locked.

The two detectives backed off the porch, their weapons lowered.

That’s when Byrne smelled the smoke.

“Do you—” he began, just as the first flame licked the inside of the front window.

Three seconds later, an explosion rocked the world.

| ONE HUNDRED THREE |

| 5 : 55 AM|

I
N THE DARKNESS, IN THE DEEP VIOLET FOLDS OF NIGHT, HE HEARS WHISPERS:
low, plaintive sounds that speak to him of his many crimes, his many sins. As the voices overlap, as the pitch and timbre rise, so does the temperature in the glass coffin in which he is trapped. He soon realizes that these are not the voices of his past.

It is the voice of fire.

His head throbs with the effects of the chloroform. Where did Odette get it? Why had she done this to him? He tries to calm himself. Panic is the enemy. He slips his fingers into the secret latch in the corner of the box that is the Fire Grotto. The catch is vertical. It does not move. Again he tries. This time the metal is too hot to touch. Smoke filters in. He cannot breathe. He is once again the Singing Boy. And once again he is locked inside a cabinet of his father’s design
.

He maneuvers his hand into his pocket, removes the small remote control. He slides off the back panel, snaps it in two. He slips the hard plastic shard into the slot at the bottom of the main catch and begins to turn the screw. The heat is becoming unbearable. Sweat pools on the floor of the cage; steel hinges brand his back. Turn by turn, the screw slowly loosens. Finally, the catch drops to the floor of the cage. He pushes against the door. Nothing. He tries again. This time it begins to move. He takes a deep breath, holds it, as the box is now filled with smoke. His eyes and lungs burn as he rocks back and forth, forcing his shoulder into the door. The glass panels of the Fire Grotto start to crack in the intense heat. He expands his chest, flexes his upper arms. The door flings open. He emerges from the cage to find the stage now covered in thick black smoke. He makes it to his feet. The backs of his arms and hands are scorched and blistered
.

As the flames devour the curtains on either side of the stage, he looks into the wings. Through the miasma he sees the Great Cygne. It is not the broken man he knows, the man who has lived in his filth for almost twenty years. It is the young illusionist, the man who strode onto the stage, his magnificent cape billowing behind him, his eyes mesmerizing.

“Where dwells the effect, Joseph?”

“The effect,” he says, each word burning his throat, “is in the mind.”

The Great Cygne lifts his cape over his face. In an instant it drops to the floor.

The Great Cygne is gone.

Joseph Swann removes his false beard and eyebrows, his cutaway coat, and makes his way to the stairs, through the flaming inferno of the basement.

| ONE HUNDRED FOUR |

| 5 : 58 AM|

F
IRE ENCIRCLED THE FIRST FLOOR OF THE HOUSE, AND
J
ESSICA WAS
trapped on the third floor. All the secret doors that had stood open were now closed, and she could not find the seams. There was no way out. As her handset crackled with static, a blast rocked the walls. The floor, the ceilings, rained plaster onto her head, and the concussive air sucked her breath from her lungs for a moment. The ornate clock on the wall behind her crashed to the floor, shattering its glass. The chandelier in the center of the room ripped from its plaster medallion.

She tore at the velvet drapes of one window, then the other. Both were barred.

She had to calm herself, to concentrate.

“There are things you should know about this house.”

Jessica looked at the yellowed schematic. Half of it had been ripped away. It took her a few moments to orient the diagram. There were lines and notations all across the surface. She soon realized she had the southern and eastern sections of the house. Was she in the eastern section? She had no idea.

Smoke drifted under the door. Jessica heard glass shattering elsewhere in the house, popping like small arms’ fire.

Her eyes danced over the yellowed page.

Where was she?

She found her location. Eastern wall. It showed three windows, but she only saw two, both of them barred. An arrow pointed to something on the wall, equidistant between the two windows. Jessica looked up. The only thing on the wall was a large wrought-iron sconce. She pulled on it. Nothing. She pushed. Nothing. She felt the heat in the very walls. The room was already thick with smoke up to her knees.

She twisted the sconce left, right, left, right, nearly tearing it from the wall. She was just about to give up when a panel slid down in front of her. Behind it was a round window. No bars.

Jessica looked around in the dense smoke. She found a heavy footstool. She lifted it and heaved it through the glass. Cool night air came rushing in. She was nearly knocked to the floor by the backdraft. Behind her, the door to the room slammed open and fire raged inside, devouring the brocade fabrics, the old dry furniture.

Jessica looked out the window. She could not see the ground. She recalled the sharp iron spikes along the railing. The flames raged ever closer. She could see part of the way down the hall, to the stairs leading up to the attic. The heat was so intense she felt as if her skin was about to peel from her face.

A figure emerged, clawing its way slowly up stairs. It was almost unrecognizable as human.

The figure paused for a moment, stared into the room. For a brief moment, through the flames, Jessica saw the man’s eyes. And it was in this instant they knew each other. Hunter and hunted.

Jessica turned back to the window, to the smoke-thickened night air. Lungs fit to burst, she could wait no longer. As she climbed onto the sill she realized what she had seen in the charred and blistered apparition outside the door.

His eyes were silver.

She jumped.

| ONE HUNDRED FIVE |

| 6 : 00 AM |

H
E TURNS TO CLIMB THE FINAL FLIGHT OF STAIRS, JUST AS A PAIR OF
oil paintings melt and slide from the walls. On the landing, a burlwood collector’s cabinet catches fire, its glass front cracking, its contents—a rare nineteenth century edition of
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin—
vaporizing in a burst of searing ash, coating his face and arms.

He glances down the main corridor as doors are flung open. Through the dense smoke he sees each room. He recalls the lovely faces of Monica Renzi and Caitlin O’Riordan, of Katja Dovic and Elise Beausoleil, Patricia Sato and Claire Finneran.

He sees Lilly. His Odette.

As he drags himself up the staircase to the attic, the flesh from his hands is left behind on the white-hot iron railings.

At the top he finds Molly Proffitt, her delicate watery eyes now open in the Sea Horse tank, the gash in her head rent to expose her brain. Molly holds the door for him, the door leading to the attic and its massive roof beam.

Moments later Joseph Swann stands on a chair, the rope hanging loosely around his shoulders. He is framed by the large circular window that overlooks the front yard. At his feet, the old reel of film,
The Magic Bricks,
bubbles and melts.

He tightens the noose around his neck, the hemp rope pulling off the remaining flesh of his palms.

It is in this position that the flames find him, drawing him into their fiery embrace, into Hell, into the diseased heart of Faerwood.

| ONE HUNDRED SIX |

| 6 : 10 AM |

I
T WAS A FAMILIAR VOICE, BUT ONE SHE COULDN’T QUITE PLACE.
W
AS IT
her father? Her brother Michael? It seemed to be filtered through a thick wad of wet cotton, like someone trying to shout through a mattress. For the moment she was underwater at Wildwood, her father yelling at her from the beach to watch out for the undertow.

But it couldn’t be the beach. Something was
burning.
She had to—

“Jessica. You okay?”

Jessica slowly opened her eyes. It was Kevin Byrne. The world came swirling back. She nodded, even though she did not know the answer to this question.

“Can you talk?” he asked.