Haunted
24.
Mr. Whittier leads Miss Sneezy to the door. To the world, outside. The two of them, hand in hand. Here is our world without a devil, our Villa Diodati without any monster to blame. He’s hauled the alley door open a little, open enough so a ray of real sunlight angles in from the alley. That bright slot, the opposite of the black slot we found when we arrived.
Miss Sneezy the same as Cassandra Clark, the bride of Mr. Whittier. The one he wants to save.
The projector bulb has burned out. Or burned so hot so long—with something dramatic always happening, something horrible always happening, something exciting always happening—it’s tripped a circuit breaker.
The Baroness Frostbite is asleep in her pile of rags and lace, her greasy pink pucker, muttering. So is the Earl of Slander, sleep-talking, dream-rewinding the scenes in his head.
We all look to be asleep or unconscious or dreaming awake, muttering about how none of this is our fault. We’re the prey. Everything here has been done to us.
Only Saint Gut-Free and Mother Nature whisper back and forth. He keeps sideways-eyeing the open door and the crack of light spilling inside. Mr. Whittier and Miss Sneezy, their dark skeletons outlined and dissolving in the glare of daylight.
The rest of us, dissolving into our costumes, into the carpet, into the floor.
Mother Nature keeps broken-record-saying, “Stop them . . . stop them . . .”
It would make a good-enough happy ending, Saint Gut-Free says. Those two young lovers walking out into the light of a bright new day. They could find help and save the group. The two of them could be victims and heroes.
But Mother Nature will only whisper, “Too early.” They need to wait just a little longer. Being younger, they can afford to wait until a few more have died.
Mother Nature and Saint Gut-Free, they could outlive old Whittier and sick Miss Sneezy.
Looking around at the rest of us, you’d bet Agent Tattletale and Chef Assassin won’t last another day. The Countess Foresight, her brocade chest has stopped moving up and down, and her lips have turned blue. Even the Reverend Godless, his plucked eyebrows have stopped trying to grow back.
No, the longer they can wait, the less ways the money will have to be split.
Her brass bells ringing, the red henna vines on her hands, Mother Nature slips off one of the Saint’s shoes. Her fingers touching just the pleasure centers of his sole, she holds on, her touch rolling his eyes backward in his head.
No, Mother Nature and Saint Gut-Free can have it all. All the money, she says, still touching him down there. All the glory. All the pity.
His eyes rolled up, blind, white as hard-boiled eggs, his eyelashes flutter until he jerks his foot away, Saint Gut-Free saying:
“Mnye etoh nadoh kahk zoobee v zadnetze.”
His pant legs and shirttails, they rip and stretch where they’re glued to the stage with blood, and the Saint drags himself to his feet and says he’s got to get out.
Not yet, says Mother Nature. Her voice a teeth-together, clenched hiss.
Saint Gut-Free takes a step and stumbles. His legs buckle, and he falls to his hands and knees. Crawling toward the open door, he says, “How can I stop them?”
And, reaching after him, Mother Nature catches her fingers hooked around his ankle and says, “Wait.”
The path where the sunlight leads them to the door, there the concrete floor feels warm. The two of them crawling, they close their eyes, blinded by the brightness, feeling their way by where the floor is warmer, Brailling with their hands and knees until they find the doorframe with the fingertips they have left. They find the sunlight with the skin of their lips and eyelids.
In the alley’s narrow blue sky, birds soar back and forth. Birds and clouds that aren’t cobwebs. In a blue that isn’t velvet or paint.
With his head stuck out the door, Saint Gut-Free says, “I know where we’re at.” Squinting, he says, “They’re still here.” He points with one hand, saying, “Miss Sneezy, wait . . .”
Mother Nature’s fingers holding tight to his shirt and the waist of his pants, he keeps crawling, swimming, saying, “Please, stop.”
Half out the door, his hands dragging him through the broken glass and trash of the alley, all of the beautiful garbage warm from the afternoon sun, Saint Gut-Free says, “Stop!”
While two figures stagger toward the alley’s entrance: the girl close by, the old man almost a city block away, his arm raised as a taxi pulls to the curb.
Toward this, the Saint shouts, “Miss Sneezy!”
He shouts, “Wait!”
Miss Sneezy turns to look.
And . . . then . . . and . . . Shooo-rook!
The knife from the floor, the paring knife that Chef Assassin tossed at Mr. Whittier, Mother Nature’s brought it with them.
That knife sticking out of Miss Sneezy’s chest, it still shakes with each beat of her heart, shaking less and less as Mother Nature and Saint Gut-Free drag her back inside the door. Back into the dark.
The knife shakes less as they climb to their feet and wrestle the door shut, the metal rollers squealing. The sky, getting more narrow, until the birds and clouds and blue are gone.
In the alley, Mr. Whittier’s voice shouts from closer and closer, for them to stop.
The knife shakes even less as Mother Nature says, “I told you:
“Not yet.”
And then the knife stands still. The coughing, sniffing, sneezing little person we’ve waited to see die from the day we arrived here—at last, dead.
We haven’t so much saved the world as we’ve preserved our audience. Kept alive the people to watch us on television, read our books, go to our some-day movie. Our consumer base.
Saint Gut-Free holding the door shut, the lock clicks open from the outside. The knob rattling. The Saint clicks it locked, and again it clicks open.
The Saint clicks it shut, saying, “No.” And the lock clicks open, turned by a key from the outside.
Back in the dark, back in the cold, Mother Nature pulls the sticky blade out of Miss Sneezy. Mother Nature sticks the blade into the lock and snaps it off.
The lock, ruined. The knife, ruined. Poor Miss Sneezy, with her red eyes and runny nose, reduced to being a prop in our story. A person made into an object. As if you cut open a rag doll with a silly name, and found inside: Real intestines, real lungs, a beating heart, blood. A lot of hot, sticky blood.
Now the story split another less way. What was done to us.
For now, we’re still here. In our dim circle around the ghost light.
The voice of Mr. Whittier, he’s wailing outside the steel door. His fists, pounding. Wanting to come inside. Not wanting to die alone.
For now we wait, repeating our story in the Museum of Us. In this, our permanent dress rehearsal.
How Mr. Whittier trapped us here. He starved and tortured us. He killed us.
We recite this: the Mythology of Us.
And someday soon, any day now, the world will come open that door and rescue us. The world will listen. Starting on that sun-glorious day, the whole world is going to love us.
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