Night Film

87

“It happened on a devil’s bridge,” Marlowe continued, staring at Hopper, anxiously clutching at her shoulders and chest to make sure she was fully covered by the robe. “You’ve heard of them?”

“No,” said Nora.

“They’re medieval bridges. Steeped in folklore. Most are in Europe, from England to Slovenia, built between one thousand and sixteen hundred A.D. Though the stories of each bridge vary, the underlying premise is that the devil agrees to help build the bridge in exchange for the first human soul to cross it. I don’t know the specifics. But somehow there came to be such a bridge on The Peak property. They built it, I imagine.”

“You mean the townspeople from Crowthorpe Falls,” I said.

She nodded. “From the moment she entered the world, Ashley was an extraordinary child. A glorious image of her father. Fearless, dark-haired, with his pale blue-gray eyes clear as a stream. The intelligence, the unquenchable curiosity, the way she grasped life. The two of them were inseparable. Stanny loved his son, Theo. But there was something about Ashley that … well, he couldn’t help but worship her. Everyone did.”

She chugged the Heaven Hill bottle with her head thrown back, seemingly oblivious that it was totally empty. She wiped her mouth.

“Stanislas never knew how Ashley came to follow him into the woods that night. Ashley never told anyone. But I have a pretty good hunch who gave her the idea. You see, that priest — he was still lurking. He hadn’t been with Cordova at The Peak for some time. After Genevra’s death, he took off, supposedly traveled throughout Africa doing missionary work, but then, rather suddenly, the old boy was back in town, having no place to stay and little money. Cordova didn’t object to his old pal shacking up at The Peak once again. I don’t know for a fact, but I imagine the priest was quite jealous of Ashley. He adored Cordova. He must have hoped that Stanny and he would one day … I don’t know. Live happily ever after? Like a couple of lovesick teenagers?”

Marlowe fell back in the chair. “However it happened, in the middle of the night in June — this was back in 1992; Ashley was five — Stanislas was at this devil’s bridge he’d constructed with these townspeople. When he was partaking in, whatever it was they did—a ritual of the utmost depravity, I’d imagine — Ashley appeared from out of nowhere. She stepped right onto the bridge. You can imagine how disturbing such a scene would be for any child. But Ashley wasn’t afraid. Stanislas, when he saw her, screamed at her to stop, go back. But in the chaos, when she saw her father, she did what any little girl who loved her father would do — she ran to him. Ashley ran the entire length of the bridge, stopping only when she’d reached the other side. She was the first human soul to cross it.”

Marlowe fell silent, sitting unsteadily forward. A white bony hand had emerged from the voluminous black satin sleeve, resting on her throat.

“Stanislas was appalled. The scene was immediately disbanded. Fires put out. Whoever and whatever these people were, they were ordered to leave the property. Stanislas led Ashley back to the house. To his relief, she seemed fine. She was herself. Wasn’t even afraid of what she’d just seen. Her family home was a veritable movie set, after all. She’d watched bonfires, cars exploding, men and women declaring their undying love, their undying hate, fight scenes, love scenes, chase scenes, women hanging for dear life off the sides of buildings, men falling out of the sky — all in her own backyard. He tucked her into bed and read aloud to her, a chapter from one of her favorite fairy tales, The Mysterious World of Bartho Lore. She fell asleep that night with a smile on her face — just as she always did. Stanny decided not to tell his wife. I don’t know the extent of Astrid’s — Stanny’s third wife’s — knowledge of what he’d been up to in the middle of the night, but there seemed to be an understanding that he was free to do what he liked, so long as he didn’t involve the children. When Stanny went to bed that night, he prayed to God. An interesting choice, given how he’d been spending his free time. But it was to God. Even then, he didn’t quite believe in the things he’d been doing. Now he hoped none of it was real. It couldn’t be. The idea’s really absurd. Is it not?”

She asked this with cynical delight, taking another long swig from the empty Heaven Hill bottle. Maybe she was guzzling the fumes.

“Within a week, Stanislas began to notice a difference. Ashley was always a watchful, gifted child, but now her gifts started having ferocious tendencies. He’d invited some Chinese soldiers and a former ambassador to live at the house while he worked on his next picture. Within two weeks of their arrival, Ashley was entirely fluent in the language. She also began staring, staring right into people, as if she could read their thoughts, see their fates unspooled before her like a roll of thirty-five-millimeter. She still laughed, of course, was still so beautiful, but there was a gravity in her now that had never been there before. And then there was the piano.”

Marlowe shuddered at the thought.

“Astrid was a trained pianist. Since Ashley was four, she had a teacher from Juilliard travel up to the estate twice a week to give the girl private lessons. At five, Ashley was good for her age but never had real passion for the instrument. She preferred to be outdoors, riding horses and bikes, climbing trees. Now she sat down, shut herself inside for hours, and played until her fingers swelled with blisters. Within weeks, the girl could master any piece put before her, Beethoven, Bartók, in mere hours, the whole thing memorized. More and more, this shift in Ashley was palpable. Stanny was too devastated to believe it. Yet he began to do research. Throughout history, alliances with the devil often manifest themselves in virtuosic mastery of an instrument. In eighteenth-century Italy, there was Paganini — still believed to be the finest violinist ever to have lived. The same was true for Robert Johnson, the blues musician. He went to a crossroads in Tunica, Mississippi, and gave the devil his soul in exchange for total music mastery.”

She paused, her breathing shallow, nervous.

“Astrid was still ignorant of what had occurred. She thought her daughter was simply growing up with a rabid intelligence. But then she began noticing Ashley was oddly cold to the touch, and when she took her temperature, rather than the normal ninety-eight-point-six degrees, Ashley was consistently around ninety-seven, ninety-six. She took her to New York City to visit various hospitals. Doctors found nothing wrong. Astrid worried, especially when Ashley began showing signs of behavioral problems. She’d stopped laughing. And when she became angry she had a temper that was frightening. Stanislas finally had to tell his poor wife. He showed Astrid what he believed to be the devil’s mark on Ashley. Something called the toad’s footprint. A sizable freckle in the iris close to the pupil. Ashley had it in her left eye.”

I stared at her. Marlowe had just described what Lupe, the housekeeper at the Waldorf had talked about. Huella del mal. Evil’s footprint. Nora turned to me, clearly remembering how she’d pointed out the freckle in the medical examiner’s photo.

“Astrid naturally didn’t want to believe it. But then there was a terrifying incident that changed her perspective. In the middle of the night, the whole house woke up to a man screaming in his bed. It was the priest. The pajamas the man was wearing, as well as the black clerical clothes in his closet, were on fire. He was on fire. The family managed to snuff out the flames, and Astrid put the man, barely conscious, into the back of her car, so she could drive him to the hospital, because Cordova, of course, could no longer drive. He refused to leave the property. They didn’t want to call an ambulance for fear of the terrible publicity. So, in Astrid’s frenzied state, driving like hell, she rounded a hairpin turn, lost control, and hit a tree, totaling her car. Theo rescued the man in a van, as this priest, drifting in and out of consciousness, moaning from the pain, inched toward death. He dropped him off at a rural hospital outside of Albany and took off. The priest was admitted under the name John Doe, third-degree burns covering his entire body. Ashley had seemingly slept through the entire incident. But the next morning, Astrid noticed her daughter had a terrible burn mark on her left hand. Astrid knew she was responsible. It was the moment she started to believe Stanny, that this devil’s curse was real.” Marlowe shook her head. “The priest survived, though I heard he vanished from the hospital a month after his admittance and was never seen again, not at The Peak, not anywhere else.”

I could hardly believe it. Marlowe had described in immaculate detail the incident I’d unearthed five years ago when I was researching Cordova. The motel desk clerk, Kate Miller, had witnessed a car accident in the early hours of a late-May morning. Astrid Cordova was behind the wheel. Astrid claimed to be alone in the car, but Kate had sworn there was someone else, a man in the backseat dressed in black clothing, his face covered in bandages — a man she claimed was Cordova.

It had been the priest, burned alive.

“How old was Ashley at the time of this incident?” I asked.

Marlowe shrugged. “Fifteen? Sixteen? Afterward, they sent her away.”

“Where?”

“Some camp for unruly teens. It was a final, rather futile attempt to pretend the problem with Ashley was ordinary.”

I turned to Hopper. He was slumped down in the chair, ankle crossed on his knee, watching Marlowe intently.

“Astrid was irate, demanded her husband fix it. He did have an idea. He believed it just might be possible to reverse this curse if they exchanged Ashley’s soul for another’s. A swap. With another child. This led to the rift between Ashley and her family. Because when it was finally explained to her, Ashley wanted to accept her fate. But Cordova was always searching for a way out. He did until the very end. He became consumed with it. To make another film was out of the question. There was only this. It ate him alive, cannibalized the family. There would be times when Ashley was perfectly normal, when they’d hope that whatever darkness she was succumbing to was entirely in their heads. But then something would happen and they’d know it was happening. He’d be coming for her.”

“He?” Hopper demanded suddenly. “Who?”

Marlowe turned to him.

“Why, the devil, of course.”

He chuckled. “Right.”

She stared him down, her masklike face immobile.

“Iblis in Islam,” she whispered. “Mara in Buddhism. Set in Ancient Egypt. Satan in Western civilizations. It’s surprising when you take the time to look at history how universally accepted he actually is.”

Marlowe thoughtfully tilted her head, turning toward me.

“Stanislas believed it would happen when she was twenty-four, twenty-five—some calculation of the full moons and all that. I don’t know the nature of what went on, but at some point the entire family became complicit in this design to transfer the promise onto some other child. Sadly, it wasn’t that outlandish a concept. These cults prey on runaways, children who wouldn’t be missed if they went missing. Many of these people get pregnant for the purpose of sacrificing the infant child on an altar. Occult crimes are very real in this country, only they’re shoved under the rug by police because it’s nearly impossible to convict in a court of law. Not because there isn’t evidence. Oh, no. These people can’t help but leave evidence of their terrifying rituals. It’s hard to clean up after yourself, if you spill blood weekly. No. It’s because juries can never quite believe. It’s a fantastical leap that they can’t make. It sounds like something out of a night film. Not real life.”

She fell silent. In a mechanical reflex she fastidiously unscrewed the bottle, put it to her lips, but at last noticed, stunned, that there was nothing left in there, not a drop.

“How do you know so much about all of it?” asked Nora quietly.

Marlowe turned, seemingly about to berate her, but then lost steam, only gazed down at her hands, crumpled on her knees. She considered them as if they weren’t part of her, but strange insects that’d crawled up her legs and she was too weary to brush them away.

“Stanny trusted me. He told me everything. He knew I’d understand the pain. Once I experienced such loss, it gutted me. It left me just my skin. When you love like that and lose, you never recover. Stanny knew I’d know how it felt. I’d spent time with Ashley. I certainly didn’t believe any of it when he first told me. But then I took her with me on vacation when she was about eight. We were sitting on the beach near Côté Plongée in Antibes and I’d catch her staring at me. It was as if she saw my past and my future — even my soul where it was headed when I died, writhing forever in limbo. It was as if she saw it all and she pitied me.”

This gutting loss had to be a reference to Marlowe’s dashing fiancé, Knightly, dumping her for her sister, Olivia.

“This priest,” I said, after a moment. “Do you remember his name?”

“People just called him Priest, sort of playfully sarcastic. I remember him during the shooting of Lovechild. He liked to spend his day fishing. I’d spot him from a distance standing on the shore by the lake all in black, like an accidental inkblot seeping into the bright landscape of sky and blue lakes and trees. I wouldn’t know what he was doing until I was near him and noticed his long fishing rod and tackle box, that he was standing there so immobile, patiently waiting for a fish. He looked like he had the self-control to wait forever. Genevra gave him the nickname Ragno. The spider.”

“What?” I asked.

“S — spider.” She slurred the word. “How he moved. So silent.”

“Was his real name Hugo Villarde?”

“I … I don’t really know.”

Marlowe was slipping away again, growing feeble, hunched back in the chair so no light hit her and she was little more than a ghostly white face floating in the dark. When she’d started talking, I’d had little confidence that what she told us would be sentient, much less the honest truth. Yet again and again she’d surprised me, disclosing details that corroborated everything I’d uncovered.

And now: this revelation about the Spider.

“Did you ever meet Cordova’s assistant, Inez Gallo?” I asked.

Marlowe shuddered with distaste. “Coyote? But of course. Wherever Cordova went, his little Coyote followed. She loved him, of course. Did his every bidding, every menial chore, no matter how cruel. All she asked of him in return was to breathe his air. It was Stanny who came up with the title To Breathe with Kings, after her, Coyote’s, sheer pathetic-ness. I think she actually wished he’d eat her alive, so at last she’d be the closest to him of everyone, living out the rest of her days huddled in the darkest corners of his belly.”

“Where is he now?” Nora asked after a moment. “Cordova, I mean.”

“The jackpot question. No one has ever answered it right.”

She mumbled this distractedly and didn’t speak again for such a long time, her chin lowered to her chest, that I wondered if she’d actually dozed off.

“I imagine he’s still there,” she croaked at last. “Or he’s sailed away on his pirate ship out into the sea, never to return. With Ashley dead, I imagine, whatever last bit of humanity he had, my Stanny, he’s let go of it. Let it fly. There’s nothing holding him back now. Not anymore.”

Marlowe made an odd choking noise and, bending over, began to cough, a violent hacking sound.

“My bed,” she whispered. “Take me to my bed. I’m so … so very tired.”

Nora glanced at me. It was my cue to assist Marlowe, though I hesitated. It was the fear of seeing her ravaged face close-up, the worry she was too fragile to touch. She’d retreated again, gone far away, folded up like an old deck chair, so weathered it seemed possible she’d come apart in raw splintered beams in my hands. Nora gently took the Heaven Hill bottle from her — Marlowe was reluctant to let it go, like a child unwilling to part with a doll — and then, bending over her, she gave her a hug.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” Nora whispered.

I stepped beside her, and as carefully as I could, gathered Marlowe into my arms. She clamped her elbows tightly around my neck as I carried her out and down the hall, her face hidden deep inside the hood. When I set her down in her bed, Nora and Hopper stepping in behind me, instantly she buried herself under the covers like a beetle hiding in the sand.

“Don’t leave me yet,” Marlowe whispered hoarsely from under the sheet. “You must read to me so I can sleep. Oh. Swallow. That was it.”

“Read to you?” asked Nora.

“I have a boy who comes. Every night at eight he comes and reads me asleep. There’s The Count. Read me just a little little …”

“What book?” whispered Nora.

“In the drawer. There, there. The Count of Cristo. He’s waiting.”

Glancing at me uncertainly, Nora reached for the handle of the bedside table. And I found myself hoping that Marlowe was telling the truth. She seemed to be referring to the drug dealer both Harold and Olivia had mentioned. It was a fantastic misreading of the world, that someone mistaken for a drug dealer was simply coming up here to read books aloud to an old woman, lightness mistaken for dark, heaven mistaken for hell.

But when Nora pulled open the drawer, there was nothing inside, no book, nothing but wads of Kleenex and fan mail.

Hopper and I searched some of the other drawers, but we could find no copy of The Count of Monte Cristo—no books in her bedroom at all, only celebrity magazines and rubber-banded stacks of hundreds of fan letters addressed to Miss Marlowe Hughes. Hopper asked if she wanted him to read one of those aloud, but she didn’t answer.

At last she was asleep.