Night Film

91

I moved with her back down the narrow pathway toward the front of the shop. I needed a safe enough distance but close enough where I could keep an eye on her. About ten yards away I found a large, plum-colored velvet armchair, the seat worn white. Beside it was a table with a stack of magazines and a yellow plastic horse, nothing of any danger.

“Noooooo,” Sam whined as I placed her in the chair. “I don’t want to.”

“Honey, I need you to wait right here.”

“It’s enchanted.” She stared up at me, her face distraught and crumpled. She was on the verge of tears.

“Not anymore, honey. It’s fun.”

She shook her head and clamped her arms around my leg, burying her face against my knee. I picked up the horse.

“Great Scott. Do you know who this is?”

Keeping her forehead glued to my thigh, she craned her face back an inch to eye the toy sideways.

“It’s Hi Ho Silver. Incredible. He’s a thousand years old, and if you’re nice to him he’ll tell you his secrets. Now, I’ll be right over there. Do not touch anything. I’ll be right back. And then you and I are going to have huge ice-cream sundaes, okay?”

There must have been something intriguing about the horse — he looked to date back to the forties, his saddle and reins painted on — because she took him, sullenly turning him over in her tiny hands.

Unfortunately, they’d all been listening to this interaction, Nora and Hopper apprehensively, Hugo Villarde with what I took to be a faint smile on his face. But as I moved toward him he immediately lowered his head, as if he didn’t like anyone staring directly at him.

I stepped between him and Sam so he wouldn’t have a view of her. Just a few more minutes and then I’ll get her the hell out of here.

“Let’s start with Ashley Cordova,” Hopper said. “How do you know her?”

He didn’t answer.

“Why was she looking for you?” pressed Hopper.

“Looking for me?” the man repeated. “You mean hunting me.”

“Why?”

He took a few cautious steps away from the door, reaching down to grab a metal stool hidden beneath a table. He dragged it slowly toward him across the concrete floor — it made a loud grating, rasping sound, which he seemed to enjoy — then he slipped around it and perched on the very edge, facing us. He hooked the heel of his shoe — a black cowboy boot with elaborate white stitching — on the top rung.

He sat there like that, staring at us like a muscular old swan, once majestic, now barely alive, so unnervingly graceful for such a towering presence. He was in a bit more light now, and I could see his face was deeply wrinkled, though on the right side, from his eye down into his neck, the skin was blistered and scarred. Marlowe Hughes must have been telling the truth. Because that scarring had to be from the night she’d told us about, when Ashley had allegedly burned the Spider alive.

“What were you doing on the thirtieth floor of the Waldorf Towers?” I asked.

He looked surprised.

“I–I was meeting somebody,” he said.

“Who?” demanded Hopper.

“My Deformed Unreal.” He smiled. “That’s what he called himself. We met on the Internet.”

“Who was paying who?” Hopper demanded rudely.

Villarde inclined his head in acceptance. “I was paying him.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“I followed his very specific directions. I obtained the room. Put it under my real name. I stripped down to nothing but a bathrobe. And when I heard the knock, three times, I opened the door. I expected a beautiful boy to be standing there.” He paused, swallowing. “Certainly not that thing.”

“You mean Ashley?” I asked.

His eyes met mine. He seemed to find the simple mention of her name repellant.

“She set you up,” I said.

He nodded. “I’ve never been so horrified. I shoved her aside. Ran screaming down the hall into the elevator, shaking, convulsing from the shock. I ran through the lobby out onto the street wearing nothing but a bathrobe. No keys. No wallet. I’d left thousands of dollars in the room. But I had to get out of there. My life depended on it.”

From his breathy, saccharine voice you’d have thought he was a nervous fifteen-year-old girl sitting there — not a hulking man in his late sixties. I couldn’t get used to this disconnect between his lilting voice and his physical self. In fact, the more he talked the more unnerving it became.

Something else about the man was off.

For one thing, I hadn’t expected him to pull up a chair, sitting down to chat without any evident discomfort or resistance. Marlowe Hughes — I understood her desire to talk, an isolated and neglected fallen star, so eager to bathe in the attention of a captive audience. But this gnarled human bird? Why tell us the truth so easily? There had to be something he wanted from us.

Uneasy, I looked back at Sam. She’d put the horse down on the table and was closely inspecting him.

“Where did you see Ashley again?” I asked, turning back. “Oubliette?”

Villarde was visibly astonished by the mention of the club. He shifted on the stool, hunching his shoulders and back before going still.

“My, my. You have done your homework. That’s right.”

“How did she know you’d be there?” Hopper asked him.

“I assume she found my member’s card in my wallet, which I’d left back in the Waldorf hotel room when I’d fled. On the back there’s a private number to call in order to arrange for your captivity. I found out later that Ashley had called and made arrangements to come as my guest.”

He paused, heavily breathing in and out, a sensuous, nauseating sound.

“I–I was with my defeater in my cell when she stepped out of the dark. As if from the stone walls themselves. I screamed. I ran away. Alerted security. They went right after her, chasing her down along the beach by the cliffs, a whole fleet of guards. But they came back empty-handed. They said her footprints simply cut out, as if she’d flown away like a bird. Or she’d walked right into the waves and drowned.” He lowered his head, gazing at his lap. “The following day, there was no sign of her. But I knew it was just a matter of time. She was coming.”

“And did she?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. Most definitely.”

“Where?”

“Right here.” He held out his arm, indicating his own shop. “I was doing inventory in the back, when suddenly I was aware that all light had retreated from the store, as if the sun had fled, cowering behind a cloud. Alarmed, I glanced up. And she was right there.”

He pointed toward the front of the store, where light from the street streamed in through the stained-glass windows and the cracked door.

“She hadn’t seen me yet, so I crouched down, crawled across the floor on my hands and knees, trying to be as silent as I could. I reached the back corner and hid inside there.”

He turned to his right, gesturing toward a huge double-door wooden wardrobe in the far corner.

“I heard every step she took, coming closer and closer toward my hiding place. As if she was the devil coming. There was a long stretch of silence. I heard her reach for the handle on the door. Very slowly it creaked open. And I knew that was it. That I’d come face-to-face with my own death.”

He fell silent and shivered, hunching his shoulders.

Trying to ignore the repulsion flooding through me, I turned, again checking on Sam. Thankfully, she and the horse were now the best of friends. She was explaining something of great importance to him, whispering in his ear.

“Why’d she come after you?” asked Hopper suddenly.

Villarde said nothing, only guiltily lowered his head.

“You worked with the townspeople from Crowthorpe Falls?” asked Nora gently, taking a step toward Villarde. “You helped them access The Peak property?”

“I did,” Villarde said, smiling wanly, grateful for her kindness.

“How did it work, exactly?” I asked. “You made a deal with them?”

“I did,” he whispered meekly.

“With who?”

He shook his head. “I never knew. There were so many of them. I–I’d just moved to Crow. I met Stanislas for the first time, quite by accident, at the General Store. His wife had sent him into town to buy her gardening gloves. He asked me what I thought of the selection. ‘Which of these gloves are fit for a fairy queen?’ It was the first thing he said to me. We had an instant attraction. When men desire each other, they crash together like wrecking balls, quenching their need right then and there, as if the world were about to end. We began to meet around town, and within the month he invited me to his estate. He gave me my own suite in the top tower, mahogany with red damask curtains, the most beautiful room I’d ever seen. Several weeks later, I was back in town, having lunch at a diner, when a bearded man in overalls slid into the seat right across from me, a toothpick in his mouth. He asked if I had any interest in a mutually beneficial arrangement. I didn’t have any money at the time. I felt that if I built up some goodwill with the locals it would help me setting up my ministry.”

“But you’re not technically a priest,” I muttered.

“I attended two years of seminary. But yes, I dropped out.”

“Yet you wear the outfit. Isn’t that sacrilegious?”

He only smiled weakly, slowly rubbing his palms together.

“Why’d you drop out?” asked Nora.

“I didn’t have what it takes to make it in the Catholic Church.”

“Funny, I’ve noticed scum flourishes with surprising ease through the top dioceses,” I said.

Villarde didn’t answer, and I turned to check on Sam. She was dancing the plastic horse along the surface of the table.

“So, what was this mutually beneficial arrangement?” Hopper asked.

“I’d help them get onto the property,” said Villarde. “It was simple. All I had to do was cut open a bit of the wire military fencing on the southern perimeter of the property, which would allow access to The Peak by canoe via a narrow rivulet which emptied into one of the lakes on the property. I was also asked to open up the tunnels.”

“The tunnels?” I asked.

“A labyrinth of underground passageways exists beneath the entire Peak property. They’ve been there since the mansion’s construction, so servants could move easily throughout the grounds, avoiding bad weather. Stanislas didn’t know they existed when he purchased the estate. The British couple who lived at The Peak before Stanislas had sealed them off, and the realtor had no clue of their existence. I was asked by this bearded stranger to unseal them. It was fairly easy to do, took me no more than a few nights’ work. They were crudely barricaded with random bits of wood and nails, snippets of poetry and odd verse scribbled backward on the brick, almost as if the person who’d done the job had been totally insane. The other thing I was asked to do was open the front gate. Every Wednesday night at midnight, I’d walk down the tunnel that led to the property’s gatehouse — about two miles — and unlock the gate. Then I’d simply go back to bed. The tunnels are vast, laid out like a spider’s web. There is a central point where one can see the many different tunnels diverging to other secret parts of the property. I didn’t know what they all were. I always stuck to the tunnel leading to the gatehouse. It was the only one I dared go down. And that was it. Certainly, what I did to Cordova was a betrayal. But honestly I really didn’t see the harm. The property was immense. Why not let these poor locals, who had nothing, use the grounds for their pagan rituals if it made them happy?”

“Did you participate in the rituals?” asked Hopper.

Villarde seemed insulted. “Of course not.”

“But Cordova did,” I suggested bluntly.

Villarde closed his eyes for a moment, as if in pain.

“The night he discovered the tunnels, he caught a lone woman running through them on her way to the site they used. Stanislas followed her, the idea being he’d confront them all. Instead, he somehow became involved.” He smiled feebly. “ ‘For every man there exists bait he cannot resist swallowing.’ ”

“What did these rituals entail?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Stanislas refused to tell me.”

“What exactly was the nature of your friendship with Stanislas?”

The question made him shy. “We had a … a bond.”

“According to you,” muttered Hopper. “It’s funny how one-sided those can be.”

Villarde bristled. “I didn’t do anything to Cordova. He was the vampire. He made you feel like he loved you, like you were the dearest person in the world to him; all the while he was sucking you dry, leeching your life out of you. You’d spend an hour with him. Afterward you were a carcass. You lost all sense of yourself, all dimension, as if there were no difference between you and the chair you were sitting in. He’d be more alive, of course, invigorated for a week, writing, filming, insatiable, so wildly alive. Art, language, food, men, women — they had to be constantly fed to him as if he were a ravenous beast that could barely be contained within human walls. There was no end to his appetites.”

He blurted all of this heatedly and was about to go on but caught himself, abruptly falling silent.

“How long did you live with Cordova at The Peak?” I asked.

“Not long. Our friendship became strained after the death of his first wife. Genevra. She was so jealous of our bond. I thought it best to leave. I traveled abroad. But when you flee someone, no matter how far you roam, that person will follow you as doggedly as the stars. In fact, their grip on you grows even stronger. I was gone for fifteen years. When I returned to Crow, I went to The Peak and asked Stanislas if I might stay with him again. I hoped we could turn over a new leaf, go back to how things had been before the death of his first wife. But he had a new one now, Astrid, and a beautiful child. Ashley. Also a new film he was hacking out of nothingness into wild being. There were a great many people living there, writers, artists, scientists. Yet after a month he pulled me aside and said I should think about my future, where I was finally going to set up the church I’d always dreamed of. Surely it would be far away from him. ‘Time to let the vines take over,’ he was fond of saying, which meant there was no use keeping parts of the house manicured and well lit, not when he had no intention of ever entering those rooms again. He lived his life like that. He was the sprawling mansion of grown-over chambers, trees winding through the broken ceiling, plants twisting up through the floors. I understood what he meant. He’d done it so many times before me. He was dismissing me. Giving me my orders to dissolve. Fade to black. Stanislas was always moving on, always warring, always loving, galloping toward the next mysterious stranger, the next island, the next sea. And what he left behind was always ruins. But he never turned around to see it. He never looked back. I was deeply wounded. He was at once the kindest and the most barbaric man. He shifted between these traits arbitrarily, when it suited him. With Cordova you felt as if you were following a beautiful twinkling light, luring you into the woods. As soon as you lost all sense of direction, were unable to find the way back, it turned on you viciously, exposed your nakedness, blinded you, burned you. I couldn’t move on. I hadn’t moved on from Stanislas in fifteen years. I don’t know why the fuck he thought I would then.”

He snarled this, spitting, unable to control himself, but then just as quickly silenced himself. He took a breath to regain his composure.

I could only stare. Marlowe Hughes had called him oily—such a strange description. But he was an insidious trickle of oil oozing out of a loosened pipe, dripping silently, relentlessly, to the floor. The stain it made barely visible at first, but over time immense, repugnant.

And yet for all his pathetic self-pity, I sensed a very real and very deep gash of pain inside him, which had never healed.

“Shortly after his dismissal of me,” he went on, “I slipped into his little girl’s room in the middle of the night. It was so absurdly easy. Ironic, really, that he’d done nothing to protect his most cherished creation—Cordova, of all people, Cordova who always warned us we should be afraid of our own shadow, that there was nothing scarier in the world.” He smiled. “She wasn’t afraid when I shook her awake. She sat up, rubbed her eyes, and asked if I’d had a bad dream. Quite the understatement. I told her something terrible had happened. I needed her help. I said her father had been kidnapped by trolls and we had to travel deep, deep down into the darkest wood to rescue him. I pulled her roughly out of bed, telling her that she had to be silent or they’d come for her mother and her brother and they’d kill them. She didn’t say a word. I took her straight to the basement and down the steps, right down into the tunnels. I didn’t even bother to put her little shoes on or give her a coat. But Ashley wasn’t afraid. Oh, no. She was Cordova’s daughter, after all. Five years old and she was so certain, so devoid of all fear. I can still remember the sound of her bare feet, how soft and clean they were, padding along the filthy ground next to mine, how my flashlight touched the hem of her white nightgown, scalding it as we followed that passage. It was like a black vein that twisted on and on in front of us. When we reached the central area she told me she hurt her foot. It was bleeding. I think she’d stepped on a nail. But I pulled her on and down the narrow tunnel that would lead us to the clearing. And the crossroads. I’d never been there before. I’d never dared go.”

He shook his head, clasping his hands, interlacing his fingers as if in prayer. I turned to check on Sam. She’d placed the horse atop the stack of magazines and was quietly chatting with him and stroking his mane. Just a few minutes longer.

“At last,” Villarde whispered almost inaudibly, “just when I started to imagine we’d descended not into the woods but to the very core of the Earth, we reached the end. There was only a dirt wall with a metal ladder. I climbed up first and unfastened the hatch. It opened up into a dense section of woods, and far to my right, beyond what appeared to be a bridge over a rushing river, I could see them. A crowd. And a bonfire. Orange light like a strobe on their pitch-black robes. And yet the sound they were making — like nothing I’d ever heard before. It was like animals, but no animal I could identify. Like a goat, a pig, and a man, all in one beast. I was petrified. I couldn’t go farther. I reached down and grabbed that little girl roughly by the arm, hauling her up the ladder. She cried out from the pain. I shoved her out of the hole. And I told her now was her only chance to save her father from burning in hell. I pointed toward the fire and I said her daddy was right there, at the end of that bridge. All she had to do was run to him, run as fast as her little feet could carry her, and she’d save him. She listened with such wisdom in her eyes, gray eyes that were really his eyes. It was as if she knew what I was doing, as if she understood completely.”

He paused to catch his breath. “I couldn’t watch her do it. I didn’t dare. I descended the ladder, pulled the hatch into place, locking it so she wouldn’t be able to get back in. Then I sprinted back through the tunnel. I hadn’t gone two minutes when I heard the most gutting screaming. I recognized the voice. It was his. My love’s. Cordova. It sounded as if he were being mauled, as if his beloved dogs were ripping him apart, tearing off his arms and legs. It was his love destroying him. I didn’t stop. I ran back through the tunnel to the house, all the way upstairs to my room. I hid under the covers all night, my heart pounding in horror over what I’d done. I was waiting for him to come for me. I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me for retribution. And yet … I was wrong. Dawn came. It was sunny. The sky was blue, the clouds like candy, as if nothing had happened at all. As if it’d all been a dream.”

He took another beleaguered breath, moved his other foot to the top rung of the stool, tucking his arms into his lap, hunching over, as if he were trying to collapse himself.

“The transformation that started taking place …”

His voice cut out in apparent incredulity.

“Before, I never believed, you see. Of course not. Yet I couldn’t help it now. There could be no other explanation. Stanislas was devastated. Yet he had no idea about my role in the whole thing. Ashley, for some reason, did not tell him. And yet, if I found myself in the same room with her, I’d catch that little girl watching me. I knew she was thinking about that night and what I’d done to her. But Stanislas, entirely ignorant, was desperate for me to stay on. He needed me because he wanted to cling to God now. God, the boring relative everyone ignores — no one calls, no one writes — until they need a serious favor.”

He smiled.

“I made myself indispensable. For the next ten years, I lived with the family. I gave my life to him. I educated Stanislas on Catholic theology. I helped him study and pray, pray for his own soul, but especially Ashley’s, which was slowly, inveterately turning dark. I suggested an exorcist. But then, it wasn’t possession, was it? No. It was a promise. A deal. After researching legendary pacts made with the devil throughout history, I came across a potential solution. If Stanislas found another child to take Ashley’s end of the bargain. An even exchange. One pure soul for another. Ashley might go free. And I’d read that if one were to try such a thing, a simple transfer of debt, one needed not harm the other child in the process. One needed only an article of clothing or object that had belonged exclusively to this new child. I told Cordova about the idea quite arbitrarily, not thinking he’d actually try such a thing. Cordova, for all his flaws, loved children. But he began to leave The Peak in the middle of the night. He had his chauffeur drive him to different schools in the area, where he’d wander the playgrounds and the athletic fields and the hallways, looking for some child’s small lost belonging. When he returned to the house with his loot of little shirts and little shoes, plastic soldiers and teddy bears, he’d stick them in a bag and take them down to the crossroads. And there he tried to exchange her, night after night, week after week. I was the only one who knew. But it wouldn’t work. Nothing did.”

I was too stunned to speak. It was, of course, exactly what the anonymous caller, John, had described to me years ago.

It had been real, after all. I had not been set up. The man had been telling me the truth.

I felt dizzying exhilaration at the realization that I had not been deceived. There’s something he does to the children, John had claimed. And it was true. The reason Cordova had visited those schools in the middle of the night was that he was hoping to use them, exchange them, save Ashley’s soul by condemning theirs.

“It was because he could find no equal to Ashley,” Villarde continued. “The devil had been promised a child of such perfection, such intelligence, depth, and beauty, it was proving impossible to find her replacement. Like finding a stand-in for an archangel. But Stanislas wouldn’t give up. He’d try and fail and try yet again. He’d do whatever it took to save her. No matter what amount of guilt and horror was left on his hands. He knew he was already beyond salvation. But she wasn’t.”

Villarde swallowed, lowering his head, his breath shallow. “A few months after I made this suggestion for a swap, I woke up in the middle of the night to the most unbearable pain. My bed was on fire. I was on fire. So were the clerical clothes in my closet, the curtains in my room. They were ablaze, writhing as if alive. I screamed, bumbling around, tried to get out to the bathroom, to water, but Ashley was blocking the doorway. Her left hand was on fire—and yet it wasn’t hurting her — a wild look in her eyes. Triumph. It was the last thing I remembered. When I regained consciousness, I was in a hospital and learned I’d been dropped off anonymously at an emergency room in Albany. I didn’t know who had driven me or how, but I had third-degree burns on eighty percent of my body. I received blood transfusions, skin grafts, and, months later, when I was at last allowed to leave, I knew I’d never go back. That thing she was turning into wanted me dead. She owned me, after all. I couldn’t save them anymore. But I could save myself. I disappeared. And so it remained, for eight years, until a few weeks ago, when she found me.”

So, everything Marlowe told us was true. Villarde was the burn victim in Astrid’s car, and Ashley was sent to Six Silver Lakes for what she’d done.

“When we arrived, why did you think we were the police?” Nora asked.

Villarde glanced at her. “I thought that … I thought you’d found evidence up on the property.”

“Evidence of what?” I asked.

“What Cordova did. Trying to save her. When the clothing and the toys didn’t work, I thought … no, I panicked that he’d grown so desperate, he’d moved on to using the children themselves. I think they might be up there somewhere. Buried. Unless they were all burned, incinerated in the mill ovens to nothing.” He closed his eyes in anguish. “ ‘I will show you fear in a handful of dust,’ ” he whispered.

The implication of what he was saying rendered me mute.

The entire shop and everything in it seemed to freeze from the revulsion of it, darkening, sinking deeper into shadow, holding its breath. I was stunned by his mention of a single word: burned. It triggered a memory of something I had in my old notes, what Nelson Garcia, Cordova’s next-door neighbor in Crowthorpe Falls, had told me years ago.

Now they set fire to all their garbage, he’d told me. You can smell it when it’s hot at night. Burning. And sometimes when the wind’s blowing southeast I can even see the smoke.

“What did she do to you?” asked Hopper suddenly.

Villarde glanced up at him, uneasy.

“When she opened up that closet and found you cowering in the corner, what did she do? You’re still alive, aren’t you? You’re still wearing that sacrilegious getup. What did Ashley do that you were so fucking afraid of?”

Villarde only lowered his head.

“You can’t even say it, can you?”

Villarde opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Then he gasped, a bizarre gagging sound that prompted disgust to flood through me. He was, without doubt, one of the most wretched beings I’d ever laid eyes on.

“She pulled me to my feet,” he whispered. “And she …”

“She what?” shouted Hopper.

“She …” Villarde was crying. “There’s really nothing more terrifying—”

“WHAT?”

“She told me she … forgave me.”

The words were so fragile and unexpected, no one spoke.

Villarde remained frozen on the stool, his shoulders hunched as if waiting for divine retribution, for God or even the devil to strike him from the world. I was about to break the silence, but abruptly, the man jerked his head up and stared right at me.

It was such a penetrating look it stunned me.

His eyes were completely dry.

For seconds, all I could think was that I’d misjudged his despair and self-loathing because his aged, carved-up face was unmistakably thrilled now, excited, his eyes pricked with light.

It was too quiet.

There was no whispering, nothing behind me. I whipped around.

The chair where Sam had been sitting was empty.

“Samantha!”

I lurched down the narrow passageway, knocking over stacks of magazines, a wooden walking stick clattering to the ground. I wheeled around, my heart pounding, staring into the hat racks and banker’s lamps, rocking chairs and vintage radios, and none of it was Sam.

“Samantha!” I shouted.

Suddenly, there was a rustling noise.

To my relief, Sam poked her head out of the junk. She’d been hiding under a dining-room table laden with animal taxidermy, elk heads with antlers, bobcats and lizards, monkey skulls. She was clutching the plastic horse tightly against her chest.

“Samantha! Get over here now!”

She blinked in alarm and obediently started toward me. But then there was a loud scraping sound.

A wooden Art Deco floor lamp with a wide crystal shade standing beside her — it was shuddering, tipping forward, drunken and alive.

“Sam! Don’t move!”

I scrambled over a steamer trunk, comic books, a bird skeleton under a glass dome smashing to the floor, but I knew I was too late.

Sam pitched forward, falling, and the lamp crashed right beside her, the shade exploding over her onto the floor seconds before her piercing screams. I climbed over a rolling stretcher, pushed aside globes and dolls to get to her, my Sam, my dearest Sam, barely aware of the chaos behind me, shouts and echoing footsteps of someone racing out of the shop.