Play dead

NINETY-EIGHT

5:47 AM

The walls in the basement were damp and clammy. The flicker of the gas lamps drew their shadows in long, spindly forms. Hand in hand, Graciella and Joseph Swann walked past many small rooms, twisting and turning through the labyrinthine halls. Some rooms were no more than ten-by-ten feet, bearing long oak shelves crammed with magic paraphernalia. Some were filled with steamer trunks, overflowing with memorabilia and mementoes. One was dedicated to smaller stage props-foldaway tables, production boxes, dove pans, parasols. Yet another room was devoted solely to the storage of stage clothing-vests, jackets, trousers, shirts, suspenders.

They eventually came to a long corridor. At the end of the passageway were bright yellow lights. As they approached the stage Graciella's heart raced. She thought of the night her mother phoned, the long dreadful night two months earlier when her world had been turned upside down. There had been so much Graciella wanted to say to her mother, years of confusion and frustration to unload. But by the end of the conversation she found that the hatred that had lived in her soul like a terrible fire for so long had simply vanished. Her mother had been not much older than she was when she'd had her baby, and she had given her up for adoption for all the right reasons. When Graciella hung up the phone she had cried until dawn. Then she had gone into her closet and opened all the boxes she had received over the years on her birthday and Christmas. She'd known who they were from all along.

Eve Galvez had loved her. That's why she walked away.

That night, via her cell phone, Eve had sent her a number of photographs. Photographs of Graciella at two and three and four years old, all taken from far away. Graciella playing lacrosse. Graciella hanging at the Mickey D's on Greene Road. The final photo was of this monstrous place. The last thing her mother had said was that there had been a girl named Caitlin O'Riordan, and that a man, a man who called himself Mr. Ludo-the man who lived here, the man she now knew as Joseph Swann-had killed Caitlin.

When the story of her mother's murder hit the newspaper, and all the flowers that had so recently been planted in Graciella's heart were ripped from the ground, she knew what she had to do. She made a promise to her mother's memory that she would finish the job.

But now that the end was in sight, she did not know if she could go through with it.

The stage stood at the far side of the room. It was about fifteen feet wide. The floor was highly polished; there were velvet curtains drawn to the sides. A spotlight over the center of the stage cut through the blackness like a knife through necrotic flesh.

Joseph Swann offered his hand, and led Graciella into the wings.

Between them, the Fire Grotto awaited.