Audrey’s Door (33 page)

T
his his happened before. Don’t you remember the ants, and Hinton?

In her dream, they were Siamese twins again. This version of her mother wasn’t black-and-white, but old and wrinkled. Her dress was a hospital gown that fit her like a sail. She pushed Audrey, hard. They came apart so that they were half-women with split hearts and wounded legs, but both were still breathing.

You live in a bad place, Lamb,
Betty said.

She was sleeping because the work had been so hard. The piano had made discordant music as she’d chopped, then sawed. Her arms and legs shivered from muscle exhaustion, even in sleep, and she was so hungry she didn’t remember her name. She thought maybe it was lamb. The kind people eat.

In her dream, she and her mother were sitting on the
air mattress, watching the door. On the other side, The Breviary’s true parents waited. Not Schermerhorn, but the thing that had guided his hand and given him the design for those plans. The spiderlike wraith that had followed her down Jayne’s hall. The monster beneath the monster.

She’d tested the door’s slant with the level in her toolbox to make sure that it pointed two degrees west. The tenants had provided her with everything she needed.

Just then severed Betty shook her. “You have to get out of here!”

Audrey looked to her left and saw her cleaved heart. No blood flowed, but only two chambers beat in a quiet
lub-dup.
“I don’t like moving, you know that. I’m done with motels, Momma.”

“Go now, Lamb. Or it’ll find a way in. It’ll get inside you, like it got inside me.” The woman shook harder, and Audrey’s breath caught in her throat. Betty was old. A skinny collection of bones and wild, white hair whose jagged bangs had recently been cut. On her far side was an IV tree that dripped fluid into her arm while, in the distance, Audrey heard the steady breathing of a respirator like half of this dream was taking place in a hospital. Was this really Betty, and not a trick? Had she somehow reached out through her coma?

Something wet and warm trickled. Audrey touched her neck and severed chest where tiny drops of blood were beginning to bead. “We’re the same. Neither of us were born whole. My heart’s all fucked up,” she said.

Betty shook her head. “No, Lamb. We’re different.” Unlike all the other ghosts and hollow echoes that had visited this last week, Audrey
knew
this woman in a way that made her feel less alone.

“I’m afraid,” Audrey said. To her left, her cleaved heart bled. The drops coalesced into a red line that thickened. And then the blood began to flow more heavily. Her neck bled, too. “I never stopped bleeding.
From that time you cut me. It’s not your fault. We were born wrong, that’s all.”

Aged Betty reached into her open chest and pulled out what remained of her still-beating heart. “Take this. It belongs to you. I never had one of my own. You shared yours. I’ll give it back now,” she said as she joined it to its mate inside Audrey’s chest. She held it there, firm, for a couple of seconds until the thing stopped bleeding. Her neck stopped bleeding, too. The split healed, and she became whole.

Audrey took the woman in her arms. Betty. She smelled like Baby Soft perfume and Winston cigarettes. Her skin was soft. In the distance, tearing through the dream, was the beeping of a hospital heart monitor.

“Thank you, Momma.”

Betty lifted her head. The veins on her neck bulged. Blood gushed as her skin paled. “Get up and get out of here!” she yelled. Then she pushed Audrey so hard she woke up.

The door was humming. The apartment was dark. Audrey woke to realize, with some shock, that she’d just inserted the hot water faucet handle and was trying to pull the door open.

The thing in her stomach turned. She felt it inside of her, growing. Down the hall, water ran from the tub and flooded the floor. “Ohhh,” she said. “Oh, no.”

She reached fast into her pocket. The key. To get it back, she’d stuffed herself with piano sawdust and cardboard, then flushed it all out of her with a gallon of water. A natural laxative. But when she’d looked out the peephole, Loretta’s blue eyes had looked back at her. So she’d waited, and dozed, and finished the door, then dreamed of Betty. The real one, perhaps.

She staggered back now, as the door began to pull from its foundation. Up from the rotten floor, red ants crawled.

What do you have left that you love?
It hummed.
Give me its blood and I’ll let you see my true face.

The slopping thing in her stomach filled her chest, then her arms and mouth.

Kill him,
the walls and floors and door whispered. The sound was deafening. She could hear the tenants through the halls. Their meaningless, frightened thoughts were an hysterical chorus. They banged on the walls. Slowly at first, and then fast. She could hear all fifty-one of them. Reams of spit flew from wrinkled lips. “You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!” they cried.

Kill all that you love,
The Breviary commanded.

But she loved nothing. Not even herself. She was dead inside, just an accumulation of scars. The worm filled her body. Her vision got small, then nothing. Her eyes turned black. She saw through The Breviary’s eyes. Felt the air through its limestone skin. Felt its fury, that it had been trapped in this awful world, wearing this flawed stone body, for more than 150 years.

First she saw the ants in the basement and the gristle of Martin’s and Edgardo’s bones. Then floor by floor, every tenant. Every apartment. Every failed door, trash-filled kitchen, and unflushed toilet. She understood why the building loathed them and had played its pranks. She despised them, too. Her gaze ascended. Up, up, up. Ninth floor: the tenants themselves had stolen all the copper fixtures, then sold them at half their value because they hadn’t known how to haggle. Tenth floor: Penelope Falco imagined, then wept in fear that she might actually get what The Breviary had promised her on the other side of the door: someone to love. Finally, she saw Saraub Ramesh through The Breviary’s cold eyes as he climbed the steps to the fourteenth floor.

She walked down the hall and unlocked it for him, then headed back into the den and located her rebar.

Kill all that you love,
The Breviary, the tenants, the ghosts, and even the thing on the other side of the door whispered, just as Saraub Ramesh entered 14B.

I
t took Saraub sixty-five excruciating minutes to check out of the hospital. His cabbie was new to the job, and took Central Park North instead of the 97
^th
Street Transverse. They wound up circling Morningside Park and adding an extra fifteen minutes to the trip. When he finally made his way into The Breviary’s lobby, the doorman was gone, and the place was empty. A kiddie porno lay open on the floor.

The more he thought about it, the worse this sounded. She
was
a private person, so why hadn’t she called him herself if she’d wanted his help? And where was everyone in this building?

He waited for the elevator for ten minutes, then finally broke open the iron gate, and looked down the shaft. The wire cable had torn, and the car lay crashed in the basement, its roof broken open from the impact of the fall.

He headed for the stairs. After two flights, he was
sweating. It was dusty in here, and he breathed some of it in—a greasy, foul taste that slithered in his stomach. After three flights, he took a break to rest his ribs and leaned against the wall. It vibrated against his fingers.

After a minute or two, he caught his breath and kept walking. Faster. As fast as he could. The building swayed. He could feel it rocking, like the top of the Empire State Building, only he didn’t think it had been engineered to bow with the wind: this thing was no longer sound.

At the fourth-floor landing, an old woman peeked out from the fire door. She’d smeared coral lipstick across her forehead and cheeks, but otherwise was wearing nothing at all. Her breasts hung slack around her belly. “She doesn’t want you!” The woman giggled. “But they want to wear you!” She pointed and laughed, and he walked faster.

He picked up his pace. It was hard to keep his balance with his arms in casts, so he leaned against the railing. Thought about calling the cops, but didn’t know yet what to tell them.

He got to the sixth floor. Sweat dripped from his brow. It was humid in here. Red ants scurried up the steps as if seeking higher ground. He felt something in his stomach. Gnawing. It got bigger inside him, like indigestion.

She said you couldn’t make a porn star cum.

Had someone just said something? He slowed. Two steps at a time. Had Audrey been talking about him?

She said she was after your money, only you don’t have any. You’re just your mother’s bitch.

One step at a time.

You never met a Twinkie you didn’t love.

He’s always wanted a girl like Audrey, who called her own shots. He’d thought she’d seen past his drawbacks. But how can anyone see past 280 pounds?

And these dreams he’d had, of a house. Before Audrey,
he’d used his family’s credit card to buy movie tickets. He’d eaten entire pizzas for dinner, followed by two pitchers of beer. He’d never paid his bills, or cooked, or cleaned. These dreams of his, they belonged to someone else.

He stopped at the tenth-floor landing. The lights flickered. The banister was hot beneath his fingers. And why was he doing this? For a woman who’d treated him like garbage and cleaned their toilet every time he used it, like she thought his ass germs would put her in a hospital.

He got to the eleventh floor. Breathing so hard he was dizzy.

She’s spreading her legs for both the partners at her office. She was easy, too. All she wanted out of it was a raise.

Saraub clenched his jaw. The bitch deserved a right hook. A tooth knocked out, or maybe her pretty face slashed, so she’d know how bad it felt to be stared at for being different.

She said she’d have respected you, if just once, you’d punched something besides a wall.

He got to the twelfth-floor landing. His fury swelled. He saw, but did not place, the dried and bloody footprints on the steps, as belonging to Audrey. The fourteenth floor. He walked down the red carpet. It was a mess of white powder and broken ceramic. All the doors except 14B were open. In 14C, an old woman in a torn dressing gown pointed at him, and shouted, “He’s here! He’s here! I tole you!”

He walked on. A white-haired old man leaned inside 14A’s doorway and shot his arm with a hypodermic needle full of cloudy fluid. When he saw Saraub, he frowned. “How are we going to get rid of the carcass? You’re too big for the chute.”

He turned the handle to 14B. It creaked open. His panting was fast, and sweat poured. He didn’t notice the
running water, or the shadows that raced down the hall and into the den. Didn’t notice the Steinway chopped to bits. From its bones and her moving boxes, she’d made a door. The blackbirds in the windows flapped their wings, trapped in glass. Alive. He didn’t register this, either. All he heard was that voice in his mind, and the walls, and the air:
Give it to her. She wants it. The only way to keep her in line is the back of your hand. If you don’t do it, she’ll find a man who can.

He charged. First walking fast, then running with his broken arms at his sides. Her expression was flat and without emotion. Her eyes were black. She was wearing a sweat suit that fit her like a blanket, and she stank. “You bitch,” he said. Then he took a swing with his plaster cast.

She swung, too, but she was faster. He didn’t have the time to block the blow. Only heard the sound as his shoulder cracked, and he crashed to the floor.

O
nce Saraub arrived, the tenants lined the fourteenth-floor hallway and began to cheer. Loretta stamped her feet. “It’s started!” she cried. Nude Arthur tucked his needle behind his ear. Elaine Alexander slammed her fists against her stomach. Benjamin Borrell tore his hair. Evvie Waugh thought about heaven. “It’s time!” they all shouted. “It’s time! It’s time! It’s time!” Francis Galton revealed what he’d done to improve on his artwork: a face without skin.

One by one, every living tenant of The Breviary followed Saraub’s path, and crawled, walked, and hobbled down the throat of 14B. Their bodies had become hunched and their eyes black. They clapped and laughed and cried with delight, as Audrey struck his shoulder once more with her rebar.

Seven generations, trapped in this building. No air,
no grass, no sky or sun. They did not care what happened next, so long as it led to an end.

The red ants climbed. Up the steps, through the cracks, vents, and floors. They swarmed 14B, until the floors and walls were red.

A
crowd had arrived. The apartment turned red, just like when Clara lived there. The stained-glass blackbirds got loose from the glass and flew circles around the door, in an ever-tightening gyre. The entire building rattled. The floor beneath her cracked, and the ceiling cracked, too. The door throbbed within its frame, and The Breviary trembled with delight.

Saraub lifted his casted arm in defense. His promises and his bullshit, oh, how she hated him. She swung again. Missed as he rolled, double casts flailing, onto his side. The door opened a crack. Her heart swelled: she was such an excellent engineer. But of course, if anyone understood functional chaos, it was the daughter of Betty Lucas.

She drew back the rebar. Saraub’s big eyes were cow-like and stupid. Too shocked to react. That’s why she was a survivor, and he wasn’t. She lifted the pole once more.

“Stop,” he groaned. “It’s not you. It’s the building.”

She tightened her fingers and struck again. This time, the bottom of his foot, just to frighten him, because his voice was so familiar. He crawled, using his hips to propel himself backward. Only, the hall was filled with the tenants and ants. Clapping and screaming. His skin was so smooth. Had he shaved for her? Did he know she’d once been a ballerina, or that before Betty went mad, Audrey’s best friend’s father had owned a Dairy Queen? Did he know that during Betty’s final AWOL, she’d gotten beaten to unconsciousness in the back of an Omaha dive bar? Or that Audrey had committed her against her will? On the day she wheeled her into Ward C, she’d told her that the hospital was an airport and that they were going on a vacation to Paris. Did he know the kind of coldhearted bitch she could be, when she had to be?

A tear rolled down the side of her face. “I don’t want to kill you. But I have to. It’s better this way, trust me.”

Behind them, the door opened about a half inch. The space made a vacuum that sucked the light from the room. The ants swarmed. They filled the cracks until the room lightened again.

“Audrey, stop,” he pleaded as she followed him down the hall.

The thing inside her squirmed, whispering words of sweetness in her mother’s voice.
We girls stick together. No one comes between. Do you know what he did to Jayne? He touched her ass. You saw, didn’t you, Lamb? It wasn’t your lamp that hurt her feelings so bad. It was the guilt, because she was afraid to tell you. That’s why he left you. He raped her, Lamb. It’s his fault she’s dead.

“No,” she muttered. “Impossible”

Schermerhorn was at her other ear.
He’ll be fine, darling. It’s better this way. Don’t worry your little head. You’re one of us, and he doesn’t make the cut.

The door groaned. Along the walls, ancestors of The Breviary watched. And there was baby Deirdre on the floor. Unresponsive, mute. Vacant. She peered up at Audrey with black eyes. “Finish it.”

Soon, they were all chanting, even the tenants. “Finish it. Finish it. Finish it.”

She could hear their thoughts. They were too far gone to think in words. All was the color red, of madness and murder and frugal love.

She hoisted the rebar.

“Audrey. Think! You’ll go to jail. You’ll lose everything,” Saraub cried as he crawled toward the turret window. Blackbirds struck his exposed skin as they flew, their talons sharp as glass.

“Finish it! Finish it! Finish it!” The tenants trilled. Loretta began to howl. The sound was pained, as if she’d been stabbed.

“Audrey. Put it down,” Saraub cried. His arms were plaster wings that reminded her of flight.

She squeezed the rebar. The look he wore was familiar. Even now, his concern outweighed his fear. Stupid man, worried about how his murder might cramp her freedom. So good at caring for other people, so terrible at caring for himself. A red ant climbed along her cheek and bit the bridge of her nose. She realized she’d become the thing she hated most. She’d become Betty’s sickness.

The thing inside her lifted her hand against the man she loved. This time she fought it. She noticed her filthy sweat suit and bare feet. Remembered Jayne, and her mother, and herself, all so scarred and raw but fighters, too. Saw Saraub’s blood as it coated the plaster of paris. Broken arms—who’d hurt him?

They both knew he could do a lot better than a white-trash hick with OCD. The thing is, maybe he didn’t want better. Maybe she made him happy.

“Finish it! Finish it!” the tenants wailed.

She dropped the pole and bent down next to him. “I’m sorry,” she said. Around them, ants scurried. There were so many that they looked fluid. They rushed the door, and she remembered, finally, that time in Hinton. Red ants had filled the holes then, too.

“I love you. I’m sorry,” Audrey said as she helped him stand. Just then, Loretta hobbled out in front of the door. All around them now, ants squirmed. They filled the ever-widening cracks as the door continued to open.

“I’ll do it myself!” Loretta hooted, then picked up the rebar and swung. Only, she didn’t go after Audrey or Saraub. She hit the den wall. Plaster chunks broke loose from their wooden beam bones. The others joined her, weak fists punching.

“Fire!” Evvie Waugh cried, and they all cheered. “Fire! Fire! Fire!” A few scrurried out of 14B, still chanting.

“What?” Saraub whispered. She squeezed his hand to quiet him. Together, they slid toward the hall, but Loretta spotted them, and blocked their way. “It’s my party!” she said. “And you have to stay!”

Panting, Saraub whispered, “I think we can take them.”

She doubted this but appreciated his optimism; from the way it slumped backward, she’d broken his shoulder. Supporting him by the waist, they kept going for a step, then two, until the crowd pushed back. Fists flailing, she struggled, punching at random. The sound was like twigs breaking. Saraub threw his body into the crowd. A few, including Evvie Waugh, fell as he jerked his neck back and shouted, “Run!”

The command confused her—did he expect her to leave him? She shook her head and followed him into the crowd. Flailing, kicking, trying to wrest him back. After a short struggle, the tenants had her, too.

The seconds passed. The smell of smoke wafted through the vents. She could feel heat, too, and realized then where the ones who left had gone. To open the
door, the tenants were killing the only thing they loved. They were burning down The Breviary. It shrieked its agonized protest, and they shrieked, too. The thing about monsters, they hate themselves most of all.

“Oh, shit,” Audrey said.

Saraub stood on tiptoe, to see over the tenants’ heads, and called out to her, “We’ve got to get out of here!” just as Loretta Parker twisted the faucet handle and opened the door.