Black Light (21 page)

I
STUMBLED INTO THE
music room. After the shrill, overheated melee of the outer hall, it seemed positively monastic. Tiffany lamps and austere Prairie School lanterns cast a cozy glow over worn leather furniture—hassocks, oxblood couches, armchairs large enough for two people to sleep in side by side. Which at least one blissed-out couple was doing, the woman’s miniskirt still hiked up to her waist while her partner snored.

Otherwise the place was empty. Oriental rugs were scattered across the floor, not the elegant Chinese silk pastels favored by my parents but thick rough-textured rugs from Turkey and Afghanistan, wool so heavy it left your fingers sticky with lanolin, with intricate mazelike patterns dyed in the autumnal hues of the wines Axel Kern loved: claret, burgundy, the golden bronze of Armagnac, pale sunlit sémillon. The floorboards were worn and creaked underfoot; the plaster ceiling cracked and blotched with water-stains. There were music stands holding black-and-white photographs of a naked Marilyn Monroe, a harp hung with a Soviet flag, a Steinway covered by a fringed paisley shawl. A shabby polar bear rug lay in front of a huge stone fireplace where a fire crackled. The room was so big, and so inadequately heated, that I hurried there to warm myself. I avoided the polar bear—its fur matted, the color of city slush—instead stood on tiptoe on the tile border in front of the hearth.

The fire must have been blazing for hours. There were logs as large as I was angled across the brass firedogs, and a mountain of ash beneath. After a minute or two I blinked, my cheeks burning, and stepped backward until I leaned against the Steinway. I could still hear laughter and thumping music, and fainter strains from other parts of the mansion. I was debating whether to brave the hall again or head off in search of Hillary, when someone grabbed my ankle; someone beneath the piano.

“Lit Moylan,” a voice intoned drunkenly. I tried to pull away but the hand moved up to my calf and gripped me. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Hillary?”

I had to lift the fringed shawl before I could see him, lying on his stomach, his flannel shirt open and his long hair sticking out like Struwwelpeter’s, a heap of apple cores beside him. “Gee, Hillary, I thought you were prostrate with grief looking for me.”

“I am. I’m completely housebroken. Get down here—”

I slid beside him. He kissed me sloppily, his mouth tasting of red wine and apples, then drew back, puzzled. “Your hair smells funny—Christ, your hair
looks
funny! What happened?”

I pulled away. “Nothing.”

“
Nothing?
You look like—well, I don’t know
what
you look like.” Hillary reached behind him and grabbed a wine bottle. He took a long pull, then regarded me thoughtfully. “Actually, you know what you look like? That picture in Ali’s room.”

“Really? ‘The Lady of Shallott’?”

“No. The creepy one, that girl with the red hair and the ripped white dress who looks like she’s pulling her hair out—what’s his name? Stuck? Gluck?”

“You
idiot.
” I turned angrily and crawled back out. “I
hate
that picture—”

“Munch,” Hillary said, snapping his fingers. “That one! Hey, where you going?”

“Leave me alone! And it’s
orange,
not white.”

Hillary stared at my dress. “Yeah, no lie.”

“Fuck you.”

I stormed from the room, not even noticing which doorway I left by. I was such a roil of pure emotion—embarrassment, fear, excitement, arousal, rage—that I felt sick to my stomach. I was halfway down a darkened hallway before I stopped to catch my breath. Overhead the ceiling was so ornately carved it seemed hung with dark crumpled linen. I glanced back for the telltale glow of firelight from the music room.

It was gone.

“Damn,” I whispered.

I was in one of those labyrinthine oak-paneled passages that wound through Bolerium like the trails bored by deathwatch beetles, opening upon anterooms and stairways, pocket libraries and maprooms, and even upon a tiny private chapel where it was said Acherley Darnell had been shriven the night before his execution. As a child I had sometimes wandered in these halls, when the adult conversation bored me and I’d tried unsuccessfully to find my way to the kitchen in search of normal food, rather than the robust and inedible spreads that Axel and my parents loved: morels, imported truffles and dark bread, venison studded with juniper berries; fiddleheads and shad roe.

But I could never make any sense of the corridors. Sometimes I found the kitchen, and Axel’s housekeeper would give me turkey sandwiches and a glass of milk before sending me back. But just as often I would wander for what seemed like hours, futilely jiggling doorknobs, climbing narrow stairways where the ceiling grazed my head, staring out lead-paned windows onto the slope of Muscanth Mountain and the distant play of light upon the lake. Eventually, of course, I always found my way back; but ever after was haunted by dreams of dim passages, muted voices speaking behind walls; doors I could never quite open and words I could not understand.

Now I felt that same dread returning. And I was starving. So I went on, trying to ignore the pulse of music from behind the walls, the flicker of movement behind half-closed doors. In front of one there was a stack of unopened mail that came up to my waist; by another someone had dumped an ashtray. The walls held some of the artifacts scattered throughout Bolerium like the detritus of a fabulous library. Old, sepia-tinted photographs of places in western England: Land’s End, The Lizard, a group of standing stones called The Merry Maidens. A huge gilt frame that held an oil painting in the style of Landseer, its colors so dark I had to squint to determine its subject: ravening hounds and an embattled stag, the deer poised upon the edge of a cliff with its head thrown back. An engraved brass plaque gave its title, “
AT BAY.
”

And after this, an entire hallway filled with a series of maps, the earliest dating back to the 1600s. All depicted the changing contours of Kamensic’s boundaries—a farm, the Indian burial ground overlooking Lake Muscanth, the Old Post Road. I stopped to peruse these, looking for my own house. I never found it, which was puzzling—it was on the Register of Historic Places, and often mentioned in local histories.

What was even stranger was that the one local landmark which should
not
have changed over the centuries—Muscanth Mountain—
did
change, at least on these ordnance maps. The oldest chart, dated 1601, showed a vast Himalaya of a peak, snow-covered, with black stones thrusting from its side like a reptile’s dorsal spines. Only three years later, Muscanth was a mere hillock, the silhouette of Bolerium already blotched onto it in tea-colored ink.

But the next map showed yet a different view, and then another: as though the mountain were a lake or marsh whose environs swelled or shrank according to the seasons. Its placement never varied. Neither did the shadowy outline of Bolerium. Only the exact size and shape of the mountain itself seemed to be in question.

This was odd, though of course old maps are notoriously unreliable. Yet even the more recent charts, dating from the 1930s, shared this anomaly. I stared at one, frowning, and recalled Jamie Casson’s complaint—

Every time we come down that mountain it’s like a different road
…

But what if that wasn’t it,
I thought, and shivered.
What if every time we come down that road, it’s like a different mountain?

As if in answer a tide of laughing voices rose and ebbed somewhere just out of sight. I lingered another moment in front of the maps, then went on.

The air grew cooler, as though I had wandered far from where the other partygoers held court. The cracks beneath closed doors hinted at what was inside: candles, a halogen glare that meant 16mm cameras; the ubiquitous fuzzy glow of ultraviolet. Occasionally I caught a whiff of something other than lemon polish—marijuana smoke, candle wax; a woman’s perfume, heavy with the sweet notes of vanilla and jasmine. My stomach growled, and I had the beginning of a headache stabbing at my eyes.

“Come on, come on,” I muttered, squinting as I tried to figure out where the hell I was: absolutely nowhere. In front of me the passage wound on. Behind me there were only all those doors, like the sets of some demented game show.
“Shit.”

I stopped and ran a hand through my knotted hair, steeling myself to kick in the next door I saw, when light flooded the hall in front of me, brilliant red. I stiffened, saw yet another door that opened inward. There was someone inside—two people. Their shadows rippled at my feet, and I stepped quickly to one side.

“…
knew
you’d find her! Why else would you be here?”

“Don’t be a fool. I had no—”

Abruptly they grew silent. I pressed myself against the wall and held my breath. I knew the first voice. It was Ralph Casson, his tone nearly strangled with rage; and the second voice, too, I almost recognized, a voice so oddly familiar that at first I thought I must know it from a movie or song.

But then the shadows moved closer. The pool of crimson light at my feet diminished and disappeared. In the doorway stood two figures, staring at me. Not in complete shock, but not quite as though I were expected. More like they had expected me sooner, or later, or in other clothes.

“Lit,” Ralph Casson pronounced. “Here you are.”

“Giulietta,”
breathed the second man: Balthazar Warnick. He ran a hand across his brow, glanced quickly at Ralph, then at me. “You—he said you were here, Giulietta, but…”

He stepped toward me and I shrank from him. “I don’t know you,” I said, sounding unaccountably childish. I looked at Ralph, who cocked his head and beckoned me to him.

“Lit,” he said, correcting Balthazar. “This is Lit Moylan.” He put his arm around me, leaning his head so it rested atop mine. “She and my son Jamie are in school together.”

Balthazar Warnick continued to stare at me. Behind him I could just glimpse a room, not much bigger than a closet, really, bare of any furniture and lit by a single red bulb in the ceiling. After a moment he stepped out into the hall, seeming disconcerted, almost fearful. But then he nodded, smoothing the lapels of his tuxedo jacket and gracing me with an ironic bow.

“Lit,” he said. “I am delighted to meet you.”

He extended his hand. I glanced at Ralph. He gave me a reassuring nod, and so tentatively I took Balthazar’s hand in my own. I thought he would shake it. Instead he drew it to his lips and kissed my knuckles. Mortified, I looked down at my boots.

“Please,”
I said. Balthazar smiled coolly and withdrew his hand.

Ralph laughed. “They teach you that at Greenwich Country Day School, Lit?” I flushed, and started to snap back at him when another figure appeared in the red-lit room behind us.

“Boys, boys, boys,” a voice scolded. “You must learn to
share
.”

I looked up. Someone stood there, head and shoulders above Balthazar and Ralph, glowing as though just pulled from a kiln. An aureole of cerise hair; milk-white face save for two slashes of rouge like arrows drawn across her cheeks; a voluptuous mouth green as poison apples. A gold sequin winked above her upper lip, and her eyes were so thickly mascaraed they looked like spiders. She stared at me and smiled, then with a flourish raised her hands. She placed one upon Balthazar’s shoulder, the other upon Ralph’s, pushed them aside and walked between them.

“I learned that from Charlton Heston in
The Ten Commandments
,” she explained. Her voice was deep but breathy, very hoarse, as though it was a continuing effort to speak. She put a long, blunt-tipped fingernail under my chin and tilted my head back, until I was gazing directly into those liquid brown eyes.

“Charlotte Moylan?”

I nodded.

“I’m Precious Bane.”

“I—I know.”

How could I
not
know? Precious Bane, née Wally Ciminski, the Jersey City steno pool speed freak turned transvestite hustler and Nursery film idol, imperiled star of
Necromancer
and
House of the Sleeping Beauties.
Heroine of Russ Greer’s anthemic 1972 hit “Cities of Night,” with its teasing refrain and daring references to sexual acts even I, liberated child that I was, could only imagine; Axel Kern’s confidante and, it was rumored, lover, though my parents refused to believe
that.

Looking at her now, I had difficulty believing it, too. Precious Bane was just too huge. She towered on silver platform shoes, her linebacker’s shoulders expansive as a condor’s wings, enhanced by a Barbara Stanwyck jacket wide enough that Barbara Stanwyck herself could be hiding in it. The halo of cerise hair shimmered when she moved, and a very short black polyester skirt skimmed the tops of her thighs. The effect wasn’t exactly what you would call a paragon of feminine beauty, but neither was it laughable. She was like a statue damaged by time and weather, her beauty increased by exposure: she was too much
herself,
her gift stemming from her own unshakable belief that she was fabulous. And so you thought so, too.

“Your godfather sent me to find you, sweetie.” She smiled, showing a lot of big, yellow teeth. “Ready?”

I swallowed and looked around uncertainly. “Uh, sure. I guess.”

Precious Bane plucked at my hair, frowning. “Maybe we better stop by the little girl’s room first? You’re a bit
untidy.
Here, this way—”

She steered me into the red room. Ralph Casson started after us, but Precious Bane turned and held up her hand like a crossing guard.

“Uh-uh-uh. No boys allowed. Sorry.”

“But—”

“I’m sure we’ll all find time to have a nice visit later.”

I peeked around her, trying to catch a last glimpse of Balthazar Warnick. But the door slammed shut before I saw anything except Ralph Casson staring after me with a greedy, almost gloating, look.

“There.” Precious Bane shook her head. “People come and go so
quickly
here,” she said, and clomped across the room. There was a single door set into the far wall, its glass knob sparkling beneath the crimson bulb. “I don’t know why Axel comes here—I
loathe
it. Those trees, this house—I always expect to find Mrs. Danvers rummaging through my underwear.”