Masque of the Red Death (3 page)

The city was a smoldering heap of rubble, and yet people crept out during the night to put messages on the sides of collapsing buildings while the rest of the populace slept peacefully or died quietly.

“It says something about human nature,” Father said. But he never shared his interpretation—at least, not with me.

“Where are you going, Dr. Worth?” the guard asks.

“I’m taking a walk with my daughter,” he says.

“We’ll arrange an escort.”

“Just a few men. We aren’t going far.” Father toys with something in his pocket, resigned.

We wait in the foyer while they are assembled. The fake plants are dusty. The ferns are the worst offenders.

The first guard opens the door and the other three spread out, walking beside us. They carry short swords as well as guns, ready to protect Father from any threat, man or beast. No matter what creatures people fear in the dead of night, in this city, violence is more likely to be carried out by men.

“The shipyard is open again,” Father’s tone is conversational.

“Is it?” There’s a breathless quality to my voice that someone who doesn’t know me might interpret as excitement.

When I was a child, when Finn was alive, we loved to walk down to the harbor. This area was busy then, a giant pageant with sailors working on the ships. Father’s feet often lead him here; I don’t know if he can help himself.

The harbor is different now. Debris litters the shore, and the blackened hulks of ships fill the bay. The mob destroyed most of them. The Weeping Sickness might have been spread from a passenger, or some rodent who arrived via ship.

These days the fishermen use a different port, farther south, to avoid this devastation.

I catch my breath. The afternoon sunlight gleams off the white masks of the sailors, who are outfitting a shiny new steamship.

“She’s called the
Discovery
,” Father says.

The last time a ship came into the harbor, I was ten years old. Unlike the steam-propelled ship in front of us, it had a tall mast and heavy canvas sails. It might’ve come from anywhere.

I remember how the passengers hurried ashore, anxious for the feel of solid earth under their feet. They wore modest dresses that reached their ankles, high collars, long sleeves. When I was very young we wore such restrictive clothing, even in the heat of summer.

But the contagion changed all that, and instead it became necessary to show as much skin as possible. Preachers denounced the new fashions, saying we would all be destroyed, even as we wondered what was left to destroy.

I imagine that those who disembarked that day had set out from some distant shore to find hope. What they found was a mob that tore them apart before they knew what was happening. Finn and I watched, horrified.

Mother was the one who came looking for us. We were wandering through back alleys, crying.

The drama pulled Father from his lab. He said that the city had gone mad, and we must not go outside again until the disease had been contained. Hiding wasn’t unusual. People quarantined themselves in cellars and attics. Some families fled. Finn and I heard the adults predict, in hushed voices, that they would die in the forests, or the wilderness beyond.

“This is good,” Father whispers now, gesturing to the gleaming ship, the
Discovery
. “The first good thing I’ve seen in a long time.” I love hearing the hope in his voice. “We will see what is left in the rest of the world.”

The wind that ruffles my hair smells of salt, and white seabirds come and go.

If I don’t look over at Father, I can imagine that Finn is standing beside me. I could lose myself to this sort of meditative state that is sometimes better than oblivion. But Father checks his pocket watch and then pulls me along; all of a sudden he’s in a hurry. He doesn’t ask questions. He stopped being interested in me a long time ago.

We walk back toward the periphery of the old city. This part of town is a little higher than the rest, and the buildings are tall. Fairy-tale towers and spires. Security officers line the sidewalks to keep people without masks out and away. Out of sight and away from our air.

We’re heading toward the bookshop. It’s the last one in the city, and Father makes a pilgrimage to it at least once a week, to see what treasures people have unearthed in their attics and cellars. The guards are accustomed to coming here. They gather in a circle outside the door, leaning against the wall.

The proprietor greets Father by name while I wander up and down rows of heavy dark tomes. I browse the shelves, but as I turn a corner, I see Father standing between two men. One of them clasps Father’s hand, and then puts his own hand quickly in his pocket. I’m sure that something passed between them. The younger man sees me watching and stares back at me through thick eyeglasses, his expression unfriendly.

I step back a few paces, nervous about this meeting.

Suddenly the bookshop feels ominous, with its smells of earth and dampness. I wrinkle my nose in distaste. Boxes of books sit near the proprietor’s desk, but some of them are moldy. Newly excavated from some rotting cellar. I pick up a small volume of poetry while I wait for Father.

Without meaning to, I glance back to where he is speaking to the young man. Now he’s clapping him on the back. These men have the look of scientists, but all the scientists besides Father are holed up in Prince Prospero’s castle, behind thick stone walls and barred windows, for their own protection.

I put down the book and walk to the door. Father comes to the front of the store and makes a purchase, and then we walk outside. For a moment I’m blinded by the glare from the setting sun; it will soon be evening. This day has passed in a blur, like so many others. As my eyes adjust, I scan the alley. Our guards stand together, leaning against a wall, smoking. Above us, faces peer out of dirty windows. Two children play outside a half-open door. And there are long shadows that my eyes can’t penetrate.

Father puts his hand on my arm, as if he can tell that I am ill at ease, but he does nothing else to comfort me. And he makes no effort to explain. I try to think of a way to ask what he’s gotten involved with, but it’s a short walk back to the Akkadian Towers and my head is aching. We leave the guards in the lobby, and the ride up to our floor is silent. Father reaches into his overcoat.

“I thought you might like this,” he says.

It’s the leather-bound book of poems. Either he noticed or he knew it was the sort of book I would treasure.

“Father—” I’m standing there with my arm still extended, trying to find a way to ask what is going on without alerting the elevator attendant that Father may be committing treason, when we reach the top floor.

The gilded door slides back, and there’s April, tapping her foot. She hates waiting.

“You have to come with me,” she says. She’s wearing a red corset, and her hair is piled artfully on top of her head and decorated with shiny black feathers.

I turn, ready to tell her that I’m not dressed for going out, that I don’t have the energy, and Father slips away. I’ve lost my chance to question him.

“Elliott will be there.” April knows how curious I am about her brother. I owe him for getting me into the club.

“I don’t know....” I gesture toward Penthouse B.

“I doubt he’ll stay at the club for long. We need to hurry.”

The elevator operator is watching us curiously. April holds up my bag, triumphant. “You don’t need anything else.” I tuck the book into my purse and cross my arms over my chest as we descend. She leads me through the lobby to her ridiculous steam carriage.

The carriage is a marvel as well as a monstrosity, a gift from her uncle. The conveyance has a retractable roof that can be closed when the weather is bad so the rain won’t ruin her hair, and it’s painted white with gold inlay, like something a fairy princess would travel about in. Except that an armed guard drives it and two guards ride up front. In the back there is a boy who puts coal into the furnace that heats the water for steam.

They say that the scientist who created this thing blew up a turret in Prince Prospero’s castle, but I don’t know if it’s true. Still, we have to have some way to get around since the plague killed off all the horses.

The evening is gray but not rainy. April laughs. “Leave the top open. I like the wind, and I dare bats to land in my hair.”

Bats. They were brought in to try to contain our mosquito problem. The scientists did something, made them bigger, so their bellies would hold more mosquitoes.

The bats caught the virus from the mosquitoes, but they didn’t die. They just carry the disease. No one speaks of it—or of the people who carry the disease for weeks or possibly months. Everyone is supposed to kill them on sight. Both the diseased bats and the people. The military gives rewards for bringing the bodies of bats.

April hands me her flask, and I take a long drink.

“I’m not afraid of bats,” I say.

We both laugh, but it wouldn’t be funny if we weren’t drinking and weren’t together. We are passing through the ruins of what used to be a bustling city, but now it’s really just a monument to our dead.

Someone has painted large black letters on the side of a building. I strain to make them out. L
IFE IS SACRED
. D
EATH IS EVEN MORE SO.
I stare at the letters, ugly and lopsided, and then April gasps and shoves me forward into the upholstery.

With a dull thud, a rock slams into the velvet seat where my head was just resting. The guard on my left raises his musket and shoots another, shattering it in midair.

April is more shaken than I’ve ever seen her. Terrified. She picks up the first stone, large as her hand and jagged, and drops it to the street. We both wince at the sound it makes. The same sound it would have made if it hit a mask or the bones of my face. If people want to throw stones at us, there is no shortage of them. The city is crumbling to bits that can be used as ammunition, anywhere, anytime.

April’s guards scan the area, while her driver adjusts his own mask and accelerates.

“I guess I just saved your life again,” she says finally.

I guess she did.

The first time I met April, I was standing with my toes barely over the edge of the roof of the Akkadian Towers. Less than two years ago.

No one ever came to the roof, but she walked up to me and said, “What are you doing?”

I was so surprised that I answered honestly.

“Imagining what it would be like to jump.”

She laughed. It was quintessentially April, but at the time I was shocked. I had tried to hide my suicidal thoughts from everyone, and this girl was laughing!

“I like you,” she said. “I heard there was a girl living in the prince’s old apartment. I need you to help me braid my hair.” She took off her hat and showed me her hair, which was half braided and half loose. Her mother had gotten too drunk to finish it. “Don’t jump right now, okay?”

The carriage stops in front of the club. April exclaims over a scratched place on the gold leaf before proceeding to the unmarked door.

In the deathly quiet of the examination room, I wince at my reflection. I’m quiet and mousy, not the sort of girl who belongs in a place like this.

“I wasn’t planning to come here tonight,” I mutter.

“Yet here you are,” he says. He’s noncommittal, neither happy nor sad to see me. Not disapproving. Not exactly.

Yet his hand seems to linger at my waist as he helps me stand. I would rather stay and talk to him, but he’s already turning to admit another member. It doesn’t matter. No matter how much I want to speak to him, I fear I have nothing worthwhile to say.

April has noticed the way I look at him.

“It’s too bad you took that vow of celibacy,” she says as I leave the examination room.

“It isn’t a vow of celibacy.”

It is much more than that. It’s the way that I have to live my life. I don’t have a choice.

“Too bad,” she repeats, tapping her foot in her expensive shoes.

We walk through the first floor, peering into room after room. April stops to get a drink, and then we walk back through the same rooms, looking into all the corners and even the stairwell. I scan for fair hair. April has blond hair that she lightens with lemon juice in the summer. So I imagine her brother might favor her.

“Just like Elliott. He probably found someplace more important to be.” She’s downed one drink and is holding a second one. Her cheeks are very pink.

“Should we look on the other floors? Where do you think he might be?”

“Top floor, maybe. He’s more attracted to books than he is to women. He’s a disgrace to the family.” She slurs the word disgrace. “The reason he won’t live with us is that he has this calling. He’s a poet, lives in a garret with other artists and writers. They won’t wear their masks. They say it’s okay to die young as long as they record the human condition, record what has happened to us. He writes day and night and takes drugs to try to make himself more aware.”

She rolls her eyes.

Is this why April hates poetry? I’m nervous, suddenly, at the prospect of meeting her brother, because nothing could fascinate me more than what she has just said.

“He said he would be here?”

“You would like him.” She looks at me for a moment. “And I suspect he’d like you. But you need eyelashes.” She pushes me onto a loveseat beside her and reaches into her bag. “Here.” She smears some glittery stuff on my cheeks. I expect it to be gritty, but it’s light and foamy. This is what our scientists create while Mother Nature tries to kill us all. Then she opens my bag and begins applying fake eyelashes. I’m surprised that her hands are steady enough.

“Now you’re pretty. Even Elliott will notice—” She stops speaking and drops my bag, spilling red lipstick and a bottle of perfume.

Two men have paused in the doorway to this room. I go cold. They are members of the club from before the plague, and we are told to avoid them.

But that’s not who April noticed. She’s staring across the room at a young man who’s leaning against the bar. I know at once that it’s not her brother; the look she gives him is too flirtatious. He walks toward us and she stands up.