Paper Tigers (20 page)

Mary patted her arm. A whisper caught in the air. “Sorry.”

From below, a round of applause broke out, cheers of “Hurrah”, then a woman's voice. “Again, again.” Piano notes began to play.

The floor shivered beneath her feet, footsteps thumped down the hallway, and Mary's mouth dropped open. In a blur of grey, she grabbed Alison's arm and guided her toward the wall, but Alison shook her head. Mary let go of her hand, slipped into the wall, and disappeared just as the door swung open with a loud creak. George laughed, low and husky.

Alison took a deep breath, armed with her self, and turned to face the tiger.

George wore a hungry grin on his face.

“You're looking a little…pale, my dear.”

“I'm not your dear,” Alison said. “I know what you did to them, to Elizabeth and William, Mary and Eleanor…and Edmund. You killed them. You killed them all and trapped them here in the house.”

His smile grew wider.

“I'm not staying here. With you, with them,” she nodded toward the wall.

“Haven't you realized that it's too late for that? You were so willing to give up everything to be whole. Now you're whole. Eventually you'll forget about everything else, and you'll be far happier here than you could ever be hiding in your house with your scars and your ugliness.”

“You call this whole?”

His eyes flashed with mirth. “Whole enough, yes. Your scars are gone. I gave you what you wanted, what you asked for. I gave them all what they asked for. None of them had a real life before. Do you think they'd want what that life would offer?” He waved a hand toward the photos. “Now they have parties and music and dancing. Now they're whole, which was all they wanted. All you wanted. You said, “Let me in and make me whole,” did you not? And I've been waiting for someone like you for a very long time.”

“Someone like me?”

“Yes. Such exquisite pain, such perfect sorrow. It's quite extraordinary. You truly are special. Every minute of your existence is a tortured one. The fire took so much from you. Your face, your fiancé, everything.”

“How do you know about that? How do you know anything at all?”

“I know everything, Monstergirl.”

“But that's—”

“You gave it to me when you entered the house. Every bit of it.”

“And if I'd been whole?”

“Oh come now, you aren't stupid. Naïve, perhaps, but not stupid.
If you'd been whole, the doorway would not have opened. You wouldn't be here.”

Because it doesn't let anyone in who
isn't
hurt. It doesn't want anyone whole and happy. It can't use them. It can't feed off them. It needs pain and hurt. No flesh for this tiger, but meat nonetheless.

“But
here
isn't even a house anymore. The house burned down.” She let out a hoarse laugh. “It's gone. This is just a bunch of old pictures in an old album.”

“But photographs have a special power, don't you agree? They can capture so many things. Sorrow, pain, life. A handful of lives kept and held. A handful of time forever preserved. Unchanging. Perfect in its simplicity, yet absolute in its possibility. Anyone and anything can live forever in a photograph. Even a house. And this house will never die. Never. I gave it far too much. I gave it life.”

“No, you gave it
death
. You killed everyone in your family.
Everyone.
And all those people.” She waved her hand toward the photos. “You tricked them and you killed them, too.”

“No, I did not. They're all still here. You saw them.”

“But it's not life. It's all a lie. If they knew, they would've never come.”

“Perhaps not.” He shrugged. “Choices made, deeds done, prices paid. It will make it so much easier for you if you let it all go. Forget about the Monstergirl. Forget about your pain. Drink and dance and forget. I'm certain Thomas would not be adverse to sharing your bed. Tell me, would anyone ever do so otherwise? You can be happy here, Alison. No one will ever point and laugh at you again.”

Her chest tightened. A part of her, a shameful, hateful part wanted to stay, wanted to be whole. It would be so easy to let herself believe him, to believe it was all for her, for their, benefit, and he knew it, but she didn't think that the case at all. No, there was something more hidden in the gleam of his eyes.

“What is it that you really want?”

He merely smiled in reply and nodded toward the door. “Go then. You'll be here a long time, you might as well enjoy yourself.”

“No. I won't stay here. I will find the way out.”

“There is no way out. You belong to me now. You belong to Pennington House.”

“I don't belong to anyone but myself,” she said, but her voice trembled.

“No?”

Music notes played, soft and sweet. Then laughter. Voices. She took a step toward the door, toward the party, where she wouldn't have to hide.

“No,” she said.

The music faded. The voices vanished. Tricks and games, nothing more.

“You will not keep me here.”

She turned to the photographs.

My exquisite pain.

George laughed, but some of the surety was missing.

“You can't have me. You can't have my pain. I take it back.”

She willed herself still. Empty. A place where nothing could touch her. She dug deep, under the pity and the anger and the sorrow that lived inside her skin, poisoning her self with every cutting word and thought. And how it all wanted to overflow and spill out, because the house, the tiger, wanted it so.

She searched even deeper and thought of—

Her mother, who always found something she thought Alison would like, a sweater, a book, a piece of Key Lime pie. All the times she called just to say hello and I love you. And her house, her tiny safety net, a perfect place for one.

Dimly, Alison heard a shout, but it came from far away.

She went further down, where the girl who wished on pennies and the first evening star still lived, the girl who loved to read and
write poetry, whose favorite color was orange, who wore monkey pajamas and socks with cats and frogs and ladybugs…

Being whole was more than a photograph's image. It was power, strength, will. Inside, the coils that held her prisoner loosened and flickered away—vanishing streamers in a ghost parade. The house gave a gentle shake. The wood solidified under her feet. Her skin warmed, and she opened her eyes. George was gone. Her hands, though still grey, shimmered, as though lit from within. This time, her fingertips tingled, touched glass and wood. It was more than a photograph. It was a key, a tether from paper to real. And all doors had keys.

With all the force she could muster, she lifted the picture over her head and threw it on the floor. The glass shattered into a thousand fragments. The frame bent, cracking and splitting at the seams. Instinct sent her down on one knee. She pried the photo free and ripped it in half.

The house lurched, knocking her off balance. The smoke overhead winked out of sight. Her hand came down hard on the wood, barely missing a jagged splinter of glass, but it didn't matter because the wood beneath her hand was firm and hard. And her skin gleamed, but not grey.

The last of the cold inside her drained away. Long cracks appeared in George's desk, filling with grime. The cushion of his desk chair let out a foul stinking cloud—old sweat, smoke, and mildew. Wallpaper bubbled and peeled, water spots appeared in the corners of the ceiling, and the floorboards warped and lifted. The scent of tobacco was replaced by the heaviness of age and forgotten memories.

From somewhere deep within the house, a voice rose in outrage and then dwindled. Alison smiled and got to her feet; the chime of the clock shook the rafters. Right before her hand met the doorknob, the door swung open.

Dust, cobwebs, and ruin held court in Pennington House now. She ran out into the hallway, the torn photo clutched in one hand. The fabric of her dress swished around her ankles, heavier and heavier with each step. Halfway down, she stopped to lift the satin, but it wouldn't budge. She tugged harder. The fabric slipped through her fingers.

The clock chimed for the second time.

Dropping the photograph, she grabbed two thick handfuls of satin. The fabric clung to her hands, slick yet sticky, not exactly satin anymore. It wrapped around her legs, fastening her in place.

“No,” she shrieked, ripping her hands free.

The house would not win. It would
not
keep her prisoner. It would
not
. The edge of the skirt slipped into the floor, melting into the carpet. With a slippery wet sound, the carpet sucked in more of the skirt and pulled her down to her knees. She twisted her body from side to side. A third chime sounded.

“You can't have me!”

She wrenched her body back and forth. The fabric near her hip ripped. She jerked harder, flinging her body in every direction, tearing skin from her knees and straining the muscles of her back. And the rip expanded.

“Can't have me, can't have me, can't have me,” she said, the words thin and breathless.

She yanked at the rip until it became an open slit. Her hands worked again, digging in. Now, a gaping mouth. And again. A wide hole. Again.

The clock chimed.

The fabric caught at the seam. The thread held tight as the floor swallowed a torn length. Alison grabbed the seam, one hand on each side, and with a
snick-snick-snick
of popping thread, it came loose. She laughed in triumph.

“I'm free, do you hear me? I don't belong to you.”

She stepped from the ruined fabric, a mermaid rising from a silken sea, kicked off the delicate slippers the house had given her, and ran. At the landing, she glanced back, over her shoulder. The tattered remnants of her skirt lay on, not in, the carpet, a heap of shimmering blue against the dusty grey, the discarded shoes on their sides next to the pile. And on the floor, two scraps of torn paper.

She ran back, careful not to touch anything else but the photo. Heard the clock.

The skin of her knees burned and stung. Blood trickled down her legs. But it didn't matter. What were a few more scars? Scraps of torn fabric fluttered around her hips and her bare feet left streak-prints in the grime as she ran down the stairs. She raced across the landing. Down the stairs leading down to the first floor, but she misjudged the distance and her entire body jolted forward. Her foot slid over the edge of the first step; her hands grabbed empty air. The photo fell from her hand, seesawing all the way.

She pinwheeled her arms, yanked herself back, pulling her foot away from the edge as the clock chimed again. Her fingers found the banister and she stopped with a lurch. How many chimes so far? Six or seven, she thought, but she still had plenty of time.

She found the first half of the photo mid-way down the stairs, scooped it up, and tucked it inside the front of her dress. The second half lay in the corner of the landing.

The table in the foyer lay on its side, the wood cracked and gouged, the vase broken, dead flower petals scattered on the floor. As she sidestepped the table, a hand curled around her upper arm. Her scream pierced the quiet, but when she turned, no one was there, and the sensation of fingers digging into her skin vanished.

The clock chimed once more, and breathing hard, she ran. The unseen hand grabbed again, then another, and another, all trying to pull her back. The air thickened. Snippets of color and faces with
mouths open, horrible faces drawn and grey and rotting away to the bone beneath, flashed in her peripheral vision. Struggling against the hands, she drew breath to scream, and the taste of decay poured down her throat. Voices flickered in and out.

…stay…

…forever and ever…

…don't go…

…we need you…

…please…

“It's not real!” she shrieked.

But the clock was real, the chime was real, and she had to get there before it stopped, had to get out. Discordant musical notes joined the voices and the grey. Hands batted her arms, her hair, the remnants of her dress. She struck out again and again, her fists meeting the air with liquid thuds.

…no…

…please no…

“Let me go!”

The music built, and she pushed through the thick air, the people. A small, cold hand took hers, pulling as the clock chimed, pulling as she twisted away from the other grasping fingers. The air changed weight, the fog lifted, and once again, she was free.

She ran with Mary at her side. The door to the turret room stood open, and the clock beckoned with its gilded promise of home. George materialized in front of the clock as it chimed again, winking into existence with his eyes narrowed, blocking the way. The tiny fingers tightened around hers, and then they were gone. A dark shadow flitted across the wall before it disappeared inside.

“Where do you think you're going?”

“Home.”