Treasure Box (11 page)

He ran into the bathroom. There was no water in the toilet, just his own urine at the bottom of the bowl. The floor of the bathroom was grimy. The tub was vile—at some point the sewer must have backed up and left grime all over the bottom of it. Had she known? Had she known what the bathroom was really like, and had enough compassion for him to steer him away from trying to bathe in it? The taps in the sink gave no water. His toothbrush still had toothpaste embedded in it—he hadn't rinsed it, but he had brushed his teeth. And now that he thought about it, he could taste the toothpaste in his mouth, could feel the graininess of it between his cheek and gums.

His heart beating madly, his mind racing yet thinking of nothing, he quickly gathered all his clothing out of the wardrobe and the drawers, his kit out of the bathroom, and crammed them all into his luggage. I slept alone in here last night, he thought. And yet we made love, Madeleine and I. We made love and then finished our sandwiches. But there was not a crumb to be found, and only a disturbance of the dust and grime on the small night table where his fingers must have brushed across the surface as he thought he was setting down the plate with his sandwich on it.

Luggage in hand, he left the room and clattered down the stairs. He did not even bother to look for a telephone. If this house had one, it would be as disconnected as the electricity and the waterlines.

The electricity. Today he could see because of light from the windows. But last night there
was
no light. And yet he hadn't bumped into anything. Someone had led him. Madeleine had led him. She might leave no footprints, but someone who knew this house had been with him or he never could have made his way inside in the darkness, up the stairs, into the bedroom in the pitch black that must have prevailed. The thick bedroom curtains had been closed.

I was not making it all up. Hallucinations can make you see things that aren't there, but they can't possibly let you see things that
are
there in pitch darkness. Schizophrenia doesn't give you a flashlight.

He set down his bags beside the door. He had been brought here by someone for some reason. The illusion had continued right up to the time when he didn't open the treasure box. Then Madeleine had fled and everyone disappeared except Uncle Paul and Grandmother. The ones whose headstones he had identified in the graveyard had disappeared.

What was real? The cleanliness of the place had been illusion, the food and servants were false, the people were—what, ghosts?—but the table had been real, the chairs, the doors, the bed, even the toilet and sink and tub in the bathroom. Maybe, in the parlor, on a small table, there really was an engraved wooden box that someone, for some reason, needed his help to open up.

He turned and headed for the door leading to the parlor. But as he approached it, two bright white letters appeared on the door.

NO

"I'm not making this up," he whispered to himself. The letters disappeared. He took another step toward the door.

More letters appeared, taster this time, smaller, each word taking the place of the one before.

DON'T

COME

IN

GET

OUT

GET

OUT

DEATH

DEATH

LIVES

HERE

He backed away from the door, looked around at the gloomy walls. In the cold dark fireplace something flickered. A light. He did not move closer; rather he recoiled from it, fearing what it would be. Yet he couldn't take his eyes away.

A rat emerged and perched atop the pile of ancient lumber stacked there. It looked him piercingly in the eye. As Grandmother had done. It opened its mouth.

"Find me," it said.

This was not madness, Quentin knew that now. It was not his mind creating a false reality. On the contrary, his mind was correctly apprehending that the rules that he had always believed reality to be governed by did not apply in this house. Something had made a rat speak, had made words appear on a door to a room he must not enter. Something had led him through this house in the dark. Something had made him believe that the woman he loved was at his side as he walked alone along the bluffs. Someone had introduced him to a group of dead people at breakfast and convinced him that he was eating the best food he had ever tasted in his life, while leaving his stomach empty.

All this he understood rationally. But his body was not rational. His heart was pounding, his limbs were cold, his fingers trembled. He dared not turn his back on the rat, on the parlor door, and yet dared not stay in this place another moment. So he did turn, and walked briskly to the front door where his luggage waited for him. He opened the door, picked up his bags, and stepped out onto the snowy porch.

At the foot of the stairs, where the car had stopped last night, Madeleine stood waiting for him, her face calm, even sad.

The terror fled, swept away by his relief. Madeleine was real. Madeleine was here. His love for her washed over him again. It would be all right. She would see him through this episode of—of whatever it was.

"Mad," he said. "You won't believe what I've been going through."

She shook her head. "Oh, Tin, I'm not Madeleine. Not anymore. She's gone."

He walked down the stairs toward her. "Call yourself whatever you want, you're here. I thought I had lost you."

"You lost me years ago, Tin. When I died in that hospital. When I told you to mellow out. When I told you not to keep me tied down."

He stopped, not believing the words coming out of Madeleine's mouth.

"You dig, you dig, you dig?" she said.

And then it wasn't Madeleine's mouth. There was no transformation. It had never been Madeleine.

"Lizzy," he whispered.

"Now you see me," she said. "But you're still not seeing me. It's your own mind putting this shape on what I am."

"Was it you all along?" At once he remembered seeing her in the grocery store, and going into that townhouse.

"That wasn't me," she said. "But that was part of why I came. You have the power to call me. When you thought you had seen me, your need for me brought me back here. Most of us are tied to our bodies, our relics, but I'm tied more to you. I don't mind, really I don't. Especially because when I came, I saw the danger you were in."

"But if it's you, Lizzy, I'm not in danger."

"It wasn't me, don't you get it? It was someone else who found my image in your mind and used it. When I came to you she was making you see that hallucination of me going into the townhouse, but I wasn't inside the thing you saw, Tin, I was with
you
. There in the car beside you, feeling you call to me. You're so strong when you call to me like that. Even if I wanted to, I don't think I could stay away."

"Why didn't you speak to me then, the way you're doing now?"

"Because
she
was there. The dead don't have any strength compared to the living. If she wants me silent, if she's paying attention to me, then believe me, Tin, I can't speak."

"
I'm
alive, Lizzy. I wanted you to speak."

"Yes, you had the strength to call me, but, Tin, if you're strong, she's—well, she's beyond strong. When she noticed me, she saw the opportunity. She used me, kept me close by, so she could raid my memory the way she raided yours. Use me as part of that Madeleine thing she made. She's a master at manipulating the dead. I thought it was mortuary reunion week at breakfast here this morning. All last night she was rummaging through the graveyard, calling those poor saps back from wherever they were and forcing them to attend her little banquet."

"Why? Who is she? Is
she
Madeleine?"

"I told you, she
made
Madeleine. Out of nothing. Out of your desires. Whatever you thought was beautiful and charming, that's what Madeleine became. The way she found the perfect taste and smell and texture for every food you ate today. She also drew on me, of course, forced me into the illusion. I was like clay to her, I couldn't do anything but what she wanted as long as she watched me."

"So I guess she's not watching now."

"You failed her. She left raging. And for the time being, she forgot me. For the first time since you called me back, we're alone together."

Quentin remembered how it was when he first took Madeleine home to meet Mom and Dad. How Madeleine never left them alone.

"Yes," said Lizzy. "Like that. Because she's mortal, she has power over me. She could paste little bits of me into Madeleine. My memories of you. Little habits of mine that you would respond to without realizing it."

"And I believed it all."

"Of course you did. Everyone did. When you went out in public with Madeleine, she pulled me in and used me as the core of her, so the illusion could fool hundreds of people all at once."

"That must have been hard for you."

"Only because I hated what she was doing to you. As for me, I had no urgent appointments. The dead never do. It's not that we're apathetic, we still care about things as much as ever. We're... patient."

"And yet you're here."

"Because
you
have a deadline. Because there are worse things than death."

"Losing Madeleine?"

"Opening that box."

"Why? What's in it?"

"I don't know what it is, Tin. I only know that it's very strong and the others are all terrified of it."

"The others?"

"The other dead ones. The dead ones at breakfast. The only one who doesn't fear it is the one who's been using us.
She
hungers for it. That's why she's so angry now. Why she isn't paying attention to us. We aren't useful to her at the moment."

"So she
is
human. She can only do one thing at a time."

"She's stronger than you and definitely stronger than me, but she can't do everything. I don't think she was able to keep her true self from leaking into Madeleine. Especially today. Today she was so busy keeping her dead puppets under control that she wasn't as careful about making Madeleine act like Miss Perfect all the time. Especially when she had the servants in the room. There weren't any real people behind those servants, dead or alive. She was just making you see them. That's a lot harder than building an illusion around a real soul. Making those servants about wore her out. And while she was maintaining them, some of the others got to sneak in a few things they wanted to say to you."

"Lizzy, I don't understand this."

"And you think I do? It's not like they give us a manual: How to Be Dead. The answers to everything don't become clear the minute you die. I mean, now I know there's definitely a life after death, but we don't look like humans to each other. You see me like this because when you recognize that I'm Lizzy, your mind adds the rest."

The moment she said it, he realized that she was looking a lot less definite. Wavering.

"Don't lose me now," Lizzy cried. "I have to tell you how this works, so you aren't completely helpless against her!"

He reached for her, but there was nothing there. She faded more. "I don't know how to hold on to you!"

"Don't look at me! Look away, listen to my voice until you have me in your head again. The way it was when I read to you out of my favorite books."

"That was real, then," he whispered.

"Listen to me. I don't think she's done with you. She needed you for some reason, and she didn't get what she wants, so she
still
needs you, and I don't know how to fight her but at least I can tell you what I've figured out about how things work. That's something. It's all I can do."

He nodded, not looking at her. "I'm listening."

"Most mortals can't see us dead people, but she can. So can you, sometimes. She can also cut loose of her body without dying and go out and do stuff. You
can't do
that."

"Is she here now? Is she listening to us? Would you even know?"

"I would know, and she isn't, not right now. I can't even feel her rage, that's how far off she is. Maybe she went back to her own body, wherever that is. The point is that when she's loose and wandering, she's like us dead people. Only she's stronger because her body's alive. So let me tell you what I've figured out about souls, so you'll know what
she
is when she's loose. We don't even have a location, unless somebody mortal calls us the way you called me. When I'm not here with you, I'm nowhere in particular. We're still free to make choices, but without a body there aren't a lot of choices to make. We can't change anything in the physical world, and we're kind of weak in some ways. We can get tired—I'm about wiped out now. And we're still bound to our old lives, for a while at least, until the old ties dissolve away. The people she called to breakfast, they're tied to this house, to the family that holds this place. She's part of it, and she can use it to bring them and tame them. That's the list. All I Know About Death, by Lizzy the Dead Girl."

"Lizzy, who
is
she?"

"I don't know, Tin, that's what I'm trying to tell you. If I knew, do you think I'd keep it a secret from you? I only know that she's so strong she must be mortal. She's a living person. And she's so powerful that she's able to create illusions that you and everybody else can actually see and touch and—and all the other things you did with her."

Quentin thought of all that he had done with Madeleine. "Lizzy, you said that sometimes you were part of Madeleine...." He blushed.

"She only used me like that in crowds, Tin. And don't worry about what I saw. We don't have bodies here, we don't care about that stuff."

"Lizzy, I loved her."

"You loved a dream that had been made real by a person so cruel that—I hate her, Tin. She's vile. But Madeleine wasn't vile. Madeleine was wonderful."

"If this—person—if she's vile, how could she create something as... someone like Mad?" And he was filled all over again with longing for his wife, who he now knew was gone forever, even though he needed her as much as always.