Illuminate (16 page)

“Where did he go?” I asked from my spot at the end of the aisle, scared to move forward. My voice came out sounding so meek even I could barely hear it. Outside, a woman lay sprawled on the ground, with another customer hovering over her. I figured she must still be alive because the person seemed to be speaking to her and getting some response. “Did they catch him?”

“Don’t know, hon,” the cashier said, elbows on the counter. “You okay?” I nodded. “Hope you don’t mind, I locked us in till the cops get here. Thought it’d be safer.”

I nodded again, letting my eyes drift to the scene unfolding outside the glass doors. Blinding lights swirled, more sirens blared as an ambulance approached. But before the EMTs could get out, the victim sprung to her feet. She steadied herself on her heeled boots, gathered her black coat around her, and then took off running, so fast I never saw her face, just the dark hair swinging in the wind. It occurred to me now that she had been at the ATM when I got to the store. The paramedic in the passenger side of the ambulance jumped out and started to run after her but then stopped and gazed into the night, seeming to have lost her.

“Now, why would she go runnin’?” the cashier said, shaking his head.

I kept watching, expecting her to come back. More sirens sounded and a police car pulled up, lights flashing.

I told the officer—a forty-something man with a paunch, a thick mustache, and a thick Chicago accent, which I found oddly comforting and strong—what little I had seen of the man, but I didn’t mention that I thought I might know who he was. It couldn’t possibly be Beckett, could it? I had my first trip in a police car (it probably felt a lot different in the front, where I sat, than in the back). He told me they hadn’t caught the guy and that he didn’t understand why the woman took off either. “Shock, coulda been,” he reasoned. “But if she ran, she must be okay. Youz be careful, ’kay?” I nodded. He chalked it up to just another mugging, but when you don’t see that kind of thing on a regular basis—or ever—it sticks with you. When you’ve been told that you’re in danger by a book that’s writing its pages just for you, scenes like this tend to want to cleave onto your memory and not let go.

All I knew was that I was grateful not to have had to walk those few blocks back to the hotel on my own.

Dante was working late at the Vault again, but within fifteen minutes of my arriving back in my room, Lance was knocking on my door—loud, urgent knocks. I opened it and he started talking before I could say hello.

“You probably thought I was just making conversation when I said, Please let me know when you get back, but actually, just so you know, I was serious. So, anyway, glad you’re home.” He began to stalk away, offended, it seemed.

“I only just got back,” I said to his back. He stopped and turned around. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long night.”

“Yeah, I know. I left you almost two hours ago. Where’ve you been?” I could tell he was sincerely worried, which I was touched and surprised by. It helped begin to settle my own rattled nerves.

“I’m sorry, but I—”

“What’s going on here?” He cut me off and leaned in toward my face for a closer look.

“A souvenir from . . . some excitement at the drugstore.” I sighed. His face fell. I went ahead and gave Lance the condensed version of what had happened. He stood there in the doorway, listening. “So, at least I got to ride back here in style.” I tried to end on an upbeat note, but my attempt at humor did nothing to disguise the underlying tremor in my voice.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” I sighed again. “Just really worn out.”

“I bet. Well, that’s the last time I let you convince me you’re fine to go on a solo expedition after dark.” His voice was tinged with guilt.

“I guess you’re entitled to one ‘I told you so.’”

“Just be careful.”

I nodded and then remembered: “So did our bosses even notice that we were gone so long?”

“Nope. When I got back, there was no sign of anyone anywhere.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Yeah.” We were both silent a few long seconds. The evening had sapped all my strength. I think he could tell. “Well, I guess I’ll let you get some rest,” he said, but lingered another second or two, as though deciding whether he wanted to say something that was on his mind. Instead, he just looked at the ground and shook his head and then looked back at me. “G’ night.”

“Night,” I said, swinging the door shut.

I shoved all of my new purchases in the closet to get them out of the way, and then remembered: I had been instructed to read the book tonight. Queasiness set in, which was my involuntary response every time I picked up that black leather-bound tormentor. Before tackling it though, I ran cold water on a washcloth, rung it out and folded it, making a compress. I lay on my back, the washcloth over my eye, and held the book above me, slowly turning the fragile pages one by one. Sure enough, a new page had been filled in.

Perhaps today proved that it behooves you to follow closely what is asked of you in these pages, when it is asked. There is a reason behind every task you will be required to perform; you need to trust implicitly in this book. If you fail to adhere to each task, you will only hurt yourself. There are opportunities every day to be killed.

That line set me shuddering. I read it three times before I could go on. Who was writing this to me?

But if you do heed these words, you won‘t be. There is much you don‘t know. Be patient and it will be revealed to you in due time.

I had to stop for a moment to let it sink in: that man who pushed me could have killed me if he wanted to. Something had kept that from happening. And the book wanted me to know that this near miss had occurred because I hadn’t carried out this most mundane-seeming shopping trip in the morning. Well, I had tested what happened when I didn’t precisely follow what it said. Now I supposed it was worth seeing what might be different if I did go along with it.

Consider evening engagements canceled for tonight.

What was I supposed to be doing? I searched my mind and then fastened on it: Aurelia wanted me to take photos at the Vault. It twisted my stomach into knots imagining the scene in her office tomorrow morning, when I would have exactly zero photos to show her, but it didn’t seem I had much choice. The Vault would be there tomorrow night too, and the next night, and the next . . .

Tonight, please explore what‘s beyond that opening you found in the closet floor. Descend until you hit solid ground. There will be one direction to go in for quite some time. When it opens up, pursue all paths until you begin to understand the layout. Get comfortable, for you will be spending a good deal of time there.

Before the end of the day tomorrow, repair the closet light. Then return here for further instruction.

I closed the book but didn’t move. I didn’t want to go. But finally I laced my sneakers back up and loaded batteries into the new flashlight. Then I dragged everything back out of the closet: my duffel bags and coat, my supplies from the drugstore. I found that seam on the floor again and, this time, wedged the pocketknife in there and pulled up the door. Musty, stale air wafted out at me. I thought of Lance. He wouldn’t like this at all—not that I planned to tell him—but just the idea of it made me laugh to myself. Scared as I was.

I couldn’t believe I was actually going to do this.

I shined the light down into the narrow black pit, but it was to get swallowed by folds of darkness. All I could see were thick wooden slats nailed into one side of the passageway to be used as a ladder. But everything below a certain point disappeared into this murky abyss. It was impossible to tell how far down it went. I would just have to investigate on foot.

I looped the flashlight around my wrist and tucked the mace key chain into my pocket (hoping with every bone in my body that I wouldn’t have a reason to use it) and lowered myself down into the pit’s clutches, one foot then the other feeling around in the darkness until each united with one of the planks. With every slow step down, the thick, stagnant air got warmer, as though I were crawling deeper into the bottom of a sleeping bag. My nervous hands left the floor of the closet and searched for a secure spot on the first rung—it was mostly sanded and smooth, with just a few errant, jagged patches here and there. Hopefully I could avoid too many splinters. The wood was several inches thick, giving me a little room to hang on; I dug my short, stubby nails in as best I could. The flashlight hung straight down from my wrist illuminating to some degree the darkness below. I could feel the brick walls of the passage close in around me. I had about a foot of space on each side.

After what felt like years, I ran out of planks and my foot poked around and found, at last, the bottom. I looked back up, longingly, toward the door in my closet floor, but I couldn’t see any trace of light from up top anymore.

I breathed in the heavy air, thick with decaying brick and mortar dust. I was at the end of some sort of hallway. I walked along, the flashlight beam shaking in front of me, until I reached an open doorway with a hazy light leaking out. I stepped through, into yet another corridor, this one at least ten feet wide, its concrete walls and the ceiling lined with long snaking pipes. I felt swallowed up. The only sound came from the hushed crunch of my feet over decades of dirt and crumble. The silence echoed deep into my bones.

Finally the pathway opened up into a fork, both sides lit dimly, but lit nonetheless, with bare bulbs dotting the ceiling amid endless wispy, cottony cobwebs. I stuck to the path on the right—remembering that old trick from cornstalk mazes as a kid that if you’re in a maze and you place your right hand on the right wall eventually you will always be led out, even if it takes eons—and followed it until it spilled into a space that looked like it had once been a room. Parts of the walls were stripped away, leaving wooden beams exposed behind sections of plaster. Some spots were pockmarked with gaping boulder-size holes running straight through them, while other sections remained nearly intact, even displaying traces of peeling, faded wallpaper that matched my room. At the very back was a red-painted door, with a single steel security bar horizontally set across it.

Outside the room, I turned a sharp corner and found nothing but a few boarded-up spots where there used to be doorways. Now I was sweating too. It had to be over 85 degrees. I unbuttoned my cardigan so I was just in my T-shirt and was tying it around my waist when I hit what appeared to be a dead end with a boarded-up wall. Beyond it I could hear the faint twang and thump of muffled music, like something brought forth from a crackly record player.

I put my hands to the boards and one swung open a sliver, creaking as it did. I had to squeeze in between freestanding shelves to get in—it seemed as if the people who owned this place didn’t know they had this passageway. Now the music poured out at me, horns and bass and drums and piano, and the murmur of voices and clink of glasses and bottles. The space was hardly bigger than the size of my room, and stacked floor to ceiling with boxes labeled with brands of alcohol and shelves full of more boxes marked from a food supply company, bulk quantities of chips and peanuts. A fridge stood in one corner. A rickety wooden staircase poked up toward the source of the music. I ascended only a few steps, enough to spot glasses stacked on low shelves behind a bar. A pair of sneakered feet walked near the mouth of the stairs and I clicked off my light and crept back down. Lance and I had passed a couple of ramshackle-looking bars on our walk to the L earlier. I wondered if this was one of those. I couldn’t quite get myself oriented to where I might be in relation to the street above; it had been too much of a labyrinth getting here. I slithered back out of the storage room and pulled the board shut behind me.

Then I heard it: a soft shuffle, footsteps echoing, like muted gunshots to my heart. I couldn’t even tell what direction they had come from. The acoustics sent each one bouncing off a different wall or spot on the floor or part of the ceiling.

Paralyzed, except for the quaking of my nerves, I gathered myself enough to head back the way I’d come. As I neared that room with the red door, the footsteps got louder. I crouched to the floor, keeping low, crawling to that wall with the chunks missing. My knees seemed to shatter against the heavy concrete. The temperature, coupled with my fear, made me lightheaded and more feverish by the minute. The footsteps stopped: this person had to be inside that crumbling room.

Huddled behind the partially destroyed wall, barely breathing, I peeked between rotted wooden beams. Inside, Beckett stood in profile, choosing the proper key from the jangling key ring in his hands. He turned his back, unlocking the steel bar first, then the door. Yanking it open with both hands, he unleashed from the doorway a roar, the rushing fury of wind or fire, and, along with it, a red glow. And heat, so much that it dried out my skin, instantly coating it. He too turned away from it for just a moment, twisting in my direction. I saw it, just a glimpse: his right eye was swollen, the lid a puffy pink pillow. On reflex, my eyes shot to his feet: yes, black, shiny, and familiar. My instant nausea told me that it couldn’t be pure coincidence. Adjusting to the heat, he took a few steps into the doorway, one arm up to shield himself from the light and the blaze. In the other hand, I now noticed, a pendulum was swinging—it sparkled, catching the light. It looked like one of those amethyst necklaces. He wound up to pitch and threw it inside, then closed the door, needing all his strength, putting his body into it, and pulled the bar down across it, giving it a shake to be sure all was locked up.

He turned around.

I ducked. Just in time. He had a fifty-fifty shot of walking toward me, and if he did, I had no idea what I would possibly do or say. My heart sped so fast I thought I might pass out from the force of it beating against my chest, trying to crash through my rib cage. If he started this way and I had enough time, I could try to wedge myself through this hole in the wall, but the wooden beams would make it close. I wasn’t sure I would quite fit and if I did, I didn’t know if I could do it fast and quietly enough. So I just held my breath and prayed he wouldn’t approach.