Paper Tigers (19 page)

With a whisper-soft rustle of fabric, Elizabeth's nightgown rotted to shreds. Her skin began to flake off, falling to the sheet, first slow, then faster and faster until all that remained was a skeleton draped with desiccated bits of flesh. The bones gave way with a clatter and crumbled to dust.

A slick taste of ash and decay coated the inside of Alison's mouth, and she scrubbed at her lips, gagging. The floor gave a gentle shift, a slight tipping first in one direction, then the other. Everything in the room disappeared, leaving behind peeling wallpaper and the broken frame of a bed. No foul taste, no foul odor.

Alison's shoulders sagged. It hadn't been real at all. But had it been real once? Just as Edmund's collapse in the hallway and Eleanor's fall down the stairs? She thought of the darkly clad hands
pushing, the thump of Eleanor's body, and the gasps from Edmund's throat. Was it some sort of trickery, a sick game to frighten her? Or had George killed them all?

She held out her pale hands. Had he killed her, too?

“No,” she said. “I am
not
dead.”

She stepped out of the room, back into darkness.

Not yet.

Another door opened, letting out a grey light, and from within, a baby cried. Inside a wooden cradle, an infant kicked his feet and waved his arms, his tiny face red.

“Shhh, it's okay. Everything is okay.”

Her body went cold as an arm clutching a pillow speared her chest. The arm descended. The cries cut off. Alison tried to grab the pillow, the arm, but she passed through them as the arm had her. She screamed for someone to come and help, for someone to come and stop it because she couldn't help. She couldn't do anything.

No, it's another trick. Just a trick.

But she heard the choking, a terrible lullaby of death, and backed out of the room with her hands fisted against her breastbone.

Stop, please, stop. I don't want to see this.

Shadows claimed the room, and someone whispered her name, freezing her in place.

Don't go. Don't listen to him.

But she knew that voice. It wasn't George. It was someone who shouldn't be here, someone she knew, but his name was buried somewhere deep in her mind.

“Alison?”

She started down the hallway. Maybe he

who?

could help her remember, could help her find the way out.

“Alison, is that you?”

“I'm coming,” she said.

She came to a halt just inside the doorway. A figure stood at the window. The light from the sconce played along the length of her green dress.

No, this is wrong. Wrong.

Slowly, Rachel turned around. “I think I'm lost,” she said, holding up her arms, arms bound at the ends with thick white bandages. “I only wanted to play the piano again.” Roses of red bloomed in misshapen stars on the bandages. “You can understand that, can't you?”

A drop of blood freed itself from the bandage and dangled in the air, gem dark and shimmering in the light, before it let go and fell to the floor with a tiny splash.

Rachel lifted her arms higher. “They couldn't save my hands. My mother said they did all they could.”

One after another, pearls of blood dripped onto her dress, turning the green fabric black. As Rachel shuffled forward, she left a trail of red on each side. The blood flow quickened into macabre leaking faucets, and the ends of the bandages fell free, uncoiling in slow motion like barber poles of red and white.

You can't help her. You have to go home.

Rachel watched them uncurl, her mouth slack. Finally, the bandages fell free, floating to the floor, unveiling two raw stumps with hints of white bone beneath the gore. A hot, meaty stench poured from the wounds, strong enough to make Alison's eye water.

Rachel smiled, despite tears in her eyes. “When they stop bleeding, I'll be able to play again. Will you stay with me until then?”

“I'm sorry,” Alison said. “I can't.”

“Please?”

“I, I…” Alison fled before she could finish. As soon as she ran back into the hallway, the door closed with a definitive click, muffling the sound of Rachel's cries, and plunging her once more into darkness.

“Alison?”

She turned from side to side. The voice was faint, coming from no discernible direction. Then another door opened on her right.

“Hello?”

No response.

Her hands shaking, she peered around the doorframe. Josephine sat on a chair in the corner of the room. She gave Alison a cursory glance before looking back down at her lap. The pale gold gown she wore hung in tatters around her emaciated frame, sores dotting the corners of her mouth, her skin a shade of grey-green. Her hair, the dull color of dishwater, clung to her shoulders in tangled clumps.

As she turned to go, the woman spoke, her voice soft. “I'll eat this time. I promise I will.”

Without a word, Alison backed out of the room. The door swung shut. The dark returned. All around her, voices whispered.

Don't listen to them. Don't listen to any of them.

But—

“Ally?”

She pressed one hand to her chest. His name, his name, what was his name? She couldn't leave him. Not in this place.

But he left you
, a small voice said.

Another door opened, and soft moans issued forth. Madeline was lying in a canopy bed beneath a nebulous figure. His pants were pushed down to his ankles; her legs were wrapped around his waist. But Madeline was

wrong

a grey husk, her cheeks withered, her eyes dull pits of dark held in hollow sockets, her body twisted. Her lips curved into a smile, a horrorshow of pleasure.

“I told you I was the first,” she said. A flake of skin dislodged from her shoulder.

Alison ran. The door slammed shut. She stood in the darkness with her hands over her ears. “Alison.”

“Go away, just go away,” she said.

But when the door opened, she turned.

No, don't do this. Don't look.

Damn her for a fool, she did.

A man stood in the corner, his face hidden.

“Alison,” he said in that terribly familiar voice. “Please help me.”

His steps were limping and awkward, his face still a dark blur. A scent of warm bread fresh from the oven made her mouth water, and she took a step inside,

They'd made bread together, that first night in their new apartment, laughing at the misshapen lump they created, pulling it apart with their fingers, eating it with the steam still rising up and butter dripping down on their fingers and then the love, oh the love, and he said forever and she believed him and he gave her the tiny diamond ring.

then another.

Forever, forever, forever.

But why couldn't she remember his name?

He moved into the light. Thomas of the sad eyes smiled. Extended his arms.

“Stay with us, stay with
me
, here.”

He lurched forward, his legs and arms hanging at odd angles, as though they'd been badly broken then put back together the wrong way.

She didn't move away as he reached for her hands. The floor shivered and warmth rushed in as his fingers curled around hers. One of her hands appeared real, not grey, all the way to the wrist.

“Stay with me, please.”

The real moved to her forearm, filling in the transparent haze with solid pale. His fingers held tight and they were warm, so warm.

“Please stay.”

Her skin turned warm and flesh, up, over, her elbow, up to her shoulder as his thumb made a lazy arc on the back of her hand.

It's another trick
, a voice said.

The skin of Thomas' cheek changed, rough replacing smooth, and a fragment in the shape of a quarter moon peeled away.

He caught her glance, and smiled. “Don't worry about that, it's just a piece of—”

“No.”

Alison wrenched her hand away. The warmth lingered briefly, then all turned grey and cold. Before he could say another word, she ran. The door shut and darkness rushed in, thick with voices begging her to stay, to help.

“No more,” she said. “Go away, all of you.”

She took a step. Then another. Choked back a sob. Then a hand touched hers.

Before she could scream, another door spilled out pale light, allowing her to see that the hand belonged to a young girl with an elfin face. Translucent, like her own. The little girl smiled, and the scream in Alison's throat vanished. A name flickered in her mind—Mary

Alison took a step toward the open door, but Mary pointed to the end of the hallway. Another trick? Mary gave her hand a gentle squeeze. Her touch was feather-light. Cold. Yet Alison sensed neither malice nor cruelty. When they passed the doorway, Alison caught a glimpse of a dark shape and a flash of light. Heard a sharp pop.

Then Mary tugged her away again. They came to a stop at the last door. Mary nodded.

“Okay,” Alison said.

Together, they went through the door. Alison's vision blurred; her bones chilled.

They walk in, their faces indiscernible behind masks, scalpels in their hands, drugs in the bag by the bed. Sleep now, they say. We're here to help you. Straining against the pain. Hold on, just hold on, they say—

On the other side, the voices in Alison's head slipped away. She tried to pull the memory back, but it was slippery

like blood and scar tissue

and fell through her grasp. She groaned. Mary clutched her arm and placed one finger to her lips.

Inside the room, curls of unmoving smoke hung from the ceiling in stalactites. Alison brushed her hand through the nearest one; the smoked swirled then reformed. Mary pointed to the wall, to a series of framed photographs.

Some of the faces behind the glass were familiar: Rachel, Thomas, Josephine, Madeline, and several others she'd seen at the party. But the photos held secrets, too, dark secrets the party concealed: Rachel wearing a sweater with the cuffs pinned over a space where hands should be; Thomas slumped in a wheelchair; Josephine in a dress that couldn't hide the jutting bones and skeletally thin limbs; Madeline hunched over, her spine distorted, her hands lumpy claws.

Alison's fingers slipped through the glass covering Rachel's photo, but she didn't need to worry about broken glass and broken skin, because her fingers went into the picture and it was—

An accident. A terrible accident. It could have happened to anyone, but Rachel had studied at Peabody and everyone knew how well she played. She was a rising star, going up and up, and then the car, the tangled metal, the pain, the quick slip of metal into skin, parting flesh from bone and bone from bone, and there were no more pianos, no more music, no more smiles. Until he took her in and gave her back her hands, gave her back her music, then made her play until her fingers bled, but she played because the pain was worth it, so, so worth it and one day, she didn't come back, but she had her music, she didn't need to come back, there was nothing to come back to.

Alison drew her hand back with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. Mary tugged on her skirt, her mouth turned down into a frown, and pointed at the last photo in the bottom row. No, Alison didn't want to look at that photo. Not at all. That photo was a nightmare, a woman, her face heavily scarred, scarred into a sideshow freak, a—

“Monstergirl,” she said.

She touched Thomas's instead and—

She was gone for good. His brother had told him she would leave. She loves me, Thomas had told him. It's not enough, his brother had said. And his brother was right. He'd thought she loved him enough and not just his money, but it wasn't enough. There wasn't enough money in the world to make her stay. He tried to make her happy and pretended not to notice the way her eyes moved away.

Then
he
came and the promise was too good to resist. He could walk again, and if he could walk, then he was whole.
He
wasn't the enemy. The enemy's name was Multiple Sclerosis, and it was taking Thomas apart a little more each day.

But she left, even after he told her. She didn't believe him and wouldn't wait to see it for herself. A daydream, she called it. But it wasn't a daydream, it was real, and after she left, he had nothing. So he stayed because inside he was whole—

Too much pain. Too much suffering.

He was weak
, a voice said.
They were
all
weak.

Mary pointed to the nightmare photo, then to Alison and back again. With a sigh, Alison took a closer look. The sorrow and the hurt on the woman's face was

weak

pitiful. And her eyes, something about her eyes, one peeking out from normal, whole skin; the other, sticking out from a nest of scars.

Ugly girl, what an ugly girl.

Alison didn't want to touch the photo. Didn't want to know. But she knew she had to.

Her fingers slipped through the glass.

She walked alone at night, alone so no one would see, because when they saw her, they pointed and murmured behind their hands. She was ugly, yes, an ugly little Monstergirl. Fire and smoke and ugly and broken. In hiding and in pain, with the windows shut and the curtains closed. No sunlight. No friends. No one but her and the faces of strangers to keep her company, and in the dark, she went outside, walking to nowhere. There was nowhere to go, but back in her house, her prison, with her scars and her sorrow and her pity.

And then she went in, inside, he took her and made her whole again with all her finger piggies in a row and a face that anyone would love—

Alison wrenched her hand from the picture, breathing hard, breathing
hurt
. “It was me,” she said, her voice the sound of broken glass ground in a fist. And everything rushed back in. Her house, her face, the fire, her mother, her isolation, her fear, the junk shop, the album, George's album, in the front window. All of the real waited for her on the other side of the clock—the doorway. She put her face in her hands.