Masque of the Red Death

  Elliott scans the crowd. He is wearing his mask, but I can still tell that he is frowning. I raise my hand, but only to eye level. I want him to see me, but I don’t want to draw attention to myself. Sailors and guards stand to either side of Elliott. I search for April but don’t see her.

  A man in a top hat that’s seen better days hands Elliott a bottle of champagne.

  I’m not that far away from him, but I can no longer interpret the look on his face. He puts his hand up to touch his mask. Then screaming starts behind me.

  People fall into the water, splashing and yelling. I’m shoved backward and I grab at the people around me, only remaining on the dock because the man beside me hasn’t fallen. He shoves me away, but I’ve regained my footing and I don’t fall.

  And then I see her. A girl stands in the crowd, convulsing. Red tears run down her face, and her fair hair has turned a rosy pink from sweat. She holds out her hands, begging for help, but people back even farther away from her.

  “The Red Death,” I hear someone say.

  The girl falls.

  I’m not surprised that no one steps forward. But I am surprised that the sound of her head connecting with the pier’s rotten wooden planks is clearly audible.

  I hear Elliott’s voice and turn. He is leaning over the railing of the ship, and his mouth is moving, but I can’t tell what he is saying. Someone shoves me again, and I fall to my hands and knees.

  I’m not sure if he was calling to me or someone else. The skin on my palms is raw and bleeding, and as I try to get to my feet, I see someone kick the dying girl. It isn’t a malicious kick, more of a prodding gesture, but once one person has done it, others join in, using their feet to push her toward the water. Her long white fingers twitch and grasp for something to hold on to. A lady screams as they wrap around her ankle.

  The girl is alive as they dump her into the harbor.

  Someone touches my shoulder, and I spin, knocking the hand away.

  “Araby?” Will has his hand still stretched toward me. I throw my arms around him, so relieved that he, at last, has found me. Over his shoulder I see April across the pier, her dress of red sequins over strips of white silk standing out in the drab crowd.

  I don’t know why she’s in the crowd, not on the ship, but Will can help me reach her and get us both on board. He can save us, and when we return, I’ll save him.

  On the ship, several well-dressed men approach Elliott to shake his hand. He is speaking to them while scanning the crowd. He’s looking for me.

  “Come with me.”

  Will’s voice is impossibly gentle. A man stands beside him. An older man of average height with a silk scarf tied tightly around his throat.

  “Make way for the scientist’s daughter,” he calls in a loud voice.

  I hear people murmuring. A woman reaches out and almost touches me. “God bless you,” she says softly.

  “Let’s get her underground,” the man says. When he moves, it’s obvious that he has a limp. Something he’s accustomed to. Something old.

  Everyone is staring at me now. A few of the maskless ones are smiling, but their smiles are not reassuring. And Will is looking away. He is not helping me, I suddenly realize. He is helping this man. I stop moving, but Will doesn’t let go of my hand.

  “Araby!” I hear Elliott and turn.

  A crackling sound is followed by a boom. I look up into the sky just as flames burst from the hull of the ship and the smokestack falls forward, into the screaming crowd.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “GET HER TO THE TUNNEL,” THE MAN YELLS. Burning scraps of timber are falling from the sky, and my eyes are watering. Something bloody splatters in front of me. I’m being propelled forward, away from the screaming crowd at the harbor, into a side street.

  A faded sign with a picture of an octopus advertises a tavern that closed years ago. Will helps me over a pile of debris, and then the man with the limp is lifting a piece of canvas and gesturing for me to climb down a ladder. I shake my head.

  A second, louder explosion rocks the pier. Will pulls me close to him for a moment, and then pushes me forward. We don’t speak. My head throbs from the noise. I put my feet on the ladder and begin to descend. Directly in front of me, behind the rusty rungs, I see a carved eye, the symbol that Elliott wanted to use for his rebellion. Elliott is probably dead.

  “So this is the scientist’s daughter,” the man says. He isn’t asking. He just announced it to all the people on the dock. He knows.

  “I’ve brought her, Reverend,” Will says. “Like I said I would.”

  Of course. On the pier, the man’s voice had the resonance of a minister. Who else would be at the center of such chaos, ruining Elliott’s plans? I had imagined that I would meet the Reverend Malcontent at some point. But not like this.

  I try to back away, but Will pushes me forward. Everything is different now. I stomp down on his foot, and he curses.

  Malcontent wraps his arms around my waist. I kick and lash out as he tries to turn, to take me through a door, and I twist away from him, and for a moment I’m free. Until Will grabs me.

  “It’ll be better if you don’t fight,” he says.

  My elbow connects with his rib cage, but before I can run again, the reverend pushes me roughly into a cell with a wooden door.

  Through the tiny barred window in the door, I watch as Will hands the man a slim black book. My father’s journal.

  The reverend smiles. “Wait here,” he says, and walks into another tunnel.

  Will stands in the center of the room, alone. In profile he is impossibly handsome. His cheekbones are higher, his eyelashes darker. He waits silently, showing no interest in me.

  I grab the bars, ready to cry out to him, ready to beg him to help me. Before I can, the reverend walks back into the room, herding Henry and Elise in front of him. The children are wearing their masks. Henry’s is cracked, but blessedly still intact. Will kneels and embraces them.

  “As promised,” the man says.

  Will leads the children to the door, then stops and turns back to me. I don’t try to interpret what he’s done. Part of me understands, but that doesn’t make it hurt less.

  “You won’t hurt her?”

  The man laughs.

  “If she is innocent, the Lord will protect her.”

  “Innocent of what?”

  The man laughs again. “Take those children home. The streets will be bloody tonight.”

  And then Elise sees me.

  “Araby,” she calls. “Will, Araby is here, too! She can come home with us.”

  Elise pulls away from her brothers and runs to the door. I can’t imagine how I look; crazy, probably. The pain of Will’s betrayal hits me with the unexpected force of a punch to the stomach.

  “We can’t take her with us. Elise, I’m sorry.” Will stays where he is. He probably doesn’t want to come close enough to look me in the face.

  “I need to kiss her good-bye,” she insists.

  “Elise, come back.”

  She runs toward me, reaching a small hand to the cell window. “I never got to say good-bye to Mother.”

  That changes his mind. He crosses the room and lifts her. She pushes her mask aside. I am careful not to look into his eyes as I accept her kiss.

  “Be a good girl,” I say. “Take care of your brothers.”

  The reverend is standing across the room, shaking his head, looking mildly amused. He stands straight with his hands behind his back.

  “I’ll come back if I can,” Will whispers. He’s really leaving me here. I turn away.

  “Araby?”

  I hate myself for looking back at him. He takes his hand out of his pocket and reaches through the bars.

  I put out my hand, and he drops the diamond ring that Elliott gave me into my palm. We stare at each other for a long moment after he withdraws his hand. But what is there to say? I doubt the people who are holding me will be impressed with a diamond. Especial
ly when they could just take it from my dead body.

  Will’s head is bowed as he leads the children away, and the reverend follows them.

  I hate Will for leaving me, and hate myself for wanting him to turn around and say something, anything, that would make me think it’s worth living through the rest of this night. I miss his touch, and that makes me sick.

  Across the cell is a small window just above street level. When I step up on my tiptoes, I can see out to the harbor, which is burning.

  The ship has collapsed in on itself. What’s left of it is on fire, probably from the gas lamps that were strung all over the rigging. Elliott was standing on the deck. Is there any way he could have survived?

  Did Elliott die believing that I abandoned him? Betrayed him?

  Didn’t I?

  Smoke billows in through the tiny window. Sometimes people run by, screaming. Two people fight, kicking and hitting each other right in front of the window.

  Finally I turn away, wondering about my parents, about April. I do hope Will gets the children home safely. My cheek is still gummy from Elise’s kiss.

  The ship is gone. Elliott is gone. I huddle beneath a threadbare blanket but can’t get warm.

  The knife Elliott gave me is still in my boot. I pull it out and touch the cold metal. Press the blade to my wrist. I could end everything right now. Oblivion. I’d never have to feel guilty again. Never have to feel the pain of betrayal again, either. That’s how Finn died. He bled to death.

  I’ve been fighting the allure of death for a long time. After Finn, I was lost, and my parents were lost as well. They were supposed to guide me, to care for me, but they couldn’t. I climbed out of bed in the mornings. I ate the food that was placed in front of me. When someone smiled at me, I tried to smile back.

  It was all unreal. I was fake and my life was make-believe and my happiness was pretend.

  Mother returned to us, but I could never forget how she returned and what she found.

  She insisted that we sleep in the same room for the first year, and all through the night she would reach over and touch me, as if to convince herself that I was still breathing.

  But if I didn’t forgive her, if I held tight to my anger, then I didn’t have to look too closely at my own guilt. And then, with April, I learned to change myself into a different Araby. I never forgot the misery inside, but I found ways to lose consciousness. I sit up, gripping the ivory handle of the knife. I imagine letting all that warmth, the blood, flow out of me.

  Finn got sick after a man came to our cellar to speak with Father about the masks. I suspect the germs crawled off his lank brown hair and infested everything. Including my brother. Finn became covered with bruises and sores, but he held my hand, and never cried. I sat beside him, night and day. I didn’t always wear my mask. Father insisted that I should, but we weren’t accustomed to masks yet and I didn’t want Finn to regain consciousness and be unable to recognize me.

  The prince’s guards came for Father. They wanted him to explain how the mask worked. To demonstrate the properties of his invention.

  “I’ll return as soon as I can,” Father told me. “Finn will pull through this. I’ve given him something to help his body fight off the contagion. Keep him very warm.”

  I wasn’t afraid when Father left. Finn and I had spent many hours alone in the cellar while Father worked. But I couldn’t let go of Finn’s hand, so I didn’t follow him up the stairs and bar the door.

  Finn woke once, and I spooned soup into his mouth. He smiled up at me, and I remembered what Father said and felt a spark of hope.

  “This is good soup,” Finn said. It probably wasn’t. I had just emptied various cans and bottles into the pot.

  Father was gone all night. I put coal in the stove. I made breakfast. I read to Finn from an illustrated adventure book that Mother had given him for Christmas. And then the men came down the creaking stairs, into our home.

  They were big, strong, with faces that were blank and stupid, like the corpse collectors who were hired to clean the streets later. They didn’t ask for my parents, so I knew something was wrong. They showed me a paper but only held it out for a moment, not long enough for me to decipher the cramped writing.

  “We’re clearing out contagion,” they said. “Cleansing the city so that some of us might live.” They gestured to Finn. “He may as well be dead.”

  I stared at them, frozen.

  The larger man stepped forward, and I threw myself over my twin brother.

  “My father says that he is getting better,” I cried. “It is just a matter of time.”

  One of the men picked me up and threw me against the wall. Tins of preserved food rained down around me. They didn’t believe me. They didn’t know who Father was or how Finn, unlike all the other dying people, could get better.

  The man who hadn’t thrown me said to the other, “Leave her alone, she’s just a girl.”

  “She’s been living down here, breathing the same air as the boy.”

  “Then we come back and kill her.”

  I didn’t see them press the knife into Finn. I don’t know if he was aware of it. They did what they had come to do and then clomped up the stairs and out of the cellar.

  Blood soaked the blankets. But then he moved his hand. Ignoring the wet stickiness, I held him. I forced myself to look, even though I didn’t want to see. I didn’t want to see what was inside a person, my own brother. Later I wished that I hadn’t. I’ve had nightmares about it most every night for the last three years. With or without drugs.

  There was no stopping the bleeding. I’ve thought about it a lot, wondering if, had I been wiser, I could have staunched it or sewed him up. But I don’t believe it would have been possible. The men knew their business. I held him until evening. That’s when Mother returned. He was already dead.

  “We can’t let your father know,” she said. “Not now, not ever. He has to believe that there is still some goodness in this world. Do you hear me?” I never considered that her fear might be of Father. But now I think of the way he spoke to me at the university. His hopelessness.

  I helped Mother carry Finn up the stairs, after she had cleaned the blood from his face, kissed his forehead, and wrapped him in our tattered blankets. We were cold that night. They were our only blankets. His body was the first the corpse collectors took that day. He fell to the floor of the cart with a hollow clunk. Father may still believe that Finn died of the contagion. I don’t know.

  In this dank cell beneath the burning city, I hold the knife for a long time, mesmerized by the sharpness of it. By the possibilities. But in the end, isn’t it more of a betrayal of Finn if I throw my life away? I hate that it was Will who made me realize this.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  HOURS LATER THE REVEREND MALCONTENT opens the door of my cell and gestures for me to come. The jaunty angle of the red scarf at his throat is at odds with his grim expression.

  “Follow me,” he says.

  When I look into his eyes, I see a feverish sort of intelligence, and it frightens me. I rest my hand against the rough stone wall and wonder whether I should refuse to go.

  “We’ve received word that Prince Prospero is going to flood this section of the tunnels.”

  I follow him.

  “What’s happening in the city?” I ask.

  “Sinners are dying.”

  I’m guessing that everyone is dying. Our eyes meet. I look away first.

  “The Red Death is just a disease,” I mutter. Though nothing, not since the first inhabitant of the city came down with the contagion, has ever really been just a disease.

  “All plagues are the work of the devil,” he says. But he’s not really paying attention; he’s scanning the tunnels ahead of us.

  Reverend Malcontent adjusts his scarf, and beneath it I see deep scar tissue. Someone slashed his throat. And suddenly, looking at his fair hair that is going gray, I know who he is. Who he was.

  The vial
that Father gave me is cold in my pocket, the knife cool against my ankle. We walk slowly. Reverend Malcontent takes slow, measured steps, hiding his limp. It reminds me of Elliott, and thinking of Elliott hurts.

  “Your children believe that the prince murdered you.”

  He touches the scarf at his neck. I should be terrified of him, but I’m numb, and I don’t feel frightened, even though I know that I should.

  “I had children a long time ago. But I lost everything.”

  I look at him with revulsion. I’m the one mourning his children.

  “How did you survive?” I ask. The stones of the corridor are smooth and easy on my slick-soled boots. I can’t think what else to do, so I ask questions, forcing myself to walk slowly, to wait for a chance to escape.

  “My brother had me thrown out into the streets with the diseased corpses. I lay in the cart for two days. My tongue swelled until it filled my mouth, and the pain was terrible. I prayed like no man has ever prayed before. A crocodile waddled up to me. It looked me in the eyes, and I saw a certain wisdom there. No crocodiles lived here before the plague, you realize. They are God’s emissaries.”

  I would ask him why God sent us crocodiles instead of curing our illnesses, but he’s obviously mad.

  “My prayers were answered by the diseased swamp dwellers. They pulled me out of the muck and healed me. They taught me their religion. Eventually I taught them mine.” He cups his hands in front of his face like he is praying, but his eyes are open and bright. “God wanted them to worship me.”

  If someone like Reverend Malcontent had taken Finn, what would I have done to get him back? Who could I have betrayed? I allow myself to forgive Will, just a little bit. He did what he had to do. But I don’t think I will ever trust him again.

  The reverend leads me around a pile of rubble. I glance up. Elliott told me that some of the passages were collapsing, but the roof of this one seems intact.