Unwept (26 page)

Ellis felt the whirlwind of moths constricting around her, a stifling shroud. She pushed through the vortex, the hard soles of her shoes crunching across the shattered glass covering the floor between the library and the parlor. She turned before the fireplace toward the closed pocket doors to the music room, but the doors were locked shut, leaving her only avenue of escape through the entry and the door to the vestibule beyond.

Merrick stood slowly, barely contained rage causing the muscles in his face to twitch.

The vortex of moths coalesced, taking shape and substance. The shadows became a man resolving into one in a soldier's combat uniform, his hair in dark waves atop his head.

“I'm taking her with me,” Jonas said, stepping forward to shield Ellis.

“You said that once before,” Merrick snarled as he pulled several large glass shards out of his palm with his teeth and spat them to the ground. “And yet she came back here. I wonder which one of us she really wants to follow?”

Ellis, her back pressed against the barred pocket doors, stood between them.

23

DOORS

Jonas stood in the archway between the library's shattered windows and the parlor. Merrick stood opposite him, blocking the way to the front door. Both stared at each other in open hatred as Ellis stood between them, her back against the locked door.

“However did you manage it?” Merrick asked. “Escaping from Ellis's little trap room, I mean.”

“I had a little help,” Jonas said.

“Ah!” Merrick smiled as he nodded. “The soldiers, of course. The one group I couldn't send away.”

“Friends are often very useful in a crisis.” Jonas shrugged. “But then you would hardly know that.”

Ellis felt her chest constricting, her breath coming in painful gulps. “You two …
know
each other?”

“Like a newspaper knows a fly,” Merrick said. His voice was low and threatening. “Get out of my home, Jonas.”

“You have no home,” Jonas snarled. “All you have are lies—not even shadows or smoke. Everything here is just wished-for dreams and nightmares. All you do is play at life when there was never any life in you … not even an idea of what life really means.”

“This
is
life!” Merrick screamed. “This is the life
I
created!”

“And where are they now?” Jonas asked, stepping toward the parlor. “Where is this life that you have created? Show them to me.”

“He can't. He k-k-killed them,” Ellis stuttered as she spoke to Jonas, her teeth chattering uncontrollably. “Alicia, Ely, Dr. Carmichael … I don't know how many more. There are bodies stacked up in the carriage house—”

“They're all for you, Ellis,” Merrick said, indignation coloring his voice.

Ellis stared at Merrick in horror.

“I have shaped and reshaped my day for you, but it isn't enough!” Merrick seethed, his words forced out between clenched teeth. “I've reshaped the world to suit you, but it's
still
not enough! I killed them all for you and it's still never enough!”

“No, Merrick.” Jonas shook his head as he spoke. “You can't kill something that has never lived—but there are other ways to die, aren't there, Merrick? They have no real bodies, but their souls, on the other hand … you
could
do something about that, couldn't you, Merrick?”

“I did this all for her,” Merrick said as he turned to face Jonas. “Killed them for her! The painter had to die because she had been a painter and would never paint again!”

“That's a lie,” Jonas countered. “She would paint again—crippled or not!”

“And the music?” Merrick snarled. “The pianist music in her had to die, too! How could she possibly ever play again?”

Jonas shook his head in defiance. “She would find a way. Through work … through pain … that was who she was!”

“Who I
was
?” Ellis screamed.

Both Merrick and Jonas turned toward Ellis.

Ellis could feel her mind spinning outward, the threads of conscious reason unraveling within her. Her thoughts were like the patchwork quilt of the Disir sisters, only she could feel the stitching that held the patchwork of her sanity coming loose.

“Tell me.” Ellis shuffled with staggering steps to the floor between Merrick and Jonas. She spoke quietly, almost pleading. “You think you know so much about me … who do you think I am?”

“Your name was, is, Ellis Harkington Kirk.” Jonas looked at her, his green eyes brimming over.

“And you say that I
am
dead?” Ellis asked, a strange, singsong quality to her voice.

“Ellis!” Merrick growled under his breath. “Do not listen to this fool again! He's brought you nothing but pain and heartache!”

Ellis ignored Merrick, staring at Jonas with feverish eyes that demanded an answer. “Am I dead?”

“No, not yet,” Jonas sighed. “Your body is still struggling to survive in a cold, dark place far away from here—”

“And here … where is here?” Ellis demanded, her hands shaking at her sides.

“It is Gamin,” Merrick said. “It's your home.”

“Home is a place very far from here,” Jonas corrected. “This is the ‘Tween'—a place far beyond the world you know as home.”

“Beyond heaven … beyond hell,” Ellis said, her voice heavy with sadness. “Captain Walker told me a story of those who were doubly damned: unfit for either heaven or hell. Is that where I am? Is that my home?”

“She came with me, Jonas!” Merrick snarled. “She was never yours, but that didn't stop you from pining for her on the far side of the gate, did it? And when you saw your chance you stole her like a thief from the world she helped build—”

“Home?” Ellis repeated, tears flowing from her wide eyes.

“Call it whatever you will, this is where you belong, Ellis,” Merrick continued, a longing in his voice as he spoke. “We made this place, you and I: word by word, line by line, drawing by drawing. We started the day, made up the rules and led all our friends out of the Umbra to a place where we could play. There were those who left now and then—some with Dr. Carmichael and some with the soldiers—but we had fun here, you and I. I was happy then. But then you left, too, and I had to play the game without you. It wasn't fair, Ellis, you leaving me here with Jenny. And then you, out of all those who left, it had to be you that came back—and now this ‘outsider' wants to take you away from me again? No, Ellis! It's not fair! This is
my
game and it is not fair!”

Ellis laughed hysterically, a hideous, unhinged cackling. She turned, staggering as she tried to maintain her balance and her sanity all at once.

“Fair?” Ellis gaped at Merrick. “What does ‘fair' have to do with any of this madness? I don't know
either
of you! You tell me you've murdered the only people of whom I have any recollection at all and expect me to just accept those deaths as a token of our former friendship? And
this
man”—she pointed at Jonas—“materializes from a cloud of moths in my bedroom, is familiar with me and takes liberties with my person, tells me that I may or may not be dead and expects me to go with him to some magical gate that will bring me back to life?”

A strange-sounding giggle burst from her lips. “I have had my sanity questioned every day since I arrived in this nightmare.
I'm
the crazy one!
I'm
the lunatic! And now I've come to see that I
am
the only sane one here. It isn't
me
at all!
You're
the ones asking me to choose between a monster and a murderer! It's
both
of
you
are mad!”

“Ellis, please,” Jonas pleaded, stepping toward her. “We need to find Jenny—both of you need to come with me.”

“Back to this gate, I suppose,” Ellis said skeptically. “Back to the place where you say I may or may not be dead?”

“Yes.” Jonas nodded. “Before it is too late. I can show you the way. Trust me.”

“No!” Ellis roared her abhorrence.

Merrick smiled.

The pain in Jonas's eyes was deep. “But, Ellis … I've told you the truth!”

“No!” Within the depths of her soul stirred a fire that was familiar to her. The anger and indignation that had been building in her found a voice. “
Your
truth!
Merrick's
truth! What about
my
truth!
My
truth is that I don't know who I am, what has happened to me, how I got here or where I have to go to get back to myself. You've kept me in this nightmare with no knowledge of my past and no hope for a future. But I—the
real
me—am out there somewhere and I'm going to know who I am!”

Ellis rushed past Merrick into the entryway. Jonas moved to follow her, but Merrick stopped him with a hand to the soldier's chest. “You think you've won, Jonas, but you haven't. You stole her before and you think you can steal her again, but it won't work a second time. I've been waiting for this … waiting for you. You should have left when you still could.”

Jonas pushed Merrick's arm aside. “I'm coming with you, Ellis. When you find the gate, we'll both be free.”

“Free?” Merrick laughed in derision as he turned. “You think it would be that easy?”

“Leave me alone!” Ellis screeched as he turned at the door. “Both of you standing there beating your chests and arguing over who owns me! As though I were your boots or your furniture or your favorite dog! As though either of you
ever
had a right to me. I want nothing more to do with this madness or with either one of you! I'm leaving and you cannot stop me.”

“You're partly right, Ellis; I never could stop you.” Merrick chuckled. He reached toward the table behind him, picking up a thick rectangular object. “But this is
my
day, Ellis.
I
make the rules. I've been very busy since I left you in your room at Summersend. Very busy indeed.”

Merrick held up the object in front of him. The edges of its cover were crisp and the binding barely broken.

“You're threatening me with a scrapbook?” Ellis laughed in disbelief. She turned to the front door.

“No,” Merrick replied as he opened the book. “I'm threatening you with what's inside.”

Ellis gripped the handle, released the catch and pulled it open.

She froze.

What had been the front door of the Norembega still opened on to the vestibule, but the outer doors were missing. Beyond where had once been the wide circular drive, lawn, hedge and towering trees now lay a long hallway with elegant raised-panel wainscoting below the chair rail and bottle green wallpaper above to the coffered ceiling twenty feet overhead. Four sets of closed doors were set into the side walls with a set of open double doors at the end. A pair of grand staircases swept upward at the end of the hall to a mezzanine on a floor above. Between the stairs, a pair of wide double doors lay open. Beyond them was a ballroom, brilliantly lit, and beyond that more rooms stretching as far as Ellis could see.

“You're never leaving my home again, Ellis.” Merrick grinned viciously. “No one is
ever
leaving my home again.”

Ellis turned back to face Merrick. “It never ends?… You made it so that it goes on forever.…”

“Welcome home, Ellis.” Merrick smiled in triumph. “Our new home.”

Ellis drew herself up. Her head tilted to one side and a smile of her own slowly brightened her countenance as memory floated up from the madness.

“Alicia! Come on; I think I can see something on the other side!”

“No! You know it is against the Rules of the Day!” Alicia said. “He'll be angrier with you than he is already! Let's go back!”

“But we found the gate! Doesn't that mean we win? We could have our very own day!”

“You can do many things in your day,” Ellis said as she turned to Merrick, her hand still bloodstained from the key, and she pointed at him. “But there is one rule not even you can break … the gate.”

Merrick's smile fell.

“I've been to the gate before with Alicia,” Ellis stated flatly.

“Yes, and Alicia came back from the gate with poor broken Jenny, but not you,” whispered Merrick hoarsely.

Ellis continued speaking, cutting across his words. “The gate can be moved, yes, and hidden, certainly, but you can never, ever destroy it,” Ellis said, holding her chin high. “I found the gate once before and I'll find it again!”

“This is still my game,” Merrick raged, “and I've changed the rules!”

“Change the rules to your game all you like,” Ellis said. “I just don't want to play anymore!”

Ellis swept through the door, slamming it behind her.

THE END OF PART I