Unhonored (16 page)

“Ellis! Please!” Margaret shouted. “We can't stay here!”

Great wings unfolded from the backs of the soldiers, their brilliance like the sun.

Ellis could no longer see. Margaret was pulling at her, but she could no longer tell where she was in the hospital ward—if the ward still existed at all.

Her hand brushed against something solid.

Ellis grasped it.

The handle.

She pressed the latch and followed the door as it swung open, tumbling to the floor with Margaret falling next to her. She heard more than saw the door close behind them.

The painful brilliance faded from her eyes and she struggled to her knees and looked up.

She was completely unprepared for what she saw.

She was kneeling on the inlaid parquet floor in the entry of Summersend.

 

16

THE PLACE

Ellis stood still in the middle of the parquet floor. She stared at the broken and faded patterns of it beneath her feet. It was entirely familiar and terrible all at once. This place belonged in Gamin … or somewhere … anywhere but here in this madness of Echo House.

The main rotunda extended overhead to the upper floors, accessed by the familiar curved staircase, but the wallpaper had mostly curled away from the curving wall except in a few of the corner spaces. The plaster on the walls was stained and had fallen away from the lathe work in several locations. The balusters of the once elegantly curved handrail were broken outward near the bottom of the stairs, causing the upper handrail to hang precariously toward the modest, web-covered chandelier overhead. Ellis was afraid to move for fear the entire crystal assembly would come loose from the ceiling and crash down on them both.

Opposite the clock and broken bench, the small side table leaned precariously against the wall. Atop it sat the bell jar, now nearly entirely obscured with dust above its weathered, wooden base. Ellis fixed her eyes on it, trying to peer through the dirty glass without success.

“It's Summersend!” cried Margaret in genuine delight. “However did you manage it?”

Ellis turned slowly around. Behind them was the short hallway to the salon, the bookcase alcove to one side. On her right were the remains of the narrow bench, its legs broken on one end. The grandfather clock standing next to it was covered in a moldering sheet. Ellis had a sudden dread of lifting it up and seeing what remained beneath it. Before her was the entry hall with double doors on either side. The doors to the left had fallen from their hinges and sat askew in the archway. She could barely make out the dark shapes of the shuttered music room just beyond. At the end of the hall was the door through which they had just come; the front door of Summersend. Its paint had peeled away and cracks had appeared in the weathered wood but brilliant light was still streaming through its cracked frosted panes.

“Tell me how you did it,” Margaret demanded breathlessly. “So perfect; so quickly!”

“I … I don't know,” Ellis said, gazing about her in stunned reverence. Her eyes returned to the side table against the wall near her left hand and opposite the bench. The enormous bell jar with the darkly stained and lacquered base was still sitting on its surface, but now it was almost completely filled with dead lunar moths. “I didn't do anything!”

“But you said you created the house,” Margaret urged, the hint of desperation in her voice. “That you were
still
creating it! You wondered if this were
still
your Day!”

“But I haven't
done
anything,” Ellis pleaded.

“Liar!” Margaret rushed toward her, gripping Ellis by the shoulders as she gazed purposefully into her eyes. “It isn't your Day, it's Merrick's Day, yet somehow you managed to change circumstances to suit you. Where does this come from, Ellis? How do you make it real?”

“Margaret, stop!” Ellis cried out, struggling to get loose from the woman's powerful grip. “I don't know how it happens!”

Ellis broke free of Margaret, rushing toward the front door.

“Ellis, no!” Margaret warned, her voice harsh and menacing. “Don't make me stop you!”

The light streaming through the frosted glass became dimmer with each step Ellis took. It had nearly vanished entirely as she grasped the door handle, turned it and pulled the door wide.

Ellis reeled back from the precipice at the doorstep.

The space beyond had changed.

She teetered on the brink of an elevator shaft. The rough, brick walls both descended into the depths and ascended into the heights beyond the limits of her vision. Doorways, patterned identically to the one in which she stood, exited the shaft at each level below her. Rusting guide rails on both sides and a set of cables running down the center of the shaft gave mind-spinning perspective to the depths beckoning her to fall into its maw.

Ellis drew back into the hall in a panic, slamming the door shut with a violent shove. She backed slowly past twisted doors to the music room until she bumped against the grandfather clock. Its chimes rattled discordantly behind her.

“So that is it.” Margaret smiled back at Ellis from the rotunda at the opposite end of the entry hall. The lady's maid took several hesitant steps toward Ellis across the floor. “That's how you do it!”

“Margaret,” Ellis said with quiet caution. “How I do what?”

“All this.” Margaret gestured toward the expanse of the house about them. “The house, the sky, the Day … I understand how you do it now … I understand
everything.
”

Ellis stood with her back against the clock, her eyes fixed on her lady's maid. “What do you understand, Margaret?”

“The Day does not come from your
thoughts,
it comes from somewhere deeper within,” Margaret said with savory relish. “It's not a rational choice of will. It comes from
desire
 … it comes from the place of
dreams
!”

“Margaret, I don't understand.”

“Yes, yes, you do!” Margaret insisted, her bright eyes burning with fanatical passion. “Think, Ellis! Out of all the possible creations you might make real in your Day … out of an infinity of possible places to fall into … why
this
place? Why Summersend?”

Ellis thought.

She drew in a breath.

“Why Summersend indeed?” came another, deeper voice from the direction of the broken doors of the music room.

Merrick moved slowly from the shadows, stepping carefully between the broken doors of the hall. He was in full morning dress with a coat and waistcoat that were perfectly tailored for him. The high, turndown collar capped his striped shirt and framed the knot of his silk tie in exact symmetry. The striped trousers had creases as straight and sharp as a knife.

Merrick stopped and stood just outside of the music room, cocking his head to one side as he considered the two women in the rotunda. He drew his long, delicate hands upward at his sides in a deliberate motion, flicking back the edges of his coat and slipping both into the pockets of his trousers.

“You've led us all a merry chase, Ellis,” Merrick said, his eyes watery and large. “I had hoped you would have at least stayed until the end of the play.”

“I didn't think I would care for the ending.” Ellis shivered slightly.

“Well, let's just say it's a work in progress.” Merrick shrugged, a painful smile flitting across his lips. “But Margaret asked a most excellent question, my dear Lady Ellis: why Summersend? It was never our house in our Day, and yet here it stands around us in the Ruins, sad and forgotten.”

“It was in Gamin, too,” Ellis said as much to herself as to Merrick. “Why was it there?”

“It was for you.” Merrick took a step forward, his hands slipping from his pockets, reaching forward as though there were a present in his hands. “It was all for you. The town, the people, the mansion and even this—even Summersend—because you loved it so and I wanted to be the one who gave it back to you. Me. From me. I wanted to give it to you. It should have been from
me
!”

Merrick strode toward Ellis suddenly. Ellis pushed away from the clock but it was too late. Merrick's hands reached up, gripping her face on either side so firmly that her vision blurred. He pulled her back in front of him, his terrible dark eyes burning inches from her own.

“But it wasn't the house at all, was it?” Merrick's lips quivered now as he spoke, his eyes fixed with a fevered stare. “It wasn't the house or the dresses or the town or the sea or the sky! It was
him,
wasn't it? He sat by the Gate and waited for you like some lovesick puppy who just wouldn't go home. And when you came to the Gate, what did he do, Ellis? What did he
do
?”

“I don't know!” Ellis cried out through her sobs. “I don't remember!”

“I remember! I remember it all!” Merrick shouted into her face. “I remember him tearing you apart! I remember that he waited and waited and then when you came to the Gate he saw his chance and stole you away from everything we had built and loved. I remember that he would rather
cripple
you than let you be great with me!”

“Merrick, don't!” Margaret pleaded as she tried to pull his grip loose from Ellis's face.

Merrick shifted his grip, clasping Ellis's narrow jaw in his left hand as he snatched at Margaret's arm. In a moment, he twisted the arm of the lady's maid painfully around the woman's back. Her feet were barely touching the floor when he threw her with all his force into the short hall behind her. Margaret crashed against the bookcase, the weathered tomes disintegrating with the impact as she slumped sobbing to the floor.

Merrick twisted Ellis around in his iron, unyielding grip, pushing her head against the curved wall opposite the stairs. She could feel the weight of his body pressing against hers, pinning her.

Again he gripped her on both sides of her face, holding her so that she was forced to look into his face. His lips were parted in agony, tears streaming from his eyes, but she could see no humanity, no compassion within them—only an unending void.

“I loved you so, Ellis.” Merrick shook as he spoke. “You came for me—you chose
me
! We left the war behind us, you and I. The others, they made their choice and the war went on without us. They sent us here, thinking it was a punishment but it wasn't that at all. They said that we were damned—damned to be who we were and nothing more. But who we were was mighty, Ellis. Serve in heaven or serve in hell—there is no choice in that—but
here
we were … I made you the mistress of all the Tween. I was the one who gave you everything! I was the one who made a place where we could be!”

Ellis could barely move against the weight of him pressing her into the wall. He had raised her up, her feet no longer touching the floor and flailing about beneath her. Ellis cast her eyes frantically about her, searching for something … anything.

Her eyes fell on the large bell jar on the table next to them.

“Merrick! Please!” she begged.

The man's lips curled back into a horrible smile, pain filling his eyes a hand's breadth from her face. “Please? Isn't that all I've ever tried to do? But you're not pleasing me back, Ellis!
You
made this house for us. It was the very first house of our existence and you made this Day for
me
! For
ME
!”

Merrick lifted her up higher onto the wall. Ellis was finding it hard to breathe. Her eyes fixed on the bell jar on the table.

Moths. It was filled with moths.

One of their wings fluttered.

“And now I find
this
abomination in the Ruins?” Merrick seethed. “It wasn't the house at all, was it, Ellis? It was for
him
! It was because of
him
!”

Ellis kicked sideways with her left foot. It did not connect with the table as firmly as she had hoped but the decayed condition of the wood yielded at once to the blow. The far leg snapped and the table shifted as it fell, sliding the bell jar across its surface.

The bell jar crashed against the parquet floor, shattering at once.

Moths—a thousand and more—erupted from the confines of the glass. They filled the rotunda of the house in a thick whirlwind of gray and color, their wings beating against the faces of everyone in the room as they passed in their frantic flight.

Merrick cried out, releasing his grip on Ellis's face in favor of shielding his own. Ellis dropped down the wall and fell to the floor on her side. The moths flew above her, whirling about Merrick, their delicate wings rushing in to brush against his face before they again entered the cloud of moths whirling about the rotunda.

Merrick reeled back from them, crying out in angry frustration. For a moment he stood swatting in panic at the moths darting about his face, then he turned and ran toward the front of the hall.

The door flew open before Merrick as he approached, still revealing the elevator shaft that had so startled Ellis long moments before. Merrick lunged out the door, howling as he dove into the shaft, the door slamming shut behind him against the onslaught of moths.

Ellis slumped to the floor, leaning against the rough surface of the rotunda wall. She felt exhausted—spent—and barely able to lift her eyes to gaze expectantly down the foyer hall.

Memories drew up unbidden within her.

She knew what was coming.

The moths wheeled at the door, a cyclone of gray and color spinning around an axis. The whirling mass at once both contracted and became more complex, the dance of the moths in the air fragmenting into appendages to the core mass. The frantically beating figures were resolving into a tighter form with arms, legs and a head. One of the larger moths flitted at the face, its broad wings forming a mask where the patterns appeared as blank, turquoise eyes.