Night Film by Marisha Pessl
His eyes were completely dry.
For seconds, all I could think was that I’d misjudged his despair and self-loathing because his aged, carved-up face was unmistakably thrilled now, excited, his eyes pricked with light.
It was too quiet.
There was no whispering, nothing behind me. I whipped around.
The chair where Sam had been sitting was empty.
“Samantha!”
I lurched down the narrow passageway, knocking over stacks of magazines, a wooden walking stick clattering to the ground. I wheeled around, my heart pounding, staring into the hat racks and banker’s lamps, rocking chairs and vintage radios, and none of it was Sam.
“Samantha!” I shouted.
Suddenly, there was a rustling noise.
To my relief, Sam poked her head out of the junk. She’d been hiding under a dining-room table laden with animal taxidermy, elk heads with antlers, bobcats and lizards, monkey skulls. She was clutching the plastic horse tightly against her chest.
“Samantha! Get over here now!”
She blinked in alarm and obediently started toward me. But then there was a loud scraping sound.
A wooden Art Deco floor lamp with a wide crystal shade standing beside her—it was shuddering, tipping forward, drunken and alive.
“Sam! Don’t move!”
I scrambled over a steamer trunk, comic books, a bird skeleton under a glass dome smashing to the floor, but I knew I was too late.
Sam pitched forward, falling, and the lamp crashed right beside her, the shade exploding over her onto the floor seconds before her piercing screams. I climbed over a rolling stretcher, pushed aside globes and dolls to get to her, my Sam, my dearest Sam, barely aware of the chaos behind me, shouts and echoing footsteps of someone racing out of the shop.
92
The neon lights of the hospital washed out Cynthia’s face, made it pale and soft as she stared back at me as if she were underwater.
“The doctor said she’ll have bruising and black eyes for six weeks,” she said. “Some swelling under her chin.”
“What about the stitches?”
“Four on her hand where they removed some glass. But it will heal.”
I numbly stared down the hall to Sam’s curtained cubicle, fighting the lump in my throat.
Bruce was in there with her. Though he’d pulled the curtains, I could still see Sam through a crack between them. She was snug in bed under a mound of blue blankets, her face puffy and red, a square white piece of gauze taped to her chin. The hospital emergency room attending physician stood beside her, talking to Bruce.
The doctor was more comfortable speaking to him. I didn’t blame her. When I’d come running in here, shouting for help, Sam crying in my arms, the nurses had doubtlessly thought the worst, that I had hurt her.
And I had. Even when I was reassured that she’d be all right, I was still racked with the terrible understanding that I was responsible, bringing Sam into that hideous shop. Even more gutting was my growing certainty that Villarde had somehow orchestrated it. I didn’t know how and I didn’t understand it, but I sensed that he’d sat down and willingly talked to us only in order to put us under the black spell of his story, and all the while he was working on a way to hurt Samantha. I wondered if he’d done it as a means to distract us, make his escape, because in the chaos of her fall, Villarde had sprinted clear out of the shop. Hopper instantly took off after him, but when he reached Third Avenue, the man was gone.
The emergency room staff sensed from my agitation I hadn’t told them the whole story and thus were understandably relieved when Cynthia and Bruce arrived. I’d called Cynthia from the cab, and their private plane, minutes from taking off at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, headed back to the terminal. She showed up within an hour and a half, and I’d been gently ushered by a nurse into the hallway.
Or was I wrong? Had it been a simple accident? It was possible I’d been sucked so deeply into Villarde’s story, the horror of what he’d done to Ashley, that I was no longer thinking clearly.
“She was playing,” I said to Cynthia. “She tripped on the electrical cord.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She said it in a monotone. I stared at her, bewildered, but there was nothing to see. Her face was so drained of feeling, it was startling to behold, as if a room I’d lived in all my life was suddenly without furniture, barren; piece by tiny piece, it had been dismantled, carted away, such a gradual progression into emptiness I hadn’t noticed it until now.
She shook her head, her bloodshot eyes electric green. “The doctors said you ran in here, shouting about someone hurting her? A priest? Have you lost your mind?”
I didn’t have a response.
“We’re finished with visitation.”
“I understand.”
“No. I’m going to the judge so it’s official. You’re not going to see her anymore. Ever.”
“Cynthia—”
“Stay. Away.”
She shouted it angrily, causing a nurse who’d just walked past to turn and frown at me.
Cynthia smoothed down the front of her blouse and started back toward the curtains, but then she turned back.
“Almost forgot.” She fumbled in the pocket of her blazer. “The nurse found this in Sam’s coat pocket.”
She held out a small figurine. I took it.
It was a black wood carving of a serpent. I realized, after a dazed moment, that I’d seen it before; it was the same figurine that had belonged to the deaf child back at 83 Henry Street.
He’d dropped it down the stairwell. I’d found it, given it back.
And now Sam had it.
“This is a toy that you consider fit for your five-year-old daughter? I can’t wait to show this one to the judge.”
The sounds in the hospital, the intercoms, the clicks and phones ringing, the squeaks of a gurney wheel, footsteps on the floor—they all grew deafeningly loud in my ears, then, almost as quickly, silent.
Again, I could feel the sucking back of that black tidal wave rising over me. It was still rising, growing stronger.
Bruce had pulled the curtain aside, and I could see Sam staring up at a doctor, her tiny bandaged hand lying atop the blankets like a lost mitten.
I turned and suddenly sprinted down the hall.
“Come back here!” Cynthia yelled after me. “I want to keep that!”
I raced past an old man lying on a gurney, blinking at the ceiling, a doctor in a white coat. I pushed open the doors to the waiting room. Hopper and Nora, sitting on the seats under the TV, glanced up at me.
“Scott?” shouted Nora.
I didn’t stop, racing through the revolving doors, emptying me back into the night.
93
I reached Enchantments five minutes after closing time.
The door was locked, but a handful of customers were still browsing inside.
I pounded loudly on the glass. A woman stepped out from behind the register.
“We’re closed!”
“I need to see Cleopatra! It’s an emergency!”
She shook her head and stepped to the door, unlocking it.
“Dude, I’m sorry, but—”
I barged right past her, racing by the few remaining customers to the counter in the back.
“Is she here?”
A punky blond kid on the stool only stared in confused alarm. I dashed past him, yanking aside the black velvet curtain.
“Hey! You can’t go in there!”
I stepped inside, finding Cleo seated at the round table, conferring with a young couple.
“This is an emergency. I need your help.”
“He barged right in,” said the blond kid hurrying in behind me.
Cleo looked unruffled by the intrusion.
“It’s all right,” she said. “We’re pretty much finished.”
The couple scrambled to their feet, grabbing the plastic bag of herbs off the table, and nervously filed past—givi
I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the figurine. It felt strangely heavy in my hand, heavier than before.
“My daughter had this in her pocket. What the hell is it?”
Cleo rose, stepping toward me. She was wearing a white embroidered peasant blouse, jeans, her red Doc Martens, her hands and wrists laden with the same silver bracelets and rings as before. She scrutinized the serpent without getting too close to it and then turned, stepping to the cluttered shelves in the back, returning with a pair of latex gloves.
She snapped them on, carefully took the figurine—as if it were a dangerous explosive—and took it over to the table.
“You just found this?”
“Yes.” I pulled up a metal folding chair, sitting across from her. “But I’ve seen it once before. Another child I encountered recently had it.”
She turned it over in her hands, shaking it, listening to the interior.
I could see now, in the strong red light overhead, the wood was intricately carved, every scale, fin, and tooth polished and pointed. The beast’s leering expression looked lecherous, lips curled back, tongue protruding.
“Could it be used to mark a person?” I asked. “Give them some type of, I don’t know, devil’s marking? Have you heard of something called huella del mal? Evil’s footprint?”
Cleo didn’t seem to hear me, setting the serpent down at the center of the table. Bending forward, with great concentration, she grabbed it by the tail—which coiled up and over the body—sliding the figurine in a slow counterclockwise circle. She did this three times, the only sound in the room the figurine’s jarring rasping on the wood.
Suddenly she whipped her hand away as if she’d been scalded, the snake falling onto its side.
“What?” I asked quickly.
She looked disconcerted. “You didn’t see that?”
“No. What?”
With a deep breath, Cleo reached out again, grabbing the tail.
“Watch the shadow,” she whispered.
I was so flooded with adrenaline, I could hardly bring myself to focus on the deliberate movement.
And then I saw what she meant.
The shadow—resolutely black on the table—did not naturally follow the object. Instead, it froze as if snagged on something invisible, quivering with tension, the shadow’s tongue elongating, pulling far out behind the figurine before swiftly snapping back into place and moving normally. Amazed, I blinked, leaning in, certain my eyes were playing tricks on me, but within seconds, it happened again.
And again.
She reversed the direction, moving the figurine clockwise, and the shadow behaved ordinarily.
“How is it possible?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” She set down the figurine. “I told you I’m not proficient in black magic. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“But you’ve read something about it. In your extensive witch education.”
She looked at me. “I can’t help you. You need to visit a real practitioner of black magic.”
“I don’t know a real practitioner of black magic. I only know you, so you’re getting to the bottom of this, even if it means we sit here for two weeks figuring it out.”
I leapt to my feet, the folding chair falling backward with a crack as I raced to the back of the room. The counters were disordered, burnt candles and ashtrays, scraps of paper scribbled with recipes for spells, battered notebooks, plastic sachets of powders marked YES and NO, jars of black ashes. The shelves were crammed to the ceiling with musty texts.
Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley.
Cleo was suddenly beside me. “Calm down.”
The Evil Eye. Book of Tobit. The Essential Nostradamus. I yanked down Encyclopedia of Popular 19th Century Spells from the top shelf, black paperbacks showering the floor, a red pentagram on the cover.
“You’ll make it worse,” Cleo said. “Potent black magic around an unstable mind is like enriched uranium near a fuse.”
I opened the encyclopedia, scanning the contents page.
“There might be another option,” Cleo said. “But it’s a long shot.”
I looked at her. “What the hell are you waiting for?”
She looked grudgingly at her watch, sighed, and moved to the back corner, where there was a small sink, stacks of notebooks, and a bulletin board propped on the counter laden with papers. She lifted the pages, looking for something, riffling through hand-drawn maps of Witch Country, Pennsylvania, a pamphlet from The Crystal Science League, the timeline of John the Conqueror, photographs of Enchantments employees, the Magical Practitioner’s Code of Ethics. She inspected a small scrap tacked underneath a postcard of a demonic-looking man and took it down, grabbing the cordless phone off the counter.
I stepped beside her.
It was a faded classified ad circled in red pen and torn from a newspaper. It read simply FOR THE GRIMMEST SITUATION ONLY, followed by a phone number, the area code 504.
“That’s your expert? Are you kidding?”
“I said it was a long shot,” Cleo snapped, dialing the number.
I took the paper. On the reverse side there was a half-torn headline that read FLOODING SUSPENDS, and above that, The Lafourche Gazette, November 8, 1983.
“No answer,” Cleo said.
“Try again.”
Sighing, she pressed redial.
After another three tries, she shook her head.
“I’m sorry. I don’t even know what the number is. The paper’s been here forever. No one knows where it came from. Come back tomorrow and we’ll try—”
I grabbed the phone, pressed redial, pacing, my heart pounding with every unanswered ring.
It can’t end like this, not with my daughter vulnerable to some dark hell I’d unwittingly unleashed on her. As I silently repeated this, I realized with a wave of sickened understanding that Cordova must have chanted the very same thing when he’d learned Ashley had run over the devil’s bridge.
This truth I’d been chasing, slowly it was becoming my own.
Suddenly, the ringing stopped. There was a click on the line.
I thought for a moment it had gone dead, but then I heard faint wheezing.
“Hello?” The connection was full of static. “Anyone there?”
“Who’s calling?”
The voice was a prehistoric gasp. If it was a man, woman, or creature—I had no idea.
Cleo, frowning, grabbed the phone.
“Hello?”
She cleared her throat, her eyes widening in surprise.
“Yes. This is Cleopatra at Enchantments in New York City. I hope it’s not too late to be calling. We have the grimmest situation.”
She fell silent, seemingly being reprimanded, but then she smiled at me, relieved, and hurried back to the table.
“I understand. Yes, ma’am. Thank you. If you want to check the stove I’ll wait.” Cleo paused, taking a deep breath, staring at the black figurine. After a minute, in a bland, clinical voice, she succinctly explained the situation.
“And the inverse shadow is totally misbehaving,” she added.
She fell silent, listening, her face grave.
After ten minutes or so, she put a hand over the receiver.
“Go to the bookshelf,” she whispered. “See if you can find a book called Symbols of Black Alchemy Animal and Mineral. Should be on the top shelf.” She listened for a moment, frowning. “Green cover.”
I raced to the back. It took me just a minute to find it, a thick hardback by C.T. Jaybird Fellows. I yanked it down, carrying it back to the table.
“We need to identify the animal before she can help,” Cleo whispered.
I flipped open the book, scanning the musty pages, the drawings of animals discolored, the type old-fashioned and faded.
Dragon. Heart. Liver. Deer.
“I understand.” Cleo squinted at the figurine. “Fins, a tail with a small suction on the end. Like something between a snake and a fish.”
Pig. Goat. Tiger. Worm.
“Look up leviathan,” Cleo whispered heatedly.
Owl. Pillar. Pine Tree. Leviathan.
The colored picture on the page for leviathan was nearly identical to the figurine. It had the same leering face, the distended tongue.
“That’s what it is,” announced Cleo happily into the phone, sliding the book toward herself, gazing down at the entry. “Out loud?” She cleared her throat. “ ‘The leviathan is a primordial sea serpent and one of the Dukes of Hell,’ ” she read. “ ‘Dante designated the creature the incarnation of total evil. Saint Thomas Aquinas described him as one of the Seven Deadly Sins, envy—the monstrous craving for that which you don’t have. In the Middle East, he represents chaos. In Satanism, he’s a demon of the inferno, which can be harnessed by the witch or warlock and discharged into the natural world for destructive means.’ ”
She paused, listening.
“Let me ask him.” She eyed me. “How many children did you see with this?”
“Two.”
“Did they have anything linking them? Did they go to the same school, have the same hobby, were they distantly related by blood? Anything like that?”
I couldn’t answer. My mind was spinning. Because I’d suddenly recalled Morgan Devold’s house, when his daughter, wearing that cherry-covered nightgown, had tiptoed after me down the drive. She’d been holding something in her fist, something small and black. It was this figurine.
“No,” I said. “There were three. Three children.”
“What did they have in common?”
I rubbed my eyes, trying to calm down, to think.
“They were between four and six years old. They had contact with a certain woman. The one who laid down the killing curse on our shoes. Ashley.” I’d said this, really only considering Devold’s daughter and the deaf child at Henry Street. But then the conclusion of my own words hit me: That meant Sam had encountered Ashley.
But that was impossible.
Cynthia never allowed Sam to talk to strangers. Yet she’d found me at the Reservoir. It wasn’t so vast a leap, then, that she’d found my child.