at her creation. Glued to the cardboard were the shredded trappings of her old life; clothes, the Parkside Plaza plans from the hall, and her air mattress sliced to plastic strips. They fit like flaking skin so that all that remained was the caution:
Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here
From the hole in the floor, she’d sawed two sets of two-by-four supporting beams to keep the door from tumbling over. The entire den now sagged, and pretty soon, she expected that it would collapse into 13B.
Ants swarmed the rotten hole and walls. They didn’t bite, even though she kept expecting them to. Instead, they circled in and out against the door, like an ocean tide.
“I beg to be adored!” Schermerhorn cried. His skin had sloughed from his bones, and in places, she could see his skeleton. He laughed so hard that tears fell as he sang, like maybe The Breviary itself had gone mad.
Audrey sat on the turret ledge of the empty room. Black-and-white Betty sat next to her. A trick. Not her real mother. But company, just the same. The television blared an old sitcom about single friends living in Manhattan. Betty giggled along with the canned laughter, while the ghosts of The Breviary lined the walls of the den. Each with noose marks, or broken skulls. Bloated faces from drowning underwater. Maybe they hadn’t wanted to build doors, either.
“Finish it, my lovely!” Schermerhorn sang.
Audrey looked at the rebar, then the piano. The door needed a solid frame, of course. Something firm, like satinwood. Otherwise, it wouldn’t hold for long enough before it collapsed…Long enough for what?
She answered her own question: Silly girl. Long enough for the monsters to climb through!
At the piano, Schermerhorn cried and laughed. “I fell in love with you, MADLY!” while next to him, the ghosts of The Breviary watched. Some smiling, some seeming themselves, haunted.
What time was it? Afternoon? Morning? Her eyes were heavy, and she knew tonight, when she fell asleep, that The Breviary would consume her, and she’d finish the job.
And what then?
Saraub would come. The last piece of this puzzle. Maybe Loretta would call him and pretend to be a concerned neighbor. Maybe by then, she’d have no control, and she’d call him herself. Either way, once he heard that she needed his help, he’d come running. She would murder him. Skin his flesh from his bones. The door would open then and set something terrible free.
She stood. Thought about tearing down the door, but knew she’d only build it again tonight, and by tomorrow, she’d be too weak to resist.
She tried to push open the turret window, but it was stuck. Betty laughed while somebody on the television broke up with another boyfriend because he looked bad bald. The children howled. They’d been howling for days.
Out the window on 110th Street, groups and couples meandered, and the M60 bus cruised toward the Triborough Bridge. She wrapped the sleeve of Clara’s sweatshirt around her hand, then smashed a small, lead-fluted windowpane. “Help me! I’m in 14B!” she shouted, but her voice by now was so hoarse that no one heard.
She pulled one of the shards from the broken pane, a perfectly preserved stained-glass bird, and sat next to black-and-white Betty. She pressed the glass to her wrist. The bird’s red eyes watched. “What should I do?” she asked her mother, not mother.
Betty’s eyes moved in her direction, but the rest of her was still. On the television, the friends sang a plucky tune at a local coffee shop: isn’t life grand?
“Build the door, baby,” Betty said. Her mouth didn’t move, only her eyes.
Audrey traced her old scars with the sharp point of the bird’s beak. Schermerhorn played louder. She tried to make herself want this. For Saraub’s sake, for her own, for the innocents of The Breviary, if there were any.
She closed her eyes, remembered the last time she’d done this. That feeling of freedom, and floating. Watching yourself drift as the water turns pink. It came back to her now, that girl in tan coveralls that she used to be. She was that girl again. Greasy and hungry and useless.
Schermerhorn played louder. The ghosts moaned. The living tenants had gathered in 14A and 14C, and now banged against her walls. The sound reminded her of childhood: bill collectors; angry boyfriends; a manic mother.
The edges of her bird’s-eye glass were sharp, but she didn’t think the cut would be clean. She pushed hard and broke her callused skin. A tiny scrape.