Soft perfume and Winston cigarettes. Her skin was soft. In the distance, tearing through the dream, was the beeping of a hospital heart monitor.
“Thank you, Momma.”
Betty lifted her head. The veins on her neck bulged. Blood gushed as her skin paled. “Get up and get out of here!” she yelled. Then she pushed Audrey so hard she woke up.
The door was humming. The apartment was dark. Audrey woke to realize, with some shock, that she’d just inserted the hot water faucet handle and was trying to pull the door open.
The thing in her stomach turned. She felt it inside of her, growing. Down the hall, water ran from the tub and flooded the floor. “Ohhh,” she said. “Oh, no.”
She reached fast into her pocket. The key. To get it back, she’d stuffed herself with piano sawdust and cardboard, then flushed it all out of her with a gallon of water. A natural laxative. But when she’d looked out the peephole, Loretta’s blue eyes had looked back at her. So she’d waited, and dozed, and finished the door, then dreamed of Betty. The real one, perhaps.
She staggered back now, as the door began to pull from its foundation. Up from the rotten floor, red ants crawled.
What do you have left that you love? It hummed. Give me its blood and I’ll let you see my true face.
The slopping thing in her stomach filled her chest, then her arms and mouth.
Kill him, the walls and floors and door whispered. The sound was deafening. She could hear the tenants through the halls. Their meaningless, frightened thoughts were an hysterical chorus. They banged on the walls. Slowly at first, and then fast. She could hear all fifty-one of them. Reams of spit flew from wrinkled lips. “You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!” they cried.
Kill all that you love, The Breviary commanded.
But she loved nothing. Not even herself. She was dead inside, just an accumulation of scars. The worm filled her body. Her vision got small, then nothing. Her eyes turned black. She saw through The Breviary’s eyes. Felt the air through its limestone skin. Felt its fury, that it had been trapped in this awful world, wearing this flawed stone body, for more than 150 years.
First she saw the ants in the basement and the gristle of Martin’s and Edgardo’s bones. Then floor by floor, every tenant. Every apartment. Every failed door, trash-filled kitchen, and unflushed toilet. She understood why the building loathed them and had played its pranks. She despised them, too. Her gaze ascended. Up, up, up. Ninth floor: the tenants themselves had stolen all the copper fixtures, then sold them at half their value because they hadn’t known how to haggle. Tenth floor: Penelope Falco imagined, then wept in fear that she might actually get what The Breviary had promised her on the other side of the door: someone to love. Finally, she saw Saraub Ramesh through The Breviary’s cold eyes as he climbed the steps to the fourteenth floor.
She walked down the hall and unlocked it for him, then headed back into the den and located her rebar.
Kill all that you love, The Breviary, the tenants, the ghosts, and even the thing on the other side of the door whispered, just as Saraub Ramesh entered 14B.
45
Let Me In
It took Saraub sixty-five excruciating minutes to check out of the hospital. His cabbie was new to the job, and took Central Park North instead of the 97th Street Transverse. They wound up circling Morningside Park and adding an extra fifteen minutes to the trip. When he finally made his way into The Breviary’s lobby, the doorman was gone, and the place was empty. A kiddie porno lay open on the floor.
The more he thought about it, the worse this sounded. She was a private person, so why hadn’t she called him herself if she’d wanted his help? And where was everyone in this building?
He waited for the elevator for ten minutes, then finally broke open the iron gate, and looked down the shaft. The wire cable had torn, and the car lay crashed in the basement, its roof broken open from the impact of the fall.
He headed for the stairs. After two flights, he was sweating. It was dusty in here, and he breathed some of it in—a greasy, foul taste that slithered in his stomach. After three flights, he took a break to rest his ribs and leaned against the wall. It vibrated against his fingers.