up at him with serious brown eyes. “Do you feel that?”
“No,” he replied too quickly, resisting the urge to touch the back of his suddenly freezing neck. And he ignored, absolutely ignored, the fact that his breath suddenly looked like little puffs of fog.
She glowered at him. “No? But you didn’t even ask me what I meant before you answered. How do you know what I was talking about?”
“Fine. I guess there’s a little bit of a draft somewhere down—”
“A very cold, freezing draft,” she said. “In the middle of July? When I can see your—”
“Fine. It’s cold. So what? Will you open the trunk already, or are we going to stand here—”
She flipped it open.
They bumped shoulders as they moved to look down into the chest. Their shadows obstructed the contents, so he moved back a little to let the stingy light better illuminate it.
“Well, it’s not a body,” Jake said with forced jocularity. That frigid chill still burned the back of his neck, and he could still see his breath, dammit. He didn’t know whether he believed in ghosts, but he knew this sort of thing supposedly portended supernatural activity.
And there was a stillness that had settled around them, there in the dim belowground pit. Like a sudden absence of sensation and movement—it was like being in a vacuum.
Just…nothing.
Or like everything was holding its breath.
Vivien spoke first. Her voice sounded artificially bright. “Looks like a bunch of costumes.”
Yes, the trunk was filled with old clothing, and it all appeared fairly well preserved. Jake saw a jumble of shiny fabrics like satin—black, pink, yellow—as she began to pull items out in wads. And there was a scrap of bright purple velvet just beneath that, then something shiny and green, and then the tangle of fabric gave way to something recognizable: a military sort of coat in bright red with black cuffs and a white patch down the front. It had two rows of large brass buttons fastened with black loops across the white front.
She pulled out the coat, and what was left beneath gave him a start at first. A huge, eerie, doll-like face looked up at them with unseeing eyes. It sported an obscenely large mouth with massive white teeth, both upper and lower, in a really creepy smile. It wore a tall, cylindrical hat of dark blue with a slanted top and a short black bill in the front.
“The Nutcracker,” she said, looking down into the trunk. “These all must be costumes from The Nutcracker.”
“I don’t ever remember the Nutcracker looking so unpleasant,” he said, suppressing a shiver. The freezing air was still brushing over the back of his neck. “Isn’t it a kids’ show? Something like that would give my nephew nightmares. That mask looks way creepier than any clown I’ve ever seen.”
He noticed she didn’t pull out the Nutcracker mask—which wasn’t a mask so much as a huge, false head that would rise several feet above one’s shoulders. He didn’t blame her. There was something unsettling about looking down at that face.
“It might be enjoyed by children, but it’s got a lot of adult elements. This headpiece is from when the Nutcracker—which is given to Clara on Christmas Eve—first becomes animated. He starts off as a regular-sized nutcracker, and then, when she falls asleep, she dreams about him. He becomes human-size in her dreams—larger than human, which is why the piece is so big—and then eventually the head goes away and he becomes fully human as the ballet goes on.”
Jake was still looking down in distaste. “If that showed up in my dreams, I think I’d wake myself up right away. Look at those chompers! Forget about cracking a walnut—they’re big enough to crack a skull.”
She gave a little snort and pulled out the ugly-as-hell fake head. “The back’s all crushed,” she said, turning the thing around in her hands. Despite its ungainly size, it seemed light. It was probably made from papier-mâché. “Maybe that’s why they—”
The light went out with a decisive pop! She made a little gasp, and, admittedly, he did too—for suddenly they were in the dark with the blazing chill still raising goosebumps on his neck…and a big, ugly, creepy mask. She moved, bumping into him sharply, then jerking away. He could hear her rough, unsteady breathing.
“Vivien, are you all right?” He felt around for her instead of digging out his cell phone with its flashlight—and that was a simple indulgence because he just wanted an excuse to touch her.