for any purpose if they ever were. I want to get out of here.”
Yet she looked back at the jar, overcome with horror. Her left hand went to her mouth as if it could somehow protect her, and gazing at the clouded fluid she saw again the dark hole of a mouth where the lips were slowly deteriorating and the white teeth shone bright. She saw the gleaming jelly of the eyes. No, don’t look at it. But what was in the jar beside it? There were things moving in the fluid, worms moving. The seal had been broken.
She turned and left the room, leaning against the wall, her eyes shut, the lamp burning her hand. Her heart thudded in her ears, and it seemed for a moment the sickness would get the better of her. She’d vomit on the very floor at the head of these filthy stairs, with this wretched vicious woman beside her. Dully, she heard the old woman passing her again. She heard her progress as she went down the stairs, steps slower than before, gaining only a little speed as the woman reached the landing.
“Come down, Rowan Mayfair,” she said. “Put out the lamp, but light the candle before you do, and bring it with you.”
Slowly Rowan righted herself. She pushed her left hand back through her hair. Fighting off another wave of nausea, she moved slowly back into the bedroom. She set down the lamp, on the little table by the door from which she’d taken it, just when she thought her fingers couldn’t take the heat anymore, and for a moment she held her right hand to her lips, trying to soothe the burn. Then slowly she lifted the candle and plunged it down the glass chimney of the lamp, because she knew the glass of the chimney was too hot to touch now. The wick caught, wax dripping on the wick, and then she blew out the lamp, and stood still for a moment, her eyes falling on that rolled rug and the pair of leather shoes tossed against it.
No, not tossed, she thought. No. Slowly she moved towards the shoes. Slowly, she extended her own left foot until the toe of her shoe touched one of those shoes, and then she kicked the shoe and realized that it was caught on something even as it fell loose and she saw the gleaming white bone of the leg extending from the trouser within the rolled carpet.
Paralyzed, she stared at the bone. At the rolled rug itself. And then walking along it, she saw at the other end what she could not see before, the dark gleam of brown hair. Someone wrapped in the rug. Someone dead, dead a long time, and look, the stain on the floor, the blackish stain on the side of the rug, near the bottom where the fluids long ago flowed out and dried up, and see, even the mashed and tiny insects fatally caught in the sticky fluid so long ago.
Rowan, promise me, you will never go back, promise me.
From somewhere far below, she heard the old woman’s voice, so faint it was no more than a thought. “Come down, Rowan Mayfair.”
Rowan Mayfair, Rowan Mayfair, Rowan Mayfair …
Refusing to hurry, she made her way out, glancing back once more at the dead man concealed in the rug, at the slender spoke of white bone protruding from it. And then she shut the door and walked sluggishly down the stairs.
The old woman stood at the open elevator door, merely watching, the ugly gold light from the elevator bulb shining full on her.
“You know what I found,” Rowan said. She steadied herself as she reached the newel post. The little candle danced for a moment, throwing pale translucent shadows on the ceiling.
“You found the dead man, wrapped in the rug.”
“What in God’s name has gone on in this house!” Rowan gasped. “Are you all mad?”
How cold and controlled the old woman seemed, how utterly detached. She pointed to the open elevator. “Come with me,” she said. “There is nothing more to see and only a little more to say … ”
“Oh, but there’s a lot more to say,” Rowan said. “Tell me—did you tell my mother these things? Did you show her those horrible jars and dolls?”
“I didn’t drive her mad if that’s your meaning.”
“I think anyone who grew up in this house might go mad.”
“So do I. That’s why I sent you away from it. Now come.”
“Tell me