Look - Zan Romanoff Page 0,51
Cruz.”
He likes you because you’re innocent, Lulu thinks. But also, He likes you because he thinks he can manipulate you. Which is ungenerous. There’s plenty about Cass to like. She knows that way, way too well.
“Anyway,” Cass says. It’s clear she’s had enough of that subject. “I mentioned Bluebeard to Dylan at the end of this summer, and he got kind of obsessed. He’s majoring in film, so now he’s thinking he’s going to write his thesis on it or something.”
“I’ve actually been looking into it too,” Lulu admits. “After Ryan mentioned it to me that first time, I got curious. You know. About the legacy. And”—she pauses, makes sure she sounds a little overdramatic—“the curse.”
Cass rolls her eyes. “It’s not a curse,” she says. “It’s just a thing that happened.”
“What’s the difference?”
“A curse keeps happening. It stays alive in a place. You’ve been to The Hotel. Does it seem like it has ghosts to you?”
“Not angry ones.”
“Exactly.”
* * *
Dylan projects Bluebeard onto a sheet in the backyard. He’s dragged a couch out from inside, which Cass and Lulu claim for themselves, a couple of sleeping bags wrapped around them to ward off the night’s sharp chill.
It’s very weird watching a silent movie: For one thing, Lulu can’t look at her phone if she wants to keep up with the dialogue. And then the city becomes the film’s soundtrack: helicopters buzzing by overhead and the distant wail of sirens, the rumble of traffic, music from a neighbor’s party drifting by.
The plot of the film is fairly straightforward. Connie Wilmott plays Katherine, a small-town girl whose small town is bankrolled by a man with a presumably blue beard—in this version, everyone calls him Barbaro. He’s been married three times, always to girls from outside the town; all three of those wives have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The people in the town are suspicious, but they know better than to ask questions.
Barbaro owns the local factory, and the bank. When Katherine’s father falls into debt, he invites Barbaro over for dinner in order to slyly introduce him to his beautiful daughters, Katherine and her sister, Anna. Barbaro takes the bait; he forgives the debts in exchange for permission to marry Katherine.
Who is, understandably, not pleased.
She’s taken to his house on a hill; she’s given the run of the place, and keys to every room. There’s one she can’t enter, he tells her. There’s a door she has the key to, but which she must never open.
For months, Katherine does as she’s told. She comes to love the house, which is beautiful. She comes to a grudging respect for her husband, who does what he can to care for her. He seems like he might not be such an evil man.
Maybe that’s why she looks, Lulu thinks. She can feel herself starting to trust him, and the animal part of her brain knows that she’s wrong to do it. He’s tame, maybe, but he is not safe.
Katherine opens the door she’s never supposed to open. She sees the bodies of all the women he’s loved before, bloodied, lifeless, hung on display.
She opens her mouth. There’s silence where her scream should be.
She drops the key. Its gets stained with blood that won’t scrub off. Barbaro comes home and sees it. He has his hands at her throat.
Katherine’s sister is knocking on the door.
Barbaro lets her go. He’s a patient man; he’ll kill her after her sister visits. He’ll let her dangle, helpless, and enjoy watching her squirm.
Anna is smart, though. She recognizes the terror on Katherine’s face. She convinces Barbaro that she and Katherine need to be left alone, that they have some intimate sisterly business to attend to. They escape out a side door, and down the hill.
They go to the police—and find Barbaro at the station waiting for them. Of course the cops, partially funded by Barbaro’s generosity, are all too happy to send his wife home with him again. She’s being hysterical over nothing, he told them, and they had no reason not to believe him.
All seems lost, until the lovely Anna convinces the chief of police to go up to the house with her. They arrive to find Katherine tied to a chair in the secret room, and Barbaro sharpening his knife.
When the film ends, one of Dylan’s friends lets out a long, low whistle. “Dude,” he says, impressed, “that was fucked up.”
“You didn’t know the story?” another one asks. “It’s, like, a famous fairy tale.”
“Not really into fairy tales,”