Treasure Box Page 0,46
here - not a single footprint led from the butler's pantry to the table. What did I eat, then?
The answering churning in his stomach told him that he had eaten nothing. The dryness in his mouth told him that he had drunk nothing. Not since yesterday in the limo, the Icelandic bottled water he had poured for himself and Mad. Had she drunk it? Was there anyone there to do the drinking? Had there ever been anyone there?
Yes, there had to have been. The limo driver did go to her door to open it - he saw her, too! His parents had seen her. His friends, the people at parties and meetings all over America - they all saw her, talked to her. They couldn't all be insane, or if they were, then insanity had lost all meaning.
Madeleine! He felt a sudden terrified yearning for her. Madeleine, how could I even for a moment have stopped believing in you!
He ran from the library, out into the entry hall, then up the two flights of stairs to the room they had shared. He flung open the door. There were his two bags, the suitcase and the carry-on. His side of the bed had been disturbed and slept in. But there were no sheets, just a single white dustcover thrown over the mattress, and webs fringed the bed on every side. Only his drawers in the bureau had been disturbed. Only his clothing hung in the musty wardrobe.
He ran into the bathroom. There was no water in the toilet, just his own urine at the bottom of the bowl. The floor of the bathroom was grimy. The tub was vile - at some point the sewer must have backed up and left grime all over the bottom of it. Had she known? Had she known what the bathroom was really like, and had enough compassion for him to steer him away from trying to bathe in it? The taps in the sink gave no water. His toothbrush still had toothpaste embedded in it - he hadn't rinsed it, but he had brushed his teeth. And now that he thought about it, he could taste the toothpaste in his mouth, could feel the graininess of it between his cheek and gums.
His heart beating madly, his mind racing yet thinking of nothing, he quickly gathered all his clothing out of the wardrobe and the drawers, his kit out of the bathroom, and crammed them all into his luggage. I slept alone in here last night, he thought. And yet we made love, Madeleine and I. We made love and then finished our sandwiches. But there was not a crumb to be found, and only a disturbance of the dust and grime on the small night table where his fingers must have brushed across the surface as he thought he was setting down the plate with his sandwich on it.
Luggage in hand, he left the room and clattered down the stairs. He did not even bother to look for a telephone. If this house had one, it would be as disconnected as the electricity and the waterlines.
The electricity. Today he could see because of light from the windows. But last night there was no light. And yet he hadn't bumped into anything. Someone had led him. Madeleine had led him. She might leave no footprints, but someone who knew this house had been with him or he never could have made his way inside in the darkness, up the stairs, into the bedroom in the pitch black that must have prevailed. The thick bedroom curtains had been closed.
I was not making it all up. Hallucinations can make you see things that aren't there, but they can't possibly let you see things that are there in pitch darkness. Schizophrenia doesn't give you a flashlight.
He set down his bags beside the door. He had been brought here by someone for some reason. The illusion had continued right up to the time when he didn't open the treasure box. Then Madeleine had fled and everyone disappeared except Uncle Paul and Grandmother. The ones whose headstones he had identified in the graveyard had disappeared.
What was real? The cleanliness of the place had been illusion, the food and servants were false, the people were - what, ghosts? - but the table had been real, the chairs, the doors, the bed, even the toilet and sink and tub in the bathroom. Maybe, in the parlor, on a small table, there really