Dennis did not stop to dress nor to dry himself. Barefoot, dripping, clad in bathing trunks, he ran around the corner into the hall, and savagely pushed the button for the elevator. He had thought of running up the stairs, but the elevator would take less time than a trip up the labyrinthine, curving stairways.
He jabbed the button again, and realized that nothing was happening. He heard no whirring of gears, no whine of cables. The bastard! If he had been able to turn the lights on and off with whatever strange powers he possessed, the elevator should be a simple thing to stop.
Dennis cursed, whirled away from the elevator door, and ran toward the steps, his wet feet slapping the carpet beneath. He reached the stairs to the lobby and began to run up them, when the lights went out.
"No!" he shouted, but heard only his voice echoing through the building. One hand in front of him to ward off whatever barrier he might strike, the other clutching the banister, he climbed up the steps in the deep blackness that only cellars can exude. The banister came to an end, dim light was visible, and he knew he was in the first floor hall. In the light that shone through the glass doors from the street lamp outside, he made his way to the door to the lobby, shambled across it, and pushed open the door to a small storage room where, among other things, the ushers' flashlights were kept. He snatched one up, flicked its switch, and ran on, preceded by a weak, yellow beam that he prayed would stay alive.
Up the winding stair he ran to the second floor, then to the third. As he labored up the narrower stairway to the fourth floor, he noticed that the strength of the flashlight's beam was diminishing, and ran faster, so as to beat its imminent failure.
He was not successful. The light winked out just as his foot touched the last step. Surprised, he tripped, banged his shin, stood up, kept moving down the hall, knowing that the costume shop was ahead, that if he kept going straight he would run right into the door. Right hand against the wall, left hand out, Dennis scuffled along, expecting at any moment to bump into the door he sought.
But it did not come, and he thought that perhaps he had taken a wrong turn, or was on the wrong floor, or was trapped in the Emperor's world, in the skewed reality of a mad thing's mind, and that the hall went on forever into the darkness, that there would never be an end to it. Sobbing in frustration and fear, he pushed on, expecting at any moment to feel the floor fall away beneath his feet, plunging him down, down into some nightmare even worse than the one he now inhabited.
And just when he thought he could not bear to move another step, just as he was on the verge of falling, shrieking, crying, surrendering to whatever the Emperor was, his bare toes battered against a wall, and the pain flung him backwards, down, and he fell hard on the floor, hurting, but thinking he was there, oh Christ, he was there at the end, at the door, and he scuttled on his knees to it, fumbling for the door knob, ignoring the sharp pain of his aching foot, finding the knob, turning it, pushing in, the door opening, and the light going on as if on cue, as if someone had been waiting to illuminate the scene.
In a large and chaotic pile of clothes, Marvella Johnson was sitting like a Buddha, rocking back and forth, tears cutting a trail of ice down her black cheeks. Whitney lay in her arms, unmoving, her face turned away from Dennis, buried in Marvella's wide breast. A soft, irregular, grunting noise came from between Marvella's parted lips, and slowly her massive head came up, looked at Dennis.
"Oh, Dennis," she said, in a soft and dreamy voice he had never heard her use before. "Oh, Dennis, she's dead…"
He walked over to the pair as if in a dream. "What happened? Marvella, what happened?"
She shook her head, and it seemed as if she could not stop. "She was playing in the pile of clothes, tunneling through, she's done it lots of times. I went into the bathroom, just went into the bathroom for a minute, and when I came out I looked over and I didn't see her, and called her name. Then I saw the pile moving, but she didn't say a thing, and I thought she was down under, playing a trick on me, and. .. and God help me, I went back to my work. I looked over again, and saw the clothes still moving.
"And I knew that it wasn't her moving them. They were coming up from the sides, like a… like a sponge or something, like something living, and I shouted her name, and went over, and started pulling the clothes off her, but they kept moving back into the pile like crawling things, like arms of an octopus or something, and when I got 'em all off, when I got to her…”
Marvella gave a choking sob and held the girl to her breast. "I did everything I knew. I gave her CPR, mouth to mouth, I had the courses, but she wasn't breathing, and I called 911, and they're coming, but it's too late now, too late. Oh, my little precious…”
"Marvella…”
"Then the lights went off, and I thought – I hoped maybe I was dying too. I hoped so, Dennis. Oh God, oh God save her sweet little soul…”
Dennis trembled from the cold, and from the fear. He heard a sound then, a low chuckle from above, but Marvella did not look up from her granddaughter's still face. Dennis looked, upward to the loft where the old costumes hung like empty shells of men and women, and saw what the Emperor wanted him to see.
Tommy Werton stood there, his severed head suspended in the air, strands of meat and gristle dangling over his neck, open like a bloody chimney, his half-closed eyes staring at Dennis. The features shifted, and Tommy became…
… Harry Ruhl, standing gutted, crimson letters streaked on his flesh, until the letters faded, and Harry melted into…
… Robin, his Robin, like a broken doll, neck twisted, back bent, her ruin of a mouth forming silent words over and over again in a litany Dennis heard in his soul – You Royal Bastard… Royal Bastard… Royal Bastard…
… and now her clothing vanished, and Donna, her face blue, her tongue black, ogled Dennis with eyes like eggs, until her flesh grew red, turned to cloth, ribbons, medals, braid, the dark tongue lost in a red beard, a devil's grin, bright blue eyes…
… to the Eniperor, who beamed down on Dennis Hamilton, as if proud to show his own creations to his creator, giving a crisp and military salute before he faded into the grief filled air.
Dennis's gaze hung in the empty space, still seeing the faces of the dead, and that final, most hideous face of the never alive. He whispered to the night, whispered so that Marvella could not hear, but knew that something else would -
"I created you. And God help me, I will destroy you."
ACT III: DESTROYER
"The way is to the destructive element submit yourself."
Scene 1
The rest of the night was chaos, a phantasmagoria of whirling faces, medics working in vain, the omnipresent policemen returning like vultures to worry the dead, Marvella's eternal sobbing, the pale, drawn faces and whispered words of Curt and Evan and John, and the stern, dread countenance of Dan Munro, his presence like a bell tolling doom for still another denizen of the Venetian Theatre. Questions were asked, photographs taken, in a dreadful fivefold repetition, and Dennis told only some of what he knew, lying some of the time, keeping the truth to himself, knowing that it would be thought a lie, that he would be thought mad for telling it.
He agreed listlessly when Munro told him that he wanted to meet with him at the station first thing in the morning, and did not see the growing awareness in Munro's eyes, nor feel the solicitude the policeman subtly offered.