He threw a look across at her, white-hot.
"They'll come looking," she said. "She'll tell them everything."
"Maybe..."
"Don't you care?" she demanded.
The bandaged lump shrugged. "Yes," he said. "Of course. But we can't leave, sweetheart." Sweetheart. The word mocked them both, a breath of sentiment in a room that had known only pain. "I can't face the world like this." He gestured to his face. "Can I?" he said, staring up at her. "Look at me." She looked.
"Can I?"
No.
"No." He went back to perusing the floor. "I need a skin, Julia."
"A skin?"
"Then, maybe...maybe we can go dancing together. Isn't that what you want?"
He spoke of both dancing and death with equal nonchalance, as though one carried as little significance as the other. It calmed her, hearing him talk that way.
"How?" she said at last. Meaning, how can a skin be stolen, but also, how will our sanity survive?
"There are ways," said the flayed face, and blew her a kiss.
3
Had it not been for the white walls she might never have picked up the box. Had there been a picture to look at-a vase of sunflowers, or a view of pyramids-anything to break the monotony of the room, she would have been content to stare at it, and think. But the blankness was too much; it gave her no handhold on sanity. So she reached across to the table beside the bed and picked up the box.
It was heavier than she remembered. She had to sit up in bed to examine it. There was little enough to see. No lid that she could find. No keyhole. No hinges. If she turned it over once she turned it half a hundred times, finding no clue to how it might be opened. It was not solid, she was certain of that. So logic demanded that there be a way into it. But where?
She tapped it, shook it, pulled and pressed it, all without result. It was not until she rolled over in bed and examined it in the full glare of the lamp that she discovered some clue as to how the box was constructed. There were infinitesimal cracks in the sides of the box, where one piece of the puzzle abutted the next. They would have been invisible, but that a residue of blood remained in them, tracing the complex relation of the parts.
Systematically, she began to feel her way over the sides, testing her hypothesis by pushing and pulling once more. The cracks offered her a general geography of the toy; without them she might have wandered the six sides forever. But the options were significantly reduced by the clues she'd found; there were only so many ways the box could be made to come apart.
After a time, her patience was rewarded. A click, and suddenly one of the compartments was sliding out from beside its lacquered neighbors. Within, there was beauty. Polished surfaces which scintillated like the finest mother-of-pearl, colored shadows seeming to move in the gloss.
And there was music too; a simple tune emerged from the box, played on a mechanism that she could not yet see. Enchanted, she delved further. Though one piece had been removed, the rest did not come readily. Each segment presented a fresh challenge to fingers and mind, the victories rewarded with a further filigree added to the tune.
She was coaxing the fourth section out by an elaborate series of turns and counter turns, when she heard the bell. She stopped working, and looked up.
Something was wrong. Either her weary eyes were playing tricks or the blizzard-white walls had moved subtly out of true. She put down the box, and slipped out of bed to go to the window. The bell still rang, a solemn tolling. She drew back the curtain a few inches. It was night, and windy. Leaves migrated across the hospital lawn; moths congregated in the lamplight. Unlikely as it seemed, the sound of the bell wasn't coming from outside. It was behind her. She let the curtain drop and turned back into the room.
As she did so, the bulb in the bedside light guttered like a living flame. Instinctively, she reached for the pieces of the box: they and these strange events were intertwined somehow. As her hand found the fragments, the light blew out.
She was not left in darkness however; nor was she alone. There was a soft phosphorescence at the end of the bed, and in its folds, a figure. The condition of its flesh beggared her imagination-the hooks, the scars. Yet its voice, when it spoke, was not that of a creature in pain.
"It's called the Lemarchand Configuration," it said, pointing at the box. She looked down; the pieces were no longer in her hand, but floating inches above her palm. Miraculously, the box was reassembling itself without visible aid, the pieces sliding back together as the whole construction turned over and over. As it did so she caught fresh glimpses of the polished interior, and seemed to see ghosts' faces-twisted as if by grief or bad glass-howling back at her. Then all but one of the segments was sealed up, and the visitor was claiming her attention afresh.
"The box is a means to break the surface of the real," it said. "A kind of invocation by which we
Cenobites can be notified-"
"Who?" she said.
"You did it in ignorance," the visitor said. "Am I right?"
"Yes."
"It's happened before," came the reply. "But there's no help for it. No way to seal the Schism, until we take what's ours..."
"This is a mistake," she said.
"Don't try to fight. It's quite beyond your control. You have to accompany me."
She shook her head. She'd had enough of bullying nightmares to last her a lifetime.
"I won't go with you," she said. "Damn you, I won't-"
As she spoke, the door opened. A nurse she didn't recognize-a member of the night shift presumably-was standing there.
"Did you call out?" she asked.
Kirsty looked at the Cenobite, then back at the nurse. They stood no more than a yard apart.
"She doesn't see me," it told her. "Nor hear me. I belong to you, Kirsty. And you to me.
"No," she said.
"Are you sure?" said the nurse. "I thought I heard-"
Kirsty shook her head. It was lunacy, all lunacy.
"You should be in bed," the nurse chided. "You'll catch your death."
The Cenobite tittered.
"I'll be back in five minutes," said the nurse. "Please go back to sleep."
And she was gone again.
"We'd better go," it said. "Leave them to their patchwork, eh? Such depressing places."
"You can't do this," she insisted.
It moved toward her nevertheless. A row of tiny bells, depending from the scraggy flesh of its neck, tinkled as it approached. The stink it gave off made her want to heave.
"Wait," she said.
"No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering."
"The box," she said in desperation. "Don't you want to know where I got the box?"
"Not particularly."
"Frank Cotton," she said. "Does the name mean anything to you? Frank Cotton."
The Cenobite smiled.
"Oh yes. We know Frank."
"He solved the box too, am I right?"
"He wanted pleasure, until we gave it to him. Then he squirmed."
"If I took you to him..."
"He's alive then?"
"Very much alive."
"And you're proposing what? That I take him back instead of you?"
"Yes. Yes. Why not? Yes. "
The Cenobite moved away from her. The room sighed.
"I'm tempted," it said. Then: "But perhaps you're cheating me. Perhaps this is a lie, to buy you time."
"I know where he is, for God's sake," she said. "He did this to me!" She presented her slashed arms for its perusal.