GET
OUT
GET
OUT
DEATH
DEATH
LIVES
HERE
He backed away from the door, looked around at the gloomy walls. In the cold dark fireplace something flickered. A light. He did not move closer; rather he recoiled from it, fearing what it would be. Yet he couldn't take his eyes away.
A rat emerged and perched atop the pile of ancient lumber stacked there. It looked him piercingly in the eye. As Grandmother had done. It opened its mouth.
"Find me," it said.
This was not madness, Quentin knew that now. It was not his mind creating a false reality. On the contrary, his mind was correctly apprehending that the rules that he had always believed reality to be governed by did not apply in this house. Something had made a rat speak, had made words appear on a door to a room he must not enter. Something had led him through this house in the dark. Something had made him believe that the woman he loved was at his side as he walked alone along the bluffs. Someone had introduced him to a group of dead people at breakfast and convinced him that he was eating the best food he had ever tasted in his life, while leaving his stomach empty.
All this he understood rationally. But his body was not rational. His heart was pounding, his limbs were cold, his fingers trembled. He dared not turn his back on the rat, on the parlor door, and yet dared not stay in this place another moment. So he did turn, and walked briskly to the front door where his luggage waited for him. He opened the door, picked up his bags, and stepped out onto the snowy porch.
At the foot of the stairs, where the car had stopped last night, Madeleine stood waiting for him, her face calm, even sad.
The terror fled, swept away by his relief. Madeleine was real. Madeleine was here. His love for her washed over him again. It would be all right. She would see him through this episode of—of whatever it was.
"Mad," he said. "You won't believe what I've been going through."
She shook her head. "Oh, Tin, I'm not Madeleine. Not anymore. She's gone."
He walked down the stairs toward her. "Call yourself whatever you want, you're here. I thought I had lost you."
"You lost me years ago, Tin. When I died in that hospital. When I told you to mellow out. When I told you not to keep me tied down."
He stopped, not believing the words coming out of Madeleine's mouth.
"You dig, you dig, you dig?" she said.
And then it wasn't Madeleine's mouth. There was no transformation. It had never been Madeleine.
"Lizzy," he whispered.
"Now you see me," she said. "But you're still not seeing me. It's your own mind putting this shape on what I am."
"Was it you all along?" At once he remembered seeing her in the grocery store, and going into that townhouse.
"That wasn't me," she said. "But that was part of why I came. You have the power to call me. When you thought you had seen me, your need for me brought me back here. Most of us are tied to our bodies, our relics, but I'm tied more to you. I don't mind, really I don't. Especially because when I came, I saw the danger you were in."
"But if it's you, Lizzy, I'm not in danger."
"It wasn't me, don't you get it? It was someone else who found my image in your mind and used it. When I came to you she was making you see that hallucination of me going into the townhouse, but I wasn't inside the thing you saw, Tin, I was with you. There in the car beside you, feeling you call to me. You're so strong when you call to me like that. Even if I wanted to, I don't think I could stay away."
"Why didn't you speak to me then, the way you're doing now?"
"Because she was there. The dead don't have any strength compared to the living. If she wants me silent, if she's paying attention to me, then believe me, Tin, I can't speak."
"I'm alive, Lizzy. I wanted you to speak."
"Yes, you had the strength to call me, but, Tin, if you're strong, she's—well, she's beyond strong. When she noticed me, she saw the opportunity. She used me, kept me close by, so she could raid my memory the way she raided yours. Use me as part of that Madeleine thing she made. She's a master at manipulating the dead. I thought it was mortuary reunion week at breakfast here this morning. All last night she was rummaging through the graveyard, calling those poor saps back from wherever they were and forcing them to attend her little banquet."
"Why? Who is she? Is she Madeleine?"
"I told you, she made Madeleine. Out of nothing. Out of your desires. Whatever you thought was beautiful and charming, that's what Madeleine became. The way she found the perfect taste and smell and texture for every food you ate today. She also drew on me, of course, forced me into the illusion. I was like clay to her, I couldn't do anything but what she wanted as long as she watched me."
"So I guess she's not watching now."
"You failed her. She left raging. And for the time being, she forgot me. For the first time since you called me back, we're alone together."
Quentin remembered how it was when he first took Madeleine home to meet Mom and Dad. How Madeleine never left them alone.
"Yes," said Lizzy. "Like that. Because she's mortal, she has power over me. She could paste little bits of me into Madeleine. My memories of you. Little habits of mine that you would respond to without realizing it."
"And I believed it all."
"Of course you did. Everyone did. When you went out in public with Madeleine, she pulled me in and used me as the core of her, so the illusion could fool hundreds of people all at once."
"That must have been hard for you."
"Only because I hated what she was doing to you. As for me, I had no urgent appointments. The dead never do. It's not that we're apathetic, we still care about things as much as ever. We're... patient."
"And yet you're here."
"Because you have a deadline. Because there are worse things than death."
"Losing Madeleine?"
"Opening that box."
"Why? What's in it?"
"I don't know what it is, Tin. I only know that it's very strong and the others are all terrified of it."
"The others?"
"The other dead ones. The dead ones at breakfast. The only one who doesn't fear it is the one who's been using us. She hungers for it. That's why she's so angry now. Why she isn't paying attention to us. We aren't useful to her at the moment."
"So she is human. She can only do one thing at a time."
"She's stronger than you and definitely stronger than me, but she can't do everything. I don't think she was able to keep her true self from leaking into Madeleine. Especially today. Today she was so busy keeping her dead puppets under control that she wasn't as careful about making Madeleine act like Miss Perfect all the time. Especially when she had the servants in the room. There weren't any real people behind those servants, dead or alive. She was just making you see them. That's a lot harder than building an illusion around a real soul. Making those servants about wore her out. And while she was maintaining them, some of the others got to sneak in a few things they wanted to say to you."
"Lizzy, I don't understand this."
"And you think I do? It's not like they give us a manuaclass="underline" How to Be Dead. The answers to everything don't become clear the minute you die. I mean, now I know there's definitely a life after death, but we don't look like humans to each other. You see me like this because when you recognize that I'm Lizzy, your mind adds the rest."
The moment she said it, he realized that she was looking a lot less definite. Wavering.
"Don't lose me now," Lizzy cried. "I have to tell you how this works, so you aren't completely helpless against her!"