There's a pounding at the door and she won't answer. Not now, not ever. How to get out of here? She knew only two exits: the front door (still pounding) or down below (no, no, no, it leads back to…)
"Please, is anyone there?"
No, no one is here. George is not here, Hideyoshi is not here, and so Eva is not here. The gun she clutches still has some shots left. But if it should be nothing? Those bullets are needed; if those people (masks with gore) find her here, she will need all of them.
"Break it down."
She stifles a scream. So it is them. Now is the crucial moment. She has not explored all corners of this place (to think Rosa wasn't lying!) and so might come across some secret door behind which to hide. But that only prolonged eventual discovery should they be familiar with the house. They were already here, weren't they? Safer to assume they knew the entirety. That left the basement, not even an option. Why were they even bothering with the entrance when they could go through there? If she ran down there now, would someone greet her with a smile?
She sank to the floor, back pressed against cool wallpaper while her head swam with fever. No bath, no food in so many days. It was only by chance she had made it this far. When Battler had fallen beneath her gun in that obscenely lit room — his chest an open flower and his eyes all lost in haze— it was then they came after her.
"Won't you greet the island's master, Eva?"
Running is all she can remember; running and screaming through the rain as the mansion behind her blazed with light. There were insanities inside; things that smiled as they raped you, as they ate you, as they slit you. She couldn't bring up any faces, only dark rooms with no keys and the acrid smell of smoke upon her face. Someone had blown it. Who? She clutched her cheeks and drew trails where her tears had been.
"Keep at it!"
Someone had caught up with her that night. She remembers being dragged by her hair to the well at the back of the mansion, her clothes all asunder and muddy from the forest. They had dropped her down there, never mind her kicks and punches, and watched as she landed on bodies beginning to rot.
"I should have brought the orgel."
She doesn't remember when she reached the end of the tunnel, only finding a door that opened onto a dungeon, then a flight of stairs leading up to here. Kuwadorian had kept her safe and warm; its wonderland intricacies a softer contrast to the nightmarish tendencies of her childhood home. But even here they shall find her out.
"What is that? Hello?"
She is drawn out of this by the startling smell of the brine. The wind is blowing through here; late afternoon has come. Squinting for a moment, she makes out three figures steadily approaching, men in dark uniforms with weapons drawn.
"Madame, who are you?"
She smiles. Rising on unsteady legs, she takes aim at the nearest mantelpiece (the men start scattering) and fires. The sound of the shards beneath her feet is incredibly soothing. Stepping out into the open air, she notes it won't be long before the rain starts up again. The smell is everywhere.
The men are shouting for her to throw away the shotgun. She can barely hear them over the thrumming in her ears. Slowly, a distant comprehension of the present situation begins to filter through, when she catches a glimpse of color near one of the trees. A bright yellow coat; it's smeared scarlet.
There had been a party. Someone had melted her son's face off and flayed her husband and then the candles went out and then…
"We made such a splendid murder play! On the floor, Eva, on the floor!"
Three policemen were shot before the medics restrained her and stopped the screaming.