Fairytale of New York
Chapter Four: A Little Bit of Hocus Pocus
HOMIGOSH I'm back. You'll understand when you get started on this why it was a bit delayed--I mean, it's a monster. Anyway, enjoy this new installment in the adventures of Marjorie, knowing that I sacrificed an entire Sunday evening proofing and adjusting and finishing and pulling hair. Kudos to anyone who spots the Sandman reference! Oh, and happy new year!
...in February. Shut up.
And um, slight warning: if you thought this was a fluffball story for some reason, you may be a tad shocked to discover all the blood I put in this chapter. :I The squeemish, beware.
Now:
There was a growing discomfort that pushed at Marjorie's eyelids and made her cold. Something hard was pressing into her all around and a terrible aching was in her arm, seeming to increase with every moment, but this was a trick her brain was playing on her: something wasn't hurting her, she was already hurt. She was simply waking up to feel it.
It was her arm. She was against something hard, slumped into it, and she couldn't sit up strait and she couldn't really feel her arm but she could feel it hanging there, and the pain she could almost feel but didn't frightened her and she tried to move a little.
It was a mistake. Pain shot up her arm like lightning and flashed behind her eyes, making her jerk her head back and cry out a little. When the white-hot path flashing in her eyes faded after the pain subsided, Marjorie was still looking up, looking through the dim light coming through the shattered glass windows over the rubble, eyes wide in fear because she had just remembered what had happened and where she was, and she was so scared because she knew she didn't know how badly she was hurt and she had heard it just after she had cried out, a movement from somewhere in the dark she couldn't see and she held her breath.
The gargoyle was still alive.
It was going to kill her.
Exactly ten hours thirty-three minutes earlier:
"I still don't see why we had to come back," Matt was complaining. "We'd barely been gone fifteen minutes—"
"Yeah, Bluestone, I know," Elisa said tensely. She was walking ahead of him at such a brisk pace he had to nearly jog to keep up. "Just give me a few moments to take care of something, and we can go."
There was an edge in her voice Matt had heard a few times before. It wasn't often, but occasionally something would trigger something—a chick thing, he guessed—and suddenly there was no telling what was going through her head. Matt studied his partner from behind as she charged into the stairwell and started climbing two at a time. Keeping pace, he wondered if he wasn't surprised by these odd mood swings so much as he was by the completely innocuous times at which she went off.
Just a few moments ago, for instance. Captain Chavez asked them to do a background check on a few suspicious storefronts in connection to a contraband ring that had ties with Dracon's crew. Matt would've thought that Elisa would've been eager for the chance to settle the score with Dracon after he had weaseled his way out of a lasting sentence for having her shot, not to mention weapon theft and racketeering; but he was learning now that what you'd expect with a badge like Elisa wasn't always what you got.
It might have had something to do with that girl, he thought. Elisa seemed to have known her from somewhere, and after she got in the car she couldn't stop glancing back in the mirror, her fingers twitching on the wheel. When he'd asked about her, Elisa had brushed it off, saying something about the library. But not even six blocks away from the station Elisa had swerved back the other direction, nearly giving him a heart attack, saying only that there was something important she had forgotten about she had to take care of before they left.
When she got like this, Matt had learned (the hard way) that it was pointless in trying to get an answer out of her. It struck him as odd, to be certain, but he also was well aware of just how odd he seemed to everyone else in the precinct, Elisa included. He'd gotten a lot of grief over the years about his own quirky obsession with conspiracy theories, but never more than the occasional roll of the eyes from Elisa. So he was perfectly willing whenever these rare instances of inexplicable behavior reared up to just stand unobtrusively out of the way.
"Yo, Matt," she said from above him, and Matt looked up to see that she'd picked up speed while he'd been pondering. "Look, I'm…sorry about just rushing back like this. Why don't you grab some coffee and rest for a sec, okay? I'll be back down as soon as I'm done." Her voice and face were apologetic and a little awkward, as if she were a bit embarrassed.
"Okay. Sure thing," Matt responded after a surprised pause at her sudden shift in attitude. Oh, Maza and her mercurial moods. If it wasn't for the fact that he occasionally spent his spare time trying to track down ancient secret societies by decoding their messages from the bar codes of Pepsi cans, he'd swear left and right that she was the with the head full of crazy.
Elisa Maza watched her partner backtrack to the fourth floor stairwell exit, her head filled with a notion that most people would indeed deem crazy. Her partner didn't know about the tenants up in the clock tower, and neither did anyone else. After she heard the click of the door closing behind him, Elisa was off at a run up the stairs, in order to make sure that it stayed that way.
As soon as that girl had asked about the clock tower, alarm bells had gone off in her head. Her instinct had flared, and she should have done something right away instead of just going along with Matt like nothing was wrong. She was frantically wracking her brains: was there some way that someone could have traced the gargoyles back to the tower? Was this girl some sort of scout, for Xanatos maybe? Didn't strike her as his style, but Xanatos always had some hidden angle—
"Get a grip, Maza," she told herself between gasps for air, finally reaching the top landing. More than likely the girl was just a nosy kid. But better make sure and get to the guys and warn them first—
—Elisa's hand just touched the door knob before the door was forced out, and a blur dressed in faded blue with a desperate expression pummeled straight into her, knocking them both to the edge of the stairs below with a startled yell. Elisa's hand shot out and grabbed at the railing, her other arm vice-like around the girl, keeping them from tumbling down the rest of the stairs but forcing them down into a very painful heap.
There was confusion and panic as they both struggled to get themselves upright, each hurried movement impeding the other until Elisa snatched the girl's wrist and both recognized each other in a flash of dread, and both were still and frozen on the floor, each seeing in the other's eyes that there was no longer any way out.
Now:
Marjorie felt herself paralyzed by a primal force. Once she had picked up a pet rabbit of a schoolgirl friend as a child, and had been alarmed at how frightened it had been in her hands, rigid and terrified, and as the rabbit's its heart thrummed she could feel it through its entire body. This is what it had felt, she realized, and she was as helpless to feeling it as the rabbit was; it swallowed her completely.
"H-hh-hhnnnn…"
Marjorie's breathing hitched, and then increased. Somewhere in her mind she knew at once that this sound was one of pain, much like the involuntary cry she had released earlier.
That it could still be alive—after that blast—it had thrown her against the wall, off of her feet in an instant as if she was weightless, the burning light and thunder…
"H-chk-hhck-k-k…"
Every nerve shaking, Marjorie summoned what strength she had left in her trembling legs and pulled her feet closer to her, careful not to make a sound as she lifted them over the debris that littered the floor. Any motion set off the dull throb in her arm to a sharp searing agony, but she bit down on her lip. How long it took for her to finally stand against the wall she couldn't tell—time had become meaningless.
She took her first step, and saw at once how she would immediately upset a chuck of stone that had been blown apart in the blast before she had time to put down her foot—
The sound it made as it tumbled to the floor was earth shattering in the still darkness. The groaning sounds ceased.
It had heard her.
Exactly ten hours twenty-two minutes earlier:
"Did something—whoa, hey, you guys alright?" A sandy-haired man in uniform had opened the door, his eyes full of surprise and then concern. Elisa pulled the girl up from where she'd been sitting stunned a moment before. "Uh, yeah, we're fine, uh…Phil. Just an accident. We'll be alright—"
Elisa glanced at the girl, who was still very pale and clearly shaken up. Her lips were pressed in a tight line and she didn't say anything, but nodded, her wrist tugging only slightly from Elisa's grip.
"Well, good, ya' know—you gotta be careful sometimes, I've said about these doors, if anyone's on the other side and there's an emergency—POW!, you know? You sure you're not hurt?" He was holding the door open still, looking at the girl. Elisa slipped her arm behind the girl's waist and began gently steering her towards the hallway, the girl giving no resistance.
"We're just shaken up," Elisa said, pulling the girl alongside a little more firmly. "Thanks, we're just, uh, we're gonna take the elevator down. Yeah, these doors are just…"
"Yeah, well, they are just the worst, then, aren't they? I got doors like those in my building, and people are always pushing them open and there have been so many times…" Officer Phil Travanti fell into step behind them, talking amiably about the hazards of stairwells and door usage, forming a rear guard without his even realizing it. Elisa saw the kid swallow nervously as they neared the elevator, her hand trembling a little in her grasp the entire time.
"Be just a little bit more careful next time, alright now?" He smiled at them both as the elevator doors closed, giving the kid one final wink before they shut, sealing them in together, alone, for a few minutes more.
Elisa let go of the girl's wrist. She immediately took it in her other hand, moving away from Elisa as far as she could to lean against the side of the elevator. She kept her eyes to the floor, her shoulders hunched as if she were trying to look smaller.
Elisa studied her openly, face inscrutable. She really was just a kid—small build, coming only just past Elisa's shoulder. Her hair was a reddish chestnut that curled haphazardly to her shoulders, and her eyes were scared and blue. She was probably younger than her little sister Beth, who wasn't even out of college yet. It was hard to believe that anyone this rattled would have known what was waiting for them in that clock tower; it was clear to Elisa that whatever the kid had thought was up there, she hadn't been expecting what she actually found.
"It's a pretty slow elevator," Elisa said finally. The kid flinched, but kept her eyes on the floor. A silent moment passed, and Elisa turned away, leaning against the opposite elevator wall.
"You went up into the clock tower, didn't you?" She asked like it was a question, but they both knew the answer already.
There was a feeling of entrapment that made it impossible for either of them to look at one another. The elevator locked them both inside with a heaviness that surrounded them and pressed in at them from all sides, a perfect reprise of that feeling they had shared for an instant above in the stairwell: they didn't know it about each other, but both of them were caught and couldn't avoid what was to come next.
Despite her calm exterior, Elisa was awash with turbulent, nervous emotions. The girl had gone looking for something at the clock tower. Either something had led her there or she hid more than she let on—this wasn't just pure accident. If it weren't for that one thing…Elisa considered but couldn't complete the thought; she honestly didn't know what she would've done even if it had been just an accident. She didn't know what she was going to do now. She hadn't been prepared for this at all.
The kid swallowed nervously again, the sound incongruously loud in the quiet elevator. Her voice cracked. "What's going to happen now?"
Elisa turned her head to look and met the kid's eyes, which were no longer panicked. They were wide and tense, like a cornered animal, but Elisa found she couldn't manage to change her stony expression. She'd had nightmares where somehow the secret of the gargoyles had gotten out and things spiraled beyond her control, dreams that left her drenched in sweat and fear when she finally awoke; they never ended well.
Elisa wasn't going to take that risk. Elisa decided that before she let this kid out of her sight, before she let this kid get anywhere near the gargoyles again—she was going to make absolutely certain that this kid posed no threat at all to her friends.
"We're going to go somewhere and talk," she said, "and then we'll decide what to do after." Before the door had opened to the first floor, Elisa already had a hold of the girl's arm in a grip as hard as the look in her eyes.
Now:
Marjorie didn't move, desperately straining to hear if the creature began moving towards her. The silence in the tower room was almost a defining sound itself, and a part of Marjorie's brain that was not completely focused on not being killed wondered if this was the sound that people in horror films heard while everyone else in the audience got cellos and warning music, and if right now if it was playing would this be the part where she would go toward the creature instead of running for dear life out the door—
Marjorie nearly cried out in dismay, but held it back just in time. She had just realized that the gargoyle, somewhere in the center of the room, was directly between her and the door.
The moaning began again, starting with a soft wheeze and growing to a whimper. It broke in pained gasps, and other expressions of pain Marjorie wished she could shut her ears to rose up from the dark.
The gargoyle would kill her, if it got the chance. But if it was wounded as it sounded…there was still the possibility of escape, if she could be quick and quiet about it. Marjorie began to take small, tense steps towards the sounds, avoiding the rubble that had been cast to the floor in the explosion. Well aware of her own pains, it took Marjorie a good deal of time to find her way in the dim light. It was getting a little brighter with each passing moment, and the sun would rise soon. The sounds of pain became clearer; they were coming from behind the solid oak table that had overturned in the blast.
The instruments that had been on the table were scattered across the floor; glass beakers shattered, torn old pages of paper stirring slightly on the floor, pined down by chucks of rock and ceiling plaster shaken loose. The squat pumpkin-sized cauldron was on its side, its contents congealing on the floor. Next to the cauldron, gleaming silver, was the knife. It was still covered in blood, and the sight of it brought back all of Marjorie's earlier sensations of fear, too recent, too strong—she was frozen looking at it, powerless to stop looking at it. It was shining in the dark—it was somehow beautiful for all of its danger, despite the blood, despite what it had done…Her fingers idly brushed the blood-soaked rag that was wrapped around her injured arm.
"N-no…"
It was something in that plea that reached Marjorie. She blinked and was surprised to discover that she had walked closer to the knife and was in the middle of picking it up. This brought her too close to the table—too close to what was on the other side.
Marjorie's panic doubled in an instant. She lost her balance—hand steadying herself grabbing the table, making too much noise—she had to stay low and back up and get out—
"Ple-e-ase…"
Marjorie stopped. Why was it now, even as she was so scared…those cries sounded so pitiful? It didn't make sense to stay—for any reason—
Without looking at the knife, she groped in the dark and found it, gripping it tightly with her good hand. Slowly, she lifted herself bit by bit and looked over the edge of the table.
Exactly nine hours, thirty-three minutes ago:
The camera had started humming.
"Now that's really strange," Lexington said. For the better part of the last two hours he had been tinkering with it, and though he had prodded it and studied it from every angle he was certain that he had nothing to do with the camera's sudden activation.
"Find something, lad?" Hudson asked, peering over his shoulder. For the better part of two hours he had been slowly pacing their home waiting for the others to return. It was unlike Hudson to pace. It was unlike him to waste energy in idle gestures that served no purpose beyond betraying an agitated state. It was also unlike a gargoyle to worry and fret about the safety of his home instead of facing the threat directly…but like so many things he was discovering, the world in which he made his home was unlike many things he had been accustomed to.
Bronx, who for the better part of two hours had been watching dejectedly as Hudson wandered the clock tower, heaved himself off his haunches and made his way towards Lexington, sniffing at the camera interestedly. "It sounds like it's finally turned on," Lexington was saying. "But it's weird. It's a really old model, obviously. I've never seen one like this. And even weirder, there's not any place to put in tape or film inside. Or batteries, or a place to recharge it. It's almost like it was built not to work. And now…" He lifted the eyepiece to a bulbous, curious eye. "I can't say for certain, but I think it's recording somehow…"
"Hmm," Hudson replied, offering it more in politeness than in comprehension. He gave his beard a thoughtful stroke. "As, ah, interestin' as this…device is," he said, gesturing to the camera with a hesitant wave, "are ye sure it's more important than scouting the area with Goliath and the others?"
"If I can get this to work, there might be something on this camera that can help us find that girl," Lexington said, lowering the camera to scrutinize the front lens. "She could have things recorded on here. Where she lives, what she sees…" Lexington's fingers shifted uncomfortably over the plastic handle made for much smaller hands. "…What she wants…"
The silence, broken only by the soft sound of taloned fingers brushing old plastic, filled the air with a solemn weight that settled heavily on their shoulders. Bronx's ears began to droop as he gave off small whines of concern, when they all heard the sound of light footsteps hurriedly scrambling up the ladder.
"Hudson, Lex—any word yet?" It was a tense and breathless Elisa.
"Goliath and the others haven't gotten back yet," Lexington answered, setting the camera down on the table before him in an almost apologetic acknowledgement of defeat. "And I'm not doing much better with this thing. I think it's broken."
"Great," Elisa sighed, casting an anxious look towards the clock face window. She rubbed her hand over her face and through her hair in a similarly uncharacteristic sign of hopelessness. "We lasted for an entire four months. So much for a safe home."
"This wasn't your fault, lass," Hudson said at once, fighting to make his tone less grave. He took her by the arm and led her to his overstuffed chair to sit. "No one could have known that anyone could find us here, least of all a fledgling such as that."
"But it is my fault, Hudson," Elisa groaned as she sank into the armchair. "She was just a kid, and I probably put the fear of God in her…just because she threw me off. And now…" Unnoticed by anyone, the camera zoomed in closer, centering on Elisa's face: anxiety, regret, fear…
"What…happened anyway?" Lexington asked, prompting both Hudson and Elisa to look up. "I mean, I just had woken up, and she was just sitting there—looking terrified. I thought she was going to scream, but she just bolted…"
"And that's about when I found her," Elisa continued, eyes staring unfocusedly at the floor. "I almost got her out, but she slipped away from me in the station when I got distracted, managed to hail a cap and hightail it out of here before I could grab her—and I mean, seconds before I could touch her." She held her forehead in her hands. "Managed to get back up here to you guys to see if you could find her, then ran back down to convince Matt that we'd have to call it quits tonight—forget what excuse I used." She was silent for a moment. "If I had just told her she wasn't in any danger—"
"Elisa, no," Lexington responded firmly. "This isn't your fault. There's no telling if she would have listened anyway. She was probably overwhelmed."
"Aye. So overwhelmed she even left her…cam-cording device," Hudson added uncertainly. As if it were surprised to hear itself mentioned in the conversation, the camera issued several panicked whirling noises. Lexington narrowed a suspicious eye in its direction.
"At least she didn't fall off the building," Elisa added, smiling wryly. Suddenly she sat upright, a spark in her eyes. "You said she left her camera. Did she leave anything else?"
"There's this," Lexington answered, picking up a piece of paper lying next to the camera. Elisa got up at once and read it quickly, flipping it over to see if anything remained on the back when she had finished. "'All your answers begin here.' Not much to go on. I guess an address was too much to hope for."
"It's something, though," Lexington pointed out. "Now we know she was sent here by someone, even if she might not have known what she was going to find."
Elisa looked at the paper one last time before folding it and placing it in her jacket. "I've told Matt that that girl was a friend of my sister's," Elisa told them, and Hudson was relieved to hear some of Elisa's usual strength. "I told him I thought she might be in trouble, so he and I pulled some favors and have a few cops keeping an eye out for her. It's not much but…" Elisa gave a small, almost restricted shrug of the shoulders, as if something of great weight rested there. "If nothing turns up, and the worse happens…all of you come to my apartment. No arguments, okay? No matter what Goliath might say."
"And what if I say, Elisa, that I do not wish to leave my home a second time?"
Goliath had returned. None of them had noticed his arrival, but he had been standing silently as a shadow within the door of the clock face, his gaze stony. Broadway and Brooklyn peeked in from behind the doorway, looking uncertain.
Elisa sighed a long, weary sigh. "Goliath, don't tell me we're going to have the castle versus family argument again. The clock tower obviously isn't safe anymore, and that's…" Elisa looked utterly miserable. "…my fault."
"None of this is anyone's fault," Goliath replied evenly, descending the stairs. "If I have learned but one thing from my experiences departing from my own time and awakening into this one, it is that life is…unpredictable." Goliath stood before Elisa, his expression betraying a myriad of emotions reflected in the camera lens. Regret, certainly, but something else: strength, a solemn resolve that seemed unshakeable.
"And one more thing I know," Goliath continued with greater volume so as to address the rest of his clan, the stone bricks, the floating dust motes, the universe: "This place is home to us, and I will not so easily allow that to change."
"I know that too," Elisa said. She reached out and placed her hand over Goliath's arm, looking up at him with concern. "But things are never that simple. There's too much going on we don't know about. Not the girl, not what might happen if she…we don't know what she might do," her voice almost pleading.
Goliath turned away from her slightly, eyes and forehead furrowing in thought. The rest of the clan observed in silence. The bricks and dust mites uttered not a word. No one could hear it, but the camera was quietly zooming out, further and further, and the universe was whispering…
Goliath opened his eyes. "There is a frightened child running from what she has no need to fear," he said, his voice firm. "And we have learned time and time again that fear will endanger those who cannot fight it. Lexington, if you haven't found anything yet, leave it be. We still have much ground to cover and the night grows short. This time, we will extend our search to the east..."
Now:
Marjorie forced herself to breathe slowly. The gargoyle was covered in rubble from the explosion, one wing ripped through and bleeding on the stone. When the glass beaker had broken, it had cut her to the bone, the blood leaking like tiny black rivers up and down her limbs.
The whimpers, which were beginning to sound wet, were coming from her throat…
"Oh," Marjorie whimpered herself, dropping the knife. She rushed and stumbled to her side, her good hand frantically scrambling along the floor for the knife, panic rising, she awkwardly began to cut the midriff of her blouse. She tried not to think of the time this was taking or how sharp the knife was or how quickly the gargoyle was bleeding out.
Just as Marjorie finished cutting a filthy strip of cloth from her blouse the gargoyle's left arm began to twitch under the hunk of wooden beam that had fallen from the ceiling, and her eyes opened.
Marjorie's heart stopped, but the gargoyle's eyes were cloudy, unseeing, and beyond her trembling arm, she made no attempt to move. Marjorie wasn't entirely sure if the gargoyle realized what had happened to her.
Her hand shaking less than it had earlier in the evening when she had met the detective woman, Marjorie carefully began to lean towards the gargoyle's neck. An evil-looking shard of glass was buried upright in the center of the gargoyle's throat, blood pulsing out in steady trickles.
"You—you shouldn't move—" Marjorie whispered quietly.
At the sound of her voice, the gargoyle's eyes opened wider and her mouth twisted in a snarl as her body strained to spring up despite the debris pinning it, enraged. Her violent movements worsened her condition, and Marjorie could only watch, horrified, as the gargoyle upended the ceiling beam and ripped the glass shard from her own throat.
Time slowed down as the gargoyle slowly looked up at Marjorie, hand filling with blood, eyes glinting and awake…
Exactly five hours, five minutes ago:
Marjorie was walking, trancelike, down a street she couldn't name. She had just left the public library, though she forgot to give the stone lion on the left side a friendly pat on the head like she always did whenever she came here, and she didn't really leave—she'd been kicked out.
Marjorie didn't remember falling asleep, but that's how the extremely bad-tempered guard had found her, four hours past closing time and curled up on the floor surrounded by books with titles like Gargoyles: Monsters of the Medieval Church; Drainspouts and Dungeons: Gargoyles in English Folklore and even Goldie the Gargoyle and the Grumpy Ghost Save Christmas. She had tried to explain that she didn't mean to fall asleep there and that she hadn't stayed behind on purpose, but the guard (a stout, cankerous woman with sharp, manicured fingernails) fumed so much that Marjorie couldn't get a word in.
And so she had listlessly walked down the stairs, both directionless and a little bit scared.
It had just seemed like the library was the perfect place to go—big sturdy stone structure, lots of people, lots of books, and newspapers, and all sorts of things that were bound to have answers in them. It seemed perfectly natural that when that taxi had pulled up as she had run out the police station door, "take me to the New York Public Library" had popped out instead of more, say, pressing things, like "there are a bunch of stone wingy monsters in the clock tower and also there's a scary police woman who wants to kill me so drive away very fast please."
But now, that was over. Now she was just another anonymous New Yorker loitering down whichever empty street she could find. Surrounded by neons and streetlights, Marjorie was separated from any monsters or darkness they inhabited; one of the most wonderful things about New York City was that while it was crowded dangerous and dirty it was never, ever completely dark. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the display window of a closed beauty salon. "Okay," she said to her own tired face. "Monsters are real. What next?" She gazed at her reflection a while longer, searching for a hint of the answer she knew wasn't there. Finally, she turned away and kept walking.
What would Lonan do? Marjorie suddenly wondered. He had seen these creatures—gargoyles, she corrected herself—he had, that night in Time Square, and so he had believed it even when everyone told him they couldn't be real. Did he still believe in them? If she told him that what she'd seen…
A rising excitement building in Marjorie's chest floundered as soon as it had started. No, he'd just think she was teasing him. Likely he'd put it out of his mind a long time ago, since he hadn't brought it up since that snowy night in January.
Marjorie crossed the street, still unconcerned with her destination or present whereabouts.
"It was really dumb, not telling him about it over the phone," Marjorie muttered glumly. "He wouldn't know what to do either, but at least he'd be someone to talk to. He'd say, 'You see, M, I told you so,' and I would say, 'Quite right you were, my dear friend Lonan, but whatever are we to do about it now?' and he would say, 'Why, I haven't the foggiest, my dear, but perhaps we should stay away from crazy armed women in the police force, what what? Never know who they're in cahoots with.' 'Jolly good, Lonan, jolly good, we shant go to the police, but what of the press? Do you think they've got their fingers in the pie as well?' 'Shocking to think of, isn't it, old chap! Best not take any chances, even if they would believe us. No, best keep our heads down for now, I should say so.' 'But, good sir Lonan, what should we do…next….'"
Completely absorbed in her hypothetical (and oddly British) conversation, Marjorie had unwittingly led herself some how back onto 5th avenue—along side Central Park, no less.
Marjorie looked into the darkness and tangle of trees in the park, and without realizing it, smiled. "He would say," she said, slowly, "'Marjorie, you only live once.'"
And so it was that barely twelve minutes later she found herself standing before Belvedere Castle, and she was not as surprised as she would have otherwise been to see a light coming from the very top of the tower.
The door was unlocked, and Marjorie slid into the unlit first room as quietly as a shadow, avoiding the velvet ropes that littered the floor. There had been a sign outside proclaiming that the Conservancy's Historic Preservation Crew was soon to start extensive repairs and replacements in the next few days; in the dark Marjorie spotted large crates covered in plastic where an entire corner of the room had been stripped away of hardwood flooring.
Marjorie took a calming breath, and started up the castle spiral staircase. It was utterly devoid of light and claustrophobically small, and Marjorie was forced to climb up with her hands stretched out before her so she wouldn't trip on the high steps. Marjorie was filled with a sudden and deep regret for losing the dinocam earlier. No doubt it would have let her see her way up the winding staircase, if not what exactly it was she was looking for. After what seemed like an eternity, she reached the top of the stair, and let out tense sigh in relief. She had never done well in dark, enclosed spaces.
The light she had seen from below the tower had been dim, and now she could see why—the room was filled with dozens and dozens of dripping wax candles, giving off not enough light to be visible from a great distance but just enough to make the room incredibly creepy. In the center of the room sat a large, thick oak table, littered with what looked like old parchment and glass beakers. But Marjorie's attention was drawn to a pumpkin-sized pewter cauldron suspended over a Bunsen burner in the center of the table. As she took a few steps closer, a rustling from above startled her, and Marjorie looked up to see a caged owl—of all things, a snowy, white owl—its feathers puffed, eyes curious. She gawked at it, and turned in all directions once again to take in the room in all its manufactured mystic glory. "Talk about your hocus pocus," she whispered as she peered into the bubbling cauldron, a bit of a laugh sneaking in. "It's like someone's planned by day to include all the clichéd…weird…stuff…"
Marjorie trailed off, all mirth disappearing. Behind the cauldron lay the most evil knife she had ever seen. It looked sharp enough to slice the air into pieces, its blade more brilliant than the steel of regular knives, its handle made from some kind of polished black stone. This wasn't a tame sort of knife, she knew somehow. This knife was meant to spill blood. She glanced up at the owl in its cage in cold realization. Innocent blood…
"Okay," Marjorie said shakily. "I've had just enough freakiness for today, I think."
Noticing a long metal rod leaning against the wall behind the owl's cage, she took it and used the hooked end to lift the top of the cage from where it was suspended to a beam on the ceiling (not an easy task; the owl was small but the cage was heavy). With effort, she managed to lower the cage down to the table, though not as smoothly as she or the owl would have liked; it shifted nervously in its cage and made tiny clicking noises as the cage landed heavily on the hard oak.
"Hey, shh, little guy," Marjorie whispered as reassuringly as she could. "I'm gonna get you out of here, and you can go back to Canada or whatever, and then I'm gonna get out of here before whoever owns that knife comes back to…I'm going home, and I am never leaving it ever again..."
She'd reached the window, the cage precariously dangling on the metal rod in front of her. The windows were small. Marjorie had a tricky moment in which she had to open the cage door and keep the cage suspended and near the window so the owl wouldn't escape into the room. She needn't have worried, for as soon as she had barely opened the cage door the owl and launched itself outward, darting through the window and knocking the cage to the floor. It landed with a clattering crash that resounded through the room.
Marjorie froze. She didn't dare to breathe. She turned back towards the stairwell, straining her ears for any sound. Nothing. She wanted to take that staircase at a run, fly out through the door—but she controlled her steps, quick and light, to the stairwell. At the first step down into the dark, she faltered. Complete darkness in space so small there was no room to fight, and if someone was coming up for her…
But then, there was a light. It was dim in the darkness, and an eerie shade of red. They reminded her, completely incongruously, of the lights on the bottom of kids' sneakers that lit up red when they walked; and as they grew closer, the sound of heavy footsteps followed. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as she recognized them: eyes.
It would be a moment that would come back in Marjorie's dreams many, many times. It was every child's nightmare made wholly real: the monster that had always been there finally emerging from the darkness, movements slow and languid, because it knew you were paralyzed with fear—fear of its claws, and teeth, and those eyes that never looked away.
In that first, terrible moment that the gargoyle crossed the threshold from darkness to flickering candle light, Marjorie was living this nightmare. She was so completely captured by it that when the gargoyle stepped into the light and Marjorie could see her as she really was (livid red hair, burning blue skin, grace of a panther and fury of thunder), Marjorie knew right away that whatever she had felt in her panic of running away from the creatures of the clock tower was nothing compared to this; they were not the same as she.
"Human," the nightmare growled in a voice that was burnt velvet and barbed wire. "You've just made the biggest mistake of your life."
Now:
She roared. And it was as if this nightmare had repeated itself: Marjorie was pinned to the oak table, all the breath squeezed out of her by a crushing strength, eye to eye with hate and rage and tooth and claw.
"What. Did. You. DO?!" she snarled. Marjorie wouldn't have been able to answer, even if she knew or had the strength to speak; the gargoyle's face was contorted in the twisted, unreal mask of a berserker, eyes casting a burning red glow through furious slits.
But then, the gargoyle's grip on Marjorie's throat began to loosen. With a spasm of pain, the gargoyle shrank back to the ground, her other hand holding the wound on her neck.
"Y-you're hurt," Marjorie said. Somehow, the chance of seeing her die in front of her eyes scared chilled Marjorie more than her claws and teeth.
"I should kill you," the gargoyle growled, her voice sounding feeble. She couldn't hold herself up properly. Marjorie could see her tail straining to maintain her balance behind her. Realizing she still had the cloth strip in her hand, she reached out without thinking towards the wound.
If Marjorie thought the gargoyle was too injured to make good on her murderous threat, she soon saw how mistaken she was: like a cornered animal, the gargoyle lunged with a force that couldn't be believed. The searing pain she felt as her injured arm was crushed beneath the gargoyle ripped a scream from her throat. It might have been "I'm sorry!" or "Please, no!"; Marjorie somehow had the presence of mind to think how remarkable it is when someone is panicked enough how all vowels tend to sound the same.
"The spell," the gargoyle was rasping. "How could you have done that to it?"
Marjorie shook her head helplessly, but the gargoyle's grip grew harder, her talons creating three bloody grooves just below Marjorie's collarbone. The gargoyle insisted over Marjorie's gasps of pain: "Answer, human, or I will put a stop to your whimpering for good!"
Exactly ten hours forty-one minutes earlier:
Rodger returned home to the smell of stale pizza thawing in the microwave and peanut sauce: Lonan was cooking again. It usually happened every month between grocery trips, when the refrigerator began growing bare. For reasons Rodger had never been able to comprehend, this event compelled Lonan to use up whatever was left by combining it in the most unlikely ways possible, often resulting in dishes like Barbeque-Wing-Peanut-Butter-Spinich-Wraps-with-Mayonaise-and-Bacon-Strips-on-the-side, or Steamed-Vegetables-Meet-Half-of-a-Salmon-with-a-bit-of-Taco-Meat-in-Spagettieos-with-Fortune-Cookies.
"Hey," he greeted with a sigh, throwing a glance in the kitchen. Lonan seemed to be combining last night's Thai with last week's pizza leftovers.
"Oh, hey," Lonan looked up from his creation-in-progress, startled. "I thought you said you had rehearsal today."
"Had. Did," he sighed with more strength, allowing himself to fall back onto the battered sofa that took up most of the floor space in their flat's living room. "Over."
"Single syllables," Lonan observed wryly. "So, terrible?"
Rodger cocked his left hand to his temple and pantomimed the firing of a gun. Under the smell of peanut sauce drifted a faint hint of garlic and pineapple.
"I couldn't believe it," Rodger began to moan, his arm covering his eyes, his mouth the perfect portrait of despair. "They don't…they can't—they're butchering me! I'm doing everything I can to make it work, but you'd think I was working with, with chimpanzees…"
Rodger continued in this vein unceasingly for a great period of time. Lonan wasn't really listening, and he wasn't really required to—as long as he threw out the occasional "Huh," or "Yeah, of course" or even a disbelieving "No!" now and then at the appropriate times. Rodger and Lonan had been roommates since sophomore year together, and there was a reason they could still stand each other: they worked. Both realized they were hard to live with, and had managed to create a system in which all difficulties were planned for, rendered unnoticed, or solved altogether. Sometimes Rodger could get largely overdramatic and rant for hours at a time when the mood struck him; so what? Lonan opened the window in the morning in all kinds of weather to smoke and liked to make Hauaiian-Pizza-Pad-Thai-Chicken-Noodle-Soup-with-chunks-of-Garlic-Bread.
Rodger paused for breath. "Did you talk to Marjorie about tomorrow night?" Lonan asked before Rodger could begin anew. "Is she free?"
There was a moment of silence, and Lonan looked up from his bubbling cauldron. Rodger lay down on the couch hidden from view, his disembodied voice becoming speculative. "Lonan…have you noticed Marjorie acting stranger than usual?"
Lonan's hand paused briefly in the middle of reaching for a bottle of aged vinegar, but quickly recovered. "How so?" he asked.
"She wanted a disguise from our prop room." Rodger sat up and looked squarely at Lonan, his expression pensive. "She wanted something that would get her somewhere unnoticed. And she wouldn't tell me—me!—what it was for," he said, sounding like he had been passed over for an invitation to a fun party.
Lonan's thought of last night's phone call. As expected, Marjorie hadn't given any explanation as to what it had been about, nor had she called him or come to see him. Marjorie was Marjorie, and if he was honest with himself he knew that it was beyond him to say when, if ever, she acted in fashion that most people called normal. But last night…had been different.
Something deeply private had been shared in that phone conversation, he thought. Maybe not a secret or a confession, but some emotion that he had never heard in Marjorie's voice before. Something was going on, and if even Rodger had noticed it…
"Nah," Lonan replied with a dismissive shrug. "It's probably Marjorie just being Marjorie. You know how she is," he added, flipping his pan-fried pizza so to evenly cook the sour-cucumber noodles. "She gets through everything without a scratch and wearing a smile."
Exactly four hours, thirty-two minutes ago:
Marjorie backed into the table. The gargoyle lunged with a snarl, and Marjorie threw her hands up to shield her face. Before she could scream she was flung to the floor, ceiling and stone beneath her whirling so fast that she only knew she had hit the floor when she felt something crack inside her arm, and she cried out in fearful despair, for it was her left arm, the one she played fiddle with, and she was going to die.
"You meddlesome bug," the gargoyle was saying. "Thought you'd go for a late night stroll in the park and poke your nose in when you saw something up in the tower?" Marjorie sobbed and struggled to get away, crawling with her good arm, the gargoyle picked her up from behind. Do you have any idea what I had to go through to get that bird in a place like Manhattan?!"
It was too much. The pain and shock in her arm, the horror that had attacked her—Marjorie's eyes rolled back and she fainted.
Moments later she woke up slumped in the corner, arm searing with pain. "Count yourself lucky I needed you alive, human," said a harsh, clipped voice. Marjorie looked up to see the gargoyle standing before the cauldron on the table, her dark, leathery wings folded around her shoulders like an elegant cape. "Otherwise, I would have made sure you would have never woken up after such an undignified display of cowardice."
As she said this, the gargoyle turned slightly to give Marjorie a cool, sharp glance. Her eyes were no longer red, Marjorie was surprised to see, and the fact that she wasn't snarling or displaying the rage she had earlier made her less fearsome, if just as formidable, to look at. Her face seemed entirely human: her eyes nicely shaped with a graceful nose, full lips and a delicate pointed chin. There was a dangerous feline aspect about the way she stood, and her cobalt blue skin and vicious red hair reminded Marjorie of the vivid, poisonous things that lived in jungles and rainforests: she was entirely beautiful, Marjorie realized. Beautiful in the way tigers are beautiful, beautiful in the way pythons were beautiful.
Marjorie let out a shaky breath. "I'm sorry," she offered quietly, barely more than whispering. "I—didn't mean—"
"Sorry?" The gargoyle stopped stirring the cauldron, letting her hands slowly grip the edge of the table. "Sorry?" she said again, as if tasting the word and finding it foul. She turned once more to look at Marjorie, and if she had been like fire raging before, she was now like ice.
"Sorry for what, exactly? Sorry for ruining my night? Sorry for the devastation and suffering your race has caused my own? Sorry for your pathetic and useless existence?!"
The gargoyle had drawn nearer and nearer to Marjorie's position on the floor, claws tense and eyes glowing red as her voice grew in volume and malice. Marjorie didn't dare move.
"I have had enough of your kind's endless mewling," she spat, sweeping about and stalking back to the cauldron. "After this spell is complete, I am that much sooner to my goal of ridding myself of all of you once and for all."
"What are you going to do with me?" Marjorie asked haltingly, amazed she was still able to speak at all.
"This spell requires the blood of an innocent," the gargoyle answered, her voice frigid once more. "I am loath to call any human 'an innocent,' but since you've lost me my intended sacrifice I am left with no alternative." In her left hand, the gargoyle was holding a glass beaker to the light, as if admiring its shine. With her right hand, Marjorie saw her pick up the knife…
Marjorie's blood ran cold. "No. No, you can't—"
"Oh I assure you, I can," replied the gargoyle with a cold, widening smile, bringing Marjorie closer to death with every leisurely step she took in her direction. "And what's more, I'll enjoy it very much."
There was no strength in Marjorie's legs. Her heart thudded in her ears and she pressed herself as far back into the wall as she could, but the gargoyle was soon crouching in front of her, the expression on her face that of a contented cat cornering a wounded bird. Without warning the gargoyle reached out and snatched Marjorie's good arm, stretching Marjorie further away from the wall than she could support herself.
"Believe me when I say this is going to hurt," said the gargoyle with serene mirth. She raised the knife.
"No, please no—"
"Sorry," said the gargoyle with a smirk. She brought down the knife swiftly across Marjorie's forearm, and Marjorie gave a pained cry and felt terrified tears spring from her eyes. It felt as though the knife had burned her skin as it cut her.
The gargoyle calmly held Marjorie's arm over the mouth of the glass beaker. When she deemed she had enough, she released Marjorie's arm and took a cloth rag. Dazed, Marjorie couldn't see the gargoyle's expression as she hurriedly wrapped the cloth around the wound and tied it in a rough knot: disgust mingled with impatience.
It was several moments after the gargoyle returned to the cauldron that it dawned on Marjorie what she had done. "I thought you said you were going to kill me," Marjorie breathed.
The gargoyle sneered at her. "I said I needed blood. Be patient. When the spell concludes…" she paused, eyes glinting. "Well. All in good time."
She turned back towards the cauldron and with a sudden snap unfurled her wings, making the candlelight tremble. She reverently lifted her hands, the blood in one and the knife in the other, into the air and spoke in a commanding voice: "This night shall listen to my words, until I free it once again to tear apart my foes. Listen!"
Marjorie felt it, then. There was a trembling somewhere, a small, electric pressure that surrounded her. Ululatus ventus, volubilis nex…The wind began to blow, swirling inside the room and causing the candlelight to dance madly. Meus hostilis habitum ut quod est cap….The gargoyle was still speaking, her words becoming more and more obscured by the sound of the gale: Per is insons insontis cruor…The trembling now felt like shaking, and Marjorie watched the shadows on the walls careening and contorting into shapes that grew and spun and shifted, becoming alive…
Thunder was booming outside, though there had been no sign of a storm before. Marjorie watched the room in a kind of terrified wonder, and saw that her own expression was reflected on that of the gargoyle. Her eyes were wide and she cast them about anxiously about the room, and Marjorie had a feeling that somehow things were not going as they were supposed to be.
The wind was pulling at her wings and hair, and she seemed to be having difficulty holding on to the blood and the knife. Furiously, she screamed into the wind as she raised her head defiantly: Recipero meus vitualamen quod infusio lux lucis! And on these final words, she tilted the beaker over the cauldron.
Marjorie was huddled in a corner in the darkness of the flickering candle light amidst the howling wind and raging thunder, but somehow she still saw it clearly as it fell: a single drop of crimson blood…
At that precise moment, a massive blackout rolled across Manhattan. Not one light on the entirety of the island was spared: from the tip of Battery Park to the end of the Harlem River, there was complete darkness. And at the center of that darkness was a castle, and in the center of that castle there was a terrible crash of fury and shadow, of noise and chaos.
And at the center of that chaos there was a girl…
Now:
The girl and the gargoyle looked each other in the eyes and were powerless to look away. Marjorie was perfectly still as the gargoyle began to shake, her claws tightening and sagging around her throat at uneven intervals. "You—you have to tell me—" The gargoyle broke off, her breathing jagged and sickeningly drenched with blood.
"Don't talk, you'll die," Marjorie said, now beyond panic, beyond fear. Her voice was calm and she didn't know why.
"Tell me," the gargoyle struggled to speak. "Tell me…your…name."
There was a silence that lasted forever. "It's Marjorie," she finally said. "Marjorie Campbell."
A wild growl and a flash of red and Marjorie was alone on the floor, the gargoyle vanished so quickly Marjorie didn't have time to blink.
She leaned against the table, utterly spent. Outside the sun was rising. The dried blood on her chest was itching and she was dimly aware of something flowing away. The light seemed to be disappearing, and soon they were alive, stone flying off like sparks in all directions, all of them, and she hadn't realized it at first but they were all stunning.
One of them—one of them sneezed, and she laughed now though it hurt, because she hadn't had the wits to realize it before now and how silly it was. Gesundheit, Goliath, one of them had said cheerfully, and when looking at her they weren't angry or even that scary looking, when she thought about it, but she had run anyway, and that's what she should have done this time but didn't.
She had run but now she wasn't scared…
The sun was up again, shining in her face…
"Miss…miss…" the voice came from far away, and Marjorie opened her eyes and squinted against the bright beaming of the flashlight. "Have you been attacked? Do you need…"
"…have a situation at Belvedere Castle, need an ambulance, repeat, at Belvedere…"
"Hey, Morgan…this kid was at the station last night, with Maza…"
"Maza? She's asked the station to look out for a kid…"
"…the number they did on this place…"
"…call Maza…"
Through the slow and heavy haze that everything had become, Marjorie clutched at a familiar name, murmuring as she slipped away into a deeper sleep. "Detective Maza…I need to find detective Maza…"