Elizabeth couldn't hear the buzzing of the alarm clock on her bedside table from the living room. She was still lying on her couch, just as she had fallen asleep the night before. Her T.V. screen had long since shown only the start menu of the movie she had fallen asleep in front of hours earlier.
"It's far too dangerous for you, sweetheart," she whispered, half asleep. "You need to stay home."
All her investigators had yet to call Elizabeth to find out where she was. The team meeting wasn't scheduled until early afternoon, and given her position as captain, there was no reason for anyone to be concerned about her absence for the time being.
"When it's done, you can come to me, C.J."
A dog barked outside the window. Elizabeth opened her eyes briefly and looked through the large windows, dull and confused.
What time is it, she thought.
xxx
"How many people are involved in making a movie?" Mardas asked Nikki after they had already seen two-thirds of the film. "It can't be that not a single person involved in the entire making of this nonsense realized that it was all crap."
"There are probably just far too many decision-makers involved," Nikki speculated with a frown. "If you want to destroy a good idea, have a panel discuss it -"
The movie dragged on, free of surprises. At first, the two investigators were amused by the unintentional comedy, but the laughter got stuck in their throats.
"What does Elizabeth say about the artwork?" Mardas asked casually.
"She has yet to get in touch. But I'm sure we'll be the first to know if she finds out anything."
He scowled at the corners of his mouth before replying: "Don't be so sure -"
xxx
Elizabeth jumped up, gathered her thoughts, and hurried to the bathroom. It was already after 10 a.m., and if she wanted to be at the Boston Dungeon on time, she couldn't possibly go to the BPD before then. On the other hand, the solution to the next mystery was imminent, and it seemed inconceivable that her investigators could only accomplish it without her help.
She thought Caleb must already have been on his way as she hastily massaged shampoo into her hair. I haven't finished watching the movie. Can I still make it?
Opposite the glass shower cubicle, Elizabeth had put up a gold wall tattoo depicting a clock with real hands in the middle.
Damn, either I watch the movie, or I meet Caleb, she realized after realizing that neither was possible in the short time available.
Then she exited the shower, threw on her bathrobe, and entered the bedroom.
xxx
"And why are they going to the pub now?" Nikki was still bravely trying to follow the plot.
Neither she nor Mardas had noticed anything special about the movie so far. At times, they had even forgotten that they shouldn't be paying attention to the numerous logical or connection errors but to passages relevant to their murder case.
"I think it's an old tradition of the boys," Mardas tried to stay on the ball.
"They've only been to Ireland once before. How can a tradition have developed after a year?"
Instead of trying to find an answer, Mardas got up and went to the coffee machine for the third time.
"Wait a minute!" Nikki suddenly called out.
Mardas turned around in surprise. By now, he had hardly expected that watching the movie would lead to anything.
"There was something!" the young woman reported after her colleague hurriedly retook her seat. "I'll rewind it!"
"Damn, what was that?" Mardas wondered after they had watched the scene in the pub for the fifth time.
"So you notice it too?"
"Yes, something looks familiar. Very strange."
Nikki stood up, looked around at her hard-working colleagues, and said, "Come here, everyone! You've got to see this!"
The team members present watched the clip three more times. Then suddenly, as if out of the blue, Rupert Mardas slapped the flat of his hand against his forehead.
"This can't be happening!" he exclaimed. "I need the production company's phone number now!"
And while Nikki and her colleagues still didn't understand what had been decisive about the film sequence, Mardas reached for his cell phone. Before he had finally found the phone number he was looking for on the Internet, he promised the group: "If what I think is true, then we've just stumbled across a real sensation!"
xxx
"Oh God, I've got the plague!" Caleb exclaimed, looking at the piece of paper with dramatic eyes. "And you?"
Elizabeth stepped back from the boy and reached into her trouser pocket with a fearful look to take out a coin. Then, she used it to rub the crucial space on the slip of paper she had been given at the till. After a few seconds, she breathed a sigh of relief and showed her teenage companion the field that read NOT INFECTED!
"What should we do now?" Elizabeth joked with a tearful expression. "Should I leave you behind while it's still possible? Or go to certain death with you?"
Caleb seized the impulse and bowed his head humbly before replying, "Leave me behind; I'm only holding you up!"
The Boston Dungeon was located in the middle of the city. Even from the outside, it warned its visitors of an impending journey through terrible chapters of Boston's history, beginning with the outbreak of various incurable diseases that would afflict half of the visitors before they even entered the dungeons. The notes from which Elizabeth and Caleb had taken their respective diagnoses would influence the further course of events, in which the visitors would be made to laugh and shudder in equal measure, both atmospherically and effectively.
"So, please come here; we have to do something," a staff member asked Elizabeth and her companions.
She led them to a photo point where guests had the opportunity to have an original picture taken of themselves before entering the world of horror. Against the backdrop of an old dungeon with blood-smeared axes on the wall, one guest was able to place his head on a beam while his companion positioned himself behind it with a plastic axe as if he were about to decapitate his supposed victim. After the visit, the guests could purchase this photo, which many visitors gladly took advantage of. Still, Elizabeth's reaction was completely different from what the employee used to.
"No photo!" she said, not unkindly, but a little too hastily for it to be noticeable.
Caleb, who had not missed the employee's surprised reaction, immediately jumped to the captain's side. "That's just the way she is," he explained with a mischievous glare that flashed his braces momentarily. "If her hair isn't in place, she won't even go past a mirror -"
"I see," the photographer agreed with a grin, abandoning her plan and asking the next visitors to the photo shoot.
"We've been seen," Elizabeth admitted to Caleb now that they could speak in private again. "I was about to tell you you can't come to my place for a while."
The remark caught Caleb entirely off guard. Surprised, he asked: "How can that happen? We're watching out like fools."
"A stupid coincidence!"
"Fuck, that can't be! You always say that of all the possible explanations, coincidence is always the least likely."
Elizabeth couldn't disagree. "It had to happen once," she resigned.
"And do we have a problem now?" Caleb's brow furrowed deeply.
"No, don't worry. I've got everything under control. Hopefully."
Just then, the entrance to the dungeon opened, and a sinister jester welcomed the visitors with entertaining theatrics.
First, the guests were divided into healthy and infected based on their lottery tickets, which meant that Elizabeth and Caleb had to separate for a moment after the jester's introduction. The two groups were transported in different elevators, accompanied by light and sound effects, into the depths of the world of horror that the jester had ominously announced to them.
"And you're sure no one followed you today?" Elizabeth whispered in Caleb's ear when the two groups reunited after exiting the elevator.
"No," the boy whispered.
"Good, the people here are all clean too."
Elizabeth had taken as much care as she could during her journey into the city. She had to be sure that no one had followed her before she finally greeted Caleb, who had been waiting for her outside the entrance to the dungeon. Therefore, Elizabeth started by scrutinizing everyone who had signed up for the upcoming dungeon tour. She had concluded that her meeting with the rather inconspicuous teenager would also go unnoticed this time.
Caleb had also waited to react to Elizabeth's arrival. They agreed that the boy would only be allowed to acknowledge the captain once she had officially greeted him. If Elizabeth had had even the slightest suspicion that she might have been followed or lured into a trap, she would have continued in the direction of the BPD, seemingly indifferent.
Caleb would have waited another fifteen minutes or so before disappearing in the opposite direction with feigned indifference. The two of them had laid down these rules some time ago, and each of them had always followed them meticulously.
After a terrifying monk had given an ominous account of Boston's history in the dungeon, an actress who appeared to be infected with the plague led the guests to safety by a staged raft ride. A slip of the tongue that turned out to be deceptive, as the astonished visitors found themselves in a doctor's surgery shortly afterward. However, the announced plague doctor would not carry out the treatment. The deadly plague had carried off the doctor himself, and he was lying dead and disemboweled on his treatment table.
"Looks pretty damn real," Elizabeth confirmed, while Caleb looked with interest at the high-quality wax replica of the dead doctor. "Still, I'd like to return to a doctor's office that doesn't have a disemboweled doctor in it."
Caleb picked up on the remark. "Don't you have to work today?"
Elizabeth hesitated for a split second too long before answering. Caleb immediately grabbed her wrist and whispered urgently: "You can't meet me on your own time, can you? What are you going to tell them about where you've been?"
Elizabeth took a deep breath. "I always have to work. And you know very well that I'd rather let a murderer walk free for two more days than cancel a meeting with you."
Before Caleb could comment, another actress began to dissect the supposedly dead doctor in a highly gross motorized manner under the eyes of the equally anxious and amused guests.
xxx
"Damn it, where is she?" cursed Rupert Mardas, who was trying to reach Elizabeth on her cell phone for the tenth time. "Has anyone even spoken to her today?"
Immediately after their discovery, Nikki and Mardas made all the necessary arrangements. Nick contacted Maura, and an RRT was set up. At the same time, the address of the actor who had played the barman in the Irish pub had been traced. The mission was imminent.
"She had a tough day yesterday," Nikki tried to defend her mother. "Maybe she went somewhere. I don't know. Anyway, she'd get in touch as soon as she found something."
"I don't care now," Mardas cut in. "She's already cost us enough time!"
Nikki then tried again to reach her mother by phone. When she was unsuccessful, she finally put on her bulletproof vest, checked the magazine of her service weapon, and then followed her colleagues to the vehicles.
xxx
Elizabeth and Caleb had survived both the agony of the torture chamber and the not-very-objective but all-the-more entertaining trial conducted by the executioner. Afterward, they were led through a hall of mirrors into a room where all visitors had to sit on coffins. It was a faithful copy of the original crypt under the church.
"When are you coming to the hotel today?" Caleb asked quietly as the group waited tensely for the next horror.
"As soon as I can -"
While the boy carefully scanned the room to see what horrors could be expected next, given the technical conditions, he proudly reported, "My mother doesn't get it. Our camouflage is perfect!"
Elizabeth bowed her head. "Don't make fun of her. What we're doing here is pretty unfair, and if she finds out at some point, it could seriously damage her trust in you."
Caleb just shrugged his shoulders. "Then she won't find out."
At that moment, a gloomy gentleman entered the crypt and immediately began to tell the story of the White Lady. In the eighteenth century, the desperate woman's ghost began to haunt her after her terrible death, and whenever the white woman had been sighted since then, death followed on her heels. A scream went through the audience when the candlestick on the coffin began to move as if by magic and suddenly drove through the crypt with unexpected force, followed by absolute darkness.
"I'm here," Elizabeth whispered and grabbed Caleb's hand.
The boy returned the pressure, and before another word could be spoken, a bolt of lightning flashed through the crypt, revealing a woman dressed in white standing among the visitors with a horrible grimace. However, no door had opened anywhere in the room. While the visitors flinched in shock, the light went out again, and barely a few seconds passed before it became light again in the crypt. The woman in white had disappeared again as inexplicably as she had appeared before.
"Do you believe in something like that?" asked Caleb after the crypt keeper had sent the visitors on their way to the last station of the dungeon.
"In ghosts?"
"About the fact that the souls of the dead cannot rest until they have found peace."
Elizabeth grinned and put her arm around the teenager. "I think it's more the souls of the living that can't."
Caleb kept his comment to himself.
"Now we're going to Carl Grossman's butcher shop," he announced instead.
"He did exist," Elizabeth told him. "A serial killer who killed up to a hundred women and then probably turned them into sausage."
"Presumably?"
"Well, Bostonians in the nineteenth century didn't have the forensic technology we have today. Genetic analysis wasn't possible."
"But they could have done the taste comparison," the boy suggested."
"I'll do the taste comparison with you, you cheeky bastard," Elizabeth replied, pretending to bite Caleb on the neck.
The boy jumped back laughing and bumped into a burly gentleman. He politely apologized to the man before the visitors were finally led into the serial killer's butcher's shop. They were told they might meet the cruel butcher in person there.
"Do you think you would have caught Grossman then?" asked Caleb, as the menacing silhouette of the killer soon appeared behind the window and moved towards the front door.
"For sure," he received the answer. "But if his sausages had tasted good, I might have let him go again."
The captain didn't get any further because suddenly the lights went out again, and the voice of Carl Grossman, who had committed suicide in his Boston prison cell almost a hundred years ago, seemed to whisper directly into their ears. When the sinister murderer appeared to be standing right behind Caleb, he reached for Elizabeth's hand again in the dark. "Are you still there now?" he asked quietly.
Elizabeth smiled contentedly and returned the pressure. Then she whispered: "I'm always here for you."