Chapter 12 #3
When Caspar stepped inside, the smell of ammonia hit his nostrils immediately.
It must have been only a memory, though, because no one seemed to react.
The floorboards were barren, stripped of all carpets and finery like Natasha had said.
The wood wasn’t even warped from the blood like Caspar thought it would be.
The walls were clean and bare too, though they had been made to look rougher at the corners.
There were none of the photographs or paintings that his parents had displayed, only depictions of ghouls throughout history.
Instead of a couch, there was a massive three-dimensional sculpture of a typical Middle Eastern ghoul, probably lifted from a painting that accompanied the story One Thousand and One Nights.
A framed newspaper clipping of Caspar’s first arrest in the Toronto paper hung over the resting station.
“Just have a seat over there,” Natasha said. She followed both Malek and Caspar to the station and made sure Caspar was comfortable several times as he sat on the couch.
Across the room, the other tour guide, Chris, was keeping everyone entertained with spooky voices.
He seemed to go through his own interpretation of the night Caspar found his parents, only his rendition seemed more like a retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk, complete with “fee, fi, fo, fum” chanting.
The whole thing seemed ridiculous to Caspar, but everyone else in the crowd ate it up as they took photographs of the sculpture.
Natasha glanced at the framed newspaper close to Caspar, reading the lines of the print silently.
“Hey,” Malek said. He tugged on Caspar’s sleeve as if he was trying to get him to stand again. “C’mon. We can’t stay long here.”
“But I’m dizzy. Why can’t I stay here a while?”
“Because of the photo.”
Caspar glanced at the newspaper clipping behind him. He’d been arrested wearing a baseball cap. Shit. Caspar went to take the hat off, but only felt more exposed. He tugged the hoodie up over his head and pulled the strings tight. “Better?”
Malek laughed. “You look a bit like a kid in his first snowsuit, but sure, better.”
“Good. I’ll stand up in a minute, though. I’m feeling a little less shaky.”
Before Caspar could stand, Natasha caught his eye. Her gaze flicked up and down his body, her eyes narrowing. Oh, no. Please don’t recognize me. Please.
“Now, everyone,” Chris spoke. “We’ll move on to the second half of the tour. Natasha, would you like to take over? I know it’s your favourite part.”
“Of course, Chris!” Natasha flashed that smile again.
She gestured toward the set of stairs and made a motion for people to follow.
“I love the upstairs room because you get to see the private lives of those involved. How they lived, how they acted, and most of all, what they dreamt about. Come on.”
The group followed her up the stairs, while Caspar lingered behind. Malek raised a brow in another silent question.
“I… I don’t know if I should go. What’s the point of this?”
“You wanted to see your parents again. This was the closest we could come.”
“Yeah, and then I almost fainted. This is a bad idea.”
“Maybe,” Malek said. “But you may also remember something that could help us find who did this. I’ll be right here, I promise. No one will see you, and if they do, fake it away. Remember?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Caspar rose to his feet again.
He and Malek took up the rear of the tour group and hung back, barely hearing the words that Natasha spoke.
She seemed to grow more excited, her hand gestures quickening and her voice rising in pitch.
His parents’ bedroom had been preserved in the same way as the kitchen, down to the Rumi poetry stitched into his mother’s pillows and the paintings hung on the wall.
The bathroom was next, which offered more of a place to have a quick break than anything fancy or remotely historical.
Caspar’s bedroom was the last stop at the end of the hallway.
“Now that the Ghoul is dead, mourning is important,” Natasha said. “If you come into his room, you’ll notice the roses we have set up. We want them to stay there until they wilt and die.”
“Why?” another man asked, disgust evident in his voice.
“Because even ghouls need respect.” Her answer was simple, to the point, and she took no more questions after it.
Most people turned around after only a small peek into the room.
Caspar waited with his stomach in knots.
He expected his entire room to be painted black or given some kind of spooky ambiance, but it wasn’t.
Everything was the same, from the half-open comic book on the chair to the Quran on the shelf and the rumpled bedsheets.
The roses were piled up high on his desk, exactly like Natasha had said.
“What do you think?” she asked, stepping close to him. “You’re the first person to stay in here longer than two minutes, I think. Everything okay?”
“Oh. Um. I’m just surprised.”
“You expected a monster? Most people expect a monster. They didn’t want me to put the roses in this morning, but I thought it would add to the room. Make the story complete, you know? Ghoul is gone, but legacy lives on. Or something like that.”
“Um, it makes sense. Very… considerate.” Caspar glanced around to find Malek, but there was no sign of him.
He didn’t know how he could lose someone who was over six feet tall in this small house, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Caspar was about to leave and search the hallway for him when Natasha gasped.
“I knew it.”
“What? Do you see my friend?”
“It’s you. Right?” Natasha squinted and tilted her head to the side. “Yeah, it’s you. You’re Caspar—”
“No, I’m not. That’s ridiculous.” Caspar turned away from her and walked out into the hallway.
Most people were gone now, having filed down the stairs and probably out onto the street for more photo ops.
Malek was nowhere to be seen, even as Caspar reached the edge of the stairs’ landing.
Natasha’s footsteps echoed heavily behind him.
“Have you seen my friend?” Caspar asked before she could accuse him of anything. “You know, the obscenely tall guy? Maybe he got stuck in a ceiling fan…”
“Um. I think I saw him leave with an older woman?” Natasha shrugged. “But you. You’re not dead, you’re—”
“I’m no one. Don’t mind me.”
Caspar jogged down the stairs and pushed his way through the crowd congregating outside the living room.
How come he didn’t see Malek? Where the fuck could his genie go?
Caspar was about to rub his finger and conjure Malek in the middle of this hell landscape when his stomach turned.
Pain shot up from his abdomen, like an ulcer or food poisoning.
He wasn’t close enough to the bathroom to use it—and really, wasn’t that just a display bathroom?
His head hurt. The light made his eyes ache.
The smell of ammonia returned and he nearly lost his footing.
He turned away from the crowd toward the back door he used growing up when he wanted to sneak away.
But the door was gone. Instead, he came face to face with a room that was clearly a gift shop. The small porch he’d once used as an escape in the middle of the night was now filled with trinkets and toys.
Oh, no. A dozen little bobbleheads with his likeness stared back at him.
Shelves were filled with books claiming to be about the history of ghouls in Canada, a guide to Middle Eastern cryptography, and then some salacious biography about him.
Now that he was dead, everything bore a price-up sticker.
He was a commodity. He was nothing but a thing. He—
“Lenny!”
Malek’s voice. Caspar turned toward the crowd that had formed in the gift shop and saw Malek, a head above everyone else. Malek held up his hands in confusion, a silent where the fuck have you been? expression on his face.
“Sorry, I got lost.” Caspar tried to push his way to Malek, but the crowd wouldn’t move. They swarmed him. They know me. They all know me.
And they’re going to tear me apart.
His stomach lurched, and the first thing he grabbed was a replica set of dishes his mother had owned.
The crowd jeered as he threw up into a mock antique, but it didn’t matter.
He tried to push his way through, and the crowd parted.
His vision blurred. He was almost out the door, on the steps, when he heard a voice.
It was so, so familiar, and yet he couldn’t place the speaker.
It was as if the voice was speaking from inside of him, yet was not a part of him at all.
You need to make a decision. You or me?
Caspar shuddered. His only good eye seemed to fail him. As the ground rushed to meet his face, it seemed like a blessing.