Chapter Thirty-Seven #2
The inferno grows. Growls. My throat instantly dries.
Through the painful stinging of my eyes, I see it: the guests.
One with hair on fire. One whose dress is in flames.
The stench of burning hair, burning flesh, fills the room.
Fills our lungs. Screams of agony pierce the air.
The guests pound at the door of the elevator, but it’s locked.
Locked. They push toward the windows, claw at the glass.
My lungs. I gasp. There is so much smoke, so much heat, my lungs cannot grasp on to air. They are blistering.
This is it, the Trio hisses. Their three voices overlay one another, three in one, a harmony of horror. The flames grow, dance, bend with the sound of their voices. You wanted to know how your sister died, Stella. This is it.
This is it. The visions I’ve been able to stave off for more than a year are here, now. I cannot keep them at bay in the presence of my sister’s murderer. This is the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. These guests are the workers.
This is how Daisy perished.
So much pain! Anguish! Terror and confusion!
Fire roars like a dragon. The guests scramble and scurry from the flames.
Some shove and claw to save themselves. Some stop and offer a fallen comrade their hand, sacrificing themselves.
These kind souls rip curtains from the walls and smother the flames that sear the flesh of others.
They whip blankets off the backs of couches and tackle their fellow guests, rolling on the hard floors to extinguish their burning frocks.
They claw at their own clothing, the clothing of others, to rip the fiery cloth off themselves and each other.
The violin player must see these moments as his last: He picks up his instrument and saws at it, his fiddle fast and furious, high and holy. The music of our fanaticism.
The best and the worst of humanity, here, in one room.
My panic peaks, and I frantically search the room for those I love.
Kiyoko weaves her way through the chaos and stoops to hug Athena the boxer, who pants wildly.
Pax—no, wait, it is the Pax look-alike—is on the opposite side of the room.
He has removed his tuxedo jacket and wrapped it around a young woman to smother the flames that eat her gown. Guests cower and shriek.
“Nirav?” I shout into the roaring flames. I turn, and scream again, “Nirav?!” I hope he has made it back to the kitchen. We know from the blueprints that there is escape down a back stairwell from there.
“Pax!” My terror elevates. Did he make it out?
I shouldn’t shout his name, connect myself with him, but I don’t care.
I pray he finished his part of the plan and has escaped this hell I’ve created.
He would never survive, knowing this is how Julia died.
It would break me if this broke him. My heart shrieks, my breath is ragged. “PAX!”
I turn again, and there, in the middle of the foyer, stands Clarice.
I’ve only seen glimpses of her all night, across crowded rooms, surrounded by her admirers as she performed her mentalist deceits, and here she is.
She spins slowly, hands outstretched. Sparks and ash fall around her like shooting stars and snowflakes.
And her face. She is not afraid. She is…
amused? She is beautiful, dazzling, a pillar of calm in the midst of chaos.
A crystal wine decanter explodes from the heat, and the alcohol within fuels the flames.
Fire eats the walls from beneath the wide molding on the ceiling.
The fire snaps and stabs, making the faces of all the guests appear to melt, like waxy, dripping ghouls.
They are skulls and eyeballs, flesh oozing.
The guests stare at one another with gaped mouths; they see it, too.
They scream and point at one another, all teeth and jawbones.
The room fills with smoke. We choke and we gasp and we cough.
One guest hoists a dining room chair over his head to smash it through the window so we can breathe, so we can breathe.
Outside, against the dark night sky, we see it.
We all see it: bodies plummeting toward earth.
So many bodies, falling past the windows.
One after the other, dropping. Screaming.
Clawing at air. Alight with fire, like tiny terrible comets.
Leaping to escape the pain of burning to death, just as in the Triangle Factory.
The fire, the smoke, the bodies leaping past windows—it is real. These horrors in the form of flame and fire? Real.
Spirit, what is this?!
SPIRIT!
SPIRIT, WHERE ARE YOU?
A question.
Spirit, I need you.
Oh, God. They’ve done it.
They’ve left me.
I am alone.
I’m crying, but the heat licks away my tears before they can streak down my cheeks.
And snap! A sharp, strong wind wails suddenly through the room. The fire immediately extinguishes, along with every candle and electric light.
The sudden darkness pulses at us all, almost like a wall of sound. And then the wind stops as suddenly as it started.
Someone screams.
Blam!
A gun?!
Gunfire briefly illuminates a corner of the room near the entrance to the parlor.
The blast is a stabby burst of light. My heart is a stabby burst of fear.
I grip the photograph of Daisy buried deep in my skirts and duck below the large dining table.
I wasn’t coming into this evening without her. My breath comes in gasps.
Kathump! Something large drops.
Someone lights a match. I recoil at the flame but welcome the illumination. I raise my head.
A guest with a torn dress leaps to her feet. She shrieks and points. “It’s her! That girl! She tried to kill Mrs. McLean!”
There, in the smallest circle of light, stands Kiyoko. She holds a large, brass candlestick. Evalyn Walsh McLean is sprawled on the floor, forehead split apart with an ugly gash. She is bleeding.
And the Hope Diamond is missing.