Chapter 73 Taylor
Taylor
Taylor cracks open the door. She doesn’t see anyone, so she opens it wider and quietly steps through, onto a tile floor.
The finished space is dimly lit, candle lanterns lining the floor like a runway.
The trail bifurcates, one path leading up another set of stairs, presumably into the Knox, and the other to a circle, a few feet away, that surrounds one of those scrolls she’s seen upstairs.
How many of these things are there? This scroll is rolled open, and exposed; the normal protective glass is gone.
A floor tile is missing just in front, revealing a small patch of dirt.
No one is in Taylor’s vicinity, yet something feels amiss. What is it? Taylor looks around hesitantly.
On the far side, beyond the scroll, there’s a door that must lead to the recently renovated room.
Is this what feels off—the room? It has quite the history, between the old-fashioned doctor items found in there and that opium book.
So what is the Knox using it for now? Could it be for Vivian—the sacrifice?
What if Vivian is already in there? What if Taylor is too late?
She inches forward, sweat dripping down her back. As she passes by the open scroll, she resists the urge to read it only out of a desperate and propulsive sense that time is running out.
The distant drumming continues, but now it sounds like it’s coming from above her, up the stairs. There’s a haze in the air, almost like smoke. Fire smoke.
No. She’s not thinking clearly. Why would there be smoke? It’s just her mind playing tricks. Aunt Gigi’s reveal about her mom has clearly affected her. Taylor pushes thoughts of her mom away; she can’t go there right now.
There may not be fire smoke, but Taylor is not imagining the murkiness.
Maybe it’s dust? No—it has a strange, almost acidic smell.
Perhaps they’re burning incense. Whatever it is, it’s not very comfortable, so she fishes through her pockets.
She stuffed a face mask in there earlier, one of those medical KN95s, in case she needed more anonymity.
Just as she is putting it on beneath the phoenix mask, the door at the top of the basement stairs creaks open.
Taylor hurries into the renovated room for cover.
She nearly trips over a large rectangular box filled with dirt in the middle of the room, and fear grips her.
Is this some sort of tomb they’re digging for Vivian?
The lighting is dim, but Taylor can make out a series of cushions and couches spread artfully around the space. The floor is littered with what appears to be instruments; long silver and wooden flutes.
She recovers and looks around wildly for a hiding spot, but there’s no obvious place.
She frantically inches the couch on the back wall forward so that she can slip behind it.
Pressed between the couch and the wall, she waits.
She feels hot and sweaty beneath the double masks, her back soaked through.
There’s an entrance and an exit. Entrance and exit. Please don’t let it be too late for Vivian. Entrance and exit.
The footsteps slowly descend the steps. Taylor’s heart thumps against her rib cage as the sound gets louder, closer.
Suddenly, she remembers the wig in her pocket, and she tugs it over her head, beneath the straps of the masks.
She’s grabbed a blue one, apparently, but better to be as disguised as humanly possible.
The person enters the room. Silence follows, pregnant with unspeakable possibilities. Taylor holds her breath, becoming dizzy. Does the person know she’s there?
After what feels like forever, there’s a reassuring clatter of light noises: rustles and clicks and…a match being struck?
Incense—yes, definitely incense—soon fills the air, making her eyes burn. Taylor closes them, grateful she’s at least wearing the masks.
Then, it goes so quiet again that Taylor wonders if the person has left. With the utmost care, she slowly peers around the arm of the couch.
No—the person is still there. It’s a man, wearing the robe and mask and sitting cross-legged with his back to her.
He is lanky; his bony legs protrude well past the cape.
Now he begins chanting in undistinguishable mutters and jerking his arm forward.
Is this some sort of ritual that precedes the sacrifice?
When he pulls back, Taylor sees he’s holding a stick.
The man appears to be making marks in the ground.
As she leans forward to try to get a closer look, the couch suddenly shifts forward with a squeak.
Fuck.
The man abruptly stops mid-chant, and starts to turn around, but then a quick flutter of footsteps on the basement stairs draws his attention.
He rises just as a woman bursts into the room.
Rose.
Taylor wants to cry with relief, she’s so glad to see her.
Rose, too, dons a robe, but hers is white, and unlike the man, she doesn’t wear the mask. Her hair is uncharacteristically mussed, and her face sags, as if the hands of gravity are tugging it down. Rose stares fixedly at the man with an odd intensity; she doesn’t appear to notice Taylor.
Should Taylor announce herself, or slink back behind the couch?
“Rose, what are you doing?” the man says, fear clipping his voice. “Please, put down the gun.”
Gun?
Now Taylor sees it, extending from the end of Rose’s arm. A black pistol, aimed at the man. And, by default, at Taylor.
Oh my God.
“Rose,” the man pleads. “It’s me, Michael. Please, put down the gun.”
Michael?
“Shut up, Michael,” Rose says in a flat, monotone voice. “Now listen to me. You take every single packet of opium and dump it in this box here on the ground.”
“Why?” Michael asks, but Rose cuts him off.
“I said now.” She flicks the gun in the opposite direction, and a shot detonates so loud it feels like it fractures the air around them. Taylor collapses behind the couch. Shit shit shit. Each second feels like ten. Her heart is beating so fast it almost hurts.
“Okay, Rose,” Michael says soothingly. “I’m doing it.
See? I’m getting the trunk with the opium.
” There’s the sound of the alleged trunk being handled and slid across the floor.
A latch unlocking. “I’m opening it. See?
Here is the opium stash. I’m putting it inside the geomancy area, like you said. ” Rustling ensues.
Geomancy area. Opium stash.
The room suddenly makes sense. The basement location, the scarce lighting, the cushions, the instruments that aren’t instruments at all—they’re opium pipes. The Knox renovation was to create an opium den.
An anger flashes through Taylor as she’s hit with a string of recollections: Aunt Gigi’s words: Your mom was strung out from drugs.
The “bad Aunt Emma” comment the woman addict made.
The headline of The Boston Globe: Boston’s Hospitals Overwhelmed by Overdoses.
What Taylor overheard Peter say to Michael: He’s already tested the waters, and the appetite is there.
The Knox’s interest in opium clearly extends beyond using it solely for divination readings.
And then Rose’s warning: It’s just that too many girls have gotten lost here through the years.
This—the Knox—could have been where Taylor’s mother got the drugs.
Opium’s always been a large part of the Knox, Liam and Eduardo told her. What if her own mother had drifted through these walls in a drugged haze, a shadow of the woman Taylor once knew?
Taylor clenches her fists, each subsequent memory further fanning her fury.
“Is that all of it?” Rose barks.
“Yes.”
“Let me see.”
A creaking noise, and then what sounds like the trunk cover closing.
“Now light it,” Rose commands. “We’re going to burn it—all of it. Because it’s the only thing Oliver cares about. The only thing.”
“This is a wooden box, Rose. Not metal. We could set the whole building on fire,” Michael protests.
“I said fucking light it!” Rose screams, setting Taylor’s hairs on end.
But something in her stirs in triumphant recognition. Yes, Taylor thinks. Rose has the right idea. Get rid of the fucking drugs.
The strike of a match, and then a crackle of fire.
The air instantly fills with a strong, acidic scent, like the one Taylor smelled earlier, but so much stronger.
Rose starts coughing, as does Michael. The temperature in the room instantly rises; sweat pools in pockets under Taylor’s robe.
The emerging haze grows more opaque by the second.
Even wearing double masks, Taylor has to bat down a cough.
“Tell me, Oliver, how does it feel to lose what you care most about?” Rose spits.
“Rose, I’m Michael, not Oliver,” he interrupts, just as Taylor is thinking, Huh?
“Ha,” Rose laughs humorlessly. “As if I wouldn’t know my own son.”
Taylor’s mind stutters over Rose’s words, trying to accept them in a way that makes sense. Rose is Oliver’s mother?
“I…” Michael’s voice falters. He’s surprised, too, then.
“No words now, Oliver? You had a lot to say to me earlier.”
“Rose,” Michael tries again, “you’re confused…. The opium smoke, the stress—it’s making you confused. Oliver’s upstairs, at the Brains scroll, with the others. We need to get out of here. We should go. Now.” There’s urgency in his voice.
“You’re trying to trick me again! Just like you tricked me about tonight’s initiation, when you said I would become a member. You humiliated me, Oliver. You’re just like your father, after all. Just like Graham!” Then, a strangulated sob escapes, as if Rose can no longer contain herself.
Taylor feels dumbfounded; Rose thought they were going to make her a member? Her wail is packed with so much anguish, it’s almost hard to listen to.
Then, a sudden tussling noise ensures; is Michael trying to get the gun away from Rose? Another startling gunshot pierces the air, followed by a deep groan.
Taylor screams, shooting up from behind the couch like a jack-in-the-box.
She’s not thinking clearly, but she knows she needs to get out of this room.
Away from the danger. The gun. The fire.
Now. She can hear the distinct whoosh of her blood pumping through her veins as she starts to stagger across the smoke-filled room.
Michael lies in a heap, a few feet from the wooden box that’s burning stronger by the second. He’s clutching his knee. Taylor looks at him, surprised at the contempt she feels. That’s karma for all the lost girls, she thinks.
“Tara?” Rose gasps.
Taylor whirls around, startled to see that Rose is addressing her.
Tara. Tara—Jerry’s sister? Taylor shakes her head, unable to form words.
“Tara, what are you doing here? It’s not good for the baby!
” Rose looks from Taylor to the gun, which she still holds between two shaking hands.
Her face dramatically contorts, like a cartoon character.
“Oh my God,” she breathes, dropping the gun, which skids across the floor.
“Come with me! He’s a murderer—you can’t trust him! ” Then she disappears into the hall.
From the ground, Michael moans. As Taylor hesitantly nears, he reaches up with surprising strength to grab ahold of her ankle. “Stop,” he mutters, in a strained voice from beneath his mask. She tries to shake him off, but he won’t let go. Then he claws at her with his other hand, too.
“Let go of me!” she yells. The air feels so smothering, it’s as if someone is holding a bag over her head. Aunt Gigi’s words flash before her: It’s probably why your mom died in the basement fire—she was likely passed out.
Taylor kicks at Michael with her free foot, and he loosens his grip. She flees the room, flinging the door shut behind her.