Chapter 76 Taylor
Taylor
Taylor can hear an alarm, but she doesn’t mind it.
It’s clearly keeping time with the drums she heard earlier.
And then, between the silent pauses, are yells.
Screams. It’s all kind of beautiful, like a symphony of cacophony.
A basement is the perfect place for such a sound installation.
Those fancy art museums should take note.
Rose is part of the exhibit; she lies motionless at the base of the stairs.
China presses against Taylor’s leg, and she picks her up.
“Taylor,” the cat says.
Taylor looks at her.
“Taylor,” the cat says again, but her mouth isn’t moving.
That’s funny, Taylor thinks.
The walls start shaking around them, and she holds on to China tighter. Is it an earthquake? She’s not scared, not like she should be. And that’s being in a basement, to boot.
Maybe all along I just needed a cat, she thinks. A cat who understands me.
“Taylor, I need you to look at me.”
It’s Michael. Or someone impersonating him. This person is tall, so tall. She doesn’t remember him being quite so tall, but maybe they’ve never stood in such close proximity. His hands are on top of her shoulders, shaking her.
She tries to push him away. “Stop,” she attempts to say, but maybe she only thinks it.
He slips something over her face. No! Is he suffocating her? She tries to fend him off, but her arms are like rubber.
“Here. Put this on.” Something snaps against her face; it’s her KN95 mask.
Oh, she thinks. Maybe Michael is to be trusted, after all.
“C’mon, we have to go.” Then he wraps a cloth around his face, to cover his own nose and mouth.
He tugs her forward. There’s an urgency to his movement that she somehow inherently understands.
She acquiesces, following as fast as she can.
But as they start climbing the stairs to the Knox, sidestepping the body sculpture—so lifelike, really—Taylor hesitates, looking across the fiery way in the direction of the boiler room.
Disjointed memories circle around her like a turn of a kaleidoscope, slowly settling into place.
A memory: Rose saying that Vivian is in the servants’ quarters.
Taylor tugs down her mask. “Vivian,” she says weakly. She doesn’t know if Michael can hear her over the alarm, but he nods gravely, like he understands. Yet in the next moment, he keeps ushering her forward.
She shakes her head. “No. No!” she says louder. “Vivian.” She points across the way. “Vivian’s over there…in the servants’ quarters.”
Michael whips his head in that direction, a strange look on his face. Taylor can see him mouth the name to himself: “Vivian.” He seems to be working something out inside his head, and then he breaks out into a grin. Like he finally understands.
But then he continues up the same stairs. “Come,” he seems to say to Taylor, with a wave. With one last regretful look over her shoulder at the boiler room, she follows. She knows that at this point, with the advancing basement flames, it is the only entrance and exit.
When they step into the Knox foyer, the cat darting out in front of them, it’s empty. Smoke grazes the air, but there are no visible flames. Not yet. But the space still screams a warning, the smoke detectors shrieking as if in protest.
How quickly does fire travel?
To her surprise, Michael doesn’t exit the Knox’s front door but instead moves toward the grand staircase.
He points up it, rather furiously, and is saying something, but the darn smoke detector is in her ear—and outside, there are the wails of approaching fire trucks.
Michael clasps his hand in a prayer sign, pleading with Taylor. What does he mean?
She throws her hands up in frustration. Aren’t they going to go next door to find Vivian—if they can access that building? If it’s not too late?
He turns and staggers up the grand staircase, not bothering to wait. What is he doing? Can she trust him? If he were trying to harm her, lead her to danger, then wouldn’t he be forcing her to go?
She looks at the front door to the Knox—it’s right there, mere feet away. She could just walk out right now. To her safety, at the very least.
But upstairs beckons her. Vivian—it has to be Vivian.
She follows Michael as he lurches up the stairs; they are now climbing a second staircase, a seemingly endless metal one.
With his injured knee, he moves like he is riding a horse, jerking up and down.
Finally, they arrive at a landing with two doors, and he swings one open.
A long corridor extends beyond, and Taylor’s heart flutters.
A connection to the servants’ quarters. It has to be.
They push down that corridor and spill out into a wing of the adjacent building, nearly colliding with Eduardo, clad in a pair of silk monogrammed pajamas. He looks surprised to see them—and worried, his face pulled like a stitch. The smoke detectors are blaring here, too.
Can flames travel through connecting buildings? Through brick walls?
Michael cups his hand over his mouth as he briefly leans toward Eduardo to say something. The two of them spring ahead, Michael glancing behind to ensure Taylor is following.
Then—they are gone, disappearing into an open bedroom door.
Taylor approaches and hovers at the entrance; she’s filled with a strange sensation, almost like déjà vu.
There’s something so familiar that it takes her a second to understand.
It’s a makeshift hospital room: an electric hospital bed, a barren IV pole, a commode.
Jerry is there, along with a slight woman whose blue hair is growing out. They nervously flit around the bed. Michael stands off to the side, with the most amazed smile, as if he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing.
And neither can Taylor. She stares at the patient lying beneath the sheets: the chestnut-brown hair, the creamy skin, the ink eyelashes.
The beauty.