Always (Scenes 9-11)

9

And brought back Colbie’s mental construct of the ballroom in Katherine Hearn’s mansion and said, “Now, Colbie, did you notice any mirrors when you came in?”

“I didn’t see any mirrors when I entered the lobby area at the beginning of my dream sequence,” she said. “Only when I got to the bathroom in the lobby area did I see any mirrors.”

“How many were there?” Nico said.

“Just one continuous mirror along the wall,” Colbie said. “You know, like the ones you see in public bathrooms, but . . .”

“But what?”

“The other masqueraders were scared of me for some reason,” Colbie said, “but I don’t know why. I was wearing this mask, too.” And she scanned the ballroom from left to right, feeling a brainwave flashing through her mind, and teleported all the way to the blue section at the other end of the ballroom to get it, then teleported back to the violet section where her friends were and showed it to them. “I wore this one.”

“The color of blood?” Nico said.

“I know it’s weird,” Colbie said, wondering if she should tell her friends about the woman who walked in on her in the bathroom, “but this mask and the layout of this whole ballroom kind of reminds me of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Masque of the Red Death,’ in which Prince Prospero confronts the Red Death in the seventh and last room of the ballroom.”

“What about in this ballroom?” Nico said, looking around at her surroundings. “Did you notice any mirrors here?”

“No,” Colbie said. “There weren’t any mirrors when I was here.”

Nico paused on Colbie’s observation, then said, “Did you see or run into Rancaster, by any chance?”

“No,” Colbie said, “but my mom did.”

“But you never met him, did you?” Nico said.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Colbie, are you serious?” Kendra said. “You’ve never met him?”

“No.”

“Damn you, Colbie, you are one lucky bitch,” Kendra said. “That fucker almost took my head off.”

“And he abducted me and Nico,” Mara said, “and had us playing Russian roulette and killed my sister.“

“And,” Nico added, “he abducted our parents and had them killed, too, the bastard.” She then looked at Colbie, singling her out, and said, “Seriously, are you telling me that you never met Rancaster during this whole night?”

“At least,” Colbie said, “I never got a chance to see him.”

At her words, Nico stayed silent for several moments, then said, “What happens at the end of Poe’s story?”

“You mean,” Colbie said, “‘The Masque of the Red Death?’”

Nico nodded.

Colbie took a deep breath and said, “The protagonist, Prince Prospero, dies when he confronts the Red Death.”

Nico gulped. “How did he die?”

“When he confronted the Red Death in the black room,” Colbie said, “he died screaming upon seeing his face. Then the masqueraders rushed into the black room and tore up the shroud of the Red Death, but found nothing within.”

“Then what?” Nico breathed.

“They all died,” Colbie said.

All the while, Mara had been counting the sections of the ballroom on her fingers to herself, counting from the furthest section to the nearest (“Blue . . . purple . . . green . . . orange . . . white . . . violet . . .”) and said, “There’s only six rooms here, and none of them are black.” Mara turned to Colbie and said, “Where’s the black room?”

So Colbie pointed towards the giant grandfather clock with an empty dial-face at the end of their section of the ballroom, pointing out the double doors with its two handles beckoning for someone to grasp and pull them open. “It’s in there.”

“Did you get inside?” Nico said.

“Once,” Colbie said, “but when I tried to do it a second time, I couldn’t open it. It wouldn’t let me.”

“When you opened it the first time,” Nico said, “did you see anything?”

But Colbie shook her head. “Nothing.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Like I said: nothing,” Colbie said. “It was pitch-black in there. I couldn’t see a damn thing the whole time I was in there.”

“Did you see anything at all?” Nico said.

“Not in that room,” Colbie said, “but I did find Katherine’s private library. Kendra, do you still have my program with you?”

“Yeah,” she said, holding it up and opening it to the page where Katherine’s letter began. “You want it back?”

“Yeah.” When Kendra handed it back to her, Colbie perused the letter a second time and noticed four blank pages before it, where an indentation in each corner of all four pages (made from pressing a fingernail against the paper) indicated something in these pages. “Could it really be that simple?”

Mara, Nico, and Kendra crowded around Colbie, looking at the blank pages, and Nico said, “What is it?”

“Before I read this letter in Kathy’s library,” Colbie said, “I experienced a quake that knocked out the lights overhead in the library, which (by the way),” and she turned to Nico, in particular, “corresponds to what you said about the moon overhead being invisible in the night sky. And just like what you said about the moonlight still surrounding Kathy’s dream realm, even without the moon in the sky, the backup lights in Kathy’s library came on, but I just didn’t know what kind of lights they were.”

“What do you mean?” Nico and Mara said.

“Wait,” Kendra said, “do you mean black lights?”

“Yeah,” and Colbie manifested a black light in her hand and raised it over the four blank pages of the program, revealing two separate maps within Katherine’s mansion in fluorescent ink. The first map, titled

“First Floor,”

showed the ballroom with its entrance hall (or lobby area) at one end, and a hidden room enclosed with another set of double doors leading into it at the other end. The second map, titled 

“Ground Floor,”

showed Katherine Hearn’s library one floor below the first map, with a hidden entrance behind one of the bookshelves leading into the private library that Colbie had entered during her initial dream dive sequence.

Colbie then flipped back to Katherine’s letter and shined the black light over it, which showed a second postscript after the first one. It read in fluorescent ink:

P.P.S.: Both maps show hidden rooms, one in the ballroom, and one in the library. I am in the seventh room in the ballroom, just beyond the double doors of the grandfather clock, but I sense another person, called the ‘bambina’ girl, somewhere in the library. I wish I could be more specific, but I think it has something to do with mirrors. Hope this helps, and I hope you find this message soon.

—K. H.

Colbie looked up from the second postscript and said to Nico, “You mentioned her name, this ‘bambina’ girl. What was it again?”

“Auna Wenger,” Nico said.

“Is that her real name?” Colbie said.

Nico paused at her question, then said, “I can’t be certain. Why do you ask?”

“Because everything we’ve been talking about in this room,” Colbie said, “like mirrors, reflections, doppelgängers, and even similarities between different events throughout our dreams, share one common element.”

“And what’s that?” Nico said.

“Acting,” Colbie said. “You know, like wearing different costumes and assuming different identities. That kind of stuff. Come on, Kendra. You know what I’m talking about. You’re wearing those clothes, remember?” And she pointed out Kendra’s tattered and bloodstained Mandarine dress.

“But this is cosplay,” Kendra said, “not acting.”

“Cosplay is a part of acting,” Colbie said. “When you and Nico met Amelia Hearn in her shop, she pegged you two as outsiders even when you were both wearing the clothes of that time period, because you were both out of character in that setting.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” Kendra said, “but how does that connect with Rancaster?”

“Or Auna Wenger?” Nico added.

“Or Alice?” Mara said.

“Because they’re all connected to the stage,” Colbie said. “Look, hear me out, okay? Nico, you were asking Kendra about this very room that Connie built for our use, and you were talking about these hallways with mirrors and the garden lake under a moonless night at Kathy’s dream realm. All of these things deal with the setting of the stage, am I right?”

“It makes sense when you put it that way,” Nico said.

“And Kendra,” Colbie continued, “you were talking about all these objectives of what we should do next, which corresponds to character goals in the storyline of a play. Am I right?”

“Yeah, it makes sense,” Kendra said, “but how does Rancaster play into all this?”

“Because Rancaster has appeared in all of your dreams tonight,” Colbie said. “I know it seems like a coincidence, but hear me out. If you were all actors playing a part in a movie or a play, then who is the one person you all have to meet during rehearsals? Come on, take a guess.”

“You mean,” Kendra said, “a director?”

“Yes,” Colbie said. “Now think about the dreams you had tonight, all of you. If all of tonight’s dreams have become the setting for a stage play, the setting for a collective storyline in which you’ve all been playing a part in until now, then who do you think has been directing everything that’s happened tonight? It should be obvious by now.”

And just like that, everyone’s eyes lit up in recognition.

Nico said, “Rancaster.”

“Exactly,” Colbie said, then looked at Nico and Mara: “And as for Auna Wenger and Alice, I think they’re the same person.”

“What?” Nico and Mara said.

“Wait a minute,” Kendra said. “Nico, Mara, and I have met Auna Wenger, this ‘bambina’ girl, but none of us have met this Alice person.”

“It’s the same thing with my mom,” Colbie said. “She met Auna in her dream, too, but not Alice. But out of everyone who had dreams tonight, I’m the only one who doesn’t fit this pattern. I’m the only one who’s met Alice, and I’m also the only one here who hasn’t met Rancaster. At least, not directly.”

“You mean, he might have seen you?” Mara said.

“Yeah,” she said, “but he hasn’t shown himself to me, or I just didn’t see him.” Colbie then backed away from the group, keeping her eyes on her friends, and said, “Either way, I know that we all play a part in Rancaster’s play, but to what end, I don’t know yet.” She then raised her hand and manifested two of her mother’s omamori charms in her hand, letting both charms hang in the air before her friends, and said, “Nico, before Auna decided to kill you, she introduced herself to you as Auna Wenger, right?”

Nico nodded. “Yeah, she did.”

On Nico’s affirmation, the right charm imprinted itself with the name of ‘Auna Wenger’ before their eyes.

“Alice did the same thing when I met her,” Colbie said. “Before my fight with her, she introduced herself as Alice Liddell.”

And on Colbie’s affirmation, the left charm imprinted itself with the name of ‘Alice Liddell’ before their eyes.

Colbie then grabbed both charms and crouched down to the floor, placing them on the ground before her friends, and said, “Oh Winds, show Auna Wenger and Alice Liddell to my friends, that they may understand. West Wind, East Wind, North Wind, South Wind, be my witnesses,” and she took a deep breath and blew onto the seals of both charms. Out of both arose images of Auna and Alice in a whirl of wind fluttering the space before them, like two doppelgängers, side by side, wearing the same white Sunday dress, sporting the same bobbed haircut, the same face, etc.

“Are you serious?” Kendra said.

Nico said, “They’re—”

“Twins,” Mara said, and without even noticing, she found herself grabbing a hold of Nico’s hand, and both sisters traded glances before turning back to the spectacle in front of them.

The gesture caught Colbie’s eye, and she looked at Mara and said, “Do any of you know anything about them?”

At first, Kendra and Nico and Mara remained silent.

Mara hesitated telling her friends the last link in the chain of horrors they were about to enter, but swallowed her qualms and said, “Auna Wenger was a sacrifice.”

“A sacrifice?” Colbie said. “Do you mean, like, a sacrifice for a summoning?”

“Yeah. Nico and I—” She glanced at the current Nico beside her and said, “Sorry. The other Nico, not you. Anyway, we were at Cooley’s mansion while Cooley was away on a mission.”

“What kind of mission?” Colbie said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Cooley wouldn’t say. Anyway, while Cooley was away, we asked Blaze what had happened. She said she and Kathy fought two other girls who looked like Auna after Cooley located them in Kathy’s mansion, and when they finally found Celia’s location, they found Auna with her at the base of the staircase. Blaze wouldn’t tell us what happened, but she said they found Auna dead on the landing just before they retrieved Celia, and  . . .”

Mara’s words drifted off at this point.

“And what?” Colbie said.

“Blaze said,” Mara continued, “they all saw Auna come back to life on the landing and attacked Celia, before Rancaster prevented her from doing anything else. That’s when they all came in and got Celia out of there, but not before Blaze noticed something strange about Auna.”

“Strange how?” Colbie said.

Mara paused for a bit before saying, “Blaze said it was like seeing the dark side of Auna coming to life as if she had a hidden personality. She also said that when they found Celia’s location, they heard two gunshots going off at the same time, and that’s when they saw Auna dead on the landing with Celia crying over her.”

“Two gunshots?” Colbie said.

“Yeah,” she said.

“What time did you hear them?” Colbie said.

“Close to midnight,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m asking,” Colbie said, looking into Mara’s eyes, “because I heard two gunshots close to midnight, as well, when I came through this ballroom to enter that grandfather clock over there,” and she pointed towards the lone grandfather clock at the end of the ballroom ahead of them, the one with no hands on the dial face. “And I’m not the only one, either. My mom mentioned hearing something similar at the same time, close to midnight, in her own dream dive. Once is a fluke, two at the same time is a coincidence, but three at the same time? I’d call that a synchronicity.”

“A synchro-what?” Mara said.

“Don’t mind her,” Kendra said in a deadpan expression. “Colbie’s into this glitch-in-the-matrix kind of stuff.”

“I’m serious here!” Colbie said, then back to Mara: “What else did she say?”

“We asked Blaze what was on her mind,” Mara said, gazing into her memory of their conversation with a blank stare, “and she said something about a blood sacrifice. That’s why I mentioned it when I did. We asked her why she thought about that, but she wouldn’t say anything else about it, so we changed the subject, which eventually led to Strip Poker. Don’t ask, please.”

Colbie just looked at her and smiled, then rolled the rest of her own thoughts through her head and said, “Was there anything else she said?”

“She said,” Mara continued, “she looked for the two doppelgängers of Auna where she and Maddy left them, but she found them missing. The only thing left of them were the bloodstains, and when we asked her what she thought must’ve happened, she said that they must’ve disappeared soon after they heard the two gunshots going off.”

“My mom saw them disappear in her own dream,” Colbie said, “but it happened on a bridge overlooking a harbor, and they both left bloodstains on the bridge, too. Do you think they’re connected?”

“I’m starting to think so,” Mara said.

“Then do you know their names?” Colbie said.

“No.” Mara’s answer left Colbie silent, and Mara had some inklings of what she was thinking, though she was uncertain where the chain of logic led to, so she said, “Is that all we know?”

“That’s it so far,” Colbie said. “Any other ideas?”

Again, Kendra and Nico and Mara stayed silent.

Colbie dissipated her spell, dispelling the dual images of Auna Wenger and Alice Liddell, then looked to Kendra and said, “It’s your turn. We’ll follow your lead from here on out.”

So Kendra took Colbie aside and proposed a plan that utilized the functions of Connie’s place to their advantage in Katherine’s ballroom, and Colbie approved. With that, Kendra and Colbie let Nico and Mara into their confidence, and once Nico and Mara approved, all four girls went to work preparing the simulated ballroom around them.

Kendra manifested a row of howitzers in the violet section of the ballroom, each one aimed at the double doors of the grandfather clock that hid Katherine inside. She then duct-taped two blocks of C-4 explosives connected to a remote-controlled detonator against the handles and hinges of the double doors, should the howitzers fail to make a dent, and put Nico in charge of it from an elevated position, pointing towards the chandelier hanging above their heads. For her part, Nico volunteered to act as reconnaissance and advised that they all keep in radio contact, giving them wireless earpieces, so she could relay information from her position. In addition, Nico suggested placing a mirror against the double doors to see what was inside to make sure Katherine was inside, first, before they blasted the doors, which Kendra approved. On Colbie’s observation that reinforcements might have arrived since her last visit to the ballroom, Mara manifested a set of roadblocks surrounding their position to slow down enemy movements, and Kendra manifested a row of Gatling guns against these makeshift bulwarks as further security and volunteered to man these as chief gunner and main guard, then added dozens of boxes full of grenades and flash bangs and smoke bombs and volunteered as chief grenadier. Mara and Nico volunteered as offensive guards in charge of engaging dangerous mobile threats, like Alice and Rancaster.

Colbie grabbed Nico’s hand and teleported her to the top of the chandelier and said, “Don’t fall, okay?”

“I’ll try not to,” Nico said, then placed the earpiece to her ear, held the remote detonator in one hand. “I’m ready.”

Afterwards, Mara and Colbie set off to work on their own additions to the battlefield. Mara went towards the other side of the ballroom and manifested concrete roadblocks against the double entrance doors, barricading it from reinforcements getting in. Meanwhile, Colbie manifested several omamori charms in her hands and teleported to all four corners of the simulated ballroom to place three charms on the floor of each corner, one with the Greek word, ‘katapató,’ to ‘override’ Connie’s safety checks preventing dreamers from manifesting serious injuries in their sleep in order to merge the simulation with the ballroom, another one with the Greek word, ‘epikálymma,’ to ‘overlay’ the simulated ballroom over Katherine’s ballroom, and a third with the Greek word, ‘metafrázo,’ to ‘translate’ all of their preparations into the ballroom. In addition, she manifested more roadblocks running parallel along every section of the ballroom, dividing the ballroom into aisles to further restrict enemy movements.

Kendra looked at Colbie’s handiwork and whistled, saying from her position by the cannons, “You should be a general, Colbie.”

Colbie turned and faced her senpai with a smug smile on her face and said, “Divide and conquer, right?”

“Please, don’t bring politics into this,” Kendra said, then into her earpiece: “Is everyone ready?”

With Nico perched overhead, and Mara and Colbie armed with kodachi and dagger on either side of Kendra, all three girls said into their earpieces, “Ready!”

With that, Kendra nodded towards Colbie.

Colbie closed her eyes, imagining Connie’s safety checks as omamori charms breaking in her mind, one by one, and yelled, “Katapató!” (Override!)

And the simulation shook and rumbled its foundations, booming in succession like the fireworks on the Fourth of July, like volleys of cannons exploding through the astral plane. The herringbone parquet flooring shifted and cracked beneath their feet, the chandeliers overhead shifted and swayed on their chains, clinking the dangling crystals beneath Nico’s feet, and the lights blinked on and off in quick succession.

10

Connie Davis awoke to the blinking of her lamplight beside her on the nightstand, breathing hard like she had been startled from a daze. She turned over in bed and reached under the lampshade and turned on the light, squinting her eyes, then sat up in bed and felt her forehead. The stress of informing Leslie Amame and Celia’s sisters about yesterday’s events and visiting Mara Cairns in the hospital only to find Roy Dolan there, in particular, had given her a headache later that day, and she had taken ibuprofen to relieve it. She felt no more pain, but her skin felt clammy and cold, her bangs sticking to her forehead, so she put her hand over her chest and felt it beating hard and fast. She began breathing in and breathing out, repeating her breathing exercises, and managed to calm down enough to ease her heart rate.

Connie paused in the darkness, wondering what had awoken her out of her dream. At first glance, the dream itself was nothing special, but she had recorded her dreams long enough to know the significance of keys, of her dream self taking it off of her night stand and opening a chest that contained . . . What, exactly?

She couldn’t remember. She had woken up just before she saw inside the box.

She stretched her arms out, arching her back, got out of bed, and lumbered into the bathroom and turned on the light, and her tire reflection greeted her with a weary glance. She took a double take and paused as her vision doubled and tripled and quadrupled, squinting her eyes and pressing her fingers over her eyelids, till her vision returned.

She looked at herself in the mirror again, and clarity returned to her, but the light-headed feeling lingered, and with it something else. What it was, though, she could only guess.

“God, what the hell’s wrong with me?” she said, unaware of Colbie’s actions in the rapid-eyed consciousness of lucid dreams till they became the wide-eyed terror of nightmares.

11

When the last of Connie’s safety checks broke with a thundering crack, Colbie then imagined the simulated ballroom synching up with Katherine’s and yelled, “Epikálymma!” (Overlay!)

And the simulation of Connie’s place doubled and tripled and quadrupled, blurring the lines with each new replication of the space, then synching back up into sharp lines like a camera lens coming into focus.

Yet the scene that greeted them, seen through the refraction of a superimposed simulation over a shifting reality, seemed like the ghost of the past remastered into a three-dimensional virtual film. In fact, the party of masqueraders, many of them normal-looking party-goers in costumes and masks, seemed more like ghosts and phantasms than actual people. Yet one thing was clear: they all grasped at knives and daggers and cane-swords and rapiers and sabers—all blades still sheathed at their sides and in their grasps.

“Fuck, we’re screwed!” Kendra said.

“I have a plan, so don’t worry,” Colbie said. “The moment we get there, I can take them here, and they’ll all be out of our hair till we deal with them later.” Then she touched Kendra’s shoulder and looked in her eyes, getting her attention, and said, “But if I do this, you’ll be one down, so you and Mara and Nico will have to be on your own, till I get back. How long can you hold out?”

“I don’t know,” Kendra said. “Maybe two minutes, tops.”

“Geez,” Colbie said, “give me a break.”

“We don’t have breaks,” she said. “A lot of shit can happen in two minutes, and that’s me being generous.”

Colbie sighed and said, “Then give me five minutes.”

“Four minutes,” Kendra said, pointing a finger in Colbie’s chest, “or nothing, got it?”

“But—”

“I’m not the only one depending on you, Colbie,” Kendra said. “Mara and Nico are, too. Don’t forget that.” And then she grimaced and looked down on the floor and said, “I wish to God Celia were here right now. She’d be able to buy us more time.”

“I’ll try my best, okay?” Colbie said.

Kendra nodded her head in a noncommittal way.

Both girls turned towards all the masqueraders standing at attention and listening to a familiar figure in a white Sunday dress, one that Colbie recognized. She was addressing this audience, but her voice carried no note, as though the refracted state of two superimposed worlds snuffed out all sound into a ghostly hum around them.

“Is that Alice?” Kendra said.

“Yeah,” Colbie said, “and she is one tough bitch. Don’t underestimate her, okay?”

“Duly noted,” Kendra said, but remained silent as though working something over in her mind. “Colbie, if you’re gonna take these masqueraders out of here, do you think you can take Alice out of here, too?”

“That’s a tall order for me,” Colbie said. “I’ll try, but I’m not Celia. Even with the help of Connie’s place, I can’t teleport people stronger than me against their will.”

“Just try your best, okay? That’s all I’m asking,” Kendra said, then said into her earpiece, “Nico, kill the lights,” and Nico cut all the chandelier lights overhead, casting the whole ballroom in gloom and sending the masqueraders into a mass panic. Then Kendra said to Colbie, “You ready for this?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Colbie said, and went to work. She imagined the refracted spaces merging together in her mind, the simulation and reality lining up, till the unearthly hum merged with the din of a panicked mob. She took one deep breath and yelled, “Metafrázo!” (Translate!)

And the battle was afoot.

Tsuzuku