sometimes even wakes if they were held in the park. If there was no cover charge, and it was bright, loud, and festive, Lucy's mother would park her daughter on a bench, returning every so often a little drunker, or a little more stoned, with a corn dog, elephant ear, or funnel cake in her hand. Many times these treats were cold, half-eaten, and it wasn't until years later that Lucy figured out that these were probably items of discarded food. Somehow that knowledge did not make them taste bad, even in retrospect. When you're four years old, cotton candy, even someone else's cotton candy, was the best thing in the world.
Mr. Costa closed the curtain, crossed the room, sat down across from Lucy. 'Shall we begin?'
'Sure,' Lucy said. She took a deep breath, tried to relax her shoulders. It wasn't easy. There was a tension that had settled upon her when she was small and, although there were days when she felt it was easing, it had never gone away completely. She looked up at the Dreamweaver, at his bright little-dog eyes. 'Let's begin.'
'Today, in our first session, we are going to go back to a specific time in your life. The time you can't seem to remember. Okay?'
Lucy felt her hands begin to shake. She knit them together in her lap. 'Okay.'
'But you are not going to re-experience this event. There is no need to be concerned with that. Instead, it will be more like you are observing it.'
'Observing? Like, watching it?'
'Yes,' Mr. Costa said. 'Exactly. Like watching it from above.'
'Like I'm flying?'
'Like you're flying.'
'Very cool,' she said. 'What do I do?'
'You needn't do anything except close your eyes and listen to the sound of my voice.'
'You know, I have to tell you something,' Lucy began. 'In fact, I was going to tell you this when I first walked in.'
'What is that?'
'I don't really think I'm the kind of person who can be hypnotized.'
'Why do you say that?'
Lucy shrugged. 'I don't know. I think I'm too intense, you know? I hardly ever sleep, I'm always nervous. Do other people ever say that?'
'Of course.'
'I'm sure that there are some people who just can't seem to-'
Mr. Costa held up a finger, stopping her. The finger had a ring on it. In fact, all of his rings seemed to be back. All six of them.
When had he done that?
'I hate to interrupt you, but I'm afraid our session is complete for today.'
Lucy wasn't sure she understood. 'What are you saying? Are you saying-'
'Yes.'
Lucy took a few moments, letting the news sink in. She had actually been hypnotized for a while.
She stood up, grabbed her purse, walked toward the door, feeling a little dizzy. She held onto the doorjamb to steady herself. Suddenly Mr. Costa was next to her again. He was light on his feet.
'Are you all right?' he asked.
'Yes,' Lucy said. 'Kinda.'
Mr. Costa nodded. 'Shall we say tomorrow, then? Just at midday?'
'Sure,' Lucy said, suddenly realizing she felt pretty good after all. As in really good. Like she'd taken a brief nap.
'I believe you made some progress today,' Mr. Costa said.
Pipe smoke.
'I did?'
'Yes,' he replied. He took off his bifocals, slipped them into an inside pocket of his suit coat. 'I don't believe it was anything like a breakthrough — that may never happen, I'm afraid — but you may have opened a door. Just the slightest bit.'
Pipe smoke and apples.
'A door?' Lucy asked.
'A door to your subconscious. A portal to what happened to you nine years ago.'
Had she told him it was nine years? She didn't remember doing that.
Mr. Costa put his hand on the doorknob. 'One last thing for today,' he said. 'Does the hotel in which you work have notepads in the rooms?'
'Notepads?'
'Notepads with the hotel logo. For the guests.'
'Yes,' Lucy said. She'd only placed a million of these pads — two inches from the left edge of the desk, pen at a forty-five-degree angle across the center.
'Excellent. Please bring one of these pads with you next time,' Mr. Costa said. 'Can you do that?'
'Sure,' Lucy said. 'I'll bring one.'
Mr. Costa opened the door. 'Until tomorrow, my dear Lucinda.'
On the way through the door Lucy glanced at the small picture on the wall next to the casing, just above the grimy light switch. She only saw it for a fleeting moment but that was long enough to see that it was a photograph of another gazebo, this one a rather dilapidated pergola overgrown with ivy. It was only after she'd stepped through the doorway and the door had closed behind her that she realized she knew the house in the background of that photograph, the wreck of a bungalow with its slanted porch and rusted gutters and broken brick walk.
It was the house she had grown up in.
Chapter 18
It is said of Mozart that he could never sit still for his barber running instead to his clavier every time he had an idea, forcing the man tasked with tonsorial duties to chase after him, ribbons in hand.
I understand. Sometimes, when the music of the dead is loud, I cannot sit still, I must go out and begin the hunt anew.
For now I watch and wait, idling, my killing instruments at the ready.
I survey the ground before me. The cemetery looks so different in the daytime. No glowering ghouls, no hovering apparitions. Just the dead. Just a chorus of plaintive voices asking for justice, for answers, for truth.
I watch the people scramble callously about, the decaying dead underfoot, souls trampled beneath the weight of duty. We all know why we are here.
There. From the other side.
Can you hear it?
It is the rooster, a fresh voice in the choir.
The carnivale has come to town.
Chapter 19
Mount Olive was an old cemetery in West Philadelphia, the final resting place of hundreds of Civil War dead as well as of some of Philadelphia's most famous and infamous citizens.
As with other areas of the City of Brotherly Love, including the design and layout of Benjamin Franklin Parkway with its similarity to the Champs Elysees, the concept of the pastoral graveyard was based on a Parisian model.
Framed on three sides by residential neighborhoods, Mount Olive was bordered to the northwest by Fairmount Park. Incorporated in the mid-1800s, it was a non-sectarian graveyard that at one time had been nearly
