Every beat of my heart cries, Now.
I reach for the trapdoor and have no idea what awaits me on the other side. A barren plain? A fiery swamp filled with torment? Or a blissful meadow faintly vibrating with harp music? Heaven, hell, or purgatory-those were the possibilities Elizabeth had mentioned. So which will it be?
I look once more at my miraculously healed hand and realize that I am not remotely afraid. All I feel is exhilaration. I open the trapdoor.
There is the chandelier, still tied off at its cleat. Below, the chapel looks completely unchanged. I swing my legs out over the edge of the hatch, and step carefully down onto one of the braces. I untie the rope from its cleat and sit down, lowering myself slowly. It’s easy work, especially with two able hands. Within moments I am at the floor.
I let my eyes linger on the ceiling, and the dull fresco suddenly pulses, showing me its former glory in a blaze of vibrant blues and golds. It’s as though, by mere will, I am making the house remember its past! I turn my gaze to the walls, where I know nothing hangs anymore, but, concentrating, I now see heavy tapestries depicting Jesus and the stations of the cross. At the altar a candle burns. Rows of simple wooden pews swim into view.
I step toward one of them, and as I rap it with my knuckles, it becomes truly solid. I stroke my fingertips across the grain-the feeling is intense, strangely pleasurable. And when I sit down upon the pew, it’s no surprise that it’s as solid as can be. It doesn’t evaporate and spill me out, though when I stand, it starts to fade, as though it takes my gaze, my touch, to properly remind it of its existence. I smile at the wonder of it, my power to make this happen.
A feeling of being watched crawls over me, and I turn toward the doorway. I am alone but suddenly conscious of what else I might see here.
I leave the chapel and walk toward the chateau’s great entrance hall. The place is so still and quiet, yet seems to pulse with energy and expectation. At first everything around me seems utterly familiar, but I need only to let my gaze rest awhile somewhere and suddenly I see spectral tapestries and paintings, bits of unknown furniture, different doorways, flagstones, wall sconces, and moldings-everything that was once in the house, or was once part of it, is still here, waiting to be seen and touched again.
I reach the entrance hall. Flanking the great wooden door are two leaded glass windows, beyond which is a fog so thick, I cannot see the courtyard.
Once more I’m aware of being watched. I whirl back to the stairs to find no one upon them. But fluttering lazily down toward me is a black butterfly. I remember the two dark creatures in Wilhelm Frankenstein’s self- portrait, holding the paintbrush. But this butterfly here is surprisingly large, with a dark blue eyespot on each of its wings, and with every wing beat I can actually hear a strangely musical thrum.
As I watch, the creature circles above my head, tentative, as though asking permission. Instinctively I stretch out my hand, and cautiously the butterfly lands upon my finger. At its touch a thrill of pleasure passes through me- and something else too, which reminds me of both hunger and being fed-and as I watch in amazement, the butterfly is illuminated with color more intense than any stained glass.
When it flutters away, gloriously ablaze, I feel a twinge of sadness. I check the spirit clock. The fetal bird leg points straight down. Half my time already gone!
I hurry upstairs, and as I near Konrad’s bedchamber, my step falters. If I find him inside, what will he look like? What will I say? I force myself onward. The door is ajar Sitting at his table before a chessboard, he’s turned away from me, dressed in the suit he was buried in. I can only stare in wonder. My voice abandons me. My brother is not gone. He has been here all along, just waiting. He moves a rook, then turns the board around, considering his next move, and I realize this is the same game we were playing at his bedside before he died.
I push the door open, enter the room. “Konrad,” I whisper.
Immediately he turns, throwing an arm across his face, as though shielding himself from a blinding glare. He stands, upsetting his chair. In shock I see him snatch up a rapier and back away from me in terror.
“Are you an angel?” he cries out. “Or a demon come to punish me?”
I walk deeper into his room, arms spread wide. “Konrad, it’s just me: Victor!”
He cowers, squinting, still shielding his face. I look over my shoulder and can’t see the source of any glare. Can it be me?
“No!” he shouts. “You lie! My brother’s alive! What are you?”
“Victor!” I insist. “And I am alive! But I found a way inside! I came to find you!”
He tightens his grip on the hilt, but I can see the blade shaking. “Prove it.”
“Ask me anything-something only we would know.”
“When we were four years old,” he begins, “there was a cat we both loved, and-”
“One day in the stables we had a contest to see who could lure it to him first. It preferred you, of course, and you gloated, so when your back was turned, I picked up a large stone and dropped it onto your head. I promised you my dessert if you wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“Victor?” Konrad says quietly. “Is it really you?”
I draw closer to embrace him, but he staggers back wincing, hand outstretched to ward me off. “No, don’t touch me! Your heat!”
“My heat?”
“It burns!”
I stop, confused and hurt-and then another thought blossoms, unbidden, in my mind:
I am light and heat. I have total control over him.
“Why do you have a rapier with you?” I ask him. “What are you afraid of?”
“The house is different now.”
“What do you mean? Are there others here?”
“Yes,” he says, “but-”
In my pocket I feel a strange vibration, and I hurriedly pull out the spirit clock. Its skeletal leg points straight up, and the tiny clenched claw is ghoulishly tapping at the glass.
“What’s that you’re holding?” Konrad says, squinting.
“I must go,” I say to my twin, remembering the notebook’s strict instructions. “Are you safe here?”
“I don’t know! Don’t go yet!”
“I’ll come back! I promise!”
I run, the ring on my hand guiding me like some supernatural magnet, in the direction of my body in the real world. It knows. It impels me.
“Victor!” I hear Konrad call from the hallway. “Don’t go!”
The despair in his voice is like a chisel to my heart. “I have to,” I call back over my shoulder, and see he’s following me from a distance. But I move like a current of wind, outstripping him. I hurtle down the grand staircase, and on the final steps a low moan of wind from outside draws my eyes to the windows. The fog is even thicker now, and eerily bright, swirling in strangely hypnotic patterns.
A dangerous curiosity stirs in me, and I want to go closer, to look deeper, but the ring on my hand sends an insistent jolt through me. I must leave. But my mind feels addled now, and as I begin to run back toward the chapel, before me suddenly stands a wall where there should be none. Without thinking I rush through a doorway I’ve never known.
“Victor, where are you going?” my twin cries out, as though from a great distance.
Panting, I find myself in a part of the chateau that must have only existed centuries ago, a totally unfamiliar anteroom. Feeling woozy and confused, I look back to the doorway, only to find it gone. There is no other entrance.
It’s as if the house is remembering its former selves so quickly that I can’t navigate it.
Concentrate!
But I’m trapped, fighting panic. With a faint musical thrum a black butterfly lands upon my shoulder, and becomes colorful. And in the moment before it flutters away, I take a great breath into my lungs and remember my light and heat, the power of my gaze.
I fix my eyes upon the walls of the room, and reluctantly the stone softens and melts away into a new doorway. I run through it before it can close, and find myself in another unfamiliar passage. I’ve spent my life in this place, and I’m truly lost. For the first time I start to feel a weakness in my limbs. I burst into a kitchen so ancient, it must be the original one built for the chateau, nothing more than a hearth and a drain in the floor. I turn around
