Half World (14 page)

Melanie stuck to the corner, as if it might somehow save her.

Fear froze her blood, her senses. Only her heart continued to pound inside her chest.

The silence of the elevator was unnerving. She could not discern the sounds of mechanical movement, and there was no telling which way she was really going. What if she was plunging through time and space? Who knew where the doors would open? What if she was going down and up, like an Escher print? Melanie started feeling sick. She glanced at the lights above the door, but she was still on the fourth floor.

The key card. She had to swipe it. Hand shaking, she dragged the plastic through the magnetic reader. “PH” lit up on the panel, and the car began to glide once more.

Melanie sagged.

It was exhausting. The terror was so very exhausting. The floor numbers lit up, one after the other, and Melanie watched with dread and impatience as she drew closer and closer to the penthouse floor.

The doors slid open.

The cacophony of noise from the fourth floor had not followed Melanie to the penthouse level. She stared fearfully down the empty, brightly lit hallway.

The doors started to close and Melanie's hand instinctively shot out to stop the movement. Swallowing hard, head downward, she pushed the housekeeping cart and stepped into the long hallway.

Ornately patterned wallpaper writhed with unfurling fronds of fern and exotic birds in a pale hue. Melanie wondered if they were supposed to be gold. Mini chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and the crystals caught the light and scattered the fragments like strewn diamonds. Small, narrow wooden stands were laden with bowls of black, gray, and white flowers, and a few tastefully upholstered chairs were strategically placed in regular intervals. It was all so pretty. . . .

It was all so horrible.

Melanie's teeth started clacking. The noise was repulsive and she couldn't stop her mind's panicked associations. Bones clattering against bones. Skeletons jiggling up and down on puppet strings.

“Stop it!” Melanie hissed to herself. She began to push the cart down the dense, compact carpet. The wheels did not rattle.

She came to an abrupt stop.

The room card . . . she didn't know which room it opened.

Melanie stared down the hallway. There weren't that many doors: six in total. Three doors along both sides of the hallway were discreetly spaced in staggered intervals so no guest's door opened onto another's. She sighed with relief. Six doors weren't so many. And if there were guests in the room it didn't matter because she was Mavis, from housekeeping. She had a reason to be there. She took the swipe card out of her pocket and approached the first door.

Go on, she told herself. Go on. You can do it.

You can do it for your mum. For yourself. For everyone who suffered in Half World. For all the tormented souls who were re-enacting their personal horrors for eternity.

Melanie was gripping the card so hard that it dug into her palm.

The pain sliced through her doubts and fears like a clean knife. She took a deep breath and forced herself toward the unmarked door. She raised the card to swipe it in the magnetic reader, but then she paused. She thought for a few seconds and lifted her free hand and knocked on the door.

Silence.

Melanie slowly counted to ten.

Nothing.

She swiped the card.

One of two lights shone, but she couldn't discern the color. Agitated, she tried the door.

It did not open.

Melanie swiped again and tried turning the door latch more quickly, but it remained locked.

“Okay,” she murmured. “It's okay. Just one down, five more left.”

She got behind the cleaning cart and pushed it farther down the hallway to the second door. As she drew closer, Melanie raised the swipe card toward the magnetic reader.

When she heard an almost inaudible click.

Silence.

Melanie sucked in her breath and held, her heart double-beating inside her ears. She hadn't noticed, but there were tiny peepholes in the doors just above her line of vision. Her skin crawled. God, she thought, anyone could be staring out at her from behind the door. Anything . . .

Keeping her head down, Melanie tried to bring a close-lipped smile to her face. “Housekeeping,” she mouthed hoarsely. She pointed to the vicinity of her name tag. “I'm Mavis,” she enunciated, “your new housekeeper.”

She thought she could hear a clicking. A familiar sound although she couldn't say where she'd heard it before. Something was spinning. A rotating device with hard metal pieces . . .

Like a roulette wheel in the casino . . . or the barrel of a revolver.

Melanie slowly, cautiously eased away, resisting the urge to raise both hands above her head. “I'll come back later,” she whispered. “Sorry to bother you.”

When she had crept away from the line of sight she heaved a great sigh. She could feel sweat turning cold upon her brow.

Suddenly, her hands started shaking. Her lips quivered spasmodically as delayed shock and adrenaline kicked in. She felt ready to collapse. Tears began to fill her eyes and she batted fiercely so she wouldn't ruin the makeup.

What was she doing here, a lone girl, without any weapons?

What did she think she could do?

Melanie dug the hard edge of the hotel swipe card deep into her palm, and the pain helped her pull back from the hopeless spiral.

“Don't,” she hissed to herself. “It doesn't help. You can't change the past. But you can change the future.”

Resolutely she pushed the cart toward the third door.

It burst open so suddenly she didn't have time to scream.

A bald portly man, bound hands held in front of him, a gag in his mouth and panicked terror and desperate hope in his eyes, was running toward her.

Something that Melanie couldn't see grabbed the back of him and yanked him back into the room as if he were nothing more than a doll. Melanie could only witness the hope fade from his eyes before the door swung shut.

Every day.

This happened to the man every day. . . .

Melanie fought the urge to retch.

This was so wrong! How could this wrongness have continued for so long!

Somehow. She would try. She would try to make it stop.

Melanie approached the next door.

“Door four,” she whispered as she drew closer. And despite the resolution in her spirit, her fragile mortal heart trembled inside her throat.

Door four. She so desperately wished she could pass by this door, marked with the unlucky number. . . .

How much can a person bear? she thought hollowly.

The silence of the entire penthouse floor was profound. Only the steady beating of her foolish heart.

As much as she had to, Melanie thought grimly.

She took a deep breath, swiped the card through the reader.

One of two small lights glowed and she heard the mechanism unlock with a loud click.

Melanie twisted the latch, and the door opened.

THE FOYER WAS
dark but a diffuse light spilled around the corner of the hallway. Melanie stood in the half-light, gripping the handle of the cleaning cart in tight fists. A faint trace of something sour lingered in the air.

No more atrocities, she mouthed silently. Let this be okay.

The writhing threads of hope and terror were unbearable. She wanted to vomit.

Instead, she stepped through the doorway, pushing the cart in front of her as if it would somehow protect her. The door swung shut behind her.

The rubber tires squeaked overloud on the cold marble tiles. Melanie stopped.

“Hello?” she tried, her voice no more than a hoarse whisper.

She was inside. Suddenly her disguise felt horribly inadequate. As if she were a child who had been forced to design her own costume for the school play.

“Housekeeping,” Melanie croaked feebly.

She was surrounded by silence.

Leaving the cart in the foyer, Melanie tiptoed down the hallway to cautiously peer into the living room.

The room was luxuriously decorated. The floor was covered in a rich, dense carpet, and the furniture was elegant and old-fashioned. Antiques, Melanie guessed, with finely carved armrests and curved legs, floral-patterned cushions. A low table, easy chairs, and a chaise divan were loosely arranged around a stand of bamboo growing in an enormous ceramic pot. A black grand piano was set near the heart-stopping wall-sized window. The lid was open but it barely seemed to take up any space in the sprawling room. The massive framed oil paintings looked like postage stamps on the walls. Even in black and white the riches of the room were the grandest things Melanie had ever seen.

She released a long sigh of relief. No one was there, and she could quickly explore the room.

Glancing this way and that, Melanie stepped onto the carpet.

Two notes on the piano were pressed simultaneously in a quick three-beat succession.

Melanie gasped.

The same notes pressed three times again. Then two different notes, one, two, three, one, two, three . . .

The melody was bizarrely familiar.

Melanie stood at the edge of the living room, staring at the piano, the player hidden behind the raised lid.

“Chopsticks.” The person was playing “Chopsticks.”

The pianist played the notes that brought the tune back to the center of the keyboard to begin the piece once more. One, two, three, one, two, three . . .

Melanie did not know what to do.

And the piano player continued playing the maddening tune.

As if caught in a dream, she was pulled toward the horrible music. Her footsteps silent on the dense carpet, she drew closer and closer to the piano perched on the edge of the precipice window.

“Chopsticks” playing on and on and on . . .

Her heart filling her throat, Melanie moved around the piano to face the player.

The bench was empty.

She stared at the keys as they played themselves.

“Ha, ha, ha, ha,” Melanie began to laugh weakly. “Hee, hee, hee, hee!”

“Who are you?” someone directly behind her asked.

Melanie shrieked and spun around, almost knocking over an open book on a book stand.

“Are you invited to the party?” the woman asked in a voice too slow.

Her hair was shorter, cut to her shoulders and curled under. Stark white foundation cast an eerie glow to her cheeks, and her lips had been drawn in with pencil and filled in more fully than their original shape. Dark mascara and heavy eyeliner lent a jaded toughness to her appearance, but her eyes were cloudy and unfocused. She seemed to be looking at a point just beyond Melanie's head.

Dressed in a black crepe dress that bristled with glinting shards of mirrors and jagged feathers, her plump arms were encased in long black transparent gloves that reached past her elbows.

In one hand she held an unlit cigarette. In the other was an empty martini glass.

It was her mother.

She had found her.

She had found her!

Tears filled Melanie's eyes. “Oh!” She could not speak; her heart was too full. “Oh! Oh!”

“Fumiko,” a sticky voice cooed from the hallway.

A waft of pungent vinegar pooled into the room.

Melanie's heart froze. No! Not yet! It wasn't fair!

Her eyes darted behind her overlong bangs. She glared at her mother, willing her to know her. Can't you
feel
that it's me? she begged internally. Can't you see your own daughter, standing in front of you?

But her mother looked past her, and Melanie fearfully glanced over her shoulder.

Mr. Glueskin seemed taller than the last time she had seen him. And his face had changed yet again. Longer, leaner, he had raised the bridge of his nose and widened his brow. His hair was silver instead of white, slightly messy upon his high forehead. His white eyes gleamed. Dressed in a worn and ragged tuxedo, still ensconced in his stinking rubber boots, he looked like a groom who had deserted his wedding and had been on the streets for a very long time. In one hand he was holding heavily weighted plastic bags.

His middle was not bulging, as it would have been if he had swallowed up Gao Zhen Xi.

What had he done to her and Jade Rat?

Mr. Glueskin's expressive mouth curled with distaste as he caught sight of Melanie. “Well! About time help has arrived,” he sneered. “We don't need housecleaning. But be the maid. What is your name, maid?”

Melanie, paralyzed with fear, could only stand there.

“Your NAME!” Mr. Glueskin roared.

“M-Mavis,” Melanie whispered. “Mavis.” She dropped her head, shoulders curling inward. Then her eyes fell upon her upside-down badge—

Horror dried all the moisture from her mouth.

Fumiko muttered something beneath her breath. Mr. Glueskin whipped his gaze away from Melanie to direct his attention at her mother.

“What, darling?” he asked in an overly kind voice. “What did you say?”

“Gladys,” Fumiko monotoned.

Melanie's heart stopped.

Mr. Glueskin's eyes narrowed.

It's over, Melanie thought, her head dropping lower with despair. Like all the hopeless repeat women she had seen sitting on their cots in the dorm . . .

“Gladys,” Melanie parroted. “Gladys. Gladys.”

“Idiot!” Mr. Glueskin began giggling. He flicked her name badge with an overlong finger. “Your name is Glaaaaadys! You don't even know your own name! Ohhhh, good help is soooo hard to find. Maybe I should just eat you up and order up another maid instead?” He made a smacking, slurping sound and Melanie felt faint. She could scarcely stand.