“Hello, little girl,” he says.
Where to run? The front gate is locked. I refuse to be the girl in the horror film who flees into the basement. Both brothers are advancing toward me down the stairs now. I don’t have any time to think. Instinctively I step into the lift. I press the button for the third floor.
The lift clanks upward, the mechanism grinding. I can hear Nick running up the stairs below: through the metal grille I can see the top of his head. He’s chasing me. The gloves are off now.
Finally I reach the third floor. The lift clanks into place agonizingly slowly. I open the metal gate and dash across the landing, shove the keys into the door to Ben’s apartment and fling it open, slam it shut behind me, lock the door, my chest heaving.
I try to think, panic making me stupid, just when I need my thoughts to be as clear as possible. The back staircase: I could try and use that. But the sofa’s in the way. I run to it, start trying to tug it away from the door.
Then I hear the unmistakable sound of a key beginning to turn in the lock. I back away. He has a key. Of course he has a key. Could I pull something in front of the door? No: there’s no time.
Nick starts advancing toward me across the room. The cat, seeing him, streaks past and jumps up onto the kitchen counter to his right, mewing at him—perhaps hoping to be fed. Traitor.
“Come on, Jess,” Nick says, coaxingly, still that chillingly reasonable tone. “Just, just stay where you are—”
This new menace in Nick is so much more frightening than if he hadn’t worn that nice-guy mask before. I mean, his brother’s violence has always seemed to simmer just beneath the surface. But Nick—this new Nick—he’s an unknown quantity.
“So what?” I ask him. “So you can do the same thing to me that you’ve done to Ben?”
“I didn’t do anything—”
There’s a strange emphasis on the way he says this. A stress on the “I”: “I didn’t.”
“Are you saying someone else did? One of the others?” He doesn’t answer. Keep him talking, I tell myself, play for time. “I thought you wanted to help me, Nick,” I say.
He looks pained now. “I did want to, Jess. And it’s all my fault. I set this whole thing in motion. I invited him here . . . I should have known. He went digging into stuff he shouldn’t have . . . fuck—” He rubs at his face with his hands and when he takes them away I see that his eyes are rimmed with red. “It’s my fault . . . and I’m sorry—”
I feel a coldness creeping through me. “What have you done to Ben, Nick?” I meant it to sound tough, authoritative. But my voice comes out with a tremor.
“I haven’t . . . I didn’t . . . I haven’t done anything.” Again that emphasis: “I didn’t, I haven’t.”
The only way out is past Nick, through that front door. Just by the door is the kitchen area. The utensil pot’s right there; inside it is that razor-sharp Japanese knife. If I can just keep him talking, somehow grab the knife—
“Come on, Jess.” He takes another step toward me.
And suddenly there’s a streak of movement, a flash of black and white. The cat has leapt from the kitchen counter onto Nick’s shoulders—the same way it greeted me the very first time I entered this apartment. Nick swears, puts his hands up to tear the animal away. I sprint forward, yank the knife out of the pot. Then I lunge past him for the door, wrench it open, and slam it behind me.
“Hello little girl.”
I turn: fuck—Antoine stands there, he must have been waiting in the shadows. I lunge the knife toward him, slashing so violently at the air with the blade that he staggers backward and falls down the flight of stairs, collapsing in a heap on the next landing. I peer at him through the gloom, my chest burning. I think I hear a groan but he’s not moving.
Nick will be out any moment. There’s only one way to go.
Up.
I’m clearly outnumbered here, one of me: four of them. But perhaps there’s somewhere I can hide, to try and buy some time.
Come on, Jess. Think. You’ve always been good at thinking yourself out of a tight spot.
Mimi
Fourth floor
“What’s going on out there? Maman?” After everything I have learned the word still feels strange, painful.
“Shh,” she says, stroking my hair. “Shh, ma petite.”
I’m crouched on the bed, trembling. She came down to check on me. I’ve allowed her to sit beside me, to put an arm around my shoulders.
“Look,” she says. “Just stay in here, yes? I’m going to go out there and see what’s going on.”
I grab hold of her wrist. “No—please don’t leave me.” I hate the neediness in my voice, my need for her, but I can’t help it. “Please,” I say. “Maman.”
“Just for a couple of minutes,” she says. “I just have to make sure—”
“No. Please—don’t leave me here.”
“Mimi,” she says, sharply. “Let go of my arm, please.”
But I keep hanging onto her. In spite of everything I don’t want her to leave me. Because then I’d be left alone with my thoughts—like a little girl afraid of the monsters under the bed.
Jess
I sprint up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Fear makes me run faster than I’ve ever done in my life.
Finally I’m on the top floor, opposite the door to the penthouse apartment, the wooden ladder up to the old maids’ quarters in front of me. I begin to climb, ascending into the darkness. Maybe I can hide out here long enough to gather my thoughts, work out what the hell I’m going to do next. I’m already pulling the hoop earrings from my ears, bending them into the right shape, making my rake and my pick. I grab for the padlock, get to work. Normally I’m so quick at this but my hands are shaking—I can feel that one of the pins inside the lock is seized and I just can’t get the pressure right to reset it.
Finally, finally, the lock pops open and I wrench it off and push open the door. I close it again quickly behind me. The open padlock is the only thing to give me away; I’ll just have to pray they won’t immediately guess I’ve come in here.
My eyes start to adjust in the gloom. I’m looking into a cramped attic space, long and thin. The ceiling slopes down sharply above me. I have to crouch so I don’t knock my head on one of the big wooden beams.
It’s dark but there’s a dim glow which I realize is the full moon, filtering in through the small, smeared attic windows. It smells of old wood and trapped air up here and something animal: sweat or something worse, something decaying. Something that stops me from breathing in too deeply. The air feels thick, full of dust motes which float in front of me in the bars of moonlight. It feels as though I have just pushed open a door into another world, where time has been suspended for a hundred years.
I move forward, looking around for somewhere to hide.
Over in the dim far corner of the space I see what looks like an old mattress. There appears to be something on top of it.