Passenger (Passenger, #1)(10)

Etta stumbled through the next few notes, eyes frantically searching the technician’s booth for a sign about whether she should stop or keep going. The audience was still, gazing up at her, almost like they couldn’t hear it—

It wasn’t a sound a human could produce; not one anyone could get without ravaging an instrument.

Do I stop? Do I start over?

She crossed strings and flubbed the next three notes, and her anxiety spiked. Why wasn’t anyone doing anything about that sound—about the screaming feedback? It crashed through her eardrums, flooding her concentration. Her whole body seemed to spasm with it, the nausea making sweat bead on her upper lip. It felt like…like someone was driving a knife into the back of her skull.

The air vibrated around her.

Stop, she thought, desperate, make it stop—

I’m messing up—

Alice was right—

Etta didn’t realize she’d stopped playing altogether until Gail appeared, white-faced and wide-eyed at the edge of the stage. Pressing her face into her hand, Etta tried to catch a breath, fighting through the sensation that her lungs were being crushed. She couldn’t look at the audience. She couldn’t look for Alice or her mother, surely watching this play out in horror.

A nauseating wave of humiliation washed over her chest, up her neck, up her face, and for the first time in Etta’s nearly fifteen years of playing, she turned and ran off the stage. Chased by the sound that had driven her off in the first place.

“What’s the matter?” Gail asked. “Etta? Are you okay?”

“Feedback,” she mumbled, almost unable to hear herself. “Feedback—”

Michelle, the curator, deftly plucked the Antonius out of her hands before she could drop it.

“There’s no feedback,” Gail said. “Let me get you a glass of water—we’ll find a place for you to sit—”

That’s not right. Etta swung her gaze around, searching the faces of the other violinists. They would have heard it—

Only, they clearly hadn’t. The sound of the feedback and her own drumming heart filled the violinists’ silence as they stared back with blank faces.

I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy—

Etta took a step back, feeling trapped between their pity and the wall of sound that was slamming into her back in waves. Panic made the bile rise in her throat, burning.

“Go!” Gail said frantically to one of the older men. “Get out there!”

“I’ve got her.”

The dark-haired girl, Sophia, stepped out of the green room, reaching out to take Etta’s arm. She hadn’t realized how unsteady she was until the arm Gail had thrown around her lifted, and she was forced to lean on a stranger a whole head shorter than her.

“I’m…I’m fine.…” Etta muttered, swaying.

“No, you’re not,” Sophia said. “I hear it, too. Come on!”

The easiest explanation was that she’d snapped, that the stress had gotten to her, but…someone else had heard it, too. It was as alive and real for her as it was for Etta, and it flooded reassurance through her system to know she hadn’t lost it, that she hadn’t just crashed and burned because her stage fright and anxiety from childhood were colliding with the way Alice had doubted her.

Etta thought, just for a moment, she might cry in relief. The sound moved like burning knives beneath her skin as Sophia expertly wove them through the dark backstage area and out a side entrance that dumped them directly into the dark, silent museum, just at the entrance of the Egyptian wing.

Wait, Etta wanted to say, but her mouth couldn’t seem to catch up to her mind. Where are we going?

“It’s coming from over here,” Sophia said, tugging her forward.

Etta took a step toward the Egyptian wing, and the sound grew more intense, the oscillations quicker, like she was working a radio dial and tuning until she found a signal. Another step, and the pitch rose again into a frenzy.

Like it was excited she was paying attention.

Like it wants me to find it.

“What is that?” she asked, hearing her own voice shake. “Why can’t anyone else hear it?”

“Well, we’re going to find out—Etta, right? Let’s go!”

In the dark, the Met wore a different, shifting skin. Without the usual crush of visitors clogging the hallways, every small sound was amplified. Harsh breathing. Slapping shoes. Cold air slipping around her legs and ankles.

Where? she thought. Where are you?

What are you?

They moved beneath the watchful gaze of pharaohs. In the daytime, during the museum’s regular hours, these rooms radiated golden light, like sun-warmed stone. But even the creamy walls and limestone gateways were shadowed now, their grooves deeper. The painted faces of sarcophagi and gods with the heads of beasts seemed sharper, sneering, as the girls followed the winding path through the exhibits.

The Temple of Dendur stood alone in front of her, bleached by spotlights. There was a massive wall of windows, and beyond that, darkness. Not here.

Sophia dragged her past the pools of still waters near the temple, and they ran past statues of ancient kings, past the gateway and temple structure, through to the small gift shop that connected this section of the museum to the American wing. There were no docents, no guards, no security gates; there was nothing and no one to stop them.