The Ten Thousand Doors of January(56)

THE DOOR OPENS FOR HER.

The coin edge bit and twisted around the period, and I believed it with all my shaken heart.

The room did that same almost-familiar reshuffling of itself, a subtle wrenching, as if an invisible housewife were tugging at the corners of reality to shake out the wrinkles. I screwed my eyes shut and waited, hope thudding through my veins and dripping out onto the floor—God help me if it didn’t work—in the morning they’d find me lying in the curdling muck of my own blood—at least Havemeyer wouldn’t have any life-heat left to steal—

The lock clicked. I opened my eyes, blinking through sudden exhaustion. The door swung inward just slightly, as if pulled by a faint breeze.

I slouched forward and rested my forehead against the tile, letting waves of fatigue roll and crash over me. My eyes wanted to close; my ribs ached as if I’d swum to the bottom of the lake and back.

But he was coming, and I couldn’t stay.

I limped back to the bed in a three-limbed crawl, smearing red behind me, and fumbled for my book. I hugged it close to me, just for a moment, breathing in that spice-and-ocean smell. It smelled exactly like my father’s ancient, shapeless coat, which he left draped over the back of his chair at dinner whenever he was home. How had I never realized that before?

I tucked the book beneath my arm, gripped the coin-knife tight in my palm, and left.

There was no Threshold here, of course, but stepping from my room into the hall was still crossing from one world into another. I swept down the hall with my stiff gown rustling against my legs and blood drip-dripping behind me in a long line of spatters. I thought absurdly of bread-crumb trails leading through dark fairy-tale forests, and quashed a slightly hysterical urge to laugh.

I crept down two flights of stairs and into the pristine white of the front lobby. I passed doors with neat gold lettering on the glass, blinking blurring eyes at the titles. Dr. Stephen J. Palmer. I had an irrational urge to slip into his office and upend all his neat files and folders, shred all his careful notes—perhaps steal that hideous pen of his—but I kept padding forward.

The entranceway was cool marble beneath my bare feet. I was reaching for the stately double-paned doors, already smelling summer grass and freedom, when I realized two things simultaneously: first, that I could hear raised voices echoing on the floor above, a rising clamor of alarm, and that I’d left a spattered red trail through the halls leading directly to the front doors. And second, that there was a blurred figure standing on the other side of the door, drawn in shadow and moonlight. The tall, attenuated silhouette of a man.

No.

My legs went weak and slow, as if I were wading through knee-deep sand. The silhouette sharpened as it came closer. The doorknob turned, the door opened, and Havemeyer stood framed on the threshold. He had abandoned his cane and gloves, and his white-spider hands hung naked by his sides. His skin was lambent and alien in the darkness, and I suddenly thought how strange it was that he seemed so human by daylight.

His eyes widened as he saw me. He smiled—a predatory, life-hungry smile, and God help you if you’ve ever seen a smile like that on a human face—and I ran.

The voices had grown louder, and electric lights snapped and buzzed ahead of me. White-frocked nurses and staff were scurrying toward me, shouting and scolding. But I could feel Havemeyer behind me like a malevolent wind and I kept running until I was nearly face-to-face with them. They slowed, hands raised in placating gestures, voices soothing. They seemed reluctant to touch me, and I had a brief disorienting vision of myself through their eyes: a feral, in-between-girl with blood staining her nightgown and words carved like prayers into her flesh. Teeth bared, eyes fear-black. Mr. Locke’s good girl had been replaced by someone else entirely.

Someone who wasn’t prepared to surrender.

I dove sideways through an unlabeled wooden door. Brooms and buckets crashed around me in the dark, an ammonia-and-lye smell: a janitor’s closet. A dangling pull-cord turned on the light and I jammed a stepladder inexpertly beneath the doorknob. Heroes were always doing that in my stories, but it looked much more tenuous in real life.

Running footsteps pounded outside the door and the knob gave a violent rattle, followed by swearing and shouting. An ominous thump shook the ladder. My pulse rocketed and I fought the panicky whine in my throat. There was nowhere left to run, no doors left to open.

Hold On January. The stepladder made a worrying splintery sound.

I needed to run, far and fast. I thought of the blue door to the sea; of my father’s world; of Samuel’s world, his cabin by the lake. I looked down at my left arm, thrumming now with pain like a marching band in the distance, and thought: Why the hell not?

I hesitated for a half second. It comes at a cost, my father had said; power always does. How much would it cost to split the world open like this? Could I afford to pay it, shivering and bleeding in a broom closet?

“Come, now, Miss Scaller,” a voice hissed through the door. “How childish.” It was a very patient voice, like a wolf circling a treed animal, waiting.

I swallowed cold terror, and began.

I started high on my shoulder, where I could barely reach, and kept my letters tight and small. SHE WRITES A DOOR

The thundering sounds on the closet door paused, and that cold voice said, “Out of my way.” Then came harassed-sounding bickering, shuffling footsteps, and much stronger, frame-rattling thuds.

OF BLOOD