The Lost Village(21)

I shrug.

“We’re still coming out of winter,” I say. “Maybe they got washed away by the snow.”

Tone turns away and nods.

“I guess,” she says. “Maybe.”

She lifts the camera and takes a picture of the windows, while I try to shake the feeling coming over me.

“Shall we see if we can get upstairs?” I ask.

“Sure,” says Tone.

Once we’re back in the lobby, she looks up at the staircase with pursed lips.

“Ready?” I ask.

She gives a silent nod.

Having the rucksack on top of my jacket has made me start to sweat, so as I walk toward the stairs I unzip the jacket to let some air in. I look over my shoulder at Tone. She’s standing still, watching me. Her gaze is steady, which should make me feel calmer.

“OK,” I say, more to myself than to her.

I place one foot on the bottom step and slowly lean into it. The step creaks a little, but it doesn’t sound like it’s about to cave in. When I take my other foot off the ground I’m half-expecting the wood to give way beneath me, but now it doesn’t make a sound.

“Seems stable,” I say, still facing forward.

I take another careful step. My shoes sink into the carpet like mud, and the reddish fibers break away with my soles as I lift them.

I look over my shoulder.

“I think it’s OK,” I say, and Tone nods.

“Be careful,” she says. “Stay near the wall. That’s where it should be strongest, structurally.”

“I know,” I say.

The staircase spirals up to the second floor. I go first, and it feels as though I’m holding my breath the whole way up, half-expecting the floor beneath us to cave in with each step, for us to fall several feet onto the hard, warped wooden floor. But it holds. Some of the tension dissipates once I reach the second-floor landing, but my eyes stay glued to Tone as she slowly works her way up the stairs behind me. It’s only when she’s standing next to me that I actually relax.

“Be careful,” I say. “Keep near the walls. We don’t know how stable the floor is.”

I expect her to say that she knows, but she just nods.

The floor is dusty and very worn, but you can tell that at one point the wood must have been beautiful. To our right there is a pair of large carved oak doors. Not only do they look miraculously undamaged; they are also still closed. I put my hand on the brass door handle and press it down, and the doors swing open on a creaking hinge.

Inside the room there are eight tall, narrow desks in rows, with a lectern and a slate chalkboard at the front. There are no chairs. The walls are lined with shelves, most of which are packed with neatly organized test tubes, glass bottles, and other equipment for basic chemistry experiments. The top shelf, however …

I step slowly into the room, my eyes glued to the jars lining the top shelf. They are filled with some sort of brownish preservative, giving the objects within them a sepia tone. Some contain plants and roots, others formless clumps that could be either fungi or organs. But at the far end of the shelf stand three jars of what can only be some sort of fetuses.

I hear something click behind me and glance over my shoulder. Tone takes a few photos of the shelves, then steps closer and zooms in, ensuring that the three far jars are in focus.

Then she lowers the camera and stares at them.

“Those are really gross,” I say, trying to lighten the mood.

A frown line appears between Tone’s eyebrows.

“Why would they even have these?” she asks.

“To teach kids about … anatomy and stuff, I guess.”

One of the jars has cracked—or even split in the cold—and its dull, syrupy brown contents have dripped onto the shelves below. It must have happened a long time ago, because the stains have long since dried. I can’t see what it might have contained.

She goes on staring at them so long that I say:

“I think we’re done in here.” My voice is louder than it needs to be. It seems to fill the whole space.

“We should come back at dusk,” she says. “To film here. The light will be perfect then. Powerful images.”

I can feel the timeless, hunched, unformed beings in the jars still pulling my eyes toward them, and a chill runs down my spine. But that has to be a good thing, really. Tone’s right: it is powerful.

Once out of that room, we walk toward an identical set of doors to the left of the staircase. These ones are slightly aslant. One of the hinges on one side has come away from the wall, leaving that door slanting sharply toward the other. A golden streak of light shines through the gap between them.

I carefully pull at the door hanging from one hinge. I’m met by a cool puff of wind that, along with the sudden sunshine, makes my eyes water. I blink.

The room is big and almost empty, but the walls are covered in posters: everything from big printed letters like the ones they use in eye tests, to cross sections of the human body, and more detailed anatomical images of the eye and heart. The nurse’s office.

By the wall next to the door stands an oak desk with a matching Windsor chair beside it. There’s a dainty little corner cabinet to one side and, on the other side of the door, a heavy white porcelain sink with cobweb cracks in the enamel and a rusty tap.

Near the far wall stands a bier-like bed with a rumpled sheet that has yellowed with age. The window above it is the only open window in the room, and it hangs open in a way that looks intentional. As if it were opened to give whoever wrinkled up those sheets some air and sunshine.