Spectacle(36)

They followed four other people under the archway that had “Musée Grévin” written on it, presented their tickets, and entered the peculiar realm of wax figures.

Nathalie and Simone moseyed through a room of historical figures, musicians, and dancers. Simone yawned as they approached a cabaret tableau.

“Bored already?” teased Nathalie. “I thought the cabaret was never dull.”

“It’s not that,” Simone said. “I just didn’t sleep well.”

“I didn’t, either.” Nathalie swallowed back the strong desire to tell her about the letter from the Dark Artist.

“Between Mirabelle and Monsieur Gloves and your aunt’s baptismal font story about the priest and nun…” Simone let go of the sentence and pushed up her sleeves. “I opened the curtains wide and let all the light from the streets pour into the room. Too many thoughts in my wild imagination.”

Nathalie paused before responding. Something didn’t make sense.

“I’m not sure I understand,” she began, drawing each word out with care. “I remember telling you the baptismal font story…” Dread tugged at her as she assembled the next sentence. “I don’t remember hearing it from Aunt Brigitte. How could I tell you a story that I don’t remember hearing?”

Simone cocked her head. “It happened the other day. When you visited her without Maman.”

Nathalie stared at Simone, trying to figure out if this was a joke. But her demeanor was solemn, almost grave, and there was no spirited twinkle in her eyes.

“I remember being in the asylum,” Nathalie said, recalling the moment she walked through the entrance the other day. “I—I don’t recall that conversation with her.”

Simone didn’t blink. She studied Nathalie’s face before speaking. “What do you remember?”

“She was braiding her hair, and she talked about her roommates. She usually talks about her dreams. That day she didn’t because she had a nightmare and said it was too disturbing. Then—” Then what? A gap, like flipping ahead several pages in a book. The next thing she remembered was rushing home on the omnibus. She relayed all this to Simone, who filled in all the now-forgotten asylum details Nathalie had shared a couple days ago.

Nathalie’s eyes fell on a wax version of Napoleon III. “I’ve been very forgetful lately. It wasn’t just buying the flowers and having no memory of it. I went on the roof one night to write to Agnès and write in my journal. I don’t remember coming back into my room afterward, but I woke up in my bed. I also don’t have the faintest idea what I wrote to Agnès, and when I read my journal later, it was unfamiliar. And now this.”

Simone put her hands on Nathalie’s shoulders. “Something just occurred to me,” she said. She bit her lip before continuing. “Yesterday you told me about visiting Aunt Brigitte, but today you don’t recall most of the visit itself. You bought flowers for your mother while standing in line at the morgue—the same day you saw Odette—and afterward didn’t know how you got them. I wouldn’t be surprised if that memory gap on the roof happened right after you saw Victim Number Two.”

The thoughts in Nathalie’s head slowed down. “They were all around the time I visited the morgue and had the visions. I thought it was—was just the strain of it all.”

From there her mind sped up again. Too quickly.

She felt cold from the inside out, and the words echoed in her head as they came out of her mouth: “So every time I have a vision, I lose a memory.”

Simone took a step back, her body tense. “It—it has to be. Why didn’t we make this connection sooner?”

“Maybe on some dark, deeply buried level I suspected it.” But couldn’t admit it to myself or anyone else. “I don’t know if I did or didn’t. I don’t know, I don’t know.”

“I mean, the only way to know is if it keeps happening,” said Simone, tucking a tress under her hat, “although I can’t think of another explanation.”

If it keeps happening.

If.

“And,” Simone added, “maybe it’s only temporary. You might get those memories back after some time has passed. It’s possible.”

“It’s also possible I won’t.” Her mind full of cutouts, like a string of paper dolls? She didn’t need that.

Simone turned toward the tableaux. “Even so, is it really that disagreeable? Inconvenient, perhaps, but to forget that you’ve bought flowers isn’t that disruptive. Every other old man forgets that, I’ll bet.”

“That’s rather dismissive.” As if Simone wanted the memory loss to be a minor detail worth overlooking. And now she had her back to Nathalie besides. “Especially when it isn’t happening to you.”

“For the incredible ability to see things? I’d give up a few memories.”

Nathalie’s ears got hot. This wasn’t some stage show. It was her mind.

They moved to the next room behind a small crowd. As soon as Nathalie saw it, her limbs grew heavy. She couldn’t move. She felt like she’d turned from girl to rooted tree.

There, in horrifying detail, was a wax depiction of Victims #1 and #2, Odette and the forever unnamed second girl, on a slab at the morgue. They were just as she remembered, mangled macabre siblings on a slab. The scene also included the viewing pane and, on the other side of it, a small crowd of people gawking.