Marisha Pessl - Night Film

“But not Ashley.”

Hopper whispered it, his voice so quiet and resolute, it sliced through the room, through Marlowe herself, rendering her silent, even a little unnerved.

“She’d never look the other way,” he said.

“No,” Marlowe answered.

“It happened on a devil’s bridge,” Marlowe continued, staring at Hopper, anxiously clutching at her shoulders and chest to make sure she was fully covered by the robe. “You’ve heard of them?”

“No,” said Nora.

“They’re medieval bridges. Steeped in folklore. Most are in Europe, from England to Slovenia, built between one thousand and sixteen hundred A.D. Though the stories of each bridge vary, the underlying premise is that the devil agrees to help build the bridge in exchange for the first human soul to cross it. I don’t know the specifics. But somehow there came to be such a bridge on The Peak property. They built it, I imagine.”

“You mean the townspeople from Crowthorpe Falls,” I said.

She nodded. “From the moment she entered the world, Ashley was an extraordinary child. A glorious image of her father. Fearless, dark-haired, with his pale blue-gray eyes clear as a stream. The intelligence, the unquenchable curiosity, the way she grasped life. The two of them were inseparable. Stanny loved his son, Theo. But there was something about Ashley that … well, he couldn’t help but worship her. Everyone did.”

She chugged the Heaven Hill bottle with her head thrown back, seemingly oblivious that it was totally empty. She wiped her mouth.

“Stanislas never knew how Ashley came to follow him into the woods that night. Ashley never told anyone. But I have a pretty good hunch who gave her the idea. You see, that priest — he was still lurking. He hadn’t been with Cordova at The Peak for some time. After Genevra’s death, he took off, supposedly traveled throughout Africa doing missionary work, but then, rather suddenly, the old boy was back in town, having no place to stay and little money. Cordova didn’t object to his old pal shacking up at The Peak once again. I don’t know for a fact, but I imagine the priest was quite jealous of Ashley. He adored Cordova. He must have hoped that Stanny and he would one day … I don’t know. Live happily ever after? Like a couple of lovesick teenagers?”

Marlowe fell back in the chair. “However it happened, in the middle of the night in June — this was back in 1992; Ashley was five — Stanislas was at this devil’s bridge he’d constructed with these townspeople. When he was partaking in, whatever it was they did —a ritual of the utmost depravity, I’d imagine — Ashley appeared from out of nowhere. She stepped right onto the bridge. You can imagine how disturbing such a scene would be for any child. But Ashley wasn’t afraid. Stanislas, when he saw her, screamed at her to stop, go back. But in the chaos, when she saw her father, she did what any little girl who loved her father would do — she ran to him. Ashley ran the entire length of the bridge, stopping only when she’d reached the other side. She was the first human soul to cross it.”

Marlowe fell silent, sitting unsteadily forward. A white bony hand had emerged from the voluminous black satin sleeve, resting on her throat.

“Stanislas was appalled. The scene was immediately disbanded. Fires put out. Whoever and whatever these people were, they were ordered to leave the property. Stanislas led Ashley back to the house. To his relief, she seemed fine. She was herself. Wasn’t even afraid of what she’d just seen. Her family home was a veritable movie set, after all. She’d watched bonfires, cars exploding, men and women declaring their undying love, their undying hate, fight scenes, love scenes, chase scenes, women hanging for dear life off the sides of buildings, men falling out of the sky — all in her own backyard. He tucked her into bed and read aloud to her, a chapter from one of her favorite fairy tales, The Mysterious World of Bartho Lore. She fell asleep that night with a smile on her face — just as she always did. Stanny decided not to tell his wife. I don’t know the extent of Astrid’s — Stanny’s third wife’s — knowledge of what he’d been up to in the middle of the night, but there seemed to be an understanding that he was free to do what he liked, so long as he didn’t involve the children. When Stanny went to bed that night, he prayed to God. An interesting choice, given how he’d been spending his free time. But it was to God. Even then, he didn’t quite believe in the things he’d been doing. Now he hoped none of it was real. It couldn’t be. The idea’s really absurd. Is it not?”

She asked this with cynical delight, taking another long swig from the empty Heaven Hill bottle. Maybe she was guzzling the fumes.

“Within a week, Stanislas began to notice a difference. Ashley was always a watchful, gifted child, but now her gifts started having ferocious tendencies. He’d invited some Chinese soldiers and a former ambassador to live at the house while he worked on his next picture. Within two weeks of their arrival, Ashley was entirely fluent in the language. She also began staring, staring right into people, as if she could read their thoughts, see their fates unspooled before her like a roll of thirty-five-millimeter. She still laughed, of course, was still so beautiful, but there was a gravity in her now that had never been there before. And then there was the piano. ”

Marlowe shuddered at the thought.

“Astrid was a trained pianist. Since Ashley was four, she had a teacher from Juilliard travel up to the estate twice a week to give the girl private lessons. At five, Ashley was good for her age but never had real passion for the instrument. She preferred to be outdoors, riding horses and bikes, climbing trees. Now she sat down, shut herself inside for hours, and played until her fingers swelled with blisters. Within weeks, the girl could master any piece put before her, Beethoven, Bartók, in mere hours, the whole thing memorized. More and more, this shift in Ashley was palpable. Stanny was too devastated to believe it. Yet he began to do research. Throughout history, alliances with the devil often manifest themselves in virtuosic mastery of an instrument. In eighteenth-century Italy, there was Paganini — still believed to be the finest violinist ever to have lived. The same was true for Robert Johnson, the blues musician. He went to a crossroads in Tunica, Mississippi, and gave the devil his soul in exchange for total music mastery.”

She paused, her breathing shallow, nervous.

“Astrid was still ignorant of what had occurred. She thought her daughter was simply growing up with a rabid intelligence. But then she began noticing Ashley was oddly cold to the touch, and when she took her temperature, rather than the normal ninety-eight-point-six degrees, Ashley was consistently around ninety-seven, ninety -six. She took her to New York City to visit various hospitals. Doctors found nothing wrong. Astrid worried, especially when Ashley began showing signs of behavioral problems. She’d stopped laughing. And when she became angry she had a temper that was frightening. Stanislas finally had to tell his poor wife. He showed Astrid what he believed to be the devil’s mark on Ashley. Something called the toad’s footprint. A sizable freckle in the iris close to the pupil. Ashley had it in her left eye.”

I stared at her. Marlowe had just described what Lupe, the housekeeper at the Waldorf had talked about. Huella del mal. Evil’s footprint. Nora turned to me, clearly remembering how she’d pointed out the freckle in the medical examiner’s photo.