Marisha Pessl - Night Film

“It’s just for a minute, sweetheart.” I put my finger to my lips and widened my eyes — going for the hard sell that this was an incredible game — and we stepped inside.

Overhead, fluorescent lights sizzled with blued, greasy light. Hopper and Nora were far ahead, quickly making their way single-file down what looked to be the only discernible pathway in — a constricted gorge through piles of junk. The place was cavernous, an entire block deep, though the light gave up on reaching the outer reaches of the store, letting it wallow in dirty shadow. There were tables and wardrobes, a cracked suitcase labeled ASBESTOS FIRE SUIT, Sherlock Holmes pipes, a carafe with a coiled preserved cobra inside it, a red bottle reading CHAMPION EMBALMING FLUID. Comic books rose in piles all around us like red rock formations in Arizona. I held my breath due to the overwhelming stench — something between mothballs and an old man’s halitosis.

I had to proceed carefully because the store looked rigged, as if it was hoping you accidentally elbowed something so the whole place came crashing down and you were charged a couple hundred thousand bucks for the damage.

As Sam and I went deeper inside, squeezing past a sewing machine, an antique train set, a wooden Quaker chair with what looked to be a mummified dog resting stiffly against the seat, we reached a section packed with barbaric-looking old medical equipment.

I moved Sam to my other side so she wouldn’t see it: toddler-sized hospital cots with grayed mattresses, blemished basins that had probably held leeches, rubber tourniquets and crusty yellow vials, pumps and syringes, a wooden case featuring silver tongs, large and small. Dented tin lockers stood stiffly along the back wall. Hundreds of brown medicine bottles — every one with a white label, too far away to read — were clustered on a stainless-steel table, which had worn-out leather restraints dangling off the sides. To restrain someone during their lobotomy. I glanced apprehensively at Sam. Thankfully, she was staring clear in the opposite direction, at Hopper.

He was wandering toward the back, where there appeared to be a long wooden table piled with papers and an antique cash register.

“Hello?” he called out loudly. “Anybody here?”

Nora, wading through the store far on the other side, looked captivated. I wasn’t surprised. The place was right up her alley — especially the vintage clothing hanging along the walls like scarecrows: old ’40s dirt-brown dresses, fluffy pink strapless gowns worn to some 1950s prom. She stopped beside a hat tree, carefully plucked a purple felt hat off — a crispy black feather glued to the side — lifted her chin, and put it on, then set about climbing through the junk to get to the speckled mirror propped against a black wagon wheel.

“Hello?” Hopper shouted.

Frowning, he picked up what looked to be a real bayonet, the end rusty and pointed.

“I don’t want to be carried anymore.” Sam was kicking like a colt.

“You have to. This place is enchanted.”

She stared. “What’s enchanted?”

“ This place. ” I stepped around an African drum — it looked to be made out of human skin, cured and dried — heading after Hopper.

Suddenly, I accidentally kicked the leg of a wooden table and it collapsed at the center. It was piled with tarnished skeleton keys, chrome car-hood ornaments, a dirty crystal chandelier, and it all started to spill off, a loud cascade of crystal drops, chains, hundreds of metal keys clattering stridently onto the floor. Clutching Sam — who mashed her face against my shoulder — I managed to catch the chandelier with one hand and right the table legs with my knee.

Hopper snapped his fingers.

He pointed at the back wall, where there was a cruddy skylight and a narrow door with frosted glass.

A human shadow had just moved directly behind it, though, as if sensing we’d spotted it, it froze.

It looked like a man, elongated head, broad shoulders.

“Anybody there?” Hopper called out again.

After a slight hesitation, the door opened and a man poked his head out. It was too dark to see his face, but he had a full head of orange-blond hair.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear anyone come in.”

The voice was husky yet delicate — oddly so. With a sharp intake of breath, the man stepped inside, closing the door behind him. And yet, facing us, he remained exactly where he was, his arm tucked behind him, his hand probably on the doorknob, as if considering escaping back through there in a matter of seconds.

It had to be him. The Spider.

He was a massive presence — at least 66″—with a hulking, muscular build. He wore all black, the only interruption in his black attire a priest’s white clerical collar.

“How may I help you?” His voice came out in a rush, followed by silence, almost as if the words accumulated in his mouth like pebbles in a drain, then suddenly burst out, giving him this strange, jarring cadence. “Are you looking for something in particular?”

“Yes,” said Hopper, stepping slowly toward him. “Hugo Villarde.”

The man went absolutely still.

“I see. ”

He said nothing else, didn’t move a muscle for at least half a minute. Yet I could see, even from where I was standing a fair distance behind Hopper and Nora, his shoulders rising and falling.

He was afraid.

“Don’t bother making a run for it,” Hopper said, stepping toward him. “We know who you are. We just want to talk.”

The man lowered his head in submission, his hair — an unnatural bronze color — catching the light.

“You’re police, I take it?” he asked.

None of us responded. I was surprised by the assumption. I was, after all, holding a child in my arms.

Yet perhaps he hadn’t noticed me. He was staring at the floor.

“I–I actually knew you’d come,” he whispered. “ Eventually. So you found it all up there, is that it? At long last, it’s all coming out. ”

He whispered this with evident fear —again, in that low, eerily female voice.

“How many were there?” he asked.

“How many what ?” I demanded, stepping toward him.

He raised his head, noticing me for the first time.

He then turned to stare pointedly at Nora and then Hopper, slowly gathering that he’d misjudged the situation: We were not police. And though he did nothing specific, I was somehow aware that as this dawned on him, his shoulders relaxed, his head rose an inch, as if he no longer was deflating himself or tucking himself away.

When he finally looked back at me a chill of unease shivered through me. I was certain he was an even blacker form hovering there by the door, as if extreme confidence were slowly returning to him and it made him swell slightly, come more darkly into being.

What was it Marlowe Hughes had said?

You see, that priest — he was still there, hanging on, silently waiting at the perimeter. An oily shadow always around.

Though the man’s face remained immobile, his eyes — what I could see of them — flicked curiously around Sam.

I needed to get Samantha away from him. Now.

I moved with her back down the narrow pathway toward the front of the shop. I needed a safe enough distance but close enough where I could keep an eye on her. About ten yards away I found a large, plum-colored velvet armchair, the seat worn white. Beside it was a table with a stack of magazines and a yellow plastic horse, nothing of any danger.