Marisha Pessl - Night Film

He snarled this, spitting, unable to control himself, but then just as quickly silenced himself. He took a breath to regain his composure.

I could only stare. Marlowe Hughes had called him oily —such a strange description. But he was an insidious trickle of oil oozing out of a loosened pipe, dripping silently, relentlessly, to the floor. The stain it made barely visible at first, but over time immense, repugnant.

And yet for all his pathetic self-pity, I sensed a very real and very deep gash of pain inside him, which had never healed.

“Shortly after his dismissal of me,” he went on, “I slipped into his little girl’s room in the middle of the night. It was so absurdly easy. Ironic, really, that he’d done nothing to protect his most cherished creation —Cordova, of all people, Cordova who always warned us we should be afraid of our own shadow, that there was nothing scarier in the world.” He smiled. “She wasn’t afraid when I shook her awake. She sat up, rubbed her eyes, and asked if I’d had a bad dream. Quite the understatement. I told her something terrible had happened. I needed her help. I said her father had been kidnapped by trolls and we had to travel deep, deep down into the darkest wood to rescue him. I pulled her roughly out of bed, telling her that she had to be silent or they’d come for her mother and her brother and they’d kill them. She didn’t say a word. I took her straight to the basement and down the steps, right down into the tunnels. I didn’t even bother to put her little shoes on or give her a coat. But Ashley wasn’t afraid. Oh, no. She was Cordova’s daughter, after all. Five years old and she was so certain, so devoid of all fear. I can still remember the sound of her bare feet, how soft and clean they were, padding along the filthy ground next to mine, how my flashlight touched the hem of her white nightgown, scalding it as we followed that passage. It was like a black vein that twisted on and on in front of us. When we reached the central area she told me she hurt her foot. It was bleeding. I think she’d stepped on a nail. But I pulled her on and down the narrow tunnel that would lead us to the clearing. And the crossroads. I’d never been there before. I’d never dared go.”

He shook his head, clasping his hands, interlacing his fingers as if in prayer. I turned to check on Sam. She’d placed the horse atop the stack of magazines and was quietly chatting with him and stroking his mane. Just a few minutes longer.

“ At last, ” Villarde whispered almost inaudibly, “ just when I started to imagine we’d descended not into the woods but to the very core of the Earth, we reached the end. There was only a dirt wall with a metal ladder. I climbed up first and unfastened the hatch. It opened up into a dense section of woods, and far to my right, beyond what appeared to be a bridge over a rushing river, I could see them. A crowd. And a bonfire. Orange light like a strobe on their pitch-black robes. And yet the sound they were making — like nothing I’d ever heard before. It was like animals, but no animal I could identify. Like a goat, a pig, and a man, all in one beast. I was petrified. I couldn’t go farther. I reached down and grabbed that little girl roughly by the arm, hauling her up the ladder. She cried out from the pain. I shoved her out of the hole. And I told her now was her only chance to save her father from burning in hell. I pointed toward the fire and I said her daddy was right there, at the end of that bridge. All she had to do was run to him, run as fast as her little feet could carry her, and she’d save him. She listened with such wisdom in her eyes, gray eyes that were really his eyes. It was as if she knew what I was doing, as if she understood completely.”

He paused to catch his breath. “I couldn’t watch her do it. I didn’t dare. I descended the ladder, pulled the hatch into place, locking it so she wouldn’t be able to get back in. Then I sprinted back through the tunnel. I hadn’t gone two minutes when I heard the most gutting screaming. I recognized the voice. It was his. My love’s. Cordova. It sounded as if he were being mauled, as if his beloved dogs were ripping him apart, tearing off his arms and legs. It was his love destroying him. I didn’t stop. I ran back through the tunnel to the house, all the way upstairs to my room. I hid under the covers all night, my heart pounding in horror over what I’d done. I was waiting for him to come for me. I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me for retribution. And yet … I was wrong. Dawn came. It was sunny. The sky was blue, the clouds like candy, as if nothing had happened at all. As if it’d all been a dream.”

He took another beleaguered breath, moved his other foot to the top rung of the stool, tucking his arms into his lap, hunching over, as if he were trying to collapse himself.

“The transformation that started taking place …”

His voice cut out in apparent incredulity.

“Before, I never believed, you see. Of course not. Yet I couldn’t help it now. There could be no other explanation. Stanislas was devastated. Yet he had no idea about my role in the whole thing. Ashley, for some reason, did not tell him. And yet, if I found myself in the same room with her, I’d catch that little girl watching me. I knew she was thinking about that night and what I’d done to her. But Stanislas, entirely ignorant, was desperate for me to stay on. He needed me because he wanted to cling to God now. God, the boring relative everyone ignores — no one calls, no one writes — until they need a serious favor. ”

He smiled.

“I made myself indispensable. For the next ten years, I lived with the family. I gave my life to him. I educated Stanislas on Catholic theology. I helped him study and pray, pray for his own soul, but especially Ashley’s, which was slowly, inveterately turning dark. I suggested an exorcist. But then, it wasn’t possession, was it? No. It was a promise. A deal. After researching legendary pacts made with the devil throughout history, I came across a potential solution. If Stanislas found another child to take Ashley’s end of the bargain. An even exchange. One pure soul for another. Ashley might go free. And I’d read that if one were to try such a thing, a simple transfer of debt, one needed not harm the other child in the process. One needed only an article of clothing or object that had belonged exclusively to this new child. I told Cordova about the idea quite arbitrarily, not thinking he’d actually try such a thing. Cordova, for all his flaws, loved children. But he began to leave The Peak in the middle of the night. He had his chauffeur drive him to different schools in the area, where he’d wander the playgrounds and the athletic fields and the hallways, looking for some child’s small lost belonging. When he returned to the house with his loot of little shirts and little shoes, plastic soldiers and teddy bears, he’d stick them in a bag and take them down to the crossroads. And there he tried to exchange her, night after night, week after week. I was the only one who knew. But it wouldn’t work. Nothing did. ”

I was too stunned to speak. It was, of course, exactly what the anonymous caller, John, had described to me years ago.

It had been real, after all. I had not been set up. The man had been telling me the truth.

I felt dizzying exhilaration at the realization that I had not been deceived. There’s something he does to the children, John had claimed. And it was true. The reason Cordova had visited those schools in the middle of the night was that he was hoping to use them, exchange them, save Ashley’s soul by condemning theirs.