Malcolm spent the night in the basement. Poole's bedroom was isolated from the macabre mess of the laboratory, which helped, but it was still dark and damp and cold. Still, he'd hardly noticed. For the first time since he'd set foot in Thornewood House, Malcolm had slept peacefully, his mind, for once, was miraculously spared from nightmares.
They woke late. Not that it mattered. They all worked the night shift.
There were no mirrors in the laboratory, so Malcolm turned to Poole as he buttoned up the coat of his butler uniform.
"How's this?" he asked.
Poole studied him, his forehead creasing like it always did when he worked in the lab. He approached Malcolm and brushed an invisible piece of lint from his sleeve. An exhilarating shiver ran up Malcolm's spine at the touch.
"You look marvelous," Poole said, grinning. "Though I must say, I rather prefer the rainbow underpants."
Malcolm laughed, and his face burned with a healthy dose of embarrassment. He really should have planned ahead when he had decided to sneak off to the basement, he thought. He supposed he liked to think the rendezvous wasn't premeditated, that he hadn't planned on sharing a bed with Poole, but really, he knew what he was doing.
Today, however, he was far too happy to let a little thing like that get the best of him. Today, he felt like he could breathe a little bit deeper than yesterday. He had awoken next to Poole that morning with a ticklish ball of energy in the pit of his stomach. It was that feeling that something had changed—irreversibly. It felt like he had done something risky, had crossed a line, like he just discovered he'd jumped out of the helicopter without checking if he had a parachute first. There was no going back, no second guessing—and it was absolutely thrilling.
Malcolm had never been with a man before. His sexuality had always felt like something of a mystery. To him, anything that felt uncertain, or ambiguous, or flexible in his mind was something to be stored away, pushed aside, buried under things that were more concrete. Sleeping with Poole hadn't brought on some great epiphany. He didn't wake up that morning with all the answers . . . but he had woken up feeling as if, maybe, having questions wasn't such a bad thing.
He looked at Poole and returned his smile. Though neither of them had any wish to leave the cellar, they made their way upstairs to prepare for the seance.
Malcolm was nervous. He always got jitters before the guests arrived. Although by now it was a routine performance, and he played quite a minor role at that, it was perpetually out of his comfort zone. When they reached the landing before entering the kitchen, Poole squeezed his hand, as if he could sense Malcolm's mounting nerves. His heart flooded with warmth, and all the jitters he had for the seance were replaced with jitters of a more welcoming variety.
Teddy and Owen were already in the kitchen when they came in. Malcolm tried to avoid Owen's gaze, expecting his brother to raise an eyebrow at him, as if to say, What were you two doing down there? But his brother didn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. Owen greeted them, but his focus was on Teddy, Malcolm noticed. She was dressed in something gaudily gothic, as was her habit during these performances. Tonight's ensemble was a deep maroon silk dress, cut dangerously low on the chest. She covered her shoulders in a sheer black shawl, lined with black feathers and rhinestones.
The doorbell chimed. The night's guests had arrived.
With an unusual confidence, Malcolm slipped through the velvet curtain into the seance room, then opened the door. There were just three guests on the schedule that night, a smaller group than they liked to have, but not unusual for a Tuesday night. Three girls stood on the front porch, huddling together in the cold night air. They looked like they frequented music festivals and read Tarot cards to each other. They were likely college students, Malcolm guessed, but they could've even been high schoolers. Regardless, he was happy. These were the type of guests that wanted to believe. It was going to be a fun show.
He gave them his usual introduction. Just as he was about to close the door behind them, two more figures ran up the misty walk.
"Excuse us!" a young woman called. She didn't look like she was with the group of girls inside, though she may have been the same age. She wore a Columbia sweatshirt and jeans, and she seemed a little breathless.
An older woman, tall but stooped with age or worry, trotted up beside her. Her face was lined and creased. She looked stiff, out of her element. Something felt off about the two of them, but Malcolm couldn't place it. Not wanting to break character, he smiled at them.
"I'm sorry, we don't have an appointment," the younger woman said. "But we were hoping you might have room for two more?"
"We brought cash," the older woman said.
He felt an irrational urge to shut the door on them. He couldn't place the feeling, and logically, it didn't make sense. They had money. And there was room for them to join. Whatever it was, he decided to let it go. He stepped aside, and gestured the newcomers inside.
After he took their coats and showed them to the seance table—which they now covered with a silk cloth to cover the scratches—he made his exit through the curtain.
He felt the shift in energy immediately. His heart sank into his stomach.
"What's wrong?" he whispered.
Owen and Poole stood on either side of Teddy, who looked green. Her eyes were wide—like she'd seen a ghost, he thought—and she shook her head and muttered something under her breath.
Poole shook his head.
"Who's here?" Owen asked him. "It was supposed to be just the three. Did someone else show up?"
"Uh, yeah, some older lady and a girl came late. They brought cash . . ." Malcolm said, trying to put the puzzle pieces together.
Teddy closed her eyes tight. She looked like she was about to scream, or faint. Or vomit.
"Theodora, do you know them?" Poole asked, gently.
Malcolm could feel the minutes ticking by. They liked to leave the guests alone, to let them take in the scene, to get their nerves up, but eventually Teddy would have to go out there. Sweat dampened his brow.
Teddy took a deep, hitching breath. Her hands shook at her sides. It seemed to take all her strength to nod a meager "yes." Then she tore free of Owen's hand and stormed off down the hall, toward her bedroom.
Malcolm locked eyes with Owen, then Poole. Each face mirrored his own confusion and fear. His heart sunk when he realized they both seemed to be looking to him to step up, to tell them what to do.
"What was that about? What's going on?" Malcolm hissed. He could hear the guests quiet voices behind the curtain and thought they sounded increasingly impatient, though that may have been his nerves.
"I don't know, but I don't think she's going out there," Owen whispered.
"Well then what the fuck do we do with them?" Malcolm snapped, waving his hand toward the curtain.
Owen stared at him, but said nothing. He turned to Poole for help, but he just nodded and looked a little apologetic.
"You could tell them to leave, but they're only going to come back," Owen said. "Or, you could go out there . . ."
"I can't go out there! I don't know her lines," he said, but as he said it, he realized it was a lie. He had watched Teddy play the medium more times than he could count.
They were silent. Malcolm took a deep breath and peeked through the velvet curtain. The guests sat patiently, but he could see confusion in their eyes. The Tarot girls were huddled on one side on the table, whispering animatedly. The latecomers, the ones who seemed to shake Teddy's mind with their presence, sat stiff and awkward. He thought again how they looked out of place there. The two women were here together, but they didn't seem to know each other well. He studied the older woman, and found what he expected in her face, an undeniable resemblance to Teddy. Her eyes were the same deep green, her hair the same dark, cool brown.
Owen was right, Teddy wasn't going out there. Not if her mother was there. He closed the curtain and faced Owen and Poole.
"Okay," he said. "Let's make sure they never come back."
***
Malcolm let the role wash over him. He forgot his nerves. He forgot the unwanted guests. It was just him at the head of the table, the guests' flickering eyes on him, and the power emitting from his lips, the pulse of it thrumming under his skin. It was strange, to hold these strangers captive, to have them on the edges of their seats, to have them bound to him with nowhere to run. They were afraid of him, he realized, but they were even more afraid of the spirits that lurked outside their dim circle of wavering candlelight.
They had learned to hold back. They'd learned that ordinary people couldn't handle the fear they could easily unleash upon them. Their typical guests were paying for a little bit of mystery, a touch of adrenaline, and just enough fear to make it all feel real.
But these weren't their ordinary guests. Malcolm wasn't sure what Teddy's mom had done to deserve such an extreme response, but he had seen the pain in his friend's eyes, and it was enough for him to pull out all the stops. He had to make sure they'd never return to Thornewood House.
He had gone through all of Teddy's typical opening lines. It was time to go off-script.
"Spirits, we welcome you!" Malcolm said, in a low, booming voice he didn't recognize. "Beasts, we welcome you! If you can hear us, show yourselves!"
Candlelight flickered. Malcolm thought he could smell the fear coming off his guests' skin.
He felt Poole and Owen doing laps around the table. They picked up their speed to a run, and Malcolm could feel the breeze of their movements. It was already enough to have some of the guests flinching and looking over their shoulders.
"Souls! Demons! Creatures beyond our conception!" Malcolm continued, feeling the power rising, suffocating him in painful ecstasy. "We offer you our souls, our flesh . . . !"
He watched as the guests took on expressions of confusion and fear. A low, animalistic growl came from somewhere at the darkest corner of the room, and several of the guests whimpered.
". . . Devour us!" Malcolm shouted over the wind, over the growl and the cries, and the vibrating fear of the guests around him.
The candles flickered, and several of them extinguished, leaving the room even more dominated by shadow. A vase fell off a shelf and shattered on the floor. The glass face of a clock on the wall cracked from an invisible blow. The growl crescendoed into a loud, throaty scream. As the room fell into chaos, the guests broke the circle. The Tarot girls stumbled over each other toward the door, their faces twisted in horror, tears streaming down their faces. The unwelcoming guests weren't far behind. They spilled out the door and into the misty night air.
Malcolm watched them from his seat at the head of the table, the power of the experience still stifling, still overwhelming in its incredible euphoria. He watched the guests stumble to their cars, watched them skin their hands and knees as their legs gave out.
He watched them flee, and felt certain he would never see their faces again.