Evangeline

the girl who was blue

The service elevator is a steel gray box. The walls gouged and stained with streaks of antique gore that no amount of bleach will resolve. Godfrey stands in the center of the box with olive drab army satchel slung over one shoulder and a square leather medical case at his feet. Legs apart as if he expects turbulence. His head slightly bowed. He wears a dark green suit of Italian wool with a white shirt and no tie. Dark purple pocket square. He holds a moleskine notebook in his left hand open to an inscrutable map of jagged labyrinthine lines. He mutters left left right left right right left left right eight eleven left right left left eight oh eight left left left eight nineteen right left left right left left. He trails off and closes his eyes. Tucks the moleskine in his breast pocket. 

Godfrey has had the eighth memorized for years but still doesn’t trust it. Doesn’t trust his shimmering memory. Doesn’t trust Pinch not to change something. The back of his neck itches but he doesn’t touch it. No visible cameras in here but he knows Pinch is never not watching somehow somewhere. He holds out his left hand. No perceptible tremor. Now the right. Twitchy as a half dead fish and he shoves it deep in his pocket. Never you mind, he mutters. Take care of it in a safe room on the eighth. He regards the panel of buttons. Like eleven unmarked silver coins. The eighth is where it should be. 

After another round of controlled breathing Godfrey shrugs off the burn the itch the hunger and extends his left hand and punches the button for the eighth. The box surges then stops. He waits a beat then reaches for the telephone. The receiver is black flecked with muddy brown and held together with electrical tape. It’s already ringing. Godfrey holds it away from his face and listens. He doesn’t much care to speak to Arthur at this hour but nothing to be done. Hotel politics are not his lookout. The beef between Pinch and the proprietor is none of his concern. The proprietor’s business is Godfrey’s business this morning and the note tucked under his door wasn’t the least bit flexible. The familiar spidery scrawl on a fragment of scorched parchment, the acidic opposite of Arthur’s pastel sticky notes. Attend to Evangeline at your earliest convenience. Translation. Do it five minutes ago or I’ll have your heart on a plate. 

Maybe he gets lucky and Valentine picks up. The old crow might even have a word of advice for him. Blind as a stone gargoyle but the lift operator is the only one besides Moxie who can navigate the eighth without a map. Moxie made the run to room 818 for the sapphire necklace that may or may not have set this whole cockup with Evangeline into motion. Godfrey mutters a half curse half sigh. He might have asked Moxie to ride shotgun but she’s giving him the treatment. The shoulder. Moxie is sleeping snug as a naked bug in Althea’s bed this morning and besides the note didn’t say to bring your girlfriend for backup. The phone rings and rings muted and faraway as if the other end is at the bottom of a lake. Godfrey breathes. The itch at the back of his neck flares hot and his right hand spasms in his pocket. Finally the other end picks up. 

Malick grunts, yeh who’s this. 

It’s Godfrey. Where is Arthur. I need the eighth. 

Nuh. Pinch says the eighth is no go. He’s got the override locked.

The hell he does. Unlock it.

Not my purview.

Goddamn it. 

Why do you need the eighth?  

Because the proprietor fucking says so. Do you want to take it upstairs?

Hummm no don’t reckon I do. 

Well then.

Hang on. 

Godfrey hears low cursing and the screech and groan of gears engaging. 

Thank you, he says.

Hmmph yeh welcome and good luck.

Don’t need luck. Need to scratch an itch.

Malick rings off and the elevator heaves upward leviathan slow. Godfrey lowers the satchel from his shoulder and takes out the gas mask just in case. He removes his right hand from pocket and flexes it to ease the shake. He makes a fist. The elevator trembles to rest and hesitates before the doors groan open. The hallway onto the eighth is unlike any other floor in the hotel. The walls are cinderblock painted bronze. Exposed cement floor and a pale green glow. No amber lights marking the passage. The room doors are unmarked and most of them are bolted shut with the knobs removed. Godfrey exhales with a shiver. He can already taste the morphine he will bang into his neck when he reaches the first safe room. He can already see his breath. He sniffs the air and detects no almonds but puts the mask on anyway. He reaches down and picks up the medical bag and proceeds. Mutters the mantra left left right left right right left left right and makes each turn knifesharp. Keeps his eyes steady on a phantom vanishing point down the far end of hall where the light disappears like water down a hole. He rounds the corner into the first blind alley and regards the unmarked door to room 811. He pulls a chain from under his shirt to reveal an odd silver skeleton key that might have been smelted by elves. He fits the key in the lock and opens the door. 

The air inside is cold and chemical bright. Godfrey removes the gas mask and tastes aluminum at the back of his throat. No almonds nor sulfur. The notes of metal on his tongue are byproduct of the jones. He surveys the room. A cherry red armoire missing several drawers and no television. No window. Queen bed with exposed mattress and torso shaped stains. Shackles mounted to wall above. Discarded gimpsuit still chained to radiator next to the narrow door to the adjoining room. Small vanity sink opposite bathroom. Toilet with lid bolted shut. No mirror. The bathtub glitters with blood and broken glass. Godfrey exhales. One man’s safe room is another’s playroom. Never you mind. Don’t need a mirror nor mini fridge to get a maintenance bump in his veins. He opens the med bag and plucks out the purple velvet pouch holding his works and prepares to give himself a 4 mg shot of sterile nonpyrogenic isobaric solution of morphine sulfate. The needle is poised like a wasp’s stinger on his jugular when the telephone rings behind him. It sounds like a strangled dove. Godfrey whirls around. What fucking phone. Never been a hotel phone in this room before and he hadn’t seen one when he walked in. He scans the room again and spots it on the floor beside the bed, a black antique with a dial. Godfrey lowers the syringe and crosses quickly to scoop it up before it chirps a third time. He holds the receiver near to but not touching his ear and says nothing. He breathes, expecting Arthur’s spiky voice to nag him about 8th floor protocol or some such busybody yammer.

Stop fucking about, doctor. You’re wasting time.

The voice on the other end is a raspy hard edged whisper like frozen black volcanic ash with a faraway French Canadian accent. The voice is the sound a particularly sharp blade might make if used to peel long pale thin near translucent fragments from bone.

The voice belongs to the Proprietor.

Are you there Godfrey?

Sir.

You want to hurry, my boy.

I’m on the eighth. Three safe rooms from the theater.

Indeed. I rang you in eight eleven, I know precisely where you are.

Godfrey wheels around looking for cameras but they could be anywhere. The mice in the Hotel 9 might be outfitted with surveillance tech for all he knows.

Yessir. On my way. I reckon five minutes, maybe seven from this spot.

I estimate you have twenty minutes before Evangeline regains consciousness. And you do know how dangerous she can be when she’s awake.

Godfrey shrugs, eyeing the gimpsuit. Yes, I do know. I’m five minutes away.

I heard you boy. But that is the tricky bit. Her breathing is restricted. She may expire before the last dose of ketamine wears off. I’d imagine she has considerably less than twenty minutes.

Fuck me. You might have told me, your note...

Start walking Godfrey. If she dies on your lookout, well. I shall be displeased. And stop it with the morphine sulfate. If you’re going to be a junkie cook the China white like a civilized man.

Godfrey drops the receiver into its cradle without another word. Displeased is the most impotent euphemism under the sun. The proprietor doesn’t muck about with displeased. He motors on past to wrathful without a sideways glance and flays your skin from you and takes his sweet time about it. Godfrey sucks in a fast deep breath and shoots the morphine directly into the soft webbing between pinkie and ring finger of his left hand. Not as effective as the jugular but won’t make him dizzy neither.

He marks the time, 10:07 am.

Godfrey scoops up his med kit and dons the gas mask then crosses to the door to the adjoining room. He uses the master skeleton to enter room 829, a mirror twin of 811 except that everything is covered in plastic drop cloths. He notes the presence of various bodily fluids still fresh but doesn’t bother with connecting forensic dots or sorting details. Suffice to say that someone has been working. He moves quickly to the proper door that opens onto another hallway altogether. Longer and darker, this hall. Narrower by half. If he were to stand in the center of this hallway he could nearly touch the doors on either side, if he cared to do so. But he does not. The rooms along this hall are occupied. Hostages being housed for ransom, prisoners awaiting punishment, slaves being fattened up before going to market.

None of his concern.

Godfrey turns right and hurries down to the first left turn, then another. Right left left right left. He passes without blinking or hesitating through safe room 817 and its adjoining twin, 805. He repeats the process with two more safe rooms and maddening ever stranger and darker hallways, muttering left and right as he goes and fending off the panic in his guts. Everyone who has ever slipped off course or missed a turn on the eighth has gone mad, lost and wandering for days or weeks that bleed into endless night in the absence of windows or natural light. Every hapless soul ever gone adrift on the eighth is reduced to a gibbering slavering dolt long before his or her throat is torn out by the creatures that prowl these halls. Godfrey will not be one of them. He has memorized and recited the turns a thousand times in bed with Moxie. He exits room 822 onto the final hallway and stands facing the door to the theater. He hears Moxie’s voice in his head, clucking at him. Tick tock. Godfrey checks his watch, 10:12. Time enough to be sure she’s breathing. Or to bring her back if she’s not, provided the Proprietor’s professional opinion is worth a good goddamn. Never mind just get on with it. Godfrey regulates his breathing and touches the warm pale golden opiate glow in his belly for luck. He opens the door to the theater and steps inside.

The space was a ballroom of sorts a century ago, now converted to an intimate amphitheater that seats three dozen whales. Once upon a time long before Godfrey’s time the Hotel 9 was a posh destination for the exotic underworld theater crowd. According to Pinch, the final production was a steampunk torture and bondage version of Midsummer Night’s Dream that garnered rave reviews among the freak aristocrat set. But that was years before Godfrey’s tenure began at the 9. The theater seating and lights remain but the stage has been retrofitted to serve as a sparse but oddly luxurious soundproof prison cell with furniture from the honeymoon suite enclosed by an impenetrable solid glass cage. Three glass walls eight inches thick, the fourth a blank grey expanse of cinderblock marked only by a square steel door that opens onto the dumb waiter shaft.

Evangeline hangs not moving in a crucified angel position from a hook in the ceiling bound in a complex array of shibari rope binding, multiple ropes of blackened hemp coiled round and round into layers upon layers and endless knots such that even though she is likely nude beneath the hemp barely an odd inch of flesh peeks through here and there. What flesh does shine through is blue. Evangeline is turning blue. Godfrey nods. He might have known. The art of shibari is one of the Proprietor’s specialties. Godfrey walks quickly to the dropdown stairs that access the bowels under the stage, making note as he passes three bodies in evening dress among the theater seats. One appears to have plucked out his own eyes with a corkscrew and bled out in the front row. Another looks to have shot himself. The third has managed somehow to snap his own neck. One thing about the Proprietor, he doesn’t truck in hyperbole. Evangeline can be quite dangerous, even bound and gagged. The poor saps must have made eye contact with her through the glass before she went under and she planted dark thoughts in their minds that festered as the show went on.

The trapdoor is heavy wood fortified with steel. The lock is the rare bit of digital future tech at the 9, magnetic tumblers secured with a retinal scan. Godfrey leans in and gives the machine his eyeball and the lock releases with a pneumatic hiss. He raises the trap and climbs the ladder up and onto the stage. He steps aside as the door crashes down with the echoing thunder of a bell tower. He flinches at the sound, as he does every time he enters Evangeline’s quarters. The trapdoor lock and retinal scan are accessible only from the underside. To exit the stage he will need the Proprietor to hit the release from his catbird seat in the sky, leaving Godfrey to the mercy of the wind.

He takes in the scene. Evangeline dangles like a butterfly from a spider’s web. Her legs are bent at the knee and bound such that her feet are folded to touch her ass. The ropes binding her arms legs torso and head are intricately wound, with painstaking care. The horse head cage is looped around her head and mouth, a metal bit wedged between her teeth. Her lips are blue. Her dark eyes are closed, hair hanging loose and tangled. Godfrey touches her throat with two fingers, finds a pulse faraway as a whisper. He realizes he has been holding his own breath and exhales softly the words fuck me. He studies the knots. He has dealt with these ropes before. It will take hours to unbind her, even if he uses a knife, so he needs to find the one that is cutting off her breathing. It isn’t the horse head cage. He recognizes the chainstitch corset, the elegant dragonfly harness, the Hojojutsu capture. Decides it must be the corset doing the most damage. He takes an ivory handled switchblade from his breast pocket and flicks it open. Hunts by sight and feel until he finds the main knot holding the corset and slips the blade between rope and skin to sever it. A few sections of rope fall away and Godfrey watches as Evangeline’s chest expands.

I’ve got you, he mutters.

He pulls the rest of the corset loose to expose the elaborate dragonfly harness. He doesn’t quite know where to start. He removes the horse head cage rather easily and slips the bit from her mouth. Her lips are dreadfully chapped. How long has she been hanging here. Evangeline’s eyes don’t open but she mutters softly thank you Godfrey. Her voice is hoarse and muted but still it makes the hairs on his arms stand up. She could have him cutting his own throat with an offhand word, a sideways glance. To be on the safe side he takes the silk pocket square from his jacket and fashions a blindfold, to protect himself from her eyes. He studies the myriad overlapping knots of the dragonfly harness and wishes he had a drink. Now the phone next to Evangeline’s bed rings and he stops in his tracks, swearing. He closes the switchblade and tucks it away. The phone is identical to the one in room 811 and he knows who is on the other end.

Hello?

If you take another blade to my ropes I’ll have your teeth in a box.

The Proprietor chuckles on the other end, the raw cold noise of metal scraping metal.

Godfrey looks around with wild eyes. No cameras in this space, so he had always been told. He spies a steel gray square box mounted to the floor that he’s never noticed before. The box is unremarkable but for vents on either side and is poorly positioned for surveillance.

Apologies sir, didn’t realize you were watching and well. She wasn’t breathing.

I understand. And no, I’m not watching. I promised Evangeline I’d only watch her from the other side of the glass, and I keep my promises.

How then.

I know you Godfrey. I gave you that bloody switchblade, if you recall.

That’s right.

Right. Now take your time with the rest of those knots. But don’t dawdle and don’t forget your earmuffs. If she comes around she may lash out.

Evangeline knows me, she trusts me.

Still. Did you mark the stiffs in the audience?

I did.

She managed that without saying a word.

Godfrey nods. She’s getting stronger.

Indeed. Now listen close, doctor. I want you to give her a sliver of daylight.

Not sure I follow, sir.

The ashen whisper goes down to a croak. Don’t play with me, Godfrey. I’d hate to find myself in need of a new doctor.

No, sir.

I mean to give her a chance. Let her run, I want to see what she can do. And I don’t mean smuggle her up to the roof for a night swim.

How. I don’t. He trails off. Lying to the Proprietor is time and breath wasted. Sorry about that sir, I was in a bit of a state.

High and drunk you mean.

Yes.

Never mind. She had a lovely swim and scared the pants off old boy Malick, a treat I’d not seen before, so it was well worth it.

What do you want me to do.

Release her onto the eighth. The dark side. I’d like to see if she can survive the halls and find her way out.

Nobody ever finds their way out, not without a map.

Your girl did, Moxie.

Well, yes. But that’s Moxie.

Make it happen, doctor. And make her think it’s her idea.

The phone goes dead in Godfrey’s hand. He lowers it softly to the cradle and stands very still for a long breath, eyeing the odd metal box in the corner. He can’t be sure but he keeps having the sense there is something moving in that box. He crouches to have a closer look, lowers his ear to one of the vents. He doesn’t hear anything. The only odors he can detect are bleach and metal. But there it is again, the phantom sense that something is moving in there. Godfrey sighs. He doesn’t care for this plan at all. It will certainly get someone killed and flushed down the drain in the boiler room, perhaps multiple someones. Evangeline will need her strength. He picks up the phone again and dials zero.

After a dozen rings Bishop picks up.

‘Ello love.

It’s Godfrey.

The dwarf grunts. What ye need doc.

Spot of lunch.

Not feeding time yet.

Change is in the air. Buzz the proprietor if you care to make noise.

Hmmph. Get your order in then.

One grilled cheese on sourdough, cup of tomato soup. Root beer float, Irish. And a shot of tequila, the good shit. The silver.

Twenty minutes.

Thank you.

Bishop grunts and the line goes dead.

Godfrey places the phone on the bedside table. He tucks his switchblade under Evangeline’s pillow like a mint, reasoning she will need a weapon for what’s coming. If he knows the Proprietor at all, he expects the old man will give Evangeline a head start then trip the alarm and send Fink or Balthazar to hunt her on the dark side of the eighth. To make things interesting. Godfrey mentally kicks himself for neglecting to bring a sidearm. He will be unarmed for the trek back to the service elevator and the return trip is never the same. Godfrey pops his knuckles and flexes his hands. He holds them both out flat for a long beat and is pleased to see neither of them trembling. Now he gets to work picking apart the knots still binding the girl who was blue.

*parts II and III of Evangeline coming soon.