I began searching the massive structure for this unsecured entrance on the northwest side of the building. Eventually I found a gate and a wooden door. With a heave, I pulled the gate open, and a terrible squeal echoed through the clearing as metal ground against stone. Inside, the hall was enormous, cold, and dark. It stretched out before me like a magnificent cathedral. Throughout the expanse rose odd, vaguely terrifying statues, though from a distance, I couldn’t make out what exactly they were. Along the wall were torches mounted like sconces, but they were extinguished. And yet somehow the space was dimlylit, which seemed impossible until I looked up and realized I was standing under an oculus, a circular aperture in the domed ceiling that opened directly up to the night sky.
“Like in the Pantheon,” I whispered.
A common feature of neoclassical architecture, the oculus functioned as a light source, but it often served a deeper, more symbolic purpose as well. As an open space, a kind of eye of God looking down on us all, it was meant to serve as a connecting point, a kind of gateway between mankind and the heavens above. For a moment, I wondered what happened when it rained, but then I noticed there was a drainage system, little holes driven into the marble through which the water might collect. I was about to get down on my hands and knees to examine them further, but a large model—a skeleton of some animal—caught my eye. As my vision adjusted, I could see now that that the statues were in fact all skeletons. I was in some kind of museum.
Taking a closer look at the display, though, I realized it couldn’t be real. It was a ghastly piece of art—it must have been. Rising up on two legs, the creature was twisted and hunched, a monstrous torso attached to a skull that looked vaguely canine. It brought to mind ancient Norse gods and biblical demons all wrapped in a single putrid package. In fact it brought to mind the thing I’d seen standing at the foot of my bed.
“Isabelle?”
I turned to see Finn standing at the entrance.
He laughed, a low, disconcerting vocalization. “I thought it was you,” he said. “When did you remember?”
Backing away, I shook my head. “I don’t.”
“Yes, you do,” he said, moving slowly toward me. “There’s no need to lie. I’m on your side. I didn’t like Isabelle, but I like you, Robin. I’m willing to help you, especially if you can help us.”
“Why do you think I’m Isabelle?” I asked.
“Because you’re here. If you’re here, then you remember.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so instead of responding, I tried to buy myself some time. Looking around the massive space, I concentrated on the strange displays, and taking them in, I saw that they were all similarly unnatural: nightmarish iterations of fiends that have populated folklore since the beginning of time—arachnoid monstrosities with skulls like goats, enormous vulpine specimens with scorpionic tails, and creature after creature with grotesque, twisting horns.
I stopped in front of a display of a hunched-over beast that had enormous spikes jutting from its spine. “What is all this stuff?”
“It’s a collection,” he said.
“A collection of what? From where?”
“From here.” He looked at me sideways. “So then you don’t remember everything, do you? Have you remembered the code yet?”
As much as I wanted to hold my cards close, I could tell there was no real point in trying to hide it anymore. If he knew, he knew. I sighed, frustration building in my chest. “I don’t know any code. If you people want me to remember a code, then just tell me how to remember it. I’m getting incredibly sick of everyone withholding useful information from me.”
“But we have to. Otherwise it would be too risky.” He walked a few paces and then stared up at a creature with two heads and knifelike talons. “If we told you everything too soon, we might break you, and then all would be lost. Your mind is in a fragile state right now, and unfortunately you are the only person qualified to tell us exactly how fragile. You see the conundrum. Honestly, I expected you to figure it out your first night backwhen I planted the flashing light near the grave. I never thought it would take you this long.”
A shock froze me in place. “The flashing light in the woods? You did that?”
“Of course. I did all of it.”
“No. The messages, the clues. I left them for myself.”
“Isabelle, they were fed to you like that to get you to believe them. It was all us.”
Stunned, a cold certainty settled heavy on my brow. “You’re serious?”
He nodded.
“I wasn’t the one leaving those clues?”
“If you were trying to convey information to yourself, don’t you think you would have left, like, a clear note?”
“I thought I was using the puzzles to encrypt the information and keep you from intercepting it. If it was you, why do all this? Why play games with me?”
“Because it’s what I do. It’s the only reason I’m involved. My task was to get information from you, and to do that, I needed you to be receptive to the truth, and believe it or not, people are receptive to the truth only when they think they’ve figured it out themselves.”
“But why not just tell me what was going on?”
Slowly he walked toward me, hands in his pockets. “Do you know what an ARG is?”
