The lighting is dim, but Taylor can make out a series of cushions and couches spread artfully around the space. The floor is littered with what appears to be instruments; long silver and wooden flutes.
She recovers and looks around wildly for a hiding spot, but there’s no obvious place. She frantically inches the couch on the back wall forward so that she can slip behind it. Pressed between the couch and the wall, she waits. She feels hot and sweaty beneath the double masks, her back soaked through.
There’s an entrance and an exit. Entrance and exit. Please don’t let it be too late for Vivian. Entrance and exit.
The footsteps slowly descend the steps. Taylor’s heart thumps against her rib cage as the sound gets louder, closer. Suddenly, she remembers the wig in her pocket, and she tugs it over her head, beneath the straps of the masks. She’s grabbed a blue one, apparently, but better to be as disguised as humanly possible.
The person enters the room. Silence follows, pregnant with unspeakable possibilities. Taylor holds her breath, becoming dizzy. Does the person know she’s there?
After what feels like forever, there’s a reassuring clatter of light noises: rustles and clicks and…a match being struck?
Incense—yes, definitely incense—soon fills the air, making her eyes burn. Taylor closes them, grateful she’s at least wearing the masks.
Then, it goes so quiet again that Taylor wonders if the person has left. With the utmost care, she slowly peers around the arm of the couch.
No—the person is still there. It’s a man, wearing the robe and mask and sitting cross-legged with his back to her. He is lanky; his bony legs protrude well past the cape. Now he begins chanting in undistinguishable mutters and jerking his arm forward.Is this some sort of ritual that precedes the sacrifice?When he pulls back, Taylor sees he’s holding a stick. The man appears to be making marks in the ground. As she leans forward to try to get a closer look, the couch suddenly shifts forward with a squeak.
Fuck.
The man abruptly stops mid-chant, and starts to turn around, but then a quick flutter of footsteps on the basement stairs draws his attention.
He rises just as a woman bursts into the room.
Rose.
Taylor wants to cry with relief, she’s so glad to see her.
Rose, too, dons a robe, but hers is white, and unlike the man, she doesn’t wear the mask. Her hair is uncharacteristically mussed, and her face sags, as if the hands of gravity are tugging it down. Rose stares fixedly at the man with an odd intensity; she doesn’t appear to notice Taylor.
Should Taylor announce herself, or slink back behind the couch?
“Rose, what are you doing?” the man says, fear clipping his voice. “Please, put down the gun.”
Gun?
Now Taylor sees it, extending from the end of Rose’s arm. A black pistol, aimed at the man. And, by default, at Taylor.
Oh my God.
“Rose,” the man pleads. “It’s me,Michael.Please, put down the gun.”
Michael?
“Shut up, Michael,” Rose says in a flat, monotone voice. “Now listen to me. You take every single packet of opium and dump it in this box here on the ground.”
“Why?” Michael asks, but Rose cuts him off.
“I said now.” She flicks the gun in the opposite direction, and a shot detonates so loud it feels like it fractures the air around them. Taylor collapses behind the couch.Shit shit shit. Each second feels like ten. Her heart is beating so fast it almost hurts.
“Okay, Rose,” Michael says soothingly. “I’m doing it. See? I’m getting the trunk with the opium.” There’s the sound of the alleged trunk being handled and slid across the floor. A latch unlocking. “I’m opening it. See? Here is the opium stash. I’m putting it inside the geomancy area, like you said.” Rustling ensues.
Geomancy area. Opium stash.
The room suddenly makes sense. The basement location, the scarce lighting, the cushions, the instruments that aren’t instruments at all—they’re opium pipes. The Knox renovation was to create an opium den.
An anger flashes through Taylor as she’s hit with a string of recollections: Aunt Gigi’s words:Your mom was strung out from drugs.The “bad Aunt Emma” comment the woman addict made. The headline ofThe Boston Globe:Boston’s Hospitals Overwhelmed by Overdoses.What Taylor overheard Peter say to Michael:He’s already tested the waters, and the appetite is there.The Knox’s interest in opium clearly extends beyond using it solely for divination readings.
And then Rose’s warning:It’s just that too many girls have gotten lost here through the years.
