VII. Friend
Scott awoke to the scent of pine.
Was it pine? he wondered, keeping his head buried beneath the blankets. The smell coming through the tunnel of cloth before him was like a forest breeze. Accompanying this, the singing of birds. Scott pulled back the blanket, and there above was the skylight he'd noticed earlier, latticed with what appeared to be bamboo mesh.
"Hey you."
Ingrid sat on the edge of the bed. Part of the blanket lay over her lap; other than that, she was still naked. She leaned forward and gave Scott a kiss. Her arms hooked around his neck.
"Welcome back to the world, slugger."
"What time is it?" he asked.
"Morning. I hope."
Scott looked at the skylight again. Another vision struck, this one a memory: Saturday in the police station, chaos, Lisa leading him through a storm of conjurations, driving him here.
"Conjurations," he said aloud, blinking.
"Hmm?"
His head shook. "Lisa. Do you know that she's...a magician of some kind? Or at least a damned good illusionist. She made everyone at the police station think they were being attacked by"--he shook his head again--"something."
"Pouting jennies. You told me about it last night."
"Yeah, but..."
Ingrid had resumed kissing him, about the face and neck. "But what, sweetheart?" she whispered.
His arms took her. The kisses were not helping his concentration much. "I guess I'm still a bit muddled from sleep."
"No. You're wide awake."
"Hey...where are we?"
Scott began to take full notice of the room. It looked decidedly different. For one thing, the desk and the lamp were gone--in their place stood a crude wooden table with burned-out candles. The bathroom was also gone--not closed behind a door but gone; the wall where the doorway had been was now solid, plain wood, decorated with a generic landscape painting. The wall next to the bed, where a window had once let on Lake Erie, had changed as well.
"Masks!" Scott exclaimed. "Look at all the masks!"
"I see them," Ingrid said.
"Where did they come from?"
They hung on the wall in five neat rows of five. A variety of materials had been used to craft them. Some were made of glass, others of wood, others still of sackcloth. Scott spied one that looked woven from the same kind of bamboo used for the skylight. He saw another that looked like a beehive with eyes. The expressions on each were varied as well. There were smiles, frowns, screams, and wails; there were tears, laughs, upturned noses, and terrified stares. Some were clearly labors of love, and looked ready to start speaking at any moment. Others seemed hacked into shape by crude tools, their faces barely recognizable as such.
"What happened last night?" Scott said. "Did somebody drug us? Take us to a different place?"
It wasn’t a crazy idea. Enough lunacy had gone down already--why not heap drugging and kidnapping onto the pile?
"In a manner of speaking," Ingrid told him. "Something drugged us alright. And we are…not at Cedar Point anymore."
Scott looked at her.
"I'm going to tell you everything I know, Scott. Don't worry."
"Don't worry? Ingrid...what is all this? What's going on? I--"
Her hand closed over his mouth. "Shh. Lie back. Let's talk."
She coaxed him into the pillows; her slender arms were gentle but insistent. She next told him everything that had happened to her on the night she left Scott at the West Main Street house. She told him about the long chat she and Lisa had shared, starting with what she now knew about the dambuhala, moving on to their summoner (Woodward Cambridge), and finishing with the region itself, along with the passion it required for entry, romantic love. Scott did not feel receptive to the story at first, but as Ingrid spoke she kept reminding him that she'd had her own difficulties with believing it at the outset.
"I kept telling myself it had to be true," she said, "mostly because of what had already happened. And also because the story was coming from Lisa."
Scott looked at the skylight again, and then at the masks.
"We woke up later on Saturday morning," Ingrid went on. "Lisa told me more about...well, how to get into the region. By then my doubts were pretty much gone. It scared me. I told her I didn't want to go. That thing you and I saw in the basement on Friday? There are about one thousand more running around in the region. Right now."
Her hands pushed his chest, as if waiting for the lungs inside to draw breath for speech. But Scott was still searching for a handle on the moment.
"One thousand?" he croaked. "God, Ingrid, why did she ask you to come here?"
Her bare breasts rose as she took a breath. They fell again with words that appalled Scott to his very core.
"I'm here to drive the ogres--the dambuhala--back. To seal them inside their own region again. I'm also here to stop Cambridge from seizing control of this region."
It was clear to Scott she wanted to get all of that out on one chestful of air, because Ingrid's next breath was almost a gasp. How could he blame her? His own breathing was now difficult, and it had nothing to do with how Ingrid was straddling his midsection.
"Ingrid, come on," he said.
She shrugged her trademark Ingrid shrug.
This time it made Scott mad. "No, that's not it. If what you just told me is true, then it sounds like your best friend is putting your neck under a guillotine. Well fuck that!"
"Scott--"
He sat up. Ingrid didn't move, and her eyes remained fixed on his. This gallantry, along with her chattiness and her newfound ability to smile, was yet another part of her that had come to life since Friday night. The changes pleased him, but Scott was still furious with Lisa for placing such a task on her shoulders, and with Ingrid for accepting it. Unless--
"Do you know magic too?" he asked, furling his brow. "Can you do things like Lisa did at the police station?"
After a moment, her eyes dropped. She shook her head. "No."
"Then what the hell do you think you're going to do--"
"Will you stop yelling please?"
Her own voice was raised now--Friday night again. Scott also noticed her bangs were pushed back from her forehead, though that might have happened as they'd made love. He put his arms around her. She came willingly. A breeze played through the skylight.
"How?" his lips whispered. "Just tell me that, Ingrid. How?"
She kissed his ear, then whispered one word.
***
There was a wooden chest with a broken latch in the corner of the room. A pile of old, dusty clothing lay inside. Ingrid poked through them first. Her eye was fastidious, but even as she rejected one garment after the next, Scott knew the result of her expedition, like it or no, was apt to be something outlandish. None of the pieces matched. Their colors were flamboyant to the point where it ached to behold them. Blouses with huge collars were wrapped around pantaloons with crooked, kaleidoscopic buttons. There were yellow hats with green bills, and green hats with yellow bills. There were high-heeled boots with tremendous golden buckles that jingled like wind-chimes.
Scott couldn't take it anymore. He started to laugh as Ingrid, with a noise of disgust, pitched one of the boots over her shoulder.
"We're in a theater," she explained. "So this is what we have for now. But the owner is a friend of Lisa's, so don't worry. We'll...cut it out!"
But Scott couldn't stop laughing. Ingrid was holding a yellow blouse with the most bodacious ruffles he had ever seen. The ruffles were funny--that Ingrid appeared to be considering the piece seriously was funnier still.
"Listen, you," she warned, grinning, "I'm not going to tolerate any insubordination." And then another one of the blouses soared at his face. "Oh I can't wait to see what you pull out of this box!"
She settled on the yellow blouse, along with a red pair of pants that ended just above her shins. Scott's delving faired no better. After fifteen minutes of pawing with increasing despair, the grotesquerie forced him to choose a plain pink shirt with no sleeves, and a pair of light blue pants with a red string around the waist that served as a belt.
Now it was Ingrid's turn to laugh. From the sound, vengeance tasted sweet. "Bravo!" she clapped. "Love it, Scott! You look ready to dance with a tambourine on Bourbon Street."
"Oh you're funny, Ingrid." He looked at himself, saw the shame, and grimaced. "You ought to be on television, so I could turn you off."
She beckoned him to what looked like a trap door next to the bed. There was a bronze-colored handle on one side and mismatched silver hinges on the other.
"According to Lisa, there's a ladder here that leads to the stage," she told him. "I'm going to let you open it because I know you're a sweet guy."
Scott knelt and pulled on the handle, feeling dumber than ever as the pants-cuffs pulled away from the dusty brown shoes on his feet. But there was a ladder underneath, plunging into murky blue light.
"Ladies first?" he asked.
She shook her head. "Not this time, Bojangles."
The rungs felt crude. They hadn't been sanded well, and were nailed crookedly onto the rails. Those inconveniences aside, the structure was sturdy; both he and Ingrid were able to climb easily to the stage.
The blue light surrounded them as they descended. There was good reason for this: A tremendous matte painting depicting an underwater scene towered over the stage. It extended from left to right, and was the height of a movie theater screen. The ladder dropped in front of it, and the sudden exposure to this fantastic set-piece froze Scott on the rungs. Seconds later, Ingrid's foot touched the top of his head. She jerked it back with a yelp of surprise.
"Sorry!" she called down. Then: "What are you doing?"
He couldn't answer right away. Though the stage was not well lit (a huge curtain, also blue, was drawn behind Scott's back; the only light visible appeared to be falling through a row of small windows high along the left wall), the painting commanded respect. Fish of all shapes, sizes, and colors gaped from the canvas, their bodies seeming to leap at the viewer in a way that reminded Scott of the 3D features he had seen as a kid at Sandusky Mall. A reef sparkled on the left, depicted in just the proper shades of green, yellow, and white to create the illusion. Sun-dapples danced on a sandy floor dotted with coral and crustaceans.
"Scott?"
But it was the image painted in the center that impressed him most. A gigantic killer whale loomed at the ladder with its mouth stretched back in a knowing grin. The 3D effect was almost perfect; Scott felt like he could reach out and touch the tip of its nose. It was not a pleasant sensation, especially in the dark.
"I'm here," he managed, closing his eyes.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes. There's a painting down here. Huge. You might not want to see it."
She wanted to see it; of course she did. Scott put his feet on the stage and let her gawk. The curtain was a little better, but not much. It was dark blue and, like the matte painting, almost vertiginous in its vastness. It undulated from time to time as rogue drafts whispered through its folds. The battens creaked. Also, Scott noticed for the first time, there was music coming from somewhere--high, lilting notes from what sounded like a small pipe.
Ingrid did not care about the curtain or the music. Her eyes were fixed on the painting, in awe of its magnificence. When Scott told her--whilst averting his own eyes--that it was a bit too magnificent for his tastes, she smiled and explained it was an anamorphic piece. The artist or artists, she went on, had deliberately painted the fish in a distorted fashion up close so they would appear to leap from the canvas when viewed from a distance.
"Only this one is better than any I've ever seen," she said. "With an anamorphic piece the viewer as a rule needs to stand in a very specific place." She gestured at the whale, fearless of the effect achieved by its creator. "Imagine what this looks like from the seats, Scott."
"No thanks."
"We'd probably get wet."
"I think from now on I'm going to stick with 2D when it comes to entertainment."
The curtain went on undulating. It had no opening in the center that either could see. Ingrid suggested they try down right and then wondered aloud who was playing the pipe. Scott had no idea what down right meant, but managed to hide his ignorance well enough as he fell in step behind her. She led him to the right front area of the stage. Here they were both able to slip around the curtain, where a mercifully prosaic seating area presented itself. Gas footlights flickered along the front of the stage. Candles glowed from sconces along wooden walls. There were perhaps five-hundred seats in all, and all were empty save one: The pipe player, a woman, sat in the front row of the theater's balcony. Her legs were crossed under a plain green dress. Her fingers scuttled like spiders over the holes.
Scott was about to call to her when he noticed a second individual running beneath the balcony, this one a child. Like the whale in the painting, he was grinning from ear to ear. In one small hand he held what looked like a toy airplane. He was making it loop and dive among the seats as he capered with what Scott saw as pure joy for the moment.
"Taas pa!" he cried, the words echoing. "Taas pa!"
The woman's pipe playing stopped. "Ingat!" she called.
That was when she noticed the visitors. Scott could tell as much from the way her head froze. For a moment none of the three adults could move. Then the woman stood. Her voice carried over the seats when she shouted: "Sino ka?"
Scott and Ingrid looked at each other, then back at the woman. The child also noticed them now, his toy forgotten at his side.
"Sino ka?" the woman shouted again, and Scott could hear menace beginning to bleed into her tone.
"Hello!" Ingrid called back. "We're sorry to intrude! Are you the owner of this theater?"
Scott raised his hand in a feeble wave. "I don't think she speaks English," he said through the corner of his mouth.
"Lisa told me there are a lot of dialects used here. Keep your fingers crossed."
The woman disappeared through a door at the back of the balcony. Moments later she was walking towards them down the center aisle. She was similar to Ingrid in size and build, but with a shade darker skin. Her face, framed behind curls of long black hair, looked neither welcoming nor disagreeable. When she reached the front row she stopped. The boy stopped behind her and peaked around her waist.
"Hello," Ingrid tried again.
The woman's eyes, which held a distinct Asian quality, narrowed. "Who are you?" she asked.
"I'm Scott Bremman," Scott said. "This is my friend, Ingrid Semeska."
"Ingrid Felton," the girl standing at his side corrected. "Are you Rowena?"
Scott looked at her in surprise. Ingrid Felton?
But neither of the two women acknowledged him now. "I am Rowena," the older one allowed. "I own this theater. How did you get backstage?"
"Through a loft above the curtains," Ingrid said.
This caused the corner of Rowena's mouth to twitch a little. "Lovers," she observed, glancing at Scott.
"Yes," Ingrid admitted, sounding not at all apologetic. "I'm Luanna Felton's daughter. She told me the two of you were friends a long time ago--"
Here, at last, came a smile from Rowena. It was wide and friendly. Scott should have felt comforted--except he wasn't, at least not in full. Ingrid had not mentioned anyone named Luanna Felton as she'd recounted her story in the loft; all the same, he had an idea who it was. The tone Ingrid used when she spoke her name was similar to how she sounded when she talked about Lisa. It jarred him. He was barely able to smile back when Rowena beckoned them off the stage and demanded they join her for an early lunch.
She led them with happy chatter to a foyer at the back of the theater.
"You were a baby!" she kept saying. "My god! A baby! And look at you now!"
The boy trailed behind them. Rowena explained between gushes that his name was Benjamin--Benji for short. His father, she added, was Caucasian, and had red hair. This accounted for the pale, freckled complexion of his skin.
"But look at you!" she exclaimed at Ingrid again. "You're dark of course, but not like Luanna!"
"No. My father--"
"Quinn, yes! Michael Quinn! A soldier! Oh god, was he gwapo! Handsome I mean! Sorry."
The foyer was larger and better cared for than the one Scott remembered from Cedar Point. Sunlight gleamed off polished wooden floors. Half a dozen giant roses--the biggest Scott had ever seen--drooped from a ceramic vase set in front of clean windows, and a breeze coming through the door carried their sweet scent. It also carried sounds from the street beyond--footsteps, talk, laughter. To Scott's right was a large canvas set on an easel. A man and a woman kissed beneath a title that was not in English.
To his left was the entrance to a small cafe--The Harlequin's Cup, according to its sign. The dining area consisted of about ten rustic wooden tables and a short row of bar-stools. Rowena sat Ingrid and Scott down at one of the more shadowy booths. She then placed a lit candle between them before dashing to the kitchen, promising that the wait would not be long.
Within fifteen minutes there was food, simple but functional: rice and gravy, chicken, mashed potatoes. As they ate Ingrid recounted their story a second time, only with bits and pieces added in. <