You quickly consider the options: Blackwell could back at any moment, and a window at ground level is safer and faster to break in than climbing a tree.
So you point at the window. Scott shrugs and kneels beside it.
He starts by trying to rub away the grime and peering inside, but he soon gives up with a grimace. "Be right back," he mutters, and jogs away.
You stare after him a moment, then kneel on the grass to have a go at the window yourself. The dirt could be baked into the glass itself, so stoutly does it resist being rubbed away, and the room within is too dark to make anything out. So you dismiss it as your imagination, or a trick of the light, when you think you glimpse a shadow darting about within.
Scott has a crowbar when he runs back up, and after pressing you to one side, he shatters first one window pane and then the others with a series of hard, smart blows. Shards tinkle and clatter as he clears out the edges; then he ruthlessly wrenches out the wooden crossbeam. Inside of a minute, he has completely cleared the window away.
He drops to his stomach, but freezes before he can slide through and inside. You drop down beside him, and also freeze when you see what he sees.
It's a basement alright, with an almost six-foot drop to a concrete floor below. The walls are painted cinderblock. Attached to one wall—the one adjoining the library—is a short, tightly curled spiral staircase. At the far end is a bed.
And standing in the middle of the floor is a girl. She has hair that would probably be platinum-blonde if it were clean, and she is doing her best to cover her nudity with her arms and hands while gazing up at you and Scott with a look that mixes hope with terror.
As yesterday, it takes you a stupidly long time before you recognize her. "Lucy?" you croak.
Her eyes shift from Scott's face to yours. "Do I know you?" she asks in a voice that cracks.
"Yesterday," you remind her. "Will Prescott? I was coming in to meet the professor, and you were just—"
Your voice dies. It is obvious from her expression that she has no idea what you're talking about, and for a moment you doubt that it is Lucy. She is certainly a lot dirtier and more haggard than the cool, fresh, clean girl you bumped into yesterday.
But in the silence that follows, she rallies. After a quick, fearful glance at the staircase, she runs up to the wall just below the window.
"You've got to get me out of here!" she hisses and stretches up with both hands to clutch at you and Scott. "Before he comes back! Please!"
Scott says, "What the—?"
"Please!" Lucy repeats. "He kidnapped me, don't you understand? He's been keeping me prisoner down here! You have to get me out of here before he—!" She quails as though struck.
Scott doesn't move, and in that moment of suspense you think, Fuck it. If Scott's not going to help her, you can!
So you scoot forward and reach for her. She grabs your hands, almost pulling you down and inside, and lifts herself up, trying to scuttle up the wall on her bare feet. Scott curses and grabs you. "Here, let me do it!" he snarls.
You shake Lucy loose and scramble out of the way. Scott lays on the grass and reaches in, and you grab hold to anchor him. A moment later, Lucy's head bobs over the sill of the window, and two moments later she is rolling out onto the grass with you.
She would be a lovely sight—a slim figure with cup-able hips and breasts—if she weren't so dirty. The grime seems to have been ground into her; her hair is in tangles; and her skin sags. But when she gasps and sniffles and turns wet eyes on you and Scott, you still have the urge to pull her close and comfort her.
But she's got other ideas. "Come on," she says with a wild look. "We have to get out of here before—"
High above there is a sound like birds' wings, as though a flock of hundreds has scattered at once, and a heavy tile crashes to the ground just inches from your feet. So when Lucy leaps onto the nearby patio and scampers off toward the front gate, you are right behind her. Scott passes you both on the way out.
--
Introductions are made on the drive away, Scott kicking up clouds of dust as he sends the truck hurtling back toward town. It is Lucy Vredenburg, Cindy's sister, who is huddling between you and Scott. She tries to shrink up inside herself. But though she is plainly scared half out of her wits, you can tell it's not you or Scott that she's not scared of.
Again, you remind her that you met her at the professor's yesterday when you came out to see him. But she shakes her head. "That wasn't me," she says in a low voice filled with horror.
"She said she was you," you reply.
"That wasn't me," she repeats, in a still firmer tone.
You glance past her at Scott. He returns your look with a pale look of his own.
"Lucy," you start to say. But when your voice dies, Scott completes your thought for you. "You can tell us what's going on," he says. "I'm pretty goddamn sure we'll believe you."
But she shakes her head. "You won't," she moans.
"This girl who wasn't you," you say, "that I met yesterday. Do you know who she is?"
Lucy hesitates, then shakes her head. "But I've seen her," she says in a voice so small you can barely hear her.
Scott takes over again, but instead of pressing her, he asks for her story from the beginning. It comes out haltingly, and Scott drives aimlessly through the countryside west of town as she tells it.
Lucy attends the local college, Keyserling, and Blackwell was one of her professors. She visited him to talk about an essay she was having trouble with, and though she suspected the worst when he invited her out to his villa for a closer consultation, she wasn't prepared for something far worse than she thought possible. During their meeting she passed out, and when she woke she found herself in that basement. Even more terrible was the moment when a door at the top of the staircase opened, and at its head appeared a girl who resembled her exactly, and who spoke as if she knew everything that Lucy did. That was at the beginning of September, and she has been Professor Blackwell's prisoner ever since.
A silence falls over your trio when she comes to a halting stop. Again, you and Scott exchange a long glance. You can tell what he's thinking, but you leave it to him say it.
"Lucy," he says after pulling over onto the shoulder of a deserted country road, "when you went out to the professor's, did you see or did he show any masks? Blue and kind of blank, like those kind that you see on theater marquees sometimes?"
Lucy frowns as she thinks. Then her expression clears up. "Oh, you mean like—? Yes," she says. "That was just about the last thing I remember, when we were talking, just before—" She breaks off with a shudder. "He showed me this mask. I remember it was blue, it glowed like a sapphire, and I remember thinking how beautiful it was. And he lifted it to my face and—" She breaks off again.
Scott looks at you. "Have you hear anything about Cindy's sister going missing?" he asks. You shake your head, and his lips whiten. "Lucy," he says to her. "There's a girl going around town pretending to be you."
Lucy looks like she's going to vomit. "I know," she says, and starts to shake all over.
Then Scott does something you wish you had the balls to do. He puts his arm around her shoulder and pulls her tight. And, to your chagrin, she nestles there, pressing up close against him.
Over her head, Scott gives you a hard, piercing look. "That book you sold him," he says. "It makes masks. But you bought it at Arnholm's? When?"
"A week ago?" you reply. "I think? Maybe too?"
"Before or after the start of the month?"
"After." You think, trying to relate the book to your school schedule. "Around the tenth of the month," you reply. "Because I bought it for a school project that was due around that time."
Scott's expression hardens. "And he had a mask at the start of the month. It sounds like the professor already knew how to make them."
You feel your eyes widen. "You mean there's another book, another copy?"
"Stands to reason. We need to get them — both of them — away from him. Before he does to anyone else what he did to Lucy."
And as soon as he says that, it hits you like a blow. A blow so hard it staggers you. Almost, the thought hits you so hard, you see stars.
Your dad talked to Blackwell before you went out to see him together. Your dad practically forced you to sell your copy of the book back to Blackwell. And your dad, all out of character, let you quit the job at Salopek before you began it.
But is he your dad anymore? Lucy disappeared, and someone who looks like Lucy took her place.
So is that really your dad back home? A feeling of nausea wells up inside you.
So when Scott foolishly argues to return to Blackwell's villa and Lucy suggests the better option of hiding her, you have a priority of your own to argue for.
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