He was still staring out of the window when he heard a woman’s voice calling out. It was so weak that it was barely audible, and it sounded bubbly, as if she had a mouthful of water. ‘Please. Please don’t leave me here. Please.’
Lincoln felt a crawling sensation all the way down his back. He turned around and saw that a woman was lying diagonally on the bed, half covered by a stained pink satin quilt. She was dark-skinned, with a plump heart-shaped face and thick wavy black hair — Hispanic, or mixed race. There were plum-colored circles under her eyes, or they could have been bruises. On her left cheek she had a large black beauty-spot, or maybe a mole. Her lips were scarlet and shiny, as if she had thickly applied too bright a shade of lipstick.
‘Please don’t leave me,’ the woman whispered. She had a strong Spanish accent.
‘OK, lady,’ said Lincoln, trying to sound reassuring. ‘I’ll try to get you some help.’
‘No use doing that,’ the woman told him.
‘What happened? How did you get in here?’
‘He brought me here. El prestidigitator. He caught me, and he brought me here.’
‘Who did?’
‘I don’t know his name. Don’t leave me, please. I’m dying.’
‘Are you sick? Did this guy beat up on you? What?’
The woman closed her eyes and didn’t answer him. Lincoln hesitated, not knowing if he should try to shake her awake. Probably best not to touch her, he thought. She might have a neck or a spinal injury, and shaking could prove fatal.
He went back over to the door and gave it another kick. ‘Open this door!’ he screamed. ‘Open this fucking door! There’s a woman dying in here! Help me!’
There was no response. Lincoln looked back at the bed and the woman still had her eyes closed. What the hell was he going to do now? He could go on kicking at the door but if nobody could hear him what was the point? He could wait until morning, for the hotel housekeepers to do their rounds, but quite apart from the fact that the woman on the bed was close to dying, it was already daylight outside, so when would it be morning? And how would the housekeepers get in here, if this was a different reality?
He was still standing by the door when his decision was made for him. He saw nobody and heard nothing, but suddenly he caught the strong raw smell of gasoline, as if somebody had splashed it all around the room. He sniffed, and sniffed again. The smell was so strong that it burned his throat and made his eyes water.
Then — without any warning at all, the woman on the bed exploded into flames. A wave of heat seared Lincoln’s face and he stumbled backward, lifting up his hand to shield his eyes. Within seconds, the whole mattress was blazing like a bonfire. Lincoln tried to edge closer, but the heat was so intense that he couldn’t get anywhere near enough to drag the woman off the bed. Lurid orange flames licked right up to the ceiling and the bedroom rapidly began to fill up with whirling sparks and billowing brown smoke.
Although she was burning from head to foot, the woman didn’t move, or cry out, so Lincoln guessed that she must have died a few minutes before when she had closed her eyes. But in any case there was no time to think of trying to save her. The linoleum flooring was ablaze, spitting and shriveling as it burned, and he knew that he had to get out of the bedroom somehow or he was going to die, too — and in only a few seconds. Fifteen years ago, his uncle and his aunt and his four cousins had all died in a house fire in Brightmoor. They had been overwhelmed by toxic smoke in less than two minutes, huddled together behind a front door that they hadn’t had the strength to open.
Lincoln pulled out his handkerchief, folded it into a pad, and pressed it against his nose and his mouth. Then — keeping as low as he could — he crouched his way toward the bathroom. In spite of the fire, he was still reluctant to climb out of the window, in case he could never climb back. He reasoned that he could break open the bathroom window if he needed ventilation, and there was plenty of water there, too.
He pushed his way through the bathroom door and quickly slammed it shut behind him. Then he dragged the soggy towel across the floor and wedged it underneath the door to keep the smoke out. He stood for a while with both hands pressed against the wall, coughing and wheezing. He was still shocked and bewildered by the way in which the Hispanic-looking woman had appeared as if from nowhere, and the way in which she had abruptly caught fire. He had smelled gasoline in the seconds before the bed had exploded, for sure, but where had it come from?
He turned around, with his back to the wall, trying to suppress his coughing. If smoke started to seep into the bathroom, he guessed that he could balance on the edge of the bath, break open the window and squeeze his way out. The window frame was just about wide enough. But for all he knew it was a sheer three-story drop out there, and even if he managed to escape uninjured, would he ever be able to climb back in again?
Maybe this is nothing but a nightmare, he thought. Maybe I was overtired and I went to bed and I’m simply dreaming all this. It can’t be happening. It’s impossible.
He reached out cautiously and touched the brass door-handle. It was already too hot for him to hold, and the door panels were growing warmer, as well. He began to think that he had made the wrong decision, shutting himself in the bathroom. At least there had been a fire escape outside the bedroom window, no matter what reality it might have led him into.
He was sweating now, and he wiped his forehead with his shirtsleeve. As he did so, he heard a shuffling noise inside the shower stall. He had seen a dark shape inside it before, but he had assumed that it was nothing but a combination of dirt and shadows. Now he could see that it was moving. Something inside the shower stall was alive.
‘Who’s that?’ he called out. ‘Come out here where I can see you!’
There was no answer, and he felt too foolish to call out a second time, in case it was nothing but an optical illusion, or maybe an animal that had gotten itself trapped — a dog or a cat or a raccoon. But then the shower stall door was pushed open with a reverberating shudder, and a man stepped out of it. Lincoln opened and closed his mouth, and coughed, but he couldn’t find the breath inside him to speak.
The man was tall — at least as tall as Lincoln, and maybe an inch or two more — but he was also very thin, with arms and legs that were disproportionately long. He was wearing a black tuxedo with a black silk vest underneath it, and a black shirt with a black bow-tie. His hair was white and ragged and almost shoulder length. What alarmed Lincoln about him the most, however, was his face. It was very pale gray, like a face in a black-and-white photograph, and it was blurred, as if he had moved when he was having his photograph taken. Lincoln could make out the dark smudges of his eyes, and the upward-sloping curve of his lips, but that was all. The rest of his features seemed to be permanently out of focus.
‘I warned you not to come, now, didn’t I?’ the man told him, hoarsely. ‘You would not listen to me, though, would you? You out-and-out refused to listen.’
‘Who are you?’ Lincoln demanded. ‘What the hell is going on here?’
‘Things that are no concern of yours, Lincoln. Things that you would have been wiser to stay ignorant of. But of course it is much too late now, isn’t it? You have come here, in spite of the fact that I specifically asked you not to, and you have witnessed what you have witnessed. And I cannot risk anybody interfering in what I am doing here. Not you. Nobody.’