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Trevor tried to make a sound to halt Rayley, who was above him on the winding staircase, but the
candle in his mouth prevented him from making an audible sound. Besides, by that time, Rayley’s
candle had found an image of its own. Another portrait, another pose, but the same woman. “He’s
painted her over and over, Welles,” Rayley called back down into the darkness. His breath was
ragged, both from the climb and from a growing sense of dread. “Rose, you said her name was? He
has gone mad with guilt.”
Trevor muttered something indistinct in reply, but it hardly mattered. For as the two men continued to
climb they encountered portrait after portrait of Rose. Rose naked. Rose in the robes of a Queen.
Rose standing. Rose reclined. Rose both indoors and out. Rose with a child in her arms. Rose
laughing, then stricken with grief.
“Dear God,” said Trevor, who paused to straighten and take the candle stub in his hand. “Be careful
when you reach the door, Abrams, and we must extinguish our candles before we open it. How is the
situation at the top of the stairs? Do you remember?”
“The steps lead straight to the door,” Rayley called back. “Which will give us trouble if we have to
force it, since there’s no way to get a running start. And you must take care to stay to the left, Welles,
don’t stand erect like that. If you lean too far to the right, you could topple into the stairwell.”
“But how shall we…” And here Trevor hesitated, for with each step, he was growing increasingly
certain that they were climbing toward a corpse, but he did not bother articulating this fear, since he
was reasonably sure Rayley had come to the same conclusion. Trevor swiped his hand toward one of
the pictures – this one of a pensive Rose, contemplating one of the flowers that was her namesake –
and was not totally surprised that his knuckles came back smeared with wet paint. LaRusse had
apparently gone into some sort of artistic frenzy – hiding in the garret and producing one hasty portrait
after another, propping each on a separate step before climbing back up to begin the next.
“How shall we what?” Rayley asked, but as he at last reached the final step, there was a sudden
flurry of motion, like a bird taking flight from a high roost. He raised his candle but it was
extinguished at once, with a single whoosh of air - and then it was upon him, a great rushing shape,
seemingly airborne. He let out a cry as he instinctively dove to the left, toward the wall, knocking his
head against the stones as he slid to his feet. Dazed, nearly blind, he watched in disbelief as the ghost
took flight and a high metallic scream filled the stairwell.
Trevor, who preferred to think of the creature as an angel, was no less stunned at its rapid
appearance. He pulled back his own candle, saving the small flame from extinction, and beheld the
figure in white sailing through the darkness, cutting over the stairwell in a definitive swoop, before
finally sinking from sight into the dark pit below. Only the gentle thud of its landing, impossibly far
beneath them, indicated that this was a human form and not a supernatural one.
“Abrams, are you there?” Trevor shouted into the void above him. “What in the name of God was
that? It flew right past me. ”
“I’m fine, Welles,” said Rayley, hoping it was true. The whack to the head had made him dizzy and
he hesitated to push to his feet. Not here, so high up in the darkness, with the yawning stairwell to the
side. “I think it was Dorinda, and she wasn’t flying. She was clinging to a rope…a pulley she