The boardwalk never changed; the city simply grew around it. Like a tumor, it clung to the shoreline by the docks, the half-rotten boards of black wood somehow managing to avoid collapse year after year. Sailing into town, the rickety old rollercoaster out on the pier was the first sight to peek over the horizon, followed shortly by the Ferris wheel, and then the EMPIRE BOARDWALK sign in its flickering electric glory. A squat line of shops, two thirds of them abandoned, hung off the pier like a row of decaying teeth. To the east, all that remained of the second pier was a line of pilings and the rusted metal skeleton of what was once the largest greenhouse in the world.
Residents of the city never went to the boardwalk, save the rite of passage of a trip or two as children. Tourists wandered over on occasion, drawn in by the tinkling music of the carousel or the smell of cotton candy. But, as soon as they arrived, the charming vintage facade faded, and the dilapidated structures and stink of the sea drove them back downtown to their hotels. Surely, the corporation that owned the place wasn’t turning a profit on it. Surely, the city didn’t want the health and safety hazard driving down beachfront property values. Still, with every proposal to tear the place down, the proprietor or the mayor would give some long speech about history and preservation, but the truth was it would have cost more to tear down the eyesore than to leave it and pray a hurricane would push it into the sea for good.
It wasn’t always that way. Once upon a time, in another century, the boardwalk was the most wonderful place in the world.
On a deep blue June day, long before the rust and water and decay, the boardwalk had a ribbon-cutting—not just a perfunctory gesture, but a ceremony. Half of the city stood shoulder-to-shoulder down the blocks by the shore, jostling each other and standing up on their tiptoes to see farther ahead. Up near the ribbon, a troupe of tap dancers from a nearby dance school were finishing up their performance. The music barely carried to the back of the crowd, but the metallic clang of their shoes on the impromptu platform stage did. In the very last row, Lena Marchetti stood between her sister, Louisa, and Louisa’s newest boyfriend, Gerald, trying not to think about the way her own dress clung to her with static electricity and other people’s sweat. A dull ache blossomed at her temples and she shifted her weight between her sore legs. She looked over at her sister’s lit-up face and mentally calculated the minutes until they could go home.
The dance troupe finished their set to a sea of riotous applause before making their way off the stage. Replacing them entered the mayor: a short, stout man wearing a top hat and a suit two decades out of fashion. Even though he stood with his face right in the microphone, no one beyond the first row could hear what he was saying over the rabble of the crowd.
“Just get on with it already, I want to go in!” a woman a few rows ahead called out.
Gerald scoffed and took off his cap to wipe the sweat from his brow. “Get comfortable. It’ll be a long while before we’re anywhere near the entrance.”
After the mayor snipped the red ribbon wrapped around the iron gates loose, Gerald’s prophecy came true; those near the front flooded inside, packing themselves into every last square foot of the boardwalk, while those near the back hardly moved a step. All they could do was stand and watch the Ferris wheel spin round and round and the cars on the rollercoaster crest and fall. As morning gave way to afternoon, the temperature only increased, magnified by the body heat of the buzzing crowd.
Louisa stepped over an abandoned, trampled tent on the ground as the group shuffled forward. “I told you we should have camped out last night.”
“We shouldn’t have come at all,” Lena grumbled. “The boardwalk’s not going anywhere. We could have come in a few weeks when the excitement would have died down.”
Louisa shot her sister a glare. “That’s the whole point. We’re here when it’s all happening.” She then looked down at the red velvet frock that had cost half her paycheck. “And I didn’t break out my glad rags just to sit around.”
Lena rolled her eyes and decided she was too hot to respond.
The sun dipped low on the horizon as revelers poured in and out. What seemed like eons later, they made it close enough to smell the taffy and the cotton candy. More than anything, Lena’s sore legs and sunburnt skin called for a place to sit. All scowling, the trio soldiered on. Jaunty music from the carousel seemed to lift Louisa’s spirits, but even that soured as the fifth chorus of “By the Beautiful Sea” began to play. The only thing stopping them from going home was the stubborn determination of having waited so long.
By the time they reached the gates, blue twilight had fallen over the ocean, the crowd inside was thin, and the ticket-taker was waving everyone through without making them pay.
Gerald rolled the sleeves of his sweat-soaked shirt back down. “This better be the best goddamn boardwalk on God’s green Earth, Louisa.”
“It will be. Trust me. Now take me on the carousel!” She dragged him off to the ride before he could get a word in. “Meet us back at the popcorn stand in two hours!”
Lena stood alone. All at once, the electric lights around her illuminated, bathing the boardwalk in a soft orange glow. The shops stood on her left and the rides on the right, perched out on the pier. Just looking at the rollercoaster made her sick, so Lena decided on the shops. She thumbed the coin purse in the pocket of her skirt and figured her meager savings would buy her, at the very least, a souvenir for all the time she spent waiting.
Taffy made Lena’s stomach sick, so the first store was out. And she felt much too old for a turn at the penny arcade, so she kept walking past the second. Not enough money for a summer frock. No need for a bathing suit. Excuse after excuse to avoid the other stores and keep walking until, finally, she reached the end.
Lena looked around. Almost no one milled about that patch of the boardwalk. The evening air cooled her skin and cleared her head. Then, she noticed: in the darkness, between the streetlamp and the electric signs of the other storefronts, stood the very last building. Flaky green lettering curled around the curtained glass window, announcing the place’s name: ‘Wright’s Emporium of Curiosities.’
Why not?
She pushed the door open and stepped inside. Dim gas lights reflected off rows and rows of glass displays. The interior was just as deserted as the space outside. After a few hesitant steps, Lena realized that no one was coming to take her money and show her around. She couldn’t help but feel like she wasn’t meant to be there—like she was breaking in, and someone would soon come chase her away. From the opposite wall, the dead glass eyes of stuffed elk heads watched over her. Lena clenched her fist around the coin purse in her pocket and walked down the ratty red carpet to see the displays.
First was what the Emporium called a mermaid. It wasn’t one of the long-haired, giggling princesses she saw when she went to the pictures. No, it was an animal—a brown, desiccated husk of a thing. A mermaid, the sign claimed, but it was obviously just two mummified corpses bound together with crude staples. Lena recognized the tail as that of a catfish, but the upper body was harder to identify. A monkey, maybe, with its face twisted into a permanent scream that nestled itself into Lena’s imagination. Looking at the creature turned her stomach sour, but she could barely look away. With effort, she tore herself from the mermaid and moved on to the other exhibits.
Rows of shrunken heads hung by their tufted hair, skirting the line between surely leather-crafted and surely real. A glimmering silver chalice that supposedly bore the curse of some cult on the other side of the world. A taxidermy hawk extracting the intestines from the split carcass of a prairie dog. A bone china doll with beetle’s wings glued on its back labeled as a fairy skeleton. Hypnotized, Lena made her way through the rows of exhibits, one by one.
Unable to see out the window, she had no idea how long it had been since she entered. Stiffness in her legs and lower back told her it had probably been a while. Still, the thought of leaving, of returning to the screaming children and incessant music and body heat, made her want to weep. She decided to stay, at least until Louisa and Gerald came to find her. At least until then.
It was only on her second turn about the room that Lena saw the door—tucked into the shadow of the displays with its deep mahogany blending into the crimson wallpaper. No sign hung on its frame warning visitors to keep out or drawing them in to the wonders inside. When Lena turned the tarnished brass knob and pushed, it swung open with ease to reveal a bare, steep staircase down to a basement. Another exhibit, perhaps? One Lena certainly couldn’t miss. Careful not to fall, she lowered herself step by step.
Down there, the only light was from a single candle burning on a wall sconce. Once she reached the foot of the stairs, Lena kept her hand on the wall until her eyes adjusted to the dark. As they did, her heart sank. All she could see was the hard dirt floor, four unfinished walls, and a tall wooden box in the corner. Closer inspection revealed the box to be a display cabinet, same as the ones upstairs, with the glass panel facing the wall. For a few seconds, she just stared.
I’ve come this far. Why not?
Rational mind silenced, Lena braced her hands on either side of the cabinet and jimmied it out until it faced the adjacent wall. She took a moment to catch her breath, wondering what could be so heavy, then walked around to see what the box held.
Inside the cabinet sat a woman. ‘MADAME ESMÉE,’ the sign read, ‘PENNY FOR YOUR FORTUNE.’
The fortune teller’s porcelain skin stood out against her patchwork dress and the jet-black wig falling limp down her shoulders. Her face was so detailed that she almost looked like a mummy herself—like the body of a maiden dipped in porcelain to keep her youth forever. Not quite real, but too real to be a simple dummy. Her hands sat poised over a crystal ball and, on her face, a permanent smile was tattooed in red paint. But her most striking feature was her eyes. Lena thought back to the dead, dull eyes of her dolls as a girl and marveled at the intricate detail of the fortune teller’s. Even though her stare was fixated down at the crystal ball, Madame Esmée’s green irises caught the light of the gas lamps with a gentle glow.
Before she realized what she was doing, Lena was reaching out to slot a penny into the machine. It dropped in with a satisfying thwack, and the machine whirred to life. Tinny, flat music played from somewhere deep inside the box, and deep violet light emanated from the crystal ball as the fortune teller’s hands moved around it in jerky, robotic circles. The automaton’s overwrought ministrations were distracting, but Lena kept her focus on the fortune teller’s eyes.
Madame Esmée’s face snapped up to look straight at her client. It sounded like the gears were grinding and breaking. Lena jumped back and screwed her eyes shut, afraid that the fortune teller would break through the glass. When she lowered her arms and looked a moment later, Madame Esmée was back in her original position. A bellowing buzz rang from deep inside the cabinet’s gears, then a strip of yellow paper printed from a slot below the glass. Without taking her eyes off the machine, Lena took a few hesitant steps forward and snatched the paper before shoving it into her pocket and bounding up the stairs.
She didn’t look back as she sprinted out of the emporium and back to the crowd. By then, the sky was black, and all the children were gone. All that was left were couples, performers, and gaggles of men leering at girls and smoking pipes of hash. Weaving through the sea of people, ignoring the catcalls and hawking street vendors, Lena wondered if she would ever find her sister. Thankfully, as she rounded the corner to the popcorn stand, Louisa’s red velvet dress stood out like a lighthouse beacon guiding her home.
Unfortunately, Louisa wasn’t so comforted by the sight of her younger sister. “Where the hell have you been? It’s an hour after we agreed to meet. You know how much I hate the fuzz, but I was about to report you missing. You know what they say about these carnival types. Father would have my head if anything happened to you, especially after Mama—”
“Nothing like that.” Lena masked the adrenaline still pumping through her with a sweet, calm voice. “I just got caught up in…a game. A stupid boardwalk game. Silly me! Let’s scram.”
Gerald and Louisa shot each other a look, but Lena was already halfway to the new subway stop, so they just followed. Subway platforms were so hot that they were like little portals to Hell, but Lena welcomed it with open arms. Already, Wright’s Emporium and Madame Esmée felt like a dream. Lena decided it had been a sort of heatstroke fantasy crafted by her mind after reading one too many of her sister’s pulp magazines. She decided not to think about it ever again—to stay as far from the boardwalk as she could for the rest of her life.
Her resolution stayed strong until, sitting in the train, her hand glanced across the paper in her pocket. While Louisa and Gerald whispered in each other’s ears, giggling in the way new lovers do, Lena lifted it to her lap and squinted at the letters printed in swirling, uneven font. Holding the fortune up to the light, she was able to make it out.
AN ACQUAINTANCE WILL SOON BECOME A TREASURED FRIEND.
Chills wracked through her body. It must have been a coincidence. A canned line printed out at random to convince fools like her to part with their pennies. She was about to ball the fortune up and throw it out the train door—when she caught a glimpse of a word printed on the back.
MAGDALENA.
Using every ounce of her energy, Lena gripped the edge of her seat to stop herself from collapsing, crushing the fortune. When she felt strong enough to sit upright, she tucked the slip of paper back into her skirt. Next to her, Louisa swatted Gerald’s shoulder as she laughed at a joke. To Lena, it felt surreal, like watching characters in the pictures. Her blood felt thin as water. MAGDALENA, in the calligraphic font of the fortune, burned in white heat whenever she closed her eyes.
At long last, the train screeched to a halt at Gerald’s stop. “Are you sure you don’t want to come back to my place? There’s a juice joint down the road that’s delightful this time of night.”
Louisa smoothed out her dress. “No. Lena and I are career girls now. We’ve got to get up for work tomorrow.”
Gerald smiled as he leapt out of the train. “I’ll call you! How’s Wednesday?”
Louisa examined her nails. “I’ll see if there’s room in my calendar.”
The doors slammed shut, and the train continued puttering along its route. On any other night, Lena would have started needling her sister about her boyfriend as soon as Gerald was out of earshot. Tonight, though, she sat silent. The paper in her skirt weighed a thousand pounds. Luckily, Louisa was babbling about her crush and wouldn’t stop until she went to bed. Lena moved through the tiny apartment like a wind-up doll, going through the motions of washing and brushing her hair and slipping on her nightgown, without really thinking about them. For two hours, she stared at the dark ceiling, waiting for a sleep she knew would not come.
Once she’d had enough, she slipped out of her bed and plucked the fortune from her skirt. Careful not to wake Louisa, Lena tiptoed into the kitchenette. Holding the thin paper up, she watched the shadows of the moon and streetlights pass over it. Then she reached into the nearest drawer, struck a match, and watched the fire lick and consume the paper. Once the fortune was just a few scraps of blonde ash, Lena left the kitchen and tucked herself back into bed.
That night, she dreamt of green eyes too alive to be made of glass.
Life felt a little more tangible when the alarm clock woke her up at six. After checking that the ash was still in the wastebasket and downing a cup of coffee, Lena almost felt back to normal. Whenever she found her mind wandering to the basement at the boardwalk, she pinched her hand until the sharp pain snapped her back to reality. The gray, cool sky that greeted her when she walked outside was a comfort; summer sun would have been too much to handle.
Walking into the library felt like diving in a pool of cool water on a hot day—hushed tones and dark, overstuffed stacks offered a sweet relief to the loud, bright memories of the boardwalk. Antsy nerves still bit their way up her ankles and palms, a hangover from the night before. When the head librarian peered over her glasses to assign Lena to shelf stocking duty, gratitude flowed through her. Mindless, manual work—exactly what she needed. Quickly, she fell into the rhythm of slipping the worn-out hardbacks onto their respective shelves. Nothing out of place, nothing that shouldn’t be there, no tricks of the eye. Lena walked back to her desk with the serenity of repetition and a book of poetry tucked under her arm.
On her desk, everything was as it should have been: two sharp pencils, a fountain pen, and an inkwell. Standard issue, they all were, from the stationery store down the road. The last two items on the desk were not so generic: a pair of glass paperweights shaped like sparrows. She swiped them from her mother’s bedroom before the funeral. Every day, she would run her fingertips over the bumps of their feathers and look at how the glass warped and magnified the view of her beige maple desktop. Not that day.
On that day, the sparrows sat on top of a thin yellow paper. Through the glass, she could make out the words FOR LENA. MY LENA.
Nausea rolled through her like a wave. She screwed her eyes shut and counted to three but, when she looked, the fortune was still there. More than anything, she needed to leave. So, she turned and headed straight out.
The head librarian caught her just before she reached the door. “Miss Marchetti, your shift doesn’t end for at least another three hours.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Mrs. Stanwick, but I’m having…I don’t feel well.” Flashing lights appeared in Lena’s vision. She swayed on her feet, and the head librarian caught her.
To Lena’s surprise, her supervisor patted her on the shoulder. “Alright, dear. Do you need me to call an ambulance?”
“No, no, no. I’m fine. I just need to go home and rest. I’ll be back tomorrow at eight.” One step at a time, Lena made her way out of the library.
The world swayed around her as she walked, as though she were aboard a ship on a choppy sea. At the same time, everything felt hazy. Surreal. As if, any minute now, she would wake up to her alarm clock and start the day all over again. She didn’t remember the trip home. One minute, she was on the curb in front of the library and, the next, she was climbing the steps to her apartment. She supposed that she took the streetcar, like she did every day, but the shivers that wracked her body indicated she may have walked through the unseasonable cold. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was dragging herself through the apartment and into bed. She wondered if she felt the way her mother had in those last days—if the dizziness and auras and churning stomach was just the madness setting in. Sleep came as soon as her head hit the pillow. As she drifted off, Lena prayed for a dark and dreamless sleep that she would wake up from laughing at her own silliness.
Instead, she found herself in a dream, lying on her side in the soft grass of an alpine valley. Birdsong lilted through the meadow, and clear air filled her lungs. A strange sensation blossomed on her scalp—something hard pressing up against her skin. Somehow, before she turned, she already knew what she would see. Madame Esmée, with her painted smile and green, green eyes, ran her porcelain hands through the tresses of Lena’s curls. Equal parts comfort and fear bubbled inside her. It made her feel like a little girl again.
Lena shot awake, panting, disoriented at the stuffy, familiar air of her apartment. Her heart beat a thready hummingbird beat for a full minute and her vision blurred at the edges. Once the panic subsided, she looked down at her lap.
Dozens of thin yellow fortunes blanketed the bed.
LENA COME AND SEE ME. DON’T YOU MISS ME LENA? WE ARE VERY BEST FRIENDS. DON’T KEEP ME WAITING FOR MUCH LONGER. I DREAM ABOUT YOU TOO.
There were so many that she couldn’t possibly read them all. The sick, migraine-like feeling crashed over her again. Haze filled her field of vision and, when it cleared, she was walking onto the train, coin purse in hand.
I’m either going to the boardwalk or the asylum.
Whichever it was, she swore to herself that she wouldn’t go home until the whole ordeal was sorted. Lena picked a seat far from the only other person in the car and leaned her head back against the window. South, she calculated that the train was headed as it pulled into the next stop. South to the boardwalk. What choice was there but to go along for the ride?
Shivering, she climbed the stairs of the subway stop into the overcast day. With that weather, the boardwalk seemed a completely different place. Sunday’s crowds had been replaced with dope fiends stumbling through the blustery winds to beg for spare change, and only the most dedicated vendors lined the streets. Empty rollercoaster cars rose and fell on their predetermined paths. Underneath the howl of the wind, the same saccharine carnival music as the day before played on a loop from the carousel, echoing through the empty boardwalk. Lena kept her head down and made a beeline for Wright’s Emporium.
Again, no usher stood by the door to charge her for entry. She walked right in, alone again, and headed straight for the basement door. At the head of the stairs, she paused and asked herself whether she’d made the whole thing up—whether she should turn on her heels and telephone one of those analysts who could interpret her dreams. She pictured it: an old man with a beard and glasses, tutting and jotting notes in a leather-bound book. Miss Marchetti, I think this fixation on the fortune-telling automaton represents your inability to grieve the death of your mother. Anger boiled in her stomach at the mere thought, so she squared her shoulders and marched down the stairs.
The fortune teller’s cabinet stood right where it had the day before. Each step towards it brushed aside the dirt at Lena’s feet. Dread dropped like a weight in her chest as she moved closer, but a hysterical voice in her head declaring it was all a dream crowed louder than the fear. Then she was face-to-face with Madame Esmée again, staring at the green eyes trained on the crystal ball.
“I got your messages, and here I am,” she announced, voice quivering.
PENNY FOR YOUR FORTUNE, the sign on the cabinet replied.
Lena reached into her purse and pulled out a penny. Gently, she pushed the coin into the slot and waited. Just like before, the crystal ball lit up violet, the music played, and Madame Esmée’s hands were set in motion. Except, then, everything was different. The crystal ball went from tacky and too bright to an otherworldly glow. Wonky, discordant music that was obviously from a warped piano roll became a clear performance, as if from a wandering band of folk musicians. And Madame Esmée herself moved her arms with the fluidity and clarity of a real person as her inky hair cascaded down her back. Even her skin took on a radiance beyond cracked paint over porcelain. Finally, Lena understood how the girls in her fairytales felt, in the midst of magic they could not understand. She walked so close to the cabinet that her breath made condensation on the glass.
After the fortune was printed out, nothing turned off. The crystal ball kept shining. The music grew even louder. Madame Esmée’s hands moved from the ball to the table. She used them to push herself forward until she was right up against the window. A thin pane of glass was the only separation between the two women. Lena would have been happy to stare at the green of Madame Esmée’s eyes all day, but the fortune teller broke the spell by tapping on the glass and pointing down. Down to the fortune, of course. Lena crouched and plucked it out of the machine, cradling the fortune in the bed of her hands. That time, there was only writing on one side.
MY MAGDALENA. I KNEW YOU’D COME BACK.
The train ride where she resolved to banish the fortune teller from her life felt like a million years in the past. How stupid she was! What was it that the first fortune had said? A treasured friend. Yes, that was it exactly—that was the warmth radiating through her body like a burst of sunlight.
Inside the cabinet, Madame Esmée moved again. This time, she lifted her hand to the glass. Up close, Lena could tell her skin was still porcelain. Her hand was too small, her fingers fused together in a hard web. And yet, her eyes remained as real as anything and trained on her visitor. Heart wrenching at the thought of her fortune teller, her friend, alone in the box, Lena lifted her hand to Madame Esmée’s. Slowly, her fingertips touched the glass.
Vertigo slammed into her as though she’d just stepped off the rollercoaster. Disoriented, she tried to stumble away, but she couldn’t move her legs, like they weren’t even there. Coming to, her vision never quite cleared. It took on a warped, scratched, yellowed pallor. No longer was she standing in the basement, staring at the Madame Esmée machine.
She was inside the cabinet, looking through the glass at a girl with long black hair and eyes like emeralds.
Sharp pain knifed its way up the ridges of her fingers to her shoulders and head. Looking down, she saw the porcelain replacing her young skin like a spreading rash. She felt every cell as it ossified and turned. Within the span of a minute, her mouth, hair, and face had hardened to a shell. She tried to cry, to scream, but her glass eyes could not produce tears and there was only porcelain where her vocal cords had been.
Meanwhile, on the outside, the girl who had been Madame Esmée sank to her knees, shoulders shaking. She was a pale, pitiful slip of a thing—a feral animal with unwashed black hair and a tattered patchwork dress. A dry, painful screech tore through her emaciated body, turning into a frenzied laugh as it rang out. Time seemed to pass differently for Lena. She couldn’t estimate how long the girl lay on the floor like a beggar.
Eventually, though, Esmée picked herself up, wiped the tears from her eyes, and faced her victim. “I can’t be sorry, Magdalena. You’ll understand soon enough.”
Enormous mental effort allowed Lena to cause the machine to spit a fortune out. Five simple words: HELP ME. FIND A WAY.
Dark circles stood out below the girl’s guarded green eyes. “I make no promises.”
Shaking steps carried her out of Lena’s line of sight. Every creaking stair echoed through the basement, as did the click of the lock on the stairway door.
Madame Magda sat alone.
Dreams cannot come where there is no sleep. What Lena had was the sight of the bare wall, the sound of distant music from the carousel above, and her own thoughts. She imagined Esmée visiting some witchy woman in the woods somewhere who knew how to return things to normal. She imagined Louisa waiting by the door for her to come home, finally marching down to the police station in tears and demanding a search. But what would a search find? No one would think to scour the boardwalk, and even if they did, all they would see was a porcelain fortune teller with eerily real brown eyes.
Hours passed, then days, then decades. Lena sat and waited, underneath the spectacle and excitement up above. Hope of seeing anyone she knew ever again dissolved as the years passed. Eventually, she started praying for the boardwalk to be torn down. That, she reasoned, was the only way anyone would find her.
But the boardwalk will never change or be torn down. So, the carousel’s music plays on and on, and all Lena can do is listen.