Chapter 28

At the Bottom of the Lake-Well

It always seems like colds aren’t as bad in the afternoon as they are in the morning and evening, so my one o’clock Wizard rehearsal was better than last night’s, but not by much. I had Glinda’s few lines down, and the blocking was easy—I just had to know when to get in and out of my bubble spaceship—but the song...well, Toto whined. Really, he did.

So during our dinner break, I had a choice: work on my song or continue my search for Candy. It may sound like an easy decision, but here’s the thing: the theater community is small, even on a national scale. People from different communities connect while traveling or on tour. Word gets around. If an actor throws a tantrum during a dress rehearsal in Seattle, directors in Chicago will think twice before hiring him. In other words, if I blew this gig, it’d be a while before I got another chance. And as an ingénue type, I didn’t have a lot of time. Not too many roles for women after thirty.

But Candy needed me, and this was a perfect chance to explore the Grand Phoenician. I could work on my song at home. I changed from Glinda’s miniskirt and boots into the t-shirt and leggings I’d worn to rehearsal, found my way to Logan’s office, and popped my head inside. “You have time to show me the spring room now?”

He glanced at the clock on his computer screen. “Sure.” He reached into the top drawer of his desk and took out a ring of keys. “Let’s go.” He clipped the bunch of keys to a belt loop on his jeans. “Why so interested?” he asked as we left the office. “You think Candy’s hiding in there or something?”

“Or something.” To tell the truth, I wasn’t sure why I wanted to see the Lady in White’s well. I just felt...led there. Plus I wanted to see more of these secret passageways. I followed Logan down the stairs and into the broom closet. “Is this the only way to get there?”

“Pretty much. Someone could get to the spring room from the hotel, just like they could get to the speakeasy.” He pushed open the secret entrance.

I steeled myself against the cobwebs and the thought of what might be crawling in them and followed him into the dark.

“You got a flashlight?” Logan asked as he led me through the dank-smelling corridor. “No light in that room.”

“There’s an app on my phone.”

We’d reached the arched opening of the speakeasy/Logan’s Nightmare. Logan patted a male dummy as we passed.

“That’s new,” I said.

“Always working on my portfolio.”

I obligingly admired this new addition to Logan’s portfolio. Huh—the figure was so normal-looking...oh. Normal looking from one side. The side facing away from me looked as if it had melted, skin sloughing off in gooey waves.

“Logan,” I said, “what happened? You used to be such a nice boy.”

“Nah,” he said. “I’ve always had a dark side. Here we are.” He turned a corner into the short hall we’d been in yesterday. It had a low ceiling that sloped, like maybe there were stairs above us. The door to the speakeasy was to our left, the door to the spring on our right. Logan stopped in front of it and unhooked his key ring from his belt loop. He sorted through the keys until he found a heavy old-fashioned-looking one and unlocked the door.

A crackle made me jump. “Logan,” a female voice said over his walkie-talkie, “we have a problem with the follow spot. Can you come take a look?”

“Sure,” he replied. Then to me, “Will you be okay here by yourself?”

In a spooky theater at the well where the ghost who haunted the place drowned herself? “Of course.” I put on a brave face. I would be okay.

“You know your way back?”

“Sure. Past your Nightmare”—Logan smiled at that—“then follow the main corridor to the back of the broom closet.” I turned on my phone flashlight. “And I’ve got plenty of battery.”

“Okay,” he said. “See you above ground.”

He left. I took a deep breath and stepped through the door into the dank darkness.

The room was small, maybe twenty-five feet long and twenty feet wide, with walls of rough wet stone. Its low ceiling was crisscrossed with wooden beams, like an unfinished attic, and a concrete pathway about three feet wide wound around the perimeter of the room, edging a black rectangle of water that lapped at the sides of its concrete pool like a tiny lake.

I used to be deathly afraid of water, had been ever since Cody’s accident. A recent incident had cured me, but this night-colored pool stirred up these old feelings. I saw Cody sinking, devoured by the blackness, the water closing over his head, pulling him down...

Ivy. You are over that, I told myself. And you are down here to look for your friend. Now look for her.

Candy obviously wasn’t in this small bare room. I shone the light into the well. I couldn’t see the bottom. She couldn’t possibly be in there, could she? I crept closer and knelt down by the edge of the well. Taking a deep breath, I dipped my hand into the pool of water. It was warm and viscous. Like blood.

I grabbed my hand back, somehow afraid the dark water might swallow it down. “Stop being stupid, Ivy,” I said out loud. “Stupid” bounced off the walls and echoed.

Gritting my teeth, I lay flat on the concrete floor, set my phone down next to me, and reached into the water. The side of the pool was slippery underneath the water line, but I could feel the irregularity of stone underneath the slickness. I stretched my arm further into the pool, as far down as I could. I couldn’t feel the bottom, but that wasn’t surprising. The well had to be deep enough for the Lady to have drowned herself.

I pulled my arm out of the pool, flicked water off my hand, and sat up. A small wooden bench stood tucked up against the wall opposite the door. Uncle Bob had said the Lady liked to watch the water. I grabbed my phone, walked over to the bench, and sat down. The wooden seat underneath me was worn smooth. Was this where she had contemplated eternity? Why here? How in the world had this black melancholy place given her comfort? Water and dust and time had washed the walls and floor the color of storm clouds and the cloudy pool looked like the portal to a different, darker world. There was nothing of light or goodness about the space, and I suddenly wanted to be out of there more than anything. I stood up. I could come back later with a stronger light, maybe something I could use to sweep the bottom of the spring, just to make sure Candy wasn’t—

A clammy hand touched my face. I jumped and dropped my cell. It skittered dangerously close to the edge of the spring. I lunged after it and grabbed it just in time to see a flicker in the water, a glimmer of light in the darkness. A piece of pale cloth, drifting downward. I grabbed my phone, knelt by the side of the pool, and shone the flashlight into its depths. Empty blackness. I played the light around the room. No one there. All in my mind. Except that touch felt so real, the light pressure of damp fingers against my cheek...

Time to go. I stood up and something crackled under my foot. I carefully picked up my shoe. Underneath it was a scrap of a wrapper. I picked up the tiny piece of cellophane and flattened it out against the palm of my hand. A bit of a yellow graphic, a sliver of a moon.

From a MoonPie.