White Space

“So outside those windows is the roof.” Saying the words out loud centers her. She can break her way out and then climb down from the roof, unless there’s a very long drop to the roof or a ledge, but she pushes that away. Her fist tightens around Jasper’s walking stick. Break a window. Climb out. But do something, anything, and do it now.

Dropping Jasper’s walking stick on the last pew, she rushes to the door and strong-arms it shut. Eyeing the freestanding cabinet, chock-full of books and immediately to the right of the door, she thinks, Yeah. Hurrying to the far side, she wedges her shoulder against it and pushes. Jumping over stone with a loud screee, the cabinet wobbles, and for a heart-stopping instant, she thinks it’s going to fall back on her. No, no. She butts against it, digging in with her toes to stop it rocking the wrong way. Come on, come on …

“Emma!” From where she stands, she can’t see the door, but there is a dull yellow glow now, and she hears both the swell of Kramer’s voice and a rougher mutter of other men bunched on the opposite side of the chapel’s door, which is only just swinging in with that grating squawww. “Emma, there’s no place left to …” Whatever Kramer’s about to say ends with a yelp as the cabinet suddenly topples with a huge reverberating crash that bounces back, the echoes caught and doubling on themselves in the cup of the dome.

Just in time. Through the three-inch gap, she can see Kramer’s face, the glistening wound where she hit him, the glint of lantern light off his panops’ brass frames—but not, she sees, mirrored in the purple lenses at all.

“You think this is the way?” This close, she can hear the gurgle. Kramer’s voice is so thick, it sounds like he’s got terminal pneumonia. There is an enormous bang as he slams a fist against the door. “This is where you belong, Emma, whether you know it or not.”

How about not? Hooking her hands on a pew, she drags it back with a grunt, leaning on her bare heels. If possible, the pew’s even heavier than the cabinet. Thank God they didn’t bolt these things to the floor. When she’s lined it up, she races to the opposite side, then strains on the balls of her feet. Her calf muscles cramp as she pushes and hammers the pew over stone, until the end of the pew jams against the fallen cabinet to form the long axis of a T. There.

Another bap as Kramer thumps the door. “Emma, this is futile,” he says in his harsh, gargly croak. “You can’t get out. You don’t think we have such things as axes or even a stout log? Or manpower? Or another way in? It’s only a matter of time—”

Yeah, yeah, resistance is futile—she tunes him out—blahdiddy-blahdiddy-blah-blah. Man, if she ever comes out of this blink, she is so dropping this class. Then, as a butterfly of a laugh flutters in her throat, she thinks, Emma, come on, don’t lose it.

She’s only bought herself a few minutes, if that. Swallowing back that bright burn of hysteria, she turns aside from the still-fuming Kramer and tries to remember why she thought this was such a good idea. Okay, this is a chapel; it’s got an organ. Which means there has to be a way up to the organ’s console. And in the next second, she spots it: a narrow curlicue of a whitewashed spiral staircase to the right. Behind her, she hears bangs and grunts, that fingernail-over-chalkboard grate of wood against stone, and knows that despite her barricade, time’s on Kramer’s side.

But that organ … Retrieving Jasper’s walking stick, she scuttles down the center aisle, dodges around the communion rails, and bounds onto the dais. Sweeping a hand over the low altar, she feels her fingers close around heavy velvet. Yes. Gathering the altar cloth, she jumps off the dais and heads for the spiral staircase. She takes the steps two at a time, her feet cringing away from cold iron. Ducking through a narrow trap, she pushes onto the second-floor loft, which is only long enough to accommodate the organ and, to its immediate right, another cabinet for books and music. Left of the organ are several ranks of folding chairs with cane seats and backs for the choir. If she thought it would help, she might toss chairs down the iron staircase or try barricading the trap with the cabinet, but she doesn’t have that kind of time. Besides, she wants that cabinet for something else entirely.