wn teeth start to chatter.
"What's there to be afraid of?" Cinnamon pondered, sounding more like she wanted us to agree than give her an answer. "So she goes for a dramatic decor. Big deal. Right?" she asked Rose.
"I don't know." Rose said, obviously having trouble swallowing.
"Oh, just come on," Cinnamon directed and started forward. When no one moved, she stopped and looked back at us. "Well, are you coming or not?"
We practically inched our way down the corridor. Along the way we passed a niche that contained a statue of a woman holding up a baby and gazing toward the heavens as if she was offering the child as some sort of sacrifice. The child's eyes were closed and looked already dead and gone.
"Not exactly a very joyful work of art," Ice muttered.
Cinnamon grunted her agreement and we continued, pausing to look at a window drape that was hanging from one corner. There was a large rip in it as well. On the tile below it was what looked like large drops of blood. The blood trailed to the doorway of the room on the left. It nailed our feet to the floor.
"What happened here?" Rose wondered aloud.
"Whatever it was, it happened a while ago. Why keep it like this?" I asked.
"Let's get out of here," Rose whispered. "'We're going to get into so much trouble."
"We've come this far," Cinnamon said. "It's too late to turn back."
Now that we were much deeper into the house, we realized the sound we heard in the walls was not voices from any recording of a song. It sounded more like someone chanting and moaning. Drawn by a morbid curiosity that seemed overpowering enough to move our numb bodies, we stepped up to the doorway and gazed into the room.
No one could speak: no one could utter a sound.
The room was in chaos. A chair was turned over and the small settee was toppled on its back. A lamp was sprawled over it and still lit. A bottle of wine lay broken on the right. Then our eyes fell to a large knife, the blade stained with what surely was blood. When we all moved a few inches to the right. Rose grabbed my arm so fast and so hard. I was positive she had driven her nails through the skin. Her cry was like a dagger itself, piercing my breast.
"What's that?" Ice cried, pointing.
It was an arm and a hand just visible behind the overturned settee.
I felt my own blood drain from my face.
No one spoke or moved until Cinnamon stepped forward and walked around the settee. She stood there gaping. . . and then she shook her head and smiled.
"What's so funny?" I asked.
"Come here and look for yourselves," she said. We all did.
There on the floor was a wax figure of a woman in a black dress, a slash across her right wrist. It was very lifelike-- or I should say, deathlike, because the eyes were glassy, like the eves of a corpse, but the skin looked so real. There was even a wedding ring on her finger and a working, expensive looking watch on her wrist.
"What's going on here?" Rose asked.
Cinnamon started to shake her head and then stopped, her eyes widening.
"Of course," she said. laughing. "This is like a museum."
"What? How?" Ice demanded. "It looks like a madhouse to me."
"That's because you guys haven't been forced to watch Madame Senetsky's greatest performances as part of your curriculum here. Howard and I have, and this corridor, all the trappings, even the statue... it's all from a German film she did called Mehl Medea-- My Medea. Its something of a twist on the famous Greek story, a modern-day version. Madame Senetsky played this wife, betrayed by her husband. Just like Medea, she gets back at him by killing their child and then she takes her own life in a very dramatic finale. It's a dark and depressing movie, but according to Mr. Marlowe, it's considered a classic, and Madame Senetsky's performance described as pure brilliance."'
"What's that have to do with all this?" Rose asked.
"She's built the set that was used in the movie for the final scene, and that's why I say it's like a museum or a homage to the performance. If you look closely at this waxwork," Cinnamon added, moving around to gaze down at the face more closely. "you'd see it's a very accurate depiction of a young Madame Senetsky."
We all studied the face and nodded in agreement.
"Didn't she make any good, happier films?" Ice asked.