the sphere she occupied and some other place: a place of bells and troubled darkness. Had 
he died? Was that it? Perished in the empty room the previous summer, and now awaiting 
exorcism? If so, what had happened to his earthly remains? Only further exchange with 
Frank himself, or the remnants thereof, would provide an explanation.
    Of the means by which she could lend the lost soul strength she had little doubt. He 
had given her the solution plainly.
    "Blood," he'd said. The syllable had been spoken not as an accusation but as an 
imperative.
    Rory had bled on the floor of the damp room; the splashes had subsequently 
disappeared. Somehow, Frank's ghost-if that it was-had fed upon his brother's spillage, 
and gained thereby nourishment enough to reach out from his cell, and make faltering 
contact. What more might be achieved if the supply were larger?
    She thought of Frank's embraces, of his roughness, his hardness, of the insistence he 
had brought to bear upon her. What would she not give to have such insistence again? 
Perhaps it was possible. And if it were-if she could give him the sustenance he 
needed-would he not be grateful? Would he not be her pet, docile or brutal at her least 
whim? The thought took sleep away. Took sanity and sorrow with it. She had been in love 
all this time, she realized, and mourning for him. If it took blood to restore him to 
her, then blood she would supply, and not think twice of the consequences.
    In the days that followed, she found her smile again. Rory took the change of mood as 
a sign that she was happy in the new house. Her good humor ignited the same in him. He 
took to the redecoration with renewed gusto.
    Soon, he said, he would get to work on the second floor. They would locate the source 
of dampness in the large room, and turn it into a bedroom fit for his princess. She 
kissed his cheek when he spoke of this, and she said that she was in no hurry, that the 
room they had already was more than adequate. Talk of the bedroom made him stroke her 
neck, and pull her close, and whisper infantile obscenities in her ear. She did not 
refuse him, but went upstairs meekly, and let him undress her as he liked to do, 
unbuttoning her with paint-stained fingers. She pretended the ceremony aroused her, 
though this was far from the truth.
    The only thing that sparked the least appetite in her, as she lay on the creaking bed 
with his bulk between her legs, was closing her eyes and picturing Frank, as he had been.
    More than once his name rose to her lips; each time she bit it back. Finally she 
opened her eyes to remind herself of the boorish truth. Rory was decorating her face with 
his kisses. Her cheeks crawled at his touch.
    She would not be able to endure this too often, she realized. It was too much of an 
effort to play the acquiescent wife: her heart would burst.
    Thus, lying beneath him while September's breath brushed her face from the open 
window, she began to plot the getting of blood.
    
    
    FIVE
    
    Sometimes it seemed that eons came and went while he lingered in the wall, eons that 
some clue would later reveal to have been the passing of hours, or even minutes.
    But now things had changed; he had a chance of escape. His spirit soared at the 
thought. It was a frail chance, he didn't deceive himself about that. There were several 
reasons his best efforts might falter. Julia, for one. He remembered her as a trite, 
preening woman, whose upbringing had curbed her capacity for passion. He had untamed her, 
of course, once. He remembered the day, among the thousands of times he had performed 
that act, with some satisfaction. She had resisted no more than was needful for her 
vanity, then succumbed with such naked fervor he had almost lost control of himself.
    In other circumstances he might have snatched her from under her would-be husband's 
nose, but fraternal politics counseled otherwise. In a week or two he would have tired of 
her, and been left not only with a woman whose body was already an eyesore to him, but 
also a vengeful brother on his heels. It hadn't been worth the hassle.
    Besides, there'd been new worlds to conquer. He had left the day after to go East: to 
Hong King and Sri Lanka, to wealth and adventure. He'd had them, too. At least for a 
while. But everything slipped through his fingers sooner or later, and with time he began 
to wonder whether it was circumstance that denied him a good hold on his earnings, or 
whether he simply didn't care enough to keep what he had. The train of thought, once 
begun, was a runaway. Everywhere, in the wreckage around him, he found evidence to 
support the same bitter thesis: that he had encountered nothing in his life-no person, no 
state of mind or body-he wanted sufficiently to suffer even passing discomfort for.
    A downward spiral began. He spent three months in a wash of depression and self-pity 
that bordered on the suicidal. But even that solution was denied him by his newfound 
nihilism. If nothing was worth living for it followed, didn't it, that there was nothing 
worth dying for either. He stumbled from one such sterility to the next, until all 
thoughts were rotted away by whatever opiate his immoralities could earn him.
    How had he first heard about Lemarchand's box? He couldn't remember. In a bar maybe, 
or a gutter, from the lips of a fellow derelict. At the time it was merely a rumor-this 
dream of a pleasure dome where those who had exhausted the trivial delights of the human 
condition might discover a fresh definition of joy. And the route to this paradise? There 
were several, he was told, charts of the interface between the real and the realer still, 
made by travelers whose bones had long since gone to dust. One such chart was in the 
vaults of the Vatican, hidden in code in a theological work unread since the Reformation. 
Another-in the form of an origami exercise, was reported to have been in the possession 
of the Marquis de Sade, who used it, while imprisoned in the Bastille, to barter with a 
guard for paper on which to write The 120 Days of Sodom. Yet another was made by a 
craftsman-a maker of singing birds-called Lemarchand, in the form of a musical box of 
such elaborate design a man might toy with it half a lifetime and never get inside.
    Stories. Stories. Yet since he had come to believe in nothing at all it was not so 
difficult to put the tyranny of verifiable truth out of his head. And it passed the time, 
musing drunkenly on such fantasies.
    It was in Dusseldorf, where he'd gone smuggling heroin, that he again encountered the 
story of Lemarchand's box. His curiosity was piqued once more, but this time he followed 
the story up until he found its source. The man's name was Kircher, though he probably 
laid claim to half a dozen others. Yes, the German could confirm the existence of the 
box, and yes, he could see his way to letting Frank have it. The price? Small favors, 
here and there. Nothing exceptional. Frank did the favors, washed his hands, and claimed 
his payment.
    There had been instructions from Kircher, on how best to break the seal on 
Lemarchand's device, instructions that were part pragmatic, part metaphysical. To solve 
the puzzle is to travel, he'd said, or something like that. The box, it seemed, was not 
just the map of the road, but the road itself.
    This new addiction quickly cured him of dope and drink. Perhaps there were other ways 
to bend the world to suit the shape of his dreams.
    He came back to the house on Lodovico Street, to the empty house behind whose walls 
he was now imprisoned, and prepared himself-just as Kircher had detailed-for the 
challenge of solving Lemarchand's Configuration. He had never in his life been so