Katya had seen the horsemen, but she didn’t seem overly unnerved. She watched them approaching without moving. Todd, meanwhile, made his way in the general direction of the door; or at least where she had indicated it stood. He scanned the place, looking for some fragment — the corner of the doorframe, the handle, the keyhole — to help him locate it. But there was nothing.
Having no other choice he simply walked across the stony ground, his hands extended in front of him. After proceeding perhaps six strides, the empty air in front of him suddenly became solid, and his hands flattened against cold, hard tile. The instant he made contact, the illusion of the painters’ trompe l’oeil was broken. He could not believe he had been so easily deceived. What had looked like infinite, penetrable reality two strides before now looked absurdly fake: stylish marks on pieces of antiquated tile, plastered on a wall. How could his eyes have been misled for an instant?
Then he looked back over his shoulder, to call Katya over, and the illusion in which she stood was still completely intact — the expanse of open ground between where they stood and the galloping horsemen apparently a quarter mile or more, the trees beyond them twice that, the sky limitless above. Illusion, he told himself, all illusion. But it meant nothing in the face of the trick before him, which refused to bow to his doubt. He gave up trying to make it concede, and instead turned back to the wall. His hands were still upon it, the tiles still laid out under his palms. Which direction did the door lie in?
“Right or left?” he called to Katya.
“What?”
“The door! Is it to the right or left?”
She took her eyes off the riders, and scanned the wall he was clinging to. “Left,” she said, casually.
“Hurry then — ”
“They didn’t find the child.”
“Forget about them!” he told her.
If she was attempting to impress him with her fearlessness she was doing a poor job. He was simply irritated. She’d shown him the way the room worked for God’s sake; now it was time to get out.
“Come on!” he cried.
As he called to her he moved along the wall, a step to his left, then another step, keeping his palms flat to the tiles every inch of the way, as though defying them to play some new trick or other. But it seemed that as long as he had his hands on the tiles — as long as he could keep uppermost in his mind the idea that this was a painted world, it could not start its trickeries afresh. And on the third, or was it fourth? step along the wall his extended hand found the door-jamb. He breathed out a little sigh of relief. The door-jamb was right there under his hand. He moved his palm over it onto the door itself which, like the jamb, was tiled so that there was no break in the illusion. He fumbled for the handle, found it and tried to turn it.
On the other side, Tammy had found her way along the passageway and chosen that precise moment to turn the handle in the opposite direction.
“Oh Jesus — ” Todd said. “It’s locked.”
“You hear that?” Tammy gasped. “That’s Todd? Todd!”
“Yeah it’s me. Who’s this?”
“Tammy. It’s Tammy Lauper. Are you turning the handle?”
“Yeah.”
“Well let go of it. Let me try.”
Todd let go. Tammy turned the handle. Before she opened the door she glanced back at Zeffer. He was still one flight up the stairs, staring out of the window.
“The dead … ” she heard him say.
“What about them?”
“They’re all around the house. I’ve never seen them this close before. They know there are people passing back and forth through the door, that’s why.”
“Do I open the door? Todd’s on the other side.”
“Are you sure it’s Todd?”
“Yes it’s Todd.”
Hearing his name called, Todd impatiently yelled from the other side. “Yes, it’s me. And Katya. Will you please open the fucking door?”
Tammy’s hands were sweaty, and her muscles weary; the handle slid through her palm. “I can’t open it. You try.”