Chapter 20

La Maison d’Horreurs. For as long as living memory served I’d always wanted to visit it but had never been able to, mostly because plane tickets cost a lot of course, or at least that was what my parents said. I’d always been very reserved as a child, and so looking back I wasn’t sure their hesitation hadn’t stemmed from a fear that I would grow up to be a type of sociopath or something on that scale. I imagine they’d thought it prudent to cut their losses.

I don’t remember the first time I heard of it, but I’m sure that I spent as much time daydreaming about the museum as other kids thought of Disneyland.

A museum of cadavers skinned and injected with wax sounded exactly what I imagined heaven would look like, and so my motives were clear. Elijah’s on the other hand remained up for debate. I sneaked a peek at him through the corner of my eye, looking away when he excitedly tried to catch my gaze and hold it.

An armrest separated the two of us, and for that I was grateful. That was the only thing I enjoyed about the trip.

Our taxi was ancient, and it smelled mildewed with a faint hint of old cheese. By the time we finally crawled to stop in front of the red-bricked building that was the House of Horrors, I was suffering from a severe case of motion sickness, and while I didn’t think my white-knuckled grip on the grab hold could get any more viselike, I certainly gave it my all.

When I was sure that we had really stopped and it wasn’t that the car had decelerated but continued to move as a result of brake failure, I relinquished my grip and tried to open the door, but nothing happened and when I tried again the driver (who I suspected was as old as his taxi) said something to me in a flurry of French and after a moment of hopelessly staring out of my side of the window Elijah, move, retrieving a wallet from one pocket of the leather jacket he wore to count out a couple of euros, which he handed over.

“That door doesn’t open from inside,” he explained, before moving on to open his and stepping out of the car.

I glared at the broad expanse of his back, but after a few seconds I turned to the driver.

“Merci beaucoup,” I said to the driver, feeling the weight of his rheumy eyes of track my very movement as I crawled out through Elijah’s side into a crisp, cool autumn afternoon.

It was a small neighborhood, I realized, and for a moment I stopped to take it all in—fabulously dressed Parisians going about their day, and a quaint little café named Vanille, which I’d heard served some of the city’s the best hot chocolate.

The hem of my dark green summer dress swayed as soon as it caught a lazy breeze and I smiled wistfully, but the moment was spoiled by the sound of the taxi starting up behind me and I let out a yelp, moving away just as it started to amble forward.

Elijah mouth twisted up in amusement, and I frowned, looking away even as I felt my heart contract in my chest. At the rate we were going it was only a matter of time before my brain began to make stupid suggestions and I didn’t think I was in any mood to even consider them, so I cleared my throat, straightening.

“Shall we?” Elijah asked, catching my meaning, and after a beat passed I nodded before silently turning to lead the way.

The urge to wrap my arms around my torso was overwhelming, but I resisted, letting them dangle loosely at my sides. I was finally getting to live out a childhood dream and nothing (or no one) would come in the way of the movement.

•

As soon as we stepped into La Maison d’Horreurs we were greeted at the entrance by its wafer-thin director, a tall and middle-aged man who introduced himself to us as Guillaume Moreau.

He was warm, courteous but reserved, and I felt a small part of me deflate when he held his hand out to me for a handshake instead of grabbing me by the shoulders to pull me in for an air kiss. Just like its stories about New York, Hollywood may have stretched the truth about Europeans and their enthusiastic greetings.

Or maybe they hadn’t, and it was just the fact that Elijah loomed behind me like an overprotective bodyguard even though he was technically my boss. He’d claimed it was one of his favorite spots in Paris, and despite the fact that Guillaume had greeted him more formally than he had me it was clear that both men were familiar with each other.

“I hope you enjoy your visit with us this time,” the director said in perfect English (for my benefit I assume) as soon as the pleasantries were over, then with one last nod at Elijah and I he spun on his heel and glided gracefully away.

I was dumbstruck. None of the reviews I’d seen online mentioned a personal visit from the director himself. It was nothing, I told myself as we continued on unescorted into the building, but with every step forward my suspicions grew until, and when we arrived at the museum’s main gallery—a wide space flanked on both sides by a pair of winding antique stairs—to find it devoid of even a single visitor I knew.

Summer might have been over, the number of tourists reduced drastically, but even on its bad days I knew the place racked in more than a thousand daily visitors—hell! Google Maps had even listed it as a landmark, and so I knew that this emptiness was uncharacteristic, just as I knew the person responsible for it.

“I asked for one thing, Elijah,” I stressed, forgetting my no first name rule as I let out an exasperated sigh. “Just one, but I couldn’t even get that. You did this even after I let you know I wanted today on my own terms.”

When he said nothing, coming to stand motionlessly beside me while his eyes critically surveyed the room around us, I gave a disbelieving laugh.

“You can’t just rent out a whole museum when you feel like it.”

“I can,” he intoned flatly after me. “I did.”

After a moment of tense silence, I threw my hands up in surrender.

“Alright then,” I said sarcastically. “I’ll show myself out. I hope you enjoy—”

“Has it crossed your mind,” Elijah interrupted smoothly, turning so his entire body faced my retreating figure. “That I did this for me and not you, Aurora?”

His words caught me off-guard, and I stopped in my tracks because no, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Even though I sometimes forgot it (to my own detriment) Elijah was a public figure. We may have been in a completely different continent, but he’d lived his entire life beneath the glare of cameras and precautions like this came as naturally to him as breathing.

The realization made me want to cover my face in embarrassment, but resisting the impulse to bow, my shoulders I straightened instead and apologized instead.

“Come,” Elijah said instead. “Let me show you around.”

He looked like he was debating something with himself, but after a moment he held his hand out and against my better judgment I sheepishly stepped forward to take it.

To this day I haven’t figured out the reason behind why I did it because I hadn’t felt pressured. I could’ve ignored it, and nothing would’ve happened, but I took it instead. My palms were sweaty, but he didn’t seem to mind. In fact, his grip tightened by a fraction, and then he led me up one of the stairs.

It may have been a big space, but perhaps because of the antiquated feeling La Maison d’Horreurs had about it, every room that Elijah led me through felt stuffy, smelling slightly of mold and formaldehyde.

Floorboards creaked as we walked over them, and in some rooms the windows were so caked with dirt that hardly any light made it in, but as he discussed in exhaustive detail a fact about one exhibit or another I realized that I was having more fun than I could ever remember having, whether I was staring at preserved specimen jars of eighteenth century three-tailed lizards or walking into a stimulation of a haunted house or funfair ghost train.

My legs hurt slightly but I trotted dutifully after him until he led me to a majestic chamber, perfectly lit with a domed ceiling. It would’ve been a vision of grandeur to look upon if a row of close to forty cadavers, perfectly spaced out, did not populate the room.

I suppose you could call it a nightmare, then.

Even though I’d read all about it, I let Elijah sweep me into the tale of the madman who had been the original founder of the museum, Monsieur Toussaint.

He was a surgeon rumored to have illegally procured the bodies (some of whom were still alive) over the course of the 1789 French revolution, and when eventually he got accused of being a loyalist, an exploration into his house revealed his experiments—cadavers injected with hot wax—Toussaint was summarily executed, the cadavers discarded. Only about thirty survived, and the most famous, a hunched over, desiccated husk of the pregnant woman with a malformed child still inside her belly, took up a place of prominence on a slightly raised dais in the middle of the room. Bony arms clutched wretchedly at her stomach, and beneath the figure, engraved into a faded bronze plate was the name of the exhibit—Benois Madonna, named after the famous Da Vinci painting.

It was grotesque, stunning, and my eyes stung with unshed tears at the sight the woman reduced to this for the sake of an experiment, or art, and her child who had never even lived to take its first breath.

It was one thing to read about it or see pictures on the internet and another to have it in front of me in real time, and a moment passed before I realized that Elijah had stopped talking. When I looked up at him I saw that he had on a slight frown, and his expression had turned slightly perplexed as he looked at me.

Silently, he handed me a handkerchief and I gratefully accepted it, dabbing at my eyes before stuffing it into the cute little purse that I’d brought along for the excursion.

When he was sure that I’d sufficiently calmed down he spoke.

“Did I do something wrong?”

I considered him for a moment, brows furrowing as I shook my head.

“No. The Madonna.” I pointed uselessly at the cadaver. “It’s—it’s nothing.”

“You’re crying about the cadaver?” he asked for clarification, and the tentativeness in his voice made my eyes fill up with a fresh round of tears that I had to hastily dab away at.

“It’s nothing,” I insisted, and after a moment he looked away to give me some privacy but didn’t resume his educative monologue.

This time I let the tears fall silently, dabbing at them as they came and only returning the handkerchief when I was all cried out. I didn’t know what it was about the exhibit that elicited such a strong emotional response from me, but once I was done a sense of peace stole swiftly through me and for the first time in days it was just my brain and I, no anxious whisperings analyzing the list of possible ways my life could careen off course and doom me. It was nice.

“Are you on the spectrum?” I blurted out into the silence, turning to look at Elijah, whose face looked carefully wiped clean of emotion. “You don’t have to answer,” I rushed on. “In fact, I’m sorry. That was kind of a personal question so—”

“Yes,” Elijah answered quietly, cutting me off for the second time that day. “I’m autistic.”

My mouth fell open, but no sound came out and after a moment I gave up, shrugging. It was shocking to hear my suspicions so casually confirmed, but I’d found a way to explain some of his stranger quirks (the hand flapping, his obsession with order and routine, some difficulties during social interaction) figuring that an autism diagnosis was something so fundamental about a member of a family with as much coverage as the Wilders would’ve made its way into the press somehow.

Obviously, I’d thought wrong.

Elijah’s was a case so mild (or at least it appeared that way) that he would’ve passed for someone neurotypical if you didn’t spend so much time with him. Hell, I’d spent the summer after I graduated high school interning at an NGO that worked with children on the spectrum, and I’d thrown the question out to fill in the awkward silence. Actually, that was a lie.

I was surprised at this bit of information but not shocked, and so on some subconscious level I must’ve known. It explained his intense preoccupation with this place—perhaps it was one of his special interests.

He’d said it so offhandedly that I decided to take his cue and not make a big deal out of it, and when after Elijah deduced that enough time had passed for the information to sink in he asked if we could continue our tour, and in reply I reached for his hand.