“We’re going to the shrine room, aren’t we?” Charity winked at Linda.
“Right, okay.” He backed into the foyer, then stepped into a hall Linda hadn’t noticed. Charity strode elegantly despite her injury, and time slowed as Linda followed behind, watching each gentle sway of Charity’s hips. As they crossed the threshold into a hall, the wood flexed beneath them but didn’t creak, creating an eerie quiet. They traveled in a line as the cameraman showed them the way without realizing they didn’t know it already—through the narrow hall and to a small stairwell with five steps. He backed up until he was pressed into a doorway, then chewed his lip and lowered the camera.
“I need to readjust.” He scooted along the wall and back down the stairs, aiming the lens at the women’s backs as they ascended. The landing wasn’t large enough for all three of them to stand, so Sabrina remained on the penultimate stair while Charity grabbed for the doorknob.
“Wait!” Leo yelled.
Linda jumped.
“What?” the women said at the same time.
“I want to get your reactions from the inside. Pretend to open the door, pause, then shut it.”
Charity rolled her eyes, but she did as the man asked. Once she clicked the door shut again, he elbowed his way back through their throng. “Don’t mind me, no need to move to let me through, I’m just the guy who makes this all happen for you, no biggie.”
Charity grinned. “Feeling snarky today?”
“I hate the fucking woods,” he said beneath his breath. “I didn’t sign up for woods.” As he pushed through the door, he flipped on a light and called out, “Action!”
The room looked like a funeral home with dark green wallpaper and two antique chairs set side by side in front of wood shelves lined with photographs of the season’s contestants. The ones who had been sent home had X’s drawn across their faces. Linda gravitated to them without realizing she was walking. She ran a finger down one of the X’s and felt a pang for the girl, who had been so eager to please that she arrived at the mansion on the first night with several ears of corn strung together and placed on her head like she was a demented May Queen of the fields. If Linda were here for the right reasons, maybe she should have sacrificed herself to the elimination ceremony so that poor girl could stay.
Linda let her gaze settle on the middle rows, where the current contestants’ photos sat amongst several flickering, battery-powered candles. She and Charity lined one shelf, while Sabrina and Marion took up another. Linda glanced back to see if anyone was watching her, but Charity peered at the wallpaper, inspecting a network of tiny lines. Blushing, Linda ran a finger down the glass of Charity’s portrait, swallowing hard as she traced her chin and neck. Quickly, she pushed her photograph a couple of inches toward Charity’s then joined the woman at the wall.
“What’s up?” Linda folded her hands behind her back. It was unreasonable, impossible, but she needed to hide them, lest the evidence of her actions show on the tips of her fingers.
“It’s just…someone drew all over this wallpaper.” Charity reached out as though to touch the wall, then withdrew. “I wonder if some little brat got his hands on a pen and went wild.”
Linda faked a laugh. It didn’t look haphazard. The green design on the walls seemed like a map through the woods.
“Obsessed,” Linda whispered.
“What, the tree people?” Charity said. “Yeah, I’d call them tree-huggers or something, but they seemed as obsessed with cutting them down as they did with depicting them all over the damn place.” Charity waved her hand around to indicate the copious amounts of wood in the room, as it was in every room. “Should we do an interview?” Charity gestured to the two chairs set in front of an army of cameras. She fell back into one of the chairs and crossed her legs. “Do you think your future wife is here, Mr. Farmhand?” she said.
Linda eased herself into the other chair and made a contemplative hum. “I do. I think she’s in this room, in fact.”
Charity leaned forward and gasped. “Is it…Sabrina?”
“No.”
“It’s Leo!”
Leo scowled as Linda shook her head.
“Oh!” Charity’s cheeks went bright red, but she raised her eyebrows in mock emotion. “It’s the ghost!”
One of the photographs fell over. Linda jumped and shrieked as the glass shattered all over the floor. Once she realized the source of the sound, she checked on Charity, who had drawn her feet into her chest and curled into herself. Across the room, Sabrina stood frozen beside the altar of photographs.
“My bad.” Sabrina grabbed another frame and bent down, trying to sweep the glass into a single pile with it.
“Goddamn you,” Leo mumbled. “Quit making a mess! You’re not even supposed to be in here.”
“Then why’d you let us in?” Sabrina said.
“Good TV,” he said. “Duh.”
Linda shivered as she calmed. “It’s okay.”
As Charity stood, she scrunched up her face. “What else can we get into here? It’s my last night. I want to go wild!”
She ran, leaping over the broken glass pile and a shocked Sabrina, and stopped before a big metal cabinet. It was the only metal furniture Linda had seen in the whole manor. Charity pulled open a drawer. “Ooo,” she said. “A blast from the more recent past!” She pulled out a black VHS and held it aloft, then started to open another drawer.
“Hey, stop it,” Leo leaned over his camera, his voice pitching. “You’re not supposed to go through that. Not even crew goes through that stuff. It’s in our contracts and everything. Belongs to the previous owners of the manor, okay? Please. Charity—please!”
“Well!” Charity finally turned and acknowledged him. “Give me something better.”
“God, you’re impossible.” Leo pointed at a laptop connected to a projector aimed at a white wall. “Go through the dailies. I don’t care.”
Charity dropped open her mouth and placed her hand across her chest. “Well, I never!” She mocked Marion’s accent.
“You wouldn’t.” Sabrina stood from the glass wreckage and inched closer to Linda and Charity. Linda’s stomach jumped at the idea that she might see herself on the screen in all her reality TV glory. She’d lain awake at night re-imagining herself, making up the comments that her fans might leave her once they watched the show. Deja had failed to make her crack, excepting the single incident with Marion today, and the camera would show Linda as a caricature, a woman with a story plain and straightforward, none of those confusing layers that threatened to peel away at any moment. Another person. Warm, happy. In love. Not only would the show erase her sticky past from the endless search results that defined her, but she would be remade within those results: one of the final women on The Groom. An exalted position. A darling of this modern world.
“Hurry up before I get Deja in here,” Leo said.
Charity bounced her shoulders as she shifted to the laptop. She fiddled with the buttons until she figured out how to project the film onto the wall. Linda imagined Deja and the other two producers reviewing film stuffed in the little interview room, picking apart their contestants as they searched for areas of weakness to exploit, mistakes to call back to. Again, Charity sunk into the chair beside Linda and offered her an imaginary bag of popcorn. Linda smirked, her head spinning at the attention as she faked taking it from her. She liked chopping-block Charity, and a brief pang cut through the pleasant fog: she might have to say goodbye, one way or another, tonight.
On screen, Tristan held hands with Sabrina at a little table in the back of the mansion. Sabrina’s face was soft with affection. A few scenes from their dates played out: he’d taken her parasailing, then tight-rope walking between two skyscrapers. Linda noted the moment before each feat that Sabrina puffed out her chest, the moment she dropped fear from her repertoire. The same look Linda saw when Sabrina rushed to Charity’s rescue. Sabrina was demure, but she had something strong-willed inside her that always threatened to release.
The next scenes showed Deja and Tristan outside of what looked like a medical building.
