I should have known.This is how I’m going to die. I let her trick me. I can smell the rot coming off the thing. Why did I let her talk me into coming down into the basement? She locked me in here with it quick enough. The worst part is when it kills me it won’t really be over. I’ll be a part of the monster. I can see all the others in its distorted eyes. I can almost feel their agony.
It’s coming closer. The fluids dripping off it make me nauseous.
I just wish she was down here too so I could push her in front of me.
     

The package sat on the desk unopened. Marilla stared at it wide-eyed. It was from Bernard Mallory, a link from her past she wanted to forget. He was a medium who had been Rinaldi’s closet friend. She'd worked for Rinaldi as his assistant. The magician had also been her lover - and tormenter. She loved him and hated him equally. February 9, 1905 was the last day she saw him. It was exactly two years to the day.
But that was in the past. She was now a young housewife, married to a banker and living the life every girl dreamed about. Geoffrey treated her well and valued her. Marilla tried to be a good wife, but one thing was missing from their relationship, the unbridled passion – the passion she'd shared with the Great Rinaldi. To her he would always be the "Magician extraordinaire.”
Although she had assisted him with many of his tricks, some were reserved exclusively for Mallory. The friendship between the two men had grown and they often performed illusions she couldn’t understand. She was not privy to their secret meetings. They claimed to awaken spirits from beyond only to send them back. She knew it had to done with actors, but how they arrived and disappeared she could never figure. The magic Rinaldi made to the public and in her bed was unsurpassable. But she was not his only love, as she found out one rainy afternoon when she followed him to the room of a dancer with whom they shared a bill. That day her heart broke. Marilla had confronted him, but he only laughed and told her it was not the first time and wouldn’t be the last. Still she did everything he asked of her, even using her looks to divert attention while he made off with cash from the theatres. She even lied for him, did every perversion he wanted, including using her feminine wilds to manipulate reporters so they would publicize his competitors as frauds.
Now the great Rinaldi was dead and she was his murderer. Marilla hadn't released the trap door in time for him to escape when he buried himself alive in a large box. He had suffocated. As far as anyone knew it was a terrible accident. But Mallory knew. He knew she'd purposely lapsed so it would be too late to save him. Mallory never exposed her, though he did warn her that Rinaldi "wasn't done with her yet".
Those words echoed in her head now as she stared at the package. She should destroy it, get rid of it before Geoffrey came home. Marilla couldn’t have anything in the house linking her to Rinaldi. Her husband didn't know about him. Her heart was pounding as something else occurred to her. Rinaldi once said; “If you ever deceive me I will hunt you down, even if I'm dead.” Do vengeful spirits exist? She wondered. Séances might be in vogue, but most mediums were shown to be fakes. The only one she knew to be real was Mallory.
Finally she mustered the courage to pick up the package. She resolved to get this done quickly. Marilla ripped the paper casing from the parcel and didn't see the note fall to the floor. All she saw was a glass plate negative. She looked at it and gasped, dropping it onto the hard floor. It shattered into many small pieces, but one shard of glass was large enough to see his cold blue eyes staring up at her. They looked right through to her soul. She panicked and started to run out of the room, but the door slammed in her face, locking her inside. She remembered Mallory once told her that souls could be preserved in glass. It couldn't be true. She screamed. Then she heard a sinister laugh from behind. A chill crept up from the base of her spine. She turned slowly, looking back at the broken negative. A blue mist arose, forming into the apparition of her dead lover. Rinaldi glared at her as his ghostly figure glided towards her. Marilla collapsed.
When Geoffrey returned home later that evening he discovered her lifeless body. He saw the shattered pieces of the negative and a letter addressed to his wife from a Bernard Mallory. The letter was still neatly folded. It read: “Rinaldi asked me to send this to you should he pass through this world by your hand. Look into his eyes to know all his secrets.”