Wax (7 page)

They did so, then frowned. “I don't smell anything,” said the woman.

“Right. Now do me a favor and dip your fingers in. It won't hurt, I promise!” The couple did as she asked. “Now sniff again!”

The woman sniffed at the bowl into which she'd dipped her finger, then gasped. “It's strawberry shortcake!”

“No, it's not,” her surly husband countered, sniffing his own bowl. “It's motor oil.”

“It's both!” the tour guide crowed. “It's your favorite scent, whatever that may be!”

“Oh, my,” said the woman, bringing a hand to her chest. “It's true! I love to bake, and he's a retired mechanic!”

“This miraculous substance is something our Waxperts have been developing for years,” the tour guide continued. “They've nicknamed it Potion, and it's one of the newest advances in waxen technology. By mixing a person's individually secreted oils with Potion​—​a proprietary mix of wax, pheromones, and scentographic sensors​—​we'll be able to create an innovative, one-of-a-kind fragrance. Personalized scents are going to revolutionize the industry!”

This was followed by a polite round of applause from most, and a drowned-out “I don't think ‘scentographic sensors' are a thing,” from Poppy.

“In fact, our new line of BiScentennial candles​—​which releases tomorrow​—​will be made with this technology, using data from volunteers found right here in Paraffin,” the tour guide continued, wheeling the table with the bowls out of the way. “We are not overexaggerating when we tell you that this is a
total candle game changer.
”

“That must be true,” Jill muttered to Poppy, “as the Grosholtz Candle Factory is not prone to overexaggeration.”

The tour guide clasped her hands together, beaming. “Yes, here at the Grosholtz Candle Factory, it truly is​—​say it with me​—​
one fire, many flames.
And with that, there's only one thing left to do!” she finished with a menacing smile. And of course,
of course,
from the wings of the stage moseyed Vermonty, that destroyer of worlds, as the melody of “These Green Mountains” filled the room.

The elderly contingent happily formed an impromptu, tuneless chorus while Poppy and Jill scanned the room for exits. “I'll push them,” Jill told Poppy. “Trampling senior citizens is not beneath me.”

“It might be the one thing you were put on this earth to do.”

The music got louder. Arthritic hands clapped along with the rhythm. Poppy whipped her head around the room and spotted a door toward the back, labeled
EMPLOYEES ONLY.

She swallowed, a rush of blood pulsing in her head. Once she was sure no one was watching her, she crept up to the door and put her ear to its surface​—​but the song had gotten so loud, it was impossible to hear anything.

Jill saw what Poppy was doing and joined her. “Have you decided to sneak into the back and set the Chandlers on fire?” she asked. “Good idea. If only we had access to anything combustible . . .”

“Look,” Poppy said, focusing on the door. “What if Blake snuck in here, found and trapped a couple of employees, and held them hostage until they agreed to fashion a statue of me?”

“Well, the simplest explanation
is
usually the right one.”

“I'm serious! What if​—”

“Our illustrious state needs a dance partner!” the tour guide crowed while Vermonty do-si-doed with himself. “Have we any volunteers? How about you, in the back there?”

The fickle finger of forced audience participation landed squarely on Jill, whose face went whiter than a jar of New-Fallen Snow. “Oh, no,” she whispered, clutching at the door. “No no no.
No.
”

Poppy saw her opportunity, and it would cost exactly one decade-old friendship. “Do it,” she commanded Jill. “Be a diversion. I'll slip in here, investigate, and find you afterward. Jill.
Please.
”

Jill's jaw went hard. She drew in a long breath, the resigned inhalation of a battle-worn soldier heading into certain death. “If I do this for you,” she said stoically, “you will purchase me
ten pounds
of fudge.”

“Done.”

Jill gave an imperceptible nod and began the long walk to the stage, where Vermonty enveloped her in a suffocating green-felted hug. The last thing Poppy saw as she slipped through the door was Jill being twirled around like a ballerina, and by the look of homicidal rage on her face, Vermonty was not long for this world.

∗ ∗ ∗

It was the strangest thing.

Not the fact that Poppy was so easily able to sneak unnoticed into the restricted area.

Not the fact that as soon as she grabbed a red vest off the coat rack within, every employee traveling the hallway nodded at her as if she were one of them, a certified Waxpert.

Not the fact that it was a really
long
hallway. She'd been walking for five minutes and still hadn't reached an end, seeing fewer and fewer employees along the way. Doors lined both sides of it, some labeled, some not. Windows revealed dull, corporate-looking rooms where product development meetings no doubt took place, where employees would shout things like
I think it whiffs of dragon fruit!
or
Let's call this one Banana Bonanza!
or
What does “freedom” smell like?
A couple of laboratories, more offices, a break room. Another window revealed a market research panel currently in session, the kind that almost everyone in town had been invited to participate in over the years. An employee would present candles for volunteers to smell while analysts watched via a one-way mirror. At the end, the sniffers would leave with a free candle, a coupon booklet, and the fervent hope that they would be invited back in the future.

No, the strangest thing was that the farther Poppy walked, the less sterile and generic the hallway was. The linoleum floor turned to hardwood​—​and then, farther down,
old
wood, the kind that jutted up in odd places with protruding nail heads. Doors got fewer and farther between, then stopped altogether. The clean white walls faded into dusty yellowed wallpaper, then, like the floor, switched to wood. The air became fusty. She had to be at the rear of the factory, somewhere in those arachnid-looking reaches. By the time Poppy arrived at the end of the hallway, finding only a single wooden door, the only thing she could think to say to herself, in the goofiest voice possible, was, “Well, gee. Knock-knock.”

“Come in,” came a voice on the other side.

Poppy clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, crap, no, I was
kidding,
” she whispered into her palm.

She glanced around, but there was nothing to glance at. With that single door, the hallway simply . . . ended. She could either go in or begin the long walk back, ending her investigation with as many unanswered questions and unfulfilled revenge fantasies as she had started with.

The silence between Poppy and the concealed answerer gained weight, sagging there between them in the form of a rotting old door. Heat clogged the hallway. Poppy's skin was sweaty, her mouth dry. If she were a candle, she would be Dehydration Celebration.

Clearly, she would not be going in. She was not an employee. She was not authorized to be there. She had hoped to maybe snoop around undetected, but now? It was time to leave.

And yet out shot her hand, reaching toward the knob. Twisting the knob. Pushing the door open.

The room was dark, but not pitch-black. Muted light entered through windows caked with grime. Dust choked the air, so thick, it was as if a fog had rolled in. The wooden boards creaked as Poppy walked, her feet brushing aside something like dry leaves with each step.

And that was when she spotted the bodies.

People hidden in the foggy shadows. Crowding around her, staring at her, advancing on her. She backed up against the door, but it had closed, trapping her inside. Her sneakers slipped on whatever she was stepping on​—​panicked, she looked down at the floor​—​it was blanketed with scrapings of skin​—​

And all the while she felt a scream gathering in the back of her throat, gasping and clawing and begging to be let out​—​until she couldn't contain it for a second longer.

5

“
GOOD HEAVENS,
”
SAID THE VOICE THAT HAD BECKONED HER INSIDE.
“Now, there's a racket to wake the dead.”

Poppy blinked. Some of the cloudy air had drifted out the door when she opened it, giving her a better view of the room. It did indeed contain several people. They were indeed staring at her.

But none of them were real.

They were models. Dummies. Life-size human replicas.

“I'm sorry to have startled you,” one of them said.

Poppy gasped, freaking out all over again until she realized that the one who spoke​—​
that
woman was a real human being. Right?

It was at this point that Poppy wondered what was in those candles she'd been inhaling all day.

The woman started flitting about like a hummingbird. She skittered over to Poppy, not touching her, but rather picking and interlacing her curved fingers together as if she were knitting an invisible sweater. “Look at you! High cheekbones. Strong bone structure. Large eyes. Asymmetrical lips.”

Never before had Poppy been greeted with an extensive list of her facial features. She found it unsettling. “Um,” she said, backing away as the woman stood on her tiptoes to examine her more closely. “I think I may have stumbled into the wrong​—”

“Stay still, my doll.” The woman spoke with an accent​—​French, probably. Paraffin wasn't far from the Canadian border, a fact its citizens were reminded of every summer when Québécois tourists migrated south in flocks. “This won't take long.”

The glass eyes of the people-shaped figures stared at Poppy while whatever “this” was continued, until she couldn't take the creepiness anymore and broke away with a full-body shudder. “I'm sorry, but​—”

“No, no. It is I who am sorry!” The woman gave a little high-pitched chuckle and backed up, holding her hands aloft in a gesture of benevolence. “I sometimes forget about​—​what do the kids call it? Personal space.”

“Um. Okay.”

Cocking her head like a bird, the woman observed Poppy with a keen, shrewd stare through a pair of thin-rimmed spectacles that weren't much bigger than her eyes. A beaky nose jutted out above a pair of pursed lips. She projected a sense of advanced age, yet thick dark brown ringlets framed a face that bore no wrinkles. And she was short​—​Poppy had at least six inches on her.

The woman started to inch closer again.

And sniff at her.

Poppy flinched. Upon realizing her error, the woman made a
tsk
noise at herself, gave Poppy a rueful look, and retreated among the figures. “Apologies, my doll. Not so good with people anymore, I am afraid. This place . . . they do not let me out much.”

“That's probably because they're an evil candle corporation dead set on destroying the human race's sense of smell,” Poppy blurted, wasting no time in disparaging the woman's place of employment.

But if the woman was taken aback, she didn't show it. Her reaction was the opposite​—​her mouth opened wide into a smile and her ringlets shook with excitement. “You think so?”

“I​—​maybe?”

As if she were physically incapable of being still, the woman started fussing with her creations, patting down some hair here, adjusting a scarf there. She was so
odd.
She stared harder than anyone had the right to stare. She spoke peculiarly. Her birdlike mannerisms were becoming more pronounced by the minute. And yet Poppy felt a strange affinity for the woman, as if she were some long-lost grandmother that her parents had always told her was dead for fear of revealing that mental illness ran in the family.

Ah, she was back to the staring again. “What is your name, my doll?”

“Poppy. Look, I'm sorry for barging in. I'm not supposed to be back here, I know​—”

“But you came for the tour! And since you are a girl who disregards signs and barges into places where she's not supposed to be, that means that what you've really come for is the
real
tour.”

Poppy made a muddled face. Was she scolding her? Or just being blunt?

“Because you are nosy,” the woman added.

Blunt, then.

The woman extended her hand. Here, at last, was proof of her oldness​—​knobby knuckles, skin paper-thin and liver-spotted. Poppy felt like she was shaking hands with a tree branch.

“I am Madame Grosholtz.”

“Oh.
Oh.
” Poppy's eyes went wide. “Sorry I called your factory evil.”

Madame Grosholtz let out a laugh. It sounded like a tangled wind chime. “It is nothing to me, my doll! Just a name. As long as I do what they tell me to do down there,” she said glibly, with a dismissive hand wave toward the floor, “they let me dabble in all the real dabblings up here.”

“Actually,” said Poppy, “I'm here to find out if you . . .”

But she trailed off, unable to work up a fit of righteous indignation. How could she accuse the woman now? Besides, maybe she wasn't the one who had sculpted the figure in the gazebo; if she had, wouldn't she have recognized Poppy the moment she entered?

“Do you want to see?” Madame Grosholtz asked, nodding and advancing upon her once again. “My dabblings?”

Poppy gathered from her manic, unblinking stare that the only answer she'd be allowed to give was, “Uh, sure.”

Delighted, Madame Grosholtz clapped her hands twice and scampered off. A second later the room lit up, and Poppy realized how wrong she'd been about the figures. There weren't just a few.

There were dozens.