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J ulia’s heart pounded. The blue light intensified as it slipped from a crack in the wall, forming a sapphire stream, its beauty preternatural.

She dropped the book and backed up against the couch. She was shocked, but not terrified. Something about the blue light felt different than before. She didn’t want to run. She had to fight her fear. She wanted the connection.

The blue stream materialized into a blue vapor hovering beside the wall, then gradually, incrementally, organized itself into a glowing blue silhouette of a woman wearing a hooded cloak, like Caterina in the bedroom fresco.

Julia gaped. She sensed Caterina’s presence, her will, her wishes. Something told her that Caterina wanted to connect with her.

Suddenly Caterina filtered into the wall as if sucked through by an unseen force.

Abruptly, the living room went back to normal. The only light came from the lamps and the orangey fire.

Julia felt stunned, struck dumb. She didn’t know what she’d just seen.

She didn’t know if she’d imagined it. Maybe she’d dozed off while she was reading, like at the laptop.

She grabbed her flashlight, got off the couch, and went to the wall.

She turned on the flashlight and stepped close to the surface, looking around for the crack that Caterina had gone through.

Julia spied a tiny, jagged crack, aglow with blue.

Caterina hovered back there, waiting for her.

Julia pressed on the crack. The wall gave way, just the slightest. She pressed again and heard a creak, the plaster breaking. She pushed again, harder. The crack widened like a seam, emitting more blue light.

Julia pressed hard, then shoved the seam with her shoulder again and again. Amazingly, she felt no pain. She felt adrenalized. She sensed something lay beyond the wall, something Caterina wanted her to see.

Julia needed something to break the plaster. She looked wildly around the room. There was a poker by the fireplace. She bolted there, grabbed the poker, and hurried back to the wall.

She whacked the wall with the poker. Once, then twice, three times, pounding on the wall.

Flakes flew in the air. She broke the plaster and made a divot.

She pounded harder and harder, beginning to sweat.

She couldn’t stop, feverish. The hole got wider and deeper.

She reached old wire mesh embedded in the plaster.

She kept going, whacking away like a madwoman. Plaster chunks fell to the floor. More and more blue light shone through, electrifying her, filling her with its energy.

Julia whacked harder and harder. She felt stronger than ever, or maybe she was imagining it. She didn’t know if she was sane or crazy, awake or asleep, but she wasn’t stopping now.

The seam opened a hole. More and more blue light came through.

She punched the poker through the hole, then used it like a crowbar, pressing it flat against the wall.

More chunks fell down. The seam opened wider, cracking along its length, glowing like a bolt of lapis lightning all the way to the floor.

It was a door —if it was real. If she wasn’t imagining it or having a vision. Or losing her mind or even entering a portal of some kind.

Julia dropped the poker, wedged her fingers in the hole, and began to yank on its side. She pulled and pulled, wrenching it open, its edges jagged. The plaster cracked loudly, and she kept going.

She opened the door partway and peered inside. She found herself standing in a shaft of radiant blue light.

Caterina hovered in the darkness a short distance away.

Julia’s mouth went dry. They regarded each other, woman and presence .

Abruptly Caterina whooshed away, whisking down a long, dark chute. She grew smaller and smaller. Her blue form glowed as if farther away. Julia had no idea how far away or where Caterina was. Everywhere around her was pitch black.

Julia switched on the flashlight, her hand trembling. She flicked it around and watched its jittery circle travel over alberese stone and crumbling mortar. The air smelled musty and dank.

She was in a tunnel. She touched the wall. It felt cold, clammy, and scratchy, so it was real, or felt that way. It looked ages old, maybe from medieval times. She shone the flashlight on the floor, which was dirt and gravel.

Caterina still hovered in the distance.

Julia felt drawn to her, to see what Caterina wanted to show her. The notion terrified and thrilled her. She shone the flashlight ahead. It illuminated nothing, paling in intensity compared with the brilliant blue light emanating from Caterina.

Julia started walking. She flicked the flashlight right and left. She was getting closer to Caterina.

The air got colder and colder. She sensed she was traveling under the vineyard. The tunnel shot forward into the blue light.

She was almost at the end of the tunnel. Caterina’s glowing form illuminated a solid metal door behind her.

Caterina vanished in an instant. The tunnel went dark except for the flashlight.

Julia gasped. She didn’t know where Caterina had gone. But she did know what Caterina wanted her to do. Caterina wanted her to open the door.

Julia aimed the flashlight at the door. Its circle of light skittered along its rusted black metal.

There was no doorknob, only a rusted metal keyhole with no key.

She felt a tingle of fear, not knowing what could be on the other side.

She wondered again if she was in some kind of nightmare, or a vision.

She braced herself, then pushed on the door. It didn’t budge. She pushed it again and again. It gave way with effort, screeching. She shone the flashlight in. She saw vague black shapes and a back wall.

It was a room.

Julia cast the flashlight around and spotted a light switch, incongruously modern. She flipped the switch, illuminating the space.

She recoiled, horrified. It was a child’s bedroom, discolored by black mold.

Against the left wall was a single bed with mildewed pink sheets and a coverlet.

Atop sat at a moldy plush purple rabbit, pink bunny, and giraffe.

The headboard, night table, and a lamp were white but spotted with mold.

On the opposite wall was a moldy child’s dresser and a washbasin with a sliver of yellowed soap, a pink toothbrush, and a tortoiseshell comb.

It must have been a little girl’s room because so much was pink.

An old-fashioned chamber pot sat on the floor.

Julia crossed to a child’s desk blanketed with black mold.

It held old Italian watercolor tins and brushes next to a stack of buckled watercolor paintings.

She set down the flashlight and picked them up.

The top one was of the vineyard, but it was thriving, its vines staked, rows pruned, and dark purple grapes hanging juicy and full.

Julia guessed it had been painted by someone around eight or nine years old, but it was well done, as if the child had talent.

Julia flipped to the second watercolor, of a flock of fluffy white geese in a pen, which had to be the trashed one in the vineyard.

The third watercolor was the villa itself, evidently as it used to be, clear of vines with its facade a warm amber and its shutters bright green.

There was a fourth watercolor of a stone well that Julia didn’t recognize, with hills in the background.

The last watercolor made her heart stop. It was of a little girl with blue eyes, light brown hair, and a tragic downturn to the mouth. A self-portrait of a child in emotional agony.

Appalled, Julia put it together. This bedroom was a prison cell. A little girl had been caged here, maybe more than once, long enough to draw pictures and need a chamber pot. Rossi had put the girl down here, and that made Rossi a monster .

Julia’s mind reeled. She felt momentarily unsteady. She looked around, trying to get her bearings. Her stricken gaze fell on the comb next to the washbasin, and she went to pick it up.

Oh. Julia felt a tingling like static electricity. She didn’t know if she was imagining that, too. She didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t.

She looked up and saw her own reflection in a small mirror on the wall, its backing silvered and black. Fragments of her own wide eyes and open mouth looked back at her, like moldy scraps of her own flesh.

Suddenly her reflection began to change. Her face stretched up and down, more and more distorted. Her eyes darkened and went deeper and deeper like bottomless black holes. Her mouth opened into an endless tunnel.

Julia backed up, terrified. She turned and ran from the cell as fast as she could. She scraped the wall on the right, then the left. She ran harder and harder. Her lungs burned, her thighs ached.

The tunnel seemed to elongate as she ran, stretching out like her face in the mirror. Just then she saw an orangey rectangle ahead. The doorway to the living room glowed from the firelight. She was almost there. She ran faster.

The orange glow came closer and closer. She reached the end but it zoomed away, reappearing at the end of another long tunnel.

Julia felt a bolt of sheer terror. She screamed, her wail echoing in the tunnel. She feared she’d never reach the end. The more she ran, the farther away she got. She’d be trapped down here forever, a captive of past and present.

It happened again and again, each time she got to the end of the tunnel, the orange rectangle zoomed away. Home was a fiery threshold she could never reach.

All of a sudden, she burst into the living room.

She staggered forward and collapsed on the floor.

In a dead faint.