The office was empty. Wyatt and Adam checked the computer and the motel safe. Opal headed for the door to the apartment. No furniture obstructed it. There wasn’t any way to lock the door from the office without breaking or somehow jamming the mechanism. She saw no evidence of damage. The hinges were on the other side. Nothing foreign lodged between the door and its frame.
Nothing . . . physical.
She stopped and stared at the chalk drawings. She touched the doorknob.
Turned it.
The door opened.
“Vera, could you get a few of those napkins?”
Vera grabbed a handful from the continental-breakfast spread. The paper squares were printed with holly sprigs and ornaments. “Max must have been in here. Those are the same kind of drawings he made inside his room. You want to clean them off?”
“I want to try something first.”
Opal stepped inside the stairwell and closed the door behind her.
She tried to open the door from the locking side. She couldn’t.
“Now go ahead and wipe the chalk off,” she said, through the door.
Brush, brush. Vera was doing her best, probably feeling like she was spreading the chalk around more than taking it away. A thin fog of particles floated under the door.
Vera sneezed. “I really should use a little water.”
“Rub off as much as you can. Erase the shapes. If I’m right, I don’t think you need to make everything disappear completely.”
More brushing. The click of her rings as they scraped along.
“Okay, that’s pretty good,” Vera said.
“Stand back.”
Opal opened the door without resistance, not so much as a squeak.
The outside panel still looked as if it had a sprinkling of powder dulling its surface. She could see streaks made by the napkins. Otherwise it was clean.
“How did you do that?” Vera asked.
Opal didn’t have a logical answer. Drawings can’t lock doors. Can they?
“The extra key to Vera’s room is missing,” said Wyatt.
“Max must’ve taken it. He was the only one down here,” Adam said.
“Not the only one,” Vera said. “Don’t forget the man with the ax.”
“What’s this?” Opal picked up a small cone of metal, mashed on one end, no bigger than a pebble, placed exactly in the center of the counter.
“Give it to me,” Wyatt said.
She dropped it into his palm. “Is that what I think it is?”
“It’s a slug from a bullet.” Wyatt turned it in his palm. Moving it around like a hot cinder that would burn him if he didn’t keep it in motion. “There’s something on it. . . writing . . . letters. Somebody wrote on it with a permanent marker.”
“Are they trying to scare us with this shit?” Adam asked.
“Yeah, well, this shit’s working.” Vera hugged her arms around her chest.
“It says s-o-r-r-y.” Wyatt spilled the slug back on the counter.
“Sorry?” Adam frowned. “Sorry for what?”
Opal watched her husband. The black eye patch he wore, from certain angles, was as good as a mask for hiding behind. His head didn’t move. He was studying the slug, and then he raised his chin up from the counter and turned to the window and the orange lights down the highway. The glow was Henry’s place.
“What did the man with the ax look like again?” he asked.
“He was tali. Salt-and-pepper hair. He had a sad face. He was wearing a long raincoat that looked too small on him.”
“Too small?”
“Like it wasn’t really his,” Vera said.
“Or like he bought it years ago. Maybe an old coat that he’d outgrown. Did he get into a car?”
“He just walked away.”
“Just walked away in his raincoat...”
“Wyatt, what are you thinking?” Opal asked.
“I don’t want to admit what I’m thinking.” Wyatt picked up the slug again and slipped it into his pocket. Shook his head. “If Max took the key, then he’s after that stone. We’d better go and see.”
“Do you think he’s with the Pitch?” Vera asked.
“The two people I know who aren’t with the Pitch are standing beside you.”
Vera thought about that.
Wyatt pushed through the frost-starred glass, letting the wind chase around the office. “He hasn’t driven out of the lot. There’d be tracks.”
They found Max cowering under the writing desk inside Vera’s room. He’d flipped a mattress over onto the stone. Adam and Wyatt lifted the mattress and tossed it against the wall. Max was mumbling. Indecipherable words flowed from his lips with a chantlike rhythm. He had taken the chalk from his pocket and crumbled it in his fists. Dust smeared beside him into the carpet—a
moon shape. He didn’t want to come out. He told them to take the stone away. It wasn’t safe. He asked if anyone else was in the room.
Wyatt stood with his boot on one of the stone’s points.
“Anyone else?”
“Did you see anyone other than me when you came in?” Max asked, his voice rising to the edge of panic.
“Like who?” Opal knelt close to him.
Max stared through his fingers at her. The childlike mischievousness had vanished from his eyes. He was a frightened old man. Spittle flecked his lips.
“Put the stone in the bathroom and I’ll come out,” he said finally.
Wyatt carried the stone over to the tub and closed the bathroom.
Max crawled out from under the desk. His collar was blotted with sweat. Fear, he smelled like fear. The Ruger dangled in his grip.
“Whoa,” Adam said. “He’s got a gun.”
“Here, you take it. It’ll do us no good.” Max untwisted his spine and handed the revolver to Wyatt. “The women should go,” he said.
“Why?”
“It’s not goddamn safe, that’s why. We’d all go if we were smart.”
His eyes tracked to the bathroom. Narrowed.
“It can hear us talking.”
Wyatt ignored the comment. He held Max’s elbow, steered him to a seat in the armchair. Adam set the mattress back on the bed frame. The two women sat down with him. Wyatt bent over and looked Max in the eye.
“Who are you afraid of?”
“Everyone ... no one ... I want to check out. Draw up my bill, please.”
“You’re not going anywhere until you explain a few things,” Wyatt said.
“I’m not your prisoner! You can’t hold me here against my will!”
“Adam, get the stone.”
Adam rose from the end of the bed. He walked across the carpet. He reached for the knob of the bathroom door.
“No, wait,” Max said. “Let me, ah, think about this....”
Adam opened the door and went into the bathroom.
Max shouted, “ Stop!”
“Who are the Pitch?” Wyatt asked.
“Never heard of them ... I don’t know what you’re ... please. I’m a stupid old man. My mind ... I get confused, you see. I should be in a hospital.”
There was a loud screech as Adam tugged the shower curtain back. Then a thumping from the tub.
“Don’t bring it out here!” Max faced Wyatt. “I’ll tell you, okay? You win. Everything I know ... just, please, I don’t want to see it again.”
“Leave the stone, Adam,” Wyatt said. “Shut the door.”
Max hung his head. He sighed in relief.
Wyatt perched on the corner of the bed.
“The Pitch, they’re for real?”
Max nodded. “I’ve spent half my life studying them.”
“Why go through all this for a rock?”
“It’s no ordinary rock,” Max began. “That’s a fact. You see stones are technology. Old, old technology. The first tools humans made were stones. They elevated us above animals. Nearly all major religions incorporate the stone as a symbol of their foundation. f The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone’ refers to Jesus. Go back pre-Christ. To Stonehenge. The Mayans carved stellae. Mystery spheres in Costa Rica. The Dome of the Rock. The Black Stone at Mecca. Jacob’s Pillow that was said to cry out for rightful kings and queens. The Philosopher’s Stone.
The Freemason’s Ashlar. Druidic runes. Scrying stones and crystal balls. The Urim and Thummim. Worry stones and rosary beads. New Age healing crystals ... it goes on and on.”
“What does our stone do?”
“The Pitch religion is no different from its daylight counterparts. People yearn for rituals. Something they can see and touch. This stone is their central relic, at the very core, of their beliefs.”
“Which are?”
“The dead aren’t dead. They exist on a different axis. In death, we boil down to essentials. Good and evil. The two gravitate to opposite ends of the cosmos. Some call them Heaven and Hell. The Greeks had Hades. The lowest level of Hades was Tartarus. It was a dungeon for the Titans. The Romans thought there was room for sinners, too. The Abyss, as they pictured it—encircled with a river of flame, surrounded by adamantine gates and guarded by the Hydra—stretched vast. Christians say it’s the pit where Satan fell, where Christ cast Legion. The Tartarus Stone acts as a compass pointing the way to Hell. It is also a key. In the right hands, it unlocks a doorway between our world and theirs. Satan will rise again at the time of Revelation. The man who leads the Pitch wants to open that door. He wants to let Evil in. The Or- phics believed Tartarus was the first thing in existence. Nothing is older than darkness.”
“What’s the stone made of?”
“No one knows. Molten in origin. A tektite, a bit of natural glass made when a falling meteor slammed into the earth. It may have powerful magnetic properties which alter brain waves and cause vivid hallucinations. The Pitch believes the stone ejected from a volcano on the moon. They’re moon worshippers. And have been as far back as the Egyptian pharaohs.”
“You’re claiming the Pitch cult is as old as the pharaohs?”
“Older, I’d say. There’s no telling. Their leader today is a doctor. A former optometrist named Horus Whiteside—he’s the only one who knows the secrets and the big picture. His group of followers will suit his current needs. They come and go. They die, or
else he kills them off. To call them the Pitch is a misnomer. There’s only one Pitch, and that’s Whiteside.”
“Why would they follow him?”
“He’s offering power, riches, and everlasting life. People sacrifice themselves for much less. It’s all lies, of course. Usually is with an offer that good.” Max paused and rubbed his chest, scratching at the eye-shaped scars underneath. “Whiteside is a master mesmerist. He may have other powers. I can’t speak to that impartially. He’s dangerous. Forty years ago he tortured me for three days. Searching for the stone .. .”
Opal knew the name Whiteside, knew also that he was one of the men she witnessed in that trailer out in the woods. For the first time in months, years, she didn’t think she was crazy. “What did you see here in the room with you?”
Max looked hard at the four of them seated on the bed.
Looked and said nothing.