Harry trailed her hands along the rough stone walls of the fissure as they descended into the earth, feeling her way through the blackness. Water poured down from the flooded prison above. It soaked through her clothing and sent her into fits of shivering. She’d always hated tight spaces. The hole Mary had bolted into was less than two feet in diameter, like a sloping, ruggedly hewn mineshaft. Harry could barely stand upright and the ceiling lowered the deeper they went. The first stirrings of panic scratched like a trapped animal in the back of her mind.
It could be worse. To get into the Beach Tunnel where Brady held poor Billy Flynn, I had to wiggle on my belly like an eel.
This thought did little to reassure her. In fact, it had the opposite effect. The memory of that terrible crawl through a ventilation shaft under City Hall Park brought back all the old feelings of helplessness and confinement. The certainty that she and John would die in some dark pit came back in full force. At least she’d had an idea where the other shaft went. This one could lead to the center of the earth for all she knew.
Stop it, Harry. You’re not alone. John’s just ahead. He was always more brave than sensible, but he’d probably say the same about you.
“John,” she called in a hoarse whisper. “Wait for me.”
“I’m just here, Harry,” he replied, his voice much closer than she expected. A pause. “Are you doing all right?”
He knew about her claustrophobia. Stubborn pride steadied her voice. That, and the thought of her sister Myrtle, who didn’t seem afraid of anything.
“Oh, yes,” she said with false cheer. “Don’t worry about me. Is Mary still up ahead?”
“I think so. I can see a faint glow. It must be the amulet.”
Harry swallowed. “Where could she be going?”
“Not a clue. But it can’t be much farther. We’ll hit bedrock eventually.”
It was too dark to see much of anything. The crevice jigged left and then right, taking a steep angle that gradually leveled out. Harry wished for a lantern, although perhaps it was better not to see too clearly what sort of Hell they were descending into—figurative and possibly literal. After some minutes, she felt a whisper of air against her skin that signified a larger space.
Far ahead, a spark of light bobbed unsteadily in the darkness.
“John,” she hissed. “I see her.”
“Watch your footing,” he warned from somewhere off to the right. “It’s squishy.”
As if to confirm this statement, she heard a wet sucking sound.
“Damn,” John muttered. “I think I just lost my shoe.”
Harry took a step and felt her feet slide on some slick, slightly curved surface. She windmilled her arms like a drunken tightrope walker. One of them struck John, who gave a soft grunt of surprise.
“What are we standing on?” she whispered once she’d regained her balance. “It feels strange.”
“Logs, I think,” he replied in a low voice. “Must be the foundation of the building. Try to stay on top of them, the stuff beneath is worse.”
Their voices sounded very small in the cavernous blackness.
“What is this place?”
“I don’t know, Harry.” He groped for her hand and gave it a squeeze.
“Poor Mr. Lawrence,” she said bitterly.
John was silent for a moment. “He’d want us to go on. To get the amulet back.”
“I know.” Harry squeezed his hand back. “Let’s keep going then.”
The great logs made for treacherous walking. Some were planted firmly in the mud of what must once have been Collect Pond, but others had a tendency to shift when one put weight on them. Several times, Harry nearly sprained an ankle when her foot slipped into the cracks between the logs. With the water up to her knees, the going was slow. But she had the satisfaction of knowing that Mary faced similar difficulties. Every so often, the glow of the amulet would suddenly dip down and she would hear a muffled curse.
I hope she breaks a leg, Harry thought darkly.
The walls receded into pitch darkness, but Harry realized she could see the rough outlines of things. Stone pillars rose out of the muck, slimy and dark with age. Around them swirled a thick white mist. It had swallowed Mary without a trace.
“We’re losing her, John,” Harry hissed.
She tried to go faster and immediately slipped on a patch of rotten wood. Harry threw out a hand to catch her fall, but she still cracked her knee on the trunk. Pain lanced through the joint.
“Drat,” she muttered, tears stinging her eyes.
“Are you all right?”
“No, but I’ll live.” Harry clenched her teeth and used John’s offered hand to pull herself up.
They continued on. The mist grew denser, brushing chill tendrils along her cheeks.
“Mary Elizabeth Wickes!” John shouted.
The rough stone walls threw his voice back in mocking echoes. Harry thought she heard a faint peal of laughter from somewhere ahead in the mists. She didn’t wish to go a single step further, but she knew John would never turn back now. He’d always had a surplus of physical courage—the result of growing up with four rowdy brothers—but it wasn’t just that. John had an innate decency that wouldn’t permit him to let someone like Mary run loose in the world. And, Harry thought with a mental sigh, she supposed she did too.
As they moved forward, the mists parted slightly, revealing patches of dark, still water. Harry began to have the unpleasant sensation of being in two places superimposed one over the other. The pillars stood sentinel over the cavern like a forest of petrified trees. But at the very edge of vision she glimpsed another, even stranger landscape. Colorless reeds swayed in an invisible current. She turned her head and they vanished like distant stars, but part of her felt certain she stood on an abyssal plane that stretched into dimness in all directions. Her inner ear tilted dizzyingly.
“Do you feel it, John?” she whispered.
He nodded. “Keep your eyes straight ahead. It seems to help.”
They kept going, picking their way across the platform of decaying logs. The water rose to Harry’s waist. She couldn’t see the surface at all now through the layer of mist, which only contributed to the creepy-crawly feeling that unseen things moved in the subterranean pond.
“What is that, John?” Harry whispered.
At first it was just a dark blur. But then the outline resolved itself into two vertical wooden beams connected by a crosspiece. A noose dangled from the center of the scaffold. Mary sat on a small platform beneath. Water lapped at its edges, making hollow echoing sounds that immediately made Harry think of the raft at her grandmother’s lake house in the Catskills. Harry used to swim out to it and bask like a turtle when they visited in the summers.
“It’s pretty Mr. Weston,” Mary said in a sing-song voice. “Come to watch me swing?”
The bizarre tableaux stopped them in their tracks. Harry wondered if it was truly real, but she could see the grain of the wood, smell the fresh sawdust. A bit of Mary’s skirt had caught on a nail that hadn’t been pounded in all the way.
“Or perhaps it will be you who takes the final step into air,” Mary said. “The abyss is always waiting for the unwary.”
She stared at Harry as she said this, her eyes dark and unknowable.
“It’s not too late, Mary.” John took a step forward. “Don’t let that creature use you. It’s not your master unless you allow it to be.”
Mary turned the amulet in her hands. It glowed with a sickly green light. The wet nightgown clung to her thin body. Harry could see the tendons in her neck, taut as bowstrings.
“I told you the dead will walk,” she said, her feet swinging back and forth, heels drumming on the platform. “My dear little angels will come back to their Mary. Would you like to meet them?”
She paused as if awaiting an answer. Harry felt ill. A shiver worked its way up from deep in her bones. She could barely remember a time when she’d felt warm and dry. It seemed another lifetime.
“I’ve always liked children.” Mary scratched her lank hair. “Don’t know why I did it. The excitement, I suppose. Poor, unloved creatures. If their parents had cared, I might have spared them, but no one did, not really. No one but me. I always held them as they crossed over. The fluttering heart. The little sigh. It was a lovely thing.”
She studied the gallows above her head. “This would have been my end if the master hadn’t come. A cruel fate. But if I serve him faithfully, I need never die. Not ever.”
“He promised the same to Araminta Sabelline,” Harry said quietly. “Before he killed her.”
Mary frowned, turning the amulet over and over in her hands.
“You wanted to make amends,” John said. “That’s why you wrote to Julius Sabelline.”
A tic contorted her face. “It was a mistake. But that Mary is gone now. She was always weak and timid. I made her take a dose of her own medicine.” She gave a sly smile. “Would you like a nice cup of hot chocolate, Mr. Weston? I’ll put cinnamon in it. No one makes hot chocolate like Mary does.”
“No games.” He’d been steadily moving towards her. “Give me back the amulet and we’ll help you. You said your everlasting soul couldn’t be saved, but it’s not true. You can still end this before it’s too late.”
“But it is, Mr. Weston.” She smiled sweetly. “The gate is already open, you see.”
The mist shivered like a candle guttering in a draft of air. The undulating reeds in the corners of Harry’s vision grew more solid. More real. This was the sea of her dream, she realized. The Dominion. Not hellfire but someplace cold and dark.
Mary tilted her head. “They’re coming.” She grinned, but there was an uncertain edge to it. “They loved their Mary. You’ll see.”
“John,” Harry hissed. “I think we should….”
She trailed off as the mist slowly peeled away from the gallows. Little ripples marred the still surface of the pond. The air thickened. An oppressive feeling of dread stole over Harry, as paralyzing as the night terrors. Mary seemed to feel it too, for her gaze darted around.
Something was moving under the water. Harry couldn’t see it, but she felt faint pressure as it brushed against her skirts. The temperature dropped sharply. Mary’s breath streamed out in white bursts. Her eyes grew huge in her face.
“The master promised,” she muttered. “He promised. The children can’t be angry at Mary. She was only helping them.” She clutched her belly, as if at a sudden pain. “Mustn’t hold a grudge now. Mary’s let you out of the cold place. She knows how hungry the poor dears must be. She’ll feed you well. Help you grow strong again.”
Harry gave a little shriek as a white face flashed in the depths, there and gone in an instant.
Mary swallowed. She raised a trembling hand to head. It came away with a hank of hair. She examined it blankly for a moment. “Perhaps best to close the gate,” she whispered. “I promised the master, but—”
She started to scoot backward from the edge of the gallows when a small, pale fist closed around her ankle. It had dirty black nails shaped like fishhooks. They dug into the skin. Mary’s eyes bugged out as a thin line of blood trickled down her foot.
Harry’s tongue froze to the roof of her mouth. Her legs felt numb. She watched, transfixed, as more hands seized hold of Mary’s skirts, dragging her into the water. Mary clung to the edge, nails raking the wood, hoarse cries coming from her throat. The amulet fell from her hand.
John lurched forward, trying to catch it, but he was too far away. The moment the talisman touched the water, suffocating blackness fell on the cavern.
Mary screamed a final time. It became a watery gurgle as her head went under.
Then all was still.