We hung a right at a big Kaufland supermarket and came to the intersection of Cechova and Starosedlecka Streets. The ossuary was on the latter, directly before us, surrounded by high walls and a cemetery. Across from it was a restaurant and store named U Balanu, and around the corner to the right was a hotel. We asked to take a look at the rooms, eventually finding two that gave us a good view of the ossuary, then went to view the ossuary itself.
Sedlec had never wanted for bodies to fill its graves: what the mines, or plague, or conflict could not provide, the lure of the Holy Land fulfilled. The fourteenth-century Zbraslav Chronicle records that in one year alone, thirty thousand people were buried in the cemetery, a great many of them brought there specifically for the privilege of being buried in soil from the Holy Land, for it was believed that the graveyard held miraculous properties, and that any decedent buried there would decompose within a single day, leaving only preserved white bones behind. When those bones inevitably began to stack up, the cemetery’s keepers built a two-story mortuary containing an ossuary within which the remains might be displayed. If the ossuary served a practical purpose by allowing graves to be emptied of skeletal remains and freed up for those more in need of a dark place in which to shed their mortal burden, it also served a spiritual purpose at least equally well: the bones became reminders of the transience of human existence and the temporary nature of all earthly things. At Sedlec, the border between this world and the next was marked in bone.
Even here, in this foreign place, there were echoes of my own past. I recalled a hotel room in New Orleans, the air outside still and heavy with moisture. We had been closing in on the man who had taken my wife and child from me, and coming at last to some understanding of the nature of his “art.” He too believed in the transience of all human affairs, and he left behind his own memento mori as he traveled the land, tearing skin from flesh, and flesh from bone, to show us that life was but a fleeting, unimportant thing, capable of being taken at will by a being as worthless as himself.
Except that he was wrong, for not all that we tried to achieve was without value, and not every aspect of our lives was unworthy of celebration or remembrance. With each life that he took, the world became a poorer place, its index of possibilities reduced forever, deprived of the potential for art, science, passion, ingenuity, hope, and regret that the unlived existences of generation upon generation of progeny would have brought with them.
But what of the lives that I had taken? Was I not equally culpable, and was that not why there were now so many names, of both good men and bad, carved upon that palimpsest I bore, and for each of which I might justifiably be called to account? I could argue that by committing a smaller evil, I had prevented a greater one from occurring, but I would still bear the mark of that sin upon me, and perhaps be damned for it. Yet, in the end, I could not stand by. There were sins that I had committed out of anger, touched by wrath, and for those I had no doubt that I would at last be charged and found wanting. But the others? I chose to act as I did, believing that the greater evil lay in doing nothing. I have tried to make reparation, in my way.
The problem is that, like cancer, a little corruption of the soul will eventually spread throughout the whole.
The problem is that there are no small evils.
∗ ∗ ∗
We passed through the cemetery gates and skirted the graves, the more recent stones often marked with photographs of the deceased inset into the marble or granite beneath the word rodina, followed by the family name. One or two even had alcoves carved in the stone, protected by glass, behind which framed portraits of all of those buried beneath the ground sat undisturbed, as they might have done on a sideboard or a shelf when those depicted were still alive. Three steps led down to the ossuary entrance: a pair of plain wooden doors overlooked by a semicircular window. To the right of the entrance, a steeper flight of steps led up to the chapel, for the chapel stood above the ossuary, and from its window, one might look down on the interior of the ossuary itself. Inside the door, a young woman sat behind a glass display case containing cards and trinkets. We paid her thirty Czech koruny each to enter, or barely four dollars between us. We were the only people present, and our breath assumed strange forms in the cold air as we looked upon the wonders of Sedlec.
“My God,” said Angel. “What is this place?”
A stairway led down before us. On the walls at either side, the letters IHS, for Iesus Hominum Salvator, or “Jesus Savior of Humanity,” were set in long bones, surrounded by four sets of three bones representing the arms of a cross. Each arm ended in a single skull. At the base of the stairs, two sets of parallel columns mirrored one another. The columns were made up of skulls alternated with what appeared to be femurs, the bones set vertically beneath the upper jaw of each skull. The columns followed the edges of two alcoves, into which had been set a pair of enormous urns, or perhaps they might have been baptismal fonts, again constructed entirely from human remains and lidded by a circle of skulls.
I stepped into the main area of the ossuary. To my right and left were chambers containing huge pyramids of skulls and bones, too many to count, topped in each case by a wooden crown painted gold. Two similar barred rooms faced me, so that they occupied the four corners of the ossuary. According to the information leaflet thrust into our hands at the door, the remains represented the multitudes facing judgment before God, while the crowns symbolized the kingdom of heaven and the promise of resurrection from the dead. On one of the walls, beside the skull chamber to my right, there was an inscription, again inset in bone. It read:
FRANTIŠEK RINT Z CESKE SKALICE 1870
In common with most artists, Rint had signed his work. But if Bosworth was right, then Rint had seen something while he was completing the reconstruction of the ossuary, and what he had seen had haunted him to such a degree that he had spent years recreating its image, as though by doing so he might slowly begin to exorcise it from his imagination, and bring himself peace at last.
The other chamber to my left was marked by the coat of arms of the Schwarzenberg family, who had paid for Rint’s work. Once again, it was made entirely from bone: Rint had even constructed a bird, a raven or a rook, using a pelvic bone for its body and a section of rib for its wing. The bird was dipping its beak into the hollow eye socket of what was supposed to be a Turkish skull, a detail that had been added to the coat of arms as a gift from Emperor Rudolf II after Adolf of Schwarzenberg had curbed the power of the Turks by conquering the fortification of Raab in 1598.
But all of this was merely a sideshow compared to the centerpiece of the ossuary. From the vaulted ceiling a chandelier hung, fashioned from elements of every bone that the human body could supply. Its extended parts were hanging arm bones, ending in a plate of pelvic bones upon which rested, in each case, a single skull. A candleholder was inset into the top of each head, and a ribbon of interlinked bones formed the suspension chains, keeping them in place. It was impossible to look upon it and not feel one’s sense of disgust overcome by awe at the imagination that could have produced such an artifact. It was simultaneously beautiful and disturbing, a marvelous testament to mortality.
Inset into the floor beneath the chandelier was a rectangular concrete slab. This was the entrance to the crypt, within which were contained the remains of a number of wealthy individuals. At each corner of the crypt stone stood a Baroque candelabra in the shape of a Gothic tower, with three lines of seven skulls set into each, again with an arm bone clasped beneath their ruined jaws, and topped by angels blowing trumpets.
All told, the remains of some forty thousand persons were contained in the ossuary.
I looked around. Angel and Louis were examining a pair of glass cabinets, behind which were contained the skulls of some of those who had died in the Hussite campaigns. Two or three bore the small holes of musket balls, while others had gaping wounds inflicted by blunt force. A sharp blade had almost entirely cleaved away the back of one skull.
Something dripped onto my shirt, spreading a stain across the fabric. I looked up and saw moisture on the ceiling. Perhaps the roof was leaking, I thought, but then I felt a rivulet of sweat run down my face and melt upon my lips. I realized that I could no longer see my breath in the air, and that I had begun to perspire heavily. Neither Angel nor Louis appeared troubled. Angel, in fact, had zipped his jacket up to his chin and was stamping his feet slightly to keep warm, his hands jammed into his pockets.
Sweat ran into my eyes, blurring my vision. I tried to clear it by wiping the sleeve of my coat across my forehead, but it seemed to make matters worse. The salt stung me, and I began to feel dizzy and disoriented. I didn’t want to lean against anything, for fear of setting off the alarms about which we had been warned at the door. Instead, I squatted on the floor and took some deep breaths, but I was teetering slightly on my heels and so was forced to put my fingers to the ground to support myself. They touched against the crypt stone, and instantly I felt a wave of pain break across my skin. I was drowning in liquid heat, my whole body aflame. I tried to open my mouth to say something, but the heat rushed to fill the new gap, stilling any sound from within. I was blind, mute, forced to endure my torments in silence. I wanted to die, yet I could not. Instead, I found myself sealed, trapped in a hard, dark place. I was constantly on the verge of suffocation, unable to draw a breath, and still there was no release. Time ceased to have meaning. There was only an endless, unendurable now.
And yet I endured.
A hand was placed upon my shoulder, and Angel spoke. His touch felt incredibly cool to me, and his breath was like ice upon my skin. And then I became aware of another voice beneath Angel’s, except this one repeated words in a language that I did not understand, a litany of phrases spoken over and over again, always with the same intonation, the same pauses, the same emphases. It was an invocation of sorts, yet one bound up entirely with madness, and I was reminded of those animals in a zoo that, driven insane by their incarceration and the never-changing nature of their surroundings, find themselves endlessly stalking in their cages, always at the same speed, always with the same movements, as though the only way they can survive is to become as one with the place in which they are kept, to match its unyielding absence of novelty with their own.
Suddenly the voice changed. It stumbled over its words. It tried to begin once more but lost its place. Finally, it stopped entirely, and I became aware of something probing the ossuary, the way a blind man might stop the tapping of his cane and listen for the approach of a stranger.
And then it howled, over and over again, the tone and volume rising until it became one repeated shriek of rage and despair, but despair now, for the first time in so long, leavened by faint hope. The sound of it tore at my ears, shredding my nerves, as it called to me over and over and over again.
It is aware, I thought. It knows.
It is alive.
∗ ∗ ∗
Angel and Louis brought me back to the hotel. I was weak, and my skin was burning. I tried to lie down, but the nausea would not go away. After a time, I joined them in their room. We sat at the windows and watched the cemetery and its buildings.
“What happened in there?” said Louis at last.
He was angry. He didn’t even try to hide it.
“Yeah, well you need to explain it, don’t matter how weird it sounds. We got no time for this.”
“You don’t have to tell me that,” I snapped.
He eyed me levelly.
“So what was it?”
I had no choice but to answer him.
“I thought, for a moment, that I felt something down there, under the ossuary, and that it knew I was aware of it. I had a sensation of being trapped, of suffocation and heat. That’s it. I can’t tell you anything more.”
I didn’t know what to expect from Louis in response to this. Now, I thought. Now we have arrived at it. The thing that has come between us is wriggling its way to the surface.
“You okay to go back in there?” he said.
“I’ll wear a lighter coat next time.”
Louis tapped his fingers gently, in time to some rhythm that only he could hear.
“I had to ask,” he said.
“I understand.”
“I guess I’m getting impatient. I want this to end. I don’t like it when it’s personal.”
He turned in his chair and stared at me.
“They’ll come, won’t they?”
“Yes,” I said. “Then you can do whatever you want with them. I promised you that we would find them, and we have. Isn’t that what you wanted from me?”
But he still wasn’t satisfied. His fingers drummed on the windowsill, and his gaze seemed drawn again and again to the twin spires of the chapel. Angel was seated on a chair in one dark corner, carefully maintaining a stillness and silence, waiting for what divided us to be named. A sea change had occurred in our friendship, and I did not know if the result would bring an end to it, or a new beginning.
“Say it,” I said.
“I wanted to blame you,” said Louis, softly. He did not look at me as he spoke. “I wanted to blame you for what happened to Alice. Not in the beginning, because I knew the life that she led. I tried to look out for her, and I tried to make other people look out for her too, but in the end she chose her own path, like we all do. When she went missing, I was grateful. I was relieved. It didn’t last long, but it was there, and I was ashamed of it.
“Then we found Garcia, and this guy Brightwell came out of the woodwork, and suddenly it wasn’t about Alice no more. It was about you, because you were tied into it somehow. And I got to thinking that maybe it wasn’t Alice’s fault, that maybe it was yours. You know how many women make their living on the streets of New York? Of all the whores or junkies they could have chosen, of all the women who might have gotten involved with this man Winston, why should it have been her? It was like you cast a shadow on lives, and that shadow was growing, and it touched her even though you’d never met her, didn’t even know she existed. After that, I didn’t want to look at you for a time. I didn’t hate you for it, because it wasn’t intentional on your part, but I didn’t want to be around you. Then she started calling to me.”
He was reflected clearly in the glass now, as the night drew in. His face hung in the air, and perhaps it was a flaw in the glass that duplicated his reflection, or maybe it was something more, but a second presence seemed suspended in the darkening air behind him, its features indistinguishable, and the stars were shining through its eyes.
“I hear her at night. I thought at the start that it was someone in the building, but when I went outside the apartment to check, I couldn’t hear her no more. It was only inside. I only hear her when there’s nobody else around. It’s her voice, except it’s not alone. There are other voices with it, so many of them, and they’re all calling different names. She calls mine. It’s hard to understand her, because someone doesn’t want her calling out. It didn’t matter to him at first, because he thought nobody cared about her, but now he knows better. He wants her to stay quiet. She’s dead, but she keeps calling out, like she’s got no peace. She cries all the time. She’s afraid. They’re all afraid.
“And I knew then that maybe it was no coincidence that you found Angel and me either, or that we found you. I don’t understand everything that goes on with you, but I do know this: whatever happened was meant to come to pass, and we’re all involved. It’s always been waiting in the shadows, and none of us can walk away from it. There’s no blame to be laid at your door. I know that now. Sure, there are other women who could have been taken, but what then? They’d have disappeared, and it would be their voices calling, but there would be no one to hear them, and no one would care. This way, we heard, and we came.”
At last, he turned back to me, and the woman in the night faded away.
“I want her to stop crying,” he said, and I could see clearly the lines upon his face and the tiredness in his eyes. “I want them all to stop crying.”
∗ ∗ ∗
Walter Cole called me on my cell that night. I had spoken to him before we left, and had told him as much as I knew.
“You sound a million miles away,” he said, “and if I were you, I’d keep it that way. Just about everyone you’ve ever talked to on this thing is dead, and pretty soon people are going to start looking for you to answer some questions. Some of this you may not want to hear. Neddo’s dead. Someone cut him up badly. It might have been torture in order to gain information, except there was a rag stuffed in his mouth, so even if he had something to give up, he wouldn’t have been able to speak. That’s not the worst of it, either. Reid, the monk who spoke with you, was stabbed to death outside a bar in Hartford. The other monk phoned it in, then disappeared. Cops want to talk to him too, but either his order is protecting him or they really don’t know where he is.”
“Do the cops think he did it? If they do, they’re wrong.”
“They just want to talk to him. There was blood on Reid’s mouth, and it wasn’t his own. Unless it matches Bartek’s, then he’s probably in the clear. It looks like Reid bit whoever killed him. The blood sample has been fast-tracked to a private lab. They’ll get the results in a day or two.”
I already knew what they would find: old, corrupted DNA. And I wondered if Reid’s voice had now joined Alice’s in that dark place from which Brightwell’s victims called out for release. I thanked Walter, then hung up and returned to my vigil upon the ossuary.
∗ ∗ ∗
Sekula arrived on the morning of the second day. He didn’t come alone. There was a driver who waited behind the wheel of the gray Audi, and Sekula entered the ossuary in the company of a small man in jeans and a sailor’s coat. After thirty minutes, they came out and took the stairs up to the chapel. They didn’t stay there long.
“Checking out the alarm,” said Angel, as we watched them from the hotel. “The little guy is probably the expert.”
“How good is it?” I asked.
“I took a look at it yesterday. Not good enough to keep them out. Doesn’t even look like it’s been upgraded since the last break-in.”
The two men emerged from the chapel and walked around the perimeter of the building, then headed back to the Audi and drove away.
“We could have followed them,” said Louis.
“We could,” I said, “but what would have been the point? They have to come back.”
Angel was pulling at his lower lip.
“How soon?” I asked.
“Me, I’d get it done as soon as possible if the alarm wasn’t a problem. Tonight, maybe.”
It felt right. They would come, and we would know everything.
∗ ∗ ∗
There was a small courtyard beside the U Balanu store across the street from the ossuary that doubled as an outdoor area for the restaurant during the summer. It was an easy matter to gain entry to it, and that was where Louis took up position shortly after dusk the following evening. I was in the hotel room, where I could get a good overview of all that was taking place. Louis and I had agreed that we would make no move alone. Angel was in the cemetery. There was a small shed with a red-tiled roof to the left of the ossuary. Its windows were broken, but guarded by black steel grates. At one time it might have functioned as the gravedigger’s cottage, but it now contained just slates, bricks, planks of wood, and one very cold New Yorker.
My cell phone was switched to vibrate. All was silence, apart from the distant growl of passing cars. And so we waited.
The gray Audi arrived shortly after nine. It made one full circuit of the block, then parked on Starosedlecka. It was followed minutes later by a second, black Audi and a nondescript green truck, its tires thick with accumulated mud and the gold lettering along its body faded and unreadable. Sekula got out of the first car, accompanied by the little alarm specialist and a second figure wearing black trousers and a calf-length hooded coat. The hood was up, for the temperature had dropped considerably that day. Even Sekula was identifiable only by his height, as a scarf covered his mouth, and he wore a black knitted cap on his head.
Three people emerged from the second vehicle. One was the charming Miss Zahn. She didn’t seem troubled by the cold. Her coat was open and her head was uncovered. Given the temperature of what was running in her veins, the night probably felt a little balmy to her. The second person was a white-haired man whom I did not recognize. He had a gun in his hand. The third was Bright-well. He was still wearing the same beige clothes. Like Miss Zahn, the cold didn’t appear to bother him unduly. He walked back to the truck and spoke to one of the two men inside. It looked like they were planning to transport the statue if they found it.
The two men climbed down from the cab and followed Bright-well to the back of the truck. Once the door was opened, two more men climbed out, swaddled in layers of clothing for the cold journey in the unheated rear. Then, after a brief consultation, Brightwell led Miss Zahn, Sekula, the unknown individual in the hooded coat, and the alarm specialist to the cemetery gate. One of the hired hands followed them. Angel had locked the gate behind him when he was making his way to the hut, but Brightwell simply cut the chain and the group entered the grounds of the ossuary.
I took a brief head count. Outside we had the driver of the Audi and three of the truck crew. Inside the grounds there were six more. I buzzed Louis.
“What can you see?” I said.
“One guy now at the ossuary door, inside the grounds,” he said quietly. “The driver, standing at the passenger door, back to me.”
I heard him shift position.
“Two amateurs from the truck at either corner, keeping watch on the main road. One more at the gate.”
I thought about it.
“Give me five minutes. I’ll come around from behind the truck and take the corner guys. You have the driver and the man at the gate. Tell Angel he has the door. I’ll buzz you when I’m ready to move.”
I exited the hotel and worked my way as quickly as I could around the block. Eventually, I had to climb a wall and walk through a green field containing a children’s play area, the cemetery to my left. I buzzed Angel as I entered the field.
“I’m in the field behind you. Don’t shoot me.”
“Just this once. I’m gonna move with you.”
I heard a low noise from the cemetery as Angel emerged from the shed, then everything was quiet again.
I found a gate at the far end of the field. I opened it as quietly as I could. To my left I could just see the back of the truck. I kept to the wall until it began to curve toward the main entrance. The shape of the guard at the gate was clearly visible. If I attempted to cross the street, there was a good chance that he would see me.
I buzzed Louis again.
“Change of plan,” he said. “Angel’s taking the door and the gate.”
Inside the cemetery, the guard at the ossuary door lit a cigarette. His name was Gary Toolan, and he was little more than an American criminal for hire based in Europe. Mostly he just liked women, booze, and hurting people, but some of the people for whom he was now working gave him the creeps. They were different, somehow: alien. The guy with white hair, the looker with the strange skin, and most of all the fat man with the swollen neck made him very uneasy. He didn’t know what they were doing here, but he was certain of one thing: he had their number, and that was why he had received payment in advance. If they tried anything, he had his money, he had a backup pistol, and the men that he had sourced for these freaks would stand by him in the event of trouble. Toolan took a long drag on his cigarette. As he dropped the match the shadows around him shifted, and it took him a second to realize that the falling light and the mutating darkness were unrelated.
Angel shot him in the side of the head, then moved toward the gate.
∗ ∗ ∗
Louis checked his watch. He still had the phone to his ear. I waited.
“Three,” counted Louis. “Two, one. Now.”
There was a soft pop, and the man at the gate crumpled to the ground, shot from behind by Angel.
I ran.
The Audi driver immediately went for his gun, but Louis was already moving to take him. The driver seemed to sense him at the last minute, for he was starting to turn when Louis’s bullet entered the back of his skull. Now one of the men at the corner was shouting something. He ran to the cab and almost managed to open the door before he slid down the side and tried to reach for the small of his back, where my first shot had taken him. I shot him again on the ground and took the last man as he loosed off a round. It blew out a chunk of crumbling masonry from the wall beside my head, but by then the man who had fired the shot was dead.
Louis was already pulling the body of the driver into the restaurant courtyard. He stopped when he heard the shot. Nobody emerged from any of the nearby houses to see what was going on. Either they had taken the shot for a car backfiring, or they just didn’t want to know. I pushed the bodies of the two men under their truck, where they would not easily be seen, then Louis and I ran to the ossuary. Angel was crouching at the door, casting quick glances into the interior.
“One more down inside,” he said. “He heard the shot and came running. It looks like they’ve got the crypt stone up, and there’s a light burning by the hole, but I don’t think there’s anyone else in there. I guess they’re all belowground.”
∗ ∗ ∗
The heat inside the ossuary was intense. At first I was afraid that I was about to experience a return of the nausea that I had felt the previous day, thus confirming Louis’s worst fears about me, but when I looked at Angel and Louis, they had both begun to sweat profusely. We were surrounded by the sound of dripping water, as rivulets ran from the ceilings and walls, dropping on the exposed bones and washing like tears down the white cheeks of the dead. The body of the alarm specialist lay inside the door, already speckled with moisture.
The crypt stone had been ejected from its resting place and lay to one side of the entrance, beside which a battery-powered lamp burned. We skirted the hole, trying not to expose ourselves to anyone waiting below. I thought I could detect, however faintly, the sound of voices, then stone moving upon stone. A flight of rough steps led down into the gloom, a trace of illumination visible from an unseen light source in the crypt itself.
Angel looked at me. I looked at Angel. Louis looked at both of us.
“Great,” whispered Angel. “Just great. We should be wearing targets on our chests.”
“You’re staying up here,” I told him. “Keep to the shadows by the door. We don’t need any more of them arriving and trapping us down there.”
Angel didn’t object. In his position, I wouldn’t have objected either. Louis and I stood just out of sight of the steps. One of us would have to go first.
“What’ll it be?” I said. “Age, or beauty?”
He stepped forward and placed his foot on the first step.
“Both,” he said.
I stayed a couple of steps behind him as he descended. The floor of the ossuary, which doubled as the crypt ceiling, was two feet thick, so we were almost halfway down before we could see anything, and even then half of the crypt remained in darkness. To our left was a series of niches, each occupied by a stone tomb. All were ornately carved with coats of arms or depictions of the resurrection. To our right was a similar arrangement of tombs, except that one of the stone coffins had been overturned and its occupant’s remains spilled across the flagged floor. The bones had long since disarticulated, but I thought I could faintly see traces of the shroud in which the body had been interred. The niche, now empty, revealed a rectangular opening previously concealed by the tomb, maybe four feet high and as many feet across. I could see light filtering through the gap from behind. The voices were louder now, and the temperature had risen noticeably. It was like standing at the mouth of a furnace, waiting to be consumed by the flames.
I felt a breath of slightly cooler air at my neck, and in the same instant spun to my right, pushing Louis to one side with as much force as I could muster before I hit the floor. Something sliced through the air and impacted on one of the columns supporting the vault. I smelled a hint of perfume as Miss Zahn grunted with the shock of the crowbar’s impact upon the stone. I struck out as hard as I could with my heel and caught her on the side of the knee. Her leg buckled, and I heard her scream, but she whipped the crowbar instinctively in my direction as I tried to rise, striking me on my right elbow and sending a shock wave through my arm that paralyzed it immediately. I dropped my gun and was forced to scramble backward before I felt the wall at my back and could raise myself using my left hand. I heard a shot fired, and even though it was suppressed it still echoed loudly in the enclosed space. I couldn’t tell where Louis was until I scrambled to my feet and saw him pressed against one of the tombs, locked in close combat with Sekula. The lawyer’s gun now lay on the floor, but with his left hand he was keeping Louis’s own gun away from him while his right scratched at Louis’s face, looking for soft tissue to damage. I couldn’t intervene. Despite her pain, Miss Zahn was limping around me, looking for another opportunity to strike. She had removed her jacket to allow herself some respite from the heat, and in the course of her attempts to strike me the buttons on her black shirt had popped. A shaft of light caught her, and I saw the tattoos upon her skin. They seemed to move in the lamplight, the faces twisting and contorting, the great eyes blinking, the pupils dilating. A mouth opened, revealing small, catlike teeth. A head turned, its pug nose flattening further, as though another living being inside her had pressed itself hard against her epidermis from below, trying to force itself through to the world outside. Her whole body was a teeming gallery of grotesques, and I could not seem to draw my eyes from them. The effect was almost hypnotic, and I wondered if that was how she subdued her victims before taking them, entrancing them as she moved in for the kill.
My right arm ached, and I felt as if all the moisture was being drained from my body by the heat. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t just shoot me. I stumbled backward as Miss Zahn feinted at me. I lost my footing, and then the crowbar was moving in a great arc toward my head when a voice said, “Hey, bitch!” and a booted foot caught Miss Zahn in the jaw, breaking it with a sharp, snapping sound. Her eyes squeezed shut in shock, and in the shadowy light I thought that the faces on her body responded in turn, the eyes briefly snapping closed, the mouths opening in silent roars of agony. Miss Zahn looked to where Angel lay sideways upon the stairs, just beneath the level of the ceiling. His right foot was still outstretched, and above it he held the .45.
Miss Zahn dropped the crowbar and raised her left hand. Angel fired, and the bullet tore through the palm. She slid down the wall, leaving a trail of dark matter behind. One eye remained open, but the other was a black and red wound. She blinked once, and again all the tattooed eyes on her skin seemed to blink in unison. Then her eye closed, the painted eyelids on her body drooping slowly in turn until at last all movement ceased.
As she died, the energy seemed to leave Sekula. He sagged, giving Louis the opening that he sought. He forced the muzzle of his gun upward into the soft flesh beneath Sekula’s chin and pulled the trigger. The noise of a shot reverberated around us once again, the sound finding material expression in the dark fountain that struck the vaulted ceiling. Louis released Sekula and allowed him to crumple to the floor.
“He stopped,” said Louis, indicating Sekula. “I was under his gun, and he stopped.”
He sounded puzzled.
“He told me that he didn’t think he could kill a man,” I said. “I guess he was right.”
I sagged against the damp wall of the crypt. My arm ached badly, but I didn’t think there were any bones broken. I nodded my thanks to Angel, and he returned to his post in the ossuary itself. Beyond us lay the opening in the wall.
“After you this time,” said Louis.
I looked at the remains of Miss Zahn and Sekula.
“At least I might see the next person who attacks us,” I said.
“She had a gun,” he said, pointing at the pistol tucked into Miss Zahn’s belt. “She could have just shot you.”
“She wanted me alive,” I said.
“Why? Your charm?”
I shook my head.
“She thought I was like her, and like Brightwell.”
I stooped and passed through the gap, Louis steps behind me. We were in a long tunnel, with a ceiling barely six feet in height that prevented Louis from standing up straight. The tunnel stretched ahead into the darkness, curving gently to the right as it went. On either side were alcoves or cells, most of which appeared to contain nothing more than stone beds, although some had broken bowls and old empty wine bottles on the floor, indicating that they had been occupied at one point. Each had a kind of portcullis arrangement to close it off, the barred gate capable of being raised and lowered through a pulley and chain system outside each alcove. In nearly every case, the alcoves were unbarred, but we came to one on the right upon which the gate had been lowered. Inside, my flashlight picked out clothed human remains. The skull still retained some of its hair, and the clothing was relatively intact. The stench was foul from within.
“What is this place?” said Louis.
“Seems like they forgot they had a guest down here.”
Something rustled in the closed cell. A rat, I thought. It’s only a rat. It has to be. Whoever was lying in that cell was long dead. It was tattered skin and yellowed bone, nothing more.
And then the man inside moved on his stone cot. His fingernails dragged across the stone, his right leg stretched almost imperceptibly, and his head shifted slightly where it rested. The effort it took was clearly enormous. I could see every wasted muscle working on his desiccated arms, and every tendon straining in his face as he tried to speak. His features were buried deep in his skull, as though they were slowly being sucked inside. The eyes were like rotted fruits in the hollows of the sockets, barely visible behind his emaciated hand as he sought to shield himself from the light while simultaneously trying to see those that lay behind it.
Louis took a step back.
“How can he still be alive?” he said. He could not keep the shock from his voice. I had never heard him speak like that before.
Like the half-life of an isotope: that remained the only way I could fathom it. The process of dying, but with the inevitable end delayed beyond imagining. Perhaps, like Kittim, this unknown man was proof of that belief.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Leave him.”
I saw Louis raise his pistol. The action surprised me. He was not a man known for conventional mercies. I laid my hand on the barrel of the gun, forcing it gently down.
“No,” I said.
The being on the stone slab tried to speak. I could see the desperation in its eyes, and I almost felt something of Louis’s pity for it. I turned away, and heard Louis follow.
By now we were deep beneath the ground, and far from the cemetery. From the direction in which we were heading, I believed that we were somewhere between the ossuary and the site of the former monastery nearby. There were more cells here, many with the portcullises lowered, but I glanced only in one or two as I went by. Those who had been incarcerated in them were now clearly dead, their bones long separated. They probably made mistakes along the way, I thought. It was like the old witch trials: if the suspects died, they were innocent. If they survived, then they were guilty.
The heat grew more and more intense. The walls were hot to the touch, and our clothing became so burdensome that we were forced to shed our jackets and coats along the way. There was a rushing sound in my head. Threaded through it, I thought, I could discern words, except they were no longer fragments of an old incantation spoken in madness. These had purpose and intent. They were calling, urging.
There was light ahead of us. We saw a circular room, lined with open cells, and a trio of lanterns at its center. Beyond them stood the obese figure of Brightwell. He was working at a blank wall, trying to free a brick at the level of his head, using a crowbar. Beside him was the hooded, jacketed figure, its head lowered. Brightwell registered our presence first, because he turned suddenly, the crowbar still in his hands. I expected him to reach for a gun, but he did not. Instead, he seemed almost pleased. His mouth was disfigured, his lower lip crisscrossed with black stitches where Reid had bitten him during his final struggle.
“I knew,” he said. “I knew that you’d come.”
The figure to his right lowered its hood. I saw a woman’s gray hair hanging loose, then her face was exposed. In the lanternlight, Claudia Stern’s fine bone structure had taken on a thin, hungry aspect. Her skin was pale and dry, and when she opened her mouth to speak I thought that her teeth seemed longer than before, as though her gums were receding. There was a white mote in her right eye, previously hidden by some form of concealing lens. Brightwell handed the crowbar to her, but he made no attempt to move toward us or to threaten us in any way.
“Nearly done,” he said. “It’s good that you should be here for this.”
Claudia Stern inserted the crowbar into the gap Brightwell had made, and strained. I saw the stone shift in its place. She repositioned the bar, then pushed hard. The stone moved some thirty degrees, until it was perpendicular to the wall. In the gap revealed, I thought I saw something shine. With a final effort, she forced the stone away. It fell to the floor as she continued to work at the bricks, forcing them apart more easily now that the first breach had been made. I should have stopped her, but I did not. I realized that I, too, wanted to know what lay behind the wall. I wanted to see the Black Angel. A large square patch of silver was now clearly visible through the hole. I could pick out the shape of a rib, and the edge of what might have been an arm. The figure was rough and unfinished, with droplets of hardened silver fixed upon it like frozen tears.
Suddenly, as though responding to an unanticipated impulse, Claudia Stern dropped the crowbar and thrust her hand into the hole.
It took a moment for me to notice the temperature rising again, for it was already so hot in the chamber, but I began to feel my skin prickle and burn, as though I were standing unprotected in intense sunlight. I looked at my skin, almost expecting it to begin reddening as I watched. The voice in my head was louder now, a torrent of whispers like the rushing of water at a great fall, its substance unintelligible but its meaning clear. Close to where Stern was standing, liquid began to drip through holes in the mortar, sliding slowly down the walls like droplets of mercury. I could see them steaming, and I could smell the dust burning. Whatever lay behind that wall, it was now melting, the silver falling away to reveal whatever lay concealed within. Stern looked at Brightwell, and I could see the surprise on her face. This was clearly beyond her expectations. All of the preparations that they had made indicated that they had intended to transport the statue back to New York, not to have it melt around their feet. I heard a sound from behind the wall, like the beating of a wing, and it brought me back to where I was, reminding me of what I had to do.
I pointed my gun at Brightwell.
“Stop her.”
Brightwell didn’t move.
“You won’t use it,” he said. “We’ll come back.”
Beside me, Louis seemed to jerk his head. His face contorted, as though in pain, and he raised his left hand to his ear. Then I heard it too: a chorus of voices, their words raised in a cacophony of pleading, all coming from somewhere deep within Brightwell.
The silver drops had become a series of streams, seeping out through cracks in the walls. I thought I heard more movement behind the stones, but there was so much noise in my head that I could not be certain.
“You’re a sick, deluded man,” I said.
“You know it’s true,” he said. “You sense it in yourself.”
I shook my head.
“No, you’re wrong.”
“There is no salvation for you, or for any of us,” said Brightwell. “God deprived you of your wife, your child. Now He’s going to take a second woman away from you, and a second child. He doesn’t care. Do you think He would have allowed them to suffer as they did if they really mattered to Him, if anyone really mattered to Him? Why, then, would you believe in Him, and not in us? Why do you continue to have hope in Him?”
I struggled to find my voice. It seemed as though my vocal cords were burning.
“Because with you,” I said, “there is no hope at all.”
I sighted carefully along the barrel.
“You won’t kill me,” said Brightwell once more, but there was now doubt in his voice.
Suddenly, he moved. All at once he was everywhere, and nowhere. I heard his voice in my ear, felt his hands on my skin. His mouth opened, revealing those slightly blunted teeth. They were biting me, and my blood was pooling in his mouth as he tore into me.
I fired three times, and the confusion stopped. Brightwell’s left foot was shattered at the ankle, and there was a second wound below his knee. The third shot had gone astray, I thought, then I saw the spreading stain upon his belly. A gun appeared in Brightwell’s hand. He tried to raise it, but Louis was already on top of him, pushing it away.
I moved past them both, making for Claudia Stern. Her attention was entirely focused on the wall before her, mesmerized by what was taking place before her eyes. The metal was already cooling upon the ground around her feet, and there was no longer any silver to be seen through the gap in the wall. Instead, I saw a pair of black ribs encased by a thin layer of skin, the exposed patch slowly increasing in dimension around the area where her hand remained in contact. I grasped the woman’s shoulder and pulled her away from the wall, breaking her contact with whatever was concealed within. She screamed in rage, and her voice was echoed by something deep within the walls. Her fingers scraped at my face, and her feet kicked at my shins. I caught a flash of metal in her left hand just before the blade sliced across my chest, opening a long wound from my left side all the way up to my collarbone. I struck her hard in the face, using the base of my hand, and as she stumbled away I hit her again, forcing her back until she was at the entrance to one of the cells. She tried to slash at me with the knife, but this time I kicked out at her, and she fell onto the stones. I followed her in, and removed the knife from her hand, placing my foot against her wrist first so that she could not strike out at me. She made an attempt to scramble past me, but I kicked her again, and I felt something crack beneat my foot. She let out an animal sound and stopped moving.
I backed out of the cell. The silver had stopped bleeding from the walls, and the heat seemed to dissipate slightly. The streams upon the floor and wall were growing hard, and I could no longer hear any sounds, real or imagined, from the presence behind the stones. I went to where Brightwell lay. Louis had torn away the front of his shirt, exposing his mottled belly. The wound was bleeding badly, but he was still alive.
“He’ll survive, if we get him to a hospital,” said Louis.
“It’s your choice,” I said. “Alice was part of you.”
Louis took a step backward and lowered his gun.
“No,” he said. “I don’t understand this, but you do.”
Brightwell’s voice was calm, but his face was contorted with pain.
“If you kill me, I’ll find you,” he said to me. “I found you once, and I’ll find you again, however long it may take. I will be God to you. I will destroy everything that you love, and I will force you to watch as I tear it apart. And then you and I will descend to a dark place, and I will be with you there. There will be no salvation for you, no repentance, no hope.”
He took a long, rasping breath. I could still hear that strange cacophony of voices, but now its pitch had changed. There was an expectancy to it, a rising joy.
“No forgiveness,” he whispered. “Above all, no forgiveness.”
His blood was spreading across the floor. It followed the gaps in the flagstones, gradually seeping in geometric patterns toward the cell in which Stern lay. She was conscious now, but weak and disoriented. She stretched a hand toward Brightwell, and he caught the movement and looked to her.
I raised the gun.
“I will come for you,” said Brightwell.
“Yes,” she said. “I know you will.”
Brightwell coughed and scraped at the wound in his belly.
“I will come for them all,” he said.
I shot him in the center of the forehead, and he ceased to be. A final breath emerged from his body. I felt a coolness upon my face, and smelled salt and clean air as the great choir was silenced at last.
Claudia Stern was crawling across the floor, trying to resume contact with the figure that still stood trapped behind the wall. I moved to stop her, but now there were footsteps approaching from the tunnel behind us. Louis and I turned and prepared to face them.
Bartek appeared in the doorway. Angel was with him, looking a little uncertain. Five or six others followed, men and women, and I understood finally why no one had responded to the shot on the street, why the alarm had not been replaced, and how a last crucial fragment of the map had found its way from France to Sedlec.
“You knew all along,” I said. “You baited them, then you waited for them to come.”
Four of those who had accompanied Bartek stepped around us and surrounded Claudia Stern, dragging her back to the open cell.
“Martin revealed its secrets to me,” said Bartek. “He said that you’d be there at the end. He had a lot of faith in you.”
“I’m sorry. I heard what happened.”
“I will miss him,” said Bartek. “I think I lived vicariously through his pleasures.”
I heard the jangling of chains. Claudia Stern started to scream, but I did not look.
“What will you do with her?”
“They called it ‘walling’ in medieval times. A terrible way to die, but a worse way not to die, assuming she is what she believes herself to be.”
“And there’s only one way to find out.”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“But you won’t keep her here?”
“Everything will be moved, in time, and hidden once again. Sedlec has served its purpose.”
“It was a trap.”
“But the bait had to be real. They would sense it if the statue were not present. The pretence of its loss had to be maintained.”
Claudia Stern’s screams increased in intensity, then were suddenly silenced.
“Come,” said Bartek. “It’s time to leave.”
∗ ∗ ∗
We stood in the churchyard. Bartek knelt and brushed snow from a headstone, revealing a photograph of a middle-aged man in a suit.
“There are bodies,” I said.
Bartek smiled.
“This is an ossuary, in a churchyard,” he said. “We will have no trouble hiding them. Still, it’s unfortunate that Brightwell did not survive.”
“I made a choice.”
“Martin was afraid of him, you know. He was right to be. Did Brightwell say anything before he died?”
“He promised that he’d find me.”
Bartek placed his hand upon my right arm and squeezed it gently.
“Let them believe what they will believe. Martin told me something about you, before he died. He said that if any man had ever made recompense for his wrongs, no matter how terrible they were, it was you. Deserved or not, you’ve been punished enough. Don’t add to it by punishing yourself. Brightwell, or something like him, will always exist in this world; others too. In turn, there will always be men and women who are prepared to confront these things and all that they represent, but in time, you won’t be among them. You’ll be at rest, with a stone like this one above your head, and you’ll be reunited with the ones that you loved and who loved you in return.
“But remember: to be forgiven, you have to believe in the possibility of forgiveness. You have to ask for it, and it will be given. Do you understand?”
I nodded. My eyes were hot. I dredged up the words from my childhood, from dark confessionals inhabited by unseen priests and a God who was terrible in His mercy.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. . . .”
The words spilled out of me like a cancer given form, a torrent of sins and regrets purging themselves from my body. And in time, I heard two words in return, and Bartek’s face was close to mine as he whispered them in my ear.
“Te absolvo,” he said. “Do you hear me? You are absolved.”