by Dean Koontz
The figure in the stairwell had been faceless. And worse than faceless. The light spilling into the hood had found nothing there to reflect it, only a terrible black emptiness.
CHAPTER 23
My immediate reaction to having seen Death himself was to get something to eat.
I had skipped breakfast. If Death had taken me before I’d had something tasty for lunch, I would have been really, really angry with myself.
Besides, I couldn’t function properly on an empty stomach. My thinking was probably clouded by plunging blood sugar. Had I eaten breakfast, perhaps Jacob would have made more sense to me.
The convent kitchen is large and institutional. Nevertheless, it’s a cozy space, most likely because it is always saturated with mouthwatering aromas.
When I entered, the air was redolent of cinnamon, brown sugar, baked pork chops simmering with sliced apples, and a host of other delicious smells that made me weak in the knees.
The eight sisters on the culinary detail, all with shining faces and smiles, a few with flour smudges on their cheeks, some with their tunic sleeves rolled back a turn or two, all wearing blue aprons over their white habits, were busy at many tasks. Two were singing, and their lilting voices made the most of a charming melody.
I felt as if I had wandered into an old movie and that Julie Andrews, as a nun, might sweep into the room, singing to a sweet little church mouse perched on the back of her hand.
When I asked Sister Regina Marie if I could make a sandwich, she insisted on preparing it for me. Wielding a knife with a dexterity and pleasure almost unseemly for a nun, she sliced two slabs of bread from a plump loaf, carved a stack of thin slices of beef from a cold roast, lathered one piece of bread with mustard, the other with mayonnaise. She assembled beef, Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, chopped olives, and bread into a teetering marvel, pressed it flatter with one hand, quartered it, plated it, added a pickle, and presented it to me in the time it took me to wash my hands at the pot sink.
The kitchen offers stools here and there at counters, where you can have a cup of coffee or eat without being underfoot. I sought one of these—and came across Rodion Romanovich.
The bearish Russian was working at a long counter on which stood ten sheet cakes in long pans. He was icing them.
Near him on the granite counter lay the volume about poisons and famous poisoners in history. I noticed a bookmark inserted at about page fifty.
When he saw me, he glowered and indicated a stool near him.
Because I’m an amiable fellow and loath to insult anyone, I find it awkward to decline an invitation, even if it comes from a possibly homicidal Russian with too much curiosity about my reasons for being a guest of the abbey.
“How is your spiritual revitalization proceeding?” Romanovich asked.
“Slow but sure.”
“Since we do not have cactuses here in the Sierra, Mr. Thomas, what will you be shooting?”
“Not all fry cooks meditate to gunfire, sir.” I took a bite of the sandwich. Fabulous. “Some prefer to bludgeon things.”
With his attention devoted to the application of icing to the first of the ten cakes, he said, “I myself find that baking calms the mind and allows for contemplation.”
“So you made the cakes, not just the icing?”
“That is correct. This is my best recipe … orange-and-almond cake with dark-chocolate frosting.”
“Sounds delicious. So to date, how many people have you killed with it?”
“I long ago lost count, Mr. Thomas. But they all died happy.”
Sister Regina Marie brought a glass of Coca-Cola for me, and I thanked her, and she said she had added two drops of vanilla to the Coke because she knew I preferred it that way.
When the sister departed, Romanovich said, “You are universally liked.”
“No, not really, sir. They’re nuns. They have to be nice to everyone.”
Romanovich’s brow seemed to include a hydraulic mechanism that allowed it to beetle farther over his deep-set eyes when his mood darkened. “I am usually suspicious of people who are universally liked.”
“In addition to being an imposing figure,” I said, “you’re surprisingly solemn for a Hoosier.”
“I am a Russian by birth. We are sometimes a solemn people.”
“I keep forgetting your Russian background. You’ve lost so much of your accent, people might think you’re Jamaican.”
“You may be surprised that I have never been mistaken for one.”
He finished frosting the first cake, slid it aside, and pulled another pan in front of him.
I said, “You do know what a Hoosier is, don’t you?”
“A Hoosier is a person who is a native of or an inhabitant of the state of Indiana.”
“I’ll bet the definition reads that way word for word in the dictionary.”
He said nothing. He just frosted.
“Since you’re a native Russian and not currently an inhabitant of Indiana, you’re not at the moment really a Hoosier.”
“I am an expatriate Hoosier, Mr. Thomas. When in time I return to Indianapolis, I will once more be a full and complete Hoosier.”
“Once a Hoosier, always a Hoosier.”
“That is correct.”
The pickle had a nice crunch. I wondered if Romanovich had added a few drops of anything lethal to the brine in the pickle jar. Well, too late. I took another bite of the dill.
“Indianapolis,” I said, “has a robust public library system.”
“Yes, it does.”
“As well as eight universities or colleges with libraries of their own.”
Without looking up from the cake, he said, “You are in your stocking feet, Mr. Thomas.”
“The better to sneak up on people. With all those libraries, there must be a lot of jobs for librarians in Indianapolis.”
“The competition for our services is positively cut-throat. If you wear zippered rubber boots and enter by the mud room at the back of the convent, off the kitchen, you make less mess for the sisters.”
“I was mortified at the mess I made, sir. I’m afraid I didn’t have the foresight to bring a pair of zippered rubber boots.”
“How peculiar. You strike me as a young man who is usually prepared for anything.”
“Not really, sir. Mostly I make it up as I go along. So at which of those many Indianapolis libraries do you work?”
“The Indiana State Library opposite the Capitol, at one-forty North Senate Avenue. The facility houses over thirty-four thousand volumes about Indiana or by Indiana writers. The library and the genealogy department are open Monday through Friday, eight o’clock until four-thirty, eight-thirty until four on Saturday. Closed Sunday, as well as state and federal holidays. Tours are available by appointment.”
“That’s exactly right, sir.”
“Of course.”
“The third Saturday in May,” I said, “at the Shelby County Fairgrounds—I think that’s the most exciting time of the year in Indianapolis. Don’t you agree, sir?”
“No, I do not agree. The third Saturday in May is the Shelby County Blue River Dulcimer Festival. If you think local and national dulcimer players giving concerts and workshops is exciting, instead of merely charming, then you are an even more peculiar young man than I have heretofore thought.”
I shut up for a while and finished my sandwich.
As I was licking my fingers, Rodion Romanovich said, “You do know what a dulcimer is, do you not, Mr. Thomas?”
“A dulcimer,” I said, “is a trapezoidal zither with metal strings that are struck with light hammers.”
He seemed amused, in spite of his dour expression. “I will wager the definition reads that way word for word in the dictionary.”
I said nothing, just licked the rest of my fingers.
“Mr. Thomas, did you know that in an experiment with a human observer, subatomic particles behave differently from the way they behave when the experiment is unobserved while i
n progress and the results are examined, instead, only after the fact?”
“Sure. Everybody knows that.”
He raised one bushy eyebrow. “Everybody, you say. Well, then you realize what this signifies.”
I said, “At least on a subatomic level, human will can in part shape reality.”
Romanovich gave me a look that I would have liked to capture in a snapshot.
I said, “But what does any of this have to do with cake?”
“Quantum theory tells us, Mr. Thomas, that every point in the universe is intimately connected to every other point, regardless of apparent distance. In some mysterious way, any point on a planet in a distant galaxy is as close to me as you are.”
“No offense, but I don’t really feel that close to you, sir.”
“This means that information or objects, or even people, should be able to move instantly between here and New York City, or indeed between here and that planet in another galaxy.”
“What about between here and Indianapolis?”
“That, too.”
“Wow.”
“We just do not yet understand the quantum structure of reality sufficiently to achieve such miracles.”
“Most of us can’t figure how to program a video recorder, so we probably have a long way to go on this here-to-another-galaxy thing.”
He finished frosting the second cake. “Quantum theory gives us reason to believe that on a deep structural level, every point in the universe is in some ineffable way the same point. You have a smear of mayonnaise at the corner of your mouth.”
I found it with a finger, licked the finger. “Thank you, sir.”
“The interconnectedness of every point in the universe is so complete that if an enormous flock of birds bursts into flight from a marsh in Spain, the disturbance of the air caused by their wings will contribute to weather changes in Los Angeles. And, yes, Mr. Thomas, in Indianapolis, as well.”
With a sigh, I said, “I still can’t figure out what this has to do with cake.”
“Nor can I,” said Romanovich. “It has to do not with cake but with you and me.”
I puzzled over that statement. When I met his utterly unreadable eyes, I felt as if they were taking me apart on a subatomic level.
Concerned that something was smeared at the other corner of my mouth, I wiped with a finger, found neither mayonnaise nor mustard.
“Well,” I said, “I’m stumped again.”
“Did God bring you here, Mr. Thomas?”
I shrugged. “He didn’t stop me from coming.”
“I believe God brought me here,” Romanovich said. “Whether God brought you here or not is of profound interest to me.”
“I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Satan who brought me here,” I assured him. “The guy who drove me was an old friend, and he doesn’t have horns.”
I got off the stool, reached past the cake pans, and picked up the book that he had taken from the library.
“This isn’t about poisons and famous poisoners,” I said.
The true title of the book did not reassure me—The Blade of the Assassin: The Role of Daggers, Dirks, and Stilettos in the Deaths of Kings and Clergymen.
“I have a wide-ranging interest in history,” said Romanovich.
The color of the binding cloth appeared to be identical to that of the book that he had been holding in the library. I had no doubt this was the same volume.
“Would you like a piece of cake?” he asked.
Putting the book down, I said, “Maybe later.”
“There may not be any left later. Everyone loves my orange-and-almond cake.”
“I get hives from almonds,” I claimed, and reminded myself to report this whopper to Sister Angela, to prove that, in spite of what she believed, I could be as despicable a liar as the next guy.
I carried my empty glass and bare plate to the main sink and began to rinse them.
Sister Regina Marie appeared as if from an Arabian lamp. “I’ll wash them, Oddie.”
As she attacked the dish with a soapy sponge, I said, “So Mr. Romanovich has baked quite a lot of sheet cakes for the lunch dessert.”
“For dinner,” she said. “They smell so good that I’m afraid they’re decadent.”
“He doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who would enjoy a culinary pastime.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t strike you that way,” she agreed, “but he loves to bake. And he’s very talented.”
“You mean you’ve eaten his desserts before?”
“Many times. You have, too.”
“I don’t believe so.”
“The lemon-syrup cake with coconut icing last week. That was by Mr. Romanovich. And the week before, the polenta cake with almonds and pistachios.”
I said, “Oh.”
“And surely you remember the banana-and-lime cake with the icing made from lime-juice reduction.”
I nodded. “Surely. Yes, I remember. Delicious.”
A sudden great tolling of bells shook through the old abbey, as though Rodion Romanovich had arranged for this clangorous performance to mock me for being so gullible.
The bells were rung for a variety of services in the new abbey, but seldom here, and never at this hour.
Frowning, Sister Regina Marie looked up at the ceiling, and then in the direction of the convent church and bell tower. “Oh, dear. Do you think Brother Constantine is back?”
Brother Constantine, the dead monk, the infamous suicide who lingers stubbornly in this world.
“Excuse me, Sister,” I said, and I hurried out of the kitchen, digging in a pocket of my jeans for my universal key.
CHAPTER 24
After the construction of the new abbey, the church in the former abbey had not been deconsecrated. Twice every day, a priest came downhill to say Mass; half the sisters attended the first service, half the second.
The late Brother Constantine almost exclusively haunted the new abbey and the new church, though he twice made memorable appearances, sans bells, at the school. He had hanged himself in the new bell tower, and when previously his restless spirit had raised a tolling, the clamor had been in that same structure.
Heeding my warning to Sister Angela, I did not go out into the storm, but followed a ground-floor hallway into the former novitiate wing, and entered the sacristy by the back door.
As loud as the bells had seemed before, they were twice that loud when I stepped out of the sacristy into the church. The vaulted ceiling reverberated not with a celebratory tintinnabulation, not with a glory-of-Christmas sound, not with the joyful ringing that follows a wedding. This was an angry tumult of bronze clappers, a pandemoniacal bong-and-clang.
By the murky stormlight that penetrated the stained-glass windows, I stepped down through the choir stalls. I passed through the sanctuary gate and hurried along the center aisle of the nave, sliding a little in my stocking feet.
My haste did not mean that I looked forward with pleasure to another encounter with the spirit of Brother Constantine. He is about as much fun as strep throat.
Because this noisy manifestation was occurring here instead of in the tower where he had killed himself, it might be in some way related to the violence that was bearing down on the children of St. Bart’s School. I had learned virtually nothing about that impending event thus far, and I hoped that Brother Constantine would have a clue or two for me.
In the narthex, I flicked a light switch, turned right, and came to the bell-tower door, which was kept locked out of concern that one of the more physically able children might slip out of supervision and wander this far. Were a child to get to the top of the tower, he would be at risk of falling out of the belfry or down the stairs.
As I turned my key in the lock, I warned myself that I was as susceptible to a fatal plunge as was a wandering child. I didn’t mind dying—and being reunited with Stormy, whether in Heaven or in the unknown great adventure she calls “service”—but not until the threat to the children had been ide
ntified and met.
If I failed this time, if some were spared but others died, as at the mall during the shooting spree, I would have no place to flee that could promise more solitude and peace than a mountain monastery. And you already know what a crock that promise turned out to be.
The spiral staircase in the tower was not heated. The rubberized treads felt cold under my stocking feet, but they were not slippery.
Here the bedlam of bells caused the walls to resonate like a drum membrane responding to peals of thunder. As I climbed, I slid my hand along the curved wall, and the plaster hummed under my palm.
By the time I reached the top of the stairs, my teeth discretely vibrated like thirty-two tuning forks. The hairs in my nose tickled, and my ears ached. I could feel the boom of the bells in my bones.
This was an auditory experience for which every thrashed-out heavy-metal rhapsodist had been searching all his life: tuned-bronze walls of sound crashing down in deafening avalanches.
I stepped into the belfry, where the air was freezing.
Before me was not a three-bell carillon like the one at the new abbey. This tower was wider, the belfry more spacious than the one in the building upslope. In earlier decades, the monks clearly had taken more exuberant pleasure in their tolling, for they had constructed a two-level, five-bell carillon, and the bells were enormous, as well.
No ropes or crankwheels were required to swing these bronze behemoths. Brother Constantine rode them as if he were a rodeo cowboy leaping from one back to another among a herd of bucking bulls.
His restless spirit, energized by frustration and fury, had become a raging poltergeist. An immaterial entity, he had no weight or leverage with which to move the heavy bells, but from him throbbed concentric waves of power as invisible to other people as was the dead monk himself, though visible to me.
As these pulses washed through the belfry, the suspended bronze forms swung wildly. The immense clappers hammered out a more violent knelling than their makers had intended or imagined possible.