“They were also known as the Order of the Golden City, if I’m not mistaken,” John added as they made their way toward two heavily armed figures who gripped their automatic rifles tightly as they approached.
“Very good,” Professor Booth said, glancing at John with a raised eyebrow and a nod, before acknowledging the guards in front of them. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. This is the esteemed John Fogg. He will be accompanying me down into the library today.”
The guards did not say a word as they coldly eyed John. Then they stepped aside, allowing him and the professor to pass.
Though badly damaged, the interior of the once holy place still held a certain presence and majesty. John took it all in, attempting to file away every detail of the impressive structure.
“An earthquake a little over a year ago caused the back end to crumble,” Booth explained.
“Was this before or after it was decided to knock it down to make way for a luxury resort?” John asked.
“Actually before,” the professor said with a chuckle. “Nobody wants a broken monastery, especially after the amount of money Mr. Anastos tossed around to the local politicians to acquire it. The earthquake helped to speed up the process a bit, which resulted in . . .” He waved toward a section of stone corridor that still retained part of a ceiling. “The demolition crew found the sepulcher, mummified remains and all, behind a section of wall that had crumbled with the force of the quake.”
The corridor seemed to head underground; lights had been strung along the ceiling to illuminate the way. Finally John saw where the corridor wall had been breached, a burial chamber beyond it. Inside the chamber, the walls were honeycombed with tombs carved into the stone where the Brothers of Heaven made their final resting places.
“The workers were pretty freaked out by this, and a team from the local university was called out to take a look.”
John stepped into the chamber and stopped, surrounded by the remains of the dead. But his eyes ignored all that as he searched for something else.
Something that had brought him to this place filled with the potential for hope.
“Have you found it yet?” the professor asked. “The entrance to the secret chambers below?”
John looked to the man whose bearded face was grinning from ear to her, his eyes twinkling in the harsh lights strung across the ceiling.
“You’re killing me here,” John said as the burly man laughed.
He looked about the chamber, his eyes slowly taking in every inch of it. Looking to the stone floor, he saw that it was cracked, partially raised in some areas.
“A result of the quake?” John asked, pointing to a particular section of floor.
The professor nodded.
John moved farther into the chamber, making his way toward a raised stone base upon which the tightly wrapped remains of one of the monks lay.
“The abbot?” John said, pointing to the body.
“The most holy of the brotherhood,” the professor confirmed.
John loomed above the enshrouded corpse, studying every detail of it. “What secrets do you keep?” he whispered to the withered remains.
The floor beneath the stone seemed strangely crumbled, the accumulation of dust and dirt pushed away. John looked down and slid his foot over the broken floor. He then looked up to see that the professor was staring at him intently.
Believing he was on the right path, John placed his hands upon the corners of the stone altar and gave it a push. Nothing happened at first, but then he planted his feet and applied a bit more force and— The stone platform slid to the left, exposing an opening in the floor and high stone steps that led down into the darkness of the earth.
“That is awesome,” John said, eyes attempting to penetrate the darkness.
“We actually found another less dramatic way down that was caused by the quake, but I figured you’d appreciate this.”
“You are so right,” John said, taking the phone from his pocket and turning on the flashlight feature. “May I?” he asked.
“Please,” the professor said, motioning for him to enter.
Carefully John descended, feeling the temperature dropping considerably the deeper he got. The last step ended in a large, circular chamber, with multiple doorways, and over each of the doorways was a symbol.
A symbol that caused the hair on the back of his neck to prickle with anticipation.
“Do you know what this means?” John asked as he slowly walked toward one of the passages, his eyes riveted to the symbol above it. He held up his phone to better illuminate it. “What these mean?”
The sudden roar of a motor practically made him leap from his skin as bulbs strung around the room came to life, flooding the chamber with light. John turned to see that the professor setting down the plastic container of gas for the generator.
“I believe I do, but I was hoping that you would be able to shed some more light on the topic.” Professor Booth walked over to stand beside him. “What do you know about the Demonists?”
John studied the drawings about the doorways. They depicted a monstrous version of some demonic entity—who many believed was a version of the devil himself—trapped inside the confines of a cage like structure, clawed hands closed tightly around the bars of its prison.
“Probably not much more than you,” he began. “A mysterious brotherhood of holy men who combated the spread of evil in the world with their vast knowledge of the supernatural. Many in fact don’t believe that they actually existed, seeing as evidence like this is nearly impossible to come by.”
“And if you think this is impressive,” the professor said, ushering John through the center doorway into an even larger space.
The room was enormous, and John couldn’t even begin to think of how it had been created. It was as if the large space had been gouged from solid rock. Everywhere his eyes looked was something that took his breath away. He recognized objects haphazardly scattered about the room: objects he had read about in his extensive research of the arcane, items of power that had likely been collected by the brotherhood as they traversed the globe.
“What do you think?” Professor Booth asked.
“I think this is one of the most historic discoveries ever been made,” John said, unable to hide the awe in his tone.
“Do you think this actually belonged to them . . . to the Demonists?”
John couldn’t stop looking around. “I do.”
“But why here?” the professor asked. “Why hidden away beneath this monastery?”
“Perhaps they believed that the items they gathered would be safe here,” John suggested. “Unnoticed.”
“But what makes this place more special than any other?”
“Didn’t you say it was the sole purpose of the monks who lived here to make their residence the holiest place on the planet for God’s return?” John asked.
The professor nodded.
“This is the heart of it, then . . . the heart of Heaven,” John said, still looking around. “Where better to store items that could potentially be used for evil?”
“You do have a point,” Huntington agreed thoughtfully.
John stood in the center of the chamber, imagining the great brotherhood of holy men as they traversed the globe finding these objects of potential evil, and returning with them here, to be cleansed of their evil.
Cleansed of their evil, the words echoed in his skull, each reverberation driving its meaning home to him.
John looked about the room as if for the first time.
“A library,” he said aloud, still searching. “Is there a library?”
The professor laughed as he walked over to a concave section of wall where an ancient shelf stood, still holding some lesser forms of danger. “I was wondering when you were going to get around to asking,” he said. He then placed both hands upon the ancient stone to the right of the dilapidated shelf and pushed.
The shelf swung outward with barely a sound, revealing another da
rkened passage.
The professor looked to him and beckoned with two fingers as he went through first. John could barely contain himself, rushing toward the darkness.
But wasn’t that what he had done most of his life? Drawn toward the black of the world, attempting to drive it back to make room for the light? He liked to think it so.
Another generator rumbled to life, filling the room with a weak, artificial light that temporarily caused the blackness to recede.
John stood in the entryway, breathless. This room—this chamber— was even larger than the storeroom they had just left. But where the other room had held items of potential evil—baubles, bones, accursed blades, and the accoutrements of black worship—this room held items of even greater power.
This room held the answers to questions long hidden from the world.
The library of the Demonists was where their true power existed.
“This is incredible,” John said breathlessly. As far back as he could see, there were shelves, and on those shelves were heavy, leatherbound books. Stacks of rolled scrolls and parchment littered the tops of long tables between the shelves.
All of them, every book, scroll, and piece of paper, demanding to be read, the knowledge contained there brought into the light.
The tiny flame of hope that he’d nurtured at the beginning of his journey began to grow. To burn. He could feel its heat, starving to be more, desperate to be fed, the potential knowledge here quite possibly enabling him to help those afflicted with the most horrific of curses.
He thought of his wife, lying in a bed, swollen with evil, and realized that the answers he sought could be somewhere in this vast library—mere feet, or even inches, from his fingertips.
“Have they been cataloged?” he asked, eyes tracing the leather bindings as he passed the shelves.
“It’s been started,” Booth said as he followed.
“Do you have a list that I might see?” John asked, moving down the makeshift aisles, searching.
He reached an area at the back of the library chamber where the thick wooden shelves had been arranged in a circle. John walked to the center and saw that they were all empty. It was strange to see open space where everywhere else he looked there were volumes of every conceivable thickness.
“Where?” he asked, saying no more as he imagined what wasn’t there.
Booth chuckled, coming to join him in the center. “Mr. Anastos knows you better than I would have imagined,” the professor said.
John looked at him, confused.
“He said that this would be the area you’d be drawn to.”
“What was here?” John asked, imagining the ghostly apparitions of books on the shelves. Books that were now denied to him. “What books were they?”
“Books of exorcism,” Professor Booth said. “Volume after volume, chronicling the Demonist Brotherhood’s battle with the diabolical across the world, as well as their methods.”
The flames of hope inside John surged. “I have to see them,” he said, attempting to keep his heartbeat steady, trying to stay calm.
“Mr. Anastos thought as much. He had all the volumes taken to his home.”
John waited, unsure of what was to follow. He had to see those books, he had to study and learn their ancient words of power.
Booth abruptly turned and started from the area.
“Wait,” John called out. “I need to . . .”
The professor stopped and removed a cell phone from his pocket. “He wants you to call him,” the professor said, waving the phone. “We’ll have better reception above.”
John hated to leave, but the answers that he sought in the dusty, ancient chambers below the holy place were no longer there.
He stood just outside the ruins, watching Booth speak softly into his phone. After what seemed like an interminable amount of time, the professor turned and offered the phone to John without a word.
John took it and brought it to his ear. “Hello?”
There was a pause and then a voice.
“John Fogg?”
“Yes.”
“Cyril Anastos.”
“Yes, Mr. Anastos. What can I do for you?”
“I believe it’s what I can do for you, John. I have some old books I think you’d like to see.”
“I think you do.”
John imagined the wealthy man smiling on the other side of the call, wielding his power over him.
“Would eight o’clock be good?” the man asked.
“For what?” John questioned, suddenly not sure about where this was going. He knew where he would like it to go, but . . . “For dinner, of course. You will come to my home, and we will con verse about the darkness, and things that go bump in the night, and then . . .”
“And then?”
“I will let you see my precious books.”
John did not respond, hating for anybody to have power over him, but . . .
“Is it a date?” Anastos asked.
He continued to wait, weighing his options, but the image of his wife bound to her hospital bed was enough to sway him. “It’s a date,” John finally agreed.
And ended the call.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The princess bed was far too small, but it was the only place where Joyce McKellan could grab any semblance of precious sleep.
Her husband, Bob, slept down the hall in their own room. He called it sleeping, but when she awakened, before slipping back down into the embrace of something more akin to unconsciousness brought on by exhaustion, she could hear him crying out.
Screaming their daughter’s name.
In the morning, before the sun even began to think about rising in the sky, they would both get up—leaving their nighttime places— and silently walk to the stairs, where they would descend to the first floor and begin their wait for another day.
That was how it had been for the last nine days.
Since Rebecca had been taken.
They did not speak as they went about their business, one of them preparing the first pot of coffee for the day while the other checked their phones for messages just in case they might have missed a call. They barely even made eye contact. Grief was all that they could experience— were allowed to experience.
Over and over again Joyce recalled the day when Rebecca went missing. One moment she was there, watching television, and then she was gone.
Joyce’s mind raced with the infinite possibilities of what could have happened. Had she left the house for some reason? Had someone, somehow, come into the house and taken her? Joyce found her mind drifting to the memory of a movie that she had seen on cable as a child, where a little girl had been taken into another world—another dimension—filled with angry ghosts.
Right then she would have taken that insane answer to the question of what had happened to her daughter. At least it was more than what they had now.
Now all they knew was that their daughter had been there and then suddenly wasn’t anymore.
Joyce sensed movement alongside her and watched as the steaming cup of coffee was placed beside her on the little table cluttered with other dirty mugs. Bob shuffled to his chair opposite the couch where she sat, and dropped into the chair, cell phone and portable landline lying in his lap.
That was where they would stay, drinking coffee.
And waiting.
Joyce looked to the clock on the cable box, calculating the number of hours before Agent Isabel would call. She called them every day with an update on the investigation. Joyce thought of the other parents with children who had recently gone missing. Agent Isabel believed that they were all somehow connected.
How many other kids had disappeared? She had to think for a moment to remember the number. Six. Six other children had disappeared from their homes without a trace.
Was it awful that she didn’t care about the other children? That the only child she cared about was her Rebecca? That she would let all those other children stay missing if it meant her d
aughter could come home to her alive?
Yes, it was awful, but it was also the truth.
She picked up her mug, not in the least bit concerned that her hand was shaking and coffee was spilling over the rim to stain the cream-colored carpet. She sipped the scalding liquid, enjoying the sensation of feeling something other than grief for only an instant before thinking of Rebecca again. Her eyes again went to the cable box to check the time. It was ten minutes later than the last time she had looked, but she went through the process of calculating how long it would be before Agent Isabel called anyway.
Her husband began to sob and she looked at him sitting in his chair, staring off into space. She considered going to him, consoling him with some of her own strength but worried that if she did such a thing she might not have the power to deal with her own misery. She hoped that he would be okay as she continued to drink her coffee, waiting for the phone to ring.
Waiting.
Joyce found that she often slipped into a strange, fugue-like state, a weird place between being awake and asleep where time seemed to pass much more quickly. She actually enjoyed when that would happen, when she slipped away to where she could remember the happier times. She was almost in that state when a sound snapped her cruelly from it.
She immediately looked at her husband.
Bob had lifted the house phone to his ear, but the look of confusion on his face told Joyce that the phone had not rung. He looked at her when the sound came again.
Joyce stood up suddenly, her half-filled cup of coffee spilling onto the floor of the living room as the realization of what she and her husband were hearing became clear.
It was the doorbell.
The doorbell. At that hour? What did it mean? What could it mean?
“Oh God,” she heard Bob say. He sounded as if he was going to be sick. He was standing as well, but not moving, as if frozen to that spot in front of his chair.
She was enraged. How dare he stand there, afraid to go to the door? What if it was something important? What if it was about Rebecca?
The Demonists Page 8