The Fraternity of the Stone

by David Morrell

  What was the tunnel used for? Where did it go? He stooped as he rushed, protecting his head from other pipes. But as he bumped past a row of insulated ducts against the left wall, he guessed that it must be a maintenance tunnel. Sure. The water and heating systems must be routed through here, he thought, making it easy for the seminary’s work crew to make repairs. If so, the tunnel must lead to the seminary building. With a goal at last in mind, he felt better. But something was wrong. The sounds behind him had stopped.

  Why?

  Ahead of him, he struck a wall. His nose stung.

  He’d been wrong—the tunnel was a trap! And now his pursuer waited back there.

  Drew clutched the Mauser, turned, and squinted uselessly toward the pitch-black gauntlet through which he’d have to return. He felt along the wall to his left, inching back the way he’d come. But as his shoes touched a chunk of broken concrete on the floor, the sound of his own footsteps changed. He stopped and frowned. Easing forward again, he heard the scuff of his shoes return to the narrow echo he’d been used to. He tried an experiment, took three steps back, and the echo became more full again.

  Understanding, he groped toward the wall across from him, and as he expected, where the wall should have been, his hand touched nothing. His foot struck concrete, though. He raised the foot, and now it, like his hand, touched nothing. A little higher, concrete again. A stairwell! He scurried up.

  The stairway turned. He reached a wooden door, turned the knob, and pulled it. Nothing happened. He had a sudden intuition, pushed instead of pulled, and exhaled as the door swung open. In case someone was hiding behind it, he shoved it against a wall, then peered out, facing a dimly lit hall. The tunnel had led him to the seminary building.

  Seeing no one, he lunged to the left. He reached a large room: sofas, chairs, tables, a television. Moonlight gleamed through windows, revealing the lawn in front of the building. Beyond the lawn would be the forest and the mountains. Safety.

  But he had to leave before a seminarian found him or his pursuers intercepted him. Passing the room, he entered a lobby, seeing a door on his left that led outside. But as he moved in that direction, he heard the rustle of cloth behind him. Pivoting, he aimed the Mauser and froze.

  “Oh, Jesus, thank you.”

  Drew’s scalp tingled.

  “I knew you’d come.” From the dark, the voice sounded desperate, ancient, brittle. “Deliver me. You know how much I’ve suffered.” The voice began to sob. “They won’t believe that your mother sings to me each night.”

  From a shadowy corner, an apparition appeared. An old stooped man. His hair and beard were white. He wore a white nightgown.

  Drew’s stomach felt chilled. The old man clutched a staff. His feet were bare. His eyes gleamed insanely.

  Dear God, Drew thought, I’m not in the seminary building. I passed that staircase. I went farther. I’m in the rest home. This is the old priest that Hal said he’d brought here. This is where they keep—

  The old man knelt, pressing his hands together, peering up in rapture. “But thank you, Jesus.” The old man wept. “You’ll make them understand. You’ll tell them I wasn’t lying about your blessed mother. I’ve waited so long for you to deliver me.”

  Drew stumbled back in horror. The old man gasped, and Drew thought that he might be having a heart attack. But he was only inhaling, beginning to sing.

  “No, please,” Drew said.

  The brittle voice cracked in its frenzy. “Holy Go-od, we praise Thy name. Lord almighty, we wor-ship, ad-ore Thee.”

  Drew rushed toward the door that led outside.

  Upstairs, a man’s voice scolded. “Father Lawrence, have you snuck out of your room again? You know you’re not supposed to sing at night. You’ll wake—”

  “A miracle!” the old man yelled. “A miracle!” He burst into song again. “In-fi-nite, Thy va-aaa-st do-main.”

  11

  Drew charged outside, breathing the cold air, feeling it sting his nostrils. He raced down concrete steps, sprinting across the lawn through the dark, the frost-hardened grass crunching under his shoes.

  To his left, he saw that all the lights were on in the seminary building. The seminarians crowded outside, staring toward the retreat house farther to the left. Some ran toward it; others had already reached it, scrambling inside.

  The retreat house itself was dark. But abruptly it began to brighten, first floor, second floor, third floor, every window gleaming in rapid succession.

  Why? Drew wondered as he ran. Do they think I’m still in the building, or are they looking for somebody else? The priest who chased me, the rest of the death team?

  Shouts filled the night. He sprinted harder as other lights came on, directly behind him, from the rest home. Their sudden blaze stretched far enough for him to see the shadow he cast ahead of him and the thick gasps of frost exploding from his mouth.

  Someone yelled, so near that Drew turned. A tall man in a bathrobe stood at the rest home’s open door, pointing in Drew’s direction. He scrambled down the steps, but his stride was awkward. He lost a slipper, stumbled, and fell.

  Still, his shouts had attracted attention. A group of seminarians sprinted toward the fallen man in front of the rest home. Another group raced after Drew.

  He thought he was seeing things. A chunk of grass erupted ahead of him, but he didn’t hear the shot. It might have been muffled by his hoarse rapid breathing and the frantic yells behind him. Or the weapon might have had a silencer. All he knew was that, as he reached the edge of the light coming from the rest home, another chunk flew up ahead of him. He veered, beginning to zigzag.

  Now he heard, not the next shot itself, but the whump! as another bullet tore up grass. The angle was such that the sniper had to be ahead of him. On the wooded slope.

  And I’m in the middle, Drew thought, hearing the seminarians rushing after him. Did they know about the sniper? Would they stop when they realized?

  But instead the sniper stopped, and with a final burst of speed, Drew lunged through bushes into the greater darkness of the forest.

  His chest felt tight. Bent low, he shifted past trees, through undergrowth, over a fallen trunk. With a disconcerting sense of déjà vu, he recalled his escape from the monastery. But the parallel wasn’t exact. Six nights ago, the marksman on the hill hadn’t known that Drew was out of the building, stalking him. And Drew had not been chased. Now he couldn’t take the time to stalk the sniper without his pursuers catching him; and if he concentrated on eluding his pursuers, he might head into the sniper’s sights.

  “It’s going down to thirty tonight,” Hal had said.

  Drew wasn’t dressed for that. The lightweight black pants, cotton sweatshirt, and unlined jacket that Hal had brought him were useless against the cold. Already, despite the burning in his lungs, Drew shivered, his sweat absorbing the forest’s chill. He could have easily survived in the insulating wool of the robe that he’d worn in the monastery. But what he now wore retained the cold instead of protecting him against it. If he spent all night in the woods, he would risk being overcome by hypothermia. And that took only three hours before it killed.

  The Mauser’s cold metal numbed his hand. He snuck past a deadfall, creeping deeper into the forest. Behind him, bodies charged through bushes. Branches snapped.

  Would the sniper decide that the situation was out of control and back away? But even then, Drew realized, the seminarians won’t stop chasing me.

  What I need is a car.

  The Cadillac that Hal had used to bring him here. It was parked somewhere. From his second-floor retreat house window, Drew had watched Hal drive it around to the back of the seminary building. There had to be a garage in back. Hadn’t Hal insisted that the seminarians weren’t supposed to see it?

  Avoiding the threats behind and ahead, Drew veered to the right. He’d been angling in that direction already, but his eventual plan had been to head deeper into the woods. Until now, however, it hadn’t occurred to him to
move in a semicircle, doubling back toward the seminary. After all, what would have been the point? Crossing the open lawn, he’d again have been a target. And what would have been his goal? He wanted to get away from here, not hide as he’d done at the monastery. But now?

  12

  He stepped from the trees to the edge of the lawn. Behind, he heard his pursuers thrashing deeper into the forest. Before him, lights continued to gleam in the rest home, seminary, and retreat house. Figures still milled in front of the buildings.

  Those figures would see him, of course, if he crossed the lawn from here, so he decided to follow the edge of the forest. The grass was silent, and the dark of the woods behind him hid his silhouette. He moved toward the area behind the buildings, risked exposing himself, and sprinted toward the rear of the seminary.

  No one raised an alarm.

  His suspicion proved correct. In a section behind the seminary—the lights were much less bright back here—he found a cinder-block structure with five garage doors. The first two he tested were locked. But the third budged when he tugged up on the handle.

  He raised it slowly, trying to make as little sound as possible. The glimmer of moonlight showed him the bishop’s black Cadillac. Drew assumed that Hal had left this garage door unlocked in case he had to leave quickly. He opened the driver’s door, and the inside lights came on. Normally he would have turned them off, afraid of making himself a target. But now he so appreciated the lights that he propped the door open, lying on his back, peering beneath the dashboard, finding the wires he needed. He pressed two together. They bypassed the Cadillac’s ignition and started the engine.

  It purred. He scrambled behind the steering wheel and slammed the door. Again, as in the van that he’d driven from Vermont, the dashboard confused him. He wasn’t sure how to turn on the headlights. Not that it mattered. The last thing he wanted now was headlights. He pressed his foot on the accelerator and rocketed the Cadillac from the garage.

  The car gained speed so rapidly that, before he could turn, he left the driveway and jounced over a concrete curb, his head snapping back. He swung the steering wheel and skidded sideways across the grass. A clatter behind him suggested that the impact against the curb had dislodged a hubcap. He kept turning sharply left and felt the Cadillac’s wheels gouging furrows in the lawn. Then he straightened the car, came back down off the grass and the curb to the driveway, and drove along the side wall of the seminary. The lane would curve to the left in front of the seminary, he anticipated, take him past the retreat house, and finally curve again, this time to the right, leading him through the woods beyond the lawn, toward the metal gate and the public road.

  But he wasn’t about to try to pass the figures in front of those buildings. Instead, as he left the side of the seminary, he aimed straight ahead, struck yet another curb, and fishtailed across the grass until the tires gripped, gaining traction, tearing up more lawn.

  He sped across it. His window was down. He heard shouts. Figures bolted toward him from the buildings. Ahead, he saw utter blackness. With his headlights off, he didn’t know where to steer to reach the continuation of the lane. For all he knew, he’d soon crash into the forest. He tapped his brakes, then realized that his taillights would flash, so that even without headlights, he’d be making himself a target.

  Damned if he did, and damned if he didn’t.

  Why not, then?

  He pawed at knobs and levers and, with seconds to spare, turned on the headlights as the forest’s black wall loomed before him. Wrenching the steering wheel to the left, he scraped past a tree and heard the Cadillac’s right rear fender crunch. Then he saw the road and aimed down its wooden tunnel. For a moment, he felt relieved. But at once his scalp froze—ahead he saw the priest from the chapel, the one with the dark hair, mustache, and Slavic features. The one with the .45 semiautomatic pistol.

  The priest stood with his legs apart, facing Drew’s onrushing car, blocking the road. The Cadillac’s headlights glinted off the priest’s white collar. They flashed off the disturbing red ring on his left hand, the hand he used to raise the pistol.

  Drew pressed the accelerator, feeling his stomach surge against his spine, aiming the Cadillac toward the priest. The trees pressed narrowly on each side.

  Instead of shooting, the priest frantically waved his hands, signaling Drew to stop.

  No way, Drew thought. He steadied the steering wheel and pressed even harder on the accelerator.

  The priest kept waving his hands, his gestures urgent, his body larger and larger through the windshield.

  Two seconds would have made the difference.

  But the priest turned sideways, darting back to the left, aiming. Drew’s ears were stunned by the .45’s roar. However, the priest hadn’t shot toward the Cadillac. He had shot above it, beyond the car’s roof.

  An automatic rifle rattled fiercely from the forest on Drew’s right. Bullets smashed against the Cadillac. Windows ruptured, chunks of glass showering Drew.

  Desperate, he tried to steer at the same time he shielded his eyes from the flying glass. He sensed the priest falling back toward the woods. The road curved, narrowing. Trees scraped the car. A sudden jolt in the rear suggested that the bumper had snagged on something. As his headlights gleamed down a straightaway, the Cadillac like a rocket again, Drew saw the high stone wall on either side. The metal gate was before him.

  But the gate was shut. Another automatic weapon rattled behind him. He strengthened his grip on the steering wheel.

  Thirty feet.

  Twenty.

  Ten.

  13

  The impact threw him forward against the steering wheel. Groaning from the pain in his ribs, he heard a sharp blat from the horn and rebounded against the seat.

  The front of the Cadillac buckled. A headlight shattered. Glass arched, glinting in the glare from the other headlight. The chrome rim around the headlight frisbeed through the air. A chunk of metal starred the Cadillac’s windshield. Drew fought to control the broken steering wheel. To his right and left, the metal gate separated. Bent, the sections walloped against the stone wall on either side.

  Though he stomped the brakes, the Cadillac shot across the road. A ditch opened up before him, and the car flew across the gap. Dipping, it hit a stretch of grass, skidded ahead, veered sideways, and jerked to a stop. Drew stared. Another ten feet, and the Cadillac would have struck a jumble of trees and rocks. His chest ached, making him wince when he breathed.

  He shook his head to clear it. Have to get away. The headlight on the left still gleamed, though the force of hitting the gate had deflected its aim toward the right. Steam hissed from the radiator. The engine still worked, though its purr had become a clatter.

  He tried the accelerator. The car responded sluggishly, crossing the stretch of grass. The suspension had been destroyed, jostling him every time he hit a bump. He reached a stream, turned left to avoid it, and found a shallow part of the ditch. A little encouragement, and the car went down, then up to the road. He increased speed.

  But the right front wheel had a wobble now. The speedometer—digital like the clock—showed zero. The engine wheezed, and the radiator hissed. He didn’t know how far or fast he could go. If the engine overheated, it might be ruined.

  That struck him as funny. Ruined? The bishop’s Cadillac was a total wreck as it was. He couldn’t cause it much more damage.

  But the car amazed him. It kept going. And that too struck him as funny. Takes a licking, keeps on ticking.

  He glanced toward his rear-view mirror, wanting to check for pursuing headlights. But he couldn’t find the mirror. Squinting down, he saw it on the floor.

  Nothing was funny after that.

  He turned left at the first intersection, then right at the next, five miles farther on, anxious to lose his pursuers in a maze of mountain roads.

  His chest tightened, pinching him. The broken steering wheel felt awkward in his hand. When he next turned right, sensing the looming mou
ntains around him, he made out a road sign that told him a town called Lenox was twelve miles in the opposite direction.

  Lenox? The name nudged his memory. The little red house. He’d never been there, but he knew that the town and that house were famous.

  Hawthorne once had lived there. Hal hadn’t lied when he’d said that they’d driven to western Massachusetts. I’m in the Berkshire Hills.

  And Pittsfield ought to be close, where Melville had lived. Melville, who’d often ridden down to visit Hawthorne, wanting so much to be Hawthorne’s friend that he’d written Moby Dick for him.

  There were ghosts around him. Drew’s reverie ended as the pain in his chest made him cough. The engine was overheating. He heard it straining. The radiator no longer hissed.

  Because it was empty.

  The car began to slow. A piece of grille fell off, clanging on the road. He chugged past a dark country store, lurched into a sleepy town, and as the engine coughed, dying, he glided to a stop in front of a dingy house whose lawn was badly in need of mowing.

  Though the house was dark, a corner streetlight showed motorcycles propped against the side and front of the listing porch. He left the Cadillac and soon discovered that none of the motorcycles was chained to anything.

  How trustful. They probably figure that no one would dare to fool with them. Well, I’m in the mood.