Although the real family mansion had been burned to the ground by a New Orleans mob many years before, Pendergast had retained this virtual mansion within his memory ever since: an intellectual artifact, perfect down to the last detail; a storehouse in which he kept not only his own experiences and observations, but innumerable family secrets as well. Normally, entering into this palace of memory was a tranquilizing, calming experience: each drawer of each cabinet of each room held some past event, or some personal reflection on history or science, to be perused at leisure. Today, however, Pendergast felt a profound unease, and it was only with the greatest mental effort he was able to keep the mansion cohesive in his mind.
He crossed the foyer and mounted the stairs to the wide second-floor hallway. Hesitating only briefly at the landing, he moved down the tapestried corridor, the broad sweep of the rose-colored walls broken at intervals by marble niches or ancient gilt frames containing portraits in oils. The smell of the mansion now swept over him: a combination of old fabric and leather, furniture polish, his mother’s perfume, his father’s Latakia tobacco.
Near the center of this hallway lay the heavy oak door to his own room. But he did not proceed that far. Instead, he stopped at the door just before it: a door that, strangely, had been sealed in lead and covered with a sheet of hammered brass, its edges nailed into the surrounding door frame.
This was the room of his brother, Diogenes. Pendergast himself had mentally sealed this door years before, locking the room forever inside the memory palace. It was the one room into which he had promised himself never again to enter.
And yet—if Eli Glinn was right—he must enter it. There was no choice.
As Pendergast paused outside the door, hesitating, he became aware that his pulse and respiration were increasing at an alarming rate. The walls of the mansion around him flickered and glowed, growing brighter, then fading, like the filament of a lightbulb failing under too much current. He was losing his elaborate mental construct. He made a supreme effort to concentrate, to calm his mind, and managed to steady the image around him.
He had to move quickly: the memory crossing could shatter at any moment under the force of his own emotions. He could not maintain the necessary concentration indefinitely.
He willed a pry bar, chisel, and mallet to appear in his hands. He wedged the pry bar under the brass sheet, pulling it away from the door frame, moving around the four sides until he had pried it off. Dropping the bar, he took up the chisel and mallet and began hammering loose the soft lead that had been packed in the cracks between the door and the frame, digging and carving it out in chunks. He worked rapidly, trying to lose himself in the task, thinking of nothing but the job at hand.
Within minutes, curls of lead lay over the carpeting. Now the only impediment to what lay on the far side of the door was its heavy lock.
Pendergast stepped forward, tried the handle. Normally, he would have picked it with the set of tools he always carried with him. But there was no time even for this: any pause, however brief, might be fatal. He stepped back, raised his foot, aimed at a point just below the lock, and gave the door a savage kick. It flew back, slamming against the interior wall with a crash. Pendergast stood in the doorway, breathing heavily. The room of Diogenes, his brother, lay beyond.
And yet there was nothing visible. The mellow light of the hallway did not penetrate the infinite gloom. The doorway was a rectangle of blackness.
Pendergast tossed aside the chisel and mallet. A moment’s thought brought a powerful flashlight into his hand. He snapped on the light and pointed the beam into the gloom, which seemed to suck the very light out of the air.
Pendergast tried to take a step forward but found he could not will his limbs to move. He stood there, on the threshold, for what seemed like an eternity. The house began to wobble, the walls evaporating as if made of air, and he realized he was once again losing the memory palace. He knew if he lost it now, he’d never return. Ever.
It was only by a final act of supreme will—the most focused, draining, and difficult moment he had ever faced—that Pendergast forced himself over the threshold.
He stopped again just beyond, prematurely exhausted, playing the flashlight around, forcing the beam to lick ever farther into the darkness. It was not the room he expected to find. Instead, he was at the top of a narrow stairway of undressed stone, winding down into the living rock, twisting deeply into the earth.
At this sight, something dark stirred within Pendergast’s mind: a rough beast that had slumbered, undisturbed, for over thirty years. For a moment, he felt himself falter and his will fail. The walls trembled like a candle flame in the wind.
He recovered. He had no choice now but to go forward. Taking a fresh grip on the flashlight, he began to descend the worn, slippery steps of stone: deeper, ever deeper, into a maw of shame, regret—and infinite horror.
50
Pendergast descended the staircase, the smell of the sub-basement coming up to him: a cloying odor of damp, mold, iron rust, and death. The staircase ended in a dark tunnel. The mansion had one of the few belowground basements in New Orleans—created at great expense and labor by the monks who originally built the structure, and who had lined the walls with sheets of hammered lead and carefully fitted stone to make cellars for aging their wines and brandies.
The Pendergast family had converted it to another use entirely.
In his mind, Pendergast made his way down the tunnel, which opened onto a broad, low open space, the irregular floor part earth, part stone, with a groined ceiling. The walls were encrusted with niter, and dim marble crypts, elaborately carved in Victorian and Edwardian style, filled the expanse, separated from one another by narrow walkways of brick.
Suddenly he became aware of a presence in the room: a small shadow. Then he heard the shadow speak with a seven-year-old voice: “Are you sure you want to keep going?”
With another shock, Pendergast realized there was a second figure in the dim space: taller, more slender, with white-blond hair. He felt chilled to the bone—it was himself, nine years old. He heard his own smooth, childish voice speak: “You’re not afraid?”
“No. Of course not,” came the small, defiant return—the voice of his brother, Diogenes.
“Well, then.”
Pendergast watched as the two dim figures made their way through the necropolis, candles in hand, the taller one leading the way.
He felt a rising dread. He didn’t remember this at all—and yet he knew something fearful was about to happen.
The fair-haired figure began examining the carved fronts of the tombs, reading the Latin inscriptions in a high, clear voice. They had both taken to Latin with great enthusiasm. Diogenes, Pendergast remembered, had always been the better Latin student; his teacher thought him a genius.
“Here’s an odd one,” said the older boy. “Take a look, Diogenes.”
The smaller figure crept up and read:
ERASMUS LONGCHAMPS PENDERGAST
1840 - 1932
De mortüs aut bene aut nihil
“Do you recognize the line?”
“Horace?” said the younger figure. “ ‘Of the dead’… hmmm… ‘speak well or say nothing.’ ”
After a silence, the older boy said, with a touch of condescension, “Bravo, little brother.”
“I wonder,” asked Diogenes, “what it was about his life he didn’t want talked about?”
Pendergast remembered his youthful rivalry with his brother over Latin… one in which he was eventually left far behind.
They moved on to an elaborate double crypt, a sarcophagus in the Roman style topped with a man and woman in marble, both laid out in death with hands crossed on their breasts.
“Louisa de Nemours Prendergast. Henri Prendergast. Nemo nisi mors,” read the older boy. “Let’s see… That must be ‘Till death do us part.’ ”
The smaller boy had already moved to another tombstone. Crouching, he read, “Multa ferunt anni venientes commoda secu
m, Multa recedentes adimiunt.” He looked up. “Well, Aloysius, what do you make of that?”
A silence followed, and then the response came, bravely but a little uncertain. “ ‘Many years come to make us comfortable, many receding years diminish us.’ ”
The translation was greeted with a sarcastic snicker. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Of course it does.”
“No, it doesn’t. ‘Many receding years diminish us’? That’s nonsense. I think it means something like ‘The years, as they come, bring many comforts. As they recede, they…’ ” He paused. “Adimiunt?”
“Just what I said: diminish,” said the older boy.
“ ‘As they recede, they diminish us,’ ” finished Diogenes. “In other words, when you’re young, the years bring good. But as you grow old, the years take it all away again.”
“That makes no more sense than mine,” said Aloysius, annoyance in his voice. He moved on toward the back of the necropolis, down another narrow row of crypts, reading more names and inscriptions. At the end of the cul-de-sac, he paused at a marble door set into the back wall, a rusted metal grate over it.
“Look at this tomb,” he said.
Diogenes came up close, peered at it with his candle. “Where’s the inscription?”
“There isn’t one. But it’s a crypt. It’s got to be a door.” Aloysius reached up, gave the grate a pull. Nothing. He pushed at it, pulled it, and then picked up a stray fragment of marble and began tapping around its edges. “Maybe it’s empty.”
“Maybe it’s meant for us,” the younger boy said, a ghoulish gleam appearing in his eyes.
“It’s hollow back there.” Aloysius redoubled his tapping and gave the grate another tug—and then suddenly, with a grinding sound, it opened. The two stood there, frightened.
“Oh, the stink!” said Diogenes, backing up and holding his nose.
And now Pendergast, deep within his mental construct, smelled it, too—an indescribable odor, foul, like a rotten, fungus-covered liver. He swallowed as the walls of the memory palace wavered, then came back into solidity.
Aloysius shone his candle into the freshly exposed space. It wasn’t a crypt at all, but rather a large storage room, set into the rear of the sub-basement. The flickering light played off an array of strange contraptions made of brass, wood, and glass.
“What’s in there?” Diogenes said, creeping back up behind his brother.
“See for yourself.”
Diogenes peered in. “What are they?”
“Machines,” the older brother said positively, as if he knew.
“Are you going in?”
“Naturally.” Aloysius stepped through the doorway and turned. “Aren’t you coming?”
“I guess so.”
Pendergast, from the shadows, watched them go in.
The two boys stood in the room. The lead walls were streaked with whitish oxides. The space was packed floor-to-ceiling with contraptions: boxes painted with grimacing faces; old hats, ropes, and moth-eaten scarves; rusted chains and brass rings; cabinets, mirrors, capes, and wands. Cobwebs and thick layers of dust draped everything. At one end, propped up sideways, stood a sign, painted in garish colors and embellished with curlicues, a pair of pointing hands, and other nineteenth-century American carnival flourishes.
Pendergast stood in the shadows of his own memory, filled with the helpless foreboding of nightmare, watching the scene unfold. At first the two boys explored cautiously, their candlelight throwing elongated shadows among the boxes and piles of bizarre devices.
“Do you know what all this is?” whispered Aloysius.
“What?”
“We’ve found all the stuff from Great-Grand-Uncle Comstock’s magic show.”
“Who’s Great-Grand-Uncle Comstock?”
“Only the most famous magician in the history of the world. He trained Houdini himself.”
Aloysius touched a cabinet, ran his hand down to a knob, and cautiously pulled out a drawer: it contained a pair of manacles. He opened another drawer, which seemed to stick, and then it gave with a sudden pop! A pair of mice shot out of the drawer and scurried off.
Aloysius moved on to the next item, his younger brother following close behind. It was a coffin-like box standing upright, with a screaming man painted on the lid, numerous bloody holes piercing his body. He opened it with a groan of rusty hinges to reveal an interior studded with wrought-iron spikes.
“That looks more like torture than magic,” said Diogenes.
“There’s dried blood on those spikes.”
Diogenes peered closely, fear temporarily overcome by a strange eagerness. Then he stepped back again. “That’s just paint.”
“Are you sure?”
“I know dried blood when I see it.”
Aloysius moved on. “Look at that.” He pointed to an object in the far corner. It was a huge box, much larger than the others, rising from floor to ceiling, the size of a small room itself. It was garishly painted in red and gold with a grinning demon’s face on the front. Flanking the demon were odd things—a hand, a bloodshot eye, a finger—floating against the crimson background almost like severed body parts loosed in a tide of blood. Arched over a door cut into the side was a legend painted in gold and black:
“If it were my show,” said Aloysius, “I would have given it a much grander name, something more like ‘The Gates of the Inferno.’ ‘The Doorway to Hell’ sounds boring.” He turned to Diogenes. “Your turn to go first.”
“How do you figure that?”
“I went first last time.”
“Then you can go first again.”
“No,” said Aloysius. “I don’t care to.” He put his hand on the door and gave Diogenes a nudge with his elbow.
“Don’t open it. Something might happen.”
Aloysius opened it to reveal a dim, stifling interior, lined with what looked like black velvet. A brass ladder stood just inside, disappearing up through a hatch in a low false ceiling set into the box.
“I could dare you to go in there,” Aloysius went on, “but I’m not going to. I don’t believe in childish games. If you want to go in, go in.”
“Why don’t you go in?”
“I freely admit it to you: I’m nervous.”
With a creeping feeling of shame, Pendergast could see his knack for psychological persuasion, already developed as a boy, coming into play. He wanted to see what was in there—but he wanted Diogenes to go in first.
“You’re scared?” Diogenes asked.
“That’s right. So the only way we’re ever going to know what’s in there is if you go in first. I’ll be right behind you, I promise.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Scared?”
“No.” The quaver in his high-pitched voice said otherwise.
Pendergast reflected bitterly that Diogenes, who was only seven, hadn’t yet learned that truth is the safest lie.
“Then what’s stopping you?”
“I… I don’t feel like it.”
Aloysius snickered dryly. “I admitted I was scared. If you’re scared, say so, and we’ll go back upstairs and forget all about it.”
“I’m not scared. It’s just some stupid fun house.”
Pendergast watched, horrified, as his childish doppelganger reached over and grasped Diogenes by the shoulders. “Go ahead, then.”
“Don’t touch me!”
Firmly and gently, Aloysius urged him through the little doorway of the box and crowded in behind him, blocking his retreat. “As you said, it’s just some stupid fun house.”
“I don’t want to stay in here.”
They were both inside the first compartment in the box, jammed up against each other. Clearly, the fun house was meant to admit one adult at a time, not two half-grown children.
“Get going, brave Diogenes. I’ll be right behind.”
Wordlessly, Diogenes began to climb the little brass ladder, and Aloysius followed.
Pender
gast watched them disappear as the hinged box door closed automatically behind them. His heart was beating so hard in his chest he thought it might explode at any moment. The walls of his memory construct flickered and shook. It was almost unbearable.
But he could not stop now. Something terrible was about to happen, but what exactly he still hadn’t the slightest idea. He had not yet excavated that deeply into old, repressed memories. He had to keep going.
In his mind, he opened the box door and climbed the brass ladder himself, passing into a crawl space above, which turned horizontally and gave onto a low chamber above the false ceiling but below the top of the box. The two boys were there ahead of him, Diogenes in the lead. He was crawling toward a circular porthole in the far wall of the crawl space. Diogenes hesitated at the entrance to the porthole.
“Go on!” Aloysius urged.
The little boy glanced back once at his brother, a strange expression in his eyes. Then he crawled through the porthole and disappeared.
Moving toward the porthole himself, Aloysius paused, peering round with the candle, apparently noticing for the first time that the walls seemed to be covered with photographs shellacked to the wood.
“Aren’t you coming?” came a small, scared, angry voice from the darkness beyond. “You promised you would stay right behind me.”
Pendergast, watching, felt himself begin to shake uncontrollably.
“Yes, yes. I’m coming.”
The young Aloysius crept up to the round, dark portal, looked inside—but went no farther.
“Hey! Where are you?” came the muffled cry from the darkness beyond. Then suddenly: “What’s happening? What’s this?” A shrill boyish scream cut through the little chamber like a scalpel. Ahead, through the porthole, Pendergast saw a light appear; saw the floor tip; saw Diogenes slide to the far end of a small room and tumble into a lighted pit below. There was a sudden low sound, like the rumble of an animal—and dreadful, unspeakable images appeared within the pit—and then with a swift thunk! the porthole snapped shut, blocking his view.
Pendergast [07] The Book of the Dead Page 29