Darkness Rising (The East Salem Trilogy)

by Lis Wiehl

  “But that’s where the enigma begins,” Villanegre said, “because it’s difficult to imagine what kind of church might have commissioned this one. One cannot say with certainty whom Bosch was working for when he created his extraordinary vision. He left no written record of his thoughts regarding the painting. The work must speak for itself. But what does it say?”

  He explained that altarpieces were meant to be read from left to right. In The Millennium, the left panel depicted the Garden of Eden, the middle panel represented life on Earth, and the right-hand panel depicted hell. Villanegre directed the audience to the center of the left panel, where God presented Eve to Adam.

  “Adam has an astonished expression, as one might expect,” Villanegre said, using his laser pointer to circle Adam’s face. “And yet even in paradise, things have begun to go wrong. We see the snake, familiar to readers of Genesis, but also a two-legged dog . . . a three-headed salamander . . . here a duck with teeth . . . and here a duck reading a book. Given that Eden is where man was born, we may consider these to prefigure knowledge of birth defects . . .”

  “Or genetic disorders,” Dani whispered to Tommy.

  “The center panel teems with Adam-and-Eve-like figures, cavorting in twos and threes and fours, engaged in a variety of sexualized behaviors.” Villanegre continued to use the laser to highlight people on the screen behind him. “Here . . . here . . . and here . . . We note that in each group, one man has some sort of oversized piece of fruit on his head, symbolic of organic or natural wisdom. The ones with fruit on their heads are the instructors. But nothing in the painting is simple. You’ll see that the creatures in the panel are hybrids, blending animal, vegetable, and mineral. The architecture is also hybrid, where man-made constructions look like caves and boats are half fish. All is in flux, midtransformation, with opposites in union.

  “The question over the centuries,” Villanegre continued, “has been whether the artist is condoning or condemning these behaviors. Is it a portrait of paradise on earth, where man has returned to an antelapsarian state of grace? Or is it a scathing depiction of human folly, where man, exalting himself above God, lives purely for the pleasures of the flesh? Ecstatic utopian vision, or nightmarish phantasmagoria? In the hellscape, filling the right-most panel, we see how God will punish those committing the seven deadly sins, with gluttony represented by this figure here, condemned to an eternity of dyspepsia . . . and sloth . . . and avarice . . .”

  “Wait here,” Tommy whispered. “I should be back in ten or fifteen minutes.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Dani said.

  “Bad idea. If they catch me, I’m just another dumb jock with a sense of entitlement who’s had too much to drink. It’s the 98 percent of all jocks who give the other 2 percent a bad name.”

  Dani smiled, even though she’d come to understand something about Tommy Gunderson: he made jokes when he was afraid.

  “I’ll be back in ten. Fifteen tops. If I’m not . . .”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. Pull the fire alarm or something. And then go home. One of us has to make it out of here. Don’t come looking for me. Promise?”

  “Promise,” she said, then watched as he sidled toward the door.

  “The key,” Villanegre was saying, “may be deciphering this figure in the lower right-hand corner of the center panel.” The laser pointer circled a man who appeared to be emerging from a cave. “This area, we know, is where artists of the period commonly inserted cameos of their patrons. One of the more compelling theories comes from the Swiss historian Viktor Friedrichs, who makes a strong case that the painting was commissioned by a pagan cult led by the Duke of Ghent, a patron of the arts who was later put to death for heresy. The provenance of the painting is not known, but it is believed to have hung in the duke’s private chapel.”

  Villanegre let his laser pointer pause on a vaguely defined man beside the duke. Dani tried to concentrate on the lecture, which she found fascinating despite the odd, even sinister circumstances of the painting’s arrival. She tapped the screen on her phone, went to her apps and then to her stopwatch application. She’d give Tommy fifteen minutes, and then she was going to look for him despite her promise.

  “Even more mysterious is this fellow here,” Villanegre said, “lurking in the shadows. He appears to be whispering something in the other man’s ear, serving as either a friendly advisor or, according to Friedrichs, as his Rasputin, his dark priest.”

  Dani studied the projection of the painting. They’d come to look for anything out of the ordinary, and Heironymus Bosch’s painting was as far from “ordinary” as anything she could think of. A celebration of evil, a nightmarish vision of psychotic content, and clearly, in any day or age, the product of a profoundly disturbed imagination. This was a “pedagogic tool”?

  Was that why it had been brought here? To be used, once more, to teach?

  Tommy held up his cell phone to the man at the door to indicate he had an important call to make. “My dad isn’t well,” he whispered. That much was the truth. He closed the door noiselessly behind him and stepped out onto the patio, where he pretended to make a call, aware that the man at the door was watching him through the window. He looked up at the sky, then held his phone out at arm’s length, pantomiming that he was unable to find a spot with adequate cell tower coverage. It was a common problem in East Salem, where no one wanted a cell tower in his own backyard. Holding his phone out in front of him, he wandered away from the museum and into the darkness. When he glanced behind him, he saw he was no longer being observed.

  He moved quickly now, crossing the quad to the main building, where he found a door at the west end. The door was locked, opening only with a key card. Part of Tommy’s training to become a private detective included private lessons in lock picking with an ex-con he’d met through his talent agency, but the lessons hadn’t covered electronic card locks. He moved to the rear of the building, staying in the shadows. The lights were out in the library wing, the stacks lined up inside like black tombstones. The back door accessing the rear parking lot was locked as well. The windows seemed formidable. The basement window wells had iron bars over them. The only way in was through the front door.

  Tommy was prepared to say he was looking for the men’s room, but discovered on entering the foyer and the domed great hall that no one was around. He listened, thinking there would at least be a switchboard operator or a night watchman afoot. His luck held. Everyone seemed to be at the museum. The soft rubber soles of his black cross-trainers, which he was wearing only because at the time he was dressing he couldn’t find his one pair of dress shoes, made his footsteps silent on the parquet floor.

  He walked quickly down the hall, past the library, and made his way to the school psychologist’s office. He listened. Nothing. The door to the waiting room was unlocked. When he closed the door behind him, the windowless room was plunged into total darkness.

  Tommy tapped on his phone for his flashlight app.

  He crossed to Ghieri’s office door. This one was locked, the mechanism again controlled with a magnetic key card. Breaking either the lock or the door or both was not an option, assuming it was even possible.

  He draped the listening device around his neck to free his hands, opened his phone’s slide-out keyboard, and went to the Google search box, where he typed How can you pick an electronic keycard lock? He’d just reached the results screen when the lights came on.

  Adolf Ghieri stood by the door, his hand on the light switch.

  “Oh, that’s where the switch was,” Tommy said. “I couldn’t find it. I’m glad you’re here—”

  Dr. Ghieri blocked the exit. “What are you doing?” he said coldly.

  “As I was about to explain,” Tommy said, slurring his words, “I was looking for a computer. I can’t get Wi-Fi, so I gotta hardwire to a computer to download a file from my accountant because apparently the underwriters are having some sort of conniption fit that has to be straighte
ned out before the IPO next month . . .”

  “What are you doing?” Ghieri repeated.

  “As I was saying,” Tommy said, smiling as he held up the USB jack to the listening device draped around his neck, “I didn’t think you’d mind, but . . . you guys really need to get a Wi-Fi setup if you—”

  Ghieri stepped forward and grabbed Tommy by the throat. His grip was like iron as his hand closed around Tommy’s windpipe and lifted him off the ground.

  Tommy weighed 220 pounds, but the man raised him as if he were holding up a dandelion to blow away the seeds. Tommy tried in vain to pry the smaller man’s hand from his throat.

  Ghieri grabbed the wire around Tommy’s neck, examined it for a moment, then snapped it as easily as breaking a dry spaghetti noodle. He pulled Tommy closer until their faces were inches apart. His breath smelled sulfurous and putrid. His eyes were penetrating and blank, windows not into a soul but into the absence of one.

  Tommy struggled to free himself.

  Ghieri heard something.

  Startled, he spun around, lifting Tommy even higher. Pinning him against the wall with one hand, Ghieri listened. Tommy couldn’t breathe.

  Then Ghieri simply wasn’t there anymore.

  Tommy dropped to the floor.

  He rubbed his throat and gasped desperately for air, coughing. He managed to rise to one knee.

  Something picked him up and gently lifted him to his feet.

  He turned to see a burly man in a tuxedo, with a close-cropped beard and long hair pulled back in a ponytail. He wore an earring in his left ear and had a tattoo of a cross on the back of his right hand. Tommy had last seen this man the night he’d gone to Bull’s Rock Hill hoping to find out why Julie Leonard had been murdered—only that night the man had been dressed in biker attire. The “biker” had revealed himself to be an angel and said his name was Charlie.

  “Are you all right?” Charlie asked.

  “I’m okay.” Tommy rubbed his throat. He looked around. “Where did he go?”

  “That’s not a question I can answer, but he’ll be back. I thought you could use some help.”

  Tommy saw a small red object, marked by a white cross, in Charlie’s hand. “From a Swiss Army knife?”

  “It has multiple attachments.”

  Standing this close to the angel, Tommy couldn’t think of what to say. The air had a kind of excitement to it, an ozone smell, as if lightning had just struck, or would any second.

  “I know,” Tommy said. “I have one.”

  “Can it do this?” the angel said. He opened a small blade and pointed it toward the ceiling. As Tommy watched, it transformed into a large sword, radiating a bright white light that forced Tommy to shield his eyes with his hand.

  The light became flame, swirling toward the ceiling in beautiful, flickering tongues. Then, just as suddenly as it appeared, the flames were extinguished. The light went out and the blade shrank back into the angel’s hand.

  “No,” Tommy said. “Mine can’t do that.”

  He knew somehow that what the angel had chosen to show him was only a partial display, a hint at the full extent of his power.

  There were a hundred questions Tommy wanted to ask, but this wasn’t the time. He had to get back to Dani. Knowing her, she’d be looking for him. The bug he’d hoped to plant was useless, but he shoved the pieces into his pocket lest someone find them and take a closer look.

  “What should I do if he comes back?”

  “When a demon is in physical form, it feels pain,” the angel said. “You can’t kill them—humans can’t—but you can drive them off. They operate in the shadows. The pure light of God is harsh to them. It burns them. And they don’t like to draw attention because they know we might come to defeat them. I have to go. But you’re on the right track.”

  Tommy blinked, and the angel was gone.

  Next time, he told himself, don’t blink.

  4.

  Dani was shocked when she read a text message from Carl Thorstein telling her Abbie Gardener had passed away in the night. Carl was a friend of Tommy’s, a theologian and scholar who’d counseled Tommy after that tragic accident convinced him to do something other than play football. Carl often visited residents at High Ridge Manor, the nursing home where Abbie had been a resident. According to Carl, Abbie had been alive during a routine bed check at ten and dead at the next check at two.

  Dani put a kettle of water on the stove for tea, then texted Tommy the news. He instantly texted her back: I HEARD. INTERESTING TIMING.

  She’d been thinking the same thing. She typed back: FIGURED HE TOLD YOU. NATURAL CAUSES, RIGHT? CARL SAID IN HER SLEEP.

  She’d barely set the phone back down when Tommy’s response popped onto her screen: IN THE NIGHT. BIG DIFFERENCE.

  Dani reread Carl’s text and realized Tommy was right. She sent him one more: I’LL MAKE SOME CALLS.

  Dani had questioned Tommy’s run-in with Dr. Ghieri because she was skeptical by nature. When he’d told her Ghieri had lifted him off the ground, she reasoned that Ghieri was a strong man temporarily assisted by a jolt of adrenaline. She thought it more likely the guidance counselor had “vanished” simply by running from the room while Tommy was still on the floor, recovering from being choked. Charlie wasn’t an angel; he was simply a guest at the opening who had appeared to help Tommy because he’d heard the scuffle. She didn’t believe in prophecies or premonitions—she knew that if you had a thousand premonitions a day, you’d only pay attention to the one that came true and forget the other nine hundred and ninety-nine.

  But when Tommy told her Charlie had produced a flaming sword and provided a demonstration of its power, she did not doubt him but sought corroboration. After he dropped her off at home, she’d researched the notion of angels wielding swords and had found plenty of references in the Bible and in noncanonical texts.

  “You should be asking questions,” Tommy had said. “God wants you to ask questions—he wants you to be you, and to use all your scientific training. Test your hypotheses and don’t take things at face value. That’s what you do, and you’re good at it.”

  Following Tommy’s line of thinking, however, required a leap of faith. Dani had made the leap when she realized science couldn’t explain the things that were happening. On the night Julie Leonard was killed, Dani had begun having troubling dreams that woke her at exactly 2:13 night after night. Then Tommy reported having the exact same dream she’d had, an apocalyptic nightmare where millions of people were fleeing a flooded city and jumping to their deaths from tall white buildings. Then an angel had spoken to her—in a dream, but she knew it was real. He’d said, “Go ahead and jump—I’m here to catch you if you need me.” The angel had spoken to Tommy too, and told him to look in the book of Revelation, chapter 2, verse 13: “I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is; and you hold fast My name . . . My witness, My faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells.”

  Tommy’s conclusion was that God wanted them to be together. He’d sent them an angel to tell them Satan was at work somewhere in the town where they lived, East Salem, and God wanted them to do something about it. Dani couldn’t argue.

  She and Tommy had decided to do what each did best, a kind of division of labor. God had brought them back together and given them an assignment, a part to play in a spiritual war, the breadth and scope of which were beyond their knowing. They agreed that Dani would approach things scientifically, using her medical training and psychiatric expertise, while Tommy would pursue the more spiritual lines of inquiry.

  She sat down at her kitchen table to sip her tea and think.

  Tommy was right about the timing. Abbie Gardener died the very night the Bosch exhibition opened at St. Adrian’s. After all the strange things that had happened in East Salem recently, Dani was inclined to believe that if something seemed suspicious or evil, it probably was.

  Why that night? For over a century, before succumbing to Alzheimer’s, Abbie had lived on a 150-
acre farm that included half a mile of frontage on Lake Atticus. Abbie drove her own car, worked in the town archives, and stayed active until she was 100, declining an invitation from the mayor for a town-wide birthday party. Her son, George, brought her to High Ridge Manor at the age of 101, when he’d realized she was failing and he could no longer keep her from wandering off the property. If she’d lived so long, why die the very night the painting came to town? What was the connection?

  Dani went to her study and looked on the shelves where she kept books she’d treasured as a child. Among them she found what she was looking for, a slender volume entitled The Witches of East Salem by Abigail Gardener. She leafed through it but found nothing remarkable save the title page, where the author had written during a visit to Dani’s fourth-grade class, You are special.

  Tommy and Dani still wondered if Abbie was somehow connected to the murder on Bull’s Rock Hill. The night Julie Leonard died, Abbie had wandered away from the nursing home and managed to set off the alarm on Tommy’s property at two in the morning. Tommy found her by his pond, where she insisted on showing him a dead frog she held in her hands. “These are the first,” she’d told Tommy. “You’ll be the last.” She’d seemed incoherent, rambling about luck’s fairy, they thought, until Carl Thorstein realized she’d been speaking Latin. “Luck’s fairy” was in fact lux ferre, which translated as “light-bringer,” the Latin root for the name Lucifer.

  It placed her in proximity to the killing, if nothing else.

  Tommy had met with Abbie in the nursing home a few days later, hoping she’d seen something the night Julie died. He’d had Carl record the interview, which hadn’t gone well—a few semi-cogent responses, and then the old woman transitioned into a psychogenic fugue.

  Dani looked out the window of her study. The morning sky was dark gray and heavy with the promise of rain. With the leaves all down on an overcast November day, the town of East Salem took on a sepulchral tone, the massive homes and mansions suddenly visible through the naked trees, and they looked gloomy and lonely, isolated from each other. Once the Christmas lights went up in December, things would be cheerier, assuming the town could shake the additional pall cast by the recent tragedies. People were still on edge. Parents hugged their kids just a little harder, tucked them in just a little tighter, checked to make sure the doors and windows were all locked before going to bed.