Nightingale, Sing

by Karsten Knight

  I followed the smell back across the lawn, until I found the culprit, still smoking in the grass: the butt of a cigar. My father had always loved smoking these with my godfather after work, one of his many filthy habits, so I recognized the scent. My initial thought was that Nox must have lit up in his backyard before he headed out.

  But then I noticed the balcony protruding from the manor’s second floor. I’d been so fixated on the ground level that I’d ignored it on my first pass. I could picture Nox wandering out of his study, puffing a lit cigar beneath his teeth like he had the whole world wrapped around his finger.

  When I gazed up at the glass balcony doors leading into the house, I noticed another encouraging detail: one of them had been left ajar.

  A smile crossed my lips. “You careless bastard,” I whispered. Building a castle meant jack shit if you couldn’t remember to close your patio doors.

  I took off at a run toward the wall, as though I were about to crash right through it. At the last second, I found a toehold in the mortar between the rocks. I kicked off with all my might, extending my arms up.

  Before gravity could catch up with me, my fingers wrapped around the balcony’s edge, so that I dangled over the grass below. It took upper-body strength I didn’t know I had—I was a cyclist, not a gymnast—but I eventually pulled myself up and climbed over the railing.

  When I slipped through the open patio doors, I half-expected an alarm to go off, for several Dobermans to come racing across the floor, lunging for my jugular with gnashing, spittle-slick teeth. But there was only the creak of the floorboards under the oriental carpet.

  The parlor was nothing I wouldn’t have expected from a wealthy, self-indulgent man. The mahogany room boasted a billiard table with the silhouette of a nightingale on the green felt top. His wet bar was stocked with more bourbon than a Tennessee distillery and unmarked bottles filled with milky Blyss.

  Other than testifying to Nox’s history of substance abuse, the parlor contained nothing of note, so I headed for the exit, moving deeper into his mansion.

  What lay beyond those doors was far more interesting.

  Horace Nox had an indoor jungle.

  I found myself at a railing, staring down on a central courtyard overgrown with trees. As far as I could tell, every room in the square-shaped estate opened into this massive greenhouse. Whereas the parlor had been air-conditioned, the climate out here was sticky and hot like an equatorial rainforest. Sunlight shone through the massive glass steeple over the courtyard, and the light took on a green tint as it filtered down through the canopy.

  Even more bizarre, the courtyard was surrounded by mesh netting, as though there was something inside the jungle that Nox wanted to keep out of the rest of his house.

  Yet I could see nothing dangerous lurking in the foliage, nor could I hear anything but the babble of running water somewhere in the underbrush.

  As I traveled along the corridor, I discovered that each room in the house was labeled with a gold plaque. The sign over the parlor doors read “Knavery.” The room next door, “Insomnia,” turned out to be a small movie theater with only one seat, dead-center, so apparently Nox wasn’t fond of date nights. A popcorn cart sat in the corner, and the projector whirred idly, casting a flickering glow onto the red curtains.

  I nearly vomited when I stepped into “Game,” a walk-in freezer populated with the carcasses of exotic animals dangling from steel hooks. Kangaroo, caribou, ostrich, lion—the hunks of frozen meat were only identifiable thanks to the morgue tags attached to them.

  Things only got stranger through the door marked “Triumph.”

  The space beyond was initially cloaked in darkness, but seconds later several gas torches bloomed on the walls, revealing a spiral staircase cut into stone. Basked in firelight, I descended one story, then another, and a third. By the time the staircase spat me out into a dark chamber, I estimated that I must be forty feet underground.

  More torches flickered to life, illuminating the limestone walls and the vaulted ceiling. The Triumph room had a decidedly tomb-like quality to it, only instead of a sarcophagus, there was a wooden desk at its center, directly under a solitary skylight. The desk was covered with an enormous map of New England and faced a glass screen embedded in the stone walls.

  But the screen wasn’t a television, I realized as I approached. The portal in the wall was a glass case with six pages pinned inside.

  Aged, yellowed pages.

  Pages that looked like they belonged to the same journal as the one in my pocket.

  Each of the six documents featured a twelve-line poem, and I felt certain that if I flipped them over, I’d find additional journal entries from Dr. Cumberland Warwick. From my pocket, I withdrew the riddle Jack had left me, which I’d protectively coated in a plastic sleeve, and I pressed it to the glass. Just as I remembered, it had the number seven inscribed in the corner.

  After snapping hi-res pictures of the new riddles using my phone, I revisited the map on the desk. Nox had placed a number of pins within a hundred miles of Boston. The pin numbered “1” was located right in the heart of the city, next to a picture of an old library—the Boston Athenaeum, according to the short description attached. A string connected the first marker to a second one outside city limits, which depicted an old grist mill with a spinning water wheel. One by one, I traced the journey along the string to different landmarks throughout New England.

  #3: Provincetown Harbor on the tip of Cape Cod, where the Mayflower first moored on its journey to the New World.

  #4: The U.S.S. Constitution, a massive forty-gun frigate that was one of the first-ever ships in the U.S. Naval fleet.

  #5: The Portland Head Light, the oldest lighthouse in Maine, which George Washington had commissioned in 1791.

  #6: The House of the Seven Gables, long associated with the city of Salem’s sordid history of witchcraft-related persecutions.

  #7: Block Island, the site of an infamous colonial massacre of Pequot Indians. This particular flag had a big red X through it, along with a photograph of an empty treasure chest.

  The final picture was of the Museum of Fine Arts, which had the #8 and a big question mark next to it.

  As the dots connected in my head, I dropped down heavily into the desk’s leather chair.

  Nox had six pages from the old journal. If I were interpreting the map correctly, each one had been discovered in a different historical landmark around New England. They formed some sort of circuitous path that Nox had been following, page by page.

  That is, until my brother had beaten him to the seventh. The map on Nox’s desk suggested the possible location of the eighth page as the MFA, the same museum from which Jack had mailed me that cryptic postcard the night of his murder. Maybe Nox or his men had followed Jack there, hoping he’d uncover the eighth riddle for him. However, that page was missing from Nox’s collection, which meant that it must still be at large.

  With a quaking hand, I withdrew the journal page once more. The riddle had sounded like gibberish at first, but I now knew exactly what was encoded within its twelve lines:

  The location of the next page.

  This whole thing was one big goddamn scavenger hunt.

  Tiny warning alarms rang in my head, reminding me that it was probably time to hightail it out of Nox’s compound. I sprinted out of the chamber and up the stairs.

  On my way out of the mansion, curiosity seized me as I passed the courtyard. It didn’t take a psychoanalyst to recognize that each of the peculiarly labeled rooms in the house had something to say about Nox’s twisted psyche. To truly understand the man who killed my brother, nothing would be more revealing than finding out what he’d constructed in the very heart of his fortress.

  I passed through a gap in the mesh and out into the indoor jungle. The humidity in the greenhouse pressed down on me like a sodden blanket. The trees were tall, brushing up against the glass overhead, and I wondered how the roots weren’t tearing the mansion’s foundation
apart—although the thought of the house caving in on Nox brought a smile to my lips.

  The path snaked through the trees, alongside a small manmade brook. When I looked closely, I saw that the water was propelled downstream by a series of motors. Like everything else in the mansion, Nox had paid a meticulous attention to detail when he designed this courtyard. But to what end? To have a quiet indoor forest where he could come to reflect? Why would a man who prided himself on a raucous nightclub create an oasis like this? And more pressingly: What was with all the nets?

  These questions were interrupted by a door crashing open somewhere in the complex, followed by a male voice, coarse and deep as the bottom of a ravine, saying:

  “Take him to the birdcage.”

  Panic exploded in me. My first instinct was to run back the way I came, but in the echoing vastness of the courtyard, I couldn’t be sure which direction the voice was originating from.

  In a move of pure desperation, I sought refuge in the thickest bush I could find and drew my hood over my head for camouflage. Then I waited, while silently praying, Please choose any room but this one.

  They entered the courtyard through the same hallway I had. I remained still, hoping that the brook would conceal any rustling I made. As the sound of footsteps approached, I could also hear the whimpering of some kind of animal.

  No, not an animal. They were the muffled cries of a human being who’d been gagged.

  Through the thick undergrowth, I saw a giant of a man—he had to be pushing seven feet tall and nearly half as wide. Although he walked with a discernible limp, the brute effortlessly carried a much smaller man draped over one of his mammoth shoulders. His captive was bound at the ankles and wrists and shrieked in short bursts of terror through the duct tape over his mouth. I recognized the hostage’s sweat-matted red hair.

  Smitty.

  The bartender still wore the formal vest and suit pants of his Nightingale uniform, but his face had been beaten into a checkerboard of black and blue, blotting out his freckles.

  I had little time to fear for Smitty’s life, because the next three people who entered brought my blood to a full boil.

  Detective Grimshaw wore a long black trench coat with his police badge pinned to the lapel.

  The spiky-haired she-devil behind him didn’t have a face that I would know, but the metal ram’s horns spiraling out of her head had haunted my dreams every night since Jack’s death. She had a croquet mallet strapped to her back, and her eyes were visibly bloodshot from whatever drugs she’d been using.

  Last but not least, an imposing man in a three-piece suit strode confidently onto the brick path. Horace Nox’s irises were so piercingly blue that they should belong to a movie star, not a killer. He kept his prematurely silver hair long and unencumbered now that he’d left the military for a life of drugs and terror, and he sported a necklace with a slender shard of blood-tinged shrapnel.

  The gangster who’d ordered Jack’s execution, the succubus who’d carried it out, and the detective who’d covered it up, all in one room, a short ten yards away from me.

  What I wouldn’t give to have a gun right now.

  The giant unshouldered Smitty and forced him down onto his knees. As he squirmed, Aries sauntered forward, twirling her croquet mallet. She held up the handle end, which had been whittled down to a sharp point. “You try to run,” she said, “and I’ll make you sit on this.” Immediately, the bartender stopped fidgeting, but he whimpered as Aries sawed through the string binding his wrists and ankles. A cry burst out of him as she ripped the duct tape off his mouth, tearing away half of his mustache in the process.

  I ducked lower in the bushes as Nox squatted in front of his kneeling captive. Even from my leafy vantage point, I could see that the drug baron was a lot like his nightclub: a paper-thin layer of class lacquered over a cheap, warped skeleton.

  Nox put a finger to his lips. “Shh. There’s no need to fret, Smitty. I just have three easy questions to ask you, and if you answer them all honestly, then I’ll have Drumm drive you right back to the Nightingale. I’ll even throw in a bottle of that Macallan you love so much to compensate you for this traumatic ordeal. What do you say?”

  Smitty swallowed hard. “I’m a Magic Eight-Ball, boss. Give me a light shake and I’ll tell you whatever you like.”

  Nox clapped his hands together. “Wonderful. Question one: When you were growing up, did you ever want to be an astronomer?”

  The bizarre inquiry visibly caught Smitty off-guard. “No, boss,” he stammered. “I wasn’t very good at science and the only telescope I used was to spy into the room of the girl next door.”

  Nox smiled but didn’t laugh. “You mangy dog. Question two: How is your golf game these days?”

  “Golf game?” A wetness spread through the seat of Smitty’s trousers. “Terrible, boss. Hard to be any good on the fairways when one of your legs is shorter than the other.”

  “Which brings us to question three,” Nox mused. “Why would someone who doesn’t like stargazing and is no good with a three-iron possibly want to visit a golf course in the dead of night?”

  So they’d kidnapped Smitty because of me. I had bullied him into meeting up with me at the country club. Nox’s men had followed him. Now the bartender was at the mercy of killers.

  If I didn’t get the hell out of here, I would be, too.

  “Boss,” Smitty pleaded. “It was nothing shady, I promise. The country club has me on call for maintenance, and I got a message that the sprinkler system was backed up. You know rich guys and golf—one piece of dry grass on a perfectly manicured fairway and it’s the end of the world.” He attempted a laugh. It sounded like the shrill giggle of a man who was already dead.

  Nox straightened up and slapped a palm against his own forehead. “Smitty, I am so sorry. Wow, do I feel embarrassed.” He pointed to the punk with the horns. “See, Aries tailed you last night to Rockport and I made this crazy assumption that you were up to no good. You know how I can leap to paranoid conclusions sometimes. I’ve been in this business for a few years now, but I can honestly say this is the first time I’ve ever wrongfully kidnapped someone for performing sprinkler maintenance. Is there any chance we can put this whole misunderstanding behind us?” He extended his hand to Smitty.

  Smitty eyed the gangster warily but shook hands with him. “We all make mistakes,” he said, his voice still trembling. “You don’t even have to give me a raise.”

  Nox shrugged and released the bartender’s hand. “How about an early bonus then?” His eyed flicked to the burly mutant who’d dragged Smitty into the greenhouse. “Drumm?”

  Drumm picked up a vat of something that had been hidden in a nearby thicket. He held the tank over Smitty, who looked up right as ten gallons of viscous, dark red liquid poured down over his head.

  Smitty screamed, and I clamped my hand over my mouth, assuming that the mysterious chemical was acid. But after several seconds, it was clear that Smitty wasn’t burning alive. He clawed the substance away from his face and retched. “What is this?” he burbled.

  “Horse blood,” Nox said matter-of-factly, as though he’d said “Pepsi” instead.

  Even Detective Grimshaw gagged. Aries twitched with anticipation. Something awful was about to happen.

  The trees came alive then. Throughout the canopy, several enormous birds that had been concealed in the foliage bristled on their perches. One of the creatures landed on a branch over my hiding place, and as soon as I saw it, I couldn’t believe I’d missed it before. It was a vulture of incredible size, with a white hood and a rubbery red projection above its beak. Its black wings spanned twice my height. Its beady eyes ignored me and fixed on the man who was now covered in blood.

  “Here’s the problem,” Nox said. “Sprinkler maintenance doesn’t explain the redhead who you rendezvoused with at the golf course last night. Or why that same girl showed up in our surveillance tapes from earlier in the day, talking with you at the bar. Or why she matches the d
escription of the overly inquisitive bitch who peppered Grimshaw with all sorts of questions. yesterday. So tell me, Smitty …” All at once, Nox’s cool façade dissolved and his voice rose into an apoplectic scream. “Why were you talking with the sister of the meddling loser that I just put in the fucking ground?”

  “I was … I was only trying … to see how much … she knew!” Smitty wailed, his sentence punctuated by sobs. “I figured if she trusted me … I could find out whether you needed … to have her taken care of.”

  Nox lifted his eyes to the trees. “Those birds watching you right now are Andean Condors. Some of the largest birds in the world. They feed mostly on the carcasses of dead animals. And this”—Nox took what looked like a fire extinguisher from Aries—“is a tank full of ethyl mercaptan, which is, quite literally, the stench of death. A few sprays from this, and those hungry condors will mistake you for carrion. See, that’s all liars like you are to me: rotting, stinking corpses.”

  Nox angled the tank’s nozzle at Smitty, ready to turn him into condor chow. The bartender raised his hands. “Wait, Horace! Wait! There’s something you need to know! Wait!”

  To my surprise, Nox set the canister down. The path must have been uneven, because it toppled over and rolled slowly, slowly …

  And when it was done rolling, the tank stopped right in front of my leafy hiding spot.

  Nox put one hand to his ear and leaned toward Smitty, waiting for the bartender to elaborate.

  “She knows how her brother died.” Smitty swallowed hard. “And she knows about the journal.”

  Nox stiffened at the word “journal,” as though an electric current had passed through his body. “Well,” he said. “That is all very good information for me to know.” A pause. “However, my pets are still famished.”

  While Smitty pleaded for his life, Nox started toward the tank. I knew that if the drug lord got close enough to pick it up, he would see me.

  Then Jack’s killers would murder me, too.

  But more than that, I pictured Echo wasting away in that hospital bed, waiting for a miracle treatment that would never come.