by Dean Koontz
I gasped for breath and found it. He was holding me, not choking me, perhaps to ensure that, when I was discovered and hauled back into the belfry, the only marks on my throat and under my chin would be those left by the lethal snap of the rope.
As he pulled me away from the column, his left hand rose and tossed the noose, which floated toward me like a ring of dark smoke. I twisted my head away. The rope fell across my face, and back into his hand.
The moment he had succeeded in slipping the noose around my neck and had drawn it tight, he would pitch me out of the belfry, and I would ring the bells to announce my death.
I stopped ripping at his hand, which had me firmly yoked, and grabbed the loop of rope as he tried once more to fit me with that crude necktie.
Struggling to foil the noose, staring down into the emptiness of his hood, I heard myself croak, “I know you, don’t I?”
That question, born of intuition, seemed to work magic, as if it were an incantation. Something began to form in the void where a face should have been.
He faltered in the struggle for the noose.
Encouraged, I said more certainly, “I know you.”
Within the hood, the basic contours of a face began to take shape, like molten black plastic conforming to a die.
The countenance lacked sufficient detail to spark recognition, glistened darkly as the dim reflection of a face might glimmer and ripple in a night pond where no moonlight brightens the black water.
“Mother of God, I know you,” I said, though intuition had still not given me a name.
My third insistence conjured greater dimension in the glossy black face before me, almost as though my words had spawned in him a guilt and an irresistible compulsion to confess his identity.
The Reaper turned his head from me. He threw me aside, and then tossed away the hangman’s rope, which raveled down upon me as I collapsed onto the belfry deck.
In a silken black swirl, he sprang onto the parapet between two columns, hesitated there, and then flung himself into the snowstorm.
I thrust up from the floor even as he jumped, and I leaned over the parapet.
His tunic spread like wings, and he sailed down from the tower, landed with balletic grace upon the church roof, and at once flung himself toward the lower roof of the abbey.
Although he seemed to me to have been something other than a spirit, less supernatural than un natural, he dematerialized as fully as any ghost might, though in a manner that I had never seen before.
In flight, he seemed to come apart like a clay disk blasted by a skeet-shooter’s shotgun. A million flakes of snow and a million fragments of the Reaper laced out into a black-and-white symmetrical pattern, a kaleidoscopic image in midair, which the wind respected only for an instant and then dissolved.
CHAPTER 26
In the ground-floor reception lounge, I sat on the edge of a sofa to pull on my ski boots, which had dried.
My feet were still stiff with cold. I would have liked to slouch deep in an armchair, put my feet on a stool, warm myself with a lap robe, read a good novel, nibble cookies, and be served cup after cup of hot cocoa by my fairy godmother.
If I had a fairy godmother, she would resemble Angela Lansbury, the actress in Murder, She Wrote. She would love me unconditionally, would bring me anything my heart desired, and would tuck me into bed each night and put me to sleep with a kiss on the forehead, because she would have been through a training program at Disneyland and would have sworn the godmother’s oath while in the presence of Walt Disney’s cryogenically preserved corpse.
I stood up in my boots and flexed my half-numb toes.
Beast of bones or no beast of bones, I would have to go outside again into the blizzard, not immediately, but soon.
Whatever forces were at work at St. Bartholomew’s, I had never encountered anything like them, had never seen such apparitions, and didn’t have much confidence that I would understand their intentions in time to prevent disaster. If I should fail to identify the threat before it was upon us, I needed brave hearts and strong hands to help me protect the children, and I knew where to find them.
Graceful, stately, her footsteps hushed by her flowing white habit, Sister Angela arrived as if she were the avatar of a snow goddess who had stepped down from a celestial palace to assess the effectiveness of the storm spell that she had cast upon the Sierra.
“Sister Clare Marie says you need to speak with me, Oddie.”
Brother Constantine had accompanied me from the bell tower and now joined us. The mother superior, of course, could not see him.
“George Washington was famous for his bad false teeth,” I said, “but I don’t know anything about the dental situations of Flannery O’Connor and Harper Lee.”
“Nor do I,” she said. “And before you ask, it has nothing to do with their hairstyles, either.”
“Brother Constantine did not commit suicide,” I told her. “He was murdered.”
Her eyes widened. “I’ve never heard such glorious news followed by such terrible news in the same sentence.”
“He lingers not because he fears his judgment in the next world but because he despairs for his brothers at the abbey.”
Surveying the reception lounge, she said, “Is he here with us now?”
“Right beside me.” I indicated his position.
“Dear Brother Constantine.” Her voice broke with sentiment. “We’ve prayed every day for you, and have missed you every day.”
Tears shone in the spirit’s eyes.
I said, “He was reluctant to move on from this world while his brothers believed that he’d killed himself.”
“Of course. He’s been worried that his suicide might cause them to doubt their own commitment to a life in faith.”
“Yes. But also I think he worried because they were unaware that a murderer had come among them.”
Sister Angela is a quick study, with a steel-trap mind, but her decades of gentle service in the peaceful environment of one convent or another have not stropped her street smarts to a sharp edge.
“But surely you mean some outsider wandered here one night, like those the news is full of, and Brother Constantine had the misfortune to cross his path.”
“If that’s the case, then the guy came back for Brother Timothy, and just now in the tower here, he tried to murder me.”
Alarmed, she put one hand on my arm. “Oddie, you’re all right?”
“I’m not dead yet,” I said, “but there’s still the cake after dinner.”
“Cake?”
“Sorry. I’m just being me.”
“Who tried to kill you?”
I said only, “I didn’t see his face. He … wore a mask. And I’m convinced he’s someone I know, not an outsider.”
She looked at where she knew the dead monk to be. “Can’t Brother Constantine identify him?”
“I don’t think he saw his killer’s face, either. Anyway, you’d be surprised how little help I get from the lingering dead. They want me to get justice for them, they want it very bad, but I think they must abide by some proscription against affecting the course of this world, where they no longer belong.”
“And you’ve no theory?” she asked.
“Zip. I’ve been told that Brother Constantine occasionally had insomnia, and when he couldn’t sleep, he sometimes climbed into the bell tower at the new abbey, to study the stars.”
“Yes. That’s what Abbot Bernard told me at the time.”
“I suspect when he was out and about at night, he saw something he was never meant to see, something to which no witness could be tolerated.”
She grimaced. “That makes the abbey sound like a sordid place.”
“I don’t mean to suggest anything of the kind. I’ve lived here seven months, and I know how decent and devout the brothers are. I don’t think Brother Constantine saw anything despicable. He saw something … extraordinary.”
“And recently Brother Timothy also saw something extraord
inary to which no witness could be tolerated?”
“I’m afraid so.”
For a moment, she mulled this information and pressed from it the most logical conclusion. “Then you yourself have been witness to something extraordinary.”
“Yes.”
“Which would be—what?”
“I’d rather not say until I have time to understand what I saw.”
“Whatever you saw—that’s why we’ve made sure the doors and all the windows are locked.”
“Yes, ma’am. And it’s one of the reasons we’re now going to take additional measures to protect the children.”
“We’ll do whatever must be done. What do you have in mind?”
“Fortify,” I said. “Fortify and defend.”
CHAPTER 27
George Washington, Harper Lee, and Flannery O’Connor smiled down on me, as if mocking my inability to solve the riddle of their shared quality.
Sister Angela sat at her desk, watching me over the frames of a pair of half-lens reading glasses that had slid down her nose. She held a pen poised above a lined yellow tablet.
Brother Constantine had not accompanied us from the reception lounge. Maybe he had at last moved on from this world, maybe not.
Pacing, I said, “I think most of the brothers are pacifists only as far as reason allows. Most would fight to save an innocent life.”
“God requires resistance to evil,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am. But willingness to fight isn’t enough. I want those who know how to fight. Put Brother Knuckles at the head of the list.”
“Brother Salvatore,” she corrected.
“Yes, ma’am. Brother Knuckles will know what to do when the shit—” My voice failed and my face flushed.
“You could have completed the thought, Oddie. The words hits the fan wouldn’t have offended me.”
“Sorry, Sister.”
“I’m a nun, not a naïf.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Who in addition to Brother Salvatore?”
“Brother Victor spent twenty-six years in the Marine Corps.”
“I think he’s seventy years old.”
“Yes, ma’am, but he was a marine.”
“ ‘No better friend, no worse enemy,’ ” she quoted.
“Semper Fi sure does seem to be what we need.”
She said, “Brother Gregory was an army corpsman.”
The infirmarian had never spoken of military service.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “I thought he had a nursing degree.”
“He does. But he was a corpsman for many years, and in the thick of action.”
Medics on the battlefield are often as courageous as those who carry the guns.
“For sure, we want Brother Gregory,” I said.
“What about Brother Quentin?”
“Wasn’t he a cop, ma’am?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“Put him on the list.”
“How many do you think we need?” she asked.
“Fourteen, sixteen.”
“We’ve got four.”
I paced in silence. I stopped pacing and stood at the window. I started pacing again.
“Brother Fletcher,” I suggested.
This choice baffled her. “The music director?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“In his secular life, he was a musician.”
“That’s a tough business, ma’am.”
She considered. Then: “He does sometimes have an attitude.”
“Saxophone players tend to have attitude,” I said. “I know a saxophonist who tore a guitar out of another musician’s hands and shot the instrument five times. It was a nice Fender.”
“Why would he do a thing like that?” she asked.
“He was upset about inappropriate chord changes.”
Disapproval furrowed her brow. “When this is over, perhaps your saxophonist friend could stay at the abbey for a while. I’m trained to counsel people in techniques of conflict resolution.”
“Well, ma’am, shooting the guitar was conflict resolution.”
She looked up at Flannery O’Connor and, after a moment, nodded as if in agreement with something the writer had said. “Okay, Oddie. You think Brother Fletcher could kick butt?”
“Yes, ma’am, for the kids, I think he could.”
“Then we’ve got five.”
I sat in one of the two visitors’ chairs.
“Five,” she repeated.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I looked at my wristwatch. We stared at each other.
After a silence, she changed the subject: “If it comes to a fight, what will they fight with?”
“For one thing, baseball bats.”
The brothers formed three teams every year. Summer evenings, during recreation hours, the teams played one another in rotation.
“They do have a lot of baseball bats,” she said.
“Too bad that monks tend not to go in for shooting deer.”
“Too bad,” she agreed.
“The brothers split all the cordwood for the fireplaces. They have axes.”
She winced at the thought of such violence. “Perhaps we should concentrate more on fortification.”
“They’ll be first-rate at fortification,” I agreed.
Most monastic communities believe that contemplative labor is an important part of worship. Some monks make excellent wine to pay the expenses of their abbey. Some make cheese or chocolates, or crumpets and scones. Some breed and sell beautiful dogs.
The brothers of St. Bart’s produce fine handcrafted furniture. Because a fraction of the interest from the Heineman endowment will always pay their operating expenses, they do not sell their chairs and tables and sideboards. They give everything to an organization that furnishes homes for the poor.
With their power tools, supplies of lumber, and skills, they would be able to further secure doors and windows.
Tapping her pen against the list of names on the tablet, Sister Angela reminded me: “Five.”
“Ma’am, maybe what we should do is—you call the abbot, talk to him about this, then talk to Brother Knuckles.”
“Brother Salvatore.”
“Yes, ma’am. Tell Brother Knuckles what we need here, defense and fortification, and let him consult with the other four we’ve picked. They’ll know their brothers better than we do. They’ll know the best candidates.”
“Yes, that’s good. I wish I could tell them who they’ll be defending against.”
“I wish I could, too, Sister.”
All the vehicles that served the brothers and sisters were garaged in the basement of the school.
I said, “Tell Knuckles—”
“Salvatore.”
“—that I’ll drive one of the school’s monster SUVs up there to bring them here, and tell him—”
“You said hostile people are out there somewhere.”
I had not said people. I had said them and they.
“Hostile. Yes, ma’am.”
“Won’t it be dangerous, to and from the abbey?”
“More dangerous for the kids if we don’t get some muscle here for whatever’s coming.”
“I understand. My point is you’d have to make two trips to bring so many brothers, their baseball bats, and their tools. I’ll drive an SUV, you drive the other, and we’ll get it all done at one time.”
“Ma’am, there’s nothing I’d like better than having a snowplow race with you—tires chocked, engines revved, starter pistol—but I want Rodion Romanovich to drive the second SUV.”
“He’s here?”
“He’s in the kitchen, up to his elbows in icing.”
“I thought you were suspicious of him.”
“If he’s a Hoosier, I’m a radical dulcimer enthusiast. When we’re defending the school, if it comes to that, I don’t think it’s a good idea for Mr. Romanovich to be inside the defenses. I’ll ask him to drive one of the SUVs to the new abbey. When y
ou talk to Brother Knuck … alvatore—”
“Knuckalvatore? I’m not familiar with Brother Knuckalvatore.”
Until meeting Sister Angela, I wouldn’t have thought that nuns and sarcasm could be such an effervescent mix.
“When you talk to Brother Salvatore, ma’am, tell him that Mr. Romanovich will be staying at the new abbey, and Salvatore will be driving that SUV back here.”
“I assume Mr. Romanovich will not know that he’s taking a one-way trip.”
“No, ma’am. I will lie to him. You leave that to me. Regardless of what you think, I am a masterful and prodigious liar.”
“If you played a saxophone, you’d be a double threat.”
CHAPTER 28
As lunchtime approached, the kitchen staffers were not only busier than they had been previously but also more exuberant. Now four of the nuns were singing as they worked, not just two, and in English instead of Spanish.
All ten cakes had been frosted with chocolate icing. They looked treacherously delicious.
Having recently finished mixing a large bowl of bright orange buttercream, Rodion Romanovich was using a funnel sack to squeeze an elaborate decorative filigree on top of the first of his orange-almond cakes.
When I appeared at his side, he didn’t look up, but said, “There you are, Mr. Thomas. You have put on your ski boots.”
“I was so quiet in stocking feet, I was scaring the sisters.”
“Have you been off practicing your dulcimer?”
“That was just a phase. These days I’m more interested in the saxophone. Sir, have you ever visited the grave of John Dillinger?”
“As you evidently know, he is buried in Crown Hill Cemetery, in my beloved Indianapolis. I have seen the outlaw’s grave, but my primary reason for visiting the cemetery was to pay my respects at the final resting place of the novelist Booth Tarkington.”
“Booth Tarkington won the Nobel Prize,” I said.
“No, Mr. Thomas. Booth Tarkington won the Pulitzer Prize.”