Suddenly Charrière stopped dead. The chanting ceased, the voices echoing and dying in the church. But noises below continued, blending into each other, groans and stertorous breathing, along with the sounds of restless shuffling.
D’Agosta watched breathlessly from the shadows.
“Envoie!” cried the high priest, backing off from the stone. “Envoie!”
The four men at each corner of the stone slab seized their ropes, turned, slung them over their shoulders, and began to pull. With a grating sound, the stone tilted up, wobbled, and rose.
“Envoie!” cried the priest yet again, raising his flat palms upward.
The men stepped sideways, dragging the stone away to expose an opening in the floor of the chancel. They brought the slab to a standstill, dropped the ropes. The circle of men closed in tighter, all waiting in silence. The room was suspended, in stasis. Bossong, who had not moved, stared at them in turn with dark eyes. A faint exhalation rose from the opening — the perfume of death.
Now the pit below was filled with the noises of restless movement; scratchings and skitterings; mucous, anticipatory slurpings.
And then it appeared out of the darkness, gripping the lip of stone: a pale, desiccated hand, a skinny forearm in which the muscles and tendons stood out like cords. A second hand appeared, and with a scrabbling sound a head came into view: the hair matted and dank, the expression empty save for a vague hunger. One eye rolled in its socket; the other was obscured by clots of dried blood and matter. With a sudden thrust, the thing hoisted itself up from the pit and fell heavily onto the floor of the church, its nails scratching the floor. Gasps arose from the congregation, along with a few approving murmurs.
D’Agosta stared in disbelief and horror. It was a man — or, at least, it had been a man. And there was no doubt in his mind — no doubt at all — this was what had chased him, attacked him, outside the Ville precisely seven days before. Yet it didn’t seem to be Fearing, and it certainly wasn’t Smithback. Was it alive… or the reanimated dead? His skin crawled as he stared at the leering face; the pasty, withered skin; the painted curlicues and tendrils and crosses that showed through the grimy rags that passed as clothing. And yet, looking more closely, D’Agosta realized the man–thing wasn’t wearing rags, after all, but the remnants of silk, or satin, or some other ancient finery, now tattered with age and stiff with dirt, blood, and grime.
The crowd murmured with something close to reverence as the man–thing skulked about hesitantly, looking up at the high priest as if for instruction, a thread of saliva dangling from thick gray lips, breath coming out like air squeezed from a wet bag. Its one good eye seemed dead — utterly.
Charrière reached into the folds of his robe, withdrew a small brass chalice. Dipping his fingers into it, he sprinkled what looked like oil over the head and shoulders of the form that stood swaying before him. Then, to D’Agosta’s infinite surprise, the high priest sank to his knees before the creature, bowing low. The rest did likewise. D’Agosta felt a tug on his robe as Pendergast directed him to do the same. He went down on his knees, stretching forth his hands in the direction of the zombii — if that’s indeed what it was — as he saw the others doing.
“We bow to the protector!” the high priest intoned. “Our sword, our rock, all hail!”
The rest chanted along.
Charrière continued in a foreign language, the others following suit.
D’Agosta glanced around. Bossong was no longer to be seen.
“As the gods above strengthen us,” the high priest said, switching back into English, “may we now strengthen you!”
As if on cue, D’Agosta heard a crying sound. Turning, he spied, in the darkness, a small chestnut colt — no more than a week old — being led to the wooden post by a halter, its long wobbly legs stamping the floor as it moved back and forth, whinnying piteously, its large brown eyes round and frightened. The congregant tied it to the post and stepped back.
The priest rose. Moving in a sort of half–dancing, half–swaying motion, he raised a gleaming knife in the air, similar to the ones they had seized in the raid.
Oh dear God, no, thought D’Agosta.
The others stood, turning toward the high priest. The ceremony was clearly coming to a climax. Charrière worked himself into a frenzy, dancing now toward the colt; the congregation was swaying in rhythm; the glittering knife raised yet higher. The little colt stamped and whinnied in increasing terror, shaking its head, trying to get free.
The priest closed in.
D’Agosta turned away. He heard the shrill whinny, heard the sudden expelled breath of the crowd — and then a shriek of equine agony.
The crowd broke into a fast chant and D’Agosta turned back. The priest hoisted up the dying colt in his arms, its legs still twitching. He advanced down the nave, the crowd parting before him, as he once again approached the hideous man–thing. With a cry, the priest heaved the colt’s body to the stone floor while the congregation abruptly knelt, all at once, D’Agosta and Pendergast hastening to keep up.
The zombii fell upon the dead colt with a hideous sound, tearing at it with his teeth, pulling out entrails with a bestial sound of gratification and stuffing them into his mouth.
The susurrus rose in volume: Feed the protector! Envoie! Envoie!
D’Agosta stared in horror at the crouching man. As he did so, a stab of atavistic fear plucked deep at his vitals. He glanced at Pendergast. A flick of the silver eyes from beneath the cowl directed D’Agosta’s attention at a side door in the church — partially open, leading into a dark, empty corridor. A route of escape.
Envoie! Envoie!
The figure ate with furious speed. And then he was sated. He rose, face expressionless, as if awaiting orders. The crowd rose, too, as one.
With a gesture from the priest, the crowd parted, forming a human passageway. At the far end of the church came the creak and squeal of iron, and a congregant opened the door to the outside. A faint breath of twilight air entered, and over the top of the perimeter wall a single dull star could be seen shining in the darkness. Charrière placed one hand on the zombii’s shoulder, raised the other, and pointed a long, bony finger at the open door.
“Envoie!” he whispered hoarsely, his finger trembling. “Envoie!”
Slowly, the figure began to shuffle toward the door. In a moment it had passed through and was gone. The door closed with a hollow boom.
At this, the crowd seemed to exhale, to relax, to shuffle and move about. The priest began loading the remains of the colt into a coffin–like box. The dreadful “service” was drawing to a conclusion.
Immediately, Pendergast began to drift toward the passageway, D’Agosta trailing, doing his best to convey a calm and purposeless manner. In a minute Pendergast had reached the open door and placed his hand on the knob.
“Just a moment!” One of the nearest congregants had turned from the appalling scene and taken notice of them. “No one can leave until the ceremony is complete — you know that!”
Pendergast gestured toward D’Agosta while keeping his head averted. “My friend is sick.”
“No excuses are permitted.” The man came forward and ducked to look at Pendergast’s face under his cowl. “Who are you, friend?”
Pendergast bowed his head but the man had already glimpsed his face. “Outsiders!” he cried, yanking Pendergast’s cowl away.
A sudden silence fell.
“Outsiders!”
Quickly Charrière threw open the outer door to the church. “Outsiders!” he cried into the darkness. “Baka! Baka!”
“Get him! Quickly!”
Suddenly, D’Agosta saw the man–thing framed in the doorway. For a minute, it stood there, swaying slightly. Then it began to move with a strange purpose — toward them.
“Envoie!” screeched the priest, pointing in their direction.
D’Agosta acted first, knocking their accuser to the ground; Pendergast leapt over his supine form, flung open the side door
; D’Agosta charged through and Pendergast followed, slamming and locking it behind them.
Chapter 64
* * *
They paused, finding themselves in a dim hallway, another door at the far end. A sudden pounding on the door they had just locked pushed them into action. They ran down the hall, but the door at the end was locked. D’Agosta backed up to kick it.
“Wait.” A swift manipulation of Pendergast’s lockpick and the lock gave way. Again they passed through and Pendergast relocked the door behind them.
They were at the top of a landing, with a wooden staircase leading down into a noisome darkness. Pendergast switched on a penlight, angling it down into the murk.
“That… that man…” D’Agosta panted. “What the hell were they doing? Worshipping him?”
“Perhaps this is not the ideal time for speculation,” Pendergast replied.
“I can tell you one thing: that’s what attacked me outside the Ville.” He could hear pounding on the door at the far end of the hall, the sound of breaking wood.
“After you,” said Pendergast, indicating the stairs.
D’Agosta wrinkled his noise. “What other choice do we have?”
“Alas, none.”
They descended the ancient staircase, the treads groaning loudly under their feet. The staircase ended at a half landing that led to a second staircase, this one of stone, spiraling down into blackness. When at last they reached the bottom, D’Agosta saw that a brick corridor stretched in front of them, damp, heavy with cobwebs and efflorescence. The air smelled of earth and mildew. From behind and above came muffled cries, the sound of fists pounding on wood.
D’Agosta pulled out his own flashlight.
“We need to find stonework matching that in the video,” Pendergast said, shining the light along the damp walls. He moved swiftly through the dark, robe trailing behind him.
“Those bastards upstairs are going to be after us in a moment,” said D’Agosta.
“They aren’t what concerns me,” murmured Pendergast. “He is.”
They passed beneath several archways and a stone staircase leading upward. Beyond, the tunnel branched, and after brief consideration Pendergast chose the left–hand fork. A moment later they came to a large, circular room, with niches hewn at regular intervals into the walls. Within each niche, human bones were stacked like cordwood, the skulls hung on the long bones. Many still had wisps of hair clinging to the crania by bits of desiccated flesh.
“Charming,” muttered D’Agosta.
Pendergast abruptly halted.
Then D’Agosta heard what stopped him: a disjointed shuffling, coming out of the darkness behind them. From beyond his light came a loud, phlegmy sniffing sound, as if of someone testing the air. A shambling tread, growing in speed, moving along an invisible passageway seemingly parallel to their chamber. D’Agosta caught the strong, gamy whiff of horseflesh drifting in the damp air.
“You smell that?”
“Only too well.” Pendergast focused his light on a nearby archway, from which the smell seemed to flow on a draft of fresh air.
D’Agosta pulled his Glock, feeling a strong spike of fear despite himself. “That thing is in there. You take the left side, I’ll take the right.”
Pendergast drew his .45 from beneath his robe and they crept up to the doorway, one on either side.
“Now!” D’Agosta cried.
They spun into the doorway, D’Agosta with his own light held against his gun; within he saw nothing but blank walls of damp brick. Pendergast pointed to the floor, where a series of bloody footprints led off into blackness. D’Agosta knelt and touched one; the blood was so fresh it hadn’t even congealed.
D’Agosta rose. “This is fucking weird,” he muttered.
“It’s also wasting time we don’t have. Let us keep moving. Fast.”
They backed out of the room and jogged across the open necropolis into a passageway at the far side. It soon opened into another cavern–like space, this one very crude, rough–hewn out of the living rock. They entered and shined their lights around.
“The walls are still unlike the stonework in the video,” said Pendergast, sotto voce. “This is schist, not granite, and not cut the same way.”
“It’s like a maze down here.”
Pendergast nodded toward a low archway. “Let’s try that passage.”
They ducked into the low tunnel. “Jesus, that smell,” said D’Agosta. It was a cloying stench of horse blood, thick, with an edge of iron to it, all the more horrible for its obvious freshness. It was accompanied by occasional eddies of cool air, coming from some invisible vent to the outside. In the distance, echoing through the tunnels, he could hear the cries and shouts of pursuing congregants, who also appeared to have gained the underground and were spreading out, searching for them.
They continued down the tunnel, Pendergast moving so swiftly D’Agosta had to jog to keep up, splashing through standing pools of water and slime. Nitre and cobwebs coated the sweating walls, and as they moved D’Agosta could see white spiders scurrying into holes in the brickwork. At the edge of darkness, red rats’ eyes gleamed and flickered at them as they passed.
They approached a junction in which three cross–tunnels met, forming a hexagonally shaped space. Pendergast slowed, putting his finger to his lips and gesturing for D’Agosta to creep along one wall of the tunnel while he took the other.
As they reached the junction, D’Agosta felt, rather than saw, a rapid movement above him. He dropped and rolled to one side just as something — the zombii–creature — dropped down, the tatters of ancient finery whipping and rustling over his knotted limbs like ruined sails in a strong breeze. D’Agosta squeezed off a shot, but the man–thing was ready, and it moved so unexpectedly that his shot went wide. It raced across his field of view, flashing through the beam of his flashlight, and as D’Agosta dropped to the ground to escape the charge a momentary, terrifying impression burned into his retinas: the single lolling eye; the whorls and curlicues of vévé painted or pasted on his skin; the wet lips quivering in a grin of desperate hilarity. And yet there was nothing vague or hilarious in its movements — it came after them with single–minded, horrifying purpose.
Chapter 65
* * *
D’Agosta fired again, but it was a gratuitous shot: the thing had flitted back into the darkness and disappeared. He lay on the ground, shining the light around, this way and that, gun at the ready.
“Pendergast?”
The special agent stepped out of the darkness of a doorway, crouching, his Colt drawn and held in front of him with both hands.
Silence fell, broken only by the sound of dripping water.
“He’s still out there,” murmured D’Agosta, rising to a half crouch and making a three–hundred–sixty–degree turn with his gun. He strained to see into the darkness.
“Indeed. I don’t think he will leave until we are dead — or he is.”
The seconds dragged on into minutes.
Finally, D’Agosta straightened up, lowering the Glock. “There’s no time for a waiting game, Pendergast. We’ve got to—”
The zombii came like a dull flash from the side, going straight for his light, slashing at it with a spidery hand and sending it spinning into the darkness with a crash. D’Agosta fired, but the thing had darted out of view and back into the relative protection of the darkness. He heard Pendergast’s .45 go off almost simultaneously with his, a deafening double blast — and then darkness fell abruptly with the sound of Pendergast’s own flashlight shattering against a wall.
The passageway was plunged into profound darkness — and almost immediately afterward, he heard the sounds of a desperate struggle.
He lunged toward the noise, holstering the Glock and pulling his knife, better for close–in work in the dark and less likely to hit Pendergast, who was now apparently locked in a life–or–death battle with the creature. He collided with the zombii’s sinewed form and immediately slashed at it
with the knife, but for all its shuffling movements it was dreadfully strong and quick, turning and clawing at D’Agosta like a panther, enveloping him in a suffocating stench. The knife was torn from his hands, and he went at the man–thing with his fists, pummeling it, seeking the soft gut, the head, all the while fending off the wiry hands that clawed and raked at him. In the dark, enveloped in a robe, he was at a disadvantage; the ragged creature, on the other hand, seemed to be in its element: no matter how D’Agosta twisted and struggled, it kept the advantage of position, aided by the slickness of its body, coated with sweat and blood and oil.
What the hell had happened to Pendergast?
An arm fastened around his neck, suddenly constricting like a steel cable. D’Agosta wrenched sideways, gasping and choking, trying to throw off his attacker while simultaneously feeling for his gun. But the slippery man–thing had muscles as hard as teak: no matter how D’Agosta struggled, one hand maintained its grip, constricting his airway, while the other pinned his gun hand. A cry of triumph went up from the creature, a banshee–like wail: oaahhuuuooooooooo!
Flashes of white sparkled in his field of vision. He knew he had only moments left. With a last explosive effort he wrenched his right arm free, pulling out the gun and firing, the flash–boom illuminating the sepulchral tunnel, deafening in the confined space.
Eeeeee! the zombii screamed, and D’Agosta immediately felt a sharp blow to the head. More stars exploded before his eyes. The thing had pinned his forearm again and was shaking and slamming it against the ground, trying to knock the weapon from his hand. Eeeeee! it cried again. Dazed as he was, D’Agosta nevertheless felt sure he had hit the creature — its agitation, its high–pitched keening, were obvious — and yet it seemed stronger than ever, fighting with an inhuman fury. It stomped his forearm and he heard bones snapping. Indescribable pain blossomed just above his wrist; the gun went flying and the thing fell on him once more, both hands now around his neck.
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