Pertwee hesitated.
Gray pushed on, unstoppable. “Like the traditions concerning this house? Rose lived over eight hundred years ago. She wasn’t exactly introducing Christianity to England. It wasn’t a minority faith. It was the law of the land. What was she evangelizing?”
“Stop it!”
“Did you look at the tapestries down there? Did you think about what their messages were? Did it occur to you that there were messages? I don’t know about you, but I saw plenty of evangelizing down there.” And his voice never stopped being gentle. It simply hit and hit and hit with the force of simple, unyielding truth.
“No!” Pertwee screamed. She pushed past him and ran inside, hands out to rescue her saint.
chapter eighteen
the night of faith
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Hudson yelled at Gray.
“What I thought we were here for,” Gray said. He hadn’t set out to upset Pertwee, but he was having trouble sympathizing with her reaction. Reaching the truth was, he had thought, her goal, too. Things were long past the point of holding on to untenable illusions.
Hudson snorted in disgust and pushed past him, running after Pertwee. The other two were right behind. Meacham paused to give Gray a hard look. “Seriously,” she said. “What do you want?”
“The truth. That’s all.”
“And what about stopping what’s happening?”
“The truth shall make you free. Won’t it?”
Meacham rolled her eyes and left him. He watched her go. He knew she thought he was sparring, and picking fine moments to do so. She was wrong. He meant what he said. Liberty could take dark forms, he knew. The truth will out, though. No more illusions. No more comforting lies.
Pertwee pounded through the Great Hall to the crypt. As she crossed the chapel’s floor, she ran across the cold spot. It slapped her in the face, then in her core. It had none of the terminal chill it had in the depths of the caves, but it was still strong with scorn. She didn’t let it stop her. Down the stairs, her flashlight beam bobbing in front of her. She could hear the others calling her above. She didn’t answer. She ran faster, almost falling on the staircase. They would catch up soon enough, and she didn’t want them with her. She wanted to be alone. She was aware of her stupidity and of the suicidal gesture she was making, but she didn’t care. Pertwee had to keep this one belief. She had thought that her ghost hunting had been a quest to expand the horizons of science. Her dreams of credibility had been part of that desire. So she had thought. She’d been wrong. She rubbed tears from her eyes. The drive for credibility had been a mask, one designed to fool no one but herself. She didn’t really need to be credible; she needed to be believed. She needed her own spiritual truth confirmed, and the benign ghost of Saint Rose casting afterlife blessings over Gethsemane Hall was the keystone of that belief. The keystone had been kicked out. The arch of her belief was collapsing. Beyond the ruins, there was nothing. Better to make one last stand, turn back the tsunami of dark truth before it swept even the ruins to oblivion. Hold off the epiphany that Gray had tried to force on her. He was wrong. He had to be. If he were right, despair would be too optimistic a response.
That there were spirits of ferocious darkness, she accepted. That one of those haunted the Hall, she accepted. That it was Rose the Evangelist, she tried not to accept. That it might be, she had to consider. She couldn’t go any further down the road of Gray’s truth than that.
She reached the caves. She ran faster — she flew. She could feel the wind of her movement against her face. Her hair was actually blowing.
It was the last stand of her belief: that Rose’s spirit was trapped here, that centuries of imprisonment had blackened the soul. All Rose needed was release. Her freedom would cleanse Gethsemane Hall. It would purge Pertwee’s mind of Gray’s suggestions.
She was gasping from the effort of the run. Her chest was raw with hyperventilation and shouted denials. Her awareness shrank to the nails in her lungs and the lead in her legs. And still the epiphany came through. The worst thing seized her consciousness. The worst thing was the afterlife as logical extension of material life and its desires. The worst thing was the darkness as the ongoing ministry of the Evangelist. The torture chamber as lecture room, Rose bleeding from self-inflicted wounds on her throne of iron, shrieking the hatred and rage of her lessons, spreading agony in this world as a tiny, fragmented reflection of what waited and writhed in the other.
No, Pertwee thought. No. The denial drummed out with the rhythm of her running feet. A denial like the one she’d recorded in the home of Winnifred Tillingate. Was it the cry of a spirit experiencing the truth that Gray was pushing at her? No, no, no, no, no. She would prove Gray wrong. She would free Rose. She would wipe the reptilian darkness from her mind. She spread her arms wide, and though her light went wild, she kept her footing. She opened her mind. She had nothing but love. But even so, the truth stabbed its way through, and she gasped as she ran past the ectoplasm. The lake rose up.
The house shook. Meacham staggered. They had just reached the crypt, and she grabbed the doorway to hold herself up. The wood moved under her hand. It felt like a snake. She recoiled, banged into Sturghill, and they both fell. Hudson had been thrown down on his face. The floor squirmed. The walls seemed to expand away from Meacham, as if she were suddenly looking through a wide-angle lens. The house breathed. Its sigh was a subaural drone. Then floor and walls became solid again. Meacham’s vision cleared.
Sturghill groaned. “Oh, fuck me. What did that stupid bitch do?”
Hudson had a tissue out and was holding it against his bleeding nose. “You think she went down there?”
Meacham gazed into the crypt’s gloom. “Of course she did.” So now what? Would she head back down into the darkness after that idiot? She hesitated at the entrance. Self-preservation fought with concern.
Gray came up behind them. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll go down and fetch her.” He looked completely calm, as if nothing had happened.
“We’ll go with you,” Meacham said.
He waved her offer away. “No point. My fault she’s done this, anyway.”
Meacham tried to repeat her offer. She tried to follow Gray. Nothing came out of her mouth. She didn’t take a step forward. Neither did anyone else. They let him go.
Gray trotted down the stairs. It occurred to him that he was playing into a pattern of idiocy. Every person who had died had been alone. Here was one fool chasing after another. The idea didn’t strike him as more than an idle speculation. He wasn’t worried. The truth would come for him soon enough, whether he was alone or not.
“Anna!” he called when he reached the caves. His voice echoed down the stretch and curve of the tunnels. There was no answer. He started down the slope, moving his light from left to right across the floor. She’d been running. She might have tripped, might be unconscious. As he neared the bend that would take him to the lake, he saw a glow. He walked faster. He rounded the corner, saw Pertwee’s flashlight on the ground. “Anna,” he called again, expecting no answer and receiving none. He picked up the lamp, turned the beams on the lake.
It was gone.
He cast light over bare stone. The floor of the cave sloped gently here, shaped into the shallow bowl that had held the ectoplasm. Now there was nothing. He stepped down into the bowl, walked all the way to its centre. He turned around, casting light to the walls. There was nothing here at all.
He headed back to the main tunnel. He didn’t call again. He knew his search was pointless. How far would Pertwee have gone without her flashlight? As far as the cave-in, and then fallen? He doubted she had gone any further than here. He kept going, though. When he reached the cave where Crawford had died, he looked for her body. Then he took the second staircase down. He went all the way back to the heart of the Evangelist’s realm. Pertwee wasn’t here, either. So that was definite, then. He confronted the cold and approached the throne. He reached out and touched it,
then turned to look at the tapestries again. His head began to spin as he followed the loop. He found himself focusing on the thing that was meting out the agony and judgement. What are you? he wondered, sensing the answer would be the greatest truth yet. The tapestries were the theory, the torture instruments the practice that would drive the lesson home. The lesson was the nature of the thing with scales.
What are you? he thought again. He travelled the circle once more, then paused a long moment on the claws that dug into the forsaken Christ at his crucifixion.
They waited at the entrance to the crypt. They didn’t step inside. They stayed out of the reach of the cold spot. Hudson thought of it as the physical touch of Rose’s hatred, reaching up from the dark heart of her constructed Hell. He looked at his watch. “Richard’s been gone quite a while,” he said. I should have gone, too, he thought. Coward, he thought.
“We’ll give him another few minutes,” Meacham said. “Then we’ll go look. All of us. No splitting up.”
“No way. Unh-unh.” Sturghill shook her head. “I’m not saying that to be a bitch or anything, but guys, just how suicidal do you want to be? I mean, Anna runs down, doesn’t come back up. Richard goes down, same thing. So hey, let’s do that too, why not?”
She was right. Hudson couldn’t let that matter, though. There were still a few principles to believe in, and some were higher than pragmatic self-preservation. We’re probably going to die anyway, he thought. We can at least do so with clear consciences. He thought this. But he didn’t say it. He watched Meacham. Her hardness was showing again. He could see she was close to agreeing with Sturghill. Not out of cowardice but out of simple common sense. He tried to make himself plead against the sensible. There were higher values, the ones that made it worthwhile to be alive and to be human. He couldn’t open his mouth. But I will go, he thought. I can’t make them do this. But I will go. In just another couple of minutes.
He didn’t have to. He wasn’t put to the test. Those couple of minutes passed, and there was the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. Gray emerged from the recess. He was alone. “I couldn’t find her,” he said. He raised one flashlight. “Just this.” He paused for a moment. “Something else,” he went on. “The ectoplasm is gone. No sign it was ever there.”
Gone where? Hudson wondered. No point hoping Pertwee had performed the miracle he had tried, and freed Rose’s spirit. The last time ectoplasm had disappeared, it had been a lure to something worse. This time? He stepped away from the walls.
“So now what?” Sturghill asked. When no one answered, she turned to Meacham. “Louise,” she said, “I don’t want to sound like a coward, and everything you said about coming back here to try to stop this thing is true, but I’m sorry. I’m scared. We don’t stand a chance. Nothing we can do is going to work. I really, really don’t want to die. So I don’t know about you, but I’m out of here.”
Meacham’s shoulders were slumped. She didn’t say anything, just nodded.
As Sturghill turned to go, Gray said, “You can take my car.” He tossed Sturghill the keys.
“You’re not coming?”
“No.”
“For God’s sake, why not?”
“I don’t know the full truth yet.”
“Your funeral.” Sturghill headed for the exit. After a moment, Meacham followed.
“Are you going too?” Hudson asked.
“I’ll let you know,” she called back over her shoulder.
He was alone with Gray. He looked at his friend, at his calm.
“You could leave,” Gray said.
“Not without you.”
Gray smiled. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. Especially if you think you are.”
“I’m not afraid of dying, Patrick. I’ve already lost my reasons to stay alive. If the thing here kills me, well ...” He shrugged. Que sera sera.
“It’s not your physical death that I’m worried about.”
“So here we go. The concern for my spiritual well-being. You fear for my immortal soul.” He didn’t raise his voice, but he put a shade of extra emphasis on each word, turning the issue into ridiculous melodrama.
“That’s right.” Hudson refused to be embarrassed. “You can’t pretend that what’s happening is making you an atheist.”
“No. No.” Gray looked thoughtful. “You know that was never an issue. I never stopped believing. I started hating. Not the same thing.”
“Then you’re playing right into her hands. You see that, don’t you?”
Gray cocked his head. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” Hudson sputtered.
“That doesn’t matter.” Hudson was about to explode, but Gray carried on, relentless. “What if there’s a truth behind the hate? A real reason for it. Wouldn’t that be worth knowing?”
Hudson took a step backward and raised his hands: No. Even now, even with what he had seen, even as he thought that Sturghill could try to run but would probably not get far, even with all of that, what Gray was suggesting was beyond the pale. “There is no truth here,” he said.
“You should take another look at those tapestries.”
“I refuse to regard Rose as an authority on divinity. Are you listening to what you’re saying?” The debate was ludicrous. He wanted to beam the real truth, the good truth, directly into Gray’s soul. He couldn’t abandon him to damnation. This was the ground he refused to surrender. He’d been through his darkest night. He’d had his period of doubt. He was still terrified. He was still convinced he was helpless against the thing that walked Gethsemane Hall. He was sure he was going to die. But Meacham had been right when she said that all of this horror was proof of the numinous. There couldn’t be one without the other. If there was a devil, there was a God.
Gray stared back at him, unmoved, unmovable.
Gray’s car was still parked on the gravel drive. Sturghill had unlocked it and was climbing into the driver’s seat when Meacham caught up to her and leaned into the window. “Any point in my trying to change your mind?” she asked.
“What do you think?”
Meacham shook her head.
“Come with me,” Sturghill urged.
“I don’t know.” She spoke with huge exhaustion. She still felt that goddamned sense of duty. It made for a steel alliance with the undertow from the Hall. Hard to leave. How to fight, though, that was the problem. The closest thing she’d had to an idea had failed. She was trapped in Now what?
“We tried,” Sturghill said. “We’re too weak. Big surprise. What’s the point in staying here to die?”
“None,” Meacham admitted. She pictured herself on a flight back to the States. The pang of desire brought tears to her eyes.
“So get in.”
Meacham took a step away from the car, as if it were playing an active role in her temptation. “Do you think you’ll be able to leave?”
Sturghill nodded. “It won’t be easy. Momentum’s the key. As long as I don’t stop, I think I can avoid being pulled back.”
“Good luck.”
“Last chance?”
“For whom?”
“Funny.” Sturghill turned the key in the ignition. Nothing happened. Big funny, all right. She tried again. The click of the turn, otherwise dead silence. Sturghill placed both hands on the steering wheel. “Shiiiiiiiiit,” she breathed. She pursed her lips, looking straight ahead and a thousand yards away.
“Kristine?” Meacham asked.
“Okay. Plan B.” Sturghill got out of the car. She started up the drive.
“You’re walking?”
“It worked before. See you.”
“Hang on.” Meacham trotted up and fell into step beside Sturghill. “I’ll see you to the gate.”
“Why?”
“If you don’t come back, I want to be sure it’s because you’re actually safe and gone.”
“No one walks alone.”
“Absolutely.”
“And what about you? If you don’t come with
me, you’ll be walking back alone.”
“I figure giving in and returning to the house is safe enough. Relatively speaking.”
Up the drive again. At night again. Into the woods again. The act wasn’t growing easier with practice. Each step was harder. The night was a thick coil around them, constricting, crushing ribs before it opened its jaws wide for the swallow. The flashlight beams were too narrow, too weak. Sturghill tripped. Her light showed a thick root snaking across the road. “Was this here before?” she asked. Her voice was very shaky.
The root was big enough to act as a speed bump. Meacham was sure she would have noticed. She traced the root back to its tree. It was one of the yews. The tree was massive, its trunk thick enough to be a castle turret. It was as old as it was huge, and Meacham was sure it was in the wrong place. The yews were the inner perimeter of the woods. She couldn’t remember seeing any here, midway through the forest to the gate. “Keep going,” she said.
They walked more slowly, careful of their footing, watching for more trees that might present threats. Meacham felt the back of her neck prickling, as if the yew were watching. She looked back at one point. The drive had curved, and she couldn’t see the tree. The woods were a tangled mass of black. She could still sense it, though. It could see her. It was judging.
They reached the gate. Meacham tried to keep her pessimism at bay as Sturghill reached out to push the button. There wasn’t even a click. The gate did not swing open. Sturghill began to shake. “Hang on,” Meacham said. “Maybe Richard can trigger it from the Hall.” She pulled her phone out. She half-expected it to be dead. It wasn’t, but there was no service. “Battery’s dead,” she lied. She wanted to spare Sturghill what she was experiencing: the claustrophobic sense of total isolation from the outside world. “See if you can use the intercom.”
Sturghill reached around the gatepost, felt up and down until she found the buzzer. Meacham saw her push. “Nothing,” Sturghill said. She eyed the top of the gate and the wall. “Can you help me over?”
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