Hell Fire

by Dee Davis

  "Probably nothing," she sighed, taking the picture from him. "But if there is anything here, then I'm betting the photograph is a clue. Frau Mueller said that Hans gave it to her for memory. An odd way of putting it surely."

  "Could just be that she got her English mixed up."

  "Maybe. Or maybe he was trying to make a point. Telling her there was something special about the photograph. Or the part of the charnel house pictured there."

  "It's certainly possible, although we haven't seen anything here to support the fact." Marcus frowned, jumping to his feet. "But it's worth looking again." He walked over to the corner of the room, bending so that he could more closely examine the skulls there.

  They came in all sizes, some pristine white, others blackened or yellowed with age. And they all shared something that would forever elude Marcus—closure. An ending of sorts. Perhaps life would seem sweeter when one knew it could be taken at any moment. Or then again, maybe not.

  "Marcus?" Celeste's voice held a note of excitement. "When did Frau Mueller say the church began allowing cremation?"

  "Sometime in the sixties." He turned to face her. "What's that got to do with anything?"

  "There's a skull here in the photograph dated 1981. With the initials T. G."

  Marcus frowned. "Theloneous Gerard. It couldn't be that simple."

  "Is it there?" She'd risen to her feet and had come to stand beside him, her gaze locked on the rows of skulls.

  "I don't see it. Let's try counting from the votive in the picture and see if that helps."

  Celeste counted silently, her finger bobbing as she moved along the line. "No luck."

  "All right. Let's try it from the other side. Maybe we're wrong about where he was standing. Or he wants us to try the inverse of the photograph."

  They counted again this time from the right, and again came up empty-handed.

  "Maybe it's been moved?" Her earlier enthusiasm had faded. "I mean it's been years since the picture was taken. If someone saw the fake, they'd have moved it, right?"

  "Yes." Marcus nodded, his mind turning over the puzzle. "Which makes the whole thing sort of an odd gamble. I mean why mark something in a photograph that he could be fairly certain would eventually be discovered and removed? That doesn't make sense."

  "So then what does it mean?" Celeste asked, clearly exasperated.

  "Hang on." He held up a hand, counting again along the left side, until he got to the place the 1981 skull should have been. "You were right."

  Celeste moved closer, her nearness setting off synaptic explosions that had nothing at all to do with Hans Weisbaum and his riddles. Marcus sucked in a breath, steeling himself to the task at hand.

  "Look. The date on this skull is 1891." He waited for her to see the relevance.

  "Oh, my God, it's a palindrome of sorts: 1891—1981."

  "Exactly." He wasn't sure exactly why he was so pleased that she'd gotten it, but he was. "And it gets better. Look at the name."

  "Gerta Thode." She smiled. "Theloneous Gerard. The initials are backward, but they work."

  "Could be a false lead, but it seems probable. Do you want to do the honors, or shall I?"

  To her credit she actually seemed to think about it a moment, then shivered and stepped back. "You do it."

  Marcus reached down and carefully grasped the skull, pulling upward in an effort not to disturb the others surrounding it. Nothing happened. He held the skull up, turning it in the early morning light, searching the various orifices for signs of a note or perhaps carving of some sort. But there was nothing seemingly out of the ordinary. Only the requisite ivy leaves curling around the letters and numbers.

  "It looks old, so it must be the real thing," Celeste said. "But it can't be a coincidence that Hans replaced it in the photograph. There has to be something more. Maybe the name is meant to throw us off. A blinding glimpse of the obvious."

  "All right." Marcus lowered the skull to study it more closely. Celeste edged closer as well, looking at it from around his shoulder. He contained a smile. "It won't bite."

  "I know that," she snapped, but still didn't move. For a woman who had declared her fervent disbelief in ghosts and curses she seemed to entertain a rather sizable belief in the power of the dead. Her hand was hot on his arm, and he resisted the urge to move away and break the contact. "Look at the tendrils on the ivy," she said, her grip tightening. It's as if they've been modified." She moved around him, her curiosity overriding her fear. "The paint is darker here, see?"

  He looked at where she pointed on the skull, and sure enough the tendrils that curled around the date were a different color of green. He squinted and then tilted the skull, trying to make the most of the light coming from the doorway. "They looks like L's and R's."

  "Left and right." She frowned, concentrating, then smiled, excitement sparkling in her eyes. " I think it's a combination."

  "To what?"

  "The skulls. Put Gerta back." She motioned to the gap where the skull had been resting.

  "Gerta?" he asked, suppressing a smile.

  "Well, we can't keep calling her 'the skull.' And it is her name."

  "Fine. I'll put her back." He gently laid the skull back into its row.

  "Okay. So the first tendril is an L. And the first number is a one. So I'm thinking we move one skull to the left. Michael." She pronounced the name with a German flourish.

  "All right. So the next tendril is an R. According to your theory we'd move right eight skulls to ...," he said, counting carefully over from Michael, "Friedrich."

  Celeste consulted Gerta's skull again. "The next one is an L. So left nine. That puts us one to the left of Michael. Sandor." She patted him on the head, apparently having completely forgotten her reticence.

  "So what's the last one?"

  Celeste bent down to study the skull. "Left again."

  Marcus moved down the line, passing Sandor and stopping at his neighbor Liesl Gasterman. The skull looked much like all the others, except that it seemed more bleached than either of its neighbors.

  "So pick it up," Celeste urged, standing at his elbow, enthusiasm coloring her voice.

  Marcus reached out for the skull, closed his hand over the top and lifted upward. "It's not moving." He tried again, but it seemed Liesl was stuck in place.

  "Try pushing," Celeste suggested.

  He pressed downward. There was an audible click, but nothing happened. "It's still not moving."

  "Maybe it didn't," Celeste said, all playfulness disappearing from her voice, "but that did." She pointed to a two-foot section of the thigh bones supporting the skulls. The section was in fact a façade, the partial bones meant to camouflage the opening behind. Pressing Liesl's skull had swung the "door" outward.

  Marcus walked over to the bone door and pulled it wider, revealing a hole with a rickety-looking wooden ladder descending down into the dark.

  "Great. A hole into Hell," Celeste said, staring down into the dank darkness.

  "Or a treasure chamber." Marcus moved toward the opening, turning on this flashlight.

  "You're not going down there?" Celeste protested. "It could be a trap. Or a grave." She shivered again.

  "I suspect it's the catacombs. There have to be more skulls than what we're seeing here. Or maybe it's just a tunnel between the graves outside. Either way it's obvious that Hans rigged this door. And if he went to all that trouble, then my guess is there's a reason."

  "Beyond his preoccupation with the dead." Celeste still didn't look convinced.

  "Look, you stay here, and I'll go down and check it out."

  "And take the ruby? No way." She shook her head to emphasize her point. "I haven't come this far to let you win by default."

  "All right then." He grinned. "Ladies first."

  She actually took a step back, but then squared her shoulders and moved toward the hole. "Fine. I'll go." She reached into the pocket of her coat and pulled out her flashlight. The beam dipped down into the dark and then disappeared
.

  "You're sure?"

  "I'm not afraid, if that's what you're implying." Her shoulders tightened, the tension a direct contradiction of her words, as she sat on the edge, then twisted around so that her feet were on the ladder. "See you at the bottom," she said, her voice light, the glow of her flashlight fading as she disappeared into the hole.

  If nothing else, he had to admire her courage.

  Although if he were being completely honest, he'd have to admit admiring a hell of a lot more than that.

  *****

  The ladder ended about four feet from the ground, the wood rotting away in the damp. Celeste pointed the flashlight downward, but couldn't really see much except what looked to be a mud floor. Praying that she wasn't jumping onto some ancient citizen of Hallstadt, she let go of the ladder, bending her knees as she hit the ground to absorb the impact. Turning in a circle, she illuminated the area, delighted to see nothing more than a passage leading off to the right.

  Marcus dropped down behind her, his presence filling the cavern. He'd always seemed larger than life to her, and somehow down here the image was only amplified. Still, she had to admit she was glad he was here. It was one thing to deny things that go bump in the night in the light of the day. Standing underneath a cemetery was another thing altogether.

  "So looks like we follow the passage," Marcus said, his breath stirring the hairs on the back of her neck.

  She nodded, shining the flashlight down the passage but still not moving.

  He took her hand, his fingers tightening around hers. "It's just a passageway."

  Any other man would have pushed past her. Or made fun of her. But he did neither, merely stood there waiting for her to find her courage, and somehow that made it easier to move forward.

  The corridor was really no more than a tunnel, moisture-slick rock and dirt glistening in the light from their flashlights. They moved forward without incident for about thirty yards, and then suddenly the tunnel made a ninety-degree turn to the right, the floor sloping sharply downward.

  The opening was shored up with rocks, as if the tunnel they'd just traversed had been dug specifically to intersect with the one shooting off from it. The remnants of an arch, dead ahead, was filled with ancient rubble.

  "Looks like this used to be an entrance of some sort," Marcus said, pushing past her to examine the old doorway. "I think I was right. This is an old catacomb. Hans must have known about it. And built the connecting tunnel."

  "So much for redemption."

  "Maybe it's not all it's cracked up to be." Marcus shrugged and started down the new tunnel, not giving her time for rebuttal.

  After about ten feet, the tunnel widened to a full-fledged passageway, cobble stones replacing the muddy floor. Marcus moved into the space first, sending the flashlight beam in a wide arc across the open area.

  Celeste wished he hadn't. The walls here weren't actually walls at all, but cubbyholes of sorts. Human cubbyholes. Or rather indentations holding human remains. In the shadowy light many looked as if they were sleeping. Curled on their sides, hands splayed. But others ... others looked as if they hadn't gone willingly. A trick of the light and decay no doubt, but the image was the kind that burned into your brain.

  "Let's just keep moving, please." Amazingly her voice was steady. And she took strength from the fact, pushing past Marcus, intent on taking the lead, but his hand on her arm stopped her.

  "They're long dead, Celeste. They can't hurt you."

  "I know that." She jerked her arm away and pressed past him, alarmed that his touch had been far more disturbing than the bodies on either side of her. She was in way over her head.

  They continued on for another twenty or thirty yards, and then suddenly the crypt ended in a stone archway. They stepped through it into a small chamber, their flashlights illuminating the remains of what had probably once been an altar. The center of the wall held a sandstone inlay, an oval inside of it containing a fresco. It was faded in places almost making it unrecognizable, but the gleam of a sword, the faded image of a knight, and the green of what could be a dragon's tail seemed to indicate St. George.

  "Dead end," Celeste said, shining her flashlight around the room. "There's no other way out. So, what now?"

  "Hans didn't dig that tunnel for nothing. There has to be something here that will lead us to the ruby."

  "Well, the stone has been linked to the devil obviously, and more obscurely to Aaron and to Jesus," Celeste said, turning in a slow circle trying to find more artwork. "But I don't see anything here connected to any of them."

  Marcus was standing by the altar, running his hands over the remaining stones. "No trick doors, either. At least not that I'm seeing. Maybe we need to go back to the beginning and start examining the niches. It could be the ruby is hidden with one of the bodies."

  Celeste started to protest, the idea making her physically ill, but before she could finish the thought, another popped into its place.

  "The monks at Avignon. They had a patron saint. I saw an effigy in the chapel when I was breaking in."

  He turned toward her, shaking his head, clearly not following her train of thought.

  "St. George. The patron saint of Theloneous Gerard's order is St. George."

  They turned together, Marcus's flashlight illuminating the fresco. In the direct light, the raised sword glimmered brightly, pointing downward at a spot in the floor. The cobblestone there was dusty, but through the glazing of dirt the painted cross was clear.

  *****

  Marcus smiled. It seemed that X marked the spot.

  Very apropos.

  "So what do we do?" Celeste asked, already walking over to the stone. "Press it?"

  "It wouldn't be that simple or someone simply walking by could trigger the thing." He knelt down beside the painted cobblestone, tracing the cross with his finger. There were no indentations. Nothing to indicate the stone was anything beyond decorative, but the sword had clearly pointed it out. And the mere fact that it was different from all the others had to signify something. "There must be another cross here somewhere. Something similar to this one. We find it, and I'm betting we find the ruby."

  "But there's nothing on the walls at all, except for St. George." Marcus stood up and walked over to the altar, carefully inspecting the sandstone that surrounded the fresco.

  "Anything?" She came to stand behind him, her chin by his shoulder, her breath warm against his ear.

  "Not yet. There's nothing visible here at all. But maybe it's not supposed to be something we'd see." To demonstrate he spread his hands across the wall, sliding his fingers over the stone, trying to discern an indentation of some kind.

  She nodded her understanding and moved to the other side of the sandstone inlay, letting her fingers trail over the roughened surface. They worked quietly, in partial darkness, the only sound their soft breathing.

  Marcus finished first, reaching the edge of the fresco having found nothing more than a couple of pockmarks and one tiny fissure that resembled nothing at all. "How's it going with you?"

  "Nothing so far. The surface is actually remarkably smooth. How old do you figure it is?" she asked.

  "Judging from the artwork, I'd say medieval, but the fresco could have been added later. I'm guessing that the catacombs predate the present charnel house. In fact, since the tunnel between the two seems to be fairly new, I'd hazard a guess that the original entrance was in here."

  Celeste looked up in response to his remark, then frowned. "Actually I think maybe I saw it, or what was left of it." She pointed with her flashlight to a tumble of rock in the far corner. The top of the rubble reached up fifteen feet or so to the ceiling and the faint remains of what might have originally been an opening, now obscured by the fall of rock. "Could that be it?"

  Marcus moved his flashlight to give better illumination, mica in the stone glistening in the light. "Could be. Maybe it led to an older charnel house. One they abandoned."

  "Hang on," Celeste said, moving o
ver to the fallen stones. "I think there's something up there." She waved with her flashlight at a spot near the ceiling on the back wall. "Can you see it?"

  He squinted, and was just able to make out what looked to be a slash of black against the rocks.

  "I'm going to see if I can get closer." She was already scrambling up the fallen rocks, loose debris raining down on the floor below.

  "Be careful. There's no telling how stable those rocks are." As if to prove his point, the rubble shifted, and Celeste slipped. Marcus was beside the rocks in two strides, but she had regained her footing and was still determinedly trying to get higher.

  "Can you shine your flashlight up there, please?" she asked. "I need mine to see where I'm going."

  He moved the beam of light so that the tiny spot of black was highlighted. She was only a couple of feet away now.

  "I've got it." She leaned over, the rock pile rattling ominously and then quieting. "It's a cross, Marcus. Same as the one on the floor. Only it's made of stone. Marble maybe."

  He moved closer, tipping his head back so that he could see, the light indeed highlighting what appeared to be a cross.

  "It looks like there's something written on it. But I can't make it out." Celeste shifted her weight from right foot to left as she tried to move closer to the cross. The movement sent more rock skittering to the floor, this time the entire pile of debris sliding downward in an avalanche of stone.

  One minute Celeste was teetering at the top and the next the she had disappeared into a swirling cloud of scree. Marcus ran forward, yelling her name, the beam from the flashlight unable to cut through the heavy dust filling the air.

  Large chunks of the ceiling rained down on his head, hitting with a force that significantly slowed his progress. He felt something slice into the skin above his brow, the warmth of the resulting blood flowing down his face. But he didn't even stop to assess the damage. It wasn't as if he were truly in danger. What mattered now was finding Celeste.