The Black Angel

by John Connolly

  “My cousin,” explained Most. He patted me on the arm. “You sure you don’t want to stay, have some fun?”

  The words “fun” and “Cupid Desire” didn’t seem a natural fit to me.

  “I have a girlfriend,” I said.

  “You could have another,” said Most.

  “I don’t think so. I’m not doing so good with the one I have.”

  Most didn’t offer girls to Angel and Louis. I pointed this out to them on the ride back to the hotel.

  “Maybe you’re the only one of us who looks like a deviant,” suggested Angel.

  “Yeah, that must be it, you being so clean-living and all.”

  “We should be there now,” said Louis.

  He was talking about Sedlec.

  “They’re not dumb,” I said. “They’ve waited a long time for this. They’ll want to look the place over before they make their move. They’ll need equipment, transport, men, and they won’t try to get to the statue until after dark. We’ll be waiting for them when they come.”

  We drove to Sedlec the next day, following the highway toward the Polish border because it was a faster road than the more direct route through the villages and towns. We passed fields of corn and beet, still recovering from the harvest, and drove through thick forests with small huts at their edges for the hunters to use. According to the guidebook I’d read on the plane, there were bears and wolves farther south, down in the Bohemian forests, but up here it was mainly small mammals and game birds. In the distance I could see red-roofed villages, the spires of their churches rising above the houses. Once we left the highway we passed through the industrial city of Kolin, the crossroads for the railways heading east to Moscow and south to Austria. There were crumbling houses and others in the process of restoration. Beer signs hung in windows, and chalk-written menus were displayed by open doors.

  Sedlec was now almost a suburb of the larger town of Kutna Hora. A great hill rose up before us: Kank, according to the map, the first big mine opened in the city following the discovery of silver on the Catholic Church’s property. I had seen paintings of the mines in the guidebook. They reminded me of Bosch’s depictions of hell, with men descending beneath the earth dressed in white tunics so that they could be seen in the dim light of their lamps, leather skirts at their backs so that they could slide down the mine shafts quickly without injuring themselves. They carried enough bread for six days, for it took five hours to climb back to the surface, and so the miners stayed underground for most of the week, only coming up on the seventh day to worship, to spend time with their families, and to replenish their supplies before returning to the world beneath the surface once again. Most kept an icon of Saint Barbara, the patron saint of miners, upon their persons, for those who died in the mines did so without benefit of clergy or the speaking of the last rites, and their bodies would probably remain below ground even if they could be found amidst the rubble of a collapse. With Saint Barbara close by them, they believed they would yet find their way to heaven.

  And so the town of Kutna Hora still rested on the remains of the mines. Beneath its buildings and streets were mile upon mile of tunnels, and the earth was mingled with the bones of those who had worked and died to bring the silver to the surface. This, I thought, was a fitting place for the interment of the Black Angel: an ancient outpost of a hidden hell in Eastern Europe, a little corner of the honeycomb world.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  We hung a right at a big Kaufland supermarket and came to the intersection of Cechova and Starosedlecka Streets. The ossuary was on the latter, directly before us, surrounded by high walls and a cemetery. Across from it was a restaurant and store named U Balanu, and around the corner to the right was a hotel. We asked to take a look at the rooms, eventually finding two that gave us a good view of the ossuary, then went to view the ossuary itself.

  Sedlec had never wanted for bodies to fill its graves: what the mines, or plague, or conflict could not provide, the lure of the Holy Land fulfilled. The fourteenth-century Zbraslav Chronicle records that in one year alone, thirty thousand people were buried in the cemetery, a great many of them brought there specifically for the privilege of being buried in soil from the Holy Land, for it was believed that the graveyard held miraculous properties, and that any decedent buried there would decompose within a single day, leaving only preserved white bones behind. When those bones inevitably began to stack up, the cemetery’s keepers built a two-story mortuary containing an ossuary within which the remains might be displayed. If the ossuary served a practical purpose by allowing graves to be emptied of skeletal remains and freed up for those more in need of a dark place in which to shed their mortal burden, it also served a spiritual purpose at least equally well: the bones became reminders of the transience of human existence and the temporary nature of all earthly things. At Sedlec, the border between this world and the next was marked in bone.

  Even here, in this foreign place, there were echoes of my own past. I recalled a hotel room in New Orleans, the air outside still and heavy with moisture. We had been closing in on the man who had taken my wife and child from me, and coming at last to some understanding of the nature of his “art.” He too believed in the transience of all human affairs, and he left behind his own memento mori as he traveled the land, tearing skin from flesh, and flesh from bone, to show us that life was but a fleeting, unimportant thing, capable of being taken at will by a being as worthless as himself.

  Except that he was wrong, for not all that we tried to achieve was without value, and not every aspect of our lives was unworthy of celebration or remembrance. With each life that he took, the world became a poorer place, its index of possibilities reduced forever, deprived of the potential for art, science, passion, ingenuity, hope, and regret that the unlived existences of generation upon generation of progeny would have brought with them.

  But what of the lives that I had taken? Was I not equally culpable, and was that not why there were now so many names, of both good men and bad, carved upon that palimpsest I bore, and for each of which I might justifiably be called to account? I could argue that by committing a smaller evil, I had prevented a greater one from occurring, but I would still bear the mark of that sin upon me, and perhaps be damned for it. Yet, in the end, I could not stand by. There were sins that I had committed out of anger, touched by wrath, and for those I had no doubt that I would at last be charged and found wanting. But the others? I chose to act as I did, believing that the greater evil lay in doing nothing. I have tried to make reparation, in my way.

  The problem is that, like cancer, a little corruption of the soul will eventually spread throughout the whole.

  The problem is that there are no small evils.

  We passed through the cemetery gates and skirted the graves, the more recent stones often marked with photographs of the deceased inset into the marble or granite beneath the word rodina, followed by the family name. One or two even had alcoves carved in the stone, protected by glass, behind which framed portraits of all of those buried beneath the ground sat undisturbed, as they might have done on a sideboard or a shelf when those depicted were still alive. Three steps led down to the ossuary entrance: a pair of plain wooden doors overlooked by a semicircular window. To the right of the entrance, a steeper flight of steps led up to the chapel, for the chapel stood above the ossuary, and from its window, one might look down on the interior of the ossuary itself. Inside the door, a young woman sat behind a glass display case containing cards and trinkets. We paid her thirty Czech koruny each to enter, or barely four dollars between us. We were the only people present, and our breath assumed strange forms in the cold air as we looked upon the wonders of Sedlec.

  “My God,” said Angel. “What is this place?”

  A stairway led down before us. On the walls at either side, the letters IHS, for Iesus Hominum Salvator, or “Jesus Savior of Humanity,” were set in long bones, surrounded by four sets of three bones representing the arms of a cross. Each arm
ended in a single skull. At the base of the stairs, two sets of parallel columns mirrored one another. The columns were made up of skulls alternated with what appeared to be femurs, the bones set vertically beneath the upper jaw of each skull. The columns followed the edges of two alcoves, into which had been set a pair of enormous urns, or perhaps they might have been baptismal fonts, again constructed entirely from human remains and lidded by a circle of skulls.

  I stepped into the main area of the ossuary. To my right and left were chambers containing huge pyramids of skulls and bones, too many to count, topped in each case by a wooden crown painted gold. Two similar barred rooms faced me, so that they occupied the four corners of the ossuary. According to the information leaflet thrust into our hands at the door, the remains represented the multitudes facing judgment before God, while the crowns symbolized the kingdom of heaven and the promise of resurrection from the dead. On one of the walls, beside the skull chamber to my right, there was an inscription, again inset in bone. It read:

  FRANTIŠEK RINT Z CESKE SKALICE 1870

  In common with most artists, Rint had signed his work. But if Bosworth was right, then Rint had seen something while he was completing the reconstruction of the ossuary, and what he had seen had haunted him to such a degree that he had spent years re-creating its image, as though by doing so he might slowly begin to exorcise it from his imagination, and bring himself peace at last.

  The other chamber to my left was marked by the coat of arms of the Schwarzenberg family, who had paid for Rint’s work. Once again, it was made entirely from bone: Rint had even constructed a bird, a raven or a rook, using a pelvic bone for its body and a section of rib for its wing. The bird was dipping its beak into the hollow eye socket of what was supposed to be a Turkish skull, a detail that had been added to the coat of arms as a gift from Emperor Rudolf II after Adolf of Schwarzenberg had curbed the power of the Turks by conquering the fortification of Raab in 1598.

  But all of this was merely a sideshow compared to the centerpiece of the ossuary. From the vaulted ceiling a chandelier hung, fashioned from elements of every bone that the human body could supply. Its extended parts were hanging arm bones, ending in a plate of pelvic bones upon which rested, in each case, a single skull. A candleholder was inset into the top of each head, and a ribbon of interlinked bones formed the suspension chains, keeping them in place. It was impossible to look upon it and not feel one’s sense of disgust overcome by awe at the imagination that could have produced such an artifact. It was simultaneously beautiful and disturbing, a marvelous testament to mortality.

  Inset into the floor beneath the chandelier was a rectangular concrete slab. This was the entrance to the crypt, within which were contained the remains of a number of wealthy individuals. At each corner of the crypt stone stood a Baroque candelabra in the shape of a Gothic tower, with three lines of seven skulls set into each, again with an arm bone clasped beneath their ruined jaws, and topped by angels blowing trumpets.

  All told, the remains of some forty thousand persons were contained in the ossuary.

  I looked around. Angel and Louis were examining a pair of glass cabinets, behind which were contained the skulls of some of those who had died in the Hussite campaigns. Two or three bore the small holes of musket balls, while others had gaping wounds inflicted by blunt force. A sharp blade had almost entirely cleaved away the back of one skull.

  Something dripped onto my shirt, spreading a stain across the fabric. I looked up and saw moisture on the ceiling. Perhaps the roof was leaking, I thought, but then I felt a rivulet of sweat run down my face and melt upon my lips. I realized that I could no longer see my breath in the air, and that I had begun to perspire heavily. Neither Angel nor Louis appeared troubled. Angel, in fact, had zipped his jacket up to his chin and was stamping his feet slightly to keep warm, his hands jammed into his pockets.

  Sweat ran into my eyes, blurring my vision. I tried to clear it by wiping the sleeve of my coat across my forehead, but it seemed to make matters worse. The salt stung me, and I began to feel dizzy and disoriented. I didn’t want to lean against anything, for fear of setting off the alarms about which we had been warned at the door. Instead, I squatted on the floor and took some deep breaths, but I was teetering slightly on my heels and so was forced to put my fingers to the ground to support myself. They touched against the crypt stone, and instantly I felt a wave of pain break across my skin. I was drowning in liquid heat, my whole body aflame. I tried to open my mouth to say something, but the heat rushed to fill the new gap, stilling any sound from within. I was blind, mute, forced to endure my torments in silence. I wanted to die, yet I could not. Instead, I found myself sealed, trapped in a hard, dark place. I was constantly on the verge of suffocation, unable to draw a breath, and still there was no release. Time ceased to have meaning. There was only an endless, unendurable now.

  And yet I endured.

  A hand was placed upon my shoulder, and Angel spoke. His touch felt incredibly cool to me, and his breath was like ice upon my skin. And then I became aware of another voice beneath Angel’s, except this one repeated words in a language that I did not understand, a litany of phrases spoken over and over again, always with the same intonation, the same pauses, the same emphases. It was an invocation of sorts, yet one bound up entirely with madness, and I was reminded of those animals in a zoo that, driven insane by their incarceration and the never-changing nature of their surroundings, find themselves endlessly stalking in their cages, always at the same speed, always with the same movements, as though the only way they can survive is to become as one with the place in which they are kept, to match its unyielding absence of novelty with their own.

  Suddenly the voice changed. It stumbled over its words. It tried to begin once more but lost its place. Finally, it stopped entirely, and I became aware of something probing the ossuary, the way a blind man might stop the tapping of his cane and listen for the approach of a stranger.

  And then it howled, over and over again, the tone and volume rising until it became one repeated shriek of rage and despair, but despair now, for the first time in so long, leavened by faint hope. The sound of it tore at my ears, shredding my nerves, as it called to me over and over and over again.

  It is aware, I thought. It knows.

  It is alive.

  Angel and Louis brought me back to the hotel. I was weak, and my skin was burning. I tried to lie down, but the nausea would not go away. After a time, I joined them in their room. We sat at the windows and watched the cemetery and its buildings.

  “What happened in there?” said Louis at last.

  “I’m not sure.”

  He was angry. He didn’t even try to hide it.

  “Yeah, well you need to explain it, don’t matter how weird it sounds. We got no time for this.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that,” I snapped.

  He eyed me levelly.

  “So what was it?”

  I had no choice but to answer him.

  “I thought, for a moment, that I felt something down there, under the ossuary, and that it knew I was aware of it. I had a sensation of being trapped, of suffocation and heat. That’s it. I can’t tell you anything more.”

  I didn’t know what to expect from Louis in response to this. Now, I thought. Now we have arrived at it. The thing that has come between us is wriggling its way to the surface.

  “You okay to go back in there?” he said.

  “I’ll wear a lighter coat next time.”

  Louis tapped his fingers gently, in time to some rhythm that only he could hear.

  “I had to ask,” he said.

  “I understand.”

  “I guess I’m getting impatient. I want this to end. I don’t like it when it’s personal.”

  He turned in his chair and stared at me.

  “They’ll come, won’t they?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Then you can do whatever you want with them. I promised you that we would find them, and we have. Isn�
��t that what you wanted from me?”

  But he still wasn’t satisfied. His fingers drummed on the windowsill, and his gaze seemed drawn again and again to the twin spires of the chapel. Angel was seated on a chair in one dark corner, carefully maintaining a stillness and silence, waiting for what divided us to be named. A sea change had occurred in our friendship, and I did not know if the result would bring an end to it, or a new beginning.

  “Say it,” I said.

  “I wanted to blame you,” said Louis, softly. He did not look at me as he spoke. “I wanted to blame you for what happened to Alice. Not in the beginning, because I knew the life that she led. I tried to look out for her, and I tried to make other people look out for her too, but in the end she chose her own path, like we all do. When she went missing, I was grateful. I was relieved. It didn’t last long, but it was there, and I was ashamed of it.

  “Then we found Garcia, and this guy Brightwell came out of the woodwork, and suddenly it wasn’t about Alice no more. It was about you, because you were tied into it somehow. And I got to thinking that maybe it wasn’t Alice’s fault, that maybe it was yours. You know how many women make their living on the streets of New York? Of all the whores or junkies they could have chosen, of all the women who might have gotten involved with this man Winston, why should it have been her? It was like you cast a shadow on lives, and that shadow was growing, and it touched her even though you’d never met her, didn’t even know she existed. After that, I didn’t want to look at you for a time. I didn’t hate you for it, because it wasn’t intentional on your part, but I didn’t want to be around you. Then she started calling to me.”

  He was reflected clearly in the glass now, as the night drew in. His face hung in the air, and perhaps it was a flaw in the glass that duplicated his reflection, or maybe it was something more, but a second presence seemed suspended in the darkening air behind him, its features indistinguishable, and the stars were shining through its eyes.