Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense: The Rosary Girls, the Skin Gods, Merciless, Badlands

by Richard Montanari

  She crossed the room, pulled down the bed sheets. The dead man stared up at her, his eyes rolled back in their sockets, his hairless skull veined and scabbed.

  Jessica touched a finger to his neck. There was no pulse.

  “And now the Seventh Wonder,” a voice said. Jessica spun around, weapon raised. The television behind her was on. Ice-blue images flickered on the walls, the ceiling.

  The scenario unfolding on the screen was identical to the other videos they had seen. But this time, Jessica knew who the man was. His name was Joseph Swann. The Collector. And he was somewhere in this house.

  On-screen, Swann stepped to the side, and Jessica saw the steel-and-glass cage at the center of the stage. Inside sat Graciella. Swann closed the door, spun the cage twice, lifted a large conical silken drape overhead.

  He then reached into his pocket, removed a small remote control, pressed a button. The camera angle widened, showing more of the stage. There was a ring of tower candles.

  Swann picked up a small copper can with a spout, like a receptacle used for drizzling olive oil. He circled the silken cone, splashing the liquid from top to bottom, all the while mumbling something Jessica was unable to hear. When he finished, he placed the can on a side table, then walked behind the drape.

  Jessica held her breath. For what seemed like a full minute, but was surely a much shorter period of time, there was no movement, no sound. The came a loud thud. The silken drapes billowed out, coming dangerously close to the candles. A few moments later a figure walked to center stage.

  It was Graciella.

  “Behold the Fire Grotto,” she said.

  She raised the hoop. The cage was closed, but Jessica could see something inside. It looked like a hand pressed against the smoked glass.

  “And behold Mr. Ludo,” Graciella added, gesturing to the box. “You may remember him from the Garden of Flowers, the Girl Without a Middle, and the Drowning Girl. You may remember him from the Sword Box, the Sub Trunk, and the Bridal Chamber.” Graciella picked up a candle. “I remember him for another reason.”

  At this Graciella lowered the curtain, stepped behind. A few more seconds passed. The silk billowed again.

  The world caught fire.

  | ONE HUNDRED TWO |

  | 5 : 55 AM |

  BYRNE PULLED INTO THE LONG DRIVEWAY, FOLLOWED BY JOSH BONTRAGER and Dre Curtis, along with seven or eight sector cars. It would only be a matter of time until every available officer in the district arrived. Jessica’s Taurus was parked halfway up the drive. She was not in it. Byrne didn’t see her anywhere.

  The three detectives emerged from their cars. Byrne began to direct a perimeter. He and Josh Bontrager approached the front of the house. On the way in, Byrne had gotten on his cell phone to Hell Rohmer and gotten a brief background on the property. In the 1800s it had been known as Prescott Square. Byrne realized it was the final piece of the puzzle. He couldn’t help feeling they were too late.

  Byrne drew his weapon, chambered a round. Bontrager covered him as he peered through the leaded glass. Byrne couldn’t see anything except the distorted flames of a hundred candles. Music came from inside. Byrne reached out, tried the knob. Locked.

  The two detectives backed off the porch, their weapons lowered.

  That’s when Byrne smelled the smoke.

  “Do you—” he began, just as the first flame licked the inside of the front window.

  Three seconds later, an explosion rocked the world.

  | ONE HUNDRED THREE |

  | 5 : 55 AM|

  IN THE DARKNESS, IN THE DEEP VIOLET FOLDS OF NIGHT, HE HEARS WHISPERS: low, plaintive sounds that speak to him of his many crimes, his many sins. As the voices overlap, as the pitch and timbre rise, so does the temperature in the glass coffin in which he is trapped. He soon realizes that these are not the voices of his past.

  It is the voice of fire.

  His head throbs with the effects of the chloroform. Where did Odette get it? Why had she done this to him? He tries to calm himself. Panic is the enemy. He slips his fingers into the secret latch in the corner of the box that is the Fire Grotto. The catch is vertical. It does not move. Again he tries. This time the metal is too hot to touch. Smoke filters in. He cannot breathe. He is once again the Singing Boy. And once again he is locked inside a cabinet of his father’s design.

  He maneuvers his hand into his pocket, removes the small remote control. He slides off the back panel, snaps it in two. He slips the hard plastic shard into the slot at the bottom of the main catch and begins to turn the screw. The heat is becoming unbearable. Sweat pools on the floor of the cage; steel hinges brand his back. Turn by turn, the screw slowly loosens. Finally, the catch drops to the floor of the cage. He pushes against the door. Nothing. He tries again. This time it begins to move. He takes a deep breath, holds it, as the box is now filled with smoke. His eyes and lungs burn as he rocks back and forth, forcing his shoulder into the door. The glass panels of the Fire Grotto start to crack in the intense heat. He expands his chest, flexes his upper arms. The door flings open. He emerges from the cage to find the stage now covered in thick black smoke. He makes it to his feet. The backs of his arms and hands are scorched and blistered.

  As the flames devour the curtains on either side of the stage, he looks into the wings. Through the miasma he sees the Great Cygne. It is not the broken man he knows, the man who has lived in his filth for almost twenty years. It is the young illusionist, the man who strode onto the stage, his magnificent cape billowing behind him, his eyes mesmerizing.

  “Where dwells the effect, Joseph?”

  “The effect,” he says, each word burning his throat, “is in the mind.”

  The Great Cygne lifts his cape over his face. In an instant it drops to the floor.

  The Great Cygne is gone.

  Joseph Swann removes his false beard and eyebrows, his cutaway coat, and makes his way to the stairs, through the flaming inferno of the basement.

  | ONE HUNDRED FOUR |

  | 5 : 58 AM|

  FIRE ENCIRCLED THE FIRST FLOOR OF THE HOUSE, AND JESSICA WAS trapped on the third floor. All the secret doors that had stood open were now closed, and she could not find the seams. There was no way out. As her handset crackled with static, a blast rocked the walls. The floor, the ceilings, rained plaster onto her head, and the concussive air sucked her breath from her lungs for a moment. The ornate clock on the wall behind her crashed to the floor, shattering its glass. The chandelier in the center of the room ripped from its plaster medallion.

  She tore at the velvet drapes of one window, then the other. Both were barred.

  She had to calm herself, to concentrate.

  “There are things you should know about this house.”

  Jessica looked at the yellowed schematic. Half of it had been ripped away. It took her a few moments to orient the diagram. There were lines and notations all across the surface. She soon realized she had the southern and eastern sections of the house. Was she in the eastern section? She had no idea.

  Smoke drifted under the door. Jessica heard glass shattering elsewhere in the house, popping like small arms’ fire.

  Her eyes danced over the yellowed page.

  Where was she?

  She found her location. Eastern wall. It showed three windows, but she only saw two, both of them barred. An arrow pointed to something on the wall, equidistant between the two windows. Jessica looked up. The only thing on the wall was a large wrought-iron sconce. She pulled on it. Nothing. She pushed. Nothing. She felt the heat in the very walls. The room was already thick with smoke up to her knees.

  She twisted the sconce left, right, left, right, nearly tearing it from the wall. She was just about to give up when a panel slid down in front of her. Behind it was a round window. No bars.

  Jessica looked around in the dense smoke. She found a heavy footstool. She lifted it and heaved it through the glass. Cool night air came rushing in. She was nearly knocked to the floor by the backdraft. Behind her, t
he door to the room slammed open and fire raged inside, devouring the brocade fabrics, the old dry furniture.

  Jessica looked out the window. She could not see the ground. She recalled the sharp iron spikes along the railing. The flames raged ever closer. She could see part of the way down the hall, to the stairs leading up to the attic. The heat was so intense she felt as if her skin was about to peel from her face.

  A figure emerged, clawing its way slowly up stairs. It was almost unrecognizable as human.

  The figure paused for a moment, stared into the room. For a brief moment, through the flames, Jessica saw the man’s eyes. And it was in this instant they knew each other. Hunter and hunted.

  Jessica turned back to the window, to the smoke-thickened night air. Lungs fit to burst, she could wait no longer. As she climbed onto the sill she realized what she had seen in the charred and blistered apparition outside the door.

  His eyes were silver.

  She jumped.

  | ONE HUNDRED FIVE |

  | 6 : 00 AM |

  HE TURNS TO CLIMB THE FINAL FLIGHT OF STAIRS, JUST AS A PAIR OF oil paintings melt and slide from the walls. On the landing, a burlwood collector’s cabinet catches fire, its glass front cracking, its contents—a rare nineteenth century edition of The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin—vaporizing in a burst of searing ash, coating his face and arms.

  He glances down the main corridor as doors are flung open. Through the dense smoke he sees each room. He recalls the lovely faces of Monica Renzi and Caitlin O’Riordan, of Katja Dovic and Elise Beausoleil, Patricia Sato and Claire Finneran.

  He sees Lilly. His Odette.

  As he drags himself up the staircase to the attic, the flesh from his hands is left behind on the white-hot iron railings.

  At the top he finds Molly Proffitt, her delicate watery eyes now open in the Sea Horse tank, the gash in her head rent to expose her brain. Molly holds the door for him, the door leading to the attic and its massive roof beam.

  Moments later Joseph Swann stands on a chair, the rope hanging loosely around his shoulders. He is framed by the large circular window that overlooks the front yard. At his feet, the old reel of film, The Magic Bricks, bubbles and melts.

  He tightens the noose around his neck, the hemp rope pulling off the remaining flesh of his palms.

  It is in this position that the flames find him, drawing him into their fiery embrace, into Hell, into the diseased heart of Faerwood.

  | ONE HUNDRED SIX |

  | 6 : 10 AM |

  IT WAS A FAMILIAR VOICE, BUT ONE SHE COULDN’T QUITE PLACE. WAS IT her father? Her brother Michael? It seemed to be filtered through a thick wad of wet cotton, like someone trying to shout through a mattress. For the moment she was underwater at Wildwood, her father yelling at her from the beach to watch out for the undertow.

  But it couldn’t be the beach. Something was burning. She had to—

  “Jessica. You okay?”

  Jessica slowly opened her eyes. It was Kevin Byrne. The world came swirling back. She nodded, even though she did not know the answer to this question.

  “Can you talk?” he asked.

  Another stumper. Jessica nodded.

  “Who’s inside the house?” Byrne asked.

  Between gulps of oxygen. “An old man,” she said. “A girl.”

  “What about our guy? What about the Collector?”

  Jessica shrugged. Bright bolts of pain shot through her shoulders, her collarbone. She recalled falling from the window, falling. She didn’t remember hitting the ground. “I don’t know. I think they’re all dead.” She looked down the length of her body. “Broken?”

  Byrne glanced at the paramedic, back. “They don’t know. They don’t think so. Your fall was broken by the hedges behind the house.” Byrne patted her hand.

  Jessica heard the sirens approaching. Moments later she saw the first ladder company arrive. She breathed more easily. Taking off the mask—over the objections of the paramedic—she slowly sat up. Byrne and Josh Bontrager helped.

  “Tell me about Logan Circle,” she said.

  Byrne shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”

  Jessica tried to smile. It hurt her face. “It’s kinda my job.”

  JESSICA GOT UNSTEADILY to her feet. Even from across the road, the heat was intense. Faerwood was an inferno, flames shooting fifty feet or more into the sky. Somehow, Josh Bontrager found a cold bottle of spring water. Jessica drank half of it, poured the other half over the back of her neck.

  Before she could make her way to the EMS van, she caught a shadow to her left; someone walking up the middle of the smoke-hazed street. Jessica was too shaken, too exhausted to react. It was a good thing she was surrounded by what seemed like the entire police department.

  As the figure got closer Jessica saw it was Graciella. Her gown was covered with soot and ash, as was her face, but she was fine.

  Kevin Byrne turned and saw the girl. Jessica watched the reaction on his face. It was the same reaction she’d had when she saw the girl in the hallway mirror. Graciella looked exactly like her mother, exactly like a young Eve Galvez. Byrne was speechless.

  Graciella walked right up to Byrne. “You must be Kevin. My mom mentioned you.” She stuck out her hand. It was bleeding.

  Byrne gently took her hand in his. Sticking out of the young woman’s palm were small shards of glass. The smell of a strong chemical filled the air.

  “My name is Graciella,” the girl added. At that moment the girl’s legs gave out. Byrne caught her before she hit the ground. She looked up at him in a daze. “I think I need to lay down.”

  | ONE HUNDRED SEVEN |

  LABOR DAY WEEKEND WAS A FESTIVE HOLIDAY IN PHILADELPHIA, INCLUDING the annual parade along Columbus Boulevard and the Arden Fair just across the Delaware River.

  For Detectives Balzano and Byrne there was little festive about it. They stood in the duty room, all but deluged by the paperwork related to the Collector case. They would piece together a preliminary report by the end of the long weekend.

  When Eve Galvez learned of the Caitlin O’Riordan case, she became obsessed. She closely followed the investigation, and when she felt that detectives Pistone and Roarke were not doing their job, Eve decided to do it for them. She photocopied their files, going so far as to take the interview notes from the binder, the notes that mentioned Mr. Ludo.

  Night after night, for two months, Eve went out on the street, talking to kids, looking for any trace of Mr. Ludo. She tracked Joseph Swann in city parks, bus stations, train stations, to runaway and homeless shelters. She finally caught up to him one night in June. As strong and resourceful as she was, he proved too much for her. He overpowered her and buried her in a shallow grave in Fairmount Park. Her exact cause of death was still undetermined.

  On the night she was killed, Eve had called her daughter and told her everything. They had never spoken before. Every birthday and Christmas, Eve had sent her something.

  That night Eve took a picture of herself in front of Faerwood with her camera phone, and sent it to her daughter. She had told Graciella of Mr. Ludo, and her quest for the truth about Caitlin O’Riordan, right before she disappeared.

  Two months later, when Eve’s body was discovered in a shallow grave in Fairmount Park, Graciella took what little money she had and came to Philadelphia.

  Graciella had been adopted when she was eight weeks old, by a couple named Ellis and Catherine Monroe. Graciella had gone by the name Grace Monroe all her life, until the night she talked to her mother.

  When Graciella was nine, her adoptive father had left, and her mother Catherine had sleepwalked through life after that. The woman had never been that close to her adopted daughter, leaving her to live in a world of her own. It wasn’t until three days after Graciella had run away to Philadelphia that the woman reported her missing.

  Joseph Swann could never have known that he had always been on a collision course with Graciella Galvez.

  According to letters
and journals found in Laura Somerville’s strongbox, Laura had met Karl Swann, the Great Cygne, when she was only twenty-three. They had met in Baton Rouge and Laura agreed to become his assistant. They toured the southern United States in the sixties and seventies, and for years she had been Odette—playing nurse and mother to young Joseph, playing the occasional lover to Karl Swann, but more important, playing accomplice to young Joseph’s murderous past. According to her diary, there were six young people found dead around the Great Cygne’s traveling show over the years. Laura’s journal detailed where they were buried. The District Attorney’s office passed along this information to the state police departments in Texas, Louisiana, and New Mexico.

  At least ten pages of Laura Somerville’s diary were a confession. When Jessica and Byrne showed up at her apartment, she apparently believed her past had caught up to her. It was she who had made the calls about Shiloh Street after all, having shadowed Joseph Swann for months, hoping to anonymously tip the police.

  When Karl Swann hanged himself in 1988, his son Joseph rescued him just in time, nursing him back to health, but locking the man in a dark, cold wing in Faerwood.

  As far as the investigators could determine, Karl Swann never again left Faerwood. He had essentially lived in that room on the third floor for twenty years. It appeared his son had cooked for him and attended to his basic needs. In time, Karl Swann’s mental illness brought him back to 1950 again. He lived through his son’s re-creation of his world. He had watched, via television monitor, everything that happened downstairs on Joseph’s secret stage.

  If Eve Galvez had been obsessed with Caitlin O’Riordan, Joseph Swann was obsessed with the prism of his own madness—magic, puzzles, and the dark history of Faerwood.

  In the days following the fire, investigators unearthed the remains of six other victims on the grounds of the mansion. All were as yet unidentified. All were buried in brightly colored boxes.