It came from two tall candles on a wooden shelf in a niche in the wall. He remembered this—it was a shrine. The centerpiece had been a photo of Karl’s teacher in England, a canny geezer with piercing eyes and a shaved head. Now in its place stood a picture of Karl. So the old guy had finally died. To the left of Karl, a filament of smoke curled down to the floor from the glowing tip of a stick of incense. To the right, a sheaf of dead flowers drooped in a slender oriental vase.
The picture was a black-and-white headshot. It showed Karl at his most soulful, his lips set in deep seriousness, eyes staring out, through and beyond Ray, beyond this world. He seemed about the same age as when Ray knew him. Or perhaps a little older, because Ray didn’t remember those smudges under his eyes. Was he tired? Karl never got tired. It must be the photo.
Ray realized he was staring at Karl, and his eyes flicked away from Karl’s gaze, as he’d always done when he saw him in the flesh. And it all came back. He shrank down inside, suddenly that guy who didn’t know anything, not how to walk across a room or brush his teeth in the proper way. A man whose every thought was suspect. Unbecoming. The word appeared in his mind in Karl’s voice, as if the picture had spoken. Above all, he was a worthless piece of shit in the eyes of his teacher, his god.
To his shame, his chest swelled with a kind of love. He looked back at Karl, then away again, biting his lip.
What if a select few had stayed with Karl and ascended to some celestial realm? Ray remembered his recurrent dream of Karl and the others in the clearing, everyone smiling, Karl telling him all was forgiven. It had been no dream, but a premonition.
He’d thought he’d come here to spy, but he was the Prodigal Son. All he had to do was climb these stairs and, Surprise! His brothers and sisters would be there, beaming like angels, arms wide to embrace him.
Welcome home.
Leaving Karl had been a terrible mistake. His whole life since then had been a nightmare of illusion, Karl’s world the only real one. Was it too late?
But what was the chance Karl would let him just waltz back after all these years? His mouth fell. He sobbed, and a tear ran down his cheek. All the time he’d missed when he could have been here.
He looked at Karl again, widened his focus from the photo to the dead flowers. He shuddered as the delusions flew away. The volcano roared to life and set his torso on fire. He was sorry, yes, but for all the years he’d wasted with the group.
And there was something wrong about this shrine. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he felt the wrongness as an icicle down his middle.
Would Karl, even with his monstrous ego, build a shrine to himself? No. That meant someone else was with him. That he still had followers. They must be living in the front rooms, whose lights he couldn’t see. They were up there, now.
He needed to get out, right now. He looked up to the window he’d come through. There was no way to climb out without a ladder. Should he creep upstairs, slip out the Front Door? Or try for that cave?
He stood, frozen with uncertainty, and stared at the shrine. What was wrong?
The dead flowers. They were sloppy, something Karl would never tolerate in his house, let alone this shrine.
Ray gazed at the floor, at the bricks he and Bassman had laid. They still looked good. But his finger had left drops of blood, which someone might see. He knelt, licked his sleeve and scrubbed at the stain. It wasn’t coming out.
Down here on the floor there was an odor, beneath the incense and burning wax. A damp cellar smell, or the clayey exhalation of that cave? No, it was organic. Rotten. But it wasn’t dead flowers….
The smell was wrong. More wrong than the flowers. It must be coming from upstairs. He pictured the first floor reverted to the state of decrepitude it had been in when they first started working up there. It had stunk of rotting carpets and moldy upholstery.
Except this was more like the dead mice in the walls of the old farmhouse Susan and he lived in back then, though there were plenty of live ones to skitter around at night keeping them awake. Dead cave rats?
He shrank down inside again, only this was different. It was the cowering of an animal trying to hide from its prey.
As he stood he felt a faint breeze. He wet a finger and held it up. The air came from further into the basement, from The Meeting Hall, and flowed upstairs, not down from above. Which made sense, if it was unheated up there. This time of year, the air down here was warmer than above, and should rise. So the odor wasn’t coming from up there, but from further in The Basement.
He pulled out the Mag-Lite and headed through the door into the dark Meeting Hall. As he stepped through, the smell got stronger. His light sliced a narrow beam in the gloom, making the room seem bigger than he remembered. He directed the beam onto the brick floor, then to the far wall, where cushions were stacked halfway to the high ceiling.
Ah. Now he relaxed. He’d forgotten about those. They’d been rotting for all these years. That was the smell.
The cushions…and he was back sitting in the last row, Karl intoning, Ray, I hear you’ve been breaking the rule about sex, with your wife, spitting out the last word with contempt. NO SEX, Ray. Maybe she should come stay here in The House where I can keep an eye on her.
Ray snapped back to the present. His face was on fire, despite the chill. He’d been standing here, looking everywhere in the room but up front, to Karl’s cushion. As if Karl might still be there.
He slowly swept the light to the front. Karl’s cushion was gone.
In place of the cushion was a long wooden box sitting on two chairs. Ray’s thoughts stopped. He was only aware of the pulse throbbing in his smashed finger, clammy air on his cheeks, and the sweat-damp shirt clinging to his chest.
Karl spoke in Ray’s head: It’s time. Time to leave. But he crept up to the box, quietly as he could, though why bother to be quiet? He was alone here. He peered down. The box was open.
Karl lay still, eyes closed, his mouth shut tight. Ray suppressed the impulse to hold a hand under his nose, see if he was breathing. Because he was quite dead. Why was Ray thinking of Lenin in his tomb, of some saint in the crypt of an Italian church? Of the mummies at The Met?
Because Karl had been mummified. How did he know? Because Karl should have been in his sixties, and this guy was barely fifty. Though being younger wasn’t doing much for his look.
This mummification job wasn’t quite up to Egyptian standards. And there was the stink, so strong here that Ray was breathing through his mouth and forcing his stomach not to heave.
Karl’s skin was too dark, too loose. His face had lost its symmetry, one side collapsed down, pulling his lips into an uncharacteristic sneer.
Ray’s skin crawled. He’d been running the gamut of emotions. Add disgust. What had he been worried about those last weeks? Karl had been dead for years.
Though that shrine had warned him of something bad, he could never have imagined this. He was stunned, but as the numbness started to pass, he felt Karl, even in death, reaching out to fuck with his head.
All Ray’s weird art—which started with the mummy in the museum—had led him here. What had Karl once said? We are what we think. We make our own reality. And Ray had been thinking macabre thoughts all these years, dreaming up faux reliquaries, and here was the real thing. A mummy in a coffin—not exactly a reliquary, but close enough.
Ray stared at those dusky eyelids, certain Karl was about to open them, nail him with that molten gaze, paralyzing him. He was terrified that Karl was about to part those shriveled lips and say, Ray, it’s time.
Ray snapped back to the reality of Karl’s badly embalmed body in its coffin and asked himself the obvious question. Who had preserved him? And who lit those candles in the shrine, sent the emails, killed a cat? Who the hell was living upstairs?
A sound, and Ray jumped. Karl’s eyes, rolling open! No. It wasn’t coming from the
coffin, but somewhere behind him. Bright light spilled from that direction, pitching his shadow against the wall, like a giant’s, and he flinched from it. The hand with the flashlight fell to his side.
Ray turned with excruciating slowness—or was it time that had slipped into slo-mo? Wordless screaming filled his head, but he could translate: Don’t turn. Don’t Look. Run for your life from this hall of horrors! But there was nowhere to run.
Even now his curiosity ruled. He must see.
At first, he was blinded by the light. He threw a hand up to shield his eyes. They adjusted.
A man, standing in the door. Ray couldn’t make out his face. But the height, the heft he knew. His stomach turned over. His skin prickled like it no longer fit his flesh.
Run! Hide! Fight! But no.
He. Had. To. See.
As if reading his mind, the figure lowered the light, and Ray was no longer blind. His lovely floor came into focus, every brick as solidly mortared as when he first laid it.
He raised his eyes.
It was Karl.
Ray’s imagined vision of a minute ago had become real. Karl’s gaze burned into him, paralyzing him. This Karl didn’t look like he’d aged a month since Ray had last seen him. If anything, he looked younger. Which was impossible…but so was his double in the coffin behind Ray.
Karl was still as ever. Scary as ever. Scarier, because of this doppelgänger business. Had Bodine laced one of those granola bars with acid? Ray’s world flipped upside down, inside out, guts on the outside and skin in. Bile jetted up into his throat, and a thread spilled from his lips.
Karl took a step toward him and something glittered at the side of his head. He was wearing an earring. What in the living, breathing fuck? Karl would never in a thousand lifetimes wear an earring.
But as Bodine liked to say, people change. Except Karl was wearing a T-shirt. That was wrong, too. Karl hated T-shirts. And this couldn’t be Karl of course, because Karl was dead in that coffin. But somehow it was him…
He walked just like Karl: light and graceful as a cat. He stepped toward Ray, and Ray couldn’t move, couldn’t flee, just had this enormous pressure building in his head.
Karl stopped a step in front of him, close enough to touch. Ray suppressed the impulse to reach out and finger his face, to see if it was made of flesh, or rubber, or just incense smoke.
Ray’s gaze fell to Karl’s hands. They were large and wide, most definitely Karl’s. To Ray’s relief, they carried no weapons, only an old key in one and in the other one of those industrial lanterns with a fat six-volt battery. But he was one big guy. With Karl’s face, though with the light he pointed illuminating his chin, it was mostly in shadow. Ray resisted the urge to shine his puny light on it.
Ray’s eyes adjusted further. That wasn’t Karl’s nose. Or his mouth, exactly, either. His smell hit Ray’s nose, overpowering the stench from the coffin. It was the stink of a homeless person: filthy clothes and shit.
Karl never smelled like anything. He never broke a sweat.
This wasn’t Karl. Then who?
Still, the man whispered, as only Karl could, “Why are you here?” Ray leapt back a step. It was Karl’s precise intonation, only it issued from the wrong pipes. This voice was not soft and seductive like a breeze through willows. It was harsh and a little nasal. Maybe he had a cold?
Why are you here? They were Karl’s words, some of the first he’d ever spoken to Ray. And now, as then, they were ambiguous. Why are you standing here, in this house? Or Why are you on this planet?
Ray tried to turn the tables, hit the man with a Karl question. “Who are you?”
“You’ve heard of the brother’s keeper?” A pedantic tone has crept into his voice.
“Of course.”
“I am my father’s keeper. The keeper of the teachings. Some fathers are of the flesh. Some of the spirit. Mine was both.”
It was the same face, almost. The same way of talking. But he was much younger than Karl should be. About…a generation. Ray said, “You’re Karl’s son.” He should be glad to have an explanation for the inexplicable, but all he felt was an icy calm.
The man’s throat emitted a little, familiar sound, Karl’s way of scoffing at something too obvious. “He said you would come.”
Ray glanced over at the coffin and his calm disintegrated. What, Karl knew he was coming here, told his son? How could he know? He was dead long before Ray thought of writing.
“He said you would come, to speak of what should never be spoken, to spread lies about the teachings…”
Ray got it. Karl didn’t prophesize that he would come personally, but that someone would come. Someone would come, and finally speak.
“…and the teachers. The line stretches back to Leonardo and Johann Sebastian Bach, to Jesus, the Buddha and Mohammed. The secret masters. I am the sum of all their wisdom.”
“What the hell does a dead cat with a dirty joke and that mannequin have to do with the teachings?”
“I needed you to stop writing. And my father taught me about mirrors.”
Oh God. Ray’s smoking form in the chair had been this kid’s version of Karl’s technique. He was trying to show Ray who he was, but with none of Karl’s subtlety. Ray had been right that someone was attempting to teach him, just wrong about who.
Ray asked again. “Who are you?”
“Seth. You are done writing, Ray.”
How did he know who Ray was, what he looked like? Seth must have recognized him from his website. The man’s body tensed—to run? to fight? But he turned and stalked out into the anteroom. Ray heard the thunder of big feet pounding upstairs. He pictured that gun in the closet on the second floor. Even closer was one of those knives in The Kitchen. Karl had insisted on only the best.
And Ray had…this baby flashlight.
He needed to get up there, out the Front Door before Seth returned. He raced into the foyer and hit the steps. A slam and he stopped. At the creaking of a key, hope drained from him. He’d never noticed a door at the top of those stairs, because it was always open. Now it was locked.
Ray stood frozen on the steps. He was locked in the basement with Karl’s corpse. Maybe Seth wasn’t about to return with a knife or a gun but was going to just leave him here, take off and never come back. Leave him here to join Seth’s father in this mausoleum of the damned.
The door was locked, and like the others in The House probably solid oak. There were other ways out. Ray raced down into the foyer. He looked up at the window he’d crawled in. There used to be a ladder in the far room. He ran there. No ladder, but the stack of bricks was there.
He picked one up. A weapon. But what did they say? You don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. And you certainly don’t bring a brick to a knife fight or a gunfight. Seth had one or the other. Ray dropped the brick.
He ran to the back door. It was locked with one of those old jobs that needed a key for both sides. He crashed a shoulder into the door. It didn’t budge.
He raced back to the pile of bricks. If he carried them into the foyer and stacked them up, could he reach the window? There were only about a hundred. Not nearly enough.
He’d known there was only one way out. He’d been avoiding it. It was right here, behind the stack of bricks.
The cave.
Did Seth know about it? Had he ever been in there? Ray frantically tossed the bricks from the entrance. He should cover it back up once he was inside, but there was no time to do it. Seth would figure out he came in here anyway. Where else could Ray be?
He needed to move. He crawled in on hands and knees. He paused to listen. Not a sound, in here or out there.
The first part would be easy, just a little painful on his knees, if not for that throbbing finger. He made that hand into a fist and proceeded on the knuckles, though that was more than a little painful. The other hand he
ld that blessed flashlight. He must be careful not to damage it. A narrow crack ran along the bottom of the passage. It gradually widened, until he had to jam his elbows against the wall to keep from slipping in. The ceiling stayed at the same level, but the crack got deeper and deeper. The way forward started undulating like a snake. It narrowed, forcing him to move sideways.
He paused for a moment to rest. A scraping sound echoed down the passage. Shit. Seth was coming. He turned off the Mag-Lite and froze, stopped breathing. It was pitch dark. Where was Seth’s lantern? The sound got louder and resolved into two. Cloth rubbing on stone, which was his clothes, and a periodic clink. Was it the lantern? A knife? A gun? Ray waited. A flicker of light reflected on the rock walls. Seth had a light but was still around a corner or two.
If he had the lantern he had before, it was a plus and a minus. It was ten candlepower stronger than Ray’s Mag-Lite, which was a major asset in this place of eternal night. But it didn’t fit in the palm of a hand. And you needed both hands down here.
Seth was getting closer and Ray had to move. But he needed to know just what his pursuer carried. He listened. There were three sounds: clothes on stone, that original clink, and a clank, duller and lower in pitch. Was the clink a knife and the clank the lantern? Or was the clink the lantern and the clank…a gun?
Ray inched on, past a dark opening in the wall.
When he’d seen that with Bodine, he asked, “How the hell are we going to keep from getting lost?”
Bodine said, “That’s a side passage. See, it’s smaller. If we stick to this main one we’ll be fine.”
Now Ray stopped again to listen: clink, clank, and a grunt. Seth was still coming, gaining on him.
Ray humped it. The crack in the floor widened. Though he’d come in here with Bodine decades ago, the memory was clear as if it happened yesterday. Which was good. He needed to remember in order to get through this.
Never Speak: A Mystery Thriller (The Murderous Arts Series) Page 27