The dread in his stomach deepened. He urged the truck on faster, gunning it for all the old machine could take. The entire time, images of disgusting ritual filled his head, Father Frederick bent over his victim, with all manner of dark purpose in his crazed, gleaming eyes.
How, how did a friendly parish priest of Whitetail Knoll hide a past this twisted? What could drive a man of the cloth to this?
War changes men, Conall answered himself. He recalled the man he'd been before he'd traveled to the continent, working for the SAS. Before he'd come home injured, to a village which no longer existed, to a family perished in the bombings. War and loss had made him cynical. If not for Shyla, he might have simply become an angry old drunk living alone in a boneyard, shunning all of humanity out of spite.
Con had been a sabotage soldier. His work carried him to supply depots and vehicle bays. He'd blown up machines and fought with guns, knives, or his own bare hands.
Fred...Fred's tour had taken him into dark occult gatherings. Put him in the front lines of fanatical societies, delving into the mysteries of the Beyond. The priest hadn't conceived of the rituals to re-awaken Asya from the brink of death on his own. He'd learned in the company of secret societies and dark magicians no one could bear to talk about.
It warped him, Conall concluded. Asya might be his dark creation...but he is a true monster.
A true monster with power, however. If Conall had forgotten it for even a moment, he couldn't forget, once he at last arrived at the church.
All hope for the lives of the Little Sisters died out as Con slowed, then finally stopped the truck, in a tiny dirt lot outside the convent of St. Margaret. It appeared smaller now than in his memory. No surprise there, though: Conall had been in the care of the Little Sisters less than a month while he'd recovered and hadn't been back since. Besides the diminished size, however, the church remained the picture-perfect model of a tiny monastery, something which might have belonged in Paris or Italy, made of stone and glass but dropped far out of reach in the quiet, secluded English countryside. There stood the main church with its chapel, a rather tiny sanctuary for all the outward grandeur of the place. Off to the side stretched the convalescent hall, where the Little Sisters cared for the sick. There had been another smaller hall too, once serving as an orphanage, but the last of their poor war-orphaned children had left the church some years ago.
At least, so Father Fred had told him, one afternoon over lemonades. The priest had said it with a pleasant sparkle in his eye. Now Conall had to wonder: had the child really gone home to some far-flung relative?
Or did he become a victim to Fred's heinous academia?
Beside the main building stood the cloisters where the sisters lived. In between, a well-tended green yard and a simple garden.
At least, it had been a well-tended yard and garden...ten years ago. Now, those gnarled, spidery black brambles overran the area, creeping around the buildings, up into shattered windows and into darkened rooms. The vines grew huge—exactly like the ones at the graveyard this morning—and Con had a suspicion they'd been here at the cloisters much, much longer.
Stained-glass windows hung broken in their panes, cracks running through half-decimated scenes from the Gospel. The shards on the ground resembled nothing so much as bright, drunken, and bloodied confetti. Beauty and color wounded, dead upon the ground.
The walls of the convent remained intact, for the most part. Con imagined the stonework proved too staunch for even the dark constructs of these brambles to break down. Sections of roof, however, had fallen inward under the weight of heavy vines. Conall followed the maze of gnarled branches up and up, until finally he took in the sight of the bell tower: the wicked thorns had grown around it to form a cage around the bell, and now it hung in eerie, unmoving silence. Like Asya when she grew still, the bell gave sign of no motion whatsoever. Even the clapper remained frozen, untouched by physical forces. It might have been a photograph, not a real thing at all.
The whole church reflected the same bizarre stillness. It might all have been a photograph, drained of color and faded with time. Lacking life, breath, or meaning.
He heard...nothing. No sound at all: not even the chirp of a bird or the rustle of dried grass. Nothing here moved.
A flat, cold frisson traveled down the back of his neck. Con brought his shotgun to bear, though he hadn't yet decided his approach, and moved a step back toward his truck.
Then, finally, a brief motion caught his eye. Toward a break between the church buildings, gated by thorns, Con saw it.
A frayed length of silken, gray ribbon. Snagged on the brambles, waving pitifully in the low, sluggish breeze.
The sight of it steeled his courage again. Asya must be here, then: it must be where the priest kept her trapped. Perhaps her final resting place.
Now Shyla must be somewhere inside as well...and Conall, the one person who could save her.
With grim resolve, he approached the chapel doors.
The crack of Conall's boot splintering the old, thick wood of the entryway echoed through the cold sanctuary like a gunshot. He brought up his weapon, anticipating attack, and his eyes darted about the space.
It didn't matter. The church lay dark and dusty. Even the light which might have poured in from the holes in the roof failed to touch the interior: black vines and thorns longer than his own leg choked out any sight of day. Con imagined the wreck he'd made of the front entrance didn't even penetrate the darkness effectively. A few wisps and phantoms of old pages, torn from hymnals and catechisms, fluttered up like bats at the disturbance, and the echo of the sound lingered a heartbeat too long. Con cursed himself for neglecting to bring a flashlight.
"Hello?" he called out. He expected no answer. If the Little Sisters were still in residence—still alive—this chapel wouldn't be the silent, abandoned tomb it appeared.
His voice stirred something in the darkness, though. There came a rustle, a murmur of voices and whispers. He couldn't make out words...but he suspected—bizarrely—they might be saying come in.
"Of course," he muttered, and he steeled himself to brave the darkness.
Once he slipped under the eaves of the thorny canopy, Conall made out shapes in the sanctuary. Mostly old pews, fallen into disrepair, sections of roof beams and windowpanes collapsed to the ground and never recovered. More dusty old pages out of hymnals and bibles scattered about the place. Bat droppings littered the floor. Perhaps they explained the sounds.
When he came near the head of the church, however, a hot, velvet grip squeezed tight around his heart, choking his air. A ring of figures stood ahead of him: seven of them at least. They all hung in a frozen dance, a sculpture of women in various graceful poses. Each one identical to his cemetery doll.
Well, no. Not completely identical. As Conall crept closer, he deemed none could be Asya. Each stood a little bit taller or shorter. They lacked the natural gracefulness of her trained ballerina's poise, but appeared more like true mannequins hastily fitted into close facsimile of dancer's movements. Scrutiny showed him eyes painted onto their masks, and each expression appeared a rictus of gleeful pain. None were shattered, as she had been; each one flawless, terrifyingly lifelike.
Conall screamed, nearly firing off the shotgun when the first one rattled and turned her face to him. No other part of her body moved—which served to make the motion even more disturbing, because she had to turn her head completely around on her neck to see him.
"Gravekeeper," said a voice from somewhere wholly outside the creature. The lips on the mask never moved, the painted eyes still flat and motionless. The voice though...Conall recognized the older, frail tone of a grandmother. The doll appeared perfectly youthful, however.
"Have you come to pray with us?" the creature asked.
Then another moved, and a third. They each began in stiff, clattering struggle against their frozen positions, trying to behold him for themselves. Some managed to move their torso and arms, some even twisted their hips; others broke with
the strain. A porcelain limb cracked and fell from the body of one. Another lost little flakes of ceramic dust; another, its entire head.
"Gravekeeper," they all greeted him. Like women at a Sunday picnic, they couldn't sound more pleased to see him. Conall backed away, repulsed.
"It's been years, dear boy," croaked one.
"How is it you never came back to us?" scolded another, younger voice.
"We expected you so much sooner."
"What are you?" he demanded, hoisting the bayonet in their direction. They hadn't ceased their rattling: some of them appeared to be tugging at their rigor even now, trying not merely to see him...but to meet him.
"Don't you recognize us, lad?"
"We are the Little Sisters!"
"And after we took such good care of you..."
Con swallowed back the bile rising in his throat. They continued to come, moving in slow, jerking movements. They weren't at all like Asya, not really: the stiff, ugly struggle of their movements made even her most discordant moments ones full of grace. These creatures were the true broken dolls. Pity warred with fear in his gut as he held the gun steady on the one in the lead.
"He did this to you?" he choked. "Father Frederick?"
"Yes..." hissed one. Despite his efforts, Con imagined the old prioress who had once watched over this place.
"He wanted more," cooed another. "The necromancer...needed more to test his technique..."
"To create his menagerie..."
"This is madness," Conall barked. His hands shook. "All of this...it's all madness!"
"Do you think so, Conall?" one of the creatures asked. Its head tilted to the side...then swung loose, hanging from the ceramic neck-joint at a grotesque angle.
Con closed his eyes and shook his head.
"Asya... Asya drowned. She showed it to me. The night she came to my graveyard, she drowned."
"Ah, yes..." hissed the dolls.
"She did attempt to die, didn't she?" one asked, as though recalling something of which it couldn't be sure.
"She did," a third replied. "But it would not matter...he stole her heart, to be certain he would always have her."
"What?" Conall snapped. His ass came up against one of the old pews, making him jump.
The first of the creatures stepped down from the altar. Its joints gave a terrible grinding sound as it stumbled at him.
"Her heart," it hissed.
"He has it...had all our hearts, in the beginning. He must keep his creations alive, mustn't he?"
"But ours all turned to sand!" pouted one petulant tone.
"Why?" Conall asked. "Why did yours...turn to sand? Why didn't hers?"
"He stored us in crates and jars...plain old worthless vessels," the voice of the prioress said.
"We wasted away until only sand and clay remained."
"But her heart lies in a special place," one of the others sneered.
"She is protected," one whined.
"She is his favorite."
This last, said with ugly, icy venom. Conall shuddered: the inhuman hatred in these poor creations...these could not be the good Sisters he had known.
"Tell me how to help you," he said. "How do I break you free from his curse?"
Rasping voices turned to wicked snickers: the sound of old, shed snakeskin in a dried-out nest. The dolls reached out for him, long, ivory limbs grasping as they staggered into the aisle. No answer this time. They all began to mutter and mumble over one another, until he couldn't make out any single voice at all. They all called to him, though. Soon his name became the single word on their lips, and at the corners of their frozen, painted mouths, blood begin to drip.
Conall fired the shotgun at the one in the lead, bellowing in crazed disbelief even as he did. The fragile thing flew backward, tumbling into two others like a child's wooden toy flung against the wall. Porcelain limbs scattered.
The others continued coming, nonplussed by the fate of their three companions. Still they called out his name, reaching for him, and Conall fired again, pausing only to reload before continuing suit. Each deafening crack of the gun sent bright, alabaster pieces of the ghostly beings exploding backward, throwing jointed arms and necks and bits of porcelain mask into the stale air. It came to him no harder than shooting clay discs—and it deepened the sickened sensation in his stomach even more.
Even as he shattered others, those still capable of moving came on. It took far too long for him to dispatch half a dozen dolls—to Conall it seemed he must have fired enough to reduce a battalion of them to ceramic dust, before he looked and beheld all of the creatures crumpled to the floor.
No more assailed him...but the remains had not stopped trying.
"Conall," he heard, rising from one of the half-masks lazily spinning on the floor. "We had better be seeing you in church this Sunday..."
"Silly man," came an echo from one without a head. "We'll make a believer of you yet."
"Stop!" he shouted into the rafters and the knot of black branches above. "Christ Almighty, make them stop! Let them be! Have you not taken enough?"
Over a few precious long moments, the whispering died down. The last of the shuddering ceramic pieces calmed themselves, and everything in the sanctuary fell still once more. Conall drew in a long, heavy breath. Then he jumped as a rush of sound bombarded him from above, and he tripped, falling back onto his ass. Aiming the shogun up, he prepared to fire.
Bats. An agitated swarm of them spiraled down from above and then took wing to find escape into deeper, darker corners or out into the gray, dimming day.
"Bloody shite," he growled, thrusting his fingers through his hair and trying to steady himself. After long moments he managed to regain his feet, using the aid of one of the pews. His ears still rang from the explosions of the gun, and the muzzle flares had ruined any adjustment his eyes had made to the darkness of the church interior. He put his head in his hand, scrubbing at his mouth.
Where from here?
The shattered remnants of the dolls practically glowed, even in the lightless cave their sanctuary had become. He didn't want to see them, but he couldn't pull his eyes away. More than anything, he wanted to be out of this church.
But Shyla is somewhere farther in.
They'd said the necromancer had to take the heart first. Asya hadn't truly drowned, because Fred had—somehow—stolen her heart. Literally? Plucked it right from her chest? Or had these freakish golems meant something else by it?
After long moments, Con mustered his strength again and checked his gun. Reloading, he prepped himself to move onward, and made his way to the doors past the altar, into the sacristy. He side-stepped the remains of the dolls with extra care. He didn't for a moment trust their stillness now.
Behind the sacristy, Conall found the church offices, all long-unused and thick with dust. No evidence of the Little Sisters remained anywhere in these rooms, not even a catechism left open or neglected vestments hung askew. The whole place smelled of ash and stale, hot air. Spiders had overrun some of the smaller offices to the point Conall couldn't even see past the doorjamb. He left them untouched, moving silently as he could manage, listening for the slightest sound of life.
If you've so much as breathed a word of harm toward my daughter, Fred...I'm going to blow your goddamn head clean off your shoulders.
Something of an empty threat, that. Because Conall had already decided to blow the man's head off regardless.
Presently, then, he did hear something. Footsteps, ahead of him—light and quick.
He recognized them.
"Asya!" he whispered, speeding up to catch her. The sound of her stayed ever ahead of him, as he found himself following her footfalls up a spiraling set of stairs and into the second-story cloister rooms. He rushed after them, forgetting himself, desperate to catch her.
Before he realized it, he followed them into a dead-end room.
Conall caught the shotgun up against his chest, ready to fire if any new creations of the father jumped
out at him. Asya was nowhere to be seen. He'd been sure those were the same steps he'd heard in the graveyard, though, as she'd led him through the fog.
Con inspected the room. A small prayer chapel. He might be the first living human to enter it in years: white cloth draped the furniture and walls; cobwebs hung from the corners and down over the statuary; a thick layer of dust lay undisturbed on a hard wooden floor. No one had been in here.
And yet, several candles had been lit.
A shiver overtook him. Con couldn't help but glance over his shoulder, then back, thinking some being had to be here with him.
He noticed, then, the white marble figure at the head of the chapel. Not the Christ, and not the Virgin Mary.
Maya.
Exactly like the statue in his graveyard: the one he'd carved from the stone where Asya hid her baby.
The one he'd carved for Asya herself. Because now, he realized, she was Maya. He'd sculpted the statue without ever seeing her, but he'd somehow managed to create an angel identical to the long-lost Russian ballerina.
A part of me...a part of us...before I even realized it.
Without stopping to think on it, he stepped into the room, approaching the statue. These were the exact stones from the cemetery—the statue destroyed by Father Frederick's thorn vines. Maya's head and torso, down to her hips. Her arms were missing, and her wings lay in pieces on the altar behind her.
Con reached out to touch the smooth stone surface of the angel's breast.
Her heart. What had Fred done...with her heart?
The man had certainly followed Asya that night. The creatures below said she'd tried to die...to drown herself. Conall didn't believe it. Asya told the story differently, and he would never believe she'd left Shyla behind. No...she’d fled the mad priest with designs to return, Con was sure of it. He'd always been sure of it. Perhaps some part of her had always lingered thereafter, keeping watch when she could not do so in person.
Yes. His hand came up to stroke the face of the angelic statue, everything beginning to make sense.
Asya had not been free to return to the graveyard. Not until very recently, for whatever reason. She'd left something of herself behind...and he'd always known it.
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