Gina took another step and reached out a shaking hand to touch the stones. She expected the rock to crumble to dust under her hands, she expected her fingers to close on ash, but the wall remained firm and cold and the cross didn’t magically disappear like it had before.
Maybe the magic was gone.
Gina raised her other hand, and with both hands on the wall, she pushed.
Nothing happened.
“What does it mean?” she asked aloud. Her voice was faint.
Geenie, use your head. What do you think it means?
It meant Vinny was right. This building, this land, was connected to the horror happening now. “It’s not the same wall.” She took a deep breath. The wind’s howl dipped and in the void she heard something else…
children
children’s voices, far away…an echo
She closed her eyes in concentration, trying to make out the words, her hands on the cold stone and an image rose in her mind. A young girl in a long brown dress, her boots…
her boots dangled in the air
dangled
because the girl was hanging
and now Gina could see all of her. A young girl with braids, a noose tight around her neck, swaying in a cold shaft of moonlight. The young girl wasn’t alone… Gina squeezed her eyes tighter, trying to see, trying to understand—
Five other children were in the barn, staring up as the body spun silently. One of them, a boy, lifted a lantern. Tears streaked the children’s cheeks. They were dressed in old fashioned clothes, hand sewn and rough. One by one, they nodded and the child with the lantern set it down. He moved closer to the dangling feet, reaching up and then the others were helping him take the little girl down. They laid her on the hay, the rope around her neck so thick and rough that Gina thought she’ll have a bruise, it’s so tight, a deep bruise…she waited for the girl’s chest to rise and fall, for her eyes to open, but the child’s chest remained still, the lashes dark against pale skin. One of the boys bent over, picked up the lantern. She heard him say, “Must get the elders.”
Gina turned and ran but only got as far as the opening in the foundation when the sky darkened and thunder cracked overhead. Cold rain slashed from the heavens. Within seconds, Gina was drenched to the bone. She stumbled over a pile of rocks and stones, scrambling up the embankment, sliding in the sudden mud. She slipped and fell, her hands searching for purchase, finding none. She landed at the bottom of the embankment, near the foundation wall.
Dear God, Dear God deargoddeargod, that child was hanging, she was hanging and her face was so blue so blue—
“Son of dust,” someone said behind her.
Laughter exploded, thunder boomed. Gina pushed herself backward, using her heels and palms. Scrambling to her feet, she started running again. Lightning flashed, illuminating the Forest Field and the street that bordered it. In the flash, Gina saw she was more than halfway there, halfway to Kate’s house and safety, halfway away from the wall—
Thunder cracked and Gina wasn’t seeing the field anymore or hearing the boom and roar above her, she was seeing old Sister Patrice, standing in the front of their classroom, a Bible open in her hands. Sister Patrice lifted her head, her wimple framing her face in black and white. Lightening flashing, turning Sister Patrice’s face blue gray for an instant and she was reading something to them, The Book of Ezekiel.
“Then he brought me to the door of the Temple Court, where I made out an opening in the wall. ‘Now dig in the wall,’ he said. I did and uncovered a door to a hidden room. ‘Go in,’ he said, ‘and see the wickedness that goes on!’”
Thunder boomed, lightening streaked the sky. Gina cried out, covering her head, She ran, doubled over, but the rain was coming down with such fury she couldn’t find her way to the street.
Please, she prayed, her words streaming together in her mind like a streak of hope, please let me get to Kate’s, I have to tell—she stumbled over something and there was a sudden, bright flash of white hot pain as her ankle turned. She heard the snap, audible even above the scream of the wind. She cried out again, already falling and she put her hands out to break the fall, landing on something soft, something that moved and squealed under her body and then she was on the ground, lying on her back and the rain was pouring from the sky, hitting her with such force it was like needles driven into her skin. Something moved next to her, a streak of gray, and there was a sudden, sharp pain in her right hand. A hoarse cry escaped her lips and she say up, wincing as she moved, staring at the gray ground, at what had tripped her, at what had broken her fall. At first, she thought rocks and she began to get to her feet and that’s when she saw. Really saw.
Not rocks.
Rats.
Dozens of rats, sewer rats with long tails, fat bodies, sharp teeth. Gina tried to scream but her breath was gone and she lurched to her feet, kicking at the rodents that hurled themselves at her legs and feet.
The house.
She could see the house through the sheets of rain. She forced herself to move, choking back the panic that was a fog in her mind. Vinny! she thought, Vinny! She half ran, half dragged herself to the edge of the Forest Field. Lightening broke the sky in two, thunder cracked with such ferocity that she screamed again. Panic was free now, zipping through every fiber of her being. She looked over her shoulder as she reached the street and saw with horror that her first impression was wrong. Not dozens of sewer rats.
Hundreds.
Stumbling, screaming, Gina hurled herself across the street and scrambled up the four steps to Kate’s front door. Surely they wouldn’t follow her, they wouldn’t try to cross the street, the magic would hold them back—
She dared a look over her shoulder and the rats were coming, skidding down the embankment to the street and when lightning flashed, their black eyes glowed. Gina grabbed the knob with hands that shook, tremors wracked her body and a single sob escaped her throat.
The door was locked.
Chapter 30
Vinny
The house was quiet when the others were gone. Too quiet. Vinny watched out the window until Gina crossed the street and Kate had disappeared from view and then he dropped the curtain back into place and walked out of the living room. He stopped in the hall by the coat tree and reached into his jacket pocket for his cigarettes. Tapping the pack against his palm, he shook out a Marlboro and put it into his mouth but didn’t light it.
Bad habit he was trying to break.
The door leading to Mr. K’s lab was at the end of the hallway. There was an elevator to the basement, too, but Vinny didn’t like elevators. There was something spooky about them. Not that he was claustrophobic or anything, he just didn’t like putting himself into a box that was lowered and raised by a machine.
No thank you.
The door to the basement was unlocked, a surprise, because when they were kids, Mr. K. was always careful to leave it latched. Mr. K., he was a good guy. A little short, a little intense, but good-hearted. He ran a decent business, took care of the neighborhood, kept to the straight and narrow. For guys like him, that meant protecting kids from things like embalming labs.
Vinny opened the door and reached for the light switch. The light worked on a chain dangling from the ceiling. He pulled the cord and the stairwell came to life below him. The white walls angled down and after a moment’s hesitation, Vinny took to the stairs.
Nothing to be afraid of.
Nothing at all.
So there’s a lab down there where Mr. K used to drain blood out of dead guys. No big deal No big—
He reached a curve in the stairs and his shadow loomed on the wall in front of him. It made him think of Lucien and he shuddered.
The basement was portioned off into three rooms. The stairs ended in the first room, a kind of entrance bay used by the guys who drove Mr. K.’s hearse. A set of garage doors were to the left of Vinny. It was through those doors that bodies were delivered to the Kowalski Funeral Home. There wasn’t anything in th
is first room to speak of. A few boxes, a couple of crates, a hospital gurney covered with a white sheet imprinted with the words BOSTON CITY HOSPITAL in black ink.
“Better watch it, Mr. K,” Vinny muttered, “That’s stealing city property now,”
From someplace close came the sound of dripping water. Vinny lifted his head to look at the pipes that ran the length of the building, but he couldn’t detect the leak. In front of him were three doors. The first led to the embalming room, the second entered the viewing prep room, the third to the office. Vinny hesitated, then thought, What the fuck? Go for it. He opened the embalming room door.
Even though he hadn’t turned the lights on, the room was brightly lit, operating on a single switch from the entrance bay. The room was exactly as he remembered it. The grooved stainless steel table gleamed under a bright white light, the troughs attached to it looking innocent empty. Instruments were neatly stacked in glass cupboards along two walls. Next to the table was an IV pole, a long rubber hose dangling from the hook. A rolling chair stood in the corner of the room.
“Still gives me the creeps,” he muttered as he looked around. “Fucking weird.”
He remembered the first time he’d been down here. It was a dare and Vinny Polowski wasn’t about to let any challenge get by him. No sir. He, Marcus and Alex had snuck into Mr. K’s lab one afternoon and they saw—
--a man. A naked, dead man. His skin was fish belly white, his cheeks studded with heavy, dark stubble. His large stomach was a hill covered with black and gray hair, he had sagging breasts,
“Like a woman’s,” Alex whispered
and big feet. Vinny took a step into the room, not wanting to see anymore. Not really, but not able to look away, either. He’d heard that men die with a hard on and he glanced down at the man’s groin to see if it was true.
“I told you, Alex,” he said triumphantly, “They don’t gotta break a guy’s dick to bury him.”
His voice was loud in the quiet of the lab. Vinny turned to see Alex and Marcus. They looked as sick as he felt and then he saw that they weren’t looking at the man on the table anymore, they were looking behind Vinny and so Vinny turned around to see that the man wasn’t the only body in Mr. K’s lab.
The old woman had been cut under both arms. Her arms were out to the sides on a T shaped table and blood dripped from the gaping wounds into metal trays fitted on the table’s edge. Vinny tried to make a sound, but the air had been trapped in his lungs and all he could manage was a whistling “whooo” noise. Her breasts sagged – no, rolled – to the left and right of her chest, her skin was flabby, she had an inny belly button and scar on her abdomen and then he saw that the cuts under her arms weren’t the only two being used to drain her. She’d been cut in the inner crease of her legs, a V, blood pooling into trays under her. The blood didn’t run so much as roll, sluggishly slow, dribbling out of her.
“Gravity,” Alex said, and that’s when Vinny knew he had to get out of there, forget the dare. Fucking—
--“Forget it,” he muttered. He rolled the cigarette in his mouth, wanting to light it, but not yet heeding the nicotine call. He hadn’t thought about that day in years, and truth to tell, he sure as hell didn’t want to be thinking about it now.
Fucking creepy.
Mr. K…he’d been one proud guy, that was for sure. Always talking about how much renovation he’d done and how the old place had historical significance, but Vinny had never been able to look at the guy the same again.
Vinny walked across the linoleum floor, his footsteps enormously loud. He went through the doors and cupboards, but there was no old book to be found. A door led from the embalming lab to the prep room and Vinny opened it, not expecting to find anything now. If the book was here, he was sure it would be in the lab. Mr. K.’s domain.
He had never been in the prep room before and he found himself a little disappointed. The room was long and narrow, a metal gurney on wheels, a closet, a sink and rolling tray tale. Kate told them that after her father “fixed” the bodies, they were rolled into the prep room to be made up and outfitted in their eternal clothes.
Vinny remembered asking Katie why people always got so dressed up when they were buried. “Since it’s the eternal sleep, how come they don’t wear pajamas?” he’d asked.
Katie had looked at him with scorn, “Don’t be silly. You have to get all dressed up to look nice for God.”
Made perfect sense at the time.
Vinny closed the door. The office was to the right. He tried to open the door, but it was stuck fast. He put his weight against it, forcing it open. The desk faced the doorway. Ornate, carved, cherry, massive. Just the kind of desk he expected from Mr. K. The drawers on the left were empty. The deep drawer on the right was locked. Vinny didn’t hesitate. He broke it.
The book was the only thing in it. The leather cover was so old it was disintegrating. Vinny stared at the ancient ledger, his mind curiously blank, and as he reached for it, the lights went out.
“Fuck!” He grabbed the book, heavier than he expected, and used both hands to lift it from its place in the drawer.
Thunder banged and Vinny jumped, looking up at the wall where he knew the windows were. Rain slashed at the narrow windows, the sound like sand tossed against glass and for no reason that he could ever explain, he thought he heard Sister Patrice, the old nun from St. Stand’s. He would later swear he heard her voice “clear as a bell,” as she said, “-lightening flashed and thunder crashed and roared and the earth was shaken as the Child of Darkness-“
There was an odd sound in his head, a buzzing, ripping noise. Sweat trickled under his arms, matted the hair on his chest, dampened his groin. Vinny turned on his heels, eyes probing the inky darkness, but he’d lost his bearings now and couldn’t make out the way to the door.
There was a meaty thump behind him and Vinny whirled, the book clutched to his chest. He stared, trying to make out anything in the dark and then lightening flashed again. In the brief glare, he saw he wasn’t alone in Mr. K’s lab.
He wasn’t alone at all.
The dead woman was with him. The woman with the slashes under her arms and between her legs. She took a step toward him. The obscene cuts gaped like hideous mouths. Her skin sagged on her bones, sloughing off as she walked toward him. The knob of her shoulder was exposed bone, sickly gray in the lightning flash. She had her arms out, like she was reaching for Vinny to give him a hug and when lightning flashed again, Vinny saw she was grinning.
Her face was a twisted smear of purple, her eyes empty sockets that flashed dull red in the eerie light, her lips pulled back in a snarl. The tangle of gray around her head was moving like it was alive and then Vinny realized it was alive; strands of white and gray were maggots twisting and turning as she took each step.
“Welcome home bay-bee,” the thing said and at last, Vinny’s paralysis was broken.
Instead of running, Vinny took a step forward, his eyes on the rotting corpse. There was no thought as to what he was doing, no action plan. He was moving on instinct. Out of his mouth he heard a voice intone, “I saw the dead, great and small, standing before God and The Books were opened, including the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to the things written in The Books, each according to the deeds he had done.”
He thought the corpse recoiled and he took another step forward, feeling the strength of the words – words he didn’t understand, didn’t know what part of his subconscious they were springing from – words spoken in a voice that was loud and commanding, strong enough to make the rotting thing in front of him hesitate.
The hesitation was enough.
“The underworld gave up the dead. Each was judged according to his deeds and Death and Hell were thrown into the Lake of Fire.”
He was so close now he could smell the sick sweet stench of it. The thing hissed.
“The books were opened,” the voice coming from him intoned again, and he raised the book in his hands, thrusting it out at the c
reature in front of him. It hissed and took a step backward and Vinny began to laugh. He laughed so hard tears streamed down his cheeks and the book shook in his hands. The thing roared, a bellow of hate and rage and Vinny thought, okay, pal, enough is enough. He pushed the book into the thing’s chest and the bellow turned to a shriek of pain and then Vinny was running, elbows pumping, the book banging against his body as he raced through the bowels of the Kowalski Funeral Home.
The wind was roaring outside, the house shook with each gust. Above the wail of the wind and the clash of thunder, Vinny heard something else. Screaming, a woman’s voice, calling his name.
He took the stairs two at a time, bursting into the hallway, the ledger thumping against his thigh. The black was so complete it was a fabric thrown over the whole of everything. He couldn’t make out furniture or walls or doors and as he ran through the parlor, he bumped into tables and knocked over a chair. Lightning flashed and he saw the front door. Through the glass panel on the side of the massive oak door, he could make out a woman, huddled against the house.
Darkness again.
Vinny swore and ran, bumping into a wall. C’mon, he thought, give me one more flash, one more flash—as if in answer to his pleas, lightning illuminated the doorway and just as he reached it, the flash faded. He tore the door open, the wind gusted, slamming the door against the wall and then Gina was in his arms, sobbing wildly.
He put his arms around her and hugged her tight. “It’s okay,” he said over and over, “You’re safe now. Safe.”
In the back of his mind, Vinny thought he heard someone laughing.
Chapter 31
Marcus
He thought about walking the few blocks to Bo’s apartment but decided the drive would do him good. Marcus loved the feel of a car under him, craved the power of a fast engine, enjoyed the smell of leather and wax. He climbed in the BMW, turned the key, kicking the car to life. Taking the long way to Bo’s apartment, Marcus tried to think about what Kate had told them and what Vinny had said, but somehow, his thoughts kept turning from Lucien. It was Bo he thought of, Bo he couldn’t get out of his mind.
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