Limbus, Inc.

by Anne C. Petty

  Hawthorne saw the look on Ryan’s face and held up his hand. “Let me explain. The details are quite sensitive. Once you have heard them, you can back out if you wish, but we need you to be bound by the confidentiality clause. If you decide the job is not for you, we will pay you a hundred dollars, no questions asked.”

  “But I didn’t see a …” Ryan looked down at the contract, and sure enough, there was a confidentiality clause at the bottom. He would have sworn that it had not been there before, but there it was, nonetheless. “Well,” he said after a moment, “it’s not illegal, is it?”

  Hawthorne responded as if that was the funniest thing he had ever heard, laughing to the point of cackling, before trailing off into a simple, “No.”

  “Alright,” Ryan said uneasily, though swayed by the thought of what he could get for the easy hundred, “that seems reasonable, I suppose.”

  Recruiter Hawthorne watched as Ryan signed, the amiable smile never leaving his face. “Excellent. Now it is time to discuss your assignment. A week ago, a fourteen-year-old girl named Angela Endicott was kidnapped from her home in the Beacon Hill area of Boston.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Ryan said, throwing up a hand as if to defend himself from some assault. “What is this, man? Shouldn’t that be something for the police to handle?”

  Hawthorne frowned, obviously irked at being interrupted. “The police have been notified, I assure you. Her parents are cooperating with them fully. As of yet, they have no leads, nor do we believe they will find any. The culprits are professionals of the highest order.”

  “Was there a note? A ransom or whatever?”

  “Nothing. There has been no communication between the kidnappers and the authorities whatsoever. It is as if she simply disappeared into thin air. If there is evidence to be had on her whereabouts or her ultimate fate, the police have not found any.”

  “Wow. And so now the parents have contacted you for help?”

  “Not the parents, Mr. Dixson, the uncle. The parents are wealthy, yes, but the girl’s uncle is extravagantly so. Only he could afford our considerable fee.”

  Ryan couldn’t help but glance around the barren white walls of the office, decorated only with the stains of previous tenants. Hawthorne took note.

  “We spend our money wisely, Mr. Dixson. And we long ago found that office space and the baubles and trinkets that often fill it are not a high priority. We put value in our talent, and we pay them accordingly.”

  Ryan nodded. “Understood. I meant no offense.”

  “None taken,” Hawthorne said, the smile returning to his face.

  “But I have to ask, why me and why you? Why not go with a detective agency?”

  “Because the uncle, a man named Bernard Samuelson, understands that no detective agency will find the girl. It will take a man with a special skill set, one with which a person is born, not taught. A person such as yourself.”

  The two men stared at one another across the short gulf between them for a few moments before Ryan said, “With all due respect, I’m beginning to think you’re a little crazy.”

  Hawthorne’s grin never wavered, though Ryan wondered if he saw a touch of frustration work into the corner of it. “The payment is guaranteed, Mr. Dixon. You need only make a good faith effort and I assure you, succeed or not, you will be paid.”

  “But I still don’t get it. Why me?”

  Hawthorne’s smile grew wider. “Sometimes it takes a hero to perform such a duty. Besides, can you really turn your back on a face like this?”

  Hawthorne slipped a picture from inside a desk drawer and slid it in front of Ryan. Whether he expected Ryan to gasp or not, he didn’t show it. For his part, Ryan could not hide his reaction. He had seen the girl before, a child no older than thirteen or fourteen. One with flannel pajamas covered in shooting stars and moons and unicorns.

  “Good,” Hawthorne said. “You leave for Boston in the morning.”

  *

  Ryan pulled his jacket tight around his chest, fastening the second to last button in a stubborn if futile effort against the cold. It was a late April evening, and he had expected warmer weather, but the notoriously fickle Massachusetts climate had been his undoing. So he stood there shivering on the corner of Dartmouth and Newbury Street, in the shadow of an ancient Episcopalian church, watching as the girls in their too small—and too cold—outfits walked past, clinging to each other’s arms, off to some night of excitement and excess in the depths of Boston’s more enticing neighborhoods. For a moment, he thought of joining them. Of leaving the job and his life behind, starting afresh in a new place where the sun rose bright and clear each day. He thought of it, but only for a moment.

  Ryan didn’t notice the Mercedes until it pulled beneath a streetlight and stopped. Ryan stepped forward and stooped down as a window lowered and the face of a man appeared, framed by the upturned collar of an expensive coat.

  “Mr. Dixson, I presume.”

  “And you must be Mr. Bernard Samuelson,” Ryan said, reaching through the window to take the man’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “I’m sure. Please, Mr. Dixson, get in.”

  The man opened the door, and Ryan slid inside. Before he could put on his seatbelt, the driver had already jerked away from the curb, into Boston traffic and a sudden, gently falling rain. It seemed that Samuelson had arrived just in time to prevent Ryan from having a very uncomfortable night, indeed.

  “Would you like a drink, Mr. Dixson?”

  Ryan hesitated, glancing over at the bottle of scotch that rested in a panel obviously custom-made for the man who now sat looking him over. “Is that allowed?” he asked. Ryan had always been a straight arrow, no matter how much he tried to avoid it.

  Samuelson smiled. “While you are with me, all things are permitted.”

  The man removed a stopper from the bottle and poured liberally, handing it to Ryan and filling his own glass.

  “So Mr. Dixson,” Samuelson said as the car maneuvered through Boston at speeds that could not be legal, “I understand you were a soldier in a past life.”

  Ryan watched as the car pulled off the city streets and on to the interstate. “I was,” he answered, “what seems like a long time ago now.” Without thinking, Ryan’s hand went down to his side, rubbing across his stomach where the newly healed wound still ached.

  “It’s fortunate. I’ve found that men such as yourself possess an uncommon bravery. You’ll need it if you are to find my niece and save her life.”

  “So you do think Angela’s in danger then?”

  Samuelson didn’t immediately answer, but rather stared straight ahead. He clenched his jaw before nodding. “She is. Of that there can be no doubt.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Samuelson, but I don’t think I understand.”

  The man laughed mirthlessly.

  “No, my friend, there’s no way you could. I am a very wealthy man, Mr. Dixson. And a man in my position learns things that others do not know. They see things that others do not see. Not all of those things are pleasant. I have been told you are a reliable man, and I believe that you are exactly what we need. But I must warn you now, once you commit to this road, you cannot leave it. You won’t find our Angela without walking down paths that are better left untrod. If you wish to abandon this mission, now is the time for you to decide. But one way or another, I need your answer.”

  Ryan looked out the window of the Mercedes as it sped along through the rain. In the distance was the sea, and in the lightning that rippled through the clouds he could see the breakers as they pounded upon the shore. He couldn’t know what he was getting himself into, but for a very long time he had felt as though his life was without direction. At least now he had a compass.

  “No, Mr. Samuelson, I intend to see this through to the end.”

  Ryan wasn’t certain, but it seemed that the compartment grew darker then, and if he were asked, he would have sworn that a flicker of a smile passed over the old man’s face in that i
nstant.

  “Very good, Mr. Dixson. I expect you have some questions. Ask them now, please.”

  “The police …” Samuelson waived him off before the words could leave his mouth.

  “You must understand now, the police are worthless in this. They will provide you no assistance, no leads. My sister is a sweet girl, but she has always been a fool. And the foolish never learn. Pay them no mind. The men who took my niece, they do not seek money, and no ransom will win her release. That task falls to you.”

  “You seem to know quite a bit about all this, sir. Is there something you want to tell me? Did you do something? Offend someone? Did they take her because of you?”

  The old man sighed and drank deep from his glass of amber liquid. Ryan hoped it would loosen his tongue and clear up the riddles. But the riddles were only just beginning.

  “Do you know, young man, where we are going tonight?”

  Ryan glanced out the window, noticing for the first time that they had left the interstate and were speeding down what could best be described as a country road. Ryan had never been to the northeast, and everything about his background had told him not to expect this. In his mind, New England was simply one great city, stretching from somewhere in Maine down through New York and Philadelphia and in to Washington, D.C. But as he gazed out into the black darkness of a rainy Massachusetts night, he realized he had been wrong. If anything, there was something ancient about this place, old and decayed.

  “No sir, I can’t say that I do.”

  “I don’t suppose you would. We are headed to a place of legend, my friend. To one of the oldest townships in the Commonwealth, a place made famous for awful things that happened here long ago—Salem.”

  Ryan chuckled. “Witches? I don’t understand.”

  Samuelson removed a cigar from his inside pocket and held it up to Ryan. “Care for one?” he asked.

  “No,” Ryan said, “but you go ahead.” He watched as the old man pulled a gold-plated cutter from his pocket, snipping off the end before lighting the other with a match. The rich, thick smoke filled the cabin, reminding Ryan of a trip his friends had made to a local strip joint the night before he deployed.

  “People are given to superstition, Mr. Dixson. No matter how rational they may claim to be. It’s in our nature. And it has, at certain times, served us well. But so too has it cost us dearly. You speak of witches, and that is no surprise. Salem is famous for that incident and the lives that were lost because of it. But it is not purely without cause that something dark seems to stalk that village. No doubt you have heard speculation about what happened there. Superstition, mass hysteria, even poisoning. All or none of that may have substance. But what if I told you there was more to it than that?”

  Ryan grinned, and though he wondered what all this had to do with the missing girl, he couldn’t help but play along. “Mr. Samuelson, I hope you’re not trying to tell me you believe in witches.”

  The man rubbed his chin and pursed his lips. “No, not quite, though I have seen enough to discount nothing. You see, my friend, the land you come from is mysterious in its own right. And those who have not seen it would say that the southern parts of this country are the darkest, the most mysterious, the wildest, and the most filled with the unknown. But they would be wrong.” As Samuelson spoke, Ryan looked out the window of the car as it passed through dark forests of low hanging branches, across broken-down bridges and rock fences built with stones pulled from fields by the first men to ever break the land for farming. “This is an old place. Everyone knows, of course, that the first white settlers of this land did not find it abandoned. But what many do not know is that neither did the Indians who once roamed its vales and great, domed hills. There are ruined stone monuments, monoliths of an ancient culture far older than the Wampanoag or the Makitan. Who can say what purpose they served? Who can say what rites were howled upon them in the dark watches of some eldritch night?”

  Samuelson shifted in his seat and took a long drag from his cigar, blowing a cloud of smoke that swirled and rippled through the air. “The settlers called these places the shunned lands, and, as the name implies, they avoided them. At least at first. Man’s spirit is weak and given to laziness and sloth. The great stone monoliths served well as foundations for houses and stores and even churches. The infamous trials of Salem were held in structures built upon the altar of some old religion’s stone of sacrifice. Ironic, don’t you think? Ah, I see you’ve gone dry.”

  Again Samuelson uncorked the green bottle now half-filled with amber liquid, pouring another glass for Ryan, even as he tried to refuse. But his heart wasn’t in it. He had other, more pressing, interests.

  “All that’s very interesting,” he said, “but I’m afraid none of it will help me find Angela.”

  Bernard looked down toward his glass and sighed. In his frown, Ryan read disappointment. “Did you know,” he said, “that every year, hundreds of people simply vanish? Just disappear? That one day, they wake up and they go to work or to school or to church. They wave to their neighbors, they say good morning to their co-workers, perhaps they even say goodbye to them as they head home. But somewhere along the way, something happens. And in that moment of ultimate mystery, they simply are no more. No ransom letter. No sign of struggle. No overdue mortgage or embezzlement scandal to give rationality to an explanation, whatever it may be. A life with all its complexity, the story of a soul, comes to an end with nothing more than a fade to black. Tell me, Mr. Dixson, how do you feel about that?”

  Ryan shrugged. “I guess I would disagree with the premise. No one just disappears, Mr. Samuelson. There’s an explanation, a story if you will, even if we don’t know it.”

  “Ah yes,” the old man said, raising his glass, “you are right. There always is a story. And there is a story here, Mr. Dixson. But you must discover it. If you are to do that, you must see what I have to show you. You must understand the world better than you know it now.”

  It was only a second later when the Mercedes pulled off the main thoroughfare onto another. Ryan had thought that the road through the forest was less than ideal, but it was nothing compared to the rocky path they now found themselves on, little more than a gash cut through a field. Ryan peered through the darkness, but although the trees had opened up to reveal a wide expanse of pasture, he could make out nothing in the cloud-obscured moonlight. But they hadn’t gone far when a stone edifice seemed to rise from the black sea of undulating grass. Ryan’s first thought was that it looked like a church.

  “Long ago,” Samuelson said, “this was a place of worship. It has since lost any ecclesiastical association. This ground is no longer holy, though it is hallowed, in its own way.”

  The Mercedes pulled in next to a long line of vehicles, many of which possessed luxury that put the German car to shame. As Ryan slammed the rear door, he looked up at the rotting steeple and wondered how many parishioners had spent countless Sundays called to worship by its bell. But that was long ago. The broken stained glass, the crumbling masonry. People had not come within those walls—at least to worship—for a very long time indeed.

  “We enter through the back,” Samuelson said. “The main entrance collapsed years prior. It’s just as well. It would be unseemly, I think.”

  The chill from earlier had turned to ice, the cold rain that had fallen stealing what little warmth the air had held. But the clouds had broken, and the sky was clear. In the light of the moon, Ryan had no trouble marking his way.

  The two men—what had happened to the driver, Ryan couldn’t say—proceeded up the gentle sloping hill to a stone-walled fence that sat behind the church. The gate was open, rusted that way by Ryan’s estimation. Beyond was a graveyard of the oldest variety, a great ancient oak in its center. The stones were marked well with the heavy chisel of some undertaker from long ago, the winged death’s-head crowning most. Even in the wan moonlight, Ryan could make some of them out. The dead interred there went back to the Revolutionary War and beyond. B
elow their names were written their stories. Tales of men and women who travelled across the seas to settle the wilds and their sons and daughters who fought the battles to win them.

  “These lands hold many tales. They were settled here long ago, during the first wave of immigrants from the old country. They found in this place something they did not expect, something that was far beyond the skills of the Wampanoag that made this their home. Something more akin to the old world than the new. A monolith of stone, one that went down into the earth. They could not destroy it, so instead upon it they built this church.”

  They passed through the last of the graves and reached an alcove with a low overhang that Ryan had to bend down to avoid. A man stood in front of a sturdy wooden door—a door that, unlike the rest of the church, did not seem old or run down. He was sporting a suit that, to Ryan’s eye at least, was quite expensive. Either he knew Samuelson or information was conveyed to him through the plastic earpiece that he wore, because he nodded once before opening the door.

  “The oldest and most honored tombs are within,” Samuelson said. “It is there that we go.”

  “When was the church abandoned?”

  “In the 1890s,” answered Samuelson. “The pastor was a rather excitable man by the name of William Hickman. He was an eccentric, even in an age of eccentricity. He preached to his flock of the end times, speaking to them of his apocalyptic vision of a coming collapse of all things. But for him it was more than just mere speculation. He believed it, and believed its coming was imminent. And he told them so.”

  The chamber beyond was darkened, a black corridor. Samuelson removed two flashlights, handing Ryan one.

  “There was an attempt once to light the church, but as you saw there is no electricity, and the noise of the generator was most unpleasant.”

  The feeble beams pierced the darkness but slightly, and for a moment, Ryan felt as though he were an explorer of old, cast into the darkened tomb of the Pharaoh with nothing but the pale glow of a torch to lead the way.

  “So what became of the Reverend?” Ryan asked.