As well as the death echo other fragments of memory surfaced, broken and disjointed like the shards of a shattered mirror. She sensed that something else had happened in this death chamber, something as disturbing as the murder of her mother. She pulled her hand from the wall, ran back to the stairs and climbed higher.
Chapter 50
Moments earlier
Where the hell was she? Why hadn’t Sorcha waited for him? As Fox stepped into the central stairwell, flickering lights revealed a spiral staircase that snaked its way up into the tower. This was the only way up or down. If Delaney came in while they were up in the tower they would be trapped like rats. “Sorcha,” he hissed. “Where are you?”
When she didn’t reply he cursed under his breath, checked the safety catch on the rifle and followed her up the stone steps. Reaching the first level, he stepped into a circular landing surrounded by bright red doors. All were open and as he glanced into the rooms radiating out from the center he noticed they were totally empty — devoid of any furnishings or décor. Except one: a wetroom complete with shower, basin and toilet. In an alcove by the bathroom was a pile of mattresses, cushions and pillows covered in immaculate white linen. On the top pillow lay a small noose and a cord with a knot in its middle, both of braided silver silk.
“Sorcha? Sorcha, where are you?” Still no reply. As he moved back to the stairwell he noticed on the pale stone floor an image of Leonardo’s Vitruvian man inlaid with amethyst. At the base of the man’s spine, the site of the first chakra, a lotus symbol had been set with a red gemstone — a triangle within a square within a circle surrounded by four lotus petals:
Pausing to review the claustrophobic rooms, Fox registered the pattern on the walls. In the low light, it resembled natural marbling but when he looked closer he noticed plaques of polished amethyst embedded in the pale stone. Veins of the same amethyst ran like violet blood vessels through the walls, connecting the plaques. The positioning of concealed lamps gave each room the semblance of a small private gallery with each plaque a work of art. He noticed that some of the plaques were blank, but most featured four lines of chiseled text. The top line was a series of numbers in the form of a date; the second a word — Neonate, Child or Adult; the third a single letter — M or F. The last line featured the same symbol as that on the Vitruvian man. Although they contained no names, the plaques were evidently memorials of some kind.
The next level had an identical layout: rooms radiating from a central circular landing, an amethyst Vitruvian man inlaid in the floor, a single bathroom, a pile of immaculate white mattresses and cushions with a silver cord and noose on the top pillow. The doors on this floor, however, were orange. As was the gemstone symbol on the site of the second chakra on the Vitruvian man’s lower spine — a spiral circle surrounded by six lotus petals:
The same symbol featured on the engraved plaques in the rooms. He called Sorcha’s name but when she didn’t reply he climbed higher. Again the next level had an identical layout but with yellow doors and a different symbol on the plaques. In the middle of the man’s spine was a yellow circle containing a triangle and surrounded by ten lotus petals:
Each floor appeared to have a different color and symbol, corresponding to the chakras. The next level had green doors with the symbol of a green circle containing six-pointed star and surrounded by twelve lotus petals. The level above had blue doors and the lotus symbol, on the Vitruvian man’s throat, of a blue circle, containing a smaller circle within a triangle, surrounded by sixteen lotus petals. Fox had reached the fifth chakra and as he ascended his unease intensified.
A sudden cry from above fractured the silence. “Sorcha!” he shouted, abandoning all attempts to keep quiet. Gripping his rifle tighter, he hurried up the stairs to the next level, where all the doors were dark indigo and the Vitruvian man’s forehead bore a symbol — a triangle within a circle flanked by two large lotus petals — designed to resemble a stylized eye. This was the level of the sixth chakra, the so-called third eye. Glancing into the rooms, looking for Sorcha, Fox noticed most of the plaques were blank, which surprised him. If these were memorials to the Indigo Family’s dead then he would have thought there would be more Indigo plaques, not fewer. On one wall he could see a faint ghost of the embedded dark blue crystals that formed the mosaic eye on the tower’s external wall. He was almost at the top but there was still no sign of Sorcha.
He ascended higher until he came to a violet door, emblazoned with another Vitruvian man. On the crown of the man’s head was the symbol of a circular lotus flower with a thousand petals:
He had reached the seventh level, the highest chakra, the top of the tower. Opening the door, he ascended more steps through an opening in the floor above and found himself standing in the center of a large circular chamber. The light was softer than on the lower floors and his eyes took a moment to grow accustomed to the strange glow. Above, he could see the vaulted underside of the conical roof. Underfoot, a giant version of the circular lotus symbol on the door covered much of the pale stone floor. Fashioned from polished amethyst, some of the petals had been patterned with a network of decorative holes through which he could glimpse the level below. The light from the lower level shone up through the gemstone, casting a violet glow around the chamber. A spider’s web of glowing amethyst radiated out from the symbol, connecting it to the walls.
To his left, a bed-sized amethyst plinth, covered with white cushions, seemed to have grown out of the symbol. A silver cord and small noose lay on one of the cushions, like chocolates on a turned-down hotel bed. To his right was a white concave table, above which a large mirror and lens descended from the ceiling. Fox realized the room was a camera obscura. During the day, a lens in the roof would reflect light into the darkened room, projecting real-time images of the settlement onto the white table, allowing Delaney to look down on his subjects: a godlike observer of his domain.
He heard someone speak: “Who am I?” The voice sounded so flat and detached it took him a second to realize it was Sorcha’s. “Only a demon could have done this. And if my father’s a demon, then what does that make me?” Fox stepped around the plinth and saw her on the floor, head down, poring over a simple black accountant’s ledger. He moved closer. She was sitting in the thin strip of pale stone between the symbol on the floor and the wall, feet tucked in as if to avoid the amethyst inlay. Her rifle lay on the floor beside her, next to an ancient leather-bound Bible. Fox wondered if it was the family Bible Regan Delaney had stolen from his brother. She was clutching her locket. “You found it, Sorcha.” She said nothing. “You OK?” She didn’t respond and he stepped closer. “What is it, Sorcha? Talk to me. Has anything triggered your memory?” She still didn’t reply. “I’m sorry we haven’t found any evidence. But at least you found the locket. Come on, we’ve got to go.”
“I can’t,” she said. She raised her head and he saw her haunted eyes and ashen face. She looked as terrified now as on the first day they’d met.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” He glanced around the chamber. “This tower’s creepy, but I’ve checked every level. There’s nothing in here.” Something about the way she looked at him caused the hairs to rise on the back of his neck. “Is there?”
“Yes, there is,” she said in the same chilling monotone she had used on that first day at Tranquil Waters. “I haven’t recovered my memory yet but this place is filled with other people’s memories.”
“Whose?”
She placed the black ledger on the floor, careful not to touch the amethyst, and pushed it to Fox. “Theirs.”
Putting his rifle down, he picked up the book and opened it. Every line of almost every page was filled with names, followed by notations which echoed those he had seen on the plaques below: a date; age description (Neonate, Child or Adult); gender (Male or Female); a colored dot. As Fox flicked through the pages it was evident that the earlier entries contained predominantly red, orange, yellow and green dots: the lower chakras. Only the latter pages had b
lue dots and a few indigo, including one entry with the name Aurora. The name of Sorcha’s mother. He felt suddenly cold. “What do you see in this tower, Sorcha? What can you feel?”
She pointed to the ledger. “All of them. Their bones may be in the pit in the forest but their dying echoes are in here. This tower is infested with ghosts. Including my mother’s.”
A shiver ran through Fox. Perhaps it was his imagination, or his own mirror-touch synaesthesia, but at that moment, looking into her eyes, he felt what she was feeling and sensed the ghostly echoes all around him. “Let’s go,” he said, reaching for her. “Let’s get out of here, now.”
“I can’t,” she said again. She pointed down at the floor, to the solid expanse of inlaid amethyst that surrounded the exit. “I can't walk across that again. I can’t touch the violet.”
“Why not?” Fox sensed a movement behind him and the cloying smell of death. Something hard, like the barrel of a gun, prodded his back. His heart skipped and he reached for the rifle on the floor.
“She can’t touch the violet gemstone on the floor because it’s where the dead live,” said an unseen voice. “Leave the rifle where it is, Dr. Fox, and I’ll explain everything.”
Chapter 51
“I hoped Sorcha might be drawn to the tower, like a moth to a flame,” said Delaney, “but I didn’t expect you to be here, Dr. Fox.” He gestured to Kaidan, who held his pistol against Fox’s back. “I’d introduce you to my son, Dr. Fox, but I believe you’ve already had dealings with each other in Portland.”
At that moment the Wives arrived in the chamber and stood in the center of the amethyst lotus flower. They had been following, the heavily pregnant Maria slowing them down on the stairs. Zara stepped forward and picked up Fox’s rifle. “Pass me mine,” Kaidan said, pointing to the weapon on the floor beside Sorcha. Putting his pistol in his belt, Kaidan stood back and leveled the rifle at Fox.
Zara moved toward Sorcha’s locket but Delaney stopped her. “Let her keep it,” he said. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“How could you have created this place?” Sorcha said, tears of anger in her eyes. “How could my own father be so evil? I know what you did to my mother.” She shot a look at her half-brother and Delaney noticed Kaidan avert his gaze as if ashamed. This angered him. He saw Fox notice it too. Sorcha pointed down at the amethyst lotus flower, which covered most of the floor. “How can this be any part of the Great Work? What’s ‘great’ about this?”
Delaney shook his head impatiently. Why couldn’t she see the genius of what he had done? “You of all people must understand this tower’s power.” He spread his arms as if to embrace an unseen crowd. “They understood. All of them realized it was a privilege. They begged to participate in the Great Work. And, in due course, so will you.”
Fox helped Sorcha to her feet then turned to Delaney. If he was scared he didn’t show it. “What is this place?” he said.
Delaney picked up the family Bible from the floor near Sorcha and placed it carefully back on the amethyst plinth. “I told you earlier. This tower’s my observatory.” He tapped the concave surface of the white table. “I use the camera obscura to look down upon my people going about their everyday lives on earth. But the main purpose of this place is to observe and experiment with astral bodies. What some call the soul or the spirit, and what you rather unimaginatively call…” He paused, searching for the right phrase.
‘Death echoes?” said Fox.
“Yes. Echoes. The word’s wrong but if it helps you to understand…”
“You have the same synaesthesia as me?” said Sorcha.
“Where do you think you and Kaidan got it from? Yours is more evolved, though. I can observe and sense death echoes but you can actually feel and empathize with them, walk in their shoes.”
“How long have you known you had it?” Fox said.
“Ever since I can remember. As a child I used to wander the streets near where my folks lived, seeking out places which resonated with what you call death echoes: abandoned buildings, hospitals, residential homes for the elderly, crime and accident scenes reported on the news.”
“Didn’t they frighten you?” said Sorcha.
He smiled at the question. “No, they excited me. They offered a glimpse beyond the natural world. I used to collect souvenirs from the scenes, a piece of the wall or another part of the surrounding fabric, and make them into sculptures.”
“Like the mosaic on the door to this tower?”
“Exactly.” He clutched the ankh around his neck, warming to his theme. “Each piece only contains a fragment of its death echo but put together they create a pleasing chorus. But I always wanted more. That’s why I built this tower. Over the years I learned the key factors for creating the most resonant echo — the most defined imprint.”
He raised four fingers and counted them down. “Number one, how recent the death. Number two, how violent and traumatic. Three, how close the dying subject was to the imprinted material. Four, the material’s composition. Composition is crucial. Some woods and bone imprint poorly and many man-made plastics and rubbers don’t imprint at all. Natural stones, crystals and minerals imprint best but some work significantly better than others. A few can even conduct the absorbed imprint in the same way copper conducts electricity — allowing the echo to travel a considerable distance away from the place of death. I used all this knowledge to build my tower,” he said proudly. “The outer shell is local stone. Then in the middle there’s an insulating layer of rubber, which contains and concentrates the echoes within the tower. The inner wall is the most important, though. It’s constructed of stone veined with an interconnecting network of amethyst.”
Fox looked at the violet gemstone on the floor and in the wall. “Why amethyst?”
“Many reasons. It’s tough: seven on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness. Diamond, the hardest, is ten. Amethyst is cheap too; there are vast deposits in Brazil. The main reasons for choosing amethyst, however, are that the violet gemstone is the color of death, it corresponds to the seventh chakra and gives the most defined imprint.” Delaney pointed to the ankh around his neck. “This contains an amethyst taken from a section of the headboard above my father's deathbed. The headboard only contained a few decorative inlays of the gemstone but its imprint of my father’s death was deeper and more resonant than in the surrounding wall. It’s also an excellent conductor for channeling the echoes.”
He reached out and patted the black ledger in Fox’s hand. “Every one of the souls listed in there is in my collection.” He turned to his son. “We started at the bottom with the reds and the other animal chakras, didn’t we, Kaidan? Then we began working our way up.” Kaidan didn’t respond but Delaney didn’t care. He was enjoying explaining his work. “As well as color, we’ve experimented with age and gender, to see which subjects reveal the clearest path to the infinite. Our hypothesis is that the higher up the chakra scale, the better the subject.”
He watched Fox flick through the ledger, scanning the names, struggling to understand the enormity of his vision. “You’re saying that each of the people listed in this book was murdered next to one of the plaques in the walls?” said Fox. “Just to imprint their individual death echo and add it to your collection?”
“They weren’t murdered. The contributed gladly to the Great Work. Most pleaded with me to sacrifice their worthless physical shell for a glimpse of the infinite. Now, by touching a plaque I can experience that person’s dying imprint. But the Great Work is about more than just collecting death echoes.”
“And this?” Sorcha said, tentatively reaching down to the violet lotus symbol on the floor. As soon as she touched the amethyst she pulled back her hand as if scalded. “What madness made you do this?”
Delaney frowned, unaccustomed to being challenged or questioned. He would have to make them appreciate and acknowledge the genius of what he had done. “It’s not madness. It’s very simple.” He pointed at the white concave table on which images from
the camera obscura were projected by day. “That’s for observing the living.” His foot tapped the amethyst flower on the floor. “This is for communing with the dead. This is my chorus of lost souls, my symphony of the dead and my inspiration for continuing with the Great Work. Death echoes diminish the further they travel from their source, but, as I said, amethyst is an excellent conductor. The network of amethyst in the walls conducts the individual plaques and then channels each death echo up the tower.
“Like veins carrying blood to the heart, every death echo flows into this amethyst lotus flower beneath our feet, the symbol of Sahasrara, the crown chakra of pure consciousness: the God Source. This symbol resonates with the faint but combined death throes of all the imprinted souls in this tower.” Delaney bent down, as if in prayer, placed his cheek flat against the polished gemstone and closed his eyes. For a moment he said nothing, just allowed the intense visions, smells and sounds to swirl around him. “This, Dr. Fox, is why Sorcha can’t touch the violet. To me, this amethyst beneath our feet is a heavenly choir of the dying. Touching it makes my heart soar, makes me feel alive and validates my mission. To her, though, it’s a sea of damned souls. She’s so sensitive to their cries she fears that is she stands on it she will drown in their suffering. I envy the connection she feels.”
Fox stared down at the polished amethyst as if trying to see the ghosts in its shimmering reflective surface. “What do you hope to achieve by capturing all these death echoes?”
“To follow their path and see beyond the veil. To regain my rightful, divine inheritance. Isn't it obvious? And this is just the start. A small part of the Great Work.”
“But these are nothing more than imprinted echoes,” said Fox. “Residual memories of a spent life force. You only sense them because of your rare synaesthesia. They can tell you no more about the afterlife than a spent match can tell you about fire. You’re not a god. There’s no magic here. How many people have to die before you understand that?”
Colour of Death, The Page 26