The Thirteenth Skull

by Rick Yancey

  I pressed, and the needle retracted.

  “Why are you giving it to me?”

  One of his eyebrows rose toward his dark, perfectly coiffed hair.

  “You should refrain from asking questions to which you already know the answer, Alfred. It could create the impression that you are not as smart as you really are.”

  He tapped lightly on the door with the head of his walking stick. “Until our next meeting, Alfred Kropp.”

  “I’m really hoping there won’t be one.”

  “The odds are against that.”

  Bulldog-Face Man opened the door. Nueve stepped quickly into the hall and the door swung closed behind him.

  I sat on the bed and waited. I got tired waiting there, so I went to the window. The window faced south, and there was Broadway, a dark ribbon between the yellow streetlights. I looked down six stories to the parking lot. A long drop, but I had recently dropped a lot longer. The window didn’t open, of course. I’d have to break the glass. And then the concrete below would break me. I guessed I could make a rope out of the bedsheets, but that would probably get me to only the fourth floor.

  The door behind me opened and Bulldog-Face Man was standing there holding a bundle of clothes. He tossed them on the bed and stepped outside again without saying a word.

  They were identical to his getup: white tube sox, white soft-soled shoes, white pants with a drawstring, a white short-sleeve shirt.

  I dressed quickly and knocked softly on the door. He opened it, avoiding eye contact.

  “Left down the hall, elevators on your right,” he murmured. “Unit 214. You got ten minutes.”

  I started down the hall and he called softly, “Other left.”

  So I turned back and hurried the opposite way. Behind some of the locked doors came sounds: moans, screeches, strange whoops; and behind other doors just silence. Maybe those rooms were empty, but I doubted it, and somehow the silence was more disturbing than the muffled screams.

  I took the elevator to the second floor. The hallway here was a lot more crowded than my floor, which had all the ambience of a haunted house. Nurses and orderlies were everywhere, and doctors with stethoscopes around their necks and white lab coats billowing around them as they hurried to the next life-threatening emergency. Nobody paid any attention to me. In a hospital, just like anywhere else, I guess, you see what you expect to see. I was just another orderly hurrying along like all the other, real orderlies.

  I stepped into Samuel’s room and eased the door shut behind me. There wasn’t much light and I stood with my back against the door for a few seconds, waiting for my eyes to adjust. I heard the hiss of an oxygen feed and the soft, steady beep-beep of a heart monitor. To my right was a row of cabinets. To the left were the bed and the screens showing Samuel’s heart rate, temperature, and blood pressure.

  He looked very pale except for his eyelids, which were black as charcoal. If it weren’t for the squiggly lines on the monitor and the beeps, I might have thought I was too late.

  “Samuel?” I whispered. “Samuel, it’s me, Alfred.”

  He was muttering something under his breath, the word a barely audible hiss. I leaned closer and thought I heard him say “Sofia.” Sofia? Who was Sofia?

  “It’s okay,” I said, patting his shoulder through the covers. “I’m getting you out of here.”

  “Sofia!”

  “No,” I said. “Alfred.” Maybe Sofia was the name of his nurse.

  I pulled open the drawers to the cabinet on the opposite wall until I found one containing an open box of scalpels, each one individually wrapped in paper. I tore off the paper, exposing the blade.

  A gift then—not a treasure.

  I went back to his side.

  “I met your replacement,” I told him. I laid the scalpel on the pillow beside his head and pulled back the covers. Practically his entire upper body was encased in white gauze.

  “He’s a little creepy, like you, only a different kind of creepy. More supersuave creepy than undertakerlike creepy.”

  I slowly peeled back the bandages. I didn’t look at the wound. I looked at his homely, hound-dog face, the sunken cheeks, the prominent jaw, the deep lines across his forehead.

  “He says OIPEP wasn’t responsible. I don’t know. It sure seems OIPEPish to me, but I wasn’t an operative like you, so I don’t know everything they’re capable of.”

  I picked up the scalpel and held it for a long time, the diamond-edged blade hovering an inch above my left palm, already laced with scars. I had saved him once from the grip of demons in Chicago. And before that I had cut myself open to heal Agent Ashley in the Smokies. But having done it before didn’t make it any easier now: it takes a special act of willpower to slice yourself open.

  “The main thing is,” I whispered, as much to me as to him. “The main thing is I’m in a real jam now and it’s either the rest of my life in a funny farm or in a prison, and I don’t like those choices. I’ve got to find a third way and you’ve got to help me find it.”

  I ran the blade along my palm and blood welled around the shiny metal.

  “In the name of the Archangel Michael ... the Prince of Light ...”

  I lowered my bleeding hand toward his stomach.

  “... in the name of Michael, who fell with me through fire ...”

  His hand shot upward and grabbed my wrist before I could touch him.

  He spoke without opening his eyes.

  “No . . .”

  Then his eyes came open. The muscles of his neck bulged as he forced out the words.

  “Not your will. Not ... your ... will!”

  I tried to force my hand to his belly, but he was very strong. It was like some bizarre version of arm wrestling.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “I can heal you.”

  “No,” he gasped. “It is not ... ”

  He took a deep breath and I could hear something rattling in his chest.

  “Well, it wasn’t for that phony deliveryman to decide either,” I snapped back. “Now stop being stupid and let me get this over with ...”

  His head came off the pillow and he spat out with such intensity I jerked backward, “Not your choice! Not my choice!”

  I tried to pry his long fingers away from my wrist, but weak as he was he was still too strong for me. His head fell back onto the pillow and he closed his eyes, pulling hard for air.

  “I will not let you, Alfred,” he whispered.

  “Maybe it isn’t my decision, you ever think of that?” I asked. “Maybe all this happened so I could be here to save you. I didn’t ask for this, you know that.”

  I yanked my hand away and held my clinched fist against my chest. The blood seeped between my fingers, staining the white shirt red.

  “What’s it for, anyway, if I can’t use it?” I demanded, but he didn’t answer. I wondered if he had passed out. “Huh? Why did this happen to me if I’m not supposed to save people with it?”

  Someone stepped into the room. Maybe they heard me in the hallway; I was talking pretty loud. It was an orderly, who grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me away from Sam’s bed.

  “You’re not supposed to be in here.”

  “You don’t get it,” I said, ripping away from his grasp and stumbling back toward Samuel’s bed. “I can save him. I can save everyone.”

  The orderly grabbed me again and pulled me toward the open door and into the hallway. Droplets of my blood fell to the floor, like I was marking a trail back to Sam. I kept shouting at the orderly to let me go, that I could save him; I could save them all. I had saved them before, saved the whole world—twice—and I could empty out this hospital, every hospital and hospice and cancer ward, and no one would ever need to be sick or hurt again.

  “What else is it for?” I hollered as he gave up trying to reason with me and forced me facefirst toward the floor. “What is it for?”

  A hand pushed my head straight down, and I turned my broken nose to one side and pressed m
y right cheek against the cold white tile. My throbbing left hand was inches from my nose and I could see my blood, shining in the light.

  12:08:38:02

  It took four guys to drag me back to my room. They tied me down to the bed with canvas straps while I screamed and cursed and generally flipped out exactly like you would expect a psycho to do. Then they gave me an armful of sedatives to knock me out.

  The next morning a psychiatrist came and interviewed me. Or tried to. I refused to answer any of her questions unless they untied me. She gave up after an hour. An aide came in with a tray and I thought they would untie me so I could eat. Instead, she tried to feed me like I was a baby. I refused. She left. I yelled for her to come back and untie me. “You forgot to untie me!” I yelled. She didn’t come back.

  The hours spun out. I don’t know what time it was when Mr. Needlemier came in, but the sun had set and the room was dark. He turned on a light and sat by the bed and looked at me with a sad expression, or as sad an expression as his round little baby face could make.

  “Here’s what I don’t understand,” I said. “Some guy blows away Samuel, cuts me up, breaks my nose, wrecks half the downtown, and incinerates five cops, and I’m the one roped to a bed.”

  He didn’t say anything. He sat in the chair with his briefcase in his lap, holding the handle with both pudgy hands like a kid sitting on the bus with his lunch box on the way to school.

  “All I did was tell the truth,” I said.

  “What is the truth?” Mr. Needlemier asked.

  “The thing that’s supposed to set you free.”

  He cleared his throat and looked away.

  “How is Samuel?” I asked.

  “Better. They moved him out of ICU. The doctors are optimistic.”

  He wouldn’t look at me. He was staring at the floor.

  “Untie me,” I said.

  “I—I can’t do that, Alfred.”

  “I’m not crazy,” I said. “They tied me down so I wouldn’t hurt anybody—or myself, I guess. But what’s really crazy is I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody. I was trying to save them.”

  “I don’t think they interpreted it that way.”

  “What have the police found out about the delivery man?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “You know who might be behind this? Mike Arnold.”

  “That awful secret agent?”

  “He’s not a secret agent anymore. He disappeared after Abigail Smith arrested his buddy the director.”

  “And you think he might be seeking revenge.”

  “The last time he saw me he said, ‘One of these days I’m gonna kill you, swear to God,’ or something like that.”

  “I spoke with that detective, Ms. Black, and she’s agreed to post an officer outside your door.”

  “Because whoever did this will try again.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Is that why you came, to tell me that?” I asked.

  “No, Alfred,” he said. He sighed. “No.”

  He opened his briefcase and took out a charred photograph, its edges black and crumbly.

  “I found this after the ... well, this morning.”

  He held it toward me.

  “I can’t move my arm, Mr. Needlemier,” I said.

  “Oh! Of course, sorry.”

  He got up and held the picture in front of my face so I could see it. Something had distorted the image, turning it a sickly, mustard yellow, but I could make out the face of my mother. She was young in the picture. She was smiling. That’s how I recognized her. Her teeth. Some big brown blob floated just under her chin.

  “What’s she holding?” I asked.

  “I think it’s a child.”

  “It’s me,” I said. “She must have sent it to Mr. Samson.”

  He didn’t take the photo away. He stood by the bed and held it in front of my nose until I told him to get it the hell away from me. He set it on the stand beside the bed.

  “Why is it all burned up like that?”

  He blinked several times and his mouth came open a little. “Oh. I’m sorry, Alfred, I assumed they had already told you.”

  “Told me what?”

  “Alfred, last night Bernard’s house burned to the ground. A total loss.” He pulled out his monogrammed handkerchief and blew his nose. “They haven’t made a determination yet, but they suspect that it was arson. And that isn’t all. Your father’s grave ... it’s been desecrated.”

  “What do you mean, desecrated?”

  “They mutilated his corpse ... left his body by the grave site ... but took his head, Alfred. They took his head!”

  He began to cry. Watching a grown man cry is never easy, but Mr. Needlemier’s baby face made it seem more natural somehow.

  “You know,” I said. “I’m just guessing, but I think somebody’s trying to send me a message.”

  11:05:29:08

  Meredith Black stepped into the room, closed the door, and without saying a word unsnapped the buckles holding my wrists and ankles. I sat up as she sat down.

  “I don’t have anything to say to you,” I told her.

  “That’s fine,” she said. “I have something to say to you. Last fall two of my colleagues responded to a homicide in the Halls area just off Broadway. A security guard had been stabbed to death in his living room. There was an eyewitness: the victim’s fifteen-year-old nephew, who told them a very odd story about a man named Arthur Myers and a company called Tintagel International and a very valuable sword, which also turned out to be the murder weapon. The victim’s name was Farrell Kropp, and he worked for Samson Industries. For Bernard Samson.”

  She paused for a breath. I was rubbing my aching wrists and avoiding her eyes.

  “It was an odd case. The manner of death, for example. Not too many people in Knoxville—or anywhere else, for that manner—meet their Maker by means of an antique broadsword. The witness’s story was odd, too. Secret chambers, saber-wielding monks, a sword that seemed to have a mind of its own. The two homicide detectives who responded to the call that night remember the case very well. They distinctly remember filing the report. Only now there is no report. There’s no record anywhere of a murder happening that night. Bernard Samson showed up at that apartment and after that the report vanished. And do you know what happened next? Both those detectives abruptly quit their jobs—one was about six months short of full retirement—and moved to the Caribbean. To an island that is owned by ... wanna guess? Samson Industries.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” I said.

  She acted like she didn’t hear me. “Four months after the murder, the witness—you—vanished into thin air. As did the former head of security for Samson Industries, a man by the name of Benjamin Bedivere.”

  “I’m really tired,” I said. “It’s hard to sleep when you’re tied down, so maybe we could pick this up after I’ve had a nice little nap.”

  “A few days later, a supervisor with the border patrol files a report that two fugitives in a stolen Jaguar try to run the Canadian border.”

  “That Jag wasn’t stolen,” I said. “Bennacio gave the guy a check for it.”

  “The supervisor’s report, like the homicide report, later disappears as if it never existed. Three weeks pass, and the FBI issues an alert, adding this same kid to its Ten Most Wanted list for involvement in a plot to blow up Stonehenge. In another month, he will be removed from that list, with no explanation offered by the FBI.”

  “Because I didn’t try to blow up anything.”

  “Now, the company called Tintagel International has not vanished, but there is no one—nor has there ever been anyone—named Arthur Myers affiliated with it. The actual CEO of that company is a man named Jourdain Garmot, and he’s quite alive and well. The name itself struck me as a little odd, so I looked it up. Tintagel is the supposed location of Camelot, King Arthur’s castle.”

  “Okay,” I said. “What’s the point? What do you want fro
m me?”

  She leaned forward. “You remember the SUV in front of the Towers that morning? The driver fled immediately afterward, but one of the guards got the tag number. It was a rental, charged to a corporate account.”

  “Let me guess. Tintagel International.”

  “Actually, a company whose major stockholder is a subsidiary to a franchisee of Tintagel International.”

  “What’s that mean exactly?”

  “It means someone is trying very hard to hide their tracks, Alfred.”

  “Does it also mean you believe me now and I can go?”

  “It means there’s one homicide detective who is very confused and the more she looks into this bizarre case, the more confused she gets. This Mogart you told me about, he’s Arthur Myers, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this man you were traveling with to Canada, he was ...”

  “Bennacio, the Last Knight of the Sacred Order. I guess his alias was Benjamin Bedivere.”

  “And he died ...?”

  “At Stonehenge. I got the Sword and that’s when OIPEP set up the whole deal with the FBI to try to catch me and get the Sword from me. I guess they also bought off your detective friends, or maybe Mr. Samson ... did.”

  “Well,” she said. “Here’s the thing, Alfred. I’m not saying that I believe everything you’ve told me. All I’m saying is there’s some very weird coincidences and connections going on, and it’s driving me crazy. Why would someone connected to Tintagel International stage an elaborate assassination attempt on a fifteen-year-old kid?”

  “Because Tintagel International is just a front.”

  “A front? A front for what?”

  “For the AODs.”

  “What’s an AOD?”

  “Agent of darkness. That was just my name for them. It wasn’t like their official title or anything. Basically, they were the private army Mogart raised after Mr. Samson kicked him out of the Sacred Order.”

  “Mogart was a knight?”

  “Sort of a black knight. He left the Order and then decided to steal the Sword.”

  “Why did he leave?”

  “Because Mr. Samson found out Mogart had a son.”