“Looks like this was once a sunroom,” Carter said.
Ezra shone his own flashlight around the room, where heavy timbered columns still rose up like telephone poles toward a roof that wasn’t there. Everything was blanched of color, a world of blackness and shadows, the shapes barely outlined by the silver glints of moonlight. Even the sounds of the surrounding city were absent here; all that could be heard was the rustling of the wind through the rotted timbers and the worn bricks. But then his flashlight picked up something, something that glittered, and that was fixed to one of the timbers.
When he went closer, Ezra could see what it was. Though twisted and charred, it was still incontestably a crucifix. He motioned Carter over.
As Carter took it in, Ezra said softly, “Could it be something left behind by a patient in the old sanatorium?”
But Carter shook his head; he knew immediately that this was the crucifix he had last seen in the burn ward at St. Vincent’s. “It belonged to Russo.”
Ezra didn’t know what to make of this. He was relieved that they might be on the right path, after all, but he was also puzzled. If his theories had been correct, this would be the last thing that Arius would want, much less put on display in his lair. But what other way was there to account for its being here?
And then, looking further into the gloomy recesses of the room, Ezra spotted something else, also fixed to one of the columns. Something, as far as he could make out from this distance, that might prove to be equally strange.
He crossed in front of the stone fountain, its basin dry and cracked, and followed the beam of his flashlight to a small spot of color in a gilded frame. It was a watercolor, unmistakably by Degas, and when Carter came to his side, Ezra said, “And this belonged to Kimberly. She had it up in her dressing area.” It hung crookedly from a rusty nail that had been driven right through the center of the picture. “He didn’t take much care hanging it,” Ezra said, in tacit acknowledgement of what they both now knew—that the picture had been nailed there by their missing quarry. “But why?” Ezra wondered aloud. “Why the crucifix? And why this painting? It’s not as if he respected the religious significance of one, or was so enchanted by the beauty of the other.”
Carter knew why, though he was sick at the thought; in various paleolithic campsites, he had seen similar behavior. Antlers and jawbones, hung from cave walls, or bashed hominid skulls tucked into niches of the rock. “He’s not decorating,” Carter said. “He’s collecting souvenirs.”
He played his flashlight beam around the room, and this time it alighted on the antique statue in the center of the fountain. It had a classical head—Apollo, Narcissus, something Beth would know more precisely—but the rest of it was loosely draped in a red cloth. He went closer, and as he did he could see that the cloth was actually a long red coat made out of suede.
“What the hell is this?” Ezra said. “It looks like something a hooker would wear.”
“It was,” Carter said. “It belonged to the transvestite who first saw Arius emerge.”
Ezra paused. “Another trophy?”
Carter nodded.
But Ezra, perhaps noticing something Carter hadn’t, stepped over the rim of the basin and threw open the coat. In a whisper, he said, “But take a look at what’s under it.”
Carter focused his flashlight beam, and now he, too, could see the tightly wound parchment, wrapped like a skin around the torso of the stone figure. “My scroll,” Ezra said. With hasty fingers, he removed the coat from the shoulders of the statue and let it fall into the dry basin.
“What are you doing?” Carter asked. “Leave the scroll alone!”
“Why should I?”
“Have you already forgotten what happened in your apartment?”
“I’m not about to leave it here,” Ezra said, glaring back at Carter. “It’s the most significant discovery in the history of the world, and this whole place is going to be demolished in a few days.”
He turned around again and before Carter could stop him, he’d taken hold of one end of the scroll, draped over the statue’s shoulder, and begun to peel it away. The moment it began to come loose, Carter heard a familiar low hum and saw a pulse of lavender light.
“Ezra, stop!”
But the scroll continued to unfurl, the humming growing louder and the lavender light deeper. Ezra took a step back, as if surprised at what he’d done.
“I told you to stop,” Carter said.
“I did,” Ezra said, as the scroll went on unwinding of its own accord, like a serpent uncoiling itself from a slender tree.
The light grew more intense, a vibrant and pulsating purple. The humming gave way to a crackling sound, like dry twigs snapping underfoot.
“Get back!” Carter said, grabbing Ezra’s sleeve, but Ezra resisted. “I don’t think it can harm us,” he said. “Not with the clay from Jerusalem on us.”
“You planning to test it?”
Ezra reached out. “Yes.” He touched the scroll, just as Carter took hold again of his arm, and it was as if a powerful jolt of electric current had suddenly hit them both. Ezra was hurled into the air, his head landing with a terrible thump on the rim of the basin.
Carter was knocked off his feet and banged up against one of the wooden columns. The knife he’d had in his belt skittered across the floor.
The scroll swirled in an upright column of ever-increasing light, illuminating the brick walls of the abandoned conservatory with a violet glow; superimposed upon the dingy walls, turning and twisting just as the scroll did, were the words that had once been written on the ancient skin.
And even as he lay there, stunned and amazed, Carter understood, as he never had before, what these words were.
They weren’t just an account of who the Watchers were, what abominations they had committed, and the terrible punishment they had then suffered.
These words were more than that. Someone had written them; a conqueror had written them.
They were the record of a victory . . . written in blood. The blood of the vanquished. And on his very own skin.
Arius’s skin.
No wonder it had come back to him.
The words, their lettering eerily elongated, circled the crumbling walls like images projected by a magic lantern, around and around, faster and faster. The purple light grew brighter, hotter, until it became almost white; Carter couldn’t look at it directly anymore, but had to shield his eyes. The scroll spun in a tighter and tighter spiral, a helix of wind and light hovering just above the base of the fountain.
He heard Ezra moan.
At least he was alive.
He glanced again at the whirling scroll, transfixed by its power. Like a column of fire now spinning in place, it grew so bright, so hot, that he finally had to squeeze his eyes shut and turn his head away. Even then he could feel its power, he could hear its crackling heat. It was a living presence in the room, and Carter could only wonder, in mute terror, what would satisfy it.
And then he could tell, even with his eyes closed, that it was gone. The great room was dark again, the crackling wind had died. Everything was still.
He opened his eyes and turned back toward the fountain. The antique figure stood alone, unencumbered, bathed only in the pale moonlight coming through the conservatory’s empty skylight.
The scroll was gone. Vanished into thin air? Extinguished like a flame? Blown through the open roof? Carter saw no sign of it anywhere. He caught his breath and said, “Ezra, are you all right?”
He got no answer.
He stumbled to his feet, stepped over the knapsack, and went to Ezra’s side. The black beret had slipped down over his face, and when Carter raised it, he could see that his eyes were open but unfocused. “Can you hear me?” he asked, and this time Ezra feebly nodded. “I’m going to get you out of here. Can you stand up?”
Again he got no reply, but slipping his arm under Ezra’s shoulders, he was able to raise him to his feet.
“Okay, one st
ep at a time.” He aimed his flashlight beam in the direction they’d entered from, and with Ezra leaning unsteadily against him, they walked slowly away from the fountain. Carter kept sweeping the flashlight back and forth to make sure they didn’t trip over any rotted timbers or broken floorboards. “We’ll take it slow,” he told Ezra, “nice and slow.”
They were almost out of the room when his flashlight beam glinted off something else, something fixed, like the other trophies, to one of the beams. He must have missed it entirely when they’d entered. Carter dragged Ezra with him toward the prize—and saw now that it was a bit of satiny fabric that had shone in the light. Satiny fabric that ran around the collar of a leopard-print pajama top.
Just like Beth’s favorite pair. The ones she was wearing on the night he’d found their bedroom door stuck . . . and the window to the fire escape wide open.
“Oh my God,” he said, under his breath, and Ezra let out a sigh of pain. There was a trickle of blood running down from the corner of his mouth.
Carter stuck the flashlight in his belt, then pulled the cloth from the nail. He held it to his face. It still carried the scent of her skin. “Oh my God,” he mumbled again, praying that this was unlike the other trophies, that it was still only a wish, unfulfilled, and not yet a memento.
THIRTY-EIGHT
“I’m glad you left the party early,” Abbie said, as she steered the car off the exit ramp for Hudson. “The sooner we get to bed tonight, the earlier we can get to work tomorrow.”
Beth, staring out the window at the black trees and brush that now lined the sides of the two-lane road, had to struggle to pay attention to what her friend was saying; her thoughts kept returning, no matter how hard she resisted, to the same things . . . the sight of Arius arriving at the gallery, the spotting of blood that she could feel, even now, in her underwear. If she looked back, over nothing more than the last couple of months, all she could see was a mounting wave of bad news, trouble, and even death. Writing a letter of condolence to Joe Russo’s mother was one of the most painful things she had ever had to do.
“Not that it won’t be loads of fun,” Abbie said. “In the right company, and we’ve certainly got that, hanging curtains can be a blast.”
“I’m sure it will be fun,” Beth said, obligingly.
“You’re not going to win any Oscars for that performance,” Abbie joked.
Beth turned to her friend and smiled. “Sorry, the party was draining. All I need is a good night’s sleep, and in the morning I’ll be raring to go.”
Abbie reached over and patted the back of Beth’s hand. “Sleep as late as you like. Even Ben, who hates the whole idea of this house, has to concede that he sleeps like a baby up here.” She was about to add that Beth looked like she could use a good night’s rest, but then thought better of it. Nobody, Abbie knew, ever wanted to hear that.
Even though she’d been up to the house a dozen times by now, Abbie was used to having Ben at the wheel, or right beside her, so she’d never paid much attention to the directions or the landmarks. But now, at night yet, she had to concentrate, and think twice at every intersection or bend in the road. Was it the hard left, or the soft one? Was the old foundry meant to stay on their right side, or were they supposed to cut through it on the service road? Every once in a while, she’d spot something—a familiar Quickie Mart casting its dismal fluorescent glow, or a gas station with its old-fashioned pumps where they’d filled up a few times before returning to the city—and know that she was still on the right track. But it wasn’t easy, and the darkness that surrounded them on all sides was deeper and more forbidding than she ever recalled from a previous trip. In her heart she had to recognize that, despite her little fantasies of solitude and country living, she wouldn’t be making many solo trips up here. At least not at night.
When they finally crossed an old railroad track, with its warning sign ravaged by rust and bullet holes, she knew she was almost home. She slowly rounded the big, sweeping curve of a hill, skirted the pothole she knew was coming, then put on her brights to help her find their driveway. It was partially obscured by a massive old oak that stood like a giant sentinel at the top of the narrow defile.
“My next project is going to be a light of some kind so I can find the place in the dark,” Abbie said, as she turned the car into the drive.
“What’s that?” Beth said, just as Abbie herself saw it—an orange highway cone on the right side of the driveway. Her bumper caught it and sent it tumbling into what she now saw was a deep trench.
“What is going on?” Abbie said, quickly pulling the car to the left and stopping.
“Looks like a construction project,” Beth said, peering down the drive. The trench ran all the way down the hill and stopped just short of the house.
“You’re right,” Abbie said, “it must be the water line. They’ve been replacing them all over the area.”
“They didn’t tell you they were going to do this?”
“Who reads all the notices we get?” She started the car again. “I just hope they haven’t cut off the water.”
They went the rest of the way down, toward the house, black as pitch and almost impossible to discern against the equally black hills beyond it.
Abbie pulled the car into the semicircular drive, its tires crunching on the loose gravel, and stopped near a pile of building supplies—lumber, bricks, a folded ladder—that were going to be used to add a deck onto the back of the house. She started to turn off the headlights, but then thought better of it.
“Maybe we should leave them on until we open up the house,” she said, and Beth nodded.
“And why don’t we leave the curtains in the car, too, until tomorrow morning?” Beth said, and this time Abbie agreed. Neither one of them wanted to say it, but both were anxious to get inside, lock the door behind them, and turn on every light in the house.
Abbie got out, leaving her car door open, the little chime ringing, and hurried up the wooden steps. On the porch, she fumbled through her keys before finding the right one; even then, it took some twisting and turning before the lock gave way and the door opened. Instantly, she reached inside and flicked on the entryway and porch lights, then returned to the car.
Beth had wrestled their bags out of the back, and together they carried them up the steps and dumped them in the foyer. The house was almost as cold inside as the night outside.
“I’ll get the heat going,” Abbie said. “That ought to work, regardless. You can just go ahead and put your stuff in the guest room.”
Beth took her bag to the corkscrew staircase and maneuvered her way up it, which wasn’t easy; the house had been built as a one-story, and it was only when some previous owner had decided to turn the attic into a second floor that the staircase had been wedged into the existing layout. The guest bedroom, with an adjoining sitting room and bath, made up the entire top floor.
Beth, exhausted, tossed her bag onto the quilt-covered bed. She hadn’t found the light switch yet, so the room was still dark, and she could look out at the barren branches of the trees in the abandoned apple orchard, and the outline, etched in silver, of the ruined barn beyond. Ben had joked that they were going to invite the neighbors over for a barn burning, but Abbie had said she liked it, that it gave character to the place. Right now, it just reinforced Beth’s feeling that they had come to the end of the earth. If the curtains had already been up, she’d have yanked them closed.
“It looks like you can take a bath, after all,” Abbie called out from the foot of the stairs. “The water heater’s on, and the water’s running fine.”
“Thanks,” Beth called back; the house was so small you hardly needed to raise your voice to be heard. “I think I will.”
“See you in the morning,” Abbie said. “First one up turns on the coffee maker.”
Beth found the light switch and flicked it on. Then she went to the window, which was open a few inches, and was about to close it when she stopped. The night air was cold all
right, but it was also so fresh and so fragrant that she had to stop and savor it for a moment. It reminded her of the way the woods had smelled after a rain shower when she’d taken a road trip through the Cotswolds. She left it open an inch—sleeping with fresh air and no city noise might be a nice change—then started to unpack her bag. Most of it she decided to leave until the morning; for now she took out her nightgown, robe, and toiletries and carried them into the bathroom. Abbie and Ben had already had the bathroom remodeled, with an etched-glass medicine chest, a porcelain sink stand with two gold faucets, and a big, high, claw-footed tub. Unfortunately, as Beth turned on the hot-water spigot, she remembered what had bothered her the last time she and Carter had come out for a weekend; the tub stood directly across from a big window and there still weren’t any curtains or blinds up.
“Who’s going to be watching from a barren field?” Carter had said, and Beth had to remind herself of that now. Plus, she thought, it’s almost midnight.
Still, as the tub filled up and she got undressed, she stood away from the window. She could have turned off the bathroom lights, but not tonight, not here; she’d rather take her chances with the most enterprising peeping Tom in history than bathe in a darkened bathroom.
She hung her white robe on the back of the door, piled her clothes up under the sink—noting, unhappily, that her panties were indeed spotted with blood—and swished a finger through the bath water. Any hotter and she’d melt. She put a couple of folded towels on top of the toilet seat, next to the tub; then, after adjusting the tap to run a little cooler, she stepped into the bath water. It was deep, and as she settled down into it, the water rose to cover her knees. She sank lower and the water went higher, up over her body and breasts, and she gently rested the back of her head against the still-cold porcelain.
Relax, she told herself, just try to relax.
But she might as well have been talking to a prisoner on the gallows. Her mind was still teeming with a thousand different things. She should call Carter, as soon as she got out of the tub, if only to leave a message that she had arrived safe and sound. And the next morning, she should call the gallery, to apologize for slipping out of the party early. She should even call Bradley Hoyt, to thank him for covering for her.
Vigil Page 33
