“Sorry, guys,” said Max, standing above the open graves as he unscrewed the lid of his flask. By good chance, the location of the burying ground, specifically the Hanging Tree, meant that the earth here was predominantly peat. A tributary of the Charles River, known locally as Witch River, wound its way through Gallows Hill, skirting the edge of the cemetery. The closer you got to the river, the marshier the ground became. This peaty earth ensured that the bodies buried within it had remained in a petrified state instead of decomposing. It was grim to look at, but it had helped Max’s search for the evil preacher immensely. He took a swig from his flask, forgetting for a moment that it was full of scalding clam chowder. He spluttered it back out, wiping his mouth.
“Smart, Max; bring a boiling flask of cream along for thirsty work.”
He screwed the lid back on and dropped it onto his bomber jacket on the ground. A flutter of wings made Max turn suddenly as a crow landed in the Hanging Tree’s branches. It cocked its head, glaring down with a single blink of the eye.
“How you doing, pal? Come to watch a man at work?”
The crow didn’t reply, unsurprisingly, but Max could never discount the unusual happening. It came with the territory. Looking up at the sky, he tried to guess how much time was left before sunset. Having as much wilderness survival knowledge as a caged canary, he quickly abandoned that plan of action, retrieving his cell from his back pocket. He punched it on and waited for the glow of the display. He got nothing. He flicked it with a grubby finger, but still the screen was a no-show.
“You’re kidding me,” he muttered, as he stuck the phone back in his pocket. He smiled at the crow, which had been joined by a second. “Perfect timing for a dead battery, eh? Don’t suppose you guys have the time?”
He’d crashed so late last night, he hadn’t thought of charging the cell. Max looked back over the other graves and the bodies within. They appeared mummified, their skin turned the color of old leather. He looked back at the crows as more arrived. They stared at the corpses.
“So you haven’t joined me for my sparkling conversation. You’ve turned up for the criminal smorgasbord?”
He shook his shovel, causing a number of them to take flight to higher branches. Reluctantly, Max turned to the open graves and set back to work filling them in before the birds could start pecking at their contents. It was slow going. The ground was loose underfoot, and more than once, Max found himself sliding down into the peat alongside the bodies. His eyes lingered over each of them as he piled the earth back on, their distended necks reminding him of their fate. By the time he’d filled the twelfth grave and the light had begun to fade, over twenty crows sat in the tree, watching with interest. Max wiped his brow with the back of his arm, his hoodie sleeve coming away filthy. He leaned back against the tree and stared up, watching the shadows flit from branch to branch.
“If you hang around long enough, you’ll have ringside seats for my demise.”
Max eased himself up onto aching legs again and looked around at his handiwork. If there was another unmarked grave somewhere in the cemetery, what hope did he have of finding it? He punched the Hanging Tree’s trunk, immediately regretting it as shock waves resonated through his fist. As he nursed his knuckles, he heard a tap-tap-tapping sound from the other side of the tree. He stepped around the black-barked trunk, constantly aware of the movements of the birds above him. Two dozen pairs of beady eyes stared down at him, heads twitching as they followed his path.
“I’ve seen that movie, y’know,” he told them—Jed was a big Hitchcock fan. “You don’t freak me out,” he lied.
Circumnavigating the tree, he found one of the crows on the ground, tapping at the earth between two raised roots of the Hanging Tree. The bird hopped to and fro, beak striking the ground, pecking and pulling at the mulch. It caught hold of something, yanking back and dragging it out of the soil: a worm, wriggling all the way. Max half expected the bird to swallow it whole, but instead the crow threw it to one side and carried on digging. Curiosity getting the better of him, Max snatched up the folding shovel and moved to join the crow. The bird hopped aside onto a wizened root, making way for the young man. The broad-bladed tool cut into the earth and came away loaded, Max tossing it back over his shoulder.
“What do we have here?” said Max, dropping to his knees. The shovel went in and out, dragging the peat and wet earth clear, taking him ever deeper. That familiar feeling that he was closing in on something monstrous began to rise around him, like a specter materializing. He trembled as he worked, the building dread making his heart beat faster, wilder. A couple of the crows fluttered down from above, flanking him alongside their brother, lining the upturned roots like a ceremonial guard. Great peaty clumps came away from the ground now, and Max grunted as he put his back into the task. The muddy clods made a sucking sound as they tore free, landing with resounding splats away from the Hanging Tree.
Max stopped digging when the shovel struck something leathery. The birds flapped clear as Max placed the tool against a root before sliding down into the shallow pit. He straddled the exposed brown leather, grimacing as his fingers set to work brushing the peat and soil away. It wasn’t flesh. It was a book. Max pulled it out of the ground and opened it delicately. It was awfully old, its pages rotten and stuck together. However, the few pages that did open revealed disquieting symbols and words in an alien language, inked on the pages with a graffiti-like scrawl. The warlock’s bible? Or was it a spell book? He tucked it into the back of his waistband and continued digging, his hands slowly revealing a black-robed body beneath the dirt.
“The first plot would’ve been far too easy,” he grumbled at the crows. “Oh no, let’s wait until he’s dug up a dozen and broken his back. Then we’ll come along and show him where he should have been digging. I can see why they call you a murder of crows now . . .”
A few more sweeps of his hands and there was Vendemeier’s body, frozen in the earth for posterity. The dark burlap of the preacher’s robes clung like a death shroud, following every contour of the corpse beneath. Every inch of exposed brown flesh clung to the bones of his skeletal hands and his narrow skull. The dead man’s mouth was open in a silent scream, choked off by packed soil squirming with worms.
“Now for the grisly business. You may want to look away, birdies.”
Max stood up, dragging his messenger bag toward him through the soil. He flipped the latch, reaching in to withdraw one of the greatest weapons the Van Helsings owned. He gave it a twirl, admiring the craftsmanship. The stake was as old as Gallows Hill Burying Ground, brought to America by Liesbeth, the one family heirloom that had survived centuries of monster hunting. Max affectionately referred to the silver-tipped mahogany blade as Splinter; every good weapon deserved a cool name.
“You may not be a vampire, but far as I know, Splinter will kill any known monster.” He dropped to his knees and straddled the corpse. Gloom had descended over Gallows Hill, but the visibility told Max that the sun was still out there, somewhere, so perhaps he wasn’t too late. He began his incantation, the words of magic rolling off his lips smooth, instinctive, and automatic; taught to him by Jed and practiced to perfection. This was the first step in banishing an evil spirit, vampiric or otherwise. The second step involved Max driving Splinter through the corpse’s heart. If that didn’t do the trick, nothing would. He held the stake in his left hand over Vendemeier’s torso and raised the shovel over his head. When Max uttered the last word, he afforded himself a smile of relief. The spade fell.
The stake passed straight through the corpse’s chest with no resistance, and Max’s hand disappeared into the rib cage, fist still wrapped around Splinter. The crows began a chorus of caws around him, some taking flight, squawking and circling the Hanging Tree as Max ripped the robes apart. There was an open cavity in Vendemeier’s breast, and it wasn’t caused by Max’s attempted staking.
“What the—”
The teenager clawed the soil aside with frantic fingers, finding other organs within the torso that had shriveled but remained in place, intact. But the organ that had pumped blood around Vendemeier’s corrupted body—of that, there was no sign. The crows continued their baleful chorus, their cries becoming a frenzy of panic that matched the horror that bloomed in Max’s fearful soul.
TWENTY-SIX
xxx
A NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM
“He’s a guide dog, mister. In training.”
“For real?” said the guard in the lobby of the Gallows Hill Museum of Anthropology. “Don’t they usually look a little more guide-doggy than that? What happened to Labradors?”
Syd bent, patting Eightball’s head as he sat at attention beside her. She was careful to avoid the three angry cuts that ran down the right-hand side of the poor hound’s face, dealt out by the gargoyle. She looked up at the guard.
“If a dog’s smart enough, he’s good enough.”
She made a silent prayer that the puppy would remain on his best behavior and resist all temptation to drag his butt across the museum’s polished marble entrance hall.
“He’s super well behaved, I promise. And he’s got to learn how to guide around places like museums. Can I please bring him in?”
The man scratched the back of his head, tipping his peaked cap forward in the process. He was a heavyset, barrel-chested man, the beginnings of a gray beard stubbling his humorless, pale face. He wore the exact same uniform as Wilbur Cunningham, or Vendemeier, or whoever the heck it was that they’d encountered at All Saints Church. His name badge read DEMBINSKI, and chances were good that he’d been a friend of poor Cunningham’s.
“You keep him on a short leash, young lady, you hear?”
“Thank you, sir,” said Syd, hitting him with her prettiest smile. It drew a grin from the man. It rarely failed. She looked around, wrinkling her brow, the picture of innocent curiosity.
“Something else I can help you with?” asked Dembinski.
“Oh, nothing,” said Syd, picking up a foldout museum map. “I just heard on the news there’d been a break-in here. I was wondering if they’d caught the robber yet.”
A frown appeared on Dembinski’s broad face. He leaned closer. “The police don’t know what they’re looking for. They seem to think it’s my friend Wilbur who did the stealing, but that’s crazy.”
“Is he the guard they have a warrant out for?”
Dembinski flapped both of his hands in a “go away” gesture. “Wilbur’s a good guy, an honest man. There’s no way he’d steal anything from the museum. He loves this place. Loves his job. You make your visit a quick one, little lady. We close soon, okay?”
Syd set off into the exhibition rooms, checking her cell. The time was just after five. What time had Max said the sun would set—six p.m.? Visiting the museum was suddenly feeling like an indulgent distraction. Perhaps she’d have been better off tooling up with weapons and following Max to the burying ground. That’s where the battle would be won and lost, not in some musty old museum.
“Well, we’re here now,” she muttered to Eightball. “Let’s take a closer look at that box and see what else we can find.”
The museum was almost empty, only the odd visitor wandering noisily up and down the parquet-floored corridors. Syd avoided them all, slipping through the building and the various exhibits. She paused by the entrance to the Egyptian Room. Yellow police tape formed a cross over the archway, the fire door closed behind it, barring any access. A poster from the management was pasted onto the inside of this glass door, informing the public that the room would reopen upon conclusion of the police investigation. A law enforcement poster sat alongside it, encouraging anyone with any information to contact Gallows Hill PD at the usual number.
Syd shrugged and moved on.
The “Early Settlers” show was in the American Room. Syd remembered this room from her elementary school days, when she’d turned up with her class to rub brass and try out a butter churn. It had never been the most inspiring room in the museum. That had changed recently, though. Now it resembled a haunted house, with waxwork reenactments of the witch trials dominating half of the exhibition. Grisly depictions of the perils the early settlers had faced were re-created around her, including diseases, ships sinking, and entire villages starving to death. Placards told stories of encounters with America’s wild animals, a homestead sacked by a pack of hungry wolves, while other accounts covered the awkward and sometimes disastrous encounters between colonials and the Massachusett tribe, not least the smallpox the Europeans introduced in 1616, almost wiping the Native Americans out. Syd shook her head.
Remembering the photo in the Examiner, Syd went deeper into the witch trials portion of the exhibition. Life-size models of three pointy-nosed, wart-faced crones were gathered around a cauldron, as though they were auditioning for Macbeth. The notice on a stand beside them explained that this was the “archetypal witch,” as caricatured down the years by popular culture. Behind them stood the preacher waxwork, all fury and righteous fervor before the trio of hags. The ministers in those early days were the most powerful, influential individuals in society. One would think these men could have done more on behalf of the poor people who were hanged or burned. Sadly, they were often behind the witch hunts, driving their parishioners into a furor as they sought out the wicked and guilty.
And then there was Vendemeier.
Syd shivered as she came to a placard that recounted the activity of the reverend of All Saints Church. The twenty-seven hangings for which he was responsible didn’t appear in his biography—here, it suggested somewhere between five and eight. Syd snorted. The write-up described his flock lynching him at the Hanging Tree, but there was no mention of his monstrous connections, or the instrumental role of Liesbeth Van Helsing. There were some things the norms just weren’t ready to face.
“You’re really helpful, pooch,” said Syd, looking down at Eightball, who was trying to catch his tail in his wobbling jaws. She watched him walk in tight, concentric circles, bewitched by his own butt. “Hellhound, huh? Sure you are.”
Then she spotted the pedestal, positioned exactly where it had been in the newspaper photograph: a tall, polished, dark wooden plinth with a brass plaque bearing the words VENDEMEYER’S BOX. Only the box wasn’t there. The top of the stand was empty, a perfect square left in the dust where the artifact had once sat. Syd stepped closer, running her finger through the dust as if it might make the cube magically reappear. She crouched, peering at the other exhibits at floor level, even lifting the skirts from around the crooked witches’ ankles. The box was nowhere to be found.
Should she go back to Mr. Dembinski, the affable security guard, and ask him the whereabouts of the box? Perhaps Dembinski was in cahoots with Vendemeier. The news had all been about the Egyptian sacrificial dagger going missing—no mention of a misplaced item from the American Room. Her thoughts were interrupted by an announcement over the PA system asking visitors to make their way to the exit, as the museum would close in ten minutes. Her hands fell to her sides in exasperation. The thing she had come for was gone, and she had no idea who’d taken it. She looked at the thin windows that circuited the walls where they met the ceiling, a faded blue light visible outside. Sun was setting. Time was running out.
Eightball growled, a low gurgle that made her jump. He’d stopped stalking his rear and had returned to her side, where he now crouched. His hackles were raised; his eyes narrowed as his nostrils flared.
“What’s the matter?”
She hunkered down to comfort him. Eightball let her left hand stroke him, but the right he chose to snarl at. She brought her hand away, fearful that the hound might try and take a bite.
“You don’t like this hand? But the other’s fine?”
He continued growling, sniffing at the air, lips slowly peeling back to reveal that row of stubby teeth. Syd loo
ked at her hand, wondering what had gotten the puppy riled up. It was clean but for the dust smear that marked her fingertip. Dust from the top of the plinth.
“Of course! Your sense of smell! It took us to All Saints, following that creature that caught Wing. Where can it lead you in here, Eightball?” She held her finger out, the snarling grunts catching in the dog’s throat as he sniffed at it.
“You can do this,” she said, moving her right hand away and lifting his jaw in her left hand gently. “Find me the box, Eightball. Seek it.”
She stood up and removed his leash. Eightball went to work, nose to the ground, snuffling. He was in and among the waxwork exhibits, bumping into the occasional one, threatening to knock a crone into a cauldron and a farmer into a fisherman. He stopped before the pedestal that had held the box, growling briefly, before continuing on his way. Syd stepped back into the main corridor that ran through the museum. She could see and hear the last remaining visitors heading for the exit. If she didn’t show up soon, the guard would come looking for her. That would be the end of her museum adventure for sure. She returned to the American Room.
There was no sign of the puppy.
“Eightball! Where are you?” she hissed, rattling his chain leash to draw him out. She called again, dropping to all fours as she tried to lure him back. She could hear heavy, booted footsteps in the corridor now, drawing ever closer. Dembinski, no doubt.
There! Beyond the fake gallows at the back of the room, a velvet curtain hung from the ceiling to the floor, and before it, Syd could see the puppy’s paws dancing about excitedly. She scampered between the exhibits, rushing to his side. Eightball’s stubby claws were catching at the red material, almost bringing it down as he tried to tug it aside. Syd lifted the curtain’s hem, the hellhound ducking beneath, and came face-to-face with a door. The girl looked it up and down, unable to find a handle. There was, however, a keyhole. She let the curtain fall behind her and fished her pick from her pocket, slipping it into the mortise lock.
The Thirteenth Curse Page 17
