The Devil's Labyrinth

by John Saul

  The librarian was glaring at him, almost as if she knew what he’d been thinking about. But then he saw the headmaster’s secretary standing near the door.

  “You’re wanted in Father Laughlin’s office, Ryan. Right away.”

  Ryan felt every eye in the room on him as he gathered up his book, notebook, and pen, and zipped them all into his backpack. What could Father Laughlin want? Did he know where he and Melody had been a few hours earlier? What had happened in that little room deep in the subbasement?

  “Some people are here to talk to you,” Sister Margaret said as they crossed the courtyard.

  “People?” Ryan echoed. “Who?”

  Sister Margaret shrugged and opened the door to the administration building. “Go on in,” she said, nodding toward Father Laughlin’s office.

  Two men in police uniforms were waiting with Father Laughlin, and they both rose to their feet as Ryan came in, and just the looks on their faces were enough to tell Ryan that whatever they had to say was something he wasn’t going to want to hear.

  “Ryan McIntyre?” one of the men said. “I’m Officer McCain. This is my partner, Officer Morgan.”

  Ryan looked uncertainly from one to the other. What was going on?

  “Come on in and have a seat,” McCain said, indicating an empty chair.

  Ryan dropped his backpack to the floor and perched nervously on the edge of a chair.

  “Ryan,” Father Laughlin began, then nervously cleared his throat.

  “Ryan,” McCain took over. “We have to tell you that your mother was assaulted last night.”

  The words seemed to hang in the air, and for a moment Ryan wasn’t sure what they were saying. But as the meaning of the words slowly sank in, he finally spoke. “Assaulted? What do you mean assaulted?” His eyes shifted from McCain to the other policeman, then back to McCain. “Is she all right?”

  “We hope she will be,” McCain said. “She’s in the hospital in Newton, and we’ll be happy to take you to see her.” He glanced at Father Laughlin, who nodded. “But first, we wanted to know if you had any idea who might have done such a thing?”

  A single name instantly rose in Ryan’s mind. “Tom Kelly,” he said. “Her boyfriend.”

  The two policemen glanced at each other now, and this time it was Morgan who spoke. “Why would you suggest him? Has he ever done anything to her before?”

  Ryan hesitated, but then shook his head.

  “Then why do you think it might have been him?” McCain pressed.

  Ryan shrugged. “I just don’t like him, you know?”

  “Do you know where we can find him?”

  Ryan shook his head. “Is my mom going to be okay? I mean, is anyone making sure he doesn’t show up at the hospital?”

  “Believe me, we’re on that,” Morgan assured him. “Now as for this Tom Kelly character—he never mentioned where he lived, or where he worked?”

  Ryan tried to think of a single thing he actually knew about Tom Kelly, and suddenly realized he couldn’t come up with anything. Nothing at all. Had Tom Kelly actually been that secretive about himself, or had Ryan himself just been that uninterested? Or could he just not remember? “Seems like I should know,” he finally said. “But I just don’t.”

  “You might remember something later,” McCain said. “Hearing about your mom kind of takes away your concentration.” He handed Ryan a business card. “Keep this in your wallet, and if you remember anything about him, call me, okay?”

  Ryan took the card and nodded.

  “Ready to go see her?”

  “Yes, please,” Ryan said.

  Ryan sat in the backseat of the police car on the short ride to the hospital. He wanted to be afraid for his mom, he wanted to be incensed, furious even, at that jerk Tom Kelly, but something was pressing down on his emotions. He felt like a zombie, just going through the motions of being worried, upset, and angry, without actually feeling any of those things.

  Maybe that was the effect of hearing that his mom was in the hospital. Maybe he was in shock.

  Or maybe it was something else.

  At the hospital, a nurse showed them into a big glass room filled with beeping machines. It wasn’t until he looked carefully that he saw the small, pale face of his mother amid all the wires and tubes and flashing lights.

  Her head bandaged in white seemed to merge with the pillow behind her. Dark circles hung under her eyes all the way to her hollow cheeks. Her thin body barely made a lump under the blanket.

  She didn’t look real.

  “She’s still in a coma,” the nurse said. “The doctor will decide tomorrow morning if the swelling in her brain is going to require surgery.”

  Ryan stood still, unsure of what to do.

  “Go ahead, talk to her,” the nurse encouraged him. “Sometimes the voice or the touch of a loved one can make a difference.”

  Ryan felt the eyes of the nurse and the two policemen on him as he approached the bed.

  “Mom?” he said quietly, but only the beeping sound of her heartbeat answered him.

  Part of him wanted to crawl into bed with her, to hold her the way she had held him so many times when he was sick or hurt. Part of him wanted to sink to the floor and cry, and part of him wanted to rip out all the tubes and wires and smash all the machinery.

  But all of that seemed like the thoughts of someone else.

  Instead, he just stood there. “Mom?” he said again.

  “Hold her hand,” the nurse urged.

  Ryan took tentative steps closer to the bed. The skin of his mother’s face looked like paper. Her hand, just as pale, lay on top of the white blanket.

  He reached for her hand, and as he did, the beeping of the heart monitor began to quicken.

  “See?” the nurse said. “She could be sensing that you’re here.”

  “Hi, Mom,” Ryan said, and then grasped her cool hand with both of his.

  “Noooo,” Teri McIntyre moaned, and violently ripped her hand from her son’s touch, then began thrashing in the bed. All the machines began to beep and flash, and another nurse rushed in.

  Ryan backed away as both nurses worked with her. By the time Teri quieted down and the beeps had gone back to normal, she had moved halfway across the bed.

  Away from her son.

  CHAPTER 55

  THE DARKNESS OF the night surrounded Ryan like a cloak, yet it was a cloak that gave no warmth; his whole body—even his spirit—was suffused with a paralyzing cold. Yet when a shadowy figure emerged from the darkness, passing Ryan without so much as a glance, Ryan followed. He knew who the figure was: Tom Kelly, the man who had beaten up his mother.

  The man he was going to kill.

  Why? Why not just call the police—they’d take care of Tom Kelly. But even as he asked himself the question, even as he silently stalked his prey, the answer also rose in his mind.

  Why not?

  The street was empty; a heavy mist hung in the air; the only light came from a single lamp in the middle of the square across the cobbled lane.

  Tom Kelly must be an idiot to be walking alone after what he’d done.

  So he deserved to die.

  Ryan’s fingers closed on the knife in his pocket and a moment later it was out of his pocket, its glittering blade flicking open with the gentlest touch to the release.

  Ryan quickened his step, closing the gap between himself and Tom Kelly. As he neared the man, the knife in Ryan’s hand grew warm, its heat spreading quickly through his body. He felt a smile spreading over his lips as he reached out to snake his left arm around Tom Kelly’s head, to jerk it backward, exposing the flesh and tendons of the man’s neck to the blade clutched tight in Ryan’s trembling right hand.

  Then with one vicious swipe of the blade—

  Ryan awoke, gasping. The street was gone; so too was the icy chill of the night.

  He was in his bed in his room at St. Isaac’s, and instead of clutching the handle of a bloody knife, his fingers were clenched only on
his own sheet and blanket.

  The thrill of what he’d been about to do was still tingling in his body.

  Ryan lay back on his damp pillow, willing the memories to fade away, but no matter what he did, every time he closed his eyes, the vision hung once more in the darkness. Worse, the thrill he’d felt in anticipation of what he’d been about to do also came flooding back, and he felt his fingers twitching as if the knife were still clutched in them.

  Terrified by what dreams might come if he let himself go back to sleep, Ryan sat up and put his bare feet on the cold floor beneath his bed. Clay Matthews breathed rhythmically in his bed on the other side of the room, and Ryan knew he couldn’t turn on his reading light without waking him.

  Maybe all he needed was to get out of bed for a while, and shake the last remnants of the dream. Silently, he pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, and slipped out of the room, closing the door softly behind him. Padding down the hall to the common room, his footfalls were as silent here as they had been in his dream, and when he came to his destination it was as dark and as deserted as the street he’d been wandering in his nightmare, the only illumination coming from the streetlamp in front of the school.

  The last thing he wanted to do was to talk with some priest or nun, or even one of his dorm-mates, so he neither turned on the ancient television that crouched in the far corner, nor a light to read by.

  Instead, he sat alone in the darkness, still trying to rid his mind of the violence in his nightmare.

  Where had it come from?

  Even as he posed the question, he knew the answer: the violence had come from inside his own being, from the dark presence that had emerged from deep within him when Father Sebastian had taken him to the small chapel hidden in the depth of St. Isaac’s School.

  He could feel that presence spreading through him, its tendrils twisting around him, tightening their grip on him with every minute that crept by.

  He paced the room nervously, as if by sheer movement he could rid himself of the thing that was growing inside him. His eyes flicked from the glass-fronted cases filled with old books to the dark oil paintings depicting St. Isaac himself, all of them framed in fading gilt, then to the worn furniture that seemed to have been collected from a half dozen different times and places. He moved to the window flanked by threadbare brocade draperies with torn and dingy lace curtains covering the glass. Ryan pulled back the curtain and gazed out. A light mist hung over the cobbled street, exactly as it had in his dream, and the sidewalks and the park were equally as deserted, but from somewhere far away he heard the faint moan of a siren.

  An ambulance? Ryan leaned his forehead against the cool glass, wondering if it might be going to the same hospital where his mother still lay unconscious.

  The same hospital where he, himself, ought to be, sitting next to her and holding her hand instead of standing here looking out over Boston and worrying about a nightmare.

  Except that when he had seen her—when he’d touched her—she’d screamed.

  Screamed, and jerked away from him, as if she knew about the thing that was inside him, growing steadily, threatening to utterly overwhelm him. And if it did—

  If only he could see her, and talk to her, and tell her what was happening. But of course he couldn’t, not now.

  Not tonight.

  Not until she woke up.

  If she woke up.

  Ryan shuddered in the darkness as he thought once more of the nightmare. Of it turning into reality, of finding himself actually clutching a knife and holding it against someone’s throat, of feeling the blade sink into the flesh and slash at the tendons, ripping open the aorta to let human blood flow.

  A movement beyond the window distracted him from the vision in his mind, and he peered into the darkness to see a silver car creeping down the street to come to a silent stop in front of the steps of St. Isaac’s. A moment later, a man clad in jeans, a black T-shirt, and a dark jacket ran down the steps and got into the car. Just before pulling the car door closed, the man glanced upward, seeming to look directly at the window from which Ryan was gazing.

  Father Sebastian Sloane!

  Ryan looked at the clock that hung on the wall above the television.

  Almost 3:30.

  Was there some sort of emergency? But what kind of emergency would make Father Sebastian leave in such a hurry in the middle of the night?

  And not dressed in the cassock he had always worn before?

  The car made a U-turn in front of the building, and as it did, the streetlight caught the face of the driver.

  Ryan gasped and stepped back.

  It couldn’t be! Surely it had only been a trick of the light!

  Too late, Ryan peered out the window once more, but by now the car was gone.

  The street was empty.

  CHAPTER 56

  ABDUL WATCHED AS Farrooq unwrapped one of the scarlet cassocks and laid it carefully in his lap. “I have made three,” Farrooq said, then showed Abdul the carefully sewn inserts that held the explosives, the detonation wires that had been snaked through the seam allowances, running first up to the right sleeve, then down the sleeve to the cuff.

  Abdul nodded in appreciation of his older brother’s intricate work. “Beautiful,” he murmured, his fingers gently caressing the silken material of the cassock, only to come to rest on the hidden explosives. He could almost feel the energy compressed within the packets hidden in the seams.

  “The triggers are here,” Farrooq said, interrupting his brother’s reverie. Abdul ran his fingers lightly over a tiny button in the hem of the sleeve, made all but invisible by the lace trim of the sleeve’s cuff. “It will be for you to decide when they are to be activated,” Farrooq said softly.

  Abdul’s eyes met those of his brother. “The altar servers will carry the tall candles, placing them into the holders on the altar. At that moment they will be as close to the Pope as it is possible to be. As soon as they have placed the candles, they will all take a single step back from the altar, at which point each of them will activate a trigger.”

  “Praise Allah,” Abdul sighed.

  “There are bombs,” Farrooq continued. “Two for each of the servers. Insha-Allah, all six will detonate.” He paused, then smiled. “But we only need one.”

  “Fail safe,” Abdul said.

  “Fail safe,” Farrooq agreed, “assuming the servers follow through.” He gently lifted the garment, repackaged it, and set it carefully with the others. “Now,” he went on as he took two bottles of water from the small refrigerator, handing one to his brother. “What of our father’s cross?”

  Abdul shrugged. “You worry too much. Even if it were to surface, we don’t know that it would mean anything. Nor are we counting on a single server—that is why we have two backups.” Now it was Abdul’s lips that spread into a dark and joyless smile. “What one might call an Un-holy Trinity.”

  “Fail safe.” Farrooq raised his bottle to his brother, then drained it of water. “We will not meet again until it is done,” Farrooq said.

  Abdul nodded. “For too many centuries we have been persecuted by the Infidels, but at last they will pay for what they have done to our family and our tribe.”

  “I do not deserve the honor of this sacred errand,” Farrooq breathed.

  “We were chosen,” Abdul said. “Allah knew we would find the strength or He would not have led us to the hiding place.” He hesitated, then looked deeply into his brother’s eyes. “These past years I have finally started to understand what our families went through, pretending to be Christian and renouncing Allah. They were strong men, our fathers, to have separated themselves from all they believed in, in order to save themselves and their children and their children’s children from the Inquisitors.”

  “Your sacrifice has been no less than theirs, Paquito,” Farrooq said softly, laying a gentle hand on his younger brother’s shoulder.

  “It is nothing,” Abdul murmured, but the glistening in his eyes told
his brother how difficult it had been. A moment later, though, his eyes cleared, and he breathed deeply. “Soon the world shall know the wrath of Allah, and the Church will be no more.”

  “Insha-Allah,” Farrooq intoned. “God willing.”

  “Insha-Allah,” Abdul echoed. He stood and grasped his brother in a fierce embrace. “Now,” he went on as he wiped moisture from his eyes. “Let us pray together, for the last time until this deed is done.”

  “And then?” Farrooq asked.

  “And then I will go put on my priest’s costume and continue the charade for a few more hours.”

  “I think this is the happiest day of my life,” said Tom Kelly.

  “Mine will be the day the Pope is blown to bits,” replied Father Sebastian Sloane.

  Sebastian Sloane twisted the key in the lock of the lowest drawer of his old oaken bureau, then slid the drawer open on the hardware he himself had installed when he’d decided the contents of the drawer were too important even to trust to a bank vault. The drawer itself on the outside looked no different from the other four the old chest held. But while the others were all made of nothing more than their original dovetailed oak, the bottom drawer was different: perfectly constructed to fit exactly within the dimensions of the drawer were several boxes, each nested in another. Each box served a special purpose: one was fireproof, another waterproof; others provided absolute protection against anything Sloane had been able to imagine: microbes, radiation, nearly anything short of a nuclear explosion. After working the combination locks set into each of the first three lids, he opened the others until he was finally able to lift out the treasure that was both hidden and protected in the drawer’s center. Wrapped in a scrap of an ancient prayer rug was the rosewood box he and his brother had unearthed in the courtyard when he was a child.

  For several long moments he gazed silently at the box, barely able to believe that the time had finally come. Everything he had done since the moment he and his older brother had dug the grave for the pet iguana, and found the box with the missing cross and the scroll, was finally culminating in an act of justice that was nearly six centuries overdue.