Chain of Souls (Salem VI)

by Heath, Jack

  Not letting himself hesitate, because he knew that to delay anything would only intensify his fear, he reached into his pocket and grasped his pocketknife. He fingered open the smallest blade, jabbed the point into the second finger on his left hand, and twisted until he saw a drop of blood. Putting his bloody hand against the indented handprint, he felt the wall soften as if it were greedily drinking in his blood, and a second later he heard the snap of a lock unfastening.

  The granite wall to the left of the handprint swung inward, and the terrible darkness beckoned. John aimed his flashlight into the gloom, squeezed Amy's hand for reassurance, and took a step through the opening and into the long lightless tunnel. He let go of Amy's hand, and almost absently, his fingers went to the pocket of his coat where they wrapped around the checkered wooden grip of the Browning .45 automatic pistol his father had brought back from WWII. He felt the reassuring heaviness and wondered absently if he was going to have to use it.

  Without Rebecca Nurse to accompany him, he had absolutely no illusions that he would be unable to tap the power he had used the last time he had been here, when he had killed the Coven leaders. Even so, he also knew that he had no compunction whatsoever about killing any member of the Coven he might find here tonight. Having spent his life as a news reporter rather than a newsmaker, he observed this change in himself, this transition from dispassionate observer to cold-hearted killer. He wondered if he should be frightened at what he had become, but he didn't have time to worry.

  Almost as soon as he stepped inside the dark opening, several lights that were set into the wall a little farther down the corridor began to glow. The air in the passage was damp and musty smelling but a strong breeze blew against them, carrying scents of dirt and metal, as if it emanated from someplace very deep in the bowels of the earth. He felt his muscles tighten, because in spite of the quickness of the wind, he also felt the stillness of death all around.

  Turning off his flashlight, he started to walk through the tunnel with Amy beside him. As if they sensed them coming, more of the wall lights farther along began to glow, just as the ones behind them died out again soon after they went past. Walking through a silence broken only by the scuff of their soles on the stone floor, John tried to force his mind to blankness, rejecting the remembered images of mutilated bodies, both those of victims and Coven leaders, that tried to take shape in his imagination.

  The walk was very long, seeming almost endless at certain points. They passed doorways that John had seen but had never tried to open before. Now he stopped at each one, but when he tried them he found them locked, the handles coated with dust and the metal rusted from long disuse.

  By the time the tunnel finally ended in a T, he knew they had gone at least several hundred yards. He flicked on his flashlight and shined it to the right, and seeing that the passage ended in just a few more yards, he motioned to Amy to turn left.

  As they started along the passage, Amy broke the long silence, whispering, "Who built all of this?"

  John shook his head, glancing at the smooth stone floor and uniform height and width of the passage. "I don't have any idea."

  "Do you think these were originally just a set of caves that people chiseled out?"

  John shook his head again. He knew Amy was asking question in order to try and distract herself from her fear, but he also knew there were so many questions and almost no answers. What was behind the old rusted doors? John wondered. Someday he needed to come back down here with a crowbar and flashlight—someday when he could actually stand to reenter this terrible place—and explore every inch of these tunnels and milk them for every bit of information on the Coven that he could glean.

  He was doing the same thing Amy was, trying to distract himself from his growing dread, because he recognized the next door they came to and the sight made the breath catch in his throat. Unlike the other doors they had passed, this one was constructed of thick oak with heavy wrought iron hinges and a stout crossbar that acted as a lock. The door stood unlocked and slightly ajar, and John eased it open with a toe, half dreading what he might find. Was Sarah in here or had she been in here recently? If she was here, why was the door unlocked? Had they killed her here and left her body?

  When the door swung open and he shined his light inside, he blinked in surprise—the room was empty. Just a week earlier, the room had been used to imprison the Coven's most recent victims. He remembered a filthy blanket crumpled in one corner and a bucket that had reeked of feces a foot or two from the door. Now both items had been taken away and the floor appeared to have been mopped.

  They pushed on, going past three similar doors, all of them ajar and all of them mopped out and empty. None of them held any sign that a person had recently been held as a prisoner. Ahead, opening another door on the right, he looked in at a bathroom with white tiles on the walls and floor. It too was empty and appeared not to have been used for some time.

  Up ahead the passage dead-ended in a door different from all the others, being made of richly polished wood with ornate carvings, in the center of which a demon's head stood out in bas relief. Again, John felt his breathing turn ragged and his pulse kick into high gear as he pictured the room on the other side of the door.

  "Do you want to stay here?" he whispered to Amy.

  When she said nothing, he turned to glance at her. Her face was pale and her eyes had a haunted look, but she shook her head no.

  Forcing himself to keep moving forward, John grabbed the knob, turned it, and shoved the door inward. The last time he had gone through this door, he had come face to face with the leaders of the Salem Coven and seen an unimaginably gruesome scene.

  Unlike the last time he was here, the room was dark, and its silence spoke of emptiness. Even before the lights on the walls came on, he flicked on his flashlight and panned the beam over the gleaming mahogany table, the ornate fireplace mantel against one wall, the polished wood plank floors, and the dark beams across the plaster ceiling. The wall sconces slowly lit the room, and as they did he heard the breath rasp in Amy's throat and felt her fingers like claws as she gripped his arm.

  After another second, his hand now trembling and causing the light to shake, John turned to his left and shined the light into the room that opened just off the underground dining room. Amy whimpered as the flashlight beam lit the room's white tile walls and white tile floor with the large drain in the center, used for sluicing away the blood that pooled after the Coven's sacrifices.

  John choked back his own moan because he half expected to see Sarah's body hanging suspended by the shackles in the tile wall. The whole time he had been walking through the underground passage his dread had been building, imagining that he was going to find that his daughter sacrificed like the two young people he had found here the night he saved Amy's life.

  Only he saw nothing. The tile walls were clean and white, the tile floor glistening in his flashlight beam, and to his astonishment the shackles had been removed from the walls and their screw holes patched with white grout, and there was no sign of Sarah. He stood there breathing heavily, his legs shaking, not sure whether he wanted to cry with relief or collapse in confusion.

  He felt Amy's arms come around him as she pulled herself against him and whispered, "Thank God." He could only nod in response, unable to trust his voice.

  After a few more seconds he turned, walked out of the room, and started to lead the way back down the passage as they retraced their steps and made their way out of the underground lair.

  Walking out the unlocked gate at the back of the cemetery and finally climbing into their car, John looked over at Amy. "I really need a drink."

  "That makes two of us."

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE NEXT MORNING, HAVING DRUNK ENOUGH bourbon the night before to finally calm down and get himself to sleep, John opened his eyes to an empty bed and a blistering hangover. He slipped on a robe and slippers and stumbled downstairs to find Amy already in the kitchen cooking bacon and eggs. The
smell of the food nearly made him lose whatever was in his stomach and he went to the front door, opened it, and stood in the cold morning wind, shivering and sucking in breaths of sea-scented air and telling himself he had to quit hammering the booze.

  When he was fairly sure he wouldn't throw up, he stooped down and picked up that morning's copies of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post and brought them inside.

  He took the papers out of their plastic bags and scanned the front pages of each, seeing the world headlines but thinking they were wrong somehow, missing something huge, and that each paper should be trumpeting the terrible tragedy of the previous evening's kidnapping.

  Back in the kitchen he collapsed into the same chair he had sat in the previous evening when he'd polished off his bottle of Basil Hayden's, then he fumbled his cell phone from the pocket of his robe and checked for missed phone calls, text messages, or emails. Nothing.

  "I called Andrew Card last night, didn't I?" he croaked.

  "And his boss."

  John put his face in his hands. He so much wanted to believe that he could dial her number on the phone and hear her voice, but he knew it wasn't possible. He almost didn't move when his phone started to vibrate. He fished it again from the pocket of his robe, looked at the number, and saw that it was blocked.

  He punched the answer button. "Hello?" he said sounding hoarse and excited.

  "Mr. Andrews?"

  "Yes?"

  "This is Captain Steve Rothstein of the Massachusetts State Police. You called me last night on a matter of some urgency?"

  "Yessir. I've been trying to reach Captain Andrew Card in your organization. I have some very important information to give him."

  "What kind of information?"

  "If you don't mind, I'd rather communicate it directly to Captain Card."

  "I'm afraid that's going to be difficult."

  A sudden cold dread rose up in John's stomach. "Did something happen to Captain Card?"

  "Not that I'm aware of. The problem is that there is no one by that name in our organization. There was a person with that name, but he left the state police several years ago. Are you sure you have the right police force?"

  "Massachusetts State Police. That's who he's with. I'm sure of it."

  "And you say he's a captain?"

  "Yes, I've got his card right here." John went to his wallet where it lay on the counter beside his keys. His hands shook from a combination of his hangover and his sudden fear as he opened the billfold, fished out the now wrinkled card, and read it out loud. "Captain Andrew A. Card. Massachusetts State Police."

  "Who gave you that card?"

  "The person who claimed it was his."

  "I'm sorry to say that there is no such person as Andrew Card on our force at the present time."

  John's throat was dry as sand. "Can you please check your records once more? Card may be with some sort of special unit. Maybe he doesn't show up on your roster."

  "I checked the entire roster, sir. It sound like you've had someone impersonating a police officer, which is a very serious crime. Now why don't you tell me what this is all about."

  John opened his mouth and then closed it again. "I can't," he said and hung up.

  John sat in the chair for the next hour, nibbling at a few pieces of toast and then staring at absolutely nothing, his brain too stunned to even let him move. Amy worked around him in silence, cleaning up the kitchen until she finally dropped into a chair across from him.

  "Okay, you're in shock right now. These people have hit you with a Pearl Harbor attack. Your daughter is gone and now you've found out that a man you thought was on your side was some kind of an impostor."

  John shook his head and tried to focus his eyes on her face. He shook his head as the unorganized thoughts came tumbling out. "How many of these people are there? How do we ever figure out who they are? Are they everywhere around us? How do we ever trust anybody?"

  "That's exactly what they want. They want you to be afraid to trust. They want you to think there are hundreds or thousands of them, that they're all around us. They're not, John. This is a head game. These people are not as strong as they want you to think they are. They worship the Devil. That means they worship entropy and chaos and the end of everything we know. I'm not even sure they understand what they're worshipping because I can't imagine why any living creature would worship death. They can't be as strong as they're making you think they are. You have to believe that."

  "Then what about Card? Was he one of them, too? And if he was, why did he string me along and want me to believe he was a cop?"

  "We don't know the answer. Maybe we never will."

  John threw his hands in the air, unable to contain his frustration. "So what do we do? How do we start to fight? How do we get a clue to where Sarah is?"

  "Baby steps. You're going to go upstairs and get into your jogging clothes. You're going to go out and walk or jog for at least an hour. You're not doing yourself or Sarah any good in your current state. You need to get your brain clear. You understand that, right?"

  John blinked at her and after a few seconds he nodded, grateful to have somebody telling him what to do. He stood slowly and went upstairs and came down a couple minutes later in his running pants and a sweatshirt.

  "I'll be right here when you get back," Amy said.

  John nodded and stumbled out the door. He jogged a couple very slow blocks to warm up and then started picking up speed. After fifteen minutes he felt heat and oxygen and blood coursing through his body, and he began to feel better. He began pushing hard, not exactly consciously, but imagining he could outrun the guilt and sadness that had nearly paralyzed him and that he could catch the rage he imagined was someplace ahead. He knew his rage was something he desperately needed, a weapon against the weight of fear and uncertainty.

  He ran harder and harder, sucking the cold air deep in his lungs, blowing out what was left of his hangover, feeling stronger and faster as he went. Gradually, and then more and more, he felt it, his rage starting to boil up from his guts. It was almost like when Rebecca Nurse's spirit had come into him down in the Coven's underground lair. Rage was power, the denial of fear, the willingness to take risks, the ability to receive pain and endure it so that he could inflict even more on his enemies.

  The Coven had told him they had Sarah, and they told him to stop. Stop doing what? Stop restarting the Salem News? Stop trying to find Jessica Lodge? It didn't matter what they wanted him to stop. He needed the mouthpiece of a newspaper to fight the Coven when the time came to fight them in print, and he needed to find Jessica Lodge because she had so many of the answers he needed. The Coven might have Sarah, but there was nothing he could do to save her without information and leverage. He knew what the Coven did to the people it captured. Obeying them wasn't an option because it wasn't going to help Sarah.

  Finally understanding what he had to do, he turned for home.

  CHAPTER TEN

  BACK IN HIS HOUSE, JOHN WENT OVER TO AMY and took her in his arms. Holding her tight to his chest, he said, "Thank you for kicking me out of my despondency. For a while there I couldn't think. I couldn't do anything. I was just stuck."

  Amy pulled away from him and looked up. "You've taken a huge blow. I don't have a child, but I think I understand what this means to you. But I also know you're a fighter." She smiled. "You're as good a fighter as I've ever seen, good enough to save my life when I didn't think there was anything that could save me. I just want you to know that I'm with you for whatever it takes to get Sarah back, even up to and including a trip to England to get Jessica or whatever else you decide. I've got your back."

  John closed his eyes as he felt a hot tear starting to work its way out of the corner of his eye. It felt so extraordinary to have somebody he could depend on, somebody he could really depend on. "Thank you," he finally managed, his voice hoarse.

  They stayed that way for a long time, and when he finally loosened his emb
race and stepped away from her, he had a fresh sense of purpose surging inside. "What are you thinking?" she asked. "Starting to have a plan?"

  He nodded. "It's sort of a process of elimination." He held up one finger. "I sorely wish Rebecca Nurse was still here, but she's not. No amount of wishing can bring her back, so I have to give up hope from that quarter."

  He held up a second finger. "Of the people we know, there's simply no way to know who we can and can't trust. There just isn't, so we don't trust anybody."

  He held up a third finger. "We have no idea where they have taken Sarah. We don't know if she's in Salem, or if she's even in Massachusetts. Heck, we don't even know if she's in the United States."

  He held up a fourth finger. "So, in the absence of any living people who can help us, and having no clue where they've taken Sarah, where do we turn? If we can't go forward, we have to go backward. We know some of my ancestors were fighting the Coven exactly the way we are, and I would bet my life we could trust them. Of course we can't talk to them, so we just have to find out if there are any messages or guides or clues they might have left behind that we haven't already found. We have to hope there's something in the past that can help us figure out what the Coven might have done with her."

  "So you're heading upstairs?"

  He nodded. "The library for starters. I'll go through the house with a fine-toothed comb."

  "I'll start on the downstairs," Amy offered. "It'll go faster."

  "Deal," John said, recalling that Amy had been the one who found the message from his relative, Captain John Andrews, hidden in the picture frame that held the portrait of Rebecca Nurse. That message had been hugely important in helping them understand that the Coven had been operating in Salem for over three hundred years and all that time had been making blood sacrifices to Satan and hunting down and killing anyone who seemed to take too much interest in their activities. Thinking about that now, and remembering that his own ancestors hadn't been able to trust the people around them any more than he could today, made him feel less alone.