The Black Angel

by John Connolly

  “What is this place?” said Louis.

  “It looks like a jail.”

  “Seems like they forgot they had a guest down here.”

  Something rustled in the closed cell. A rat, I thought. It’s only a rat. It has to be. Whoever was lying in that cell was long dead. It was tattered skin and yellowed bone, nothing more.

  And then the man inside moved on his stone cot. His fingernails dragged across the stone, his right leg stretched almost imperceptibly, and his head shifted slightly where it rested. The effort it took was clearly enormous. I could see every wasted muscle working on his desiccated arms, and every tendon straining in his face as he tried to speak. His features were buried deep in his skull, as though they were slowly being sucked inside. The eyes were like rotted fruits in the hollows of the sockets, barely visible behind his emaciated hand as he sought to shield himself from the light while simultaneously trying to see those that lay behind it.

  Louis took a step back.

  “How can he still be alive?” he said. He could not keep the shock from his voice. I had never heard him speak like that before.

  Like the half-life of an isotope: that remained the only way I could fathom it. The process of dying, but with the inevitable end delayed beyond imagining. Perhaps, like Kittim, this unknown man was proof of that belief.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Leave him.”

  I saw Louis raise his pistol. The action surprised me. He was not a man known for conventional mercies. I laid my hand on the barrel of the gun, forcing it gently down.

  “No,” I said.

  The being on the stone slab tried to speak. I could see the desperation in its eyes, and I almost felt something of Louis’s pity for it. I turned away, and heard Louis follow.

  By now we were deep beneath the ground, and far from the cemetery. From the direction in which we were heading, I believed that we were somewhere between the ossuary and the site of the former monastery nearby. There were more cells here, many with the portcullises lowered, but I glanced only in one or two as I went by. Those who had been incarcerated in them were now clearly dead, their bones long separated. They probably made mistakes along the way, I thought. It was like the old witch trials: if the suspects died, they were innocent. If they survived, then they were guilty.

  The heat grew more and more intense. The walls were hot to the touch, and our clothing became so burdensome that we were forced to shed our jackets and coats along the way. There was a rushing sound in my head. Threaded through it, I thought, I could discern words, except they were no longer fragments of an old incantation spoken in madness. These had purpose and intent. They were calling, urging.

  There was light ahead of us. We saw a circular room, lined with open cells, and a trio of lanterns at its center. Beyond them stood the obese figure of Brightwell. He was working at a blank wall, trying to free a brick at the level of his head, using a crowbar. Beside him was the hooded, jacketed figure, its head lowered. Brightwell registered our presence first, because he turned suddenly, the crowbar still in his hands. I expected him to reach for a gun, but he did not. Instead, he seemed almost pleased. His mouth was disfigured, his lower lip crisscrossed with black stitches where Reid had bitten him during his final struggle.

  “I knew,” he said. “I knew that you’d come.”

  The figure to his right lowered its hood. I saw a woman’s gray hair hanging loose, then her face was exposed. In the lanternlight, Claudia Stern’s fine bone structure had taken on a thin, hungry aspect. Her skin was pale and dry, and when she opened her mouth to speak I thought that her teeth seemed longer than before, as though her gums were receding. There was a white mote in her right eye, previously hidden by some form of concealing lens. Brightwell handed the crowbar to her, but he made no attempt to move toward us or to threaten us in any way.

  “Nearly done,” he said. “It’s good that you should be here for this.”

  Claudia Stern inserted the crowbar into the gap Brightwell had made, and strained. I saw the stone shift in its place. She repositioned the bar, then pushed hard. The stone moved some thirty degrees, until it was perpendicular to the wall. In the gap revealed, I thought I saw something shine. With a final effort, she forced the stone away. It fell to the floor as she continued to work at the bricks, forcing them apart more easily now that the first breach had been made. I should have stopped her, but I did not. I realized that I, too, wanted to know what lay behind the wall. I wanted to see the Black Angel. A large square patch of silver was now clearly visible through the hole. I could pick out the shape of a rib, and the edge of what might have been an arm. The figure was rough and unfinished, with droplets of hardened silver fixed upon it like frozen tears.

  Suddenly, as though responding to an unanticipated impulse, Claudia Stern dropped the crowbar and thrust her hand into the hole.

  It took a moment for me to notice the temperature rising again, for it was already so hot in the chamber, but I began to feel my skin prickle and burn, as though I were standing unprotected in intense sunlight. I looked at my skin, almost expecting it to begin reddening as I watched. The voice in my head was louder now, a torrent of whispers like the rushing of water at a great fall, its substance unintelligible but its meaning clear. Close to where Stern was standing, liquid began to drip through holes in the mortar, sliding slowly down the walls like droplets of mercury. I could see them steaming, and I could smell the dust burning. Whatever lay behind that wall, it was now melting, the silver falling away to reveal whatever lay concealed within. Stern looked at Brightwell, and I could see the surprise on her face. This was clearly beyond her expectations. All of the preparations that they had made indicated that they had intended to transport the statue back to New York, not to have it melt around their feet. I heard a sound from behind the wall, like the beating of a wing, and it brought me back to where I was, reminding me of what I had to do.

  I pointed my gun at Brightwell.

  “Stop her.”

  Brightwell didn’t move.

  “You won’t use it,” he said. “We’ll come back.”

  Beside me, Louis seemed to jerk his head. His face contorted, as though in pain, and he raised his left hand to his ear. Then I heard it too: a chorus of voices, their words raised in a cacophony of pleading, all coming from somewhere deep within Brightwell.

  The silver drops had become a series of streams, seeping out through cracks in the walls. I thought I heard more movement behind the stones, but there was so much noise in my head that I could not be certain.

  “You’re a sick, deluded man,” I said.

  “You know it’s true,” he said. “You sense it in yourself.”

  I shook my head.

  “No, you’re wrong.”

  “There is no salvation for you, or for any of us,” said Brightwell. “God deprived you of your wife, your child. Now He’s going to take a second woman away from you, and a second child. He doesn’t care. Do you think He would have allowed them to suffer as they did if they really mattered to Him, if anyone really mattered to Him? Why, then, would you believe in Him, and not in us? Why do you continue to have hope in Him?”

  I struggled to find my voice. It seemed as though my vocal cords were burning.

  “Because with you,” I said, “there is no hope at all.”

  I sighted carefully along the barrel.

  “You won’t kill me,” said Brightwell once more, but there was now doubt in his voice.

  Suddenly, he moved. All at once he was everywhere, and nowhere. I heard his voice in my ear, felt his hands on my skin. His mouth opened, revealing those slightly blunted teeth. They were biting me, and my blood was pooling in his mouth as he tore into me.

  I fired three times, and the confusion stopped. Brightwell’s left foot was shattered at the ankle, and there was a second wound below his knee. The third shot had gone astray, I thought, then I saw the spreading stain upon his belly. A gun appeared in Brightwell’s hand. He tried to raise it, but Louis w
as already on top of him, pushing it away.

  I moved past them both, making for Claudia Stern. Her attention was entirely focused on the wall before her, mesmerized by what was taking place before her eyes. The metal was already cooling upon the ground around her feet, and there was no longer any silver to be seen through the gap in the wall. Instead, I saw a pair of black ribs encased by a thin layer of skin, the exposed patch slowly increasing in dimension around the area where her hand remained in contact. I grasped the woman’s shoulder and pulled her away from the wall, breaking her contact with whatever was concealed within. She screamed in rage, and her voice was echoed by something deep within the walls. Her fingers scraped at my face, and her feet kicked at my shins. I caught a flash of metal in her left hand just before the blade sliced across my chest, opening a long wound from my left side all the way up to my collarbone. I struck her hard in the face, using the base of my hand, and as she stumbled away I hit her again, forcing her back until she was at the entrance to one of the cells. She tried to slash at me with the knife, but this time I kicked out at her, and she fell onto the stones. I followed her in, and removed the knife from her hand, placing my foot against her wrist first so that she could not strike out at me. She made an attempt to scramble past me, but I kicked her again, and I felt something crack beneat my foot. She let out an animal sound and stopped moving.

  I backed out of the cell. The silver had stopped bleeding from the walls, and the heat seemed to dissipate slightly. The streams upon the floor and wall were growing hard, and I could no longer hear any sounds, real or imagined, from the presence behind the stones. I went to where Brightwell lay. Louis had torn away the front of his shirt, exposing his mottled belly. The wound was bleeding badly, but he was still alive.

  “He’ll survive, if we get him to a hospital,” said Louis.

  “It’s your choice,” I said. “Alice was part of you.”

  Louis took a step backward and lowered his gun.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t understand this, but you do.”

  Brightwell’s voice was calm, but his face was contorted with pain.

  “If you kill me, I’ll find you,” he said to me. “I found you once, and I’ll find you again, however long it may take. I will be God to you. I will destroy everything that you love, and I will force you to watch as I tear it apart. And then you and I will descend to a dark place, and I will be with you there. There will be no salvation for you, no repentance, no hope.”

  He took a long, rasping breath. I could still hear that strange cacophony of voices, but now its pitch had changed. There was an expectancy to it, a rising joy.

  “No forgiveness,” he whispered. “Above all, no forgiveness.”

  His blood was spreading across the floor. It followed the gaps in the flagstones, gradually seeping in geometric patterns toward the cell in which Stern lay. She was conscious now, but weak and disoriented. She stretched a hand toward Brightwell, and he caught the movement and looked to her.

  I raised the gun.

  “I will come for you,” said Brightwell.

  “Yes,” she said. “I know you will.”

  Brightwell coughed and scraped at the wound in his belly.

  “I will come for them all,” he said.

  I shot him in the center of the forehead, and he ceased to be. A final breath emerged from his body. I felt a coolness upon my face, and smelled salt and clean air as the great choir was silenced at last.

  Claudia Stern was crawling across the floor, trying to resume contact with the figure that still stood trapped behind the wall. I moved to stop her, but now there were footsteps approaching from the tunnel behind us. Louis and I turned and prepared to face them.

  Bartek appeared in the doorway. Angel was with him, looking a little uncertain. Five or six others followed, men and women, and I understood finally why no one had responded to the shot on the street, why the alarm had not been replaced, and how a last crucial fragment of the map had found its way from France to Sedlec.

  “You knew all along,” I said. “You baited them, then you waited for them to come.”

  Four of those who had accompanied Bartek stepped around us and surrounded Claudia Stern, dragging her back to the open cell.

  “Martin revealed its secrets to me,” said Bartek. “He said that you’d be there at the end. He had a lot of faith in you.”

  “I’m sorry. I heard what happened.”

  “I will miss him,” said Bartek. “I think I lived vicariously through his pleasures.”

  I heard the jangling of chains. Claudia Stern started to scream, but I did not look.

  “What will you do with her?”

  “They called it ‘walling’ in medieval times. A terrible way to die, but a worse way not to die, assuming she is what she believes herself to be.”

  “And there’s only one way to find out.”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “But you won’t keep her here?”

  “Everything will be moved, in time, and hidden once again. Sedlec has served its purpose.”

  “It was a trap.”

  “But the bait had to be real. They would sense it if the statue were not present. The pretence of its loss had to be maintained.”

  Claudia Stern’s screams increased in intensity, then were suddenly silenced.

  “Come,” said Bartek. “It’s time to leave.”

  We stood in the churchyard. Bartek knelt and brushed snow from a headstone, revealing a photograph of a middle-aged man in a suit.

  “There are bodies,” I said.

  Bartek smiled.

  “This is an ossuary, in a churchyard,” he said. “We will have no trouble hiding them. Still, it’s unfortunate that Brightwell did not survive.”

  “I made a choice.”

  “Martin was afraid of him, you know. He was right to be. Did Brightwell say anything before he died?”

  “He promised that he’d find me.”

  Bartek placed his hand upon my right arm and squeezed it gently.

  “Let them believe what they will believe. Martin told me something about you, before he died. He said that if any man had ever made recompense for his wrongs, no matter how terrible they were, it was you. Deserved or not, you’ve been punished enough. Don’t add to it by punishing yourself. Brightwell, or something like him, will always exist in this world; others too. In turn, there will always be men and women who are prepared to confront these things and all that they represent, but in time, you won’t be among them. You’ll be at rest, with a stone like this one above your head, and you’ll be reunited with the ones that you loved and who loved you in return.

  “But remember: to be forgiven, you have to believe in the possibility of forgiveness. You have to ask for it, and it will be given. Do you understand?”

  I nodded. My eyes were hot. I dredged up the words from my childhood, from dark confessionals inhabited by unseen priests and a God who was terrible in His mercy.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned….”

  The words spilled out of me like a cancer given form, a torrent of sins and regrets purging themselves from my body. And in time, I heard two words in return, and Bartek’s face was close to mine as he whispered them in my ear.

  “Te absolvo,” he said. “Do you hear me? You are absolved.”

  I heard him, but I could not believe.

  V

  Through these years I’ve seen days that I won’t miss at all,

  but then God knows I’ve been as high as the sun.

  Through it all you kept me warm,

  holding on to my hand,

  but now you’re on your own.

  —Pinetop Seven, “Tennessee Pride”

  EPILOGUE

  The days fall like leaves. All is quiet now.

  The marsh grass is blackened, and when the wind blows from the southeast it carries with it the smell of smoke. Someone found the charred body of a mute swan floating in the water, and the burned remains of shrews and hares hav
e been discovered in the charred undergrowth. The dog no longer likes to venture where the fire burned, and so the twin boundaries of his world are represented by events from the recent past: flames rising where no flames should have been, and a deformed man drowning slowly in a pool of bloodied water as a pregnant woman watches him die.

  I traced the young prostitute named Ellen to Tenth Avenue, just a couple of blocks from Times Square. After the death of G-Mack, I heard that she’d been taken under the wing of a new pimp, a middle-aged serial abuser of women and children who called himself Poppa Bobby, and liked his girls to call him Poppa or Daddy. It was after midnight, and I watched single men hover around the street girls like hawks circling wounded prey. Natives drifted past the hookers, by now immune to such sights, while late-night tourists darted uneasy looks at them, the glances of the men perhaps lingering for a moment too long before returning to the street ahead or the faces of their partners, a little moisture falling softly and secretly upon the seeds of their discontent.

  Ellen was different now. Before, she had maintained a veneer of toughness and carried herself with a confidence that, if she did not actually feel it in reality, was still a sufficiently strong counterfeit of the original to enable her to live the life that had been forced upon her. But now as I watched her stand on the corner, a cigarette in her right hand, she looked lost and fragile. Something had broken within her, and she appeared even younger than she was. I imagined that would have suited Poppa Bobby just fine, as he could then sell her to men with such tastes as a fourteen-or fifteen-year-old, and they would inflict themselves upon her with greater ferocity as a result.