The Search for Joseph Tully

by William H Hallahan

  This is the story of one of the strangest quests in recent fiction.

  In Brooklyn, in an historic part of that shambled borough, the flailing iron ball of the wrecker’s crane is at work. One of the few buildings still standing amid the rubble is the Brevoort House, older than memory. Its only remaining tenant is Peter Richardson. Abandoned. Menaced. Alone. The Brevoort has become an unbearable burden for him. Houses, like people, can go bad, and the Brevoort emanates an evilness, an undefined terror, aimed directly at him. The house— something in the house—is telling Richardson of his impending death.

  In another part of Brooklyn, Matthew Willow, a solicitor just arrived from London, takes up quarters. He is seeking a man who may not exist. He has one clue only, the name of the wanted man’s ancestor: Joseph Tully. This eighteenth-century wine merchant had sent his four sons to colonial America to make their fortunes, and Willow’s search takes him into the fascinating world of the genealogical detective. He follows a circuitous trail through old courthouse files, colonial church records, graveyards, dockets of wills, property deeds, and bastardy laws. One after another, he traces the lines of Tully’s sons. One by one, he reaches dead ends: No issue. Oddly enough, he is profoundly relieved. He is about to return to England when he chances upon an ancient diary. Its contents hold the vital information he has been so afraid he would find. Now he is forced to carry out his awesome revenge.

  The Search for Joseph Tully is a harrowing tale, beautifully written; a powerful novel of tyranny beyond the grave.

  The Search

  For

  Joseph Tully

  William H. Hallahan

  Copyright © 1974 by William H. Hallahan

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form

  Published by the Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. Indianapolis New York

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  for

  BARBARA NORVILLE

  Table of Contents

  Prolog

  Chapter The First

  Chapter The Second

  Chapter The Third

  Chapter The Fourth

  Chapter The Fifth

  Chapter The Sixth

  Chapter The Seventh

  Chapter The Eight

  Chapter The Ninth

  Chapter The Tenth

  Prolog

  The Armorer’s Forge: Rome, 1498

  The sweating arms of the apprentice began again to pump the asthmatic bellows.

  All seven faces in the dark chamber glowed red, watching.

  The sword maker used his gad tongs to tap the two molten blades a fraction of an inch deeper into the incandescent charcoals.

  In a semicircle away from the rolling heat of the Catalan forge, the three Italian gentlemen stood. Occasionally they flicked their eyes sidewise from the two blades to the two stripped captives who lay in shadow, bound and strapped to a stone slab. All waited.

  The apprentice forced his aching arms to pump, flushing the charcoals to a brighter yellow. In the silence, the croupy bellows wheezed and panted. High on a wall, two torches in wall sockets fluttered like pennants against the permanent darkness of the chamber. The cloying odor of cat’s urine was mixed with the acrid smell of charcoal.

  The sword maker had patiently cold-hammered both blades from two bars of the finest Toledo steel. Under his celebrated hammer, they’d been formed and shaped, then heated and quenched and heated and quenched to be supple as whips and to hold an edge of legendary sharpness—a master’s fencing set. One rapier blade for the right hand. One stiletto blade for the left hand. They were heated now for the final quenching. The sword maker’s eyes turned whitely to the two bound captives. The eyes of the apprentice followed his in the light of the fire.

  The men on the slab saw him glance at them. They lowered their heads in despair.

  “Enough,” said the sword maker. The bellows stopped. He used his gad tongs to draw the rapier from the bed of charcoals. He laid the glowing blade upon the anvil and tapped it tentatively several times with his cross-peen hammer. Sparks danced around his hairy forearms. He ran the blade back into the coals.

  The tongs drew forth the stiletto. The sword maker studied the color for a moment, then laid the blade on the anvil and rapped it, too, with his cross-peen. Sparks rose again, and he rammed the blade back into the fire next to the rapier blade. He nodded to the apprentice.

  Eye-stinging smoke rose in the air as the bellows slowly began again. The boy’s arms were noticeably slower.

  Patiently, with his arms crossed, the sword maker stood watching and waiting, intent upon his burgeoning blades. Finally he dropped his arms to his sides and stepped into the wall of heat around the forge. He fitted a wooden socket over the tang of the rapier blade and drew it out. He held it up and put his face as close as the heat would permit and peered carefully into the translucent metal, seeking for cracks or fractures. The blade glowed like a white torch in the darkness. Turning, he walked over to the stone slab.

  The two bound men watched him with increasing terror. Naked and with their heads raised, they looked like figureheads from sailing ships. The captive on the left shook his head at the glowing blade. “No. No no. Ah. No!”

  The sword maker stepped to the side of the man and, with accustomed skill, thrust the molten blade under his skin. The man screamed in a rising pitch at the incredible pain. The blade traveled across his back glowing yellow-red under the skin and emerged from the other side. He shrieked and shrieked again. The smith smartly withdrew the smoking blade and ran it under the skin in a lower part of the back, skin, muscle and cartilage. Then again. Across the muscle, across the back.

  “No more!” screamed the captive. “God in heaven. No more! Stop! Stop! Stop!” The sword maker attentively studied his blade and frowned at it. He thrust the blade through a buttock, withdrew it and ran it through the other buttock. More clouds of acrid stinking smoke rose. The blade was a malevolent purple.

  The man’s screams rose in waves now, incoherent words screamed at the gentleman in the center of the trio, tugging a beard thoughtfully; screams of agony, screams of supplication. The sword maker raised the blade and with a swift cavalry chop drove it through the taut, screaming neck. The man’s head tumbled to the floor.

  The sword maker ran the blade through the scapular cavity’ of the left shoulder, down into the torso, through the lungs, heart and stomach. He left it there for final quenching. The sweet, sickening odor of scorched skin hung in the air of the chamber. He returned to the friendly glow of the forge fire and, using the same wooden socket, withdrew the shorter stiletto blade.

  The other captive writhed and shouted at him as he approached. “No! No! Madness! Stop!” The sword maker stabbed him deeply in the trapezius muscle, where the blade suffused an eerie red glow under the skin of his back and shoulder. The man’s head rose slowly in horror as he inhaled deeply. Then he screamed. A long, exhausting, terrifying scream.

  The sword maker withdrew the skinny blade. He glanced at it, and like a man sewing leather, he punched it under the skin and muscle of the other shoulder. Around the sebaceous wound, blood bubbled fiercely. At the third thrust, lower in the back, the captive fainted.

  Indifferently, the smith buried the blade in the fatty tissue of first one buttock, then the other. When the blade had been quenched to an iridescent royal purple, he stepped to the man’s limp head, which projected beyond the slab. With the ease of a chef slicing through roast meat, he severed the head. The head tumbled across the floor and stopped at the feet of the center gentleman of the trio.

  The sword maker pushed the stiletto blade through the scapula into the left lung. Then he
withdrew the rapier blade from the first body and bent it into a loop from tip to hilt.

  He glanced at the apprentice. Hugging his pain-filled arms to his torso, the boy turned away from the bellows and vomited.

  Chapter The First

  1

  Friday, February

  Second Apartment 4A

  The sound woke him.

  Someone was in his apartment.

  Richardson lay in his bed listening, trying to hear over the rushing of the winter wind against his window, trying to keep his breath soft and audible, sensing that his pulse was racing, his ears throbbing.

  He lay still, fighting an urgent need to hide like a child under the bed.

  He listened in the darkness, waiting to hear that sound that had awakened him again. The wind rushed at his window.

  It had been a single sound, a resonant sound, a sweeping sound: the sound of a supple, swinging golf club. Whoosh! In the middle of the night, in the pitch darkness of his living room, someone had swung a golf club. The echoes of it reverberated around the walls of his apartment, slowly dying in his ears: whoosh.

  Richardson pulled back the covers and stood up. Softly, idiot, softly. He walked the carpeted floor to the bedroom doorway.

  His skin was coated with clammy sweat and his pulse was pounding in his ears. Death was near: the flash of a gun; the thud of an arcing knife hitting skin, bone, and organ. The clout of a golf club shattering skull bone. Terrible fear clutched his abdomen.

  “Who’s there?” he said to the vast darkness. His voice frightened him. “Who’s there!” he shouted.

  The living room remained dark and lumpish and still. Listen. The wind seethed once more.

  Richardson reached into the darkness, probed along the wall and found a wall switch. He moved it: an overhead light illuminated the living room.

  The room was familiar, unchanged, harmless. Empty.

  He quickly walked to the front door. The chain was off. He turned the doorknob. Locked. He’d gone to bed with the chain off? He opened the front door and peered into the hallway. Silent. Empty.

  Richardson resolutely yanked open the closet door. Clothing on hangers. Stuff and boxes on the shelf. Furled umbrella. Irish blackthorn cane. Dust-covered rubber boots.

  He stepped into the kitchen and turned on the light. He opened the pantry door. He walked around the furniture in the living room. He checked the windows, walked into the bedroom, opened the closet door, went into the bathroom, prodded the shower curtain.

  He sat down on the edge of the tub, spent.

  Whoosh! That was the sound. The whoosh of a golf club swung at a ball. Didn’t make any sense.

  He roused himself, went and put the chain lock on the door. Someone could have entered with that chain off; someone with a key could have been there. Someone could have entered, swung a golf club in the dark and left, locking the door from the outside. The idea struck him as silly, and he almost laughed, picturing a man entering, swinging a club in the darkness, and hastily exiting, scurrying down the stairs.

  Robbery? Richardson checked his wallet, then checked the drawers of the small desk in the living room. No. He put out the lights again, all but the bathroom light, and stood by the living room window to look out.

  Cassiopeia was westering in the frozen February blackness, sliding below the horizon. The sky was blue-black, far from even a hint of dawn. A film of ice coated the lower panes. He touched the ice with his fingertips and felt the chill of bitter winter.

  Richardson had never felt more alone in his life.

  Below him, street lights made a geometric pattern around a great quadrangle of blackness. A quadrangle six blocks by nine blocks of flattened real estate.

  What had been there, houses, apartments, stores, garages and other structural impedimenta, had all been battered to rubble by the flailing, smoking ball of the wrecker’s tractor crane, conqueror of cities.

  The crane squatted in darkness, holding its boom aloft like a menacing club. Faintly, very faintly, he could hear a wind-shook chain clanging on the frozen metal of the boom.

  Beyond it, at the far comer of the quadrangle, the sign of a store hung whitely in the darkness at a crazy angle: Waite’s Groceries. From the room of that empty building hung a great icicle.

  Richardson listened again to the wan clanging of the chain on the tractor boom, then backed away from the window. The urge to flee was enormous—illogical, senseless. He fought it. Shave—he’d shave. Sleep was murdered; day, near; time to shave yet again.

  He washed his face with care, then held a hot face cloth over it, feeling the restorative heat penetrate his eyes. He reached into his cabinet and pulled out a can of shaving cream. Then he put it back and crumpled down on the toilet seat. He wanted to hide in a closet, wanted to flee down the stairs and across the freezing quadrangle.

  He felt the terrible loneliness of despair.

  Something was come to kill him.

  2

  Apartment 3A

  At precisely seven o’clock, and without the aid of a clock alarm, Albert Clabber opened his eyes. Dark eyes under thick hairy brows, alert eyes, piercing eyes. Humorless eyes.

  He lay in the silence of that hour. He heard the ticking of his cheap wind-up clock. He heard the bitter cold wind that pressed against the walls and rocked the loose, open window. He watched a puff of his breath vaporize. Bump bump went the window. Bump bump. Cold air poured into his apartment and over his cocoon of blankets. Bump bump.

  Clabber’s apartment was military—monkish—in its furnishings. It pleased him to recall his freedom from possessions. He itemized: one cot (army surplus), four very warm dense-wool blankets (army surplus), pillow, some pillowcases and sheets, a table for writing, three wooden chairs, a wall filled neatly and meticulously with books, filed by subject and, within subject, by author, alphabetically. There were no rugs, no easy chairs, no decorations. His few clothes hung in the closet, his shirts and linens on a shelf above. In the kitchen, a few pots and pans, a few dishes, some cutlery and basic food staples.

  Freedom.

  Albert Clabber peeled back the layer of four blankets and stood up. His vulnerable nakedness contracted and crawled against the frigid air that flowed through the open window. Bump bump. He shut the window.

  By the numbers he went through his morning ritual that included, invariably, a tepid shower, a tooth scrubbing, a scarifying shave and finally, dressing—in baggy clothes purchased with an eye for warmth, comfort and long wear.

  Clabber made a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of hot chocolate. A loose window rattled. The winter wind rushed the building in flurries while Clabber sat, eating and reading.

  He read until eight a.m. precisely, washed the few utensils, folded all four blankets, set them squarely in the center of the cot, and returned the book to its slot in the bookcase.

  He pulled a heavy bulk-knit cardigan over his flannel shirt, then began to put on his heavy pile-linen hooded parka. As he did so, he began the daily ritual of reading the hvo framed proclamations that hung on the wall next to the front door. Between them hung a crucifix.

  He paused and shook his head angrily at the opening lines of the document on the left.

  ALBERT CLABBER

  My Dear Brother in Christ:

  It is like a grievous wound to me that I fulfill this office.

  I am directed to inform you that by authority of a Decree from the Holy See under CIC c. 2258.2 of the Code of Canon Law, your name and person has been placed in a state of excommunication. Your soul is in the gravest peril and you are deemed a terrible heretic.

  Because of your conscious, determined and obstinate error, you have been categorized an excommunicant yitandi and stand now per sententiam shut off from the fellowship and communion of your brothers and sisters in Christ

  I am further directed to inform you that as long as you remain stubbornly rebellious and contumacious, you are to be shunned by your fellows, cast out in a state of spiritual death and henceforth denied the follow
ing consolations of your faith:

  1) you may not participate or assist at divine service

  2) you are forbidden all sacraments

  3) you may perform no legitimate ecclesiastical acts of the Holy Church

  4) you are denied all indulgences, suffrages and public prayer of the Holy Church

  5) you are denied Christian burial according to the Code of Canon Law, CIC 1240, im2 All of these—and their logical concomitants—are to be withheld until you repent of your willful stubborn heresy and petition the Holy See for readmission to your all-merciful Mother, the Holy Church.

  Brother Albert, my soul trembles for you. The terrors of the damned loom before my eyes when I try to picture you wandering the earth in a state of gravest peril. If you should die in your present condition, eternal calamity may befall you. I beseech you with all the great love I feel for you to reconsider. Surely you realize in espousing the teachings of our erring brother, Bruno of Nolo, that you have raised up heresies and ecclesiastical matters deemed closed these last five long centuries. Brother Bruno was a willful stubborn man whose spiritual attitudes were based more on a stiff-necked pride than on religious principle and scriptural authority.

  The Holy Church, under sterner hands, you will recall, burned Bruno at the stake.

  I will continue to pray for you and your imperiled soul.

  Yours in Christ, Thomas

  Next, he turned his eyes to the other, then pulled the parka over his head. And he worked his torso into the parka he looked at his words:

  EXCOMMUNICATIO

  Nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti.

  I, Albert Clabber, do by these articles, declare the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church to be in gravest error. I hereby separate the Church in Error, together with its accomplices and abettors, adherents and communicants, from the precious body and blood of the Lord Christ and from the society of all enlightened and true Christians. I exclude it from our Holy Mother, the True Church in Heaven and on Earth; I declare it excommunicate and anathema; I judge it damned, with the Devil and his angels and all the reprobate, to eternal fire until it shall recover itself from the toils of the Devil and return to amendment and to penitence.