The Arcanum, page 23
“The church,” Lovecraft whispered.
“Oh, God, no!” Abigail’s terrified voice rang out from the black doors.
The true import of the moment made Lovecraft weak with terror. But then all his differences, all his failings—all the otherness that separated him from his fellow man—fell away like a snake’s shed skin. All that was left was a single, surging will to survive.
And the vessel for that survival was Abigail.
Lovecraft shoved past Marie and charged down the tunnel, his fears transmuted by rage and a primal instinct to defend. The black door loomed ahead of him; inhuman squeals screeched from behind it. Lovecraft screamed and bared his teeth as his shoulder connected with the door, buckling the aged planks.
The door shattered inward, and Lovecraft tumbled headfirst into Hell.
The scale and dimensions of the church were overwhelming, and every inch of it was meant as a visual mockery of the Christian Church. There was a short transept and a nave, flanked by double aisles and square chapels. There were enough pews for a congregation of two hundred—a chilling thought in itself—but that was subsumed by the cumulative effect. The mighty columns were adorned with early gothic carvings of disemboweled souls and copulating creatures. And the figures, who in any other cathedral would be Old Testament kings, were instead grotesque demons: hideous mixes of animals and people with slicing fangs and barbed tails. The floors were drenched in blood and gleamed in the light of flaming black candelabras. The air was thick and cloying from the thousands of black roses hanging from the ceilings, and the rotting, excoriated animals hung over the altar, their entrails dripping from an upside-down cross.
Eleven monstrous demons swathed in monklike robes and hoods wrestled Abigail onto the altar, her red cape half torn off her body. Her legs kicked impotently. They spread her thin arms open as she was forced face-first on the viscera-stained block. Shining steel scythes cut the air.
“Leave her be,” Lovecraft bellowed as he scrambled to his feet and readjusted his grip on the torch. Three of the squealing creatures turned and flowed toward him. Lovecraft swung his torch in wild, soaring arcs. As tiny embers showered the room, the dried roses and brittle wooden figures adorning the columns burst into flame. Tendrils of fire lanced out in all directions. The flames reflected in the ruby eyes of four more creatures as they converged on Lovecraft.
“Back! Stay back!” Lovecraft jabbed with his torch. The demons circled, gurgling to each other. The phlegm-coated sounds rolled deep in their lungs.
Several sickles sunk into a pew just inches from Lovecraft’s arm and he instinctively wrenched the torch around and struck one of the beasts in the side of the head. Fire exploded, followed by squeals of rage and agony.
By now, the cathedral was an inferno.
An arm like a tree branch whacked the back of Lovecraft’s head, toppling the demonologist from his feet. His torch flew in the other direction.
The legion was moving in for the kill, when a shriek spun them around.
Marie stood, barefoot, astride two pews, her eyes rolled back. She chanted unintelligible words as white smoke poured out from between her lips. Her body shuddered as she clawed the air with her hands.
Before the demons could advance, other forms filled the broken doorway of the church. Heads bobbed and torsos swayed as the firelight spilled over the corpses of the catacombs, stumbling forward on skeleton legs—hands reaching, mouths open in silent screams, eye sockets black and empty. Some were children in their now ragged Sunday best. A mother with patchy blond hair and most of her teeth cried weirdly, clutching her rotted infant’s body to her lean breast.
Marie shrieked and moved her arms like a symphony conductor, white smoke still flooding out of her mouth.
The demons turned on the zombie intruders, lopping off heads and arms, flinging body parts across the transept.
But still they came—a marionette army. Some pulled themselves along the floor, their legs missing, grabbing at the demons’ robes, biting at their hands with clicking jawbones.
The demons squealed and hacked, reducing the mother and her baby to a cloud of corpse dust, beheading a white-bearded pilgrim, and cutting a grandmother still wearing her yellow wedding gown in half.
Lovecraft sat up as the skull of a six-year-old girl landed in his lap. A piece of his mind broke off and he felt it go, like a loose tooth falling out—another small piece of his sanity swept away. And from that point forward, Lovecraft knew he would always have a phobic terror of little girls with blond ponytails.
He screamed as Marie grabbed at his shirt and dragged him into one of the side aisles. Marie looked scarcely better than the animated corpses.
“Howard . . .” She fell into his arms, her lips gray, her eyes fluttering.
“Mr. Lovecraft,” a voice called out.
Abigail waved both arms from the altar and pointed to a side door.
Lovecraft threw his satchel, with the Book of Enoch, over his shoulder, and dragged Marie to her feet.
“Marie, please walk!”
But she was spent, so Lovecraft took her in his arms and dragged her to the altar.
The demons were making short work of the corpses, and now came at Lovecraft en masse, a wall of grasping arms and swaying heads with sticklike noses. They squealed like pack animals. Lovecraft lunged for the door behind Abigail as a wall collapsed behind him. Fire, rock, and timbers came raining down, crushing several demons.
Lovecraft dove through the door, propelled by a gush of hot wind and billowing sparks.
DOYLE MUTTERED GRIMLY as the Silver Ghost surged into the tunnel of trees and toward the stone gates and the perched gargoyles that marked the head of the drive. The Rolls swerved to a stop and idled at the appointed meeting place, but though Doyle leaped out of the car and jogged to the road, there was no sign of the others. He checked his pocket-watch. It was 10:50.
He plunged into the woods, dried leaves crackling underfoot. His cries fell on a chilling silence, as if the estate had swallowed his companions whole. He cursed his willfulness, his flawed strategy. Darian had taken their measure and bested them with ease. Even knowing it was a trap, they’d taken the bait. Now here was the great Sir Arthur Conan Doyle blundering through the woods like a panicked child. Who was he to presume he could fill Duvall’s shoes? Maybe he wasn’t as inured to the criticisms of the press and the British public as he thought. Perhaps it was pride that had thrust him back into the game, and to what end? To watch the others die as Duvall had? Houdini, an accused murderer? Sweat streamed down his face and into his moustache as he stumbled out into the clearing on the southern side of the mansion. Green hills rose and dipped before dropping steeply to the Willow Grove Cemetery some two hundred feet below.
Branches snapped to his left.
Doyle lunged behind a tree. He heard something large push through the bushes. Whoever it was, it snorted and spit into the grass, and Doyle detected the scent of ammonia—a scent he’d encountered recently. He peeked around the trunk and spotted Morris only a few steps away, carrying a Winchester shotgun. He was dressed as an Italian opera clown, with a white and black face and a circus tent for a gown. Morris’s misshapen head swiveled, studying every shadow. A cigarette pack crinkled in his grip. He lit a match on his tooth and sucked in smoke. Doyle was about to sneak away but his shoe caught a twig and it snapped.
Morris turned and aimed.
Doyle dove forward, tearing through the brambles. Wood chips exploded in his face as a shell tore into a tree. Between his thundering footsteps, he heard two more shots and the impact of bursting shells.
Morris stormed after him, much faster than he looked. He gained on Doyle with every stride. Doyle darted left, ducking under a fallen tree, then cut right. Morris just obliterated the tree, plunging straight through it.
Doyle reached the edge of the forest, which opened onto a clearing. The gardener’s shed sat fifty feet in front of him. Even from this vantage point, he could see black smoke seeping from the edges of the window and leaking out the front door. Doyle ran to the shed and threw open the door. He saw the hole in the earthen floor, the aged pine door, and instantly knew.
Something slammed him from behind, and Doyle pitched forward into the far wall, tools raining down around him. Morris loomed above him, flicking the rifle open to reload it. Doyle found a shovel and swung it, knocking the gun from Morris’s hands. He swung again, and the shovel snapped in two across Morris’s forearm. The giant instead took Doyle by the collar, lifted his two-hundred-plus pounds effortlessly, and bashed him to the wall. Doyle’s hands clawed at the orderly’s face as Morris wrenched and hurled him into the other wall, which collapsed. There was a deafening crunch, and Doyle landed on the grass.
He looked up in time to see Morris ducking through a huge hole in the side of the shed. Doyle attempted to stand, but Morris hammered a fist into his jaw. Morris then hefted him to his feet and threw him into the side of the shed. Doyle landed, gasping, stars bursting behind his eyes. He pawed frantically through the grass and found the wooden handle of a pair of rusted hedge clippers. When Morris reached for him again, Doyle pulled the clippers open, locked them over Morris’s fingers, and snapped them closed.
Morris howled and ripped his hand away, minus the halves of three fingers. Blood spurted from the stumps and the giant lumbered back, horrified.
Doyle lunged to his feet and limped off across the clearing, hearing Morris’s cries of agony fade in the distance.
37
MARIE AND ABIGAIL were lost. The ceiling of the tunnel looked like a black ocean of flowing smoke. The fire was spreading. There was no sign of Lovecraft; Marie could only assume he was dead, lost in the tumult of their escape. She would mourn the eccentric demonologist if she managed to survive herself. The fire had already consumed much of the breathable air. Marie’s lungs burned, and she could tell Abigail had inhaled too much smoke. Her face was dark with soot, her breathing labored. And they had no protection from the demons save for a long wooden stake that Marie had salvaged from one of the splintered pews.
Worse still, her efforts in the cathedral had backfired—not only exhausting her, but also adding an unexpected new gauntlet to run.
For the bodies of the dead still walked the tunnels and they, too, were now on fire.
The corpse of an old woman, gray hair in flames, flailed at them as she surged from the shadows. Marie fended her off with the stake, and the old lady plunged into the earthen wall, burst into pieces, and clattered into a pile of smoldering bones.
Abigail tugged anxiously on Marie’s wrist. They’d lost all sense of direction in the smoky haze.
“This way,” Abigail suggested.
“We been dat way,” Marie countered.
Squeals resounded from the tunnel Marie had chosen, and ruby eyes gleamed just beyond the flames.
“Hurry, Marie!” Abigail ran down her chosen tunnel.
By now, they could not even see the walls, the smoke was so thick. The fire roared through the tunnels—snapping timbers, igniting corpses, fouling the air.
Then, just as Marie sucked in what she feared would be her last breath, her foot slammed into stone. Pain shot up her leg, and she tumbled into a wide, circular crypt. The taller ceiling drew the smoke up from the floor. Marie collapsed, dragging herself forward on all fours, coughing violently.
ABIGAIL TRIED TO help Marie to herfeet, but could not. Instead she crossed the floor of the tomb until her hands found a solid monolith of stone set into the wall—the doorway sealing off the dead from the living. She screamed and scratched at the stone in futility as her strength ebbed.
ELSEWHERE IN THE underground labyrinth, Lovecraft gasped for air. His labored breaths made him light-headed, and he ran only because stopping meant dying. He had no idea where he was; no energy to think with as the flames roared around him. He fell to one knee and just barely found the will to stand again.
A toddler, cloaked in fire, staggered from the shadows, still clutching a ragged teddy bear, bouncing crazily off the walls before careening down another tunnel.
Lovecraft laughed at the absurdity—a high, manic sound.
Then the demons squealed, close by.
He didn’t want to die at their hands. It was better to suffocate in the smoke than be pulled apart by a mob of demons, or burned alive like a heretic. Though he realized with some irony that the situation was fitting: to die in a grave. Why bother his aunts with a funeral now? He was already buried, and there would be no need for a coffin once he was cremated.
He fell to the tunnel floor suddenly, utterly spent. He would not—could not—function any longer. The dirt was cold. He was thankful for that. A hum filled his ears, drowning out the crackle of the flames, and Lovecraft wondered what visions would overtake him in the moments before death. As his consciousness swirled, the ragged hem of a worn brown robe swept into his field of view.
Lovecraft looked up, seeing first the glint of a scythe. Then his gaze traveled higher, to the long wood beak and, finally, those jeweled eyes.
The creature didn’t see him.
Another flowed out of the fire and joined its companion. They gurgled at each other, heads bobbing like crows. Then one of them turned and, for a moment, the back of its robes parted, and Lovecraft dug his fingers into the mud walls to keep from screaming.
For behind the ragged robes, Lovecraft saw the feathery tips of bloodstained white wings.
As the demons flowed back into the fire, Lovecraft felt small comfort in the chilling notion that, as he died, the world died with him.
THE CHAIN LOCK flew to pieces and the steel gates tore off their hinges as the Silver Ghost crashed through into the Willow Grove Cemetery. The car finally plowed to a stop after upsetting two headstones. Doyle kicked open the driver’s door and ran onto the field. The moon had broken through the clouds to provide a hazy illumination.
“Howard! Marie!” Doyle was losing strength and resolve, the full weight of his sixty-plus years pressing down on him.
“Marie!”
He stopped, and turned in a circle. All he could see around him were silent headstones and the occasional white block of a mausoleum. Crows squawked in the distance, their calls carried on the wind. Doyle turned back to the car, when the crows cawed a second time, making him hesitate. Crows were diurnal. Doyle stopped to listen, head tilted.
There it was again, but now it didn’t sound like a crow at all. He began to run. Graves flashed past him as crow calls transformed into shrill cries of terror—
“Arthur!”
Doyle surged toward a mausoleum. “Marie?”
His call was answered from inside the crypt, weakly. “Arthur!”
Now he could see the smoke, trailing from the tiny cracks in the door. “Marie?” he called again.
There was no answer. He banged at the door with his fists; he dug his fingers into the narrow groove, tearing skin, but nothing gave. Doyle even tried flinging his battered body against it, but in vain.
He pounded some more. “Marie, answer me!”
More black smoke escaped from the tomb. It seemed to be growing thicker.
Doyle backed up and forced himself to think logically.
“Secret tunnels,” he muttered as he assessed the mausoleum. His fingers searched the borders of the slab and found rounded grooves, not too different from tracks. At the top corners of the slab were holes, and when he probed at these, Doyle felt steel. So, somewhere, there was a catch to open this door.
He began to look around. A rectangular grave some thirty feet distant boasted a marble statue of a blindfolded woman holding a sword. Doyle noticed that the sword pointed directly to a gravestone in the shape of a cross. He walked over to the cross, which was not buried in the ground, but rather set into a steel square. Odder still was a curious engraving, which read: TURN TO HIM FOR HE IS NEAR
“ ‘For He is near,’ ” Doyle repeated.
He grasped the arms of the cross and lifted it from its sheathe. Then, grunting from its weight, he turned the cross upside down and set it back into the steel square.
Something clicked, and the mausoleum slab rolled ponderously open. Abigail and Marie flopped out of the opening and onto the grass.
Doyle rushed to their sides.
“Marie? Marie!” He slapped her cheeks and checked her pulse, which was too weak to detect. Then he took a deep breath, tipped her neck back, and pressed his mouth to hers, blowing air deeply into her lungs.
Out of the corner of his eye, he was aware of Abigail coughing raggedly and crawling away from the mausoleum.
Doyle pressed his fingers again to Marie’s neck and continued to work, forcing air into her lungs. Finally, Marie’s chest lifted, she breathed.
Her slender hand caressed Doyle’s cheek, sliding around to the back of his neck as she kissed him. After a long moment, their lips parted. Marie’s finger brushed a tear from Doyle’s cheek, then she was overcome with a violent jag of coughing.
Abigail said quietly from behind him, “Mister Lovecraft is still back there.”
Doyle stood up and regarded the column of black smoke still billowing from the tomb.
“No, Arthur. Don’t,” Marie said.
Doyle tore off his topcoat and threw his deerstalker cap to the ground, then took in a great gulp of air and plunged into the crypt.
His eyes stung from the smoke, and tears flowed down his cheeks. Visibility was nil, though the glow of the flames provided a ghostly light. The corpses—at least those who remained in their graves—shimmered like coals. Aging support timbers groaned, and Doyle heard one of them collapse up ahead—a sound that didn’t bode well for the rest of the tunnel system.
“Lovecraft!” he shouted, but there was no answer. He waited another few seconds, but heard nothing save the crackle of the flames. He plowed deeper into the tunnels, shielding his face from the patchy fires dotting the ground. He climbed over a collapsed timber and dove away just as another buckled to his right. His path out of the tunnels was slowly vanishing.
He wiped the sweat from his eyes. “Lovecraft, can you hear me?”
“Oh, God, no!” Abigail’s terrified voice rang out from the black doors.
The true import of the moment made Lovecraft weak with terror. But then all his differences, all his failings—all the otherness that separated him from his fellow man—fell away like a snake’s shed skin. All that was left was a single, surging will to survive.
And the vessel for that survival was Abigail.
Lovecraft shoved past Marie and charged down the tunnel, his fears transmuted by rage and a primal instinct to defend. The black door loomed ahead of him; inhuman squeals screeched from behind it. Lovecraft screamed and bared his teeth as his shoulder connected with the door, buckling the aged planks.
The door shattered inward, and Lovecraft tumbled headfirst into Hell.
The scale and dimensions of the church were overwhelming, and every inch of it was meant as a visual mockery of the Christian Church. There was a short transept and a nave, flanked by double aisles and square chapels. There were enough pews for a congregation of two hundred—a chilling thought in itself—but that was subsumed by the cumulative effect. The mighty columns were adorned with early gothic carvings of disemboweled souls and copulating creatures. And the figures, who in any other cathedral would be Old Testament kings, were instead grotesque demons: hideous mixes of animals and people with slicing fangs and barbed tails. The floors were drenched in blood and gleamed in the light of flaming black candelabras. The air was thick and cloying from the thousands of black roses hanging from the ceilings, and the rotting, excoriated animals hung over the altar, their entrails dripping from an upside-down cross.
Eleven monstrous demons swathed in monklike robes and hoods wrestled Abigail onto the altar, her red cape half torn off her body. Her legs kicked impotently. They spread her thin arms open as she was forced face-first on the viscera-stained block. Shining steel scythes cut the air.
“Leave her be,” Lovecraft bellowed as he scrambled to his feet and readjusted his grip on the torch. Three of the squealing creatures turned and flowed toward him. Lovecraft swung his torch in wild, soaring arcs. As tiny embers showered the room, the dried roses and brittle wooden figures adorning the columns burst into flame. Tendrils of fire lanced out in all directions. The flames reflected in the ruby eyes of four more creatures as they converged on Lovecraft.
“Back! Stay back!” Lovecraft jabbed with his torch. The demons circled, gurgling to each other. The phlegm-coated sounds rolled deep in their lungs.
Several sickles sunk into a pew just inches from Lovecraft’s arm and he instinctively wrenched the torch around and struck one of the beasts in the side of the head. Fire exploded, followed by squeals of rage and agony.
By now, the cathedral was an inferno.
An arm like a tree branch whacked the back of Lovecraft’s head, toppling the demonologist from his feet. His torch flew in the other direction.
The legion was moving in for the kill, when a shriek spun them around.
Marie stood, barefoot, astride two pews, her eyes rolled back. She chanted unintelligible words as white smoke poured out from between her lips. Her body shuddered as she clawed the air with her hands.
Before the demons could advance, other forms filled the broken doorway of the church. Heads bobbed and torsos swayed as the firelight spilled over the corpses of the catacombs, stumbling forward on skeleton legs—hands reaching, mouths open in silent screams, eye sockets black and empty. Some were children in their now ragged Sunday best. A mother with patchy blond hair and most of her teeth cried weirdly, clutching her rotted infant’s body to her lean breast.
Marie shrieked and moved her arms like a symphony conductor, white smoke still flooding out of her mouth.
The demons turned on the zombie intruders, lopping off heads and arms, flinging body parts across the transept.
But still they came—a marionette army. Some pulled themselves along the floor, their legs missing, grabbing at the demons’ robes, biting at their hands with clicking jawbones.
The demons squealed and hacked, reducing the mother and her baby to a cloud of corpse dust, beheading a white-bearded pilgrim, and cutting a grandmother still wearing her yellow wedding gown in half.
Lovecraft sat up as the skull of a six-year-old girl landed in his lap. A piece of his mind broke off and he felt it go, like a loose tooth falling out—another small piece of his sanity swept away. And from that point forward, Lovecraft knew he would always have a phobic terror of little girls with blond ponytails.
He screamed as Marie grabbed at his shirt and dragged him into one of the side aisles. Marie looked scarcely better than the animated corpses.
“Howard . . .” She fell into his arms, her lips gray, her eyes fluttering.
“Mr. Lovecraft,” a voice called out.
Abigail waved both arms from the altar and pointed to a side door.
Lovecraft threw his satchel, with the Book of Enoch, over his shoulder, and dragged Marie to her feet.
“Marie, please walk!”
But she was spent, so Lovecraft took her in his arms and dragged her to the altar.
The demons were making short work of the corpses, and now came at Lovecraft en masse, a wall of grasping arms and swaying heads with sticklike noses. They squealed like pack animals. Lovecraft lunged for the door behind Abigail as a wall collapsed behind him. Fire, rock, and timbers came raining down, crushing several demons.
Lovecraft dove through the door, propelled by a gush of hot wind and billowing sparks.
DOYLE MUTTERED GRIMLY as the Silver Ghost surged into the tunnel of trees and toward the stone gates and the perched gargoyles that marked the head of the drive. The Rolls swerved to a stop and idled at the appointed meeting place, but though Doyle leaped out of the car and jogged to the road, there was no sign of the others. He checked his pocket-watch. It was 10:50.
He plunged into the woods, dried leaves crackling underfoot. His cries fell on a chilling silence, as if the estate had swallowed his companions whole. He cursed his willfulness, his flawed strategy. Darian had taken their measure and bested them with ease. Even knowing it was a trap, they’d taken the bait. Now here was the great Sir Arthur Conan Doyle blundering through the woods like a panicked child. Who was he to presume he could fill Duvall’s shoes? Maybe he wasn’t as inured to the criticisms of the press and the British public as he thought. Perhaps it was pride that had thrust him back into the game, and to what end? To watch the others die as Duvall had? Houdini, an accused murderer? Sweat streamed down his face and into his moustache as he stumbled out into the clearing on the southern side of the mansion. Green hills rose and dipped before dropping steeply to the Willow Grove Cemetery some two hundred feet below.
Branches snapped to his left.
Doyle lunged behind a tree. He heard something large push through the bushes. Whoever it was, it snorted and spit into the grass, and Doyle detected the scent of ammonia—a scent he’d encountered recently. He peeked around the trunk and spotted Morris only a few steps away, carrying a Winchester shotgun. He was dressed as an Italian opera clown, with a white and black face and a circus tent for a gown. Morris’s misshapen head swiveled, studying every shadow. A cigarette pack crinkled in his grip. He lit a match on his tooth and sucked in smoke. Doyle was about to sneak away but his shoe caught a twig and it snapped.
Morris turned and aimed.
Doyle dove forward, tearing through the brambles. Wood chips exploded in his face as a shell tore into a tree. Between his thundering footsteps, he heard two more shots and the impact of bursting shells.
Morris stormed after him, much faster than he looked. He gained on Doyle with every stride. Doyle darted left, ducking under a fallen tree, then cut right. Morris just obliterated the tree, plunging straight through it.
Doyle reached the edge of the forest, which opened onto a clearing. The gardener’s shed sat fifty feet in front of him. Even from this vantage point, he could see black smoke seeping from the edges of the window and leaking out the front door. Doyle ran to the shed and threw open the door. He saw the hole in the earthen floor, the aged pine door, and instantly knew.
Something slammed him from behind, and Doyle pitched forward into the far wall, tools raining down around him. Morris loomed above him, flicking the rifle open to reload it. Doyle found a shovel and swung it, knocking the gun from Morris’s hands. He swung again, and the shovel snapped in two across Morris’s forearm. The giant instead took Doyle by the collar, lifted his two-hundred-plus pounds effortlessly, and bashed him to the wall. Doyle’s hands clawed at the orderly’s face as Morris wrenched and hurled him into the other wall, which collapsed. There was a deafening crunch, and Doyle landed on the grass.
He looked up in time to see Morris ducking through a huge hole in the side of the shed. Doyle attempted to stand, but Morris hammered a fist into his jaw. Morris then hefted him to his feet and threw him into the side of the shed. Doyle landed, gasping, stars bursting behind his eyes. He pawed frantically through the grass and found the wooden handle of a pair of rusted hedge clippers. When Morris reached for him again, Doyle pulled the clippers open, locked them over Morris’s fingers, and snapped them closed.
Morris howled and ripped his hand away, minus the halves of three fingers. Blood spurted from the stumps and the giant lumbered back, horrified.
Doyle lunged to his feet and limped off across the clearing, hearing Morris’s cries of agony fade in the distance.
37
MARIE AND ABIGAIL were lost. The ceiling of the tunnel looked like a black ocean of flowing smoke. The fire was spreading. There was no sign of Lovecraft; Marie could only assume he was dead, lost in the tumult of their escape. She would mourn the eccentric demonologist if she managed to survive herself. The fire had already consumed much of the breathable air. Marie’s lungs burned, and she could tell Abigail had inhaled too much smoke. Her face was dark with soot, her breathing labored. And they had no protection from the demons save for a long wooden stake that Marie had salvaged from one of the splintered pews.
Worse still, her efforts in the cathedral had backfired—not only exhausting her, but also adding an unexpected new gauntlet to run.
For the bodies of the dead still walked the tunnels and they, too, were now on fire.
The corpse of an old woman, gray hair in flames, flailed at them as she surged from the shadows. Marie fended her off with the stake, and the old lady plunged into the earthen wall, burst into pieces, and clattered into a pile of smoldering bones.
Abigail tugged anxiously on Marie’s wrist. They’d lost all sense of direction in the smoky haze.
“This way,” Abigail suggested.
“We been dat way,” Marie countered.
Squeals resounded from the tunnel Marie had chosen, and ruby eyes gleamed just beyond the flames.
“Hurry, Marie!” Abigail ran down her chosen tunnel.
By now, they could not even see the walls, the smoke was so thick. The fire roared through the tunnels—snapping timbers, igniting corpses, fouling the air.
Then, just as Marie sucked in what she feared would be her last breath, her foot slammed into stone. Pain shot up her leg, and she tumbled into a wide, circular crypt. The taller ceiling drew the smoke up from the floor. Marie collapsed, dragging herself forward on all fours, coughing violently.
ABIGAIL TRIED TO help Marie to herfeet, but could not. Instead she crossed the floor of the tomb until her hands found a solid monolith of stone set into the wall—the doorway sealing off the dead from the living. She screamed and scratched at the stone in futility as her strength ebbed.
ELSEWHERE IN THE underground labyrinth, Lovecraft gasped for air. His labored breaths made him light-headed, and he ran only because stopping meant dying. He had no idea where he was; no energy to think with as the flames roared around him. He fell to one knee and just barely found the will to stand again.
A toddler, cloaked in fire, staggered from the shadows, still clutching a ragged teddy bear, bouncing crazily off the walls before careening down another tunnel.
Lovecraft laughed at the absurdity—a high, manic sound.
Then the demons squealed, close by.
He didn’t want to die at their hands. It was better to suffocate in the smoke than be pulled apart by a mob of demons, or burned alive like a heretic. Though he realized with some irony that the situation was fitting: to die in a grave. Why bother his aunts with a funeral now? He was already buried, and there would be no need for a coffin once he was cremated.
He fell to the tunnel floor suddenly, utterly spent. He would not—could not—function any longer. The dirt was cold. He was thankful for that. A hum filled his ears, drowning out the crackle of the flames, and Lovecraft wondered what visions would overtake him in the moments before death. As his consciousness swirled, the ragged hem of a worn brown robe swept into his field of view.
Lovecraft looked up, seeing first the glint of a scythe. Then his gaze traveled higher, to the long wood beak and, finally, those jeweled eyes.
The creature didn’t see him.
Another flowed out of the fire and joined its companion. They gurgled at each other, heads bobbing like crows. Then one of them turned and, for a moment, the back of its robes parted, and Lovecraft dug his fingers into the mud walls to keep from screaming.
For behind the ragged robes, Lovecraft saw the feathery tips of bloodstained white wings.
As the demons flowed back into the fire, Lovecraft felt small comfort in the chilling notion that, as he died, the world died with him.
THE CHAIN LOCK flew to pieces and the steel gates tore off their hinges as the Silver Ghost crashed through into the Willow Grove Cemetery. The car finally plowed to a stop after upsetting two headstones. Doyle kicked open the driver’s door and ran onto the field. The moon had broken through the clouds to provide a hazy illumination.
“Howard! Marie!” Doyle was losing strength and resolve, the full weight of his sixty-plus years pressing down on him.
“Marie!”
He stopped, and turned in a circle. All he could see around him were silent headstones and the occasional white block of a mausoleum. Crows squawked in the distance, their calls carried on the wind. Doyle turned back to the car, when the crows cawed a second time, making him hesitate. Crows were diurnal. Doyle stopped to listen, head tilted.
There it was again, but now it didn’t sound like a crow at all. He began to run. Graves flashed past him as crow calls transformed into shrill cries of terror—
“Arthur!”
Doyle surged toward a mausoleum. “Marie?”
His call was answered from inside the crypt, weakly. “Arthur!”
Now he could see the smoke, trailing from the tiny cracks in the door. “Marie?” he called again.
There was no answer. He banged at the door with his fists; he dug his fingers into the narrow groove, tearing skin, but nothing gave. Doyle even tried flinging his battered body against it, but in vain.
He pounded some more. “Marie, answer me!”
More black smoke escaped from the tomb. It seemed to be growing thicker.
Doyle backed up and forced himself to think logically.
“Secret tunnels,” he muttered as he assessed the mausoleum. His fingers searched the borders of the slab and found rounded grooves, not too different from tracks. At the top corners of the slab were holes, and when he probed at these, Doyle felt steel. So, somewhere, there was a catch to open this door.
He began to look around. A rectangular grave some thirty feet distant boasted a marble statue of a blindfolded woman holding a sword. Doyle noticed that the sword pointed directly to a gravestone in the shape of a cross. He walked over to the cross, which was not buried in the ground, but rather set into a steel square. Odder still was a curious engraving, which read: TURN TO HIM FOR HE IS NEAR
“ ‘For He is near,’ ” Doyle repeated.
He grasped the arms of the cross and lifted it from its sheathe. Then, grunting from its weight, he turned the cross upside down and set it back into the steel square.
Something clicked, and the mausoleum slab rolled ponderously open. Abigail and Marie flopped out of the opening and onto the grass.
Doyle rushed to their sides.
“Marie? Marie!” He slapped her cheeks and checked her pulse, which was too weak to detect. Then he took a deep breath, tipped her neck back, and pressed his mouth to hers, blowing air deeply into her lungs.
Out of the corner of his eye, he was aware of Abigail coughing raggedly and crawling away from the mausoleum.
Doyle pressed his fingers again to Marie’s neck and continued to work, forcing air into her lungs. Finally, Marie’s chest lifted, she breathed.
Her slender hand caressed Doyle’s cheek, sliding around to the back of his neck as she kissed him. After a long moment, their lips parted. Marie’s finger brushed a tear from Doyle’s cheek, then she was overcome with a violent jag of coughing.
Abigail said quietly from behind him, “Mister Lovecraft is still back there.”
Doyle stood up and regarded the column of black smoke still billowing from the tomb.
“No, Arthur. Don’t,” Marie said.
Doyle tore off his topcoat and threw his deerstalker cap to the ground, then took in a great gulp of air and plunged into the crypt.
His eyes stung from the smoke, and tears flowed down his cheeks. Visibility was nil, though the glow of the flames provided a ghostly light. The corpses—at least those who remained in their graves—shimmered like coals. Aging support timbers groaned, and Doyle heard one of them collapse up ahead—a sound that didn’t bode well for the rest of the tunnel system.
“Lovecraft!” he shouted, but there was no answer. He waited another few seconds, but heard nothing save the crackle of the flames. He plowed deeper into the tunnels, shielding his face from the patchy fires dotting the ground. He climbed over a collapsed timber and dove away just as another buckled to his right. His path out of the tunnels was slowly vanishing.
He wiped the sweat from his eyes. “Lovecraft, can you hear me?”
