“Wait,” she demanded.
Dr. K and Will stopped, turning to face her.
“Did you guys hear that?”
Will looked around uncertainly, but the doctor’s thin mouth turned up in a malicious smile.
“You’ll hear many things in these woods at night. Best not to linger.”
He turned back to the trail and hurried along.
“Please…” the voice came again, a whisper so much like the wind she couldn’t separate the two. This time Will cocked his head, glancing back at her with an uneasy look in his eyes.
They walked down the small hill into the hollow of trees.
“The key, please,” the man told Will, his eyes almost feverish with desire.
Will handed him the key.
Sarah and Will had searched the space for hours, coming up empty, but the doctor strode purposefully to a wall of brush, stuck his hand inside and pushed open a door.
“How?” Will asked, shaking his head. He reached his hands into the brush around the opening, patting and searching.
Sarah stared at the bushes for a long moment, committing the tangle of vines to memory, noting the angle of a young maple tree. She bent down and raked her hands through the dirt, marking the entrance to the door.
CORRIE
“ARE ANY OF THE BIRDS SICK?” I asked, gazing into the glass cage where parakeets hopped from little wooden branches. They cheeped and chittered.
“I’m sorry?” the young man asked who’d walked over to help me.
“I’d like to adopt one nobody else would want. If there’s a sick or injured bird…” I trailed off.
He scratched the blond stubble on his chin and shook his head.
“We don’t sell ‘em if they’re sick.”
I swallowed thickly and pointed. “I’ll take that one.”
“The blue with the black spots by his nose?”
I nodded and turned away.
“Do you need a cage? Food? I can get him ready while you pick out your other-”
“No,” I interrupted him. “I have those things at home.”
I drove to Kerry Manor, listening to the bird. He chirped for the first few minutes, and then the sounds grew quieter with long stretches of silence between. I wondered if he sensed what lay ahead.
Sarah
THE ENCHIRIDION LAY heavy and neglected on a wooden pew in a dark corner of the cold chamber.
As Will crept toward the book, his eyes wide, Sarah blinked around the room, using her torch to illuminate the wooden benches, the stone floor, and rows of carefully laid bricks curving to the ceiling.
A moist, rank smell hovered in the chamber.
The old doctor walked to a bed suspended on a platform. He placed his hands on the grimy yellow sheet and closed his eyes.
Sarah preferred not to imagine the memories he savored.
“Let’s get out of here,” Will said, taking up the heavy book and holding it against his chest.
“Not just yet,” the doctor said, and his eyes looked darker, without color, as he pulled a small pistol from beneath his layers of coats.
“No way, man. Is this a joke?” Will asked, taking a step back.
“The chamber is a special place,” the doctor told them, tilting his face up as if relishing the odor of something ancient and decayed the space emanated. “It gives, and it takes. The power of this place,” again he fingered the filthy hospital bed, “brought the key to me. Now payment is due.”
CORRIE
I CARRIED the box containing the bird and set it on the kitchen counter. After grabbing the other items on the old woman’s list from my car, I pulled a cast-iron pot from a cupboard and set it near the butcher block. Carefully cutting open their pouches, I dumped dried yew, thyme, and yarrow in the pot. The house creaked and groaned, growing louder as I worked. The bird cheeped, the wind whipped against the windows.
Near the lake, I scraped bark from the oak tree with a hammer’s claw. I filled a plastic bag with dirt and grass from the space where Sammy’s body had lain.
I added those to the pot. Next came bits of his hair from a brush, the bristles from his toothbrush, and a letter he’d written me. I grimaced and drew in a hard breath as I dropped the sheet of paper with his words, his writing, into the pot.
When I took out the bird, he squeaked and hopped away. I did not want to look at his tiny black eyes as I lay him on the block and lifted the knife.
Sarah
“US?” Sarah asked. She glanced at Will, whose knuckles had gone white as he clutched the book. He wasn’t looking at Dr. K. but studying the room, as if planning his attack.
“That book doesn’t leave here, and neither do you,” the doctor whispered.
“Why?” Sarah asked, knowing their only hope was time and mentally chastising herself for her stupidity. Who followed a deranged man into a hidden forest chamber without a weapon?
“I, better than anyone, know the score of this place. Do you think it gives freely? Don’t you hear their cries?” He cocked his head, and a little smile played on his lips.
“You are completely insane,” Sarah muttered.
Will had begun to edge toward the only other torch in the room that was lit when they first entered.
“I’m not a vagrant. I’m a scholar, a doctor. I’ve waited twenty years to come back to this place. The source of my awakening, of a power that is indescribable.”
His voice had shifted. The rambling of the homeless man had given way to someone much cleverer and more controlled.
“This is an act?” she gestured at his clothes. “You’re not really homeless?”
The man’s eyes glittered, and Sarah suspected that no, he was not homeless.
“I have many friends in low places. Unlike my colleagues, I learned years ago your greatest assets are the people beneath you, the people who can slither and slip into the dark places where secrets live.”
“Why did you need us? If you wanted the key, you could have gotten it yourself.”
The doctor laughed and put his finger on his chin, as if watching them squirm delighted him.
“Time is irrelevant, but magic, synchronicity, that is where the power flows. I have known for years the key would come to me. I had to be patient and allow the forces that work tirelessly from the shadows to bring the moment into being, the perfect placement of myself, you, and this key. The chamber had chosen its sacrifice. I am merely a messenger.”
“But you orchestrated the whole thing. No supreme power brought us here. You told us where to get the key, you brought us here,” Sarah insisted.
The man’s eyes flickered, but his smile did not shift.
“Every outcome has a series of players, of action and consequence. Consider this gun. When I cocked it, I prepared the gun for firing. When I pull the trigger, a tiny pin will hit the bullet encased in its primer shell. An explosion will occur and the bullet will find its target. If a single component was absent, the firing pin for instance, the outcome shifts. Death occurs when every piece plays its part. The moment Maurice contacted me, I knew the chamber had created the way. And now here we are, fates colliding. For me it is the beginning of the next journey, and for both of you, it is the end. Don’t you see? A thousand choices had to occur to bring us to this instant. And here we are.”
Sarah’s mind reeled. If this man murdered them, they’d never be discovered.
CORRIE
I DROVE to the graveyard in a state of numbness. Periodically, the chirp of the bird seemed to fill my car, but then I remembered what was left of the bird lay in the pot, and it most definitely was not singing.