Near the center, they hesitated at an intersection of narrow paths. At first Cree wasn't sure she remembered the way, but finally she decided they needed to go left, and only a few steps farther brought them to the crypt. As befitted an old and prestigious family, it was larger than most, a Greek temple about the size of a prefab backyard storage shed. In front, two fluted pillars held up the roof of a shallow vestibule that cast the vault's cover into shadow. The back was wedged only a hand's width from neighboring crypts, the gaps between completely lightless.
"What do we do?" Lila whispered so quietly Cree could hear the pulse in her throat.
"We wait. Might as well sit." Cree gestured toward a squat urn to the left of the door. "You'll find him."
Lila sat, just a shadow within the shadow of the overhang. Barely more visible, Paul hung several paces back, shifting uneasily. When Cree had proposed this visit, he had warned her that New Orleans cemeteries were dangerous places at night, and not for supernatural reasons. The enclosed, labyrinthine little cities made good temporary lodging for homeless people and had become favored places for crack deals to be made, for junkies to cook heroin over candle flames and shoot up. Night in the cemeteries was too often a time of predation.
"If you're too scared," she had told him acidly, "then don't come." The look on his face had given her a pang, but he damned well deserved it.
The air turned gradually cooler. Cree stood until her legs tired and then sat cross-legged on the floor of the vestibule. Paul's shadow shifted uneasily from foot to foot. Lila was a mound of darkness that rocked ever so slightly from side to side.
Sometime later, Cree felt it coming: the impulse growing toward its eerie nascence. It began with a faint sense of movement and feeling that coalesced only inches away, on the other side of the vault cover.
Paul sensed it, too. His shadow froze, as if he were listening.
"I'm scared, Cree," Lila whispered.
Something moved audibly inside the crypt. It started as a faint scraping noise, like a rat gnawing, but it soon changed. Something larger shifted, making a rustle of cloth and then a faint, dull thump. Even knowing it was coming, Cree felt a feather drift up her spine.
"There's someone coming," Paul whispered urgently.
"Shhh."
"No, there's someone… this is no joke, Cree, these crack heads – "
"Paul, shut up!"
The shadow of Paul looked down one side of the crypt, saw nothing, then stepped to the other side. Then he mounted the apron and put one hand against the marble crypt cover. He snatched it away as if it had burned him. No doubt he felt the faint vibration in the marble. Afterward he stood motionless again, indecisive. Cree couldn't see his face, but she could hear his breath, a short, sharp panting.
Lila hadn't moved. Cree let herself fall into sync with the burgeoning manifestation in the crypt and felt Lila coming with her.
And they found him there.
He had just awakened in utter darkness, confused. At first it seemed that he couldn't open his eyes, but then he realized they were open, he had either gone blind or there was simply no light for them to register. A waterfall of pain originated in his head and poured down his neck and back. Something was wrong with him, he realized. He'd been hurt. It took a while to make sense of things, but he became aware he was lying on his back on a hard, smooth, slightly rounded surface. With an effort, he lifted one hand only to discover a coarse masonry ceiling just inches above him. The discovery shocked him and his whole body jerked reflexively. The movement caused him to slide to the right, down the slight incline of the curved surface. Abruptly he felt a gap beneath him, and he rolled partly into it.
He was wedged there in the dark, his forehead against rough stone, the back of his head against the thing he'd been lying on. One arm hung beneath him, his fingers trailing in some kind of rubble – dust and crumbly chunks and sharp pieces. An incomprehensible place.
The movement had caused savage arcs of pain to streak through his whole body, and with it the memory came suddenly to him: Richard had been beating him! He had fled the purpling face of his brother-in-law, cringing from and yet welcoming every explosion of pain as the poker struck. Now was some time after that, and he was somewhere dark and small and musty smelling.
The arm beneath his body could hardly move, but the other was free, and with his fingers he traced the surface behind him. Beneath a film of grit it felt smooth and metallic. Something was digging painfully into his back, and when his fingers found it he discovered it was carved in low-relief designs. A flange or fixture like a decorative fist gripping a pole or rail that felt like, it was, a handle!
It was the carrying rail on a coffin.
At the realization, Bradford's ghost ignited in sheer terror. The hand wedged beneath him scrabbled in the remains of his Lambert ancestors. His free hand clawed the wall and bloodied itself. He got it above him, past the end of the coffin, and found only more of the same: bricks with bulges of mortar between them.
Bradford screamed. He was in a crypt. Richard must have done this. Richard and that black witch Josephine had buried him alive.
A groan squeezed out of Lila, and Cree knew she was experiencing the ghost's terror. The silhouette of Paul had put its hands over its ears.
Bradford tried to pound on the wall. Somebody would hear the thumping. They'd let him out. But he found he was too weak to pound long. Two useless blows and his arm fell back against his side, muscles exhausted. The darkness swam in whorls of sick yellow light. He tried to inch himself forward or backward beneath the low ceiling but found he couldn't. He was wedged in the narrow gap between the coffin and the rough wall and he had no strength and he was damaged, badly damaged.
"Help me!" he mouthed. He intended the words but had not enough breath to make them sound. "Help me!"
He pounded the wall for another few seconds and nearly blacked out from the exertion. Confusion took him, and he lost track of where he was or why. It had to do with Lila, he thought. Lila was an idea that was all pain. He had to do something for Lila, she was hurt. Somebody bad had hurt her. He had to get free to do something for Lila. Why? Then he remembered chasing her, and the giddy craziness of it, the way his anger and envy had risen and converged with his lust and that strange sadistic abandon, and how he'd let them go, let it go on. Breaking the boundaries was a thrill that fueled itself. In the boar mask he was a rutting animal, powerful and brutal and free, given power in all the ways his daily life deprived him of power. How good her fear of him felt, how supple her flesh when he forced himself on her, how exciting her struggles beneath him. Even in his pain and remorse, the memory was sharp and clear and spun out of him like a creature with its own separate life, savage and exultant.
Then it got distant and he forgot it again. A sharp tooth of mortar seemed to screw itself into the flesh of his forehead, and he couldn't pull away even a fraction of an inch.
"Charm? Charm!" he called, and this time his heard his voice work. Charm would always help, she had always helped. For a moment the thought of her gave him reassurance, but then he lost his place in time again. He kicked with his free leg and hit something hard. The crypt door. He kicked again, and that was all the strength he had.
The sound of Bradford's spectral shoe against the inch-thick marble door was clearly audible outside the crypt. Paul retreated several steps from the crypt, stumbling as he came off the apron, hands still over his ears, and despite her anger Cree felt a pang for him: His world, too, would come undone tonight.
Bradford's ghost scratched at the bricks with his free hand until he felt his nails come away and he became too weak to move any more. He lay there in the dark, mostly unconscious for a while.