Constance stood at the top of the stairs and looked down. There was nothing visible but sand and rubble. What was she expecting to find here? The futility of her plan struck her. Despite the remoteness and the desolation, these ruins had no doubt been picked over by beachcombers and other people in the many decades since Oldham was abandoned. What could she possibly find — especially when she didn’t know what, precisely, she was looking for?
She felt another surge of humiliation, chagrin, and anger. Against her better judgment she walked down the granite steps and into the open cellar. Here, within the shelter of the hole, the wind subsided. She shone her light around. The cellar was about thirty feet by forty, with a central stone structure that supported the remains of two fireplaces on the first floor. Those fireplaces could still be seen, of mortared stone, falling apart, a partial chimney sticking up like a hollow stub. The wooden part of the church was mostly gone, with only a few heavy, worm-eaten beams lying here and there, as soft as punk. Oak leaves lay piled up in the corners and against the back part of the central chimney. Bayberry bushes grew thickly along the north-facing stone wall, and a large stained canvas — it looked like an old sailcloth — lay rotting against it.
Constance finished a circuit of the cellar. If there was some dark secret hidden in this town, it would probably be here, in the church. But what? She brushed aside the leaves here and there, uncovering only broken glass, rusted nails, and bits of crockery. The wind picked up and she moved into the shelter of one of the walls. The sailcloth she had noticed was sprawled in the dead weeds. She grasped one end of it and pulled, dragging it back. A foul smell arose, like that of a dead animal, and instinctively she let the canvas fall back. She hesitated, grasped it again, and this time dragged it out of the way, back from the wall. The stench rose again. Shining her light, she saw that the sailcloth had been concealing a small, four-foot-square iron plate in the stone of the rear wall. The plate appeared to be covering a niche. The smell was awful, but no dead animal could be seen — in fact, the smell seemed to be coming from behind the plate.
She knelt and, breathing through her mouth, looked closely at the plate. It was rusted but not, it seemed, as rusted as it should have been. It looked like the entrance to a root cellar. The plate was hinged, the hinges oiled and suspiciously operable.
Her heart beat faster. There was something behind here; she was sure of it.
She shone the flashlight around the space, checked to make sure her stiletto was still tucked into the folds of her dress. Then, quietly and carefully, she lifted the iron plate — which moved easily on its hinges — revealing not a root cellar but a low tunnel, a descending stone staircase. A horrible smell came drifting up: a mingling of feces, urine, and rotting meat. She ducked through the opening and began descending the stairs into darkness.
At the bottom she paused, listening. The storm above was now greatly muffled, and she could hear a faint, intermittent sound ahead: the sound of childlike weeping.
45
Gavin sat in the back room of the station house, staring glumly at the checkerboard. Once again the chief was winning, and it galled him no end to be beaten in checkers by a person who was in every way his intellectual inferior. How did Mourdock do it? He’d probably read a book and learned some cheap tricks, like those guys who played ten-second chess for money in Boston Common.
He finally made his move.
“King me,” the chief said, his plump fingers moving a piece into the back row.
With ill-disguised annoyance Gavin stacked on a second chip. He was going to lose this one, too.
What made it worse was that the chief, insufferable at the best of times, had become puffed up like a toad since his triumph that afternoon, where he’d basically hogged all the credit for solving the case, when it was Pendergast and Constance Greene who had done all the work. Gavin couldn’t understand why Pendergast had just stood at a distance during the press conference while the chief monopolized the limelight. At least, he thought, the case was over. He couldn’t get out of his memory those two corpses, obscenely carved up with the Tybane Inscriptions, and it had been a tremendous relief to learn it was just those dumbass Dunwoody brothers trying to divert suspicion from their own criminal bullshit. It was like he’d been telling everyone from the very beginning: The carvings were only a red herring. No witches or witchcraft was involved at all — a ridiculous false alarm.
“Your move,” Mourdock said, intruding on his thoughts.
The chief had moved his king into a clever position in which Gavin saw he was inevitably going to lose two pieces and, with them, the game. There was nothing he could do. He moved a piece, and the chief quickly double-jumped his men, smacking the pieces down with excessive force as he did so. Fucking jackass.
“I resign,” Gavin said immediately.
“Come on, don’t give in so early,” said the chief, almost at a whine. “You might still win.”
As Gavin was shaking his head he heard a sudden crash in the outer office — the front doors had been flung open. This was followed by a half-bellowed scream for help.
Gavin and the chief leapt up, the board and its pieces scattering. A woman — Rose Buffum, Gavin instantly recognized — stood in the doorway, streaming wet, her sodden clothes clinging to her heavy body, her long gray hair plastered against her head, her eyes wide in terror.
“God help me!” she screeched, choking. “Help me!” She staggered toward Gavin.
“What is it?” Gavin grabbed one arm and the chief took the other. She was shaking violently. “Are you hurt?”
“My God, my God!” she wailed.
They eased her down in a chair. Gavin rushed to get her a cup of coffee.
“Call nine-one-one, get an ambulance,” said the chief. “There’s blood here.”
Buffum lay back in the chair, half swooning, eyes rolling in her head. Gavin put down the coffee and grabbed his radio. He quickly got the dispatcher in Newburyport and called in the 911. Meanwhile, the chief was wiping down Buffum’s face with a paper towel, dabbing here and there.
“Where are you hurt?” he asked.
The woman gasped. “It isn’t my blood!”
“Okay,” said the chief. “Have a sip of coffee and tell us what’s going on.”
Buffum ignored the coffee, let out another gasped wail. “The monster!”
“Monster?” Mourdock repeated in a skeptical tone.
“It won’t stop killing.” And then, as if seized with a sudden thought: “Oh, dear God, lock the doors!”
“We don’t lock the station doors,” said the chief.
“Get us in a cell, then. It’s coming!”
“What’s coming?”
“It’s a demon from hell, ripping people apart!”
Listening, Gavin felt a sudden freezing in his vitals. The monster. No. Impossible.
“Ripping people apart, and...!” At this the woman doubled over and, with a retching sound, lost her dinner all over the floor of the station.
The chief backed away with a disgusted expression. “We have an ambulance coming, Rose. Just hang in there.” He looked at Gavin. “What should we do?”
Gavin stared at him. There was no doubting the woman’s sincerity. Rose Buffum had all the imagination of a fencepost — she wasn’t the kind of person to be seeing things. The chief knew this, too. The skepticism was quickly draining from his face.