“No,” he whispered, even to himself. “That was no dream.”
He picked up the phone, still standing naked in the dawning light of a Boston day. He rang the front desk first. “What day is it?” he asked.
“Saturday,” the girl answered.
“No! The date! The date!”
The girl on the other end of the line hesitated, and he realized he must sound mad.
“April 30th,” she stuttered, her voice shaking.
He swallowed hard. “Thanks,” he mumbled as he re-cradled the phone. A whole day. He had lost a whole day.
Or maybe he had lived it.
He knew one thing though. Today was the day of which Samuelson had spoken in his dream or his vision or his memory. The 30th of April, the May-Eve, Walpurgis. He knew little of the date. Only what he had heard, read in certain forbidden books that he had enjoyed as a child. But what he did know frightened him. It was on Walpurgis, or so they said, when the veils between the worlds were sundered; when the ancients believed that those dark beings from beyond the borders of our world, could, if so invited, pass into our own. For centuries, they had built bonfires on that eve, great flaming beacons of light meant to chase away the night.
He considered his options. He was sure now, certain, that whatever had befallen him the night before, there was one thing that was beyond doubting. Samuelson was no innocent. Whatever had come to the house of Angela Endicott was his doing. And if she was in danger, it was he who had put her there. What had happened to Katya was but a prelude, a glimpse of what was to come. For if it was blood that was required, it would be Angela’s that would be spilled, sacrificed to whatever dark gods, whatever fallen idols, that Samuelson and his associates worshiped.
Ryan picked up the phone again, intent, despite his previous instructions, on calling the police. That seemed to be the one course of action that made sense. But he had not pressed a single digit before he abandoned his plan. He remembered who Samuelson was and, more importantly, who were his compatriots that previous night. They had been of wealth and power and privilege. No, the police could not be trusted. It was as Recruiter Hawthorne had said. They would be of no help to him.
Hawthorne.
He fumbled for his wallet on the bedside table, removing the still pristine business card contained within its folds. The tiny specks of diamond on the dappled globe shimmered. He dialed the number. It rang once, twice, three times before a machine answered. Ryan almost hung up then. But something told him, if he did nothing else, he should at least leave a message. And so he waited. A voice came on the line, one he did not recognize and did not expect.
It said, in tones quiet and soft — yet steady — that were neither male nor female, “We are Limbus. We stand on the edge. We stare into the abyss. We do not discriminate. We do not forget. We employ. The job is the seeker’s. The duty his, and his alone. To fail or to succeed, lies only on his shoulders. That is the contract. That is the promise. That is the bargain. There is only one.”
Ryan waited for the beep, but it did not come. Instead a soft click announced the line was dead. He cursed under his breath and dialed the number again, but this time, something even more unexpected met his ear — the recorded voice of an operator telling him that the number had been disconnected. Ryan sat there, on his bed, still naked, cradling the dead phone to his ear, wondering what had happened, how he had come to this, how he had found himself here.
The light still streamed through his window, a blue shade dimmer. And then he realized — it was not the rising sun that he looked upon, but one that was setting. It was this realization that sprung him to action.
Thirty minutes later, he was speeding up Route 1 in a rented car. The night had fallen quickly over the Massachusetts countryside, faster than he expected, faster than seemed possible even. He wondered at it, though not for long. His mind was filled with other thoughts.
The night was not so black after all. A gibbous moon had risen, holding sway over the sky and the earth in its fullness. Yet somehow it was not comforting. No, it was hate-filled, angry. And in its glow, Ryan saw nothing but death. It was as if that great orb cast down darkness over the land, not light.
He drove by feel. He had only barely noticed the path they had taken the night before, and by all rights, he should have been unable to retrace it. And yet, his hands knew the way, and the car seemed to drive itself to his destination. The terrain grew darker and wilder, the road more worn, the path less trod. He wasn’t surprised when he found himself on the narrow, winding gravel trail that led to the ancient church, though he marveled at how quickly he arrived. Nor was he surprised when he found no parked cars around it, as they had been the night before. But they were there, waiting for him. Of that, he had no doubt.
He left his car behind, but not before removing the 9 mm he had put in the glove compartment, his sidearm from what now seemed a lifetime ago. When he slammed the door behind him, the echo thundered across the hillside, rebounding through the cemetery and off into the forest. It was the only sound he heard. The normal life of the wilds was silent, and even the wind did not stir.
Ryan moved through the gravestones, training his gun on the rear entrance to the church. But there were no guards, and the door sat open, as if it had been locked in that position for all time. Ryan made his way inside, fishing the flashlight he’d bought at a Route 1 gas station out of his pocket. Somehow, the beam seemed even feebler than the last time he had come within this long dead house of worship, as if the air had grown thicker over the course of the day.
When he reached the false tomb, it was open, beckoning him, just as the door had been. He stopped for a moment and listened. And yet the silence held sway, though the eerie glow still floated up from below. Into that ethereal light he went, ducking low as he descended the spiral stair. When he reached the caverns, he paused. For the first time, from somewhere deep within the earth, Ryan heard something. It was a drumming, a throbbing, a pulsating beat, as if deep bass drums were pounding in regular rhythm. Somehow he knew it was nothing of the sort.
He stood before the entrance to the caverns, to the corridors that endlessly intertwined, that ran, as far as he knew, until the ends of the world. He could be lost forever in their depths, were it not for the preternatural sense that he knew precisely how he should proceed. For only a moment, he paused to consider what he was doing. Where this was leading him. Something was horribly wrong, something even worse than the young girl that had gone missing. She was only the beginning. But he couldn’t stop now. He held the dimming beam of the flashlight before him and raised his gun. Then he ran.
He plunged forward, running hard through corridor after corridor. Turning here, going straight there, passing from one low hanging stone archway to another. He ran as hard as he could, letting his legs carry him wherever they might. To anyone watching, he would have seemed as a man mad, rushing mindlessly to an untimely end. But Ryan knew the way. And still, he was shocked when he turned a corner and stumbled headlong into a scene out of a nightmare.
The room was lit by great torches, smoke billowing up into the seemingly endless vaulted ceiling above. The room was filled with people, though because of their hooded cloaks Ryan could not say if they were male or female. But it wasn’t to them that his eyes were drawn; it was to the naked girl tied to the ancient stone altar and the man who stood at her head, curved blade raised above her heart.