I opened my eyes and saw the priest looking up at me, concerned. “Daughter? You are unwell?”
“No. It’s just the chapel. It’s . . . overwhelming. There are so many. . . .” I stood still and looked around. Streetlight and faint moonlight shone through the large round window that took up most of the back wall and through the arched one on the side where we’d entered. The light limned the bones embedded in the mortared walls with silver, while a single fat candle glowed below the crucifix. The priest lit the four wax tapers on the altar, and four more in tall stands beside it, turning the illumination golden.
“Yes,” the priest replied. “You are sensible of them. There are many bones, many bodies. There was an explosion in 1732, then the Spanish siege, the wars, Napoleon. . . . So many in the graveyards . . . Then the cholera in 1765. We built the chapel for them—there were so many taken by the illness—but there are others here. All the bones here wait, as a reminder. We are all bones and all bones are dust. Only the glory of heaven is eternal.”
The room was much smaller within than it had looked from the outside, the walls a foot or more thick from the long bones that had been piled up, ends facing out, and mortared into place. The walls’ bottom third was all covered in skulls, like bizarre wainscoting, and the skulls were protected by thick sheets of clear Plexiglas. Every joint of the walls and the arched ceiling was delineated with lines of skulls. The floor was a smooth mosaic of small colored stones below the wing-like patterns of the bones and skulls that covered the wall surfaces and pillars that supported the roof. Even the ceiling was covered in the bones of arms and ribs, mortared in place like thatching above the shadowed niches and pointed arches made of the smallest bones.
Playing our parts, Carlos, Quinton, and I approached to genuflect and cross ourselves at the altar in the golden light. Only I hesitated, uncomfortable with my deception, wondering if the God of the Old Testament would take exception to the way I did my job. But there was no lightning or thunder, and I turned away to look over the room again.
The priest knelt on one side of the altar and switched on a small electric floodlight that aimed its beam from the floor to the wall above. For a moment, the plain crucifix in front of a Plexiglas-covered bone altar piece was brightly lit, as were the vases of wilting flowers below. Then the priest turned the small light toward a section of the wall that lay farther back, near the rear windows, our shadows huge across it.
I caught my breath, seeing the crumbled section of wall, thick with bones and skulls, but now torn and raked as if by giant claws. I turned in a small circle to see the whole room. There were three niches in total, two on the wall facing the door and one on the door-side wall. It was the niche beside the door that was now empty, hidden from first view in the darkest part of the room by the way the stairs deposited visitors next to the altar, with their backs to the niche. The other two niches were untouched.
The long-faced priest took a taper from the altar and lit a silver oil lamp that hung from the ceiling by silver chains, adding to the golden light that touched the desecrated wall. He returned the candle and stopped near the lamp to look at the damage. “It is profane. The whole skeleton that stood in that niche is gone.”
“A whole skeleton? Of a single individual?” I asked.
The priest shook his head. “I cannot say for certain. This other one has mummified flesh which binds the bones,” he added, pointing to the niche across from the ruined one, “but the one that was taken did not. It is not recorded who the bones were in life.”
“This is terrible,” I said, walking up to the ruined wall and putting out my hands as if I could recall the missing skeleton by touching the place it had stood. The priest laid his hand on the back of mine, stopping my movement as he said, “They are very old and fragile.”
“Of course,” I replied, lowering my hands. How could I talk to the ghost if I couldn’t touch the bones to make a connection to it . . . ? I looked at the priest again. “Could you allow us a moment to confer?” I asked, giving a little more psychic weight to the trust and persuasion I’d already established with him.
He looked uncomfortable, but he nodded as I leaned harder on the compulsion, feeling it like cold quills piercing my skin. “I shall wait in the vestibule,” he offered.
He walked through to the tiny antechamber and sat on the wooden chair at the head of the steps, but he didn’t close the door, keeping a benign eye on us from a respectful distance—or as much distance as the small space allowed. It would have to do. I stood staring at the wall for a moment, awash in ghosts. If only they would cleave to their own bones, this would be easier. I turned toward Carlos and moved close to him, which in such a small room required only a few steps. Quinton followed.
Carlos waited for me to speak, offering nothing. “I have an idea, but it depends on you,” I murmured.
“Go on,” he replied, matching my low tone.
“Can you, without touching the bones, force the ghosts to retreat to, say, their skulls? All of them. At the same time.”
He frowned. “All of them?”
“Yes. The ghost who has no skull to retreat to will remain isolated in the room and then I can hold him while you talk to him and find out what he or she can tell us.”
His frown darkened into a scowl as he thought about it. He turned to look around the room, raising his eyes toward the ceiling. It almost looked like he was praying. He turned his gaze back to me and I shivered. “I can, but not without touching something of the chapel’s bone walls. To control them all will be difficult enough, but to do so with no contact is impossible. Your chance to catch the spirit in question will be short even then.”
“We’ll have to find a way. I know it will take a lot of energy and won’t be easy, but I can manage my end if you can manage yours.”
“I know how it can be done without the priest becoming upset. If you are ready . . . ?”
“Hang on,” said Quinton. “Maybe I can help.”
“You would have to die. That would not do.”
“No. I’m just thinking there might be another way. . . . Is there any reason to keep all these ghosts captive here? Aren’t they . . . kind of miserable? If you can isolate the ones that have bones still here, why can’t you just . . . absorb them? They are dead after all. . . . Then you’d only need to expend enough energy to isolate the first one and the rest will simply replace the energy used for the start cycle. The tricky bit is making sure you don’t suck up the one ghost we need.”
“That I will leave to your beloved.”
Quinton was pleased with himself for the idea and I was certain it wasn’t just because it was clever—Carlos in need of energy could become dangerous and unpredictable, and none of the humans in the area wanted to die to make him feel better.
“But I will need your help,” Carlos added.
Quinton paled. “Mine? What do you want me to do?”
“Pray.”
THIRTY-ONE
“What?”
“Kneel, fold your hands, and let them rest on the edge of the altar while you bow your head. The balance of life and death is maintained so long as we each touch the edge of the altar—which is made of their bones. The ghosts will flow through you to me. It will be unpleasant, but it won’t kill you,” Carlos said, then added with a sharp, white grin, “It doesn’t matter if you pray or not, but I suspect you will.”
Quinton made a face and turned to look at the altar, muttering, “This is not what I had in mind.”