The Captain swung up to the staging platform, then climbed the ladder into Orthanc, his muddy boots marking the metal floor. He faced Hatch wordlessly. Bonterre stepped up onto the deck, then entered the chamber behind the Captain. Hatch glanced at her, then tensed suddenly, alarmed by the expression on her face. Both were strangely silent.
Neidelman turned to Magnusen. "Sandra, may we have some privacy for a moment?"
The engineer stood up, walked out onto the observation deck, and shut the door behind her. Neidelman drew a deep breath, his tired gray eyes on Hatch.
"You'd better steady yourself," he said quietly.
Bonterre said nothing, looking at Hatch.
"Malin, we found your brother."
Hatch felt a sudden sense of dislocation, almost as if he was pulling away from the world around him, into a remote and shrouded distance.
"Where?" he managed.
"In a deep cavity, below the vaulted tunnel. Under the grate."
"You're sure?" Hatch whispered. "No chance of mistake?"
"It is the skeleton of a child," Bonterre said. "Twelve years old, perhaps thirteen, blue dungaree shorts, baseball cap—"
"Yes," Hatch whispered, sitting down suddenly as a wave of dizziness passed over him, leaving his knees weak and his head light. "Yes."
The tower was silent for the space of a minute.
"I need to see for myself," Hatch said at last.
"We know you do," Bonterre said, gently helping him to his feet. "Come."
"There's a tight drop down a vertical passage," said Neidelman. "The final cavity's not fully braced. There's a certain danger."
Hatch waved his hand.
Shrugging into a slicker, stepping onto the small electric lift, descending the ladder array—the next minutes passed in a gray blur. His limbs ached, and as he gripped the lift railing his own hands looked gray and lifeless in the stark light of the Pit. Neidelman and Bonterre crowded in at either side, while members of the bracing crews looked on from a distance as they went past.
Reaching the hundred-foot level, Neidelman stopped the lift. Stepping off the metal plate, they crossed a walkway to the mouth of the tunnel. Hatch hesitated.
"It's the only way," said Neidelman.
Hatch stepped into the tunnel, past a large air-filtration unit. Within, the ceiling was now braced by a series of metal plates, held up by a row of titanium screw jacks. A few more nightmare steps and Hatch found himself back in the octagonal stone chamber where Wopner had died. The great rock lay against the wall, seemingly undisturbed, a chilling memorial to the programmer and the engine of death that destroyed him. A twin set of jacks still braced the rock at the place where the body had been removed. A large stain coated the inside of the rock and the wall, rust-colored in the bright lights. Hatch looked away.
"It's what you wanted, isn't it?" Neidelman said in a curious tone.
With a tremendous effort, Hatch willed his feet forward, past the stone, past the rust-colored stain, to the well in the center of the room. The iron grating had been removed and a rope ladder led down into darkness.
"Our remote mapping teams only started working the secondary tunnels yesterday," Neidelman said. "When they returned to this vault, they examined the grating and calculated the shaft beneath it intersected the shore tunnel. The one you discovered as a boy. So they sent someone down to investigate. He broke through what seems to have once been some kind of watertight seal." He stepped forward. "I'll go first."
The Captain disappeared down the ladder. Hatch waited, his mind empty of everything but the chill breath from the well before him. Silently, Bonterre took his hand in hers.
A few minutes later, Neidelman called up. Hatch stepped forward, bent down, and gripped the rails of the narrow ladder.
The well was only four feet in diameter. Hatch climbed down, following the smooth-walled shaft as it curved around a large rock. He stepped off the bottom rung, sank his foot into foul-smelling ooze, and looked around, almost drowning in dread.
He was in a small chamber, cut into the hard glacial till. It had the look of a cramped dungeon, massive rock walls on all sides. But then he noticed that one of the walls did not reach the floor. In fact, what he thought was a wall was a massive piece of dressed stone, hewn square.
Neidelman angled his light beneath the stone. There was a dim flash of white.
The pulse pounding at his temples, Hatch took a step forward, then bent down. He unhooked his flashlight from the harness and snapped it on.
Jammed beneath the stone was a skeleton. The Red Sox cap still hung on the skull, clumps of brown hair peeking out from beneath. A rotten shirt clung to the rib cage. Below was a pair of ragged dungaree shorts, still attached by a belt. One bony knee peered out from the denim. A red, high-top Keds sneaker covered the right foot, while the left was still trapped behind the rear of the stone, ground into a rubbery mass.
The distant part of Hatch could see that the legs and arms were massively fractured, the ribs sprung from the breastplate, the skull crushed. Johnny—for this could only be Johnny—had fallen victim to one of Macallan's traps, similar to that which killed Wopner. But without the helmet to slow the movement of the rock, death had been much quicker. At least, Hatch could always hope so.
He reached out, gently touching the brim of the cap. It was Johnny's favorite, signed by Jim Lonborg. Their father had bought it for him on that trip down to Boston, the day the Red Sox won the pennant. His fingers moved down to caress a lock of hair, then traced the curve of the mandible, past the chin to the crushed rib cage, along the arm bones to the skeletonized hand. He noticed every detail as if in a dream: distant, yet with that peculiar intensification that sometimes occurs in dream, every detail etched into his brain with jewellike clarity.
Hatch remained motionless, cradling the cold, birdlike bones in his own hand, in the sepulchral silence of the hole.
Chapter 38
Hatch swung the Plain Jane's dinghy past Cranberry Neck and into the broad, slow reach of the Passabec River. He glanced over his shoulder as he angled the boat closer to shore: Burnt Head lay three miles behind, a reddish-colored smudge against the southern horizon. The late summer morning air held a chill that was pregnant with the promise of winter.
He kept the little engine running hard, concentrating on thinking about nothing.
As the river narrowed and became less tidal, the water grew calm and green. Now he was passing what as a boy he'd called Millionaire's Row: a series of grand nineteenth-century "cottages" adorned with turrets, gables, and mansard roofs. A small child, dressed in the fantastically anachronistic outfit of pinafore and yellow umbrella, waved to him from a porch swing as he went by.
Inland, the landscape softened. Rocky shores gave way to low pebbled beaches, and spruce trees were replaced by mossy oaks and stands of birches. He passed a ruined pier, then a fishing shack on stilts. Not much farther now. Around another bend, and there it was: the shingle beach he remembered so well, its massive, improbable banks of oyster shells heaped twenty feet high. It was deserted, as he knew it would be. Most local residents of Stormhaven and Black Harbor had little interest in prehistoric Indian encampments, or the shell heaps they'd left behind. Most, but not alclass="underline" this was the place Professor Horn had taken him and his brother one warm cloudless afternoon, the day before Johnny died.
Hatch pulled the dinghy up onto the beach, then retrieved his battered paintbox and collapsible chair from the bow. He looked around a moment, deciding on a spot beneath a lone birch tree. It was out of the glare of the sun, and his paints wouldn't dry up in the heat. He placed the paintbox and chair in the shade of the tree, then went back to the dinghy for the fold-up easel and portfolio.