When I looked up from the pages, the last door hung open, and Dennis, already through it, climbed a gravel path toward a terrifying house of shadows, whose cupola crested trees that didn’t belong in the city I knew, a bright needle aimed at the mysterious stars and illuminated by moonlight.
Maggie: Dennis, no! Come back.
Me: Let him do what he needs to do. Then we all get out of here.
Maggie: No way! He’s coming back with us now.
Me: Maggie, wait!
Maggie chased Dennis. I dashed after her as fresh screams resonated within the walls of the courtyard and footsteps clattered from the surrounding alleys. The meager flames of oil and candle that lit our way back snuffed out one by one behind us. The full moon persisted — then faded as a tangible darkness surrounded us and cut me off from my brother and friend. Cold seeped into my bones as I ascended the trail. Only the crunch of gravel underfoot let me know I remained on the path. I hurried along until I stumbled against a hard object. When I righted myself, a tepid yellow brightness glimmered ahead. I had caught my foot on the first of several steps approaching a doorway. The light came from within it. My eyes adjusted to the gloom. I entered the house in search of Dennis and Maggie.
Dying candle stubs lit the foyer and the bottom of a curving staircase. Seeing no other rooms or doors I climbed the stairs and called out Maggie’s name, then Dennis’s. My voice echoed flatly, but no other answer came. At the top of the stairs I faced three doors along a hallway filled with the odor of age and mustiness. The first two doors proved locked, but the third swung open onto a room where I found my brother and my friend with the strange man in the Georgian clothing. He studied his pocket watch, its chain dangling from his grip. The room — a paneled library stocked with books so ancient they looked ready to crumble to dust — sloped oddly to my right, creating an odd discordance with the sagging shelves. Dennis and Maggie stood side by side at three modest windows of rippled glass and lead muntins. Timid light from a sliver of moon glittered through. Before I saw any more, the Georgian man noticed me. Stuffing his watch into his pocket, he rushed me, and then pushed me back into the hallway. Without a word, he slammed the door in my face and locked it.
I pounded on the wood, called for Maggie and Dennis, but the door held firm, and no one answered my pleas. How long I stayed there, fighting a losing battle with the door, I don’t know. The harder I banged, the louder I cried out, the more the screams that filled that horrible night pierced me. They came from everywhere outside the strange house as if all the screams I’d ever heard reverberated together in that place.
I gave up on the door only when a hand dropped onto my shoulder from behind.
Jolting around, I confronted an arm reaching for me out of the empty shadows.
Another arm joined it. Both seized me by the shoulders then yanked me off-balance. As I toppled forward, darkness cupped me like an angry hand — and shoved.
A sensation of falling came. The world blanked out.
It returned in candle-lit gloom. The secret space in the basement of Redcap’s apartment building, its stones engraved with symbols and formulae, its walls tilted at strange angles. The open trap door through which Maggie and I had descended. Hands still clutched me tight. The arms belonged to a tall, wiry man, who pressed me to my knees and glared down at me. Long, wavy hair shadowed his face. Beaded necklaces click-clacked over a loose, paisley shirt, and from a chain around his neck dangled a talisman like the one Dennis had showed me, engraved with the symbol of Redcap’s coven. People surrounded us, posted at the perimeter of the ritual circle. They chanted. Their words made no sense to me, but in them I heard the familiar rolling rhythm I had earlier mistaken for a passing subway train.
Somewhere in their midst a young child wept.
Redcap: What’d you see though the windows of the Private Estate, Richie.
Me: Are you…Redcap?
The sharp smack of a hand slapping my face.
Redcap: Who else would I be? Tell me what you saw.
Me: What I saw…
Redcap: Your deadbeat brother screwed it up, Richie, so now you put it right and tell me.
Me: Where are Dennis and Maggie?
Redcap: Dennis is dead and probably Maggie too by now.
Squirrel snitched about your plan to pin it on me. Man, I was furious. Then I told him to go along with it because I saw this golden opportunity for you to finish what your brother started. I put the Coven back together just for you, kiddo, and we brought a new sacrifice to reopen the way.
Me: Did you…kill Dennis?
Redcap: Nah, man, the sudden stop when he hit the sidewalk did that.
Me: Let me go find them. Please!
Redcap: Tell me what you saw through the windows. That’s all your brother had to do, but when he came back, he told me to fuck off. You believe it? He wanted to protect the world by keeping the secret. What a hypocrite. And what about me, man? Who’s protecting me from the cosmic darkness thundering at us out of history? Only me, man. Only me. And to do that, I must know what you saw through the windows in the Private Estate.
Me: I saw…I saw a sliver of the moon.
A horrifying groan of anger and frustration from Redcap. Rattling, chittering sounds from the shadows. Louder, faster, frightened chanting from the circle.
Redcap: What else? Tell me.
Me: There isn’t anything else. The guy slammed the door in my face when I tried to look.
Behind Redcap, a figure materialized. An impossibly giant man seemingly carved from black obsidian and with the face of a devil. Its height defied the confines of the room. Redcap shuddered and released me. The chanting of the circle reached a feverish beat. The members of the Coven of the Right Stars took on definition in the dark, men and women who swayed in a trance. An ungainly shape scrabbled around their feet and sent a ripple of excitement among them. The next moment I saw what Dennis had died to avoid. The abominable cockroach thing with the face of a haggard and ancient woman. As large as a dog and hazy as if it were somehow not entirely present. In its segmented forelegs it clutched the body of a bloody child, two, maybe three years old. A new sacrifice. The woman’s face opened its mouth and showed me a blend of teeth and wriggling palps, running with fresh blood. It dawned on me then that I hadn’t noticed when the child’s crying had stopped, and that single moment of realization pushed my senses reeling beyond the point of rational thought. I crawled toward the trap door, but Redcap seized me again and dragged me to my feet. He gestured at me, motions mimicked by the man of black stone, and I couldn’t tell which imitated the other, if the stone man pulled Redcap’s strings or vice versa. Cold terror filled me. I wrenched myself free and dove into the trapdoor opening even as the cockroach thing scuttled toward me.
I fell through a shrieking void. Merciful silence followed. For a time, I sensed nothing.
Then a car horn honked. A dog barked. A child cried. Daylight stabbed my eyes.
I clambered to my feet and stumbled down a narrow alley, spilling out onto a cobblestone road on the west side of Manhattan. Perry Street. The Hudson River a block away. The opposite side of the city from Redcap’s old apartment.
Passersby flashed me frightened glances.
My watch showed me less than an hour had passed since Maggie and I entered the trap door. My senses reeled, but I kept my composure, began walking, telling myself I had dreamt it or fallen victim to a prank by Squirrel, hallucinating on some drug he’d slipped me.
I gave up trying to rationalize it.