“Um, yes,” Day said.
“After that he started sneaking into people’s attics and hiding until they were asleep. He’d creep out at night, kill them. The whole family, I mean, kill them all and live in the house. He was found serving food to a family of rotting corpses the last time and eventually brought here.”
“But you don’t know his name?”
“He’s never spoken. Completely mute.”
“You must have called him something.”
“Well, some of the warders and the other inmates called him by a buggy sort of name. Some insect. Let me see here.” Folger looked through his file, then looked up at Day and smiled. “Oh, yes. Well, it makes perfect sense. They called him the Harvest Man after the species of spider. You know, it lives in attics. Quite an appropriate moniker, I suppose.”
“Yes,” Day said. “And what about this cell?” He indicated the last empty cell in the row.
“That one was… let me see. Ah, his name is Cinderhouse.” Folger looked up from his stack of files at Day. “Oh, it seems you’re familiar with his history.”
“We’ve met.”
“You arrested him.”
“After he went to my home and threatened my wife.”
“And after he abducted a child,” Hammersmith said.
“And after he killed several other children and two good policemen,” Day said.
“Well, it looks like you’ll have to arrest him all over again,” Folger said. “I remember interviewing him. I didn’t think he seemed particularly dangerous.”
“He was dangerous enough,” Hammersmith said. “He just wasn’t very smart.”
10
Jack heard footsteps coming in the dark, wet shoes slapping the ground, someone moving quickly. It wasn’t the doctor; the doctor hadn’t visited him in days. And it wasn’t the policeman. This was someone new, a gait he didn’t recognize. Whoever it was, he was alone. Jack kept his muscles loose, his breath hot and steady under the canvas hood, and he listened. The footsteps slowed and then stopped as the stranger neared the opening of Jack’s cell.
“Isn’t this exciting?” Jack raised his voice so that the stranger would hear him. “I haven’t had a new visitor in quite some time.”
“What…” The stranger stopped, then started again, nervous. “What is this? Who are you?”
Oh, the stranger didn’t know! He had stumbled upon Jack by accident. Under the hood, Jack smiled. His cracked lips broke and he tasted copper.
“Come closer, little fly,” he said.
“I need to… There’s no time.”
“Someone is following you,” Jack said.
“I don’t know. I mean, yes, they’re looking for me.”
“And where will you hide?”
“Here. Down here.”
“But this is my home. You may only hide here if I allow it.”
“Why are you chained like that?”
“Come closer.”
He heard the stranger shuffle in place, undecided.
“It’s all right,” Jack said. “I can’t hurt you, can I? You can see that. So where’s the harm?” Every word scorched his dry throat. He savored the pain. “Come and take this off my head so that we might see each other and converse like the gentlemen we surely are.”
The stranger didn’t move.
“What’s your name, little fly?”
“Cinder… My name is Cinderhouse, but I fail to see how that matters.” The stranger, Cinderhouse, feeling brave now after his initial confusion, feeling like Jack couldn’t hurt him, chained and hooded in the dark as he was. Jack smiled again. Such a perfect little fly, a tender morsel already caught in Jack’s web, but still unaware of the danger.
“Oh, it matters to me, Mr Cinderhouse. Do you mind if I call you Peter?”
“But that’s not my name.”
“It’s not meant to be a name. It’s a title.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Tell me, do you understand this: Exitus probatur?”
“What?”
“Never mind. They’re not close. The men following you. They’re far away, aren’t they?”
“I don’t know where they are. I think I killed one.”
“We have time before they follow you here. You’re quite safe with me, Peter. I can protect you.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“But why not? I should think you’d be honored.”
Cinderhouse shuffled closer, the soles of his shoes dragging grit from the floor.
“Take the hood from my head and face me,” Jack said.
There was a long moment of silence, and then Jack could feel the presence of the other man, hovering close, and suddenly the canvas was lifted and dull orange light sliced through Jack’s eyes and stabbed into his brain. He hadn’t even known that his eyes were open; there was no difference in the darkness either way and he had long ago lost track. Now his eyelids slammed shut and he gradually lifted them again, a fraction of an inch, letting them grow used to the idea of something besides their accustomed blackness. He let his eyes deal with the light, droplets of color filtering through his lashes, and concentrated on listening to Cinderhouse. The other man had stepped back from him, was loitering at the mouth of the cell, no doubt planning to run.
Frightened little fly.
“If you leave, you will never fulfill your destiny.” Jack’s voice was little more than a whisper, filling the space, echoing from stone to stone. “If you leave now, you will always be lost and afraid, running here and there like a rabbit until you are caught.”
“Who did that to you?”
“I did.”
“I meant the chains. Who chained you here?”
“I told you. I did.”
“You didn’t chain yourself.”
“Of course I did.”
“How?”
Such a stupid little fly.
“You’ve heard of a man, lived centuries ago, who worked miracles? A man who walked on the surface of the sea, laid his healing hands on the sick, and turned water into blood?”
“It was wine. You’re talking about… He turned water into wine.”
“Did he? Perhaps we read different accounts.”
“What does that have to do with…?”
“Oh, it has everything to do. The man I speak of, when he had done what he needed to do to establish his power, he allowed lesser beings to take him, to tear his flesh and spill his blood on the thirsty ground.”
“He died.”
“Do you think so? I don’t. No, he had gone too far to die, taken too much power into himself. He allowed them to think he was gone and then he showed them that power. But only when he was ready and only after he had prepared his disciples.”
The light didn’t hurt so badly anymore and Jack’s eyes were fully open, drinking in the sight of the cell, really a cave, the tall gaunt man in prison dress standing at the edge of the darkness beyond. Cinderhouse was holding a lantern and the light from it reflected on his bald scalp, pink and vulnerable. Jack took a deep breath of cool, fresh-smelling air. He glanced down and saw that his own blood and sweat and shit and piss had turned the ground at his feet black, had soaked into the earth so deeply that it would never wash away, even if these tunnels flooded. He closed his eyes and smiled again.