"Well . . . the smoke seems to think that he's hiding down here."
Hicks grimaced, as if this was all too much for him. "The smoke thinks he's down here? For Pete's sake."
Decker took an awkward step over the broken bricks and eased himself sideways through the opening. The smell of herbs was even stronger here, but there was another smell, too, and it was sickening. The smell of seawater and raw sewage, and bad fish, and half-decayed crabs.
He maneuvered himself around and offered his hand to
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Queen Ache, but she managed to climb through the opening unaided. The "staircase" was only a steep slope of crumbled masonry, slippery with damp, and Decker had to keep one hand pressed against the right-hand wall to steady himself as he descended. Halfway down he lost his footing and landed on his backside, sliding down six or seven feet before he managed to catch hold of a protruding beam of rotten timber and stop himself.
At the bottom of the slope was the opening to a low, pitch-black crawl space. They shone their flashlights into the darkness, crisscrossing like light sabers. The floor of the crawl space was thick with streaky black mud, and the ceiling was buttressed with dripping brick. Decker reckoned that it ran more than two hundred feet, from one side of the station building to the other.
Hicks said, "If you get caught in here, Lieutenant, you won't stand a hope in hell."
"Has to be done, sport."
"But if you can't even see him—"
"I can," Queen Aché reassured him.
"Okay . . ." Hicks said, reluctantly, "so what's the plan?" "I guess we'll just have to search the place on our hands and knees. Do it systematically, in squares."
"No, Lieutenant," Queen Aché said. "You won't have to do that. Look."
Decker turned around. The smoke from the burning apples was drifting steadily down the staircase and into the crawl space. When Decker shone his flashlight on it, he saw that it was hurrying toward the right-hand side, about three-quarters of the way under the station, where it abruptly disappeared downward This was where the ceiling had collapsed from the floor above.
"Looks like we've found him," Decker said.
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"So what do we do now?" Hicks asked.
"We propitiate his eleda."
"I thought we were just going to blow his head off." "Same thing, differently put."
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CHAPTER THIRTY
THREE
Decker took the bundle of candles out of his pocket. Queen Aché untied the ribbon around them and lit them, handing one to Decker and one to Hicks.
"You will have to think respectful thoughts about Change). Make him your offering of fruit and beg his forgiveness for the sins of your forefathers."
"And you really think that will work? Think what he did to Moses Adebolu."
"Change) saw Moses Adebolu as a traitor to his faith. You are only his blood enemy."
"Is that all? That's reassuring. But, well, we all have to die someday, don't we? Let's go do it."
He crouched down and entered the crawl space, the brick ceiling scraping against his back. The sewagey reek of river water was even more overpowering down here, and the
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greenish black mud squashed thickly into his brand-new Belvedere loafers.
As he approached the hole where Queen Aché's apple smoke was disappearing, he could see more clearly what had happened. A large section of the ceiling had collapsed, not enough to cause any structural damage to the station, but enough to cause the floor beneath it to collapse, too. He shone his flashlight on the bricks and rubble and saw that there was a gaping cavity beneath the foundations, black as a prehistoric cave. He could also see rotting wooden uprights, and part of an old brick wall, which he took to be remnants of the old fishing dock at Shockoe Creek.
Inside the cavity he saw greasy wet planks, blackened with age, which could have been a section of a ship's deck, although most of them had given way, and there was another cavity below them, where the ship's hold must have been.
Queen Ache and Hicks came crouching up to join him. Hicks knocked his head on the ceiling and said, "God damn it."
"You see that?" Decker said. "I'll bet you that was the ship that was carrying Major Shroud's casket—the Nathan Cooper, wasn't it? When they started renovating the station last year, all the drilling must have brought the ceiling down, and opened up the old Shockoe dock."
"You mean to say they built the station right over the ship, without even bothering to move it?"
"Maybe it wasn't practical to move it. Maybe the builders were too scared to move it. It looks like they filled in the creek and buried the ship, too."
Decker tried to penetrate the ship's hold with his flashlight, but the darkness seemed to swallow the beam of light completely, and absolutely nothing was reflected back. His jaw was trembling, not only because of the chilly damp
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down here in the crawl space, but because he could sense that something deeply malevolent was very close. It was the same feeling that he had experienced in his nightmares—the feeling that somebody was rushing toward him, somebody who wanted to do him terrible harm.
He paused for a moment and took a steadying breath, and then another, even though the air down here was so fetid. He had never suffered from claustrophobia before, but now he was conscious of the tons and tons of brick and masonry that were weighing down on him, and the fact that he would have to crouch like Quasimodo to escape anything that came after him.
"Lieutenant?" Hicks asked. "You okay, Lieutenant?" "What? Never felt better."
"You really think there's something down here?"
"I'm sure of it. Let's get down there and check it out." "That deck don't look none too safe."
"Well, we'll just have to tread easy, then, won't we?"
Queen Aché knelt down in the mud. Her candle flame was dancing in the draft, so her expression seemed to change from one second to the next—amused, indifferent, scornful, disturbed. "Chango is here, no question about it. Yemayá can sense his Chango's presence, very strong."
"In that case, we'd better go get him."
Queen Ache gripped his sleeve. "Don't forget. You must acknowledge Changó's greatness. You must beg him to forgive you for all of your misdeeds. Whatever Major Shroud looks like, however he talks to you, it is Chango to whom you are paying your respects, not him. When Chango is distracted—then and only then can you deal with Major Shroud."
"How will I know when that is?"
"Because I will tell you. You cannot see Chango, but Yemaya can."
"Okay, then. Hicks, you ready?"
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"I guess so."
Decker turned around and cautiously climbed backward down the heaps of rubble. His shoes immediately dislodged broken bricks and crumbling mortar, creating a miniature landslide that rattled onto the planking of the ship below. As he climbed down lower, he saw that a rusted iron girder had fallen across the ship, preventing the rubble from dropping any farther, so that there was a gap of at least three feet between the rubble and the deck. Grunting with effort, he edged himself around so that he could jump down. More bricks suddenly slipped beneath his feet and before he could jump he fell awkwardly sideways and landed on his side, bruising his shoulder and his hip. He said, "Fuck!" His candle rolled away from him, into a pool of stagnant water, where it instantly fizzled out.
"Are you okay, sir?" Hicks called.
"Terrific, damn it."
"Your candle!" Queen Ache warned him. "You must light your candle!"
Decker climbed to his feet and retrieved his candle. He dried it on his sleeve and then lit it again with his cigarette lighter. "Queen Aché? You coming down next?"