"Wait a sec," Jack said. "What's this about not believing in your ghost? Why are you doing this demolition work then?"
He shrugged. "I'm caught between. Certain aspects of this situation don't jibe."
"Like what?"
"Well, like that song, for instance. I heard what sounded like a little girl singing. But how can a ghost sing? Or talk, for that matter?"
"If it can smash mirrors and write in dust, why shouldn't it be able to sing and talk?"
"It's got no vocal cords, and no lungs to push air past them if it did. So how does it make noise?"
Jack thought he knew the answer. "Last I heard, noise is nothing more than vibrating air. If this thing can smash a mirror, I'd think it should be able to vibrate air."
Lyle nodded, grinning. He turned to Charlie. "See? That's what I need. An explanation I can sink my teeth into. Not simply saying 'It's God's will.' That won't cut it."
"It will, bro," Charlie said. "When that final trumpet blows, it will."
"So you believe."
"I know, Lyle."
"That's just it: You don't know. And neither do I. Neither of us will ever know until we die."
This was getting a little heavy. Jack walked over to the exposed granite blocks and ran a hand over the stone. Cold. And clammy. He pulled his hand away. For a moment there it felt as if the surface had shifted under his touch. He looked at his hand, then at the stone. Nothing had changed. He tried it again and felt that same strange, squirming sensation.
"Looking for something?" Lyle asked.
"Just checking out these blocks."
As he moved to another stone, he glanced back and noticed Lyle staring at him. More than staring—squinting at him, as if trying to bring him into focus.
"Something wrong?"
Lyle blinked. "No. Nothing."
Jack turned back to the stones. He found one with a cross-shaped pocket and noticed scratch marks in the granite around the depression.
"Didn't the Greek say some of the stones had inlaid crosses?"
"Right," Lyle said, moving closer. "Brass and nickel."
Jack ran a finger over the gouges. "Looks like Dmitri was none too gentle in digging them out."
"Yeah, I noticed those before. I wonder what he did with them?"
"Maybe he used them as grave markers."
"Maybe he wanted to make the place more hospitable to demons," Charlie said. "They can't bear the presence of a cross."
In an effort to head off another argument that wasn't going to settle anything, Jack grabbed a pry bar and held it up.
"What say we take down the rest of the paneling?"
"Why bother?" Charlie said. "Probably just more of the same."
Jack jabbed the straight end of the bar through a section of paneling and felt the tip strike the stone beyond. He reversed the bar, shoved the curved end into the opening, and ripped away a chunk of the laminated wood. Despite the nagging tug of discomfort in his flank, it felt good. Sometimes he liked to break things. Liked it a lot.
"Maybe not. We look hard enough, we might find that some of these blocks aren't mortared like the others. That they slide out and there's some sort of hidey hole behind them. Who knows what we'll find there? Maybe what's left of Tara Portman."
Charlie said, "It's not Tara Portman, I tell you, it's a—"
"Wait." Lyle held up a hand. "Something's happening."
Jack looked around. He hadn't heard anything.
"What?"
"Don't you feel it?"
Jack glanced at Charlie who looked just as confused.
"Feel what?"
Lyle turned in a slow circle. "Something's coming."
Then Jack felt it too. A chill, a sense of gathering, as if all the warmth in the room were being sucked into its center to drain away through an invisible black hole there, leaving a steadily growing knot of cold in its place.
Cold stabbed Jack high on his right thigh, so cold it burned. He clutched at the spot and felt a frozen lump in the pocket. The key ring! He clenched his teeth as he dropped to his knees—God, it hurt—and clawed at the pocket, reaching in, trying to grab the key ring but the skin of his fingers stuck to it like a wet tongue to a frozen wrought iron fence. He peeled his fingers away, losing some skin, and yanked at the fabric, pulling it out, inverting the pocket. Finally the Roger Rabbit figure appeared and tumbled toward the floor.
But it never landed. Instead it dipped and then rose and darted toward the center of the cellar. There it hovered in the air. Jack saw a rime of frost form along the figure's limbs, then the head, finally engulfing the trunk.
A high keening wail began to echo the air, growing in pitch and volume as Jack pushed himself back up to his feet. The frost thickened on the Roger Rabbit figure, and Jack thought he heard the plastic creak and crinkle as it became brittle from the intense cold.
Suddenly the wail became a screech of rage as Roger's head snapped off and hurtled across the cellar. It struck one of the granite blocks and shattered into powder that scattered and swirled like drifting snow. Then an arm snapped off and flashed in the opposite direction, just missing Charlie's head. Jack ducked as an arm narrowly missed him.
More pieces flew as the frenzied screech rose in pitch and volume. And then there were no more pieces and yet still the enraged howl rose until Jack had to cover his ears. The sound became a physical thing, battering him until…
It stopped.
As suddenly as the sound had begun, silence returned. The sense of presence dissipated as well until Jack felt that the cellar was again occupied by just the three of them.
He shook his head to relieve the ringing in his ears. It didn't work.
Lyle and Charlie looked shaken, but Jack felt oddly calm. Deadly calm.
"What the hell was that all about?" Lyle said.
"Yeah," Charlie said. "What'd you have in your pocket? Looked like that cartoon rabbit…"
"Roger Rabbit."
"Yeah."
Lyle snorted a laugh and shook his head. "Roger Rabbit. Just the sort of thing to drive the average demon into a frenzy."
Charlie took a step toward his brother. "Warning you, Lyle—"
Jack jumped in. "Tara Portman's father told Gia that Tara was a Roger Rabbit fan. I was wondering if that key ring might be hers."
"Judging from what just happened," Lyle said, bending and rubbing his finger through the powdery remains of one of Roger's legs, "I think she answered you with a very big yes."
"That she did," Jack said, nodding. "And she also identified her killer."
But his satisfaction at solving the mystery was marred by the unanswered question of how and why he'd come to be involved.
12
Gia sat in a pew three-quarters back from the altar under the vaulted ceiling and waited for peace.
She'd taken a slow walk from Sutton Square down to St Patrick's Cathedral. She wasn't sure why she'd come, hadn't consciously headed this way. She'd simply gone for a walk as a break from painting and found herself on Fifth Avenue. She ambled past St. Pat's and then doubled back to visit, hoping to find some of the serenity and inner peace religion was supposed to bring. So far it remained elusive.
The sense of isolation was welcome, though. Here in this huge, stone-wrapped space she felt cut off from the bustling reality just beyond the tall oak doors and insulated from the need that called to her from that house in Astoria.
She sat alone and watched the gaggles of tourists wandering in and out, the Catholics blessing themselves with holy water and lighting candles, the rest standing around and gawking at the gothic arches, the stations of the cross spaced along the side walls, the larger-than-life statues, the giant crucifix, the gilded altar.
The images drew Gia back to her years in Our Lady of Hope grammar school in Ottumwa. Not a particularly Catholic town, but then Iowa wasn't a particularly Catholic state. There'd been enough Catholic kids to fill the local church school though, and keep the nuns of the convent busy as teachers. Of all that black-robed crew, she best remembered Sister Mary Barbara—known to all the kids as Sister Mary Barbed-wire. Not because she'd liked the nun; quite the opposite: she'd scared the hell out of Gia.