Chain of Souls (Salem VI) (23 page)

The maid interrupted Sarah's thoughts as she came back into the room with a pot of fresh tea and glass of juice. She poured tea into Sarah's cup and put down the juice. When she went over to pour more tea into Jessica's cup, Sarah stole a glance at the newspaper, trying to see the day's date along the top of the page.

She had only made it as far as seeing the word November before Jessica moved the paper so that Sarah could no longer see it. For half a second Sarah felt a twinge of alarm. Had Jessica done that on purpose? Why didn't she want Sarah to see the paper? How long had she been here? Had it been October or November when she arrived?

"Jessica, could I see the paper?" she asked.

Jessica looked at her, and Sarah felt something coldly appraising in her glance before Jessica broke into another of her trademark smiles. "My dear, it was rude of me to be reading at the table. We are both here in this lovely place so we can rest up and regain our strength. A newspaper only pulls us back into the problems of the larger world and works against our recovery.

"What am I recovering from? I don't remember. I don't remember much of anything, in fact."

"Things were very traumatic back in Salem before you left. And then you were abducted, do you remember that?"

Sarah paused, trying to reassemble the memories. She had been getting out of her car when someone had grabbed her, she recalled that much. There had been a strange smell and then darkness, and then she'd awakened to find herself here. Finally, she shook her head. "No."

"Well, suffice it to say, you
were
abducted, but then we rescued you, and you've been recovering here ever since."

Sarah closed her eyes. Was that a different explanation than Jessica had previously given her? She wasn't sure, but she thought it might be. The problem was her brain was still so fuzzy she couldn't be certain of anything.

A moment later the maid brought her breakfast, and the smell of freshly scrambled eggs, buttered toast, and sausage hit her nose and made her stomach rumble with hunger pangs. She forgot about her questions and whatever it was that had alarmed her and took a bite.

For the next several moments she gave herself up to eating and enjoying the wonderful flavors of the food. For some reason, sensual pleasures like food, the feel of a hot bath on her skin when she lay in the tub every afternoon, or the warmth of crisp sheets when she lay under the comforter at night, all of these things suddenly seemed more important to her than they ever had before. Even the pleasure of walking through the pastures and up the meandering country roads with Jessica, the smell of salt-laden air in her nostrils, and the tingle of clean wind on her cheeks had deeper meanings she had never been aware of before.

She had discovered the importance of feeling good, of pleasing her senses, and she couldn't believe she had over emphasized her job for so many years and ignored her physical needs. In addition to the purely personal, she was starting to realize there was one other thing she wanted that she had largely ignored for just as long: a relationship.

Her good looks, inherited from her mother, had meant she'd always had plenty of opportunities for male companionship, but she had kept men at arm's length, believing that in any relationship the woman always ended up making more compromises than the man. Not wanting to be the one who had to make the inevitable career compromises, she had simply avoided entanglements in the first place. Now, however, along with wanting her skin soft and warm from a bath and her stomach full of good food and her muscles feeling toned and fresh from a good walk, she found herself missing another body beside her in bed, someone to speak to across the dinner table, someone in whom she could confide her innermost secrets.

"What are you thinking about, my dear?" Jessica asked, sounding friendly and interested, always concerned for Sarah's best interests.

Sarah paused, smiling before she answered. "I was thinking about having a man in my life," she said, thinking Jessica asked such penetrating questions but never seemed to be prying.

Jessica dabbed her lips with her napkin and stood up from the table. "Are you ready for your walk, my dear? You'll have to tell me all about this new interest of yours."

JOHN SAT IN THE FRONT SEAT OF THE OLD PEUGEOT
looking out the window as suburbs gave way to small farms and the countryside became hillier. Leaving Krakow, they climbed away from the valley around the Wisla River and drove through miles of farmland, the road sometimes winding back down into the valley to cut through a small town before heading back into the hills again. Finally, the road settled back into the valley and they continued on through an endless topography of farms until they came to an intersection of several roads and John saw the first sign for Osweicim.

"Is that where we're going?" he asked.

Czarnecki nodded. They drove into the city of Osweicim and out the other side, and they hadn't gone another mile before John felt his throat start to tighten up. He suddenly felt feverish, and his muscles began to tighten, his hands clenching and unclenching involuntarily.

He had seen people have allergic reactions to peanuts, and even though he wasn't allergic, he felt his airway begging to close off, and then a sound that started off as a soft wailing became stronger and stronger. John could see Czarnecki turning his head slightly and giving him a sideways glance. Czarnecki realized that whatever was happening to him was quite terrible, but he seemed to have expected it to happen because the rabbi did not slow the car.

John's first panicked thought was that the rabbi must be another Coven member who had figured out a way to poison him somehow. He tried to turn his head to see if Amy was having the same problem, but by this time he could barely move. The wailing sound had grown louder and louder and was now drowning out every other sound.

He tried to say something, tell Amy he needed help, but all he could manage was choking grunts. There was a touch on his shoulders and neck, a soothing, gentle touch, Amy's hands trying to tell him everything would be okay.

At some point the car came to a halt. Up ahead he saw a building, austere and ugly and made of reddish-brown brick. The road seemed to dead end at the building, and to John life itself also seemed to end at the building. He felt so much pain, unimaginable pain, and by now the wailing had grown so loud he thought his ears must have been bleeding.

Things were going from bad to worse, his eyes tearing so badly he could barely see, his nose running, a mixture of snot and tears pouring down over his lips, his muscles cramping uncontrollably. He thought he was going to suffocate, that his mind was going to snap from the torture of the wails, and then, just when he thought he couldn't take it a second longer, it started to change.

He didn't know if the car was moving, but the wailing began to recede, and gradually his muscles loosened and breath came back into his lungs, just a fraction at first and then a bit more. He was aware of the car door opening and felt something soft on his face, and he realized Amy was cleaning him up and then pulling him to his feet.

Walking like a very old man, he shuffled between Amy and Czarnecki, who held his arms as they walked toward the red brick building. They passed signs that he was unable to read, but he had the impression they were in a public place. The wailing continued to drop in volume and his muscles unclenched a bit more. When his breath had become more normal and he thought he could trust his voice, he asked, "Can you hear that?"

Amy looked at him, "Only when I touch you. If I let go, I can't hear it. Is it terrible?"

"Not as bad now as before."

"I still can't see very well. Where are we?"

"Just keep walking," Czarnecki said. "I think it will all become clear in a moment."

Czarnecki led them up to the very front of the building, and as they stepped close John suddenly saw and felt, and it was almost enough to take him to his knees. On both side of him there were suddenly huge numbers of people standing in a line. There were men and women, old and young; there were children and teenagers and infants in their mother's arms.

It wasn't just the people; it was what he felt, as if he was experiencing the totality of all of their emotions all at the same time. He experienced rage and fear and terror and helplessness and unspeakable sorrow, each emotion totally outsized and all encompassing, something larger and more profound than a human being was meant to feel. As if the emotions were knives, John felt being cut to pieces and reassembled. As if they were stretching machines, he felt himself being pulled and wrenched as they were shoved inside of him with a pain that was so intense it crossed from being mental to being physical as well.

He felt his heart pounding, his blood pressure rising like an engine revving past the red line, and his nerve endings seeming to fragment under the load. When he looked down he saw he was holding the hands of the nearest people on both sides, but he didn't know when he'd grasped them or how long he'd been holding them. The two on either side of him were old men, wearing black coats and black fedoras like Rabbi Charnecki's. Both men were silent and expectant, and they were looking at John with quiet intensity. The two men held out their other hands and people took them, as one by one all the people began to clasp hands until they were joined together in a chain that seemed to extend out a long, long way in either direction.

As John watched the line continued to grow, and he realized those people who had not yet become part of the hand-holding chain were wailing, but each time one of them joined their hand to the last person in line, they would fall silent and turn their silent gaze down the line toward John.

No one had told him what this place was called or who these people were, but he now understood at a level beyond the reach of words. He looked from side to side at the wide, expectant eyes and felt an anger begin to build inside him. Unlike the night in the catacombs beneath Salem, this anger was neither white hot or uncontrollable. Nonetheless it was consuming, but more like the molten core of a star that might burn for eons rather than the quick, hot flash from a can of gasoline. John looked to either side, took in what had grown to be thousands of people standing hand in hand, a link of bodies that stretched to the horizon. He understood why he was here and what together they were supposed to accomplish, and he nodded once in each direction.

Then he let go of the hands and turned to Czarnecki. "We can go now," he said, hearing only the sound of the cold wind blowing across the lonely ground.

AS THEY DROVE AWAY JOHN TURNED IN HIS SEAT
and looked back at the austere building set in the middle of nowhere with bucolic farm fields on either side and the ruins of what must have been the dormitories of the prisoners before they were put to death behind. He turned back around and shuddered, his eyes not focused on anything in particular. He felt like a man who had just had the crap pounded out of him in a bar fight so totally and completely that he was stunned into silence and submission. He felt Amy's hands on his shoulders, seeming to ground him into his existence.

The past few minutes were still a total blur. He had only stood there, probably not longer than five minutes, but looking back, it seemed like an eternity.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked after several moments, feeling the anger and resentment build.

"Tell you what?" Czarnecki asked.

"Where we were headed. What was going to happen when we got there."

"Would you have come if we had?" Czarnecki asked.

John thought about the horror he had experienced. "I don't know."

He fell silent for a time, feeling Amy's fingers as they tried to massage the tightness from his muscles. "What am I supposed to do with it?" he asked after another long silence.

Czarnecki turned his head to look at him. "Doesn't it give you power of some kind?"

"I've no idea." John shook his head. "It's not something I can just call up, like a magic trick." He felt a hollowness inside, as if rather than filling him up, the spirits he had seen and experienced had exposed his glaring weakness and inadequacy.