On the Fifth Day (26 page)

place ruse, the priest had said "
Il Capitano.
"

Pietro's dying words lingered in his mind like ghosts. At the time they had meant nothing to him, but now, quite sud

denly, he was sure he understood.
Somewhere in here,
Thomas thought,
somewhere piled amid the thousands of others, is a
single skull, one bound to an old ghost story about a captain
who left the grave to attend the wedding he had orchestrated
for a young woman who had tended his bones.
And under that skull were his brother's papers.

Okay,
thought Thomas, panning his flashlight over the fleshless faces.
But which one?

CHAPTER 49

Walking faster now, he tried to remember what Giovanni had told him about the legend of the Captain. For a moment he could think of nothing except the outline of the story, the woman who wanted a husband, the marriage celebration, and the good-looking stranger who had offended her new spouse. 189

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What about the skull?

It was shiny, he recalled, polished so that no dust clung to it.

That smacked of a legend that had been given an anchor in reality. Somewhere in the Fontanelle was a glossy, polished skull, one forever tied to the old tale of the Captain. The story was well known, so the skull wouldn't be buried in a pile somewhere, indistinguishable from those around it. It would be by itself, marked out from the rest. Pietro had hidden the notes where they would be safe, but he had also made them re

coverable.

Thomas approached the closest waist-high ledge on which the skulls were stacked in blocks of eight, and began to scan them for one that might look different. They were all differ

ent, he thought, if not in the ways he wanted. That was what made them so unsettling. He thought all skulls would look the same, but they didn't. Some of it was just about the way they had been positioned: staring blankly forward, looking off to the side, or rocking back in what looked unnervingly like laughter. Some of the difference was in the state of de

cay: some more complete, teeth intact, eye sockets sharply formed, nasal cavity clean. Others were rotted, broken, or marked by violence Thomas could only hope had happened after death: the skulls split, cheeks broken, septums col

lapsed. Some even looked as if their tops had been surgically sawn off. Some were evenly pale as alabaster; some gray and mottled; some brown, stained, and hung with a fibrous filth Thomas dared not name. And among them were smaller skulls: children, babies.

Christ, what a place.

He stared at the smallest skull he had seen, riveted to it, fighting to suppress the images, the memories that were rising within him. Thomas blinked and turned away delib

erately--

Not that. Not now.

--but found that the nagging dread he had felt since he arrived in the cemetery had turned into a deep, penetrating 190

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sadness. Maybe that was what kept people away, he thought as he walked, forcing himself to look again, to study the remains. It wasn't the Gothic horrors of ghostly apparitions and silly stories that clung to these bones that was so unsettling; it was the way they each tried to tell you who they were, each dead face once loved by someone, now nameless and forgotten. And there were so many of them, so that in his head Thomas began to feel their presence swelling, like voices lost in a crowd.

Was one of them Ed's?

It was a curious thought, nonsensical, and he shrugged it away, but its implication registered in some deep recess of his mind.

You never even saw his body.

He pushed the self-pity away, striding forward with even more deliberation as he scanned the bones around him. And then he saw it.

In a glass box marked with the year 1948 was a skull brighter, slicker than the rest. It was ivory-colored, toothless, but otherwise large and well-preserved. Someone had placed a red glass votive lamp in front of it, though the candle inside had burned out long ago. It sat prominently on a corner ledge. Thomas set down his flashlight and carefully picked up the glass box and set it on the floor.

Beneath it was a folder stuffed with papers.

Thomas tucked them under his arm and replaced the box with the gleaming skull.

"Thanks, Captain," he said, and then, struck by something like reverence, touched the top of the box with his fingers, as if completing some kind of ritual.

He had taken no more than a couple of steps, however, when something stopped him, something as much instinct as actual sight or hearing. He turned to stare down the long gallery. Something else was here. Something alive.

Thomas kept quite still and now he heard it, down at the end of the corridor, something moving, skulking. He closed 191

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his eyes and strained for more, at once catching the sound he had least wanted to hear: a rasping, hissing snarl through un

naturally pointed teeth. He was coming.

CHAPTER 50

He wasn't afraid, not this time, not as he had been before when the killer had come creeping up the stairs into the dome where Pietro was dying in his arms like some hellish Pieta. He had been scared then, as he knew he was meant to be. That was what this ghoul did, what he fed on: fear. But Thomas had been walking the halls of the dead for the last half hour, and while he did not want to be carved like Satoh, or strung up like the monsignor, he was not afraid of the killer's ghoulish theatrics, and that was a kind of victory. If he had still had Roberta's gun, he would have faced the gar

goyle down, shot him if he'd had to. But he was unarmed. He shut off the flashlight and crouched in the darkness, thinking and listening, trying to home in on the ghoul's snuf

fling, on the animal noises he had cultivated to scare his victims. A disdainful anger flared in Thomas, and he suddenly didn't want to hide anymore. He inched back to the wall as silently as he could and reached out with his left hand, fingers spread. He moved it cautiously through space, felt a hard ridge of bone and moved back another foot, carefully so as not to dislodge any of the skulls. The snuffling and hissing was getting closer. Then there was light at the end of the passage, a flickering, yellow light that cast leaping irregular shadows on the walls. The ghoul had taken a candle from the church, Thomas thought, and the idea pleased him a little, made the ghoul more human. The ghoul didn't like the dark.

Thomas's left hand found the edge of the glass box. He 192

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traced his fingers lightly over its surface till he found the sim

ple latch. He opened it and blindly raised the lid. He reached in with both hands and lifted the shining skull of the Captain out. Still crouching, he cradled the skull in his lap, then raised the glass box and balanced it on his left hand, like a waiter with a tray of drinks. His right strayed back to the skull, grasping it by the back. Then he squatted there among the bones, his face among the piled skulls, and waited for the ghoulish candle bearer, quite calm, quite uncannily calm. The killer's pale, bald head came into view, the candle held aloft, the sputtering flame showing more of him than he could possibly see himself. The ghoul twisted his head suddenly and Thomas saw it again, the batlike face, the filed, jagged teeth. And the curved knife. Thomas saw that too, and his muscles began to tauten like those of a sprinter in the blocks. The killer took three more paces toward him down the broad passage, and Thomas saw the hungry malevolence in his tiny eyes. A part of him wanted to leap to his feet and run as far and as fast as he could, but the smoldering, bullish anger had taken control now, stifling the urge to flee. The candlelight made the hollows of the ghoul's cheeks look as deep as those of the skulls around him, and the bones of his naked chest and shoulders showed tight under pale, blood-splashed skin as he came closer: five yards, three yards. Another step and the ghoul would see Thomas crouching in the shadows at the end of the gallery. And then the bald man froze, candle held high, blade out

stretched: he was listening, and something came over his fea

tures that changed him utterly. The calculated wickedness faltered and he looked unsure of himself, a transformation that made him smaller, more human.

Thomas could hear it too. It began with the groan of a great door opening, then voices, men's voices speaking in hushed tones. Thomas couldn't catch the words, but the music of them was certainly Italian. They had come in through the main door.

Who the hell would come in here at night, letting them

selves in as if they owned the place?

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The police? Could they have found Pietro already? If so, suspect or no suspect, Thomas's best chance was with them. Without pausing to consider further, he leaped to his feet, took one long stride toward the ghoul, and thrust the skull of the Captain into his face with his left hand. The ghoul flinched away in surprise--perhaps even in horror--and as he did so Thomas brought the glass box around hard, smashing it over his head with his other hand. The ghoul crumpled, hissing, dropping the sickle, clawing at his eyes as the blood ran down his face. Thomas kicked once and he dropped entirely, moan

ing in pain as the blade skittered away into the darkness. Thomas snapped on the flashlight to see where it had fallen, and in the sudden leap of shadows, the ghoul rolled into a loping retreat. Thomas hesitated, cursing himself, but his moment of advantage was past and pursuit would likely get him killed. This was no time for justice of any stripe, and he wasn't the person to administer it. Right now, it was more important that he get out in one piece.

Thomas walked quickly toward the entrance, to where the men had come in, though they were now silent. As soon as he rounded the corner, half blinded by their flashlights, he knew they weren't police. Quite the contrary, in fact. The clothes, the body language were all wrong. One of them had a gun. He had stumbled into the local Mafia who--as Giovanni had warned him--met from time to time in the Fontanelle. CHAPTER 51

Thomas considered his options and, in a second, chose grace

ful bravado.

Very Italian,
he thought, as he put the folder of notes back under his arm and began to walk. He was still holding the skull of the Captain.

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He turned the corner at an even pace. Five men in long coats were silhouetted against the door. All had flashlights turned on him; two had guns. Thomas didn't hesitate, didn't raise his hands. He saw the gray rectangle of space where the door was, and he made for it, walking with long deter

mined strides--but not overly quick--as if nothing were more normal.

Somebody spoke to him in Italian and, when he kept com

ing, repeated what was clearly a question in a higher, more in

sistent register. Another gun came out and was trained on him. Someone whispered.

Thomas kept walking. One of the men stepped closer to the wall, and then another on the other side did the same. They were parting before him, and beyond them the massive door was still ajar.

"
Buona sera,
" said Thomas, nodding formally, not making eye contact, not slowing down, but thrusting the skull into the hands of one of the nearest men. The man took it before he re

alized what it was, and then began sputtering his outrage. God alone knew what they had expected when they had come in here, but it wasn't this. In the caves behind him he could hear the snarling rage of the ghoul. The Mafiosi--if that's what they were--could hear it too, and their attention was leaving Thomas and gravitating to the darkness behind him. Another gun came out.

Then Thomas was walking between them, and though they watched him, no one spoke. He kept going, stepped through the door without looking back, and turned right into the street by the church. He was out before he realized what their flash

lights must have made glaringly obvious. His shirt and trousers were stiff with the unmistakable rust of Pietro's blood.

CHAPTER 52

His composure was feigned. It was what he guessed would serve him best with those particular men, but he didn't feel anything like as collected as he had seemed, and once out in the night air, he found his pulse beginning to race as the day's accumulated horrors registered fully for the first time. His brain had managed to push back the enormity of Roberta's de

ception, the attempt on his life, the death of Pietro, and the episode in the Fontanelle, but now it was all massing above him like a dam threatening to burst. He also ached from his various exertions, the fighting and the running, but he knew that he had to somehow keep it together, now more than ever. He found a side window into the presbytery and broke it as quietly as he could with his elbow. He allowed himself no more than three minutes inside, time enough to wash, dump his clothes, and grab a pair of ill-fitting trousers and a cotton shirt, both gray, from Pietro's wardrobe. They smelled musty, as if the priest had grown out of them long ago and they had merely hung there ignored ever since. He let himself out of the side door, walking in a manner that he hoped looked both casual and businesslike.

He wanted to call the police, tell them about Pietro and the ghoul in the Fontanelle, but he knew that he was a suspect in the death of Satoh and that he was the obvious link to Pietro. He also knew that he was no longer being merely threatened and spied upon: someone wanted him dead. Pietro's body would probably remain undiscovered till morning, when a flower arranger or pious parishioner who stopped in to light a candle on her way to work would find him there. Thomas winced at the thought.

"Sorry," he said aloud, to both the dead priest and whoever would be scarred by finding him.

But if they wouldn't find Pietro till morning he had the rest 196

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of the night to go underground. He dared not go back to his hotel, but he had his passport and wallet with him. Roberta would be waking, maybe was already hitching a ride back into town, relying once more on the way her Franciscan habit made her respectable and safe.