The Book of 21 (30 page)

Not far from them, a low railing separated the pews from the altar. Behind the railing were a few cabinets, candles, incense burners, and two open doors leading back into the rest of the church. More pertinent to his current need, however, was a red rope that ran through a series of small brass poles with loops at their tops.

Father Lamb caught his gaze, and said, “The rope is used to guide the communion line.”

“Directing the sheep to their slaughter, Father Lamb?” Amy laughed.

“Enough, Amy,” John sighed. “Anyway, I doubt that’s the good Father’s real name.”

John made his way around the railing and untied the rope. The rope was thick enough, and seemed strong enough, to support him. He slipped it out of the other eyelets and moved to the railing in front of the pews. There, he tied the rope around the railing and tugged a bit to make sure that it was secure.

“I guess there is no chance I could borrow my gun from you, just in case the demon we saw on the relief just happens to be down there,” he quipped.

Amy’s face crinkled, and she replied, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Thought so,” he said. “Just out of curiosity, is that the revolver I left in the woods last night?”

“Thanks for leaving me at the diner long enough to make a call and get a special delivery.” She smiled, and continued, “Sophia thought it was a nice touch to use your weapon, and easier to explain if I had to shoot you.”

John breathed deeply and exhaled slowly.

Amy looked over at Father Lamb, and snapped, “Answer fast, Father, and realize that if he doesn’t come back, you get shot; is there any other way out of the Mithraeum down there?”

Father Lamb shook his head, then answered, “You know there isn’t.”

“Lower him down, then, Father.”

“No, thanks,” John interjected, shaking his head. “If it’s the good Father’s job to protect this portal, I don’t need him to accidentally drop me into whatever hell is waiting down there.”

John looked into the shaft. It was too narrow for him to repel. Even if it was larger, his shoes would not give him the traction he needed, and his ankle would not take the stress. He pulled the rope taught and used the old rusty rungs as a foothold while the rope bore much of his weight.

“This may take a bit,” he said.

Amy cocked her head, glared at him, and said, “Move your ass, lest some others show up and I don’t need you anymore.”

John gave her a mock smile and lowered himself into the darkness. Surprisingly, the iron rungs seemed rather sturdy. After about twenty to thirty feet, he hit bottom, and said, “I’m down.”

“What do you see?” Amy shouted down the shaft.

“Nothing. It’s pitch black down here.” John realized he had the small LED flashlight on his keychain and started to dig for it.

“Head’s up, Einstein,” she said.

John looked upward to see Amy holding a candle and box of matches in her left hand.

She shook the candle and matchbox for emphasis, and said, “The good thing about being in a church is that there are plenty of candles. I hope you can catch, John.”

Her fingers opened just enough that only the box of matches dropped. Amy watched for John to complete the catch, and then let the candle follow. John snatched it out of the air and began to open the matchbox.

She smiled and continued her condescending bent with the words, “Not bad, John.”

“Thanks,” he grunted with a roll of his eyes.

John decided to keep the flashlight his little secret and struck a match to reveal a hallway extending off into the darkness. After lighting the candle, he realized the hallway was even longer than he first believed. Instead of perfectly uniform block, as he would have expected from the expert stonemasons that completed the church above, he found large slate slabs of disparate sizes stacked together to create the walls. Even larger pieces spanned the distance across the top of the two walls to create the ceiling. While the construction technique did not necessarily inspire confidence, John knew that the hallway had not collapsed in a past few hundred years, and there was no reason to believe it would do so in the next few minutes.

John moved slowly into the hallway and saw that narrow gaps exhibited themselves at random locations between the irregularly sized slabs. He reached out and gave a push on the wall; it refused to budge. Realizing that the construction was sturdier than it seemed, he fought back the feeling that someone could be watching him through the tiny cracks, and edged forward.

The corridor was too narrow to hold the candle out to his side. Holding the candle in front of him blinded him to what was beyond the flame, as streetlights hid the stars at night. Holding the candle behind him, however, caused his body to cast a shadow down the hall and negate the candle’s effects. After struggling with the problem for a few seconds, he wondered how the human race survived through several centuries with only candlelight to illuminate the darkness. He decided that he could probably use his small flashlight without giving too much away to Amy at this point. He doused the flickering candle and dug into his pocket for his key ring.

Upon locating the small flashlight, he pinched the sides between his thumb and forefinger to activate it. The fresh beam of crisp light washed forward into the full length of the hall. At the far end of the hall, a horned, cloven-hooved beast stared at him. He did a quick jump back at the sight of the demon ahead of him, before realizing the thing was yet another statue.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

He decided it would be best to take a second to look around and ran the beam over the rough stones of the corridor. In the strong light of the LED, he noticed a strange shadow on the floor about ten feet away from him. After a few seconds, he realized that the source of the shadow was a wire. The wire was very thin, suspended about a foot off the floor, and coated in a type of black mossy substance.

His mind returned to the lid of the sarcophagus and the three barely perceptible ridges his fingers detected on the last glyph. He froze, and started looking for the two other wires. After a few seconds, he saw a second tripwire about five feet ahead of him. He realized that if the pattern held, the third wire could be fifteen feet away, or right at his feet. He slowly shined the flashlight down, and found the last wire hovering a foot above his left toe. Apparently, the architects expected any unwanted guests would have only dim candle or lantern light, and would therefore be unable to see the trap.

John did not know what exactly the wires did, but now he could guess why the apparently haphazard construction of the hall existed; the tiny cracks between the stones could allow the builders to spring all kinds of foul traps. The wires could trigger poison darts to shoot from between the stones, or they could collapse the whole tunnel. After debating what the trap could be, and whether it withstood the test of sitting in the damp earth for three hundred years, he thought it best to let both questions remain a mystery. He carefully stepped over the wires and proceeded forward, toward the statue of Baphomet.

At this distance, the sculpture in front of him was very lifelike. He noted that it was at least as realistic as the statues upstairs but, unlike the figures in the church above, this sculpture was unpainted. Even without the paint, John had the impression that the thing could stand up and walk toward him at any moment. As he approached the leering sculpture, he noticed the tunnel ahead of him opened up into a large room at its end, and the statue actually sat on the other side of that room.

After what seemed like an eon of painfully limping along in the darkness, John reached the end of the tunnel. There he found an octagonal chamber that was twenty feet across, with each of the walls decorated in an intricate marble bas-relief. The ceiling arched up from the eight walls into a dome.

Columns framed each bas-relief wall, and ascended upward into the domed ceiling. Each column was adorned with carvings of angels and demons intertwined in battle. The two forces were clawing at each other, and both sides were committing atrocious acts. The fierceness and desperation of the mêlée was captured in the marble with the utmost beauty and delicacy, making the ugliness of the fight even more repugnant.

Across from him, Baphomet sat silently.

John’s heart gave a slight start upon noticing the faces between each of the columns. There, ugly bas-relief forms were held in captivity by carvings of sturdy cell doors, complete with carved locks and hinges. Gates adorned six walls of the chamber, three to his left and three to his right. Each of these doors retained a large main character that John took to be one of the more important gods of the mythos.

The carvings were so expert that, if it were not for the shallow depth of the bas-relief, John would have sworn the scenes to be real. Behind each main character, a supporting cast of associates loomed. One god, with the body of a man and a head that resembled an octopus, stood in front of a scene of stormy seas while, in the water behind him, demons were attacking a sailing ship. The rotting corpse of a woman stood at another gate while an army of undead approached from the field behind her. On the left, a beautiful woman stood before an orgy, and looked coquettishly into the chamber. Another relief displayed a man holding a goblet and standing before a scene of a feast. Though the gods varied drastically in form, they all had one thing in common; each of the faces stared through the carved prison bars toward something on the floor—something in the middle of the room.

John followed their gaze to the floor and found the object of their affection. Carved into a single marble tile in the center of the floor, was a key. That key matched the one on the side of the sarcophagus of Evan Fields.

It was then that John heard metal click, followed by a sharp and quick grating sound that reminded him of when his mother used a sharpening stone on her kitchen knives. A gurgling sound erupted in the hall behind him. He wheeled and directed the glow of his tiny flashlight back down the tunnel.

He saw the face of Father Lamb, who had wide eyes and blood gushing from his mouth. Two blades cut into him on the front, one at his upper chest and one at his pelvis. John could see a third blade, which was cutting into the spine of Father Lamb—just below his ribcage. The blades reset into the walls with a second sharp grating sound, and the Father’s body collapsed.

Behind the slumped corpse, flickering candlelight illuminated Amy Ritter’s gaping maw. She looked up from the corpse and saw John. After raising the candle in her left hand to help illuminate the scene, she squatted to see what triggered the blades.

John watched coldly, and remembered the priest saying that she knew there was only one way out. If she knew that, she knew there were traps here as well. He was sure that she sent him down here to spring the traps the builders left. If not for dumb luck, he would be lying in the hallway instead of Father Lamb.

“You really should be more careful,” he said calmly.

“The trigger to the blades has to be on the floor. He didn’t touch anything.” After a pause, she went on. “I see it. How many of these things are there?”

“Now why would it be in my interest to help you with that?”

After a deep breath, he reminded himself of his earlier decision; he needed to attack only when he could do so in one deadly strike. Even if he let her flounder in the hall, he guessed that she would probably find the two other tripwires. If she did, and eventually made it to the end of the tunnel, she would probably be angry enough to shoot him straightaway. Moreover, the key on the floor told him that he needed her phone, and the pictures on it, to remain intact just a little while longer.

“I found two other tripwires, about five feet apart after the first,” he said.

After a short pause, Amy replied, “I see them.”

John turned back to the room; it seemed to be a tribute to the church above. Six deities looked at him instead of twelve saints. Their eyes seemed to indicate that the path continued into the depths of the earth.

He sat down and looked at the key carved into the middle of the floor. Smaller, coral-colored tiles bordered the marble tile bearing the key. Each of the small tiles was engraved with a symbol. The corner tiles bore the same notches as the diagram of the key and the sides of Evan Fields’ sarcophagus.

Placing his thumb firmly on one of the small tiles, he exerted lateral pressure. There was the slightest movement. He knew what that meant.

Amy stepped into the room, and let out a sigh of relief.

“I need your phone,” he said, extending his hand.

Amy’s eyes looked at him coldly, as if the suggestion was too stupid to warrant a response.

Chapter 40:
The Back Door

From the dashboard of the car, a female voice announced, “You are nearing your final destination.”

Lou Fanelli glanced at the small dot on the screen of the GPS device and knew that the Church of St. Francis church would soon be in sight. He was increasingly aware that he had to start watching all that moved. George Pew had thought Ritter’s contacts were on their way, but he lost their location on the grid; there was no telling whether they were already in the church, or about to appear.

He glanced into his rear-view mirror and saw Jake Moore’s police cruiser. The car’s bright paint intentionally attracted attention. It would be hard to miss.

If these people were up to no good, Fanelli pondered the potential actions they might take when they saw the cruiser: they could quietly slip away, they could open fire, or they could draw back and wait. The last option was what Fanelli feared the most. It could be just like cornering a snake and then giving it time to coil and prepare to strike.

He decided not to announce his arrival.

Fanelli lifted the radio handset from the dash of the unmarked car, and said, “Jake, we’re about a half mile out. I need you to pull over and keep the cruiser out of sight.”

“Got it, let me know when you’re ready,” Moore replied across the radio.

Fanelli glanced over and could see Harry’s confusion. “We don’t want to announce ourselves too much at this point. Let’s go in easy and figure out what’s going on.”