Vigil (42 page)

No streetlight made an impression here, but the moon was bright and bathed the ruins in a pale, silvery light. Carter fished the flashlight out of his pocket and used its beam to help pick his way across the treacherous terrain, which was strewn with a combination of old debris—bricks and rotted boards—and newer junk: plastic detergent bottles and the occasional stained mattress. When he got to the sanatorium itself, he put one hand on the bottom of the fire escape, which dangled from the building like a twisted coat hanger, and gave it a couple of yanks. Nothing moved or gave way. Cautiously, he stepped up onto its bottom rung with one foot and tested his weight again there. Apart from a rusty creaking sound, the assembly still seemed stable enough.

He looked back at Ezra, who nodded his approval.

“Let’s not push it,” Carter said, instinctively keeping his voice down. “Wait till I get off the stairs before you get on them.”

He climbed a few steps farther. The creaking grew louder, and by the time he’d reached the second story, where the window frame had been bricked in, he felt a sudden shiver descend through the metal steps. For a second, he debated turning around, then, seeing the empty third-floor window just a few steps higher up, took the remaining stairs three at a time; when he got to the windowsill, he played the flashlight beam into the interior, just to make sure there was a floor to land on, then ducked over the rotting wooden sill and inside.

Putting his head back out the window, he saw Ezra slinging the straps of his knapsack over his shoulders. Silently, he waved for him to come on up. Then, he turned to survey his new surroundings.

This floor must never have been used by the defunct Surgical Supply. It had clearly been one of the sanatorium wards. It was a long, narrow room with several iron bed-steads, most of their springs reduced to dust, lined up against one wall. A metal tray table with no wheels lay on its side. At the far end a large, open archway led into blackness.

Ezra clambered over the window frame and into the room. In a hushed voice he said, “How are we ever going to go over this whole place?”

“Let’s just hope we don’t have to.”

Carter led the way, his flashlight picking out the holes in the floor, the splintered boards sticking up at odd angles, and through the archway. He played the flashlight in all directions, where corridors led off in both directions; straight ahead, a wider corridor beckoned.

“This one,” Carter whispered, “looks the most like it will lead us into the belly of the beast.”

Even treading as lightly as they could, their footsteps echoed in the cavernous interior. The walls on both sides were pocked with holes and riddled with water stains. The doors to the rooms all either had fallen off or stood open, revealing barren interiors with nothing more than another bed frame, a dresser with no drawers, a cracked sink that had toppled to the floor.

But ahead, at the farthest reach of Carter’s flashlight beam, he had the sense of something opening up—it even felt as if fresher air were circulating from that direction. He began to get the sense, from the way the other corridors had branched off, that the old hospital had been built in one big square, with a central space at its core. As they grew closer, the fresh air increased, and the gloom subtly diminished. Even the ceiling, Carter noted, had been raised at this end of the corridor.

And then the ceiling was gone altogether. Carter stopped, with Ezra beside him, and looked up . . . to see a bank of clouds scudding across the moon. They were in a large open area like a conservatory, with what appeared to be the remains of a vast skylight overhead. The iron support beams, or at least some of them, were bent like black fingers above them, but the oversized panes of glass that they had once held were completely gone now. All that remained of the sheets of glass were a thousand grainy shards that crunched underfoot. In the middle of the room a stone fountain stood silent, with a statue of some kind, indistinguishable from this distance, at its center.

“Looks like this was once a sunroom,” Carter said.

Ezra shone his own flashlight around the room, where heavy timbered columns still rose up like telephone poles toward a roof that wasn’t there. Everything was blanched of color, a world of blackness and shadows, the shapes barely outlined by the silver glints of moonlight. Even the sounds of the surrounding city were absent here; all that could be heard was the rustling of the wind through the rotted timbers and the worn bricks. But then his flashlight picked up something, something that glittered, and that was fixed to one of the timbers.

When he went closer, Ezra could see what it was. Though twisted and charred, it was still incontestably a crucifix. He motioned Carter over.

As Carter took it in, Ezra said softly, “Could it be something left behind by a patient in the old sanatorium?”

But Carter shook his head; he knew immediately that this was the crucifix he had last seen in the burn ward at St. Vincent’s. “It belonged to Russo.”

Ezra didn’t know what to make of this. He was relieved that they might be on the right path, after all, but he was also puzzled. If his theories had been correct, this would be the last thing that Arius would want, much less put on display in his lair. But what other way was there to account for its being here?

And then, looking further into the gloomy recesses of the room, Ezra spotted something else, also fixed to one of the columns. Something, as far as he could make out from this distance, that might prove to be equally strange.

He crossed in front of the stone fountain, its basin dry and cracked, and followed the beam of his flashlight to a small spot of color in a gilded frame. It was a watercolor, unmistakably by Degas, and when Carter came to his side, Ezra said, “And this belonged to Kimberly. She had it up in her dressing area.” It hung crookedly from a rusty nail that had been driven right through the center of the picture. “He didn’t take much care hanging it,” Ezra said, in tacit acknowledgement of what they both now knew—that the picture had been nailed there by their missing quarry. “But why?” Ezra wondered aloud. “Why the crucifix? And why this painting? It’s not as if he respected the religious significance of one, or was so enchanted by the beauty of the other.”

Carter knew why, though he was sick at the thought; in various paleolithic campsites, he had seen similar behavior. Antlers and jawbones, hung from cave walls, or bashed hominid skulls tucked into niches of the rock. “He’s not decorating,” Carter said. “He’s collecting souvenirs.”

He played his flashlight beam around the room, and this time it alighted on the antique statue in the center of the fountain. It had a classical head—Apollo, Narcissus, something Beth would know more precisely—but the rest of it was loosely draped in a red cloth. He went closer, and as he did he could see that the cloth was actually a long red coat made out of suede.

“What the hell is this?” Ezra said. “It looks like something a hooker would wear.”

“It was,” Carter said. “It belonged to the transvestite who first saw Arius emerge.”

Ezra paused. “Another trophy?”

Carter nodded.

But Ezra, perhaps noticing something Carter hadn’t, stepped over the rim of the basin and threw open the coat. In a whisper, he said, “But take a look at what’s under it.”

Carter focused his flashlight beam, and now he, too, could see the tightly wound parchment, wrapped like a skin around the torso of the stone figure. “My scroll,” Ezra said. With hasty fingers, he removed the coat from the shoulders of the statue and let it fall into the dry basin.

“What are you doing?” Carter asked. “Leave the scroll alone!”

“Why should I?”

“Have you already forgotten what happened in your apartment?”

“I’m not about to leave it here,” Ezra said, glaring back at Carter. “It’s the most significant discovery in the history of the world, and this whole place is going to be demolished in a few days.”

He turned around again and before Carter could stop him, he’d taken hold of one end of the scroll, draped over the statue’s shoulder, and begun to peel it away. The moment it began to come loose, Carter heard a familiar low hum and saw a pulse of lavender light.

“Ezra, stop!”

But the scroll continued to unfurl, the humming growing louder and the lavender light deeper. Ezra took a step back, as if surprised at what he’d done.

“I told you to stop,” Carter said.

“I did,” Ezra said, as the scroll went on unwinding of its own accord, like a serpent uncoiling itself from a slender tree.

The light grew more intense, a vibrant and pulsating purple. The humming gave way to a crackling sound, like dry twigs snapping underfoot.

“Get back!” Carter said, grabbing Ezra’s sleeve, but Ezra resisted. “I don’t think it can harm us,” he said. “Not with the clay from Jerusalem on us.”

“You planning to test it?”

Ezra reached out. “Yes.” He touched the scroll, just as Carter took hold again of his arm, and it was as if a powerful jolt of electric current had suddenly hit them both. Ezra was hurled into the air, his head landing with a terrible thump on the rim of the basin.

Carter was knocked off his feet and banged up against one of the wooden columns. The knife he’d had in his belt skittered across the floor.

The scroll swirled in an upright column of ever-increasing light, illuminating the brick walls of the abandoned conservatory with a violet glow; superimposed upon the dingy walls, turning and twisting just as the scroll did, were the words that had once been written on the ancient skin.

And even as he lay there, stunned and amazed, Carter understood, as he never had before, what these words were.

They weren’t just an account of who the Watchers were, what abominations they had committed, and the terrible punishment they had then suffered.

These words were more than that. Someone had written them; a conqueror had written them.

They were the record of a victory . . . written in blood. The blood of the vanquished. And on his very own skin.

Arius’s skin.

No wonder it had come back to him.

The words, their lettering eerily elongated, circled the crumbling walls like images projected by a magic lantern, around and around, faster and faster. The purple light grew brighter, hotter, until it became almost white; Carter couldn’t look at it directly anymore, but had to shield his eyes. The scroll spun in a tighter and tighter spiral, a helix of wind and light hovering just above the base of the fountain.

He heard Ezra moan.

At least he was alive.

He glanced again at the whirling scroll, transfixed by its power. Like a column of fire now spinning in place, it grew so bright, so hot, that he finally had to squeeze his eyes shut and turn his head away. Even then he could feel its power, he could hear its crackling heat. It was a living presence in the room, and Carter could only wonder, in mute terror, what would satisfy it.

And then he could tell, even with his eyes closed, that it was gone. The great room was dark again, the crackling wind had died. Everything was still.

He opened his eyes and turned back toward the fountain. The antique figure stood alone, unencumbered, bathed only in the pale moonlight coming through the conservatory’s empty skylight.

The scroll was gone. Vanished into thin air? Extinguished like a flame? Blown through the open roof? Carter saw no sign of it anywhere. He caught his breath and said, “Ezra, are you all right?”

He got no answer.

He stumbled to his feet, stepped over the knapsack, and went to Ezra’s side. The black beret had slipped down over his face, and when Carter raised it, he could see that his eyes were open but unfocused. “Can you hear me?” he asked, and this time Ezra feebly nodded. “I’m going to get you out of here. Can you stand up?”

Again he got no reply, but slipping his arm under Ezra’s shoulders, he was able to raise him to his feet.

“Okay, one step at a time.” He aimed his flashlight beam in the direction they’d entered from, and with Ezra leaning unsteadily against him, they walked slowly away from the fountain. Carter kept sweeping the flashlight back and forth to make sure they didn’t trip over any rotted timbers or broken floorboards. “We’ll take it slow,” he told Ezra, “nice and slow.”

They were almost out of the room when his flashlight beam glinted off something else, something fixed, like the other trophies, to one of the beams. He must have missed it entirely when they’d entered. Carter dragged Ezra with him toward the prize—and saw now that it was a bit of satiny fabric that had shone in the light. Satiny fabric that ran around the collar of a leopard-print pajama top.

Just like Beth’s favorite pair. The ones she was wearing on the night he’d found their bedroom door stuck . . . and the window to the fire escape wide open.

“Oh my God,” he said, under his breath, and Ezra let out a sigh of pain. There was a trickle of blood running down from the corner of his mouth.

Carter stuck the flashlight in his belt, then pulled the cloth from the nail. He held it to his face. It still carried the scent of her skin. “Oh my God,” he mumbled again, praying that this was unlike the other trophies, that it was still only a wish, unfulfilled, and not yet a memento.

“I’m glad you left the party early,” Abbie said, as she
steered the car off the exit ramp for Hudson. “The sooner we get to bed tonight, the earlier we can get to work tomorrow.”

Beth, staring out the window at the black trees and brush that now lined the sides of the two-lane road, had to struggle to pay attention to what her friend was saying; her thoughts kept returning, no matter how hard she resisted, to the same things . . . the sight of Arius arriving at the gallery, the spotting of blood that she could feel, even now, in her underwear. If she looked back, over nothing more than the last couple of months, all she could see was a mounting wave of bad news, trouble, and even death. Writing a letter of condolence to Joe Russo’s mother was one of the most painful things she had ever had to do.