The Book of the Dead (46 page)

Although the real family mansion had been burned to the ground by a New Orleans mob many years before, Pendergast had retained this virtual mansion within his memory ever since: an intellectual artifact, perfect down to the last detail; a storehouse in which he kept not only his own experiences and observations, but innumerable family secrets as well. Normally, entering into this palace of memory was a tranquilizing, calming experience: each drawer of each cabinet of each room held some past event, or some personal reflection on history or science, to be perused at leisure. Today, however, Pendergast felt a profound unease, and it was only with the greatest mental effort he was able to keep the mansion cohesive in his mind.

He crossed the foyer and mounted the stairs to the wide second-floor hallway. Hesitating only briefly at the landing, he moved down the tapestried corridor, the broad sweep of the rose-colored walls broken at intervals by marble niches or ancient gilt frames containing portraits in oils. The smell of the mansion now swept over him: a combination of old fabric and leather, furniture polish, his mother’s perfume, his father’s Latakia tobacco.

Near the center of this hallway lay the heavy oak door to his own room. But he did not proceed that far. Instead, he stopped at the door just before it: a door that, strangely, had been sealed in lead and covered with a sheet of hammered brass, its edges nailed into the surrounding door frame.

This was the room of his brother, Diogenes. Pendergast himself had mentally sealed this door years before, locking the room forever inside the memory palace. It was the one room into which he had promised himself never again to enter.

And yet—if Eli Glinn was right—he must enter it. There was no choice.

As Pendergast paused outside the door, hesitating, he became aware that his pulse and respiration were increasing at an alarming rate. The walls of the mansion around him flickered and glowed, growing brighter, then fading, like the filament of a lightbulb failing under too much current. He was losing his elaborate mental construct. He made a supreme effort to concentrate, to calm his mind, and managed to steady the image around him.

He had to move quickly: the memory crossing could shatter at any moment under the force of his own emotions. He could not maintain the necessary concentration indefinitely.

He willed a pry bar, chisel, and mallet to appear in his hands. He wedged the pry bar under the brass sheet, pulling it away from the door frame, moving around the four sides until he had pried it off. Dropping the bar, he took up the chisel and mallet and began hammering loose the soft lead that had been packed in the cracks between the door and the frame, digging and carving it out in chunks. He worked rapidly, trying to lose himself in the task, thinking of nothing but the job at hand.

Within minutes, curls of lead lay over the carpeting. Now the only impediment to what lay on the far side of the door was its heavy lock.

Pendergast stepped forward, tried the handle. Normally, he would have picked it with the set of tools he always carried with him. But there was no time even for this: any pause, however brief, might be fatal. He stepped back, raised his foot, aimed at a point just below the lock, and gave the door a savage kick. It flew back, slamming against the interior wall with a crash. Pendergast stood in the doorway, breathing heavily. The room of Diogenes, his brother, lay beyond.

And yet there was nothing visible. The mellow light of the hallway did not penetrate the infinite gloom. The doorway was a rectangle of blackness.

Pendergast tossed aside the chisel and mallet. A moment’s thought brought a powerful flashlight into his hand. He snapped on the light and pointed the beam into the gloom, which seemed to suck the very light out of the air.

Pendergast tried to take a step forward but found he could not will his limbs to move. He stood there, on the threshold, for what seemed like an eternity. The house began to wobble, the walls evaporating as if made of air, and he realized he was once again losing the memory palace. He knew if he lost it now, he’d never return. Ever.

It was only by a final act of supreme will—the most focused, draining, and difficult moment he had ever faced—that Pendergast forced himself over the threshold.

He stopped again just beyond, prematurely exhausted, playing the flashlight around, forcing the beam to lick ever farther into the darkness. It was not the room he expected to find. Instead, he was at the top of a narrow stairway of undressed stone, winding down into the living rock, twisting deeply into the earth.

At this sight, something dark stirred within Pendergast’s mind: a rough beast that had slumbered, undisturbed, for over thirty years. For a moment, he felt himself falter and his will fail. The walls trembled like a candle flame in the wind.

He recovered. He had no choice now but to go forward. Taking a fresh grip on the flashlight, he began to descend the worn, slippery steps of stone: deeper, ever deeper, into a maw of shame, regret—and infinite horror.

P
endergast descended the staircase, the smell of the sub-basement coming up to him: a cloying odor of damp, mold, iron rust, and death. The staircase ended in a dark tunnel. The mansion had one of the few belowground basements in New Orleans—created at great expense and labor by the monks who originally built the structure, and who had lined the walls with sheets of hammered lead and carefully fitted stone to make cellars for aging their wines and brandies.

The Pendergast family had converted it to another use entirely.

In his mind, Pendergast made his way down the tunnel, which opened onto a broad, low open space, the irregular floor part earth, part stone, with a groined ceiling. The walls were encrusted with niter, and dim marble crypts, elaborately carved in Victorian and Edwardian style, filled the expanse, separated from one another by narrow walkways of brick.

Suddenly he became aware of a presence in the room: a small shadow. Then he heard the shadow speak with a seven-year-old voice: “Are you sure you want to keep going?”

With another shock, Pendergast realized there was a second figure in the dim space: taller, more slender, with white-blond hair. He felt chilled to the bone—it was himself, nine years old. He heard his own smooth, childish voice speak: “You’re not afraid?”

“No. Of course not,” came the small, defiant return—the voice of his brother, Diogenes.

“Well, then.”

Pendergast watched as the two dim figures made their way through the necropolis, candles in hand, the taller one leading the way.

He felt a rising dread. He didn’t remember this at all—and yet he knew something fearful was about to happen.

The fair-haired figure began examining the carved fronts of the tombs, reading the Latin inscriptions in a high, clear voice. They had both taken to Latin with great enthusiasm. Diogenes, Pendergast remembered, had always been the better Latin student; his teacher thought him a genius.

“Here’s an odd one,” said the older boy. “Take a look, Diogenes.”

The smaller figure crept up and read:

ERASMUS LONGCHAMPS PENDERGAST
   1840 - 1932
De mortüs aut bene aut nihil

“Do you recognize the line?”

“Horace?” said the younger figure. “ ‘Of the dead’… hmmm… ‘speak well or say nothing.’ ”

After a silence, the older boy said, with a touch of condescension, “Bravo, little brother.”

“I wonder,” asked Diogenes, “what it was about his life he didn’t want talked about?”

Pendergast remembered his youthful rivalry with his brother over Latin… one in which he was eventually left far behind.

They moved on to an elaborate double crypt, a sarcophagus in the Roman style topped with a man and woman in marble, both laid out in death with hands crossed on their breasts.

“Louisa de Nemours Prendergast. Henri Prendergast.
Nemo nisi mors,”
read the older boy. “Let’s see… That must be ‘Till death do us part.’ ”

The smaller boy had already moved to another tombstone. Crouching, he read,
“Multa ferunt anni venientes commoda secum, Multa recedentes adimiunt.”
He looked up. “Well, Aloysius, what do you make of that?”

A silence followed, and then the response came, bravely but a little uncertain. “ ‘Many years come to make us comfortable, many receding years diminish us.’ ”

The translation was greeted with a sarcastic snicker. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Of course it does.”

“No, it doesn’t. ‘Many receding years diminish us’? That’s nonsense. I think it means something like ‘The years, as they come, bring many comforts. As they recede, they…’ ” He paused.
“Adimiunt?”

“Just what I said: diminish,” said the older boy.

“ ‘As they recede, they diminish us,’ ” finished Diogenes. “In other words, when you’re young, the years bring good. But as you grow old, the years take it all away again.”

“That makes no more sense than mine,” said Aloysius, annoyance in his voice. He moved on toward the back of the necropolis, down another narrow row of crypts, reading more names and inscriptions. At the end of the cul-de-sac, he paused at a marble door set into the back wall, a rusted metal grate over it.

“Look at this tomb,” he said.

Diogenes came up close, peered at it with his candle. “Where’s the inscription?”

“There isn’t one. But it’s a crypt. It’s got to be a door.” Aloysius reached up, gave the grate a pull. Nothing. He pushed at it, pulled it, and then picked up a stray fragment of marble and began tapping around its edges. “Maybe it’s empty.”

“Maybe it’s meant for
us
,” the younger boy said, a ghoulish gleam appearing in his eyes.

“It’s hollow back there.” Aloysius redoubled his tapping and gave the grate another tug—and then suddenly, with a grinding sound, it opened. The two stood there, frightened.

“Oh, the
stink!”
said Diogenes, backing up and holding his nose.

And now Pendergast, deep within his mental construct, smelled it, too—an indescribable odor, foul, like a rotten, fungus-covered liver. He swallowed as the walls of the memory palace wavered, then came back into solidity.

Aloysius shone his candle into the freshly exposed space. It wasn’t a crypt at all, but rather a large storage room, set into the rear of the sub-basement. The flickering light played off an array of strange contraptions made of brass, wood, and glass.

“What’s in there?” Diogenes said, creeping back up behind his brother.

“See for yourself.”

Diogenes peered in. “What are they?”

“Machines,” the older brother said positively, as if he knew.

“Are you going in?”

“Naturally.” Aloysius stepped through the doorway and turned. “Aren’t you coming?”

“I guess so.”

Pendergast, from the shadows, watched them go in.

The two boys stood in the room. The lead walls were streaked with whitish oxides. The space was packed floor-to-ceiling with contraptions: boxes painted with grimacing faces; old hats, ropes, and moth-eaten scarves; rusted chains and brass rings; cabinets, mirrors, capes, and wands. Cobwebs and thick layers of dust draped everything. At one end, propped up sideways, stood a sign, painted in garish colors and embellished with curlicues, a pair of pointing hands, and other nineteenth-century American carnival flourishes.