The Reckoning (35 page)

They took Lemon's truck up the access road that led to the parking area near Crater Sink. The road had been cut and the parking lot put in many years ago, when the city council had decided to make a tourist destination out of Tallulah's Wall and Crater Sink, call it the Haunted Mountain or something like that, put up a railing around the pool, build a concession stand, sell tickets.

That hadn't gone well.

All that was left now was a broken-down winding ribbon of corroding tarmac pressed in and crushed down by the old forest all around it, and at the end of the road a cleared space in the pines and willows that used to be a parking lot. At one end of the lot a meandering gravel path had been laid down, now almost entirely overgrown with weeds and covered in fallen leaves. A chain of footlights led off into the darkness under the towering canopy of willows and pines and live oaks. At the far end of the path a low circle of yellow lamps defined the perimeter of Crater Sink, a near-perfect circle of moss-covered limestone walls surrounding a pool of water a hundred feet in diameter, a thousand feet deep.

Doris stopped the truck at the end of the path, left the engine running. She looked over at Helga, who was in the passenger seat, and then back at Lemon, leaning at an angle in the bench seat, his left arm strapped to his body, a leather jacket over his shoulders, his chest bare, his face wet with pain and sweat.

“Lemon, do you want to wait here?”

“Wait for what?” he said, showing white teeth in the dark, a pin light in each green eye.

“We have to confess something,” said Doris.

“Yeah, we do,” said Lemon.

“What?” said Helga.

“We don't actually know a chant for this,” said Lemon. Doris nodded, looking solemn.

“Then why are we here?”

“Because we
think
the chant was only to keep the singer's mind calm,” said Doris. “Music was what counted. Every plains tribe had a different chant for different spirits—”

“But in many ways they were all the same,” said Lemon. “The point was that the singer be clear so that the power could come into him and he could be stronger than the spirit.”

Helga gave that some thought. “You
think,
but you don't
know
?”

“Nope,” said Lemon.

“Okay,” said Helga, “so we need music, then?”

“Yeah,” said Lemon, holding up a Bose speaker in a black case and his iPhone.

“What is the music?” Helga wanted to know.

Doris and Lemon exchanged a smile.

“It's a recording of a Shoshone spirit song, a chant for the healing of a sick soul. We found it on the Smithsonian website.”

“Do you think it will work?”

“We're about to find out.”

Helga laughed at that, and they all smiled.

Doris said, “Okay, time to do this.”

“Will this really work?” asked Helga.

“Hell no,” said Lemon. “We're all gonna die.”

“He is joking, no?” said Helga to Doris.

“We'll see,” she said.

They cracked the doors and got out.

The night was cloudy but they could see the lights of Niceville spread out below them, a carpet of glowing jewels covered in mist, except for the dark oblong of the Confederate Graveyard and the broad back of the Tulip snaking through the heart of the town.

Helga walked to the edge of the lot and looked out over the town. Music was rising up faintly from the glittering bars on the Pavilion, and traffic was streaming north and south along the riverside drives, a ribbon of red and a river of white, a dull rumble from the avenues and cross streets. Below them the lights of the mansions in The Chase neighborhood rose up against the foot of Tallulah's Wall, pressing into the trees along the base of the cliff. In the northwest an airplane was lifting off from Mauldar Field and the searchlight on the radar tower was making a slow circuit, flaring up blue-white as the spot came around.

Over the music from the Pavilion they could hear the pop-pop-crackle of semiauto gunfire, and sirens, some in the north, more down in the crowded streets of Tin Town, a mile below the Pavilion. A sparkle pulse of red and blue lights was arcing and flashing halfway down the Mile, a police helicopter was hammering south toward Cap City, and a couple of fire trucks were bulling their way east across the Armory Bridge, driving cars onto the sidewalks. They could hear the heavy bass blare of their horns from a mile away.

“A lot going on,” said Lemon, standing behind her. Doris was waiting for them at the opening of the pathway, facing into the forest.

“Yes,” said Helga. “The city is all stirred up, like an angry hive. Is it always like this?”

“No,” said Lemon, looking grim. “It's not.”

“Let's go, kids,” called Doris from the edge of the forest. They turned and walked across the lot and followed Doris into the woods.

They went up into the dark, the stairs creaking and moaning under their weight. Each flight ended at a gallery, and the next one began at the far end of that gallery, so they had to make their way through the shadowy halls, following Reed's flash, a harsh cone of light as they passed by open doors leading into rooms that had once been bedrooms for patients. The rooms on the first gallery were large and airy, with casement windows, although barred. The rooms on the second less so, smaller and more cramped, one window only, and that one covered in crossbars, and on the third gallery there were no windows at all, only tiny cells with chains and manacles attached to the walls, twenty cells to a side and four sides on each gallery. They passed by these open rooms and could feel the grief, the pain, the fear seeping out of each tiny room. On their left the atrium fell away to the ground far below; beside them the chandelier hung motionless in the cone of blue light, coated in dust, draped in webs.

As they went up they heard the building breathing in and out, a low bass note that growled and hummed in the air itself. The air was getting thicker around them, as if the pressure were being pumped up, and they could hear voices now, some rising up from below, faint cries and whispers, and other voices coming from the top floor, a man's voice, deep and strident, and another voice, much less clear, more like a hissing vibration.

Danziger had the lead, with the BAR, Reed behind him, keeping the light moving, Danziger following the cone with the muzzle of the BAR, Kate next, and Nick following last, with his Colt, turning and watching, looking up and down and left and right, down into the atrium, up at the dome of the skylight, getting nearer, his skin crawling and his chest muscles tight, his stitches on fire, his head pounding from the slow fading away of his pain meds. He had popped two amphetamines—a standard Special Ops tactic. He had wanted to be clear, and he was clear, but he was paying a high price.

They reached the top floor. Here there were no cells or holding rooms. The stairs led up to a landing fenced in with balustrades, and another landing that branched up from the main one, where a flight of smaller stairs led up into the rafters and a door that probably opened onto the turreted platforms on top of Candleford House.

“In there,” said Reed, pointing the light to a large sitting area with a stained-glass window. It had once been a pretty room, and the air here was cleaner and less smothering. There was a carpet in the middle of the room, faded oriental patterns now coated in mold and dust. A large industrial light in a green tin shade hung over the center of the carpet. Reed put his light on the carpet, picked out the four indentations in the general dimensions of a bed frame. It was directly under the bowl of the factory lamp, clearly intended to shed a glare down on whatever, whoever, was in the bed.

No one had to be told what the bed and the light had been used for. Danziger stepped across the carpet, Reed close behind, Kate and Nick back a few feet, Nick watching the door they had come in through. He looked at Kate and saw, in the light streaming in through the stained-glass window, that she had gone into herself, as if listening to a voice only she could hear.

She felt his eyes on her, looked at him, gave him a smile that did not reach her eyes. “She's here,” said Kate in a whisper.

Danziger and Reed had stopped at a section of wall that had been kicked in. A broken board with a window cut into it lay shattered on the other side of the wall, half resting on a large armchair, covered in dust. Beside the armchair was a smoking table, and a footstool had been shoved into the corner of the little space, which was really not much more than a cupboard.

Its purpose was also clear.

Whoever sat in that chair would have a comfortable view of whatever took place in the sitting room and on the bed under the light, and he could enjoy a cigar and a glass of brandy while he watched. There was a second door on the other side of the space, set into a wall of unpainted spruce boards. They could hear voices coming through the thin wooden slats, a murmuring bass rumble and something else, something not really human at all.

Danziger stepped over the shattered board and into the space, moving the armchair as he did so, the BAR across his chest, his boots crunching into broken wood splinters and bits of glass.

The voices stopped.

There was a pause, something heavy sliding across the floor on the other side of the wall. The inner door popped open slightly, as if a catch had been released. A band of pale light showed along the open edge of the door.

“That you, cowboy?” said a hard voice from inside the room. “You just come right on in.”

Danziger checked Reed, Nick, got a nod, lifted the BAR, braced himself, slammed the panel with his right shoulder, sending it flying back. He stepped through it as the panel bounced off the wall and came swinging back. Danziger stopped it with his shoulder, covering the room with the BAR.

It was a large master bedroom lined in wood paneling, with a wall of stained glass running the length of the room. City light streamed in through the window wall, but the rest of the room was in shadows, dim corners and darkness above, black shadows in the rafters.

In the middle of the room, under a large brass chandelier that had five lit candles glowing in it, was a four-poster bed frame, mattress and spring long gone, resting on a large carpet that had been eaten away by mold and rot.

On the far wall by another door stood a four-drawer dresser, and on the dresser was a set of crystal glasses and a decanter of something that looked like cognac in the flickering light from the candles. Three chairs were arranged in an arc in front of the dresser.

Sitting in the largest of the three was Abel Teague, a shotgun resting in his lap, the muzzle pointing at Rainey Teague's head, Rainey's white face staring back at the door, his body rigid with fear, his eyes dark holes in his face with a flickering pinpoint of candle glow reflected in each eye.

And in the middle chair, upright, dressed in a long silky blue gown that covered and revealed her lovely body, sat a woman who was neither old nor young, neither pretty nor plain, unmarked by age but magisterial, radiating power and a cold intelligence. She ruled the room.

Her hair was very long and very red and it fell in rivulets and curls down past her shoulders. Her long-fingered hands were folded in her lap, her legs crossed at the ankles, her feet bare. Her eyes were as black as polished ebony, and in them the same candlelight flickered and danced, but with a greenish tint. She was looking at them, perfectly still, utterly motionless, staring back at them without any emotion showing on her face.

Danziger moved out of the way and Reed came in, and then Kate. When Rainey saw Kate, he started to get up as if he wanted to go to her, but Teague had the shotgun and he moved the muzzle enough to keep him there.

“Kind of a standoff, isn't it, cowboy,” he said, talking to Danziger. “I'll give it to you, son, you can ride and you can hunt and, by Jesus, you can shoot. You cut my boys to pieces, you surely did.”

“We're here for the boy,” said Nick.

Teague showed his gravestone teeth. “The boy is mine,” he said. “My son. My own blood son.”

“Kate,” said Rainey. “I'm sorry—”

“Shut up,” said Teague, lifting the shotgun. He came back to the rest of them.

“I don't want to have you in my head,” said Rainey. “I know what will happen to me.”

“
Nothing
will happen to you,” said Teague. “And we'll all have a wonderful time together. You'll see things, boy, and do things and experience things that few living men have ever done. You're a young lad, be patient, you'll grow into your money and your size—”

“And I'll be dead and you'll live in my body like…like a worm in a corpse.”

Teague smiled. “Boy's got a gift for melodrama,” he said. “But the matter is already decided. You folks don't believe me, why just ask the lady here.”

The woman had not spoken, had not moved.

Kate stepped forward around Nick and into the room and walked over and stood in front of her. The woman's head moved to track her, but nothing else in her seemed alive, except for the black light in those bottomless eyes.

“I am Kate Walker,” she said.

“And I am who I am,” said the woman in a voice that seemed to come out of the walls all around them.

“I know who you are,” said Kate.

The woman smiled then, a terrible thing to see.

“No one in this world knows what I am,” she said. “I am Nothing. I am No Thing.”

“No,” said Kate, her voice trembling.

“No?”

“No, I know your name. You are Branwen.”

There were crows in the trees that hung down over the surface of Crater Sink, and they were not happy to see Lemon and Doris and Helga walk out onto the open ground that surrounded the pool. They screeched and flapped and fluttered and cawed, growing louder and more threatening.

Doris walked to the edge of the pool, looked down into the black water and then up at the branches. The crows in the trees glared back at her, tiny red lights in their eyes, heads cocked and beaks clacking as they puffed themselves up and twitched and shifted on the branches.

Doris kept her eyes on them and said nothing. Their chatter grew and spread and they became more agitated. They started to dart and flutter and skim just above the surface of the pool.

Some of them flew at Doris's head, clawing at her, one or two coming close enough to catch at her hair, but she did not flinch or move.

She lifted a hand and Lemon put the Bose down on a shelf of rock, touched the iPhone. The first notes of the Shoshone healing chant floated out into the night, a sinuous human voice rising and falling and under that the pounding of drums.

At Candleford House, Kate and the woman stared at one another. The woman tilted her head slightly, like a raven, and seemed to listen to a sound no one else could hear. And then, faintly, from a long way off, they all could hear music, a man's voice singing a Native American chant, rhythmic and snakelike, and under that the bass beat of drums.

The woman went away, went inward, and then flared back at Kate. “You have sent people to my gate. I can hear them at the door. This will serve no purpose. I will not tolerate it. I do not intend to be alone for another age of your kind. I will take the boy and we will use him together.”

“No, you will not. Mr. Teague will go to the Reckoning and you will go on being Branwen.”

“How do you know my name is Branwen?”

“Your sister told me your name.”

“I have no sister.”

“Yes, you do. Her name is Glynis.”

The crows withdrew, clacking and fluttering, higher and higher into the branches around Crater Sink, as if driven away by the music.

Helga and Lemon came to stand near Doris, and they all stood there, listening to the Shoshone singer chanting. Other than that, the forest was silent. The surface of Crater Sink was as still as black glass. And then it wasn't.

The woman stood up. She was taller than Kate, almost as tall as Charlie Danziger, and she seemed to grow as she towered over Kate, bearing her down. “Glynis has nothing to tell me. And if those people do not leave my gate I will go back there and take them and keep them in torment forever.”

The sound of Shoshone spirit chant was filling the room. Teague stood up and started to pull at Rainey, as if to take him away from the sound, but the woman lifted a hand and froze him in place, never taking her black eyes off Kate.

Kate, shaking and shivering, struggled to find her voice again. “Glynis told me about the storm.”

Figures were emerging from the darkness under the trees, the burned souls that Doris had seen in her pictures. They came forward in silence, as faint as wisps of fog, drifting slowly through the trees, gathering in around the pool as if they were being called upon. The surface of Crater Sink was rippling and shimmering and its color was changing from a bottomless black to a cobalt blue, and a green spark was showing down deep, a green fire rising up.

And now Doris and Helga and Lemon felt the fear, the dread, felt it coiling around them, tightening on them, squeezing the air out of their lungs. Doris gripped the railing, feeling the panic coming, fighting it. She looked down at her hands and saw the skin over her knuckles go white.

She heard Helga gasping for air and saw Lemon on the other side of her, his eyes closed, body stiff, vibrating like a tuning fork. The shadow figures pressed in around them, a cold clinging mist on their skins, whispering and clutching, and now, in the depths, Crater Sink was filling up with a terrible blue light.

“She told me a story,” said Kate. “About a storm. She said it wasn't the way it happened, but she had to tell it in a way that made sense to me.”

The woman had her fixed and caught, pinned like a dragonfly on a card, her eyes boring in on Kate's, and Kate could feel her prying at the gates of her mind, pulling and twisting her, trying to force her open, trying to get inside her and infect her.

There was a bottomless well of hate and cruelty and rage inside those black eyes, but Kate closed her mind and she told the story the way Glynis had told it to her in the mirror while Nick was in the ICU and she was alone in that awful night.

“Two sisters lived by an ocean. They spent their time making things out of the sand that was there, shaping it into mirrors and other necessary objects. One sister was lighter and the other was darker, and in the land behind them lived other twins just like them, all of them doing other things, making other objects that were beautiful or necessary, and sometimes they met to exchange them or just to sit together and watch the ocean.

“One evening a storm came from the land behind them, the worst storm the sisters had ever seen, and it caught them both up and carried them away across a huge dark ocean. The storm came from the other side of their world, from the blue sun that lit it, and the storm flared out over the endless ocean, taking them away with it into the darkness.