Part 43 (1/2)

Reasoning any illumination's better than none, she reached into the car, hitting the b.u.t.ton that activated the hazard lights. The flas.h.i.+ng orange bulbs sent a ruddy ghost light into the cemetery to illuminate those monstrous trees that loomed over her, seemingly ready to pounce the moment she stepped inside those railings.

She forced herself toward the entrance to the Necropolis. She had to find Paul's sister. She was responsible for her safety. If anything shoulda A shape lumbered out of the darkness toward her.

”Miranda? What are you doing out of the car?”

”Mr. Newton?”

Into the field of flas.h.i.+ng orange light John Newton appeared. There were two figures, John Newton and an old man she recognized as Stan Price. Both looked exhausted as if they'd just come down from a mountain.

”Miranda, get back into the car. I need to take Stan Price home.”

Miranda was frightened to say the words but she had no choice. ”Mr. Newton, I-I'm sorry, but Elizabeth ran off after some girl. The dog followed her. I don't know why she went or-”

”Elizabeth's gone into the cemetery?” A look of horror transformed his face into a wide-eyed mask.

Miranda nodded. ”I'm sorry. I never even saw any girl, but she-”

”Oh, G.o.d.” His voice dropped to a whisper. ”Help Stan into the car. I'll be back as soon as I can.”

Then he disappeared into the cemetery, calling Elizabeth's name as he ran, the penlight flas.h.i.+ng from headstones, sending shadows racing across the ground.

4.

Where was her father? Had he fallen here in the dark? Was he hurt? But if he was hurt how could she help him?

The ghostly shape of the girl running along the path ahead of her twisted through the darkness and the headstones with a dream-like slowness. Elizabeth followed, weaving amongst all those Jesus's and angels whose faces had rotted into ugly, monstrous things, that leered as she ran by. Inadvertently, she stepped on a grave. Something clutched at her heel.

Slipping free, she ran deeper and deeper into the cemetery. Trees arched over her, then shadow swallowed her burying her in darkness.

Seconds later she entered the eerie maze of pa.s.sageways with iron doors. Behind those, she knew, there were coffins that contained the bones of dead people.

Still following the girl in old-fas.h.i.+oned clothes she ran along the pa.s.sageway. As she did so, she happened to glance down and saw that Sam ran beside her, his eyes bright, and his ebony body sleek.

Ahead of her, the girl had now stopped outside a tomb.

The door lay open. When she saw Elizabeth she beckoned her. Then she went into the velvet blackness of the vault.

Why had her father gone in there? Why didn't he wait at the door for her?

Elizabeth decided he must have hurt himself, that's why he hadn't come out to meet her.

With the dog still following faithfully she went inside.

5.

John moved quickly through the cemetery. The darkness here all but complete. The penlight cast its meager radiance ahead of him; a little of the light splashed against the tombs.

His cracked ribs chafed against each other as he ran. The pain was immense. That, and the hot airless night, conspired to leave him with a suffocating breathlessness. He strove to take deep breaths, but they only triggered fresh agonies.

He followed the path as it meandered across a landscape scabbed darkly with eighty thousand tombs. Ivy swarmed over them like an infection. Rotting in man-sized cavities beneath the earth, skulls would grimace up at him; eyes that had been devoured by maggots now bulged with mushroom growths; they glared at the soles of his pa.s.sing feet and gleamed with antic.i.p.ation, sensing what was to come.

In a weird, dislocated way his mind slipped free to swoop like some spirit bird down through the brown mist of earth. It glided amongst the burials lying there. He saw it all: Rotting coffins revealing their occupants that are slowly melting into the soil. And in the casket beneath the humpbacked angel is old Abraham, the miller who'd slipped between his millstones one winter's morning, which ground his skull to splinters. He'd burnt the letters that came to him in the dead of night. Then he mixed the ashes with salt and buried them where the gallows once stood at Skelbrooke crossroads.

It didn't do any good.

The demands must be met.

John knew that now.

He ran on into the darkening heart of the Necropolis. At every bend in the path he willed his daughter to be there.

Once more his imagination took him underground, down through the coffins that stretched out for half a mile or more in a single, vast formation. Black lozenge shapes flying through the mists of eternity. His mind's eye flew deeper and deeper into the hill, where something pulsed with a violet light. Something that was old when the pyramids were new. It pulsed, slowly hemorrhaging its evil out into the dirt where it spread outward, polluting the lives of everyone it touched.

Five thousand years ago it was known by a different name that was now lost to history. A thousand years ago it was Father Bones, five hundred years ago it was Jack O'Bones. Three hundred years ago the name mutated into Baby Bones. Three hundred years from now it would probably attract a new name. But it would carry on the same age-old business. Slumbering. Waking. Issuing its toxic little demands. Nouris.h.i.+ng itself on outbreaks of terror and submission. Then once more slumbering until the next time.

A branch raked his face like a claw. He shook himself out of the trance. The pain in his chest was worse; his breathing had become so restricted the oxygen barely reached his brain. Somewhere across the hill the clock in the cemetery chapel struck midnight.

At last the entrance to the Vale of Tears hung before him, clad in the same darkness that lies between stars. s.h.i.+ning the all too feeble penlight in front of him, he lumbered into the alleyway; ahead of him stretched the crypts with their iron doors.

In one such alley the body of Robert Gregory would lie cooling. John had intended to call the police from his mobile. That, however, was forgotten now.

He must see Elizabeth. He needed it like he needed breath. It had become a burning demand of his own body.

He moved along between the slumbering tombs, working his way deeper into the maze of pa.s.sageways that were now held by a dreamlike stillness.

Then he stopped. Ahead, stood the tomb of the Ellerby family.

Slowly he approached. Silent, forbidding, secretive, the iron door was now shut. As if someone had closed it to commit a private act.

”Elizabeth?”

He'd intended to shout. But his voice came softly. ”Elizabeth?”

He approached the iron door that was now so firmly sealed against the outside world. He shone the light at it. A few strands of light brown hair that looked a lot like Elizabeth's hung down where the door closed against the frame.

”Elizabeth.” He struck the door with the flat of his hand. The echoes came back at him before slowly dying away.

It may have been a trick of his ear but as the sound faded, it sounded like the faint bark of a dog receding far underground.