Sixteen years later, that long chamber was not entirely as it had been on the night of owls and rats. The plaster had been torn down and hauled away. The victims had been removed from the niches in the walls. Between the columns of red-black brick that Spencer’s father had left as supports, the dark earth was exposed. Police and forensic pathologists, who labored for weeks within that room, had added vertical four-by-four beams between some brick columns, as if they hadn’t trusted solely to the supports that Steven Ackblom had thought sufficient.
The cool, dry air now smelled faintly of stone and earth, but it was a clean smell. The pungent miasma of chemicals and the stink of biological decay were gone.
Standing in that low-ceilinged space again, with Ellie and the dog, Spencer vividly recalled the fright that had nearly crippled him when he was fourteen. However, fear was the least of what he felt—which surprised him. Horror and disgust were part of it, but not as great as a diamond-hard anger. Sorrow for the dead. Compassion for those who had loved them. Guilt for having failed to save anyone.
He knew regret, as well, for the life he might have had but had never known. And now never could.
Above all, what overcame him was an unexpected reverence, as he might have felt at any place where the innocent had perished: from Calvary to Dachau, to Babi Yar, to the unnamed fields where Stalin buried millions, to rooms where Jeffrey Dahmer dwelt, to the torture chambers of the Inquisition.
The soil of any killing ground isn’t sanctified by the murderers who practice there. Though they often think themselves exalted, they are as the maggots that live in dung, and no maggots can transform one square centimeter of earth into holy ground.
Sacred, instead, are the victims, for each dies in the place of someone whom fate allows to live. And though many may unwittingly or unwillingly die in the place of others, the sacrifice is no less sacred for the fact that fate chose those who would make it.
If there had been votive candles in those cleansed catacombs, Spencer would have wanted to light them and gaze into their flames until they blinded him. Had there been an altar, he would have prayed at the foot of it. If by offering his own life he could have brought back the forty-one and his mother, or any one of them, he would not have hesitated to rid himself of this world in hope of waking in another.
All he could do, however, was quietly honor the dead by never forgetting the details of their final passage through this place. His duty was to be witness. By shunning memory, he would dishonor those who had died here in his place. The price of forgetfulness would be his soul.
Describing those catacombs as they had been in that long-ago time, coming at last to the woman’s cry that had roused him from his paralytic terror, he was suddenly unable to go on. He continued to speak, or thought he did, but then he realized that no more words would come. His mouth worked, but his voice was only a silence that he cast into the silence of the room.
Finally a thin, high, brief, childlike cry of anguish came from him. It was not unlike the one cry that had jolted him from his bed on that July night or the one that, later, had broken his paralysis. He buried his face in his hands and stood, shaking with grief too intense for tears or sobbing, waiting for the seizure to pass.
Ellie was aware that no word or touch could console him.
In glorious canine innocence, Rocky believed any sadness could be relieved by a wagging tail, a cuddle, an affectionate warm lick. He rubbed his flank against his master’s legs and swished his tail—and padded away in confusion when none of his tricks worked.
Spencer found himself speaking again almost as unexpectedly as he had found himself unable to speak a minute or two ago. “I heard the woman’s cry again. From down there at the end of the catacombs. Hardly loud enough to be a scream. More a wail to God.”
He started toward the last door, at the end of the catacombs. Ellie and Rocky stayed with him.
“Even as I moved past the dead women in these walls, I was remembering something from six years before, when I’d been eight years old—another cry. My mother’s. That spring night, I woke hungry, got out of bed for a snack. There were fresh chocolate-chip cookies in the kitchen jar. I’d been dreaming about them. Went downstairs. The lights were on in some rooms. I thought I’d find my mom or dad along the way. But I didn’t see them.”
Spencer stopped at the painted black door at the end of the catacombs. Catacombs they were and always would be to him, even with the bodies all disinterred and taken away.
Ellie and Rocky stopped at his side.
“The kitchen was dark. I was going to take as many cookies as I could carry, more than I would ever be allowed to have at one time. I was opening the jar when I heard a scream. Outside. Behind the house. Went to the window by the table. Parted the curtain. My mom was on the lawn. Running back to the house from the barn. He…he was behind her. He caught her on the patio. Beside the pool. Swung her around. Hit her. In the face. She screamed again. He hit her. Hit and hit. And again. So fast. My mom. Hitting her with his fist. She fell. He kicked her in the head. He kicked my mom in the head. She was quiet. So fast. All over so fast. He looked toward the house. He couldn’t see me in the dark kitchen, at the narrow gap in the curtains. He picked her up. Carried her to the barn. I stood at the window awhile. Then I put the cookies back in the jar. Put the lid on. Went back upstairs. Got into bed. Pulled up the covers.”
“And didn’t remember any of it for six years?” Ellie asked.
Spencer shook his head. “Buried it. That’s why I couldn’t sleep with the air conditioner running. Deep down where I didn’t realize it, I was afraid he would come for me in the night, and I wouldn’t hear him because of the air conditioner.”
“And then that night, all those years later, your window open, another cry—”
“It reached me deeper than I could understand, drew me out of bed, out to the barn, down here. And when I was walking toward this black door, toward the scream…”
Ellie reached to the lever-action knob on the door, to open it, but he stayed her hand.
“Not yet,” he said. “I’m not ready to go in there again yet.”
…barefoot on icy stone, I approach the black door, filled with the fear of what I have seen tonight but also with the fear of what I saw on that spring night when I was eight, which has been repressed since then but all at once comes bursting up from within me. I’m in a state beyond mere terror. No word is adequate for what I feel. I’m at the black door, touching the black door, so black, glossy, like a moonless night sky reflected in the blind face of a pond. I’m nearly as confused as I am terrified, for it seems to me that I’m both eight and fourteen, that I’m opening the door to save not merely the woman who made bloody birds on the vestibule door but to save my mother as well. Time past and time present melt together, and all is one, and I enter the slaughterhouse.
I step into deep space, infinite night around me. The ceiling is ink-black to match the walls, the walls to match the floor, the floor like a chute to Hell. A naked woman, half conscious, lips split and bleeding, rolling her head in listless denial, is manacled to a burnished-steel slab, which seems to float in blackness because its supports also are black. A single light. Directly over the table. In a black fixture. It floats in the void, pin-spotting the steel, like a celestial object or the cruel beam of a godlike inquisitor. My father’s wearing black. Only his face and hands are visible, as if severed but alive in their own right, as if he’s an apparition struggling toward completion. He’s extracting a gleaming hypodermic syringe from thin air—actually from a drawer beneath the steel slab, a drawer invisible in its blackness-upon-blackness.
I shout, “No, no, no,” as I plunge at him, surprising him, so the syringe drops back into the thin air from which it came, and I drive him backward, backward, past the table, out of the focused light, into blackest infinity, until we crash into the wall at the end of the universe. I’m screaming, punching, but I’m fourteen and slender, and he’s in his prime, muscular, powerful. I kick
him, but I’m barefoot. He lifts me effortlessly, turns with me, floating in space, slams me back-first into the hard blackness, knocking the wind out of me, slams me again. Pain along my spine. Another blackness rises inside me, deeper than the abyss all around. But the woman cries out again, and her voice helps me resist the inner darkness, even if I can’t resist my father’s far greater strength.
Then he presses me to the wall with his body, holding me off the floor with his hands, his face looming before mine, locks of black hair falling across his forehead, eyes so dark that they seem to be holes through which I’m seeing the blackness behind him. “Don’t be afraid, don’t, don’t be afraid, boy. Baby boy, I won’t hurt you. You’re my blood, my seed, my creation, my baby. I’d never hurt you. Okay? You understand? You hear me, son, sweet boy, my sweet little Mikey, you hear me? I’m glad you’re here. It had to happen sooner or later. Sooner the better. Sweet boy, my boy. I know why you’re here, I know why you’ve come.”
I’m dazed and disoriented because of the perfect blackness of that room, because of the horrors in the catacombs, because of being lifted bodily and pounded against the wall. In my condition, his voice is as lulling as fearsome, strangely seductive, and I’m nearly convinced he won’t harm me. Somehow I must have misunderstood the things I’ve seen. He continues speaking in that hypnotic way, words pouring out, giving me no chance to think, Jesus, my mind spinning, him pressing me to the wall, face like a great moon over me.
“I know why you’ve come. I know what you are. I know why you’re here. You’re my blood, my seed, my son, no different from me than my reflection in a mirror. Do you hear me, Mikey, sweet baby boy, hear me? I know what you are, why you’ve come, why you’re here, what you need. What you need. I know, I know. You know it too. You knew it when you came through the door and saw her on the table, saw her breasts, saw between her spread legs. You knew, oh, yes, oh, you knew, you wanted it, you knew, you knew what you wanted, what you need, what you are. And it’s all right, Mikey, it’s all right, baby boy. It’s all right what you are, what I am. It’s how we were born, each of us, it’s what we were meant to be.”
Then we’re standing at the table, and I’m not sure how we got there, the woman lying in front of me and my father pressing against my back, pinning me to the table. He has a vicious grip on my right wrist, pushes my hand onto her breasts, slides it along her naked body. She’s half conscious. Opens her eyes. I’m staring into her eyes, begging her to understand, as he forces my hand everywhere, all the time talking, talking, telling me that I can do anything to her I want, it’s right, it’s what I was born to do, she’s only here to be what I need her to be.
I come far enough out of a daze to struggle briefly, fiercely. Too brief, not fierce enough. His arm’s around my throat, choking me, jamming me against the table with his body, choking with his left arm, choking, the taste of blood in my mouth, until I’m weak again. He knows when to release the pressure, before I pass out, because he doesn’t want me to pass out. He has other plans. I sag against him, crying now, tears dropping onto the bare skin of the manacled woman.
He lets go of my right hand. I hardly have strength to lift it from the woman. Clink and rattle. Down at my side. I look. One of his disembodied hands. Sorting through the silvery instruments that are floating in the void. He plucks a scalpel from the weightless array of clamps and forceps and needles and blades. Seizes my hand, presses the scalpel into it, folds his hand over mine, grinding my knuckles, forcing me to grip the blade. Below us the woman sees our hands and the shining steel, and she begs us not to hurt her.
“I know what you are,” he says, “I know what you are, sweet boy, my baby boy. Just be what you are, just let go and be what you are. You think she’s beautiful now? You think she’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen? Oh, just wait until we’ve shown her how to be more beautiful. Let Daddy show you what you are, what you need, what you like. Let me show you what fun it is to be what you are. Listen, Mikey, listen now, the same dark river runs through your heart and mine. Listen, and you can hear it, that deep dark river, roaring along, swift and powerful, roaring along. With me now, with me, just let the river carry you along. Be with me now and lift the blade high. See how it shines? Let her see it, see how she sees it, how she has eyes for nothing else. Shining and high in your hand and mine. Feel the power we have over her, over all the weak and foolish ones who can never understand. Be with me, lift it high—”
He has one arm loosely around my throat, my right hand gripped by his, so my left arm is free. Instead of reaching back for him or trying to jam my elbow into him, which won’t work, I plant my hand against the stainless steel. Unendurable horror and desperation empower me. With that hand and my whole body, I shove away from the table. Then with my legs. Then my feet. Kicking against the table with both feet. Raging backward into the bastard, unbalancing him. He stumbles, still grinding the hand in which I’ve got the scalpel, trying to tighten the arm at my throat. But then he falls backward, me atop him. The scalpel clinks away in darkness. My falling weight drives the breath out of him. I’m free. Free. Scramble across the black floor. The door. My right hand aching. No hope of helping the woman. But I can bring help. Police. Someone. She can still be saved. Through the door, onto my feet, tottering, flailing to keep my balance, out into the catacombs, running, running past all the frozen white women, trying to shout. Throat bleeding inside. Raw and raspy. Voice a whisper. No one on the ranch to hear me anyway. Just me, him, the naked woman. But I’m running, running, screaming in a whisper when there’s no one to hear.
The expression on Ellie’s face cut through Spencer’s heart.
He said, “I shouldn’t have brought you here, shouldn’t have put you through this.”
She was gray in the light of the frost-white bulbs. “No, it’s what you had to do. If I had any doubts, I have none now. You can’t have gone on forever…with all of this.”
“But that’s what I’ll have to do. Go on forever with it. And I don’t know now why I thought I could find a life. I don’t have any right to make you carry this weight with me.”
“You can go on with it and have a life…as long as you remember it all. And I think now I know what it is you can’t remember, where those lost minutes come in.”
Spencer couldn’t bear to meet her eyes. He looked at Rocky, where the dog sat in deep despondency: head lowered, ears drooping, shivering.
Then he turned his eyes to the black door. Whatever he found beyond it would decide whether he had a future with or without Ellie. He might have neither.
“I didn’t try to run back to the house,” he said, returning in his mind to that distant night. “He would have caught me before I’d gotten there, before I could use a telephone. Instead, I went up to the vestibule, out of the cupboard, through the file room, and turned right toward the front of the building, into the gallery. By the time I was on the stairs to his studio, I could hear him coming through the darkness behind me. I knew he kept a gun in the lower left-hand drawer of his desk. I’d seen it once when he’d sent me there to get something. Entering the studio, I hit the light switch, ran past his easels, supply cabinets, to the far corner. The desk was L-shaped. I vaulted over it, crashed into the chair, clawed at the drawer, got it open. The gun was there. I didn’t know how to use it, whether it had a safety. My right hand was throbbing. I could hardly hold the damn thing, even in both hands. He was off the stairs, into the studio, coming for me, so I pointed and pulled the trigger. It was a revolver. No safety. The recoil about knocked me on my ass.”
“And you shot him.”
“Not yet. I must’ve pulled up hard on it when I squeezed the trigger, pulled off target, so the bullet took a chunk out of the ceiling. But I held on to the gun, and he stopped coming. At least he didn’t come as fast, not pell-mell anymore. But he was so calm, Ellie, so calm. As if nothing had happened, just my dad, good old dad, a little perturbed with me, you know, but telling me everything was going to be all right, romancing me
with that sweet talk like in the black room. So sincere. So hypnotic. And so sure that he could make it work if I only gave him time.”
Ellie said, “But he didn’t know that you’d seen him beat your mother and carry her back to the barn six years before. He might have thought you would put together her death and his secret rooms when you came down from your panic—but until then he thought he had time to bring you around.”
Spencer stared at the black door.
“Yeah, maybe that’s what he thought. I don’t know. He told me that to be like him was to know what life was all about, the true fullness of life without limits or rules. He said I’d enjoy what he could show me how to do. He said I’d already started to enjoy it back in that black room, that I’d been afraid of enjoying it, but that I’d learn it was all right to have that kind of fun.”
“But you didn’t enjoy it. You were repulsed.”
“He said that I did, that he could see I did. His genes ran through me like a river, he said again, through my heart just like a river. Our shared river of destiny, the dark river of our hearts. When he got to the desk, so close I couldn’t miss again, I shot him. He flew backward from the impact. The spray of blood was horrible. It seemed for sure that I’d killed him, but then I hadn’t seen much blood until that night, and a little looked like a lot. He hit the floor, rolled facedown, and lay there, very still. I ran out of the studio, back down here….”
The black door waited.
She didn’t speak for a while. He couldn’t.
Then Ellie said, “And in that room with the woman…those are the minutes you can’t remember.”
The door. He should have had the old cellars collapsed with explosives. Filled in with dirt. Sealed forever. He shouldn’t have left that black door to be opened again.
“Coming back here,” he said with difficulty, “I had to carry the revolver in my left hand because of how he’d clenched my right so hard in his, grinding my knuckles together. It was throbbing, full of pain. But the thing is…it wasn’t just pain I felt in it.”