“Jesus Christ,” said Grey.
Beyond the hole was a tunnel. Roughly round and crudely made, it curled around down into the bowels of the earth. The sides of it glistened and when Looks Away reached to touch it he quickly withdrew his hand. His fingers were wet and sticky and they smelled like rotting fish.
“What the hell is that?” asked Grey.
“I have no idea,” said the Sioux as he rubbed his fingers together under his nose. “It’s disturbingly like the secretions a worm makes. But God—the smell.”
The odor wafting up from the tunnel was clearly the source of the stench they’d smelled earlier. Here, though, it hadn’t been diluted by distance. The stink was almost palpable.
Looks Away drew a breath and raised his leg to step over the fractured rim.
“You’ll die in there,” said a voice behind them.
They both whirled, bringing their guns to bear.
A figure stood at the far end of the chamber, surrounded by the corpses of the reanimated dinosaurs. It was a woman who wore the shredded remnants of a sheer dressing gown. Her hair was up in a loose bun, her eyes were filled with dark mystery. A dreadful wound had been opened in her side through which they could see purple coils of her intestines. She seemed to be bathed in the glow of a pale blue-white light, but she cast no shadow.
Beside him, Grey heard Looks Away utter a low cry of bottomless pain and endless fear.
It was Veronica Chesterfield.
And she was dead.
Chapter Fifty-Four
The dead woman spoke in a voice that was as cold and alien as a cemetery wind.
“Thomas,” she said. “My sweet man.”
Looks Away would have fallen to his knees if Grey hadn’t dropped his lantern and caught him. The lantern fell over and burning oil spilled out. The flames cast wild shadows onto the walls, though none were stranger than the dead thing that stood before them.
“What…,” began Looks Away in a strained choke, “what are you?”
She held her arms wide. The gesture pulled the bloody gossamer tight across her ample breasts, and the wisps of cloth seemed to float around her as if stirred by a wind that neither man could feel. Grey realized that the blue-white light did not fall upon her but was instead part of her, as if she were alight within. It was beautiful in its way, but in this moment and in this place there was nothing in Grey’s heart but terror.
“Don’t you know?” she asked. “Don’t you recognize me? Don’t you know your own loving Veronica?”
“God rot you,” snarled Looks Away, “you are not her. Damn you to Hell!”
“To Hell?” mused Veronica, letting her arms drop. “No, my love. That’s not where I belong. Nor do I belong among the living. I walk now between those worlds.”
“I don’t … I don’t…”
She smiled sadly. “Such a brave man. You’ve faced such horrors already. Will you shrink in fear from a helpless spirit?”
“Spirit? You’re a … a ghost?” breathed the Sioux.
“Though I’ve only been dead for a short time I feel as I’ve lived forever here in the world of spirits. Ghost? That is so impure a word, and so shallow. Call me that if it helps, but know that it does not truly tell you what I’ve become.”
“You can’t be here. It’s wrong … it’s a lie. What are you that you are so cruel?”
For a moment the she-thing before them seemed to waver, her face twisted into doubt. “I don’t mean to be cruel,” she said in a voice that was filled with sadness. “Truly I do not.”
“Then why do this?” demanded Looks Away. “You have no right to use Veronica’s body like this. It’s unholy.”
“Unholy? That’s a strange word for you to use, Thomas. I thought you didn’t believe in God. Or the Devil. Or anything. Isn’t that what you told me? Or, isn’t that what you told her? That you were a man of science, not of ancient superstitions.”
Grey saw his friend stiffen. “How could you know what I said to her?”
“Because I am her. When she died, I rose from the flesh, but all that she was I am except that flesh. Please, Thomas, try and understand.”
“Don’t call me that. Only she was allowed to call me that. You don’t have the right.”
The ghost considered, then nodded. “Then I will call you Looks Away. Great Sioux warrior. Noted scientist. May I address that man rather than the lover of the woman who died?”
“This is insane,” Grey said sharply.
Veronica turned to him. “Ah … Greyson Torrance,” she said slowly, a half-smile on her lips. “The haunted man. Oh yes, don’t look so surprised. In the worlds beyond the flesh there is much we spirits know. Much we can see. And do you want to know what I see when I look at you?”
Looks Away frowned as he studied Grey. “What is she talking about?”
“Nothing,” said Grey. “This thing just wants to mess with our heads.”
“Oh no,” said the ghost. “I can see a tarot card burning in the air above your head. The martyr’s card. It is your sigil now. You are the haunted man who walks one step ahead of the tireless dead.”
“Grey—?” murmured Looks Away.
“She’s lying.”
“Am I?” asked the ghost. “Did Carmilla not read your fortune?”
“I don’t know anyone named—.”
“Mircalla then. She spoke prophecy to you and its truth burns within you. I can see the flame. Be careful, Grey Torrance or it will consume you.”
“I don’t give a mule’s hairy balls about prophecy or card tricks or any of that guff. You want to know the future? Sure—it’s me putting a hot lead bullet through the brain of that twisted bastard Aleksander Deray.”
Veronica’s smile faded from her pale lips. “Then listen to me, both of you. And you, Looks Away most of all,” she said softly. “I will tell you now what I was too afraid to say while I lived. “Nolan was nothing but a pawn of Deray. My husband was little more than a slave. He worshipped Deray like a god. He crawled on his belly before the necromancer. They conspired together to destroy this town because the Maze here is ripe with wealth. Gold and precious metals. You’ve seen it, you know. The great Gold Rush was nothing compared to the veins of ore that were exposed after the Quake. Nolan discovered the vast riches here, and he knew how to find the ore. He knew how to smelt it and extract the purest metals. And he knew where to find ghost rock.”
“If you’re Veronica, then why didn’t you tell me this before,” demanded Looks Away.
“Because, no matter what else, Nolan was still my husband and I swore to keep his secrets. That oath perished with my vows.” She smiled again, and it was ghoulish and cold. “The vow was ’til death do us part, and we are surely parted now. I am beyond the bindings of my wedding vow and beyond the cruel force of his hand. There is nothing Nolan can do to me anymore. But I fear Deray, because he has mastery over the dead. He could raise my body as one of his undead slaves. He is worse than a murderer, worse than a monster. He is evil incarnate. Even the dead and the damned fear him.”
“So what?” asked Grey. “We already know he’s a miserable blood-sucking bastard. That’s why I want to park a bullet between his eyes. And we pretty much figured Nolan was his lackey.”
“Nolan was all that, but the presence of all that gold and ghost rock here in his basement weighed on him. It was not his—he was merely the treasurer for Deray. He coveted it, though. It ate at his mind and gnawed even at his devotion to Deray. He came to worship a different god—that of his own greed. And so he rebelled. He used the gold to buy the loyalty of many of Deray’s men. The deputies in the town, some of the hired gunmen. With enough gold you can buy any mortal man’s soul.”
Looks Away said, “You’re speaking about Chesterfield in the past-tense. Is he dead?”
“Not yet,” said the manitou. “Every man, woman, and child on this estate has either been killed, captured, or given over to the undead summoned by Deray. A few yet live. Nolan himself still lives, but his h
ours are numbered. As for the rest? Most of them have been raised through the black magic of Deray’s necromancy and bound to his will by the ghost rock he has fused into their flesh.”
“Good lord,” said Looks Away faintly, “that’s quite … horrible.”
Veronica nodded. “For love of you, my dear Thomas, I have come to you to tell you this. I came freely and willingly, even though I know I am abhorrent to your eyes. You look at me and you see only a wretched ghost. But hear me, I beg.”
“We’re listening,” said Grey thickly, and he did not correct her on the use of his given name.
“Deray has Harrowed in his service, and a legion of the undead. This is the army he will use to realize his mad dreams.”
“What dreams? He’s already richer than God,” snapped Grey. “What the hell else does he want?”
“He wants to conquer.”
“Conquer what?”
She shook her head. “I … do not know. His mind is closed to me as it is closed to all lesser spirits. What I know for certain is that if he is unchecked all will suffer. Your kind and perhaps even mine. Necromancy is an abomination that threatens the living and the dead in equal measures.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
“That’s impossible,” said Grey. “I admit that I’m not much for church and all that Bible stuff, but I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that souls are immortal. Eternal. How can he do you any further harm?”
“Oh, my love there is so much you don’t know, so much you can’t know until death opens your eyes. Magic is not merely a tool, it is a doorway. With necromancy, Deray can enslave the souls of the dead. He could take me and use me in ways the living could never imagine—not in your wildest nightmares. I have an eternity to suffer, and Deray has the power to turn forever into Hell itself. Believe me, it does not. Haven’t you heard of banshees wailing or ghosts moaning? Suffering does not end when the heart becomes still and the flesh cools.”
“By the queen’s garters,” breathed Looks Away.
“What is it you expect us to do?” asked Grey.
“You need to stop Aleksander Deray,” said Veronica, “by any means necessary.”
“How?” demanded Looks Away. “If he’s that powerful, if he’s able to force ghosts and demons and every damned hobgoblin that goes bump in the night to his will, then what chance do we have?”
“Almost none,” she said sadly.
“Well that’s encouraging as hell,” said Grey. “Thanks so much. Maybe we should take the gold, gather everyone in town and move to—oh, I don’t know—anywhere else.”
She shook her head. “You cannot escape what is coming.”
“I can give it one hell of a try.”
“If you run all will be lost. Deray is not doing all of this just to conquer the town of Paradise Falls. He cares nothing for this place. Surely you can see that.”
Grey said nothing.
“The future is not a window but a house of mirrors reflecting ten thousand possibilities. Worlds will turn on the wink of your eye,” said Veronica, repeating what Mircalla had said. “Worlds will fall in the light of your smile.”
Grey felt his mouth go dry as dust.
“What does she mean?” asked Looks Away, frowning at him.
Grey said nothing.
“Not all who walk in shadows are evil,” continued the ghost. “Not all of the lonely spirits of the dead wish you harm.”
And with those words she turned and walked away. The firelight danced along the swirling folds of her gossamer nightgown. Then she vanished into the distance and the darkness.
Looks Away took a single, uncertain step as if to follow, then he stopped and sagged back in grief and defeat. Finally he turned to Grey.
“We are already in Hell,” he said. “So I guess we must play our parts like good puppets.”
He walked past Grey and stepped through the ragged hole in the wall. Grey lingered for a long moment, feeling an icy chill on his spine and a fiery burn in his gut. Then he, too, turned, stepped through the destroyed wall and began his journey into darkness.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Grey caught up with Looks Away, who had walked fifty feet along the slime-covered corridor. The Sioux stood without a lantern, awash in shadows. Grey carried the only remaining light and as before it cast capering shadows onto the walls.
“This is madness,” said Looks Away without preamble.
“This is not normal,” agreed Grey with a tone that was ten tons lighter than the weight on his heart.
“What are we doing? After all, we don’t even know if this tunnel will lead us to Deray.”
Grey looked at him. “Sure we do. Where else would it lead?”
“Bedlam?”
“Where?”
“Oh, never mind,” groused Looks Away. Then he cut a sharp look at Grey. “What was all that about Mircalla? You dodged me before when I asked.”
Grey did not want to tell him because it would open the door to more questions and to things he never wanted to share with anyone. However that kind of privacy no longer seemed to matter. He began walking and Looks Away fell into step beside him. Their path sloped down and curved away into unknown territory.
As they walked, Grey told him about what had happened at the brothel and his dream about that tarot card reading by Mircalla.
“The martyr card?” mused Looks Away. “Hardly what I’d call an apt description.”
“Why not? I’m down here risking my ass, aren’t I?”
“Sure but—.”
“And don’t think it’s just because you hired me. Give me a little more credit than that.”
“I do, actually,” said Looks Away, looking amused. “And I wasn’t casting aspersions on your valor, old chap. It’s just that martyrs sacrifice themselves and you’re a fighter, Grey. I believe you’d fight them all the way to the bitter end.”
Grey thought about it, and shrugged. “Guess I don’t have a whole lot of ‘give up’ in me. If I did you’d be down here alone.”
Looks Away nodded, his face serious. “I wonder if maybe I should be down here alone. After all this isn’t really your fight.”
“You’re paying me to make it my fight.”
“Oh, come now, old chap, I hardly think my offer of employment extends to fighting demons in an underground anteroom to Hell itself.”
“I still took your coin.”
“It was a token. You can give it back and no hard feelings.”
Grey dug into his pocket and realized that it was the one that had been torn by the dinosaur’s claw. “I guess I can’t.”
“But—”
“So I guess you’re stuck with me.”
The Sioux shook his head. “I don’t know which of us is more daft.”
“You’re doing this for love and I’m doing it for—.”
“Love?” asked Looks Away. “No, don’t try and look so innocent. Do you think I did not hear you two downstairs?”
Grey said nothing and he felt his face burn.
“Jenny’s a fine and decent woman,” he said.
“Yes,” Looks Away agreed, “she is. As was Veronica Chesterfield. They are the ladies of our heroic little tale and I suppose that makes us the knights errant.”
“Oh, please.”
“Who knows … maybe we’ll even get to slay a dragon.”
Grey shook his head. “You need to shut the fuck up.”
They kept going, deeper and deeper into the belly of the beast.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
They walked for miles down there in the dark.
For the first hour the tunnel was featureless except for the dripping slime on the walls and strange footprints that fit no creature they had ever seen. Several times Grey caught Looks Away pausing to study those walls.
“You seeing something I should know about?”
The Sioux nodded, looking worried.
“There are certain kinds of worms that secrete acids through their skin that allow them to essentiall
y burn their way through the soil. Mind you, we’re talking about tiny creatures. Two or three inches long.”
“So?” began Grey, then he stopped and reappraised the slick, unnaturally smooth walls. “Oh … shit.”
“Yes,” agreed Looks Away.
“Is that even possible? Something this big?”
Looks Away turned and gave him a withering stare. “After all that’s happened you can ask that question with a straight face?”
Grey sighed. “I guess I keep hoping we’ve seen the worst of what Deray has up his sleeve.”
“I wish,” muttered the Sioux.
They pressed on, and soon turned a sharper corner and found themselves in a vast cavern. They stood gaping in wonder at the things they saw.
The cavern stretched out in all directions and gnarled pillars of sandstone rose to support a roof that was lost in the darkness far above. They did not need the lantern to see because there was a light that seemed to come from blue fungi that clung to all the walls. The ground was broken, but there were pathways formed of natural sand runoff. Water dripped from the points of massive spears of quartz crystal that had been thrust outward from the walls by some titanic force. They looked too old to have been the result of the Great Quake, and Grey decided that this cavern, unlike the slimy tunnel they had just traversed, had been here for maybe a million years and only opened by the quake. Fantastic mushrooms sprouted from the ground to their right and rose in staggered ranks to cover one entire wall. The stems were as big around as oak trees and the caps of even the smallest would have covered an entire stagecoach. Bats clustered beneath the hoods, wriggling in their leathery thousands, and below them, insects writhed through the piles of guano. The stink of ammonia rolled at them in waves, but to their left was a different sight, and it brought with it a different and more powerful smell. The landscape sloped downward toward the rock-strewn shore of an underground sea. Waves broke upon the shore and cast broken shells and bizarre bones onto the sand. With each breaking wave a fresh stench of spoiled fish assaulted them.
The sea stretched on for miles, the wave tops glimmering with more of the eerie blue luminescence, but in the misty distance it faded into a uniform blackness.